Chapter VI: Part 6

“When you left me this afternoon, it was with a promise that on my
next visit to Branton you would tell me of the things that limit
Dorothy’s life. It was my purpose then to make an early opportunity
for the hearing. I have changed my mind. I do not want to hear now,
because when this knowledge comes to me, I must act upon it, in one
way or another, and I must act promptly. Should it come to me now,
I should not be free to act. I simply cannot, because I must not,
leave my work here till it is done. I do not refer now to those
plans of which we spoke today, but simply to the fever. I must not
quit my post till that is at an end. I am a soldier in the midst of
a campaign. I cannot quit my colors till the enemy is completely
put to rout. This enemy--the fever--is an obstinate one, slow to
give way. It will be many weeks, possibly several months, before I
can entirely conquer it. Until then I must remain at my post, no
matter what happens. Until then, therefore, I do not want to know
anything that might place upon me the duty of withdrawing from
present surroundings. I shall ride over to Branton now and then, as
matters here grow better, and I hope, too, that you will continue
your compassionate visits to our fever camp. But please, my dear
Edmonia, do not tell me anything of this matter, until the last
negro in the camp is well and I am free to take the next train for
New York, and perhaps the next ship for Havre.

“You will understand me, I am sure. I do not want to play a
halting, hesitating part in a matter of such consequence. I do not
wish to be compelled to sit still when the time comes for me to
act. So I must wait till I am free again from this present and most
imperative service, before I permit myself to hear that which may
make it my duty to go at once into exile.

“In the meantime I shall guard my conduct against every act, and
lock my lips against every utterance that might do harm.

“I have formulated a plan of action, and of that I will tell you at
the first opportunity, because I want your counsel respecting it.
As soon as I am free, I shall act upon it, if you do not think it
too late.

“I cannot tell you, my dear Edmonia, how great a comfort it is to
me in my perplexity, that I have your sympathy and may rely upon
your counsel in my time of need. I have just now begun to realize
how little I know of myself, and your wise words, spoken today,
have shown me clearly how very much you know of me. To you,
therefore, I shall look, in this perplexity, for that guidance for
which I have always, hitherto, relied,--in mistaken and conceited
self-confidence,--upon my own judgment. Could there be anything
more precious than such friendship and ready sympathy as that which
you give to me? Whatever else may happen, now or hereafter, I shall
always feel that in enriching my life with so loyal, so unselfish a
friendship as that which you have given to me, my Virginian
episode has been happy in its fruit.

“Poor Dorothy is almost broken down with work and loss of sleep.
You will be glad to know that I have sent her to the house for a
night of undisturbed rest. I had to use all my influence with her
to make her go. And at the last she went, I think, merely because
she felt that her going would relieve me of worry and apprehension.
She is a real heroine, but she has so much of the martyr’s spirit
in her that she needs restraint and control.”

Dick returned to the camp before this letter was finished, and his master delivered it into his hands with an injunction to carry it to Branton in the early morning of the next day. He knew the habit of young women in Virginia, which was to receive and answer all letters carried by the hands of special messengers, before the nine o’clock breakfast hour. And there were far more of such letters interchanged than of those that came and went by the post. For the post, in those years, was not equipped with free delivery devices. Most of the plantations were nearer to each other than to the nearest postoffice, and there were young negroes in plenty to carry the multitudinous missives with which the highly cultured young women of the time and country maintained what was in effect a continuous conversation with each other. They wrote to each other upon every conceivable occasion, and often upon no occasion at all, but merely because the morning was fine and each wanted to call the other’s attention to the fact. If one read a novel that pleased her, she would send it with a note,--usually covering two sheets and heavily crossed,--to some friend whom she desired to share her enjoyment of it. Or if she had found a poem to her liking in Blackwood, or some other of the English magazines, for American periodicals circulated scarcely at all in Virginia in those days--except the Southern Literary Messenger, for which everybody subscribed as a matter of patriotic duty--she would rise “soon” in the morning, make half a dozen manuscript copies of it, and send them by the hands of little darkeys to her half dozen bosom friends, accompanying each with an astonishingly long “note.” I speak with authority here. I have seen Virginia girls in the act of doing this sort of thing, and I have read many hundreds of their literary criticisms. What a pity it is that they are lost to us! For some of them were mightily shrewd both in condemnation and in ecstatic approval, and all of them had the charm of perfect and fearless honesty in utterance, and all of them were founded upon an actual and attentive reading of the works criticised, as printed criticism usually is not.

XXI

HOW A HIGH BRED DAMSEL CONFRONTED FATE AND DUTY

Quite unconsciously Arthur Brent had prepared a very bad morning hour for the best friend he had ever known. His letter was full of dagger thrusts for the loving girl’s soul. Every line of it revealed his state of mind, and that state of mind was a very painful thing for the sensitive woman, who loved him so, to contemplate. The very intimacy of it was a painful reminder; the affection it revealed so frankly stung her to the quick. The missive told her, as no words so intended could have done, how far removed this man’s attitude toward her was from that of the lover. Had his words been angry they might not have indicated any impossibility of love--they might indeed have meant love itself in such a case,--love vexed or baffled, but still love. Had they been cold and indifferent, they might have been interpreted merely as the language of reserve, or as a studied concealment of passion. But their very warmth and candor of friendship would have set the seal of impossibility upon her hope that he might ever come to love her, if she had cherished any such hope, as she did not.

The letter told her by its tone more convincingly than any other form of words could have done, that this man held her in close affection as a friend, and that no thought of a dearer relationship than that could at any time come to him.

Edmonia Bannister was a strong woman, highly bred and much too proud to give way to the weakness of self-pity. She made no moan over her lost love as she laid it away to rest forever in the sepulchre of her heart. Nor did she in her soul repine or complain of fate.

“It is best for him as it is,” she told herself, as she had told herself before during that long, solitary drive in the carriage; “and I must rejoice in it, and not mourn.”

The sting of it did not lie in disappointment. She met that with calm mind as the soldier faces danger without flinching when it comes to him hand in hand with duty. The agony that tortured her was of very different origin. All her pride of person, all her pride of race and family, even her self-respect itself, was sorely stricken by the discovery that she had given her love unasked.

This truth she had not so much as suspected until that conversation in Dorothy’s little porch on the day before had revealed it to her. Then the revelation had so stunned her that she did not realize its full significance. And besides, her mind at that time was fully occupied with efforts so to bear herself as to conceal what she regarded as her shame. Now that she had passed a sleepless night in company with this hideous truth, and now that it came to her anew with its repulsive nakedness revealed in the gray of the morning, she appreciated and exaggerated its deformity, and the realization was more than she could bear.

She had been bred in that false school of ethics which holds a woman bound to remain a stock, a stone, a glacier of insensibility to love until the man shall graciously give her permission to love, by declaring his own love for her. She believed that false teaching implicitly. She was as deeply humiliated, as mercilessly self-reproachful now as if she had committed an immodesty. She told herself that her conduct in permitting herself, however unconsciously, to love this man who had never asked for her love, had “unsexed” her--a term not understanded of men, but one to which women attach a world of hideous meaning.

“I am not well this morning,” she said to her maid as she passed up the stairs in retreat. “No, you need not attend me,” she added quickly upon seeing the devoted serving woman’s purpose; “stay here instead and make my apologies to my brother when he comes out of his room, for leaving him to breakfast alone.”

“Why, Miss Mony, is you done forgot? Mas’ Archer he ain’t here. You know he done stayed at de tavern at de Co’t House las’ night, an’ a mighty poor white folksey breakfas’ he’ll git too.”

“Oh, yes, I had forgotten. So much the better. But don’t accompany me. I want to be alone.”

The maid stared at her in blank amazement. When she had entered her chamber and carefully shut the door, the woman exclaimed:

“Well, I ’clar to gracious! I ain’t never seed nuffin like dat wid Miss Mony before!”

Then with that blind faith which her class at that time cherished in the virtues of morning coffee as a panacea, Dinah turned into the dining room, and with a look of withering scorn at the head dining room servant, demanded:

“Is you a idiot, Polydore? Couldn’t you see dat Miss Mony is seriously decomposed dis mawnin’? What you means by bein’ so stupid? What fer didn’t you give her a cup o’ coffee? An’ why don’t you stir yourself now an’ bring me de coffee urn, an’ de cream jug? Don’t stan’ dar starin’, nigga! Do you heah?”

Having “hopes” in the direction of this comely maid, Polydore was duly abashed by her rebuke while full of admiration for the queenly way in which she had administered it. He brought the urn and its adjuncts and admiringly contemplated the grace with which Dinah prepared a cup for her mistress.

“I ’clar, Dinah, you’se mos’ as fine as white ladies dey selves!” he ventured to say in softly placative tones. But Dinah had no notion of relaxing her dignity, so instead of acknowledging the compliment she rebuffed it, saying:

“Why don’t Mas’ Archer sen’ you to the cawnfiel’, anyhow? Dat’s all you’se fit for. Don’ you see I’se a waitin’ fer you to bring me a tray an’ a napkin, an’ a chaney plate with a slice o’ ham on it?”

Equipped at last, the maid, disregarding her mistress’s injunction, marched up the stairs and entered Edmonia’s room. The young woman gently thanked her, and then, after a moment’s thought, said:

“Dinah, I wish you would get some jellies and nice things ready this morning and take them over to your Miss Dorothy for her sick people. You can use the carriage, but go as soon as you can get away; and give my love to your Miss Dorothy, and tell her I am not feeling well this morning. But tell her, Dinah, that I’ll drive over this afternoon about two o’clock and she must be ready to go with me for a drive. Poor child, she needs some relaxation!”

Having thus secured immunity from Dinah’s kindly but at present unwelcome attentions, Edmonia Bannister proceeded, as she phrased it in her mind, to “take herself seriously in hand.”

After long thought she formulated a program for herself.

“My pride ought to have saved me from this humiliation,” she thought. “Having failed me in that, it must at least save me from the consequences of my misconduct. I’ll wear a cheerful face, whatever I may feel. I’ll cultivate whatever there is of jollity in me, and still better, whatever I possess of dignity. I’ll be social. I’ll entertain continually, as brother always wants me to do. I’ll have some of my girl friends with me every day and every night. I’ll busy myself with every duty I can find to do, and especially I shall devote myself to dear Dorothy. By the way, Arthur will expect a reply to his letter. I’ll begin my duty-doing with that.”

And so she wrote:

“You are by all odds the most ridiculous fellow, my dear Arthur,
that I have yet encountered--the most preposterous, wrong headed,
cantankerous (I hope that word is good English--and anyhow it is
good Virginian, because it tells the truth) sort of human animal I
ever yet knew. Do you challenge proof of my accusations? Think a
bit and you’ll have it in abundance. Let me help you think by
recounting your absurdities.

“You were a young man, practically alone in the world, with no
fortune except an annuity, which must cease at your death. You had
no associates except scientific persons who never think of anything
but trilobites and hydrocyanic acid and symptoms and all that sort
of thing. Suddenly, and by reason of no virtuous activity of your
own, you found yourself the owner of one of the finest estates in
Virginia, and the head of one of its oldest and most honored
houses. In brief you came into an inheritance for which any
reasonable young man of your size and age would have been glad to
mortgage his hopes of salvation and cut off the entail of all his
desires. There, that’s badly quoted, I suppose, but it is from
Shakespeare, I think, and I mean something by it--a thing not
always true of a young woman’s phrases when she tries her hand at
learned utterance.

“Never mind that. This favored child of Fortune, Arthur Brent, M.
D., Ph. D., etc., bitterly complains of Fate for having poured such
plenty into his lap, rescuing him from a life of toil and trouble
and tuberculosis--for I’m perfectly satisfied you would have
contracted that malady, whatever it is, if Fate hadn’t saved you
from it by compelling you to come down here to Virginia.

“Don’t criticise if I get my tenses mixed up a little, so long as
my moods are right. Very well, to drop what my governess used to
call ‘the historical present,’ this absurd and preposterous young
man straightway ‘kicked against the pricks’--that’s not slang but a
Biblical quotation, as you would very well know if you read your
Bible half as diligently as you study your books on therapeutics.
Better than that, it is truth that I’m telling you. You actually
wanted to get rid of your heritage, to throw away just about the
finest chance a young man ever had to make himself happy and
comfortable and contented. You might even have indulged yourself in
the pastime of making love to me, and getting your suit so sweetly
rejected that you would ever afterwards have thought of the episode
as an important part of your education. But you threw away even
that opportunity.

“Now comes to you the greatest good fortune of all, and it
positively frightens you so badly that you are planning to run away
from it--if you can.

“Badinage aside, Arthur,--or should that word be ‘bandinage?’ You
see I don’t know, and my dictionary is in another room, and anyhow
the phrase sounds literary. Now to go on. Really, Arthur, you are a
ridiculous person. You have had months of daily, hourly, intimate
association with Dorothy. With your habits of observation, and
still more your splendid gifts in that way, you cannot have failed
to discover her superiority to young women generally. If you have
failed, if you have been so blind as not to see, let me point out
the fact to you. Did you ever know a better mind than hers? Was
there ever a whiter soul? Has she not such a capacity of devotion
and loyalty and love as you never saw in any other woman? Isn’t her
courage admirable? Is not her truthfulness something that a man may
trust his honor and his life to, knowing absolutely that his faith
must always be secure?

“Fie upon you, Arthur. Why do you not see how lavishly Providence
has dealt with you?

“But that is only one side of the matter, and by no means the
better side of it. On that side lies happiness for you, and you
have a strange dislike of happiness for yourself. You distrust it.
You fear it. You put it aside as something unworthy of you,
something that must impair your character and interrupt your work.
Oh, foolish man! Has not your science taught you that it is the men
of rich, full lives who do the greatest things in this world, and
not the starvelings? Do you imagine for a moment that any monkish
ascetic could have written Shakespeare’s plays or Beethoven’s music
or fought Washington’s campaigns or rendered to the world the
service that Thomas Jefferson gave?

“But there, I am wandering from my point again. Don’t you see that
it is your duty to train Dorothy, to give to her mind a larger and
better outlook than the narrow horizon of our Virginian life
permits?

“Anyhow, you shall see it, and you shall see it now. For in spite
of your unwillingness to hear, and in spite of your injunction that
I shall not tell you now, I am going to tell you some things that
you must know. Listen then.

“Certain circumstances which I may not tell you either now or
hereafter, render Dorothy’s case a peculiar one. She was only a
dozen years old, or so, when her father died, and he never dreamed
of her moral and intellectual possibilities. He was oppressed with
a great fear for her. He foresaw for her dangers so grave and so
great that he ceaselessly planned to save her from them. To that
end he decreed that she should learn nothing of music, or art or
any other thing which he believed would prove a temptation to her.
His one supreme desire was to save her from erratic ways of living,
and so to hedge her life about that she should in due course marry
into a good Virginia family and pass all her days in a round of
commonplace duties and commonplace enjoyments. He had no conception
of her character, her genius or her capacities for enjoyment or
suffering. He fondly believed that she would be happy in the life
he planned for her as the wife of young Jefferson Peyton, to whom,
in a way, he betrothed her in her early childhood, when Jeff
himself was a well ordered little lad, quite different from the
arrogant, silly young donkey he has grown up to be, with dangerous
inclinations toward dissoluteness and depravity.

“Dr. South and Mr. Madison Peyton planned this marriage, as
something that was to be fulfilled in that future for which Dr.
South was morbidly anxious to provide. Like many other people, Dr.
South mistook himself for Divine Providence, and sought to order a
life whose conditions he could not foresee. He wanted to save his
daughter from a fate which he, perhaps, had reason to fear for her.
On the other side of the arrangement Madison Peyton wanted his
eldest son to become master of Pocahontas plantation, so that his
own possessions might pass to his other sons and daughters. So
these two bargained that Dorothy should become Jefferson Peyton’s
wife when both should be grown up. Dr. South did not foresee what
sort of man the boy was destined to become. Still less did he dream
what a woman Dorothy would be. His only concern was that his
daughter should marry into a family as good as his own.

“Now that Peyton sees what his son’s tendencies are he is more
determined than ever to have that mistaken old bargain carried out.
He is willing to sacrifice Dorothy in the hope of saving his son
from the evil courses to which he is so strongly inclined.

“Are you going to let this horrible thing happen, Arthur Brent? You
love Dorothy and she loves you. She does not yet suspect either
fact, but you are fully aware of both. You alone can save her from
a fate more unhappy than any that her father, in his foolishness,
feared for her, and in doing so you can at the same time fulfil her
father’s dearest wish, which was that she should marry into a
Virginia family of high repute. Your family ranks as well in this
commonwealth as any other--better than most. You are the head of
it. You can save Dorothy from a life utterly unworthy of her, a
life in which she must be supremely unhappy. You can give to her
mind that opportunity of continuous growth which it needs. You can
offer to her the means of culture and happiness, and of worthy
intellectual exercise, which so rare and exceptional a nature must
have for its full development.

“Are you going to do this, Arthur Brent, or are you not? Are you
going to do the high duty that lies before you, or are you going to
put it aside for some imagined duty which would be of less
consequence even if it were real? Is it not better worth your while
to save Dorothy than to save any number of life’s failures who
dwell in New York’s tenements? Are not Dorothy South’s mind and
soul and superb capacities of greater consequence than the lives of
thousands of those whose squalor and unwholesome surroundings are
after all the fruit of their own hereditary indolence and
stupidity? Is not one such life as hers of greater worth in the
world, than thousands or even millions of those for whose
amelioration you had planned to moil and toil? You know, Arthur,
that I have little sympathy with the thought that those who fail in
life should be coddled into a comfort that they have not earned. I
do not believe that you can rescue dulness of mind from the
consequences of its own inertia. Nine tenths of the poverty that
suffers is the direct consequence of laziness and drink. The other
tenth is sufficiently cared for. I am a heretic on this subject, I
suppose. I do not think that such a man as you are should devote
his life to an attempt to uplift those who have sunk into squalor
through lack of fitness for anything better. Your abilities may be
much better employed in helping worthier lives. I never did see why
we should send missionaries to the inferior races, when all our
efforts might be so much more profitably employed for the
betterment of worthier people. Why didn’t we let the red Indians
perish as they deserve to do, and spend the money we have
fruitlessly thrown away upon them, in providing better educational
opportunities for a higher race?

“The moral of all this is that you have found your true mission in
the rescue of Dorothy South from a fate she does not deserve. I’m
going to help you in doing that, but I will not tell you my plans
till you get through with your fever crusade and have time to
listen attentively to my superior wisdom.

“In the meantime you are to humble yourself by reflecting upon your
great need of such counsel as mine and your great good fortune in
having a supply of it at hand.

“I hope your patients continue to do credit to your medical skill
and to Dorothy’s excellent nursing. I have sent Dinah over this
morning with some delicacies for the convalescent among them, and
in the afternoon I shall go over to the camp myself and steal
Dorothy from them and you, long enough to give her a good long
drive.

“Always sincerely your Friend,

“EDMONIA BANNISTER.”

XXII

THE INSTITUTION OF THE DUELLO

_W_hen Arthur Brent had read Edmonia’s letter, he mounted Gimlet and rode away with no purpose except to think. The letter had revealed some things to him of which he had not before had even a suspicion. He understood now why Madison Peyton had been so anxious to become Dorothy’s guardian and so angry over his disappointment in that matter. For on the preceding evening Archer Bannister had ridden over from the Court House to tell him of Peyton’s offensive words and to deliver the letter of apology into his hands.

“I don’t see how you can challenge him after that” said Archer, with some uncertainty in his tone.

“Why should I wish to do so?” Arthur asked in surprise. “I have something very much more important to think about just now than Madison Peyton’s opinion of me. You yourself tell me that when he was saying all these things about me, he only got himself laughed at for his pains. Nobody thought the worse of me for anything that he said, and certainly nobody would think the better of me for challenging him to a duel and perhaps shooting him or getting shot. Of course I could not challenge him now, as he has made a written withdrawal of his words and given me an apology which I am at liberty to tack up on the court house door if I choose, as I certainly do not. But I should not have challenged him in any case.”

“I suppose you are right,” answered Archer; “indeed I know you are. But it requires a good deal of moral courage--more than I suspect myself of possessing--to fly in the face of Virginia opinion in that way.”

“But what is Virginia opinion on the subject of duelling, Archer? I confess I can’t find out.”

“How do you mean?” asked the other.

“Why, it seems to me that opinion here on that subject is exceedingly inconsistent and contradictory. Dorothy once said, when she was a child,”--there was a world of significance in the past tense of that phrase--“that if a man in Virginia fights a duel for good cause, everybody condemns him for being so wicked and breaking the laws in that fashion; but if he doesn’t fight when good occasion arises, everybody calls him a coward and blames him more than in the other case. So I do not know what Virginia opinion is. And even the laws do not enlighten me. Many years ago the Legislature adopted a statute making duelling a crime, but I have never heard of anybody being punished for that crime. On the contrary the statute seems to have been carefully framed to prevent the punishment of anybody for duelling. It makes a principal in the crime of everybody who in any capacity participates in a duel, whether as fighter or second, or surgeon or mere looker on. In other words it makes a principal of every possible witness, and then excuses all of them from testifying to the fact of a duel on the ground that to testify to that fact would incriminate themselves. I saw a very interesting farce of that sort played in a Richmond court a month or so ago. Are you interested to hear about it?”

“Yes, tell me!”

“Well, Mr. P.”--Arthur named a man who has since become a famous judge--“had had something to do with a duel. As I understand it he was neither principal nor second, but at any rate he saw the duel fought. The principals, or one of them, had been brought before the judge for trial, and Mr. P. was called as a witness. When a question was put to him by the judge himself, Mr. P. replied: ‘I am not a lawyer. I ask the privilege of consulting counsel before answering that question.’ To this the judge responded: ‘To save time Mr. P., I will myself be your counsel. As such I advise you to decline to answer the question. Now, as the judge of this court, and not in my capacity as your counsel, I again put the question to you and require you, under penalty of the law to answer it.’ Mr. P. answered: ‘Under advice of counsel, your Honor, I decline to answer the question.’ The judge responded: ‘Mr. Sheriff, take Mr. P. into custody. I commit him for contempt of court.’ Then resuming his attitude as counsel, the judge said: ‘Mr. P., as your counsel I advise you to ask for a writ of Habeas Corpus.’

“‘I ask for a writ of Habeas Corpus, your Honor,’ answered P.

“‘The court is required to grant the writ,’ said the judge solemnly, ‘and it is granted. Prepare it for signature, Mr. Clerk, and serve it on the sheriff.’

“The clerical work occupied but a brief time. When it was done the sheriff addressing the court said: ‘May it please your Honor, in obedience to the writ of Habeas Corpus this day served upon me, I produce here the body of R. A. P., and I pray my discharge from further obligation in the premises.’

“Then the judge addressed the prisoner, saying: ‘Mr. P. you are arraigned before this court, charged with contempt and disobedience of the court’s commands. What have you to say in answer to the charge?’ Then instantly he added: ‘In my capacity as your counsel, Mr. P., I advise you to plead that the charge of contempt which is brought against you, rests solely upon your refusal to answer a question the answer to which might tend to subject you to a criminal accusation.’

“‘I do so make my answer, your Honor,’ said Mr. P.

“‘The law in this case,’ said the judge, ‘is perfectly clear. No citizen can be compelled to testify against himself. Mr. P., you are discharged under the writ. There being no other testimony to the fact that the prisoners at the bar have committed the crime charged against them, the court orders their discharge. Mr. Clerk, call the next case on the calendar.’[B] Now wasn’t all that a roaring farce, with the judge duplicating parts after the ‘Protean’ manner of the low comedians?”

“It certainly was,” answered young Bannister. “But what are we to do?”

“Why, make up your minds--or our minds I should say, for I am a Virginian now with the best of you--whether we will or will not permit duelling, and make and enforce the laws accordingly. If duelling is right let us recognize it and put an end to our hypocritical paltering with it. I’m not sure that in the present condition of society and opinion that would not be the best course to pursue. But if we are not ready for that, if we are to go on legislating against the practice, for heaven’s sake let us make laws that can be enforced, and let us enforce them. The little incident I have related is significant in its way, but it doesn’t suggest the half or the quarter or the one-hundredth part of the absurdity of our dealing with this question.”

“Tell me about the rest of it,” responded Archer, “and then I shall have some questions to ask you.”

“Well, as to the rest of it, you have only to look at the facts. Years ago the Virginia Legislature went through the solemn process of enacting that no person should be eligible to a seat in either house of our law making body, who had been in any way concerned in a duel, either as principal or second, since a date fixed by the statute. If that meant anything it meant that in the opinion of the Legislature of Virginia no duellist ought to be permitted to become a lawgiver. It was a statute prescribing for those who have committed the crime of duelling precisely the same penalty of disfranchisement that the law applies to those who have committed other felonies. But there was this difference. The laws forbidding other felonies, left open an opportunity to prove them and to convict men of committing them, while the law against duelling carefully made it impossible to convict anybody of its violation. To cover that point, the Legislature enacted that every man elected to either house of that body, should solemnly make oath that he had not been in any wise engaged in duelling since the date named in the statute. Again the lawgivers were not in earnest, for every year since that time men who have been concerned in duelling within the prohibited period have been elected to the Legislature; and every year the Legislature’s first act has been to bring forward the date of the prohibition and admit to seats in the law making body all the men elected to it who have deliberately defied and broken the law. It deals in no such fashion with men disfranchised for the commission of any other crime. Is not all this in effect an annual declaration by the Legislature that its laws in condemnation of duelling do not mean what they say? Is it not a case in which a law is enacted to satisfy one phase of public sentiment and deliberately nullified by legislative act in obedience to public sentiment of an opposite character?”

“It certainly seems so. And yet I do not see what is to be done. You said just now that perhaps it would be best to legalize duelling. Would not that be legalizing crime?”

“Not at all. Duelling is simply private, personal war. It is a crime only by circumstance and statute. Under certain conditions such war is as legitimate as any other, and the right to wage it rests upon precisely the same ethical grounds as those upon which we justify public, national war. In a state of society in which the law does not afford protection to the individual and redress of wrongs inflicted upon him, I conceive that he has an indisputable right to wage war in his own defence, just as a nation has. But we live in a state of society quite different from that. If Madison Peyton or any other man had inflicted hurt of any kind upon me, I could go into court with the certainty of securing redress. I have no right, therefore, to make personal war upon him by way of securing the redress which the courts stand ready to give me peaceably. So I say we should forbid duelling by laws that can be enforced, and public sentiment should imperatively require their enforcement. Till we are ready to do that, we should legalize duelling and quit pretending.”

“After all, now that I think of it,” said young Bannister, “most of the duels of late years in Virginia have had their origin in cowardice, pure and simple. They have been born of some mere personal affront, and the principals on either side have fought not to redress wrongs but merely because they were afraid of being called cowards. You at least can never be under any necessity of proving that you are not a coward. The people of Virginia have not forgotten your work at Norfolk. But I’m glad Peyton apologized. For even an open quarrel between you and him, and especially one concerning Dorothy, would have been peculiarly embarrassing and it would have given rise to scandal of an unusual sort.”

“But why, Archer? Why should a quarrel between him and me be more productive of scandal than one between any other pair of men? I do not understand.”

“And I cannot explain,” answered the other. “I can only tell you the fact. I must go now. I have a long ride to a bad bed at the Court House, with tedious jury duty to do tomorrow. So, good night.”

XXIII

DOROTHY’S REBELLION

_T_he conversation reported in the last preceding chapter of this record, occurred on the evening before Edmonia Bannister’s letter was written. The letter, therefore, when Arthur received it at noon of the next day, supplemented and in some measure explained what Archer had said with respect to the peculiar inconvenience of a quarrel between Dr. Brent and Madison Peyton.

Yet it left him in greater bewilderment than ever concerning Dorothy’s case. That is why he mounted Gimlet and rode away to think.

He understood now why Madison Peyton so eagerly desired to become Dorothy’s guardian. That would have been merely to take charge of his own son’s future estate. But why should any such fate have been decreed for Dorothy under a pretence of concern for her welfare? What but wretchedness and cruel wrong could result from a marriage so ill assorted? Why should a girl of Dorothy’s superior kind have been expected to marry a young man for whom she could never feel anything but contempt? Why should her rare and glorious womanhood have been bartered away for any sort of gain? Why had her father sought to dispose of her as he might of a favorite riding horse or a cherished picture?

All these questions crowded upon Arthur’s mind, and he could find no answer to any of them. They made him the angrier on that account, and presently he muttered:

“At any rate this hideous wrong shall not be consummated. Whether I succeed in setting myself free, or fail in that purpose, I will prevent this thing. Whether I marry Dorothy myself or not, she shall never be married by any species of moral compulsion to this unworthy young puppy.”

Perhaps Doctor Brent’s disposition to call young Peyton by offensive names, was a symptom of his own condition of mind. But just at this point in his meditations a thought occurred which almost staggered him.

“What if Dr. South has left somewhere a written injunction to Dorothy to carry out his purpose? Would she not play the part of martyr to duty? Would she not, in misdirected loyalty, obey her dead father’s command, at whatever cost to herself?”

Arthur knew with how much of positive worship Dorothy regarded the memory of her father. He remembered how loyally she had accepted that father’s commands forbidding her to learn music or even to listen to it in any worthy form. He remembered with what unquestioning faith the girl had accepted his strange dictum about every woman’s need of a master, and how blindly she believed his teaching that every woman must be bad if she is left free. Would she not crown her loyalty to that dead father’s memory by making this final self-sacrifice, when she should learn of his command, as of course she must? In view of the extreme care and minute attention to detail with which Dr. South had arranged to hold his daughter’s fate in mortmain, there could be little doubt that he had somehow planned to have her informed of this his supreme desire, at some time selected by himself.

At this moment Arthur met the Branton carriage, bearing Edmonia and Dorothy.

“You are playing truant, Arthur,” called Edmonia. “You must go back to your sick people at once, for I’ve kidnapped your head nurse and I don’t mean to return her to you till six. She is to dine with me at Branton. So ride back to your duty at once, before Dick shall be seized with an inspiration to give somebody a dose of strychnine as a substitute for sweet spirits of nitre.”

“Oh, no, Edmonia,” broke in Dorothy, “we must drive back to the camp at once. Cousin Arthur needs his ride. You don’t know. I tell you he’s breaking down. Yes you are, Cousin Arthur, so you needn’t shake your head. That isn’t quite truthful in you. You work night and day, and lately you’ve had a dreadfully worn and tired look in your eyes. I’ve noticed it and all last night, when you had sent me away to sleep, I lay awake thinking about it.”

Edmonia smiled at this. Perhaps she recognized it as a symptom--in Dorothy. She only said in reply:

“Don’t worry about Arthur. I am worried only about you, and I’m going to take you to Branton. Am I not, Arthur?”

“I sincerely hope so,” he replied. “And there is not the slightest reason why you shouldn’t keep her for the night if you will. She is really not needed at the hospital till tomorrow. I’m honest and truthful when I say that, Dorothy. Dick and I can take care of everything till tomorrow, and I’ll see to it that Dick’s inspirations are restricted to poetry. So take her, Edmonia, and keep her till tomorrow. And don’t let her talk too much.”

“Oh, I’m going to take her. She is impolite enough not to want to go but she is much too young to have a will of her own--yet. As for Dick, he’s already in the throes. He is constructing a new ‘song ballad’ on the sorrowful fate of the turkey. It begins:

‘Tukkey in de bacca lot,
A pickin’ off de hoppa’s,’

but it goes no further as yet because Dick can’t find any rhyme for ‘hopper’ except ‘copper’ and ‘proper’ and ‘stopper,’ which I suggested, and they don’t serve his turn. He came to me to ask if ‘gobblers’ would not do, but I discouraged that extreme of poetic license.”

“Edmonia,” said Dorothy as soon as the carriage had renewed its journey, “did you really think it impolite in me not to want to go with you?”

“No, you silly girl.”

“I’m glad of that. You see I think there is nothing so unkind as impoliteness. But really I think it is wrong for me to go. Why didn’t you take Cousin Arthur instead? You don’t know how badly he needs rest.”

Edmonia made no direct reply to this. Instead, she said presently:

“Arthur is one of the best men I know. Don’t you think so, Dorothy?”

“Oh, he’s altogether the best. I can’t think of anybody to compare him with--not even Washington. He’s a hero you know. I often read over again all the newspapers that told about what he did in Norfolk, and of course he’s just like that now. He never thinks of himself, but always of others. There never was any man like him in all the world. That’s why I can’t bear to think of going to Branton and leaving him alone when if I were at my post, he might get some of the sleep that he needs so much. Edmonia, I’m not going to Branton! Positively I can’t and I won’t. So if you don’t tell the driver to turn back, I’ll open the carriage door and jump out and walk back.”

Curiously enough Edmonia made no further resistance. Perhaps she had already accomplished the object she had had in view. At any rate she bade the driver turn about, and upon her arrival at the camp she offered Arthur no further explanation than he might infer from her telling him:

“I’ve brought back the kidnapped nurse. I couldn’t win her away from you even for a few hours. See that you reward her devotion with all possible good treatment.”

“You are too funny for anything, Edmonia,” said Dorothy as she stepped from the carriage. “As if Cousin Arthur could treat me in any but the best of ways!”

“Oh, I’m not so sure on that point. He’ll bear watching anyhow. He’s ‘essenteric’ as Dick said the other day in a brave but hopeless struggle with the word ‘eccentric.’ But I must go now or I shall be late for dinner, and I’m expecting some friends who care more than Dorothy does for my hospitality.”

“Oh, please, Edmonia--”

“Don’t mind me, child. I was only jesting. You are altogether good and sweet and _lovable_.”

She looked at Arthur significantly as she emphasized that last word.

The young man thereupon took Dorothy’s hands in his, looked her in the eyes, and said:

“Edmonia is right, dear. You are altogether good and sweet and lovable. But you ought to have taken some rest and recreation.”

“How could I, when I knew you needed me?”

XXIV

TO GIVE DOROTHY A CHANCE

_I_t was nearly the Christmas time when Arthur finally broke up the fever camp. He decided that the outbreak was at an end and the need of a hospital service no longer pressing. The half dozen patients who remained at the camp were now so far advanced on the road to recovery that he felt it safe to remove them to the new quarters at the Silver Spring.

He had sent Dorothy home a week before, saying:

“Now, Dorothy, dear, we have conquered the enemy--you and I--and a glorious conquest it has been. We have had forty-seven cases of the disease, some of them very severe, and there have been only two deaths. Even they were scarcely attributable to the fever, as both the victims were old and decrepit, having little vitality with which to resist the malady. It is a record that ought to teach the doctors and planters of Virginia something as to the way in which to deal with such outbreaks. I shall prepare a little account of it for their benefit and publish it in a medical journal. But I never can tell you how greatly I thank you for your help.”

“Please don’t talk in that way,” Dorothy hastily rejoined. “Other people may thank me for things whenever they please, but you never must.”

“But why not, Dorothy?”

“Why, because--well, because you are the Master. I won’t have you thanking me just like other people. It humiliates me. It is like telling me you didn’t expect me to do my duty. No, that isn’t just what I mean. It is like telling me that you think of Dorothy just as you do of other people, or something of that kind. I can’t make out just what I mean, but I will not let you thank me.”

“I think I understand,” he answered. “But at any rate you’ll permit me to tell you, that in my honest judgment as a physician, there would have been many more deaths than there have been, if I had not had you to help me. Your own tireless nursing, and the extraordinary way in which you have made all the negro nurses carry out my orders to the letter, have saved many lives without any possibility of doubt.”

“Then I have really helped?”

“Yes, Dorothy. I cannot make you know how much you have helped--how great an assistance, how great a comfort you have been to me in all this trying time.”

“I am very glad--very glad.”

That was all the answer she could make for tears. It was quite enough.

“Now I’m going to send you home, Dorothy, to get some badly needed rest and sleep, and to bring the color back to your cheeks. I am going home myself too. I need only ride over here twice a day to see that the getting well goes on satisfactorily, and in a week’s time I shall break up the camp entirely, and send the convalescents to their quarters. It will be safe to do so then. In the meantime I want you to think of Christmas. We must make it a red letter day at Wyanoke, to celebrate our victory. We’ll have a ‘dining day,’ as a dinner party is queerly called here in Virginia, with a dance in the evening. I’ll have some musicians up from Richmond. You are to send out the invitations at once, please, and we’ll make this the very gladdest of Christmases.”

“May I take my Mammy home with me?” the girl broke in. “She has been so good to me, you know.”

“Yes, Dorothy, and I wish you would keep her there ‘for all the time,’ as you sometimes say. There’s a comfortable house by the garden you know, and we’ll give her that for her home as long as she lives. You shall pick out one or two of the nicest of the negro girls to wait on her and keep house for her, and make her old age comfortable.”

Dorothy ejaculated a little laugh.

“Mammy would drive them all out of the house in ten seconds,” she said, “and call them ‘dishfaced devils’ and more different kinds of other ugly names than you ever heard of. Old as she is, she’s very strong, and she’ll never let anybody wait on her. She calls the present generation of servants ‘a lot o’ no ’count niggas, dat ain’t fit fer nothin’ but to be plaguesome.’ But you are very good to let me give her the house. Thank you, Cousin Arthur.”

“Oh, Dorothy,” answered Arthur, “I thought you always ‘played fair’ as the children say.”

“Why, what have I done?” the girl asked almost with distress in her tone.

“Why, you thanked me, after forbidding me to thank you for an immeasurably greater service.”

“Oh, but that’s different,” she replied. “You are the Master. I am only a woman.”

“Dorothy,” said Arthur seriously, “don’t you know I think there is nothing in the world better or nobler than a woman?”

“That’s because you are a man and don’t know,” she answered out of a wisdom so superior that it would not argue the point.

During the next week Arthur found time in which to prepare and send off for publication a helpful article on “The Plantation Treatment of Typhoid Epidemics.” He also found time in which to ride over to Branton and hold a prolonged conference with Edmonia Bannister. Before a hickory wood fire in the great drawing room they went over all considerations bearing upon Arthur’s affairs and plans and possibilities.

“This is the visitation you long ago threatened me with,” said Edmonia. “You said you would come when the stress of the fever should be over, and you told me you had some plan in your mind. Tell me what it was.”

“Oh, your past tense is correct there; that was before you wrote to me about Dorothy. Your letter put an end to that scheme at once.”

“Did it? I’m very glad.”

“But why? You don’t know what it was that I had in mind.”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps I have a shrewd idea as to the general features of your plan. At any rate I’m perfectly sure that it was unworthy of you.”

“Why do you think that, Edmonia? Surely I have not--”

“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.”