Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Carolina Lee]
CAROLINA LEE
By
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)
_All rights reserved_
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
I. Captain Winchester Lee
II. The First Grief
III. The Danger of Wishing
IV. The Turn of the Wheel
V. Brother and Sister
VI. The Stranger
VII. Mortal Mind
VIII. Man's Extremity
IX. The Trial of Faith
X. Cross Purposes
XI. In Which Truth Holds Her Own
XII. Whitehall
XIII. Guildford
XIV. Kinfolk
XV. The Blind Baby
XVI. A Letter from Carolina
XVII. In the Barnwells' Carryall
XVIII. A Letter from Kate
XIX. The Fear
XX. Moultrie
XXI. The Light Breaks
XXII. In The Voodoo's Cave
XXIII. Loose Threads
XXIV. The House-party Arrives
XXV. 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!