THE DANGER OF WISHING
The Lees' dinner-table was round, and about it were gathered six
people--Sherman and his wife, Carolina, Mrs. Winchester, Noel St.
Quentin, and Kate Howard, Carolina's most intimate girl friend. It was
the first time they had all met since the return of the travellers from
India. Later they were going to hear Melba in "Faust," but there was no
hurry. It was only nine o'clock.
"Carolina, if you could have the dearest wish of your heart, what would
it be?" asked Noel St. Quentin.
"If I should tell, it might not come true," Carolina answered. "And I
want it so much!"
"I never saw such a girl as Carolina in all my life," complained her
sister-in-law. "Her mind is always made up. She keeps her ideas as
orderly as an old maid's bureau-drawer. No odds and ends anywhere. You
may ask her any sort of a question, and she has her answer ready. She
knows just what box in her brain it is in. Just fancy having thought
out what your wish would be, and having it at your tongue's end to tell
at a dinner-party!"
Mrs. Lee leaned back and fanned herself with a fatigued air.
"You almost indicate that Carolina thinks," said St. Quentin.
"Oh, don't accuse me of such a crime in public!" cried the girl,
laughing.
"Carolina seems to me the one person on earth whose every wish had been
gratified before it could be uttered," said St. Quentin, who was in some
occult way related to the Lees. "I would be interested to know just
what her dream in life could be."
Carolina smiled at him gently.
"She--she's had Europe, Asia, and Africa a-all her life," cried Kate
Howard, who always stuttered a little in the excitement of the moment.
To Carolina this slight stutter was one of Kate's greatest fascinations.
You found yourself expecting and rather looking forward to it. At least
it spelled enthusiasm. "She's had masters in every known
accomplishment. She--she can do all sorts of things. She can speak any
language except Chinese, I do believe. She's pretty. She's rich in her
own right--no waiting for dead men's shoes or trying to get along on an
allowance--a-and what under the sun can she want--e-except a husband?"
"Perhaps, if she's good, she may even get that," said St. Quentin.
Again Carolina smiled. But her smile faded when her eyes met those of
her sister-in-law, who viewed the girl with a thinly veiled dislike.
The girl's eyes flashed. Then she spoke.
"I have wanted one thing so much that I am sure sometime I must achieve
it," she said, slowly. "I want to be so poor that I shall be forced to
earn my own living with no help from anybody!"
She was not looking at her brother as she spoke, or she would have seen
him start so violently that he upset his champagne-glass, and that his
face had turned white.
"What did I tell you?" murmured St. Quentin.
"Carol likes to be sensational," said Mrs. Lee. "No one would dislike to
be poor more than she, and no one would find herself more utterly
helpless and dependent, if such a calamity were to overtake her."
"I wouldn't call it a calamity," said Carolina, quietly.
"Yes, you would!" cried Kate.
"I am inclined to agree with Carol," said St. Quentin, deliberately,
"and to disagree, if I may, with Cousin Adelaide. In my opinion, Carol
could go out to-morrow with only enough money to pay her first week's
board, and support herself."
"I hope she may never be obliged to try," said her brother, harshly.
"Addie, if you intend to hear any of the music, we'd better be starting.
It is a quarter to ten now."
Addie raised her shoulders in a slight shrug.
"When Carolina holds the centre of the stage, it is impossible to carry
out one's own ideas of promptness," she said.
"Nasty old cat," whispered Kate to St. Quentin, as he stooped for her
glove and handkerchief. "Thanks so much. I don't know how I managed it,
but I held on to my fan."
Later in the Lees' box with Melba singing Marguerite, St. Quentin turned
to Carolina again. She had swept the house with her glass as soon as the
party were seated, and had noted but one old acquaintance whose face
seemed to invite study. The girl's name was Rosemary Goddard, and among
the discontented faces which thronged the boxes in the horseshoe, hers
alone was peaceful. Nay, more. It was radiant. Carolina remembered her
face--a cold, aristocratic mouth, disdainful eyes, haughty brows, and a
nose which seemed to spurn friend and foe alike. What a
transfiguration! How beautiful she had grown!
She was so occupied with the enigma Rosemary presented that St. Quentin
was obliged to repeat his question.
"How would you go to work, Carol?"
The girl turned with a sigh. Sometimes it seemed to her that she never
would become accustomed to talking at the opera. She almost envied a
tall young man, who stood in the first balcony. His evening clothes
were of a hopeless cut. His manner was that of a stranger in New York,
but in his face, one of the finest she had ever seen, was such a passion
for music that she watched him, even while she answered St. Quentin with
a grace which hid her unwillingness to talk.
"For what I really would love to do," she said over her white shoulder,
with her eyes on the strange young man, "you started me off a little too
poor. I might have to borrow a hundred or two from you to begin with!
I want to pioneer! I don't mean that I want to go into a wilderness and
be a squatter. I want to reclaim some abandoned farm--make over some
ugly house--make arid acres yield me money in my purse--money not given
to me, left to me, nor found by me, but money that I, myself--Carolina
Lee--have earned! Does that amuse you?"
"It interests me," said St. Quentin, quietly.
To be taken seriously was more than the girl expected. She was only
telling him a half-truth, because she did not consider him privileged to
hear the whole. She continued to test him.
"I never see an ugly house that I do not long to go at it, hammer and
tongs, and make it pretty. Not expensive, you understand,--I've lived in
Paris too long not to know how to get effects cheaply,--but attractive.
Oh, Noel! The ugliness of rural America, when Nature has done so much!"
"You ought to have been a man," said St. Quentin.
"I would have been more of a success," said the girl, quickly. "I
believe I could have started poor and become well-to-do."
"How you do emphasize beginning poor and how you never mention becoming
rich! Don't millions appeal to you?"
"Not at all! nor do these common men, even though they did begin poor,
who have acquired millions by speculation. They but make themselves and
their sycophants ridiculous. No, I mean honest commerce--buying and
selling real commodities at a fair profit--establishing new
industries--developing situations--taking advantage of Nature's
beginnings. Such thoughts as these are the only things in life which
really thrill me."
"I understand you," said St. Quentin, "but I fear your wish will never
come true. Years ago I held similar desires. All my plans fell
through. I had too much money. And so have you. You'll have to go on
being a millionairess, whether you will or no, and you'll marry another
millionaire and eat and drink more than is good for you and lose your
complexion and your waist line and end your life a dowager in black
velvet and diamonds."
A messenger boy entered and handed a telegram to Sherman Lee, just as
Melba rose from her straw pallet and led the glorious finale to "Faust."
Her brother leaned over and touched her arm.
"You may get your infernal wish sooner than you expected," he said, with
a wry smile twisting his pale face.
Carolina turned to St. Quentin with indifference.
"Possibly I may yet keep my waist line," she said, as he laid her cloak
on her shoulders.
On the way out she came face to face with the tall young man who had
stood through the whole opera, in the balcony.
He gave back all her interest in him in the one look he cast upon her
loveliness. A sudden light of incredulous surprise dilated her eyes and
a swift blush stained her cheeks. She recognized, in some intangible,
unknown way, that he possessed kindred traits with her father and with
herself. He had the same look in his eyes--or rather back of them, as
if his eyes were only a hint of what lay hid in his soul. He was of
their temperament. He dreamed the same dreams. He was akin to her.
"I could have told him the truth," she whispered. "He would have
understood that I meant Guildford all the time, and that the reason I
want to be poor is so that I can show that I am willing to work, to
carry out my father's dearest wish. Just to spend money on it is too
sordid and too easy. I want it to be made hard for me, just to show
them what I will do! He would have understood!"
But with one's best friends it is as well to be on the defensive, and
not let them know our true aims, lest they take advantage of their
friendship and treat our heart's dearest secrets with mockery.