Carolina Lee. Lilian Bell

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СКАЧАТЬ was about fifteen, Colonel Yancey made his appearance, dressed in deep mourning. Carolina did not hear the explanation made of his loss, but she resented vaguely yet consciously the glances he cast at her during dinner, and when her father whispered to her that the colonel had lost his wife and no questions were to be asked, her lip curled and her delicate nostrils dilated. She listened with more than her usual attention to the conversation which followed, and in after years it often came to her mind, and never without giving her some help.

      Colonel Yancey opened the conversation with an inexplicable remark.

      "When I hear you talk, captain, I always feel sorry for you."

      Carolina lifted her head with instant hauteur, but her father only smiled and knocked the ashes from his cigar.

      "Yes, an enthusiast of my type is always to be pitied," he said, gently.

      "Not entirely that," responded Colonel Yancey. "In some strong characters, their enthusiasms only indicate their weak points, but it is not so in your case. It is rather that you have idealized your homesickness."

      "I am homesick," said Captain Lee, "for what I never had."

      "Exactly. Now you left Guildford when you were a mere lad, so it is largely your father's opinion of the South-your father's love for the old place that you have inherited and made your own, just as, in Miss Carolina's case, it is wholly vicarious. Have you any idea of the deterioration your own little town of Enterprise has suffered?"

      "I suppose you are right," said Captain Lee.

      "I hope, then," said Colonel Yancey, slowly, "that you will never go back South to live, especially to Enterprise."

      Carolina's sensitive face flushed, but she was too well bred to interrupt.

      "You mean," said Captain Lee, with a keen glance at his friend, "that I would find the South a disappointment?"

      "It would break your heart! It hurts me, tough as I am and little as I care compared to an enthusiast like yourself. It would wound you, but" – and here he turned his magnetic glance on the young girl-"for an idealist like missy here, it would be death itself!"

      Captain Lee reached out and laid his hand, on his daughter's head.

      "I am afraid so! I am afraid so!" he said, with a sigh.

      "You understand me?" questioned Colonel Yancey. It was a pleasure, which Colonel Yancey seldom experienced, to converse with so comprehending a man as Captain Lee. He was accustomed to dazzling people by his own brilliancy, but he seldom dived into the depths of his penetrating mind for the edification of men, simply for the reason that the ordinary run of men seldom care to be edified. But in diplomatic circles, Colonel Yancey was a welcome guest. He possessed an instinct so keen that it amounted almost to intuition in his understanding of men, a business ability amounting almost to genius, and a philosophic turn of mind which permitted him to apply his knowledge with almost unerring judgment. As a promoter, he had served governments with marked ability, and had the reputation of having amassed fortunes for those of his friends who had followed his lead and advice.

      All this Carolina knew and yet-

      However, she had the good taste to listen further, without attempting to draw a hasty conclusion.

      "The South," said Colonel Yancey, with a sigh of regret, "is like a beautiful woman asleep-no, not asleep, but standing in the glorious sunlight of God, with her eyes deliberately shut. Shut to opportunity! Shut to advancement! Shut to progress! Her ears are closed also. Closed to advice! Closed to warning! Closed to truth! Her mind is locked. Locked against common sense! Locked against the bitter lesson taught by a jolly good licking. And the key which thus locks her mind is a key which no one but God Almighty could turn, and that is prejudice! Blind, bitter, unreasoning, stupid prejudice! That is why her case is hopeless! That is why fifty or a hundred years from now the South will still be ignorant, stagnant, and indigent!"

      "But why? Why?" cried Carolina, carried quite out of herself by her excitement.

      "I beg your pardon!" she added, flushing.

      Colonel Yancey whirled upon her, delighted to have moved her so that she spoke without thinking.

      "Why? My dear young lady-why? Because she spends half her days and all her evenings fighting over the lost battles of the Lost Cause. Because she still glories in her mistakes of judgment! Because, almost to a man, the South to-day believes in the days of '61!"

      "Do they still talk about it?" asked Captain Lee.

      "Talk about it?" cried Colonel Yancey. "Talk about it? They talk of little else! They dream about it! They absorb it in the food they eat and the air they breathe! Every anniversary which gives them the ghost of an excuse they get up on platforms and spout glorious nonsense, which is so out-of-date-so prehistoric that it would be laughable, if it were not pitiable-as pitiable as a beautiful woman would be who paraded herself on Fifth Avenue in hoop-skirts and a cashmere shawl. You lose sight of even great beauty if it is clad in garments so old-fashioned that they are ludicrous."

      As Colonel Yancey paused, Captain Lee said, with a quiet smile:

      "And yet, Wayne, haven't I heard you breathe fire and brimstone against the 'damned Yankees,' and when they come South to invest their capital, don't you feel that they are legitimate prey?"

      Colonel Yancey rose to his feet and strode around the room for a few moments before replying.

      "Well, Savannah has had her fill of them, I think. Perhaps I do consider the most of them damned Yankees, but believe me, captain, in the first place, we Southerners fully believe that they deserve that title, and in the second place, we don't want them! No, nor their money either! Let them stay where they are wanted!"

      "Ah-h!" breathed Winchester Lee. "Who now has been talking beautiful nonsense which he didn't in the least subscribe to?"

      "There! There!" said Colonel Yancey. "It is a temptation to me to follow the dictates of my brain, but my heart, Winchester, is as unreconstructed as ever! After all, I am no better than the rest of them!"

      "But why do they-do you all feel that way?" asked Captain Lee. "I assure you from my soul that I do not."

      "I know you don't. But you have had strong meat to feed your brain upon during all these years. The rest of us have had nothing to feed our intelligence upon except the daily papers-and you know what they are. Our intellects are ingrowing, and have been for years.

      "It is difficult for you to believe this, captain, and almost impossible for missy. But let me explain a bit further. For nearly forty years the South has been poor, with a poverty you cannot understand, nor even imagine. There has been no money to buy books-scarcely enough to buy food and clothes. The libraries are wholly inadequate. Consequently current fiction-that ephemeral mass of part-rubbish, part-trash, which many of us despise, but which, nevertheless, mirrors, with more or less fidelity, modern times, its business, politics, fashions, and trend of thought-is wholly unknown to the great mass of Southern people. The few who can afford it keep up, in a desultory sort of way, with the names of modern novelists and a book or two of each. But compared to the omnivorous reading of the Northern public, the South reads nothing. Therefore, in most private libraries to-day, you find the novels which were current before the war.

      "Now take forty years out of a people's mind, and what do you find? You find a mental energy which must be utilized in some manner. Therefore, after a cursory knowledge of whatever of the classics their grandfathers had collected, and which the fortunes of war spared, you find a community, like the Indians, forced to confine themselves СКАЧАТЬ