Carolina Lee Part 36

The young man stared into her lovely face in a very genuine astonishment.

"Our codes of honour different, Carolina?" he said. "Oh, I hope not. I should be sorry to think that your code of honour differed from mine."

"And, dear friend--"

"Don't call me friend! I am not your friend! I am your lover!"

"No, let me call you friend, for that is all that I can call you at present. I should be sorry to hold a code of honour no higher than yours."

The slow, dark flush of pride and race rose in the man's fine face.

Carolina was daring to say such words to a La Grange. But Carolina herself was a Lee.

"I should be sorry," said Carolina, deliberately, not waiting for his reply, "to be so narrow that I could refuse an offer to improve my land, denuded and mortgaged as it is,--an offer for the only rights I had left to sell, and which would give me plenty of money to enable me to restore the home of my ancestors,--simply because the syndicate furnis.h.i.+ng the money was composed of Northern men, thus, for a senseless prejudice, compelling my mother and sister to eke out their income by sewing for _negroes_!"

Had Carolina struck him in the face, he could not have turned a whiter countenance upon her than he did. Twice he opened his lips to speak and twice closed them again with the futile words still unspoken. His hands were clenched at his side, his whole figure rigid with outraged pride.

Yet he continued to look his accuser in the face, and Carolina honoured him for his courage even while she could see self-knowledge dawn and humiliation take the place of his dethroned pride. The first blow had been struck which was to unmask his pitiable att.i.tude,--the att.i.tude of the typical young Southerner of to-day, proud of his worn-out prejudices, and unaware that his very pride in them is in rags.

Carolina clasped her hands to hide their trembling. She could have cried out in pity for the suffering in the face of the man she loved, but she dared not speak one word of the sympathy her heart ached to show, for fear of undoing her work. Blindly she steeled herself for the words she feared would pour forth. Dully she wondered if, when they came, they would end everything between them, and preclude any possible overtures on her part when the leaven should have worked. But the words, bitter or otherwise, did not come. Still he simply stood and looked at her.

Then, with a gesture both graceful and dignified, he bent and took her hand and kissed it.

"I understand," he said, simply, and Carolina, turning away, albeit sick at heart, felt a dawning thrill of pride--her first--that she had come to love this man.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE LIGHT BREAKS

One afternoon, a few days later, there came an hour of stifling heat, and Carolina, sitting in her little cottage room with "Science and Health" on her knees, heard the rise and fall of voices in earnest discussion, which seemed to come from the back porch. When she appeared at the door to ascertain who it was, she found Aunt Calla, the cook at Whitehall, and Aunt Tempy, Flower's baby's mammy, in animated conversation with Rose Maud, her own cook.

"Dar she is now!" exclaimed Calla. "Miss Calline, I was jes' awn my way over hyah to ax yoh advice as to what I shall do wid dat no 'count Lily ob mine, when erlong come Sis Tempy in de Barnwells' cah'yall, sent by Miss Flower to say will you please come over to see de baby right away, en Sis Tempy done fetch me wid her."

"Is anything wrong with the baby?" asked Carolina, quickly.

"No'm! no'm!" cried Tempy. "Miss Flowah got somepin' mighty fine to show you. Miss Callina, de lill fellah kin see!"

"Oh, Tempy, how glad I am to hear it!"

"Well'm, I reckon you is de one what otto hyah it fust," said the old woman, with a shrewd glance.

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Carolina.

The three women settled themselves with such an air of having come to the point that Carolina felt reasonably sure that they had been discussing the affair, and that further concealment was no longer of any avail. She was surprised to see that, instead of the hostility she had feared, each old woman had the appearance of eager curiosity if not of real interest.

"I means, Miss Callina, dat I believes--we all believes--dat you done kunjered" (conjured) "de chile en kyored him," said Calla.

"I ain't a-saying dat," put in Tempy. "I ain't a-saying but what you is raised de spell what de voodoo done put awn de chile."

"En I tells um, Miss Callina," ventured Rose Maud, Carolina's own cook, "dat hit's yoh new religion what done it, en I tole em I believed dat you is de Lawd Jesus come down to yearth de secon' time, wid power to heal de sick, to cast out debbils, en to raise de dead."

"Rose Maud, Jesus was a man, and you know that He will never take the form of a woman," said Carolina, "so don't ever say such a foolish thing again. But He gave that power to His disciples, and this new religion of mine you are talking about gives that same power both to men and women."

"Miss Callina," cried Tempy and Calla at the same time, "has you got dat power?"

"Ask Rose Maud," said Carolina.

"I done tole 'em, Miss Callina," cried Rose Maud. "But dey is bofe doubtin' Thomases. Dey won't believe until dey sees."

"Miss Callina," pleaded Calla, "I cain't believe jis' caze I _wants tuh so bad_. Ef you kin mek me believe, I would fall down awn my face wid joy. I ain't never been satisfied wid no religion. Sis Tempy will tell you. Ise done jined de chutch en fell from grace mo' times den I kin count. But, missy, _even n.i.g.g.e.rs_ want a trufe dat dey kin cling tuh!"

"Dat's a fack, Miss Callina!" broke in Aunt Tempy. "En ef you will jis'

put awn yoh hat en go wid us in de Barnwells' cah'yall, en 'splain t'ings to us lake Jesus done when He tuk de walk to Emyus" (Emmaus), "you will be talkin' to thirsty sinners what are des a-begging of you fur de water ob life!"

Carolina remembered the great number of intelligent coloured faces which were scattered through the congregations of the beautiful white marble church, with its splendour and glory of stained gla.s.s, in New York, and she wondered if here, in the pleadings of these three fat old coloured women in the pine forest of South Carolina lay the answer to the great and ever burning question of the white man's burden. As she debated swiftly, her heart leaped to the task. It was not for her to refuse to spread the truth when it was so humbly and earnestly desired.

"Come then," she said, "ask me questions, and I will tell you the answers that my new religion teaches. You may come, too, Rose Maud."

The Barnwells' carryall went slowly out through the great avenue of live-oaks from Carolina's little cottage at Guildford into the "big road" which led to Sunnymede. But no one thought of the incongruity of the three old coloured women and Jake, letting the horses drive themselves, while he listened with pathetic eagerness to the clear, earnest tones of the white young lady, who simply and sincerely answered the questions all four asked of her with such painful anxiety and eager understanding.

Meanwhile the storm, which the intense heat presaged, gathered, and they hurried the horses in order to reach Sunnymede before it broke.

"Dat's all I ask," cried Aunt Tempy. "I don' need to ax no mo'

questions. Miss Callina done fixed t'ings for old Tempy."

"I allus knowed dat I was a wors.h.i.+pper ob de unknown G.o.d," cried Calla.

"Ef I had 'a' knowed de right One, does y'all reckon He would 'a' let me get away? No, suh! De Lawd hol's awn tuh His own!"

The storm broke just as they reached Flower's little cabin in the dreary stump-filled waste which had once been the handsome estate of the La Granges. Flower met them at the door and welcomed them in.

"Hurry, Jake, and get the horses safe before the rain comes. Aunt Tempy, take Calla and Rose Maud to the kitchen and give them some sa.s.safras tea. Oh, Cousin Carolina, dearest, did Tempy tell you? Oh, the blessed, blessed news! For two nights now, the lamb has turned over in his crib because the light hurt his eyes. I didn't send for you the first time because I wanted to be sure. I was reading the fourteenth of John, and when I came to the verse, 'And if ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it,' I just threw the Bible down and fell on my face on the floor and begged G.o.d for my baby's eyesight. And, when I looked, he had turned over. Oh, Cousin Carol, Cousin Carol, I think I shall go mad with joy!"

"Let me see him," cried Carolina, rus.h.i.+ng past Flower and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the baby. "Oh, yes, dearest, I can see even a different expression in his eyes. And see how he blinks in the light! Flower, your baby is healed!"

"I know it," said Flower, reverently. "And I shall thank G.o.d for it on my knees every day of my life."

A terrific flash of lightning at that moment almost blinded them. It was followed instantaneously by a clap of thunder which nearly rent the cabin in twain. Flower immediately seized her baby, with a face made ashen by fear, and looking apprehensively at windows and doors, she whispered:

"The voodoo! Watch for her! She always comes in a thunder-storm!"

At the same time the three old women, with Jake, and Flower's black cook, old Eloise Lu, stumbled into the room, crying:

"Foh de Lawd's sake, Miss Flower, honey, let us in hyah! De Day of Judgment sho has come!"

"Nonsense!" cried Carolina, with a sternness none of them had ever suspected her of possessing. "For shame, you Tempy and Rose Maud and Calla! Where is your new religion? Where is your understanding of the truth? Is G.o.d going to punish you for coming to Him as you just told me you had come? Oh, faithless disciples! Now see if _I_ am afraid of a little thunder and lightning!"