Carolina Lee

Cover

Carolina Lee

CAROLINA LEE

LILIAN BELL

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

With a frontispiece in colour by

DORA WHEELER KEITH

NEW YORK
A. WESSELS COMPANY
1907

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

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO MY FRIEND

Ella Berry Rideing

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

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

[Captain Winchester Lee]
[The First Grief]
[The Danger of Wishing]
[The Turn of the Wheel]
[Brother and Sister]
[The Stranger]
[Mortal Mind]
[Man's Extremity]
[The Trial of Faith]
[Cross Purposes]
[In Which Truth Holds Her Own]
[Whitehall]
[Guildford]
[Kinfolk]
[The Blind Baby]
[A Letter from Carolina]
[In the Barnwells' Carryall]
[A Letter from Kate]
[The Fear]
[Moultrie]
[The Light Breaks]
[In The Voodoo's Cave]
[Loose Threads]
[The House-party Arrives]
[Bob Fitzhugh]

CAROLINA LEE

CHAPTER I.

CAPTAIN WINCHESTER LEE

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!

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST GRIEF

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.

CHAPTER III.

THE DANGER OF WISHING

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.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TURN OF THE WHEEL

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.

CHAPTER V.

BROTHER AND SISTER

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?"