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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40850
   :PG.Title: Carolina Lee
   :PG.Released: 2012-09-23
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Lilian Bell
   :MARCREL.ill: Dora Wheeler Keith
   :DC.Title: Carolina Lee
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1906
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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CAROLINA LEE
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      Cover

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      :alt: Carolina Lee

      Carolina Lee

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      CAROLINA LEE

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      By

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      LILIAN BELL

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      Author of "Hope Loring," "Abroad
      with the Jimmies," "At Home with the
      Jardines," etc.

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      With a frontispiece in colour by

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      DORA WHEELER KEITH

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      NEW YORK
      \A. WESSELS COMPANY
      1907

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      *Copyright, 1906*
      BY \L. \C. PAGE & COMPANY
      (INCORPORATED)

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      *All rights reserved*

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      I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
      TO MY FRIEND

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      Ella Berry Rideing

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      AS AN AFFECTIONATE RECOGNITION
      OF THE EVIDENCES OF HER BEAUTIFUL WORK
      AND LOVE FOR ME AND MINE

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      CONTENTS

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      CHAPTER

      I.  `Captain Winchester Lee`_
      II.  `The First Grief`_
      III.  `The Danger of Wishing`_
      IV.  `The Turn of the Wheel`_
      V.  `Brother and Sister`_
      VI.  `The Stranger`_
      VII.  `Mortal Mind`_
      VIII.  `Man's Extremity`_
      IX.  `The Trial of Faith`_
      X.  `Cross Purposes`_
      XI.  `In Which Truth Holds Her Own`_
      XII.  `Whitehall`_
      XIII.  `Guildford`_
      XIV.  `Kinfolk`_
      XV.  `The Blind Baby`_
      XVI.  `A Letter from Carolina`_
      XVII.  `In the Barnwells' Carryall`_
      XVIII.  `A Letter from Kate`_
      XIX.  `The Fear`_
      XX.  `Moultrie`_
      XXI.  `The Light Breaks`_
      XXII.  `In The Voodoo's Cave`_
      XXIII.  `Loose Threads`_
      XXIV.  `The House-party Arrives`_
      XXV.  `Bob Fitzhugh`_

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.. _`CAPTAIN WINCHESTER LEE`:

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   CAROLINA LEE

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   CHAPTER I.

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   CAPTAIN WINCHESTER LEE

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Having been born in Paris, Carolina tried to
make the best of it, but being a very ardent little
American girl, she always felt that her foreign birth
was something which must be lived down, so when
people asked her where she was born, her reply was
likely to be:

"Well, I was born in Paris, but I am named for
an American State!"

Then if, in a bantering manner, her interlocutor
said:

"Then, are you a Southerner, Carolina?" the
child always replied:

"My father says we are Americans first and
Southerners second!"

Colonel Yancey, himself from Savannah, upon
hearing Carolina make this reply commented upon
it with unusual breadth of mind for a Southern
man, with:

"I wish more of my people felt as you do, little
missy.  Most of my kinfolk call themselves
Southerners first and Americans second and are prouder
of their State than of their country."

"I don't see how they can be," said the child
with a puzzled frown between her great blue eyes.
"It would be just as if I liked one hand better than
my whole body!"

Whereat the colonel slapped his leg and roared
in huge enjoyment, and went to Henry's to drink
Carolina's health and to tell the Americans
assembled there that he knew a little American girl that
would be heard from some day.

All this took place in Paris, when General Ravenel
Lee, Carolina's grandfather, was ambassador to
France, and when her father, Captain Winchester
Lee, was his first secretary.

Many brilliant personages surrounded the child
and influenced her more or less, according to the
fancy she took to them, for she was a magnetic
personality herself, and accepted or rejected an
influence according to some unknown inner guide.

Her mother was a woman of refinement and
breeding, and to her the child owed much of her
good taste and charmingly modest demeanour.
But it was her father who captured her imagination.

One of her earliest recollections was of her
father's voice and manner when she looked up from
her novel and asked him why he did not spell his
name Leigh as men in books spelled theirs.

She had not known her father very well, so she
was totally unprepared for his reply.  Although she
had been but a little child, she could see his face
and hear his voice as distinctly to-day as she did
when he whirled around on the hearth-rug and
looked down at her as she sat on a low stool with
a book on her knees.

"Spell my name Leigh?" he had said, in a tone
she never had heard him use before.  "Child, you
little know what blood flows in your veins, or you
would thank God every night in your prayers that
you inherit the name of Lee, spelled in its simplest
way.  Honest men, Carolina, pure women, heroes
in every sense of the word; statesmen, warriors,
brave, with the bravery which risks more than life
itself, are your ancestors.  They date back to the
Crusaders, and down the long line are men of title
in the old world, distinguished in ways you are
too young to understand.  Books, did you say?
Your name appears in many a book, child, which
records heroic deeds.  On both your dear Northern
mother's side and mine, you come of blood which is
your proudest heritage.  Were you poor and forced
to earn your daily bread, you would still be rich
in that which the world can never take
away--good blood and a proud name.  And remember
this, too, little daughter, although your life has
been spent in foreign lands, I loved America so
well that I gave you the name of my native State,
and my dearest wish is to restore Guildford and to
pass the remainder of my life there."

It was a long, long speech for a little girl to
remember, but it burned itself into her memory
and kindled her pride to such a degree that she
could hardly wait to tell some one of her newly
discovered treasure.

Fortunately her first auditor happened to be her
governess, and fortunately, also, her father chanced
to overhear her as she translated his remarks into
shrill French.  He immediately stopped her, and
these words also were seared into her memory
through poignant mortification.

"I was wrong to tell you that, little daughter.
I see that you are too young to have understood it
properly.  I can only undo the mischief by
reminding you never to boast of your old family to any
one.  If we Southerners have one fault more than
another, it is our tendency to mention the antiquity
of our families--as if that counted where breeding
were absent.  You will observe that your dear
mother never mentions hers, though she is a De
Clifford.  Let others boast if they will.  Speak you
of their family and name and be silent concerning
your own.  It is sufficient to feed your pride in
secret by the inward knowledge of who you are.
Will you try to remember that, little daughter, and
forgive me for putting notions into that head of
yours?"

She flew into his arms, and in that moment was
born the passionate love and understanding which
ever afterward existed between them.

"Oh, father!" she cried.  "Don't be sorry you
told me!  I am not too young.  I will show you
that I am not.  I will never speak of it again, and
only in my heart I will always be proud that I am
Carolina Lee!"

In after years, Carolina dated her life--her
most poignant happiness and her dearest
anguish--from the moment when her father thus opened
his heart to her and she found how intensely they
were akin.  He became her idol, and she
worshipped him not only with the abandonment of
youth, but with all the passion of her tempestuous
nature.  She set herself to be worthy of his love
and companionship with such ardour that she
unwittingly broke the first commandment every day
of her life.

Her father realized it, perhaps because of his
answering passion, for he often sighed as he looked
at her.  He knew, as did no one else, what an
inheritance was hers.  He felt in his own bosom all
the ardour and passion and furious love of home
which as yet his child only suspected in herself.
As long as he could remain at her side he felt that
he could control it in both, but his heart sometimes
stood still at the thought of what could happen were
Carolina left defenceless.  How could the child
battle with her own nature?  He shook his head
with his fine smile as he realized how more than
competent she was to fight her own battles with
an alien.

They saw a good deal of Colonel Yancey in those
days.  He had some business with the French
government which kept him abroad or going back
and forth, and because of his companionable
qualities, his sympathy as well as his brilliance, Captain
Lee discussed his most intimate plans with him.

Carolina always made it a point to be present
when her father and Colonel Yancey smoked their
cigars in the library after dinner, for there it was
that conversations took place concerning the South
and Guildford, of so breathless an interest that not
one word would she willingly have missed.

She had a confused feeling concerning Colonel
Yancey which she was too young to analyze.  He
was only a little past forty, and had won his title
of colonel in the Spanish war.  She knew that her
father, like most Southern men, trusted Colonel
Yancey, simply because he also was a Southern
man, when he would have been cautious with a
Northerner.  He spoke freely of the most intimate
plans and dearest hopes of his life, with all the
hearty, generous, open freedom of a great nature.
Yet the watchful child saw something in Colonel
Yancey's eyes, especially when her father spoke of
Guildford, and his passionate hope of the part it
would play in Carolina's future, which reminded
the little girl of the look in the gray cat's eyes
when she pretended to fall asleep by the hole of a mouse.

This feeling was too intangible for her to realize
at first, but as years passed by, and Colonel
Yancey's business brought him to Paris every season
while General Lee was ambassador, and when her
father was transferred to the Court of St. James,
even oftener, she grew better able to understand
her childish fears.

One day in London, when Carolina was about
fifteen, Colonel Yancey made his appearance,
dressed in deep mourning.  Carolina did not hear
the explanation made of his loss, but she resented
vaguely yet consciously the glances he cast at her
during dinner, and when her father whispered to
her that the colonel had lost his wife and no
questions were to be asked, her lip curled and her
delicate nostrils dilated.  She listened with more than
her usual attention to the conversation which
followed, and in after years it often came to her mind,
and never without giving her some help.

Colonel Yancey opened the conversation with an
inexplicable remark.

"When I hear you talk, captain, I always feel
sorry for you."

Carolina lifted her head with instant hauteur,
but her father only smiled and knocked the ashes
from his cigar.

"Yes, an enthusiast of my type is always to be
pitied," he said, gently.

"Not entirely that," responded Colonel Yancey.
"In some strong characters, their enthusiasms only
indicate their weak points, but it is not so in your
case.  It is rather that you have idealized your
homesickness."

"I am homesick," said Captain Lee, "for what
I never had."

"Exactly.  Now you left Guildford when you
were a mere lad, so it is largely your father's
opinion of the South--your father's love for the old
place that you have inherited and made your own,
just as, in Miss Carolina's case, it is wholly
vicarious.  Have you any idea of the deterioration your
own little town of Enterprise has suffered?"

"I suppose you are right," said Captain Lee.

"I hope, then," said Colonel Yancey, slowly,
"that you will never go back South to live,
especially to Enterprise."

Carolina's sensitive face flushed, but she was too
well bred to interrupt.

"You mean," said Captain Lee, with a keen
glance at his friend, "that I would find the South
a disappointment?"

"It would break your heart!  It hurts me,
tough as I am and little as I care compared to an
enthusiast like yourself.  It would wound you,
but"--and here he turned his magnetic glance on
the young girl--"for an idealist like missy here,
it would be death itself!"

Captain Lee reached out and laid his hand, on
his daughter's head.

"I am afraid so!  I am afraid so!" he said,
with a sigh.

"You understand me?" questioned Colonel
Yancey.  It was a pleasure, which Colonel Yancey
seldom experienced, to converse with so
comprehending a man as Captain Lee.  He was
accustomed to dazzling people by his own brilliancy, but
he seldom dived into the depths of his penetrating
mind for the edification of men, simply for the
reason that the ordinary run of men seldom care
to be edified.  But in diplomatic circles, Colonel
Yancey was a welcome guest.  He possessed an
instinct so keen that it amounted almost to
intuition in his understanding of men, a business ability
amounting almost to genius, and a philosophic turn
of mind which permitted him to apply his
knowledge with almost unerring judgment.  As a
promoter, he had served governments with marked
ability, and had the reputation of having amassed
fortunes for those of his friends who had followed
his lead and advice.

All this Carolina knew and yet--

However, she had the good taste to listen further,
without attempting to draw a hasty conclusion.

"The South," said Colonel Yancey, with a sigh
of regret, "is like a beautiful woman asleep--no,
not asleep, but standing in the glorious sunlight of
God, with her eyes deliberately shut.  Shut to
opportunity!  Shut to advancement!  Shut to
progress!  Her ears are closed also.  Closed to advice!
Closed to warning!  Closed to truth!  Her mind
is locked.  Locked against common sense!  Locked
against the bitter lesson taught by a jolly good
licking.  And the key which thus locks her mind
is a key which no one but God Almighty could turn,
and that is prejudice!  Blind, bitter, unreasoning,
stupid prejudice!  That is why her case is
hopeless!  That is why fifty or a hundred years from
now the South will still be ignorant, stagnant,
and indigent!"

"But why?  Why?" cried Carolina, carried
quite out of herself by her excitement.

"I beg your pardon!" she added, flushing.

Colonel Yancey whirled upon her, delighted to
have moved her so that she spoke without thinking.

"Why?  My dear young lady--why?  Because
she spends half her days and all her evenings fighting
over the lost battles of the Lost Cause.  Because
she still glories in her mistakes of judgment!
Because, almost to a man, the South to-day believes
in the days of '61!"

"Do they still talk about it?" asked Captain Lee.

"Talk about it?" cried Colonel Yancey.  "Talk
about it?  They talk of little else!  They dream
about it!  They absorb it in the food they eat
and the air they breathe!  Every anniversary which
gives them the ghost of an excuse they get up on
platforms and spout glorious nonsense, which is so
out-of-date--so prehistoric that it would be
laughable, if it were not pitiable--as pitiable as a
beautiful woman would be who paraded herself on Fifth
Avenue in hoop-skirts and a cashmere shawl.  You
lose sight of even great beauty if it is clad in
garments so old-fashioned that they are ludicrous."

As Colonel Yancey paused, Captain Lee said,
with a quiet smile:

"And yet, Wayne, haven't I heard you breathe
fire and brimstone against the 'damned Yankees,'
and when they come South to invest their capital,
don't you feel that they are legitimate prey?"

Colonel Yancey rose to his feet and strode around
the room for a few moments before replying.

"Well, Savannah has had her fill of them, I
think.  Perhaps I do consider the most of them
damned Yankees, but believe me, captain, in the
first place, we Southerners fully believe that they
deserve that title, and in the second place, we don't
want them!  No, nor their money either!  Let
them stay where they are wanted!"

"Ah-h!" breathed Winchester Lee.  "Who now
has been talking beautiful nonsense which he didn't
in the least subscribe to?"

"There!  There!" said Colonel Yancey.  "It is
a temptation to me to follow the dictates of my
brain, but my heart, Winchester, is as unreconstructed
as ever!  After all, I am no better than the
rest of them!"

"But why do they--do you all feel that way?"
asked Captain Lee.  "I assure you from my soul
that I do not."

"I know you don't.  But you have had strong
meat to feed your brain upon during all these years.
The rest of us have had nothing to feed our
intelligence upon except the daily papers--and you
know what they are.  Our intellects are ingrowing,
and have been for years.

"It is difficult for you to believe this, captain,
and almost impossible for missy.  But let me
explain a bit further.  For nearly forty years the
South has been poor, with a poverty you cannot
understand, nor even imagine.  There has been
no money to buy books--scarcely enough to buy
food and clothes.  The libraries are wholly
inadequate.  Consequently current fiction--that
ephemeral mass of part-rubbish, part-trash, which many
of us despise, but which, nevertheless, mirrors, with
more or less fidelity, modern times, its business,
politics, fashions, and trend of thought--is wholly
unknown to the great mass of Southern people.
The few who can afford it keep up, in a desultory
sort of way, with the names of modern novelists
and a book or two of each.  But compared to the
omnivorous reading of the Northern public, the
South reads nothing.  Therefore, in most private
libraries to-day, you find the novels which were
current before the war.

"Now take forty years out of a people's mind,
and what do you find?  You find a mental energy
which must be utilized in some manner.  Therefore,
after a cursory knowledge of whatever of the
classics their grandfathers had collected, and which
the fortunes of war spared, you find a community,
like the Indians, forced to confine themselves to
narratives handed down from mouth to mouth.  It
creates an appalling lack in their mental pabulum."

"Are they conscious of this?" asked Captain
Lee.  He had been following Colonel Yancey with
the closeness of a man accustomed to learn of all
who spoke.  Carolina had hardly breathed.

"In a way--yes!  In a manner--no!  The
comparative few who are able to travel see it when
they return, but years of parental training have
bred a blind loyalty to the mistakes of the South
which paralyzes all outside knowledge.  Even those
who see, dare not express it.  They know they
would simply brand themselves as traitors."

Carolina opened her lips to speak, then closed
them again.  She had been trained as a child to have
her opinions asked for before she ventured them.
Her father, who always saw her with his inner eye,
whether he was looking at her or not, said:

"You were going to say something, little daughter?"

"I was only going to ask Colonel Yancey if
they would not welcome suggestions from one of
themselves?"

"Welcome suggestions, missy?  They would
welcome them with a shotgun!  Take myself, for
instance.  I have travelled.  I am supposed to have
learned something.  I and my family have been
Georgians ever since Georgia was a State.  Yet
when I notice things which my fellow citizens have
become accustomed to, and suggest remedying them,
what do I get?  Abuse from the press!  Abuse
from the pulpit!  Abuse from friends and enemies
alike!"

"What did you say, colonel?" asked Captain
Lee, smiling.

"Why, I noticed the shabbiness of my little city--and
a well-to-do little city she is.  Yet half the
residences in town need paint.  Southern people
let their property run down so, not from poverty,
but from shiftlessness.  *You* know, captain!  It is
the Spanish word '*manana*' with them.  The slats
of a front blind break off.  They stay off!  Paint
peels off the brickwork.  It hangs there.  A
window-pane cracks.  They paste paper over it.  A board
rots in the front porch.  They leave it, or if they
replace it, they don't paint it, and the new board
hits you in the eye every time you look at it.  They
decide to put on an electric door-bell.  In taking
the old one off they leave the hole and never think
of the wildness of painting the door over!  They
just leave the hall-mark of untidiness, of shiftlessness,
over everything they own.  And if you tell
them of it?  Well!"

"I see," said Captain Lee.  "I have often
wondered why Northerners always spoke of the South
as such a shabby place.  They must have meant
what you have just described--a lack of attention
to detail."

"You have noticed it yourself?" asked Colonel
Yancey, eagerly.

"You must remember that I have not been south
of Washington for thirty years."

"Ah, yes, I remember.  You had the luck to be
in the Civil War."

"I was in it only the last two years before the
surrender.  I enlisted when I was fourteen, was a
captain at sixteen, and was wounded in my last engagement."

"And you've never been back since?"

"Never!"

Colonel Yancey leaned back and sighed.

"Never go, then!" he said.  "Take my advice
and never go.  Remember your beautiful unspoiled
South as you see her in your dreams!"

"The South is like a petted woman who openly
declares that she would rather be lied to agreeably
than be told the truth to, objectionably," said
Captain Lee, with a regretful smile.  Then he added,
with a mischievous glance at Carolina, "Do the
ladies still--er--gossip, Colonel Yancey?"

The colonel simply flung up his hands.

"Gossip?  My God!"

It was Carolina who rebuked him.  Her voice
was grave, but her eyes flashed fire.

"Do Southern ladies gossip more than Parisian
or London ladies?"

"Fairly hit, colonel!" said Captain Lee.  "To
answer that truthfully, you must admit that they
do not, for nothing can equal the malice of Paris
and London drawing-rooms."

"Quite right, captain.  No, missy," he answered,
"it is only because we expect so much more of
Southern ladies that their gossip sounds more
malicious by way of contrast."

Carolina smiled, well pleased by the brilliant tact
with which he always extricated himself from a
dilemma.

When Colonel Yancey had gone, Captain Lee put
one arm around Carolina's shoulder, and with the
other hand tilted the girl's flowerlike face up to his,
with a remark which, if he had made it to his son,
would have changed the whole current of the girl's
life.  He said:

"Ah, little daughter, the colonel is like all the
rest of the Southerners.  He can see the truth and
can spout gloriously about her, but in a money
transaction between himself and a Northern man,
he would forget it all, and would consider it no
more than honest to 'skin the damned Yankee,' to
quote his own language."

And with that the subject was dropped.

The Lee household at that time consisted of
Captain and Mrs. Lee, the two children, Sherman
and Carolina, and the widow of a cousin of
Captain Lee, Rhett Winchester, whom they called
Cousin Lois.

Mrs. Winchester had abundant means of her
own, which were all in the hands of the Lee
family agents, and she was distinguished by her
idolatry of Carolina.  No temptation of travel, no
wooing of elderly fortune hunters, had power to move
her.  All the love which in her early life had been
given to her husband, relations, and friends, she
now poured out on the child of her husband's cousin.
She had been denied children of her own, which,
perhaps, was just as well, as she would have ruined
them with indulgence.  Mrs. Winchester was a born
aunt or grandmother.  She took up the spoiling just
where a mother's firmness ceased.

She cared very little for Sherman, who was three
years older than Carolina, and who resembled his
Northern mother as closely as Carolina modelled
herself upon her father, except that Sherman was
weak, whereas Mrs. Lee, as a De Clifford of
England, inherited great strength of character as well as
a calm judgment and a governable quality, which
made her an admirable helpmeet for the fiery, if
controlled, nature of her Southern husband.

Never was there a happiness so complete as
Carolina's seemed to be.  She grew from a beautiful
child into a still more beautiful young girl.  She
absorbed her education without effort, learning
languages from much travel and from hearing them
constantly spoken, and breathing in the truest
culture from her daily surroundings.  How could an
intelligent girl be ignorant of art and science and
literature and diplomacy when she heard them
discussed by some of the greatest minds of the day
as commonly as most children hear continual
conversations about the shortcomings of the servants?
She did not realize that she was unusually equipped
because it had been absorbed as unconsciously as
the air she breathed, but other American girls who
came into contact with her felt and resented it or
admired it, according to their calibre.

In religion Carolina was outwardly orthodox
and conventional, but many were the discussions she
and her father held on the subject, in strict privacy,
and many were the questions she put to him which
he could not answer.  He often ended these
interrogations by gathering her up in his arms and
saying: "My little girl will need a new religion, made
especially for her, if she continues to trouble her
head about things which no man knoweth!"

"But why don't they know, dearest?  And why
does the Bible contradict itself so?  And how can
God be a 'father' if he sends pain and sickness
and death?  Is He any worse than a real father
would be?  And why does He not answer prayers
when He promises to?  And when did the healing
Jesus taught His disciples disappear?  Did He only
let them possess the power for a few years?  Why
are we commanded to be 'perfect' when God knows
we can't be?  And how can you believe in a God
who punishes you and sends all manner of evil on
you while calling Himself a God of Love?"

"Carolina!  Carolina!  You make my head swim
with your heresies!  I don't know, child!  I don't
know the answer to a single one of your questions.
Such things do not trouble me.  I believe in God,
and that satisfies me."

"No, it doesn't, daddy!" cried the girl,
astutely, "but you try to make yourself believe that
it does."

"Then try to make yourself believe it, dear.  It
has done me very well for nearly forty years."

And as usual, such footless discussion ended in
nothingness and a burst of human love which
effectually put out of mind all gropings after Divine
Love!





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.. _`THE FIRST GRIEF`:

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   CHAPTER II.


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   THE FIRST GRIEF

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Then, with no illness to prepare her for so
awful a blow, with nothing but a stopping of the
heart-beats, Carolina's father fell into his last, long
sleep, and before she could fairly realize her loss,
her mother followed him.

Within six weeks, the girl found herself orphaned
and mistress of the great Lee fortune, but utterly
alone in the world, for her grandfather had died
the year previous and Sherman had just married
and gone back to America.

That Carolina felt her mother's loss no one could
doubt, but the change in the young girl wrought
by her father's death was something awful to
behold.  She had not dreamed that he could die.  He
was so young, so strong, so noble, so upright, such
an honour to his country and to his race!  Why
should perfection cease to exist and the ignorant,
wicked, and common live on?  Carolina resisted
the thought with tigerish fierceness, and openly
blasphemed the God who created her.

"God my father?" she stormed at Cousin Lois,
who listened with blanched face and trembling fear
of further vengeance on the part of outraged Deity.
"Why, would my own precious father send me a
moment of such suffering as I have passed through
ever since they took him away from me?  He
would have given his life to save me from one
heart-pang, and you ask me to believe that God
is a father, when He sends such awful anguish into
this world?"

"He sends it for your good, Carolina, dear,"
pleaded Cousin Lois.

"Oh, He does, does He?  He thinks it will do
me good to suffer?  *Daddy* thought so, didn't he?
Daddy *liked* to make me unhappy, didn't he?  He
didn't realize how blissful heavenly love could be,
so he only loved me in a poor, blind, earthly
fashion, which made every day a joy and every hour
we spent together a song!  Poor daddy!  To be
so ignorant of the real way to love his children!"

"Oh, Carolina!" moaned Mrs. Winchester.

"God hates me, Cousin Lois," said the girl,
dropping her impassioned manner and speaking with
bitter calmness.

"I have been recognizing it for some time.  I
have felt that He was jealous of my happiness.
You know it says: 'For I the Lord thy God am
a jealous God.'  He admits it Himself.  So He
took vengeance on me through His power and
killed my parents just to show me that He could!
But if He thinks that I am going to kneel down
and thank Him for murder, and love Him for
ruining my life--"

A steel blue light seemed to blaze from the girl's
eyes as she thus raised her tiny hand and shook
it at her Creator.

Cousin Lois burst into tears.  Carolina viewed
her without sympathy.

"I am so little," she said, suddenly.  "It is a
brave thing for God to pit His great strength
against mine, isn't it?  Listen to me, Cousin Lois,
I am done with religion from now on.  I will
never say another prayer as long as I live.  The
worst has happened to me which could happen.
Nothing more counts."

It was while she was in this terrible state of mind
that Mrs. Winchester took charge of her.

Sherman and his wife came over for the funeral
of their father, and before they could so arrange
their affairs as to be able to leave for home, they
were called upon to bury, instead of try to console,
their mother.

Neither Carolina nor Mrs. Winchester liked
Adelaide, Sherman's wife.  She was selfish and
ignorant, but, with true loyalty to their own, they
never expressed themselves on the subject, even to
each other.  After the period of mourning was
over, they accepted her invitation to visit her, and
spent a month in New Work.  Then, with no
explanation whatever, Mrs. Winchester and Carolina
went abroad and travelled--travelled now
furiously, now in a desultory way; now stopping for
one month or six; now hurrying away from a spot
as if plague-stricken--all at Carolina's whim.

It was a strange life for an ardent young
American to lead, but Noel St. Quentin and Kate
Howard, who knew Carolina best, shook their heads,
and fancied that the two travellers found in
Mrs. Sherman Lee their incentive to remain away from
America so long and so persistently.

Mrs. Winchester and Carolina were an oddly
assorted pair, but their very dissimilarity made them
congenial.

Mrs. Winchester was a woman who merited the
attention she always received.

At first sight she did not invariably attract,
being stout, asthmatic, vague of manner, and of
middle age.  She had her figure well in hand,
however, large though she was.  Her waist-line, she
was fond of saying, had remained the same for
twenty years, though the rest of her had outgrown
all recollection of the trim young girl she doubtless
had been.  But it was her complexion of which
she was most proud.  It was still a blending of
cream and roses, and her blush was famous.

"Carolina, child," she used to say, "don't let
me be ridiculous, just because I am large.  Promise
me that you will never leave crumbs on my breast,
even if they fall there and I can't see them.  If
you only knew how I suffered from not knowing
where all of me is.  Why, with my figure, it is
just like the women we used to see in Russia with
little tables on each hip and a tray around their
necks.  Don't laugh, child.  It's dreadful, my dear."

"Well, but Cousin Lois, it wouldn't be so bad
if you wouldn't pinch your waist in so.  Just let
that out and you will find yourself falling into
place, so to speak."

"What!" cried Mrs. Winchester.  "Lose the
only--the only thing I have left to be proud of,
except my complexion?  Carolina, you are crazy.
I'd rather never draw another comfortable breath
than to add one inch to my waist-line.  No,
Carolina.  Don't advise me.  Just watch for the crumbs.
For I will not be guilty of the inelegance of tucking
a napkin under my chin if I ruin a dress at each meal."

Thus it will be seen that Mrs. Winchester was
quite determined in spite of the gentlest manner
of putting her ultimatum into words.

She carefully cultivated her asthma, as, without
affording her too much discomfort, it was always
an excuse to travel.

"Asthma is the most respectable disease I know
of," she often said to Carolina.  "Gout is more
aristocratic, but so uncomfortable.  Asthma is
refined and thoroughly convenient, besides always
forming a safe topic of conversation, especially
with strangers."

"That makes it almost indispensable for persistent
travellers like us, doesn't it?" said Carolina.

"Well, you may get tired of hearing about it,
but with me it is always a test of a person's
manners.  When a stranger says to me 'How do you
do, Mrs. Winchester?'  I don't consider him polite
if he makes that merely a form of salutation.  I
want him to stand still and listen while I answer
his question and tell him just how I feel!"

She also had a slight cast in her eye, which added
to this gentleness and likewise led the casual
observer to suspect her of vagueness of purpose, but
her intimates made no such mistake.  The mere fact
that one of her light gray eyes was not quite in
line with the other rather added to her attractions,
for if her features and manner had carried out the
suggestions of her figure, she would have been a
formidable addition to society instead of the
charming one she really proved.

She habitually wore light mourning for the two
excellent reasons she herself gave, although
General Winchester had been dead these twelve years.

"In the first place," she always said, when
Carolina tried to coax her to leave off her veil at least
in warm weather, "mourning is so dignified,
especially in the chaperoning of a young and
charming girl.  In the second place, age shows first of
all in a woman's neck, try as she may to conceal
it.  In the third place, a large woman ought always
to wear black if she knows what she is about, and
as to my bonnet always being a trifle crooked, as
you say it is, well, Carolina, little as I like to say
it, I really think that is your fault.  It would be so
easy for you to keep your eye on it and give me a
hint.  I only ask these two things of you."

"I'll try, Cousin Lois," Carolina always hastened
to say, "though really a crooked bonnet on you
does not look as bad as it would on some women.
If you can understand me, it really seems to
become you--it looks so natural and so comfortable."

"Now, Carolina, that is only your dear way of
trying to set me *à mon aise*!  As if a crooked
bonnet ever could look nice!"

Yet she cast a glance into the mirror as she
spoke, and seeing that her bonnet was even then
a point off the compass she forebore to change it.
Such graceful yielding to flattery was in itself a
charm.  But the thing about Mrs. Winchester,
which proved a never-failing source of amusement
to the laughter-loving, was her amusing habit of
miscalling words.  She habitually interpolated into
her sentences words beginning with the same letter
as the term she had intended, as if her brain had
been switched off before completing its thought
and her tongue did the best it could, left without
a guide.

"Carolina," she would say, "come and look up
Zurich on the map for me; I can't see without my
gloves."

In her hours of greatest depression this trait
never failed to amuse Carolina, and when, on one
occasion, Cousin Lois took the tissue-paper from
around a new bonnet, folded the paper carefully
and put it in the hat-box and threw the bonnet in
the waste-basket, Carolina laughed herself into
hysterics.

Carolina was genuinely fond of Cousin Lois, but
it must be confessed that one great secret of her
attractiveness for the girl was because much of
Cousin Lois's early childhood had been spent at
Guildford, when she had been a ward of General
Lee's, and thus had met his nephew, Rhett
Winchester, whom she afterward married.

Thus, while not related to their immediate
family, Cousin Lois was inextricably mixed up with
their history and knew all the traditions which
Carolina so prized.

Although Mrs. Winchester deplored Carolina's
persistence in so dwelling upon the past and brooding
over her loss, nothing ever really interested this
girl except to talk about her father or the golden
days of Guildford.

She cared nothing for her wealth.  She shifted
the burden of investing it upon Sherman's shoulders,
and refused even to read his reports upon its
earnings.

Admirers failed to interest her for the reason
that she was unable to believe that they sought her
for herself alone.  Her fortune had the effect upon
her of keeping her modest concerning her own great
beauty.

But grief and a rooted discontent with everything
life has to offer will mar the rarest beauty and
undermine the most robust health, and the change
struck Colonel Yancey with such force when he
met them in Rome that he became almost explosive
to Mrs. Winchester.

"The girl is losing her beauty, madam!" he
said.  "Look at the healthful glow of your
complexion and then look at her pale face!  Her eyes
used to dance!  Her lips were all smiles!  Her
cheeks were like two roses!  And what do I find
now?  A sneer on that perfect mouth!  Coldness,
cruelty, if you like, in those eyes!  Why, madam,
it is a sin for so beautiful a creature as Miss
Carolina to destroy herself in this way.  She might as
well shoot herself and be done with it!  What does
she want?"

"She wants what she can never have, Colonel
Yancey," said Mrs. Winchester, sadly.  "Carolina
wants her father to come back."

"We all want that, madam!" said the colonel,
gravely.  "I no less than the others.  His loss
never grows less."

When Cousin Lois repeated this conversation to
Carolina, she laughed at what he said about her
beauty, but flushed with gratitude at his praise of
her father, and was so kind to the colonel for two
days afterward that he proposed to her again and
so fell from grace, as he persisted in doing with
somewhat annoying regularity.

They travelled for another year, and Carolina
grew no better.  She seldom complained, but her
lack of interest in everything, added to her restless
love of change, preyed upon Mrs. Winchester.

They were in Bombay when this restlessness got
beyond control.

"I am not happy!" she cried, passionately,
"and knowing I ought to be is what makes me
even more miserable!"

"What you need is a good dose of America,"
said Cousin Lois, decidedly.  "You are homesick!"

"I believe I am!" she answered, with brightening
eyes.  "I am homesick, though, for something
in America which I've never found there."

"You are homesick for South Carolina," said
Cousin Lois, with timid daring.

At these words a look came into Carolina's eyes
which half-frightened Mrs. Winchester, for
Carolina had suddenly recalled her father's words.

"My dearest wish is to restore Guildford, and
pass the remainder of my days in the old place."

Instantly her life-work spread itself out before
her.  Here was the solution to all her restlessness,
the answer to all her questionings of Fate, the link
which could bind her closer to her beloved father!
If he could have spoken, she knew that he would
have urged her to give her life, if need be, to the
restoration of Guildford.

Her interest in existence returned with a gush.
A new light gleamed in her eyes.  A new smile
wreathed her too scornful lips.  Her face was
irradiated by the first look of love which Cousin Lois
had seen upon it since her father's death.

They began to pack in an hour.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE DANGER OF WISHING`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III.


.. class:: center medium

   THE DANGER OF WISHING

.. vspace:: 2

The Lees' dinner-table was round, and about it
were gathered six people--Sherman and his wife,
Carolina, Mrs. Winchester, Noel St. Quentin, and
Kate Howard, Carolina's most intimate girl friend.
It was the first time they had all met since the
return of the travellers from India.  Later they
were going to hear Melba in "Faust," but there
was no hurry.  It was only nine o'clock.

"Carolina, if you could have the dearest wish
of your heart, what would it be?" asked Noel
St. Quentin.

"If I should tell, it might not come true,"
Carolina answered.  "And I want it so much!"

"I never saw such a girl as Carolina in all my
life," complained her sister-in-law.  "Her mind is
always made up.  She keeps her ideas as orderly as
an old maid's bureau-drawer.  No odds and ends
anywhere.  You may ask her any sort of a
question, and she has her answer ready.  She knows
just what box in her brain it is in.  Just fancy
having thought out what your wish would be, and
having it at your tongue's end to tell at a dinner-party!"

Mrs. Lee leaned back and fanned herself with a
fatigued air.

"You almost indicate that Carolina thinks," said
St. Quentin.

"Oh, don't accuse me of such a crime in public!"
cried the girl, laughing.

"Carolina seems to me the one person on earth
whose every wish had been gratified before it could
be uttered," said St. Quentin, who was in some
occult way related to the Lees.  "I would be
interested to know just what her dream in life could be."

Carolina smiled at him gently.

"She--she's had Europe, Asia, and Africa
a-all her life," cried Kate Howard, who always
stuttered a little in the excitement of the moment.  To
Carolina this slight stutter was one of Kate's
greatest fascinations.  You found yourself expecting
and rather looking forward to it.  At least it
spelled enthusiasm.  "She's had masters in every
known accomplishment.  She--she can do all sorts
of things.  She can speak any language except
Chinese, I do believe.  She's pretty.  She's rich in
her own right--no waiting for dead men's shoes
or trying to get along on an allowance--a-and
what under the sun can she want--e-except a
husband?"

"Perhaps, if she's good, she may even get that,"
said St. Quentin.

Again Carolina smiled.  But her smile faded
when her eyes met those of her sister-in-law, who
viewed the girl with a thinly veiled dislike.  The
girl's eyes flashed.  Then she spoke.

"I have wanted one thing so much that I am
sure sometime I must achieve it," she said, slowly.
"I want to be so poor that I shall be forced to earn
my own living with no help from anybody!"

She was not looking at her brother as she spoke,
or she would have seen him start so violently that
he upset his champagne-glass, and that his face
had turned white.

"What did I tell you?" murmured St. Quentin.

"Carol likes to be sensational," said Mrs. Lee.
"No one would dislike to be poor more than she,
and no one would find herself more utterly helpless
and dependent, if such a calamity were to overtake her."

"I wouldn't call it a calamity," said Carolina,
quietly.

"Yes, you would!" cried Kate.

"I am inclined to agree with Carol," said
St. Quentin, deliberately, "and to disagree, if I may,
with Cousin Adelaide.  In my opinion, Carol could
go out to-morrow with only enough money to pay
her first week's board, and support herself."

"I hope she may never be obliged to try," said
her brother, harshly.  "Addie, if you intend to
hear any of the music, we'd better be starting.  It
is a quarter to ten now."

Addie raised her shoulders in a slight shrug.

"When Carolina holds the centre of the stage,
it is impossible to carry out one's own ideas of
promptness," she said.

"Nasty old cat," whispered Kate to St. Quentin,
as he stooped for her glove and handkerchief.
"Thanks so much.  I don't know how I managed
it, but I held on to my fan."

Later in the Lees' box with Melba singing
Marguerite, St. Quentin turned to Carolina again.
She had swept the house with her glass as soon
as the party were seated, and had noted but one
old acquaintance whose face seemed to invite study.
The girl's name was Rosemary Goddard, and
among the discontented faces which thronged the
boxes in the horseshoe, hers alone was peaceful.
Nay, more.  It was radiant.  Carolina remembered
her face--a cold, aristocratic mouth, disdainful
eyes, haughty brows, and a nose which seemed to
spurn friend and foe alike.  What a transfiguration!
How beautiful she had grown!

She was so occupied with the enigma Rosemary
presented that St. Quentin was obliged to repeat
his question.

"How would you go to work, Carol?"

The girl turned with a sigh.  Sometimes it
seemed to her that she never would become
accustomed to talking at the opera.  She almost
envied a tall young man, who stood in the first
balcony.  His evening clothes were of a hopeless cut.
His manner was that of a stranger in New York,
but in his face, one of the finest she had ever seen,
was such a passion for music that she watched him,
even while she answered St. Quentin with a grace
which hid her unwillingness to talk.

"For what I really would love to do," she said
over her white shoulder, with her eyes on the
strange young man, "you started me off a little too
poor.  I might have to borrow a hundred or two
from you to begin with!  I want to pioneer!  I
don't mean that I want to go into a wilderness and
be a squatter.  I want to reclaim some abandoned
farm--make over some ugly house--make arid
acres yield me money in my purse--money not
given to me, left to me, nor found by me, but money
that I, myself--Carolina Lee--have earned!
Does that amuse you?"

"It interests me," said St. Quentin, quietly.

To be taken seriously was more than the girl
expected.  She was only telling him a half-truth,
because she did not consider him privileged to hear
the whole.  She continued to test him.

"I never see an ugly house that I do not long
to go at it, hammer and tongs, and make it pretty.
Not expensive, you understand,--I've lived in
Paris too long not to know how to get effects
cheaply,--but attractive.  Oh, Noel!  The ugliness
of rural America, when Nature has done so much!"

"You ought to have been a man," said St. Quentin.

"I would have been more of a success," said the
girl, quickly.  "I believe I could have started poor
and become well-to-do."

"How you do emphasize beginning poor and
how you never mention becoming rich!  Don't
millions appeal to you?"

"Not at all! nor do these common men, even
though they did begin poor, who have acquired
millions by speculation.  They but make themselves
and their sycophants ridiculous.  No, I mean
honest commerce--buying and selling real commodities
at a fair profit--establishing new
industries--developing situations--taking advantage of
Nature's beginnings.  Such thoughts as these are
the only things in life which really thrill me."

"I understand you," said St. Quentin, "but I
fear your wish will never come true.  Years ago
I held similar desires.  All my plans fell through.
I had too much money.  And so have you.  You'll
have to go on being a millionairess, whether you
will or no, and you'll marry another millionaire and
eat and drink more than is good for you and lose
your complexion and your waist line and end your
life a dowager in black velvet and diamonds."

A messenger boy entered and handed a telegram
to Sherman Lee, just as Melba rose from her straw
pallet and led the glorious finale to "Faust."

Her brother leaned over and touched her arm.

"You may get your infernal wish sooner than
you expected," he said, with a wry smile twisting
his pale face.

Carolina turned to St. Quentin with indifference.

"Possibly I may yet keep my waist line," she
said, as he laid her cloak on her shoulders.

On the way out she came face to face with the
tall young man who had stood through the whole
opera, in the balcony.

He gave back all her interest in him in the one
look he cast upon her loveliness.  A sudden light of
incredulous surprise dilated her eyes and a swift
blush stained her cheeks.  She recognized, in some
intangible, unknown way, that he possessed kindred
traits with her father and with herself.  He had
the same look in his eyes--or rather back of them,
as if his eyes were only a hint of what lay hid in
his soul.  He was of their temperament.  He
dreamed the same dreams.  He was akin to her.

"I could have told him the truth," she whispered.
"He would have understood that I meant Guildford
all the time, and that the reason I want to be
poor is so that I can show that I am willing to work,
to carry out my father's dearest wish.  Just to
spend money on it is too sordid and too easy.  I
want it to be made hard for me, just to show them
what I will do!  He would have understood!"

But with one's best friends it is as well to be
on the defensive, and not let them know our true
aims, lest they take advantage of their friendship
and treat our heart's dearest secrets with mockery.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TURN OF THE WHEEL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV.


.. class:: center medium

   THE TURN OF THE WHEEL

.. vspace:: 2

A week later St. Quentin dropped in at
Mrs. Lee's for a cup of tea.  He would have preferred
to have Carol brew it, for she had not only learned
how in Russia, but had brought with her a brand
of tea which, to St. Quentin's mind, was not to be
ignored for mere conversation, and once drunk, was
not to be forgotten.  When Mrs. Lee was out, Carol
dispensed this tea, but when Addie was in her own
house, she was mistress of it in more ways than
tea-drinking.

St. Quentin found several people there for whom
he had little use, so he sat silent until they had gone
and no one except Kate, Adelaide, and Carol were left.

Carol was wearing a pale blue velvet gown
trimmed with sable and a picture hat with a long
white ostrich plume which swept her shoulder.
Both St. Quentin and Kate plied her with
admiring comments until Addie could bear it no longer,
and excused herself with unnatural abruptness.

"There are more ways than one of killing a cat,"
murmured St. Quentin, stooping for Kate's
immense ermine muff, which she had dropped for the
third time, "than by choking it to death with
cream."

Kate laughed delightedly.

Carolina turned from the doorway.

"Don't go, either of you," she said.  "I am
only going for some tea.  Noel, ring for some more
hot water, will you?"

"I wonder how it would be," said Kate, dreamily,
"to be born without any relations at all!
Could one manage to be happy, do you think?"

"Carol couldn't.  She is very fond of Sherman."

"I wouldn't be fond of any brother who had lost
all his own fortune and mine and was millions in
debt besides.  One couldn't love a fool, you know."

"I know.  But do you remember what Carol
said about wanting to be poor?"

"Of course I remember!" said Kate, "but I
d-didn't believe her then and I d-don't believe her
now.  Carol was s-simply lying--that's the answer
to that!"

"Lying about what?" asked Carolina, reëntering,
with a square box in her hand.  The box was
of old silver, heavily carved and set with turquoise.

"Lying about being g-glad Sherman has lost
all your money.  Of course you were lying,
w-weren't you?  No-nobody but a raving maniac
could be glad to be p-poor."

"Then I am a raving maniac," said Carolina,
pouring the delicately brewed tea carefully into the
tall, slender glasses.  "Lemon or rum, Kate?"

"W-which will I like best?  I--I've had four
cups already to-day."

"Then you'd better have rum.  It makes you
sleep when you have had too much tea."

"Lemon for me, please," said St. Quentin.

"I remembered that," said Carolina, smiling.
"And three lumps."

"P-put in some m-more rum, Carol.  I can't
taste it."

"What a Philistine!" cried St. Quentin.  "To
insult such tea with rum."

"It's quite g-good," murmured Kate, with her
glass to her lips.  "When y-you have enough of it."

"So you really think I can't mean it when I tell
you I am glad that Sherman has lost all our
money?" said Carolina.  "Of course I am sorry
on Addie's account--she cares a great deal and is
quite miserable over her future prospects.  But she
has ten thousand a year from her own estate, so
she can still educate the children and get along in
some degree of comfort.  But as for me"--she
leaned forward in her chair with the whimsical
idea of testing their calibre kindling in her
eyes--"if you will believe me and will not scoff, I will
tell you what my plan is."

"Promise," said Kate, briefly.

"If Sherman can manage it, I want," said Carolina,
slowly, but with an odd gleam in her eye, "to
buy an abandoned farm in New England and raise
chickens."

In spite of her promise, Kate looked at the
beautiful face and figure of the girl in blue velvet and
sables who said this, and burst into a shriek of
laughter, which St. Quentin, after a moment's
decorous struggle, joined.

"I know," said Carolina, leaning back, still with
that curious look in her eyes.  "I know it sounds
absurd.  I know you are thinking of me out feeding
chickens in these clothes.  But oh, if you only
knew how tired I am of--of everything that my
life has held hitherto.  If you only knew how
unhappy I am!  If you only knew how I want a farm
with pigs and chickens and cows and horses.  If
you only knew how I long to plant things and see
them grow.  But above everything else in the world,
if you only knew how I want a dark blue print
dress!  I saw a country girl in one once when I was
a child in England, and I've never been really happy
since."

She joined in the burst of laughter which followed.

"But do things grow on farms in New England?"
asked Kate.  "And isn't that just why so
many are abandoned?"

"I suppose so," answered Carolina, "but those
are the only ones which are cheap, and chickens
don't need a rich soil.  All you've got to do is to--"

"I'd go South," interrupted Kate, "or to
California, where the c-climate would help some.
I've read in the papers how farmers suffer when
their crops fail.  I--I'd hate to think of you
suffering if your turnips didn't sprout properly,
Carol!"

"Laugh if you want to, but I'll get my farm in
some way."

"How about the old Lee estate in South Carolina?"
asked St. Quentin.

For the first time in his life St. Quentin was
actually conscious that Carolina was mocking him.
The thought was startling.  Why should she
dissemble?  Carolina's face fell, and a trace of
bitterness crept into her voice.  This seemed so natural
that he forgot his curious suspicion.

"I suppose that went, too.  I haven't questioned
Sherman, but he told me everything was gone.
That, although the house was burned during the
war, and only the land itself remained, is the only
thing I regret about our loss.  I did love Guildford."

"But you never saw it!" exclaimed Kate.

Carolina's eye flashed with enthusiasm.

"I know that!  Nevertheless, I love it as I love
no spot on earth to-day."

There was a little pause, full of awkwardness for
the two who had accidentally brought Carolina's
loss home to her.  To Carolina it brought home a
sense of real guilt.  If she had believed that
Guildford was lost she would have screamed aloud and
gone mad before their very eyes.  She was almost
afraid to juggle with the truth even to protect her
sacred enthusiasm from their profane eyes.

It was St. Quentin who spoke first.

"I can understand wanting a farm or country
estate in England," he began.  "I myself enjoy
the thought of thatched roofs and cattle standing
knee-deep in waving, grassy meadows; of tired
farm horses; of mugs of ale and thick slices of
bread and the sweat of honest toil--"

"On another person's brow!" interrupted
Carolina.  "You want your farm finished.  I want to
make mine.  I want to see it grow.  I almost
believe when it was complete, that I would want to
leave it."

"You'd want to leave it long before that," cried Kate.

"Oh, can't you understand my idea?" cried
Carolina, with sudden passion.  "I want to get back to
Nature and sit in the lap of my mother earth!"

St. Quentin nodded his head.

"I do understand," he said, "and *apropos* of
your idea, I have a piece of news for you."

Carolina looked at him distrustfully.

"You will take that look back when you hear,"
he said, with a trifle of reproach in his tone.  "I
know you expect no help from any of
us--discouragements, rather--but I have only to-day
heard of business which calls me to Maine, and as
I expect to be obliged to wait there a fortnight, I
will devote that time to looking up a farm for your
purpose."

"You will?" cried Carolina, in a faint voice.
Her deception was already tripping her up.

Kate looked at him with undisguised amazement,
mingled with a little reluctant contempt.

St. Quentin's eyes dilated when he saw the flash
of personal interest in Carolina's demeanour.  Her
eyes and voice and manner all underwent a subtle
but delightful change.  For the first time, although
he was distantly related to her family and had
known her since childhood, she seemed to approach
him of her own accord.  Hitherto her fine sense of
pride had kept her individuality inviolate.  She
was not a girl to permit familiarity even from an
intimate.  She seemed to hold aloof even from
Kate's verbal impertinences, but this was largely
due to the fact that Kate's own nature was such
that she never attempted to break down the
barriers in deeds.  There was always a dignified
reserve between them--a respect for each other's
privacy, which was the foundation for their
friendship.  One of the greatest proofs of this was that
neither had ever thought of suggesting that they
spend the night together, with the result that they
had never exchanged indiscreet secrets.

Of the relations in which St. Quentin stood to
the two; neither had given any particular thought
until that moment.  Kate surprised the look in
St. Quentin's eyes and the response in Carolina's
attitude.  Carolina had never appeared to her friend
"so nearly human," as she expressed it to herself,
as at that moment.  It gave her two distinct shocks
of surprise.  One, that Carolina was, for the first
time in her life, really interested in something, and
therefore she was honest in wishing to be poor and
left free to pursue her idea.  The other, and a far
more disquieting one, was the fact that St. Quentin's
glance at Carolina had brought a distinct pang to
Kate's heart.

She regarded both emotions with dismay.  They
threatened an upheaval in her life.

She dropped her muff, and, as St. Quentin did
not even see it, she stooped hastily for it herself,
murmuring:

"That let's me down hard!"  But with characteristic
energy she wasted no time in repining nor
even in analyzing her emotions.  She was not yet
sure whether she was experiencing wounded vanity
or the first pangs of a love-affair.  She was
extraordinarily healthy-minded and instinctively loyal.

It was this latter feeling which prompted her to
leave herself out of the matter, for the present, at
least, and to be sure wherein lay her friend's
happiness before she proceeded further.

As she and St. Quentin left the house together,
they met Sherman Lee just coming up the steps,
looking pale and anxious.

"Is Carol at home?" he inquired, eagerly, and
before they could reply, added, "and alone?"

"Yes, she is," answered Kate, "and if you hurry,
you will be in time to get a cup of tea."

He thanked them and ran hastily up the steps.

"How I admire a woman's tact," said St. Quentin,
giving her a grateful glance.

"How do you mean?" asked Kate to gain time,
though the quick colour flew to her face.

"My man's first idea would have been to ask
Sherman what the matter was--he was plainly distraught--"

"And to offer to help him!" said Kate.

"Perhaps.  But your woman's quickness leaped
ahead of my blundering intentions with the
instinctive knowledge that any cognizance of his manner,
no matter how friendly, would be unwelcome.
Therefore you sent him away with the comforting
assurance in his mind that we had noticed nothing
amiss.  Thus, in an instant, you saved the feelings
and kept intact the *amour propre* of two men."

"That's what women are for!" said Kate, bluntly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BROTHER AND SISTER`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium

   BROTHER AND SISTER

.. vspace:: 2

Carolina had left the drawing-room before
Sherman sought her there, but on receipt of a
message from him that he wished to see her
immediately in the library, she once more descended the
stairs to wait for him.

An anxious look swept over her face as she
passed the door of his room, for she heard Addie's
voice raised in shrill accents, and to hear it thus
was growing to be an every-day affair.  She knew
her brother's sensitive, yet proud and gentle nature,
and she knew how difficult his wife's loud reproaches
were to endure.

Suddenly the door opened and his rapid footsteps
were heard running down the stairs and hurrying to
the library.  She rose to meet him with her anxiety
to make up to him for his wife's conduct written
in her face.  He saw the look and misunderstood it.

"Don't look at me like that, Carol!" he cried,
raising his hands as if to ward off a blow.  "If
you, too, feel the loss of the money as Addie does
and you reproach me, I shall go mad."

"Sherman!" cried his sister.  "Don't insult
me by the suggestion of my reproaching you!
Haven't you lost all your money as well as mine?
And would you have done either if you could have
helped it?"

Her brother turned uneasily.

"You don't know how it came about?" he asked.

Carolina shook her head.

"Ah," he breathed, "then I must wait until you
have heard before I dare trust such generous
statements."  He hesitated, then burst out.  "But at
least you shall know the truth.  We are absolute
beggars, you and I, and Cousin Lois, and wholly
dependent upon Adelaide's bounty until I can pull
myself together."

Carolina recoiled as if he had struck her.  A
sudden sickening fear clutched her heart.  Sherman
said "everything."  Did he include Guildford?
She could not clear her eyes and voice sufficiently
to mention that beloved name.  Sherman went on,
not heeding her silence.

"I know what you mean, but it's the truth.  She
acknowledges it as well as I.  Her money is intact,
and she will keep it so.  She cannot spare any of
it to start me again.  I must trust in strangers."

"Why strangers?" asked Carolina.  "Have you
no friends?"

"Friends!" sneered her brother.  "What do
friends do for a man when he is down?  Give him
good advice, offer to lend him a few hundreds for
living expenses, but trust him to make a second
success after one failure?  Never!  Not even
St. Quentin, one of the best fellows who ever lived,
would do that!"

"I think you do Noel an injustice," said
Carolina, quietly.  "He has offered to help me!"

Sherman looked quizzically at his sister and
laughed a little.

"Has he, indeed?" he said, with a lift of his
eyebrows.

Carolina noticed his manner with a slight inward
start of surprise.  What could he be thinking of?
She had known Noel all her life, and not once had
the idea Sherman's tone suggested entered her mind.
Noel St. Quentin?  She dismissed the thought with
impatience.  Sherman did not know what he was
talking about.

"I have not yet told you," he broke out
suddenly, "how the money was lost.  Have you no
idea?  You ought to know.  You warned me against
the man, but I refused to believe you."

Carolina leaned forward and her eyes blazed.

"Not Colonel Yancey?" she half-whispered.

Her brother nodded.

"Tell me," she said, with white lips.

"There is very little to tell.  The whole thing
was an elaborate lie--a swindle from one end to
the other.  I don't believe there ever was any oil
on the lands he sold us.  He swore there was, and
bought outright the man I sent down to Texas to
investigate.  I could put him in jail, I suppose, but
what good would that do me?  Yancey says he has
used all the money in speculation and lost it, so
even to prosecute him would not get a penny back.
Now he has disappeared--Algiers, I believe they
say.  It makes no difference where.  He was so
plausible, and his enthusiasm was so contagious, we
kept handing over the money like born fools.  I
wonder that he did not laugh in our faces.  But he
deceived well.  He planned from the ground up,
and was ready with letters and witnesses of all sorts
whenever we began to show signs of weakening.  I
can see it all now with fatal clearness.  But then
he had me thoroughly blinded by his own artful
proceedings.  He has wrecked two others besides
myself.  The other three men in the syndicate
suspected him and sold out to Brainard and me.  We
continued to believe in him and he has ruined us."

Carolina listened in silence, dreading, yet
waiting, for the next blow.

"He could be the most charming man in the
world when he wanted to," Sherman continued.
"I will admit that I felt his spell, but all the time
there was something in his face which I distrusted.
First I thought it was his shifty eyes, and then, as
if he had read my thoughts, he would meet my
glance with perfect candour and frankness and the
craft would go to his lips, and when I looked again
for it, I would be disarmed by the sincerity of his
smile, so I was left to fall back on my Doctor Fell
dislike of him, which always attacked me most
strongly when I was not in his magnetic presence."

Sherman looked at his sister expectantly.  He
noticed for the first time how pale she was.  Her
own recollections of Colonel Yancey, his ceaseless
pursuit of her, his intimacy with her father in Paris,
her fear that he knew of the Lees' great wish to
restore Guildford were all gathering themselves
together into a horrible certainty.  She was obliged to
listen with an effort to her brother's next words.

"I've always thought that he tried to make love
to you, Carol.  Did he?"

"I believe there was something of the sort
suggested," answered his sister, carelessly.  She did
not choose to admit that Colonel Yancey had
proposed to her regularly ever since his wife died, and
that he had pursued her with letters as far as India
itself.

A silence fell between them.  It struck Sherman
Lee as most extraordinary that his sister should
evince no more curiosity or even interest in the
loss of her fortune than she had hitherto expressed.
He felt that possibly she was only holding herself
in check.

"You said a moment ago," she began so
suddenly and in such a different tone that her brother
nerved himself for the explosion he felt sure was
at hand, "that we were both--you and I--dependent
upon Addie.  Just what did you mean?"

"Simply that neither of us has a dollar of ready
money."

"That is all very well for you," pursued
Carolina, in a low voice, "but for me to be Adelaide's
guest for even a day would be intolerable.  I shall
sell my jewels and accept Kate Howard's invitation
to spend a few weeks with her until I find
something to do.  I made Cousin Lois go to Boston to
see her niece.  I feel that I ought to tell you how
glad--how more than glad I am that the money
is gone.  I never wanted it!  I never liked it!  But
Cousin Lois!  What will she do?  Oh, Sherman!
If only I had been a man, too!"

"If only you had been a man instead of me," he
cried, "you never would have lost it.  I always
made money when I took your advice.  I always
lost it when I went against you."

Carolina's face glowed.  She felt equal now to
putting the question.

"What has become of Guildford?" she asked,
in a low tone.

"Guildford?" he repeated, to gain time.

At the mere mention of that beloved name Carolina's
face was aflame.  Her great blue eyes flashed
and she seemed illumined from within.  Her brother
stared at her with astonishment and a growing
uneasiness.

"Yes, Guildford!" she whispered.  "Oh, Sherman!
I have been so afraid to ask.  Tell me, is
that lost, too?"

The man's eyes fell before her accusing gaze.

"Not--not entirely," he stammered.  "I--I
raised money on it--I forget just how much--I
will investigate--I had no idea you cared--it is
deserted--the house burned, you know--"

He broke off, as he realized his sister's gathering anger.

"Stop!" she said.  "I have not uttered one
complaint because you lost our money, nor would
I complain at the loss of Guildford.  You could
not know how I cared for the place, because no one
knew it.  I never even told Cousin Lois.  But don't,
if you love me, belittle the place or try to excuse
your having mortgaged it because it had no value
in your eyes!  I know the house is gone, but the
ground is there, and we Lees have owned it since
we bought it from the Indians.  That same ground
that the Cherokees used to tread with moccasined
feet has been in our family ever since they owned
it, and the dream of my life has been to restore
the house and to live there--to marry from Guildford
and to give my children recollections that you
and I were denied, and of which nothing can take
the place.  Oh, Sherman, doesn't it fairly break
your heart to think that we are the only generation
that Guildford skipped?  Father remembered it and
loved it beyond words to express."

"And you are like him," said her brother,
gloomily.  "I am like my mother.  She never cared for
Guildford, and refused to let father restore it.  It
was she who urged him into diplomacy--"

"Where he distinguished himself," cried Carolina, loyally.

"Yes, where he distinguished himself, as all the
Lees have done except me!" he said, bitterly.

"It's your name!" cried Carolina, passionately.
"What could you expect with those two names
pulling you in opposite directions!  Why did they
ever name you, a Southern man, Sherman?"

"Father named you, and mother named me,"
answered her brother.  "I have heard them say
that it was all planned before either of us was
born.  Then, too, you must remember that--well,
that I am not as enthusiastic over the traditions of
the Lee family as you are.  I think that my leanings
are all toward the de Cliffords, if anything."

"It's only fair," said Carolina, with justice, "that
you should be like mother and love her family best.
Only--only I am glad my name is Carolina!"

Her brother bent down and kissed her flushed face.

"And I am glad, too, little sister, for you are
a veritable Lee, and one to be proud of."

Carolina felt herself grow warm in every fibre
of her being over the first compliment which had
ever reached her heart.

Sherman was still holding her hand, and she
pressed his fingers gratefully.

"I will look up the papers to-morrow, and let
you know the moment I discover anything.  I can
easily guess what your plan is, but--without money?"

Carolina laughed strangely.

"Thank you, brother.  And in the meantime I
shall go to stay with Kate."

Again the slight lift to Sherman's eyebrows.

"You will doubtless be happier there," he said,
quietly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STRANGER`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI.


.. class:: center medium

   THE STRANGER

.. vspace:: 2

But when Carolina was comfortably established
in the suite of rooms which Kate had joyfully
placed at her disposal, she found that she could
neither fix her attention on the new decorations of
which Kate was so inordinately proud, nor could
she wrench her mind from the subject of Guildford.

She had been so stunned by the knowledge, not
that the estate was mortgaged, but that it had been
parted with so lightly, with little thought and less
regret, that she had not been able, nor had she
wished to express to Sherman her intense feeling
in the matter.  The more she thought, the more
she believed that some turn of the wheel would
bring Guildford back.  If it were only mortgaged
and not sold, she felt that her yearning was so
strong she even dared to think of assuming the
indebtedness and taking years, if need be, to free the
place and restore the home of her fathers.

Her intimacy with her father had steeped her
in the traditions of Guildford.  The mere fact of
their having lived abroad seemed to have
accentuated in Captain Lee's mind his love for his native
State, and no historian knew better the history of
South Carolina than did this little expatriated
American girl, Carolina Lee.  By the hour these
two would pace the long drawing-rooms and
discuss this and that famous act or chivalric deed,
Carolina's inflammable patriotism readily bursting
into an ardent flame from a spark from her father's
scintillant descriptions.  She fluently translated
everything into French for her governess, and to
this day, Mademoiselle Beaupré thinks that every
large city in the Union is situated in South
Carolina, that the President lives in Charleston, and that
Fort Sumter protects everything in America
except the Pacific Coast.

Carolina knew and named over all the great
names in the State's history.  She could roll them
out in her pretty little half-foreign English,--the
Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Gadsdens, the
Heywards, the Allstons, the Hugers, the Legares,
the Lowndes, the Guerards, the Moultries, the
Manigaults, the Dessesseurs, the Rhetts, the
Mazycks, the Barnwells, the Elliotts, the
Harlestons, the Pringles, the Landgravesmiths, the
Calhouns, the Ravenels,--she knew them all.  The
Lees were related to many of them.  She knew the
deeds of Marion's men as well as most men know
of battles in which they have fought.  She knew of
the treaties with the Indians, those which were
broken and those which were kept.  She had been
told of some of the great families which even
boasted Indian blood, and were proud to admit that
in their veins flowed the blood of men who once
were chiefs of tribes of savage red men.  She found
this difficult to believe from a purely physical
prejudice, but her father had assured her that it was true.

In vain she tried to interest herself in Kate's
plans for her amusement.  In vain she attempted
to fix her attention on the white and silver
decorations of her boudoir, all done in scenes from
"Lohengrin."  Instead she found herself dreaming
of the ruins of an old home; of the chimneys,
perhaps, being partially left; of a double avenue of
live-oaks, which led from the gate to the door and
circled the house on all sides; of fallow fields,
grown up in rank shrubbery; of palmetto and
magnolia trees, interspersed with neglected bushes of
crêpe myrtle, opopinax, sweet olives, and azaleas;
of the mocking-birds, the nonpareils, and
bluebirds making the air tremulous with sound; of
broken hedges of Cherokee roses twisting in and
out of the embrace of the honeysuckle and yellow
jessamine.  Beyond, she could picture to herself
how the pine-trees, left to themselves for forty years,
had grown into great forests of impenetrable gloom,
and she longed for their perfumed breath with
a great and mighty longing.  She felt, rather than
knew, how the cedar hedges had grown out of all
their symmetry, and how raggedly they rose against
the sky-line.  She knew where the ground fell away
on one side into the marshes which hid the river--the
river, salt as the ocean, and with the tide of the
great Atlantic to give it dignity above its inland
fellows.  She knew of the deer, the bear even,
which furnished hunters with an opportunity to
test their nerve in the wildness beyond, and of the
wild turkeys, quail, terrapin, and oysters to be
found so near that one might also say they grew
on the place.  In her imagination the rows upon
rows of negro cabins were rebuilt and whitewashed
anew.  The smoke even curled lazily from the
chimneys of the great house, as she dreamed it.  Dogs
lay upon the wide verandas; songs and laughter
resounded from among the trimmed shrubbery, and
once more the great estate of Guildford was owned
and lived upon by the Lees.

Filled so full of these ideas that she could think
of nothing else, she sprang to her feet and decided
to see Sherman without losing another day.  She
would put ruthless questions to him and see if any
power under Heaven could bring Guildford within
her eager grasp.  What a life work would lie before
her, if it could be accomplished!  Europe, with all
its history and glamour, faded into a thin and
hazy memory before the living, vital enthusiasm
which filled her heart almost to the point of bursting.

It was, indeed, the intense longing of her ardent
soul for a home.  All her life had been spent in
a country not her own, upon which her eager love
could not expend itself.  It was as if she had been
called upon to love a stepmother, while her own
mother, divorced, yet beloved, lived and yearned
for her in a foreign land.

It was four o'clock on a crisp January day when
Carolina found herself in the throng on Fifth
Avenue.  It was the first pleasant day after a week
of wretched weather, and the whole world seemed
to have welcomed it.

Carolina was all in gray, with a gray chinchilla
muff.  Her colour glowed, her eyes flashed, as she
walked along with her chin tilted upward so that
many who saw her carried in their minds for the
rest of the day the recollection of the girl who had
formed so attractive a picture.

Suddenly and directly in front of her, Carolina
saw a young woman, arm in arm with a tall man,
whose broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, added to a
certain nameless quality in his clothes and type of
face, proclaimed him to be a Southerner.  They
were laughing and chatting with the blitheness of
two children, frankly staring at the panorama of
Fifth Avenue on a bright day.  If the whim seized
them to stop and gaze into shop windows, they
did it with the same disregard of appearances
which induced them to link arms and not to notice
the attention they attracted.  No one could
possibly mistake them for anything but what they
were--bride and groom.

Having reached her brother's house, Carolina
paused for a moment in an unpremeditated rush
of interest in the young couple.  Something in the
man's appearance stirred some vague memory, but
even as she searched in her mind for the clue, she
saw an expression of abject terror spread over the
young bride's face, and pulling her husband madly
after her by the arm to which she still clung, she
darted across the walk and into a waiting cab.  Her
husband, after a hasty glance in the direction she
had indicated, plunged after her, and the wise
cabby, scenting haste, if not danger, without
waiting for orders, lashed his horse, the cab lurched
forward and was quickly swallowed up in the line
of moving vehicles.

This had necessarily created a small commotion
in the avenue, and a tall man who had also been
walking south behind Carolina and who would
soon have met the young couple face to face,
chanced to raise his head at the crack of the
cabman's whip, and thus caught a glimpse of the
bride's face out of the window of the cab.

Instantly, with an exclamation, he looked wildly
for another cab.  None was at hand, but Sherman
Lee's dog-cart stood at the curb, and Carolina had
paused on the lowest step of the house and was
looking at him.  There was desperate anxiety in
his face.

"May I use your carriage, madam?  I promise
not to injure the horse!"

It was the strange young man who had stood in
the balcony all during the opera of "Faust."

Carolina never knew why she did it, but
something told her that this young man's cause was
just.  In spite of the pleading beauty of the young
couple, she arrayed herself instinctively on their
pursuer's side.

"Yes, yes!" she cried.  "Follow them!"

He sprang in, and the groom loosed the horse's
head and climbed nimbly to his place.  A moment
more and the dog-cart was lost to view.

Most of the good which is done in this world
is the result of impulse, yet so false is our training,
that the first thing we do after having been betrayed
into a perfectly natural action is to regret it.

The moment Carolina came to herself and
realized what she had done, a great uneasiness took
possession of her.  She had no excuse to offer even
to herself.  She felt that she had done an
immeasurably foolish thing and that she deserved to
take the consequences, no matter what they might
be.  If the stranger injured Sherman's favourite
horse, that would be bad enough, but the worst
result was the mortification her rash act had left in
her own mind.  It is hard for the most humble-minded
to admit that one has been a fool, and to
the proud it is well-nigh impossible.

But Carolina admitted it with secret viciousness,
directed, let it be said, entirely against herself.  In
her innermost heart she realized that she had
yielded, without even the decent struggle prompted
by self-respect, to the compelling influence of a
strong personality.  This unknown man had wrested
her consent from her by a power she never had felt
before.

At first she decided that it was her duty to tell
her brother at once what she had done.  Then she
realized that, in that case, they must both wait some
little time before the dog-cart could possibly be
expected to return, and Sherman would no doubt
exhaust himself in an anxiety which, if the horse
returned in safety, could be avoided.  She therefore
compromised on a bold expedient.

"Sherman," she said, when she found her
brother, "I saw the dog-cart at the door; were you
going out?"

"I was, but since I came in, I have decided
differently.  Ring, that's a good girl, and tell Powell
to see that the horse is well exercised and put him up."

"I saw Marie in the hall.  I'll just send her with
the message to Powell," said Carolina.  "There is
no doubt in my mind," she murmured, as she went
out, "that the horse will be well exercised."

She sent word by Marie that when Powell
returned he was to be told to see to the condition of
the horse himself by Miss Carol's express orders,
and then to report to Miss Carol herself privately.

But these precautions were taken in vain, for
not ten minutes had elapsed before Sherman was
summoned to the drawing-room, there to meet the
stranger, who introduced himself, told a most manly
and straightforward story, and, having produced an
excellent impression of sincerity on his host, left
with profuse apologies.

Sherman returned to his sister with a quizzical
smile on his face.

"Carol," he said, "what have you been doing?"

Carolina's reply was prompt and to the point.

"I own to being reckless, of trying to conceal
my recklessness, under a mistaken sense that I was
clever enough to cover my tracks.  I vainly
endeavoured to spare you an hour's anxiety, and I
feel that I am a fool for my pains."

Her brother laughed.

"The man is unmistakably a gentleman.  He is
in deep trouble over a young woman, not his sister,
who has run away, presumably with a man.  He
tried to trace them and failed."

"Failed?"

"Failed.  If she is his wife, may God help her
when he catches her, for there was danger in that
man's eye.  But his pride forbade him to give me
more than the bare facts necessary to explain his
extraordinary action in surprising you into lending
him my horse."

"Was that the way he put it?" asked Carolina.

"It was."

"He is a gentleman!"

She waited a moment, hesitated, and then said:

"Did he say anything else, anything about--"

"About the woman in the case?  Not a word
about anything more than I have told you.  He
seemed to take it for granted, however, that you
were my wife."

"And didn't you deny it?" demanded Carolina,
with such spirit that she surprised herself.  She felt
her cheeks grow hot.

"He didn't give me time."

"And you let him go, still thinking it?"

"I didn't let him do anything.  He mastered the
situation, and carried it off with such ease that I
almost felt grateful to him for borrowing the dogcart."

Carolina opened her lips to say something, then
changed her mind.

"It is of no importance," she said lightly.  But
there was an odd sinking at her heart which belied
her words.  She had never believed in love at first
sight, yet she had watched this stranger at a
distance all one evening, and at their first meeting in
the throng leaving the opera, she had not been
mistaken in the look of--well, of welcome, she had
felt.  Their second meeting had been equally
striking, and Carolina calmly said to herself that she
would meet this man again, and the third time it
would be even more strange.  She was so sure of
this that she would not allow her mind to be
disturbed by the two blundering conclusions Sherman
had forced--one that the man was in pursuit of
a runaway wife or love and the other that she was
the wife of the master of the horse.  She was so
sure of her own premises that she overlooked the
possibility that the stranger might have put the
supposition tentatively to Sherman and had been
misled by her brother's lack of denial.

In fact, Carolina at this time was a very self-centred
young woman.  It was so of necessity.  She
had never been taught self-denial, nor permitted to
be unselfish.  Her father and mother, in yielding
to every whim, had quite overlooked the fact that
the pretty child's character needed discipline, so
that Carolina was selfish without knowing it.
Quite unconsciously she placed her own wishes
before those of any other, and regarded the
carrying of her point as the proper end to strive for.
No one had ever taught her differently.  Cousin
Lois had pampered her even more than her parents
had done, and when she became dissatisfied with
life, offered, as a remedy, change of scene.

Now the girl possessed an inherently unselfish
nature, and for this reason--that she never had
been called upon to sacrifice her own will--she was
not happy.  Although she possessed much that
young girls envied in wealth and the freedom to
travel, the two things which would have made her
happiest, a permanent home and some one--father
or mother or lover--upon whom to lavish her
heart's best love, were lacking.  Not being of an
analytical turn of mind, she had never realized her
lack, until suddenly she had been given a glimpse
of both, and then both had been snatched away.

Opposition always made the girl more spirited.
Guildford lost was more to be desired than
Guildford idle and only waiting for her to reclaim and
restore it.  This dominant stranger interested in
another woman--Carolina lifted her chin.  It was
her way.

Her brother saw it and smiled.  It was a pretty
trick she had inherited from the Lees.  It was a
gage of battle.  It betokened unusual interest.  It
meant that their blood was fired and their pride
roused.  He mistook the cause, that was all.  He
was so engrossed in his own thoughts and so
pleased by his efforts to gain something which his
sister actually desired, that he had forgotten the
episode of the strange visitor.  So that when he said:

"So that is the way you feel, is it?" Carolina
started violently and blushed.  She was diplomatic
enough to make no reply, so that Sherman's next
remark saved her from further embarrassment.

"Do you really care for Guildford so much?"

"How do you know I am thinking of Guildford?"
asked Carolina, quickly.  "I have not
spoken of it."

"Ah," said her brother, lifting his hand, "I can
read your thoughts.  I notice that you only have
that look on your face when you are thinking of
something you love.  But I wouldn't waste such
a blush on a measure of cold earth, even if they
are your ancestral acres."

"My ancestral acres!" repeated Carolina, softly.
"How beautiful that sounds!  Oh, Sherman, tell
me if we can save them!"

Sherman hesitated a moment and knit his brow.
Then he lifted his head and looked Carolina in the
eyes.

"I will do what I can," he said.  "You may be
sure of that."

Carolina had all a strong woman's belief in the
power of a man to do anything he chose.  His
words were not particularly reassuring, but his
manner, as she afterwards thought it over, was
vaguely comforting.

It was the more comforting, because, deep down
in her heart, she intended to supplement his efforts,
weak or strong, and win victory even from defeat.

Guildford?

She *would* have it!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MORTAL MIND`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII.


.. class:: center medium

   MORTAL MIND

.. vspace:: 2

Therefore, when the blow fell and Sherman had
written her a letter, not daring to see her, telling
her as gently as he could, but with an air of finality
which there was no mistaking, that the mortgage
on Guildford had been bought and foreclosed by
Colonel Yancey, and therefore, in his opinion, it
was lost to the Lees for ever, Carolina realized for
the first time how tenacious had been her hold on
the hope of possessing it.  In an instant, with her
woman's instinct, she saw what it had taken years
for Sherman to discover.  Colonel Yancey had, as
Carolina found, learned that it was Captain Lee's
and Carolina's dearest wish to restore Guildford.
The two men had talked intimately.  Both were
Southern, although Colonel Yancey was a Georgian,
but with the confidence in each other's integrity,
which is typical of most Southern men, and which
has led to the ruin of many an honest man, Captain
Lee confided his hopes to Colonel Yancey, who
profited by them to secure Guildford for himself,
and thus gain a hold over Carolina.

It was so easy to do this, in the most ordinary
business manner, with Sherman both unsuspicious
of him and his sister's love for the place, that at
times Colonel Yancey almost had the grace to be
ashamed of himself.

Carolina saw the whole vile plot, and the shock
and disappointment put her fairly beside herself.
She was so sure that she had got at the root of
the matter that she at once disbelieved that
part of Sherman's story which said that Colonel
Yancey was a fugitive from justice.  If he had
cheated this syndicate, he had done it in such a
manner that it left no illegal entanglements, and she
was sure that he was free to return to this country
whenever he chose.  If not, her whole theory fell
to the ground, for she knew that Colonel Yancey
would not dare to offer her a reputation which the
law had power to smirch.

It never was Carolina's way to wax confidential,
but one day Kate surprised her in a particularly
desperate mood.  Carolina was in her habit,
waiting for her horse to be brought around, and when
Kate entered, she was walking up and down the
peaceful blue and silver boudoir like an outraged
lioness.

"It's no use, Kate!" she cried, when her friend
began to remonstrate.  "I have come to the end
of my rope.  You don't know the truth because I
have been afraid to tell you.  You couldn't have
understood if I had told you.  Even if I should
sit down now and spend a whole day trying to
explain why I adored Guildford and why I am so
upset over its loss, at the end of the time you would
only shake your head and say, 'Poor Carolina,'
without in the least understanding me.  No one
ever did understand about Guildford except dear
Daddy, and since he died, I've been afraid to let
even God know how much I wanted it, because I
knew if He did, He would take it away from me!
He takes everything away from me that I love!
That is His way of showing His vaunted kindness.
He is indeed a God of vengeance!  He punishes His
children as no earthly father would be mean enough
to do.  Oh, I won't hush!  But the end has come,
Kate, to even God's power to hurt me.  I have
nothing left for Him to take.  Let Him be satisfied
with His revenge.  I wouldn't care if He took my
life now, so He is practically powerless!  He has
reached His limit!"

"Oh, Carolina!" almost screamed Kate.  "Do
be careful how you blaspheme!  Goodness knows
I am not religious, but I am a member of the
Church and I am not wicked!"

"You have never suffered, Kate, or you could
bear, not only to hear, but to say worse things than
I am saying.  If you only knew how much worse
my thoughts are!"

"But you will be punished for them, Carolina!
I--I don't like to preach, but God always sends
afflictions to those who defy Him!"

"I wouldn't care if He killed me!" cried Carolina,
furiously.  "I have nothing left to live for.
I hope I shall never come back alive from this ride!"

When she had rushed from the room, leaving that
terrible wish in Kate's memory, Kate shivered with
apprehensions.

"Something awful will happen to Carolina!"
she muttered.  "I never knew it to fail!"  But her
eyes filled with tears.  "What if I had to bear what
she has!" she thought.  "Loss of father, mother,
home, and fortune!  Poor girl!  Poor girl!"

She had intended to go out, but some inner voice
told her to wait.  Carolina's dreadful mood and
reckless words haunted her.  She went restlessly
from room to room, and anxiously listened for
sounds of her return.  And so keenly was she
expecting a misfortune that when the telephone-bell
rang sharply, it calmed her at once.

"It has happened!" she said to herself, as she
flew to answer.

The message was that Carolina had been thrown
from her horse and dragged.  They were bringing
her home.

"I knew it!" said Kate.  "She was in too awful
a mood to wear spurs with Astra.  I ought to have
made her take them off."

Carolina was still unconscious when they brought
her in.  Kate caught a glimpse of her still, white
face as they carried her up-stairs.  She waited with
feverish impatience for the doctor's verdict, with
her mind full of Carolina's awful words.  "I knew
it!" she kept whispering to herself through a rain
of tears.  "God always gets even with people who
dare Him to do His worst!"

It seemed hours before Doctor Colfax finally
came out, with his refined face full of pain.

"Is she dead?" whispered Kate, catching at his
arm.  He shook his head.

"Disfigured?" continued Kate, with growing anxiety.

"Worse!" said the doctor.  "She has broken
her hip badly.  Even if she recovers, she will be
lamed for life!"

Kate covered her mouth to repress a scream.

Beautiful Carolina lamed for life!

"Crutches?" whispered Kate.

"I am afraid so!" said the doctor, with a deep
sigh.  "I am going to have a consultation.  We
will do everything we can to preserve her
health--and her beauty, poor child!"

Kate turned away in a passion of tears, well
knowing that to Carolina's proud spirit dependence
would be far worse than death.

Bad news travels on the wings of the wind, and
before the day was over Carolina's accident was on
everybody's tongue.

Her sister-in-law was indignant, in a sense
outraged by Carolina's behaviour.  She blamed her
first of all for existing in her radiant youth and
beauty and so far outshining her own modest
charms.  She blamed her secondly for permitting
Sherman to lose her money and thus make it
Addie's duty to offer her a home.  She blamed her
thirdly, and most bitterly of all, for injuring
herself so hopelessly that she could never marry, thus
placing herself upon Addie to support for life.  Was
ever a more unkind fate invented?  Addie's
temper, never of the best, burst all bounds as this
situation became plain to her, and she expressed
herself fluently to Sherman, who felt himself
included in her misfortunes as part author of them.

It was an unhappy time for all concerned, for
Carolina's bitter denunciations of her fate and her
grief over her dependence could hardly be checked
even in the presence of Kate and her family, whose
hospitality and friendship, so generously offered,
put the girl under at least civilized bonds of
restraint.  There were times, however, when she was
alone, that she relapsed into such a savage state
that she tore her hair and bit her own tender flesh.

The sight of such rebellion reduced even Kate's
mutinous nature to peace and quiet by contrast,
and Kate was developed into a gentle friend of
Christian sentiments by Carolina's great need.

The conversations they held with each other were
long and intimate.  Kate tried to put faith in the
series of doctors who succeeded each other like
chapters in a book, but the sufferer's clear eyes saw
not only through Kate's kind intentions, but
through the great surgeon's hopeless hopes, and
from the first she knew the worst.  Knew that her
bright youth was for ever gone; that her
usefulness was ended; that never again could she expect
even to ornament a social function, crippled as she
was and disfigured by ungainly crutches.  Her one
hope was to die.  Thus she made no effort to
recover, and her strength, instead of aiding her,
gradually faded away until her accident, though not at
first of a fatal nature, began to be looked on as her
death-blow.

At this juncture, Addie, struck with remorse,
came and offered Carolina a home, but Carolina
shook her head.

"Thank you, Addie, but when I move from here
it will be to rest for ever.  I want to die here with
Kate.  She loves me!"

It was a bitter thrust, and Addie felt it to the
verge of tears.  Indeed, she was so moved by pity
for the frail shadow that Carolina had become, that
she forgave the girl for having been so beautiful
and began to be fond of her, as one is fond of a
crippled child, who had been obnoxious in health.

Trouble develops people.

Mrs. Winchester was detained in Boston by the
dangerous illness of the niece she had gone to visit,
and although greatly fretting at being kept away
from Carolina, was fairly obliged to stay.

Carolina felt that she was welcome at the
Howards, for not only Kate's mother but her father
often came to sit with her and cheer her and to
urge upon her how glad they were to be able to
help her when she needed help.

Carolina was grateful, the more so because she
felt that she had not long to live.  She had been
in bed several months, and while the surgeons said
the broken bones had knit, yet it was agony for
her to move.  She almost fainted with pain when
they were obliged to lift her from one position to
another.

Kate spent hours in trying to interest her in the
life around her.  She felt frightened when she
discovered the depth of Carolina's listlessness.  Her
weakness took a stubborn form.

"I am only one of the crowd now, Kate dear,"
she said one day after a long argument from her
friend.  "There is no use in wasting so much
energy over me.  Go and forget me and enjoy
yourself.  I used to be of the exclusive few who got
their own ways always.  Now I belong to the great
mob of malcontents--the anarchists of the social
world.  I shall not want to blow up kings and
presidents, but I would like to throw a bomb at every
happy face I see."

Her voice trailed off to a weak whisper.

"Y-you wouldn't need many bombs, then," said
Kate, "for I never s-see any really happy faces.
Did you ever in all your life--either at balls
abroad or the opera here, see a perfectly happy face?"

Carolina shook her head and closed her eyes wearily.

Suddenly she opened them again.

"Yes," she said, "I have seen one--the night
of 'Faust.'  It was Rosemary Goddard!"

Kate gave a little scream.

"Well, I'd rather follow you to the grave you
seem so bent on f-falling into," she stammered,
"than to get happiness from such a source.  My
dear, Rosemary Goddard is a C-Christian Scientist!"

Kate's tone indicated that Rosemary had
contracted a loathsome disease.

Carolina fixed her eyes on Kate.  She was not
of a contrary disposition, yet the difference between
Kate Howard's tone and Rosemary Goddard's face
made her stop to think.

"I should like to talk to Rosemary," she said at
last.  To her surprise and consternation, Kate burst
into tears.

"If you g-go and turn into one of those n-nasty
things," she sobbed, "it will end everything.  I'd
rather you died!"

"Then never mind," said Carolina, wearily.  "I
don't want to vex anybody.  Perhaps I shall die."

Kate jumped up.  The momentary colour faded
from Carolina's face and the strength from her
voice.  Kate recognized the change.

"I'll go and f-fetch her," she said, with her
old-time change of front.  "She may do you good."

When she came back with Rosemary, she saw
what Carolina had seen in Rosemary's face--an
illumination which no one could understand.  It
transfigured her.

Kate left the two girls together, and walked the
floor in tempestuous anger all during Rosemary's
stay in the house.  Something in Carolina's eyes
as they first met Rosemary's told Kate that the
poison was already at work, and that Carolina was
ripe for the hated new religion.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MAN'S EXTREMITY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII.


.. class:: center medium

   MAN'S EXTREMITY

.. vspace:: 2

Rosemary approached the bed wherein lay the
wreck of the girl she had often, when in the grasp
of mortal mind, envied.  A great wave of sympathy,
not pity, swept over her, as she noted the weary
eyes and the lines of dissatisfaction and despair
around Carolina's mouth.  With an impulse of love,
she knelt at the bedside and took Carolina's little
thin hand in both of hers.

"Oh, my dear Carol," she said, "I am so glad
to see you.  I heard of your accident while I was
in California.  I only got back yesterday."

"Would you have come to see me if I had not
sent for you?" asked Carolina, childishly.

"I was coming to-day.  Mother suggested it,
and I was only too happy to put off everything of
less importance and come at once."

"Your mother!" said Carolina, involuntarily.
Then, as she saw Rosemary's face flush, she
hastened to cover her awkward exclamation.  "I did
not know your mother knew me well enough to--to care!"

"Mother is very much changed since you knew
her," said Rosemary, gently.  "She has been healed."

Carolina did not know the nature of Mrs. Goddard's
infirmity, so she forbore to ask of what.
She only knew, as all the smart world knew, that
Mrs. Goddard did something dreadful, and did it
to excess.  It was whispered that it was a case of
drugs, but there were those, less kind, who hinted
at a more vulgar excess, either of which would
explain the dreadful scenes Mrs. Goddard had
occasioned in public.  Her intimates asserted that a
terrible malady was at the bottom of her habits,
whatever they were.  At any rate, a somewhat
scandalous mystery hung over Mrs. Goddard's
name, although she had been at the forefront of
every mad scene of pleasure the fashionable world
could invent to kill time.

"You are changed, too," said Carolina, wonderingly,
more and more surprised to see Rosemary
Goddard--of all girls!--kneeling at her bedside,
holding her hand in a warm grasp, pressing it now
and then to emphasize an affection she felt shy of
expressing, and talking in a gentle, altogether
unknown tone of voice.  In Carolina's uncompromising
vocabulary she had privately stigmatized
Rosemary as a snob, and rather ridiculed her
exaggeration of aristocracy.  But the coldness, the tired
expression, the aloofness, were all gone.  The weary
eyes shone.  The bored eyebrows were lowered.
The curved lips smiled.  The withdrawn hands
were reached out to help.  The whole attitude was
radiant of sympathy and love.

Rosemary could not forbear to smile at Carolina's
unconscious scrutiny.

"What has done it?" asked Carolina, abruptly.

"Christian Science," said Rosemary, frankly.

Carolina was disappointed that she did not rush
on and explain.  She had heard that Scientists
thrust their views upon you and were instant in
season, out of season.  She was piqued that
Rosemary did not give her the opportunity to argue
and refute.  Carolina wanted to be coaxed.

"The change in you is wonderful," she said at
last.  "I think it is always a little insulting to tell
a woman how she has improved, so I will not harp
on it.  But I don't think I care to investigate
Christian Science.  It has always bored me when people
have tried to explain it to me."

"You have a perfect right to leave it alone,
then," said Rosemary.  "Christian Science does not
need you in the least."

Although her tone was perfectly sweet and kind,
it was dignified, and Carolina's quickness at once
comprehended the almost unbearable priggishness
of her remark.

"I did not intend to be rude," she said, hurriedly.
Then she hesitated as another thought struck her,
and in a more timid voice she said:

"Did you mean that Christian Science does not
need me as much as I need Christian Science?"

Rosemary pressed her hand as her only reply.

"Can it help me?" cried Carolina, with sudden
fervour.  "I am a wreck, physically and mentally.
I have lost parents, fortune, home, health, and
ambition.  I long to die!  I have even lost my God!"

"Christian Science will give you back your God,"
said Rosemary.

"I hate God!" said Carolina, calmly.

"I used to hate Him, too," said Rosemary.  "In
the old thought there was nothing else to do, for a
just mind, than to hate Him.  We had made an
image of hate and vengeance and set it up to
worship and called it God."

"We?  Did we do it?"

"Of course!  Who else?"

"Then it is all our fault?"

"It certainly is not God's fault," said Rosemary.
"He has declared Himself to be Love Incarnate.
If we have been stupid enough to endow Him with
human attributes of our own distorted imagination,
is He to blame?"

"He never answered a prayer of mine in all my
life!" cried Carolina, passionately, looking at the
ceiling as if to make sure that God heard her
accusation, and as if she hoped to irritate Him into
hearing future prayers.

"Nor of mine, either, until I learned how to pray."

"Who discovered the new way?  That Eddy woman?"

"Mrs. Eddy did."

"How, I should like to know?  Why was all
this given to her to know and not to some man?"

"By the way," said Rosemary, as if changing
the subject, "I hear that you speak both Japanese
and Russian and that you did some important
interpreting at a banquet on board the Kaiser's yacht
at Cowes, last spring.  Did you?"

"I believe so," said Carolina, wearily.

"However did you manage to master two such
awfully difficult languages?"

"I studied years to do it."

"How strange that my brother was not called
upon to do that interpreting," said Rosemary, in
a musing tone.  "He was at that banquet, and he
is a man."

Carolina opened her lips to make an incautious
reply, but caught herself just in time.  A gleam in
Rosemary's eyes warned her.

"I see," she said, reddening.  "But I must say
you baited the hook skilfully."

"I had to, in order to catch you," said Rosemary.

Carolina turned her head on her pillow restlessly.

"Tell me about how you came to accept it," she
said, pleadingly.

"Well, I was so abnormally miserable!  I had
everything in the world I wanted--apparently,
yet my home was full of discord.  I had only a big,
beautiful house.  I wanted the love of a certain
man.  He held aloof while all the others were at
my feet.  I prayed wildly to my God for help, and
He mocked me.  Then I grew bitter and vengeful.
I vowed that I would have all that life held
without God, for it seemed to me, in my vicious
interpretation of Him, that every time He saw me poke
my head out of my hole, He hit it--"

"Just to show that He could!" cried Carolina,
almost with a scream of comprehension.

"Exactly--just to show that He could.  Well,
then I plunged into a madness I called gaiety, and
grew more and more unhappy because I saw that
each day I was putting myself further and further
from the man I loved.  Then, as if to fill my
already full cup to overflowing, mamma grew very
much worse, so much so that I wanted her to die.
I really felt that she had exhausted all that *materia
medica* could do for her, and that death was the
only way to end it, both for her and for us.  Then
I heard of a Christian Science practitioner, named
Mrs. Seixas.  I went to see her, and, impossible
as it may sound, in the first fifteen minutes, I had
told her the whole truth, mortifying as it was.  But
she seemed not only to inspire confidence, but to
radiate help.  I felt that, although I was a perfect
stranger to her, yet she wanted to help me--that
she would go out of her way to do it, and that
the reason she would do it was because she loved
much.  I took her to mamma that same day, and
mamma's complete healing is so great a marvel
that we never can get used to it.  Our happiness is
almost too much to bear."

Rosemary's eyes filled with tears which rolled
down her cheeks.  Carolina viewed her with an
astonishment that she could ill conceal.  Rosemary
Goddard to be talking, nay, more, feeling like that!
A question was so unmistakably in Carolina's eyes,
which her tongue could not gain permission to
utter, that Rosemary found herself answering it.

"Then, when God had made me worthy of a
good man's love, the desire of my heart came to
me, in so sweet and natural a way that it broke
down the last barrier of pride and left me humbly
at the foot of the cross, marvelling at God's goodness!"

Carolina drew Rosemary's face down to hers
and laid her cheek against it.

There was a long silence between them.  Then
Carolina said, fearfully:

"My hip is broken.  Can that be cured?"

"God can do anything."

"So that I needn't use crutches?"

"Most certainly.  You won't even limp.  You
will be made perfectly whole!"

"Just as I was before?"

"Just as you were before--except these bonds."

Carolina thought a moment.

"But what do I want to get well for?  I have
lost Guildford!"

"Nothing can be lost in Truth!"

Rosemary felt her two hands grasped firmly, and
without thinking Carolina raised herself to a
sitting posture in bed without pain.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is the--that
Christian Science teaches that there is any remote
possibility of my getting Guildford back?"

"Guildford belongs to you, and has never been
lost.  It is only error which makes such a law for
you.  Truth emancipates everybody and everything."

"I don't believe it!" said Carolina.  "I can't!
It's too good to be true!  I don't understand it!"

"You do understand it!" said Rosemary.

"What makes you think so?"

"Because you are sitting up in bed, and you
raised yourself without pain.  That is because, for
a moment, your soul accepted God as Love and the
source of all supply.  Unconsciously your mind
looked into His mind, and you saw the truth."

"I believe that I could get up!" said Carolina,
in a sort of ecstasy.

"I know that you can!  Give me your hand."

Rosemary helped Carolina to dress, and in half
an hour Carolina was sitting, for the first time
in months, in a chair by the window, with
Rosemary reading and marking for her the passages
in "Science and Health" which bore immediately
upon her case.  Carolina's mind opened under it
like a flower.

"Oh, I need so much teaching!" cried Carolina.
"Who will help me?"

"Did you know that my mother is a practitioner
and holds classes?" asked Rosemary.

Carolina almost felt her new-found rock
melting beneath her feet at this intelligence.

"No, I did not.  Will she take me?  And will
you help?"

"We will both do all we can for you with the
greatest joy."

When Rosemary left, Kate came in and Carolina
explained everything to her.

Kate called Noel St. Quentin by telephone and
told him that Carolina had gone insane.

The next morning Carolina awakened with the
happy consciousness that something pleasant had
happened.  Hitherto she had gone to sleep, glad
of the respite of a few hours of unconsciousness.
Simply not to know--simply not to be awake
and to realize her load of pain and disappointment,
had been her prayer.  With her definite
aim in life swept away, she felt rudderless,
forlorn, despairing.

But suddenly everything was changed.  Her
weakness vanished as if by magic.  Instead of
dreading to open her eyes and clarify her brain
for thought her mind leaped to a lucid clearness
without effort.  The glow of happiness which
pervaded her she could liken to nothing so much
as the awakening in her hated school-days to the
knowledge that to-day was Saturday!

And what had brought her healing?  Only a
few hours' talk from Rosemary Goddard which
seemed to untangle all the knots of her existence
and to wipe the mists from the window-panes,
out of which she had been vainly trying to get
a clear view of her life, its reason for being, and
its duties.  Always the question with Carolina had
been "To what end?"  And all the answers had
been vague and unsatisfactory, until suddenly she
had stumbled by reason of her infirmity upon one
who could answer her vehement questions clearly
and lucidly.

Emerson must have been largely of the thought
when he wrote: "Put fear under thy feet!"  Carolina,
with her sensitive, mystic nature had
been, in common with all imaginative persons,
literally a slave to her fear.  What could it
mean, this sudden freedom, except that she had
found the only true way out of bondage?

With a little assistance, she was able to dress
herself and sit in a chair to wait for the promised
visit of Rosemary's mother.

She had known of Mrs. Goddard for years,
although she seldom appeared in public.  No
one spoke the name of her malady, but
everyone knew of her intense suffering and of the
days she spent unconscious from the effects of
quieting drugs.  Secretly every one expected to
hear at any time of Mrs. Goddard's madness
or death, and Carolina had heard no news of
her except what Rosemary had said until
Mrs. Goddard was announced and found her, dressed
and sitting up to meet her guest, with
outstretched hand and happy, smiling face.  As usual
Carolina's expressive countenance betrayed her.

"No wonder you look surprised, my dear,"
said Mrs. Goddard, kissing the girl on the cheek
with warmth.  "Rosemary evidently did not have
time yesterday to tell you what brought us both
into Science.  I was cured of cancer in its worst
form.  Did you never know?"

"I knew you were very, very ill and suffered
horribly," said Carolina, "but--"

"I know.  My friends were very kind.  They
never gave it a name.  But that was it."

"Oh, how wonderful!" cried Carolina, with
shining eyes.

"Not half as wonderful as what it did for me
mentally," said Mrs. Goddard.  "I used to feel
that I had brought my malady on myself by my
way of life.  I was the gayest of the gay in my
youth, and in middle life I found that stimulants
had such a hold on me that I was not myself
unless I was drugged.  I ran the gauntlet of those
until I came to morphine.  There I stayed, and
whether the morphine came of the cancer or the
cancer of the morphine I never knew.  But the
horror of my life I can readily recall.  It came to
a point when the best physicians and surgeons in
New York said that there must be an operation
and frankly added that no one could tell whether
I would come out of it or not.  Pleasant, wasn't it?"

Carolina only clasped her hands together, and
Mrs. Goddard proceeded:

"Then Rosemary heard of Christian Science,
and without saying a word to me, she looked up
the names of one or two practitioners and called.
The first one she did not care for and came away
discouraged.  But something told her to try
again, and her second attempt led her to the door
of the angel of healing who, under God, worked
this cure, Mrs. Seixas.  Rosemary had not talked
with her ten minutes before she knew that she had
been led aright.  She wanted Mrs. Seixas to get
into the brougham and come at once, but according
to Science practice she insisted upon Rosemary's
coming home and getting my consent.

"You can imagine that I was not slow to accept
the hope it offered, and that same afternoon I had
my first treatment.  Carolina, inside of an hour the
pain all left me!  Child, you have suffered, so you
know, you can fathom as many cannot, what that
means!  I promised when the pain returned to call
her by telephone, instead of taking the morphine,
but it never did come back!  She gave me treatments
from her office every hour for the rest of the
day and came back after dinner that night and gave
me another.  That was three years ago.  To-day I
am a well woman.  I eat whatever I please and not
once has the old craving for stimulants attacked
me.  I am a free woman and a very happy one!"

"Oh, Mrs. Goddard," cried Carolina, "thank you
so much for telling me.  It helps me to know that
I am being cured!"

"That you are cured."

"Yes, I must believe that."

"Pardon me--not so much believe it, as you
must understand it and understand why it is so.
Every orthodox Christian is ready to state glibly
that God is All, but they never act as if they
believed it and that is the chief difference between
members of churches and Christian Scientists."

"Why does every one hate Christian Science so
before they understand it?"

"Christian Science is like a large crystal bowl
full of the pure water of life.  Left alone it simply
sparkles in the sunlight of God's smile.  But if you
bring to it the alkali of ignorance and the acid of
prejudice, this clear water becomes the vehicle of
a most energetic boiling and fizzing.  But when it
has assimilated the two foreign ingredients the
residue sinks to the bottom harmlessly, the water
clarifies itself by its reflected power, and the crystal
bowl resumes its placid, sparkling aspect."

"I understand," said Carolina, "that I must have
caused that commotion rather often, for I used to
hate Christian Science so vigorously and I hated
Mrs. Eddy so intensely that I used to rejoice at
every adverse criticism of her or her work, and I
used to go to the trouble (when I never would
have bothered to make a scrap-book) of cutting
things out of the papers, and mailing them to my
friends.  I deliberately put myself out in order to
hate it more adequately!"

"I know," said Mrs. Goddard.  "Isn't it strange,
when you look back on it in the light of your new
understanding and your healing?"

"Ye-es," said Carolina, dubiously, "but to be
quite truthful, I am afraid I am not cured of all
my prejudice yet!"

"Let it go," said Mrs. Goddard.  "It will pass
of itself.  Don't fret about it.  Now tell me about
yourself.  You know we do not dwell upon our
ailments, mental or physical, but if you state them
to me, as your physician I can work more intelligently."

"Oh," sighed Carolina, "what is there not the
matter with me!  Where shall I begin?"

"Let it console you to know in advance that
there is a remedy in Divine Science for everything.
'Not a sparrow falleth'--you remember!  The
table of comfort for every woe is spread before you
in the presence of your enemies.  Fear neither
them nor to partake freely of God's gifts.  The
more eagerly you come and the more you partake
of the feast Divine Love spreads, the more
generously God will pour out His blessings upon you."

Thus encouraged Carolina told her suspicions
of the fate of Guildford and of Colonel Yancey,
without, however, mentioning him by name, until,
led on by Mrs. Goddard's sympathetic manner, she
threw her whole soul into the recital of her own and
Mrs. Winchester's loss, and of how she had hoped to
restore Guildford.

Occasionally Mrs. Goddard interrupted her to
ask a pertinent question.  It gave Carolina a
feeling of comfort to realize her new friend's mentality.
Carolina, was so accustomed to knowing people of
capacity and brilliant intelligence that her mind
reached after such naturally.

"Guildford is not lost to you," said Mrs. Goddard,
just as Rosemary had.

"It will be restored to you, and you will be able
to make good Mrs. Winchester's loss.  You must
have harmony in your life.  That is your right--your
God-bestowed right.  You are an heir of God's
boundless affluence.  It is a crime for one of God's
little ones to be poor, or neglected, or sick, or
forsaken.  Not to believe this is to doubt His promises,
which are sure, and to limit His power, which is
limitless.

"We do not know the way, nor must we make
laws nor dictate means.  But God is even now
preparing the broad highway which shall lead your feet
straight to the gates of Guildford.  Let Him find you
humble, grateful, and ready for the blessing.  Don't
fret.  Don't worry.  Don't be anxious.  'Be still,
and know that I am God!'"

For her only reply Carolina bowed her face upon
her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of
weeping.

Mrs. Goddard made no effort to check or comfort
her, except by thought.  When she had finished,
Mrs. Goddard nodded her head, saying:

"That did you good.  Now for your physical
self!  Was the hip broken?"

"Yes, and set by six of the best surgeons in New
York.  Doctor Colfax is the most hopeful, but even
he says that if ever I grow strong enough to leave
off crutches, I shall limp all my life."

Mrs. Goddard smiled.

"Doctor Colfax is one of the best men I ever
knew.  His left hand knows not what his right hand
does in the way of charity, and his whole life,
instead of being devoted to amassing a fortune, is
given up to the healing of mankind."

"Why, I thought Scientists did not like
doctors!" cried Carolina.

"We admire their intentions.  Who could fail
to?  Among them are some of the noblest
characters I have ever known in any walk of life."

"But," cried Carolina, alarmed by this praise,
"you don't believe that what he says is true?  Why,
Rosemary assured me--"

"And I assure you no less than Rosemary," said
Mrs. Goddard, "that God is able and willing to heal
all such as repent of their sins and come to Him with
an humble and contrite heart.  You are the best
judge of whether your heart is right toward your
enemies.  Can you bring yourself to love this man
who has defrauded you of your inheritance?  If
not, you have no right to expect God to restore it
to you.  Now think this over while I give you a
treatment."

Carolina watched her in so great a surprise that
she forgot to think over her grievance against
Colonel Yancey.  Mrs. Goddard leaned her elbow on
the arm of her chair, and pressed the tips of her
fingers lightly against her closed eyes as if in silent
prayer.  Her lovely face framed in large ripples of
iron-gray hair, her gown of silvery gray, her figure
still youthful in its curves, her slender, spiritual
hands, her earnest voice, and tender, helpful
manner, formed so beautiful an image in
Carolina's mind, and she longed so ardently to model
herself upon the spirit she represented, that tears
welled to her eyes when she contrasted her own
attitude with Mrs. Goddard's, and when she recalled
herself with a start, to the subject of Colonel
Yancey, she found to her surprise that his importance
had so diminished that he had receded into the
background of her thought, and the thing she most
ardently desired was not Guildford, but to put
herself right with God, her Father!

At the moment that this thought formulated in
her mind, a flood of divine peace poured over her
whole spirit, and for the first time the pain of her
bereavement lessened, and then gently passed into
nothingness.

God her Father!  A God of infinite tenderness
and love!  One who loved her even as her own dear
father had loved!  One who was not responsible for
all the evil which had descended upon her!  One
who owed her only love and protection, and a
tenderness such as she had received in its highest
earthly form from her father.

In vain Carolina struggled to deify God above her
earthly father.  She had loved him in so large and
deep and broad a manner that she could only
realize her new God by comparing Him to her father.
And Divine Science had sent this new interpretation
of God to her to take the place in her sore
heart of the ever-present aching sense of her great loss.

When Mrs. Goddard ended her treatment and
opened her eyes, she sat for a moment in silent
contemplation of the transfigured face before her.
Carolina's beauty, as she thus, for the first time,
beheld the face of her Father, was almost unearthly.
It was as that of the angels in heaven.

A wave of generous thanksgiving and rejoicing
swept over the soul of her practitioner, for she
knew that she had been permitted to be the
instrument in God's hands of healing a soul which had
been sick unto death.  Carolina's bodily healing
took second place in her thought, yet her confidence
was sound that that was even now being accomplished.

When Carolina met her eyes, she smiled.  She
had found peace.

"Now, dear child, I want to leave with you the
ninety-first Psalm.  Read it with your new thought
in mind, and you will realize that you never have
even apprehended it before.  Remember, too, that
you are not alone any more.  You are cradled in
Divine Love, for God is both Mother and Father
to His children.  'The eternal God is thy refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms!'"

Mrs. Goddard bent and kissed the girl, and Carolina,
usually so reserved, laid her flowerlike face
against the older woman's cheek in a silence too
deep for words.

"Remember, dear, to call on me by day or night
exactly as if I were Doctor Colfax, for I am your
physician now.  But deny your error as soon as it
makes its appearance and you won't need to send
for me.  I will come of my own accord every day
and help you in your studies.  Now I must go.
Rosemary and I love you already.  Both Divine
and human love are pouring in upon you in such
a manner that you shall not be able to receive it.
Good-bye and God bless you, my dear!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TRIAL OF FAITH`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX.


.. class:: center medium

   THE TRIAL OF FAITH

.. vspace:: 2

To understand Carolina's complete and instant
acceptance of the doctrines of Christian Science
in addition to her healing, it is necessary to take
a more intimate view of her character.

A person of little or no understanding, or of little
or no depth, would naturally have accepted the
boon of restored health, whether she ever went any
further in the doctrine or not.  But Carolina was
different.  To her the blessing was in a change of
thought.  Marvellous as she felt her healing to be,
her greatest gain was in the peace and happiness
which descended upon her like a garment.

To be sure she had been in a desperate plight,
both physically and spiritually, when this wonderful
hand was stretched out to her in her darkness
and despair, yet many to whom it reaches out
refuse its grasp simply from a blind prejudice.
Having ears, they hear not, nor will they when they
might.  It argues a particularly lovely spirit to be
able to accept so freely and gladly.  Carolina was
not free from prejudice.  Far from it.  But she
was not stupid.  Aside from a clear, spiritual
understanding, to be able to accept Christian Science
demonstrates no small degree of mentality,
clearness of perception, and a capacity for higher
education.  The Science of Metaphysics does not
appeal to fools, and only wise men pursue it.
Christian Science is the only religion which calls
in any dignified way upon a man's brain.  All the
others stuff one's intelligence with cotton wool,
bidding the questioner not to question but believe.
Believe what his ordinary human intelligence
repudiates.  "If you don't understand all of me,"
says popular religion, "skip what you don't
understand and go on to the next.  If you keep on long
enough you will find something that you can
believe without any trouble.  Let that satisfy you.
Forget the rest."

But when a metaphysical interpretation of
the Scriptures comes along saying: "Ask any
question you will and I will give you an answer
that will satisfy the best brains and highest order
of intelligence among you, for the day of blind
belief is past, and the day of understanding is at
hand," then the highest compliment which can be
paid to the mentality of the most brilliant man and
woman, is to say: "They are Christian Scientists."

There may be--there are, many erratic minds
attracted by Christian Science, but there are no
complete and utter fools among its followers, for
the mere fact that a man has sense enough to
grope after the very best, instead of being
satisfied with that which never completely satisfied the
mentality of any man or woman of real intelligence,
is an evidence that some degree of wit must be
entangled in the meshes of his foolishness.  While
on the other hand it is doubtful if there ever was
a forty-year old sect in the knowledge of man
which numbered the multitude of brilliant minds
which are within the annals of Christian Science.

Carolina, all her life, had been, not only
surrounded by, but familiar with the best.  Her
father's and mother's brilliance and good taste had
drawn around them many of the finest minds in
Europe, so that the girl's mentality was as ripe for
the highest form of religion as it was of literature
or art.

She plunged into the study of it with all the
ardour of an enthusiastic intelligence, and heaved
a sigh of relief when she realized that at last she
had found a dignified religion, free from every
form of superstition, from all material symbols,
and, above all, one which made it possible
intelligently to obey the command, "Be ready always
to give an answer to every man that asketh you
a reason of the hope that is in you" (1 Peter iii. 15).

Her greatest fear was that she would be unable
to curb the hot temper which mortal mind had
made into the law that it was a Lee inheritance.

She particularly dreaded her first interview with
Noel St. Quentin, Kate, and Cousin Lois.  She had
yet, also, to face Doctor Colfax.  She had not seen
him since, by Mrs. Goddard's advice, she wrote
him a frank little note, saying that her healing had
been marvellously hastened by Christian Science,
and that she had so much faith in it that she felt
compelled to relinquish all claim on materia medica,
but that, in doing so, she wished to acknowledge
most gratefully all that his skill had accomplished
in her case.

It was a hard note to write, for Kate's assertion,
which at first Carolina had indignantly repudiated,
that Doctor Colfax was falling in love with her,
had proved true, and Carolina knew that this
dismissal of him as her physician would indicate that
he need expect nothing more of her in any other
capacity, either.

He wrote her a polite but stiff letter of
acknowledgment, and soon afterward went away for a
brief vacation.

Carolina realized how much antagonism she had
aroused among her own immediate friends, and
she spent many hours consulting Mrs. Goddard
how to conduct herself with tact.

When Mrs. Winchester returned from Boston,
Carolina experienced her first battle with error.
She possessed a high spirit, and to see Cousin Lois
sit and look at her in silent despair, with tears
rolling unchecked down her cheeks, irritated
Carolina almost to the verge of madness, so that instead
of waving aloft the glorious banner of a new
religion, Carolina found herself longing to box Cousin
Lois's ears.  Anything, anything to stop those
maddening tears!

She could only control herself by a violent effort.
Mrs. Winchester, like Kate Howard, was an ardent
churchwoman, and to both these women Carolina's
acceptance of Christian Science was the greatest
blow which could have fallen on them, short of
her eloping with the coachman.  They felt ashamed,
and in no small degree degraded.

"Whatever can you see in it?" demanded
Mrs. Winchester, plaintively, one Sunday morning just
after she returned from church.  "Why need you
go to their church?  Why can't you continue in
the church you were baptized into as a baby?  I
don't care what you believe, just so you go to the
Episcopal church!  It is so respectable to be an
Episcopalian!  Oh, Carolina, as I sat there
listening to that sermon to-morrow--oh, Carolina, how
can you laugh when I am so serious!"

"Do forgive me, Cousin Lois, but you couldn't
be any funnier if you said you had seen something
week after next!"

"I am glad to know that a Christian Scientist
can laugh," sighed Mrs. Winchester, whose mild
persistency in investing the new thought with every
attribute that she particularly disliked was, to say
the least, diverting.

"Am I improved or not since I began to study
with Mrs. Goddard?" demanded Carolina, with
recaptured good humour.

"I don't see any improvement, my dear.  To
me you were always as nearly perfect as a mortal
could be!"

"Dear loyal Cousin Lois!" said Carolina.

She seldom kissed any one, but she kissed
Mrs. Winchester, who blushed with pleasure under the
unusual caress.

"Perhaps," she added, cautiously, "you are a
trifle more demonstrative, but I always thought
your apparent coldness was aristocratic."

"It wasn't," said Carolina, decidedly.  "It was
because I didn't care."

"And now?" questioned Mrs. Winchester, wistfully.

"Now," cried Carolina, "I care vitally for everything good!"

"You always did, I think," said Mrs. Winchester.
"Even as a child you always gravitated
toward the highest of everything.  You are too
remarkable a girl, Carolina, to throw yourself away
at this late day on a fad which will die a natural
death of its own accord."

"May I be there to see when Christian Science
dies!" cried Carolina, brightly.  She felt ashamed
that she had ever lost patience with any one who
loved her as idolatrously as Cousin Lois.

"Doctor Colfax--I forgot to tell you that I
met him on the train, and that he asked fifty
questions about you that I couldn't answer--Doctor
Colfax will certainly be nonplussed when he sees
you walking with only that cane.  He told me he
never expected to see you walk without two
crutches."

"Then you do give Christian Science credit for
that much, do you?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, yes.  It must have some wonderful power.
I simply don't understand it, that's all.  And
Carolina, it seems so--excuse me, but so disreputable!"

"Does it?  I hadn't thought of it in that light."

"And so unsexing!  Don't you have women in
the pulpit?"

"Yes.  Christian Science recognizes woman as
the spiritual equal, if not the spiritual superior, of
man."

"There!" said Mrs. Winchester, triumphantly,
as if having scored a point against the new religion.
"Yet woman caused man's fall!"

"No, she didn't, Cousin Lois.  Christian Science
doesn't take that allegory as history."

"Oh, Carolina!  Carolina!  You are indeed in
a sad way when you forsake the faith of your
ancestors!  Such disloyalty cannot fail to have a
depressing effect upon your character!"

"On the contrary," said Carolina, "it is as
exhilarating to kick down all one's old, stale beliefs
as a game of football."

At this Mrs. Winchester's asthma returned.
There was nothing left for her to do, in her state
of mind, but to choke or to swoon.

A few evenings later Doctor Colfax telephoned
to Kate that he would drop in for a few minutes
after dinner.

"H-he can't stand it for another minute,
Carolina!" cried Kate.  "I am crazy to see his face
when you walk in without your crutches!  C-Carol,
couldn't you take an extra treatment or so, and
come in without even your c-cane?"

Carolina's eyes blazed with joy at this unconscious
admission on Kate's part that she believed
even that little in the new faith.

For reply Carolina rose by means of the arms
of her chair, and without any material aid
whatsoever took half a dozen steps.

"Oh, Carol!  Carol!" shrieked Kate, bursting
into tears.  "Y-you never even limped!  Oh, it's
l-like the d-days when Christ was on earth to s-see
a m-miracle like that!"

She seized her friend in her arms and almost
lifted her from her feet.

"D-do it to-night, Carolina, and we'll knock their
eye out!  I'll get the whole family together, a-a-and
you j-just walk in like that!  Will you?"

"Yes, if you will go away and let me work over
it this afternoon.  And don't tell anybody!"

"Oh, certainly not!  That would spoil the surprise."

"I don't mean for that reason.  I mean that
outsiders' adverse thought would hinder my work.
Mortal mind makes false laws."

"C-could you just as well t-talk United States
when you are heaving your ideas at me?" pleaded
Kate.  "Y-you know I'm not on to the new jargon,
and I fail to connect more than half the time."

As Carolina laughed, Kate nodded her head with
great satisfaction.

"I am glad to see that Christian Science has
not destroyed your royal sense of humour," she
said.  "Now I'm off to let you w-work!"

But when the door closed behind Kate, a
prolonged sense of discouragement seized Carolina.
She looked forward to the evening with dread.
Kate made fun of it, Doctor Colfax was coming
purposely to scoff, and she knew that she was to
be made conspicuous because of her religion.

She tried to walk without her cane, but her knee
bent under her and she fell to the floor.  Her first
impulse was to burst into tears, but, as she lay
there alone, too far from the bell to summon help,
apparently without human aid, she fancied she
heard the voice of Mrs. Goddard repeating: "For
He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep
thee in all thy ways.  They shall bear thee up in
their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."

She said this over and over to herself, and it
comforted her.  Then the face of Mrs. Goddard
came before her mental vision, and the lovely
earnestness of her voice sounded in Carolina's ear.
She remembered her last words, which now came
back to her with strange and timely significance:

"The way will not always be smooth beneath
your feet.  Error in the guise of fear, selfish or
vainglorious thoughts, revenge, self-pity, or desire
to shine before others will sometimes cause you to
stumble and fall.  But at such times, remember to
blame, not circumstances nor others, but your own
faulty thought.  Be severe with yourself.  Then
turn your thought instantly to the Source of your
supply.  No one can help you, Carolina, but God,
your Father, Divine Love, the All in All of your
existence, your very Reason for being.  Realize
that God is all there is.  Beyond Him there is
nothing and nothingness.  Breathe His spirit.  Drink
in His divine power.  Make yourself one with Him,
and you will instantly find that the mists which
covered the surface of your spiritual reflection of
His image will disappear, and you will begin to
reflect His government clearly.  At that same
moment, you will be healed of your infirmity."

As she repeated these last few words aloud, a
feeling of complete security took possession of her,
and she rose, first to her knees, then to her feet,
and walked confidently to her chair by the window.

In great thankfulness she took her Bible and
read the fifth chapter of Luke, and, when she came
to the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses, she
read them three times, with a heart full of gratitude.

Still she was not satisfied.  She was groping
after a sign, and she read on until she came to the
words, "And when they bring you unto the
synagogues, and unto the magistrates and powers, take
ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer,
or what ye shall say.  For the Holy Ghost shall
teach you in that hour what ye ought to say."

"The Holy Ghost!" thought Carolina.  "I wonder
what that really is.  That is one of the things
I never could understand in the old thought."

She turned to the Glossary in "Science and
Health," and there the first definition of Holy Ghost
was "Divine Science."

"I am answered," she said, with a sigh of
complete satisfaction.  "For the first time in my life I
begin to understand the fourteenth chapter of John."

She leaned her head against the window-pane
to watch the postman come down the street.  Then
she heard his whistle, and presently the maid
brought her a letter.  She asked the maid to turn
on the electric light, and, when she had done so
and left the room, Carolina read the following
letter:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left medium

   "LONDON, May 6, 19--

"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINA:--You have
rejected my suit so often, when I had no inducement
to offer you except a heart which beats for you
alone, which seems to be no temptation to you,
that I shall not pay you the poor compliment of
offering myself to you again when, as you must
have heard, I have become the owner of Guildford.

"But, having heard of your great misfortune
and of your change of religion, and knowing that
you love the old home so ardently that its
atmosphere might effect a cure when all else failed, I
beg you to accept Guildford as it stands, as a gift
from your father's old friend,

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: left medium

   "WAYNE YANCEY."

.. vspace:: 2

Carolina's first impulse, having read the letter
twice, was one of the cold fury she used to feel
when a child, and she turned pale with a rage which
was unspeakable in its violence.

Too well she saw through the malice of the whole
affair.  Colonel Yancey knew that, after her first
impact of anger had passed, her next thought
would be to wish she could buy the estate back,
and these terms he intended to make prohibitive.
Carolina wondered if he expected to wear out her
patience, and so force her to marry him, or what?
She could not hope to follow with accuracy the
tortuous windings of a mind as intricate as Colonel
Yancey's, and she despaired of ever realizing that
the labyrinth could untwist into the straight and
narrow way to which she was accustomed.  But,
so far from crushing her, this letter simply roused
in her the valiant spirit of the Lees.  So far from
feeling downhearted, she began to sing.

But it was not a worldly courage which was
sustaining her.  It was the spirit which had grown
out of her afternoon of work.

She deliberately took her cane with her as she
went down to dinner, although she felt that she
could walk without it.  She knew that Kate wanted
the surprise to be complete.

With this end in view, she sat at the table until
the footman announced Doctor Colfax, and then
she allowed all the others to precede her.

"N-now wait until we have all had time to
shake hands, and a-ask him how he enjoyed
himself, and give him a chance to be disappointed
or g-gloating, just as he feels, because y-you aren't
down.  Then y-you skate in and w-watch him
drop!  We'll have him a Christian Science
practitioner b-before we are done with him!"

Carolina obeyed.

They were all there,--Mr. and Mrs. Howard,
Kate, Cousin Lois, Doctor Colfax, and Noel
St. Quentin, and all were under the impression that
Carolina would never be able to walk without some
slight support.  So that, when she walked slowly
through the door, taking her steps with great care,
that she might more gloriously reflect the Light,
a hush fell upon them all.  They did not greet her.
They rose to their feet and stood watching her in
perfect silence, and it was not until Kate sobbed
in her excitement that the spell was broken.

Noel St. Quentin bit his lips, and Doctor Colfax's
face went from red to white in an emotion which
no one could fathom.  Was he chagrined to see
the woman he loved cured?  Did he grudge her
healing at other hands than his?

They all began to speak at once.  Only Mr. Howard,
Kate's father, sat back and watched and listened.

Roscoe Howard was a remarkable man in many
ways.  He possessed a critical mind, large wealth,
great depth of character, and a sureness and
quickness of perception, which had all contributed to
his success in life.  He was a student, above all,
of human nature, and he had insisted upon Kate's
willing hospitality to her friend, partly from
affection to the daughter of his old friend, Winchester
Lee, and partly to see what effect such an avalanche
of misfortunes would have upon the proud spirit
and high-strung nature of Carolina.  When he
heard of her embrace of Christian Science, he
became still more interested.  He had once gone in
to sit with her when her arm was bandaged from
wounds from her own teeth in one of her fits of
despairing rage.

Therefore, when he learned from his daughter
that this was to be the girl's first appearance before
her old friends, he could imagine the ordeal it
would prove to her, and in his own mind he said:
"Carolina will show us to-night whether she is
The Lady or The Tiger!"

At first they all tried to be polite and remember
that they were civilized, but soon that curious
unable-to-let-it-alone spirit which Christian Science
invariably stirs in mortal mind began to manifest
itself in hints and covert remarks and side glances
and meaning silences, until Carolina calmly looked
them in the eyes and said, in her gentlest manner:
"I am perfectly willing to talk about it."

Kate clutched her mother's arm.

"I-isn't Carolina a d-dandy?" she whispered.
"Takes every hurdle without even stopping to
measure it with her eye!"

"Well, doctor, since Carolina has given us
permission to discuss it, what have you to say about
it?" asked Mrs. Howard.

"I can simply say this," said Doctor Colfax.  "I
don't understand it.  But, then," he added frankly,
"I don't understand the Bible, either."

"Then that is why you don't understand my
cure, doctor," said Carolina, quietly, "for it is
founded on the promises which Christ explicitly
made to His disciples."

"To His disciples,--yes," replied Doctor Colfax,
quickly, "but not to us.  We are not His disciples."

"If you are a thorough Bible student," said
Carolina, "please tell me the exact words of His
promise."

"I am not.  You have me there, Miss Lee."

"Well," persisted Carolina, "where did He limit
the power He gave, and which you admit existed
at one time, to His disciples?  Did He ever say,
'I will give it to you and to no other?' or 'I will
give it to you during my lifetime, but after my
ascension it will return unto me, because you will
no longer have need of it?'"

"No, I can't remember any such passages,"
admitted Doctor Colfax.

"W-well, He never s-said anything of the kind,"
put in Kate.  "I don't know much, but I know that!"

"What did He say, Carolina?" asked St. Quentin.
"Do you remember the exact words?"

"Yes, I do.  In one place He said: 'He that
believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also.  And greater works than these shall he do
because I go unto my father.'  And at another time
He said: 'Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise
the dead, cast out devils.  Freely ye have received.
Freely give.'  Now when did the time limit to those
commands end?"

"Oh, nonsense, Carolina!" said Mrs. Howard,
with the amused toleration of the already saved.
"How can you bring up such absurd speculations?
All those questions have been settled for us by the
heads of the Churches years and years before we
were born."

"They were settled, dear Mrs. Howard, for all
who choose to accept such decisions, but how about
those of us who have questioned all our lives and
never found an answer which satisfied?  I can
remember, as a little girl in Paris, I used to come
home from the convent and ply my father with this
very question: 'Why can't priests and preachers
heal in these days the way Jesus commanded?'"

"Well, does Mrs. Eddy have the nerve to assert
that she rediscovered the way to perform Christ's
miracles?" asked Doctor Colfax.

"Mrs. Eddy asserts that in 1866 she discovered
the Christ Science, or the power of healing disease
as Jesus healed it, by a mental process which is so
simple that to all Christian Scientists Christ's
so-called miracles are not miracles at all, but as simple
and natural as any other mental phenomenon which
has become common by reason of its frequency."

"That sounds like sacrilege," said St. Quentin.

"It sounds like tommy-rot!" said Kate.

"And yet," put in Mr. Howard, "we must all
admit that Carolina has been miraculously healed.
Do you not admit that, doctor?"

Doctor Colfax's face became suffused.  He bit his
lip, then said, with quiet distinctness:

"If I had cut off a man's leg with my own hands,
and Mrs. Eddy, under my very eyes, caused a new
leg to grow in the place of the old one, I would not
believe in her or in anything she taught!"

Expressions of varying emotions swept over the
faces of his listeners at this sincere statement of
unbelief,--some were triumphant, some incredulous,
some surprised, and one contemptuous.

"But, doctor, when you see Christian Science
enrolling the names of the most brilliant minds;
when you see the loveliest women forsaking a life
of ease and pleasure and becoming practitioners,--Christian
Science doctors just as selfless and single-minded as you--"

"If you are referring to that depraved woman
who claims to have cured you, Miss Lee, that
morphine fiend, that drunkard, that reformed character,
I beg that you will not name her as a physician in
any sense of the word.  The medical profession is
too noble to be degraded in such a manner!"

"Oh, doctor," cried Carolina, reproachfully, "if
you could only hear the beautiful way in which
she speaks of you!"

"Oh, doctor, aren't you a little severe?" asked
Mrs. Winchester.

Noel St. Quentin smothered an amused laugh.

"Pooh!" cried Kate.  "Why pay any attention
to him?  He's o-only a man, and men are always
wrong!  H-he's talking through his h-hat, that's
w-what he's doing.  He's jealous."

She was sitting near St. Quentin, and, turning to
him under cover of the conversation, she murmured:

"What are you laughing at behind your hand?"

"I was simply remarking a phenomenon that I
have often remarked before, and that is, that
Christian Science seems to possess a peculiar power--"

"Oh, oh! are you going over to the enemy?"
asked Kate.

"You didn't let me finish.  I was going to say
that it possesses a peculiar power of making
well-bred people forget what is due a civilized
community.  I have never, I think, heard so much rudeness,
such rank inelegance, such brutal prejudice
expressed on any subject which polite society
discusses.  It takes Christian Science every time to
make people absolutely insulting to their best
friends."

"Funny, isn't it?  I don't mind it so much since
Carolina got into it; she is so honest and so brave
about answering it, b-but I used to hate it so it
c-cankered the roof of my mouth j-just to speak
the name of it."

"Another curious thing I have noticed," said
St. Quentin, speaking for Kate's ear only, "is that
those who hate it most violently at first generally
end by adopting it, so look out!"

"You don't mean it!" cried Kate, in such a
horror-stricken voice that every one heard her.
"D-don't ask me what we are t-talking about,
because it is not f-fit for you to hear," she cried.

"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, tactfully, "please
tell us what you have found in Christian Science.
I have always had a great respect for your intelligence,
and I am not prepared to find it befogged in
this instance, or that you have been deceived."

He never forgot the luminous gratitude of her look.

"Thank you, dear Mr. Howard.  Let me see
if I can tell you what it is and what it has done for
me.  It is the theory of mind over matter, put in
practice and lived up to.  It teaches us to
understand before we are called upon to believe.  It is
the study of Christian metaphysics, or metaphysics
spiritualized.  It takes all the impossible out of the
Scriptures, and makes them understandable, not to
a fool, but to the wise man,--the man capable of
understanding a great matter.  Having done this
for the brain, it teaches so absolutely a God of Love,
a God who is both father and mother in the love
and yearning tenderness of His thought toward us,
that it eliminates all fear from our lives.  All fear!
Can you take that in at once?  It makes the ninety-first
psalm a personal talk between a father and his
dearly loved child.  To me it sounds just as if
daddy were talking to me from the Beyond.  That
would be just his attitude toward me if he possessed
God's power.  And if you believe it,--if you can
once let yourself believe it, it makes this earth
instantly into heaven."

"Yes, yes, I can see that it would," said
Mr. Howard.  "But do not Scientists believe that it
also prospers you in a worldly sense?"

"Are you giving Kate everything that heart
could wish now, and are you going to leave her
all your money when you die?" asked Carolina.

"That knocked his eye out," murmured Kate,
in an aside to St. Quentin, but he observed that she
looked singularly pleased when Carolina scored a
point.

Mr. Howard waved his hand in a slightly deprecatory way.

"Ah, that is just it!" cried Carolina.  "You
are thinking, 'Oh, but, Carolina, I am Kate's own
father, and God is just God!'  Heavenly Father
doesn't mean a thing to most Christians.  Christian
Scientists can't shirk their beliefs.  If they do,
they are just as they were before,--pretending or
rather trying to believe what they feel that they
ought to believe, but getting no satisfaction and no
comfort from it.  A Scientist who does not put his
belief into practice can neither heal his own body
nor others.  So he is literally forced to be honest."

"Well," said St. Quentin, "I can easily see
where the supreme and slightly irritating happiness
of Christian Scientists comes in.  I could be
supremely happy myself if I could believe in it."

"So could I," declared Kate.  "A-and I suppose
it is sheer envy on my part, when I see their
Cheshire-cat grins, to want to slap their faces for
being happier than I am!"

"But what makes them so happy?" asked Mrs. Winchester,
plaintively.  "Why should they be any
happier than we are?  We both have the same
Bible, and I flatter myself that I am just as capable
of understanding it as any self-styled priestess of a
new religion."

"But *do* you understand it, Cousin Lois?" asked
Carolina, gently.

"I understand all that is good for me, dear child.
I understand all that our Lord wants me to, or He
would have made me Mrs. Eddy and made Mrs. Eddy,
Mrs. Winchester.  We are fulfilling God's will."

"I d-don't believe that, either," whispered Kate
to St. Quentin.  "I--I have to admit that
Carolina's God is a more consistent Being than
Mrs. Winchester's."

"But you have not answered my question, Carolina,"
said Cousin Lois.

"What makes us so happy?  Well, I wonder
if I can tell you.  In the first place, it is the relief
of dropping all anxiety.  We don't have to worry
about a single solitary thing.  We put all
responsibility off on God.  You know it says 'Cast thy
burdens on the Lord!'"

"But how can you?" cried Kate.  "I--I'm sure
I'd like to, but I c-can't get my own consent."

"That's exactly it.  Well, we do it.  Then,
having put all fear out of our lives, what is there left
to make one unhappy?  If you are no longer afraid
of losing your health or your money or of dying
or of being maimed or injured in accidents by land
or sea, or of old age or any misfortune coming to
any of your dear ones, so that it leaves you
perfectly free to come and go as you please, to eat at
all hours things which used to produce indigestion,
to eat lobster and ice-cream together, drink strong
coffee late at night and drop off to sleep like a baby,
and, if it eliminates all dread of the unseen and the
unknowable, what more is there left to fret about,
I'd like to know?"

"How about waking up in the middle of the
night to worry about your debts?" asked St. Quentin.

"The answer to that is that, at first you begin by
remembering that as God is the Source of all
supply, if you are consistent, the way will be opened
to pay your debts.  And, after you once master
that comforting fact, it is easy to see that the next
thing will be that you won't wake up in the night
to worry or even to think."

"Carolina!" exclaimed Mrs. Winchester, "do
you mean to tell me that you, who used to lie
awake hours and hours every night of your life,
can sleep through till morning?"

"I do, Cousin Lois.  Often actually without
turning over.  And with no bad dreams.  Can you
believe me?"

Doctor Colfax rose abruptly, as if he could bear
no more, and when, with a little more leave-taking,
St. Quentin had offered to drive Mrs. Winchester
back to Sherman's in his new motor-car, and the
Howards and Carolina were left alone, Mr. Howard
turned to Carolina and said:

"Carol, I have heard a great deal, here and there,
about your interest in Guildford and your wish to
restore the place.  Would you mind telling me your
plans?"

"Not in the least, Mr. Howard.  The place has
been sold under its mortgage, as you doubtless
know, but it is of no more value to its present owner
than any of the land surrounding it, which is
equally arable.  Its only value to us was because
it was our ancestral estate.  It has a water-front,
and, having been left intact for over two hundred
years, its timber is enormously valuable.  If I
owned it, and had a little working capital, I could
pay off the mortgage and restore the house with
the timber alone."

"Why, how is that, Carolina?  Is it so extensive
as all that?"

"It is only about two thousand acres,--a mere
handful of land to a Northern millionaire, who buys
land along the Hudson and in the Catskills and
Adirondacks of ten times that amount, but that is
a very decent size for a Southern plantation.  But
the value is in the kind of timber.  It is long-leaf
yellow pine, which produces turpentine and rosin
first, by the orchard process, then what is left is
suitable for the lumber men, and the fallen trees
and stumps for the new process of making turpentine.
My plan was to sell the turpentine rights to
the orchard people for, say, three years, then sell
the timber, and afterward sell the stumpage and
refuse to the patent people, or perhaps erect a plant
myself.  There is a tremendous profit in turpentine
and a constant and ready market."

Mr. Howard sat in a large armchair, with his
finger-tips together and his head bent forward,
looking at the girl from under his heavy eyebrows.
He was amazed at her statement of Guildford's
possibilities.  Hitherto he had regarded her unknown
plan as probably only a woman's sentimental idea,
and doubtless wild and impracticable.

"You say that the timber has been untouched
for two hundred years?"

"Practically untouched.  We had it examined
four years ago, and I have heard of nothing since."

"Is any of this land suitable for cotton?"

"Yes, for both cotton and rice, and I should
raise both.  There is no reason to my mind why
a Southerner should not be as thrifty with every
acre of ground as the Northerner is, nor why every
inch should not be made to yield in America as it
does in France."

"Right! right!  And the Southerners will
accept such incendiary sentiments from you, because
you are one of them, but, when I ventured
something on the same order, but much more mild, I was
called 'a damned Yankee,' who wanted to 'make
truck-farmers out of gentlemen.'"

"Oh, oh!" laughed Carolina, merrily.  "How
like them that sounds!  You know, dear Mr. Howard,
they think we have no gentlemen in the North."

"T-they aren't far from it," cried Kate.  "There
are f-few gentlemen anywhere in the world,
according to m-my definition of one."

"You say Guildford is sold?" said Mr. Howard.

"Yes, Sherman was obliged to mortgage it, but
he did so without knowing how dearly I loved it.
Then some one bought the mortgage and foreclosed it."

"Why, who could have done such a thing?
There must have been a motive.  Has coal been
discovered on any of the surrounding property?"

"Not that I know of," said Carolina, in a
guarded tone.

"Then there must have been some motive in the
mind of the purchaser," said Mr. Howard, decisively.

Carolina was silent.

"Can you throw any light on the subject,
Carol?" he persisted, but his manner was so kindly
that Carolina could not take offence.

Her reticence arose from two causes.  One, her
natural wish not to bruit her private affairs abroad,
and the other that Mrs. Goddard had enjoined
strict silence on her.  "Nothing can be lost in
Truth," Mrs. Goddard had said, "nor are the
channels of God's affluence ever clogged, but mortal
mind makes laws which we are obliged to overcome.
Therefore, the fewer people who know about
it, the easier our work will be."

However, something in Mr. Howard's manner
led Carolina to suspect that he was not seeking to
be informed out of idle curiosity, and her heart
gave a bound at the thought that perhaps Divine
Love might be using him as a channel.

Noticing her momentary hesitation, he said:

"You need not fear to confide in me, Carol.
Perhaps I can be of some help to you."

Again she hesitated.  She knew that the Howard
family knew of Colonel Yancey's attentions to her.
Still she felt that she must venture.

"The present owner of Guildford is Colonel
Yancey," she said, in a low voice.

"Colonel Yancey!"

"Colonel Yancey!"

"Colonel Yancey!"

And so occupied was each listener with his own
thoughts and mental processes that each regarded
that exclamation as an original remark.

Carolina looked from one to the other of them
anxiously, in the short silence which followed.

"I understand," said Mr. Howard, slowly.  "I
think--I--understand!"

"And this afternoon," Carolina went on, "I
received a most extraordinary letter from him,
dated at London, making me a present of Guildford."

"Making you a p-present of it!" cried Kate.
"What g-gigantic impudence!"

"He did it to irritate her into taking some notice
of him!" declared Mrs. Howard.

"H-he did it to show her how h-helpless she is!"
cried Kate.  "He knows she has n-no money.  But
I think I see him hanging around until he wears
Carolina out.  That is his g-game!  A n-nice
step-m-mother you w-would make to those two children
of his,--and the l-little one a cripple!"

"Children!" cried Carolina, turning white.  "I
never knew that there were any!  He never
mentioned them."

"Oh, h-he didn't want to d-discourage you t-too
much," cried Kate.

"And one of them--the little one--a cripple,
did you say?"

The eager pity in Carolina's voice frightened
Kate.  She looked at Carolina in wonder.  The
girl was leaning forward in her chair, her lips
parted, her eyes shining, her cheeks blazing.  Kate
felt physically sick as the thought flashed through
her mind that perhaps this altruistic pity might
rush her friend into the marriage with Colonel
Yancey, which even Guildford had been unable to do.

"Where is the child?" asked Carolina.

"She is at the Exmoor Hospital.  Her aunt,
Sue Yancey, brought here there last week for an
examination.  They are trying to gain Colonel
Yancey's consent to an operation."

"How do you know all this?" asked Kate's mother.

"I went there to take some flowers to-day, and
I saw this child,--she is a little beauty,--and I
asked Doctor Shourds who she was and he told
me.  The trouble is with her ankles.  Her feet
are perfectly formed, but they turn in and she
can't bear her weight upon them, nor walk a step."

"She *can* walk!" said Carolina, in a low, earnest
voice.  "God, in His Divine Love, never made a
crippled baby!"

Something smarted in Mr. Howard's eyes.  He,
was no believer in Christian Science, but he loved
little children, and Carolina's tone of deep and
quiet conviction wrenched his heart.

"Carol, Carol!" wailed Kate, wringing her nose
and mopping her eyes, with utter disregard of their
redness, "you do make me howl so!"

"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, suddenly, "you
know that I do not personally subscribe to the
teachings of your new religion, but I am an
observer of human nature, and I know the hall-marks
of real Christianity.  I have seen you to-night keep
your temper under trying circumstances, defend
your faith with spirit, and exemplify the command
to love your enemies, and I want to tell you that if
there is anything I can do toward financing a plan
to buy Guildford from Colonel Yancey, and installing
you there to pursue your life-work, you can
count on me."

Carolina made an attempt to speak, but her eyes
swam in tears, and she buried her face in her arm.

"Oh, daddy! daddy!  D-dear old daddy!" cried
Kate, dancing up and down in her excitement.
"I knew y-you were up to something!  Y-you may
not care for C-Christian Science, b-but, when you
s-see a good thing, you know enough to p-push it along!"





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.. _`CROSS PURPOSES`:

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   CHAPTER X.


.. class:: center medium

   CROSS PURPOSES

.. vspace:: 2

"Noel must take me for a f-fool if he thinks
I don't see through him!" said Kate, angrily, to
her own image in the glass.

It was about three months after Mr. Howard
had offered to help Carolina to regain Guildford.

"H-he wants to p-pump me," she went on, adjusting
her motor veil.  "I d-don't mind trying his
automobile, b-but I hate to t-think he takes me for
a s-sucker!"

She rummaged viciously in her top drawer for
her goggles.

"I wonder if he th-thinks I don't know he asked
Carol first.  Men are s-such fools!  But j-just wait!
He wants m-me to tell him things.  M-maybe I
won't g-give him a run for his money!"

But, as she ran down the steps and jumped into
the powerful new racing machine, all outward trace
of vexation was gone, and St. Quentin was quite
as excusable as most men who believe they can
outwit a clever woman.

Not that St. Quentin was particularly noticeable
for his conceit.  He seemed like the majority of
men, who are merely self-absorbed.  Yet in many
respects he was quite different.

For example, he was interested in other things
besides his motor-cars.  He read, thought even, and
was somewhat interested in other people's mental
processes,--a thing which Kate quite overlooked
in her flash of jealousy, for Kate had been obliged
to admit to herself that, if the signs spoke truly
and Noel were really in love with Carolina, it would
be a melancholy thing for her to face.

"But I'm game!" she often said to herself.  "I
won't give up the fight until I have to.  Then, if I
get left, I won't howl."

There were several things in Kate's favour.
First, Carolina showed no symptoms of being in
love with Noel, although she must know that she
could have him if she wanted him.  Second, but
this thought gave her almost the same discomfort
as if Carolina should fancy St. Quentin, Carolina
was in a fair way to become violently interested in
another man,--Colonel Yancey.

The thought of how this news would stir Noel
brought such a colour into Kate's cheeks that Noel,
turning his eyes for the fraction of a second from
the wheel, said:

"Motoring becomes you, Kate."

"I-it's more than I can s-say for y-you, then,"
she answered.  "You look like a burglar in that mask."

"Now sit tight," said St. Quentin, "I'm going
to let her out a little here."

Noel's idea of letting her out a little was more
than Kate's nerves could stand.  She touched Noel's
arm imploringly and he obediently slowed up.
Kate could hardly get her breath.

"Wasn't that fine?" asked St. Quentin.

"It was s-simply devilish.  I'd rather travel in
a wheelbarrow.  It g-gives you more time for the
scenery."

"You are just like Carolina.  She hates racing.
She likes to jog along about like this."

Kate leaned over and looked at the speedometer.
They were going at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

"P-poor Carolina!" said Kate, mockingly.
"How old-fashioned we both are!"

Noel laughed and slowed up a little more.

"There, is that better?" he asked, with the
toleration a man shows when he is fond of a woman.

"Yes, now I can tell the trees from the telegraph-poles.
A m-moment ago I thought the r-road was fenced."

"What is Carolina up to these days?  I haven't
seen her for over a fortnight," said St. Quentin.

Kate reluctantly admired him for being so honest
about it.  Most men would have tried to come at
it from around the corner.  Nevertheless, she
wanted to carry out her original purpose.

"She goes to the hospital every day."

"The hospital?  What for?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?  Then I have some
news for you."

Kate smiled with wicked enjoyment.  Noel was
now about to receive a dose of his own medicine,
and she was to administer it.  She viciously hoped
it was in her power to make him as uncomfortable
over Colonel Yancey as he made her about Carolina.

"Well, soon after--why, it was the very night
you were at our house--after you and Doctor
Colfax had gone, we still kept on talking, a-and it came
out that Colonel Yancey had never told Carolina
that he had children, whereas he has t-two,--the
dearest little creatures,--b-but the little one,
Gladys, is a hopeless cripple."

St. Quentin turned with a start.

"Yes, that's just the way it struck me.  Of
course you g-get the vista.  Carolina instantly
investigated her c-case, and she and Mrs. Goddard
got it out of the doctors that there was only about
one chance in ten of the operation being successful,
whereas--well, N-Noel, I am not sentimental, but
I thank God I--I am human, and when I s-saw the
frightened look in the b-blue eyes of that l-little
child--that b-baby--she's only six--when she
found out th-they were going to cut her, I c-could
have screamed.  As it w-was, I c-called them
criminals and b-burst out crying, and I b-begged Carol
to c-cable Colonel Yancey for p-permission to try
Christian Science."

"You did just right," said St. Quentin.  "It
seems to me that the legitimate and proper place for
Christian Science is in a desperate case like that,
when doctors agree that they are practically powerless."

"I--I think so, too.  And especially when time
cuts no i-ice,--not like a fever, you know, which
must b-be checked at once.  Well, Carol cabled,
and Colonel Yancey answered in these very words,
'Have no faith, but must respect your intelligence.
Do as you think best.'"

"By Jove!"

"You see?  Oh, Noel, it's s-such a comfort to
t-talk to you.  Y-you're so clever.  Most men are
f-fools.  But do you s-see the diabolical flattery of
the cablegram?  Do you also see that it puts Carolina
in the p-place of the c-child's mother?  Oh, when
I saw the c-colour come into her face, as she read
that cablegram, and that s-sort of d-dewy mother-look
she s-sometimes gets in her eyes, I--I could
have s-slapped Colonel Yancey's face for him!"

"I know," said Noel, in a low, strained tone
which woke Kate from her enthusiasm to a sense
of her own folly.  Her face flamed.

"Well, I'll be switched!" she said to herself.
"If N-Noel took me for a s-sucker, he didn't half
state the case."

"Why don't you go on?" asked St. Quentin.
He looked at her flushed face and quivering lips
in surprise.  "Why, I didn't think she had it in
her to show such feeling!" he said to himself.

"I am the m-more afraid," she went on, looking
straight before her, "b-because Carol doesn't care
for any other m-man, so she is f-free to fall in
l-love with Colonel Yancey, if she wants to.  He
is only a little over forty, is quite the most
fascinating man I ever m-met, and he owns Guildford."

If Kate expected St. Quentin to betray any
violent emotion on hearing these statements, she was
doomed to disappointment.  However, she seemed
satisfied at Noel's utter silence.  A smile quivered
at the corners of her mouth.

"Well?" said St. Quentin at last.

"C-can't you picture the rest?  Can't you see
Carol and Mrs. Goddard going there d-day after
day, until Mrs. Goddard got permission to move
Gladys to her house?  I b-believe they were to t-take
her there this morning."

"Is there any improvement in the child?" asked
St. Quentin.

"A little.  She is old enough to understand and
help herself, and she knows she is g-going to get
well, or as she puts it, 'I know that I am well.'  Her
ankles have become flexible and her little feet
can b-be put straight with the hand, b-but, as yet,
they don't stay straight.  S-she has not gained
c-control over them."

"Can she stand at all?"

"J-just barely.  But she s-sinks right down."

"Do you believe she will be cured?"

"I s-suppose you will think I am f-foolish, but
I do."

"Not at all, Kate.  I am not sure but that I
believe it myself."

"Why, Noel S-St. Quentin!  And you a Roman
Catholic!"

"Well, why not?  Wouldn't I be an acceptable
convert if I should decide to join their ranks?"

"I-indeed you would not!" cried Kate, delighted
to be able to administer a stinging rebuff.  "I have
an idea that they would refuse even to instruct
you without a w-written permission from your
priest.  Ah, ha!  Can't you j-just see your
confessor g-giving up a l-little white w-woolly lamb
like you?  Y-ye are of more value than many
s-sparrows."

St. Quentin accelerated the speed of the machine
so suddenly that the motor seemed to leap into the air.

"Oh, Lord, Noel!  D-don't do that again!  The
m-machine can't feel it!  N-now if you had struck
your horse--"

St. Quentin turned on her savagely, but said nothing.

"T-that's right, Noel.  D-don't speak.  There's
a good deal in being a g-gentleman, after all.  If
you h-hadn't been, you would have said, 'S-shut
up, Kate!'"

"If your husband," said St. Quentin, slowly,
"ever goes to jail for wife-beating, I shall bail him
out."

"I-it's strange how men agree with one another,"
said Kate, pensively.  "M-my cousin has always
said that a g-good beating with a bed-slat would
about fit my c-case."

"Bright boy!" said St. Quentin.  "He ought
to get on in the world."

"Hadn't we better turn back, Noel?  I have
an engagement at five."

"Do you have to go home to dress, or shall I
drop you anywhere?"

"I was just going to see Gladys for half an hour.
You may drop me at Mrs. Goddard's if you will."

"Will Carolina be there?" asked St. Quentin.

"Yes, I think so.  Do you want to see her?"
asked Kate, innocently.

"Well, I'd rather like to see her with the child.
Will you let me come in with you?"

"By all means.  I should be delighted."

"Then I can bring you home afterward."

"Most thoughtful of you," murmured Kate.

"I say, Kate," said St. Quentin, after a pause,
"keep your eye open for a toy shop, will you?
One oughtn't to call on a child without some little
present, ought one?"

"You won't find one up in this part of the
country, such as you want," said Kate.  "Let her out
a little and we will have time to go down to
Twenty-third Street."

When they came out of the shop, even Kate,
extravagant as she was, was aghast.

"Noel, it's w-wicked to spend money like that.
Why, that child is only a b-baby.  She can't
appreciate all those hand-made clothes for that doll.
And real lace!  It's absurd!"

"Kate," said St. Quentin, slowly, "if you were
that crippled baby, I'd have bought you everything
in that whole shop!"

A lump came into Kate's throat so suddenly that
it choked her.

When they arrived at Mrs. Goddard's, there was
no need to ask the butler if the ladies were at home,
for, instead of the formal household Mrs. Goddard
used to boast, the house seemed now to have become
a home.  Even the butler looked human, as laughter
and childish screams of delight floated down
the hall from the second floor.

"Perkins, what is it?" asked Kate, pausing suddenly.

"Little Miss Gladys finds that she can stand
alone, Miss Howard, and we are so delighted none
of the servants can be got to do their work.  They
just stand around and gape at her and clap their
hands."

But Perkins himself was smiling as Kate rushed
past him up the stairs.

"Here, Perkins, my man," said St. Quentin,
"lend a hand with this, will you, and send a footman
out to the motor for the rest of those parcels."

The sight which met the eye was enough to make
any one's heart leap, as Kate flung open the door
and joined the group.

There were Mrs. Goddard, Rosemary, Miss Sue
Yancey, Carolina, and the two children, Emmeline
and Gladys.  Gladys was standing in the corner,
partly supporting herself by leaning in the angle
of the walls, but standing, nevertheless, bearing
her entire weight upon her slender, beautiful little
feet, which never before had been of any use to
her, nor, in their distorted position, even sightly.
Now they were in a normal position and actually
bearing her weight, and so excited was everybody
that no one turned even to give the newcomers a
greeting.  Rosemary and Carolina were kneeling
on the floor in front of the child, while Mrs. Goddard
was audibly affirming that Gladys could walk.
Gladys alone looked up at Kate and St. Quentin,
and smiled a welcome.

"Thee, Katie!" she lisped, "Gladyth can thtand alone!"

"Gladys can walk," affirmed Mrs. Goddard, and,
as they saw the child cautiously begin to remove
her hands from the supporting walls and evidently
intend to attempt a step, Kate snatched the huge
box from Noel's hands, and, hastily unfastening it,
silently held up before her a gorgeously beautiful
French doll, in a long baby dress, frilled and
trimmed with cobweb lace, and calculated not only
to set a child crazy, but to turn the heads of the
grown-ups, for such a doll is not often seen.

No one saw it at first.  Then Gladys, looking up
for encouragement, glanced at Kate, and, as her
eyes rested on the baby doll, with one delighted
mother-cry of "Baby, baby!" she started forward
and fluttered across the floor, light as any
thistle-down, until she clasped the doll in her arms, and
Kate seized her little swaying body to keep her
from falling.

"See what Divine Love has wrought!" exclaimed
Mrs. Goddard, in a voice so filled with
gratitude and a reverent exultation that it sounded
like a prayer.

There were tense exclamations, excited laughter
which ended in sudden tears, quivering smiles and
murmurs of thanksgiving, until Carolina, turning
to Noel, said:

"Noel, I am sure that doll was your doing,"
when error again claimed Kate for its own, for
the look of gratitude Noel sent in return.

"Lord, but this Christian Science does make me
t-tired," murmured Kate to herself, as she released
Gladys, and the two children, in a fever of
excitement, sat down on the floor to undress the
doll.  "F-first we go up, up, up, and th-then we go
down, down, down!  J-just as surely as I have an
up feeling, I g-get it in the neck inside of the next
thirty seconds.  A-at any rate, there's no m-monotony
about it.  It k-keeps you guessing where it will
hit you n-next."

Kate unconsciously made such a wry face as she
murmured these words under her breath that
Rosemary leaned over and whispered:

"What's the matter, Kate?"

"I th-think I've got an attack of what you call
Error, but it cramps me most cruel.  Or d-do you
think I could have caught cholera infantum from
holding that d-doll baby?"

"Kate, you are so funny!" laughed Rosemary.

"I s-spend a good deal of v-valuable time amusing
m-myself," said Kate.  "I sorta have to, in a
way.  Everybody else seems o-occupied."

As Kate made this indiscreet remark about error,
Rosemary looked back at the other groups in the
room, and surprised Noel looking at Carolina with
an expression in his eyes he gave to no other, and
again a spasm of pain crossed Kate's face.  At once
Rosemary understood, and Kate saw that she did.
Kate's face flamed.  She pushed Rosemary into the
window-seat, thrust her violently down, and pulled
the thick crimson curtains together, shutting them in.

"It's n-not so!" she whispered, excitedly.  "I
know w-what you think, b-but it's not true.  He
loves C-Carolina, and in time, no doubt, she'll l-love
him.  I d-don't see how she can help it.  I d-don't
care."

"Oh, Kate, that is not true!  I certainly hope
Carolina will not fall in love with him.  He is not
suited to her, she doesn't want him, and he is
suited to you.  You can't deny it."

"I do d-deny it!" cried Kate, but the look that
swept over her face at Rosemary's remark belied
her words.  "And you are to t-think no more about
it.  And Rosemary Goddard, if you go to t-treating
the situation, as if N-Noel and I were a couple of
hunchbacks or yellow fevers or s-snake-bites, I'll
h-half kill you!  I--I'm no subject for p-prayer,
let me tell you that now."

"Kate, I wouldn't think of such a thing!" cried
Rosemary, biting her lips.  "Now go on.  There's
Noel calling for you to go home!"

"As if she could mislead me," said Rosemary
to herself.  "She wouldn't even try if she could
have seen her own face when I said, on purpose to
try her, 'There's Noel calling you to go home.'  Well,
bless her dear heart!  I hope her love-affair
will turn out as luckily as mine has, and without
all my misery.  Good-bye, all!"





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.. _`IN WHICH TRUTH HOLDS HER OWN`:

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   CHAPTER XI.


.. class:: center medium

   IN WHICH TRUTH HOLDS HER OWN

.. vspace:: 2

Perhaps, as a student of human nature, Roscoe
Howard rather looked forward with enjoyment to
his encounter with Colonel Yancey in the matter of
the purchase of Guildford.  With the promptness
and decision which gave the fundamental strength
to his character, he at once investigated the whole
transaction, beginning with the private history of
the syndicate, which, in his bitterness, Sherman
Lee was only too ready to give him.  He drew from
Carolina, by adroit conversations, much of the
story of Colonel Yancey's connection with the Lee
family abroad, and, to a man with an imagination,
he soon was able to formulate, though by a
somewhat elliptical process, a theory concerning Colonel
Yancey's designs on Carolina, which fitted the case
as it stood, but which needed a personal interview
with the colonel to enable Mr. Howard to decide
whether the man was anxious to marry Carolina
from love of herself alone or with the ulterior
motive of having discovered some unsuspected
source of wealth on the Guildford estate.

"This man is a very accomplished rascal!" he
said to himself, as he followed the winding clues
in the labyrinth of the colonel's transactions.  "I
feel sure that Sherman's money is done for.  He
will never get any of that back.  Yet Yancey, rascal
as he is, is too shrewd to put himself in the clutches
of the law.  However, he is also clever enough to
be willing to have Sherman think him a fool for
failing.  At the same time, I believe that Yancey
has made a fortune.  The question is, where is it?"

He fell to musing on the man's extraordinary
career.  Serving governments with honesty for
years, waiting, studying, learning, biding his time
until he could make a grand haul without fear of
detection, with his honourable career to throw
suspicion off the scent, and finding his quarry at last
in wrecking the orphaned children of his best friend.

It was a curious type of character,--a curious
code of honour,--but not phenomenal.  It simply
showed the effect of climate on a man's definition
of honesty.  Doubtless Colonel Yancey considered
the syndicate of New Yorkers "damned Yankees,"
and therefore his legitimate prey.  Did not the
carpet-baggers rob the South?  And, as to getting
possession of Guildford, even if only in order to
force Carolina to accept him with it--all's fair in
love and war.  Doubtless Colonel Yancey was an
honourable man in his own eyes, and ready to
defend his honour to the death if necessary.
Mr. Howard had spent several years in the South, and
did not underestimate his personal danger in the
coming interview should he impinge on what the
colonel was pleased to call his "honour."  Mr. Howard
felt that he must fortify himself with
serpent-wisdom and dove-harmlessness.

For Colonel Yancey was coming home, and
Mr. Howard had arranged for a meeting with him
without stating his errand.

He was prepared for a confident, even a dignified,
bearing in the colonel, but let it be said that he had
not looked for the jaunty air with which Colonel
Yancey met him when Mr. Howard called at his
office at the time appointed.  Considering that
Colonel Yancey must be aware that Mr. Howard knew
of the crookedness of the whole transaction in oil,
his audacity was, to say the least, extraordinary
when he rose, held out his hand to the older man,
and said, genially:

"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

The impertinence of the remark, to say nothing
of its bad taste under the circumstances, for a
moment staggered even the Northerner's good
breeding, and, for one brief breathing spell,
Mr. Howard felt impelled to imperil the whole situation
by the trenchant reply:

"Not a damned thing, sir!"

But his self-control came to his rescue, and with
it a determination to master the natural and
inevitable irritation which many Northern men feel at
being called upon to transact business with a
Southern man, and which all Southern men feel when
doing business with Northern men.  The whole
code is different and all the conditions misunderstood.
Nor will there be harmony until each
endeavours to obtain and comprehend the other's
point of view.

It was only by detaining the conversation upon
strictly neutral grounds for a few moments that
Mr. Howard was able to see that the fault lay
largely with himself.  Perhaps Colonel Yancey was
unaware that his visitor knew anything of his
private history or was at all interested in the Lees.  It
was only Mr. Howard's smarting under the real
injuries Colonel Yancey had inflicted on Winchester
Lee's children which caused him to resent Colonel
Yancey's assumption of the role which he essayed
on all occasions and inevitably with strangers.  At
first, he was the bland, suave, genial, open-hearted
Southerner.  But at the first hint of Mr. Howard's
errand, the openness snapped shut.  The thin lips
were compressed, the crafty eyes narrowed, and
Colonel Wayne Yancey, like a pirate craft, "prepared
to repel boarders."

"Now, Mr. Howard," he said, "in broaching
the subject of the purchase of Guildford, may I
ask whom you are representing?"

"Why should you imagine that I am representing
any one?" inquired Mr. Howard.  "Why not
imagine that I want Guildford for my own use?
It is a good property.  It has a water-front.  It
is picturesque.  Why not suppose that I merely
want to acquire a winter home in South Carolina?"

"Then why not look at property just as good,
nearer to the town of Enterprise than Guildford
lies, and with a good stone house already on it?
For instance, my sister's late husband's place,
Whitehall, is for sale."

"Thank you for mentioning it," said Mr. Howard,
"but I especially want Guildford."

"Then--pardon me for saying so--you must
have some ulterior motive for wanting it, for the
place is worth no more than the adjoining property
of Sunnymede or half a dozen other contiguous
estates."

"That is exactly the thought which came to me,
if you will pardon me for mentioning it, when I
heard that you had bought and foreclosed the
mortgage on Guildford!"

Mr. Howard laid his finger-tips together, with
a quiet satisfaction in thus having trapped his
antagonist.  But he little knew Wayne Yancey.

With an assumption of honesty, which fairly
took the Northern man's breath away, Colonel
Yancey looked first out of the window, as if to
consider, and then said:

"You are right, Mr. Howard, and to a man of
honour like yourself, I will tell you the real reason
why I bought the mortgage on Guildford, why I
foreclosed it in order to own the place, and why
I hope you will drop the idea of purchasing it,
for I tell you frankly at the outset that, if you press
the matter, I shall simply put a prohibitive price
upon the property, and you have no legal recourse
by which you can compel me to part with it.  Please
bear this in mind.  And for explanation of this
unalterable decision--here it is.  I love Carolina
Lee.  I told her father so when she was only a girl
of sixteen in London.  He gave me his blessing,
and told me he would rather leave her to me than
to any other man in the world.  He was my dearest
friend.  I was the unhappy means of bringing a
loss on Sherman, which it shall be my life-work
to make good.  If Winchester Lee can hear me in
the place where he has gone, he knows that I mean
well by both of his children.  I adore Carolina,
but she has refused to marry me, and, knowing her
love for her old home, I obtained possession of it
in order to restore it to her.  If you do not believe
that I mean this, ask her if I did not offer her
Guildford as a free gift."

"You are a clever man, Colonel Yancey, and
you knew then, as well as you know now, that to
offer a girl of Carolina's spirit a valuable gift like
that was to insult the Lee pride.  What did you
hope to gain by it?"

"The girl herself!  I confess it without shame,
sir.  I would move heaven and earth in order to
have that girl for my wife!  You do not know
Wayne Yancey, Mr. Howard, or you would know
that that means more than appears on the surface."

"I may not know you completely, Colonel
Yancey, but I know you well enough to believe that
part of your statement implicitly.  But you will
never win her either by force or by coercion of any
kind.  Give her a free hand and let her come to you
of her own accord, or she will not come at all."

By the expression which flitted across the
colonel's slightly cruel face at Mr. Howard's words,
he was convinced of one thing, and that was that
the man was honestly and deeply in love with
Carolina.  This fact illuminated the matter somewhat.

"It would be quite true with horses," mused
Colonel Yancey.  "And a blooded horse and a
spirited woman have many points in common."

"I freely confess to you that I wish to purchase
Guildford in order to let Carolina go down there
and work her will with the place.  The girl has
courage, good business ideas; she is a friend of
my daughter's, and I am interested in the
development of her character.  I would just as soon leave
you to make the same arrangement with her which
I propose to make, if she would consent to have
money transactions with you, but she will not.  For
what reason you and she probably know.  I confess
that I do not, but what you have just been good
enough to tell me concerning your feelings toward
her would seem to throw light upon the situation.
Now, may I make a suggestion?"

"A thousand, if you will!"

"Thank you.  Now, possibly an outsider may be
able to give you a new point of view.  Suppose you
yield to Carolina's wishes, sell me the place, and
thus give her the opportunity to carry out her dead
father's plans.  You thus provide her with a
cherished life-work.  You know the Lees.  They are
proud and grateful.  To whom would her heart
naturally turn?  To an old married man like me,
through her friendship for my daughter, or to a
comparatively young man like yourself, in whose
children she is as vitally interested as she must have
been to heal your baby girl?"

Now Mr. Howard was deliberately playing upon
the man's feelings, but he was not prepared for the
change in Colonel Yancey's face.

"Did she do that?" he said, in a hoarse voice,
"Did she do it?"

"Certainly she did.  Who else?"

"They told me that Mrs. Goddard did it--Sister
Sue told me."

"No, it is considered by the Christian Scientists--this
new sect which you may have heard that
Carolina has joined--that Gladys is her first case
of healing.  Carolina is Mrs. Goddard's pupil, and
doubtless Mrs. Goddard helped her,--in the
curious way they have, for I overheard Carolina
telephoning Mrs. Goddard to treat her--Carolina--for
fear, in your little daughter's case.  I believe
they heal by confidence in God's promises and the
theory that mind controls matter.  Wonderful,
isn't it?"

"Wonderful, indeed, but the  most wonderful
part of it to me is that Miss Carolina was induced
to render me this inestimable benefit when she--well,
she used to hate me, to be quite frank.  If you
knew the rebuffs I have taken at her hands!"

"Well, that is one of the results of this new
religion of hers.  It is founded on love, and they
are obliged to live it, or they fail to receive any
benefits.  It is a self-acting religion, and is its own
detective.  They regard hatred, for example, as a
disease, and naturally Carolina could not, in their
code, be healed herself or heal others as long as she
hated you.  Thus, in healing your little girl, she
was working out her own salvation."

"Mr. Howard," said Colonel Yancey, with his
face working painfully, "you don't know what it
is to have a crippled child.  You don't know the
agony I have endured, looking at her beautifully
formed little body and into her dear face, with its
intelligent eyes, broad brow, and sweet mouth, and
then realizing that all her life she must be helpless,
unable to walk or even to stand, a burden to herself
and others.  Her feet, as perhaps you know, were
perfect in shape and form.  They were simply
turned inward.  I have gone through Gethsemane
itself wondering when her tender little heart would
learn its first taste of bitterness against the parents
who brought her into the world to suffer so.  And
then to have all this load of grief lifted, to see my
baby walk about and play with her little sister, and
frolic as other children do, and suddenly to learn
that I owe it to the woman who is my all in life--I
assure you, sir, it is almost more than my heart
can bear.  Take Guildford on your own terms, sir!
It is a small return!"

Mr. Howard held out his hand, and Colonel
Yancey grasped it.

"The human heart is a curious thing, Mr. Howard.
I was as determined five minutes ago as ever
a man was on earth to let you plead until you lost
your breath, yet I would never part with my hold
on Miss Carolina through owning Guildford.  Now,
in the twinkling of an eye, I am ready to let you
have it.  I can't give it to you quickly enough.
What price are you willing to pay?"

"Suppose we say the face of the mortgage,--just
what it cost you?"

"Ten thousand dollars less, if you say so, Mr. Howard."

"No, I prefer to let you show your gratitude to
her in some other way.  I will pay what you paid."

"Good!  I will have the deed made out to-day.
But lose no time in telling her that Guildford is
hers.  She has won it for herself."

"If I tell her that, do you know what she will
say?" asked Mr. Howard.

"No, what?"

"She will give all the credit to her new thought.
She told me before I started that I would be
successful.  As she puts it, 'Nothing is ever lost in
Truth.'"

"Then she considers, even though Guildford has
been in my power for several years, that it was
never really lost to her?"

"In her new conception of the truth, that is the
way she argues."

"By Jove, Mr. Howard, I'm going to join them!
I wonder if she would let me go to church with her
next Sunday?"

"I'm sure she would."

But, as he turned away, Mr. Howard shook his
head and said to himself: "Carolina will have to
tell him what she told Noel,--of the futility of
attempting to be a Scientist for the sake of the
loaves and fishes."

But, indeed, Carolina had not only believed it,
but, with her Bible and "Science and Health" on
her knees, during the hour of the interview she had
made her demonstration, so that she knew it
without words.  She felt it by the uplift in her own
heart and the nearness of her own soul to the
Infinite, so that, when Mr. Howard appeared with a
beaming face to tell her, the radiance on Carolina's
admonished him that she knew already.

"But you don't know all, young lady!  After I
had left his office, the colonel came post-haste after
me to say that his sister and the children are to leave
to-morrow for Whitehall, his brother-in-law's
estate, which lies some twelve miles from Guildford,
but northeast from Enterprise, the little station,
where you leave the railroad, and Miss Yancey
is going to call on you and Mrs. Winchester this
evening, to invite you to make Whitehall your
headquarters until you can establish yourself elsewhere."

"Oh, how kind of them!" said Carolina.

"Then y-you will accept?" demanded Kate, in
old-thought surprise.

"Why, what could possibly be better?" asked
Carolina, in new-thought simplicity and gratitude.

"T-ten to one on Colonel Yancey!" murmured
Kate in her father's ear as they turned away.

"W-was it a d-difficult job, d-daddy?" she
asked, tucking her arm into his.

"Kate, child, it was an absolute triumph for
Carolina's new religion.  I deserve no credit.  The
man set his jaws and looked as hard as nails, until
I mentioned that Carolina had healed his baby.
He had been carefully led--probably by Carolina's
instructions--to believe that Mrs. Goddard did it--"

"Y-yes, Miss Yancey believes it, too."

"Well, they forgot to coach me, so I told him
it was Carolina.  My dear, *voilà tout*!"

"C-Christian Science p-plays ball every time,
doesn't it?" observed Kate, thoughtfully.





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.. _`WHITEHALL`:

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   CHAPTER XII.


.. class:: center medium

   WHITEHALL

.. vspace:: 2

"Well," said Mrs. Winchester, looking out of
the car-window as the train approached Enterprise,
"if any man had told me that two years from the
day we left Bombay I should find myself going
back to Guildford to live, I should have said he was
a thousand dollars from the truth.  What are you
laughing at, Carolina?"

"And if any man had told me that I could ever
have brought myself to accept an invitation from
Miss Sue Yancey to visit them at Whitehall until
we could establish ourselves comfortably, when I
used to dislike her brother so much, I should have
said the same," said Carolina, "but love works
many miracles in the human heart."

Mrs. Winchester looked sharply at the young
girl, but Carolina's expression was so innocent
Cousin Lois decided that she was not referring to
Colonel Yancey.  Then, with one of her rare
caresses, which Mrs. Winchester prized above gold,
Carolina laid her hand on Mrs. Winchester's arm
and said:

"And, dear Cousin Lois, no mother could have
been sweeter and more unselfish about the loss of
her money than you have been, or more
self-sacrificing to come down here with me."

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mrs. Winchester,
colouring like a girl of eighteen.  Her blush was
still beautiful and was her only comfort, except her
waist-line.  "You know that I love to be where
you are.  In fact, Carolina, if you knew how I
suffered, actually suffered, child, last winter in
Boston, when I was separated from you, you would
believe me when I say that I cannot live
without you.  I must be with you.  You are all I have
in the world,--and the money,--what is money
good for except to buy things with?  Haven't I
everything I want?"

Carolina listened with a beating heart.

"Yet, you are even going to have the money
back!" she said, with another pressure of Cousin
Lois's hand.

"Yes, I really believe I am.  That new religion
of yours seems to be a sort of magic carpet, to take
you anywhere you want to go and to get you
everything you want to have."

"It brings perfect harmony into your life," said
Carolina.

"Well, harmony is heaven!" said Mrs. Winchester,
emphatically.

"Oh, what bliss to be coming home!" breathed
Carolina, fervently.  "I wonder if any shipwrecked
sailor or prodigal son or homesick child ever yearned
as cruelly for his father's house as I yearn for my
first sight of Guildford!"

Mrs. Winchester turned, a little frightened at the
passion in the girl's tone.  She felt that Carolina
was unconsciously preparing herself for a bitter
disappointment.

"How dear those little darkies are!" she cried.
"But, oh, did you see what that woman did?  She
knocked that little boy sprawling!  She knocked that
child down!  Did you ever hear of such cruelty?
Do you suppose she could possibly have been his
own mother, Cousin Lois?"

"Sit down, Carolina, and don't get so excited.
Of course she was his mother.  That's the way
coloured women do.  It saves talking,--which
seems to do no good.  I've seen old Aunt 'Polyte,
in your father's time at Guildford, come creeping
around the corner of her cabin to see if her children
were obeying her, and, if she found that they were
not, I've seen her knock all ten of them down,--some
fully six feet away.  And such yells!"

"Did grandfather allow it?" demanded Carolina,
with blazing eyes.

"I can fairly see him now, sitting his horse
Splendour, draw rein and shake with silent laughter,
till he had to take his pipe out of his mouth.  It
was too common a sight to make a fuss about.
Besides, they needed it.  Of all the mischievous,
obstinate, thick-headed little donkeys you ever saw,
commend me to a raft of black children,--Aunt
'Polyte's in particular.  Coloured women are nearly
always inhuman on the surface to their own children."

"Wasn't Aunt 'Polyte my father's black mammy?
Wasn't she kind to the white children in her charge?"

"Ah, that was a different matter.  Kind?  'Polyte
would have let all her own children die to save your
father one ache.  I remember when her children
got the measles, she locked them all in the cabin,
and sent her sister to feed them at night, while
she stayed in the big house and kept her white
children from contagion.  Fortunately, none of her own
died, but, if they had, it wouldn't have changed her
idea of her duty."

"What was there queer about Aunt 'Polyte?  I
remember that daddy told me once, but I have forgotten."

"She had one blue eye and one biack one, and not
one of her children inherited her peculiarity except
her youngest child,--a boy,--born when she was
what would be called an old woman.  I know she
thought it was a bad omen to have a child after
she was fifty, and, when she saw his blue eye, she
said he was marked for bad luck."

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Carolina.  "Cousin
Lois, you know enough about Christian Science to
know that she made a law for that child which may
have ruined him for life."

"Yes, I suppose she did.  But, Carolina, dear,
don't get your hopes of the South up too high.  I
am afraid it won't come up to your expectations."

Carolina smiled, sighed, and shook her head.

"I can't modify my anticipations, Cousin Lois.
Don't try to help me.  If I am to be disillusioned,
let it come with an awful bump.  Nothing short
of being knocked down with a broadside like that
little negro boy can do my case any good.  I'm
hopeless."

"I believe you are.  Well, we shall see.  We
must be nearly there.  The last time the train
stopped,--was it to shoo a cow off the track or
to repair the telegraph wires?--the conductor said
we were only five hours late.  But that was six
hours ago.  I wonder what we are stopping at this
little shed for?  Oh, hurry, Carolina!  He is
calling Enterprise and beckoning to us."

"No hurry, ma'am," said the conductor.  "The
train will wait until you all get off in comfort, or
I'll shoot the engineer with my own hand!"

Carolina stepped from the train to the platform
and looked around.  Then she bit her lip until it
bled.  Cousin Lois was counting the hand-luggage
and purposely refrained from looking at her.

There was a platform baking in the torrid heat
of a September afternoon.  From a shed at one
end came the clicking of a telegraph instrument.
That, then, must be the station.  Six or eight negro
boys and men, who had been asleep in the shade of
a dusty palmetto, roused up at the arrival of the
train and came lazily forward to see what was going
on.  There were some dogs who did not take even
that amount of trouble.  A wide street with six
inches of dust led straight away from the station
platform.  There was a blacksmith shop on one
side and a row of huts on the other.  Farther along,
Carolina could see the word "Hotel" in front of
a one-story cottage.  The town fairly quivered with
the heat.

"Was you-all expectin' any one to meet you?"
inquired the conductor.

"Why, yes," answered Mrs. Winchester.  "Miss
Yancey said she would send for us."

"Miss Yancey?  Miss Sue or Miss Sallie
Yancey?  Fat lady with snappin' brown eyes?"

"Yes, that describes her."

"The one that's just been to New York with the
colonel's children?"

"Yes."

"Oh, well, that's Miss Sue.  She'll send all right,
but likely's not you've got to wait awn her.  She's
so fat she can't move fast.  Have you ever heard
how the colonel's little girl was kyored?  She went
to one of these here spiritualists and was kyored in
a trance, they tell me."

"Ah, is that what they say?" said Mrs. Winchester,
in a tone of deep vexation.  She felt insulted
to think of so dignified a belief as Christian
Science being confounded with such a thing as
spiritualism.  But she realized the absurdity of
entering into a defence of a new religion with the
conductor of a waiting train.  She had, however,
forgotten what Southern railroads are like.

"Yes'm.  They say a lady done it.  Jest waved
her hands over the child, and Gladys hopped up and
began to shout and sing and pray!"

"My good man," said Mrs. Winchester, "do
start your train up.  You are seven hours late as it
is!"

"What's your hurry, ma'am?  Everybody expects
this train to be late.  I can't go till my wife's
niece comes along.  She wants to go on this train,
and I reckon I know better than to leave her.  She's
got a tongue sharper'n Miss Sue Yancey's."

Mrs. Winchester turned her majestic bulk on the
conductor, intending to annihilate him with a
glance, but he shifted his quid of tobacco to the
other cheek, spat neatly at a passing dog, lifted
one foot to a resting-place on Carolina's steamer-trunk,
and continued, pleasantly:

"Now, that there dust comin' up the road means
business for these parts.  I'd be willin' to bet a
pretty that that is either Moultrie La Grange or
Miss Sue Yancey.  But whoever it is, they are
sho in a hurry."

Carolina stood looking at the cloud of dust also.
Most of the passengers on the waiting train, with
their heads out of the car-windows, were doing the
same.  It seemed to be the only energetic and
disturbing element in an otherwise peaceful landscape,
and only one or two passengers, who were obviously
from the North and therefore impatient by inheritance,
objected in the least to this enforced period
of rest.

"And from here, I'd as soon say it was Moultrie
as Miss Sue.  They both kick up a heap of dust in
one way or another, on'y Moultrie, he don't raise
no dust talking.  If it *is* Moultrie, he'll be mighty
sore at bein' away when the train come in, on'y I
reckon he didn't look for her so soon.  We was
thirteen hours late yestiddy."

How much longer the train would have waited,
no one with safety can say, had not the cloud of
dust resolved itself into a two-seated vehicle, in
which sat two ladies, both clad in gray linen dusters,
which completely concealed their identity.  One of
the dusters proved to be the conductor's niece, who
took the time to be introduced to Mrs. Winchester
and Carolina by the other duster, which turned out
to be Miss Sue Yancey.  When the conductor's
niece had fully examined every item of Carolina's
costume with a frank gaze of inventory, she stepped
into the station to claim her luggage, and then,
after bidding everybody good-bye all over again,
she got into the train, put her head out of the
window, called out messages to be given to each of
her family, and, after a few moments more of
monotonous bell-ringing by the engineer, in order
to give everybody plenty of notice that the train
was going to start, it creaked forward and bumped
along on its deliberate journey farther south.

Carolina took an agonized notice of all this.  If
it had been anywhere else in the world, she could
have been amused; she would have listened in
delight to the garrulous conductor, and would have
laughed at the crawling train.  But here at
Enterprise,--that dear town which was nearest to the
old estate of Guildford,--why, it was like being
asked to laugh at the drunken antics of a man whom
you recognized as your own brother!

She listened to Miss Yancey's apologies for being
late with a stiff smile on her lips.  She must have
answered direct questions, if any were asked,
because no breaks in the conversation occurred and no
one looked questioningly at her, but she had no
recollection of anything except the jolting of the
springless carriage and the clouds of dust which
rolled in suffocating clouds from beneath the horses'
shuffling feet.

They drove about four miles, and then turned in
at what was once a gate.  It was now two rotting
pillars.  The road was rough and overgrown on
each side with underbrush.  The house before which
they stopped had been a fine old colonial mansion.
Now the stone steps were so broken that Miss
Yancey politely warned her guests with a gay:

"And *do* don't break your neck on those old
stones, Mrs. Winchester.  You see, we of the old
South live in a continuous state of decay.  But
we don't mind it now.  We have gotten used to
it.  If you will believe me, it didn't even make me
jealous to see the prosperity of those Yankees up
North.  I kept saying to myself all the time, 'But
*we* have got the blood!'"

As they entered the massive hall, cool and dim,
the first thing which struck the eye was a large
family tree, framed in black walnut, hanging on one
side of the wall, while on the other was a highly
coloured coat of arms of the Yanceys, also framed
and under glass.

Miss Yancey took off her duster and hung it on
the hat-rack.

"Now, welcome to Whitehall!  Will you come
into the parlour and rest awhile, or would you like
to go to your rooms and lie down before supper?
I want you to feel perfectly at home, and do just
as you please."

"I think we will go to our rooms, please," said
Mrs. Winchester, with one glance into Carolina's
pale, tired face.

"Here, you Jake!  Carry those satchels to
Mrs. Winchester's room, and, Lily, take these things and
go help the ladies.  And mind you let me know
if they want anything."

A few moments afterward, Lily, the negro maid,
came hurrying down-stairs, her eyes rolling.

"Laws, Miss Sue!  Dey wants a bath!  Dey
axed me where wuz de bathroom, en I sez, 'Ev'ry
room is a bathroom while y'all is takin' a bath in
it.'  En Miss Sue, Miss Calline, she busted right out
laffin'."

"They want a bath?" cried Miss Sue.  "Well,
go tell Angeline to heat some water quick, and you
fill this pitcher and take it up to them.  But mind
that you wash it out first,--if you don't, you'll
hear from me,--and don't be all day about it.
Now, see if you can hurry, Lily."

When the sun went down, the oppressive quality
in the heat seemed to disappear, and when Cousin
Lois and Carolina came down in their cool, thin
dresses, they found themselves in the midst of the
most delightful part of a Southern summer day.

Miss Sue was nowhere to be seen, but another
lady, as thin as she was fat, came out of the dimness
and introduced herself.

"I am Mrs. Elliott Pringle, ladies, though you
will nearly always hear me called Miss Sallie
Yancey.  Sister Sue is out in the garden.  Shall we
join her?  I know she wants you to see her roses."

Carolina's spirits began to rise.  She felt ashamed
of her hasty disillusionment.  Where was her
courage that she should be depressed by clouds of dust
and the lack of a bathroom?

In the early evening, with the shadows lengthening
on the grass and the pitiless sun departed, the
ruin everywhere apparent seemed only picturesque,
while the warm, sweet odours from the garden were
such as no Northern garden yields.

There were narrow paths bordered with dusty
dwarf-box, with queer-shaped flower-beds bearing
four-o'clocks, touch-me-nots, phlox, azaleas, and
sweet-william.  Then there were beds upon beds
of a flower no Northerner ever sees,--the
old-fashioned pink, before gardeners, wiser than their
Maker, attempted to graft it.  In its heavy, double
beauty it always bursts its calyx and falls of its
own weight of fragrance, to lie prostrate on the
ground, dying of its own heavy sweetness.  Against
a crumbling wall were tea-roses.  In another spot
grew a great pink cabbage rose, as flat as a plate
when in full bloom, with its inner leaves still so
tightly crinkled that its golden heart was never
revealed except by a child's curious investigating
fingers.  And curiously twisting in and out of the
branches of this rose-tree was a honeysuckle vine.
Over one end of the porch climbed a purple clematis.
Over the other a Cherokee rose.  But the great glory
of the garden was over against the southern wall,
where roses of every sort bloomed in riotous
profusion.  Evidently they bloomed of their own sweet
will, and with little care, for the garden was almost
as neglected as the rest of the place.

Still it was the first thing which brought back
to Carolina "a memory of something" she "never
had seen," as she told Cousin Lois when she went
in, and she made an excuse to go out alone after
supper was over and the three ladies were
comfortably seated in rocking-chairs on the front porch.

"Don't sit in that chair, Mrs. Winchester,"
Carolina heard Miss Sallie's voice say, as she ran down
the steps into the garden.  "That chair has no seat
to it, and the back is broken to this one.  Sit in
this chair.  I think it won't be too damp here to
wait for Moultrie."

The girl could smile now, for the witchery of
the evening was on the garden, and its perfume
enthralled her senses.  She walked until she got
beyond the sound of voices on the front porch, and,
at the head of a set of shallow terraces, set like
grassy steps to lead down to the brook which
babbled through the lower meadow, she sat down to
let her mind take in the sudden change in her life.

She rested her chin on her hands and was quite
unaware that, in her thin blue dress, with frills of
yellow lace falling away from the arms above the
elbows, and with her neck rising from the transparent
stuff like an iris on its slender stem, she made
anything of a picture, until she became aware that
some one was standing quite still on a lower terrace
and looking at her with so fixed an expression that
she turned until her eyes met his.  Most girls would
have started with surprise, but to Carolina it was
no surprise at all to find the stranger of the
Metropolitan Opera and the stranger who had borrowed
her brother's dog-cart, a part of the enchanted
garden, and to feel in her own heart that he was no
stranger to her, nor ever had been, nor ever could be.

They looked at each other for a few moments,
the man and the woman, and the sound of the brook
came faintly to their ears.  But the scent of the
garden was all about them and there was no need
of speech.

Slowly Carolina smiled, and he reached up his
hand to hers and took it and said:

"You know me?" and she said:

"Yes."

"And I know you," he said, "for I have felt
ever since that first night that you would come."

"That first night?" she breathed.

"At the opera," he said.

Then he drew back strangely and looked around
at the garden and frowned, as if it had been to
blame for the words he had spoken when he had not
meant to speak.  But, although Carolina saw the
look and the frown, she only smiled and breathed
a great sigh of content and looked at the garden
happily.

Then he turned to her again and said:

"Did you know that you and I are related?"  And
he saw with a great lift of the heart that she
turned pale before answering, so to spare her he
went on, hurriedly:

"I have been talking to Mrs. Winchester, and
we find that the La Granges and Lees are kin.  You
and I are about twelfth cousins, according to Miss
Sallie Yancey."

"So we are of the same blood," said Carolina,
gently.  Then she added: "I am glad."

"And so am I,--more glad than I can say, for
it will give me the opportunity to be of service to
you--in a way I could not--perhaps--if we
were not kin."

Carolina looked at him inquiringly, but he had
turned his head away, and again a frown wrinkled
his smooth, brown forehead.  Carolina looked at
him eagerly.  He was a man to fill any woman's
eye,--tall, lean, lithe, and commanding, with long
brown fingers which were closed nervously upon
the brim of his soft black hat.  His nose was
straight, his lips sensitive yet strong, and his eyes
had a way of making most women sigh without
ever knowing why.  Moultrie La Grange was said
to have "a way with him" which men never
understood, but which women knew, and knew to their
sorrow, for everywhere it was whispered that
"Moultrie would never marry, since--" and here
the whispers became nods and half-uttered words
and mysterious signs which South Carolinians
understood, but which mystified Mrs. Winchester, and
Carolina did not happen to hear the subject discussed.

"You have come down here," said Moultrie, "to
restore Guildford."

"Yes," said Carolina, seeing that he paused for
a reply.

"I wish that I could restore Sunnymede.  Our
place joins yours."

"It does?" cried Carolina.  "Then why don't you?"

He looked at her sharply.  Was she making fun
of him?

"You are a rich young lady.  I am a poor man.
Can I rebuild Sunnymede with these?"  He held
out two fine, strong, symmetrical hands.

Carolina looked at them appreciatively before
she answered.

"I am a poor young woman, but I intend to
rebuild Guildford with, these!"  And she held out
beside his two of the prettiest hands and wrists and
arms that Moultrie La Grange had ever seen in his
life, and he at once said so.  And Carolina, instead
of being bored, as was her wont in other days, was
so frankly pleased that she blushed, and said to
herself that the reason she believed this man meant
what he said was because she was poor, and he could
not possibly be paying court to a wealth that she
had lost.  But the truth of the matter was that she
believed him because she wanted to.  It gave her
an exquisite and unknown pleasure to have this
man tell her over and over, as he did, that her hands
were the most beautiful he had ever seen, and
Carolina looked at them in a childish wonder, and as
if she had never seen them before.  And it was not
until she had laid them in her lap again, and they
were partly hidden, that she could bring the
conversation back to anything like reason.

"How do you mean?" he questioned.  "You
can't do a thing without money.  And I hear--"
he stopped in confusion, and his forehead reddened.

"You know that we have lost ours," supplemented
Carolina.  "Well, you have heard correctly.
Every dollar of my fortune is gone!"  Her voice
took on so triumphant a ring that Moultrie looked
up at her in surprise.  He did not know that part of
her exultation came from the joy it gave her to be
able to proclaim her poverty to this man out of all
the world, and thus put herself on a level with him.

"I have only," she continued, "a little laid by
which came from the sale of my jewels."  Then,
as she still saw the questions in his eyes which he
forebore to ask, she added: "Do you want me to
tell you about it all?"

"More than anything in the world," he assured
her.  And something in his tone shook the girl so
that she paused a little before she began.

"Well, I suppose you know that when Sherman,
my brother, mortgaged Guildford, Colonel Yancey
bought the mortgage and foreclosed it.  That is
how he got possession of Guildford."

"But why?" interrupted the man.  "What in
the world did he especially want Guildford for,
when there are a dozen other estates he could have
bought for less money, and some of them with
houses already built?"

"I don't know," said Carolina, so hurriedly that
the man turned his eyes upon her, and, noticing the
wave of colour mount to her brow under his gaze,
he looked away and all at once he knew why.
Carolina did not see his hands clench and his teeth come
together with a snap, as he thought of the Colonel
Yancey that men knew.

"But Mr. Howard, the father of my dearest
friend, persuaded Colonel Yancey to sell it to him
for the face value of the mortgage, so that now I
have no fear of losing it, for Mr. Howard will give
me all the time I want to pay for it."

"But what are you going to pay for it with?"
asked the young man.

"Well, if you will go with us when we look over
the estate, I can tell you better than I can now.
Do you happen to know anything about this new
process of making turpentine?"

"Of course I do," said La Grange, with a frown.
"I suppose that your brother and his friends have
organized a company with Northern capital to erect
a plant which will make everybody rich.  That's
what all Northerners tell us when they want us to
invest.  Money is all Yankees seem to think about."

"My brother will have nothing to do with the
affair at all!" said Carolina, with some heat.
"Guildford is mine, and I'm going to make it pay
for itself."

Moultrie said nothing, but his chin quivered with
a desire to laugh, and Carolina saw it.  Then he
turned to her.

"You have never seen the home of your ancestors?
How are you going to have your first view
of it?  From the Barnwells' carryall?"

Carolina's eyes dilated and she bit her lip.

"How else could I go?" she said, gently.

"If you would allow me," he said, eagerly, "we
would go on horseback,--just you and I,--early,
early in the morning.  It would be the best time.
Will you?"

"Oh, will you take me?" cried Carolina.  There
was only a look from Moultrie La Grange's eyes
for an answer.  But Carolina's flashed and wavered
and dropped before it.

"Did you ever hear of a magnificent horse your
grandfather owned, named Splendour?" he asked,
quietly.

"Ah, yes, indeed."

"Well, I own a direct descendant of the sire
of that very animal.  Her name is Scintilla, and
my friend, Barney Mazyck, owns Scintilla's full
sister, a mare named Araby.  I'll borrow her for
you.  Would you like that?"

"Oh, Mr. La Grange!" breathed Carolina.

"Please *never* call me that.  Do let me claim kin
with you sufficiently to have you call me 'Moultrie.'"

"And will you call me 'Carolina?'" she asked, shyly.

"We never do that down here with young ladies,
unless we are own cousins.  But I will call you
'Miss Carolina,' if I may."

"Then you are asking me to take more of a
privilege than you will," said Carolina.

"I want you to take every privilege with me
that you can permit yourself," he said, earnestly.

When Carolina went indoors that night, the first
thing she did was to take two candlesticks, and,
holding them at arm's length above her head, to
study her own face in the great pier-glass which,
in its carved mahogany frame, occupied one corner
of her large bedchamber.  Whatever the picture
was which she saw reflected there, it seemed to give
her pleasure, for she coloured and smiled as her
eyes met those of the girl in the mirror.

"I am glad *he* thinks so!" she whispered to
herself, as she turned away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GUILDFORD`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIII.


.. class:: center medium

   GUILDFORD

.. vspace:: 2

Carolina never forgot that morning.  She was
up at four o'clock, and, by a previous arrangement
with old Aunt Calla, the cook, she had a cup of
coffee at dawn.  Aunt Calla brought it into the
dining-room herself.

"'Scuse me, honey, fer waiting awn you myself,
but do you reckon I could 'a' got dat no 'count fool,
Lily, to git up en wait awn ennybody at dis time
in de mawnin'?  Not ef she knowed huh soul gwine
be saved by doin' it.  Dese yere chillen ob mine
is too fine to wuk lake dere mammy does."

"But how did you manage to wake up so early?"
asked Carolina.

"Lawd, honey, I'se done nussed sick chillen tell
I sleeps wid one eye open from habit.  En when I
see what a pretty day it gwine turn out, en when I
see dat en de fust five minutes you laid eyes awn
him, you done cotched de beau what half de young
ladies in Souf Calliny done set dere caps for, I
says to myself, 'Ole 'ooman, ef you wants to see
courtin' as is courtin', you jes' hump doze ole
rheumatiz laigs ob yours, en get dar 'fore dey suspicion
it demselves!'  Law, Mis' Calline, how you is blushing!
Ump! ump!"

"Here, Aunt Calla, take this for your trouble,
and go and see if Mr. La Grange has come," cried
Carolina.

"Why, Mis' Calline, dis yere will buy me a new
bunnet!  Thank you, *ma'am*.  Yas'm, dah he is!
I kin tell de way Mist' Moultrie rides wid my eyes
shut.  He rides lake one ob dese yere centipedes!"

Old Calla made it a point to see the riders mount.
The sun was just coming into view, sending the
mists rolling upwards in silvery clouds, when
Carolina stepped out of the door.  Her habit was of a
bluish violet, so dark that it was almost black.  It
matched the colour of her eyes.  Her hair caught
the tinge of the sun and held it in its shining meshes.

Moultrie La Grange was waiting for her at the
foot of the steps.

He held the mare Araby by the bridle, and leaned
on the saddle of his own mare, Scintilla, shielding
his eyes.

"Good morning,--Moultrie."

"Is that you, Miss Carolina?  The sun, or
something blinds me."

Carolina had heard it all many times before.
Why, then, this difference?  She pretended to
herself that she did not know, but she did know, and
was happy in the knowing.  He was so handsome!
She gloried in his looks.  She felt as she had felt
when she stood before the Hermes of Praxiteles,
and wondered, if such glorious beauty should ever
come to life, how she could *bear* it!

Moultrie La Grange was not considered
handsome by everybody.  His beauty was too cold--too
aloof--for the multitude to appreciate.  But
does the ordinary tourist go to Olympia?

Carolina had rather dreaded the four miles to
Enterprise, if their way should lie over the dusty
highway of yesterday.  But she was not surprised;
in fact, it seemed in keeping with what she had
expected of him when he struck off through the
woods, and she found herself, not only on the most
perfect animal she had ever ridden, but in an
enchanted forest.

Moultrie led the way both in conversation and
in direction, and Carolina found herself glad to
follow.  His sarcasm, his wit, and the poetry of
his nature were displayed without affectation.  She
kept looking at him eagerly, gladly, and yet
expectantly.  What was she waiting for?  He discussed
men but not deeds; amusements but not occupation;
designs but not achievements.  She wondered
what he did with his time.  He was strong,
magnetic, gentle, charming.  His voice was melodious.
His manner full of the fineness of the old South.

Yet there was a vague lack in him somewhere.  He
just failed to come up to her ideal of what a man
should be.  Wherein lay this intangible lack?

Suddenly they emerged from the woods and
struck the highway, and in another moment they
were in Enterprise.

Not a breath of life was anywhere visible.
Although it was six o'clock, not a wreath of smoke
curled upward from any chimney.  They rode
through the sleeping town in silence.

"Now here," said Moultrie, "is a very remarkable
town.  It is, I may say, the only town in the
world which is completely finished.  Most towns
grow, but not a nail has been driven in Enterprise,
to my knowledge, since I was born.  This town is
perfectly satisfactory to its inhabitants *just as it is*!"

Against her will Carolina laughed.  His tone was
irresistible.

"Ought you to make fun of your own--your
home town?" she asked.

"My more than that!  Enterprise yields me my
bread--sometimes."

Carolina looked at him.  He pointed with his
whip at the shed on the railroad platform.

"I am telegraph operator there six months in
the year.  I teach a country school in winter."

If he had struck her in the face with that same
riding-whip, the red would not have flamed into
Carolina's cheeks with more sudden fury.  She
dug her spurless heel into Araby's side, and the
mare jumped with a swerve which would have
unseated most riders.  Moultrie looked at her in swift
admiration, but she would not look at him.  She
struck her horse, and, with a mighty stride, Araby
got the lead and kept it for a mile, even from
Scintilla.  Then the man overtook her and reached out
and laid a hand on Carolina's bridle hand, and
looked deep into her eyes and said:

"Why did you do that?  Why did you try to
escape from me?  Don't you know that you *never can*?"

And all the time Carolina's heart was beating
heavily against her side, and her brain was spinning
out the question over and over, over and over:

"Oh, how can he?  How can he be satisfied with
that?  How can he endure himself!"

It was not the lack of money, it was the lack of
ambition in the man at her side, which stung her
pride until it bled.

"Better go West on a cattle ranch," she thought,
with bitter passion.  "Better hunt wolves for the
government.  Better take the trail with the Indians
than to lie down and rot in such a manner!  And
*such* a man!"

But suddenly a realization came to her of how
marked her resentment would seem to him if he
should discover its cause, and she hastened to play
a part.  But he was in no danger of discovering,
because he did not even suspect.  All the young
fellows he knew, no matter how aristocratic their
names, were at work for mere pittances at
employments no self-respecting men would tolerate for a
moment, because they offered no hope of betterment
or promotion.  Men with the talent to become
lawyers, artists, bankers, and brokers were teaching
school for less than Irish bricklayers get in large
cities.  Therefore, it could not be alleged that they
were incapable of earning more or of occupying
more dignified positions.  It was simply the lack
of ambition--the inertia of the South--which
they could not shake off.  It is the heritage of the
Southern-born.

Presently Moultrie again pointed with his whip:

"Over yonder is Sunnymede, our place.  Poor
old Sunnymede!  Mortgaged to its eyes, and with
all its turpentine and timber gone!  Guildford is
intact.  We just skirt the edge of Sunnymede riding
to Guildford.  And right where you see that tall
blasted pine standing by itself is where I made one
of my usual failures.  I'm like the man with the
ugly mule, who always backed.  He said if he
could only hitch that mule with his head to the
wagon, he could get there.  So, if my failures were
only turned wrong side out, I'd be wealthy."

Carolina tried to smile.  Moultrie continued:

"Once I thought I'd try to make some money,
so I sold some timber to a Yankee firm who wanted
fine cypress, and with the money I constructed a
terrapin crawl.  I knew how expensive terrapin are,
and, if there is one thing I do know about, it is
terrapin.  So I canned a few prize-winners, and
sent them to New York, and got word that they
would take all I could send.  Well, with that I
began to feel like a Jay Gould.  I could just see
myself drinking champagne and going to the opera
every night.  So I immediately raised some mo'
money in the same way,--out of the Yankees,--organized
a small company, and built a canning
factory.  The lumber company was interested with
me and advanced me all the money I wanted.  So
I got the thing well started, and left special word
with the foreman, a cracker named Sharpe, to be
sure and not can the claws, then I went off to New
York to enjoy myself.  I stayed until all my money
was gone and then came home, intending to enjoy
the wealth my foreman had built up in my absence.
But what do you reckon that fool had done?  Why,
he had turned the work over to the niggers, and
they had canned the terrapin just so,--claws,
eyebrows, and all!  Well, of course, the New York
people went back on me,--wrote me the most
impudent letters I ever got from anybody.  It just
showed me that Yankees can never hope to be
considered gentlemen.  Why, they acted as if I had
cheated them!  Said they had advertised largely on
my samples, and had lost money and credit by my
dishonest trickery.  Just as if *I* were to blame!
Then, of course, the Yankee lumbermen got mad,
too, and foreclosed the mortgage and liquidated the
company, and left me as poor as when I went in.
I believe they even declare that I owe them
money.  Did you ever hear of such a piece of
impudence?"

"Never," said Carolina, coolly, "if you mean
on your part!  You did everything that was wrong
and nothing that was right.  And the worst of it
is that you are morally blind to your share of the
blame."

"Why, Miss Carolina, what do you mean?  I
didn't go to lose their money.  It hit me just as
hard as it did them.  I didn't make a cent."

"But the money that you lost wasn't yours to
lose," cried Carolina, hotly.

"No, but I didn't do wrong intentionally.  You
can't blame a man for a mistake."

"There is such a thing as criminal negligence,"
said the girl, deliberately.  "You had no business
to trust an affair where your honour was pledged
to an incompetent cracker foreman, and go to New
York on the company's money, even if you did think
you would earn the money to pay it back.  How
do you ever expect to pay it?"

"I don't expect to pay it at all, and I reckon
those Yankees don't expect it, either."

"No, I don't suppose they do," said Carolina,
bitterly.

"Well, if they are satisfied to lose it, and have
forgotten all about it, would you bother to pay it
back if you were in my place?"

"I would pay it back if I had to pay it out of
my life insurance and be buried in a pine coffin
in the potter's field!  And as to those Northerners
having forgotten it,--don't you believe it!  They
have simply laid it to what they call the to-be-expected
dishonesty of the South when dealing with
the North.  The South calls it 'keeping their eyes
peeled,' 'being wide-awake,' 'not being caught
napping,' or catch phrases of that order.  But the
strictly honest business man calls it dishonest
trickery, and mentally considers all Southerners
inoculated with its poison.  Do you know what
Southern credit is worth in the North?"

Moultrie only looked sulky, but Carolina went
on, spurred by her own despair and disillusionment.

"Well, you wouldn't be proud of it if you did!
And just such a tolerant view of a thoroughly
wrong transaction as you have thus divulged is
responsible.  Colonel Yancey was right.  The
South is heart-breaking!"

"Do you care so much?" asked Moultrie, softly.

Carolina lifted herself so proudly that the mare
danced under her.  She saw that she had gone
too far.  She also felt that error had mocked her.
She had despaired of Moultrie's blind and false
point of view when the Light of the world was
at hand.  Immediately her thought flew upwards.

But with Carolina absorbed in her work, and
Moultrie puzzling over the sudden changes in her
behaviour, it could not be said that the remainder
of the ride was proving as pleasant as each had
hoped.  However, a perfect day, a fine animal, and
the spirits of youth and enthusiasm are not to be
ignored for long, and presently Carolina began to
feel Guildford in the air.  She looked inquiringly
at Moultrie, and he answered briefly:

"In another mile."  But there was a look in
his eyes which made Carolina's heart beat, for it
was the glance of comprehension which one soul
flings to another in passing,--sometimes never to
meet again, sometimes which leads to mating.

In another five minutes Moultrie raised his arm.

"There!"

Carolina reined in and Araby stood, tossing her
slim head, raising her hoofs, champing her bit, and
snuffing at the breeze which came to her red nostrils,
laden with the breath of piny woods and balsam.
Moultrie, sitting at parade rest on Scintilla and
watching Carolina catch her breath almost with a
sob, said to himself: "She feels just as that horse
acts."

Carolina could find no words, nor did she dare
trust herself.  She was afraid she would break
down.  She lifted her gauntleted hand and the
horses drew together and moved forward.

For more than a mile an avenue as wide as a
boulevard led in a straight line, lined on each side
by giant live-oaks.  Ragged, unkempt shrubbery,
the neglect of a lifetime, destroyed the perfectness
of the avenue, but the majesty of those monarchs
of trees could not be marred.  The sun was only
about an hour high, and the rays came slantingly
across meadows whose very grasses spoke of
fertility and richness.  The glint of the river
occasionally flashed across their vision, and between
the bird-notes, in the absolute stillness, came the
whispering of the distant tide.

At the end of the avenue lay the ruined stones
of Guildford.

Carolina sprang down, flung her bridle-rein to
Moultrie, and ran forward.  She would not let him
see her eyes.  But she stumbled once, and by that
he knew that she was crying.  They were, however,
tears of joy and thanksgiving.  Guildford!  Her
foot was on its precious turf.  These stones had
once been her father's home.  And she was free,
young, strong, and empowered to build it up, a
monument to the memory of her ancestors.  Every
word which Mrs. Goddard had prophesied had
come true, and Carolina's first thought was a
repetition of her words:

"See what Divine Love hath wrought!"

When she came back, instead of a tear-stained
face, Moultrie saw one of such radiance that her
beauty seemed dazzling.  Where could be found
such tints of colouring, such luminous depths in
eyes, such tendrils of curling hair, such a flash of
teeth, such vivid lips, and such a speaking smile?
As he bent to receive her foot in his hand, he
trembled through all his frame, and, as he felt her light
spring to her mare's back, he would not have been
at all surprised to discover that she had simply
floated upward and vanished from his earthly sight
to join her winged kindred.  But, as she gathered
up her reins and watched him mount, it was a very
businesslike angel who spoke to him, and one whose
brain, if the truth must be told, was full of turpentine.

"Now, let's explore," she said.  "I have paid
my respects to the shrine of my forefathers, now
let's see what I have to sell my turpentine farmers."

"Your what?" asked the man, with the amused
smile a man saves for the pretty woman who talks
business.

"I am going to sell the orchard turpentine rights
of Guildford to get money for building," she said,
in a matter-of-fact tone.

"And I was thinking of you in a white robe
playing a harp!" he said, with a groan.

"I often wear a white robe, and I play a harp
quite commendably, considering that I have studied
it since I was nine years old, but when I am
working, I don't wear my wings.  They get in my way."

Carolina by instinct rode to an elevation which
commanded a view of the pine forests of Guildford.

"How much do I own?" she asked.

"As far as you can see in that direction.  Over
here your property runs into ours just where you
see that broad gap."

"Why don't you rebuild Sunnymede?"

"No money!" he said, with a shrug.

"You have plenty of fallen timber and acres of
stumpage to sell to the patent turpentine people."

"I don't know.  I have never heard it discussed.
We wouldn't sell to Yankees.  We feel that we
wouldn't have come to grief with the terrapin affair
if we had been dealing with Southerners."

"Who are there to discuss?  Who owns it with
you?" asked Carolina, calmly ignoring the absurdity
of his remarks.

"My brother and sister--"  He paused abruptly,
and then said: "You are sure to hear it from others,
so I will tell you myself.  The La Grange family
skeleton shall be shown to you by no less a hand
than my own!  My brother has made a very--I
hardly know what to call it.  It is an unfortunate
marriage, since no one knows who the girl is.
When you saw me in New York, I was hoping to
prevent their marriage, but it was too late.  They
had eloped and had been married immediately on
arriving in New York.  As soon as her aunt, with
whom she lived, learned that Flower had eloped
with my brother, she sent for me.  She had been
a great invalid, and the excitement had upset her
so that when I arrived she looked as if she had
not an hour to live.  She caught me by the arm
and said: 'Flower must not marry a La Grange.
She is not my niece nor any relative of mine.  Her
mother was--' and with that her speech failed.
She struggled as I never saw a being struggle to
speak the one word more,--the one word needful,--and,
failing, she fell back against her pillow--dead!"

Carolina's face showed her horror.  He felt
soothed by her understanding and went on, in a low,
pained voice.

"It ruined my life.  And it has ruined Winfield's."

"And the girl," said Carolina, in a tense voice,
"Flower!"

"It has ruined hers.  They are the most unhappy
couple I ever saw.  And more so since the baby came."

"It will all come right," declared Carolina,
straightening herself.  "You will discover that
Flower is entitled to a name, and that your worst
fears are incorrect."

"My worst fears--" began Moultrie.  Then he
stopped abruptly.  "I cannot explain them to you,"
he said.

"I know what you mean.  But remember that
I, too, have seen Flower.  I saw her that day, and
I say to you that not one drop of negro blood flows
in that girl's veins, and your brother's child is
safe."

"You think so?" he exclaimed, moved by the
earnestness of her voice and the calm conviction
of her manner.  Then he shook his head.

"It seems too good to be true."

"I can understand," she said, "the terrible
strain you are all under, but, believe me, it will all
come out right."

"They think the baby is bewitched,--that he
has been voodooed,--if you know what that means.
The negroes declare that an evil spirit can be seen
moving around whatever spot the child inhabits."

"What utter nonsense!" cried Carolina.  "I
hope your brother has too much sense, too much
religion, to encourage such a belief."

"My poor brother believes that the devil has
marked him for his own."

"Does your brother believe in a devil?" asked
Carolina.

"Why, don't you?" asked Moultrie, in a shocked tone.

"I was not aware that any enlightened person
did nowadays," answered Carolina, with a lift of
her chin.

The movement irritated her companion far more
than her words, just as Carolina had intended it to.

There are some subjects which cannot be argued.
They must be obliterated by a contempt which bites
into one's self-love.

The mare saved the situation by a soft whinny.
She turned her head expectantly, and, following her
eyes, the riders saw the tall, lithe figure of a man
making his way toward them through the
underbrush.  Moultrie gave vent to an exclamation.

"What is it?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, only a bad negro who haunts places where
he has no business to.  He is a perfect wonder with
horses, and broke in that mare you are riding, who
will follow him anywhere without a bridle, pushing
her nose under his arm like any dog who thrusts
a muzzle into your palm.  He is always up to
something.  From present appearances, I should say
that he had probably been bleeding your trees."

The negro, hearing voices, stopped, glanced in
their direction, and promptly disappeared.  Carolina
only had time to notice that he was very black, but
she followed him in thought, mentally denying
dishonesty and declaring that harm could not come
to her through error in any form.

She was struck, too, by the manner in which
her sensitive, high-bred mare lifted her pretty head
and looked after his retreating form, pawing the
earth impatiently and sending out little snuffling
neighs which were hardly more than bleatings.
Surely, if a man had the power to call forth devoted
love from such an animal, there must be much good
in him!

"What makes you so quiet?" asked Moultrie,
breaking in on her thought.

Carolina looked at him abruptly and decided her
course of action.

"You have told me of the skeleton in your closet.
Let me be equally frank and tell you of mine.  I
am a Christian Scientist."

"A what?"

"A Christian Scientist!"

"I never heard of one," said the young man,
simply.  "What is it?"

For the second time the girl's face flushed with
a vicarious mortification.

"It is a new form of religion founded on a perfect
belief in the life of Christ and a literal following
of His commandments to His disciples, regardless
of time," said Carolina, slowly.

Moultrie allowed a deep silence to follow her
words.  Then he drew a long breath.

"I think I should like that," he said.  "Does
it answer all your questions?"

"All!  Every one of them!" she answered, with
the almost too eager manner of the young believer
in Christian Science.  But an eagerness to impart
good news and to relieve apparent distress should
be readily forgiven by a self-loving humanity.
Curiously, however, the most blatant ego is
generally affronted by it.

"I was raised a Baptist," he said, reluctantly,
"but I reckon I never was a very good one, for
I never got any peace from it."

"My religion gives peace."

"And my prayers were never answered."

"My religion answers prayers."

"Not even when I lifted my heart to God in
earnest pleading to spare my brother the unhappiness
I felt sure would follow his marriage.  *How*
I prayed to be in time to prevent it!  God never
heard me!"

"My religion holds the answer to that unanswered prayer."

"Not even when I prayed, lying on the floor
all night, for the life of my father."

"My religion heals the sick."

He turned to her eagerly.

"Do you believe so implicitly in Christ's teachings
that you can reproduce His miracles?" he cried.

"Christ never performed any miracles.  He
healed sickness through the simplest belief in the
world,--or rather an understanding of His
Father's power.  That same privilege of understanding
is open to me--and to you.  You have the power
within you at this very moment to heal any disease,
if you only know where to look for the understanding
to show you how to use it."

"Do you believe that?"

"I do better than believe it.  I understand it.  I
know it."

"Is there a book which will tell me how to find it?"

"Yes."

"Will you order it for me, or tell me where to
order it?"

"It is a very expensive book," said Carolina,
hesitatingly, thinking of the telegraph-office.

"How expensive?"

"Three dollars."

"Do you call that expensive for what you promise
it will do?"

When Carolina looked at him, he saw that she
was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.  And
he understood.

"You only said that to try me."

And she nodded.  Her heart was too full of
mingled emotions for her to speak.  She had loved,
despised, been proud of, and mortified for this
man,--all with poignant, pungent vehemence,--during
this three-hour ride, and at the last he had humbled
and rebuked her by his childlike readiness to believe
the greatest truth of the ages.  She sat her horse,
biting her lips to keep back the tears.

"Give me just one fact to go on," he begged.

"Do you read your Bible?"

"I used to, till I found I was getting not to
believe in it.  Then I stopped for my dead father's
sake.  He believed in it implicitly."

"Then you have read the fourteenth chapter of John?"

"I got fifty cents when I was twelve years old
for learning it by heart."

"Then run it over in your own mind until you
come to the twelfth verse.  When you get to that,
say it aloud."

"'Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth
on me, the works that I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I
go unto my Father.'"

He did not glance her way again, which Carolina
noticed with gratitude.  It showed that he was
not accepting it for her sake.  Presently he spoke
again.

"Did you yourself ever heal any one?"

"Through my understanding of Divine Love, I
healed Gladys Yancey," she said, quietly.

The man's face flushed with his earnestness.  He
lifted his hat and rode bareheaded.

"Do you remember what the father of the dumb
child said?  'Lord, I believe!  Help thou mine
unbelief!'"

When they rode in at the gates of Whitehall,
Moultrie was astonished at the radiance of the girl's
countenance.  She seemed transfigured by love.
Moultrie's ready belief had glorified her, and for
the second time her grateful thought ascended in
the words, "See what Divine Love hath wrought!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`KINFOLK`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV.


.. class:: center medium

   KINFOLK

.. vspace:: 2

Carolina took her writing materials out on the
back porch.  There was not a small table in the
house whose legs did not wabble, so she propped the
best of them with chips from Aunt Calla's wood-pile
and wrote until Aunt Calla could stand it no
longer.

"Miss Calline, honey," she said, "you writes so
fas' wid yo' fingahs, would you min' ef I brung de
aigplant out here to peel it en watch you?  I won't
make no fuss."

"Certainly not, Aunt Calla.  I'd be glad to have you."

"Hum! hum!  You sho have got pretty mannahs,
Miss Calline.  Youse got de mannahs ob de ole
ladies of de South.  You don't see 'em now'days
wid de young ladies.  De young people got de
po'est mannahs I ebber did see,--screechin' and
hollerin' to each odder 'cross de street, or from
one eend ob de house to de other.  Ole mahster
would 'a' lammed his chillen ef dey'd cut up sech
capers en his time!  But Miss Peachie,--she's got
de La Grange mannahs.  She's Mist' Moultrie's
sistah.  Dey calls her 'Peachie' caze she's got such
pretty red in huh cheeks,--lake yores.  Most
ladies down in dese pahts is too white to suit me.
I lakes 'em pinky and pretty."

"Thank you, Aunt Calla!" cried Carolina.  "I
wonder if I couldn't get Cousin Lois to give you
that black grenadine you thought was so pretty
yesterday."

Aunt Calla laid down her knife.

"Miss Calline, is you foolin' me?"

"No, Calla, I am not."

"Dish yere grenadier dress I mean is lined wid
black silk!"

"I know it."

"En you gwine gib dat to me?"

"I am thinking of it."

"Well, glory be!  Ef you does dat, Ise gwine
jine de chutch all over ag'in, en I reckon I'll jine
de Babtis' dish yere time.  Dey's mo' style to de
Babtis' den to de Meth'diss.  Ise 'bleeged to live
up to dat silk linin'!"

The old woman's face took on a worried look.

"I don' keer!" she said aloud.  "I don' keer!
Nemmine, Miss Calline!  You wouldn' laff so ef
you knew what Ise studyin' 'bout doin'.  Ise been
savin' my money foh two years now to get a
gravestone foh my fou'th husban' what done died three
yeahs ago.  He baiged me wid his las' breath to
bury him stylish, en I promus him I would.  He
was all for style.  Do you know, Miss Calline, dat
man would 'a' gone hongry rathah dan turn his
meat ovah awn de fiah.  He was de mos' dudish man
I ebber see.  But I can't he'p it.  Ise gwine take
dat grave-stone money and hab dat dress made to
fit me good en stylish.  En I bet Miss Peachie will
charge me eve'y cent I got to do it!"

"Who?" demanded Carolina.

"Miss Peachie La Grange.  She does all my
sewin' foh me, an' foh Lily, too.  Dat's de way
she mek huh money.  Yas, *ma'am*.  Sewin' foh
niggahs!"

Aunt Calla paused with her mouth open, for
Carolina, regardless of what anybody thought,
sprang up, overturning her table, spilling her ink
over Aunt Calla's clean porch floor, and scattering
her papers to the four winds of heaven.

"Ump!  So dat's de way de win' blows!  Well,
ef she ain't a Lee sho nuff.  She's got de pride of
huh ole gran'dad, en mo', too.  She looked at me
ez if she'd lake to kill me.  I wondah ef I'll evah
git dat dress now!"

She sent Lily to reconnoitre.

"Jes' creep up en see what she's doin'.  De keyhole
in huh room is busted, en you kin see de whole
room thoo it.  Jis' go en peek.  But ef you let huh
ketch you, she'll know who sont you, en she'll be
so mad, I nevah will git dat dress.  Den I'll bust
yo' yallah face open wid de i'nin' boa'd!"

"She ain't cryin' nor nothin'!" cried Lily, bursting
into the kitchen twenty minutes later.  "She's
settin' in huh rockin'-cheer, wid a open book awn
huh lap, en huh eyes is shut en huh lips a-movin',
lake she's studyin'."

"T'ank de Lawd!" observed Calla.  "Somehow
er odder, Ise gwine git hole ob a fryin' chicken foh
huh.  You tell Jake I wants tuh see him dis evenin'.
Run, Lily!  See who's dat drivin' in outen de big road!"

"Hit's de La Granges!  De whole kit en bilin' ob
'em.  Dey's done borried de Barnwells' double ca'y-all."

Fortunately, there were many rocking-chairs at
Whitehall, and, although many of them were war
veterans, all were pressed into service the day the
La Granges came to call.  Miss Sue and Miss Sallie
Yancey glanced at each other expressively when
they saw that even Flower, Mrs. Winfield La
Grange, was one of the party.  It was the first time
that she had ever been openly recognized by the
La Grange family, except in name, and no one knew
that it was by Moultrie's express wish that Peachie
had asked her to go with them.  Thus, indirectly,
Carolina was at the bottom of it, after all.

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!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BLIND BABY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV.


.. class:: center medium

   THE BLIND BABY

.. vspace:: 2

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!'"

"I like that," said Aunt Angie, promptly.  "And
I think the churches make a mistake in forbidding
innocent pleasures.  Oh, why don't they dwell on
the good instead of squabbling over the bad?"

"You have described one of the chief differences
between the Christian Science and the other
churches," cried Carolina.  "Why, Aunt Angie,
you are a ready-made Scientist!"

"Am I?  Well, we shall see.  Now tell me when
you can go to see Flower.  Was Moultrie able to
buy Araby for you?"

"No, Mr. Mazyck refused to sell her.  But Moultrie
has lent me Scintilla until he can find another
good horse for me."

"But you especially wanted Araby, didn't you?"

"Yes, because she is a direct descendant of the
sire of my grandfather's favourite saddle-horse.
And she is simply perfect, Aunt Angie."

"I am afraid Barney Mazyck is hopeless.  If
he wants a thing, he wants it and is going to
keep it."

"I know; but I have not despaired of getting
her yet.  Perhaps I am just as bent upon getting
her as Mr. Barnwell Mazyck is upon keeping her."

"And in that case--"

"Well, I wouldn't put any money on Mr. Mazyck!"
laughed Carolina.

In the slight pause which ensued, Carolina could
see that Mrs. La Grange was ill at ease.  Suddenly
she turned to the girl and said:

"My dear, doubtless you think it strange that I
do not know beyond a doubt the state of my own
little grandson's sight, but--"

"I know," said Carolina, gently.  "I have heard."

"Who told you?  Some stranger?"

"No, Moultrie told me."

"Ah, then you have heard the truth!  It is a
terrible grief to us, Carolina.  Think of the child!
I do not know who my own grandson is descended from!"

"But you will know," said Carolina, earnestly.
"And soon.  I--we have a right to expect God's
harmony in our lives."

Mrs. La Grange looked at her curiously, but only
said, with a sigh:

"I am sure I hope you may be right."

It was arranged that Carolina was to meet
Mrs. La Grange at Flower's the next afternoon at three
o'clock.

"Can't you go in the morning?" asked Mrs. La Grange.

"I have an appointment with the architect from
Charleston and the builders at Guildford at ten.
We wouldn't get through in time, I am afraid, for
there will be so much to discuss."

"Won't you be too tired?"

"I never get tired.  There is rest in action for me."

Mrs. La Grange shook her head, but not in disapproval.

"I hope I am going to like it.  If I like all of
it as well as I do the sample bits you have fed me
with, I think, as you say, you may find that I have
been a Scientist all my life without knowing it."

Mrs. La Grange looked into the girl's pure, beautiful
face scrutinizingly, as if to learn her secret of
happiness, and, as she did so, she was surprised to
see it suffused by a blush which rose in delicate
waves to her hair.  Looking about in surprise for
a cause, Mrs. La Grange saw her son Moultrie
approaching.  Could Carolina have recognized his
step without seeing him, and was that blush for
Moultrie?

The question could not be answered at once, nor
did she see them together the next day, for Carolina
was late in keeping her appointment, and, by the
time she arrived, the awful truth was known.
Mrs. La Grange had been so overcome that Moultrie was
obliged to take her home.

The moment Carolina rode up to the house, she
knew that something had happened.  The house,
a mere cabin, was ominously quiet, and no one came
to meet her.

She dismounted hurriedly, fastened Scintilla to
the fence, and ran up the steps.  No one answered
her knock.  She pushed open the door and entered.

At first she saw no one, but presently she heard
heavy breathing, and, crouching on the floor, in the
darkest corner of the room, she saw Flower,
holding the still form of her baby in her arms.  Her
posture and the glare in her eyes were tigerish.

With a low cry, Carolina sprang to her side.

"Oh, Flower, darling!  What is the matter with
your baby?"

"You may take him," said Flower, dully.  "You
care!  You cared yesterday.  I can tell.  She only
cares because Arthur is a La Grange.  You will
care just because he a helpless little blind baby.
Oh! oh!"

"Not blind, Flower!  Don't say it.  Don't think
it.  Your baby sees."

"No, Cousin Carol.  You are good and kind,
but Mrs. La Grange made me see for myself.  We
took a candle and held it so close to his eyes we
nearly burned his little face--"

"You?" cried Carolina.  "Were you in the room?"

"That's what Moultrie said, but you don't either
of you know.  When you have a child of your own,
you will both understand that a mother can't keep
away.  She must know the worst, and she must
be there when it happens."

"Oh, poor Flower!  Poor child!" cried Carolina,
weeping unrestrainedly.  She cuddled the baby's
face in her neck, and Flower watched her
apathetically.  Flower's face was suffused from stormy
weeping, but she had wept herself out.

"And you had to bear this all alone, poor lamb!"

"I wanted to be alone!  I wanted her to go.
They meant to be kind, but they don't love me,
and they don't love my little baby.  I would rather
be alone.  Who could I send for--the priest?
When he predicted it?"

"What did he predict?" asked Carolina, quickly.

"He was very angry because we went to New
York to be married.  He lost fifty dollars by it.
That is what he charges even poor people like me.
And because I married a heretic, and because I was
not married by a priest, he cursed me and my
offspring.  Then--" she broke off suddenly and
cried: "Oh, why do I tell it all?  Why do I trust
even you?"

"Because you know that I can help you," said
Carolina, gravely.

"No one can help me--not even God!"

"Say what you were going to," urged Carolina.

"Well, the child is bewitched.  Every time there
is a thunder-storm, or if I am even left alone with
the baby, like to-day, when I let Aunt Tempy have
her afternoon--there she is now!"

With a shriek of terror she pointed to the window,
and Carolina looked just in time to see a dark
face disappear from view.  She ran to the door,
but nothing could be seen.  Not a sound could be
heard.

"It is the voodoo!" whispered Flower.  "That
face always comes.  Once I saw it in the room,
bending over the cradle when the baby was asleep.
But I never can catch her.  Aunt Tempy has seen
her, so has Winfield.  She has cast an evil spirit
over my baby."

"Her face looked kind--it even looked worried,"
thought Carolina to herself, but she said nothing
to Flower.  She only sat rocking the sleeping baby,
wiping the tears which rolled down her cheeks at
the sight of the mother's anguish.

"Flower," she said, suddenly, "did you ever
see Gladys Yancey before Miss Sue took her North?"

"Heaps of times."

"Did you ever hear how she was cured?"

"Why, Moultrie told Winfield that it was a new
kind of religion that did it, and Winfield just
hollered and laughed."

"Well, if I could prove to you that your baby
could be made to see, would you holler and laugh?"

"I reckon I wouldn't.  I'd kiss your feet."

"The only trouble," murmured Carolina, half to
herself, "is that you are a Roman Catholic.  We
do not like to interfere with them."

"I am not a Roman Catholic," said Flower.
"The lady who brought me up, and whom I was
taught to believe was my aunt, was a Catholic,
but I never was baptized.  I believe Father
Hennessey knows who I am, and that, if he would,
he could clear up the mystery of my birth and give
me back my happiness.  But he never will until I
join his church.  He told me so."

"Is he an old man?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, a very old man.  He must be over eighty,"

A slight pause ensued.  Then Carolina said:
"Would you like to hear of this new religion?"

"If it will give my baby eyes, Cousin Carolina,
how can you even stop to ask?"

"Oh, my dear, it is only because we are taught
to go cautiously,--to be sure our help is wanted
before we offer."

"Well, offer it to me.  I want your help with
all my soul!"

She rose from her corner and came and sat at
Carolina's feet.  Something of Carolina's sincerity,
which always appealed to people, moved her to
believe that Carolina could help her.  Flower's mind,
too, though it may sound like an anomaly, had been
trained by her aunt's Catholicism to believe in signs
and wonders, and her superstitions had been
carefully educated.  Therefore, when a more analytical
mind might have hesitated to believe that material
help for a supposed hopeless affliction could come
from religion, instead of from a knife or a drug,
which even the most skeptical may see and handle
and thus believe, Flower, by her very childishness,
held up a receptive mind for the planting of the
seed of an immortal truth.

The gravity of the situation caused Carolina a
moment's wrestle with error.  The burning eyes
of the young mother fastened on Carolina's face
with such agonizing belief,--the feeble
flutterings of the sleeping baby in her arms terrified
her for a brief second.  Then she lifted her heart
to the boundless source of supply for every human
need, and in a moment she felt quieted and could
begin.

"Flower," she said, "do you believe in God?"

"Of course I do."

"Did you ever read your Bible?"

"No."

"Have you one?"

"No."

"Will you promise to read it if I will give you one?"

"I will do whatever you want me to."

Carolina hesitated a moment.

"Will your husband object to your trying
Christian Science with the baby?"

"I don't know--yes, I suppose he will.  What
shall we do?"

"What will he want to do when he first learns
that the baby is blind?"

"I reckon he'll want to have Doctor Dodge see him."

"There is no objection to that.  Then what will
he do?"

"There isn't anything we can do just now,
Cousin Carol.  We have had a dreadful time even
to live since we were married.  And look what a
shanty we live in!  Not fit for a negro.  And
Winfield a La Grange!  Of course, if the crops are
better next year we might be able to take him
away to consult some big doctor, but this winter
we can't do anything at all."

"I don't know what to do," said Carolina.
"You ought to get your husband's consent first."

"Well, what do you want me to do?  Does your
treatment commence right away?"

"It is already begun."

"Why, how?  You haven't done anything that
I could see.  Do you pray?"

"Not to any virgin or saint, Flower."

"No, I know that Protestants pray to God.  Is
that what you want me to do?"

"I want you first to have a talk with Winfield
and Moultrie--"

"Moultrie will help me!" interrupted Flower.
"I'll ask him to talk to Winfield."

"Well, do that.  Then if he says you may try it,
I want you not to tell another soul, especially don't
let Aunt Tempy or any of the negroes know a word
about it.  I want you to get up about twelve o'clock
every night and light your candle, and put it where
it shines directly in the baby's eyes.  It can't hurt
him.  Then read the whole of the New Testament,--just
as much every night as you can for one
hour, believing that everything which was true of
Jesus and His disciples then, can be and is true of
His disciples on earth to-day, and that, if any one
of us could ever be as pure and holy as He was,
that we could do the one thing which is denied us
yet,--that is, raise the dead!  Will you?"

"Indeed, I will."

"Then every night I will treat your baby's eyes
by mind-healing, which I will explain to you a
little later.  In the meantime, you watch very closely
to see the first indication which Arthur's eyes give
of the light's making him stir, for that will show
that his darkness is lifting and that he is beginning
to see."

Flower raised herself up and clung to Carolina's
knees and buried her face in her dress, weeping
bitterly.

"Oh, oh!  Don't think I am unhappy.  I am
crying because I think you can do it.  How long
will it take?"

"No one can say.  It may only take one treatment,
or it may take years.  'According to your
faith be it unto you.'"

Just then, as Carolina rose to go, the baby
wakened, and Flower reached for him and pressed him
to her bosom in a passion of grief and hope.

"Look!" she whispered to Carolina, "you can
tell from the very expression of his little eyes that
he can't see.  I remember now that once the sun
was shining right into his eyes, and he kept them
open, but I didn't notice it at the time."

"Remember this, Flower.  We think that he
can't see.  But in God's eyes he is perfect.  With
Him there is no blindness nor sickness nor sin
nor sorrow.  He will take away your grief.  He
will wipe away all tears from your eyes."





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.. _`A LETTER FROM CAROLINA`:

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   CHAPTER XVI.


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   A LETTER FROM CAROLINA

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   "'THE BATH,' ENTERPRISE, S.C.,
       "January 27, 19--

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"MY DEAR MR. HOWARD:--If only I could drop
in on you this evening and make my report in
person, what couldn't I tell!  You would laugh if you
knew why we call our house The Bath.  But first,
have I ever told you that we have a house?  Well,
Guildford is so far from even Whitehall, which is
the nearest place we visited, that I lost too much
time in coming and going.  I must have been eight
hours in the saddle some days, and I didn't get on
fast enough to suit my leaping ambition,--and--bathrooms
are scarce in the country, so Cousin Lois
and I decided to build a model cabin or quarters
before we started the house, and live on the place.
There was already a windmill, so I ordered a
porcelain tub in Charleston, and built my house
around it.  Cousin Lois preëmpts it most of the
time, but I get my full share, and it is a luxury.
Did you ever try going without a bathroom?  Try
it.  It will make you 't'ink ob yo' marcies,' as the
negroes say.

"Oh, we are so happy!  Every day some of the
dear neighbours who knew Guildford in its prime
ride or drive over to tell me little forgotten quirks
of the blessed place, and to assure me that I am
copying it faithfully.  Cousin Lois calls it curiosity,
but I think it is interest.  But the primitive
methods in vogue in the South--well, you simply would
not believe me unless you saw them.  For example,
at the turpentine plant at Schoville, which I will
tell you more of later, my engineer found them
ladling out the crude turpentine by hand, when
you know it ought to be piped, and half the time
this cheap negro labour, which they hire to save
machinery, is drunk or striking, which often shuts
down the plant for days at a time,--ten days at
Christmas always.  Machinery may be expensive,
but, at least, it doesn't get drunk, and by means
of it a man may run his business, even in the South,
regularly, and so build up a reputation for
reliability, which, honestly, Mr. Howard, nobody down
here seems to know the meaning of, as we
understand it!  Any excuse serves.  Just make your
excuse--that's all.  It not only seems to relieve the
conscience of the purveyor, but satisfies the
consumer as well.  In Georgia it is a State law not to
move freight on Sunday.  Imagine that, added to the
railroad service as it stands!  And in a certain town
in Middle Georgia, the fire-engines are drawn by
oxen.  I enclose the kodak I took of it, for I know
you won't believe me else.  One thing the South
needs more than anything else is some of our
Northern Italian labour.  Then the negroes will see what
it really is to work.

"But I am running away with myself.

"I shall skip all I can, and only tell the essentials.

"After we left Whitehall, nothing would do but
we must pay a round of visits among the Lees and
La Granges, which we did, staying as short a time
as possible with each, partly because I could not
properly attend to my work, and partly because of
the heart-breaking poverty of all my poor dear
relatives.  If you could only see their bravery, their
pride, and their wholly absurd fury at the bare
suggestion that ease and comfort might come to them
from admitting Northern capital!  I think if they
knew that my money comes through you, they
would force me to starve with them rather than be
indebted to a ---- Yankee.  The ladies don't use
that word with their lips, but their eyes say it.
As it is, they think I am still selling my jewels.
And I don't contradict them, simply because there
is no use in giving them pain.  Their hatred of the
North is something which cannot be eradicated in
a day.  It is a factor in business which blocks the
path of every well-wisher of the South, and is an
entity to be reckoned with just as palpably as credit.
The man who ignores it makes a mistake which
sooner or later will bring him up with a jerk.  I
dwell upon this, because, if we form the syndicate
which you propose, it must be managed craftily,
and I know you will not disregard my warning.

"As an example of it, let me tell what has
befallen the plant for making wood turpentine at
Schoville, Georgia.  It is a fine, modern, up-to-date
plant of the steam process, backed and controlled
by Judd Brothers & Morgan, of Brooklyn.  Their
representative approached my counsel, offering to
sell.  The Brooklyn firm own fifty-one per cent. of
the stock, and the rest is taken by citizens of
Schoville.  I sent my man, Donohue, down to
investigate the process, intending, if I didn't buy, to
organize a similar company and operate under their
patents, as I find theirs, if not the best, is at least
a satisfactory process, and turns out a pure
water-white turpentine with a specific gravity of 31.70.
And Donohue asserts that by the use of steam
he can eliminate the objectionable odour.  He has
been in the employ of both the Schoville and the
Lightning companies and is a valuable man, though
not strictly honest.  Donohue was satisfied that
there was something wrong at Schoville, and
advised me to hold off.  He reported the plant out
of repair, although the books showed money in
plenty supplied by the owners.  Donohue then
visited the plant at Lightning, Georgia, and found
everything all right.  It has since transpired that
the foreman of the plant at Schoville, a cracker
named Leakin, had deliberately shipped crude
turpentine, which of course was of rank odour and
off colour, to the factors at Savannah, who shipped
it to Germany and South America without giving
it a very careful examination.  As is usual with
these men, they were too slack to make the
thorough examination before making shipment which
the law requires, and paid over an advance of
thirty-five cents a gallon to Leakin like innocent
little lambs.  Of course, the inevitable occurred.
Buenos Ayres and Berlin not only refused to pay,
but returned the consignment, and the Savannah
factors now refuse to touch wood turpentine at any
price.

"It seems that, when the Northern owners sent
their representative down to investigate, Leakin
frankly told him that he did not intend to make
money for any ---- Yankees.  They thereupon
swore out a warrant for his arrest, but he wrecked
the plant at night and was hurried out of town by
his relatives.

"Now, so far from discouraging me, this serves
my purpose well.  For with sixty per cent. profit on
the manufacture of wood turpentine on paper (as
per my previous reports), which cuts to between
forty and fifty in actual operation, it is one of the
future industries of the South.  Of course the little
plant I propose to build at Guildford or near by will
only be a mouthful.  I figure that between ten and
twelve millions of dollars would corner the
turpentine market, and then put the price of orchard
turpentine so high that it would practically be off the
market.  Then we could force the consumers to
take wood turpentine in its place, and in this way
show them that it will do the same work and bring
the same results as the regular orchard turpentine.
They are afraid of it now, so they must be reduced
by compulsion to giving it a fair trial.  I bought
ten barrels of wood turpentine made by the
company at Lightning, and sent a small sample to every
paint and varnish manufacturer in the United
States, with a letter giving them the chemical
analysis and asking the recipient to give it a fair trial.
About one-third replied that it seemed satisfactory,
and sent me orders for from five to ten barrels for
a trial, but they want it at about ten cents per gallon
less than the orchard.  It seems that no one will
pay within ten cents of the regular market price.
I turned these orders over to the Lightning
company on a commission, and am making quite a
neat little sum out of it, though I never thought
of that end of the proposition when I sent out the
samples.  I tried the experiment to see what sort
of a market I could look for.  There is no reason
why this wood turpentine should not be shipped
and sold as regular turpentine, and one good strong
corner on the market will bring this about.

"To continue my investigations, I want you to
organize a small company, giving me control.  I
shall erect a twenty-cord plant between Enterprise
and Guildford, within wagon distance of the
wood-supply of the estate.  Recollect that this process
uses only the fallen trees and stumps of the
long-leafed pine, which are reduced to a sawdust, and
this is then put into the retorts.  Steam is then
injected, which tries out the turpentine, which is
then run into the refining still.

"I can arouse no interest whatever among my
relatives.  They simply think I am crazy.  I even
suggested to my uncle, Judge Fanshaw Lee, of
Charleston, the simple proposition of joining me
in the purchase of a stump-puller to clear his land
for rice and cotton, but he wouldn't do it, and
continues to plant in fields dotted with old stumps.
But he will rent it from me if *I* buy one!  So please
order immediately the most improved sort, and
consign it to me at Enterprise, S.C.

"Even though I am a Southerner by blood, and
anxious to improve the country in general, and my
relatives in particular, I work under inconceivable
difficulties.  I sent my lawyer to one of the biggest
factors in Savannah, by the name of James
Oldfield, to suggest a combine to corner turpentine,
offering to raise nine million dollars, if he and his
friends would raise one million.  Legare reported
that 'Oldfield's head hit the ceiling' at the mere
suggestion.  But, upon being drawn out, Oldfield
admitted that twenty years ago he had entertained
a similar idea, although, of course, at that time not
for the purpose of introducing wood turpentine.
But his ideas were on too narrow-gauge a plan
to admit the suggestion now.  So we shall simply
be obliged to do it without him.

"It seems to me that, with the South in the
mental attitude it now holds, it will need some
radical means, such as a turpentine corner, to force
Southern landowners to reinvest money in their
own property.  Many a man is land poor with
thousands of dollars' worth of stumps and fallen trees
on his land which are suitable for wood turpentine.
In order to supply the demand, the orchard people
are obliged each year to find two million acres of
virgin forest for their operations.  After bleeding
these for three years, the lumber men then enter
and cut the timber, thus leaving millions of fallen
trees and stumps, all of which are suitable for our
process.  Now, it would take years to educate these
landowners in the process of extracting turpentine
from this stumpage, while a corner in orchard
turpentine would, in three months, turn the attention
of half the chemists and inventors in the United
States toward bettering present processes and
discovering new ones.  Every newspaper in the land
would give this New Southern Industry millions
of dollars' worth of free advertising, and inside of
ten years the whole South would blossom as a rose.

"I have hinted at this before, but have not
explained it because the time was not ripe.  Now,
after six months of untiring investigation by
trustworthy agents, and after bitter personal experience,
I find that no help whatsoever can be expected from
the South.  Rather they will fight us at every step,
like children compelled to take medicine.  Did you
ever see a health officer try to vaccinate a negro
settlement on the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic?

"You understand me, do you not?  Tell me if
I make my point sufficiently clear.  I propose to
corner turpentine, not for the purpose of raising
the price, but to take the orchard stuff completely
off the market until we have forced the public to
give wood turpentine a trial.  It has been
demonstrated in every department that the patented
product will do the work of the orchard, not only just
as well, but in some cases, as that of paint, it
actually holds the colour better.

"If you are still interested, let me know and I
will explain my developed plan.  Meanwhile I
welcome suggestions from you, or any of your
interested parties.

"With devoted love to all in your dear house, I am,

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   Always affectionately yours,
         "CAROLINA LEE."





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.. _`IN THE BARNWELLS' CARRYALL`:

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   CHAPTER XVII.


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   IN THE BARNWELLS' CARRYALL

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Aunt Angie La Grange descended from the
Barnwells' carryall in front of the station platform
at Enterprise, and tapped on the window of the
telegraph-agent's box.

"How late is the train from Savannah, Barney, son?"

Mr. Mazyck sauntered out.

"Only about three hours to-day, Aunt Angie.
Expecting the folks?"

"Only Peachie.  Mrs. Winchester and Carolina
went on down to Jacksonville on business.  Did
you ever see such a girl?"

"I never did.  She scares me 'most to death.  I'd
like to marry her, Aunt Angie, but what could
I--what could any man do with such a wife?"

"She'd make any man rich.  Moultrie says she
goes so far ahead of him in her ideas of business,
he can't even keep her in sight."

"Oh, any man has got to make up his mind to
take her dust!" laughed Barnwell.

"Are you in earnest about marrying her, Barney?"

"Of cou'se I am!  Aren't all the boys?  Isn't
Moultrie?"

A shade darkened Aunt Angie's face.

"You know, son, that Moultrie will never marry
unless--"

"Exactly!  Unless!  Well, there's a heap of
unlesses which may he'p him to change his mind.
And maybe Miss Carolina is one of them."

"I'd be proud to have him win her, but, as you
say, all the boys are in love with her, here and in
Charleston, and now she has been to Savannah,
I suppose they will follow suit, and--"

"Poor Jacksonville!" sighed Barnwell.

Mrs. La Grange laughed.

"We haven't had such a belle in South Carolina
in many years," she said.  "Before the war--"
and she sighed.

Barney laughed unfeelingly, and Mrs. La Grange
continued:

"How about Araby, son?  Are you going to sell
her to Carolina?"

"Indeed I am not, Aunt Angie.  I'd give her to
Miss Carolina before I'd sell her to anybody else;
but, to tell you the truth, I'd about die if I had
to part with that mare!  She's human.  Sound as
a dollar and not a trick of any kind.  That nigger
horse-trainer is a magician with animals.  I'm
blest if I don't believe he'll teach Araby to talk
before he quits.  And she whinnies if she even
passes him in a crowd."

"Carolina wants her worse than anything in the
world."

"Well, she can just go awn wantin'," said the
usually gallant Mr. Mazyck, ungallantly.  "If I'd
give Araby to her, I'd lose both my mare and my
sweetheart."

"Somehow or other I can't help thinking that
Carolina will get that horse in spite of you.
Barney, do go and see what time it is!  This is the
third time I've been down here to wait for this
mean train!"

"Yonder she comes now.  Only three hours and
fifteen minutes late.  That's not so bad, Aunt
Angie.  When she tries, she can tardy herself up a
heap mo' than that!"

Mrs. La Grange anxiously scanned the shabby
coaches for a sight of her daughter's blooming face.
Peachie jumped from the car steps and ran to her
mother's arms.  They kissed each other like two
lovers who had been parted for years.

"Have you had a pleasant week, darling baby?"
asked her mother.

Peachie's pink cheeks paled and her face clouded
over.

"No, I haven't," she whispered, hurriedly, "but
I don't want anybody but you to know.  Don't let
Barney ask me.  Let's hurry."

Mrs. La Grange led the way to the borrowed
carriage with a sinking heart.  Aside from two
visits to her aunt in Charleston, this was the only
time Peachie had ever been away from home.  And
now to have this invitation to visit Savannah, given
the year before and anticipated all this time, turn
into the failure which Peachie's face indicated, was
almost as great a disappointment to Mrs. La Grange
as to the girl herself.

In the carriage, where Old Moses could not hear
them, the mother anxiously awaited the story.

"Begin at the beginning and don't skip a word.
We've two good hours before us with nobody to
interrupt."

"Well, you know how happy Carolina was at
the prospect of taking me to a fine hotel like the
De Soto, and how lovely my clothes were, and how
pleased Cousin Lois was at the prospect of seeing
her old friends there?  Well, people called, of
course,--none of the girls, though,--and
Mrs. General Giddings, who is the leader of Savannah
society, at once asked Cousin Lois to be a chaperon at
the Valentine Ball.  John Hobson invited me, and
Jim Little asked Carolina, and, do you know, it
was the first time in all her life that Carolina had
ever been to a ball with a man!  She says she always
went with a chaperon and met her partners at the
dance.  And she wanted to do that in Savannah,
but Mrs. Giddings assured her that it was all right,
and so she did.

"Oh, mother, I wish you could have seen us that
night!  You know how I looked, but Cousin Lois
wore a black satin brocade, studded with real
turquoises and blue ostrich feathers woven into the
goods.  And, with all her size, she looked perfectly
lovely.  Carolina wore a white Paris muslin over
white silk, with every flounce trimmed with real
lace.  Her hair looked as if she only had one pin
in it, it was so loose and fluffy and--well, artistic
is the only word to describe her.  She looked like
a fairy princess.  It began in the dressing-room."

"What began?

"Well--Savannah began!" cried Peachie.  "I
never heard of such things happening to our girls
when they go to Atlanta and Columbus and
Augusta and Macon, while as for Charleston!--well,
I needn't defend Charleston manners to *you*,
mother!

"Not a soul spoke to us, although everybody
knew we were strangers and everybody knew who
we were, for of course it was in the papers,--such
distinguished arrivals as Mrs. Rhett Winchester
and Carolina Lee!  But not a girl came near.  They
hollered and joked among themselves, and
somebody would whisper to two or three, then the whole
roomful would scream like wild Indians, and once
one of the boys came to the door and called to them
to hurry up, and one girl screamed back, 'Shut yo'
big mouth!' and the rest fairly yelled with approval.

"Then one girl was just going out with her
bodice all gaping open, and Carolina stepped up to
her as sweetly as if she had been received with
perfect politeness and asked if she mightn't fasten
it.  The hooks were half off, so Carolina took a
paper of pins and fairly pinned that girl into her
clothes,--her waist and skirt didn't meet.  She
accepted all this help, thanked her, and went out,
leaving us all alone.  Then our boys came and took
us down to the ballroom, and, if you will believe it,
mother, not a girl came near us or asked to be
introduced or introduced a single boy!  Not even
the girl that Carolina had helped.  I looked at
Carolina to see if she noticed it, but her face was as
calm as it always is.  Her colour, however, was a
little less than usual at first.

"We noticed that things sort of dragged at first,
and soon we found out what it was.  An English
yacht was in the river, and its owner, Sir
Hubert Wemyss, a young man only about thirty, was
expected, and all the girls were trying to save
dances for him, and all the boys were trying to get
the choice ones.

"The first dance I didn't watch Carolina, because
I had heard that Jim Little was a good dancer, but,
after it was over, I saw him take her to the door
and she went up to the dressing-room.  I made
John stop near him, and I asked him what was the
matter.  'Oh, I stuck my foot through the lace of
her dress, and she's gone to be sewed up.  Say,
Miss Peachie, that girl can't dance!  I never saw
a Yankee that could!'

"Well, mother, I could scarcely believe my ears!
The conceit of that raw Southern boy, who never
had been outside of his own little town in the whole
of his life, except to go duck-shooting in the
swamps, to presume to criticize Carolina's dancing!"

"What did you say to him, sweetheart?"

Aunt Angie's cheeks were as red as any girl's.
She sat bolt upright in the borrowed carriage, in
her cheap print dress and cotton gloves, looking
like an empress.  The proudest blood in South
Carolina flowed in her veins and she had the spirit of her
State.

"I said, 'Are you sure, Mr. Little, that the fault
was all hers?'  And he laughed and said, 'Well, the
Savannah girls never find fault with my dancing,
Miss Peachie!'  'Oh,' I said, 'if such criterions have
stamped their approval on you, Mr. Little, of course
there is no more to be said!'  He didn't see the
sarcasm at all,--he seems a trifle dense.  So we
waited for Carolina, and when she came back, I
saw that her dress was ruined, but she had managed
to hide it pretty well, and her manner was just as
sweet to that man as if he had been fanning her,
and we all four went back to Cousin Lois.

"The next dance we changed partners, Jim Little
taking me and John Hobson taking Carolina.  Now
John is said to be the best dancer in Savannah, so
I kept an eye on them, but they didn't do very well.
Carolina's colour began to rise and her eyes began
to grow that purplish black--you remember?  Oh,
she looked so beautiful!  But she wasn't enjoying
herself, and she stopped near me to rest.  Then
I heard John say, 'You dance more like a Southern
girl than any Yankee I ever knew!'  Think,
mother!  That was twice she had been called a
Yankee before we had been there an hour.  A
Lee of South Carolina!  Her cheeks just grew
a little warmer and she lifted her chin a little higher,
but didn't correct him--just said, 'I suppose you
intend that for a compliment, Mr. Hobson?'  'I
should say I did!' he said.  'I never saw a Yankee
girl who could dance in all my born days!'  'How
do you account for that?' asked Carolina, in just
as sweet a tone, mother, as she always uses.  Me?
I was just boiling!  I was ready to cry!"

Her mother pressed her hand.  Aunt Angle's
own lips were trembling with indignation.

"'Oh,' the fool said, 'I reckon they don't get
as many chances to dance as our girls do!'  Well,
that saved me.  I began to laugh and I laughed
until I nearly went into hysterics.  I had to
excuse myself and ask Jim to get me some water!"

"Did Carolina laugh, too?" asked Mrs. La Grange.

"Well, she smiled, and I knew from that, that
she was only holding herself in.

"The next was a Lancers.  Carolina danced
with Rube Bryan.  He is very tall and from the
first he tried to get fresh with Carolina.  I was
in the same set dancing with John again.  And
I want to say right here that I never saw such
unladylike and ungentlemanly dancing in all my
life.  Why, in Charleston the chaperons would
have requested the whole dance to be stopped.
They wouldn't have permitted such hootings and
yellings, such jumps and shouts.  Girls yelled at
each other across the whole hall--just like
negroes.  'Go it, Virgie!'  'Shake a foot, Nell!'  In
the ladies' chain the boys jerked the girls so
that one girl in our set was thrown down and her
wrist sprained."

"I was getting frightened and I could see that
Carolina was on the verge of leaving the set.
Then she seemed to brace herself, for Mrs. Winchester
had left the line of chaperons and was
making her way down to where we were dancing.
And mother, there was rage in her whole
bearing.  She just looked as if Carolina were being
insulted by dancing with such rowdies.  But Carolina
gave her a look and she did not interfere.  She
stood there, however."

"Did anything happen, Peachie?" asked
Mrs. La Grange, unable to wait for the sequel.

"Yes, mother, it did.  I believe those girls had
dared him to, because he waited until the very
last, then he lifted Carolina off her feet clear up
into the air, and landed her in front of Mrs. Winchester
with a deep bow.  Everybody laughed and
screamed for a minute, then something in the
attitude of both Mrs. Winchester and Carolina made
them hush.  Cousin Lois's voice was low, but you
could hear it all over the room.

"'Young man,' she said, 'your name is unknown
to me, but let me say to you that you are
not a gentleman!'

"What happened then?" cried Mrs. La Grange.

"Mrs. Giddings, of course.  She always says
the cutting thing.  'You are perfectly right, Lois,'
she said, 'the man is a nobody.  We expect such
manners from nobodies.  Not that the somebodies
are any better, if this dance is a sample.  This is
my first appearance.  Rest assured that it will be
my last.  We Giddings don't chaperon barn dances!'

"That, from Mrs. Giddings, seemed to sober
them.  They all moved away leaving Rube Bryan
bowing and scraping and trying to square
himself.  Cousin Lois simply waved him aside as if
he were a piccaninny.  She asked Carolina if she
wanted to go home.  Carolina hesitated a
minute, then she lifted that chin of hers and said,
'No; a Lee cannot be driven from a ballroom
by rudeness.  Just let me go and put on my truth!"

"Bless the child!" cried Mrs. La Grange, who
was as excited as a spectator at his first horse-race.
"Bless her!  There is pride!  There is what the
French call 'race'!  And to see the dear *putting
on the armour of her religion even in a ballroom*!"

"Mother, Carolina's religion helps her in everything.
Why, she just stepped out of sight behind
a row of palms.  She went to a window and
reached up one arm and leaned her head against
it.  With the other hand she drew back the
curtain and looked up at the stars.  I put my arm
around her and she said, in a low, distinct voice.
'The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath
are the everlasting arms.'  'And mother, it made
the tears come to my eyes.  To think of my beautiful
Carolina, with nothing but love in her heart
for the whole South, to come home to us and be
treated so rudely that she had to appeal to God
to help her to get through something which ought
to have been only a pleasure to her!"

"I know, my dear baby," said her mother, whose
own eyes were suspiciously bright, "but I rather
imagine that to a girl who has seen the best
society that Europe and America have to offer, a
dance with a lot of Savannah boys and girls could
not be considered in the light of much of a treat."

"I know it, mother.  Yet Cousin Carol's
manners are so perfect that she never lets you
suspect that.  She enters into everything with such
love."

"That is her religion," said Mrs. La Grange.

"Oh, that reminds me.  She went on talking
aloud as we stood there.  She said, 'I must
remember that the vesture of truth is my raiment.
I must stand sentinel at the door of my thought
and not allow error to enter it.  And the way to
keep error out, is to pour love in.  Love!  Love!
Love!  That is the way to meet them.
Father--mother--God!  Help me to love mine enemies!'
Oh, and mother dearest, by that time I was
weeping, but Carol's eyes were quite dry.  'Don't cry,
little girl,' she said, 'I don't any more, for I have
got beyond the belief that religion is an emotion.
It is too real--too lasting.  Emotions die out.'  And
a little light seemed to dawn for me--just
as I have seen clouds break on a dark night and
a single star shine through."

"Then did you go back?" asked her mother,
after a pressure of the hand to show that she
understood.  There was a singular bond between these
two.

"Yes, she turned and pressed my hand just as
you did then, with such understanding, and her
face was fairly shining, but with such a different
radiance.  'Come, Peachie, darling! faithful
little comrade.  You would not have been one of
the disciples who slept and left their Master
to pray alone, would you?  Well, I have
conquered my little moment of error.  Now let's go
back.'  'And show them how South Carolina faces
her foes,' I said.  'Wouldn't it be better to go
back and show them how South Carolina can
forgive?' she asked."

"Bless her heart!" murmured Mrs. La Grange.
"I know how a young girl feels to be mistreated
at a ball."

"Yes, but wait.  The grandest, glorious-est thing
happened.  Just as we came from behind the
palms who should be bowing to the chaperons
but the handsomest man I ever saw in my life.
Tall, dark, distinguished-looking, with one white
lock of hair and all the rest black as a coal.  He
has a slight limp from a wound at Magersfontein,
but it only distinguished him the more and doesn't
interfere with his dancing a bit.  Well, when he
saw Carolina, his face lighted up and he said, 'Oh,
Miss Lee, how awfully jolly to see you again!  To
tell the truth, I had half a mind not to come, after
all I had promised, and I wanted to get out of it
the worst way until I heard that you were to be
here.  Then I couldn't get here fast enough.'  Well,
mother, even if every girl there hadn't
suddenly found that side of the room strangely
attractive, his voice has a carrying tone, and--well,
I wish you could have seen those girls.  They
looked as though they had been slapped in the face."

"As they deserved!" said Mrs. La Grange, grimly.

"Then the band struck up a two-step and he
turned to Mrs. Winchester and asked her if she
would save her first square dance for him, but she
said she wasn't dancing.  So then he asked
Carolina.  She gave me a little look which meant that
I could have him next, and then!  Well, I've seen
dancing all my life, but I never saw anybody
dance as those two did.  It was like the flight of
swallows.  So graceful, so dignified, so distinguished,
and yet so spirited.  Carolina dances like a breeze."

"I can imagine just how she dances," cried
Mrs. La Grange, excitedly.  "Go on, child!"

"Well, the funniest sight of all was Cousin
Lois.  She drew her chin in and waved her fan
and puffed herself out for all the world like our
turkey-hen.  I could have laughed."

"I know just how she felt--just how I should
have felt in her place if you had been treated as
Carolina was.  Then did he dance with you?"

"Yes, then he danced with me.  Then with
Carolina again.  Then she said to him, 'Now, Sir
Hubert, I want you to meet some of these pretty
girls, but as I don't know them myself, I shall ask
Mr. Little to take you around and introduce you
to the brightest of them, so that you will take away
with you the best impression of our Southern girls.'"

"Oh, Peachie!  I couldn't have done that!"

"Nor I either, mother.  I just couldn't.  So
Jim started to take him, but he said, 'Just wait
a moment.'  Then he came to me and took--"

"I hope he took more than one!" cried
Mrs. La Grange, jealously.

"He took seven, mother.  And in the German he
favoured me until--"

"That was too many, Peachie.  You ought not--"

"I know, dearest honey mother.  I ought not to
do heaps of things I do do, but after all, what
do I care what those people think of me?  All they
can say is that I flirted with him--"

"Or that he flirted with you," laughed her mother.

"Oh, yes, they will say that, never fear.  And
yet--"

"And yet what, my darling?  Here we are at home."

"And yet he took Cousin Lois and Carolina to
Jacksonville on his yacht, and he asked me to go,
but I said I had to get back to you, and he was
with us all the rest of the time we were there--"

Her mother turned and looked at her.

"And he is coming to see me on his way back."

As Mrs. La Grange stepped from the carriage
with the air of a queen descending from her
chariot, she put her arm around her daughter's waist
and said:

"I think I have to be proud of a dear, generous
little girl whose loyalty caused an otherwise
pleasant week to be spoiled."

Peachie's cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled.

"It wasn't quite spoiled, mother dear.  Oh,
honey, he is the handsomest man and the best
dancer!  Just wait till you see him!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A LETTER FROM KATE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVIII.


.. class:: center medium

   A LETTER FROM KATE

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left medium

   "NEW YORK.

"DEAREST CAROLINA:--Great news!  Three
pieces of it.  First, I have turned Christian
Scientist!  Second, Rosemary Goddard is married to the
Honourable Lionel Spencer!  Third, daddy is so
tickled over all that you have done, as you may have
suspected from his letters lately, that he is going
down.  He will take the car, and Noel and
Mrs. Goddard, mother, and I are coming, too!  Don't
bother about accommodations.  We will switch the
car to a siding and live in it.  We may all have
to go to Charleston and Jacksonville, so that you
and Peachie and a handy man or two had better
get ready for a rip-roaring old time, for we are
going to make Rome howl.  Noel wants to go to
Ormond for the automobile races.  He has entered
his machine.  I named it for him,--'The White
Moth,'--don't you think that's a dandy name?

"Now to go back to the really important thing.
I've wanted to be a Scientist ever since I found out
that it wasn't a drag-net to catch all the cranks in
the world, as I at first supposed.  I found that out
in two ways.  One, by knowing a lot of you who
were not in the least cranks.  The other, by seeing
what a lot of cranks there are left!  Yet all the
time I was hating myself and struggling against
the compelling influence.  Did you ever drag a cat
across the carpet by the tail?  Well, that is just
about the easy, gliding gait I used to reach
Christian Science!

"Still, you'll never guess who influenced me
most.  Not you nor that heavenly Mrs. Goddard
nor the wonderful cures I've seen.  Nuh!  Guess
again.  Old Noel!  Yes, sir.  Old skeptical Noel!
Brought up for a Catholic, too.  Wouldn't that
freeze you?  Well, think si to myself, think si, 'if
old Noel can see good in it, and he's the best
all-round sport, man of the world, and gentleman I
know, it's time little Katie got aboard.'  So I just
climbed on the raft without saying a word to
anybody, expecting everybody to raise Cain, but, to
my astonishment, daddy was as pleased as Punch,
and he and mother go to church with me every
Sunday.  What do you say to that?

"At the ball the Goddards gave for Rosemary
just before she sailed, I was doing a two-step with
Noel, and I saw a dandy girl, whose gown simply
reeked of Paris, it was so delicious.  She was
dancing with a corking looking man, and, as we
stopped near them for me to get a better look at
her clothes, I heard her say, 'Are you going to
communion at the Mother Church?' and he said,
'I never miss it.  It is the treat of my whole
year!'  I looked at Noel and he looked at me.

"'Noel,' I said, 'Did I hear aright?  They
weren't betting on a horse-race in cipher, were
they?'  'No,' sez he, giggling, 'they were not.
They are Christian Scientists, and they are now
talking about an incorporeal God.'  'In a ballroom,'
murmurs I to myself.  'Noel,' I said, in a weak
voice, 'Take me out and lay me softly under a
pump and bring me to.  I am too young to go dotty
without any warning.'  But, instead of that, we
joined them and Noel introduced us to each other,
and we finished the two-step talking about how
hard it was to change from our old idea of a God
who was so much like a man that we had to flag
Him and shout out our prayers to be sure to get
His attention.  I used to feel as if I were on the
floor of a convention, trying to catch the Speaker's eye.

"But I want to ask you two things that I can't
quite get up my nerve to ask Mrs. Goddard.  What
did you do about praying while changing your idea
of a personal, corporeal God to one of spirit?  Why,
Carolina, I've lost the combination!  I feel as
though I were praying through a megaphone out of
an open window.  My prayers don't seem to strike
against anything.  Will I get over this feeling in
time?  It is only fair to state, however, that even
this queer hit-or-miss method brings answers which
my most frantic screams for help and my most
humble and dependent clinging to the robe of my
personal God never did.  So you can just bet that
I'm going to stick to the new method, whether I
ever understand it or not, because it does deliver
the goods.  Am I right or wrong?  I want to know.

"Now, I did tackle Mrs. Goddard on this point.
I feel a perfect wretch to mention it, but the fact
is, I simply cannot endure the name of Mrs. Eddy!
Every time they mention 'Science and Health'
in church, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.'  Every
time they give out a hymn that she wrote,
they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.'  And every
time they do it, my blood boils and my face burns
and I grab my hymn-book until--well, I split a
pair of gloves nearly every Sunday!

"The conceit of that woman!  Suppose she has
given the world a new religion,--why not let us
show our gratitude spontaneously.  Why need she
say such conceited, sacrilegious things in her book?
She throws hot air at herself indirectly in every
chapter.  It reminds me of a page in Roosevelt's
'Alone in Cubia.'  I counted sixty-three I's on one
page in that book, until I felt like the little boy
who said to his father, after an evening of war
experiences, 'Papa, couldn't you get any one to
help you put down the rebellion?'

"I don't believe, unless my feeling changes, that
I shall ever join the church while its by-laws remain
as they are.  I will work for the cause, and be
diligent and faithful and studious, but I disapprove of
a church being such a close corporation and for one
finite, human being to possess such power as
Mrs. Eddy holds, and holds with such pertinacity and
deliberate love of power.

"When I said some of this to Mrs. Goddard,
she said that she never chemicalized over Mrs. Eddy
the way great numbers did, but she said you had
a claim at one time, and I want to know if you are
over it.  I feel like a brute to have to admit it even
to you, for of course I am grateful and appreciative
and all that.  But if you call what I feel 'chemicalizing,'
I can only say that I can hear myself sizzling
like a bottle of Apollinaris whenever I come across
the name of Eddy, and realize how she holds the
power of a female Pope.

"I told Noel about it, but he doesn't feel it at
all.  Never did.  But he understands how intensely
I suffer from it, and he said if I didn't mind my
eye, I'd blow off a tire right in church.  And once,
when he took me and saw me getting red in the face,
he said, 'Now sit tight, old girl!' and I nearly
laughed aloud.

"Now let me tell you my first demonstration.
I am so happy over it I am going to do something
to celebrate it, and that's another thing I want to
consult you about.

"Yesterday Noel and I were out in the White
Moth, and every time I know I am going out in
the thing I read in 'Science and Health' about
accidents, and declare the truth, so that my mind
will be filled with a preventive.  It comforts me
a great deal and is the only thing that enables me
to enjoy an automobile ride in New York, for, with
the danger of blowing up and other people's bad
driving and frightened horses and the absolute
recklessness of pedestrians, you take, if not your
life, at least your enjoyment of life, in your hand
whenever you get into a machine.

"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw,
and we were just trundling along out in the Bronx,
when, without a word of warning, a little bit of
a boy jumped from a crowd of children and
stumbled right in front of us.  I saw him fall, and to
my dying day I never shall forget the sight of
his little white, upturned face as he disappeared
under the machine.  We ran right squarely over him!

"I stood up and screamed out: 'You said accidents
could not happen!  You promised!  You promised!
We have not hurt that baby!  He is alive!
He is not hurt!  He is not even run over!'  And
by that time we had both jumped down and run
back, and a big crowd was gathering.  Talk about
treating audibly!  I was screeching at the top of my
voice.  Yet still there lay the child apparently dead.
I picked him up in my arms and sat down in the
mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud.
Oh, Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his
little hands!  So dirty, but so *little*!  And his little
limp body,--I feel as if I had it in my lap still.
The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen
came, and suddenly, with a scream I never can
forget even in my dreams, the child's mother rushed
up.  She raised her fist to strike me in the face, and
I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child's
eyes opened, and something made me say: 'Here
is your baby, little woman.  He is not hurt at
all!'  She fairly snatched him from me and began to feel
him all over, but she could find no broken bones.
She was crying and laughing and kissing him, and
I still kept telling her that he was unhurt.  Just
then the police got through with Noel, and he
insisted on putting mother and child and a policeman
in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest
hospital to have the child examined.  We did so, and,
if you will believe it, there wasn't a scratch on him.
He either fainted from fright or we stunned him,
the doctor said.

"Two of the surgeons came out and examined
the machine, and they found that there is only a
foot of space between the lowest part of the car
and the ground.

"'It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,'
said one of them, 'to run over a five-year-old boy
and not even scratch him.  To make the story quite
complete you ought to claim to be Christian
Scientists.  That is the sort of game they always play
on a credulous public.'

"'We are both Christian Scientists,' said Noel,
in his most polite manner, 'and I am deeply
impressed with your involuntary tribute to its efficacy
in case of accident.'

"Between you and me, I don't believe that doctor
got his mouth together again without help.

"Well, we had the greatest time when we got
back.  First, we took every child on the scene--and
I believe there must have been a hundred--to
an ice-cream saloon and treated them.  And
while they were waiting their turns, Noel filled the
White Moth with them and gave them a ride.  I
never had so much fun in my life.  I went home
with the mother, with a quart of ice-cream in each
hand, and got her to tell me the story of her life.
Poor soul!  She has nine children, but she loves
each one as if it were her all.  Noel and I are both
going to do something for that child.  His name
is Dewey Dolan.

"When it was all over, and we were sneaking
along back streets to get home without being seen,
for we were both sights, and the Moth will have
to be done over, I began to think of the way I had
acted, and I have made Noel promise never to take
me out again unless I have my Amityville tag on,
so that, if I go crazy out loud again, they will know
where I have escaped from.

"But Noel, dear old thing, confessed that he
was declaring the truth no less, only in a quieter
way, and we both firmly believe that our little
knowledge of Science and our understanding,
incomplete though it is, are what turned that calamity
into a blessing, for a blessing I am determined to
crown it.

"What do you think of my idea?  You know
how I have always been carried away over children,--how
their sufferings and deaths have almost
turned me into an infidel,--how the carelessness
of parents and nurses has almost driven me insane,--well,
if they can be protected by Christian Science
thought and healed by mind, why not hasten
the day by establishing a Christian Science
kindergarten, and, if it succeeds, by a series of them?
There must be plenty of kindergartners among
Scientists who would welcome a combination of their
work, and in the crowded tenement districts it
would be a boon.  But, oh, how carefully we must
go, for the poor will only allow themselves to be
helped in their own blind way.  Tell me if you
think there is any hope for the philanthropic end
of it.  I am going to open one for the children of
ready-made Scientists in my own house,--you
know I studied kindergartning, and I have ten
already promised.  I shall have no trouble about
assistants for my Fifth Avenue school.  But the
other place is the one my heart is in.  Tell me what
you think of that.

"Rosemary is coming back here to live.  Her
husband is a Christian Scientist, and has gone into
business in New York, so I know she will help me,
but, oh, Carolina, you will never know how I miss
you!  New York is not the same place since you
left it.  You have such a way of dominating every
spot you are in by your own personality.  Does
this hot air sound natural from Kate Howard?

"I am crazy--fairly daffy--over your success
in the turpentine, and daddy goes around swelling
out his chest and strutting like a turkey gobbler.
Why, Carolina, do you realize that you will not only
make yourself rich and anybody you choose to let
into the game, but that you will be opening up by
force, so to speak, with your Educational
Turpentine Corner, an industry which will revolutionize
the entire turpentine pine country?  It is a big
project, my dear, to have emanated from the brain
of a woman.  But, oh, won't the papers fairly eat
you raw!

"I will attend to all the commissions you sent
and bring the stuff down in the car.  A good many
of us want newer and finer editions of 'Science
and Health,' and, if you utterly refuse to make
presents of them for the good of the cause, we will
sell our old books at whatever you think your
friends can afford to pay.  I agree with you that
it is better to make them pay something for them.

"Rawlins, our butler, and two of the footmen
go regularly to the Christian Science church, and
Rawlins has been healed of intemperance through
Mrs. Goddard's butler.  Perkins says he owes his
conversion to the day Gladys Yancey walked across
the floor for Noel's doll.  So you see we all had
a hand in the work you started, and a little leaven
is leavening the whole lump.

"Oh, Carolina, you know how discontented and
fractious I used to be?  Well, it is all gone,--all
the fear, the dread of the unknown, the unhappiness,
and the temper, and I am happy for the first
time in my life!

"But now good-bye, my dearest friend.  I am
bringing some dandy glad rags with which to
astonish the natives.  Tell Peachie that I go to every
sale I hear of, and that I am bringing her and
Flower some of the dearest little inexpensive
remnants they ever saw.  Bless those girls!  It sorta
makes my old heart ache to think they haven't the
clothes they need to set off their good looks.

"Again good-bye.  Best love to Cousin Lois and
yourself from all of us.  And I am as ever your
slave.  KATE."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FEAR`:

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   CHAPTER XIX.


.. class:: center medium

   THE FEAR

.. vspace:: 2

Carolina had not been a week among her
kinsmen before they began to warn her of the terror
of the South.  They definitely forbade her ever
riding alone, except in broad daylight along the
public highway, and even then some white man
of her acquaintance generally made it his business
to be called in whatever direction she happened to
be going.

All this Carolina saw and felt and appreciated,
but with the natural fearlessness of her character
and the total want of comprehension which women
seem to feel who have never come into contact with
this universal dread of all Southern States,
Carolina often forgot her warnings, and tempted
opportunity by striking off the highway into the pine
woods to inspect her turpentine camps.

Once Moultrie La Grange found her unaccompanied
by any white man, talking to a burly negro
in a camp, and when he had taken her away and
they had gained the road where she could see
distinctly, she found him white and shaking.
Knowing his physical courage, this exhibition of fear
startled her, and for a few weeks she was more
cautious.

Then one afternoon she mounted Scintilla and
rode into Enterprise for the mail.  She received
the letter from Kate which has just been quoted
and read it as she rode along.  It contained so much
food for thought that Carolina forgot everything
else, until, looking up, she found that she was just
opposite the new terrapin crawl she was having
prepared under Moultrie's direction.  Without
thinking, she struck into the woods and threaded
her way among the giant pine-trees toward the coast.

It was virgin forest and on her own land, a tract
she intended leasing to some orchard turpentine
factors in Jacksonville.  It was twilight in the forest,
but Carolina rode forward fearlessly, glancing
sharply at the trees for signs of their having been
boxed by thieving negroes.

Suddenly she saw a boxed tree, and, springing
down, she drew Scintilla's bridle over her arm and
stooped to examine the suspected tree.  As she was
bending down, Scintilla jerked her head, and the
bridle slipped from Carolina's arm.  She sprang
to her feet, but, with a nicker of delight, the
handsome horse kicked up her heels and pranced away
from her, looking for all the world like a child ready
for a romp.

So free from fear she was that Carolina laughed
aloud, but the laugh froze on her lips, for, without
turning her head, she could see, crouching down
and creeping toward her, the huge form of a negro
man, whose half-open mouth and half-closed eyes,
as he stole noiselessly closer and closer, instantly
told her of her dire peril.

The girl's whole body became rigid with terror,--a
terror so intense and so unspeakable that she
realized how it was that women can go mad from
the effect of it.  In a moment, every warning, every
hint, every word that she had heard on the subject
flashed through her brain with lightning quickness.
An intense silence reigned in the forest, broken only
by Scintilla's cropping a stray tuft of spring grass
and the footsteps of the black creeping nearer to
his white prey.

Carolina never thought of screaming.  No white
man was within a mile of her.  Oh, for
Moultrie,--Moultrie, who had saved her once before!  A
sick feeling came over her--things began to swim
before her eyes--she swayed--and at the sight
of her weakness the negro stood upright.

He was no longer a crawling horror.  He was
a man, and her God was at hand!

The girl smote her hands together.  "His truth
shall be thy shield!"  "God is my all!"  "He is
my rock and my fortress!"  "Thou shalt call upon
me and I will answer!"  "Fear not, for I am with
thee!"  Detached sentences, phrases, half-sentences
fell from her lips in frozen whispers.  But the man
stood still.  He was no longer crawling toward her.
And they stood looking at each other.  He had
queer eyes,--one blue and one black--where had
she heard of such eyes--where had she seen this
very man?

"'Polyte!" she cried.

Instantly the white woman got the ascendency
over the black blood of the man.

"'Polyte, do you know who you are?  You are
the son of my father's nurse!  Your mother was
my father's black mammy!"

The assurance, even the confidence, left the man's
manner.  His shoulders drooped perceptibly.  He
took a backward step.  Surely she did not know
what he was or she would not speak to him except
to scream for help.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yas, missis."

"You don't know how you frightened me, until
I saw who you were.  Then I knew that you would
catch Scintilla for me.  Mr. Moultrie has told me
what a way you have with animals."

In an instant the man was her servant, the son
of her grandfather's slave.  His fear of detection
and punishment left him, and he was quick enough
to know that her supposed ignorance of his
intentions had saved him from a horrible death.  He
was a bad negro partly because he was so intelligent.

"I'll git her for you.  Jes' watch me!"

He turned eagerly toward the horse and snapped
his fingers.  Scintilla raised her head and began
to step gingerly toward the man.  'Polyte's power
over animals may have been hypnotism, but to
Carolina it was like magic to see Scintilla's bridle
in 'Polyte's hand.  The man proudly led the mare
to her.

"Help me to mount," said Carolina, her shaking
knees threatening every minute to give way beneath
her.  "No, hold your hand, and when I put my
foot in it, you lift me.  There!"

Once on her horse's back, Carolina felt her heart
begin to beat with less noise.  It seemed as if he
could see how it pounded against her side.

"'Polyte," she said, "you are what people call
a bad man.  You have been bleeding my trees, and
I don't know what all.  Why don't you behave?"

The man kicked at a tuft of moss.

"Nobody won't hire me, Miss Calline.  Ise done
been in de chain-gang too often.  Nobody won'
trus' me!"

"Well, if I will trust you, for the sake of your
dead mother, will you be good and faithful to me?"

The man's face lighted up.  He took a step
toward her.

"Will I?  Miss Calline, on'y jes' try me!  I kin
do anyt'in'!"

"I believe you.  Well, I'm going to try you.  I
want you to be my--well, my body-servant.  To
go everywhere I go and take care of
me--so--I--won't--be--frightened--again.  Will you?"

The man's eyes wavered in momentary terror.
But he kept his head.

"On'y jes' try me!"

"I'm going to.  But you must have a horse to
ride.  Look out for a good one, and one for me,
too.  You must get me, 'Polyte, the best
saddle-horse in South Carolina!"

"Yas'm.  I'll do my bes'.  I kin git you a hawse."

"I'll pay you good wages, 'Polyte.  But you
mustn't drink.  If a lady hires you, you can never
get drunk, you know."

"I'll tek de pledge."

"Take any pledge that you can keep," said
Carolina.  She gathered up the reins and turned her
horse.  The man took a step nearer.

"Well, 'Polyte?"

"Miss Calline--"

"Well?"

"Nobody ain't ever trusted me befo'!"

"Well?"

"Not even my ole mammy.  She voodooed me.
She said I brought her bad luck, an' everybody tuk
up de bad word agin me--"

"Well?"

"Even when I was a child, dey laid ever'thin' awn
to me."

"I know."

"Well, you say ''Polyte, I trus' you.  You tek
care ob me.'"

"Yes, that is what I say."

"Well, Miss Calline, *you gwine be teken cah ob*!"

"I am sure of it.  Good-bye, 'Polyte."

As she rode away, Carolina's shoulders drooped
until she seemed fairly to shrink in her saddle.

"If he had touched me--oh, my God!--if he
had touched me, I would have killed myself!"

She bowed her face in her hands, and the bitter
tears streamed through her fingers.

She strove to think--to quiet herself--no one
must know.  Suddenly she heard the hoof-beats of
a horse behind her.  She dashed away her tears
and straightened herself in her saddle.  If any
white man suspected the cause of her agitation, a
human life--the life of some black man--would
pay the forfeit.  'Polyte's life was in her keeping.
She began to think of him as her property,--a
human soul given into her power until it could be
saved through her ministrations.  God help him
to have got away!  God protect him!  Black or
white, he was God's child!  The tear-stained face
of a white woman,--a woman riding alone?

Scintilla had never felt a spur before in her life.
Carolina knew it by her snort of fright and
surprise.  But she needed her best speed to draw away
from the avenging white man on her track.

In her stall that night, Scintilla knew that there
was a sharp-toothed animal which had bitten her
twice in one short ride.  She had tried to run away
from it, but it was fastened to a woman's heel.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MOULTRIE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XX.


.. class:: center medium

   MOULTRIE

.. vspace:: 2

It was the last of March.  Spring, which comes
so early in the South, was already in the fulfilment
of her promise, and no lovelier spot could be found
than that portion of South Carolina which contains
the estates of Guildford, Sunnymede, and Whitehall.

Carolina, although working hard all of every day
and often far into some nights, was happier than
she had ever been in her life.  She was free from
the persecutions of Colonel Yancey at last.  Little
Gladys was now perfectly healed and as active as
other children.  Moultrie was proving a most eager
and progressive student of Christian Science, and,
while most of his narrowness and astonishing
ignorance was still painfully in evidence at times when
discussions of import took place, yet Carolina held
faithfully to the thought that perfect harmony must
result in time, and that such a fine mind as he
naturally possessed must yield to the enlightenment
which most men inherit.  Instead of this, however,
Moultrie La Grange inherited prejudices which had
dwarfed and hampered his mental and spiritual
advancement, and which mere friends overlooked.
But to Carolina, who loved him, they were
heart-breaking.  It was as impossible to discuss history
with most of her relatives as to expect them to speak
Chinese.  In the country schools they used a
history which described the Civil War as a series of
rebel victories, and the outcome of the war was
not accounted for in any way.  Carolina, in reading
the book at Moultrie's request, wondered if the
pupils, after a study of its facts, did not question
the sanity of Gen. Robert E. Lee for surrendering
a victorious and a gloriously successful army to a
conquered and outnumbered foe, simply because
General Grant asked him to.  When she handed the
history back to Moultrie, Carolina said, sadly:

"I wonder what you will say when I tell you that
my dear father, who was as loyal a Southerner as
ever lived, and who entered the Confederate army
when he was only sixteen years old, was engaged
at the time of his death in an elaborate life of
Abraham Lincoln, whom he regarded as the best friend
the South ever had, and the noblest patriot
America ever produced!"

The young man's face flushed with feeling, but
he was too wise to express his bitter disagreement
with Carolina's views.

But she knew how he felt and that, unless he
deliberately determined to open his mind to the
truth in every way, that she never could bring
herself to marry him, and thus court discord in her
daily life.

He did the best he could, but among his own
people he passed muster as an unusually fine fellow,
well-educated and progressive.  It was only when
brought into contact with a broad-minded, cultured
young woman like Carolina that Moultrie's intellect
showed its limitations.  However, the fact that he
was proud of his prejudices was the only alarming
thing about the whole situation.  Carolina saw his
possibilities.  She recognized his courage; she
trusted in his capacity to rouse himself from his
ignorance; she knew that he would some day
awaken to the impression he made upon cultivated
minds.  And the more she yielded to his charm,
to his chivalrous care of her, to the attraction his
almost ideal beauty had for her, the more she was
determined to save him in spite of himself.  She
knew that she could expect no help from his family,
who idealized him just as he was, and who would
have regarded an intimation that even a Benjamin
Franklin would have found him crude, as sacrilege.
Nor could relatives or friends avail, for did not all
in his little community think as he did, and were
not prejudices respected?  No, she realized that she
must save him unaided and alone.  Therefore, when,
in a burst of passion which nearly swept her off
her feet and left her shaken and trembling, he asked
her to marry him, she took her courage in both
hands and refused.

He stared at her in a dismay so honest and
unfeigned that she almost smiled.  Then his face
flushed, and he said, in a low, hurt tone:

"I understand.  You have urged me to believe
that Flower's ancestry was not the disgraceful
thing I suspect, when you could not bring
yourself to believe it.  That can--that must be your
only reason, for you love me, Carolina.  You have
shown me in a hundred ways that you liked my
care of you; you have permitted my attentions,
you have not discouraged my honest, ardent love,
which every one has been a witness to.  You do
care for me!  You cannot deny it."

"Moultrie," said the girl, slowly, "I do not wish
to deny it.  I never said I did not love you, for I
love you more dearly than you know or than you
ever will know.  I said I would not marry you,
but not, oh, not on Flower's account.  I believe
implicitly in all I have said of her.  If that were
all, I would marry you to-morrow.  But that is
not the reason."

"Then what is?  Oh, Carolina, love, *love*!"

"You don't know me at all, Moultrie, or you
would know what I am going to say."

"I reckon I don't, dear, for I haven't an idea
of the reason."

"Well, it is because we never could be happy
together, holding such different ideals and such
different codes of honour.  Colonel Yancey told my
father in London that he would find the South
heart-breaking, and it is."

The young man stared into her lovely face in a
very genuine astonishment.

"Our codes of honour different, Carolina?" he
said.  "Oh, I hope not.  I should be sorry to think
that your code of honour differed from mine."

"And, dear friend--"

"Don't call me friend!  I am not your friend!
I am your lover!"

"No, let me call you friend, for that is all that
I can call you at present.  I should be sorry to hold
a code of honour no higher than yours."

The slow, dark flush of pride and race rose in
the man's fine face.  Carolina was daring to say
such words to a La Grange.  But Carolina herself
was a Lee.

"I should be sorry," said Carolina, deliberately,
not waiting for his reply, "to be so narrow that
I could refuse an offer to improve my land, denuded
and mortgaged as it is,--an offer for the only
rights I had left to sell, and which would give me
plenty of money to enable me to restore the home
of my ancestors,--simply because the syndicate
furnishing the money was composed of Northern
men, thus, for a senseless prejudice, compelling my
mother and sister to eke out their income by
sewing for *negroes*!"

Had Carolina struck him in the face, he could
not have turned a whiter countenance upon her
than he did.  Twice he opened his lips to speak
and twice closed them again with the futile words
still unspoken.  His hands were clenched at his
side, his whole figure rigid with outraged pride.
Yet he continued to look his accuser in the face,
and Carolina honoured him for his courage even
while she could see self-knowledge dawn and
humiliation take the place of his dethroned pride.  The
first blow had been struck which was to unmask
his pitiable attitude,--the attitude of the typical
young Southerner of to-day, proud of his worn-out
prejudices, and unaware that his very pride in them
is in rags.

Carolina clasped her hands to hide their
trembling.  She could have cried out in pity for the
suffering in the face of the man she loved, but she
dared not speak one word of the sympathy her heart
ached to show, for fear of undoing her work.
Blindly she steeled herself for the words she feared
would pour forth.  Dully she wondered if, when
they came, they would end everything between them,
and preclude any possible overtures on her part
when the leaven should have worked.  But the
words, bitter or otherwise, did not come.  Still he
simply stood and looked at her.

Then, with a gesture both graceful and dignified,
he bent and took her hand and kissed it.

"I understand," he said, simply, and Carolina,
turning away, albeit sick at heart, felt a dawning
thrill of pride--her first--that she had come to
love this man.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LIGHT BREAKS`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXI.


.. class:: center medium

   THE LIGHT BREAKS

.. vspace:: 2

One afternoon, a few days later, there came
an hour of stifling heat, and Carolina, sitting in
her little cottage room with "Science and Health"
on her knees, heard the rise and fall of voices in
earnest discussion, which seemed to come from the
back porch.  When she appeared at the door to
ascertain who it was, she found Aunt Calla, the
cook at Whitehall, and Aunt Tempy, Flower's
baby's mammy, in animated conversation with Rose
Maud, her own cook.

"Dar she is now!" exclaimed Calla.  "Miss
Calline, I was jes' awn my way over hyah to ax
yoh advice as to what I shall do wid dat no 'count
Lily ob mine, when erlong come Sis Tempy in de
Barnwells' cah'yall, sent by Miss Flower to say
will you please come over to see de baby right away,
en Sis Tempy done fetch me wid her."

"Is anything wrong with the baby?" asked
Carolina, quickly.

"No'm! no'm!" cried Tempy.  "Miss Flowah
got somepin' mighty fine to show you.  Miss
Callina, de lill fellah kin see!"

"Oh, Tempy, how glad I am to hear it!"

"Well'm, I reckon you is de one what otto hyah
it fust," said the old woman, with a shrewd glance.

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Carolina.

The three women settled themselves with such an
air of having come to the point that Carolina felt
reasonably sure that they had been discussing the
affair, and that further concealment was no longer
of any avail.  She was surprised to see that,
instead of the hostility she had feared, each old woman
had the appearance of eager curiosity if not of real
interest.

"I means, Miss Callina, dat I believes--we all
believes--dat you done kunjered" (conjured) "de
chile en kyored him," said Calla.

"I ain't a-saying dat," put in Tempy.  "I ain't
a-saying but what you is raised de spell what de
voodoo done put awn de chile."

"En I tells um, Miss Callina," ventured Rose
Maud, Carolina's own cook, "dat hit's yoh new
religion what done it, en I tole em I believed dat
you is de Lawd Jesus come down to yearth de secon'
time, wid power to heal de sick, to cast out debbils,
en to raise de dead."

"Rose Maud, Jesus was a man, and you know
that He will never take the form of a woman," said
Carolina, "so don't ever say such a foolish thing
again.  But He gave that power to His disciples,
and this new religion of mine you are talking
about gives that same power both to men and women."

"Miss Callina," cried Tempy and Calla at the
same time, "has you got dat power?"

"Ask Rose Maud," said Carolina.

"I done tole 'em, Miss Callina," cried Rose
Maud.  "But dey is bofe doubtin' Thomases.  Dey
won't believe until dey sees."

"Miss Callina," pleaded Calla, "I cain't believe
jis' caze I *wants tuh so bad*.  Ef you kin mek me
believe, I would fall down awn my face wid joy.  I
ain't never been satisfied wid no religion.  Sis
Tempy will tell you.  Ise done jined de chutch en
fell from grace mo' times den I kin count.  But,
missy, *even niggers* want a trufe dat dey kin cling
tuh!"

"Dat's a fack, Miss Callina!" broke in Aunt
Tempy.  "En ef you will jis' put awn yoh hat en
go wid us in de Barnwells' cah'yall, en 'splain t'ings
to us lake Jesus done when He tuk de walk to
Emyus" (Emmaus), "you will be talkin' to thirsty
sinners what are des a-begging of you fur de water
ob life!"

Carolina remembered the great number of intelligent
coloured faces which were scattered through
the congregations of the beautiful white marble
church, with its splendour and glory of stained
glass, in New York, and she wondered if here, in
the pleadings of these three fat old coloured women
in the pine forest of South Carolina lay the answer
to the great and ever burning question of the white
man's burden.  As she debated swiftly, her heart
leaped to the task.  It was not for her to refuse
to spread the truth when it was so humbly and
earnestly desired.

"Come then," she said, "ask me questions, and
I will tell you the answers that my new religion
teaches.  You may come, too, Rose Maud."

The Barnwells' carryall went slowly out through
the great avenue of live-oaks from Carolina's little
cottage at Guildford into the "big road" which
led to Sunnymede.  But no one thought of the
incongruity of the three old coloured women and
Jake, letting the horses drive themselves, while he
listened with pathetic eagerness to the clear, earnest
tones of the white young lady, who simply and
sincerely answered the questions all four asked of her
with such painful anxiety and eager understanding.

Meanwhile the storm, which the intense heat
presaged, gathered, and they hurried the horses in
order to reach Sunnymede before it broke.

"Dat's all I ask," cried Aunt Tempy.  "I don'
need to ax no mo' questions.  Miss Callina done
fixed t'ings for old Tempy."

"I allus knowed dat I was a worshipper ob de
unknown God," cried Calla.  "Ef I had 'a' knowed
de right One, does y'all reckon He would 'a' let
me get away?  No, suh!  De Lawd hol's awn tuh
His own!"

The storm broke just as they reached Flower's
little cabin in the dreary stump-filled waste which
had once been the handsome estate of the La
Granges.  Flower met them at the door and welcomed them in.

"Hurry, Jake, and get the horses safe before
the rain comes.  Aunt Tempy, take Calla and Rose
Maud to the kitchen and give them some sassafras
tea.  Oh, Cousin Carolina, dearest, did Tempy tell
you?  Oh, the blessed, blessed news!  For two
nights now, the lamb has turned over in his crib
because the light hurt his eyes.  I didn't send for
you the first time because I wanted to be sure.  I
was reading the fourteenth of John, and when I
came to the verse, 'And if ye shall ask anything
in my name, I will do it,' I just threw the Bible
down and fell on my face on the floor and begged
God for my baby's eyesight.  And, when I looked,
he had turned over.  Oh, Cousin Carol, Cousin
Carol, I think I shall go mad with joy!"

"Let me see him," cried Carolina, rushing past
Flower and snatching up the baby.  "Oh, yes, dearest,
I can see even a different expression in his eyes.
And see how he blinks in the light!  Flower, your
baby is healed!"

"I know it," said Flower, reverently.  "And I
shall thank God for it on my knees every day of
my life."

A terrific flash of lightning at that moment almost
blinded them.  It was followed instantaneously by
a clap of thunder which nearly rent the cabin in
twain.  Flower immediately seized her baby, with a
face made ashen by fear, and looking apprehensively
at windows and doors, she whispered:

"The voodoo!  Watch for her!  She always
comes in a thunder-storm!"

At the same time the three old women, with Jake,
and Flower's black cook, old Eloise Lu, stumbled
into the room, crying:

"Foh de Lawd's sake, Miss Flower, honey, let
us in hyah!  De Day of Judgment sho has come!"

"Nonsense!" cried Carolina, with a sternness
none of them had ever suspected her of possessing.
"For shame, you Tempy and Rose Maud and
Calla!  Where is your new religion?  Where is your
understanding of the truth?  Is God going to
punish you for coming to Him as you just told me
you had come?  Oh, faithless disciples!  Now see
if *I* am afraid of a little thunder and lightning!"

They straightened up under her words, and, with
rapidly clearing faces, they watched her go toward
the open door.  The rain was coming straight down
with a terrific tropical downpour, and, as Carolina
stepped suddenly to the open door, she saw the same
figure she had seen before, in the act of leaving a
little clump of pine-trees to come nearer to the cabin.
The figure spied Carolina at the same time, and,
lifting a hand, beckoned to the girl.  Without a
thought of fear, but with rather a wild questioning
hope in her heart, Carolina, to the amazement of
the cabin inmates, and later on no less to her own,
stepped out into the pouring rain and ran toward
the shelter of the trees.

They all crowded into the doorway to see her
go, and, when they recognized the other figure, they
were speechless with awe.

Miss Carolina had deliberately gone to meet the
voodoo and lift the curse!  Then she was indeed
a chosen one of God!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IN THE VOODOO'S CAVE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXII.


.. class:: center medium

   IN THE VOODOO'S CAVE

.. vspace:: 2

As Carolina felt the rain drenching her to the
skin, the thought came to her, "This is the first
time in all my life that I ever was thoroughly wet
with rain, yet to how many of the less favoured
ones of earth this must be no unusual occurrence.
How sheltered my life has been!"

And the thought of God's protection went with
her as she approached the motionless figure under
the pines.

At first Carolina took the woman to be a quadroon,
but, on a nearer view, she saw that none of
the features was African.  Rather the high
cheekbones and sombre eyes suggested the Indian.

The woman held out her hand, and, as Carolina
yielded hers, the woman said, in a voice whose tones
vibrated with a resemblance to Flower's:

"You must come with me.  You will not be
afraid.  You are a Lee.  I have been waiting a long,
long time to get speech with you, but your wet
clothes must be dried.  Will you follow me?"

"Willingly," said Carolina, gently.

The woman did not smile, but her face lighted.

"You will not be sorry," she said, tersely.  Then
she turned and led the way.

The rain still came down in torrents, but, as
Carolina was already wet through, she thoroughly
enjoyed the novel sensation.  She remembered how
often, as a child, she had begged to be allowed to
go out and get sopping wet--just once!--and had
been denied.

Suddenly the woman paused.

"Do you know where we are?" she said.

Carolina looked around, but could see no possible
place of concealment.  The ground was flat and
somewhat rocky.  The river made a sudden bend
here, and in this clearing lay huge pieces of rock
half-embedded in the soil.  The timber had been
cut, and now a second growth of scrubby trees had
grown up, hedging the spot in a thicket of underbrush.

"No," said Carolina.  "I never was here before."

"But you will come many times again," said the
woman.  "Look!"

She knelt in the sand and scratched away with
both hands at the base of a great rock, until she
came to its edge.  Then with one hand she pushed,
and the great boulder was balanced so neatly on its
fellow that it slid back, revealing a natural cave.

The cool, underground air came in a wave to
Carolina's nostrils, laden with mystery.  Only one
moment she hesitated.

"You are sure we can get out?" she said.

"I am sure.  From where I stand I can see
through this underground passage the sail of a ship
on the ocean.  But this rock will not slip.  Watch me."

She was already in the cave, and she reached out,
and, with apparently little effort, pulled the boulder
into place, closing herself in.  Carolina put her hand
under the rock and felt its perfect balance give.  She
herself opened the cave again.

"I will come," said Carolina.  "Have you a light?"

Never could she forget the hour which followed.
She sat in this cavern, wrapped in an Indian
blanket, watching her thin clothes dry before the fire
the woman had kindled and listening to the
following story:

"I have watched you," said the Indian, "ever
since you came, and when I found that you were
the one to cause my daughter to take her rightful
place in the La Grange family--you start.  Flower
is my own daughter.  I am a half-breed Indian.
My name is Onteora.  Both my grandfather and
his father were chiefs of the Cherokee tribe.  I am
a direct descendant of the great chief Attakullakulla,
friendly to your people, who, in 1761, made
peace between the Cherokees and the great war
governor, Bull.  My father married a white woman
of good family, named Janet Christopher.  I, too,
married white blood.  I was married by Father
Hennessey, the Jesuit priest, to a Frenchman named
Pierre Pellisier, who died in Charleston in 1889.
I have the documents to prove all these things.
Here, I will show them to you.

"I am educated beyond my class.  I speak
French.  I can read and write, but no one knows
what I can do, because I have lived as an Indian
woman in order to avert suspicion from my child.
All my children died except Flower.  She was my
baby,--pure white, as you see, and so pretty!  Miss
Le Moyne, who educated Flower, knew the truth.
We agreed upon terms.  Miss Le Moyne would
have gone to the poorhouse if it had not been for
the money I gave her every week for the care of
Flower.  And yet she would have betrayed the
secret she swore by her crucifix to keep, if death
had not struck her dumb just in time!"

"But why," interrupted Carolina, "did you not
come forward after Flower's marriage and tell the
La Granges of her honourable birth?  It is a
proud heritage to have the blood of kings run in
her veins."

Onteora shook her head.

"The time was not ripe.  *It needed you to open
their eyes*.  Now they will listen because Fleur-de-lys
has found a friend!  You have rescued her
from their contempt.  You have rescued my
grandson from blindness--a blindness I knew the
moment I looked at him.  And for that reason I have
a gift for the daughter of the Lees--a gift she
will not despise!"

Onteora disappeared and when she came back
she held in one hand two silver coasters,
beautifully carved and inscribed in French, "From the
Marquis de La Fayette to his friend Moultrie Lee,
Esquire, of Guildford, 1784."  And in the other
a large silver tankard engraved, "To Major-General
Gadsden Lee, of Guildford, from his obliged
friend, George Washington, 1791."

Carolina's shining eyes were lifted from the
massive silver pieces to Onteora's face.  The woman
nodded.

"The famous Lee silver!  I have it all!  It was
I who removed it and hid it here.  It was in 1866,
before I was married.  I tracked 'Polyte and her
husband to its hiding-place and took it away.  No
one ever knew--not even my husband!  I never
knew why I kept it secret.  I saw the rewards
offered.  I could have been rich.  I could have
dowered Fleur-de-lys so that even the La Granges would
have welcomed her.  But something told me to
wait.  Wait!  Wait!  Now, I know why.  It was
to give it to you in return for my child's
happiness!  If I had returned it for the money, that
money would have gone to help ruin the La
Granges, and I should have come to you empty-handed!"

The woman was barbaric in this speech.  She
showed her Indian blood, her Indian power, her
Indian patience.

Carolina reached out her hand and Onteora took
it in both of hers.

"What do you wish me to do?" Carolina
asked, gently.

"Take these," said Onteora with sudden
passion, thrusting the documents toward Carolina,
"and show them to the La Granges!"

She sprang to her feet and folded her arms in
a matchless pride.

She was, in truth, an Indian.

The rain had ceased and Carolina's things were
dried.  Onteora helped her to dress, her eyes
shining with delight at Carolina's beauty, but she
expressed nothing in words.

"Come and see your silver," she said.

She led Carolina to a smaller cavern, where, by
the light of a candle, Carolina could see the black
shapes of all the silver Cousin De Courcey had
described to her.  But so cunningly was this cavern
concealed, that even one who discovered the cave
wherein they stood would never have found the
cavern.

"It reminds me of Monte Cristo!" she said to
herself in the breathless delight every one feels at
the touch of the romantic and mysterious in a
humdrum daily life.

Then, as she realized the boundless Source of
Supply whence this precious silver and thrice
precious information had come, Carolina turned and
put her arms around Onteora.

At this sign of human love, tears filled the eyes
of the Indian.





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.. _`LOOSE THREADS`:

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   CHAPTER XXIII.


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   LOOSE THREADS

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Goddard alone knew of Carolina's discouragements,
disappointments, and dangers, as the
summer came and went.  To all others the girl turned
a smiling face, and Mrs. La Grange often wondered
at her courage.  How could she know that there
were times when that sorely tried courage ebbed
so low that many a cipher telegram winged its
soft way to her practitioner for help, and that the
battle with tears and disheartenment was fought
out alone in the silence and sanctuary of her closet?

Often things went very wrong.  She was cheated
by men because she was a woman.  She was hated
by the rural doctors because she healed diseases.
She was an object of suspicion among the
neighbours because she was not "orthodox."  She was
accused of inciting the negroes to an idea of social
equality because she taught them.  Father
Hennessey gave her all the trouble he could, but
Carolina's constant and unvarying kindness to the poor
in his parish finally drove him to an armed
neutrality.  He hated her, but dared not show it too
openly, because she had powerful influence back
of her.  The La Granges rose to her defence *en
masse*, and carried all their enormous relationship
with them.  Carolina had removed the largest blot
from their escutcheon, and no price was too great
to pay.  Flower became the pet of the whole family,
and, in their gratitude, they even endeavoured to
provide for Onteora, but that wise woman, having
seen justice meted out to her child, silently
disappeared, and, beyond knowing that she lived and
wanted for nothing, they could discover no more about her.

She was not too far away, however, to keep the
unruly negroes in order, and many a warning went
out from the voodoo when Carolina's interests were
jeopardized.

'Polyte's surveillance was something Carolina had
not bargained for.  At first his devotion was
engendered by gratitude for the trust she placed in him,
and fear, for he knew that she actually held over
him the power of life and death.  Even if she were
ignorant of the true significance of that meeting
in the woods, at what moment might not some
stray anecdote bring home to her its meaning?
'Polyte was no fool, and there were times when
he writhed in a hell of fear.

Then gradually Carolina's personality began to
gain ascendency over him, as it had over Tempy
and Calla and Rose Maud, and even flighty ones
like Lily and her kind, and he worshipped her as
a superior being.  Carolina embodied to the negroes
the old times of prosperity and the patriarchal
protection of the whites.  They liked the idea of the
restoration of the old Guildford mansion.  Aged
negroes, who had known the place in its prime,
heard of its rebuilding and journeyed back many
weary miles to see "old mahstah's" granddaughter,
and to test her hospitality.  Several of these
Carolina annexed and housed in the clean and shining
new quarters, and she was amply repaid by their
real knowledge of past events and their idolatry
of herself as the last of the Lees.

'Polyte studied her every whim, and carried it
out with the zeal of a fetich.

The mare Araby became her property almost by
magic.  'Polyte would never say one word
concerning it, but one day Barnwell Mazyck sent word
to Carolina that she could have the mare on her
own terms, only he felt obliged to warn her that
Araby had turned vicious.

'Polyte spoke only one sentence.

"Ef you tek her, missy, she won't trick *you*!"

"Oh, 'Polyte!" cried Carolina, "what have you
been doing?"

"Not a t'ing, Miss Callina.  Honest!  Only I
raised dat mah, en I knows huh!"

Carolina still hesitated until Moultrie brought
word that Araby had nipped at Barney's hand, and
in a rage he had kicked her.  After that, the mare
would not allow him to approach, but even at the
sight of him she would rear, bite, and kick, so that,
being quite useless to her owner, he proposed to
sell her,--if not to Carolina, then to some one else.

Hearing that decided the girl.  She bought
Araby, and sent 'Polyte to fetch her.

The beautiful creature proved as gentle as a
lamb, and, even on the day when 'Polyte led her
up for Carolina to see, she nosed her new mistress
lovingly.

"Why, she seems just as usual," said Carolina,
but she did not see 'Polyte's heaving shoulders and
convulsed face.

Thus, for the most part, the negroes were
Carolina's friends.  They not only stood in awe of her
body-guard, 'Polyte, who knew them root and
branch, good and bad alike, but their childish
vanity was tickled by the beauty of the small white
marble chapel Carolina built on the estate, which
had an organ and stained-glass windows and a
gallery for negroes.

This had been Mr. Howard's gift to the little
band of Christian Scientists which he had found
on his first trip down South, meeting every Sunday
on Carolina's cottage porch, which, vine-shaded
and screened and furnished daintily, was as large
as the cottage itself.  He took infinite pleasure in
furnishing the finest material and in rushing the
work with Northern energy, and personally
supervising the building.

He well knew that he could please Carolina in
no better way, and, when Rosemary Goddard's
husband, the Honourable Lionel Spencer, became
president of the turpentine company, which was
organized on the basis of Carolina's investigations,
and confirmed by Mr. Howard's agents, and it
became necessary for the Spencers to live in South
Carolina, Rosemary was elected first reader of the
little church, and Carolina offered them the use of
her cottage until they could build, while she and
Cousin Lois took possession of the now completed
Guildford mansion.

Things were prospering with the La Grange
family.  Peachie had become engaged to Sir
Hubert Wemyss, who, urged by the example of his
friend Lionel Spencer, and the enormous profits
of the turpentine company, had invested largely,
and, after taking Peachie to England to meet his
family and make her bow as Lady Wemyss to the
king and queen, he promised to return to America
for half of the year.

Carolina went to New York twice during the
summer, and visited Sherman and Addie at their
camp in the Adirondacks.

To her surprise, she found Colonel Yancey there.
He had paid one or two mysterious visits to his
sisters at Whitehall, and had been deeply pleased
to discover that they were both members of the
little Christian Science church there.  He even went
so far as to ask Carolina to organize a Sunday
school, which had not then been done, and to enroll
Emmeline and Gladys as its first members.

He also took this opportunity, let it be said, to
offer himself to Carolina again, but promised her,
if she refused him this time, after he had declared
himself a believer in the new thought, that he would
never trouble her again.

Mr. Howard viewed Colonel Yancey's conversion
to Christian Science with amused toleration, but
Carolina, who knew why, held steadfastly to the
thought that there can be no dishonesty in the
perfect man, and so firmly did she cling to this
affirmation that, when Colonel Yancey, in the
Adirondacks, announced that the old oil wells had again
begun to yield, and that all the money which she
and Sherman had considered lost was by way of
being restored to them, Carolina resolutely closed
her eyes to any investigations which might unearth
disagreeable discoveries, even opposing her best
friend, Mr. Howard, in this decision, and simply
opened her arms to her reappearing fortune and her
heart in gratitude therefor.

Neither she nor Mrs. Goddard was even surprised.

"From the moment I knew that the man's change
of heart was sincere and that he was a true
Christian Scientist, I knew this restoration must come,"
she said, "otherwise no blessing of peace nor
untroubled night's sleep could come to him.
Christian Science lays bare the very root of error, and
when error is recognized in the light of day, it
must disappear from the heart of an honest man."

But Carolina only said in the depths of her own soul:

"See what Divine Love hath wrought!"

There were changes, too, going on in Moultrie.
He had never repeated his declaration of love to
Carolina, but in every unobtrusive way he made her
feel that she was surrounded by it, while as to the
lesson she had conveyed to him in that one stinging
sentence, which was never absent from the minds
of either of them, it was his mother who brought
word of its effect.

"Carolina, child, I never saw such a change in
any man in my life, as there is in Moultrie.  He
has subscribed for three or four Northern
newspapers, and as to books!  Not novels, mind you.
They are histories and biographies and Congressional
reports,--the driest things!  Peachie and I
tried to read them, but we couldn't, and, when I
asked Moultrie if he were getting ready to write
a book, he answered me in such a short way, 'No,
mother.  I am only trying to educate myself for
the first time.'  'Oh, son!' I said, for I assure you
I was hurt to hear my son, who has had the best
education of any of the boys around here, speak
as if he weren't satisfied with his education.  But
he only patted my head and said he was only
studying now for a purpose.  What do you reckon it is?"

"He has said nothing to me about it," said Carolina,
but Mrs. La Grange noticed her scarlet cheeks,
and, thinking it might be only a self-conscious blush,
dropped the subject.

Moultrie had asked Carolina if he might write
to her while she was away, and she had assented,
though with fear and trembling, for some of the
letters she had received on business from various
people contained serious shocks for a fastidious and
cultivated mind, but Moultrie's letters proved a
pleasant surprise.  Not only were they correctly
written and correctly spelled, but in them he had
dared to let himself go as he never had done in
conversation, and Carolina found not only a distinct
literary style but an imagination which astonished
her.  Although he carefully avoided subjects which
had been discussed between them, he showed a
breadth and largeness of view which could only
come from a wider vision of things in general.

Then came the time, after Carolina's return, when
the great turpentine company was being organized,
backed by unlimited capital, and destined to corner
the market "for educational purposes," as Kate put
it, when there arose a crying need for an honest
Southern man, one who knew the country well, one
who possessed the confidence of the sly, tricky
crackers,--those crackers so crafty that straight-forward
dealing is impossible,--who possess little
sense of honour, who are prejudiced beyond belief,
narrow beyond credence, ignorant beyond
imagination, who are only honest under compulsion, and
who require the greatest tact, not to say craft, in
handling.  These are the men who, for the most
part, produce the orchard turpentine, and who, for
the company's purpose, had to be tied up by
contract in long leases.  A Northern man could not
have touched them.  They will deal only with their
own, and even then must be "managed."

For two months the organization of the company
was held up because no one could be found capable
of filling this delicate position.

Then, to the relief of all, and to Carolina's secret
delight, Moultrie La Grange offered himself, and,
upon being instantly accepted, upon Mr. Howard's
and Carolina's advice, he leased them the stumpage
rights of Sunnymede, and then and there was born
the purpose to restore the home of the La Granges,
even as Carolina had restored Guildford--out of
money earned by the place itself.





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.. _`THE HOUSE-PARTY ARRIVES`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV.


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   THE HOUSE-PARTY ARRIVES

.. vspace:: 2

Ever since the restoration of Guildford had been
an assured fact, Carolina had looked forward to
gathering the dearest of her friends and relatives
under its roof for a housewarming, and as Thanksgiving
Day was the first festival to occur after its
completion, she issued her invitations for that day,
and anticipated the arrival of her guests with a
heart so full of gratitude that she walked with her
head in the clouds.

Beautiful Guildford stood upon its ancient site,
more beautiful by far than it ever had been before,
for Carolina had allowed herself a few liberties,
which, after seeing, even Judge Fanshaw Lee approved.

For example, the great flight of steps, as broad
as an ordinary house, was lengthened to raise the
house to an even more commanding position, and
to allow a better view of the ocean and river from
the upper windows and the flat, railed-in roof.  In
the midst of this great flight of steps was a platform,
where twenty persons might have dined at ease,
with a collateral flight of steps on each side,
leading, as well as the second section of the central
staircase, to the porch.  No one who has not seen
Guildford can form any idea of the imposing beauty
of this snowy expanse of steps leading to its
veranda.  And such a veranda!  Surely, the
observer exclaimed, the whole house could be no
larger! so great was the idea its size first induced.
It ran around all four sides of the house, and was
lived in for fully nine months of the year.  It was
fitted with screens and glass, which could be
removed at will, but for her house-party, so perfect
was the weather, even these slight obstructions to
the view were dispensed with.

Inside the house, however, Carolina had carried
out the original plan, with only the necessary
additions of bathrooms to each suite and plenty of
closets, which the old Guildford had never
possessed.  This did not interfere with the installation
of the great carved wardrobes, without which no
Southern house could look natural to a Southerner.

These she designed from old cuts and had made
to order, preferring new ones exactly like those
which had been in the family for generations to
purchasing old pieces which rightly belonged to
other histories than hers.  Guildford was frankly
a restoration, so she boldly reproduced the
furniture as well as the house.

With the papering she had some difficulty.  No
one could remember the exact patterns, and there
was more friction over diverse recollections of
wallpaper than over any other point.  But Carolina
waived all advice finally, deciding that decorations
were but temporary at best, and resting upon the
absolute word of Judge Fanshaw Lee, of Charleston,
that Guildford had been utterly redecorated
in 1859.

This decision gave Carolina a free hand, and
she exercised her taste to such good purpose that
the new Guildford, in its decorations, maintained
an air of age, yet so skilfully was it done that it
was also essentially modern.  Only patterns were
used which had borne the test of time, as one who
discarded in cut glass the showier designs for the
dignified simpler patterns, considering them more
restful to live with than those more ornate and
modern.

In her cut glass Carolina had been more
fortunate, owing to the possession of a few precious
pieces, preserved among the Lees, from which to
design.  The largest was a huge épergne, with
glittering pendants, which rose almost to the chandelier,
and was designed for pyramids of fruit.  It was
so delightfully old-fashioned that Carolina viewed
it with clasped hands.

Although electric light glowed unobtrusively
from submerged globes in walls and ceilings,
Carolina used sconces for the wax tapers of her
ancestors, and the delicate light was so deftly shaded and
manipulated that it seemed only to aid and abet the
candles.

The central staircase of the house rose from the
midst of a square hall, turned on a broad landing,
and wound, in two wings, back upon itself to reach
the second floor.  On this landing was an enormous
window, cushioned and comfortable, from which
the view of the fallow fields and winding river was
quite as attractive as the front view, which gave
upon the distant ocean.

The main hall pierced the roof, in the centre of
which was a gorgeous skylight of stained glass.
Here, too, Carolina had departed from the lines of
ancient Guildford, for no less a hand than that of
John La Farge designed that graceful group, whose
colours drenched the marble floor beneath with all
the colours of the rainbow.

A high carved balustrade ran around this space
on the second floor, from behind which, in years
gone by, the children and black mammies had
viewed the arrival of distinguished guests, whose
visits had helped to make Guildford famous.

From this square space, transverse halls ran each
way, with suites of rooms on both sides, ending in
doors which led to the upper porch, as large and
commodious and more beautiful than the lower,
because the view was finer.

This gives an idea of the plan of Guildford, but
not necessarily of other Southern houses, unless you
go back to old New Orleans, for Guildford partook
largely of the beauty of the Creole estates, owing
to the originator of the present design, who had
felt the influence of many foreign countries in his
travels.  Returning to spend the remainder of his
life in his native land, he had built Guildford--a
mansion in those days--in 1703, on the site of the
first house, built originally in 1674.  Thus, the
Guildford which Carolina built was the third actual
house to bear that name.

The morning of Thanksgiving Day dawned clear,
cool, and beautiful.  Carolina was up at sunrise,
full of delightful anticipations, and as brimming
with zeal for the pleasure of her guests as any young
bride in her first house.

Mr. Howard was bringing most of his guests in
his car, and only yesterday she had received a
telegram from him saying: "Am bringing an extra
guest, an old friend of yours, as a surprise.  Due
Enterprise nine A.M. to-morrow.  All Lees aboard."

Just as he had anticipated, this threw her into
a fever of curiosity.  It must be some one who
would be congenial, yet she fancied she had asked
everybody who seemed to belong.  Who could
the newcomer be?  Man or woman?  Old or young?

"All Lees aboard."  That meant that Sherman
and Addie had decided to come, after all.  She
wondered if they had brought the children.  All
Lees.  That *must* mean the children, because she
had invited them.  All Lees,--that meant also the
Fanshaw Lees, of Charleston, whom he had
promised to pick up on the way.  But who could the
other be?  Carolina almost shook the scrap of
yellow paper to make it divulge the secret.  How
uncommunicative telegrams can be!

There was plenty of room at Guildford,--that
was fortunate.  And every room was in order.
She would give him (?) her (?) the violet room
and bath in the south wing.  But if she only knew!

Rosemary and her husband were comfortably
ensconced in the cottage, and had asked to have
Mrs. Goddard under their own roof.  Colonel Yancey
and his children would, of course, be the guests
of Mrs. Pringle at Whitehall, but Carolina expected
as her very own, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, Kate, Noel,
and Sir Hubert Wemyss, Judge Fanshaw Lee and
his wife and children, from Charleston, Cousin De
Courcey Lee, Aunt Evelyn Lee, Aunt Isabel and
Uncle Gordon Fitzhugh, with the children, Eppie,
Marie, Teddy, and Bob.

Every neighbour within a radius of twenty miles
was anxious to help Carolina entertain her guests.
Moultrie had arranged a hunt, Aunt Angie was
to give an oyster roast on the shore, Colonel
Yancey had declared for an old-fashioned barbecue,
whereat all the negroes promptly lost their minds.
Mrs. Gordon Fitzhugh, after consulting Carolina's
plans, advised a fishing-party and picnic, rather an
oddity in November, with everything to be cooked
on the ground, including a 'possum with sweet
potatoes.  Carolina greeted each of these proposals with
tears in her eyes.  Never before had she been so
loved!  Hitherto, she had been surrounded by
courtiers, flattered and admired, always, however,
with a generous appreciation of favours to come.

But here, she was with her own, and her own had
received her with open arms and taken her into
their inmost hearts.

As Carolina walked in her garden, after her
morning canter on Araby, she wondered if any one
on earth was so fortunate as she.

A messenger came up the broad avenue, and
Carolina went to meet him.  It was with a note
from Mrs. Barnwell, saying that she was sending
the carryall to the station at Enterprise, for fear
Carolina, at the last moment, might not have room
for all her guests.

The Barnwells' carryall!  Carolina gave a laugh
that was half a sob, to think of the part that
ancient vehicle had played in her life during the last
year.  The neighbours had not seen the glistening
carriages and automobiles which stood as impatiently
as inanimate things so beautiful and alert
can be,--inanimate things which know that they
can go.  She turned to the messenger.

"Give my love to Mrs. Barnwell, Sam, and say
that I will ride home in the carryall myself, and
that I thank her for her kindness.  Can you
remember that, or shall I write a note?"

"I kin 'member it, Miss Calline.  Thank you, ma'am!"

Mrs. Barnwell subsequently got a message from
Sam to the effect that "Miss Calline sed she'd 'a'
had to walk her own self ef Mrs. Barnwell hadn't
'a' sont de ca'yall."  Which is about as accurate
as any message can be after going through the
brain of a negro.

Finally it was time to go to the train.  Carolina
had no fear that the train carrying the car of a
president of a Northern road would be late, so she
hurried Rosemary and Lionel and Cousin Lois into
her big blue French touring-car, and started.

As they sped down the great avenue, Carolina
looked back at Guildford, as a mother looks back
at her first-born child.  There rose the beautiful
house, just as the strangers would get their first
glimpse of it; for the last time the Howards came
South, only a dim idea of it could have been obtained.

There was not a hint of frost as yet.  Late roses
bloomed riotously in the garden, which Carolina
had been tending for the last eight months with a
view to this very day.  She had planned well.  She
did not intend to have a rebuilt Guildford look down
upon patches of brown earth, remains of mortar
beds, and broken-down shrubbery.  Every day she
had cautioned the workmen against destroying any
of her outdoor work, and, as fast as she could, she
had made the gardens, the lawns, and the hedges
keep pace with the builders, so that everything
might be completed practically at the same time.  A
dozen black forms were hurrying hither and thither,
bent on carrying out "lill mistis's last orders."  The
quarters glistened in the sunshine, even the dogs
asleep on the steps were just as Carolina had
pictured Guildford in her childish dreams in Paris.

It was a very excited little group which stood
on the tiny platform at Enterprise, waiting for the
train.

Finally, only half an hour late, its warning
whistle sounded, and scarcely had the brakes
squeaked, when Mr. Howard sprang from the
forward end of the rear car, followed by--Doctor Colfax!

Carolina could scarcely believe her eyes.  She did
not speak.  She only went with outstretched hands
to meet her friends, and something in the way
Doctor Colfax looked at her hinted at some great
change.  Then Mrs. Goddard followed, and, even
in the excitement of placing her people in the proper
vehicles, and in the midst of unanswered questions
and unlistened-to replies, Carolina noticed that
Doctor Colfax hovered near Mrs. Goddard.  She
wondered if he remembered the last thing he said
about her.  But, oh, the joy of seeing them friends!

Addie was wonderfully friendly.  She kissed
Carolina quite affectionately, and told her that Kate
Howard had succeeded in curing her neuralgia, to
which Carolina knew Addie had been a slave for years.

Addie's children, Cynthia and Arthur, were wild
with delight.  It was the first time they ever had
been South, and to leave snow in New York on
one day and see roses blooming the next was more
than their young imaginations could stand.

They always had been fond of their Aunt Carolina,
but now their comments on her beauty were
quite embarrassing.

As Kate sprang from the steps, a close observer
might have seen a telegraphic question flash from
Carolina's eyes to hers and a quick negative flash
back.  No one but a woman would have known
what it signified.  Still Carolina seemed satisfied
with Kate's radiant aspect.

Judge Fanshaw Lee was pompous but plainly
delighted, and ready to be pleased with everything.
Carolina was keen to see what he would think of
her daring, for he had promptly wet-blanketed her
every effort to assist him in any way.  But she
could see that he was impressed with the appearance
of her automobiles, and she fairly ached to have
him see Guildford.

To achieve this end, she gave personal instructions
to each chauffeur and driver to go by roads
which would enable her, even in the Barnwells'
carryall, to arrive at Guildford first.

"You aren't going in that thing?" cried Kate.
"There's plenty of room here."

"I'm going in it to accept the hospitality of a
dear neighbour," said Carolina.

Kate and Noel were seated in a little electric
runabout.  As they started ahead, Kate turned to
Noel and said:

"Somehow, I can't listen to anything Carolina
says lately without knowing that the bridge of
my nose is going to ache before she turns me loose."

"She certainly is the most angelic creature!"
said Noel.

Kate looked at him out of the tail of her eye.

"Do you like angels?"

"I do, indeed."

A pause.

"But I could never fall in love with one."

"Oh!" said Kate.

Noel cleared his throat once or twice, as if trying
to say something.  Finally he said:

"Kate, won't you be hurt if I say an indiscreet
thing?"

"Certainly not.  You know you can say
anything you like to me.  I'm not a fool."

"Well, here goes, then.  I've been noticing lately
that you don't stammer any more.  Are you being
treated for it?"

"No," cried Kate, plainly delighted.  "I am
treating myself."

"Then, don't!" cried Noel.  "Kate, I can't bear
it.  Yours was the most attractive, the dearest
little mannerism--not a bit disagreeable.  Your
speech, so far from being marred by it, was only
made distinctive.  I--I feel as if I had lost my Kate!"

His voice sank with unmistakable tenderness at
the last words, and Kate stiffened herself, as if
prepared for a plunge into ice-water.  Finally she
caught her breath sufficiently to say, awkwardly:

"If you care, Noel, of course I w-won't."

"If I care!" cried St. Quentin.  "Do I care
about anything or anybody else in all this world
except Kate Howard?  Don't talk as if you didn't
know it."

"K-know it!" cried Kate, stammering quite
honestly.  "Indeed," as she told Carolina later,
"after that, I'd have stammered if I'd been cured
of it fifty times over.  A proposal is enough to
make any woman stammer!"

"Indeed, and I didn't.  I th-thought you were
in love with C-Carolina."

"Carolina!" cried Noel.  "Carolina!  Well, you
are blind!  As if she would ever look at me, in the
first place--"

"Oh, so that was your reason," interrupted Kate.

"And in the second place," pursued Noel, calmly
ignoring the interruption, "she is in love with--"

"With whom?" exploded Kate, gripping his arm.

"Why, with La Grange!  Did you never notice
them together last spring, and then the way she
speaks of him?"

Kate let her own love-affair slip from her mind,
while she thought rapidly for a few minutes.

"I believe you are right," she said, slowly, "but
I can tell you something more.  They are not
engaged.  Something is separating them."

"I think so, too.  Possibly Carolina is holding
off.  I've noticed that girls have a way of doing that."

Kate's face crimsoned.  She afterward told Carolina
that, if Noel had caught her laughing, he would
have known all.

But her obstinate silence left it to Noel to continue.

"Kate," he said, finally, "when you get through
playing with me, will you begin to take me
seriously?  I'm tired of your game.  Now don't
pretend that you haven't been baiting me."

"Honestly, Carolina," said Kate, afterward,
"I'm telling you this j-just so you'll know how
d-dog funny the whole thing was.  Here I've nearly
had nervous prostration for a year, wondering if
he ever *would* propose, and then he went and
accused me of playing a game to hold him off!  Aren't
men fools?"

"I--I thought when you g-got good and ready,
y-you'd speak your mind," said Kate to Noel.  "I
c-couldn't go down on my knees and b-beg you to
name the day, could I?"

"Do you mean to tell me," said St. Quentin,
"that you will accept me,--that you will marry
me, Kate?"

"T-that's just what my p-poor, feeble speech
is t-trying to g-get through your th-thick head,"
said Kate.

But Noel refused to be amused.  He reached for
Kate's hand, and, in spite of Kate's impertinence,
if he had looked, he would have seen tears in her eyes.





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.. _`BOB FITZHUGH`:

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   CHAPTER XXV.


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   BOB FITZHUGH

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Even Carolina was satisfied with the expression
on Judge Fanshaw Lee's face when he was whirled
up the great avenue of live-oaks, and the new
Guildford burst upon his view.  He had snow-white
hair, a pale olive complexion, and piercing black
eyes.  His eyebrows were still black, and he had
a ferocious way of working them back and forth
very rapidly when he was moved.  This was one
sign by which Carolina could tell; another was that
the unusual colour came into his face.

Even before the guests had been to see their own
rooms, Carolina was implored to lead the way and
let them explore Guildford.  This she was as eager
to do as a young bride, and yet, in spite of her
natural pride in her achievement, her modesty was
so sincere and delightful that Judge Lee and
Mr. Howard were obliged to ply her with questions.

The exclamations of delight were perfectly
satisfactory, even to Mrs. Winchester, who moved with
majestic mien in their midst, listening with a
jealous ear for praises of her idol, and, by her
questioning eyes, plainly demanding more of the same
kind.

Mrs. Goddard's eyes were dewy with gratitude,
and Carolina whispered to her that she--Mrs. Goddard--was
Guildford's fairy godmother.

When they had all returned to the drawing-room,
Mr. Howard turned to Judge Lee and said:

"Well, judge, what is your opinion?  Isn't this
pretty good for one little girl to accomplish all
by herself?"

"Mr. Howard," said Judge Lee and his eyebrows,
"it is the most marvellous thing I ever heard
of a young girl achieving.  Why, sir, to us Southerners,
it is nothing short of miraculous.  Here are
scores of my own dear friends, similarly
situated,--land poor, they call themselves,--yet, as I
cannot doubt Carolina's word or your figures, and
you both assert that Guildford has paid for itself,
each and every one of them might restore their
property in a similar manner.  I had no idea of
the value of this new turpentine company of yours."

"Aren't you sorry now, Cousin Fanshaw," said
Carolina, mischievously, "that you wouldn't invest
when we wanted you to?"

Judge Lee cleared his throat and reddened
slightly.  He did not relish being jested with.

"I think I am, Carolina," he said.  "God knows
I needed the money, but, if you will allow me, under
the circumstances of your great triumph, to be
ungallant, I will tell you that I did not have any faith
in a woman's head for business."

"Few of us have, I think," said Mr. Howard,
coming to his rescue.  "At first, I did not, but
Carolina was so sure that I began it as an
experiment which was likely to cost me dear.  I have
ended by believing in it with all my heart."

"Of course I have had a great deal of help,"
said Carolina, generously.  "Mr. La Grange is
very influential, and I am sure I could not have got
the telephone and electric light without him.  They
were carrying lanterns in Enterprise when we first
came down here, and I expected to have to get
along with acetylene, which I greatly dislike.  But
he told me that for the last ten years the subject
of electric lighting had been agitated, and that he
believed a little new blood and ready money would
start the thing.  That was easily managed, but the
cost of bringing the wires to Guildford was greater
than I expected.  However, in another year several
other estates will need lighting, and I shall carry
it for them over my wires, and thus reduce my
initial expense materially."

"Who owns the control in the electric company?"
asked Judge Lee.

"Why, Carolina does, of course!" said
Mr. Howard.  "You don't suppose my little Napoleon
of Finance would commit such an error of
judgment as not to keep that?  Nevertheless, she put
up the poles from Enterprise to Guildford at her
own expense.  She wouldn't take any unfair
advantage of her control."

Judge Lee glanced at his cousin in half-way
disapproval.  He greatly disliked a woman who
understood finance, and he privately considered Carolina
unsexed.  If she had not been beautiful, he would
have said so, but her girlish loveliness saved her.

Judge Lee looked around.  On every side familiar
objects met his eye.  It was the same Guildford
of his ancestors, yet enlarged, dignified,
engrandeured.  His gaze clung affectionately to the heavy,
quaint furnishings, so cunningly reproduced that
they might well pass as the ancient pieces they
represented.  He began to realize the enormous amount
of hard work this indicated,--of the hours and
days of unremitting toil,--of the discouragements
overcome,--the obstacles surmounted,--the love
this mirrored.

Finally he turned to Carolina, with his keen eyes
softened.

"I do not understand how you accomplished it,
little cousin.  It is a marvellous achievement for
any one!"

"I did not accomplish it of myself," said
Carolina, gravely.  "I never in the world could have
done it if--"

"If what?"

"I hear that it annoys you even to hear the
words," said Carolina.  "Nevertheless, I must tell
you that the whole of Guildford is a demonstration
of Christian Science."

A deep silence fell, and the eyes of the two men
met.  Judge Lee's fell before the corroboration he
met in Mr. Howard's.  A sudden softening took
place in his heart.

"I begin to believe that there is something in
this thing, after all," he said, slowly.

A babel of voices broke in upon their conversation
just here, as the guests trooped down from
their rooms, exclaiming with admiration on every
hand.  Sherman and Addie were particularly
delighted, but they looked at Carolina wonderingly,
as if uncertain whether this were the same sister
they had known before.

Carolina bloomed like a rose under all the
admiration her work received, but she was too busy
to drink it all in.  She had, for one thing, the
children to amuse.  Emmeline Yancey, a
serious-browed child with grave eyes, was her right hand,
and to Emmeline and Bob Fitzhugh she confided
her plans.  Hardly had the children learned of the
delights in store for them, when the guests began
to arrive.

Then, such a rushing to and fro!  Such a calling
for servants!  Such hurried dressing!  Such a
gathering up of children, and a general hastening
of duties which should have been performed before!

Introductions to the few who had not met before
seemed like a meeting of old friends, so warm was
the welcome and so well known the existing friendships.

Carriage after carriage rolled up the drive and
deposited Fitzhughs, La Granges, Manigaults,
Pringles, and Yanceys, until Guildford resembled the
palmiest days of its predecessors.

Peachie and Sir Hubert Wemyss and Noel and
Kate were receiving sub rosa congratulations, and
beaming faces were everywhere.  Moultrie's eyes
followed Carolina wherever she was, and none
noticed it more jealously than a slim, blue-eyed boy
who would not mingle with the other children, even
when Emmeline begged him to.  He only shook
his head, and continued to watch his divinity.

Then old Israel, who had been a rascally boy
in the days of Carolina's grandfather, flung open
the doors and the guests trooped out to the dining-room.

Every one stood and exclaimed with delight at
the sight which met their eyes.  The majestic
dinner-table of Guildford, which would seat forty,
stood in the centre of the room, flanked by
side-tables groaning under the glorious old Lee silver
and glass and china, such as no contemporaneous
eye had seen, but so often had those gathered here
heard its beauty described that it seemed a familiar
sight.

The children had a table to themselves, and this
was set across one end of the room.  Emmeline
was to be the mother and Bob Fitzhugh the father,
and actually carve the turkey.

"He'll spill the gravy and drop the turkey on
the floor, Carolina," cried his mother.

"Let him," said Carolina.  "Who cares?  But
this turkey will be so good that he will stay on
the platter, as I shall bid him, and Bob shall carve
him, and Emmeline shall serve the plum pudding!"

Shrieks of joy went up from the children at this
daring announcement, and all the parents were made
radiant by their babies' happiness.

The table was long and low, with chairs to match,
and the children saw with jealous delight that it
was copied exactly from the big table, even to the
bowls of flowers and pyramids of fruit.  They even
had their tiny champagne glasses, in which 'Polyte,
who was their butler, poured foaming ginger ale,
so that they could join in the toasts which Judge
Fanshaw Lee proposed.  They wriggled with an
ecstasy they never had felt before, and never, never
did they have such a time as at Cousin Carolina's
Thanksgiving dinner at Guildford.

The climax came to their awe when, at the end
of everything, Mr. Howard arose, glass in hand,
and announced--what everybody knew--the
engagement of his daughter Kate and Noel St. Quentin,
and gave them his blessing, and everybody cried
and laughed and drank their health.  The children's
round eyes almost popped out of their heads.  To
be present at a real betrothal!  It was more
exciting to the little Southerners than a negro baptism.

Bob Fitzhugh's face was seen to grow very red,
and then suddenly he pushed back his chair and
strode to where Carolina sat, and said, in a sturdy
voice:

"Cousin Carolina, why can't we announce our
engagement?  You know you promised to marry me."

He stood crimson but dauntless under the shrieks
of laughter which followed his speech.  Carolina's
face was very rosy also, and she was seen to steal a
mischievous glance at Moultrie La Grange, which
somehow set his heart to beating with hope.

She put her arm around Bob and kissed him on
the forehead before them all.

"Bob, dear, it is too soon," she whispered,
consolingly.  "You know I said if you wanted me
in ten years and I was still unmarried--"

"Oh, but Cousin Carol!" cried the boy, "you
are so beautiful that unless you promise to wait for
me you are sure to be snapped up.  Father said so."

An added wave of colour flew to Carolina's face,
and she hid her face in the boy's shoulder, when, to
her surprise, she heard the voice of Col. Wayne
Yancey saying:

"Bob, my boy, if she should promise you, you'd
have to fight me, and fight me to the death."

Bob looked at him, and stiffened.

"Are you after her, too?" he cried, angrily.

"I've been after her longer than you have.  And
I'm not the only one."

Bob turned despairingly to his father.

"How many does that make?" he roared.

The laughter of the grown people passed unheeded.

"Never mind, son," said his father.  "Colonel
Yancey's name completes the list.  There isn't
another bachelor or widower left in South Carolina.
It's just the way the girls used to treat me, son,
but afterward I met your mother and she made
everything all right."

The boy flew to his father's side, and hid his head.

"Girls are all alike, son.  You'll have to bear it.
We all have to.  Turn around here and ask your
Uncle De Courcey why he is a bachelor.  Ask your
mother how many boys she flirted with before I
came along.  Be a man.  Look there at Emmeline
and Gladys and--"

Bob burst away with a roar of pain.

"Emmeline is about right for Teddy!" he
exclaimed, in wrath.  "I want a grown woman.  I
don't want anybody but Miss Carolina Lee.
Moultrie knows how it is, don't you, Moultrie?  When
you've once loved a girl like Carolina, how would
you like it to be told to take up with anybody else?"

"I just wouldn't do it, that's all!" said
Moultrie, looking squarely at Carolina.

"Bob," said Carolina, severely, "you are
embarrassing Mr. La Grange and me dreadfully.
Won't you please go back to your place and make
me feel that I can depend upon you to protect me
instead of exposing me to laughter like this?"

The boy's eagle glance flew from one convulsed
face to another.  Then he showed his blood.  He
came to Carolina's side, and put his arms around
her neck and kissed her cheek, whispering:

"I'll never speak of it again.  They can laugh
if they want to, but some day you'll remember that
I behaved when you asked me to."

He went back to his seat and Carolina looked at
Emmeline, and both little ladies rose from the heads
of their tables and led the way to the drawing-room.

But Carolina was uneasy.  She could not forget
the look that Moultrie La Grange shot at her, when
Bob said, "After you have once loved a girl like
Carolina, how would you like to be told to take up
with anybody else?"

She knew the time was approaching when he
would ask his question over again, and she was not
prepared yet to give an answer.  She was sure he
was on the right track, but she was not sure that he
would persevere.

The chill of autumn always manifests itself in
November days in South Carolina after the sun
goes down, and when the guests repaired to the
library, they found a great log fire, the size of
which they had never seen before.  For weeks
Carolina's servants had scoured the woods for a
backlog of sufficient girth to please their mistress, but
it was 'Polyte who finally secured the prize.

Around this glorious fire they all gathered, and
something of the way Guilford had been restored,
as well as the gentle tranquillity of the twilight
hour, crept into their hearts and tinged the
conversation with an intimacy which years of ordinary
social intercourse could not have accomplished.
Christian Scientists all over the world will recognize
this as a fact peculiar to themselves.  If
church-member meets church-member of any other
denomination, they are forced to become acquainted as is
usual in society, because there is no unanimity of
thought, and each is bound for his or her particular
goal by independent and widely diverse routes.  But
in Christian Science instantaneous intimacies are
possible, because it is the one religion which requires
comparative unanimity of thought, and all are
travelling in the identical path which leads to the
ultimate perfection of harmony.

Thus, with no other light than the firelight and
with no further introduction to the dear people of
the Southland, than that they were either Christian
Scientists or Carolina's beloved kinfolk, no one
was surprised when Doctor Colfax said:

"You showed no astonishment this morning,
Miss Carolina, when you saw me among the guests
Mr. Howard was bringing to your beautiful
house-warming.  And as I know the type of your mind, I
know that you will ask no questions.  Therefore, I
owe it to you to tell you, and believe me, I am
delighted to include your friends.

"You, Mrs. Winchester, remember meeting me
on the train as you were coming from Boston.
You thought I had been to take a rest.  I had.  But
it was a rest in a hospital from an operating-table.
It was my second operation for cancer of the throat.
My inexcusable show of anger at your house,
Mrs. Howard, the night I saw the miracle of Miss
Carolina's healing, was induced and aggravated by the
knowledge of the ordeal before me and of the
futility of it.  My brutal words against Mrs. Goddard,
this dear, dear woman, whom I have learned to
revere and love as my best friend, were uttered
because I longed to go and fling myself at her feet
and ask her if she could cure me.  If any of you
men who were there that night--if you, St. Quentin,
had knocked me senseless and taken my unconscious
body to a Christian Scientist for treatment,
I should have thanked you on my knees.  But none
of you knew.

"Well, I went through this second operation, and
it proved as futile as the first had done.  Within
six months I was confronted by the certainty of the
third, and this I felt sure would be fatal.

"With the horrible fear of death before my
mental vision, and no faith in surgery, I one day
made up my mind to call on Mrs. Goddard, to tell
her the ungentlemanly, unmanly words I had used
against her in public, to beg her pardon, and if she
forgave me, to implore her help for my hideous malady.

"Dear friends, you, who know her, know how
she received me.  But none of you know that under
her treatment I was entirely cured.  Nor does she
know what I am about to say, for only since I came
down here and lived among you and saw your
beautiful lives, have I decided.  Mrs. Goddard, I
owe it to you to tell you first.  I have decided to
give up the practice of materia medica, which failed
me in the hour of my greatest need, and I intend
to study to be a Christian Science practitioner."

A startled murmur ran through the group.  Even
with all their faith, this came as a surprise, for the
name of Doctor Colfax stood for so much in the
medical world.  Few men would have dared to show
so much moral courage.  Only Mrs. Goddard seemed
to understand, for she reached out her hand to him,
and he bent and kissed it before them all.

"I give up!" cried Colonel Yancey, to relieve
the tension.  "Cousin Lois, look at all these lovers
holding hands, and thinking we don't see them, and
say whether you and I shall be left out."

"Wayne Yancey," said Mrs. Winchester, "I'm
not going to be left out of anything.  I have come
to the point where I don't believe in the Church of
England the way I did, and, if I decide to become
a Christian Scientist, there is no telling but that I
may forget what a rascal you used to be in what
they call 'the old thought' and decide to marry
you in the new!"

Thus Guilford began at once to take her proper
place as the mystic spot where lovers' vows were
plighted almost before they knew it, so replete it
was with all that goes to make a home, and, as the
dancing flames died down, Carolina felt a soft hand
steal into hers, and looked down into the wide eyes
of her niece, little Cynthia Lee.

"What is it, darling?" she asked.

"I feel," whispered the child, "that strange
things are going to happen at Guildford, and that
you and I shall always be in the midst of them!"

Carolina, instinctively realizing that this was a
psychic moment for the imaginative child, slipped
her arm around Cynthia's delicate waist, saying:

"Why do you feel it, Cynthia?"

"Listen, Aunt Carolina.  Something of all the
queerness I have heard since I came down here
makes me feel that I shall lead a stormy life, and
that I shall need this thing and want it and be
unable to accept it until I am beaten by everything
else.  Do you understand me?"

"Only too well," sighed Carolina.

"Then I shall want you, and want you terribly."

"I shall always be here, dearest."

"That is what comforts me," said the child, the
mystic light dying out of her eyes.  "It is what
comforts me about the whole thing.  I know it will
always be there when I want it.  I have talked to
Emmeline about it.  Even little Gladys taught me
her hymn."

And the child and the woman looked into each
other's eyes, knowing that their souls were akin,
and that the witchery of the twilight hour had
opened floodgates closed by day, but which opened
when the soul felt the need of speech.

"I am glad you told me, Cynthia," said Carolina.
"The only answer to all of life's puzzles, I have
found in this awakened sense of mine, which will
surely come to you some day.  Remember it when
the waters grow too deep."

"The answer to all life's puzzles," echoed Cynthia.

"Sing, child," said Carolina.

And Cynthia, whose voice was like the rippling
water and the sounding of silver bells, began to sing
what Gladys called her hymn:

   |   "'And o'er earth's troubled, angry sea
   |     I see Christ walk,
   |   And come to me and tenderly,
   |     Divinely talk!'"
   |

As the child sang, every feeling in every heart
melted, until only love remained, and, when she
finished, Kate cried out:

"It's all over!  I d-don't hate Mrs. Eddy any
more.  I--I've been healed of it by Cynthia's
singing."

The child's lovely voice had so sadly shaken
Carolina's composure that, under cover of the
half-darkness, she rose and made her way quietly to a
little hall which led to a private staircase, intending
to gain her own room and recover herself before
her guests began to take leave.

As the voices rose and fell, she moved nearer and
nearer the door, too intent upon her own ends to
notice that Moultrie La Grange had likewise detached
himself from the fireside group and disappeared.

As she finally stepped behind a group of palms
which concealed the door, she sprang lightly into
the dark passage and flung herself headlong into the
arms of Moultrie La Grange, who had come in that
way to intercept her flight.

He was not slow to take advantage of the very
opportunity he had come to seek, and, after one
brief struggle, so slight that it was like the fluttering
of a bird, she hid her face in his shoulder, with
a little sob in which relief and joy and love were
mingled.

He said nothing, only held her close and kissed
her hair, until her arms stole upward and curled
around his neck, and she whispered:

"Moultrie, dear, dear Moultrie, will you forgive
me for what I said to you that day?"

"I have nothing to forgive, dear heart.  You
only said it because you loved me."

Tears filled her eyes, and she drew closer to him,
whispering:

"I knew that first night in New York at the
opera--that this hour would come--and just now,
while Cynthia was singing, I knew that--you
would understand--everything!"

"I would not have dared to speak to you again,
dearest," he answered, "if I had not emptied my
soul of self and got rid of that which separated us.
But--I have been working since you showed me
where I stood with you, and I, too, under the spell
of that child's voice, have come to the point where
I can say that, if you think I am capable of it,--and
worthy to be the successor of such a man as
your idolized father,--I would be proud to
complete his work on Abraham Lincoln, and, with your
consent, we will call it 'The Debt of the South
to Lincoln.'"

For reply, Carolina lifted his hand to her lips
and kissed it.  She could make no reply to such a
surrender as that, but in that hour she lifted her
hero to a pinnacle, whence he never was dislodged.

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   THE END.

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