If this slip of a girl had talked Greek or Sanscrit or the differential calculus at him, Arthur could not have been more astounded than he was. Surely a girl so young, so fresh, and so obviously wholesome of mind could never have formulated such a philosophy of life for herself, even had she been thrown all her days into the most complex of conditions and surroundings, instead of leading the simplest of lives as this girl had manifestly done, and seeing only other living like her own. But he forbore to question her, lest he trespass again upon delicate ground, as he had done with respect to music. He was quick to remember that he had already asked her where she had learned her philosophy, and that she had nimbly evaded the question—defending her philosophy as a thing obvious to the mind, instead of answering the inquiry as to whence she had drawn the teaching.

Altogether, Arthur Brent’s mind was in a whirl as he left the luncheon table. Simple as she seemed and transparent as her personality appeared to him to be, the girl’s attitude of mind seemed inexplicable even to his practised understanding. Her very presence in the house was a puzzle, for Aunt Polly had offered no explanation of the fact that she seemed to belong there, not as a guest but as a member of the household, and even as one exercising authority there. For not only had the girl apologized for leaving Aunt Polly to order the luncheon, but at table and after the meal was finished, it was she, and not the elder woman who gave directions to the servants, who seemed accustomed to think of her as the source of authority, and finally, as she withdrew from the dining room, she turned to Arthur and said:

“Doctor, it is the custom at Wyanoke to dine at four o’clock. Shall I have dinner served at that hour, or do you wish it changed?”

The young man declared his wish that the traditions of the house should be preserved, adding playfully—“I doubt if you could change the dinner hour, Miss Dorothy, even if we all desired it so. I remember Aunt Kizzey, the cook, and I for one should hesitate to oppose my will to her conservatism.”

“Oh, as to that,” answered the girl, “I never have any trouble managing the servants. They know me too well for that.”

“What could you do if you told Kizzey to serve dinner at three and she refused?” asked the young man, really curious to hear the answer.

“I would send for Aunt Kizzey to come to me. Then I would look at her. After that she would do as I bade her.”

“I verily believe she would,” said the young man to himself as he went to the sideboard and filled one of the long stemmed pipes. “But I really cannot understand why.”

He had scarcely finished his pipe when Dorothy came into the hall accompanied by a negro girl of about fourteen years, who bore a work basket with her. Seating herself, Dorothy gave the girl some instruction concerning the knitting she had been doing, and added: “You may sit in the back porch to-day. It is warm.”

“Is it too warm, Miss Dorothy, for you to make a little excursion with me to the stables?”

“Certainly not,” she quickly answered. “I’ll go at once.”

“Thank you,” he said, “and we’ll stop in the orchard on our way back and get some June apples. I remember where the trees are.”

“You want me to show you the horses, I suppose,” she said as the two set off side by side.

“No; any of the negroes could do that. I want you to render me a more skilled service.”

“What is it?”

“I want you, please, to pick out a horse for me to ride while I stay at Wyanoke.”

“While you stay at Wyanoke!” echoed the girl. “Why, that will be for all the time, of course.”

“I hardly think so,” answered the young man, with a touch of not altogether pleased uncertainty in his tone. “You see I have important work to do, which I cannot do anywhere but in a great city—or at any rate,”—as the glamour of the easy, polished and altogether delightful contentment of Virginia life came over him anew, and its attractiveness sang like a siren in his ears,—“at any rate it cannot be so well done anywhere else as in a large city. I have come down here to Virginia only to see what duties I have to do here. If I find I can finish them in a few months or a year, I shall go back to my more important work.”

The girl was silent for a time, as if pondering his words. Finally she said:

“Is there anything more important than to look after your estate? You see I don’t understand things very well.”

“Perhaps it is best that you never shall,” he answered. “And to most men the task of looking after an ancestral estate, and managing a plantation with more than a hundred negroes—”

“There are a hundred and eighty seven in all, if you count big and little, old and young together,” broke in the girl.

“Are there? How did you come to know the figures so precisely?”

“Why, I keep the plantation book, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” he answered.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve kept it ever since I came to Wyanoke three or four years ago. You see your uncle didn’t like to bother with details, and so I took this off his hands, when I was so young that I wrote a great big, sprawling hand and spelled my words ever so queerly. But I wanted to help Uncle Robert. You see I liked him. If you’d rather keep the plantation book yourself, I’ll give it up to you when we go back to the house.”

“I would much rather have you keep it, at least until you make up your mind whether you like me or not. Then, if you don’t like me I’ll take the book.”

“Very well,” she replied, treating his reference to her present uncertainty of mind concerning himself quite as she might have treated his reference to a weather contingency of the morrow or of the next week. “I’ll go on with the book till then.”

By this time the pair had reached the stables, and Miss Dorothy, in that low, soft but penetrating voice which Arthur had observed and admired, called to a negro man who was dozing within:

“Ben, your master wants to see the best of the saddle horses. Bring them out, do you hear?”

The question “do you hear?” with which she ended her command was one in universal use in Virginia. If an order were given to a negro without that admonitory tag to it, it would fall idly upon heedless ears. But the moment the negro heard that question he gathered his wits together and obeyed the order.

“What sort of a horse do you like, Doctor?” asked the girl as the animals were led forth. “Can you ride?”

“Why, of course,” he answered. “You know I spent a year in Virginia when I was a boy.”

“Oh, yes, of course—if you haven’t forgotten. Then you don’t mind if a horse is spirited and a trifle hard to manage?”

“No. On the contrary, Miss Dorothy, I should very much mind if my riding horse were not spirited, and as for managing him, I’m going to get you to teach me the art of command, as you practise it so well on your dogs, your horse and the house servants.”

“Very well,” answered the girl seeming not to heed the implied compliment. “Put the horses back in their stalls, Ben, and go over to Pocahontas right away, and tell the overseer there to send Gimlet over to me. Do you hear? You see, Doctor,” she added, turning to him, “your uncle’s gout prevented him from riding much during the last year or so of his life, and so there are no saddle horses here fit for a strong man like you. There’s one fine mare, four years old, but she’s hardly big enough to carry your weight. You must weigh a hundred and sixty pounds, don’t you?”

“Yes, about that. But whose horse is Gimlet?”

“He’s mine, and he’ll suit you I’m sure. He is five years old, nearly seventeen hands high and as strong as a young ox.”

“But are you going to sell him to me?”

“Sell him? No, of course not. He is my pet. He has eaten out of my hand ever since he was a colt, and I was the first person that ever sat on his back. Besides, I wouldn’t sell a horse to you. I’m going to lend him to you till—till I make up my mind. Then, if I like you I’ll give him to you. If I don’t like you I’ll send him back to Pocahontas. Hurry up, Ben. Ride the gray mare and lead Gimlet back, do you hear?”

“You are very kind to me, Miss Dorothy, and I—”

“Oh, no. I’m only polite and neighborly. You see Wyanoke and Pocahontas are adjoining plantations. There comes Jo with your trunks, so we shall not have time for the June apples to-day—or may be we might stop long enough to get just a few, couldn’t we?”

With that she took the young man’s hand as a little girl of ten might have done, and skipping by his side, led the way into the orchard. The thought of the June apples seemed to have awakened the child side of her nature, completely banishing the womanly dignity for the time being.

V
ARTHUR BRENT’S TEMPTATION

“I will arrange everything for you,” said the lawyer; “the will gives you everything and it has already been probated. It makes you sole executor with no bonds, as well as sole inheritor of the estate. There is really nothing for you to do but hang up your hat. You take your late uncle’s place, that is all.”

“But there are debts,” suggested Arthur.

“Oh, yes, but they are trifling and the estate is a very rich one. None of your creditors will bother you.”

“But I do not intend to remain in debt,” said the young man impatiently. “Besides, I do not intend to remain a planter all my life. I have other work to do in the world. This inheritance is a burden to me, and I mean to be rid of it as soon as possible.”

“Allow me to suggest,” said the lawyer in his self-possessed way, “that the inheritance of Wyanoke is a sort of burden that most men at your time of life would very cheerfully take upon their shoulders.”

“Very probably,” answered Arthur. “But as I happen not to be ‘most men at my time of life’ it distinctly oppresses me. It loads me with duties that are not congenial to me. It requires my attention at a time when I very greatly desire to give my attention to something which I regard as of more importance than the growing of wheat and tobacco and corn.”

“Every one to his taste,” answered the lawyer, “but I confess I do not see what better a young man could do than sit down here at Wyanoke and, without any but pleasurable activities, enjoy all that life has to give. Your income will be large, and your credit quite beyond question. You can buy whatever you want, and you need never bother yourself with a business detail. No dun will ever beset your door. If any creditor of yours should happen to want his money, as none will, you can borrow enough to pay him without even going to Richmond to arrange the matter. I will attend to all such things for you, as I did for your late uncle.”

“Thank you very much,” Arthur answered in a tone which suggested that he did not thank him at all. “But I always tie my own shoe strings. I do not know whether I shall go on living here or not, whether I shall give up my work and my ambitions and settle down into a life of inglorious ease, or whether I shall be strong enough to put that temptation aside. I confess it is a temptation. Accustomed as I am to intensity of intellectual endeavor, I confess that the prospect of sitting down here in lavish plenty, and living a life unburdened by care and unvexed by any sense of exacting duty, has its allurements for me. I suppose, indeed, that any well ordered mind would find abundant satisfaction in such a life programme, and perhaps I shall presently find myself growing content with it. But if I do, I shall not consent to live in debt.”

“But everybody has his debts—everybody who has an estate. It is part of the property, as it were. Of course it would be uncomfortable to owe more than you could pay, but you are abundantly able to owe your debts, so you need not let them trouble you. All told they do not amount to the value of ten or a dozen field hands.”

“But I shall never sell my negroes.”

“Of course not. No gentleman in Virginia ever does that, unless a negro turns criminal and must be sent south, or unless nominal sales are made between the heirs of an estate, simply by way of distributing the property. Far be it from me to suggest such a thing. I meant only to show you how unnecessary it is for you to concern yourself about the trifling obligations on your estate—how small a ratio they bear to the value of the property.”

“I quite understand,” answered Arthur. “But at the same time these debts do trouble me and will go on troubling me till the last dollar of them is discharged. This is simply because they interfere with the plans I have formed—or at least am forming—for so ordering my affairs that I may go back to my work. Pray do not let us discuss the matter further. I will ask you, instead, to send me, at your earliest convenience, an exact schedule of the creditors of this estate, together with the amount—principal and interest—that is owing to each. I intend to make it my first business to discharge all these obligations. Till that is done, I am not my own master, and I have a decided prejudice in favor of being able to order my own life in my own way.”

Behind all this lay the fact that Arthur Brent was growing dissatisfied with himself and suspicious of himself. The beauty and calm of Wyanoke, the picturesque contentment of that refined Virginia life which was impressed anew upon his mind every time a neighboring planter rode over to take breakfast, dinner, or supper with him, or drove over in the afternoon with his wife and daughters to welcome the new master of the plantation—all this fascinated his mind and appealed strongly to the partially developed æsthetic side of his nature, and at times the strong, earnest manhood in him resented the fact almost with bitterness.

There was never anywhere in America a country life like that of Virginia in the period before the war. In that state, as nowhere else on this continent, the refinement, the culture, the education and the graceful social life of the time were found not in the towns, but in the country. There were few cities in the state and they were small. They existed chiefly for the purpose of transacting business for the more highly placed and more highly cultivated planters. The people of the cities, with exceptions that only emphasized the general truth, were inferior to the dwellers on the plantations, in point of education, culture and social position. It had always been so in Virginia. From the days of William Byrd of Westover to those of Washington, and Jefferson and Madison and John Marshall, and from their time to the middle of the nineteenth century, it had been the choice of all cultivated Virginians to live upon their plantations. Thence had always come the scholars, the statesmen, the great lawyers and the masterful political writers who had conferred untold lustre upon the state.

Washington’s career as military chieftain and statesman, had been one long sacrifice of his desire to lead the planter life at Mount Vernon. Jefferson’s heart was at Monticello while he penned the Declaration of Independence, and it was the proud boast of Madison that he like Jefferson, quitted public office poorer than he was when he undertook such service to his native land, and rejoiced in his return to the planter life of his choice at Montpélièr.

In brief, the entire history of the state and all its traditions, all its institutions, all its habits of thought tended to commend the country life to men of refined mind, and to make of the plantation owners and their families a distinctly recognized aristocracy, not only of social prestige but even more of education, refinement and intellectual leadership.

To Arthur Brent had come the opportunity to make himself at once and without effort, a conspicuous member of this blue blooded caste. His plantation had come to him, not by vulgar purchase, but by inheritance. It had been the home of his ancestors, the possession and seat of his family for more than two hundred years. And his family had been from the first one of distinction and high influence. One of his great, great, great grandfathers, had been a member of the Jamestown settlement and a soldier under John Smith. His great, great grandfather had shared the honor of royal proscription as an active participant in Bacon’s rebellion. His great grandfather had been the companion of young George Washington in his perilous expeditions to “the Ohio country,” and had fallen by Washington’s side in Braddock’s blundering campaign. His grandfather had been a drummer boy at Yorktown, had later become one of the great jurists of the state and had been a distinguished soldier in the war of 1812. His father, as we know, had strayed away to the west, as so many Virginians of his time did, but he had won honors there which made Virginia proud of him. And fortunately for Arthur Brent, that father’s removal to the west was not made until this his son had been born at the old family seat.

“For,” explained Aunt Polly to the young man, in her own confident way, “in spite of your travels, you are a native Virginian, Arthur, and when you have dropped into the ways of the country, people will overlook the fact that you have lived so much at the north, and even in Europe.”

“But why, Aunt Polly,” asked Arthur, “should that fact be deemed something to be ‘overlooked?’ Surely travel broadens one’s views and—”

“Oh, yes, of course, in the case of people not born in Virginia. But a Virginian doesn’t need it, and it upsets his ideas. You see when a Virginian travels he forgets what is best. He actually grows like other people. You yourself show the ill effects of it in a hundred ways. Of course you haven’t quite lost your character as a Virginian, and you’ll gradually come back to it here at Wyanoke; but ‘evil communications corrupt good manners,’ and I can’t help seeing it in you—at least in your speech. You don’t pronounce your words correctly. You say ‘cart’ ‘carpet’ and ‘garden’ instead of ‘cyart’ ‘cyarpet’ and ‘gyarden.’ And you flatten your a’s dreadfully. You say ‘grass’ instead of ‘grawss’ and ‘basket’ instead of ‘bawsket’ and all that sort of thing. And you roll your r’s dreadfully. It gives me a chill whenever I hear you say ‘master’ instead of ‘mahstah.’ But you’ll soon get over that, and in the meantime, as you were born in Virginia and are the head of an old Virginia family, the gentlemen and ladies who are coming every day to welcome you, are very kind about it. They overlook it, as your misfortune, rather than your fault.”

“That is certainly very kind of them, Aunt Polly. I can’t imagine anything more generous in the mind than that. But—well, never mind.”

“What were you going to say, Arthur?”

“Oh, nothing of any consequence. I was only thinking that perhaps my Virginia neighbors do not lay so much stress upon these things as you do.”

“Of course not. That is one of the troubles of this time. Since we let the Yankees build railroads through Virginia, everybody here wants to travel. Why, half the gentlemen in this county have been to New York!”

“How very shocking!” said Arthur, hiding his smile behind his hand.

“That’s really what made the trouble for poor Dorothy,” mused Aunt Polly. “If her father hadn’t gone gadding about—he even went to Europe you know—Dorothy never would have been born.”

“How fortunate that would have been! But tell me about it, Aunt Polly. You see I don’t quite understand in what way it would have been better for Dorothy not to have been born—unless we accept the pessimist philosophy, and consider all human life a curse.”

“Now you know, I don’t understand that sort of talk, Arthur,” answered Aunt Polly. “I never studied philosophy or chemistry, and I’m glad of it. But I know it would have been better for Dorothy if Dr. South had stayed at home like a reasonable man, and married—but there, I mustn’t talk of that. Dorothy is a dear girl, and I’m fitting her for her position in life as well as I can. If I could stop her from thinking, now, or—”

“Pray don’t, Aunt Polly! Her thinking interests me more than anything I ever studied,—except perhaps the strange and even inexplicable therapeutic effect of champagne in yellow fever—”

“There you go again, with your outlandish words, which you know I don’t understand or want to understand, though sometimes I remember them.”

“Tell me of an instance, Aunt Polly.”

“Why, you said to me the other night that Dorothy was a ‘psychological enigma’ to your mind, and that you very much wished you might know ‘the conditions of heredity and environment’ that had produced ‘so strange a phenomenon.’ There! I remember your words, though I haven’t the slightest notion what they mean. I went upstairs and wrote them down. Of course I couldn’t spell them except in my own way—and that would make you laugh I reckon if you could see it, which you never shall—but I haven’t a glimmering notion of what the words mean. Now I want to tell you about Dorothy.”

“Good! I am anxious to hear!”

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. That would be gossip, and no Virginia woman ever gossips.”

That was true. The Virginians of that time, men and women alike, locked their lips and held their tongues in leash whenever the temptation came to them to discuss the personal affairs of their neighbors. They were bravely free and frank of speech when telling men to their faces what opinions they might hold concerning them; but they did that only when necessity, or honor, or the vindication of truth compelled. They never made the character or conduct or affairs of each other a subject of conversation. It was the very crux of honor to avoid that.

“Then tell me what you are minded to reveal, Aunt Polly,” responded Arthur. “I do not care to know anything else.”

“Well, Dorothy is in a peculiar position—not by her own fault. She must marry into a good family, and it has fallen to me to prepare her for her fate.”

“Surely, Aunt Polly,” interjected the young man with a shocked and distressed tone in his voice, “surely you are not teaching that child to think of marriage—yet?”

“No, no, no!” answered Aunt Polly. “I’m only trying to train her to submissiveness of mind, so that when the time comes for her to make the marriage that is already arranged for her, she will interpose no foolish objections. It’s a hard task. The girl has a wilful way of thinking for herself. I can’t cure her of it, do what I will.”

“Why should you try?” asked Arthur, almost with excitement in his tone. “Why should you try to spoil nature’s fine handiwork? That child’s intellectual attitude is the very best I ever saw in one so young, so simple and so childlike. For heaven’s sake, let her alone! Let her live her own life and think in her own honest, candid and fearless way, and she will develop into a womanhood as noble as any that the world has seen since Eve persuaded Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge and quit being a fool.”

“Arthur, you shock me!”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Polly, but I shall shock you far worse than that, if you persist in your effort to warp and pervert that child’s nature to fit it to some preconceived purpose of conventionality.”

“I don’t know just what you mean, Arthur,” responded the old lady, “but I know my duty, and I’m going to do it. The one thing necessary in Dorothy’s case, is to stop her from thinking, and train her to settle down, when the time comes, into the life of a Virginia matron. It is her only salvation.”

“Salvation from what?” asked Arthur, almost angrily.

“I can’t tell you,” the old lady answered. “But the girl will never settle into her proper place if she goes on thinking, as she does now. So I’m going to stop it.”

“And I,” the young man thought, though he did not say it, “am going to teach her to think more than ever. I’ll educate that child so long as I am condemned to lead this idle life. I’ll make it my business to see that her mind shall not be put into a corset, that her extraordinary truthfulness shall not be taught to tell lies by indirection, that she shall not be restrained of her natural and healthful development. It will be worth while to play the part of idle plantation owner for a year or two, to accomplish a task like that. I can never learn to feel any profound interest in the growing of tobacco, wheat and corn—but the cultivation of that child into what she should be is a nobler work than that of all the agriculturists of the south side put together. I’ll make it my task while I am kept here away from my life’s chosen work.”

That day Arthur Brent sent a letter to New York. In it he ordered his library and the contents of his laboratory sent to him at Wyanoke. He ordered also a good many books that were not already in his library. He sent for a carpenter on that same day, and set him at work in a hurry, constructing a building of his own designing upon a spot selected especially with reference to drainage, light and other requirements of a laboratory. He even sent to Richmond for a plumber to put in chemical sinks, drain pipes and other laboratory fittings.

VI
“NOW YOU MAY CALL ME DOROTHY”

ARTHUR BRENT had now come to understand, in some degree at least, who Dorothy South was. He remembered that the Pocahontas plantation which immediately adjoined Wyanoke on the east, was the property of a Dr. South, whom he had never seen. At the time of his own boyhood’s year at Wyanoke he had understood, in a vague way that Dr. South was absent somewhere on his travels. Somehow the people whom he had met at Wyanoke and elsewhere, had seemed to be sorry for Dr. South but they never said why. Apparently they held him in very high esteem, as Arthur remembered, and seemed deeply to regret the necessity—whatever it was—which detained him away, and to all intents and purposes made of Pocahontas a closed house. For while the owner of that plantation insisted that the doors of his mansion should always remain open to his friends, and that dinner should be served there at the accustomed hour of four o’clock every day during his absence, so that any friend who pleased might avail himself of a hospitality which had never failed,—there was no white person on the plantation except the overseer. Gentlemen passing that way near the dinner hour used sometimes to stop and occupy places at the table, an event which the negro major-domo always welcomed as a pleasing interruption in the loneliness of the house. The hospitality of Pocahontas had been notable for generations past, and the old servant recalled a time when the laughter of young men and maidens had made the great rooms of the mansion vocal with merriment. Arthur himself had once taken dinner there with his uncle, and had been curiously impressed with the rule of the master that dinner should be served, whether there were anybody there to partake of it or not. He recalled all these things now, and argued that Dr. South’s long absence could not have been caused by anything that discredited him among the neighbors. For had not those neighbors always regretted his absence, and expressed a wish for his return? Arthur remembered in what terms of respect and even of affection, everybody had spoken of the absent man. He remembered too that about the time of his own departure from Wyanoke, there had been a stir of pleased expectation, over the news that Dr. South was soon to return and reopen the hospitable house.

He discovered now that Dr. South had in fact returned at that time and had resumed the old life at Pocahontas, dispensing a graceful hospitality during the seven or eight years that had elapsed between his return and his death. This latter event, Arthur had incidentally learned, had occurred three years or so before his own accession to the Wyanoke estate. Since that time Dorothy had lived with Aunt Polly, the late master of Wyanoke having been her guardian.

So much and no more, Arthur knew. It did not satisfy a curiosity which he would not satisfy by asking questions. It did not tell him why Aunt Polly spoke of the girl with pity, calling her “poor Dorothy.” It did not explain to him why there should be a special effort made to secure the girl’s marriage into a “good family.” What could be more probable than that that would happen in due course without any managing whatever? The girl was the daughter of as good a family as any in Virginia. She was the sole heir of a fine estate. Finally, she promised to become a particularly beautiful young woman, and one of unusual attractiveness of mind.

Yet everywhere Arthur heard her spoken of as “poor Dorothy,” and he observed particularly that the universal kindness of the gentlewomen to the child was always marked by a tone or manner suggestive of compassion. The fact irritated the young man, as facts which he could not explain were apt to do with one of his scientific mental habit. There were other puzzling aspects of the matter, too. Why was the girl forbidden to sing, to learn music, or even to enjoy it? Where had she got her curious conceptions of life? And above all, what did Aunt Polly mean by saying that this mere child’s future marriage had been “already arranged?”

“The whole thing is a riddle,” he said to himself. “I shall make no effort to solve it, but I have a mind to interfere somewhat with the execution of any plans that a stupid conventionality may have formed to sacrifice this rarely gifted child to some Moloch of social propriety. Of course I shall not try in any way to control her life or direct her future. But at any rate I shall see to it that she shall be compelled to nothing without her own consent. Meanwhile, as they won’t let her learn music, I’ll teach her science. I see clearly that it will take me three or four years to do what I have planned to do at Wyanoke—to pay off the debts, and set the negroes up as small farmers on their own account in the west. During that time I shall have ample opportunity to train the child’s mind in a way worthy of it, and when I have done that I fancy she will order her own life with very little regard to the plans of those who are arranging to make of her a mere pawn upon the chess board. Thank heaven, this thing gives me a new interest. It will prevent my mind from vegetating and my character from becoming mildewed. It opens to me a duty and an occupation—a duty untouched with selfish indulgence, an occupation which I can pursue without a thought of any other reward than the joy of worthy achievement.”

“Miss Dorothy,” he said to the girl that evening, “I observe that you are an early riser.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “You see I must be up soon in the morning”—that use of “soon” for “early” was invariable in Virginia—“to see that the maids begin their work right. You see I carry the keys.”

“Yes, I know, you are housekeeper, and a very conscientious one I think. But I wonder if your duties in the early morning are too exacting to permit you to ride with me before breakfast. You see I want to make a tour of inspection over the plantation and I’d like to have you for my guide. The days are so warm that I have a fancy to ride in the cool of the morning. Would it please you to accompany me and tell me about things?”

“I’ll like that very much. I’m always down stairs by five o’clock, so if you like we can ride at six any morning you please. That will give us three hours before breakfast.”

“Thank you very much,” Arthur replied. “If you please, then, we’ll ride tomorrow morning.”

When Arthur came down stairs the next morning he found the maids busily polishing the snow-white floors with pine needles and great log and husk rubbers, while their young mistress was giving her final instructions to Johnny, the dining room servant. Hearing Arthur’s step on the stair she commanded the negro to bring the coffee urn and in answer to the young master’s cheery good morning, she handed him a cup of steaming coffee.

“This is a very pleasant surprise,” he exclaimed. “I had not expected coffee until breakfast time.”

“Oh, you must never ride soon in the morning without taking coffee first,” she replied. “That’s the way to keep well. We always have a big kettle of coffee for the field hands before they go to work. Their breakfast isn’t ready till ten o’clock, and the coffee keeps the chill off.”

“Why is their breakfast served so late?”

“Oh, they like it that way. They don’t want anything but coffee soon in the morning. They breakfast at ten, and then the time isn’t so long before their noonday dinner.”

“I should think that an excellent plan,” answered the doctor. “As a hygienist I highly approve of it. After all it isn’t very different from the custom of the French peasants. But come, Miss Dorothy, Ben has the horses at the gate.”

The girl, fresh-faced, lithe-limbed and joyous, hastily donned her long riding skirt which made her look, Arthur thought, like a little child masquerading in some grown woman’s garments, and nimbly tripped down the walk to the gate way. There she quickly but searchingly looked the horses over, felt of the girths, and, taking from her belt a fine white cambric handkerchief, proceeded to rub it vigorously on the animals’ rumps. Finding soil upon the dainty cambric, she held it up before Ben’s face, and silently looked at him for the space of thirty seconds. Then she tossed the handkerchief to him and commanded:—“Go to the house and fetch me another handkerchief.”

There was something almost tragic in the negro’s humiliation as he walked away on his mission. Arthur had watched the little scene with amused interest. When it was over the girl, without waiting for him to offer her a hand as a step, seized the pommel and sprang into the saddle.

“Why did you do that, Miss Dorothy?” the young man asked as the horses, feeling the thrill of morning in their veins, began their journey with a waltz.

“What? rub the horses?”

“No. Why did you look at Ben in that way? And why did it seem such a punishment to him?”

“I wanted him to remember. He knows I never permit him to bring me a horse that isn’t perfectly clean.”

“And will he remember now?”

“Certainly. You saw how severely he was punished this time. He doesn’t want that kind of thing to happen again.”

“But I don’t understand. You did nothing to him. You didn’t even scold him.”

“Of course I didn’t. Scolding is foolish. Only weak-minded people scold.”

“But I shouldn’t have thought Ben fine enough or sensitive enough to feel the sort of punishment you gave him. Why should he mind it?”

“Oh, everybody minds being looked at in that way—everybody who has been doing wrong. You see one always knows when one has done wrong. Ben knew, and when I looked at him he saw that I knew too. So it hurt him. You’ll see now that he’ll never bring you or me a horse on which we can soil our handkerchiefs.”

“Where did you learn all that?” asked Arthur, full of curiosity and interest.

“I suppose my father taught me. He taught me everything I know. I remember that whenever I was naughty, he would look at me over his spectacles and make me ever so sorry. You see even if I knew I had done wrong I didn’t think much about it, till father looked at me. After that I would think about it all day and all night, and be, oh, so sorry! Then I would try not to displease my father again.”

“Your father must have been a very wise as well as a very good man!”

“He was,” and two tears slipped from the girl’s eyes as she recalled the father who had been everything to her from her very infancy. “That is why I always try, now that he is gone, never to do anything that he would have disliked. I always think ‘I won’t do that, for if I do father will look at me.’ You see I must be a great deal more careful than other girls.”

“Why? I see no reason for that.”

“That’s because you don’t know about—about things. I was born bad, and if I’m not more careful than other girls have to be, I shall be very bad when I grow up.”

“Will you forgive me if I say I don’t believe that?” asked Arthur.

“Oh, but it’s true,” answered the girl, looking him straight in the face, with an expression of astonishment at his incredulity.

Arthur saw fit to change the conversation. So he returned to Ben’s case.

“Most women would have sent Ben to the overseer for punishment, wouldn’t they?”

“Some would, but I never find that necessary. Besides I hate your overseer.”

“Why? What has he done to incur your displeasure, Miss Dorothy?”

“Now you’re mocking me for minding things that are none of my business,” said the girl with a touch of contrition in her voice.

“Indeed I am not,” answered the young man with earnestness. “And you have not been doing anything of the kind. I asked you to tell me about things here at Wyanoke, because it is necessary that I should know them. So when you tell me that you hate the overseer here, I want to know why. It is very necessary for me to know what sort of man he is, so that I may govern myself accordingly. I have great confidence in your judgment, young as you are. I am very sure you would not hate the overseer without good cause. So you will do me a favor if you’ll tell me why you hate him.”

“It is because he is cruel and a coward.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen it for myself. He strikes the field hands for nothing. He has even cruelly whipped some of the women servants with the black snake whip he carries. I told him only a little while ago that if I ever caught him doing that again, I’d set my dogs on him. No Virginia gentleman would permit such a thing. Uncle Robert—that’s the name I always called your uncle by—would have shot the fellow for that, I think.”

“But why did Uncle Robert employ such a man for overseer?”

“He never did. Uncle Robert never kept any overseer. He used to say that the authority of the master of a plantation was too great to be delegated to any person who didn’t care for the black people and didn’t feel his responsibility.”

“But how did the fellow come to be here then? Who employed him?”

“Mr. Peyton did—Mr. Madison Peyton. When your uncle was ill, Mr. Peyton looked after things for him, and he kept it up after Uncle Robert died. He hired this overseer. He said he was too busy on his own plantation to take care of things here in person.”

“Uncle Robert was quite right,” said Arthur meditatively. “And now that I am charged with the responsibility for these black people, I will not delegate my power to any overseer, least of all to one whom you have found out to be a cruel coward. Where do you suppose we could find him now?”

“Down in the tobacco new grounds,” the girl answered. “I was going there to-day to set my dogs on him, but I remembered that you were master now.”

“What was the special occasion for your anger this time?” Arthur asked in a certain quiet, seemingly half indifferent tone which Dorothy found inscrutable.

“He whipped poor old Michael, the gardener last night,” answered the girl with a glint as of fire in her eyes. “He had no right to do that. Michael isn’t a field hand, and he isn’t under the overseer’s control.”

“Do you mean the shambling old man I saw in the garden yesterday? Surely he didn’t whip that poor decrepit old man!”

“Yes, he did. I told you he was a cruel coward.”

“Let’s ride to the tobacco new grounds at once,” said Arthur quite as he might have suggested the most indifferent thing. But Dorothy observed that on the way to the new grounds Arthur Brent spoke no word. Twice she addressed him, but he made no response.

Arrived at the new grounds Arthur called the overseer to him and without preface asked him:

“Did you strike old Michael with your whip last night?”

“Yes, and there wan’t a lick amiss unless I made a lick at him and missed him.”

The man laughed at his own clumsy witticism, but the humor of it seemed not to impress the new master of the plantation. For reply he said:

“Go to your house at once and pack up your belongings. Come to me after I have had my breakfast, and we’ll have a settlement. You are to leave my plantation to-day and never set foot upon it again. Come, Miss Dorothy, let’s continue our ride!”

With that the two wheeled about, the girl saying:

“Let’s run our horses for a stretch.” Instantly she set off at breakneck speed across the fields and over two stiff fences before regaining the main plantation road. There she drew rein and turning full upon her companion she said:

“Now you may call me Dorothy.”

VII
SHRUB HILL CHURCH

Shrub Hill Church represented one of the most attractive of Virginia traditions. Early in his career as statesman, Thomas Jefferson had rendered Virginia a most notable service. He had secured the complete separation of church from state, the dissolution of that unholy alliance between religion and government, with which despotism and class privilege have always buttressed the fabric of oppression. But church and family remained, and in the course of generations that relation had assumed characteristics of a most wholesome, ameliorating and liberalizing character.

Thus at Shrub Hill all the people of character and repute in the region round about, found themselves at home. They were in large degree Baptists and Presbyterians in their personal church relations, but all of them deemed themselves members of Shrub Hill—the Episcopal church which had survived from that earlier time when to be a gentleman carried with it the presumption of adherence to the established religion. All of them attended service there. All contributed to the cost of keeping the edifice and the graveyard grounds in repair. All of them shared in the payment of the old rector’s salary and he in his turn preached scrupulously innocuous sermons to them—sermons ten minutes in length which might have been repeated with entire propriety and acceptance in any Baptist or Presbyterian pulpit.

When the Easter elections came, all the gentlemen of the neighborhood felt themselves entitled to vote for the wardens and vestrymen already in office, or for the acceptable person selected by common consent to take the place of any warden or vestryman who might have been laid to rest beneath the sod of the Shrub Hill churchyard during the year. And the wardens and vestrymen were Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians or gentlemen professing no faith, quite indifferently.

These people were hot debaters of politics and religion—especially religion. When the question of immersion or pedo-baptism was up, each was ready and eager to maintain the creed of his own church with all the arguments that had been formulated for that purpose generations before and worn smooth to the tongue by oft-repeated use. But this fervor made no difference whatever in the loyalty of their allegiance to their old family church at Shrub Hill. There they found common ground of tradition and affection. There they were all alike in right of inheritance. There all of them expected to be buried by the side of their forefathers.

It has been said already that services were held at Shrub Hill on two Sundays of the month. As the old rector lived within a few minutes’ walk of the church, and had no other duty than its ministry, there might have been services there every Sunday in the year, except that such a practice would have interfered with the desire of those who constituted its congregation to attend their own particular Baptist or Presbyterian churches, which held services on the other Sundays. It was no part of the spirit or mission of the family church thus to interfere with the religious preferences of its members, and so, from time immemorial, there had been services at Shrub Hill only upon two Sundays of the month.

Everybody attended those services—every gentleman and every gentlewoman at least. That is to say, all went to the church and the women with a few of the older men went in. The rest of the gentlemen gathered in groups under the trees outside—for the church stood in the midst of an unbroken woodland—and chatted in low tones while the service was in progress. Thus they fulfilled their gentlemanly obligations of church going, without the fatigue of personal participation in the services.

The gentlemen rode to church on horseback. The ladies, old and young alike, went thither in their family carriages. Many of these, especially the younger ones, were accustomed to go everywhere else in the saddle, but to church, propriety and tradition required them to go decorously in the great lumbering vehicles of family state.

The gentlemen arrived first and took their places at the church door to greet the gentlewomen and give them a hand in alighting from the high-hung carriages.

As soon as the service was over the social clearing-house held its session. It was not known by that name, but that in fact was what it amounted to. Every young woman present invited every other young woman present to go home with her to dinner and to stay for a few days or for a week. There was a babel of insistent tongues out of which nothing less sagacious than feminine intelligence could have extracted a resultant understanding. But after a few minutes all was as orderly as the domestic arrangements over which these young women were accustomed to preside. Two or three of them had won all the others to their will, and the company, including all there was of young and rich voiced femininity in the region round about, was divided into squads and assigned to two or three hospitable mansions, whither trunks would follow in the early morning of the Monday.

The young men accommodated themselves at once to these arrangements, each accepting at least a dinner invitation to the house, to which the young woman most attractive to himself had elected to go. As there was no afternoon or evening service, the religious duties of the day were at an end before one of the clock.

Out under the trees before and during the service the men discussed affairs of interest to themselves, and on this his first Sunday, Arthur found that his own affairs constituted the subject of most general interest. He was heartily welcomed as the new master of Wyanoke, the welcome partaking somewhat of the nature of that given to one who returns to right ways of living after erratic wanderings. There was a kindly disposition to recognize Arthur’s birthright as a Virginian, together with a generous readiness to forgive his youthful indiscretion in living so much elsewhere.

Only one man ventured to be censorious, and that was Madison Peyton, who was accustomed to impress himself upon the community in ways which were sometimes anything but agreeable, but to which everybody was accustomed to submit in a nameless sort of fear of his sharp tongue—everybody, that is to say, except Aunt Polly and John Meaux.

Aunt Polly was not afraid of Madison Peyton for several reasons. The first was that Aunt Polly was not accustomed to stand in awe of anybody. The second was that her blood was quite the bluest in all that part of the State and she had traditions behind her. Finally she was a shrewdly penetrative person who had long ago discovered the nature of Madison Peyton’s pretensions and subjected them to sarcastic analysis. As for John Meaux, everybody knew him as by odds the most successful planter and most capable man of business in the county. Madison Peyton could teach him nothing, and he had a whiplash attachment to his tongue, the sting of which Peyton did not care to invoke.

For the rest, Madison Peyton was dominant. It was his habit to lecture his neighbors upon their follies and short-comings and rather arrogantly, though with a carefully simulated good nature, to dictate to them what they should or should not do, assuming with good-natured insolence an authority which in no way belonged to him. In this way, during the late Robert Brent’s last illness, Peyton had installed as overseer at Wyanoke, a man whom the planters generally refused to employ because of his known cruelty, but whose capacity to make full crops was well attested by experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ignoring Meaux’s interruption Peyton said to Arthur:

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

“Have I? I didn’t know it.”

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

“Who made the contract?” asked Arthur.

“Well, I did—acting for your uncle.”

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

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

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

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

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

VIII
A DINNER AT BRANTON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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