I read the mystic, involved, subjective words again, as most of the

Concord Sage's words require, and reflected how well they jumped with

the note of my heathen Epictetus, who had said, "Be natural and

noble". And, so thinking, I began to wonder whether, after all, my

father, whose ruthless ways I betimes had explored, whose ruthless

sins I had betimes atoned, had not been, perhaps, a better man than

sometimes I had credited him with being. He, in accordance with his

lights, had accepted the part given him by the Poet of the Play. He

had confided himself childlike to the genius of his age, roaring,

fighting, scrambling, getting and sometimes giving. He had trusted

himself; and in the end, a bold man, he had advanced bravely on Chaos

and the Dark. After a life of war and sometimes of rapine, done under

the genius of his day, he had struck boldly the last chord on an iron

string. Dear old Governor! I did not regret the million of his money I

had spent to restore his memory clean in my own mind: for after all,

it had all been in open war--that time when he unloaded a worthless

mine on his friend, Dan Emory--Helena's father, Daniel Emory, who was,

at first, said to have left his family penniless; until a shrewd

lawyer in some miraculous way had managed to sell at a good price a

box full of worthless mining stock to some innocent victim.

Helena Emory never knew of that sale, nor did her guardian aunt. I did

know of it, for the very good reason that I was both the shrewd lawyer

and the innocent purchaser. It was the last act of my professional

career; and it was this which caused the general report that I had

made a bad mining venture, had lost my father's fortune, and retired

from my career a ruined man. A few friends knew otherwise: and I

blessed the rumor which cost me certain friends who thought me poor

and so forsook me. Perhaps, my father would have called me quixotic

had he known. Now, as I read and pondered, I neither blamed him for

his own course in fair business war with old Dan Emory, nor did I

censure myself for my own hidden act of restitution. Let the world wag

its head if it liked, and remain ignorant of other millions given to

me before my father's death, unprobated, secret, after the fashion of

my pirate parent who buried his treasures and told none but his kin

how they might be found.

Of course, in time, it all might come out. In time, Helena would know

that this yacht which she supposed to be Davidson's was my own, that

the farm I was supposed to have rented really was a handsome estate

that I owned, that many covert deeds in finance had been my own--it

was only my silence and my absence in many parts of the world which

had prevented her, also much a traveler, from knowing the truth about

me long ago. And the truth was, I was not a poor man, but a rich one.




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