The Builders

"Perhaps she will. You would like to see her, darling?"

The child thought earnestly for a moment. "I'd like to see her," she answered, "she is so pretty."

"It would make you happier if she came back?"

A smile, which was like the wise smile of an old person, flickered over Letty's features. "Wasn't it funny?" she said. "Father asked me that this morning."

A tremor shook Caroline's heart. "And what did you tell him?"

"I told him I'd like her to come back if she wanted to very badly. It hurts mother so not to do what she wants to do. It makes her cry."

"She says she wants to come back?"

"I think she wants to see me. Her letters are very sad. They sound as if she wanted to see me very much, don't they mammy? Somebody has to read them to me because I can read only plain writing. How long will it be, Miss Meade, before I can read any kind, even the sort where the letters all look just alike and go right into one another?"

"Soon, dear. You are getting on beautifully. Now I'll run into my room, and put on my uniform. You like me in uniform, don't you?"

"I like you any way," answered Letty politely. "You always look so fresh, just like a sparkling shower, Cousin Daisy says. She means the sort of shower you have in summer when the sun shines on the rain."

Going into her room, Caroline bathed her face in cold water, and brushed her hair until it rolled in a shining curve back from her forehead. She was just slipping into her uniform when there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Timberlake said, without looking in,

"David has come home, and he has asked for you. Will you go down to the library?"

"In one minute. I am ready." Her voice was clear and firm; but, as she left the room and passed slowly down the staircase, by the copy of the Sistine Madonna, by the ivory walls of the hall and the pink walls of the drawing-room, she understood how the women felt who rode in the tumbril to the guillotine. It was the hardest hour of her life, and she must summon all the courage of her spirit to meet it. Then she remembered her father's saying, that after the worst had happened, one began to take things easier, and an infusion of strength flowed from her mind into her heart and her limbs. If the worst was before her now, in a little while it would be over – in a little while she could pass on to hospital wards, and the sounds of the battlefield, and the external horrors that would release her from the torment of personal things.

The door of the library was open, and Blackburn stood in the faint sunshine by the window – in the very spot where he had stood on the night when she had gone to tell him that Angelica had ordered her car to go to the tableaux. As she entered, he crossed the room and held her hand for an instant; then, turning together, they passed through the window, and out on the brick terrace. All the way down the stairs she had wondered what she should say to him in the beginning; but now, while they stood there in the golden light, high above the June splendour of the rose garden, she said only,

"Oh, how lovely it is! How lovely!"

He was looking at her closely. "You are working too hard. Your eyes are tired."

"I must go on working. What is there in the world except work?" Though she tried to speak brightly, there was a ripple of sadness in her voice. Her eyes were on the garden, and it seemed to her that it blazed suddenly with an intolerable beauty – a beauty that hurt her quivering senses like sound. All the magic loveliness of the roses, all the reflected wonder and light and colour of the sunset, appeared to mingle and crash through her brain, like the violent crescendo of some triumphant music. She had not wanted colour; she had attuned her life to grey days and quiet backgrounds, and the stark forms of things that were without warmth or life. But beauty, she felt, was unendurable – beauty was what she had not reckoned with in her world.

"You are going to France?" he asked.

"I am leaving for camp next week. That means France, I hope."

"Until the end of the war?"

"Until the end – or as long as I hold out. I shall not give up."

For the first time she had turned to look at him, and as she raised her lashes a veil of dry, scorching pain gathered before her eyes. He looked older, he looked changed, and, as Mrs. Timberlake had said, he looked as if he had suffered. The energy, the force which had always seemed to her dynamic, was still there in his keen brown face, in his muscular figure; only when he smiled did she notice that the youth in his eyes had passed into bitterness – not the bitterness of ineffectual rebellion, but the bitterness that accepts life on its own terms, and conquers.

"When I parted from you last autumn," he said suddenly, "I was full of hope. I could look ahead with confidence, and with happiness. I felt, in a way, that the worst was over for both of us – that the future would be better and richer. I never looked forward to life with more trust than I did then," he added, as if the memory of the past were forcing the words out of him.

"And I, also," she answered, with her sincere and earnest gaze on his face, "I believed, and I hoped."

He looked away from her over the red and white roses. "It is different now. I can see nothing for myself – nothing for my own life. Where hope was there is only emptiness."

The sunset was reflected in the shining light of her eyes. "Life can never be empty for me while I have your friendship and can think of you."

By the glow in his face she knew that her words had moved him; yet he spoke, after a moment, as if he had not heard them. "It is only fair that you should know the truth," he said slowly and gravely, "that you should know that I have cared for you, and cared, I think, in the way you would wish me to. Nothing in my life has been more genuine than this feeling. I have tested it in the last year, and I know that it is as real as myself. You have been not only an emotion in my heart – you have been a thought in my mind – every minute – through everything – " He stopped, and still without turning his eyes on her, went on more rapidly, "As a lover I might always have been a failure. There have been so many other things. Life has had a way of crowding out emotion to make room for other problems and responsibilities. I am telling you this now because we are parting – perhaps for a time, perhaps for ever. The end no one can see – "

Beyond the rose garden, in one of the pointed red cedars down in the meadow, a thrush was singing; and it seemed to her, while she listened, that the song was in her own heart as well as in the bird's – that it was pouring from her soul in a rapture of wonder and delight.

"I can never be unhappy again," she answered. "The memory of this will be enough. I can never be unhappy again."

From the cedar, which rose olive black against the golden disc of the sun, the bird sang of hope and love and the happiness that is longer than grief.

"The end no one can see," he said, and – it may have been only because of the singing bird in her heart – she felt that the roughness of pain had passed out of his voice. Then, before she could reply, he asked hurriedly, "Has Letty spoken to you of her mother?"

"Yes, she talked of her the little while that I saw her."

"You think the child would be happier if she were here?"

For an instant she hesitated. "I think," she replied at last, "that it would be fairer to the child – especially when she is older."

"Her mother writes to her."

"Yes. I think Letty feels that she wishes to come home."

The bird had stopped singing. Lonely, silent, still as the coming night, the cedar rose in a darkening spire against the afterglow.

"For us there can be no possible life together," he added presently. "We should be strangers as we have been for years. She writes me that she has been ill – that there was a serious operation – "

"Have the doctors told her the truth?"

"I think not. She knows only that she does not regain her strength, that she still suffers pain at times. Because of this it may be easier."

"You mean easier because you pity her? That I can understand. Pity makes anything possible."

"I am sorry for her, yes – but pity would not be strong enough to make me let her come back. There is something else."

"There is the child."

"The child, of course. Letty's wish would mean a great deal, but I doubt if that would be strong enough. There is still something else."

"I know," she said, "you feel that it is right – that you must do it because of that."

He shook his head. "I have tried to be honest. It is that, and yet it is not that alone. I wonder if I can make you understand?"

"Has there ever been a time when I did not understand?"

"God bless you, no. And I feel that you will understand now – that you alone – you only among the people who know me, will really understand." For a time he was silent, and when at last he went on, it was in a voice from which all emotion had faded: "Pity might move me, but pity could not drive me to do a thing that will ruin my life – while it lasts. Letty's good would weigh more with me; but can I be sure – can you, or any one else, be sure that it is really for Letty's good? The doubt in this could so easily be turned into an excuse – an evasion. No, the reason that brings me to it is larger, broader, deeper, and more impersonal than any of these. It is an idea rather than a fact. If I do it, it will be not because of anything that has happened at Briarlay; it will be because of things that have happened in France. It will be because of my year of loneliness and thought, and because of the spirit of sacrifice that surrounded me. If one's ideal, if one's country – if the national life, is worth dying for – then surely it is worth living for. If it deserves the sacrifice of all the youth of the world – then surely it deserves every other sacrifice. Our young men have died for liberty, and the least that we older ones can do is to make that liberty a thing for which a man may lay down his life unashamed."

The emotion had returned now; and she felt, when he went on again, that she was listening to the throbbing heart of the man.

"The young have given their future for the sake of a belief," he said slowly, "for the belief that civilization is better than barbarism, that humanity is better than savagery, that democracy has something finer and nobler to give mankind than has autocracy. They died believing in America, and America, unless she is false to her dead, must keep that faith untarnished. If she lowers her standards of personal responsibility, if she turns liberty into lawlessness, if she makes herself unworthy of that ultimate sacrifice – the sacrifice of her best – then spiritual, if not physical, defeat must await her. The responsibility is yours and mine. It belongs to the individual American, and it cannot be laid on the peace table, or turned over to the President. There was never a leader yet that was great enough to make a great nation."

As he paused, she lifted her eyes, and looked into his without answering. It was the unseen that guided him, she knew. It would be always the unseen. That was the law of his nature, and she would accept it now, and in the future. "I understand," she said, simply, after a moment.

"It is because you understand," he answered, "because I can trust you to understand, that I am speaking to you like this, from my heart. My dear, this was what I meant when I wrote you that nationality is nothing for personality is everything. Our democracy is in the making. It is an experiment, not an achievement; and it will depend, not on the size of its navy, but on the character of its citizens, whether or not it becomes a failure. There must be unselfish patriotism; there must be sacrifice for the general good – a willing, instead of a forced, sacrifice. There must be these things, and there must be, also, the feeling that the laws are not for the particular case, but for the abstract class, not for the one, but for the many – that a democracy which has been consecrated by sacrifice must not stoop, either in its citizens, or in its Government, to the pursuit of selfish ends. All this must be a matter of personal choice rather than of necessity. I have seen death faced with gladness for a great cause, and, though I am not always strong enough to keep the vision, I have learned that life may be faced, if not with gladness, at least with courage and patience, for a great ideal – "

His voice broke off suddenly, and they were both silent. The sun had gone down long ago, and it seemed to Caroline that the approaching twilight was flooded with memories. She was ready for the sacrifice; she could meet the future; and at the moment she felt that, because of the hour she had just lived, the future would not be empty. Whatever it might bring, she knew that she could face it with serenity – that she was not afraid of life, that she would live it in the whole, not in the part – in its pain as well as in its joy, in its denial as well as in its fulfilment, in its emptiness as well as in its abundance. The great thing was that she should not fall short of what he expected of her, that she should be strong when he needed strength.

She looked up at him, hesitating before she answered; and while she hesitated, there was the sound of hurrying footsteps in the library, and Mrs. Timberlake came through the room to the terrace.

"David," she called in a startled voice. "Did you know that Angelica was coming back?"

He answered without turning. "Yes, I knew it."

"She is here now – in the hall. Did you expect her so soon?"

"Not so soon. She telegraphed me last night."

"Mrs. Mallow met her at the Hot Springs yesterday, and told her that Letty was ill. That brought her down. She has been at the Hot Springs for several weeks."

Blackburn had grown white; but, without speaking, he turned away from the terrace, and walked through the library to the hall. Near the door Angelica was leaning on the arm of a nurse, and as he approached, she broke away from the support, and took a single step forward.

"Oh, David, I want my child! You cannot keep me away from my child!"

She was pale and worn, her face was transparent and drawn, and there were hollows under the grey velvet of her eyes; but she was still lovely – she was still unconquerable. The enchanting lines had not altered. Though her colour had been blotted out, as if by the single stroke of a brush, the radiance of her expression was unchanged, and when she smiled her face looked again as if the light of heaven had fallen over it. Never, not even in the days of her summer splendour, had Caroline felt so strongly the invincible power of her charm and her pathos.

"No, I cannot keep you away from her," Blackburn answered gently, and at his words Angelica moved toward the staircase.

"Help me, Cousin Matty. Take me to her." Abandoning the nurse, she caught Mrs. Timberlake's arm, clinging to her with all her strength, while the two ascended the stairs together.

Blackburn turned back into the library, and, for a moment, Caroline was left alone with the stranger.

"Have you known Mrs. Blackburn long?" asked the other nurse, "she must have been so very beautiful."

"For some time. Yes, she was beautiful."

"Of course, she is lovely still. It is the kind of face that nothing could make ugly – but I keep wondering what she was like before she was so dreadfully thin. You can tell just to look at her what a sad life she has had, though she bears it so wonderfully, and there isn't a word of bitterness in anything that she says. I never knew a lovelier nature."

She passed up the stairs after the others, her arms filled with Angelica's wraps, and her plain young face enkindled with sympathy and compassion. Clearly Angelica had found another worshipper and disciple.

Alone in the hall, Caroline looked through the library to the pale glimmer of the terrace where Blackburn was standing. He was gazing away from her to the rose garden, which was faintly powdered with the silver of dusk; and while she stood there, with her answer to him still unuttered, it seemed to her that, beyond the meadows and the river, light was shining on the far horizon.

THE END