affairs of interest to themselves, and on this his first Sunday, Arthur
found that his own affairs constituted the subject of most general
interest. He was heartily welcomed as the new master of Wyanoke, the
welcome partaking somewhat of the nature of that given to one who
returns to right ways of living after erratic wanderings. There was a
kindly disposition to recognize Arthur’s birthright as a Virginian,
together with a generous readiness to forgive his youthful indiscretion
in living so much elsewhere.
Only one man ventured to be censorious, and that was Madison Peyton, who
was accustomed to impress himself upon the community in ways which were
sometimes anything but agreeable, but to which everybody was accustomed
to submit in a nameless sort of fear of his sharp tongue--everybody,
that is to say, except Aunt Polly and John Meaux.
Aunt Polly was not afraid of Madison Peyton for several reasons. The
first was that Aunt Polly was not accustomed to stand in awe of anybody.
The second was that her blood was quite the bluest in all that part of
the State and she had traditions behind her. Finally she was a shrewdly
penetrative person who had long ago discovered the nature of Madison
Peyton’s pretensions and subjected them to sarcastic analysis. As for
John Meaux, everybody knew him as by odds the most successful planter
and most capable man of business in the county. Madison Peyton could
teach him nothing, and he had a whiplash attachment to his tongue, the
sting of which Peyton did not care to invoke.
For the rest, Madison Peyton was dominant. It was his habit to lecture
his neighbors upon their follies and short-comings and rather
arrogantly, though with a carefully simulated good nature, to dictate to
them what they should or should not do, assuming with good-natured
insolence an authority which in no way belonged to him. In this way,
during the late Robert Brent’s last illness, Peyton had installed as
overseer at Wyanoke, a man whom the planters generally refused to employ
because of his known cruelty, but whose capacity to make full crops was
well attested by experience.
Arthur Brent had summarily dismissed this man as we know, and Peyton was
distinctly displeased with him for doing so. Taking the privilege of an
old friend of the young man’s uncle, Peyton called him by his first
name, without any prefix whatever.
“Why in the world, Arthur,” he said by way of introducing the subject,
“why in the world have you sent Williams away?”
Something in Peyton’s manner, something that was always in his manner,
had given Arthur a feeling of resentment when the man had called upon
him soon after his arrival. This direct interrogatory concerning a
matter exclusively his own, almost angered the young man, as the others
saw when, instead of answering it directly, he asked:
“Are you specially interested in Williams’s welfare, Mr. Peyton?”
Peyton was too self-satisfied to be sensitive, so he took the rebuff
with a laugh.
“Oh, no,” he answered. “It is you that I’m troubled about. Knowing
nothing of planting you need a capable overseer more than anybody else
does, and here you’ve sent away the best one in the county without even
consulting anybody.”
“I did not need to consult anybody,” answered Arthur, “in order to know
that I did not want that man on my plantation.”
“Oh, of course! But you can’t get another overseer at this time of year,
you know.”
“On the whole, I don’t think I want another at any time of year.”
“You imagine perhaps that you know something about planting. I’ve known
other young men to make the same mistake.”
“Perhaps I can learn,” answered Arthur in placid tones. “I have learned
some things quite as difficult in my life.”
“But you don’t know anything about planting, and if you try it without
an overseer you’ll find your account at your commission merchant’s
distressingly short at the end of the year.”
“I don’t know about that,” broke in John Meaux. “You predicted the same
thing in my case, you remember, Mr. Peyton, when I came back after
graduating at West Point, and yet I’ve managed to keep some hams in my
meat house for fifteen years now,--and I never had an overseer.”
Ignoring Meaux’s interruption Peyton said to Arthur:
“And you know you’ve got a law-suit on your hands.”
“Have I? I didn’t know it.”
“Why, of course, Williams will sue. You see he was engaged for the year,
and the contract lasts till January.”
“Who made the contract?” asked Arthur.
“Well, I did--acting for your uncle.”
“Had you my uncle’s power of attorney to bind him to a year’s
arrangement?”
“Of course not. He was ill and I merely did a neighbor’s part.”
“Then suppose Williams should sue you instead of me? You see it is you
who are liable for non-fulfilment of that contract. You bargained with
this man to serve you for a year as overseer on my plantation, and I
have declined to accept the arrangement. If he has a right of action
against anybody, it is against you. However, I don’t think he will sue
you, for I have paid him his wages for the full year. Fortunately I
happened to have money enough in bank for that. There is the
voluntary--let’s go into church.”
Arthur Brent entered the place of service, one or two of the gentlemen
following him.
He had made an enemy of Madison Peyton--an enemy who would never admit
his enmity but would never lose an opportunity to indulge it.
VIII
A DINNER AT BRANTON
_I_t fell to Arthur Brent’s share to dine on that Sunday at Branton, the
seat of the most princely hospitality in all that part of Virginia. The
matter was not at all one of his own arranging, although it was
altogether agreeable to him. The master of Branton--a young man scarcely
older than himself, who lived there with his only sister, Edmonia
Bannister, had been the first of all the neighbors to visit Arthur,
dining with him and passing the night at Wyanoke. He had been most
kindly and cordial in his welcome and Arthur had been strongly drawn to
him as a man of character, intelligence and very winning manners. No
sooner had Arthur dismounted at church on that first Sunday, than young
Archer Bannister had come to shake his hand and say--“I want to preëmpt
you, Doctor Brent. All your neighbors will clamor for your company for
the dinner and the night, but I have done my best to establish the
priority of my claim. Besides my good sister wants you--and as a
confidence between you and me, I will tell you that when my sister wants
anything she is extremely apt to get it. I’m something of a laggard at
dressing myself for church, but this morning she began upon me early,
sending three servants to help me put on my clothes, and laying her
particular commands upon me to be the first man to arrive at Shrub Hill,
lest some other get before me with an invitation to dinner. So you are
to be my guest, please, and I’ll send one of my people over to Wyanoke
for anything you want. By the way I’ve cleared out a wardrobe for you at
Branton, and a dressing case. You’ll need to send over a supply of
linen, coats, boots, underwear, and the like and leave it in your room
there, so that you shall be quite at home to come and go at your will,
with the certainty of always finding ready for you whatever you need in
the way of costume.”
Arthur Brent’s one extravagance was in the matter of clothes. He always
dressed himself simply, but he was always dressed well, and especially
it was his pleasure to change his garments as often as the weather or
the circumstances might suggest the desirability of a change.
Accordingly he had brought fat trunks to Wyanoke, but by the time that
three others of his new neighbors had informed him, quite casually and
as a matter of course, that they had prepared rooms for him and expected
him to send to those rooms a supply of clothing sufficient for any need,
he was pleased to remember that he had left careful measurements with
his tailor, his shirt maker, his fabricator of footwear, and his “gents’
furnisher” in New York. And he had also acquired a new and broader
conception than ever before, of the comprehensive heartiness of Virginia
hospitality.
“You see,” said young Bannister, later in the day, “Branton is to be one
of your homes. As a young man you will be riding about a good deal, and
you mustn’t be compelled to ride all the way to Wyanoke every time you
want to change your coat or substitute low quarter shoes for your riding
boots. If you’ll ask little Miss Dorothy to show you my room at Wyanoke
you’ll find that I have everything there that any gentleman could
possibly need with which to dress himself properly for any occasion,
from a fish fry to a funeral, from a fox hunt to a wedding. You are to
do the same at Branton. You don’t do things in that way in a city, of
course, but here it is necessary, because of the distance between
plantations. A man doesn’t want all his belongings in one place when
that place may be ten or a dozen miles away when he wants them.”
Arthur found Branton to be substantially a reproduction of Wyanoke,
except that the great gambrel-roofed house had many wings and
extensions, and several one storied, two roomed “offices” built about
the grounds for the accommodation of any overflow of guests that might
happen there. The house had been built about the time at which the
Wyanoke mansion had come into being. It was of wood, but by no means of
such structure as we now expect in a wooden house. The frame was made of
great hewn timbers of forest pine, twelve inches square as to floor
beams and rafter plates, and with ten inch timbers in lieu of studding.
The vast chimneys were supported, not upon arches nicely calculated to
sustain their superincumbent weight with a factor of safety, but upon a
solid mass of cellar masonry that would have sustained the biggest of
Egyptian monoliths. The builders of the old colonial time may not have
known the precise strength of materials or the niceties of calculation
by which the supporting capacity of an arch is determined, but they
knew--and they acted upon the knowledge--that twelve inch, heart pine
timbers set on end will sustain any weight that a dwelling is called
upon to bear, and that a chimney built upon a solid mass of masonry,
twenty feet in diameter, is not likely to fall down for lack of
underpinning.
One full half of the ground floor of the great mansion constituted the
single drawing room, wainscoted to the ceiling and provided with three
huge fire places built for the burning of cord wood. The floors were as
white as snow, the wainscoting as black as night with age and jealous
polishing with beeswax. After the architectural manner of the country,
there was a broad porch in front and another in rear, each embowered in
honeysuckles and climbing rose bushes. A passageway, more than twenty
feet in width ran through the building, connecting the two porches and
constituting the most generally used sitting room of the house. It had
broad oaken doors reaching across its entire width. They stood always
open except during the very coldest days of the mild Virginia winter,
there being no thought of closing them even at night. For there were no
criminal classes in that social fabric, and if there had been, the
certainty that the master of the mansion slept upon its ground floor
and knew what to do with a shot gun, would have been a sufficient
deterrent to invasion of the premises.
There were two large fire places in the hall for winter use. But the
glory of the place was the stairway, with its broad ashen steps and its
broader landings. Up and down it had passed generations of happy maidens
and matrons. Up and down it, prattling children had played and romped
and danced in happy innocence. Up and down it wedding guests and funeral
attendants had come and gone, carrying their burdens of flowers for the
bride and blossoms for the bier. Upon it had been whispered words of
love and tenderness that prepared the way for lives of happiness, and
sorrowful utterances that soothed and softened grief. Upon its steps
young men of chivalric soul had wooed maidens worthy of their devotion.
Upon its landings young maidens had softly spoken those words of consent
which ushered in lives of rejoicing.
The furniture of the house was in keeping with its spaciousness and its
solidity. Huge sofas were everywhere, broad enough for beds and long
enough for giants to stretch their limbs upon. Commodious,
plantation-made chairs of oak invited every guest to repose in the
broad hallway. In the drawing room, and in the spacious dining hall the
sedate ticking of high standing clocks marked time only to suggest its
abundance in that land of leisure, and to invite its lavish use in
enjoyment.
Now add to all this still life, the presence of charming people--men of
gracious mien and young women of immeasurable charm, young women whose
rich and softly modulated voices were exquisite music, and whose
presence was a benediction--and you may faintly understand the
surroundings in which Arthur Brent found himself on that deliciously
perfect Sunday afternoon in June, in the year of our Lord, 1859.
Is it surprising that the glamour of it all took hold upon his soul and
tempted him to rest content with a life so picturesquely peaceful? Is it
surprising that his set purpose of speedily returning to his own life of
strenuous, scientific endeavor, somewhat weakened in presence of a
temptation so great? All this was his for the taking. All of it was open
to him to enjoy if he would. All of it lay before him as a gracious
inheritance. Why should he not accept it? Why should he return to the
struggle of science, the pent life of cities? Why should he prowl about
tenement houses in an endeavor to solve the problem of mephitic gases,
when all this free, balsamic air offered itself gratis to his
breathing? He had but one life to live, he reflected. Why should he not
live it here in sweet and wholesome ways? Why should he not make himself
a part of this exquisitely poised existence?
All these vexed and vexing questions flitted through his brain even
before he had opportunity to meet his hostess in her own home,
surrounded by her bevy of variously attractive young women.
Edmonia Bannister was everywhere recognized as the belle of the state in
which she lived. Suitors for her hand had come from afar and anear to
woo this maiden of infinite charm, and one by one they had gone away
sorrowing but with only the kindliest memory of the gentleness with
which she had withheld her consent to their wooings.
She was scarcely beautiful. The word “comely” seemed a better one with
which to describe her appearance, but her comeliness was allied to a
charm at once indefinable and irresistible. John Meaux had said that “it
is a necessary part of every young man’s education to fall in love with
Edmonia Bannister at least once,” and had predicted that fate for Arthur
Brent. Whether the prediction was destined to be fulfilled or not,
Arthur could not decide on this his first day as a guest at Branton. He
was sure that he was not in love with the girl at the end of his visit,
but he drew that assurance chiefly from his conviction that it was
absurd to fall in love with any woman upon acquaintance so slight. While
holding firmly to that conviction he nevertheless felt strongly that the
girl had laid a spell upon him, under control of which he was well nigh
helpless. He was by no means the first young man to whom this experience
had come, and he was not likely to be the last.
And yet the young woman was wholly free from intent thus to enslave
those who came into her life. Her artlessness was genuine, and her
seriousness profound. There was no faintest suggestion of frivolity or
coquetry in her manner. She was too self-respecting for that, and she
had too much of character. One of those who had “loved and lost” her,
had said that “the only art she used was the being of herself,” and all
the rest who had had like experience were of the same mind. So far
indeed was she from seeking to bring men to her feet that on more than
one occasion she had been quick to detect symptoms of coming love and
had frankly and solemnly said to prospective wooers for whom she felt a
particular kindness--“please don’t fall in love with me. I shall never
be able to reciprocate the sentiment, and it would distress me to reject
your suit.” It is not upon record, however, that any one of those who
were thus warned profited by the wise counsel. On the contrary, in many
instances, this mark of kindliness on her part had served only to
precipitate the catastrophe she sought to avert.
Arthur Brent had a stronger shield. He saw clearly that for him to marry
this or any other of that fair land’s maidens would make an end of his
ambitions.
“If I should fall in love down here in Virginia,” he reflected, “I
should never have strength of mind enough to shake off the glamour of
this life and go back to my work. The fascination of it all is already
strong upon me. I must not add another to the sources of danger. I must
be resolute and strong. That way alone safety lies for me. I will set to
work at once to carry out my mission here, and then go away. I shall
know this week how matters stand with the estate. I shall busy myself at
once with my fixed purpose. I shall find means of discharging all the
debts of the plantation. Then I shall sell the land and with the
proceeds take the negroes to the west and settle them there on little
farms of their own. Then I shall be free again to resume my proper work
in the world. Obviously I must not complicate matters by marrying here
or even falling in love. A man with such a duty laid upon him has no
right to indulge himself in soft luxury. I must be strong and resolute.”
Nevertheless Arthur Brent felt an easily recognizable thrill of delight
when at dinner he found himself assigned to a seat on Edmonia
Bannister’s left hand.
There were sixteen at dinner, and all were happy. Arthur alone was a
guest unused to occupy that place at Branton, and to him accordingly all
at table devoted special attention. Three at least of the younger men
present, had been suitors in their time for their hostess’s hand, for it
was a peculiarity of Edmonia’s rejections of her wooers, that they
usually soothed passion into affection and made of disappointed lovers
most loyal friends. Before the dinner came to an end, Arthur found
himself deliberately planning to seek this relation of close friendship
without the initiatory process of a love making. For he found his
hostess to be wise in counsel and sincere in mind, beyond her years.
“She is precisely the person to advise me in the delicate affairs that I
must manage,” he thought. “For in the present state of public
feeling”--it was the era of Kansas-Nebraska bills and violent
agitation--“it will require unusual tact and discretion to carry out my
plans without making of myself an object of hatred and loathing. This
young woman has tact in infinite measure; she has discretion also, and
an acquaintance with sentiment here, such as I cannot even hope to
acquire. Above all she has conscience, as I discover every time she has
occasion to express an opinion. I’ll make her my friend. I’ll consult
her with regard to my plans.”
By way of preparation for this he said to Edmonia as they sat together
in the porch one evening: “I am coming often to Branton, because I want
you to learn to know me and like me. I have matters in hand concerning
which I very much want your counsel. Will you mind giving it to me if I
behave well, resist the strong temptation to pay court to you as a
lover, and teach you after a while to feel that I am a friend to whom
your kindliness will owe counsel?”
“If you will put matters on that level, Cousin Arthur, and keep them
there I shall be glad to have it so. I don’t know that I can give you
advice of any account, but, at any rate, as I think your impulses will
be right and kindly, I can give you sympathy, and that is often a help.
I’ll give you my opinion also, whenever you want it--especially if I
think you are going wrong and need admonition. Then I’ll put on all the
airs of a Minerva and advise you oracularly. But remember that you must
win all this, by coming often to Branton and--and the rest of it.”
“I’ll come often to Branton, be sure of that,” he answered. But he did
not feel himself quite strong enough of purpose, to promise that he
would not make love to the mistress of the mansion.
At the dinner each gentleman had a joint or a pair of fowls before him
to carve, and every gentleman in that time and country was confidently
expected to know how to carve whatever dish there might be assigned to
him. Carving was deemed as much a necessary part of every gentleman’s
education as was the ability to ride and shoot and catch a mettlesome
fish. The barbarity of having the joints clumsily cut up by a butler at
a side table and served half cold in an undiscriminating way, had not
then come into being. Dining was a fine art in that time and country, a
social function, in which each carver had the joy of selecting tidbits
for those he served, and arranging them daintily and attractively upon
the plate brought to him for that purpose by a well trained servant.
Especially each took pleasure in remembering and ministering to the
particular fancies of all the rest in the act of helping. Refined people
had not yet borrowed from barbaric Russians the practice of having
themselves fed, like so many cattle, by servitors appointed to deal out
rations.
There was no wine served with the meal. That came later in its proper
place. Each gentleman had been invited to partake of a “toddy”--a mild
admixture of whiskey, water, sugar and nutmeg--before sitting down to
the meal. After that there was no drink served until the meal was over.
When the cloth was removed after the dessert, there came upon the
polished board some dishes of walnuts of which all partook sparingly.
Then came the wine--old sherry or, if the house were a fortunate one,
rare old Madeira, served from richly carved decanters, in daintily
stemmed cut glasses. The wine was poured into all the glasses. Then the
host proposed “the ladies,” and all drank, standing. Then the host
gallantly held the broad dining room door open while the ladies, bowing
and smiling, graciously withdrew. After that politics and walnuts,
religion and raisins, sherry and society divided the attention of the
gentlemen with cigars that had been kept for a dozen years or more
drying in a garret. For the modern practice of soaking cigars in a
refrigerator and smoking them limp and green was an undreamed of insult
to the tongues and palates of men who knew all about tobacco and who
smoked for flavor, not for the satisfaction of a fierce and intemperate
craving for narcotic effect.
After half an hour or so over the rich, nutty wine, the gentlemen joined
the gentlewomen in the drawing room, the hallway or the porches
according to the weather, and a day well spent ended with a light supper
at nine o’clock. Then there was an ordering of horses and a making of
adieux on the part of such of the gentlemen as were not going to remain
over night.
“You will stay, Cousin Arthur,” Edmonia said. “You will stay, of course.
You and I have a compact to carry out. We are to learn to like each
other. It will be very easy, I think, but we must set to work at it
immediately. Will you ride with me in the morning--soon?”
She called him “Cousin Arthur,” of course. Had not a distant relative of
his once married a still more distant kinswoman of her own? It would
have been deemed in Virginia a distinct discourtesy in her not to call
him “Cousin Arthur.”
IX
DOROTHY’S CASE
_A_fter a few weeks of work Arthur Brent’s laboratory was ready for use,
with all its apparatus in place and all its reserve supply of chemicals
safely bestowed in a small, log built hut standing apart.
His books too had been brought to the house and unpacked. He provided
shelf room for them in the various apartments, in the broad hallway, and
even upon the stairs. There were a multitude of volumes--largely the
accumulations of years of study and travel on his own and his father’s
part. The collection included all that was best in scientific
literature, and much that was best in history, in philosophy and in
_belles lettres_. To this latter department he had ordered large
additions made when sending for his books--this with an eye to Dorothy’s
education.