Carolina Lee

"And he is coming to see me on his way back."

As Mrs. La Grange stepped from the carriage with the air of a queen descending from her chariot, she put her arm around her daughter's waist and said:

"I think I have to be proud of a dear, generous little girl whose loyalty caused an otherwise pleasant week to be spoiled."

Peachie's cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled.

"It wasn't quite spoiled, mother dear. Oh, honey, he is the handsomest man and the best dancer! Just wait till you see him!"

CHAPTER XVIII

A LETTER FROM KATE

    "NEW YORK.

"DEAREST CAROLINA: – Great news! Three pieces of it. First, I have turned Christian Scientist! Second, Rosemary Goddard is married to the Honourable Lionel Spencer! Third, daddy is so tickled over all that you have done, as you may have suspected from his letters lately, that he is going down. He will take the car, and Noel and Mrs. Goddard, mother, and I are coming, too! Don't bother about accommodations. We will switch the car to a siding and live in it. We may all have to go to Charleston and Jacksonville, so that you and Peachie and a handy man or two had better get ready for a rip-roaring old time, for we are going to make Rome howl. Noel wants to go to Ormond for the automobile races. He has entered his machine. I named it for him, – 'The White Moth,'-don't you think that's a dandy name?

"Now to go back to the really important thing. I've wanted to be a Scientist ever since I found out that it wasn't a drag-net to catch all the cranks in the world, as I at first supposed. I found that out in two ways. One, by knowing a lot of you who were not in the least cranks. The other, by seeing what a lot of cranks there are left! Yet all the time I was hating myself and struggling against the compelling influence. Did you ever drag a cat across the carpet by the tail? Well, that is just about the easy, gliding gait I used to reach Christian Science!

"Still, you'll never guess who influenced me most. Not you nor that heavenly Mrs. Goddard nor the wonderful cures I've seen. Nuh! Guess again. Old Noel! Yes, sir. Old skeptical Noel! Brought up for a Catholic, too. Wouldn't that freeze you? Well, think si to myself, think si, 'if old Noel can see good in it, and he's the best all-round sport, man of the world, and gentleman I know, it's time little Katie got aboard.' So I just climbed on the raft without saying a word to anybody, expecting everybody to raise Cain, but, to my astonishment, daddy was as pleased as Punch, and he and mother go to church with me every Sunday. What do you say to that?

"At the ball the Goddards gave for Rosemary just before she sailed, I was doing a two-step with Noel, and I saw a dandy girl, whose gown simply reeked of Paris, it was so delicious. She was dancing with a corking looking man, and, as we stopped near them for me to get a better look at her clothes, I heard her say, 'Are you going to communion at the Mother Church?' and he said, 'I never miss it. It is the treat of my whole year!' I looked at Noel and he looked at me.

"'Noel,' I said, 'Did I hear aright? They weren't betting on a horse-race in cipher, were they?' 'No,' sez he, giggling, 'they were not. They are Christian Scientists, and they are now talking about an incorporeal God.' 'In a ballroom,' murmurs I to myself. 'Noel,' I said, in a weak voice, 'Take me out and lay me softly under a pump and bring me to. I am too young to go dotty without any warning.' But, instead of that, we joined them and Noel introduced us to each other, and we finished the two-step talking about how hard it was to change from our old idea of a God who was so much like a man that we had to flag Him and shout out our prayers to be sure to get His attention. I used to feel as if I were on the floor of a convention, trying to catch the Speaker's eye.

"But I want to ask you two things that I can't quite get up my nerve to ask Mrs. Goddard. What did you do about praying while changing your idea of a personal, corporeal God to one of spirit? Why, Carolina, I've lost the combination! I feel as though I were praying through a megaphone out of an open window. My prayers don't seem to strike against anything. Will I get over this feeling in time? It is only fair to state, however, that even this queer hit-or-miss method brings answers which my most frantic screams for help and my most humble and dependent clinging to the robe of my personal God never did. So you can just bet that I'm going to stick to the new method, whether I ever understand it or not, because it does deliver the goods. Am I right or wrong? I want to know.

"Now, I did tackle Mrs. Goddard on this point. I feel a perfect wretch to mention it, but the fact is, I simply cannot endure the name of Mrs. Eddy! Every time they mention 'Science and Health' in church, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' Every time they give out a hymn that she wrote, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' And every time they do it, my blood boils and my face burns and I grab my hymn-book until-well, I split a pair of gloves nearly every Sunday!

"The conceit of that woman! Suppose she has given the world a new religion, – why not let us show our gratitude spontaneously. Why need she say such conceited, sacrilegious things in her book? She throws hot air at herself indirectly in every chapter. It reminds me of a page in Roosevelt's 'Alone in Cubia.' I counted sixty-three I's on one page in that book, until I felt like the little boy who said to his father, after an evening of war experiences, 'Papa, couldn't you get any one to help you put down the rebellion?'

"I don't believe, unless my feeling changes, that I shall ever join the church while its by-laws remain as they are. I will work for the cause, and be diligent and faithful and studious, but I disapprove of a church being such a close corporation and for one finite, human being to possess such power as Mrs. Eddy holds, and holds with such pertinacity and deliberate love of power.

"When I said some of this to Mrs. Goddard, she said that she never chemicalized over Mrs. Eddy the way great numbers did, but she said you had a claim at one time, and I want to know if you are over it. I feel like a brute to have to admit it even to you, for of course I am grateful and appreciative and all that. But if you call what I feel 'chemicalizing,' I can only say that I can hear myself sizzling like a bottle of Apollinaris whenever I come across the name of Eddy, and realize how she holds the power of a female Pope.

"I told Noel about it, but he doesn't feel it at all. Never did. But he understands how intensely I suffer from it, and he said if I didn't mind my eye, I'd blow off a tire right in church. And once, when he took me and saw me getting red in the face, he said, 'Now sit tight, old girl!' and I nearly laughed aloud.

"Now let me tell you my first demonstration. I am so happy over it I am going to do something to celebrate it, and that's another thing I want to consult you about.

"Yesterday Noel and I were out in the White Moth, and every time I know I am going out in the thing I read in 'Science and Health' about accidents, and declare the truth, so that my mind will be filled with a preventive. It comforts me a great deal and is the only thing that enables me to enjoy an automobile ride in New York, for, with the danger of blowing up and other people's bad driving and frightened horses and the absolute recklessness of pedestrians, you take, if not your life, at least your enjoyment of life, in your hand whenever you get into a machine.

"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw, and we were just trundling along out in the Bronx, when, without a word of warning, a little bit of a boy jumped from a crowd of children and stumbled right in front of us. I saw him fall, and to my dying day I never shall forget the sight of his little white, upturned face as he disappeared under the machine. We ran right squarely over him!

"I stood up and screamed out: 'You said accidents could not happen! You promised! You promised! We have not hurt that baby! He is alive! He is not hurt! He is not even run over!' And by that time we had both jumped down and run back, and a big crowd was gathering. Talk about treating audibly! I was screeching at the top of my voice. Yet still there lay the child apparently dead. I picked him up in my arms and sat down in the mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud. Oh, Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his little hands! So dirty, but so little! And his little limp body, – I feel as if I had it in my lap still. The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen came, and suddenly, with a scream I never can forget even in my dreams, the child's mother rushed up. She raised her fist to strike me in the face, and I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child's eyes opened, and something made me say: 'Here is your baby, little woman. He is not hurt at all!' She fairly snatched him from me and began to feel him all over, but she could find no broken bones. She was crying and laughing and kissing him, and I still kept telling her that he was unhurt. Just then the police got through with Noel, and he insisted on putting mother and child and a policeman in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest hospital to have the child examined. We did so, and, if you will believe it, there wasn't a scratch on him. He either fainted from fright or we stunned him, the doctor said.

"Two of the surgeons came out and examined the machine, and they found that there is only a foot of space between the lowest part of the car and the ground.

"'It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,' said one of them, 'to run over a five-year-old boy and not even scratch him. To make the story quite complete you ought to claim to be Christian Scientists. That is the sort of game they always play on a credulous public.'

"'We are both Christian Scientists,' said Noel, in his most polite manner, 'and I am deeply impressed with your involuntary tribute to its efficacy in case of accident.'

"Between you and me, I don't believe that doctor got his mouth together again without help.

"Well, we had the greatest time when we got back. First, we took every child on the scene-and I believe there must have been a hundred-to an ice-cream saloon and treated them. And while they were waiting their turns, Noel filled the White Moth with them and gave them a ride. I never had so much fun in my life. I went home with the mother, with a quart of ice-cream in each hand, and got her to tell me the story of her life. Poor soul! She has nine children, but she loves each one as if it were her all. Noel and I are both going to do something for that child. His name is Dewey Dolan.

"When it was all over, and we were sneaking along back streets to get home without being seen, for we were both sights, and the Moth will have to be done over, I began to think of the way I had acted, and I have made Noel promise never to take me out again unless I have my Amityville tag on, so that, if I go crazy out loud again, they will know where I have escaped from.

"But Noel, dear old thing, confessed that he was declaring the truth no less, only in a quieter way, and we both firmly believe that our little knowledge of Science and our understanding, incomplete though it is, are what turned that calamity into a blessing, for a blessing I am determined to crown it.

"What do you think of my idea? You know how I have always been carried away over children, – how their sufferings and deaths have almost turned me into an infidel, – how the carelessness of parents and nurses has almost driven me insane, – well, if they can be protected by Christian Science thought and healed by mind, why not hasten the day by establishing a Christian Science kindergarten, and, if it succeeds, by a series of them? There must be plenty of kindergartners among Scientists who would welcome a combination of their work, and in the crowded tenement districts it would be a boon. But, oh, how carefully we must go, for the poor will only allow themselves to be helped in their own blind way. Tell me if you think there is any hope for the philanthropic end of it. I am going to open one for the children of ready-made Scientists in my own house, – you know I studied kindergartning, and I have ten already promised. I shall have no trouble about assistants for my Fifth Avenue school. But the other place is the one my heart is in. Tell me what you think of that.

"Rosemary is coming back here to live. Her husband is a Christian Scientist, and has gone into business in New York, so I know she will help me, but, oh, Carolina, you will never know how I miss you! New York is not the same place since you left it. You have such a way of dominating every spot you are in by your own personality. Does this hot air sound natural from Kate Howard?

"I am crazy-fairly daffy-over your success in the turpentine, and daddy goes around swelling out his chest and strutting like a turkey gobbler. Why, Carolina, do you realize that you will not only make yourself rich and anybody you choose to let into the game, but that you will be opening up by force, so to speak, with your Educational Turpentine Corner, an industry which will revolutionize the entire turpentine pine country? It is a big project, my dear, to have emanated from the brain of a woman. But, oh, won't the papers fairly eat you raw!

"I will attend to all the commissions you sent and bring the stuff down in the car. A good many of us want newer and finer editions of 'Science and Health,' and, if you utterly refuse to make presents of them for the good of the cause, we will sell our old books at whatever you think your friends can afford to pay. I agree with you that it is better to make them pay something for them.

"Rawlins, our butler, and two of the footmen go regularly to the Christian Science church, and Rawlins has been healed of intemperance through Mrs. Goddard's butler. Perkins says he owes his conversion to the day Gladys Yancey walked across the floor for Noel's doll. So you see we all had a hand in the work you started, and a little leaven is leavening the whole lump.

"Oh, Carolina, you know how discontented and fractious I used to be? Well, it is all gone, – all the fear, the dread of the unknown, the unhappiness, and the temper, and I am happy for the first time in my life!

"But now good-bye, my dearest friend. I am bringing some dandy glad rags with which to astonish the natives. Tell Peachie that I go to every sale I hear of, and that I am bringing her and Flower some of the dearest little inexpensive remnants they ever saw. Bless those girls! It sorta makes my old heart ache to think they haven't the clothes they need to set off their good looks.

"Again good-bye. Best love to Cousin Lois and yourself from all of us. And I am as ever your slave. KATE."

CHAPTER XIX

THE FEAR

Carolina had not been a week among her kinsmen before they began to warn her of the terror of the South. They definitely forbade her ever riding alone, except in broad daylight along the public highway, and even then some white man of her acquaintance generally made it his business to be called in whatever direction she happened to be going.

All this Carolina saw and felt and appreciated, but with the natural fearlessness of her character and the total want of comprehension which women seem to feel who have never come into contact with this universal dread of all Southern States, Carolina often forgot her warnings, and tempted opportunity by striking off the highway into the pine woods to inspect her turpentine camps.

Once Moultrie La Grange found her unaccompanied by any white man, talking to a burly negro in a camp, and when he had taken her away and they had gained the road where she could see distinctly, she found him white and shaking. Knowing his physical courage, this exhibition of fear startled her, and for a few weeks she was more cautious.

Then one afternoon she mounted Scintilla and rode into Enterprise for the mail. She received the letter from Kate which has just been quoted and read it as she rode along. It contained so much food for thought that Carolina forgot everything else, until, looking up, she found that she was just opposite the new terrapin crawl she was having prepared under Moultrie's direction. Without thinking, she struck into the woods and threaded her way among the giant pine-trees toward the coast.

It was virgin forest and on her own land, a tract she intended leasing to some orchard turpentine factors in Jacksonville. It was twilight in the forest, but Carolina rode forward fearlessly, glancing sharply at the trees for signs of their having been boxed by thieving negroes.

Suddenly she saw a boxed tree, and, springing down, she drew Scintilla's bridle over her arm and stooped to examine the suspected tree. As she was bending down, Scintilla jerked her head, and the bridle slipped from Carolina's arm. She sprang to her feet, but, with a nicker of delight, the handsome horse kicked up her heels and pranced away from her, looking for all the world like a child ready for a romp.

So free from fear she was that Carolina laughed aloud, but the laugh froze on her lips, for, without turning her head, she could see, crouching down and creeping toward her, the huge form of a negro man, whose half-open mouth and half-closed eyes, as he stole noiselessly closer and closer, instantly told her of her dire peril.

The girl's whole body became rigid with terror, – a terror so intense and so unspeakable that she realized how it was that women can go mad from the effect of it. In a moment, every warning, every hint, every word that she had heard on the subject flashed through her brain with lightning quickness. An intense silence reigned in the forest, broken only by Scintilla's cropping a stray tuft of spring grass and the footsteps of the black creeping nearer to his white prey.

Carolina never thought of screaming. No white man was within a mile of her. Oh, for Moultrie, – Moultrie, who had saved her once before! A sick feeling came over her-things began to swim before her eyes-she swayed-and at the sight of her weakness the negro stood upright.

He was no longer a crawling horror. He was a man, and her God was at hand!