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.
CHAPTER XXV
BOB FITZHUGH
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 p