Carolina Lee Part 27

"Nonsense, Peachie!" cried Carolina, blushing. "I am not half as good-looking as you and Flower. But the way you all watch me here makes me feel as if I were a strange kind of a beetle under a powerful microscope, at the other end of which there was always a curious human eye."

"Oh, Cousin Carol, you do say such quayah things!" cried Peachie, laughing.

"We ought to go in, I think," said Carolina. But at her words the two girls, as if nerving themselves for an ordeal planned beforehand, looked at each other, and then Peachie, in evident embarra.s.sment, said:

"Cousin Carol, I want to ask you something, and I don't want you to be offended or to think that we have no manners, but--"

"Go on, Peachie, dear. Ask anything you like. You won't offend me.

Remember that we are all cousins down here."

"I know, you dear! But maybe when you know what I want,--but you see, we never get a chance to see any of the styles--"

"Do you want to see my clothes?" cried Carolina. "You shall see every rag I possess, you dear children! Don't I know how awful it must be never to know what they are wearing at Church Parade. Five trunks came yesterday that haven't even been unpacked. They are just as they were packed by a frisky little Frenchman in Paris, and, as they were sent after me, they were detained in the custom-house, and, before I could get them out, I was hurt. While I was in bed, my brother got them out of the custom-house and took them to _his_ house, where I forgot all about them until I was preparing to come here. Then I thought of clothes!

And I also thought I might find some pretty girls down here among my relatives who would like to see the Real Thing just as it comes from the hands of the Paris couturieres,--so there you are!"

"Oh, Carolina Lee!" shrieked Peachie, softly. "What a sweet thing you are! Just think, Flower, Paris clothes!"

"And better still, Vienna clothes!" said Carolina, laughing.

"You said you were hurt, Cousin Carol," said Flower, in her soft little voice. "How were you injured?"

"I was thrown from my horse, Flower, dear, and my hip was broken. I was in bed for months with it."

"But you were cured," said Flower. "I never heard of a broken hip that didn't leave a limp. There must be mighty fine doctors in New York."

"There are!" said Carolina, softly. Then she turned suddenly and led the way to the house, the girls eagerly following.

It will be difficult and not at all to the point to try to learn the relationship of the Lees and La Granges to Carolina and to each other.

Aunt Angie La Grange was Moultrie's, Winfield's, and Peachie's mother.

Rose Manigault was Aunt Angie's married sister, and elise an unmarried one.

Of the Lees, there was Aunt Evelyn Lee, Carolina's own maiden aunt.

Aunt Isabel Fitzhugh, her married aunt, with her two daughters, Eppie and Marie. Uncle Gordon Fitzhugh, Aunt Isabel's husband, and a bachelor cousin of Carolina's, De Courcey Lee, were the ones who had come in the buggy with the two little Fitzhugh boys, Teddy and Bob.

The children could not be induced to leave the parlour until they had seen their new cousin, they had heard so much of her beauty from Moultrie, so that, when Carolina entered and was introduced to her admiring relatives, none was more admiring than the children. Indeed, Bob Fitzhugh announced to his father, as they were driving home that evening, that he was going to marry Cousin Carol. He said that he had already asked her, and that she had told him that she was ten years older than he was, but that, if he still wanted her when he was twenty-one and she hadn't married any one in the meantime, she would marry him.

"You couldn't do better, son," said his father, nudging De Courcey, "and I commend your promptness, for, as Carolina is the prettiest--the very prettiest little woman I ever saw, the other boys will doubtless get after her, and it's just as well to have filed your pet.i.tion beforehand."

Indeed the verdict on Carolina was universally favourable. Her relatives were familiar with her photographs, and were proud of the accounts which at intervals had filtered home to them through letters and newspapers, but the girl's beauty of colouring had so far outshone their expectations, and her exquisite modesty had so captivated them that they annexed her bodily, and quoted her and praised and flattered her until she hardly knew where to turn. She won the Fitzhugh hearts by her devotion to Teddy, the seven-year-old boy, who could not speak an intelligible word on account of a cleft palate. She took him with her on the sofa and talked to him and encouraged him to try to answer, until the mother, though her soul was filled with the most pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude, unselfishly called the boy away, saying, in a hurried aside to Carolina:

"Thank you, and G.o.d bless you, my darling girl, for trying to help my baby boy, but you owe your attention to the grown people, who, some of them, have driven twenty miles to see your sweet face. Some day, Carolina, I want you to come and spend a week with us, and tell me about the best doctor to send the child to. You must know all about such things, coming from New York."

She won the heart of her bachelor cousin, a man of nearly sixty, by allowing him to lead her to a sofa and question her about her father, his last days in London, and of how she had inherited her love for Guildford.

"For it is an inheritance, Carolina, my dear. Your father loved the place as not one of us do who have stayed near it."

"Yes, Cousin De Courcey, I think you are right. Daddy used to dream of it."

"Did he ever tell you of the loss of the family silver?"

"Yes, he said it was lost during the war."

"Did he never tell you of his suspicions concerning it?"

"No, because I don't think he had any."

"Pardon me for disagreeing with you, my dear, but in letters to me he has stated it. You know our family silver included many historical pieces,--gifts from great men, who had been guests at Guildford,--besides all that the family had inherited on both sides for generations. Many of these pieces were engraved and inscribed, and, unless they were melted at once, could have been traced. Your grandfather and your father, being the only ones fortunate enough to have increased their fortunes, undertook to search the world over for traces of this silver, but, as not so much as a teaspoon of it was ever found, we think it is still buried somewhere near here,--possibly on the estate. Aunt 'Polyte, your father's black mammy, and her husband buried it, and to the day of their death they swore it was not stolen by the Yankees, for, when they missed it, there were no Federal troops within fifty miles. They both declared that some one traced them in their frequent pilgrimages to its hiding-place to ascertain that it was intact, and that the Lee family will yet come into its own. As you seem to be our good angel, it will probably be you who will find it. Doesn't something tell you that you will?"

"Yes, something tells me that it is not lost," said Carolina, with grave eyes. "I came into the possession of Guildford so wonderfully, perhaps I shall find the Lee silver by the same means."

Just then Mrs. Pringle hurried into the room, saying hospitably:

"Now listen to me, good people. You all don't come to Whitehall so often that we don't feel the honour, and now that you are here, you must stay to supper. Don't say a word! I'll tell Jake to hitch up and go after Moultrie and Winfield, and there's a full moon to-night, so you won't have any trouble in getting home. elise, if you are too big a coward to drive twenty miles after dark, you can stay here all night.

Flower, do you trust your nurse to stay with the baby?"

"Oh, yes, indeed, thank you, Miss Sallie. I'll just write a note to Winfield and send it by Jake, if I may, telling him to see that Aunt Tempy and the baby are all right before he starts, then I won't be a bit uneasy."

The La Granges had never heard their unpopular kinswoman make so long a speech before, and, as they listened to it, with critical, if not hostile ears, they were forced to admit that she exhibited both spirit and breeding, and her voice had a curious low-toned dignity which indicated an inherited power.

Whitehall had not been famous for its hospitality since the death of Elliott Pringle, Miss Sallie's husband. During his lifetime they had kept open house, and Miss Sallie was the soul of hospitality. She would dearly have loved to continue his policy and the prestige of Whitehall, but her sister, Sue Yancey, was, in popular parlance, called "the stingiest old maid in the State of Georgia," and when she came to live with her widowed sister she watched the expenditures at Whitehall, until n.o.body who ever dined there had enough to eat. There was a story going around that the reason she lost the only beau she ever had, was because once when he was going on a journey she asked him to take out an accident insurance policy, and when he told her that he was all alone in the world and that no one would be benefited by his death, she told him to send the ticket to her. Rumour said that he sent the ticket, but that he never came back to Sue.

Sue either cared nothing for the good opinion of other people or she made the mistake of underestimating her friends' intelligence, for she carried her thrift with a high hand. At Sunday-school picnics it was no uncommon sight for the neighbours to see Miss Sue Yancey going around to the different tables gathering all that was edible into her basket to take home with her. And that these sc.r.a.ps subsequently appeared on the table at Whitehall often led to high words between the sisters; but in the end it always happened that Sue conquered, because Mrs. Pringle dreaded her sister's bitter tongue and ungoverned temper.

Yet Sue often complained that she felt so alone in the world because no one understood her.

"Don't stay," whispered Gordon Fitzhugh, in his wife's ear. "Sue never gives me enough sugar in my tea!"

Carolina could not help overhearing. She looked up quickly and laughed.

"Are you getting thin?" he whispered. "Does Sue give you as hash for supper the beef the soup is made from?"

"I think Miss Sallie is ordering while we are here," said Carolina, loyally. She would not tell her Uncle Fitzhugh that one morning when Lily was taking Cousin Lois's breakfast up to her, when her asthma was bad, that Sue had waylaid Lily in the hall and had taken the extra b.u.t.ter ball off the tray and carried it back to the dining-room in triumph.

"I admire economy," said Uncle Fitzhugh. "Sue's ancestors were French, but, in her case, French thrift has degenerated into American meanness."

"You stay," said Carolina, dimpling, "and I'll see that you get all the sugar you want, if I have to ask for it myself!"

"Then I'll stay," chuckled Uncle Fitzhugh, and he beckoned to De Courcey to come out into the garden and have a smoke--in reality to gossip.

Hardly were the gentlemen out of sight when Peachie said, excitedly:

"Mamma, do beg them all to excuse Cousin Carol, Flower, and me! Carol has promised to show us her Paris clothes--five trunks full of them!"

Her voice rose to a little shriek of ecstasy, which was echoed in various keys all over the room. Every face took on a look of intense excitement and antic.i.p.ation.

"Excuse you!" cried Aunt Angie La Grange. "We shall do no such thing.

If Carol thinks we old people are not just as crazy over pretty clothes as we were when we were girls, she doesn't know the temperament of her own blood and kin. Carol, child, lead the way to those trunks immediately. My fingers fairly burn to turn the keys in those locks!"

"Really, Aunt Angie? Why, we shall be delighted. You should see the gowns Cousin Lois had made for the Durbar. They are simply regal!"