IN WHICH TRUTH HOLDS HER OWN
Perhaps, as a student of human nature, Roscoe Howard rather looked
forward with enjoyment to his encounter with Colonel Yancey in the
matter of the purchase of Guildford. With the promptness and decision
which gave the fundamental strength to his character, he at once
investigated the whole transaction, beginning with the private history
of the syndicate, which, in his bitterness, Sherman Lee was only too
ready to give him. He drew from Carolina, by adroit conversations, much
of the story of Colonel Yancey's connection with the Lee family abroad,
and, to a man with an imagination, he soon was able to formulate, though
by a somewhat elliptical process, a theory concerning Colonel Yancey's
designs on Carolina, which fitted the case as it stood, but which needed
a personal interview with the colonel to enable Mr. Howard to decide
whether the man was anxious to marry Carolina from love of herself alone
or with the ulterior motive of having discovered some unsuspected source
of wealth on the Guildford estate.
"This man is a very accomplished rascal!" he said to himself, as he
followed the winding clues in the labyrinth of the colonel's
transactions. "I feel sure that Sherman's money is done for. He will
never get any of that back. Yet Yancey, rascal as he is, is too shrewd
to put himself in the clutches of the law. However, he is also clever
enough to be willing to have Sherman think him a fool for failing. At
the same time, I believe that Yancey has made a fortune. The question
is, where is it?"
He fell to musing on the man's extraordinary career. Serving
governments with honesty for years, waiting, studying, learning, biding
his time until he could make a grand haul without fear of detection,
with his honourable career to throw suspicion off the scent, and finding
his quarry at last in wrecking the orphaned children of his best friend.
It was a curious type of character,--a curious code of honour,--but not
phenomenal. It simply showed the effect of climate on a man's
definition of honesty. Doubtless Colonel Yancey considered the
syndicate of New Yorkers "damned Yankees," and therefore his legitimate
prey. Did not the carpet-baggers rob the South? And, as to getting
possession of Guildford, even if only in order to force Carolina to
accept him with it--all's fair in love and war. Doubtless Colonel
Yancey was an honourable man in his own eyes, and ready to defend his
honour to the death if necessary. Mr. Howard had spent several years in
the South, and did not underestimate his personal danger in the coming
interview should he impinge on what the colonel was pleased to call his
"honour." Mr. Howard felt that he must fortify himself with
serpent-wisdom and dove-harmlessness.
For Colonel Yancey was coming home, and Mr. Howard had arranged for a
meeting with him without stating his errand.
He was prepared for a confident, even a dignified, bearing in the
colonel, but let it be said that he had not looked for the jaunty air
with which Colonel Yancey met him when Mr. Howard called at his office
at the time appointed. Considering that Colonel Yancey must be aware
that Mr. Howard knew of the crookedness of the whole transaction in oil,
his audacity was, to say the least, extraordinary when he rose, held out
his hand to the older man, and said, genially:
"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"
The impertinence of the remark, to say nothing of its bad taste under
the circumstances, for a moment staggered even the Northerner's good
breeding, and, for one brief breathing spell, Mr. Howard felt impelled
to imperil the whole situation by the trenchant reply:
"Not a damned thing, sir!"
But his self-control came to his rescue, and with it a determination to
master the natural and inevitable irritation which many Northern men
feel at being called upon to transact business with a Southern man, and
which all Southern men feel when doing business with Northern men. The
whole code is different and all the conditions misunderstood. Nor will
there be harmony until each endeavours to obtain and comprehend the
other's point of view.
It was only by detaining the conversation upon strictly neutral grounds
for a few moments that Mr. Howard was able to see that the fault lay
largely with himself. Perhaps Colonel Yancey was unaware that his
visitor knew anything of his private history or was at all interested in
the Lees. It was only Mr. Howard's smarting under the real injuries
Colonel Yancey had inflicted on Winchester Lee's children which caused
him to resent Colonel Yancey's assumption of the role which he essayed
on all occasions and inevitably with strangers. At first, he was the
bland, suave, genial, open-hearted Southerner. But at the first hint of
Mr. Howard's errand, the openness snapped shut. The thin lips were
compressed, the crafty eyes narrowed, and Colonel Wayne Yancey, like a
pirate craft, "prepared to repel boarders."
"Now, Mr. Howard," he said, "in broaching the subject of the purchase of
Guildford, may I ask whom you are representing?"
"Why should you imagine that I am representing any one?" inquired Mr.
Howard. "Why not imagine that I want Guildford for my own use? It is a
good property. It has a water-front. It is picturesque. Why not
suppose that I merely want to acquire a winter home in South Carolina?"
"Then why not look at property just as good, nearer to the town of
Enterprise than Guildford lies, and with a good stone house already on
it? For instance, my sister's late husband's place, Whitehall, is for
sale."
"Thank you for mentioning it," said Mr. Howard, "but I especially want
Guildford."
"Then--pardon me for saying so--you must have some ulterior motive for
wanting it, for the place is worth no more than the adjoining property
of Sunnymede or half a dozen other contiguous estates."
"That is exactly the thought which came to me, if you will pardon me for
mentioning it, when I heard that you had bought and foreclosed the
mortgage on Guildford!"
Mr. Howard laid his finger-tips together, with a quiet satisfaction in
thus having trapped his antagonist. But he little knew Wayne Yancey.
With an assumption of honesty, which fairly took the Northern man's
breath away, Colonel Yancey looked first out of the window, as if to
consider, and then said:
"You are right, Mr. Howard, and to a man of honour like yourself, I will
tell you the real reason why I bought the mortgage on Guildford, why I
foreclosed it in order to own the place, and why I hope you will drop
the idea of purchasing it, for I tell you frankly at the outset that, if
you press the matter, I shall simply put a prohibitive price upon the
property, and you have no legal recourse by which you can compel me to
part with it. Please bear this in mind. And for explanation of this
unalterable decision--here it is. I love Carolina Lee. I told her
father so when she was only a girl of sixteen in London. He gave me his
blessing, and told me he would rather leave her to me than to any other
man in the world. He was my dearest friend. I was the unhappy means of
bringing a loss on Sherman, which it shall be my life-work to make good.
If Winchester Lee can hear me in the place where he has gone, he knows
that I mean well by both of his children. I adore Carolina, but she has
refused to marry me, and, knowing her love for her old home, I obtained
possession of it in order to restore it to her. If you do not believe
that I mean this, ask her if I did not offer her Guildford as a free
gift."
"You are a clever man, Colonel Yancey, and you knew then, as well as you
know now, that to offer a girl of Carolina's spirit a valuable gift like
that was to insult the Lee pride. What did you hope to gain by it?"
"The girl herself! I confess it without shame, sir. I would move
heaven and earth in order to have that girl for my wife! You do not
know Wayne Yancey, Mr. Howard, or you would know that that means more
than appears on the surface."
"I may not know you completely, Colonel Yancey, but I know you well
enough to believe that part of your statement implicitly. But you will
never win her either by force or by coercion of any kind. Give her a
free hand and let her come to you of her own accord, or she will not
come at all."
By the expression which flitted across the colonel's slightly cruel face
at Mr. Howard's words, he was convinced of one thing, and that was that
the man was honestly and deeply in love with Carolina. This fact
illuminated the matter somewhat.
"It would be quite true with horses," mused Colonel Yancey. "And a
blooded horse and a spirited woman have many points in common."
"I freely confess to you that I wish to purchase Guildford in order to
let Carolina go down there and work her will with the place. The girl
has courage, good business ideas; she is a friend of my daughter's, and
I am interested in the development of her character. I would just as
soon leave you to make the same arrangement with her which I propose to
make, if she would consent to have money transactions with you, but she
will not. For what reason you and she probably know. I confess that I
do not, but what you have just been good enough to tell me concerning
your feelings toward her would seem to throw light upon the situation.
Now, may I make a suggestion?"
"A thousand, if you will!"
"Thank you. Now, possibly an outsider may be able to give you a new
point of view. Suppose you yield to Carolina's wishes, sell me the
place, and thus give her the opportunity to carry out her dead father's
plans. You thus provide her with a cherished life-work. You know the
Lees. They are proud and grateful. To whom would her heart naturally
turn? To an old married man like me, through her friendship for my
daughter, or to a comparatively young man like yourself, in whose
children she is as vitally interested as she must have been to heal your
baby girl?"
Now Mr. Howard was deliberately playing upon the man's feelings, but he
was not prepared for the change in Colonel Yancey's face.
"Did she do that?" he said, in a hoarse voice, "Did she do it?"
"Certainly she did. Who else?"
"They told me that Mrs. Goddard did it--Sister Sue told me."
"No, it is considered by the Christian Scientists--this new sect which
you may have heard that Carolina has joined--that Gladys is her first
case of healing. Carolina is Mrs. Goddard's pupil, and doubtless Mrs.
Goddard helped her,--in the curious way they have, for I overheard
Carolina telephoning Mrs. Goddard to treat her--Carolina--for fear, in
your little daughter's case. I believe they heal by confidence in God's
promises and the theory that mind controls matter. Wonderful, isn't
it?"
"Wonderful, indeed, but the most wonderful part of it to me is that
Miss Carolina was induced to render me this inestimable benefit when
she--well, she used to hate me, to be quite frank. If you knew the
rebuffs I have taken at her hands!"
"Well, that is one of the results of this new religion of hers. It is
founded on love, and they are obliged to live it, or they fail to
receive any benefits. It is a self-acting religion, and is its own
detective. They regard hatred, for example, as a disease, and naturally
Carolina could not, in their code, be healed herself or heal others as
long as she hated you. Thus, in healing your little girl, she was
working out her own salvation."
"Mr. Howard," said Colonel Yancey, with his face working painfully, "you
don't know what it is to have a crippled child. You don't know the
agony I have endured, looking at her beautifully formed little body and
into her dear face, with its intelligent eyes, broad brow, and sweet
mouth, and then realizing that all her life she must be helpless, unable
to walk or even to stand, a burden to herself and others. Her feet, as
perhaps you know, were perfect in shape and form. They were simply
turned inward. I have gone through Gethsemane itself wondering when her
tender little heart would learn its first taste of bitterness against
the parents who brought her into the world to suffer so. And then to
have all this load of grief lifted, to see my baby walk about and play
with her little sister, and frolic as other children do, and suddenly to
learn that I owe it to the woman who is my all in life--I assure you,
sir, it is almost more than my heart can bear. Take Guildford on your
own terms, sir! It is a small return!"
Mr. Howard held out his hand, and Colonel Yancey grasped it.
"The human heart is a curious thing, Mr. Howard. I was as determined
five minutes ago as ever a man was on earth to let you plead until you
lost your breath, yet I would never part with my hold on Miss Carolina
through owning Guildford. Now, in the twinkling of an eye, I am ready
to let you have it. I can't give it to you quickly enough. What price
are you willing to pay?"
"Suppose we say the face of the mortgage,--just what it cost you?"
"Ten thousand dollars less, if you say so, Mr. Howard."
"No, I prefer to let you show your gratitude to her in some other way.
I will pay what you paid."
"Good! I will have the deed made out to-day. But lose no time in
telling her that Guildford is hers. She has won it for herself."
"If I tell her that, do you know what she will say?" asked Mr. Howard.
"No, what?"
"She will give all the credit to her new thought. She told me before I
started that I would be successful. As she puts it, 'Nothing is ever
lost in Truth.'"
"Then she considers, even though Guildford has been in my power for
several years, that it was never really lost to her?"
"In her new conception of the truth, that is the way she argues."
"By Jove, Mr. Howard, I'm going to join them! I wonder if she would let
me go to church with her next Sunday?"
"I'm sure she would."
But, as he turned away, Mr. Howard shook his head and said to himself:
"Carolina will have to tell him what she told Noel,--of the futility of
attempting to be a Scientist for the sake of the loaves and fishes."
But, indeed, Carolina had not only believed it, but, with her Bible and
"Science and Health" on her knees, during the hour of the interview she
had made her demonstration, so that she knew it without words. She felt
it by the uplift in her own heart and the nearness of her own soul to
the Infinite, so that, when Mr. Howard appeared with a beaming face to
tell her, the radiance on Carolina's admonished him that she knew
already.
"But you don't know all, young lady! After I had left his office, the
colonel came post-haste after me to say that his sister and the children
are to leave to-morrow for Whitehall, his brother-in-law's estate, which
lies some twelve miles from Guildford, but northeast from Enterprise,
the little station, where you leave the railroad, and Miss Yancey is
going to call on you and Mrs. Winchester this evening, to invite you to
make Whitehall your headquarters until you can establish yourself
elsewhere."
"Oh, how kind of them!" said Carolina.
"Then y-you will accept?" demanded Kate, in old-thought surprise.
"Why, what could possibly be better?" asked Carolina, in new-thought
simplicity and gratitude.
"T-ten to one on Colonel Yancey!" murmured Kate in her father's ear as
they turned away.
"W-was it a d-difficult job, d-daddy?" she asked, tucking her arm into
his.
"Kate, child, it was an absolute triumph for Carolina's new religion. I
deserve no credit. The man set his jaws and looked as hard as nails,
until I mentioned that Carolina had healed his baby. He had been
carefully led--probably by Carolina's instructions--to believe that Mrs.
Goddard did it--"
"Y-yes, Miss Yancey believes it, too."
"Well, they forgot to coach me, so I told him it was Carolina. My dear,
_voila tout_!"
"C-Christian Science p-plays ball every time, doesn't it?" observed
Kate, thoughtfully.