CHAPTER XI.
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 "d.a.m.ned 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sumption 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 hoa.r.s.e voice, "Did she do it?"
"Certainly she did. Who else?"
"They told me that Mrs. G.o.ddard 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. G.o.ddard"s pupil, and doubtless Mrs.
G.o.ddard helped her,--in the curious way they have, for I overheard Carolina telephoning Mrs. G.o.ddard to treat her--Carolina--for fear, in your little daughter"s case. I believe they heal by confidence in G.o.d"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 a.s.sure 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 grat.i.tude 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?"