Chapter XII: Whitehall

"Well," said Mrs. Winchester, looking out of the car-window as the train approached Enterprise, "if any man had told me that two years from the day we left Bombay I should find myself going back to Guildford to live, I should have said he was a thousand dollars from the truth. What are you laughing at, Carolina?"

"And if any man had told me that I could ever have brought myself to accept an invitation from Miss Sue Yancey to visit them at Whitehall until we could establish ourselves comfortably, when I used to dislike her brother so much, I should have said the same," said Carolina, "but love works many miracles in the human heart."

Mrs. Winchester looked sharply at the young girl, but Carolina's expression was so innocent Cousin Lois decided that she was not referring to Colonel Yancey. Then, with one of her rare caresses, which Mrs. Winchester prized above gold, Carolina laid her hand on Mrs. Winchester's arm and said:

"And, dear Cousin Lois, no mother could have been sweeter and more unselfish about the loss of her money than you have been, or more self-sacrificing to come down here with me."

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mrs. Winchester, colouring like a girl of eighteen. Her blush was still beautiful and was her only comfort, except her waist-line. "You know that I love to be where you are. In fact, Carolina, if you knew how I suffered, actually suffered, child, last winter in Boston, when I was separated from you, you would believe me when I say that I cannot live without you. I must be with you. You are all I have in the world,--and the money,--what is money good for except to buy things with? Haven't I everything I want?"

Carolina listened with a beating heart.

"Yet, you are even going to have the money back!" she said, with another pressure of Cousin Lois's hand.

"Yes, I really believe I am. That new religion of yours seems to be a sort of magic carpet, to take you anywhere you want to go and to get you everything you want to have."

"It brings perfect harmony into your life," said Carolina.

"Well, harmony is heaven!" said Mrs. Winchester, emphatically.

"Oh, what bliss to be coming home!" breathed Carolina, fervently. "I wonder if any shipwrecked sailor or prodigal son or homesick child ever yearned as cruelly for his father's house as I yearn for my first sight of Guildford!"

Mrs. Winchester turned, a little frightened at the passion in the girl's tone. She felt that Carolina was unconsciously preparing herself for a bitter disappointment.

"How dear those little darkies are!" she cried. "But, oh, did you see what that woman did? She knocked that little boy sprawling! She knocked that child down! Did you ever hear of such cruelty? Do you suppose she could possibly have been his own mother, Cousin Lois?"

"Sit down, Carolina, and don't get so excited. Of course she was his mother. That's the way coloured women do. It saves talking,--which seems to do no good. I've seen old Aunt 'Polyte, in your father's time at Guildford, come creeping around the corner of her cabin to see if her children were obeying her, and, if she found that they were not, I've seen her knock all ten of them down,--some fully six feet away. And such yells!"

"Did grandfather allow it?" demanded Carolina, with blazing eyes.

"I can fairly see him now, sitting his horse Splendour, draw rein and shake with silent laughter, till he had to take his pipe out of his mouth. It was too common a sight to make a fuss about. Besides, they needed it. Of all the mischievous, obstinate, thick-headed little donkeys you ever saw, commend me to a raft of black children,--Aunt 'Polyte's in particular. Coloured women are nearly always inhuman on the surface to their own children."

"Wasn't Aunt 'Polyte my father's black mammy? Wasn't she kind to the white children in her charge?"

"Ah, that was a different matter. Kind? 'Polyte would have let all her own children die to save your father one ache. I remember when her children got the measles, she locked them all in the cabin, and sent her sister to feed them at night, while she stayed in the big house and kept her white children from contagion. Fortunately, none of her own died, but, if they had, it wouldn't have changed her idea of her duty."

"What was there queer about Aunt 'Polyte? I remember that daddy told me once, but I have forgotten."

"She had one blue eye and one biack one, and not one of her children inherited her peculiarity except her youngest child,--a boy,--born when she was what would be called an old woman. I know she thought it was a bad omen to have a child after she was fifty, and, when she saw his blue eye, she said he was marked for bad luck."

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Carolina. "Cousin Lois, you know enough about Christian Science to know that she made a law for that child which may have ruined him for life."

"Yes, I suppose she did. But, Carolina, dear, don't get your hopes of the South up too high. I am afraid it won't come up to your expectations."

Carolina smiled, sighed, and shook her head.

"I can't modify my anticipations, Cousin Lois. Don't try to help me. If I am to be disillusioned, let it come with an awful bump. Nothing short of being knocked down with a broadside like that little negro boy can do my case any good. I'm hopeless."

"I believe you are. Well, we shall see. We must be nearly there. The last time the train stopped,--was it to shoo a cow off the track or to repair the telegraph wires?--the conductor said we were only five hours late. But that was six hours ago. I wonder what we are stopping at this little shed for? Oh, hurry, Carolina! He is calling Enterprise and beckoning to us."

"No hurry, ma'am," said the conductor. "The train will wait until you all get off in comfort, or I'll shoot the engineer with my own hand!"

Carolina stepped from the train to the platform and looked around. Then she bit her lip until it bled. Cousin Lois was counting the hand-luggage and purposely refrained from looking at her.

There was a platform baking in the torrid heat of a September afternoon. From a shed at one end came the clicking of a telegraph instrument. That, then, must be the station. Six or eight negro boys and men, who had been asleep in the shade of a dusty palmetto, roused up at the arrival of the train and came lazily forward to see what was going on. There were some dogs who did not take even that amount of trouble. A wide street with six inches of dust led straight away from the station platform. There was a blacksmith shop on one side and a row of huts on the other. Farther along, Carolina could see the word "Hotel" in front of a one-story cottage. The town fairly quivered with the heat.

"Was you-all expectin' any one to meet you?" inquired the conductor.

"Why, yes," answered Mrs. Winchester. "Miss Yancey said she would send for us."

"Miss Yancey? Miss Sue or Miss Sallie Yancey? Fat lady with snappin' brown eyes?"

"Yes, that describes her."

"The one that's just been to New York with the colonel's children?"

"Yes."

"Oh, well, that's Miss Sue. She'll send all right, but likely's not you've got to wait awn her. She's so fat she can't move fast. Have you ever heard how the colonel's little girl was kyored? She went to one of these here spiritualists and was kyored in a trance, they tell me."

"Ah, is that what they say?" said Mrs. Winchester, in a tone of deep vexation. She felt insulted to think of so dignified a belief as Christian Science being confounded with such a thing as spiritualism. But she realized the absurdity of entering into a defence of a new religion with the conductor of a waiting train. She had, however, forgotten what Southern railroads are like.

"Yes'm. They say a lady done it. Jest waved her hands over the child, and Gladys hopped up and began to shout and sing and pray!"

"My good man," said Mrs. Winchester, "do start your train up. You are seven hours late as it is!"

"What's your hurry, ma'am? Everybody expects this train to be late. I can't go till my wife's niece comes along. She wants to go on this train, and I reckon I know better than to leave her. She's got a tongue sharper'n Miss Sue Yancey's."

Mrs. Winchester turned her majestic bulk on the conductor, intending to annihilate him with a glance, but he shifted his quid of tobacco to the other cheek, spat neatly at a passing dog, lifted one foot to a resting-place on Carolina's steamer-trunk, and continued, pleasantly:

"Now, that there dust comin' up the road means business for these parts. I'd be willin' to bet a pretty that that is either Moultrie La Grange or Miss Sue Yancey. But whoever it is, they are sho in a hurry."

Carolina stood looking at the cloud of dust also. Most of the passengers on the waiting train, with their heads out of the car-windows, were doing the same. It seemed to be the only energetic and disturbing element in an otherwise peaceful landscape, and only one or two passengers, who were obviously from the North and therefore impatient by inheritance, objected in the least to this enforced period of rest.

"And from here, I'd as soon say it was Moultrie as Miss Sue. They both kick up a heap of dust in one way or another, on'y Moultrie, he don't raise no dust talking. If it _is_ Moultrie, he'll be mighty sore at bein' away when the train come in, on'y I reckon he didn't look for her so soon. We was thirteen hours late yestiddy."

How much longer the train would have waited, no one with safety can say, had not the cloud of dust resolved itself into a two-seated vehicle, in which sat two ladies, both clad in gray linen dusters, which completely concealed their identity. One of the dusters proved to be the conductor's niece, who took the time to be introduced to Mrs. Winchester and Carolina by the other duster, which turned out to be Miss Sue Yancey. When the conductor's niece had fully examined every item of Carolina's costume with a frank gaze of inventory, she stepped into the station to claim her luggage, and then, after bidding everybody good-bye all over again, she got into the train, put her head out of the window, called out messages to be given to each of her family, and, after a few moments more of monotonous bell-ringing by the engineer, in order to give everybody plenty of notice that the train was going to start, it creaked forward and bumped along on its deliberate journey farther south.

Carolina took an agonized notice of all this. If it had been anywhere else in the world, she could have been amused; she would have listened in delight to the garrulous conductor, and would have laughed at the crawling train. But here at Enterprise,--that dear town which was nearest to the old estate of Guildford,--why, it was like being asked to laugh at the drunken antics of a man whom you recognized as your own brother!

She listened to Miss Yancey's apologies for being late with a stiff smile on her lips. She must have answered direct questions, if any were asked, because no breaks in the conversation occurred and no one looked questioningly at her, but she had no recollection of anything except the jolting of the springless carriage and the clouds of dust which rolled in suffocating clouds from beneath the horses' shuffling feet.

They drove about four miles, and then turned in at what was once a gate. It was now two rotting pillars. The road was rough and overgrown on each side with underbrush. The house before which they stopped had been a fine old colonial mansion. Now the stone steps were so broken that Miss Yancey politely warned her guests with a gay:

"And _do_ don't break your neck on those old stones, Mrs. Winchester. You see, we of the old South live in a continuous state of decay. But we don't mind it now. We have gotten used to it. If you will believe me, it didn't even make me jealous to see the prosperity of those Yankees up North. I kept saying to myself all the time, 'But _we_ have got the blood!'"

As they entered the massive hall, cool and dim, the first thing which struck the eye was a large family tree, framed in black walnut, hanging on one side of the wall, while on the other was a highly coloured coat of arms of the Yanceys, also framed and under glass.

Miss Yancey took off her duster and hung it on the hat-rack.

"Now, welcome to Whitehall! Will you come into the parlour and rest awhile, or would you like to go to your rooms and lie down before supper? I want you to feel perfectly at home, and do just as you please."

"I think we will go to our rooms, please," said Mrs. Winchester, with one glance into Carolina's pale, tired face.

"Here, you Jake! Carry those satchels to Mrs. Winchester's room, and, Lily, take these things and go help the ladies. And mind you let me know if they want anything."

A few moments afterward, Lily, the negro maid, came hurrying down-stairs, her eyes rolling.

"Laws, Miss Sue! Dey wants a bath! Dey axed me where wuz de bathroom, en I sez, 'Ev'ry room is a bathroom while y'all is takin' a bath in it.' En Miss Sue, Miss Calline, she busted right out laffin'."

"They want a bath?" cried Miss Sue. "Well, go tell Angeline to heat some water quick, and you fill this pitcher and take it up to them. But mind that you wash it out first,--if you don't, you'll hear from me,--and don't be all day about it. Now, see if you can hurry, Lily."

When the sun went down, the oppressive quality in the heat seemed to disappear, and when Cousin Lois and Carolina came down in their cool, thin dresses, they found themselves in the midst of the most delightful part of a Southern summer day.

Miss Sue was nowhere to be seen, but another lady, as thin as she was fat, came out of the dimness and introduced herself.

"I am Mrs. Elliott Pringle, ladies, though you will nearly always hear me called Miss Sallie Yancey. Sister Sue is out in the garden. Shall we join her? I know she wants you to see her roses."

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?"

"Oh, Mr. La Grange!" breathed Carolina.

"Please _never_ call me that. Do let me claim kin with you sufficiently to have you call me 'Moultrie.'"

"And will you call me 'Carolina?'" she asked, shyly.

"We never do that down here with young ladies, unless we are own cousins. But I will call you 'Miss Carolina,' if I may."

"Then you are asking me to take more of a privilege than you will," said Carolina.

"I want you to take every privilege with me that you can permit yourself," he said, earnestly.

When Carolina went indoors that night, the first thing she did was to take two candlesticks, and, holding them at arm's length above her head, to study her own face in the great pier-glass which, in its carved mahogany frame, occupied one corner of her large bedchamber. Whatever the picture was which she saw reflected there, it seemed to give her pleasure, for she coloured and smiled as her eyes met those of the girl in the mirror.

"I am glad _he_ thinks so!" she whispered to herself, as she turned away.