Carolina Lee

Peachie was pretty, but her delicate prettiness was scarcely noticeable when Carolina was in the room. Aunt Angie La Grange, Cousin Élise La Grange, Cousin Rose Manigault, with her little girl Corinne, who had come to play with Gladys and Emmeline Yancey, – all these insisted on claiming kin with Mrs. Winchester and Carolina, and, as Aunt Angie and Cousin Lois had known each other in their girlhood, and had spent much time at Guildford and Sunnymede, it was easy for them to fall into the old way of claiming cousinship, even when a slender excuse was called upon to serve.

The conversation was very gay and kindly, but, under cover of its universality, Carolina managed to seat herself next to Flower La Grange, whose pale cheeks and frightened eyes proclaimed how much of a stranger she was to such scenes. When Carolina called her "Cousin Flower," the flush on her face and the look of passionate gratitude in her eyes gave Carolina ample evidence that any kindness she might choose to bestow here would be appreciated beyond reason.

At first Flower was constrained and answered in monosyllables, but when Carolina adroitly mentioned the baby, Flower's whole manner thawed, and, in her eagerness, she poured forth a stream of rapturous talk which caused the others to look at her in a chilling surprise. But Flower's back was toward her haughty relatives, and only Carolina caught the glances, – Carolina, who calmly ignored them.

"You must come to see my baby!" cried Flower, impulsively. "He is so dear! And so smart! You can't imagine how hard it is to keep him asleep. He hears every sound and wants to be up all the time."

"I suppose he notices everything, doesn't he?"

"No-o, I can't say that he does. He likes things that make a noise. He doesn't care much for looks. If you hold a rattle right up before his eyes, he won't pay any attention to it. But, if you shake it, he smiles and coos and reaches out for it. Oh, he is a regular boy for noise!"

As Flower said this upon a moment of comparative silence, Carolina noticed that Aunt Angie grew rather pale and said:

"I haven't seen your baby for several months, Flower. May I come to see him to-morrow?"

"Oh, I should be so glad if you would, Mrs. – "

"Call me mother, child," said the older woman, looking compassionately at her daughter-in-law.

Flower flushed as delicately as a wild rose, and looked at Carolina, as if wondering if she had noticed this sudden access of cordiality. But to Carolina, a stranger, it seemed perfectly natural, and she rather hurriedly resumed her conversation with Flower, because she had the uneasy consciousness that Miss Sue and Aunt Angie, on the other side of the room, were talking about her. Fragments of their conversation floated over to her in the pauses of her talk with Flower.

"She thinks nothing of sending off ten or a dozen telegrams a day-"

" – she'll wear herself out-"

" – it can't last long. Moultrie says she shows a wonderful head for-"

" – and she never gets tired. I never saw such power of concentration-"

" – when I was a girl-"

" – writes-writes-writes the longest letters, and if you could see her mail!"

" – the very prettiest girl I ever saw, – a perfect beauty, Moultrie thinks."

Carolina's little ears burned so scarlet that she got up and took Peachie and Flower out into the garden, and, as the three girls went down the steps, a perfect babel of voices arose in the parlour. Plainly Carolina's going had loosened their tongues. They drew their chairs around Mrs. Winchester's, and, although the day was cool, they gave her the warmest half-hour she could remember since she left Bombay. They could understand and excuse every feminine vagary, from stealing another woman's lover to coaxing a man to spend more than he could afford, or idling away every moment of a day over novels or embroidery, but for a beauty, a belle, a toast, a girl who had been presented at three courts before she was twenty, to come down to South Carolina and live on horseback or in a buggy, meeting men by appointment and understanding long columns of figures, sending and receiving cipher telegrams, and in all this aided and abetted by no less exclusive and particular a chaperon than Cousin Lois Winchester, Rhett Winchester's widow, herself related to the Lees, – this was a little more than they could comprehend. Nor could Miss Sue Yancey nor Miss Sallie (Mrs. Pringle), although they were in the same house with her, throw any light on the subject or help them in any way. Carolina was plainly a puzzle to the La Granges, at least, and when, that same afternoon, Carolina and the two girls in the garden saw another carryall and a buggy drive in at Whitehall, containing her father's relatives, the Lees, she frankly said that she would stay out a little longer and give them a chance to talk her over before she went in to meet them.

Peachie laughed at Carolina's high colour when she said this.

"You mustn't get mad, Cousin Carol, because you are talked about. We talk about everybody, – it's all we have to do in the country. But you ought to be used to it. You are such a little beauty, you must have been talked about all your life."

"Nonsense, Peachie!" cried Carolina, blushing. "I am not half as good-looking as you and Flower. But the way you all watch me here makes me feel as if I were a strange kind of a beetle under a powerful microscope, at the other end of which there was always a curious human eye."

"Oh, Cousin Carol, you do say such quayah things!" cried Peachie, laughing.

"We ought to go in, I think," said Carolina. But at her words the two girls, as if nerving themselves for an ordeal planned beforehand, looked at each other, and then Peachie, in evident embarrassment, said:

"Cousin Carol, I want to ask you something, and I don't want you to be offended or to think that we have no manners, but-"

"Go on, Peachie, dear. Ask anything you like. You won't offend me. Remember that we are all cousins down here."

"I know, you dear! But maybe when you know what I want, – but you see, we never get a chance to see any of the styles-"

"Do you want to see my clothes?" cried Carolina. "You shall see every rag I possess, you dear children! Don't I know how awful it must be never to know what they are wearing at Church Parade. Five trunks came yesterday that haven't even been unpacked. They are just as they were packed by a frisky little Frenchman in Paris, and, as they were sent after me, they were detained in the custom-house, and, before I could get them out, I was hurt. While I was in bed, my brother got them out of the custom-house and took them to his house, where I forgot all about them until I was preparing to come here. Then I thought of clothes! And I also thought I might find some pretty girls down here among my relatives who would like to see the Real Thing just as it comes from the hands of the Paris couturières, – so there you are!"

"Oh, Carolina Lee!" shrieked Peachie, softly. "What a sweet thing you are! Just think, Flower, Paris clothes!"

"And better still, Vienna clothes!" said Carolina, laughing.

"You said you were hurt, Cousin Carol," said Flower, in her soft little voice. "How were you injured?"

"I was thrown from my horse, Flower, dear, and my hip was broken. I was in bed for months with it."

"But you were cured," said Flower. "I never heard of a broken hip that didn't leave a limp. There must be mighty fine doctors in New York."

"There are!" said Carolina, softly. Then she turned suddenly and led the way to the house, the girls eagerly following.

It will be difficult and not at all to the point to try to learn the relationship of the Lees and La Granges to Carolina and to each other. Aunt Angie La Grange was Moultrie's, Winfield's, and Peachie's mother. Rose Manigault was Aunt Angie's married sister, and Élise an unmarried one.

Of the Lees, there was Aunt Evelyn Lee, Carolina's own maiden aunt. Aunt Isabel Fitzhugh, her married aunt, with her two daughters, Eppie and Marie. Uncle Gordon Fitzhugh, Aunt Isabel's husband, and a bachelor cousin of Carolina's, De Courcey Lee, were the ones who had come in the buggy with the two little Fitzhugh boys, Teddy and Bob.

The children could not be induced to leave the parlour until they had seen their new cousin, they had heard so much of her beauty from Moultrie, so that, when Carolina entered and was introduced to her admiring relatives, none was more admiring than the children. Indeed, Bob Fitzhugh announced to his father, as they were driving home that evening, that he was going to marry Cousin Carol. He said that he had already asked her, and that she had told him that she was ten years older than he was, but that, if he still wanted her when he was twenty-one and she hadn't married any one in the meantime, she would marry him.

"You couldn't do better, son," said his father, nudging De Courcey, "and I commend your promptness, for, as Carolina is the prettiest-the very prettiest little woman I ever saw, the other boys will doubtless get after her, and it's just as well to have filed your petition beforehand."

Indeed the verdict on Carolina was universally favourable. Her relatives were familiar with her photographs, and were proud of the accounts which at intervals had filtered home to them through letters and newspapers, but the girl's beauty of colouring had so far outshone their expectations, and her exquisite modesty had so captivated them that they annexed her bodily, and quoted her and praised and flattered her until she hardly knew where to turn. She won the Fitzhugh hearts by her devotion to Teddy, the seven-year-old boy, who could not speak an intelligible word on account of a cleft palate. She took him with her on the sofa and talked to him and encouraged him to try to answer, until the mother, though her soul was filled with the most passionate gratitude, unselfishly called the boy away, saying, in a hurried aside to Carolina:

"Thank you, and God bless you, my darling girl, for trying to help my baby boy, but you owe your attention to the grown people, who, some of them, have driven twenty miles to see your sweet face. Some day, Carolina, I want you to come and spend a week with us, and tell me about the best doctor to send the child to. You must know all about such things, coming from New York."

She won the heart of her bachelor cousin, a man of nearly sixty, by allowing him to lead her to a sofa and question her about her father, his last days in London, and of how she had inherited her love for Guildford.

"For it is an inheritance, Carolina, my dear. Your father loved the place as not one of us do who have stayed near it."

"Yes, Cousin De Courcey, I think you are right. Daddy used to dream of it."

"Did he ever tell you of the loss of the family silver?"

"Yes, he said it was lost during the war."

"Did he never tell you of his suspicions concerning it?"

"No, because I don't think he had any."

"Pardon me for disagreeing with you, my dear, but in letters to me he has stated it. You know our family silver included many historical pieces, – gifts from great men, who had been guests at Guildford, – besides all that the family had inherited on both sides for generations. Many of these pieces were engraved and inscribed, and, unless they were melted at once, could have been traced. Your grandfather and your father, being the only ones fortunate enough to have increased their fortunes, undertook to search the world over for traces of this silver, but, as not so much as a teaspoon of it was ever found, we think it is still buried somewhere near here, – possibly on the estate. Aunt 'Polyte, your father's black mammy, and her husband buried it, and to the day of their death they swore it was not stolen by the Yankees, for, when they missed it, there were no Federal troops within fifty miles. They both declared that some one traced them in their frequent pilgrimages to its hiding-place to ascertain that it was intact, and that the Lee family will yet come into its own. As you seem to be our good angel, it will probably be you who will find it. Doesn't something tell you that you will?"

"Yes, something tells me that it is not lost," said Carolina, with grave eyes. "I came into the possession of Guildford so wonderfully, perhaps I shall find the Lee silver by the same means."

Just then Mrs. Pringle hurried into the room, saying hospitably:

"Now listen to me, good people. You all don't come to Whitehall so often that we don't feel the honour, and now that you are here, you must stay to supper. Don't say a word! I'll tell Jake to hitch up and go after Moultrie and Winfield, and there's a full moon to-night, so you won't have any trouble in getting home. Élise, if you are too big a coward to drive twenty miles after dark, you can stay here all night. Flower, do you trust your nurse to stay with the baby?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, thank you, Miss Sallie. I'll just write a note to Winfield and send it by Jake, if I may, telling him to see that Aunt Tempy and the baby are all right before he starts, then I won't be a bit uneasy."

The La Granges had never heard their unpopular kinswoman make so long a speech before, and, as they listened to it, with critical, if not hostile ears, they were forced to admit that she exhibited both spirit and breeding, and her voice had a curious low-toned dignity which indicated an inherited power.

Whitehall had not been famous for its hospitality since the death of Elliott Pringle, Miss Sallie's husband. During his lifetime they had kept open house, and Miss Sallie was the soul of hospitality. She would dearly have loved to continue his policy and the prestige of Whitehall, but her sister, Sue Yancey, was, in popular parlance, called "the stingiest old maid in the State of Georgia," and when she came to live with her widowed sister she watched the expenditures at Whitehall, until nobody who ever dined there had enough to eat. There was a story going around that the reason she lost the only beau she ever had, was because once when he was going on a journey she asked him to take out an accident insurance policy, and when he told her that he was all alone in the world and that no one would be benefited by his death, she told him to send the ticket to her. Rumour said that he sent the ticket, but that he never came back to Sue.

Sue either cared nothing for the good opinion of other people or she made the mistake of underestimating her friends' intelligence, for she carried her thrift with a high hand. At Sunday-school picnics it was no uncommon sight for the neighbours to see Miss Sue Yancey going around to the different tables gathering all that was edible into her basket to take home with her. And that these scraps subsequently appeared on the table at Whitehall often led to high words between the sisters; but in the end it always happened that Sue conquered, because Mrs. Pringle dreaded her sister's bitter tongue and ungoverned temper.

Yet Sue often complained that she felt so alone in the world because no one understood her.

"Don't stay," whispered Gordon Fitzhugh, in his wife's ear. "Sue never gives me enough sugar in my tea!"

Carolina could not help overhearing. She looked up quickly and laughed.

"Are you getting thin?" he whispered. "Does Sue give you as hash for supper the beef the soup is made from?"

"I think Miss Sallie is ordering while we are here," said Carolina, loyally. She would not tell her Uncle Fitzhugh that one morning when Lily was taking Cousin Lois's breakfast up to her, when her asthma was bad, that Sue had waylaid Lily in the hall and had taken the extra butter ball off the tray and carried it back to the dining-room in triumph.

"I admire economy," said Uncle Fitzhugh. "Sue's ancestors were French, but, in her case, French thrift has degenerated into American meanness."

"You stay," said Carolina, dimpling, "and I'll see that you get all the sugar you want, if I have to ask for it myself!"

"Then I'll stay," chuckled Uncle Fitzhugh, and he beckoned to De Courcey to come out into the garden and have a smoke-in reality to gossip.

Hardly were the gentlemen out of sight when Peachie said, excitedly:

"Mamma, do beg them all to excuse Cousin Carol, Flower, and me! Carol has promised to show us her Paris clothes-five trunks full of them!" Her voice rose to a little shriek of ecstasy, which was echoed in various keys all over the room. Every face took on a look of intense excitement and anticipation.

"Excuse you!" cried Aunt Angie La Grange. "We shall do no such thing. If Carol thinks we old people are not just as crazy over pretty clothes as we were when we were girls, she doesn't know the temperament of her own blood and kin. Carol, child, lead the way to those trunks immediately. My fingers fairly burn to turn the keys in those locks!"

"Really, Aunt Angie? Why, we shall be delighted. You should see the gowns Cousin Lois had made for the Durbar. They are simply regal!"

"Lois Winchester," said Aunt Angie, as they went up-stairs, "they tell me that you actually rode an elephant while you were in India!"

"I did, Cousin Angie," said Mrs. Winchester, imperturbably. "And what is more, I had my picture taken on one. You can hardly tell me from the elephant!"

Now Cousin Lois so seldom jested that this sally met with the usual reception which non-jokers seem to expect, and the walls fairly reeled with the peals of laughter from the delighted kinfolk. But when they were all gathered in Carolina's room and the chairs were brought from all the other rooms to seat the guests, a hush fell upon the assemblage similar to that which falls upon Westminster Abbey when a funeral cortège arrives.

Carolina was unlocking her Paris trunks!

CHAPTER XV

THE BLIND BABY

The same terrible suspicion which had entered Aunt Angie La Grange's mind when she overheard Flower's innocent words had occurred to Carolina, and as there seemed to be one of those sudden new-born bonds of sympathy between the beautiful old woman and the beautiful young girl, which sometimes spring into existence without warning, yet with good reason, as afterwards transpires, Carolina was not surprised to have Aunt Angie draw her aside after supper and say:

"Carolina, child, what did you think when you heard what Flower said about little Arthur?"

"I thought just what you thought, Aunt Angie, at first, then-"

"Then what?"

"Nothing."

"Now, Carol, you were going to say something! What was it? I am sure the thought that I am a comparative stranger to you stopped the words on your lips."

"I am afraid that you wouldn't understand what I was going to say, Aunt Angie, dear, and I don't want to antagonize you. I like you too much."

"Dear child, nothing that your silver tongue could utter could antagonize me after your sweet generosity to my daughter this afternoon. Oh, Carol, don't you think my mother-heart aches at not being able to dress my pretty girl in such fairy fabrics as you showed us? And then to think of your giving her that pink silk! Why, Peachie won't sleep a wink for a week, and I doubt if her mother does, either! Now she can go to the Valentine German in Savannah. You must go, too. I will arrange it. I-but my tongue is running away with me. Tell me what you were going to say."

"Well," said Carolina, hesitatingly, "you have heard that I am a Christian Scientist, haven't you?"

"Yes, dear, I have, and I must say that I deeply regret it. Not that I know anything about it, but-"

"That's the way every one feels who doesn't know about it," cried Carolina, earnestly; "but that is nothing but prejudice which will wear away. Indeed, indeed it will, Aunt Angie."

Mrs. La Grange shook her head.

"I am a dyed-in-the-wool Presbyterian, and I've fought, bled, and died for my religion in a family who believe that God created the Church of England first and then turned His attention to the creation of the earth, so you can't expect me to welcome a new fad, can you, my dear? But I beg your pardon, Carol. What were you going to say?"

"It was only this," said Carolina, gently. "That even if Flower's baby is blind to mortal sight, he is not blind in God's eyes. There he is perfect, for God, who is Incarnate Love, never created a blind or dumb baby."

Tears rushed suddenly to the old woman's eyes.

"Are you thinking of poor little Teddy Fitzhugh?" she whispered.

"Yes, I was."

"Oh, Carolina! If you could have seen his mother's anguish all these years! But you would have to be a mother yourself before you could even apprehend it."

"Yes, I suppose I would."

"And now," said the older woman, with that patient tightening of the lips with which so many Christian women prepare themselves to bear the heart-breaking calamities which they believe a tender Heavenly Father inflicts on those He loves, "I suppose I must steel my heart to see poor Flower writhe under a worse agony. Indeed, Carol, God's ways are hard to understand."

"Yes, God is such a peculiar sort of parent," observed Carolina. "He seems to do things with impunity, which if an earthly father did, the neighbours would lynch him."

Aunt Angie La Grange sat up with a spring of fright.

"Why, Carolina Lee! What sacrilege! You will certainly be punished by an avenging God for such blasphemy. You shock me, Carolina. You really do."

"Forgive me, Aunt Angie. I only meant to imply that the God I believe in is a God of such love that He never sends anything but good to His children."

"Then how do you get around that saying, 'Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth?'"

"There is authority for translating that word 'chasteneth,' 'instructeth.' But even if you leave it 'chasteneth,' it doesn't mean a life-long disfigurement or crippling of innocent babies. Supposing Peachie should disobey you, or even disgrace you, would you deliberately infect her with smallpox to destroy her beauty or send her into a train wreck to lame her or paralyze for life?"

Mrs. La Grange only looked into Carolina's eyes for reply, but her hands gripped the arms of her chair until her nails were white.

"Yet you are only her earthly-her human-her finite mother. How much greater capacity has the Infinite Heart for love!"

Mrs. La Grange stirred restlessly.

"It is beautiful," she breathed, "but-disquieting. It upsets all my old beliefs."

"'And good riddance to bad rubbish,' as we children used to say," said Carolina, smiling. Aunt Angie smiled in answer, but a trifle dubiously.

"Carolina," she said, "Moultrie told me-but of course you never said such a thing and I told him then that he must have misunderstood you-that Gladys Yancey was cured by Christian Science! Now, what did you say?"

"I said just that. She was cured by Christian Science."

"I don't believe it!" cried Aunt Angie. "Excuse me, dear child, for saying so. I know that you are truthful and that you believe it, but I don't. I'd have to see it done."

"If you saw Teddy Fitzhugh taught to speak plainly, would you believe?"

"My dear, I'd leave the Presbyterian Church and join the Christian Scientists so quickly my church letter would be torn by the way I'd snatch it."

Carolina laughed and squeezed Aunt Angie's hand, who added with a smile:

"I suppose you think I am as good as caught already, don't you?"

"I hope you are. You can't imagine how much peace it brings."

"Peace! It's something I never have had, child."

"Nor I. But I have it now."

"What does your religion compel you to give up? Peachie absolutely refuses to join the church because it won't allow dancing, and the child loves to dance better than anything in the world. They tell me, too, that she dances like a fairy." Aunt Angie pronounced it "fayry."

"Why, that is one of the best things about Christian Science. It requires you to give up no innocent pleasure. It only cautions one against indulging to excess in anything. Dancing, card-playing, games, – why, some of the best card-players I know are Christian Scientists, but they don't lose their tempers when they lose a game and they don't cheat to win. In fact, one of the most graceful things I have ever seen done was when two ladies tied for the prize-a beautiful gold vase-at a bridge party Addie gave just before she closed her house, and the lady who won had played coolly, well, and won by merit. The other flung herself back in her chair with an exclamation, showing by her suffused face and clenched hands every sign of ill-temper. My sister-in-law brought the prize to the winner, who, with the prettiest grace imaginable, thanked her and then presented it, by Addie's permission, to the vexed lady who had lost. You should have seen the recipient's face! Surprise, humiliation, and cupidity struggled almost audibly for supremacy. She protested feebly, but ended by taking it. A number of others gathered around, attracted by the unusual scene, and suddenly the owner of the vase said to the giver of it: 'I would like to know what church you go to.' 'Well, as none of you know, you may guess,' she answered. They guessed Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Episcopal, and finally the recipient of the vase said: 'No, you are all wrong. I believe she is a Christian Scientist, because no one but a Christian Scientist would give up a gold vase!'"