Chapter VII: Part 7

“I will. When we began our conversation in Dorothy’s little porch, I was just beginning to be afraid that I might learn to love her. She had so suddenly matured, somehow. Her womanhood seemed to have come upon her as the sunrise does in the tropics without any premonitory twilight. It was the coming of serious duty upon her, I suppose that wrought the change. At any rate, with the outbreak of the fever, she seemed to take on a new character. Without losing her childlike trustfulness and simplicity, she suddenly became a woman, strong to do and to endure. And her beauty came too, so that I caught myself thinking of her when I ought to have been thinking of something else.”

“Oh, yes,” Edmonia broke in. “I know all that and sympathize with it. You remember I found it all out before you did.”

“Yes, I was coming to that. Perhaps I wandered from my story a bit--”

“You did, of course. But under the circumstances I forgive you. Go on.”

“Well, when you told me it was too late for me to save myself from loving Dorothy, I knew you were right, though I had not suspected it before. I hoped, however, that it might not be too late to save Dorothy from myself. I did not want to lure her to a life that was sure to bring much of trial and hard work and sympathetic suffering to her.”

“But why not? Isn’t such a life, with the man she loves, very greatly the happiest one she could lead? Have you studied her character to so little purpose as to imagine--”

“No, no, no!” he broke in. “I saw all that when I thought the matter out, after you left the camp that day. But at first I didn’t see it, and I didn’t want Dorothy sacrificed--especially to me.”

“No woman is sacrificed when she is permitted to share the work, the purposes, the aspirations of the man she loves. How men do misjudge women and misunderstand them! It is not ease, or wealth, or luxury that makes a woman happy--for many a woman is wretched with all these--it is love, and love never does its work so perfectly in a woman’s soul as when it demands sacrifice at her hands.”

Edmonia said this oracularly, as she sat staring into the fire. Arthur wondered where she had learned this truth, seeing that love had never come to her either to offer its rewards or to demand sacrifice at her hands. She caught his look and was instantly on her guard lest his shrewd gift of observation should penetrate her secret.

“You wonder how I know all this, Arthur,” she quickly added. “I see the question in your face. For answer I need only remind you that I am a woman, and a woman’s intuitions sometimes serve her as well as experience might. Go on, and tell me what it was you planned before I wrote you concerning Dorothy’s case. What was the particular excuse you invented at that time for running away?”

“It is of no consequence now, but I don’t mind telling you. I conceived the notion of freeing myself from the obligations that tie me here in Virginia by giving Wyanoke and all that pertains to it to Dorothy.”

“I almost wish you had proposed that to Dorothy. I should have been an interested witness of the scorn and anger which she would have visited upon your poor foolish head. It would have taken you five years to undo that mistake. But those five years would have been years of suffering to Dorothy; so on the whole I’m glad you didn’t make the suggestion. What spasm of returning reason restrained you from that crowning folly?”

“Your letter, of course. When you told me that those who had assumed the rôle of Special Providence to Dorothy had planned to marry her to that young Jackanapes--”

“Don’t call him contemptuous names, Arthur. He doesn’t need them as a label, and it only ruffles your temper. Go on with what you were saying.”

“Well, of course, you see how the case stood. Even if I had not cared for Dorothy in any but a friendly way, I should have felt it to be the very highest duty of my life to save her from this hideous thing. I decided instantly that whatever else might happen I would save Dorothy from this fate. So I have worked out a new plan, and I want you to help me carry it out.”

“Go on. You know you may count upon me.”

“Well, I want you to take Dorothy away from here. I want you to show her a larger world than she has ever dreamed of. I want you to take her to Washington, Baltimore and New York and introduce her to the best society there is there. Then I want you to take her to Europe for a year. She must see pictures and sculpture, and the noblest examples of architecture there are in the world. That side of her nature which has been so wickedly cramped and crippled and dwarfed, must be cultivated and developed. She must hear the greatest music there is, and see the greatest plays and the greatest players. Fortunately she is fluent in her French and she readily understands Italian. Her capacity for enjoyment is matchless. It is that of a full-souled woman who has been starved on this side of her nature. You once bade me remember that in anything I did toward educating her I was educating my future wife. I don’t know whether it will prove to be so or not. But in any case this thing must be done. She must know all these higher joys of life while yet she is young enough to enjoy them to the full, and she must have the education they will bring to her. She will be seventeen in March--only three months hence. She is at the age of greatest susceptibility to impressions.”

“Your thought mightily pleases me, Arthur,” said Edmonia. “But I warn you there is serious danger in it.”

“Danger for Dorothy?”

“No. But danger for you.”

“That need not matter. You mean that--”

“I mean just that. In all this Dorothy will rapidly change--at least in her points of view. Her conceptions of life will undergo something like a revolution. At the end of it all she may not care for any such life as you can offer her, especially as she will meet many brilliant men under circumstances calculated to make the most of their attractions. She may transfer her love for you, which is at present a thing quite unconsciously felt, to some one who shall ask for it. For I suppose you will say nothing to her now that might make her conscious of her state of mind and put her under bonds to you?”

“Quite certainly, no! My tongue shall be dumb and even my actions and looks shall be kept in leash till she is gone. Can’t you understand, Edmonia--”

“I understand better than you think, and I honor you for your courage and your unselfishness. You want this thing done in order that Dorothy may have the fullest possible chance in life and in love--in order that if there be in this world a higher happiness for her than any that you can offer, she may have it?”

“That is precisely my thought, Edmonia. You have expressed it far better than I could have done. I don’t want to take an unfair advantage of Dorothy, as I suppose I easily might. I don’t want her to accept my love and agree to share my life, in ignorance of what better men and better things there may be for her elsewhere. If I am ever to make her my own, it must be after she knows enough to choose intelligently. Should she choose some other life than that which I can offer, some other love than mine, she must never know the blight that her choice cannot fail to inflict upon me. As for myself, I have my crucibles and my work, and I should be better content, knowing that she was happy in some life of her own choosing, than knowing that I had made her mine by taking unfair advantage of her inexperience.”

“Arthur Brent,” said Edmonia, rising, not to dismiss him, but for the sake of giving emphasis to her utterance, “you are--well, let me say it all in a single phrase--you are _worthy of Dorothy South_. You are such a man as women of the higher sort dream of, but rarely meet. It is not quite convenient for me to undertake this mission for you just now, but convenience must courtesy to my will. I’ll arrange the matter with Dorothy at once and we’ll be off in a fortnight or less. Fortunately no dressmaking need detain us, for we must have our first important gowns made in Richmond and Baltimore, a larger supply in New York, and then Paris will take care of its own. I’ll have some trouble with Aunt Polly, of course; she regards travel very much as she does manslaughter, but you may safely leave her to me.”

“But, Edmonia, you said this thing would subject you to some inconvenience?”

“So it will. But that’s a trifle. I had half promised to spend July at the White Sulphur, but that can wait for another July. Now you are to tell me goodby a few minutes hence and ride away. For I must write a note to Dorothy--no, on second thoughts I’ll drive over and see her and Aunt Polly, and you are to remain here and dine with brother. Dorothy and I are going to talk about clothes, and we shan’t want any men folk around. I’ll dine at Wyanoke, and by tomorrow we’ll have half a dozen seamstresses at work making things enough to last us to Baltimore.”

“But tell me, Edmonia,” said Arthur, beginning to think of practical things, “can you and Dorothy travel alone?”

“We could, if it were necessary. You know I’ve been abroad twice and I know ‘the tricks and the manners’ of Europe. But it will not be necessary. I enjoy the advantage of having been educated at Le Febvre’s School, in Richmond. That sort of thing has its compensations. Among them is the fact that it is apt to locate one’s friendships variously as to place. I have a schoolmate in New York--a schoolmate of five or six years ago, and a very dear friend--Mildred Livingston. She is married and rich and restless. She likes nothing so much as travel and I happen to know that she is just now planning a trip to Europe. I’ll write to her today and we’ll go together. As her husband, Nicholas Van Rensselaer Livingston, hasn’t anything else to do he’ll go along just to look after the baggage and swear in English, which they don’t understand, at the Continental porters and their kind. He’s really very good at that sort of thing.”

“It is well for a man to be good at something.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I’ve often said so to Mildred. Besides he worships the ground--or the carpets, rather,--that she walks on. For he never lets her put her foot on the ground if he can help it. He’s a dear fellow--in his way--and Mildred is really fond of him--especially when he’s looking after the tickets and the baggage. Now you must let me run away. You are to stay here and dine with brother, you know.”

XXV

AUNT POLLY’S VIEW OF THE RISKS

_O_ddly enough Edmonia had very little of the difficulty she had anticipated in securing Aunt Polly’s consent to the proposed trip. Perhaps the old lady’s opinions with respect to the detrimental effects of travel were held like her views on railroads and the rotundity of the earth, humorously rather than with seriousness. Perhaps she appreciated, better than she would admit, the advantages Dorothy was likely to reap from an introduction to a larger world. Perhaps she did not like the task set her of cramping Dorothy’s mind and soul to the mould of a marriage with young Jeff Peyton. Certain it is that she did not look forward to that fruition of her labors as Dorothy’s personal guardian with anything like pleasure. While she felt herself bound to carry out her instructions, she felt no alarm at the prospect of having their purpose defeated in the end by an enlargement of horizon which would prompt Dorothy to rebellion. Perhaps all these things, and perhaps something else. Perhaps Aunt Polly suspected the truth, and rejoiced in it. Who shall say? Who shall set a limit to the penetration of so shrewd a woman, after she has lived for more than half a century with her eyes wide open and her mind always quick in sympathy with those whom she loves?

Whatever the reason of her complaisance may have been, she yielded quickly to Edmonia’s persuasions, offering only her general deprecation of travel as an objection and quickly brushing even that aside.

“I can’t understand,” she said, “why people who are permitted to live and die in Virginia should want to go gadding about in less desirable places. But we’ve let the Yankees build railroads down here, and we must take the consequences. Everybody wants to travel nowadays and Dorothy is like all the rest, I suppose. Anyhow, you’ll be with her, Edmonia, and so she can’t come to any great harm, unless it’s true that the world is round. If that’s so, of course your ship will fall off when you get over on the other side of it.”

“But Europe isn’t on the other side of it Aunt Polly, and besides I’ve been there twice already you know, and I didn’t fall off the earth either time.”

“No, you were lucky, and maybe you’ll be lucky this time. Anyhow you have all made up your minds and I’ll interpose no objections.”

It was by no means so easy to win Dorothy’s consent to the proposed journey.

“I ought not to run away from my duty,” she said, in objection to a proposal which opened otherwise delightful prospects to her mind.

“But it’s your duty to go, child,” Edmonia answered. “You need the trip and all the education it will give you. What is there for you to do here, anyhow?”

“Why, Cousin Arthur might need me! You know he never tells lies, and he says I have really helped him to save people’s lives in this fever time.”

“But that is all over now and it won’t occur again. Arthur has taken care of that by burning the old quarters and building new ones in a wholesome place. By the way, Dorothy, you’ll be glad to know that his example is already having its influence. Brother has decided to build new quarters for our servants at a spot which Arthur has selected as the best one for the purpose on the plantation. Anyhow there’ll be no further fever outbreaks at Wyanoke or at Pocahontas, now that Arthur is master there also.”

“But he might need me in other ways,” answered the persistently reluctant Dorothy. “And besides he is teaching me chemistry and other scientific things that will make me useful in life. No, I can’t go away now.”

“But, you absurd child,” answered Edmonia, “there will be plenty of time to learn all that when you come back. You are ridiculously young yet. You won’t be seventeen till March, and you know a great deal more about science than Arthur did at your age. Besides this is his plan for you, not mine. He wants you to learn the things this trip will teach you, a great deal more than he wants you to learn chemistry and that sort of thing. He knows what you need in the way of education, and it is at his suggestion that I’m going to take you North and to Europe. He appreciates your abilities as you never will, and it is his earnest wish that you shall make this trip as a part of your education.”

“Very well,” answered Dorothy. “I’ll ask him if he wants me to go, and if he says yes, I’ll go. Of course it will be delightful to see great cities and the ocean and Pompeii and pictures and all the rest of it. But a woman mustn’t think of enjoyment alone. That’s the way women become bad. My father often told me so, and I don’t want to be bad.”

“You never will, Dorothy, dear. You couldn’t become bad if you wanted to. And as for Arthur, I assure you it was he who planned this journey for you and asked me to take you on it. Don’t you think he knows what is best for you?”

“Why, of course, he does! I never questioned that. But maybe he isn’t just thinking of what is best for me. Maybe he is only thinking of what would give me pleasure. Anyhow I’ll ask him and make sure. He won’t deceive me. And he couldn’t if he tried. I always know when he’s making believe and when I get angry with him for pretending he always quits it and tells me the truth.”

“Then you’ll go if Arthur tells you he really wants you to go, and really thinks it best for you to go?”

“Of course, I will! I’ll do anything and everything he wants me to do, now and always. He’s the best man in the world, and the greatest, Edmonia. Don’t you believe that? If you don’t I shall quit loving you.”

“Oh, you may safely go on loving me then,” answered Edmonia bowing her head very low to inspect something minute in the fancy work she had in her lap, and in that way hiding her flushed face for the moment. “I think all the good things about Arthur that you do, Dorothy. As I know what his answer to your questions will be, we’ll order the seamstresses to begin work tomorrow morning. I’ll have everything made at Branton, so you are to come over there soon in the morning.”

The catechising of Arthur yielded the results that Edmonia had anticipated.

“Yes, Dorothy,” he said, “I am really very anxious that you shall make this trip. It will give you more of enjoyment than you can possibly anticipate, but it will do something much better than that. It will repair certain defects in your education, which have been stupidly provided for by people who did not appreciate your wonderful gifts and your remarkable character. For Dorothy, dear, though you do not know it, you are a person of really exceptional gifts both of mind and character--gifts that ought to be cultivated, but which have been suppressed instead. You do not know it, and perhaps you won’t quite believe it, but you have capacities such as no other woman in this community can even pretend to possess. You are very greatly the superior of any woman you ever saw.”

“Oh, not of Edmonia!” the girl quickly replied.

“Yes--even of Edmonia,” he answered.

The girl’s face was hotly flushed. She did not know why, but such praise, so sincerely given, and coming from the man whom she regarded as “the best man in the world, and the greatest,” was gladsome to her soul. Her native modesty forbade her to believe it, quite, “but,” she argued with herself, “of course he knows better than I do, better than anybody else ever can. And, of course, I must do all I can to improve myself in order that I may satisfy his expectations of me. I’ll ask him all about that before I leave.”

And she did.

“Cousin Arthur,” she said one evening as they two sat with Aunt Polly before a crackling fire in “the chamber”--let the author suspend that sentence in mid air while he explains.

The chamber, in an old plantation house, was that room on the ground floor in which the master of the plantation, whether married or unmarried, slept. It was the family room always. Into it came those guests whose intimacy was sufficient to warrant intrusion upon the penetralia. The others were entertained in the drawing room. The word chamber was pronounced “chawmber,” just as the word “aunt” was properly pronounced “awnt.” The chamber had a bed in it and a bureau. In a closet big enough for a modern bedroom there was a dressing case with its fit appurtenances. In the chamber there was a lounge that tempted to afternoon siestas, and there were great oaken arm chairs whose skilful fashioning for comfort rendered cushions an impertinence. In the chamber was always the broadest and most cavernous of fire places and the most satisfactory of fires when the weather was such as to render artificial heating desirable. In the chamber was usually a carpet softly cushioned beneath, itself and its cushions being subject to a daily flagellation out-of-doors in the “soon” hours of morning in order that they might be relaid before the breakfast-time. All other rooms in the house were apt to be carpetless, their immaculate white ash floors undergoing a daily polishing with pine needles and rubbing brushes. The chamber alone was carpeted in most houses. Why this distinction the author does not undertake to say. He merely records a fact which was well-nigh universal in the great plantation houses.

So much for the chamber. Let us return to the sentence it interrupted.

“Cousin Arthur,” Dorothy said, “I wish you would mark out a course of study for me to pursue during this journey, so that I may get out of it all the good I can.”

Arthur picked up a dry sponge and dropped it into a basin of water.

“Look, Dorothy,” he said. “That is the only course I shall mark out for you.”

“It is very dull of me, I suppose,” said the girl, “but I really don’t understand.”

“Why, I didn’t tell the sponge what to absorb, and yet as you see it has drunk up all the water it can hold. It is just so with you and your journey. You need no instruction as to what you shall learn by travel or by mingling in the social life of great cities. You are like that sponge. You will absorb all that you need of instruction, when once you are cast into the water of life. You have very superior gifts of observation. There is no fear that you will fail to get all that is best out of travel and society. It is only the stupid people who need be told what they should see and what they should think about it, and the stupid people would much better stay at home.”

XXVI

AUNT POLLY’S ADVICE

_I_f Aunt Polly had entertained any real desire to forbid the expedition planned for Dorothy, the prompt interference of Madison Peyton in that behalf would have dissipated it.

No sooner had Peyton learned of the contemplated journey than he bustled over to Wyanoke to see Aunt Polly regarding it.

It is not a comfortable thing to visit a man with whom one has recently quarrelled and to whom one has had to send a letter of apology. Even Peyton, thick-skinned and self-assured as he was, would probably have hesitated to make himself a guest at Wyanoke at this time but for the happy chance that Arthur was absent in Richmond for a few days.

Seizing upon the opportunity thus afforded, Peyton promptly visited Aunt Polly to enter a very earnest and insistent protest. He was genuinely alarmed. He realized Dorothy’s moral and intellectual superiority to his son. He was shrewd enough to foresee that travel and a year’s association with men and women of attractive culture and refined intellectual lives would, of necessity, increase this disparity and perhaps--nay, almost certainly--make Jefferson Peyton seem a distinctly unworthy and inferior person in Dorothy’s eyes. He realized that the arrangement made some years before between himself and Dr. South, was not binding upon Dorothy, except in so far as it might appeal to her conscience and to her loyalty to her father’s memory when the time should be ripe to reveal it to her. For as yet she knew nothing of the matter.

She had liked young Peyton when he and she were children together. His abounding good nature had made him an agreeable playmate. But as they had grown up, the sympathy between them had steadily decreased. The good nature which had made him agreeable as a playmate, had become a distinct weakness of character as he had matured. He lacked fixity of purpose, industry and even conscience--while Dorothy, born with these attributes, had strengthened them by every act and thought of her life.

The young man had courage enough to speak the truth fearlessly on all occasions that strongly called for truth and courage, but Dorothy had discovered that in minor matters he was untruthful. To her integrity of mind it was shocking that a young man should make false pretences, as he had done when they had talked of literature and the like. She could not understand a false pretence, and she had no toleration for the weakness that indulges in it.

Moreover in intellectual matters, Dorothy had completely outgrown her former playmate. The bright boy, whom Dorothy’s father had chosen as one destined to be a fit life companion for her, had remained a bright boy. And that which astonishes us as brilliancy in a child ceases to impress us as the child grows into manhood, if the promise of it is not fulfilled by growth. A bright boy, ten or twelve years old, is a very pleasant person to contemplate; but a youth who remains nothing more than a bright boy as he grows into manhood, is distinctly disappointing and depressing.

It is to be said to the credit of Madison Peyton that he had done all that he could--or rather all that he knew how--to promote the intellectual development of this his first born son. He had lavished money upon tutors for him, when he ought instead to have sent him to some school whose all dominating democracy would have compelled the boy to work for his standing and to realize the value of personal endeavor. In brief Madison Peyton had made that mistake which the much richer men of our day so often make. He had tried to provide for his son a royal road to learning, only to find that the pleasures of the roadside had won the wayfarer away from the objects of his journey.

Madison Peyton now realized all this. He understood how little profit his son had got out of the very expensive education provided for him, how completely he had failed to acquire intellectual tastes, and in a dimly subconscious way, he understood how ill equipped the young man was to win the love of such a girl as Dorothy, or to make her happy as his wife. And he realized also that if travel and culture and a larger thinking should weaken in Dorothy’s mind--as it easily might--that sense of obligation to fulfil her father’s desires, on which mainly he had relied for the carrying out of the program of marriage between these two, with Pocahontas plantation as an incidental advantage, the youth must win Dorothy by a worthiness of her love, or lose her for lack of it.

The worthiness in his son was obviously wanting. There remained only Dorothy’s overweening loyalty to her father’s memory and will as a reliance for the accomplishment of Madison Peyton’s desires. It was to prevent the weakening of that loyalty that he appealed to Aunt Polly to forbid the travel plan.

Aunt Polly from the first refused. “Dorothy is a wonderful girl,” she said, “and she has wonderful gifts. I shall certainly not stand in the way of their development.”

“But let me remind you, Cousin Polly,” answered Peyton, “that Dorothy’s life is marked out for her. Don’t you think it would be a distinct injustice to her to unfit her as this trip cannot fail to do, for the life that she must lead? Will not that tend to render her unhappy?”

“Happiness is not a matter of circumstance, Madison. It is a matter of character. But that isn’t what I meant to say. You want me to keep Dorothy here in order that she may not grow, or develop, or whatever else you choose to call it. You want to keep her as ignorant as you can, simply because you know she is already the superior of the young man whom you and Dr. South, in your ignorant assumption of the attributes of Divine Providence, have selected to be her husband. You are afraid that she will outgrow him. Isn’t that what you mean, Madison?”

“Well, yes, in a way. You put it very baldly, but----”

“But that’s the truth, isn’t it? That’s what you’re afraid of?”

“Well, the fact is I don’t believe in educating girls above their station in life.”

“How can anything be above Dorothy’s station, Madison? She is the daughter and sole heir of one of the oldest and best families in Virginia. I have never heard of anything higher than that.”

“Oh, certainly. But that isn’t what I mean. You see Dorothy has been permitted to read a lot of books that young women don’t usually read, and study a lot of subjects that young women don’t usually study. She has got her head full of notions, and this trip will make the matter worse. I think women should look up to their husbands and not down upon them, and how can Dorothy----”

“How would it do, Madison, for the young men to make an effort on their own account, to improve their minds and build up their characters so that their wives might look up to them without an effort? There are some men to whom the most highly cultivated women can look up in real respect, and it is quite natural that the best of the young women should choose these for their husbands. Many young men refuse to make themselves worthy in that way, or fail in such efforts as they may make to accomplish it. If I understand you properly, you would forbid the girls to cultivate what is best in them lest they grow superior to their coming husbands.”

“That’s it, Cousin Polly. The happy women are those who feel the superiority of their husbands and find pleasure in bowing to it.”

“I thought that was your idea. It is simply abominable. It makes no more of a woman than of a heifer or a filly. It regards her as nothing more or better than a convenience. I’ll have nothing to do with such a doctrine. Dorothy South is a girl of unusual character, and unusual mind, so far as I can judge. She has naturally done all she could to cultivate what is best in herself, and, so far as I can control the matter she shall go on doing so, as every woman and every man ought to do. When she has made the best she can of herself, she may perhaps meet some man worthy of her, some man fit to be her companion in life. If she does, she’ll probably marry him. If she meets none such she can remain single. That isn’t at all the worst thing that can happen to a woman. It is a hideous thing to marry a girl to her inferior. You have yourself suggested that such a marriage can only mean wretchedness to both. And your plan of avoiding such marriages is to keep the girls inferior by denying them the privilege of self-cultivation. I tell you it is an abominable plan. It’s Turkish, and the only right way to carry it out is to shut women up in harems and forbid them to learn how to read. For if a woman or a man of brains learns that much, the rest cannot be prevented. So you may make up your mind that Dorothy is going to make this trip. I’ve already consented to it, and the more I think about it, the more I am in favor of it. My only fear is that she may fall off the earth when she gets to the other side, and I reckon that will not happen, for both Arthur and Edmonia assure me they didn’t fall off when they were over there.”

Peyton saw the necessity of making some stronger appeal to Aunt Polly, than any he had yet put forward. So he addressed himself to her conscience and her exalted sense of honor.

“Doubtless you are right, Cousin Polly,” he said placatively, “at least as to the general principle. But, as you clearly understand, this is a peculiar case. You see Dorothy _must_ marry Jefferson in any event. Don’t you think it would be very unfair and even cruel to her, to let her unfit herself for happiness in the only marriage she is permitted to make? Will it not be cruel to let her get her head full of notions, and perhaps even accept some man’s attentions, and then find yourself in honor bound to show her the letter you hold from Dr. South, instructing her to carry out his will? You know she will obey her dead father and marry Jefferson. Isn’t it clearly your duty to shield and guard her against influences that cannot fail to unfit her for happiness in the marriage she must make?”

“I am sole judge of that matter, Madison. I am the guardian of Dorothy’s person during her nonage--four years longer. By the terms of Dr. South’s will she must not marry until she is twenty-one, except with my consent. With my consent she may marry at any time. As to the letter you speak of, you have never had the privilege of reading it, and I do not intend to show it to you. It is less peremptory, perhaps than you think. It does not command Dorothy to marry your son. It only recommends such a marriage to her as a safe and prudent one, securing to her the advantages of marriage into as good a family as her own. But there are other families than yours as good as her own, and I may see fit not to show Dorothy her father’s letter at all. I am not bound to let her read it, by any clause in his will, or by any promise to him, or even by any injunction from him. I am left sole judge as to that. If I had not been so left free to use my own discretion I should never have accepted the responsibility of the girl’s guardianship.”

“You astonish me!” exclaimed Peyton. “I had supposed this matter settled beyond recall. I had trusted Dr. South’s honor----”

“Stop, Madison!” interposed Aunt Polly. “If you say one word in question of Dr. South’s honor and integrity, I will burn that letter now, and never, so long as I live mention its existence.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean--”

“It seems to me you say a good many things you do not mean today, Madison. As for me, I am saying only what I mean, and perhaps not quite all of that. Let me end the whole matter by telling you this: I am going to let Dorothy make this trip. I am going to give her every chance I can to cultivate herself into a perfect womanhood--many chances that I longed for

in my own girlhood, but could not command. I may or may not some day show her Dr. South’s letter. That shall be as my judgment dictates. I shall not consent now or hereafter, while my authority or influence lasts, to Dorothy’s marriage to anybody except some man of her own choosing, who shall seem to me fit to make her happy. If you want Jefferson to marry her, I notify you now that he must fairly win her. And my advice to you is very earnest that he set to work at once to render himself worthy of her; to repair his character; to cultivate himself, if he can, up to her moral and intellectual level; to make of himself a man to whom she can look up, as you say, and not down. There, that is all I have to say.”

Madison Peyton saw this to be good advice, and he decided to act upon it. But, as so often happens with good advice, he “took it wrong end first,” in the phrase of that time and country. He decided that his son should also go north and to Europe, following the party to which Dorothy belonged as closely as possible, seeing as much as he could of her, and paying court to her upon every opportunity.

XXVII

DIANA’S EXALTATION

_I_t was the middle of January, 1860, when Dorothy bade Arthur good-by and went away upon her mission of enjoyment and education.

It is not easy for us now to picture to ourselves what travel in this country was in that year which seems to the older ones among us so recent. In 1860 there was not such a thing as a sleeping car in all the world. The nearest approach to that necessity of modern life which then existed, was a car with high backed seats, which was used on a few of the longer lines of railroad. For another thing there were no such things in existence as through trains. Every railroad in the country was an independent line, whose trains ran only between its own termini. The traveller must “change cars” at every terminus, and usually the process involved a delay of several hours and a long omnibus ride--perhaps at midnight--through the streets of some city which had thriftily provided that its several railroads should place their stations as far apart as possible in order that their passengers might “leave money in the town.” The passenger from a south side county of Virginia intending to go to New York, for example, must take a train to Richmond; thence after crossing the town in an omnibus and waiting for an hour or two, take another train to Acquia Creek, near Fredericksburg; there transfer to a steamboat for Washington; there cross town in an omnibus, and, after another long wait, take a train for the Relay House; there wait four hours and then change cars for Baltimore, nine miles away; then take another omnibus ride to another station; thence a train to Havre de Grace, where he must cross a river on a ferry boat; thence by another train to Philadelphia, where, after still another omnibus transfer and another delay, one had a choice of routes to New York, the preferred one being by way of Camden and Amboy, and thence up the bay twenty miles or so, to the battery in New York. There was no such thing as a dining car, a buffet car or a drawing room car in all the land. There were none but hand brakes on the trains, and the cars were held together by loose coupling links. The rails were not fastened together at their badly laminated ends, and it was the fashion to call trains that reached a maximum speed of twenty miles an hour, “lightning expresses,” and to stop them at every little wayside station. The engines were fed upon wood, and it was a common thing for trains to stop their intolerable jolting for full twenty minutes to take fresh supplies of wood and water.

There was immeasurably more of weariness then, in a journey from Richmond or Cincinnati or Buffalo to New York, than would be tolerated now in a trip across the continent. As a consequence few people travelled except for short distances and a journey which we now think nothing of making comfortably in a single night, was then a matter of grave consequence, to be undertaken only after much deliberation and with much of preparation. New York seemed more distant to the dweller in the West or South than Hong Kong and Yokohama do in our time, and the number of people who had journeyed beyond the borders of our own country was so small that those who had done so were regarded as persons of interestingly adventurous experience.

Quite necessarily all parts of the country were markedly provincial in speech, manner, habits and even in dress. New England had a nasal dialect of its own, so firmly rooted in use that it has required two or three generations of exacting Yankee school marms to eradicate it from the speech even of the educated class. New York state had another, and the Southerner was known everywhere by a speech which “bewrayed” him.

And as it was with speech, so also was it with manners, customs, ideas. Prejudice was everywhere rampant, opinion intolerant, and usage merciless in its narrow illiberality. Only in what was then the West--the region between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi--was there anything of cosmopolitan liberality and tolerance. They were found in that region because the population of the West had been drawn from all parts of the country. Attrition of mind with mind, and the mingling of men of various origin had there in a large degree worn off the angles of provincial prejudice and bred a liberality of mind elsewhere uncommon in our country.

Edmonia and Dorothy were to make their formidable journey to New York in easy stages. They remained for several days with friends in Richmond, while completing those preliminary preparations which were necessary before setting out for the national capital. They were to stay in Washington for a fortnight, in Baltimore for three weeks, in Philadelphia for a week or two, and in New York for nearly two months before sailing for Europe in May.

The time was a very troubled one, on the subject of slavery. Not only was it true that if the owner of a slave took the negro with him into any one of the free states he by that act legally set him free, but it was also true that the most devoted and loyal servant thus taken from the South into a Northern state was subjected to every form of persuasive solicitation to claim and assert his freedom. It was nevertheless the custom of Southern men, and still more of Southern women, to take with them on their travels one or more of their personal servants, trusting to their loyalty alone for continued allegiance. For the attitude of such personal servants in Virginia at that time was rather that of proud and voluntary allegiance to loved masters and mistresses who belonged to them as a cherished possession, than that of men and women held in unwilling bondage.

Accordingly it was arranged that Edmonia’s maid, Dinah--or Diana as she had come to call herself since hearing her mistress read a “history pome” aloud--should accompany the two young women as their joint servitor.

As soon as this arrangement was announced at Branton, Diana began what Polydore called “a puttin’ on of airs.” In plainer phrase she began to snub Polydore mercilessly, whereas she had recently been so gracious in her demeanor towards him as to give him what he called “extinct discouragement.”

After it was settled that she was to accompany “Miss Mony an’ Miss Dorothy” to “de Norf” and to “Yurrop”--as she wrote to all her friends who were fortunate enough to know how to “read writin’,” there was, as Polydore declared, “no livin’ in de house wid her.” She sailed about the place like a frigate, delivering her shots to the right and left--most of them aimed at Polydore, with casual and contemptuous attention, now and then, to the other house servants.

“I ’clar’ to gracious,” said Elsie, one of the housemaids, “ef Diana ain’t a puttin’ on of jes’ as many airs as ef she’d been all over a’ready, an’ she ain’t never been out of dis county yit.”

“Wonder ef she’ll look at folks when she gits back,” said Fred, the cadet of the dining room, who was being trained under Polydore’s tutelage to keep his nails clean and to offer dishes to guests at their left hands.

“Don’ you be in too big a hurry to fin’ out dat, you nigga,” rejoined Polydore, the loyalty of whose love for Diana would brook no criticism of her on the part of an underling. “You’se got enough to attend to in gittin’ yer manners into shape. Diana’s a superior pusson, an’ you ain’t got no ’casion to criticise her. You jes’ take what yer gits an’ be thankful like Lazarus wuz when de rich man dropped water outer his hand on his tongue.”

Polydore’s biblical erudition seems to have been a trifle at fault at this point. But at any rate his simile had its intended effect upon the young darkey, who, slipping a surreptitious beaten biscuit into his pocket, retreated to the distant kitchen to devour it.

At that moment Diana entered the dining room with the air of a Duchess, and, with unwonted sweetness, said:

“Please, Polydore, bring me de tea things. De ladies is faint.”

Polydore, anxious that Diana’s gentle mood should endure, made all haste to bring what she desired. He made too much haste, unluckily, for in his hurry he managed to spill a little hot water from a pitcher he was carrying on a tray, and some drops of it fell upon the sleeve of Diana’s daintily laundered cambric gown.

The stately bronze colored namesake of the ancient goddess rose in offended dignity, and looked long at the offender before addressing him. Then she witheringly put the question:

“Whar’s your manners dis mawnin’, Polydore? Jes’ spose I was Miss Mony now; would you go sloppin’ things over her dat way?”

Even a worm will turn, we are told, and Polydore was prouder than a worm. For once he lost his self-control so far as to say in reply:

“But you _ain’t_ Miss Mony, dough you seems to think you is. I’se tired o’ yer highty tighty airs. Git de tea things for yerse’f!” With that Polydore left the dining room, and Diana, curiously enough, made no reference to the incident when next she encountered him, but was all smiles and sweetness instead.

XXVIII

THE ADVANCING SHADOW

_N_o sooner were Dorothy and Edmonia gone than Arthur turned again to affairs. It was a troubled uneasy time in Virginia, a time of sore apprehension and dread. The “irrepressible conflict” over slavery had that year taken on new and more threatening features than ever before.

There was now a strong political party at the North the one important article of whose creed was hostility to the further extension of slavery into the territories. It was a strictly sectional party in its composition, having no existence anywhere at the South. It was influential in Congress, and in 1856 it had strongly supported a candidate of its own for president. By the beginning of 1860 its strength had been greatly increased and circumstances rendered probable its success in electing a president that year, for the hopeless division of the Democratic party, which occurred later in the year, was already clearly foreshadowed, an event which in fact resulted in the nomination of three rival candidates against Mr. Lincoln and made his election certain in spite of a heavy popular majority against him.

Had this been all, Virginia would not have been greatly disturbed by the political situation and prospect. But during the preceding autumn the Virginians had been filled with apprehension for the safety of their homes and families by John Brown’s attempt, at Harper’s Ferry, to create a negro insurrection, the one catastrophe always most dreaded by them. That raid, quickly suppressed as it was, wrought a revolution in Virginian feeling and sentiment. The Virginians argued from it, and from the approval given to it in some parts of the North, that Northern sentiment was rapidly ripening into readiness for any measures, however violent they might be, for the extinction of slavery and the destruction of the autonomy of the Southern States.

They found it difficult under the circumstances to believe the Republican party’s disclaimer of all purpose or power to interfere with the institution in the states. They were convinced that only opportunity was now wanting to make the Southern States the victims of an aggressive war, with a servile insurrection as a horrible feature of it. They cherished a warm loyalty to that Union which Virginia had done so much to create, but they began seriously to fear the time when there would be no peace or safety for their state or even for their wives and children within the Union. They were filled with resentment, too, of what they regarded as a wanton and unlawful purpose to interfere with their private concerns, and to force the country into disunion and civil war.

There were hot heads among them, of course, who were ready to welcome such results; but these were very few. The great body of Virginia’s people loved the Union, and even to the end--a year later--their strongest efforts were put forth to persuade both sides to policies of peace.

But in the meantime a marked change came over the Virginian mind with respect to slavery. Many who had always regarded the institution as an inherited evil to be got rid of as soon as that might be safely accomplished, modified or reversed their view when called upon to stand always upon the defensive against what they deemed an unjust judgment of themselves.

Arthur Brent did not share this change of view, but he shared in the feelings of resentment which had given it birth. In common with other Virginians he felt that this was a matter belonging exclusively to the individual states, and still more strongly he felt that the existing political situation and the methods of it gravely menaced the Union in ways which were exceedingly difficult for Southern men who loved the Union to meet. He saw with regret the great change that was coming over public and private sentiment in Virginia--sentiment which had been so strongly favorable to the peaceable extinction of slavery, that John Letcher--a lifelong advocate of emancipation as Virginia’s true policy--had been elected Governor the year before upon that as the only issue of a state campaign.

But Arthur was still bent upon carrying out his purpose of emancipating himself and, incidentally his slaves. And the threatening aspect of political affairs strengthened his determination at any rate to rid both his own estate and Dorothy’s of debt.

“When that is done, we shall be safe, no matter what happens,” he told himself.

To that end he had already done much. In spite of his preöccupation with the fever epidemic he had found time during the autumn to institute many economies in the management of both plantations. He had shipped and sold the large surplus crops of apples and sweet potatoes--a thing wholly unprecedented in that part of Virginia, where no products of the soil except tobacco and wheat were ever turned to money account. He was laughed at for what his neighbors characterized as “Yankee farming,” but both his conscience and his bank account were comforted by the results. In the same way, having a large surplus of corn that year, he had fattened nearly double the usual number of hogs, and was now preparing to sell so much of the bacon as he did not need for plantation uses. In these and other ways he managed to diminish the Wyanoke debt by more than a third and that of Pocahontas by nearly one-half, during his first year as a planter.

“If they don’t quit laughing at me,” he said to Archer Bannister one day, “I’ll sell milk and butter and even eggs next summer. I may conclude to do that anyhow. Those are undignified crops, perhaps, but I’m not sure that they could not be made more profitable than wheat and tobacco.”

“Be careful, Arthur,” answered his friend. “It isn’t safe to make planting too profitable. It is apt to lead to unkindly remark.”

“How so? Isn’t planting a business, like any other?”

“A business, yes, but not like any other. It has a certain dignity to maintain. But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of Robert Copeland.”

“I wish you’d tell me about him, Archer. What has he done? I observe that everybody seems to shun him--or at least nobody seems quite willing to recognize him as a man in our class, though they tell me his family is fairly good, and personally he seems agreeable. Nobody says anything to his discredit, and yet I observe a general shoulder shrugging whenever his name is mentioned.”

“He makes too many hogsheads of tobacco to the hand,” answered Archer smiling but speaking with emphasis and slowly.

“Is he cruel to his negroes?”