BROTHER AND SISTER
Carolina had left the drawing-room before Sherman sought her there, but
on receipt of a message from him that he wished to see her immediately
in the library, she once more descended the stairs to wait for him.
An anxious look swept over her face as she passed the door of his room,
for she heard Addie's voice raised in shrill accents, and to hear it
thus was growing to be an every-day affair. She knew her brother's
sensitive, yet proud and gentle nature, and she knew how difficult his
wife's loud reproaches were to endure.
Suddenly the door opened and his rapid footsteps were heard running down
the stairs and hurrying to the library. She rose to meet him with her
anxiety to make up to him for his wife's conduct written in her face.
He saw the look and misunderstood it.
"Don't look at me like that, Carol!" he cried, raising his hands as if
to ward off a blow. "If you, too, feel the loss of the money as Addie
does and you reproach me, I shall go mad."
"Sherman!" cried his sister. "Don't insult me by the suggestion of my
reproaching you! Haven't you lost all your money as well as mine? And
would you have done either if you could have helped it?"
Her brother turned uneasily.
"You don't know how it came about?" he asked.
Carolina shook her head.
"Ah," he breathed, "then I must wait until you have heard before I dare
trust such generous statements." He hesitated, then burst out. "But at
least you shall know the truth. We are absolute beggars, you and I, and
Cousin Lois, and wholly dependent upon Adelaide's bounty until I can
pull myself together."
Carolina recoiled as if he had struck her. A sudden sickening fear
clutched her heart. Sherman said "everything." Did he include
Guildford? She could not clear her eyes and voice sufficiently to
mention that beloved name. Sherman went on, not heeding her silence.
"I know what you mean, but it's the truth. She acknowledges it as well
as I. Her money is intact, and she will keep it so. She cannot spare
any of it to start me again. I must trust in strangers."
"Why strangers?" asked Carolina. "Have you no friends?"
"Friends!" sneered her brother. "What do friends do for a man when he
is down? Give him good advice, offer to lend him a few hundreds for
living expenses, but trust him to make a second success after one
failure? Never! Not even St. Quentin, one of the best fellows who ever
lived, would do that!"
"I think you do Noel an injustice," said Carolina, quietly. "He has
offered to help me!"
Sherman looked quizzically at his sister and laughed a little.
"Has he, indeed?" he said, with a lift of his eyebrows.
Carolina noticed his manner with a slight inward start of surprise.
What could he be thinking of? She had known Noel all her life, and not
once had the idea Sherman's tone suggested entered her mind. Noel St.
Quentin? She dismissed the thought with impatience. Sherman did not
know what he was talking about.
"I have not yet told you," he broke out suddenly, "how the money was
lost. Have you no idea? You ought to know. You warned me against the
man, but I refused to believe you."
Carolina leaned forward and her eyes blazed.
"Not Colonel Yancey?" she half-whispered.
Her brother nodded.
"Tell me," she said, with white lips.
"There is very little to tell. The whole thing was an elaborate lie--a
swindle from one end to the other. I don't believe there ever was any
oil on the lands he sold us. He swore there was, and bought outright
the man I sent down to Texas to investigate. I could put him in jail, I
suppose, but what good would that do me? Yancey says he has used all
the money in speculation and lost it, so even to prosecute him would not
get a penny back. Now he has disappeared--Algiers, I believe they say.
It makes no difference where. He was so plausible, and his enthusiasm
was so contagious, we kept handing over the money like born fools. I
wonder that he did not laugh in our faces. But he deceived well. He
planned from the ground up, and was ready with letters and witnesses of
all sorts whenever we began to show signs of weakening. I can see it
all now with fatal clearness. But then he had me thoroughly blinded by
his own artful proceedings. He has wrecked two others besides myself.
The other three men in the syndicate suspected him and sold out to
Brainard and me. We continued to believe in him and he has ruined us."
Carolina listened in silence, dreading, yet waiting, for the next blow.
"He could be the most charming man in the world when he wanted to,"
Sherman continued. "I will admit that I felt his spell, but all the time
there was something in his face which I distrusted. First I thought it
was his shifty eyes, and then, as if he had read my thoughts, he would
meet my glance with perfect candour and frankness and the craft would go
to his lips, and when I looked again for it, I would be disarmed by the
sincerity of his smile, so I was left to fall back on my Doctor Fell
dislike of him, which always attacked me most strongly when I was not in
his magnetic presence."
Sherman looked at his sister expectantly. He noticed for the first time
how pale she was. Her own recollections of Colonel Yancey, his
ceaseless pursuit of her, his intimacy with her father in Paris, her
fear that he knew of the Lees' great wish to restore Guildford were all
gathering themselves together into a horrible certainty. She was
obliged to listen with an effort to her brother's next words.
"I've always thought that he tried to make love to you, Carol. Did he?"
"I believe there was something of the sort suggested," answered his
sister, carelessly. She did not choose to admit that Colonel Yancey had
proposed to her regularly ever since his wife died, and that he had
pursued her with letters as far as India itself.
A silence fell between them. It struck Sherman Lee as most
extraordinary that his sister should evince no more curiosity or even
interest in the loss of her fortune than she had hitherto expressed. He
felt that possibly she was only holding herself in check.
"You said a moment ago," she began so suddenly and in such a different
tone that her brother nerved himself for the explosion he felt sure was
at hand, "that we were both--you and I--dependent upon Addie. Just what
did you mean?"
"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.