THE STRANGER
But when Carolina was comfortably established in the suite of rooms
which Kate had joyfully placed at her disposal, she found that she could
neither fix her attention on the new decorations of which Kate was so
inordinately proud, nor could she wrench her mind from the subject of
Guildford.
She had been so stunned by the knowledge, not that the estate was
mortgaged, but that it had been parted with so lightly, with little
thought and less regret, that she had not been able, nor had she wished
to express to Sherman her intense feeling in the matter. The more she
thought, the more she believed that some turn of the wheel would bring
Guildford back. If it were only mortgaged and not sold, she felt that
her yearning was so strong she even dared to think of assuming the
indebtedness and taking years, if need be, to free the place and restore
the home of her fathers.
Her intimacy with her father had steeped her in the traditions of
Guildford. The mere fact of their having lived abroad seemed to have
accentuated in Captain Lee's mind his love for his native State, and no
historian knew better the history of South Carolina than did this little
expatriated American girl, Carolina Lee. By the hour these two would
pace the long drawing-rooms and discuss this and that famous act or
chivalric deed, Carolina's inflammable patriotism readily bursting into
an ardent flame from a spark from her father's scintillant descriptions.
She fluently translated everything into French for her governess, and to
this day, Mademoiselle Beaupre thinks that every large city in the Union
is situated in South Carolina, that the President lives in Charleston,
and that Fort Sumter protects everything in America except the Pacific
Coast.
Carolina knew and named over all the great names in the State's history.
She could roll them out in her pretty little half-foreign English,--the
Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Gadsdens, the Heywards, the Allstons, the
Hugers, the Legares, the Lowndes, the Guerards, the Moultries, the
Manigaults, the Dessesseurs, the Rhetts, the Mazycks, the Barnwells, the
Elliotts, the Harlestons, the Pringles, the Landgravesmiths, the
Calhouns, the Ravenels,--she knew them all. The Lees were related to
many of them. She knew the deeds of Marion's men as well as most men
know of battles in which they have fought. She knew of the treaties
with the Indians, those which were broken and those which were kept.
She had been told of some of the great families which even boasted
Indian blood, and were proud to admit that in their veins flowed the
blood of men who once were chiefs of tribes of savage red men. She
found this difficult to believe from a purely physical prejudice, but
her father had assured her that it was true.
In vain she tried to interest herself in Kate's plans for her amusement.
In vain she attempted to fix her attention on the white and silver
decorations of her boudoir, all done in scenes from "Lohengrin."
Instead she found herself dreaming of the ruins of an old home; of the
chimneys, perhaps, being partially left; of a double avenue of
live-oaks, which led from the gate to the door and circled the house on
all sides; of fallow fields, grown up in rank shrubbery; of palmetto and
magnolia trees, interspersed with neglected bushes of crepe myrtle,
opopinax, sweet olives, and azaleas; of the mocking-birds, the
nonpareils, and bluebirds making the air tremulous with sound; of broken
hedges of Cherokee roses twisting in and out of the embrace of the
honeysuckle and yellow jessamine. Beyond, she could picture to herself
how the pine-trees, left to themselves for forty years, had grown into
great forests of impenetrable gloom, and she longed for their perfumed
breath with a great and mighty longing. She felt, rather than knew, how
the cedar hedges had grown out of all their symmetry, and how raggedly
they rose against the sky-line. She knew where the ground fell away on
one side into the marshes which hid the river--the river, salt as the
ocean, and with the tide of the great Atlantic to give it dignity above
its inland fellows. She knew of the deer, the bear even, which
furnished hunters with an opportunity to test their nerve in the
wildness beyond, and of the wild turkeys, quail, terrapin, and oysters
to be found so near that one might also say they grew on the place. In
her imagination the rows upon rows of negro cabins were rebuilt and
whitewashed anew. The smoke even curled lazily from the chimneys of the
great house, as she dreamed it. Dogs lay upon the wide verandas; songs
and laughter resounded from among the trimmed shrubbery, and once more
the great estate of Guildford was owned and lived upon by the Lees.
Filled so full of these ideas that she could think of nothing else, she
sprang to her feet and decided to see Sherman without losing another
day. She would put ruthless questions to him and see if any power under
Heaven could bring Guildford within her eager grasp. What a life work
would lie before her, if it could be accomplished! Europe, with all its
history and glamour, faded into a thin and hazy memory before the
living, vital enthusiasm which filled her heart almost to the point of
bursting.
It was, indeed, the intense longing of her ardent soul for a home. All
her life had been spent in a country not her own, upon which her eager
love could not expend itself. It was as if she had been called upon to
love a stepmother, while her own mother, divorced, yet beloved, lived
and yearned for her in a foreign land.
It was four o'clock on a crisp January day when Carolina found herself
in the throng on Fifth Avenue. It was the first pleasant day after a
week of wretched weather, and the whole world seemed to have welcomed
it.
Carolina was all in gray, with a gray chinchilla muff. Her colour
glowed, her eyes flashed, as she walked along with her chin tilted
upward so that many who saw her carried in their minds for the rest of
the day the recollection of the girl who had formed so attractive a
picture.
Suddenly and directly in front of her, Carolina saw a young woman, arm
in arm with a tall man, whose broad-brimmed, soft felt hat, added to a
certain nameless quality in his clothes and type of face, proclaimed him
to be a Southerner. They were laughing and chatting with the blitheness
of two children, frankly staring at the panorama of Fifth Avenue on a
bright day. If the whim seized them to stop and gaze into shop windows,
they did it with the same disregard of appearances which induced them to
link arms and not to notice the attention they attracted. No one could
possibly mistake them for anything but what they were--bride and groom.
Having reached her brother's house, Carolina paused for a moment in an
unpremeditated rush of interest in the young couple. Something in the
man's appearance stirred some vague memory, but even as she searched in
her mind for the clue, she saw an expression of abject terror spread
over the young bride's face, and pulling her husband madly after her by
the arm to which she still clung, she darted across the walk and into a
waiting cab. Her husband, after a hasty glance in the direction she had
indicated, plunged after her, and the wise cabby, scenting haste, if not
danger, without waiting for orders, lashed his horse, the cab lurched
forward and was quickly swallowed up in the line of moving vehicles.
This had necessarily created a small commotion in the avenue, and a tall
man who had also been walking south behind Carolina and who would soon
have met the young couple face to face, chanced to raise his head at the
crack of the cabman's whip, and thus caught a glimpse of the bride's
face out of the window of the cab.
Instantly, with an exclamation, he looked wildly for another cab. None
was at hand, but Sherman Lee's dog-cart stood at the curb, and Carolina
had paused on the lowest step of the house and was looking at him.
There was desperate anxiety in his face.
"May I use your carriage, madam? I promise not to injure the horse!"
It was the strange young man who had stood in the balcony all during the
opera of "Faust."
Carolina never knew why she did it, but something told her that this
young man's cause was just. In spite of the pleading beauty of the
young couple, she arrayed herself instinctively on their pursuer's side.
"Yes, yes!" she cried. "Follow them!"
He sprang in, and the groom loosed the horse's head and climbed nimbly
to his place. A moment more and the dog-cart was lost to view.
Most of the good which is done in this world is the result of impulse,
yet so false is our training, that the first thing we do after having
been betrayed into a perfectly natural action is to regret it.
The moment Carolina came to herself and realized what she had done, a
great uneasiness took possession of her. She had no excuse to offer
even to herself. She felt that she had done an immeasurably foolish
thing and that she deserved to take the consequences, no matter what
they might be. If the stranger injured Sherman's favourite horse, that
would be bad enough, but the worst result was the mortification her rash
act had left in her own mind. It is hard for the most humble-minded to
admit that one has been a fool, and to the proud it is well-nigh
impossible.
But Carolina admitted it with secret viciousness, directed, let it be
said, entirely against herself. In her innermost heart she realized
that she had yielded, without even the decent struggle prompted by
self-respect, to the compelling influence of a strong personality. This
unknown man had wrested her consent from her by a power she never had
felt before.
At first she decided that it was her duty to tell her brother at once
what she had done. Then she realized that, in that case, they must both
wait some little time before the dog-cart could possibly be expected to
return, and Sherman would no doubt exhaust himself in an anxiety which,
if the horse returned in safety, could be avoided. She therefore
compromised on a bold expedient.
"Sherman," she said, when she found her brother, "I saw the dog-cart at
the door; were you going out?"
"I was, but since I came in, I have decided differently. Ring, that's a
good girl, and tell Powell to see that the horse is well exercised and
put him up."
"I saw Marie in the hall. I'll just send her with the message to
Powell," said Carolina. "There is no doubt in my mind," she murmured,
as she went out, "that the horse will be well exercised."
She sent word by Marie that when Powell returned he was to be told to
see to the condition of the horse himself by Miss Carol's express
orders, and then to report to Miss Carol herself privately.
But these precautions were taken in vain, for not ten minutes had
elapsed before Sherman was summoned to the drawing-room, there to meet
the stranger, who introduced himself, told a most manly and
straightforward story, and, having produced an excellent impression of
sincerity on his host, left with profuse apologies.
Sherman returned to his sister with a quizzical smile on his face.
"Carol," he said, "what have you been doing?"
Carolina's reply was prompt and to the point.
"I own to being reckless, of trying to conceal my recklessness, under a
mistaken sense that I was clever enough to cover my tracks. I vainly
endeavoured to spare you an hour's anxiety, and I feel that I am a fool
for my pains."
Her brother laughed.
"The man is unmistakably a gentleman. He is in deep trouble over a
young woman, not his sister, who has run away, presumably with a man.
He tried to trace them and failed."
"Failed?"
"Failed. If she is his wife, may God help her when he catches her, for
there was danger in that man's eye. But his pride forbade him to give
me more than the bare facts necessary to explain his extraordinary
action in surprising you into lending him my horse."
"Was that the way he put it?" asked Carolina.
"It was."
"He is a gentleman!"
She waited a moment, hesitated, and then said:
"Did he say anything else, anything about--"
"About the woman in the case? Not a word about anything more than I
have told you. He seemed to take it for granted, however, that you were
my wife."
"And didn't you deny it?" demanded Carolina, with such spirit that she
surprised herself. She felt her cheeks grow hot.
"He didn't give me time."
"And you let him go, still thinking it?"
"I didn't let him do anything. He mastered the situation, and carried
it off with such ease that I almost felt grateful to him for borrowing
the dogcart."
Carolina opened her lips to say something, then changed her mind.
"It is of no importance," she said lightly. But there was an odd
sinking at her heart which belied her words. She had never believed in
love at first sight, yet she had watched this stranger at a distance all
one evening, and at their first meeting in the throng leaving the opera,
she had not been mistaken in the look of--well, of welcome, she had
felt. Their second meeting had been equally striking, and Carolina
calmly said to herself that she would meet this man again, and the third
time it would be even more strange. She was so sure of this that she
would not allow her mind to be disturbed by the two blundering
conclusions Sherman had forced--one that the man was in pursuit of a
runaway wife or love and the other that she was the wife of the master
of the horse. She was so sure of her own premises that she overlooked
the possibility that the stranger might have put the supposition
tentatively to Sherman and had been misled by her brother's lack of
denial.
In fact, Carolina at this time was a very self-centred young woman. It
was so of necessity. She had never been taught self-denial, nor
permitted to be unselfish. Her father and mother, in yielding to every
whim, had quite overlooked the fact that the pretty child's character
needed discipline, so that Carolina was selfish without knowing it.
Quite unconsciously she placed her own wishes before those of any other,
and regarded the carrying of her point as the proper end to strive for.
No one had ever taught her differently. Cousin Lois had pampered her
even more than her parents had done, and when she became dissatisfied
with life, offered, as a remedy, change of scene.
Now the girl possessed an inherently unselfish nature, and for this
reason--that she never had been called upon to sacrifice her own
will--she was not happy. Although she possessed much that young girls
envied in wealth and the freedom to travel, the two things which would
have made her happiest, a permanent home and some one--father or mother
or lover--upon whom to lavish her heart's best love, were lacking. Not
being of an analytical turn of mind, she had never realized her lack,
until suddenly she had been given a glimpse of both, and then both had
been snatched away.
Opposition always made the girl more spirited. Guildford lost was more
to be desired than Guildford idle and only waiting for her to reclaim
and restore it. This dominant stranger interested in another
woman--Carolina lifted her chin. It was her way.
Her brother saw it and smiled. It was a pretty trick she had inherited
from the Lees. It was a gage of battle. It betokened unusual interest.
It meant that their blood was fired and their pride roused. He mistook
the cause, that was all. He was so engrossed in his own thoughts and so
pleased by his efforts to gain something which his sister actually
desired, that he had forgotten the episode of the strange visitor. So
that when he said:
"So that is the way you feel, is it?" Carolina started violently and
blushed. She was diplomatic enough to make no reply, so that Sherman's
next remark saved her from further embarrassment.
"Do you really care for Guildford so much?"
"How do you know I am thinking of Guildford?" asked Carolina, quickly.
"I have not spoken of it."
"Ah," said her brother, lifting his hand, "I can read your thoughts. I
notice that you only have that look on your face when you are thinking
of something you love. But I wouldn't waste such a blush on a measure
of cold earth, even if they are your ancestral acres."
"My ancestral acres!" repeated Carolina, softly. "How beautiful that
sounds! Oh, Sherman, tell me if we can save them!"
Sherman hesitated a moment and knit his brow. Then he lifted his head
and looked Carolina in the eyes.
"I will do what I can," he said. "You may be sure of that."
Carolina had all a strong woman's belief in the power of a man to do
anything he chose. His words were not particularly reassuring, but his
manner, as she afterwards thought it over, was vaguely comforting.
It was the more comforting, because, deep down in her heart, she
intended to supplement his efforts, weak or strong, and win victory even
from defeat.
Guildford?
She _would_ have it!