True, and Other Stories

by George Parsons Lathrop

In answer to his exposition of his schemes, the colonel, who was fond of a classical allusion, said: "That's all very fine, Lance; but you propose a labor beside which Hercules slaying the Lernean Hydra would be insignificant. You know, that myth is supposed to refer to the draining of a morass. Hercules was the first man who discovered the still mythical disease of malaria, and tried to kill it."

But Lance was not to be discouraged by banter. When they got back to the mansion the colonel judiciously disappeared, and the two young people were left alone on the veranda. Lance began to talk over his theories anew with Jessie, as they sat there just outside the window of the morning-room whence the scent of the pine-boughs, the jessamine, and flowering vines drifted toward them in occasional puffs of fragrant air.

"The people here need so much help, so much enlightening," he said. "I can't give up the idea that something might be done in the way of elevating them."

"Oh, that's only because you're so restless," said Jessie. "You come from the North, and you find it so dull here that you have to think of something to keep you busy."

Her lips pretended that they were smiling with indolent mockery; but she looked so charming, and the contrast between her gray eyes and the Spanish jauntiness of her dark hair was so attractive, that the young man began to think opposition was the pleasantest form of encouragement.

"No," he said, quite earnestly; "I don't think it's mere restlessness. I mean what I say, and I can't help it. And certainly it isn't dull here for me."

He fixed his eyes for a moment on the boards of the veranda-floor, as if meditating. Jessie, in her turn, considered him. In his loose blue flannel suit, with a soft straw hat perched upon his thoughtful head, but throwing no shadow on his features, to which a small brown mustache gave additional emphasis, he certainly was handsome; she had never denied to herself that he was handsome, but she was just now especially impressed with the fact.

"I am going to tell you something curious," he said, lifting his eyes unexpectedly, so that she turned hers quickly toward the garden. He had evidently arrived at the result of his meditation. "It has several times occurred to me," he continued, "that my interest in this locality may have a queer, remote sort of origin that no one would ever suspect."

"Why, what's that?" asked Jessie, in a dreamy tone, feeling sure now that he could not be going to speak of her, since she was neither "queer" nor "remote."

Thereupon Lance went on to relate to her the legend of Gertrude Wylde and Guy Wharton, as well as he could from the stories which he remembered to have heard half jestingly repeated in his father's household. "I am directly descended from Guy Wharton," he stated, in conclusion, "but my name is different, because the male line died out and my father belonged to the posterity of one of the daughters. It's true, all that romance happened a hundred miles or more from here, way up by Roanoke, and I didn't think of it in the least when I started to make this visit; but, some way or other, the thing has come back into my mind, and I begin to fancy that by an occult law of thought it may account for my interest in this place—at least, partly."