Carolina Lee Part 34

"Yesterday Noel and I were out in the White Moth, and every time I know I am going out in the thing I read in 'Science and Health' about accidents, and declare the truth, so that my mind will be filled with a preventive. It comforts me a great deal and is the only thing that enables me to enjoy an automobile ride in New York, for, with the danger of blowing up and other people's bad driving and frightened horses and the absolute recklessness of pedestrians, you take, if not your life, at least your enjoyment of life, in your hand whenever you get into a machine.

"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw, and we were just trundling along out in the Bronx, when, without a word of warning, a little bit of a boy jumped from a crowd of children and stumbled right in front of us. I saw him fall, and to my dying day I never shall forget the sight of his little white, upturned face as he disappeared under the machine. We ran right squarely over him!

"I stood up and screamed out: 'You said accidents could not happen! You promised! You promised! We have not hurt that baby! He is alive! He is not hurt! He is not even run over!' And by that time we had both jumped down and run back, and a big crowd was gathering. Talk about treating audibly! I was screeching at the top of my voice. Yet still there lay the child apparently dead. I picked him up in my arms and sat down in the mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud. Oh, Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his little hands! So dirty, but so _little_! And his little limp body,--I feel as if I had it in my lap still. The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen came, and suddenly, with a scream I never can forget even in my dreams, the child's mother rushed up. She raised her fist to strike me in the face, and I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child's eyes opened, and something made me say: 'Here is your baby, little woman. He is not hurt at all!' She fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed him from me and began to feel him all over, but she could find no broken bones. She was crying and laughing and kissing him, and I still kept telling her that he was unhurt. Just then the police got through with Noel, and he insisted on putting mother and child and a policeman in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest hospital to have the child examined. We did so, and, if you will believe it, there wasn't a scratch on him. He either fainted from fright or we stunned him, the doctor said.

"Two of the surgeons came out and examined the machine, and they found that there is only a foot of s.p.a.ce between the lowest part of the car and the ground.

"'It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,' said one of them, 'to run over a five-year-old boy and not even scratch him. To make the story quite complete you ought to claim to be Christian Scientists.

That is the sort of game they always play on a credulous public.'

"'We are both Christian Scientists,' said Noel, in his most polite manner, 'and I am deeply impressed with your involuntary tribute to its efficacy in case of accident.'

"Between you and me, I don't believe that doctor got his mouth together again without help.

"Well, we had the greatest time when we got back. First, we took every child on the scene--and I believe there must have been a hundred--to an ice-cream saloon and treated them. And while they were waiting their turns, Noel filled the White Moth with them and gave them a ride. I never had so much fun in my life. I went home with the mother, with a quart of ice-cream in each hand, and got her to tell me the story of her life. Poor soul! She has nine children, but she loves each one as if it were her all. Noel and I are both going to do something for that child.

His name is Dewey Dolan.

"When it was all over, and we were sneaking along back streets to get home without being seen, for we were both sights, and the Moth will have to be done over, I began to think of the way I had acted, and I have made Noel promise never to take me out again unless I have my Amityville tag on, so that, if I go crazy out loud again, they will know where I have escaped from.

"But Noel, dear old thing, confessed that he was declaring the truth no less, only in a quieter way, and we both firmly believe that our little knowledge of Science and our understanding, incomplete though it is, are what turned that calamity into a blessing, for a blessing I am determined to crown it.

"What do you think of my idea? You know how I have always been carried away over children,--how their sufferings and deaths have almost turned me into an infidel,--how the carelessness of parents and nurses has almost driven me insane,--well, if they can be protected by Christian Science thought and healed by mind, why not hasten the day by establishing a Christian Science kindergarten, and, if it succeeds, by a series of them? There must be plenty of kindergartners among Scientists who would welcome a combination of their work, and in the crowded tenement districts it would be a boon. But, oh, how carefully we must go, for the poor will only allow themselves to be helped in their own blind way. Tell me if you think there is any hope for the philanthropic end of it. I am going to open one for the children of ready-made Scientists in my own house,--you know I studied kindergartning, and I have ten already promised. I shall have no trouble about a.s.sistants for my Fifth Avenue school. But the other place is the one my heart is in.

Tell me what you think of that.

"Rosemary is coming back here to live. Her husband is a Christian Scientist, and has gone into business in New York, so I know she will help me, but, oh, Carolina, you will never know how I miss you! New York is not the same place since you left it. You have such a way of dominating every spot you are in by your own personality. Does this hot air sound natural from Kate Howard?

"I am crazy--fairly daffy--over your success in the turpentine, and daddy goes around swelling out his chest and strutting like a turkey gobbler. Why, Carolina, do you realize that you will not only make yourself rich and anybody you choose to let into the game, but that you will be opening up by force, so to speak, with your Educational Turpentine Corner, an industry which will revolutionize the entire turpentine pine country? It is a big project, my dear, to have emanated from the brain of a woman. But, oh, won't the papers fairly eat you raw!

"I will attend to all the commissions you sent and bring the stuff down in the car. A good many of us want newer and finer editions of 'Science and Health,' and, if you utterly refuse to make presents of them for the good of the cause, we will sell our old books at whatever you think your friends can afford to pay. I agree with you that it is better to make them pay something for them.

"Rawlins, our butler, and two of the footmen go regularly to the Christian Science church, and Rawlins has been healed of intemperance through Mrs. G.o.ddard's butler. Perkins says he owes his conversion to the day Gladys Yancey walked across the floor for Noel's doll. So you see we all had a hand in the work you started, and a little leaven is leavening the whole lump.

"Oh, Carolina, you know how discontented and fractious I used to be?

Well, it is all gone,--all the fear, the dread of the unknown, the unhappiness, and the temper, and I am happy for the first time in my life!

"But now good-bye, my dearest friend. I am bringing some dandy glad rags with which to astonish the natives. Tell Peachie that I go to every sale I hear of, and that I am bringing her and Flower some of the dearest little inexpensive remnants they ever saw. Bless those girls!

It sorta makes my old heart ache to think they haven't the clothes they need to set off their good looks.

"Again good-bye. Best love to Cousin Lois and yourself from all of us.

And I am as ever your slave. KATE."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FEAR

Carolina had not been a week among her kinsmen before they began to warn her of the terror of the South. They definitely forbade her ever riding alone, except in broad daylight along the public highway, and even then some white man of her acquaintance generally made it his business to be called in whatever direction she happened to be going.

All this Carolina saw and felt and appreciated, but with the natural fearlessness of her character and the total want of comprehension which women seem to feel who have never come into contact with this universal dread of all Southern States, Carolina often forgot her warnings, and tempted opportunity by striking off the highway into the pine woods to inspect her turpentine camps.

Once Moultrie La Grange found her unaccompanied by any white man, talking to a burly negro in a camp, and when he had taken her away and they had gained the road where she could see distinctly, she found him white and shaking. Knowing his physical courage, this exhibition of fear startled her, and for a few weeks she was more cautious.

Then one afternoon she mounted Scintilla and rode into Enterprise for the mail. She received the letter from Kate which has just been quoted and read it as she rode along. It contained so much food for thought that Carolina forgot everything else, until, looking up, she found that she was just opposite the new terrapin crawl she was having prepared under Moultrie's direction. Without thinking, she struck into the woods and threaded her way among the giant pine-trees toward the coast.

It was virgin forest and on her own land, a tract she intended leasing to some orchard turpentine factors in Jacksonville. It was twilight in the forest, but Carolina rode forward fearlessly, glancing sharply at the trees for signs of their having been boxed by thieving negroes.

Suddenly she saw a boxed tree, and, springing down, she drew Scintilla's bridle over her arm and stooped to examine the suspected tree. As she was bending down, Scintilla jerked her head, and the bridle slipped from Carolina's arm. She sprang to her feet, but, with a nicker of delight, the handsome horse kicked up her heels and pranced away from her, looking for all the world like a child ready for a romp.

So free from fear she was that Carolina laughed aloud, but the laugh froze on her lips, for, without turning her head, she could see, crouching down and creeping toward her, the huge form of a negro man, whose half-open mouth and half-closed eyes, as he stole noiselessly closer and closer, instantly told her of her dire peril.

The girl's whole body became rigid with terror,--a terror so intense and so unspeakable that she realized how it was that women can go mad from the effect of it. In a moment, every warning, every hint, every word that she had heard on the subject flashed through her brain with lightning quickness. An intense silence reigned in the forest, broken only by Scintilla's cropping a stray tuft of spring gra.s.s and the footsteps of the black creeping nearer to his white prey.

Carolina never thought of screaming. No white man was within a mile of her. Oh, for Moultrie,--Moultrie, who had saved her once before! A sick feeling came over her--things began to swim before her eyes--she swayed--and at the sight of her weakness the negro stood upright.

He was no longer a crawling horror. He was a man, and her G.o.d was at hand!

The girl smote her hands together. "His truth shall be thy shield!"

"G.o.d is my all!" "He is my rock and my fortress!" "Thou shalt call upon me and I will answer!" "Fear not, for I am with thee!" Detached sentences, phrases, half-sentences fell from her lips in frozen whispers. But the man stood still. He was no longer crawling toward her. And they stood looking at each other. He had queer eyes,--one blue and one black--where had she heard of such eyes--where had she seen this very man?

"'Polyte!" she cried.

Instantly the white woman got the ascendency over the black blood of the man.

"'Polyte, do you know who you are? You are the son of my father's nurse! Your mother was my father's black mammy!"

The a.s.surance, even the confidence, left the man's manner. His shoulders drooped perceptibly. He took a backward step. Surely she did not know what he was or she would not speak to him except to scream for help.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yas, missis."

"You don't know how you frightened me, until I saw who you were. Then I knew that you would catch Scintilla for me. Mr. Moultrie has told me what a way you have with animals."

In an instant the man was her servant, the son of her grandfather's slave. His fear of detection and punishment left him, and he was quick enough to know that her supposed ignorance of his intentions had saved him from a horrible death. He was a bad negro partly because he was so intelligent.

"I'll git her for you. Jes' watch me!"

He turned eagerly toward the horse and snapped his fingers. Scintilla raised her head and began to step gingerly toward the man. 'Polyte's power over animals may have been hypnotism, but to Carolina it was like magic to see Scintilla's bridle in 'Polyte's hand. The man proudly led the mare to her.

"Help me to mount," said Carolina, her shaking knees threatening every minute to give way beneath her. "No, hold your hand, and when I put my foot in it, you lift me. There!"

Once on her horse's back, Carolina felt her heart begin to beat with less noise. It seemed as if he could see how it pounded against her side.

"'Polyte," she said, "you are what people call a bad man. You have been bleeding my trees, and I don't know what all. Why don't you behave?"