Carolina Lee

Carolina's spirits began to rise. She felt ashamed of her hasty disillusionment. Where was her courage that she should be depressed by clouds of dust and the lack of a bathroom?

In the early evening, with the shadows lengthening on the grass and the pitiless sun departed, the ruin everywhere apparent seemed only picturesque, while the warm, sweet odours from the garden were such as no Northern garden yields.

There were narrow paths bordered with dusty dwarf-box, with queer-shaped flower-beds bearing four-o'clocks, touch-me-nots, phlox, azaleas, and sweet-william. Then there were beds upon beds of a flower no Northerner ever sees, – the old-fashioned pink, before gardeners, wiser than their Maker, attempted to graft it. In its heavy, double beauty it always bursts its calyx and falls of its own weight of fragrance, to lie prostrate on the ground, dying of its own heavy sweetness. Against a crumbling wall were tea-roses. In another spot grew a great pink cabbage rose, as flat as a plate when in full bloom, with its inner leaves still so tightly crinkled that its golden heart was never revealed except by a child's curious investigating fingers. And curiously twisting in and out of the branches of this rose-tree was a honeysuckle vine. Over one end of the porch climbed a purple clematis. Over the other a Cherokee rose. But the great glory of the garden was over against the southern wall, where roses of every sort bloomed in riotous profusion. Evidently they bloomed of their own sweet will, and with little care, for the garden was almost as neglected as the rest of the place.

Still it was the first thing which brought back to Carolina "a memory of something" she "never had seen," as she told Cousin Lois when she went in, and she made an excuse to go out alone after supper was over and the three ladies were comfortably seated in rocking-chairs on the front porch.

"Don't sit in that chair, Mrs. Winchester," Carolina heard Miss Sallie's voice say, as she ran down the steps into the garden. "That chair has no seat to it, and the back is broken to this one. Sit in this chair. I think it won't be too damp here to wait for Moultrie."

The girl could smile now, for the witchery of the evening was on the garden, and its perfume enthralled her senses. She walked until she got beyond the sound of voices on the front porch, and, at the head of a set of shallow terraces, set like grassy steps to lead down to the brook which babbled through the lower meadow, she sat down to let her mind take in the sudden change in her life.

She rested her chin on her hands and was quite unaware that, in her thin blue dress, with frills of yellow lace falling away from the arms above the elbows, and with her neck rising from the transparent stuff like an iris on its slender stem, she made anything of a picture, until she became aware that some one was standing quite still on a lower terrace and looking at her with so fixed an expression that she turned until her eyes met his. Most girls would have started with surprise, but to Carolina it was no surprise at all to find the stranger of the Metropolitan Opera and the stranger who had borrowed her brother's dog-cart, a part of the enchanted garden, and to feel in her own heart that he was no stranger to her, nor ever had been, nor ever could be.

They looked at each other for a few moments, the man and the woman, and the sound of the brook came faintly to their ears. But the scent of the garden was all about them and there was no need of speech.

Slowly Carolina smiled, and he reached up his hand to hers and took it and said:

"You know me?" and she said:

"Yes."

"And I know you," he said, "for I have felt ever since that first night that you would come."

"That first night?" she breathed.

"At the opera," he said.

Then he drew back strangely and looked around at the garden and frowned, as if it had been to blame for the words he had spoken when he had not meant to speak. But, although Carolina saw the look and the frown, she only smiled and breathed a great sigh of content and looked at the garden happily.

Then he turned to her again and said:

"Did you know that you and I are related?" And he saw with a great lift of the heart that she turned pale before answering, so to spare her he went on, hurriedly:

"I have been talking to Mrs. Winchester, and we find that the La Granges and Lees are kin. You and I are about twelfth cousins, according to Miss Sallie Yancey."

"So we are of the same blood," said Carolina, gently. Then she added: "I am glad."

"And so am I, – more glad than I can say, for it will give me the opportunity to be of service to you-in a way I could not-perhaps-if we were not kin."

Carolina looked at him inquiringly, but he had turned his head away, and again a frown wrinkled his smooth, brown forehead. Carolina looked at him eagerly. He was a man to fill any woman's eye, – tall, lean, lithe, and commanding, with long brown fingers which were closed nervously upon the brim of his soft black hat. His nose was straight, his lips sensitive yet strong, and his eyes had a way of making most women sigh without ever knowing why. Moultrie La Grange was said to have "a way with him" which men never understood, but which women knew, and knew to their sorrow, for everywhere it was whispered that "Moultrie would never marry, since-" and here the whispers became nods and half-uttered words and mysterious signs which South Carolinians understood, but which mystified Mrs. Winchester, and Carolina did not happen to hear the subject discussed.

"You have come down here," said Moultrie, "to restore Guildford."

"Yes," said Carolina, seeing that he paused for a reply.

"I wish that I could restore Sunnymede. Our place joins yours."

"It does?" cried Carolina. "Then why don't you?"

He looked at her sharply. Was she making fun of him?

"You are a rich young lady. I am a poor man. Can I rebuild Sunnymede with these?" He held out two fine, strong, symmetrical hands.

Carolina looked at them appreciatively before she answered.

"I am a poor young woman, but I intend to rebuild Guildford with, these!" And she held out beside his two of the prettiest hands and wrists and arms that Moultrie La Grange had ever seen in his life, and he at once said so. And Carolina, instead of being bored, as was her wont in other days, was so frankly pleased that she blushed, and said to herself that the reason she believed this man meant what he said was because she was poor, and he could not possibly be paying court to a wealth that she had lost. But the truth of the matter was that she believed him because she wanted to. It gave her an exquisite and unknown pleasure to have this man tell her over and over, as he did, that her hands were the most beautiful he had ever seen, and Carolina looked at them in a childish wonder, and as if she had never seen them before. And it was not until she had laid them in her lap again, and they were partly hidden, that she could bring the conversation back to anything like reason.

"How do you mean?" he questioned. "You can't do a thing without money. And I hear-" he stopped in confusion, and his forehead reddened.

"You know that we have lost ours," supplemented Carolina. "Well, you have heard correctly. Every dollar of my fortune is gone!" Her voice took on so triumphant a ring that Moultrie looked up at her in surprise. He did not know that part of her exultation came from the joy it gave her to be able to proclaim her poverty to this man out of all the world, and thus put herself on a level with him.

"I have only," she continued, "a little laid by which came from the sale of my jewels." Then, as she still saw the questions in his eyes which he forebore to ask, she added: "Do you want me to tell you about it all?"

"More than anything in the world," he assured her. And something in his tone shook the girl so that she paused a little before she began.

"Well, I suppose you know that when Sherman, my brother, mortgaged Guildford, Colonel Yancey bought the mortgage and foreclosed it. That is how he got possession of Guildford."

"But why?" interrupted the man. "What in the world did he especially want Guildford for, when there are a dozen other estates he could have bought for less money, and some of them with houses already built?"

"I don't know," said Carolina, so hurriedly that the man turned his eyes upon her, and, noticing the wave of colour mount to her brow under his gaze, he looked away and all at once he knew why. Carolina did not see his hands clench and his teeth come together with a snap, as he thought of the Colonel Yancey that men knew.

"But Mr. Howard, the father of my dearest friend, persuaded Colonel Yancey to sell it to him for the face value of the mortgage, so that now I have no fear of losing it, for Mr. Howard will give me all the time I want to pay for it."

"But what are you going to pay for it with?" asked the young man.

"Well, if you will go with us when we look over the estate, I can tell you better than I can now. Do you happen to know anything about this new process of making turpentine?"

"Of course I do," said La Grange, with a frown. "I suppose that your brother and his friends have organized a company with Northern capital to erect a plant which will make everybody rich. That's what all Northerners tell us when they want us to invest. Money is all Yankees seem to think about."

"My brother will have nothing to do with the affair at all!" said Carolina, with some heat. "Guildford is mine, and I'm going to make it pay for itself."

Moultrie said nothing, but his chin quivered with a desire to laugh, and Carolina saw it. Then he turned to her.

"You have never seen the home of your ancestors? How are you going to have your first view of it? From the Barnwells' carryall?"

Carolina's eyes dilated and she bit her lip.

"How else could I go?" she said, gently.

"If you would allow me," he said, eagerly, "we would go on horseback, – just you and I, – early, early in the morning. It would be the best time. Will you?"

"Oh, will you take me?" cried Carolina. There was only a look from Moultrie La Grange's eyes for an answer. But Carolina's flashed and wavered and dropped before it.

"Did you ever hear of a magnificent horse your grandfather owned, named Splendour?" he asked, quietly.

"Ah, yes, indeed."

"Well, I own a direct descendant of the sire of that very animal. Her name is Scintilla, and my friend, Barney Mazyck, owns Scintilla's full sister, a mare named Araby. I'll borrow her for you. Would you like that?"