great need of such counsel as mine and your great good fortune in
having a supply of it at hand.
“I hope your patients continue to do credit to your medical skill
and to Dorothy’s excellent nursing. I have sent Dinah over this
morning with some delicacies for the convalescent among them, and
in the afternoon I shall go over to the camp myself and steal
Dorothy from them and you, long enough to give her a good long
drive.
“Always sincerely your Friend,
“EDMONIA BANNISTER.”
XXII
THE INSTITUTION OF THE DUELLO
_W_hen Arthur Brent had read Edmonia’s letter, he mounted Gimlet and
rode away with no purpose except to think. The letter had revealed some
things to him of which he had not before had even a suspicion. He
understood now why Madison Peyton had been so anxious to become
Dorothy’s guardian and so angry over his disappointment in that matter.
For on the preceding evening Archer Bannister had ridden over from the
Court House to tell him of Peyton’s offensive words and to deliver the
letter of apology into his hands.
“I don’t see how you can challenge him after that” said Archer, with
some uncertainty in his tone.
“Why should I wish to do so?” Arthur asked in surprise. “I have
something very much more important to think about just now than Madison
Peyton’s opinion of me. You yourself tell me that when he was saying
all these things about me, he only got himself laughed at for his
pains. Nobody thought the worse of me for anything that he said, and
certainly nobody would think the better of me for challenging him to a
duel and perhaps shooting him or getting shot. Of course I could not
challenge him now, as he has made a written withdrawal of his words and
given me an apology which I am at liberty to tack up on the court house
door if I choose, as I certainly do not. But I should not have
challenged him in any case.”
“I suppose you are right,” answered Archer; “indeed I know you are. But
it requires a good deal of moral courage--more than I suspect myself of
possessing--to fly in the face of Virginia opinion in that way.”
“But what is Virginia opinion on the subject of duelling, Archer? I
confess I can’t find out.”
“How do you mean?” asked the other.
“Why, it seems to me that opinion here on that subject is exceedingly
inconsistent and contradictory. Dorothy once said, when she was a
child,”--there was a world of significance in the past tense of that
phrase--“that if a man in Virginia fights a duel for good cause,
everybody condemns him for being so wicked and breaking the laws in
that fashion; but if he doesn’t fight when good occasion arises,
everybody calls him a coward and blames him more than in the other case.
So I do not know what Virginia opinion is. And even the laws do not
enlighten me. Many years ago the Legislature adopted a statute making
duelling a crime, but I have never heard of anybody being punished for
that crime. On the contrary the statute seems to have been carefully
framed to prevent the punishment of anybody for duelling. It makes a
principal in the crime of everybody who in any capacity participates in
a duel, whether as fighter or second, or surgeon or mere looker on. In
other words it makes a principal of every possible witness, and then
excuses all of them from testifying to the fact of a duel on the ground
that to testify to that fact would incriminate themselves. I saw a very
interesting farce of that sort played in a Richmond court a month or so
ago. Are you interested to hear about it?”
“Yes, tell me!”
“Well, Mr. P.”--Arthur named a man who has since become a famous
judge--“had had something to do with a duel. As I understand it he was
neither principal nor second, but at any rate he saw the duel fought.
The principals, or one of them, had been brought before the judge for
trial, and Mr. P. was called as a witness. When a question was put to
him by the judge himself, Mr. P. replied: ‘I am not a lawyer. I ask the
privilege of consulting counsel before answering that question.’ To this
the judge responded: ‘To save time Mr. P., I will myself be your
counsel. As such I advise you to decline to answer the question. Now, as
the judge of this court, and not in my capacity as your counsel, I again
put the question to you and require you, under penalty of the law to
answer it.’ Mr. P. answered: ‘Under advice of counsel, your Honor, I
decline to answer the question.’ The judge responded: ‘Mr. Sheriff, take
Mr. P. into custody. I commit him for contempt of court.’ Then resuming
his attitude as counsel, the judge said: ‘Mr. P., as your counsel I
advise you to ask for a writ of Habeas Corpus.’
“‘I ask for a writ of Habeas Corpus, your Honor,’ answered P.
“‘The court is required to grant the writ,’ said the judge solemnly,
‘and it is granted. Prepare it for signature, Mr. Clerk, and serve it on
the sheriff.’
“The clerical work occupied but a brief time. When it was done the
sheriff addressing the court said: ‘May it please your Honor, in
obedience to the writ of Habeas Corpus this day served upon me, I
produce here the body of R. A. P., and I pray my discharge from further
obligation in the premises.’
“Then the judge addressed the prisoner, saying: ‘Mr. P. you are
arraigned before this court, charged with contempt and disobedience of
the court’s commands. What have you to say in answer to the charge?’
Then instantly he added: ‘In my capacity as your counsel, Mr. P., I
advise you to plead that the charge of contempt which is brought against
you, rests solely upon your refusal to answer a question the answer to
which might tend to subject you to a criminal accusation.’
“‘I do so make my answer, your Honor,’ said Mr. P.
“‘The law in this case,’ said the judge, ‘is perfectly clear. No citizen
can be compelled to testify against himself. Mr. P., you are discharged
under the writ. There being no other testimony to the fact that the
prisoners at the bar have committed the crime charged against them, the
court orders their discharge. Mr. Clerk, call the next case on the
calendar.’[B] Now wasn’t all that a roaring farce, with the judge
duplicating parts after the ‘Protean’ manner of the low comedians?”
“It certainly was,” answered young Bannister. “But what are we to do?”
“Why, make up your minds--or our minds I should say, for I am a
Virginian now with the best of you--whether we will or will not permit
duelling, and make and enforce the laws accordingly. If duelling is
right let us recognize it and put an end to our hypocritical paltering
with it. I’m not sure that in the present condition of society and
opinion that would not be the best course to pursue. But if we are not
ready for that, if we are to go on legislating against the practice, for
heaven’s sake let us make laws that can be enforced, and let us enforce
them. The little incident I have related is significant in its way, but
it doesn’t suggest the half or the quarter or the one-hundredth part of
the absurdity of our dealing with this question.”
“Tell me about the rest of it,” responded Archer, “and then I shall have
some questions to ask you.”
“Well, as to the rest of it, you have only to look at the facts. Years
ago the Virginia Legislature went through the solemn process of
enacting that no person should be eligible to a seat in either house of
our law making body, who had been in any way concerned in a duel, either
as principal or second, since a date fixed by the statute. If that meant
anything it meant that in the opinion of the Legislature of Virginia no
duellist ought to be permitted to become a lawgiver. It was a statute
prescribing for those who have committed the crime of duelling precisely
the same penalty of disfranchisement that the law applies to those who
have committed other felonies. But there was this difference. The laws
forbidding other felonies, left open an opportunity to prove them and to
convict men of committing them, while the law against duelling carefully
made it impossible to convict anybody of its violation. To cover that
point, the Legislature enacted that every man elected to either house of
that body, should solemnly make oath that he had not been in any wise
engaged in duelling since the date named in the statute. Again the
lawgivers were not in earnest, for every year since that time men who
have been concerned in duelling within the prohibited period have been
elected to the Legislature; and every year the Legislature’s first act
has been to bring forward the date of the prohibition and admit to
seats in the law making body all the men elected to it who have
deliberately defied and broken the law. It deals in no such fashion with
men disfranchised for the commission of any other crime. Is not all this
in effect an annual declaration by the Legislature that its laws in
condemnation of duelling do not mean what they say? Is it not a case in
which a law is enacted to satisfy one phase of public sentiment and
deliberately nullified by legislative act in obedience to public
sentiment of an opposite character?”
“It certainly seems so. And yet I do not see what is to be done. You
said just now that perhaps it would be best to legalize duelling. Would
not that be legalizing crime?”
“Not at all. Duelling is simply private, personal war. It is a crime
only by circumstance and statute. Under certain conditions such war is
as legitimate as any other, and the right to wage it rests upon
precisely the same ethical grounds as those upon which we justify
public, national war. In a state of society in which the law does not
afford protection to the individual and redress of wrongs inflicted upon
him, I conceive that he has an indisputable right to wage war in his own
defence, just as a nation has. But we live in a state of society quite
different from that. If Madison Peyton or any other man had inflicted
hurt of any kind upon me, I could go into court with the certainty of
securing redress. I have no right, therefore, to make personal war upon
him by way of securing the redress which the courts stand ready to give
me peaceably. So I say we should forbid duelling by laws that can be
enforced, and public sentiment should imperatively require their
enforcement. Till we are ready to do that, we should legalize duelling
and quit pretending.”
“After all, now that I think of it,” said young Bannister, “most of the
duels of late years in Virginia have had their origin in cowardice, pure
and simple. They have been born of some mere personal affront, and the
principals on either side have fought not to redress wrongs but merely
because they were afraid of being called cowards. You at least can never
be under any necessity of proving that you are not a coward. The people
of Virginia have not forgotten your work at Norfolk. But I’m glad Peyton
apologized. For even an open quarrel between you and him, and especially
one concerning Dorothy, would have been peculiarly embarrassing and it
would have given rise to scandal of an unusual sort.”
“But why, Archer? Why should a quarrel between him and me be more
productive of scandal than one between any other pair of men? I do not
understand.”
“And I cannot explain,” answered the other. “I can only tell you the
fact. I must go now. I have a long ride to a bad bed at the Court House,
with tedious jury duty to do tomorrow. So, good night.”
XXIII
DOROTHY’S REBELLION
_T_he conversation reported in the last preceding chapter of this
record, occurred on the evening before Edmonia Bannister’s letter was
written. The letter, therefore, when Arthur received it at noon of the
next day, supplemented and in some measure explained what Archer had
said with respect to the peculiar inconvenience of a quarrel between Dr.
Brent and Madison Peyton.
Yet it left him in greater bewilderment than ever concerning Dorothy’s
case. That is why he mounted Gimlet and rode away to think.
He understood now why Madison Peyton so eagerly desired to become
Dorothy’s guardian. That would have been merely to take charge of his
own son’s future estate. But why should any such fate have been decreed
for Dorothy under a pretence of concern for her welfare? What but
wretchedness and cruel wrong could result from a marriage so ill
assorted? Why should a girl of Dorothy’s superior kind have been
expected to marry a young man for whom she could never feel anything but
contempt? Why should her rare and glorious womanhood have been bartered
away for any sort of gain? Why had her father sought to dispose of her
as he might of a favorite riding horse or a cherished picture?
All these questions crowded upon Arthur’s mind, and he could find no
answer to any of them. They made him the angrier on that account, and
presently he muttered:
“At any rate this hideous wrong shall not be consummated. Whether I
succeed in setting myself free, or fail in that purpose, I will prevent
this thing. Whether I marry Dorothy myself or not, she shall never be
married by any species of moral compulsion to this unworthy young
puppy.”
Perhaps Doctor Brent’s disposition to call young Peyton by offensive
names, was a symptom of his own condition of mind. But just at this
point in his meditations a thought occurred which almost staggered him.
“What if Dr. South has left somewhere a written injunction to Dorothy to
carry out his purpose? Would she not play the part of martyr to duty?
Would she not, in misdirected loyalty, obey her dead father’s command,
at whatever cost to herself?”
Arthur knew with how much of positive worship Dorothy regarded the
memory of her father. He remembered how loyally she had accepted that
father’s commands forbidding her to learn music or even to listen to it
in any worthy form. He remembered with what unquestioning faith the girl
had accepted his strange dictum about every woman’s need of a master,
and how blindly she believed his teaching that every woman must be bad
if she is left free. Would she not crown her loyalty to that dead
father’s memory by making this final self-sacrifice, when she should
learn of his command, as of course she must? In view of the extreme care
and minute attention to detail with which Dr. South had arranged to hold
his daughter’s fate in mortmain, there could be little doubt that he had
somehow planned to have her informed of this his supreme desire, at some
time selected by himself.
At this moment Arthur met the Branton carriage, bearing Edmonia and
Dorothy.
“You are playing truant, Arthur,” called Edmonia. “You must go back to
your sick people at once, for I’ve kidnapped your head nurse and I don’t
mean to return her to you till six. She is to dine with me at Branton.
So ride back to your duty at once, before Dick shall be seized with an
inspiration to give somebody a dose of strychnine as a substitute for
sweet spirits of nitre.”
“Oh, no, Edmonia,” broke in Dorothy, “we must drive back to the camp at
once. Cousin Arthur needs his ride. You don’t know. I tell you he’s
breaking down. Yes you are, Cousin Arthur, so you needn’t shake your
head. That isn’t quite truthful in you. You work night and day, and
lately you’ve had a dreadfully worn and tired look in your eyes. I’ve
noticed it and all last night, when you had sent me away to sleep, I lay
awake thinking about it.”
Edmonia smiled at this. Perhaps she recognized it as a symptom--in
Dorothy. She only said in reply:
“Don’t worry about Arthur. I am worried only about you, and I’m going to
take you to Branton. Am I not, Arthur?”
“I sincerely hope so,” he replied. “And there is not the slightest
reason why you shouldn’t keep her for the night if you will. She is
really not needed at the hospital till tomorrow. I’m honest and truthful
when I say that, Dorothy. Dick and I can take care of everything till
tomorrow, and I’ll see to it that Dick’s inspirations are restricted to
poetry. So take her, Edmonia, and keep her till tomorrow. And don’t let
her talk too much.”
“Oh, I’m going to take her. She is impolite enough not to want to go but
she is much too young to have a will of her own--yet. As for Dick, he’s
already in the throes. He is constructing a new ‘song ballad’ on the
sorrowful fate of the turkey. It begins:
‘Tukkey in de bacca lot,
A pickin’ off de hoppa’s,’
but it goes no further as yet because Dick can’t find any rhyme for
‘hopper’ except ‘copper’ and ‘proper’ and ‘stopper,’ which I suggested,
and they don’t serve his turn. He came to me to ask if ‘gobblers’ would
not do, but I discouraged that extreme of poetic license.”
“Edmonia,” said Dorothy as soon as the carriage had renewed its journey,
“did you really think it impolite in me not to want to go with you?”
“No, you silly girl.”
“I’m glad of that. You see I think there is nothing so unkind as
impoliteness. But really I think it is wrong for me to go. Why didn’t
you take Cousin Arthur instead? You don’t know how badly he needs
rest.”
Edmonia made no direct reply to this. Instead, she said presently:
“Arthur is one of the best men I know. Don’t you think so, Dorothy?”
“Oh, he’s altogether the best. I can’t think of anybody to compare him
with--not even Washington. He’s a hero you know. I often read over again
all the newspapers that told about what he did in Norfolk, and of course
he’s just like that now. He never thinks of himself, but always of
others. There never was any man like him in all the world. That’s why I
can’t bear to think of going to Branton and leaving him alone when if I
were at my post, he might get some of the sleep that he needs so much.
Edmonia, I’m not going to Branton! Positively I can’t and I won’t. So if
you don’t tell the driver to turn back, I’ll open the carriage door and
jump out and walk back.”
Curiously enough Edmonia made no further resistance. Perhaps she had
already accomplished the object she had had in view. At any rate she
bade the driver turn about, and upon her arrival at the camp she offered
Arthur no further explanation than he might infer from her telling him:
“I’ve brought back the kidnapped nurse. I couldn’t win her away from
you even for a few hours. See that you reward her devotion with all
possible good treatment.”
“You are too funny for anything, Edmonia,” said Dorothy as she stepped
from the carriage. “As if Cousin Arthur could treat me in any but the
best of ways!”
“Oh, I’m not so sure on that point. He’ll bear watching anyhow. He’s
‘essenteric’ as Dick said the other day in a brave but hopeless struggle
with the word ‘eccentric.’ But I must go now or I shall be late for
dinner, and I’m expecting some friends who care more than Dorothy does
for my hospitality.”
“Oh, please, Edmonia--”
“Don’t mind me, child. I was only jesting. You are altogether good and
sweet and _lovable_.”
She looked at Arthur significantly as she emphasized that last word.
The young man thereupon took Dorothy’s hands in his, looked her in the
eyes, and said:
“Edmonia is right, dear. You are altogether good and sweet and lovable.
But you ought to have taken some rest and recreation.”
“How could I, when I knew you needed me?”
XXIV
TO GIVE DOROTHY A CHANCE
_I_t was nearly the Christmas time when Arthur finally broke up the
fever camp. He decided that the outbreak was at an end and the need of a
hospital service no longer pressing. The half dozen patients who
remained at the camp were now so far advanced on the road to recovery
that he felt it safe to remove them to the new quarters at the Silver
Spring.
He had sent Dorothy home a week before, saying:
“Now, Dorothy, dear, we have conquered the enemy--you and I--and a
glorious conquest it has been. We have had forty-seven cases of the
disease, some of them very severe, and there have been only two deaths.
Even they were scarcely attributable to the fever, as both the victims
were old and decrepit, having little vitality with which to resist the
malady. It is a record that ought to teach the doctors and planters of
Virginia something as to the way in which to deal with such outbreaks. I
shall prepare a little account of it for their benefit and publish it in
a medical journal. But I never can tell you how greatly I thank you for
your help.”
“Please don’t talk in that way,” Dorothy hastily rejoined. “Other people
may thank me for things whenever they please, but you never must.”
“But why not, Dorothy?”
“Why, because--well, because you are the Master. I won’t have you
thanking me just like other people. It humiliates me. It is like telling
me you didn’t expect me to do my duty. No, that isn’t just what I mean.
It is like telling me that you think of Dorothy just as you do of other
people, or something of that kind. I can’t make out just what I mean,
but I will not let you thank me.”
“I think I understand,” he answered. “But at any rate you’ll permit me
to tell you, that in my honest judgment as a physician, there would have
been many more deaths than there have been, if I had not had you to help
me. Your own tireless nursing, and the extraordinary way in which you
have made all the negro nurses carry out my orders to the letter, have
saved many lives without any possibility of doubt.”
“Then I have really helped?”
“Yes, Dorothy. I cannot make you know how much you have helped--how
great an assistance, how great a comfort you have been to me in all this
trying time.”
“I am very glad--very glad.”
That was all the answer she could make for tears. It was quite enough.
“Now I’m going to send you home, Dorothy, to get some badly needed rest
and sleep, and to bring the color back to your cheeks. I am going home
myself too. I need only ride over here twice a day to see that the
getting well goes on satisfactorily, and in a week’s time I shall break
up the camp entirely, and send the convalescents to their quarters. It
will be safe to do so then. In the meantime I want you to think of
Christmas. We must make it a red letter day at Wyanoke, to celebrate our
victory. We’ll have a ‘dining day,’ as a dinner party is queerly called
here in Virginia, with a dance in the evening. I’ll have some musicians
up from Richmond. You are to send out the invitations at once, please,
and we’ll make this the very gladdest of Christmases.”
“May I take my Mammy home with me?” the girl broke in. “She has been so
good to me, you know.”
“Yes, Dorothy, and I wish you would keep her there ‘for all the time,’
as you sometimes say. There’s a comfortable house by the garden you
know, and we’ll give her that for her home as long as she lives. You
shall pick out one or two of the nicest of the negro girls to wait on
her and keep house for her, and make her old age comfortable.”
Dorothy ejaculated a little laugh.
“Mammy would drive them all out of the house in ten seconds,” she said,
“and call them ‘dishfaced devils’ and more different kinds of other ugly
names than you ever heard of. Old as she is, she’s very strong, and
she’ll never let anybody wait on her. She calls the present generation
of servants ‘a lot o’ no ’count niggas, dat ain’t fit fer nothin’ but to
be plaguesome.’ But you are very good to let me give her the house.
Thank you, Cousin Arthur.”
“Oh, Dorothy,” answered Arthur, “I thought you always ‘played fair’ as
the children say.”
“Why, what have I done?” the girl asked almost with distress in her
tone.
“Why, you thanked me, after forbidding me to thank you for an
immeasurably greater service.”
“Oh, but that’s different,” she replied. “You are the Master. I am only
a woman.”
“Dorothy,” said Arthur seriously, “don’t you know I think there is
nothing in the world better or nobler than a woman?”
“That’s because you are a man and don’t know,” she answered out of a
wisdom so superior that it would not argue the point.
During the next week Arthur found time in which to prepare and send off
for publication a helpful article on “The Plantation Treatment of
Typhoid Epidemics.” He also found time in which to ride over to Branton
and hold a prolonged conference with Edmonia Bannister. Before a hickory
wood fire in the great drawing room they went over all considerations
bearing upon Arthur’s affairs and plans and possibilities.
“This is the visitation you long ago threatened me with,” said Edmonia.
“You said you would come when the stress of the fever should be over,
and you told me you had some plan in your mind. Tell me what it was.”
“Oh, your past tense is correct there; that was before you wrote to me
about Dorothy. Your letter put an end to that scheme at once.”
“Did it? I’m very glad.”
“But why? You don’t know what it was that I had in mind.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps I have a shrewd idea as to the general features of
your plan. At any rate I’m perfectly sure that it was unworthy of you.”