pitched voice--a contralto it would be called in musical nomenclature.
It has no jar in it--it is rich and full and sweet, and while you always
speak softly, your voice is easily heard. I should say that you sing.”
“No. I must not sing.”
“Must not? How is that?”
The girl seemed embarrassed--almost pained. The young man, seeing this,
apologized:
“Pardon me! I did not mean to ask a personal question.”
“Never mind!” said the girl. “You were not unkind. But I must not sing,
and I must never learn a note of music, and worst of all I must not go
to places where they play fine music. If I ever get to liking you very
well indeed, perhaps I’ll tell you why--at least all the why of it that
I know myself--for I know only a little about it. Now tell me what else
you know about me. You see you were wrong this time.”
“Yes, in a way. Never mind that. I know that you are a rigid
disciplinarian. You keep your hounds under a sharp control.”
“Oh, I _must_ do that. They would eat somebody up if I didn’t. Besides
it is good for them. You see dogs and women need strict control. A
mistress will do for dogs, but every woman needs a master.”
The girl said this as simply and earnestly as she might have said that
all growing plants need water and sunshine. Arthur was astonished at the
utterance, delivered, as it was, in the manner of one who speaks the
veriest truism.
“Now,” he responded, “I have encountered something in you that I not
only do not understand but cannot even guess at. Where did you learn
that cynical philosophy?”
“Do you mean what I said about dogs?”
“No. Though ‘cynic’ means a dog. I mean what you said about women. Where
did you get the notion that every woman needs a master?”
“Why, anybody can see that,” answered the girl. “Every girl’s father or
brother is her master till she grows up and marries. Then her husband is
her master. Women are always very bad if they haven’t masters, and even
when they mean to be good, they make a sad mess of their lives if they
have nobody to control them.”
If this slip of a girl had talked Greek or Sanscrit or the differential
calculus at him, Arthur could not have been more astounded than he was.
Surely a girl so young, so fresh, and so obviously wholesome of mind
could never have formulated such a philosophy of life for herself, even
had she been thrown all her days into the most complex of conditions and
surroundings, instead of leading the simplest of lives as this girl had
manifestly done, and seeing only other living like her own. But he
forbore to question her, lest he trespass again upon delicate ground, as
he had done with respect to music. He was quick to remember that he had
already asked her where she had learned her philosophy, and that she had
nimbly evaded the question--defending her philosophy as a thing obvious
to the mind, instead of answering the inquiry as to whence she had
drawn the teaching.
Altogether, Arthur Brent’s mind was in a whirl as he left the luncheon
table. Simple as she seemed and transparent as her personality appeared
to him to be, the girl’s attitude of mind seemed inexplicable even to
his practised understanding. Her very presence in the house was a
puzzle, for Aunt Polly had offered no explanation of the fact that she
seemed to belong there, not as a guest but as a member of the household,
and even as one exercising authority there. For not only had the girl
apologized for leaving Aunt Polly to order the luncheon, but at table
and after the meal was finished, it was she, and not the elder woman who
gave directions to the servants, who seemed accustomed to think of her
as the source of authority, and finally, as she withdrew from the dining
room, she turned to Arthur and said:
“Doctor, it is the custom at Wyanoke to dine at four o’clock. Shall I
have dinner served at that hour, or do you wish it changed?”
The young man declared his wish that the traditions of the house should
be preserved, adding playfully--“I doubt if you could change the dinner
hour, Miss Dorothy, even if we all desired it so. I remember Aunt
Kizzey, the cook, and I for one should hesitate to oppose my will to
her conservatism.”
“Oh, as to that,” answered the girl, “I never have any trouble managing
the servants. They know me too well for that.”
“What could you do if you told Kizzey to serve dinner at three and she
refused?” asked the young man, really curious to hear the answer.
“I would send for Aunt Kizzey to come to me. Then I would look at her.
After that she would do as I bade her.”
“I verily believe she would,” said the young man to himself as he went
to the sideboard and filled one of the long stemmed pipes. “But I really
cannot understand why.”
He had scarcely finished his pipe when Dorothy came into the hall
accompanied by a negro girl of about fourteen years, who bore a work
basket with her. Seating herself, Dorothy gave the girl some instruction
concerning the knitting she had been doing, and added: “You may sit in
the back porch to-day. It is warm.”
“Is it too warm, Miss Dorothy, for you to make a little excursion with
me to the stables?”
“Certainly not,” she quickly answered. “I’ll go at once.”
“Thank you,” he said, “and we’ll stop in the orchard on our way back
and get some June apples. I remember where the trees are.”
“You want me to show you the horses, I suppose,” she said as the two set
off side by side.
“No; any of the negroes could do that. I want you to render me a more
skilled service.”
“What is it?”
“I want you, please, to pick out a horse for me to ride while I stay at
Wyanoke.”
“While you stay at Wyanoke!” echoed the girl. “Why, that will be for all
the time, of course.”
“I hardly think so,” answered the young man, with a touch of not
altogether pleased uncertainty in his tone. “You see I have important
work to do, which I cannot do anywhere but in a great city--or at any
rate,”--as the glamour of the easy, polished and altogether delightful
contentment of Virginia life came over him anew, and its attractiveness
sang like a siren in his ears,--“at any rate it cannot be so well done
anywhere else as in a large city. I have come down here to Virginia only
to see what duties I have to do here. If I find I can finish them in a
few months or a year, I shall go back to my more important work.”
The girl was silent for a time, as if pondering his words. Finally she
said:
“Is there anything more important than to look after your estate? You
see I don’t understand things very well.”
“Perhaps it is best that you never shall,” he answered. “And to most men
the task of looking after an ancestral estate, and managing a plantation
with more than a hundred negroes--”
“There are a hundred and eighty seven in all, if you count big and
little, old and young together,” broke in the girl.
“Are there? How did you come to know the figures so precisely?”
“Why, I keep the plantation book, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” he answered.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve kept it ever since I came to Wyanoke three or
four years ago. You see your uncle didn’t like to bother with details,
and so I took this off his hands, when I was so young that I wrote a
great big, sprawling hand and spelled my words ever so queerly. But I
wanted to help Uncle Robert. You see I liked him. If you’d rather keep
the plantation book yourself, I’ll give it up to you when we go back to
the house.”
“I would much rather have you keep it, at least until you make up your
mind whether you like me or not. Then, if you don’t like me I’ll take
the book.”
“Very well,” she replied, treating his reference to her present
uncertainty of mind concerning himself quite as she might have treated
his reference to a weather contingency of the morrow or of the next
week. “I’ll go on with the book till then.”
By this time the pair had reached the stables, and Miss Dorothy, in that
low, soft but penetrating voice which Arthur had observed and admired,
called to a negro man who was dozing within:
“Ben, your master wants to see the best of the saddle horses. Bring them
out, do you hear?”
The question “do you hear?” with which she ended her command was one in
universal use in Virginia. If an order were given to a negro without
that admonitory tag to it, it would fall idly upon heedless ears. But
the moment the negro heard that question he gathered his wits together
and obeyed the order.
“What sort of a horse do you like, Doctor?” asked the girl as the
animals were led forth. “Can you ride?”
“Why, of course,” he answered. “You know I spent a year in Virginia when
I was a boy.”
“Oh, yes, of course--if you haven’t forgotten. Then you don’t mind if a
horse is spirited and a trifle hard to manage?”
“No. On the contrary, Miss Dorothy, I should very much mind if my riding
horse were not spirited, and as for managing him, I’m going to get you
to teach me the art of command, as you practise it so well on your dogs,
your horse and the house servants.”
“Very well,” answered the girl seeming not to heed the implied
compliment. “Put the horses back in their stalls, Ben, and go over to
Pocahontas right away, and tell the overseer there to send Gimlet over
to me. Do you hear? You see, Doctor,” she added, turning to him, “your
uncle’s gout prevented him from riding much during the last year or so
of his life, and so there are no saddle horses here fit for a strong man
like you. There’s one fine mare, four years old, but she’s hardly big
enough to carry your weight. You must weigh a hundred and sixty pounds,
don’t you?”
“Yes, about that. But whose horse is Gimlet?”
“He’s mine, and he’ll suit you I’m sure. He is five years old, nearly
seventeen hands high and as strong as a young ox.”
“But are you going to sell him to me?”
“Sell him? No, of course not. He is my pet. He has eaten out of my hand
ever since he was a colt, and I was the first person that ever sat on
his back. Besides, I wouldn’t _sell_ a horse to _you_. I’m going to lend
him to you till--till I make up my mind. Then, if I like you I’ll give
him to you. If I don’t like you I’ll send him back to Pocahontas. Hurry
up, Ben. Ride the gray mare and lead Gimlet back, do you hear?”
“You are very kind to me, Miss Dorothy, and I--”
“Oh, no. I’m only polite and neighborly. You see Wyanoke and Pocahontas
are adjoining plantations. There comes Jo with your trunks, so we shall
not have time for the June apples to-day--or may be we might stop long
enough to get just a few, couldn’t we?”
With that she took the young man’s hand as a little girl of ten might
have done, and skipping by his side, led the way into the orchard. The
thought of the June apples seemed to have awakened the child side of her
nature, completely banishing the womanly dignity for the time being.
V
ARTHUR BRENT’S TEMPTATION
_D_uring the next three or four days Arthur was too much engaged with
affairs and social duties to pursue his scientific study of the young
girl--half woman, half child--with anything like the eagerness he would
have shown had his leisure been that of the Virginians round about him.
He had much to do, to “find out where he stood,” as he put the matter.
He had with him for two days Col. Majors the lawyer, who had the
estate’s affairs in charge. That comfortable personage assured the young
man that the property was “in good shape” but that assurance did not
satisfy a man accustomed to inquire into minute details of fact and to
rest content only with exact answers to his inquiries.
“I will arrange everything for you,” said the lawyer; “the will gives
you everything and it has already been probated. It makes you sole
executor with no bonds, as well as sole inheritor of the estate. There
is really nothing for you to do but hang up your hat. You take your late
uncle’s place, that is all.”
“But there are debts,” suggested Arthur.
“Oh, yes, but they are trifling and the estate is a very rich one. None
of your creditors will bother you.”
“But I do not intend to remain in debt,” said the young man impatiently.
“Besides, I do not intend to remain a planter all my life. I have other
work to do in the world. This inheritance is a burden to me, and I mean
to be rid of it as soon as possible.”
“Allow me to suggest,” said the lawyer in his self-possessed way, “that
the inheritance of Wyanoke is a sort of burden that most men at your
time of life would very cheerfully take upon their shoulders.”
“Very probably,” answered Arthur. “But as I happen not to be ‘most men
at my time of life’ it distinctly oppresses me. It loads me with duties
that are not congenial to me. It requires my attention at a time when I
very greatly desire to give my attention to something which I regard as
of more importance than the growing of wheat and tobacco and corn.”
“Every one to his taste,” answered the lawyer, “but I confess I do not
see what better a young man could do than sit down here at Wyanoke and,
without any but pleasurable activities, enjoy all that life has to give.
Your income will be large, and your credit quite beyond question. You
can buy whatever you want, and you need never bother yourself with a
business detail. No dun will ever beset your door. If any creditor of
yours should happen to want his money, as none will, you can borrow
enough to pay him without even going to Richmond to arrange the matter.
I will attend to all such things for you, as I did for your late uncle.”
“Thank you very much,” Arthur answered in a tone which suggested that he
did not thank him at all. “But I always tie my own shoe strings. I do
not know whether I shall go on living here or not, whether I shall give
up my work and my ambitions and settle down into a life of inglorious
ease, or whether I shall be strong enough to put that temptation aside.
I confess it is a temptation. Accustomed as I am to intensity of
intellectual endeavor, I confess that the prospect of sitting down here
in lavish plenty, and living a life unburdened by care and unvexed by
any sense of exacting duty, has its allurements for me. I suppose,
indeed, that any well ordered mind would find abundant satisfaction in
such a life programme, and perhaps I shall presently find myself growing
content with it. But if I do, I shall not consent to live in debt.”
“But everybody has his debts--everybody who has an estate. It is part of
the property, as it were. Of course it would be uncomfortable to owe
more than you could pay, but you are abundantly able to owe your debts,
so you need not let them trouble you. All told they do not amount to the
value of ten or a dozen field hands.”
“But I shall never sell my negroes.”
“Of course not. No gentleman in Virginia ever does that, unless a negro
turns criminal and must be sent south, or unless nominal sales are made
between the heirs of an estate, simply by way of distributing the
property. Far be it from me to suggest such a thing. I meant only to
show you how unnecessary it is for you to concern yourself about the
trifling obligations on your estate--how small a ratio they bear to the
value of the property.”
“I quite understand,” answered Arthur. “But at the same time these debts
do trouble me and will go on troubling me till the last dollar of them
is discharged. This is simply because they interfere with the plans I
have formed--or at least am forming--for so ordering my affairs that I
may go back to my work. Pray do not let us discuss the matter further. I
will ask you, instead, to send me, at your earliest convenience, an
exact schedule of the creditors of this estate, together with the
amount--principal and interest--that is owing to each. I intend to make
it my first business to discharge all these obligations. Till that is
done, I am not my own master, and I have a decided prejudice in favor of
being able to order my own life in my own way.”
Behind all this lay the fact that Arthur Brent was growing dissatisfied
with himself and suspicious of himself. The beauty and calm of Wyanoke,
the picturesque contentment of that refined Virginia life which was
impressed anew upon his mind every time a neighboring planter rode over
to take breakfast, dinner, or supper with him, or drove over in the
afternoon with his wife and daughters to welcome the new master of the
plantation--all this fascinated his mind and appealed strongly to the
partially developed æsthetic side of his nature, and at times the
strong, earnest manhood in him resented the fact almost with bitterness.
There was never anywhere in America a country life like that of
Virginia in the period before the war. In that state, as nowhere else on
this continent, the refinement, the culture, the education and the
graceful social life of the time were found not in the towns, but in the
country. There were few cities in the state and they were small. They
existed chiefly for the purpose of transacting business for the more
highly placed and more highly cultivated planters. The people of the
cities, with exceptions that only emphasized the general truth, were
inferior to the dwellers on the plantations, in point of education,
culture and social position. It had always been so in Virginia. From the
days of William Byrd of Westover to those of Washington, and Jefferson
and Madison and John Marshall, and from their time to the middle of the
nineteenth century, it had been the choice of all cultivated Virginians
to live upon their plantations. Thence had always come the scholars, the
statesmen, the great lawyers and the masterful political writers who had
conferred untold lustre upon the state.
Washington’s career as military chieftain and statesman, had been one
long sacrifice of his desire to lead the planter life at Mount Vernon.
Jefferson’s heart was at Monticello while he penned the Declaration of
Independence, and it was the proud boast of Madison that he like
Jefferson, quitted public office poorer than he was when he undertook
such service to his native land, and rejoiced in his return to the
planter life of his choice at Montpélièr.
In brief, the entire history of the state and all its traditions, all
its institutions, all its habits of thought tended to commend the
country life to men of refined mind, and to make of the plantation
owners and their families a distinctly recognized aristocracy, not only
of social prestige but even more of education, refinement and
intellectual leadership.
To Arthur Brent had come the opportunity to make himself at once and
without effort, a conspicuous member of this blue blooded caste. His
plantation had come to him, not by vulgar purchase, but by inheritance.
It had been the home of his ancestors, the possession and seat of his
family for more than two hundred years. And his family had been from the
first one of distinction and high influence. One of his great, great,
great grandfathers, had been a member of the Jamestown settlement and a
soldier under John Smith. His great, great grandfather had shared the
honor of royal proscription as an active participant in Bacon’s
rebellion. His great grandfather had been the companion of young George
Washington in his perilous expeditions to “the Ohio country,” and had
fallen by Washington’s side in Braddock’s blundering campaign. His
grandfather had been a drummer boy at Yorktown, had later become one of
the great jurists of the state and had been a distinguished soldier in
the war of 1812. His father, as we know, had strayed away to the west,
as so many Virginians of his time did, but he had won honors there which
made Virginia proud of him. And fortunately for Arthur Brent, that
father’s removal to the west was not made until this his son had been
born at the old family seat.
“For,” explained Aunt Polly to the young man, in her own confident way,
“in spite of your travels, you are a native Virginian, Arthur, and when
you have dropped into the ways of the country, people will overlook the
fact that you have lived so much at the north, and even in Europe.”
“But why, Aunt Polly,” asked Arthur, “should that fact be deemed
something to be ‘overlooked?’ Surely travel broadens one’s views and--”
“Oh, yes, of course, in the case of people not born in Virginia. But a
Virginian doesn’t need it, and it upsets his ideas. You see when a
Virginian travels he forgets what is best. He actually grows like other
people. You yourself show the ill effects of it in a hundred ways. Of
course you haven’t quite lost your character as a Virginian, and you’ll
gradually come back to it here at Wyanoke; but ‘evil communications
corrupt good manners,’ and I can’t help seeing it in you--at least in
your speech. You don’t pronounce your words correctly. You say ‘cart’
‘carpet’ and ‘garden’ instead of ‘cyart’ ‘cyarpet’ and ‘gyarden.’ And
you flatten your a’s dreadfully. You say ‘grass’ instead of ‘grawss’ and
‘basket’ instead of ‘bawsket’ and all that sort of thing. And you roll
your r’s dreadfully. It gives me a chill whenever I hear you say
‘master’ instead of ‘mahstah.’ But you’ll soon get over that, and in the
meantime, as you were born in Virginia and are the head of an old
Virginia family, the gentlemen and ladies who are coming every day to
welcome you, are very kind about it. They overlook it, as your
misfortune, rather than your fault.”
“That is certainly very kind of them, Aunt Polly. I can’t imagine
anything more generous in the mind than that. But--well, never mind.”
“What were you going to say, Arthur?”
“Oh, nothing of any consequence. I was only thinking that perhaps my
Virginia neighbors do not lay so much stress upon these things as you
do.”
“Of course not. That is one of the troubles of this time. Since we let
the Yankees build railroads through Virginia, everybody here wants to
travel. Why, half the gentlemen in this county have been to New York!”
“How very shocking!” said Arthur, hiding his smile behind his hand.
“That’s really what made the trouble for poor Dorothy,” mused Aunt
Polly. “If her father hadn’t gone gadding about--he even went to Europe
you know--Dorothy never would have been born.”
“How fortunate that would have been! But tell me about it, Aunt Polly.
You see I don’t quite understand in what way it would have been better
for Dorothy not to have been born--unless we accept the pessimist
philosophy, and consider all human life a curse.”
“Now you know, I don’t understand that sort of talk, Arthur,” answered
Aunt Polly. “I never studied philosophy or chemistry, and I’m glad of
it. But I know it would have been better for Dorothy if Dr. South had
stayed at home like a reasonable man, and married--but there, I mustn’t
talk of that. Dorothy is a dear girl, and I’m fitting her for her
position in life as well as I can. If I could stop her from thinking,
now, or--”
“Pray don’t, Aunt Polly! Her thinking interests me more than anything I
ever studied,--except perhaps the strange and even inexplicable
therapeutic effect of champagne in yellow fever--”
“There you go again, with your outlandish words, which you know I don’t
understand or want to understand, though sometimes I remember them.”
“Tell me of an instance, Aunt Polly.”
“Why, you said to me the other night that Dorothy was a ‘psychological
enigma’ to your mind, and that you very much wished you might know ‘the
conditions of heredity and environment’ that had produced ‘so strange a
phenomenon.’ There! I remember your words, though I haven’t the
slightest notion what they mean. I went upstairs and wrote them down. Of
course I couldn’t spell them except in my own way--and that would make
you laugh I reckon if you could see it, which you never shall--but I
haven’t a glimmering notion of what the words mean. Now I want to tell
you about Dorothy.”
“Good! I am anxious to hear!”
“Oh, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. That would be
gossip, and no Virginia woman ever gossips.”
That was true. The Virginians of that time, men and women alike, locked
their lips and held their tongues in leash whenever the temptation came
to them to discuss the personal affairs of their neighbors. They were
bravely free and frank of speech when telling men to their faces what
opinions they might hold concerning them; but they did that only when
necessity, or honor, or the vindication of truth compelled. They never
made the character or conduct or affairs of each other a subject of
conversation. It was the very crux of honor to avoid that.
“Then tell me what you are minded to reveal, Aunt Polly,” responded
Arthur. “I do not care to know anything else.”
“Well, Dorothy is in a peculiar position--not by her own fault. She
_must_ marry into a good family, and it has fallen to me to prepare her
for her fate.”