"Yes."
"Well—maybe not. You know I never took Canby as a name. They—the fishermen—just gave it to me, and for a long time it suited my purposes. I wanted to get away from everybody and everything and if I had planned it deliberately it could not have come out better. But little Jim's future bothers me. She can't stay here much longer; she has got to go to school somewhere, and she, girl-like, wants to go up North, about which I have told her so much in order to amuse her when little. What do you think?" he asked, again the simple Georgia Cracker.
"It will be pretty hard to advise you without knowing more of the circumstances," I said, dropping down on a seat in the cabin by a porthole.
He dropped his tools, came in and sat on the other side, throwing off his hat. His long black mane was turning slightly gray at the temples, but his body was sturdy and powerful.
"I never before felt as though I could talk about it, and don't believe I could now to anyone but you. I think it would be a relief to tell you because you have known me so long and understand so many things," he said, filling his pipe carefully and lighting up. He leaned back, crossed his legs, and looked keenly the friendship he felt for me.
"You know," he began, in wonderful self-restraint, "it takes a long time to get real, cankerous bitterness out of a man—me anyhow. I think it was you who told me that hatred, malice, and revenge were the three arch enemies of peace of mind and development. Wood, I have remembered that, and am glad I have made some progress, but I suppose I am like everybody else. I think my trouble has been the worst. I believe now that if I had followed your advice and not borrowed from the Transatlantic I could have kept my property, but I would have to go through some kind of a melting fire to be made into good steel. No doubt, the family trouble would have come in some other way." I arched my brows, appearing not to understand.
"You, of course, recall, for I know you don't forget anything, the last talk we had in the Waldorf in New York," he continued. "You advised me to sit tight and let good enough alone. That night, and for a day or two, I thought you had grown over-cautious and conservative, and had entered the class who hold up their hands and cry be careful, be cautious; but never do a damn thing for themselves. But I soon began to see that way myself, and decided to let things be as they were. Mrs. Potter took the lead against me. That name I have never pronounced since then, till now. It sounds strange to do so. It seems like recalling things to memory that might have happened when I was on earth at some former time. Mrs. Potter, as you well know, was my sister-in-law, my partner's wife, and while the family stood well socially, she had a great ambition to be at the head of the Four Hundred. She wanted to be worth millions. She not only filled Potter with it but won over her father, and with all of them against me I gave in and the deal went through. I am satisfied now the Transatlantic Trust Company plotted to acquire the property. The panic played into their hands, enabling them to call our loans, without which we could not run or pay the interest on the bonds. They took snap judgment and foreclosed as cold as a cake of ice, kicked me out, and Byng & Potter, Incorporated, was theirs. I had a card up my sleeve that would have brought them down, but this blackleg Ramund extended the robbery to my home and wrecked that, too."
Howard stopped here, filled his pipe again and looked at me appealingly, apparently waiting for me to arrive at the true significance of his quiet statement of fact.
"Ramund, Ramund, you don't mean to say——" And then, as though shot between the eyes, I recalled the same name and the peculiar cultivated inflection given it by Norma Byng some twelve years before. Now the cause of his extreme interest and agitation when we were examining the prisoners a few days before rushed upon me like Niagara. I could still hear Byng's cut—"It is a lie, his name is Ramund—a damned Prussian!" It was strange I did not remember the name then, especially as both times it had been connected with a foreign banking house.