irregular buying during two hundred years past. Swift was there in time
stained vellum. The poets, from Dryden and Pope to the last quarter of
the eighteenth century were well represented, and there were original
editions of “Childe Harold,” and “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” on
the shelves. Scott was present in leathern cuirass of binding--both in
his novels and in his poems. But there was not a line of Coleridge or
Wordsworth or Shelley or Rogers or Campbell or John Keats, not a
suggestion of Matthew Arnold. Tennyson, Browning and their fellows were
completely absent, though Bailey’s “Festus” was there to represent
modern poetry.
The latest novels in the list, apart from Scott, were “Evelina,” “The
Children of The Abbey,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” “Scottish Chiefs” and some
others of their kind. But all the abominations of Smollett, all the
grossness of Fielding, all the ribaldry of Richardson, and all the
sentimental indecency of Laurence Sterne were present in full force--on
top shelves, out of consideration for maidenly modesty.
In history there were Josephus and Rollin, and scarcely anything else.
Hume was excluded because of his scepticism, and Gibbon had been passed
over as a monster of unbelief.
Arthur found that Dorothy had browsed somewhat in this old library,
particularly among the British Essayists and in some old volumes of
Dramas. Her purity had revolted at Fielding, Smollett and their kind,
and she had found the sentimentalities of Miss Burney insipid. But she
knew her “Don Quixote” almost by heart, and “Gil Blas” even more
minutely. She had read much of Montaigne and something of Rousseau in
the original also, and the Latin classics were her familiars. For her
father had taught her from infancy, French and Latin, not after the
manner of the schools, as grammatical gymnastics, but with an eye single
to the easy and intelligent reading of the rich literatures that those
languages offer to the initiated. The girl knew scarcely a single rule
of Latin grammar--in text book terms at least--but she read her Virgil
and Horace almost as easily as she did her Bible.
It was with definite reference to the deficiencies of this and other old
plantation libraries, that Arthur Brent ordered books. He selected
Dorothy’s own sitting room--opening off her chamber--as the one in which
to bestow the treasures of modern literature--Tennyson, Dickens,
Thackeray, Bulwer, Coleridge, Keats, Rogers, Campbell, Shelley and their
later successors--Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Halleck, and above all
Irving, Paulding and Hawthorne.
In arranging these treasures in Dorothy’s outer room, Arthur resorted to
a little trick or two. He would pick up a volume with ostensible purpose
of placing it upon a shelf, but would turn to a favorite passage and
read a little aloud. Then, suddenly stopping, he would say:--
“But you’ll read all that for yourself,” and would add some bit of
comment or suggestion of a kind to awaken the girl’s attention and
attract her to the author in question. Before he had finished arranging
the books in that room Dorothy was almost madly eager to read all of
them. A new world was opening to her, a world of modern thought far more
congenial to her mind than the older literature which alone she had
known before. Here was a literature of which she had scarcely known even
the existence. It was a clean, wholesome, well-aired literature; a
literature founded upon modern ways of thinking; a literature that dealt
with modern life and character; a literature instinct with the thought
and sentiment of her own time. The girl was at once bewildered by the
extent of it and fascinated by its charm. Her sleep was cut short in her
eagerness to read it all. Its influence upon her mind and character
became at once and insistently manifest.
“Here endeth the first lesson,” quoted Arthur Brent when he had thus
placed all that is best in modern literature temptingly at this eager
girl’s hand. “It will puzzle them to stop her from thinking now,” he
added, “or to confine her thinking within their strait-laced
conventions. Now for science.”
The age of Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer had not yet come, in 1859.
Haeckel was still unheard of, outside of Berlin and Jena. The science of
biology, in which all other science finds its fruition and justifies its
being, was then scarcely “a borning.” Otherwise, Arthur Brent would have
made of Dorothy’s amateurish acquaintance with botany the basis of a
systematic study, leading up to that conception which came later to
science, that all life is one, whether animal or vegetable; that species
are the results of differentiation by selection and development, and
that the scheme of nature is one uniform, consistent whole, composed of
closely related parts. But this thought had not yet come to science.
Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was not published until later in that year,
Wallace was off on his voyages and had not yet reached those all
embracing conclusions. Huxley was still only a young man of promise.
Virchow was bound in those trammels of tradition from which he was
destined never quite to disentangle himself, even with the stimulus of
Haeckel, his wonderful pupil. But the thought that has since made
science alive had been dreamed of even then. There were suggestions of
it in the manuscripts,--written backwards--of Leonardo da Vinci, and
Goethe had foreshadowed much of it.
Nevertheless, it was not for such sake or with a purpose so broad that
Arthur Brent set out to interest Dorothy South in science. His only
purpose was to teach her to think, to implant in her mind that divine
thirst for sound knowledge which he clearly recognized as a specific
remedy for conventional narrowness of mind.
The girl was quick to learn rudiments and general principles, and in
laboratory work she soon surpassed her master as a maker of experiments.
In such work her habits of exactitude stood her in good stead, and her
conscientiousness had its important part to play.
But science did not become a very serious occupation with Dorothy. It
was rather play than study at first, and when she had acquired some
insight into it, so that its suggestions served to explain the phenomena
about her, she was fairly well content. She had no passion for original
research and of that Arthur was rather glad. “That sort of thing is
masculine,” he reflected, “and she is altogether a woman. I don’t want
her to grow into anything else.”
But to her passion for literature there was no limit. “Literature
concerns itself with people,” she said to Arthur one day, “and I care
more for people than for gases and bases and reactions.”
But literature, in its concern for people, records the story of human
life through all the centuries, and the development of human thought. It
includes history and speculative philosophy and Dorothy manifested
almost a passion for these.
It was at this point that trouble first arose. So long as the girl was
supposed to be devouring novels and poetry, the community admired and
approved. But when it was noised abroad that she knew Gibbon as
familiarly as she did her catechism, that she had read Hume’s Essays and
Locke on the Understanding, together with the elder Mill, and Jeremy
Bentham and much else of like kind, the wonder was not unmixed with
doubt as to the fitness of such reading for a young girl.
For a time even Aunt Polly shared this doubt but she was quickly cured
of it when Madison Peyton, with his customary impertinence protested.
Aunt Polly was not accustomed to agree in opinion with Madison Peyton,
and she resented the suggestion that the girl could come to any harm
while under her care. So she combated Peyton’s view after a destructive
fashion. When he spoke of this literature as unfit, Aunt Polly meekly
asked him, “Why?” and naturally he could not answer, having never read a
line of it in his life. He sought to evade the question but Aunt Polly
was relentless, greatly to the amusement of John Meaux and Col. Majors,
the lawyer of the old families. She insisted upon his telling her which
of the books were dangerous for Dorothy to read. “How else can I know
which to take away from her?” she asked. When at last he unwisely
ventured to mention Gibbon--having somehow got the impression, which was
common then, that the “Decline and Fall” was a sceptical work, Aunt
Polly--who had been sharing Dorothy’s reading of it,--plied him with
closer questions.
“In what way is it harmful?” she asked, and then, quite innocently,
“what is it all about any how, Madison?”
“Oh, well, we can’t go into that,” he said evasively.
“But why not? That is precisely what we must go into if we are to direct
Dorothy’s reading properly. What is this book that you think she ought
not to read? What does it treat of? What is there in it that you object
to?”
Thus baited on a subject that he knew nothing about, Peyton grew angry,
though he knew it would not do for him to manifest the fact. He
unwisely, but with an air of very superior wisdom, blurted out:--
“If you had read that book, Cousin Polly, you wouldn’t like to make it
the subject of conversation.”
“So?” asked the old lady. “It is in consideration of my ignorance then
that you graciously pardon my discretion?”
“It’s a very proper ignorance. I respect you for never having indulged
in such reading,” he answered.
“Then you must respect me less,” calmly responded the old lady, “for I
have read the book and I’m reading it a second time. I don’t see that it
has hurt me, but I’ll bow to your superior wisdom if you’ll only tell
me what there is in the book that is likely to undermine my morals.”
The laugh that followed from Col. Majors and John Meaux--for the idea
that anything, literary or otherwise, could undermine the vigorous
morals of this high bred dame was too ludicrous to be resisted--nettled
Peyton anew. Still further losing his temper he broke out:
“How should I know what is in the book? I never read such stuff. But I
know it is unfit for a young girl, and in this case I have a right to
dictate. I tell you now, Cousin Polly, that I will not have Dorothy’s
mind perverted by such reading. My interest in this case is paramount
and I mean to assert it. I have been glad to have her with you for the
sake of the social and moral training I expected you to give her. But I
tell you now, that if you don’t stop all this kind of reading and all
this slopping in a laboratory, trying to learn atheistical science--for
all science is atheistical as you well know--”
“Pardon me, Madison,” broke in the old lady, “I didn’t know that. Won’t
you explain it to me, please?”--this with the meekness of a reverent
disciple, a meekness which Peyton knew to be a mockery.
“Oh, everybody knows that,” testily answered the man. “And it is
indecent as well. I hear that Arthur has been teaching Dorothy a lot
about anatomy and that sort of thing that no woman ought to know, and--”
“Why shouldn’t a woman know that?” asked Aunt Polly, still delivering
her hot shot as if they had been balls of the zephyr she was knitting
into a nubia. “Does it do her any harm to know how--”
“Oh, please don’t ask me to go into that, Cousin Polly,” the man
impatiently responded. “You see it isn’t a proper subject of
conversation.”
“Oh, isn’t it? I didn’t know, you see. And as you will not enlighten me,
let us return to what you were about to say. I beg pardon for
interrupting.”
“I don’t remember what I was going to say,” said Peyton, anxious to end
the discussion. “Besides it was of no consequence. Let’s talk of
something else.”
“Not yet, please,” placidly answered the old lady. “I remember that you
were about to threaten me with something. Now I never was threatened in
my life, and I’m really anxious to know how it feels. So please go on
and threaten me, Madison.”
“I never thought of threatening you, Cousin Polly, I assure you. You’re
mistaken in that, surely.”
“Not at all. You said you had been pleased to have Dorothy under my
charge. I thank you for saying that. But you added that if I didn’t stop
her reading and her scientific studies you’d--you didn’t say just what
you’d do. That is because I interrupted. I beg pardon for doing so, but
now you must complete the sentence.”
“Oh, I only meant that if the girl was to be miseducated at Wyanoke, I
should feel myself obliged to take her away to my own house and--”
“You need not continue,” answered the old lady, rising in stately wrath.
“You have said quite enough. Now let me make my reply. It is simply that
if you ever attempt to put such an affront as that upon me, you’ll wish
you had never been born.”
She instantly withdrew from the piazza of the house in which all were
guests, John Meaux gallantly accompanying her. She paid no more heed to
Peyton’s clamorous protestations of apology than to the buzzing of the
bees that were plundering the honeysuckles of their sweets.
When she had gone Peyton began to realize the mistake he had made. In
that Col. Majors, who was left alone with him, greatly assisted him. In
the slow, deliberate way in which he always spoke, Col. Majors said:
“You know, Peyton, that I do not often volunteer advice before I am
asked to give it, but in this case I am going to do so. It seems to me
that you have overlooked certain facts which present themselves to my
mind, as important, and of which I think the courts would take
cognizance.”
“Oh, I only meant to give Cousin Polly a hint,” broke in Peyton. “Of
course I didn’t seriously mean that I would take the girl away from
her.”
“It is well that you did not,” answered the lawyer, “for the sufficient
reason that you could not do that if you were determined upon it.”
“Why, surely,” Peyton protested. “I have a right to look after the
girl’s welfare?”
“Absolutely none whatever.”
“Why, you forget the arrangement between me and Dr. South.”
“Not at all. That arrangement was at best a contract without
consideration, and therefore nonenforcible. Even if it had been reduced
to writing and formally executed, it would be so much waste paper in
the eyes of a court. Dorothy is a ward in chancery. The court would
never permit the enforcement of a contract of that kind upon her, so
long as she is under age; and when she attains her majority she will be
absolutely free, if I know anything of the law, to repudiate an
arrangement disposing of her life, made by others without her consent.”
“Do you mean that on a mere whim of her own, that girl can upset the
advantageous arrangements made for her by her father and undo the whole
thing?”
“I mean precisely that. But pardon me, the time has not come to consider
that question. What I would impress upon your mind at present is that on
the whole you’d better make your peace with Miss Polly. She has the girl
in charge, and if you antagonize her, she may perhaps train Miss Dorothy
to repudiate the arrangement altogether. In that case you may not wish
that you had never been born, as Miss Polly put the matter, but you’ll
wish that you hadn’t offended the dear old lady.”
“Then I must take the girl away from her at once,” exclaimed Peyton in
alarm. “I mustn’t leave her for another day under Cousin Polly’s
influence.”
“But you cannot take her away, Peyton. That is what I am trying to
impress upon your mind.”
“But why not? Surely I have a right--”
“You have absolutely _no_ rights in the premises. The will of the late
Dr. South, made Robert Brent Dorothy’s guardian.”
“But Robert Brent is dead,” broke in Peyton, impatiently, “and I am to
be the girl’s guardian after the next term of the court.”
“Perhaps so,” answered the lawyer. “The court usually allows the ward to
choose her guardian in such a case, and if you strongly commend yourself
to her, she may choose you. But I may be allowed to suggest that that
will depend a good deal upon what advice Miss Polly may give her. She is
very fond of Miss Polly, and apt to be guided by her. However that again
is a matter that has no bearing upon the question in hand. Even were you
already appointed guardian of Miss Dorothy’s estate you could not take
the girl away from Miss Polly.”
“Why not? Has a guardian no authority?”
“Oh, yes--a very large authority. But it happens in this case that by
the terms of the late Dr. South’s will, Miss Polly is made sole and
absolute guardian of Miss Dorothy’s person until such time as she shall
come of age or previously marry with Miss Polly’s consent. Neither
Robert Brent, during his life, nor any person appointed to succeed him
as guardian of Miss Dorothy’s estate, had, or has, or can have the
smallest right to take her away from the guardian of her person. That
could be done only by going into court and showing that the guardian of
the person was of immoral life and unfit to have charge of a child. It
would be risky, to say the least of it, to suggest such a thing as that
in the case of Miss Polly, wouldn’t it? She has no very near relatives
but there isn’t a young or a middle-aged man in this county who
wouldn’t, in that case, adopt the relation of nearest male relation to
her and send inconvenient billets-doux to you by the hands of insistent
friends.”
“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” answered Peyton. “Of course nobody would
think of such a thing as questioning Cousin Polly’s eminent fitness to
bring up a girl.”
“And yet that is precisely what you did, by implication at least, a
little while ago. My advice to you is to repair your blunder at the
earliest possible moment.”
Peyton clearly saw the necessity of doing so, especially now that he had
learned that Dorothy must in any case remain in Aunt Polly’s charge. It
would ruin all his plans to have Aunt Polly antagonize them even
passively. But how to atone for his error was a difficult problem. With
anybody else he would have tried his favorite tactics of “laughing the
thing off,” treating it as a jest and being more good naturedly insolent
than ever. But with Aunt Polly he could not do that. She was much too
shrewdly penetrative to be deceived by such measures and much too
sensitively self-respectful to tolerate familiarity as a substitute for
an apology.
Moreover he knew that he needed something more than Aunt Polly’s
forgiveness. He wanted her coöperation. For the dread which had inspired
his blundering outbreak, was not mainly, if at all, a dread of English
literature as a perverting educational force. He knew next to nothing of
literature and he cared even less. Under ordinary circumstances he would
never have bothered himself over any question of Dorothy’s reading. But
Dorothy was doing her reading under the tutelage and with the sympathy
of Arthur Brent, and Madison Peyton foresaw that the close, daily
association of the girl--child as she was--with a man so gifted and so
pleasing was likely, after a year or two at least to grow into a warmer
attachment. And even if that should not happen, he felt that her
education under the influence of such a man might give her ideals and
standards which would not be satisfied by the life plans made for her
between himself and her father.
It was not to remove her from Aunt Polly’s control, or even to save her
from too much serious reading--though he was suspicious of that--that he
cared. He wanted to keep her away from Arthur Brent’s influence, and it
was in a blundering attempt to bring that about that he had managed to
offend Aunt Polly, making a possible enemy of his most necessary ally.
It was with a perturbed mind therefore that he rode away from the
hospitable house where the discussion had occurred, making some hastily
manufactured excuse to the hostess, for not remaining to dinner.
X
DOROTHY VOLUNTEERS
_A_ll this while Arthur Brent was a very busy man. It was true, as
Madison Peyton had said, that he knew little of planting, but he had two
strong coadjutors in the cultivation of his crops. John Meaux--perhaps
in unconscious spite of Peyton--frequently rode over to Wyanoke and
visited all its fields in company with the young master of the
plantation. There was not much in common between Meaux and Arthur, not
much to breed a close intimacy. Meaux was an educated man, within the
rather narrow limits established by the curriculum at West Point--for
Robert E. Lee had not yet done his work of enlargement and betterment at
the military academy when Meaux was a cadet in that institution--but he
was not a man of much reading, and intellectually he was indolent.
Nevertheless he was a pleasant enough companion, his friendship for
Arthur was genuine, and he knew more about the arts of planting than
anybody else in that region. He freely gave Arthur the benefit of his
judgment and skill greatly to the advantage of the growing crops at
Wyanoke.
Archer Bannister, too, was often Arthur’s guest. He came and went as he
pleased, sometimes remaining for three or four days at a time, sometimes
staying only long enough to advise Arthur to have a tobacco lot cut
before a rain should come to wash off the “molasses”--as the thick gum
on a ripening tobacco leaf was called. He was himself a skilful planter
and his almost daily counsel was of great value to Arthur’s
inexperience.
But it was not of things agricultural only that these two were
accustomed to talk with each other. There had quickly grown up between
them an almost brotherly intimacy. They were men of congenial tastes and
close intellectual sympathies, and there was from the first a strong
liking on either side which was referable rather to similarity of
character than to anything merely intellectual. Both men cherished high
ideals of conduct, and both were loyal to those ideals. Both were
thoroughly educated, and both had been broadened by travel. Both
indulged in intellectual activities not always attractive even to men of
culture. Arthur loved science with the devotion of a disciple; Archer
rejoiced in a study of its conclusions and their consequences rather
than of its processes, its methods, its details. Above all, so far as
intellectual sympathies were concerned, both young men were almost
passionately devoted to literature. Between two such men, thrown
together in that atmosphere of leisure which was the crowning glory of
Virginia plantation life, it was inevitable that something more and
stronger than ordinary friendship should grow up. And between them stood
also Archer’s sister Edmonia--a woman whom both held in tender
affection, the one loving her as a sister, the other as--he scarcely
knew what. She shared the ideas, the impulses, the high principles of
both, and in her feminine way she shared also their intellectual tastes
and aspirations.
Arthur had still another coadjutor in his management of affairs, in the
person of Dorothy. Throughout the summer and autumn the girl rode with
him every morning during the hours before breakfast, and, in her queer,
half childish, half womanly way, she instructed him mightily in many
things. Her habits of close observation had given her a large and
accurate knowledge of plantation affairs which was invaluable to him,
covering as it did many points of detail left unmentioned by Meaux and
Bannister.
But his interest in the girl was chiefly psychological. The
contradiction he observed between her absolutely child-like simplicity
and the strangely sage and old way she had of thinking now and then,
interested him beyond measure. Her honesty was phenomenal--her
truthfulness astonishing.
One morning as the two rode together through the corn they came upon a
watermelon three fourths grown. Instantly the girl slipped to the ground
with the request:--
“Lend me your knife, please.”
He handed her the knife wondering what she would do with it. After an
effort to open it she handed it back, saying: “Won’t you please open it?
Knives are not fit for women’s use. Our thumb nails are not strong
enough to open them. But we use them, anyhow. That’s because women’s
masters are not severe enough with them.”
Receiving the knife again, with a blade opened, the girl stooped and
quickly scratched Arthur’s initials “A. B.,” upon the melon.
“I’ve observed you do that before, Dorothy,” said Arthur as the girl
again mounted Chestnut, without assistance. “Why do you do it?”
“To keep the servants from stealing the melon,” she replied. “Everybody
does that. I wonder if it’s right.”
“But how can that keep a negro from taking the melon some dark night
after it is ripe and secretly eating it?”