Carolina Lee Part 21

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 s.h.i.+fted his quid of tobacco to the other cheek, spat neatly at a pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 ident.i.ty. 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 b.u.mped 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 ma.s.sive 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 gla.s.s.

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 gra.s.s 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 gra.s.sy 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.