we had any money. But we haven’t any, because I have spent all my own
and borrowed and spent all of hers. We must wait now until you and
Archer Bannister can send us new letters of credit or whatever it is
that you call the papers on which the banking people here are so ready
to give us all the money we want. Now I must ’fess up about the
expenses. They have not been incurred for new gowns or for any other
feminine frivolities. I’ve spent all my own money and all of Edmonia’s
for chemicals and chemical apparatus, which I foresee that you and I
will need in order to make medicines and salt and soda and saltpetre for
our soldiers and people. I’ve ordered all these things sent by a ship
that is going to Nassau, in the Bahama Islands, and the captain of the
ship promises me that whether there is a blockade or not, he will get
them through to you somehow or other. By the way the foolish fellow, who
is a French naval officer, detailed for the merchant service, wanted me
to marry him--isn’t it absurd?--and I told him we’d keep that question
open till the chemicals and apparatus should be safe in your hands, and
till he could come to you in the uniform of a Virginia officer, and ask
you as my guardian, for permission to pay his addresses. Was it wrong,
Cousin Arthur, thus to play with a fellow who never really loved
anybody, but who simply wanted Pocahontas plantation? You see I’ve
become very bad, and very knowing, since I’ve been without control, as I
told you I would. But, anyhow, that Frenchman will get the things to you
in safety.
“But all this nonsense isn’t what I wanted to write to you. I want to go
home and I will go home, even if I have to accept Jefferson Peyton’s
offer to furnish the money necessary. We simply mustn’t be shut out of
Virginia when the war comes, and nobody can tell when it will come now.
But of course I shall not let Jeff furnish the money. That was only a
strong way of putting it. For Jeff has insulted me, I think. I’m not
quite certain, but I think that is what it amounts to. You will know,
and I’m going to tell you all about it, just as I used to tell you all
about everything, before--well before all this sort of thing. Jeff has
been travelling about ever since we began our journey, and he has really
been very nice to us, and very useful sometimes. But a few days ago he
proposed marriage to me. I was disposed to be very kindly in my
treatment of him, because I rather like the poor fellow. But when I told
him I didn’t in the least think of marrying him or anybody else, he lost
his temper, and had the assurance to say that the time would come when I
would be very grateful to him for being willing to offer me _such a road
out of my difficulties_. He didn’t explain, for I instantly rang for a
servant to show him out of the hotel parlor, and myself retired by
another door. But, I think I know what he meant, because I have found
out all about myself and my mother, all the things that people have been
so laboriously endeavoring to keep me from finding out. And among other
things I have found out that I must marry Jeff Peyton or nobody. So I
will marry nobody, so long as I live. I’ll be like Aunt Polly, just good
and useful in the world.
“I’ll write you all about this by the next steamer, if I can make up my
mind to do it--that is to say if I find that in spite of all, I may go
on thinking of you as my best friend on earth, and telling you
everything that troubles me just as I used to tell dear old mammy, when
the bees stung me or the daisies wilted before I could make them into a
pretty chain. I have a great longing to tell you things in the old,
frank, unreserved way, and to feel the comfort of your strong support in
doing what it is right for me to do. Somehow, all this distance has
seemed to make it difficult to do that. But now that my fate in life is
settled and my career fully marked out as a woman whose only ambition is
to be as useful as possible, I may talk to you, mayn’t I, in the old,
unreserved way, in full assurance that you won’t let me make any
mistakes?
“That is what I want. So I have this moment decided that I will not wait
for you to send me a new letter of credit, but will find somebody here
to lend me enough money to go home on. In the meantime I’m going to
begin being the old, frank, truthful Dorothy, by writing you, by the
next steamer, all that I have learned about myself.”
XXXIV
DOROTHY’S DISCOVERY
_D_orothy’s next letter came at the beginning of the spring. There were
mail steamers at that time only once a fortnight and the passage
occupied a fortnight more--or perhaps a longer time as the sea and the
west wind might determine.
“I hope this letter will reach you before I do, Cousin Arthur,” Dorothy
began. “But I’m not quite sure of that, for we hope to sail by the Asia
on her next trip and she is a much faster ship they say than the one
that is to carry this. The money things arranged themselves easily and
without effort. For when I asked Mr. Livingston,--Mildred’s husband, you
know--to go with me to the bankers to see if they wouldn’t lend me a few
hundred dollars, he laughed and said:
‘You needn’t bother, you little spendthrift. I provided for all that
before we started. I knew you women would spend all your money, so I
gave myself a heavy credit with my bankers here, and of course you can
have all the money you want.’ I didn’t like it for him to think we’d
spent our money foolishly, but I couldn’t explain, so I just thanked him
and said, with all the dignity I could command: ‘I’ll give you a letter
of credit on my guardian Dr. Brent.’ I suppose I got the terms wrong,
for he laughed in his careless way--he always laughs at things as if
nothing in the world mattered. He even laughed at his own seasickness on
the ship. Anyhow, he told me I needn’t give him any kind of papers--that
you would settle the bill when the time came, and that I could have all
the money I needed. So at first we thought we should get off by the ship
that is to carry this letter. But something got the matter with
Mildred’s teeth, so we had to wait over for the Asia. Why do things get
the matter with people’s teeth? Nothing ever got the matter with mine,
and I never heard of anything getting the matter with yours or
Edmonia’s. Mr. Livingston says that’s because we eat corn bread. How I
wish I had some at this moment!
“But that isn’t what I want to write to you about. I have much more
serious things to tell you--things that alter my whole life, and make it
sadder than I ever expected it to be.
“I have seen my mother, and she has told me the whole terrible story.
She wouldn’t have told me now or ever, but that she thought she was
going to die under a surgical operation.
“You remember I wrote to you about Madame Le Sud, whom I met on
shipboard and learned to love so much. I’m glad I learned to love her,
because she is my mother. She calls herself Madame Le Sud, because that
is only the French way of calling herself Mrs. South, you know.
“The way of it was this: When we parted at Liverpool I told her what our
trip was to be. She was coming direct to Paris, and I made her promise
to let me visit her here if she did not leave before our arrival, as she
thought she probably would. When we got here I rather hoped to hear from
her, for somehow, though I did not dream of the relationship between us,
I had formed a very tender attachment to her, and I longed to see her
again.
“As the weeks passed and I heard nothing, I made up my mind that she had
gone back to New York before we reached Paris, and I was not undeceived
until a few weeks ago, when she sent me a sad little note, telling me
she was ill and asking me to call upon her in her apartments in the Rue
Neuve des Petits Champs.
“I went at once and found her in very pitiful condition. Her apartments
were mere garrets, ill furnished and utterly uncomfortable, and she
herself was manifestly suffering. When I asked her why she had not sent
for me before, she answered: ‘It was better not, child. You were in your
proper place. You were happy. You were receiving social recognition of
the highest kind and it was good for you because you are fit for it and
deserve it. I have sent for you now only because I have something that I
must give to you before I die. For I’m going to die almost immediately.’
She wouldn’t let me interrupt her. ‘I’m going to have a surgical
operation tomorrow, and I do not expect to get over it.’
“I found out presently that she was going to a charity hospital for her
treatment, and that it was because she is so poor; for by reason of her
sickness, she has lost her employment, which was that of a dresser for
an opera company. Think of it, Cousin Arthur! My mother,--though I
didn’t know then that she was my mother--a dresser to those opera
people! I’m glad she didn’t tell me she was my mother until after I had
told her she should not go to a charity hospital, to be operated on
before a class of gaping students and treated very much as if she were a
subject in a dissecting room. I took all that in my own hands. I went
down to the concierge and secured a comfortable apartment for my mother
on the entresol, with a nice French maid to look after her. Then I sent
for the best surgeon I could hear of to treat her, and he promised me to
get her quite well again in a few weeks, which he has done. It was after
I had moved her down to the new apartments and sent the maid out for a
little dinner--for my mother hadn’t anything to eat or any money--it was
after all that that she told me her story.
“First she gave me a magnificent ring, a beautiful fire opal set round
with diamonds. Think of it! She with that in her possession and
belonging to her, which would have sold for enough to keep her in luxury
for months, yet shivering there without a fire and without food, and
waiting for the morrow, to go to a charity hospital like a pauper, while
I have the best rooms in the best hotel in Paris! And she my mother, all
the while!
“When she put the ring on my finger, saying, ‘It fits you as it once
fitted me--but you are worthy of it as I never was,’ I cried a little
and begged her to tell me what it all meant. Then she broke down and,
clasping me in her arms, told me that she was my own mother. I won’t
tell you all the details of our weeping time, for they are too sacred
even for you to hear. Let me simply copy here, as accurately as I can,
my mother’s account of herself.
“‘I was born,’ she said, ‘the daughter of a Virginian of good family--as
good as any. My father lived as many Virginians do, far beyond his
means. Perhaps he did wrong things--I do not know, and after all it is
no matter. At any rate when he died people seemed to care very little
for us--my mother and me--when everything we had was sold and we went
out into the world to hunt for bread. I was seventeen then, I had what
they call a genius for music. We went to New York and lived wretchedly
there for a time. But I earned something with my violin and my ’cello,
and now and then by singing, for I had a voice that was deemed good. We
lived in that wretched, ill-mannered, loose-moraled, dissolute and
financially reckless set which calls itself Bohemia, and excuses itself
from all social and moral obligation on the ground that its members are
persons of genius, though in fact most of them are anything else. My
mother never liked these people. She simply tolerated them, and she did
that only because she had no choice. She did her best to shield me
against harm to my soul in contact with them, but she could not prevent
the contact itself. Our bread and butter and the roof over our heads
depended upon that. Finally there came into our set a manager who was
looking out for opportunities. He heard me play, and he heard me sing.
He proposed that I should go to Europe for instruction at his expense,
and that he should bring me out as a genius in the autumn. I went, and I
received some brief instruction of great value to me--not that it made
me a better musician but that it taught me how to captivate an audience
with such gifts as I had. Well the manager brought me out, and I
succeeded even beyond his expectations. I don’t think it was my musical
ability altogether, though that was thought to be remarkable, I believe.
I was beautiful then, as you are now, Dorothy; I had all the charm of a
willowy grace, which, added to my beauty, made men and women go mad over
me. I made money in abundance for my manager, and that was all that he
cared for. I made money for myself too, and my mother and I were eagerly
sought after by the leaders of fashion. We ceased to know the old
Bohemia and came to be members of a new and perhaps not a better
set--except in its conformity to those rules of life which are supposed
to hedge respectability about, without really improving its morals. For
I tell you child I saw more of real wickedness in my contact with those
who call themselves the socially elect than I ever dreamed of among my
old-time Bohemian associates. The only advantage these dissolutes had
over the others was, that having bank accounts they drew checks for
their debts where the others shirked and shuffled to escape from theirs.
“‘I was glad, therefore, when your father came into my life. He was a
man of a higher type than any that I had known since early childhood--a
man of integrity, of honor, of high purposes. His courtesy was
exquisite, and it was sincere. It is often said of a man that he would
not tell a lie to save his life. Your father went further than that, my
child. He would not tell a lie even to please a woman, and with such a
man as he was, pleasing a woman was a stronger temptation than saving
his life. He was in New York taking a supplementary medical course--what
they now call a post graduate course,--in order, as he said, that he
might the better fulfil his life-saving mission as a physician. He fell
madly in love with me, and I--God help me! I loved him as well as one of
my shallow nature and irregular bringing up could love any man. After a
little I married him. I went with him for a brief trip abroad, and after
that I went to be mistress of Pocahontas. I looked forward longingly to
the beautiful life of refinement there, as he so often pictured it to
me. I was tired of the whirl and excitement. I was weary of the
footlights and of having to take my applause and my approval over the
heads of the orchestra. I thought I should be perfectly happy, playing
grand lady in an old, historic Virginia house. I was only nineteen years
old then,--I am well under forty still--and for a time I did enjoy the
new life amazingly. But after a little it wearied me. It seemed to me
too narrow, too conventional, too uninteresting. When I had company and
poured my whole soul into a violin obligato,--rendering the great music
in a way which had often brought down the house and called for repeated
encores while delighted audiences threatened to bury me under
flowers--when I did that sort of thing at Pocahontas, the guests would
say coldly how well I played and all the other parrot like things that
people say when they mean to be polite but have no real appreciation of
music. Little by little I grew utterly weary of the life. The very
things in it that had at first delighted and rested me, became like
thorns in my flesh. As the rescued children of Israel longed for the
flesh pots of Egypt, so at last I came to long again for the delights of
the old life on the stage, with its excitements, its ever changing
pleasures, its triumphs and even its failures and disappointments. Yet
it was not so much a longing for that old life which oppressed me, as an
intolerable impatience to get out of the new one from which I had
expected so much of happiness. It seemed to me a tread-mill life of
self-indulgence. I was surrounded by every luxury that a well-ordered
woman could desire. But I was not a well-ordered woman, and the very
luxury of my surroundings, the very exemption they gave me from all
care, all responsibility, all endeavor, seemed to drive me almost insane
with impatience. I had nothing to do. I was surrounded by skilled
servants who provokingly anticipated every wish I could form. If I
wanted even to rinse my fingers after eating a peach, I was not
permitted to do it in any ordinary way. There was always a maid standing
ready with a bowl and napkin for my use. My bed was prepared for me
before I went to it, and the maid waited to put out the candle after I
had gone to rest. Your father worshipped me, and surrounded me with
attentions on his own part and on that of others, which were intolerable
in the perfection of their service. I knew that I was not worthy of his
worship and I often told him so, to no effect. He only worshipped me the
more. The only time I ever saw him angry was once soon after you were
born. I loved you as I had never dreamed of loving anybody or anything
before in my life--even better ten thousand times than I had ever loved
music itself. I wanted to do something for you with my own hands. I
wanted to feel that I was your mother and you altogether my own child.
“‘So, just as old mammy was preparing to give you your bath, I pretended
to be faint and sent her below stairs to bring me a cup of coffee. When
she had gone I seized you and in ecstatic triumph, set to work to make
your little baby toilet with my own hands. Just as I began, your father
came stalking up the stairs and entered the nursery. For mammy had told
him I was faint, and he had hurried to my relief. When he found me
bathing you he rang violently for all the servants within call and as
they came one after another upon the scene he challenged each to know
why their mistress was thus left to do servile offices for herself. But
for my pleading I think he would have taken the whole company of them
out to the barn and chastised them with his own hand, though I had never
known him to strike a servant.
“‘I know now that I ought to have explained the matter to him. I ought
to have told him how the mother love in me longed to do something for
you. I know he would have understood even in his rage over what he
regarded as neglect of me, and he would have sympathized with my
feeling. But I was enraged at the baffling of my purpose, and I hastily
put on a riding habit, mounted my horse, which, your father, seeing my
purpose, promptly ordered brought to the block, and rode away,
unattended except by a negro groom. For when your father offered his
escort I declined it, begging him to let me ride alone.
“‘It was not long after that that I sat hour after hour by your cradle,
composing a lullaby which should be altogether your own, and as worthy
of you as I could make it. When the words and the music were complete
and satisfying to my soul, I began singing the little song to you, and
your father, whose love of music was intense, seemed entranced with it.
He would beg me often to sing it, and to play the violin accompaniment I
had composed to go with it. I would never do so except over your cradle.
Understand me, child, if you can understand one of so wayward a temper
as mine. I had put all my soul into that lullaby. Every word in it,
every note of the music, was an expression of my mother love--the best
there was in me. I was jealous of it for you. I would not allow even
your father to hear a note of that outpouring of my love for my child,
except as a listener while I sang and played for you alone. So your
cradle with you in it must always be brought before I would let your
father hear.
“‘One day, when you were six or eight months old, we had a houseful of
guests, as we often did at Pocahontas. They stayed over night of course,
and in the evening when I asked their indulgence while I should go and
sing you to sleep, your father madly pleaded that I should sing and play
the lullaby in the drawing room in order that the guests might hear what
he assured them was his supreme favorite among all musical compositions.
I suppose I was in a more than usually complaisant mood. At any rate, I
allowed myself to
[Illustration: “_IN THAT MUSIC MY SOUL LAID ITSELF BARE TO YOURS AND
PRAYED FOR YOUR LOVE_.”]
be persuaded against my will, and mammy brought you in, in your cradle.
I remember that you had a little pink sack over your night gown--a thing
I had surreptitiously knitted for you without anybody’s knowledge, and
without even the touch of a servant’s hand.
“‘You were crowing with glee at the lights and the great, flaring fire.
Everybody in the room wanted to caress you, but I peremptorily ordered
them off, and took you for a time into my own arms. At last, when the
lights were turned down at my command, and the firelight hidden behind a
screen, I took the violin--a rare old instrument for which your father
had paid a king’s ransom--and began to play. After the prelude had been
twice played, I began to sing. Never in my life had I been so
overwhelmingly conscious of you--so completely unconscious of everybody
else in the world. I played and sang only to my child. All other human
beings were nonexistent. I played with a perfection of which I had never
for a moment thought myself capable. I sang with a tenderness which I
could never have commanded had I been conscious for the time of any
other existence than your own. In that music my soul laid itself bare to
yours and prayed for your love. I told you in every tone all that a
mother love means--all that an intensely emotional woman is capable of
feeling; I gave free rein to all there was in me of passion, and made
all of it your own. I was in an ecstasy. I was entranced. My soul was
transfigured and all was wrought into the music.
“‘In the midst of it all someone whispered a cold blooded, heartlessly
appreciative comment upon my playing, or the music, or my voice, or the
execution, or something else--it matters not what. It was the sort of
thing that people say for politeness’ sake when some screeching girl
sings “Hear Me, Norma.” It wakened me instantly from my trance. It
brought me back to myself. It revealed to me how completely I had been
wasting the sacred things of my soul upon a company of Philistines. It
filled me with a wrath that considered not consequences. I ceased to
play. I seized the precious violin by its neck--worn smooth by the touch
of artist hands--and dashed it to pieces over the piano. Then I snatched
my baby from the cradle and retreated to your nursery, where I double
locked the door, and refused to admit anybody but mammy, whose affection
for you I felt, had been wounded as sorely as my own. I sent your father
word that I would pass the night in the nursery, and at daylight I left
home forever, taking you and mammy with me in the carriage.
“‘I had taken pains to learn that your father had been summoned that
night, on an emergency call, to the bedside of a patient, ten miles
away. This gave me my opportunity. With you in my arms and mammy by my
side, I drove to Richmond, and sending the carriage back, I drew what
money there was to my credit in the bank, and took the steamer sailing
that day for New York. All this was seventeen years ago, remember, when
there were no railroads of importance, and no quicker way of going from
Richmond to New York than by the infrequently sailing steamers. It was
in the early forties.
“‘Your father had loaded my dressing case with splendid jewels, in the
selection of which his taste was unusually good. I left them all behind,
all but this ring, which he had given me when you were born and asked me
to regard as his thank offering for you. I have kept it all these years.
I have suffered and starved many times rather than profane it by
pawning, though often my need has been so sore that I have had to put
even my clothes in pledge for the money with which to buy a dinner of
bread and red herrings.
“‘I had money enough at first, for your father’s generosity had made my
bank deposit large. But I had to spend the money in keeping myself
hidden away with you, and I could not earn more by my music, as that
would make me easily found. It was then that I translated my name. Mammy
remained with me, caring for nothing in the world but you.
“‘It was several years before your father found me out. I was shocked
and distressed at the way in which sorrow had written its signature upon
his face. I loved him then far better than I had ever done before. For
the first time I fully understood how greatly good and noble he was. But
I would not, I could not, go back with him to the home I had disgraced.
I could have borne all the scorn and contempt with which his friends
would have looked upon me. I could have faced all that defiantly and
with an erect head, giving scorn for scorn and contempt for contempt,
where I knew that my censors were such only because in their
commonplaceness they could not understand a nature like mine or even
believe in its impulses. But I could not bear to go back to Pocahontas
and witness the pity with which everybody there would look upon him.