“Oh, yes you have--if you mean that you haven’t deserved to be thought
ill of. You have wanted to run away from your duty and your happiness,
and it was that sort of thing you had in mind. Otherwise you wouldn’t
have needed to plan at all. Besides, you said you didn’t want to have
this conversation with me, or to hear about Dorothy till you should be
‘free to act.’ You meant by that ‘free to run away.’ That is why I wrote
you about Dorothy.”
“Listen, Edmonia!” said the young man pleadingly. “Don’t think of me as
a coward or a shirk! Don’t imagine that I have been altogether selfish
even in my thoughts! I did plan to run away, as you call it. But it was
not to escape duty--for I didn’t know, then, that I had a duty to do. Or
rather I thought that my duty called upon me to ‘run away.’ Will you
let me tell you just what I felt and thought, and what the plan was that
I had in mind?”
“Surely, Arthur. I did not really think you selfish, and certainly I did
not think you cowardly. If I had, I should have taken pains to save
Dorothy from you. But tell me the whole story.”
“I will. When we began our conversation in Dorothy’s little porch, I was
just beginning to be afraid that I might learn to love her. She had so
suddenly matured, somehow. Her womanhood seemed to have come upon her as
the sunrise does in the tropics without any premonitory twilight. It was
the coming of serious duty upon her, I suppose that wrought the change.
At any rate, with the outbreak of the fever, she seemed to take on a new
character. Without losing her childlike trustfulness and simplicity, she
suddenly became a woman, strong to do and to endure. And her beauty came
too, so that I caught myself thinking of her when I ought to have been
thinking of something else.”
“Oh, yes,” Edmonia broke in. “I know all that and sympathize with it.
You remember I found it all out before you did.”
“Yes, I was coming to that. Perhaps I wandered from my story a bit--”
“You did, of course. But under the circumstances I forgive you. Go on.”
“Well, when you told me it was too late for me to save myself from
loving Dorothy, I knew you were right, though I had not suspected it
before. I hoped, however, that it might not be too late to save Dorothy
from myself. I did not want to lure her to a life that was sure to bring
much of trial and hard work and sympathetic suffering to her.”
“But why not? Isn’t such a life, with the man she loves, very greatly
the happiest one she could lead? Have you studied her character to so
little purpose as to imagine--”
“No, no, no!” he broke in. “I saw all that when I thought the matter
out, after you left the camp that day. But at first I didn’t see it, and
I didn’t want Dorothy sacrificed--especially to me.”
“No woman is sacrificed when she is permitted to share the work, the
purposes, the aspirations of the man she loves. How men do misjudge
women and misunderstand them! It is not ease, or wealth, or luxury that
makes a woman happy--for many a woman is wretched with all these--it is
love, and love never does its work so perfectly in a woman’s soul as
when it demands sacrifice at her hands.”
Edmonia said this oracularly, as she sat staring into the fire. Arthur
wondered where she had learned this truth, seeing that love had never
come to her either to offer its rewards or to demand sacrifice at her
hands. She caught his look and was instantly on her guard lest his
shrewd gift of observation should penetrate her secret.
“You wonder how I know all this, Arthur,” she quickly added. “I see the
question in your face. For answer I need only remind you that I am a
woman, and a woman’s intuitions sometimes serve her as well as
experience might. Go on, and tell me what it was you planned before I
wrote you concerning Dorothy’s case. What was the particular excuse you
invented at that time for running away?”
“It is of no consequence now, but I don’t mind telling you. I conceived
the notion of freeing myself from the obligations that tie me here in
Virginia by giving Wyanoke and all that pertains to it to Dorothy.”
“I almost wish you had proposed that to Dorothy. I should have been an
interested witness of the scorn and anger which she would have visited
upon your poor foolish head. It would have taken you five years to undo
that mistake. But those five years would have been years of suffering to
Dorothy; so on the whole I’m glad you didn’t make the suggestion. What
spasm of returning reason restrained you from that crowning folly?”
“Your letter, of course. When you told me that those who had assumed the
rôle of Special Providence to Dorothy had planned to marry her to that
young Jackanapes--”
“Don’t call him contemptuous names, Arthur. He doesn’t need them as a
label, and it only ruffles your temper. Go on with what you were
saying.”
“Well, of course, you see how the case stood. Even if I had not cared
for Dorothy in any but a friendly way, I should have felt it to be the
very highest duty of my life to save her from this hideous thing. I
decided instantly that whatever else might happen I would save Dorothy
from this fate. So I have worked out a new plan, and I want you to help
me carry it out.”
“Go on. You know you may count upon me.”
“Well, I want you to take Dorothy away from here. I want you to show her
a larger world than she has ever dreamed of. I want you to take her to
Washington, Baltimore and New York and introduce her to the best society
there is there. Then I want you to take her to Europe for a year. She
must see pictures and sculpture, and the noblest examples of
architecture there are in the world. That side of her nature which has
been so wickedly cramped and crippled and dwarfed, must be cultivated
and developed. She must hear the greatest music there is, and see the
greatest plays and the greatest players. Fortunately she is fluent in
her French and she readily understands Italian. Her capacity for
enjoyment is matchless. It is that of a full-souled woman who has been
starved on this side of her nature. You once bade me remember that in
anything I did toward educating her I was educating my future wife. I
don’t know whether it will prove to be so or not. But in any case this
thing must be done. She must know all these higher joys of life while
yet she is young enough to enjoy them to the full, and she must have the
education they will bring to her. She will be seventeen in March--only
three months hence. She is at the age of greatest susceptibility to
impressions.”
“Your thought mightily pleases me, Arthur,” said Edmonia. “But I warn
you there is serious danger in it.”
“Danger for Dorothy?”
“No. But danger for you.”
“That need not matter. You mean that--”
“I mean just that. In all this Dorothy will rapidly change--at least in
her points of view. Her conceptions of life will undergo something like
a revolution. At the end of it all she may not care for any such life as
you can offer her, especially as she will meet many brilliant men under
circumstances calculated to make the most of their attractions. She may
transfer her love for you, which is at present a thing quite
unconsciously felt, to some one who shall ask for it. For I suppose you
will say nothing to her now that might make her conscious of her state
of mind and put her under bonds to you?”
“Quite certainly, no! My tongue shall be dumb and even my actions and
looks shall be kept in leash till she is gone. Can’t you understand,
Edmonia--”
“I understand better than you think, and I honor you for your courage
and your unselfishness. You want this thing done in order that Dorothy
may have the fullest possible chance in life and in love--in order that
if there be in this world a higher happiness for her than any that you
can offer, she may have it?”
“That is precisely my thought, Edmonia. You have expressed it far better
than I could have done. I don’t want to take an unfair advantage of
Dorothy, as I suppose I easily might. I don’t want her to accept my love
and agree to share my life, in ignorance of what better men and better
things there may be for her elsewhere. If I am ever to make her my own,
it must be after she knows enough to choose intelligently. Should she
choose some other life than that which I can offer, some other love than
mine, she must never know the blight that her choice cannot fail to
inflict upon me. As for myself, I have my crucibles and my work, and I
should be better content, knowing that she was happy in some life of her
own choosing, than knowing that I had made her mine by taking unfair
advantage of her inexperience.”
“Arthur Brent,” said Edmonia, rising, not to dismiss him, but for the
sake of giving emphasis to her utterance, “you are--well, let me say it
all in a single phrase--you are _worthy of Dorothy South_. You are such
a man as women of the higher sort dream of, but rarely meet. It is not
quite convenient for me to undertake this mission for you just now, but
convenience must courtesy to my will. I’ll arrange the matter with
Dorothy at once and we’ll be off in a fortnight or less. Fortunately no
dressmaking need detain us, for we must have our first important gowns
made in Richmond and Baltimore, a larger supply in New York, and then
Paris will take care of its own. I’ll have some trouble with Aunt Polly,
of course; she regards travel very much as she does manslaughter, but
you may safely leave her to me.”
“But, Edmonia, you said this thing would subject you to some
inconvenience?”
“So it will. But that’s a trifle. I had half promised to spend July at
the White Sulphur, but that can wait for another July. Now you are to
tell me goodby a few minutes hence and ride away. For I must write a
note to Dorothy--no, on second thoughts I’ll drive over and see her and
Aunt Polly, and you are to remain here and dine with brother. Dorothy
and I are going to talk about clothes, and we shan’t want any men folk
around. I’ll dine at Wyanoke, and by tomorrow we’ll have half a dozen
seamstresses at work making things enough to last us to Baltimore.”
“But tell me, Edmonia,” said Arthur, beginning to think of practical
things, “can you and Dorothy travel alone?”
“We could, if it were necessary. You know I’ve been abroad twice and I
know ‘the tricks and the manners’ of Europe. But it will not be
necessary. I enjoy the advantage of having been educated at Le Febvre’s
School, in Richmond. That sort of thing has its compensations. Among
them is the fact that it is apt to locate one’s friendships variously as
to place. I have a schoolmate in New York--a schoolmate of five or six
years ago, and a very dear friend--Mildred Livingston. She is married
and rich and restless. She likes nothing so much as travel and I happen
to know that she is just now planning a trip to Europe. I’ll write to
her today and we’ll go together. As her husband, Nicholas Van Rensselaer
Livingston, hasn’t anything else to do he’ll go along just to look after
the baggage and swear in English, which they don’t understand, at the
Continental porters and their kind. He’s really very good at that sort
of thing.”
“It is well for a man to be good at something.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I’ve often said so to Mildred. Besides he worships the
ground--or the carpets, rather,--that she walks on. For he never lets
her put her foot on the ground if he can help it. He’s a dear fellow--in
his way--and Mildred is really fond of him--especially when he’s looking
after the tickets and the baggage. Now you must let me run away. You are
to stay here and dine with brother, you know.”
XXV
AUNT POLLY’S VIEW OF THE RISKS
_O_ddly enough Edmonia had very little of the difficulty she had
anticipated in securing Aunt Polly’s consent to the proposed trip.
Perhaps the old lady’s opinions with respect to the detrimental effects
of travel were held like her views on railroads and the rotundity of the
earth, humorously rather than with seriousness. Perhaps she appreciated,
better than she would admit, the advantages Dorothy was likely to reap
from an introduction to a larger world. Perhaps she did not like the
task set her of cramping Dorothy’s mind and soul to the mould of a
marriage with young Jeff Peyton. Certain it is that she did not look
forward to that fruition of her labors as Dorothy’s personal guardian
with anything like pleasure. While she felt herself bound to carry out
her instructions, she felt no alarm at the prospect of having their
purpose defeated in the end by an enlargement of horizon which would
prompt Dorothy to rebellion. Perhaps all these things, and perhaps
something else. Perhaps Aunt Polly suspected the truth, and rejoiced in
it. Who shall say? Who shall set a limit to the penetration of so shrewd
a woman, after she has lived for more than half a century with her eyes
wide open and her mind always quick in sympathy with those whom she
loves?
Whatever the reason of her complaisance may have been, she yielded
quickly to Edmonia’s persuasions, offering only her general deprecation
of travel as an objection and quickly brushing even that aside.
“I can’t understand,” she said, “why people who are permitted to live
and die in Virginia should want to go gadding about in less desirable
places. But we’ve let the Yankees build railroads down here, and we must
take the consequences. Everybody wants to travel nowadays and Dorothy is
like all the rest, I suppose. Anyhow, you’ll be with her, Edmonia, and
so she can’t come to any great harm, unless it’s true that the world is
round. If that’s so, of course your ship will fall off when you get over
on the other side of it.”
“But Europe isn’t on the other side of it Aunt Polly, and besides I’ve
been there twice already you know, and I didn’t fall off the earth
either time.”
“No, you were lucky, and maybe you’ll be lucky this time. Anyhow you
have all made up your minds and I’ll interpose no objections.”
It was by no means so easy to win Dorothy’s consent to the proposed
journey.
“I ought not to run away from my duty,” she said, in objection to a
proposal which opened otherwise delightful prospects to her mind.
“But it’s your duty to go, child,” Edmonia answered. “You need the trip
and all the education it will give you. What is there for you to do
here, anyhow?”
“Why, Cousin Arthur might need me! You know he never tells lies, and he
says I have really helped him to save people’s lives in this fever
time.”
“But that is all over now and it won’t occur again. Arthur has taken
care of that by burning the old quarters and building new ones in a
wholesome place. By the way, Dorothy, you’ll be glad to know that his
example is already having its influence. Brother has decided to build
new quarters for our servants at a spot which Arthur has selected as the
best one for the purpose on the plantation. Anyhow there’ll be no
further fever outbreaks at Wyanoke or at Pocahontas, now that Arthur is
master there also.”
“But he might need me in other ways,” answered the persistently
reluctant Dorothy. “And besides he is teaching me chemistry and other
scientific things that will make me useful in life. No, I can’t go away
now.”
“But, you absurd child,” answered Edmonia, “there will be plenty of time
to learn all that when you come back. You are ridiculously young yet.
You won’t be seventeen till March, and you know a great deal more about
science than Arthur did at your age. Besides this is his plan for you,
not mine. He wants you to learn the things this trip will teach you, a
great deal more than he wants you to learn chemistry and that sort of
thing. He knows what you need in the way of education, and it is at his
suggestion that I’m going to take you North and to Europe. He
appreciates your abilities as you never will, and it is his earnest wish
that you shall make this trip as a part of your education.”
“Very well,” answered Dorothy. “I’ll ask him if he wants me to go, and
if he says yes, I’ll go. Of course it will be delightful to see great
cities and the ocean and Pompeii and pictures and all the rest of it.
But a woman mustn’t think of enjoyment alone. That’s the way women
become bad. My father often told me so, and I don’t want to be bad.”
“You never will, Dorothy, dear. You couldn’t become bad if you wanted
to. And as for Arthur, I assure you it was he who planned this journey
for you and asked me to take you on it. Don’t you think he knows what is
best for you?”
“Why, of course, he does! I never questioned that. But maybe he isn’t
just thinking of what is best for me. Maybe he is only thinking of what
would give me pleasure. Anyhow I’ll ask him and make sure. He won’t
deceive me. And he couldn’t if he tried. I always know when he’s making
believe and when I get angry with him for pretending he always quits it
and tells me the truth.”
“Then you’ll go if Arthur tells you he really wants you to go, and
really thinks it best for you to go?”
“Of course, I will! I’ll do anything and everything he wants me to do,
now and always. He’s the best man in the world, and the greatest,
Edmonia. Don’t you believe that? If you don’t I shall quit loving you.”
“Oh, you may safely go on loving me then,” answered Edmonia bowing her
head very low to inspect something minute in the fancy work she had in
her lap, and in that way hiding her flushed face for the moment. “I
think all the good things about Arthur that you do, Dorothy. As I know
what his answer to your questions will be, we’ll order the seamstresses
to begin work tomorrow morning. I’ll have everything made at Branton, so
you are to come over there soon in the morning.”
The catechising of Arthur yielded the results that Edmonia had
anticipated.
“Yes, Dorothy,” he said, “I am really very anxious that you shall make
this trip. It will give you more of enjoyment than you can possibly
anticipate, but it will do something much better than that. It will
repair certain defects in your education, which have been stupidly
provided for by people who did not appreciate your wonderful gifts and
your remarkable character. For Dorothy, dear, though you do not know it,
you are a person of really exceptional gifts both of mind and
character--gifts that ought to be cultivated, but which have been
suppressed instead. You do not know it, and perhaps you won’t quite
believe it, but you have capacities such as no other woman in this
community can even pretend to possess. You are very greatly the
superior of any woman you ever saw.”
“Oh, not of Edmonia!” the girl quickly replied.
“Yes--even of Edmonia,” he answered.
The girl’s face was hotly flushed. She did not know why, but such
praise, so sincerely given, and coming from the man whom she regarded as
“the best man in the world, and the greatest,” was gladsome to her soul.
Her native modesty forbade her to believe it, quite, “but,” she argued
with herself, “of course he knows better than I do, better than anybody
else ever can. And, of course, I must do all I can to improve myself in
order that I may satisfy his expectations of me. I’ll ask him all about
that before I leave.”
And she did.
“Cousin Arthur,” she said one evening as they two sat with Aunt Polly
before a crackling fire in “the chamber”--let the author suspend that
sentence in mid air while he explains.
The chamber, in an old plantation house, was that room on the ground
floor in which the master of the plantation, whether married or
unmarried, slept. It was the family room always. Into it came those
guests whose intimacy was sufficient to warrant intrusion upon the
penetralia. The others were entertained in the drawing room. The word
chamber was pronounced “chawmber,” just as the word “aunt” was properly
pronounced “awnt.” The chamber had a bed in it and a bureau. In a closet
big enough for a modern bedroom there was a dressing case with its fit
appurtenances. In the chamber there was a lounge that tempted to
afternoon siestas, and there were great oaken arm chairs whose skilful
fashioning for comfort rendered cushions an impertinence. In the chamber
was always the broadest and most cavernous of fire places and the most
satisfactory of fires when the weather was such as to render artificial
heating desirable. In the chamber was usually a carpet softly cushioned
beneath, itself and its cushions being subject to a daily flagellation
out-of-doors in the “soon” hours of morning in order that they might be
relaid before the breakfast-time. All other rooms in the house were apt
to be carpetless, their immaculate white ash floors undergoing a daily
polishing with pine needles and rubbing brushes. The chamber alone was
carpeted in most houses. Why this distinction the author does not
undertake to say. He merely records a fact which was well-nigh universal
in the great plantation houses.
So much for the chamber. Let us return to the sentence it interrupted.
“Cousin Arthur,” Dorothy said, “I wish you would mark out a course of
study for me to pursue during this journey, so that I may get out of it
all the good I can.”
Arthur picked up a dry sponge and dropped it into a basin of water.
“Look, Dorothy,” he said. “That is the only course I shall mark out for
you.”
“It is very dull of me, I suppose,” said the girl, “but I really don’t
understand.”
“Why, I didn’t tell the sponge what to absorb, and yet as you see it has
drunk up all the water it can hold. It is just so with you and your
journey. You need no instruction as to what you shall learn by travel or
by mingling in the social life of great cities. You are like that
sponge. You will absorb all that you need of instruction, when once you
are cast into the water of life. You have very superior gifts of
observation. There is no fear that you will fail to get all that is best
out of travel and society. It is only the stupid people who need be told
what they should see and what they should think about it, and the stupid
people would much better stay at home.”
XXVI
AUNT POLLY’S ADVICE
_I_f Aunt Polly had entertained any real desire to forbid the expedition
planned for Dorothy, the prompt interference of Madison Peyton in that
behalf would have dissipated it.
No sooner had Peyton learned of the contemplated journey than he bustled
over to Wyanoke to see Aunt Polly regarding it.
It is not a comfortable thing to visit a man with whom one has recently
quarrelled and to whom one has had to send a letter of apology. Even
Peyton, thick-skinned and self-assured as he was, would probably have
hesitated to make himself a guest at Wyanoke at this time but for the
happy chance that Arthur was absent in Richmond for a few days.
Seizing upon the opportunity thus afforded, Peyton promptly visited Aunt
Polly to enter a very earnest and insistent protest. He was genuinely
alarmed. He realized Dorothy’s moral and intellectual superiority to his
son. He was shrewd enough to foresee that travel and a year’s
association with men and women of attractive culture and refined
intellectual lives would, of necessity, increase this disparity and
perhaps--nay, almost certainly--make Jefferson Peyton seem a distinctly
unworthy and inferior person in Dorothy’s eyes. He realized that the
arrangement made some years before between himself and Dr. South, was
not binding upon Dorothy, except in so far as it might appeal to her
conscience and to her loyalty to her father’s memory when the time
should be ripe to reveal it to her. For as yet she knew nothing of the
matter.
She had liked young Peyton when he and she were children together. His
abounding good nature had made him an agreeable playmate. But as they
had grown up, the sympathy between them had steadily decreased. The good
nature which had made him agreeable as a playmate, had become a distinct
weakness of character as he had matured. He lacked fixity of purpose,
industry and even conscience--while Dorothy, born with these attributes,
had strengthened them by every act and thought of her life.
The young man had courage enough to speak the truth fearlessly on all
occasions that strongly called for truth and courage, but Dorothy had
discovered that in minor matters he was untruthful. To her integrity of
mind it was shocking that a young man should make false pretences, as he
had done when they had talked of literature and the like. She could not
understand a false pretence, and she had no toleration for the weakness
that indulges in it.