"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. HowI 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!"
CHAPTER XIV
KINFOLK
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!