Ellen Glasgow - The Builders

THE train was late that day, and when the old leather mail pouch was brought in, dripping wet, by Jonas, the negro driver, Mrs. Meade put down the muffler she was knitting, and received it reluctantly.

"At least there aren't any bills at this time of the month," she observed, with the manner of one who has been designed by Providence to repel disaster.

While she unbuckled the clammy straps, her full, round face, which was still fresh and pretty in spite of her seventy years, shone like an auspicious moon in the dusky glow of the fire. Since wood was scarce, and this particular strip of southside Virginia grew poorer with each year's harvest, the only fire at The Cedars was the one in "the chamber," as Mrs. Meade's bedroom was called. It was a big, shabby room, combining, as successfully as its owner, an aspect of gaiety with a conspicuous absence of comforts. There were no curtains at the windows, and the rugs, made from threadbare carpets, had faded to indeterminate patterns; but the cracked mahogany belonged to a good period, and if the colours had worn dim, they were harmonious and restful. The house, though scarred, still held to its high standards. The spirit of the place was the spirit of generous poverty, of cheerful fortitude.

The three girls on the hearthrug, knitting busily for the War Relief Association, were so much alike in colouring, shape, and feature, that it was difficult at a casual glance to distinguish Maud, who was almost, if not quite, a beauty, from Margaret and Diana, who were merely pretty and intelligent. They were all natural, kind-hearted girls, who had been trained from infancy to make the best of things and to laugh when they were hurt. From the days when they had played with ears of corn instead of dolls, they had acquired ingenuity and philosophy. For Mrs. Meade, who derived her scant income from a plantation cultivated "on shares" by negro tenants, had brought up her girls to take life gaily, and to rely on their own resourcefulness rather than on fortuitous events.

"Here is a nice fat letter for Caroline, and it looks as if it weren't an advertisement." With one plump hand she held out the letter, while she handed the dripping mail bag to Jonas. "Bring some wood for the fire, Jonas, and be sure to shut the door after you."

"Dar ain' no mo' wood, ole Miss."

For an instant Mrs. Meade stopped to think. "Well, the garden fence is falling down by the smoke-house. Split up some of the rails. Here is your letter, Caroline."

A woman's figure, outlined against the rocking branches of an old cedar beyond the window, turned slowly toward the group on the hearthrug. In Caroline's movements, while she lingered there for a moment, there was something gallant and free and spirited, which was a part of the world outside and the swaying boughs. Though she was older than the three girls by the fire, she was young with an illusive and indestructible grace of the soul. At thirty-two, in spite of the stern sweetness about her thin red lips, and the defiant courage which flashed now and then from the shadowy pallor of her face, one felt that the flame and ardour of her glance flowed not from inward peace, but from an unconquerable and adventurous spirit. Against the grey rain her face seemed the face of some swiftly changing idea, so expressive of an intangible beauty was the delicate curve of the cheek and the broad, clear forehead beneath the dark hair, which grew low in a "widow's peak" above the arched eyebrows and the vivid blue of the eyes. If there was austerity in the lines of her mouth, her eyes showed gaiety, humour, and tenderness. Long ago, before the wreck of her happiness, her father, who had a taste for the striking in comparisons, had said that Caroline's eyes were like bluebirds flying.

The letter could wait. She was not interested in letters now, rarely as they came to her. It was, she knew, only the call to a patient, and after nearly eight years of nursing, she had learned that nothing varied the monotonous personalities of patients. They were all alike, united in their dreadful pathos by the condition of illness – and as a mere matter of excitement there was little to choose between diphtheria and pneumonia. Yet if it were a call, of course she would go, and her brief vacation would be over. Turning away from the firelight, she deferred as long as possible the descent from her thoughts to the inevitable bondage of the actuality.

Beyond the window, veiled in rain, she could see the pale quivering leaves of the aspens on the lawn, and the bend in the cedar avenue, which led to the big white gate and the private road that ran through the farm until it joined the turnpike at the crossroads. Ever since she was born, it seemed to her, for almost thirty-two years, she had watched like this for something that might come up that long empty road. Even in the years that she had spent away, she had felt that her soul waited there, tense and expectant, overlooking the bend in the avenue and the white gate, and then the road over which "the something different," if it came at all, must come at last to The Cedars. Nothing, not change, not work, not travel, could detach the invisible tendrils of her life from the eager, brooding spirit of the girl who had once watched there at the window. She had been watching – watching – she remembered, when the letter that broke her heart had come in the old mail pouch, up the road beyond, and through the gate, and on into the shadows and stillness of the avenue. That was how the blow had come to her, without warning, while she waited full of hope and expectancy and the ardent sweetness of dreams.

"My poor child, your heart is broken!" her mother had cried through her tears, and the girl, with the letter still in her hands, had faced her defiantly.

"Yes, but my head and my hands are whole," she had replied with a laugh.

Then, while the ruins of her happiness lay at her feet, she began rebuilding her house of life with her head and her hands. She would accept failure on its own terms, completely, exultantly, and by the very audacity of her acceptance, she would change defeat into victory. She would make something out of nothing; she would wring peace, not from joy, but from the heart of an incredible cruelty; she would build with courage, not with gladness, but she would build her house toward the stars.

"There must be something one can live on besides love," she thought, "or half the world would go famished."

"Come and read your letter, Caroline," called Maud, as she reached the end of a row. "There isn't anything for the rest of us."

"I am so afraid it is a call, dear," said Mrs. Meade; and then, as Caroline left the window and passed into the firelight, the old lady found herself thinking a little vaguely, "Poor child, the hard work is beginning to show in her face – but she has never been the same since that unfortunate experience. I sometimes wonder why a just Providence lets such things happen." Aloud she added, while her beaming face clouded slightly, "I hope and pray that it isn't anything catching."

As Caroline bent over the letter, the three younger girls put down their knitting and drew closer, while their charming faces, brown, flushed, and sparkling, appeared to catch and hold the glow of the flames. They were so unlike Caroline, that she might have been mistaken, by a stranger, for a woman of a different race. While she bent there in the firelight, her slender figure, in its cambric blouse and skirt of faded blue serge, flowed in a single lovely curve from her drooping dark head to her narrow feet in their worn russet shoes.

"It is from an old friend of yours, mother," she said presently, "Mrs. Colfax."