Carolina Lee Part 33

"I know, my dear baby," said her mother, whose own eyes were suspiciously bright, "but I rather imagine that to a girl who has seen the best society that Europe and America have to offer, a dance with a lot of Savannah boys and girls could not be considered in the light of much of a treat."

"I know it, mother. Yet Cousin Carol's manners are so perfect that she never lets you suspect that. She enters into everything with such love."

"That is her religion," said Mrs. La Grange.

"Oh, that reminds me. She went on talking aloud as we stood there. She said, 'I must remember that the vesture of truth is my raiment. I must stand sentinel at the door of my thought and not allow error to enter it. And the way to keep error out, is to pour love in. Love! Love!

Love! That is the way to meet them. Father--mother--G.o.d! Help me to love mine enemies!' Oh, and mother dearest, by that time I was weeping, but Carol's eyes were quite dry. 'Don't cry, little girl,' she said, 'I don't any more, for I have got beyond the belief that religion is an emotion. It is too real--too lasting. Emotions die out.' And a little light seemed to dawn for me--just as I have seen clouds break on a dark night and a single star s.h.i.+ne through."

"Then did you go back?" asked her mother, after a pressure of the hand to show that she understood. There was a singular bond between these two.

"Yes, she turned and pressed my hand just as you did then, with such understanding, and her face was fairly s.h.i.+ning, but with such a different radiance. 'Come, Peachie, darling! faithful little comrade.

You would not have been one of the disciples who slept and left their Master to pray alone, would you? Well, I have conquered my little moment of error. Now let's go back.' 'And show them how South Carolina faces her foes,' I said. 'Wouldn't it be better to go back and show them how South Carolina can forgive?' she asked."

"Bless her heart!" murmured Mrs. La Grange. "I know how a young girl feels to be mistreated at a ball."

"Yes, but wait. The grandest, glorious-est thing happened. Just as we came from behind the palms who should be bowing to the chaperons but the handsomest man I ever saw in my life. Tall, dark, distinguished-looking, with one white lock of hair and all the rest black as a coal. He has a slight limp from a wound at Magersfontein, but it only distinguished him the more and doesn't interfere with his dancing a bit. Well, when he saw Carolina, his face lighted up and he said, 'Oh, Miss Lee, how awfully jolly to see you again! To tell the truth, I had half a mind not to come, after all I had promised, and I wanted to get out of it the worst way until I heard that you were to be here. Then I couldn't get here fast enough.' Well, mother, even if every girl there hadn't suddenly found that side of the room strangely attractive, his voice has a carrying tone, and--well, I wish you could have seen those girls.

They looked as though they had been slapped in the face."

"As they deserved!" said Mrs. La Grange, grimly.

"Then the band struck up a two-step and he turned to Mrs. Winchester and asked her if she would save her first square dance for him, but she said she wasn't dancing. So then he asked Carolina. She gave me a little look which meant that I could have him next, and then! Well, I've seen dancing all my life, but I never saw anybody dance as those two did. It was like the flight of swallows. So graceful, so dignified, so distinguished, and yet so spirited. Carolina dances like a breeze."

"I can imagine just how she dances," cried Mrs. La Grange, excitedly.

"Go on, child!"

"Well, the funniest sight of all was Cousin Lois. She drew her chin in and waved her fan and puffed herself out for all the world like our turkey-hen. I could have laughed."

"I know just how she felt--just how I should have felt in her place if you had been treated as Carolina was. Then did he dance with you?"

"Yes, then he danced with me. Then with Carolina again. Then she said to him, 'Now, Sir Hubert, I want you to meet some of these pretty girls, but as I don't know them myself, I shall ask Mr. Little to take you around and introduce you to the brightest of them, so that you will take away with you the best impression of our Southern girls.'"

"Oh, Peachie! I couldn't have done that!"

"Nor I either, mother. I just couldn't. So Jim started to take him, but he said, 'Just wait a moment.' Then he came to me and took--"

"I hope he took more than one!" cried Mrs. La Grange, jealously.

"He took seven, mother. And in the German he favoured me until--"

"That was too many, Peachie. You ought not--"

"I know, dearest honey mother. I ought not to do heaps of things I do do, but after all, what do I care what those people think of me? All they can say is that I flirted with him--"

"Or that he flirted with you," laughed her mother.

"Oh, yes, they will say that, never fear. And yet--"

"And yet what, my darling? Here we are at home."

"And yet he took Cousin Lois and Carolina to Jacksonville on his yacht, and he asked me to go, but I said I had to get back to you, and he was with us all the rest of the time we were there--"

Her mother turned and looked at her.

"And he is coming to see me on his way back."

As Mrs. La Grange stepped from the carriage with the air of a queen descending from her chariot, she put her arm around her daughter's waist and said:

"I think I have to be proud of a dear, generous little girl whose loyalty caused an otherwise pleasant week to be spoiled."

Peachie's cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled.

"It wasn't quite spoiled, mother dear. Oh, honey, he is the handsomest man and the best dancer! Just wait till you see him!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

A LETTER FROM KATE

"NEW YORK.

"DEAREST CAROLINA:--Great news! Three pieces of it. First, I have turned Christian Scientist! Second, Rosemary G.o.ddard is married to the Honourable Lionel Spencer! Third, daddy is so tickled over all that you have done, as you may have suspected from his letters lately, that he is going down. He will take the car, and Noel and Mrs. G.o.ddard, mother, and I are coming, too! Don't bother about accommodations. We will switch the car to a siding and live in it. We may all have to go to Charleston and Jacksonville, so that you and Peachie and a handy man or two had better get ready for a rip-roaring old time, for we are going to make Rome howl. Noel wants to go to Ormond for the automobile races.

He has entered his machine. I named it for him,--'The White Moth,'--don't you think that's a dandy name?

"Now to go back to the really important thing. I've wanted to be a Scientist ever since I found out that it wasn't a drag-net to catch all the cranks in the world, as I at first supposed. I found that out in two ways. One, by knowing a lot of you who were not in the least cranks. The other, by seeing what a lot of cranks there are left! Yet all the time I was hating myself and struggling against the compelling influence. Did you ever drag a cat across the carpet by the tail?

Well, that is just about the easy, gliding gait I used to reach Christian Science!

"Still, you'll never guess who influenced me most. Not you nor that heavenly Mrs. G.o.ddard nor the wonderful cures I've seen. Nuh! Guess again. Old Noel! Yes, sir. Old skeptical Noel! Brought up for a Catholic, too. Wouldn't that freeze you? Well, think si to myself, think si, 'if old Noel can see good in it, and he's the best all-round sport, man of the world, and gentleman I know, it's time little Katie got aboard.' So I just climbed on the raft without saying a word to anybody, expecting everybody to raise Cain, but, to my astonishment, daddy was as pleased as Punch, and he and mother go to church with me every Sunday. What do you say to that?

"At the ball the G.o.ddards gave for Rosemary just before she sailed, I was doing a two-step with Noel, and I saw a dandy girl, whose gown simply reeked of Paris, it was so delicious. She was dancing with a corking looking man, and, as we stopped near them for me to get a better look at her clothes, I heard her say, 'Are you going to communion at the Mother Church?' and he said, 'I never miss it. It is the treat of my whole year!' I looked at Noel and he looked at me.

"'Noel,' I said, 'Did I hear aright? They weren't betting on a horse-race in cipher, were they?' 'No,' sez he, giggling, 'they were not. They are Christian Scientists, and they are now talking about an incorporeal G.o.d.' 'In a ballroom,' murmurs I to myself. 'Noel,' I said, in a weak voice, 'Take me out and lay me softly under a pump and bring me to. I am too young to go dotty without any warning.' But, instead of that, we joined them and Noel introduced us to each other, and we finished the two-step talking about how hard it was to change from our old idea of a G.o.d who was so much like a man that we had to flag Him and shout out our prayers to be sure to get His attention. I used to feel as if I were on the floor of a convention, trying to catch the Speaker's eye.

"But I want to ask you two things that I can't quite get up my nerve to ask Mrs. G.o.ddard. What did you do about praying while changing your idea of a personal, corporeal G.o.d to one of spirit? Why, Carolina, I've lost the combination! I feel as though I were praying through a megaphone out of an open window. My prayers don't seem to strike against anything. Will I get over this feeling in time? It is only fair to state, however, that even this queer hit-or-miss method brings answers which my most frantic screams for help and my most humble and dependent clinging to the robe of my personal G.o.d never did. So you can just bet that I'm going to stick to the new method, whether I ever understand it or not, because it does deliver the goods. Am I right or wrong? I want to know.

"Now, I did tackle Mrs. G.o.ddard on this point. I feel a perfect wretch to mention it, but the fact is, I simply cannot endure the name of Mrs.

Eddy! Every time they mention 'Science and Health' in church, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' Every time they give out a hymn that she wrote, they say, 'By Mary Baker G. Eddy.' And every time they do it, my blood boils and my face burns and I grab my hymn-book until--well, I split a pair of gloves nearly every Sunday!

"The conceit of that woman! Suppose she has given the world a new religion,--why not let us show our grat.i.tude spontaneously. Why need she say such conceited, sacrilegious things in her book? She throws hot air at herself indirectly in every chapter. It reminds me of a page in Roosevelt's 'Alone in Cubia.' I counted sixty-three I's on one page in that book, until I felt like the little boy who said to his father, after an evening of war experiences, 'Papa, couldn't you get any one to help you put down the rebellion?'

"I don't believe, unless my feeling changes, that I shall ever join the church while its by-laws remain as they are. I will work for the cause, and be diligent and faithful and studious, but I disapprove of a church being such a close corporation and for one finite, human being to possess such power as Mrs. Eddy holds, and holds with such pertinacity and deliberate love of power.

"When I said some of this to Mrs. G.o.ddard, she said that she never chemicalized over Mrs. Eddy the way great numbers did, but she said you had a claim at one time, and I want to know if you are over it. I feel like a brute to have to admit it even to you, for of course I am grateful and appreciative and all that. But if you call what I feel 'chemicalizing,' I can only say that I can hear myself sizzling like a bottle of Apollinaris whenever I come across the name of Eddy, and realize how she holds the power of a female Pope.

"I told Noel about it, but he doesn't feel it at all. Never did. But he understands how intensely I suffer from it, and he said if I didn't mind my eye, I'd blow off a tire right in church. And once, when he took me and saw me getting red in the face, he said, 'Now sit tight, old girl!' and I nearly laughed aloud.

"Now let me tell you my first demonstration. I am so happy over it I am going to do something to celebrate it, and that's another thing I want to consult you about.