Lilian Bell - Carolina Lee

"Simply that neither of us has a dollar of ready money."

"That is all very well for you," pursued Carolina, in a low voice, "but for me to be Adelaide's guest for even a day would be intolerable. I shall sell my jewels and accept Kate Howard's invitation to spend a few weeks with her until I find something to do. I made Cousin Lois go to Boston to see her niece. I feel that I ought to tell you how glad-how more than glad I am that the money is gone. I never wanted it! I never liked it! But Cousin Lois! What will she do? Oh, Sherman! If only I had been a man, too!"

"If only you had been a man instead of me," he cried, "you never would have lost it. I always made money when I took your advice. I always lost it when I went against you."

Carolina's face glowed. She felt equal now to putting the question.

"What has become of Guildford?" she asked, in a low tone.

"Guildford?" he repeated, to gain time.

At the mere mention of that beloved name Carolina's face was aflame. Her great blue eyes flashed and she seemed illumined from within. Her brother stared at her with astonishment and a growing uneasiness.

"Yes, Guildford!" she whispered. "Oh, Sherman! I have been so afraid to ask. Tell me, is that lost, too?"

The man's eyes fell before her accusing gaze.

"Not-not entirely," he stammered. "I-I raised money on it-I forget just how much-I will investigate-I had no idea you cared-it is deserted-the house burned, you know-"

He broke off, as he realized his sister's gathering anger.

"Stop!" she said. "I have not uttered one complaint because you lost our money, nor would I complain at the loss of Guildford. You could not know how I cared for the place, because no one knew it. I never even told Cousin Lois. But don't, if you love me, belittle the place or try to excuse your having mortgaged it because it had no value in your eyes! I know the house is gone, but the ground is there, and we Lees have owned it since we bought it from the Indians. That same ground that the Cherokees used to tread with moccasined feet has been in our family ever since they owned it, and the dream of my life has been to restore the house and to live there-to marry from Guildford and to give my children recollections that you and I were denied, and of which nothing can take the place. Oh, Sherman, doesn't it fairly break your heart to think that we are the only generation that Guildford skipped? Father remembered it and loved it beyond words to express."

"And you are like him," said her brother, gloomily. "I am like my mother. She never cared for Guildford, and refused to let father restore it. It was she who urged him into diplomacy-"

"Where he distinguished himself," cried Carolina, loyally.

"Yes, where he distinguished himself, as all the Lees have done except me!" he said, bitterly.

"It's your name!" cried Carolina, passionately. "What could you expect with those two names pulling you in opposite directions! Why did they ever name you, a Southern man, Sherman?"

"Father named you, and mother named me," answered her brother. "I have heard them say that it was all planned before either of us was born. Then, too, you must remember that-well, that I am not as enthusiastic over the traditions of the Lee family as you are. I think that my leanings are all toward the de Cliffords, if anything."

"It's only fair," said Carolina, with justice, "that you should be like mother and love her family best. Only-only I am glad my name is Carolina!"

Her brother bent down and kissed her flushed face.

"And I am glad, too, little sister, for you are a veritable Lee, and one to be proud of."

Carolina felt herself grow warm in every fibre of her being over the first compliment which had ever reached her heart.

Sherman was still holding her hand, and she pressed his fingers gratefully.

"I will look up the papers to-morrow, and let you know the moment I discover anything. I can easily guess what your plan is, but-without money?"

Carolina laughed strangely.

"Thank you, brother. And in the meantime I shall go to stay with Kate."

Again the slight lift to Sherman's eyebrows.

"You will doubtless be happier there," he said, quietly.

But when Carolina was comfortably established in the suite of rooms which Kate had joyfully placed at her disposal, she found that she could neither fix her attention on the new decorations of which Kate was so inordinately proud, nor could she wrench her mind from the subject of Guildford.

She had been so stunned by the knowledge, not that the estate was mortgaged, but that it had been parted with so lightly, with little thought and less regret, that she had not been able, nor had she wished to express to Sherman her intense feeling in the matter. The more she thought, the more she believed that some turn of the wheel would bring Guildford back. If it were only mortgaged and not sold, she felt that her yearning was so strong she even dared to think of assuming the indebtedness and taking years, if need be, to free the place and restore the home of her fathers.

Her intimacy with her father had steeped her in the traditions of Guildford. The mere fact of their having lived abroad seemed to have accentuated in Captain Lee's mind his love for his native State, and no historian knew better the history of South Carolina than did this little expatriated American girl, Carolina Lee. By the hour these two would pace the long drawing-rooms and discuss this and that famous act or chivalric deed, Carolina's inflammable patriotism readily bursting into an ardent flame from a spark from her father's scintillant descriptions. She fluently translated everything into French for her governess, and to this day, Mademoiselle Beaupré thinks that every large city in the Union is situated in South Carolina, that the President lives in Charleston, and that Fort Sumter protects everything in America except the Pacific Coast.

Carolina knew and named over all the great names in the State's history. She could roll them out in her pretty little half-foreign English, – the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Gadsdens, the Heywards, the Allstons, the Hugers, the Legares, the Lowndes, the Guerards, the Moultries, the Manigaults, the Dessesseurs, the Rhetts, the Mazycks, the Barnwells, the Elliotts, the Harlestons, the Pringles, the Landgravesmiths, the Calhouns, the Ravenels, – she knew them all. The Lees were related to many of them. She knew the deeds of Marion's men as well as most men know of battles in which they have fought. She knew of the treaties with the Indians, those which were broken and those which were kept. She had been told of some of the great families which even boasted Indian blood, and were proud to admit that in their veins flowed the blood of men who once were chiefs of tribes of savage red men. She found this difficult to believe from a purely physical prejudice, but her father had assured her that it was true.

In vain she tried to interest herself in Kate's plans for her amusement. In vain she attempted to fix her attention on the white and silver decorations of her boudoir, all done in scenes from "Lohengrin." Instead she found herself dreaming of the ruins of an old home; of the chimneys, perhaps, being partially left; of a double avenue of live-oaks, which led from the gate to the door and circled the house on all sides; of fallow fields, grown up in rank shrubbery; of palmetto and magnolia trees, interspersed with neglected bushes of crêpe myrtle, opopinax, sweet olives, and azaleas; of the mocking-birds, the nonpareils, and bluebirds making the air tremulous with sound; of broken hedges of Cherokee roses twisting in and out of the embrace of the honeysuckle and yellow jessamine. Beyond, she could picture to herself how the pine-trees, left to themselves for forty years, had grown into great forests of impenetrable gloom, and she longed for their perfumed breath with a great and mighty longing. She felt, rather than knew, how the cedar hedges had grown out of all their symmetry, and how raggedly they rose against the sky-line. She knew where the ground fell away on one side into the marshes which hid the river-the river, salt as the ocean, and with the tide of the great Atlantic to give it dignity above its inland fellows. She knew of the deer, the bear even, which furnished hunters with an opportunity to test their nerve in the wildness beyond, and of the wild turkeys, quail, terrapin, and oysters to be found so near that one might also say they grew on the place. In her imagination the rows upon rows of negro cabins were rebuilt and whitewashed anew. The smoke even curled lazily from the chimneys of the great house, as she dreamed it. Dogs lay upon the wide verandas; songs and laughter resounded from among the trimmed shrubbery, and once more the great estate of Guildford was owned and lived upon by the Lees.