A lull fell on the table, and for the first time Caroline heard Blackburn's voice. Mrs. Chalmers was asking him about the house, and he was responding with a smile that made his face almost young and sanguine. His mouth, when he was not on guard, was sensitive and even emotional, and his eyes lost the sharpness that cut through whatever they looked at.
"Why, yes, I built it before my marriage," he was saying. "Dodson drew the plans. You know Dodson?"
Mrs. Chalmers nodded. "He has done some good things in New York. And this lovely furniture," she was plainly working hard to draw him out. "Where did you find it?"
He met the question lightly. "Oh, I had a lot of stuff here that Angelica got rid of."
From the other end of the table Mrs. Blackburn's voice floated plaintively, "There isn't a piece of it left," she said. "It made the house look exactly like an Italian hotel."
The remark struck Caroline as so unfortunate that she turned, with a start of surprise, to glance at her hostess. Could it be that Mrs. Blackburn was without tact? Could it be that she did not realize the awkwardness of her interruption? Yet a single glance at Angelica was sufficient to answer these questions. A woman who looked like that couldn't be lacking in social instinct. It must have been a casual slip, nothing more. She was probably tired—hadn't old Mrs. Colfax said that she was delicate?—and she did not perceive the effect of her words. Glancing again in Blackburn's direction, Caroline saw that his features had hardened, and that the hand on the tablecloth was breaking a piece of bread into crumbs.
The change in his manner was so sudden that Caroline understood, even before she saw the twitching of his eyebrows, and the gesture of irritation with which he pushed the bread crumbs away, that, in spite of his reserve and his coldness, he was a bundle of over-sensitive nerves. "He was behaving really well," she thought. "It is a pity that she irritated him." Though she disliked Blackburn, she was just enough to admit that he had started well with Mrs. Chalmers. Of course, no one expected him to appear brilliant in society. A man who had had no education except the little his mother had taught him, and who had devoted his life to making a fortune, was almost as much debarred from social success as a woman who knew only trained nursing. Yet, in spite of these defects, she realized that he appeared to advantage at his own table. There was something about him—some latent suggestion of force—which distinguished him from every other man in the room. He looked—she couldn't quite define the difference—as if he could do things. The recollection of his stand in politics came to her while she watched him, and turning to Mr. Peyton, who was a trifle more human than Colonel Ashburton, she asked:
"What is this new movement Mr. Blackburn is so much interested in? I've seen a great deal about it in the papers."
There was a bluff, kind way about Charles Peyton, and she liked the natural heartiness of the laugh with which he answered. "You've seen a great deal more than you've read, young lady, I'll warrant. No, it isn't exactly a new movement, because somebody in the North got ahead of him—you may always count on a Yankee butting in just before you—but he is organizing the independent voters in Virginia, if that's what you mean. At least he thinks he is, though even way down here I've a suspicion that those Yankees have been meddling. Between you and me, Miss Meade, it is all humbug—pure humbug. Haven't we got one party already, and doesn't that one have a hard enough time looking after the negroes? Why do we want to go and start up trouble just after we've got things all nicely settled? Why does David want to stir up a hornet's nest among the negroes, I'd like to know?"
On the other side of Caroline, Colonel Ashburton became suddenly audible. "Ask that Rip Van Winkle, Miss Meade, if he was asleep while we made a new constitution and eliminated the vote of the negroes? You can't argue with these stand-patters, you know, because they never read the signs of the times."
"Well, there isn't a better way of proving it's all humbug than by asking two questions," declared the jovial Charles—a plethoric, unwieldy old man, with a bald head, and a figure that was continually brimming over his waistcoat. "What I want to know, Billy Ashburton, is just this—wasn't your father as good a man as you are, and wasn't the Democratic Party good enough for your father? I put the same to you, Miss Meade, wasn't the Democratic Party good enough for your father?"
"Ah, you're driven to your last trench," observed the Colonel, with genial irony, while Caroline replied slowly: "Yes, it was good enough for father, but I remember he used to be very fond of quoting some lines from Pope about 'principles changing with the times.' I suppose the questions are different from what they were in his day."
"I'd like to see any questions the Democrats aren't able to handle," persisted Charles. "They always have handled them to my satisfaction, and I reckon they always will, in spite of Blackburn and Ashburton."
"I wish Blackburn could talk to you, Miss Meade," said Colonel Ashburton. "He doesn't care much for personalities. He has less small talk than any man I know, but he speaks well if you get him started on ideas. By-the-way, he is the man who won me over. I used to be as strongly prejudiced against any fresh departure in Virginia politics as our friend Charles there, but Blackburn got hold of me, and convinced me, as he has convinced a great many others, against my will. He proved to me that the old forms are worn out—that they can't do the work any longer. You see, Blackburn is an idealist. He sees straight through the sham to the truth quicker than any man I've ever known——"
"An idealist!" exclaimed Caroline, and mentally she added, "Is it possible for a man to have two characters? To have a public character that gives the lie to his private one?"
"Yes, I think you might call him that, though, like you, I rather shy at the word. But it fits Blackburn, somehow, for he is literally on fire with ideas. I always say that he ought to have lived in the glorious days when the Republic was founded. He belongs to the pure breed of American."
"But I understood from the papers that it was just the other way—that he was—that he was——"
"I know, my child, I know." He smiled indulgently, for she looked very charming with the flush in her cheeks, and after thirty years of happy companionship with an impeccable character, he preferred at dinner a little amiable weakness in a woman. "You have seen in the papers that he is a traitor to the faith of his fathers. You have even heard this asserted by the logical Charles on your right."
She lifted her eyes, and to his disappointment he discovered that earnestness, not embarrassment, had brought the colour to her cheeks. "But I thought that this new movement was directed at the Democratic Party—that it was attempting to undo all that had been accomplished in the last fifty years. It seems the wrong way, but of course there must be a right way toward better things."
For a minute he looked at her in silence; then he said again gently, "I wish Blackburn could talk to you." Since she had come by her ideas honestly, not merely borrowed them from Charles Colfax, it seemed only chivalrous to treat them with the consideration he accorded always to the fair and the frail.
She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to have Mr. Blackburn talk to her. "I thought all old-fashioned Virginians opposed this movement," she added after a pause. "Not that I am very old-fashioned. You remember my father, and so you will know that his daughter is not afraid of opinions."
"Yes, I remember him, and I understand that his child could not be afraid either of opinions or armies."
She smiled up at him, and he saw that her eyes, which had been a little sad, were charged with light. While he watched her he wondered if her quietness were merely a professional habit of reserve which she wore like a uniform. Was the warmth and fervour which he read now in her face a glimpse of the soul which life had hidden beneath the dignity of her manner?
"But Blackburn isn't an agitator," he resumed after a moment. "He has got hold of the right idea—the new application of eternal principles. If we could send him to Washington he would do good work."
"To Washington?" She looked at him inquiringly. "You mean to the Senate? Not in the place of Colonel Acton?"
"Ah, that touches you! You wouldn't like to see the 'Odysseus of Democracy' dispossessed?"
Laughter