Chapter III: Part 3

Arthur Brent had summarily dismissed this man as we know, and Peyton was distinctly displeased with him for doing so. Taking the privilege of an old friend of the young man’s uncle, Peyton called him by his first name, without any prefix whatever.

“Why in the world, Arthur,” he said by way of introducing the subject, “why in the world have you sent Williams away?”

Something in Peyton’s manner, something that was always in his manner, had given Arthur a feeling of resentment when the man had called upon him soon after his arrival. This direct interrogatory concerning a matter exclusively his own, almost angered the young man, as the others saw when, instead of answering it directly, he asked:

“Are you specially interested in Williams’s welfare, Mr. Peyton?”

Peyton was too self-satisfied to be sensitive, so he took the rebuff with a laugh.

“Oh, no,” he answered. “It is you that I’m troubled about. Knowing nothing of planting you need a capable overseer more than anybody else does, and here you’ve sent away the best one in the county without even consulting anybody.”

“I did not need to consult anybody,” answered Arthur, “in order to know that I did not want that man on my plantation.”

“Oh, of course! But you can’t get another overseer at this time of year, you know.”

“On the whole, I don’t think I want another at any time of year.”

“You imagine perhaps that you know something about planting. I’ve known other young men to make the same mistake.”

“Perhaps I can learn,” answered Arthur in placid tones. “I have learned some things quite as difficult in my life.”

“But you don’t know anything about planting, and if you try it without an overseer you’ll find your account at your commission merchant’s distressingly short at the end of the year.”

“I don’t know about that,” broke in John Meaux. “You predicted the same thing in my case, you remember, Mr. Peyton, when I came back after graduating at West Point, and yet I’ve managed to keep some hams in my meat house for fifteen years now,--and I never had an overseer.”

Ignoring Meaux’s interruption Peyton said to Arthur:

“And you know you’ve got a law-suit on your hands.”

“Have I? I didn’t know it.”

“Why, of course, Williams will sue. You see he was engaged for the year, and the contract lasts till January.”

“Who made the contract?” asked Arthur.

“Well, I did--acting for your uncle.”

“Had you my uncle’s power of attorney to bind him to a year’s arrangement?”

“Of course not. He was ill and I merely did a neighbor’s part.”

“Then suppose Williams should sue you instead of me? You see it is you who are liable for non-fulfilment of that contract. You bargained with this man to serve you for a year as overseer on my plantation, and I have declined to accept the arrangement. If he has a right of action against anybody, it is against you. However, I don’t think he will sue you, for I have paid him his wages for the full year. Fortunately I happened to have money enough in bank for that. There is the voluntary--let’s go into church.”

Arthur Brent entered the place of service, one or two of the gentlemen following him.

He had made an enemy of Madison Peyton--an enemy who would never admit his enmity but would never lose an opportunity to indulge it.

VIII

A DINNER AT BRANTON

_I_t fell to Arthur Brent’s share to dine on that Sunday at Branton, the seat of the most princely hospitality in all that part of Virginia. The matter was not at all one of his own arranging, although it was altogether agreeable to him. The master of Branton--a young man scarcely older than himself, who lived there with his only sister, Edmonia Bannister, had been the first of all the neighbors to visit Arthur, dining with him and passing the night at Wyanoke. He had been most kindly and cordial in his welcome and Arthur had been strongly drawn to him as a man of character, intelligence and very winning manners. No sooner had Arthur dismounted at church on that first Sunday, than young Archer Bannister had come to shake his hand and say--“I want to preëmpt you, Doctor Brent. All your neighbors will clamor for your company for the dinner and the night, but I have done my best to establish the priority of my claim. Besides my good sister wants you--and as a confidence between you and me, I will tell you that when my sister wants anything she is extremely apt to get it. I’m something of a laggard at dressing myself for church, but this morning she began upon me early, sending three servants to help me put on my clothes, and laying her particular commands upon me to be the first man to arrive at Shrub Hill, lest some other get before me with an invitation to dinner. So you are to be my guest, please, and I’ll send one of my people over to Wyanoke for anything you want. By the way I’ve cleared out a wardrobe for you at Branton, and a dressing case. You’ll need to send over a supply of linen, coats, boots, underwear, and the like and leave it in your room there, so that you shall be quite at home to come and go at your will, with the certainty of always finding ready for you whatever you need in the way of costume.”

Arthur Brent’s one extravagance was in the matter of clothes. He always dressed himself simply, but he was always dressed well, and especially it was his pleasure to change his garments as often as the weather or the circumstances might suggest the desirability of a change. Accordingly he had brought fat trunks to Wyanoke, but by the time that three others of his new neighbors had informed him, quite casually and as a matter of course, that they had prepared rooms for him and expected him to send to those rooms a supply of clothing sufficient for any need, he was pleased to remember that he had left careful measurements with his tailor, his shirt maker, his fabricator of footwear, and his “gents’ furnisher” in New York. And he had also acquired a new and broader conception than ever before, of the comprehensive heartiness of Virginia hospitality.

“You see,” said young Bannister, later in the day, “Branton is to be one of your homes. As a young man you will be riding about a good deal, and you mustn’t be compelled to ride all the way to Wyanoke every time you want to change your coat or substitute low quarter shoes for your riding boots. If you’ll ask little Miss Dorothy to show you my room at Wyanoke you’ll find that I have everything there that any gentleman could possibly need with which to dress himself properly for any occasion, from a fish fry to a funeral, from a fox hunt to a wedding. You are to do the same at Branton. You don’t do things in that way in a city, of course, but here it is necessary, because of the distance between plantations. A man doesn’t want all his belongings in one place when that place may be ten or a dozen miles away when he wants them.”

Arthur found Branton to be substantially a reproduction of Wyanoke, except that the great gambrel-roofed house had many wings and extensions, and several one storied, two roomed “offices” built about the grounds for the accommodation of any overflow of guests that might happen there. The house had been built about the time at which the Wyanoke mansion had come into being. It was of wood, but by no means of such structure as we now expect in a wooden house. The frame was made of great hewn timbers of forest pine, twelve inches square as to floor beams and rafter plates, and with ten inch timbers in lieu of studding. The vast chimneys were supported, not upon arches nicely calculated to sustain their superincumbent weight with a factor of safety, but upon a solid mass of cellar masonry that would have sustained the biggest of Egyptian monoliths. The builders of the old colonial time may not have known the precise strength of materials or the niceties of calculation by which the supporting capacity of an arch is determined, but they knew--and they acted upon the knowledge--that twelve inch, heart pine timbers set on end will sustain any weight that a dwelling is called upon to bear, and that a chimney built upon a solid mass of masonry, twenty feet in diameter, is not likely to fall down for lack of underpinning.

One full half of the ground floor of the great mansion constituted the single drawing room, wainscoted to the ceiling and provided with three huge fire places built for the burning of cord wood. The floors were as white as snow, the wainscoting as black as night with age and jealous polishing with beeswax. After the architectural manner of the country, there was a broad porch in front and another in rear, each embowered in honeysuckles and climbing rose bushes. A passageway, more than twenty feet in width ran through the building, connecting the two porches and constituting the most generally used sitting room of the house. It had broad oaken doors reaching across its entire width. They stood always open except during the very coldest days of the mild Virginia winter, there being no thought of closing them even at night. For there were no criminal classes in that social fabric, and if there had been, the certainty that the master of the mansion slept upon its ground floor and knew what to do with a shot gun, would have been a sufficient deterrent to invasion of the premises.

There were two large fire places in the hall for winter use. But the glory of the place was the stairway, with its broad ashen steps and its broader landings. Up and down it had passed generations of happy maidens and matrons. Up and down it, prattling children had played and romped and danced in happy innocence. Up and down it wedding guests and funeral attendants had come and gone, carrying their burdens of flowers for the bride and blossoms for the bier. Upon it had been whispered words of love and tenderness that prepared the way for lives of happiness, and sorrowful utterances that soothed and softened grief. Upon its steps young men of chivalric soul had wooed maidens worthy of their devotion. Upon its landings young maidens had softly spoken those words of consent which ushered in lives of rejoicing.

The furniture of the house was in keeping with its spaciousness and its solidity. Huge sofas were everywhere, broad enough for beds and long enough for giants to stretch their limbs upon. Commodious, plantation-made chairs of oak invited every guest to repose in the broad hallway. In the drawing room, and in the spacious dining hall the sedate ticking of high standing clocks marked time only to suggest its abundance in that land of leisure, and to invite its lavish use in enjoyment.

Now add to all this still life, the presence of charming people--men of gracious mien and young women of immeasurable charm, young women whose rich and softly modulated voices were exquisite music, and whose presence was a benediction--and you may faintly understand the surroundings in which Arthur Brent found himself on that deliciously perfect Sunday afternoon in June, in the year of our Lord, 1859.

Is it surprising that the glamour of it all took hold upon his soul and tempted him to rest content with a life so picturesquely peaceful? Is it surprising that his set purpose of speedily returning to his own life of strenuous, scientific endeavor, somewhat weakened in presence of a temptation so great? All this was his for the taking. All of it was open to him to enjoy if he would. All of it lay before him as a gracious inheritance. Why should he not accept it? Why should he return to the struggle of science, the pent life of cities? Why should he prowl about tenement houses in an endeavor to solve the problem of mephitic gases, when all this free, balsamic air offered itself gratis to his breathing? He had but one life to live, he reflected. Why should he not live it here in sweet and wholesome ways? Why should he not make himself a part of this exquisitely poised existence?

All these vexed and vexing questions flitted through his brain even before he had opportunity to meet his hostess in her own home, surrounded by her bevy of variously attractive young women.

Edmonia Bannister was everywhere recognized as the belle of the state in which she lived. Suitors for her hand had come from afar and anear to woo this maiden of infinite charm, and one by one they had gone away sorrowing but with only the kindliest memory of the gentleness with which she had withheld her consent to their wooings.

She was scarcely beautiful. The word “comely” seemed a better one with which to describe her appearance, but her comeliness was allied to a charm at once indefinable and irresistible. John Meaux had said that “it is a necessary part of every young man’s education to fall in love with Edmonia Bannister at least once,” and had predicted that fate for Arthur Brent. Whether the prediction was destined to be fulfilled or not, Arthur could not decide on this his first day as a guest at Branton. He was sure that he was not in love with the girl at the end of his visit, but he drew that assurance chiefly from his conviction that it was absurd to fall in love with any woman upon acquaintance so slight. While holding firmly to that conviction he nevertheless felt strongly that the girl had laid a spell upon him, under control of which he was well nigh helpless. He was by no means the first young man to whom this experience had come, and he was not likely to be the last.

And yet the young woman was wholly free from intent thus to enslave those who came into her life. Her artlessness was genuine, and her seriousness profound. There was no faintest suggestion of frivolity or coquetry in her manner. She was too self-respecting for that, and she had too much of character. One of those who had “loved and lost” her, had said that “the only art she used was the being of herself,” and all the rest who had had like experience were of the same mind. So far indeed was she from seeking to bring men to her feet that on more than one occasion she had been quick to detect symptoms of coming love and had frankly and solemnly said to prospective wooers for whom she felt a particular kindness--“please don’t fall in love with me. I shall never be able to reciprocate the sentiment, and it would distress me to reject your suit.” It is not upon record, however, that any one of those who were thus warned profited by the wise counsel. On the contrary, in many instances, this mark of kindliness on her part had served only to precipitate the catastrophe she sought to avert.

Arthur Brent had a stronger shield. He saw clearly that for him to marry this or any other of that fair land’s maidens would make an end of his ambitions.

“If I should fall in love down here in Virginia,” he reflected, “I should never have strength of mind enough to shake off the glamour of this life and go back to my work. The fascination of it all is already strong upon me. I must not add another to the sources of danger. I must be resolute and strong. That way alone safety lies for me. I will set to work at once to carry out my mission here, and then go away. I shall know this week how matters stand with the estate. I shall busy myself at once with my fixed purpose. I shall find means of discharging all the debts of the plantation. Then I shall sell the land and with the proceeds take the negroes to the west and settle them there on little farms of their own. Then I shall be free again to resume my proper work in the world. Obviously I must not complicate matters by marrying here or even falling in love. A man with such a duty laid upon him has no right to indulge himself in soft luxury. I must be strong and resolute.”

Nevertheless Arthur Brent felt an easily recognizable thrill of delight when at dinner he found himself assigned to a seat on Edmonia Bannister’s left hand.

There were sixteen at dinner, and all were happy. Arthur alone was a guest unused to occupy that place at Branton, and to him accordingly all at table devoted special attention. Three at least of the younger men present, had been suitors in their time for their hostess’s hand, for it was a peculiarity of Edmonia’s rejections of her wooers, that they usually soothed passion into affection and made of disappointed lovers most loyal friends. Before the dinner came to an end, Arthur found himself deliberately planning to seek this relation of close friendship without the initiatory process of a love making. For he found his hostess to be wise in counsel and sincere in mind, beyond her years. “She is precisely the person to advise me in the delicate affairs that I must manage,” he thought. “For in the present state of public feeling”--it was the era of Kansas-Nebraska bills and violent agitation--“it will require unusual tact and discretion to carry out my plans without making of myself an object of hatred and loathing. This young woman has tact in infinite measure; she has discretion also, and an acquaintance with sentiment here, such as I cannot even hope to acquire. Above all she has conscience, as I discover every time she has occasion to express an opinion. I’ll make her my friend. I’ll consult her with regard to my plans.”

By way of preparation for this he said to Edmonia as they sat together in the porch one evening: “I am coming often to Branton, because I want you to learn to know me and like me. I have matters in hand concerning which I very much want your counsel. Will you mind giving it to me if I behave well, resist the strong temptation to pay court to you as a lover, and teach you after a while to feel that I am a friend to whom your kindliness will owe counsel?”

“If you will put matters on that level, Cousin Arthur, and keep them there I shall be glad to have it so. I don’t know that I can give you advice of any account, but, at any rate, as I think your impulses will be right and kindly, I can give you sympathy, and that is often a help. I’ll give you my opinion also, whenever you want it--especially if I think you are going wrong and need admonition. Then I’ll put on all the airs of a Minerva and advise you oracularly. But remember that you must win all this, by coming often to Branton and--and the rest of it.”

“I’ll come often to Branton, be sure of that,” he answered. But he did not feel himself quite strong enough of purpose, to promise that he would not make love to the mistress of the mansion.

At the dinner each gentleman had a joint or a pair of fowls before him to carve, and every gentleman in that time and country was confidently expected to know how to carve whatever dish there might be assigned to him. Carving was deemed as much a necessary part of every gentleman’s education as was the ability to ride and shoot and catch a mettlesome fish. The barbarity of having the joints clumsily cut up by a butler at a side table and served half cold in an undiscriminating way, had not then come into being. Dining was a fine art in that time and country, a social function, in which each carver had the joy of selecting tidbits for those he served, and arranging them daintily and attractively upon the plate brought to him for that purpose by a well trained servant. Especially each took pleasure in remembering and ministering to the particular fancies of all the rest in the act of helping. Refined people had not yet borrowed from barbaric Russians the practice of having themselves fed, like so many cattle, by servitors appointed to deal out rations.

There was no wine served with the meal. That came later in its proper place. Each gentleman had been invited to partake of a “toddy”--a mild admixture of whiskey, water, sugar and nutmeg--before sitting down to the meal. After that there was no drink served until the meal was over. When the cloth was removed after the dessert, there came upon the polished board some dishes of walnuts of which all partook sparingly. Then came the wine--old sherry or, if the house were a fortunate one, rare old Madeira, served from richly carved decanters, in daintily stemmed cut glasses. The wine was poured into all the glasses. Then the host proposed “the ladies,” and all drank, standing. Then the host gallantly held the broad dining room door open while the ladies, bowing and smiling, graciously withdrew. After that politics and walnuts, religion and raisins, sherry and society divided the attention of the gentlemen with cigars that had been kept for a dozen years or more drying in a garret. For the modern practice of soaking cigars in a refrigerator and smoking them limp and green was an undreamed of insult to the tongues and palates of men who knew all about tobacco and who smoked for flavor, not for the satisfaction of a fierce and intemperate craving for narcotic effect.

After half an hour or so over the rich, nutty wine, the gentlemen joined the gentlewomen in the drawing room, the hallway or the porches according to the weather, and a day well spent ended with a light supper at nine o’clock. Then there was an ordering of horses and a making of adieux on the part of such of the gentlemen as were not going to remain over night.

“You will stay, Cousin Arthur,” Edmonia said. “You will stay, of course. You and I have a compact to carry out. We are to learn to like each other. It will be very easy, I think, but we must set to work at it immediately. Will you ride with me in the morning--soon?”

She called him “Cousin Arthur,” of course. Had not a distant relative of his once married a still more distant kinswoman of her own? It would have been deemed in Virginia a distinct discourtesy in her not to call him “Cousin Arthur.”

IX

DOROTHY’S CASE

_A_fter a few weeks of work Arthur Brent’s laboratory was ready for use, with all its apparatus in place and all its reserve supply of chemicals safely bestowed in a small, log built hut standing apart.

His books too had been brought to the house and unpacked. He provided shelf room for them in the various apartments, in the broad hallway, and even upon the stairs. There were a multitude of volumes--largely the accumulations of years of study and travel on his own and his father’s part. The collection included all that was best in scientific literature, and much that was best in history, in philosophy and in _belles lettres_. To this latter department he had ordered large additions made when sending for his books--this with an eye to Dorothy’s education.

There was already a library of some importance at Wyanoke, the result of 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?”

“Oh, that’s because of their ignorance. They are very ignorant--much more so than you think, Cousin Arthur. I may call you ‘Cousin Arthur,’ may I not? You see I always called your uncle ‘Uncle Robert,’ and if your uncle was my uncle, of course you and I are cousins. Besides I like to call you ‘Cousin Arthur.’”

“And I like to have you call me so. But tell me about the marking of the watermelon.”

“Oh, that’s simple enough. When you have marked your initials on a melon, the negroes know you have seen it and so they are afraid to steal it.”

“But how should I know who took it?”

“That’s their ignorance. They never think of that. Or rather I suppose they think educated people know a great deal more than they do. I wonder if it is right?”

“If what is right, Dorothy?”

“Why, to take advantage of their ignorance in that way. Have educated people a right to do that with ignorant people? Is it fair?”

“I see your point, Dorothy, and I’m not prepared to give you an answer, at least in general terms. But, at any rate, it is right to use any means we can to keep people from stealing.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve thought of that. But is it stealing for the negroes to take a watermelon which they have planted and cultivated? They do the work on the plantation. Aren’t they entitled to all they want to eat?”

“Within reasonable bounds, yes,” answered Arthur, meditatively. “They are entitled to all the wholesome food they need, and to all the warm clothing, and to comfortable, wholesome quarters to live in. But we mustn’t leave the smoke house door unlocked. If we did that the dishonest ones among them would take all the meat and sell it, and the rest would starve. Besides, the white people are entitled to something. They take care of the negroes in sickness and in childhood and in old age. They must feed and clothe them and nurse them and have doctors for them no matter what it may cost. It is true, the negroes do the work that produces the food and clothing and all the rest of it, but their masters contribute the intelligent management that is quite as necessary as the work. Imagine this plantation, Dorothy, or your own Pocahontas, left to the negroes. They could do as much work as they do now, but do you suppose their crops would feed them till Christmas if there were no white man to manage for them?”

“Of course not. Indeed they never would make a crop. Still I don’t like the system.”

“Neither do I, Dorothy, but in the present state of the public mind neither of us must say so.”

“Why not, Cousin Arthur? Is there any harm in telling the truth?”

“Sometimes I suppose it is better to keep silence,” answered Arthur, hesitating.

“For women, yes,” quickly responded the girl. “But men can fight. Why shouldn’t they tell the truth?”

“I don’t quite understand your distinction, Dorothy.”

“I’m not sure,” she answered, “that I understand it myself. Oh, yes, I do, now that I think of it. Women tell lies, of course, because they can’t fight. Or, if they don’t quite tell lies they at least keep silent whenever telling the truth would make trouble. That’s because they can’t fight. Men can fight, and so there’s not the slightest excuse for them if they tell lies or even if they keep silent.”

“But, Dorothy, I don’t yet understand. Women can’t fight, of course, but then they are never called upon to fight. Why--”