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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IX
DOROTHY’S CASE

There was already a library of some importance at Wyanoke, the result of irregular buying during two hundred years past. Swift was there in time stained vellum. The poets, from Dryden and Pope to the last quarter of the eighteenth century were well represented, and there were original editions of “Childe Harold,” and “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” on the shelves. Scott was present in leathern cuirass of binding—both in his novels and in his poems. But there was not a line of Coleridge or Wordsworth or Shelley or Rogers or Campbell or John Keats, not a suggestion of Matthew Arnold. Tennyson, Browning and their fellows were completely absent, though Bailey’s “Festus” was there to represent modern poetry.

The latest novels in the list, apart from Scott, were “Evelina,” “The Children of The Abbey,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” “Scottish Chiefs” and some others of their kind. But all the abominations of Smollett, all the grossness of Fielding, all the ribaldry of Richardson, and all the sentimental indecency of Laurence Sterne were present in full force—on top shelves, out of consideration for maidenly modesty.

In history there were Josephus and Rollin, and scarcely anything else. Hume was excluded because of his scepticism, and Gibbon had been passed over as a monster of unbelief.

Arthur found that Dorothy had browsed somewhat in this old library, particularly among the British Essayists and in some old volumes of Dramas. Her purity had revolted at Fielding, Smollett and their kind, and she had found the sentimentalities of Miss Burney insipid. But she knew her “Don Quixote” almost by heart, and “Gil Blas” even more minutely. She had read much of Montaigne and something of Rousseau in the original also, and the Latin classics were her familiars. For her father had taught her from infancy, French and Latin, not after the manner of the schools, as grammatical gymnastics, but with an eye single to the easy and intelligent reading of the rich literatures that those languages offer to the initiated. The girl knew scarcely a single rule of Latin grammar—in text book terms at least—but she read her Virgil and Horace almost as easily as she did her Bible.

It was with definite reference to the deficiencies of this and other old plantation libraries, that Arthur Brent ordered books. He selected Dorothy’s own sitting room—opening off her chamber—as the one in which to bestow the treasures of modern literature—Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer, Coleridge, Keats, Rogers, Campbell, Shelley and their later successors—Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Halleck, and above all Irving, Paulding and Hawthorne.

In arranging these treasures in Dorothy’s outer room, Arthur resorted to a little trick or two. He would pick up a volume with ostensible purpose of placing it upon a shelf, but would turn to a favorite passage and read a little aloud. Then, suddenly stopping, he would say:—

“But you’ll read all that for yourself,” and would add some bit of comment or suggestion of a kind to awaken the girl’s attention and attract her to the author in question. Before he had finished arranging the books in that room Dorothy was almost madly eager to read all of them. A new world was opening to her, a world of modern thought far more congenial to her mind than the older literature which alone she had known before. Here was a literature of which she had scarcely known even the existence. It was a clean, wholesome, well-aired literature; a literature founded upon modern ways of thinking; a literature that dealt with modern life and character; a literature instinct with the thought and sentiment of her own time. The girl was at once bewildered by the extent of it and fascinated by its charm. Her sleep was cut short in her eagerness to read it all. Its influence upon her mind and character became at once and insistently manifest.

“Here endeth the first lesson,” quoted Arthur Brent when he had thus placed all that is best in modern literature temptingly at this eager girl’s hand. “It will puzzle them to stop her from thinking now,” he added, “or to confine her thinking within their strait-laced conventions. Now for science.”

The age of Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer had not yet come, in 1859. Haeckel was still unheard of, outside of Berlin and Jena. The science of biology, in which all other science finds its fruition and justifies its being, was then scarcely “a borning.” Otherwise, Arthur Brent would have made of Dorothy’s amateurish acquaintance with botany the basis of a systematic study, leading up to that conception which came later to science, that all life is one, whether animal or vegetable; that species are the results of differentiation by selection and development, and that the scheme of nature is one uniform, consistent whole, composed of closely related parts. But this thought had not yet come to science. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was not published until later in that year, Wallace was off on his voyages and had not yet reached those all embracing conclusions. Huxley was still only a young man of promise. Virchow was bound in those trammels of tradition from which he was destined never quite to disentangle himself, even with the stimulus of Haeckel, his wonderful pupil. But the thought that has since made science alive had been dreamed of even then. There were suggestions of it in the manuscripts,—written backwards—of Leonardo da Vinci, and Goethe had foreshadowed much of it.

Nevertheless, it was not for such sake or with a purpose so broad that Arthur Brent set out to interest Dorothy South in science. His only purpose was to teach her to think, to implant in her mind that divine thirst for sound knowledge which he clearly recognized as a specific remedy for conventional narrowness of mind.

The girl was quick to learn rudiments and general principles, and in laboratory work she soon surpassed her master as a maker of experiments. In such work her habits of exactitude stood her in good stead, and her conscientiousness had its important part to play.

But science did not become a very serious occupation with Dorothy. It was rather play than study at first, and when she had acquired some insight into it, so that its suggestions served to explain the phenomena about her, she was fairly well content. She had no passion for original research and of that Arthur was rather glad. “That sort of thing is masculine,” he reflected, “and she is altogether a woman. I don’t want her to grow into anything else.”

But to her passion for literature there was no limit. “Literature concerns itself with people,” she said to Arthur one day, “and I care more for people than for gases and bases and reactions.”

But literature, in its concern for people, records the story of human life through all the centuries, and the development of human thought. It includes history and speculative philosophy and Dorothy manifested almost a passion for these.

It was at this point that trouble first arose. So long as the girl was supposed to be devouring novels and poetry, the community admired and approved. But when it was noised abroad that she knew Gibbon as familiarly as she did her catechism, that she had read Hume’s Essays and Locke on the Understanding, together with the elder Mill, and Jeremy Bentham and much else of like kind, the wonder was not unmixed with doubt as to the fitness of such reading for a young girl.

For a time even Aunt Polly shared this doubt but she was quickly cured of it when Madison Peyton, with his customary impertinence protested. Aunt Polly was not accustomed to agree in opinion with Madison Peyton, and she resented the suggestion that the girl could come to any harm while under her care. So she combated Peyton’s view after a destructive fashion. When he spoke of this literature as unfit, Aunt Polly meekly asked him, “Why?” and naturally he could not answer, having never read a line of it in his life. He sought to evade the question but Aunt Polly was relentless, greatly to the amusement of John Meaux and Col. Majors, the lawyer of the old families. She insisted upon his telling her which of the books were dangerous for Dorothy to read. “How else can I know which to take away from her?” she asked. When at last he unwisely ventured to mention Gibbon—having somehow got the impression, which was common then, that the “Decline and Fall” was a sceptical work, Aunt Polly—who had been sharing Dorothy’s reading of it,—plied him with closer questions.

“In what way is it harmful?” she asked, and then, quite innocently, “what is it all about any how, Madison?”

“Oh, well, we can’t go into that,” he said evasively.

“But why not? That is precisely what we must go into if we are to direct Dorothy’s reading properly. What is this book that you think she ought not to read? What does it treat of? What is there in it that you object to?”

Thus baited on a subject that he knew nothing about, Peyton grew angry, though he knew it would not do for him to manifest the fact. He unwisely, but with an air of very superior wisdom, blurted out:—

“If you had read that book, Cousin Polly, you wouldn’t like to make it the subject of conversation.”

“So?” asked the old lady. “It is in consideration of my ignorance then that you graciously pardon my discretion?”

“It’s a very proper ignorance. I respect you for never having indulged in such reading,” he answered.

“Then you must respect me less,” calmly responded the old lady, “for I have read the book and I’m reading it a second time. I don’t see that it has hurt me, but I’ll bow to your superior wisdom if you’ll only tell me what there is in the book that is likely to undermine my morals.”

The laugh that followed from Col. Majors and John Meaux—for the idea that anything, literary or otherwise, could undermine the vigorous morals of this high bred dame was too ludicrous to be resisted—nettled Peyton anew. Still further losing his temper he broke out:

“How should I know what is in the book? I never read such stuff. But I know it is unfit for a young girl, and in this case I have a right to dictate. I tell you now, Cousin Polly, that I will not have Dorothy’s mind perverted by such reading. My interest in this case is paramount and I mean to assert it. I have been glad to have her with you for the sake of the social and moral training I expected you to give her. But I tell you now, that if you don’t stop all this kind of reading and all this slopping in a laboratory, trying to learn atheistical science—for all science is atheistical as you well know—”

“Pardon me, Madison,” broke in the old lady, “I didn’t know that. Won’t you explain it to me, please?”—this with the meekness of a reverent disciple, a meekness which Peyton knew to be a mockery.

“Oh, everybody knows that,” testily answered the man. “And it is indecent as well. I hear that Arthur has been teaching Dorothy a lot about anatomy and that sort of thing that no woman ought to know, and—”

“Why shouldn’t a woman know that?” asked Aunt Polly, still delivering her hot shot as if they had been balls of the zephyr she was knitting into a nubia. “Does it do her any harm to know how—”

“Oh, please don’t ask me to go into that, Cousin Polly,” the man impatiently responded. “You see it isn’t a proper subject of conversation.”

“Oh, isn’t it? I didn’t know, you see. And as you will not enlighten me, let us return to what you were about to say. I beg pardon for interrupting.”

“I don’t remember what I was going to say,” said Peyton, anxious to end the discussion. “Besides it was of no consequence. Let’s talk of something else.”

“Not yet, please,” placidly answered the old lady. “I remember that you were about to threaten me with something. Now I never was threatened in my life, and I’m really anxious to know how it feels. So please go on and threaten me, Madison.”

“I never thought of threatening you, Cousin Polly, I assure you. You’re mistaken in that, surely.”

“Not at all. You said you had been pleased to have Dorothy under my charge. I thank you for saying that. But you added that if I didn’t stop her reading and her scientific studies you’d—you didn’t say just what you’d do. That is because I interrupted. I beg pardon for doing so, but now you must complete the sentence.”

“Oh, I only meant that if the girl was to be miseducated at Wyanoke, I should feel myself obliged to take her away to my own house and—”

“You need not continue,” answered the old lady, rising in stately wrath. “You have said quite enough. Now let me make my reply. It is simply that if you ever attempt to put such an affront as that upon me, you’ll wish you had never been born.”

She instantly withdrew from the piazza of the house in which all were guests, John Meaux gallantly accompanying her. She paid no more heed to Peyton’s clamorous protestations of apology than to the buzzing of the bees that were plundering the honeysuckles of their sweets.

When she had gone Peyton began to realize the mistake he had made. In that Col. Majors, who was left alone with him, greatly assisted him. In the slow, deliberate way in which he always spoke, Col. Majors said:

“You know, Peyton, that I do not often volunteer advice before I am asked to give it, but in this case I am going to do so. It seems to me that you have overlooked certain facts which present themselves to my mind, as important, and of which I think the courts would take cognizance.”

“Oh, I only meant to give Cousin Polly a hint,” broke in Peyton. “Of course I didn’t seriously mean that I would take the girl away from her.”

“It is well that you did not,” answered the lawyer, “for the sufficient reason that you could not do that if you were determined upon it.”

“Why, surely,” Peyton protested. “I have a right to look after the girl’s welfare?”

“Absolutely none whatever.”

“Why, you forget the arrangement between me and Dr. South.”

“Not at all. That arrangement was at best a contract without consideration, and therefore nonenforcible. Even if it had been reduced to writing and formally executed, it would be so much waste paper in the eyes of a court. Dorothy is a ward in chancery. The court would never permit the enforcement of a contract of that kind upon her, so long as she is under age; and when she attains her majority she will be absolutely free, if I know anything of the law, to repudiate an arrangement disposing of her life, made by others without her consent.”

“Do you mean that on a mere whim of her own, that girl can upset the advantageous arrangements made for her by her father and undo the whole thing?”

“I mean precisely that. But pardon me, the time has not come to consider that question. What I would impress upon your mind at present is that on the whole you’d better make your peace with Miss Polly. She has the girl in charge, and if you antagonize her, she may perhaps train Miss Dorothy to repudiate the arrangement altogether. In that case you may not wish that you had never been born, as Miss Polly put the matter, but you’ll wish that you hadn’t offended the dear old lady.”

“Then I must take the girl away from her at once,” exclaimed Peyton in alarm. “I mustn’t leave her for another day under Cousin Polly’s influence.”

“But you cannot take her away, Peyton. That is what I am trying to impress upon your mind.”

“But why not? Surely I have a right—”

“You have absolutely no rights in the premises. The will of the late Dr. South, made Robert Brent Dorothy’s guardian.”

“But Robert Brent is dead,” broke in Peyton, impatiently, “and I am to be the girl’s guardian after the next term of the court.”

“Perhaps so,” answered the lawyer. “The court usually allows the ward to choose her guardian in such a case, and if you strongly commend yourself to her, she may choose you. But I may be allowed to suggest that that will depend a good deal upon what advice Miss Polly may give her. She is very fond of Miss Polly, and apt to be guided by her. However that again is a matter that has no bearing upon the question in hand. Even were you already appointed guardian of Miss Dorothy’s estate you could not take the girl away from Miss Polly.”

“Why not? Has a guardian no authority?”

“Oh, yes—a very large authority. But it happens in this case that by the terms of the late Dr. South’s will, Miss Polly is made sole and absolute guardian of Miss Dorothy’s person until such time as she shall come of age or previously marry with Miss Polly’s consent. Neither Robert Brent, during his life, nor any person appointed to succeed him as guardian of Miss Dorothy’s estate, had, or has, or can have the smallest right to take her away from the guardian of her person. That could be done only by going into court and showing that the guardian of the person was of immoral life and unfit to have charge of a child. It would be risky, to say the least of it, to suggest such a thing as that in the case of Miss Polly, wouldn’t it? She has no very near relatives but there isn’t a young or a middle-aged man in this county who wouldn’t, in that case, adopt the relation of nearest male relation to her and send inconvenient billets-doux to you by the hands of insistent friends.”

“Oh, that’s all nonsense,” answered Peyton. “Of course nobody would think of such a thing as questioning Cousin Polly’s eminent fitness to bring up a girl.”

“And yet that is precisely what you did, by implication at least, a little while ago. My advice to you is to repair your blunder at the earliest possible moment.”

Peyton clearly saw the necessity of doing so, especially now that he had learned that Dorothy must in any case remain in Aunt Polly’s charge. It would ruin all his plans to have Aunt Polly antagonize them even passively. But how to atone for his error was a difficult problem. With anybody else he would have tried his favorite tactics of “laughing the thing off,” treating it as a jest and being more good naturedly insolent than ever. But with Aunt Polly he could not do that. She was much too shrewdly penetrative to be deceived by such measures and much too sensitively self-respectful to tolerate familiarity as a substitute for an apology.

Moreover he knew that he needed something more than Aunt Polly’s forgiveness. He wanted her coöperation. For the dread which had inspired his blundering outbreak, was not mainly, if at all, a dread of English literature as a perverting educational force. He knew next to nothing of literature and he cared even less. Under ordinary circumstances he would never have bothered himself over any question of Dorothy’s reading. But Dorothy was doing her reading under the tutelage and with the sympathy of Arthur Brent, and Madison Peyton foresaw that the close, daily association of the girl—child as she was—with a man so gifted and so pleasing was likely, after a year or two at least to grow into a warmer attachment. And even if that should not happen, he felt that her education under the influence of such a man might give her ideals and standards which would not be satisfied by the life plans made for her between himself and her father.

It was not to remove her from Aunt Polly’s control, or even to save her from too much serious reading—though he was suspicious of that—that he cared. He wanted to keep her away from Arthur Brent’s influence, and it was in a blundering attempt to bring that about that he had managed to offend Aunt Polly, making a possible enemy of his most necessary ally.

It was with a perturbed mind therefore that he rode away from the hospitable house where the discussion had occurred, making some hastily manufactured excuse to the hostess, for not remaining to dinner.

X
DOROTHY VOLUNTEERS

ALL this while Arthur Brent was a very busy man. It was true, as Madison Peyton had said, that he knew little of planting, but he had two strong coadjutors in the cultivation of his crops. John Meaux—perhaps in unconscious spite of Peyton—frequently rode over to Wyanoke and visited all its fields in company with the young master of the plantation. There was not much in common between Meaux and Arthur, not much to breed a close intimacy. Meaux was an educated man, within the rather narrow limits established by the curriculum at West Point—for Robert E. Lee had not yet done his work of enlargement and betterment at the military academy when Meaux was a cadet in that institution—but he was not a man of much reading, and intellectually he was indolent. Nevertheless he was a pleasant enough companion, his friendship for Arthur was genuine, and he knew more about the arts of planting than anybody else in that region. He freely gave Arthur the benefit of his judgment and skill greatly to the advantage of the growing crops at Wyanoke.

Archer Bannister, too, was often Arthur’s guest. He came and went as he pleased, sometimes remaining for three or four days at a time, sometimes staying only long enough to advise Arthur to have a tobacco lot cut before a rain should come to wash off the “molasses”—as the thick gum on a ripening tobacco leaf was called. He was himself a skilful planter and his almost daily counsel was of great value to Arthur’s inexperience.

But it was not of things agricultural only that these two were accustomed to talk with each other. There had quickly grown up between them an almost brotherly intimacy. They were men of congenial tastes and close intellectual sympathies, and there was from the first a strong liking on either side which was referable rather to similarity of character than to anything merely intellectual. Both men cherished high ideals of conduct, and both were loyal to those ideals. Both were thoroughly educated, and both had been broadened by travel. Both indulged in intellectual activities not always attractive even to men of culture. Arthur loved science with the devotion of a disciple; Archer rejoiced in a study of its conclusions and their consequences rather than of its processes, its methods, its details. Above all, so far as intellectual sympathies were concerned, both young men were almost passionately devoted to literature. Between two such men, thrown together in that atmosphere of leisure which was the crowning glory of Virginia plantation life, it was inevitable that something more and stronger than ordinary friendship should grow up. And between them stood also Archer’s sister Edmonia—a woman whom both held in tender affection, the one loving her as a sister, the other as—he scarcely knew what. She shared the ideas, the impulses, the high principles of both, and in her feminine way she shared also their intellectual tastes and aspirations.

Arthur had still another coadjutor in his management of affairs, in the person of Dorothy. Throughout the summer and autumn the girl rode with him every morning during the hours before breakfast, and, in her queer, half childish, half womanly way, she instructed him mightily in many things. Her habits of close observation had given her a large and accurate knowledge of plantation affairs which was invaluable to him, covering as it did many points of detail left unmentioned by Meaux and Bannister.

But his interest in the girl was chiefly psychological. The contradiction he observed between her absolutely child-like simplicity and the strangely sage and old way she had of thinking now and then, interested him beyond measure. Her honesty was phenomenal—her truthfulness astonishing.

One morning as the two rode together through the corn they came upon a watermelon three fourths grown. Instantly the girl slipped to the ground with the request:—

“Lend me your knife, please.”

He handed her the knife wondering what she would do with it. After an effort to open it she handed it back, saying: “Won’t you please open it? Knives are not fit for women’s use. Our thumb nails are not strong enough to open them. But we use them, anyhow. That’s because women’s masters are not severe enough with them.”

Receiving the knife again, with a blade opened, the girl stooped and quickly scratched Arthur’s initials “A. B.,” upon the melon.

“I’ve observed you do that before, Dorothy,” said Arthur as the girl again mounted Chestnut, without assistance. “Why do you do it?”

“To keep the servants from stealing the melon,” she replied. “Everybody does that. I wonder if it’s right.”

“But how can that keep a negro from taking the melon some dark night after it is ripe and secretly eating it?”

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

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

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

“But how should I know who took it?”

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

“If what is right, Dorothy?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s just it, Cousin Arthur. If a woman speaks out, nobody can hold her responsible. But anybody can hold her nearest male friend responsible and he must fight to maintain what she has said, whether he thinks she was right in saying it or not. The other day Jeff. Peyton—Mr. Madison Peyton’s son, you know,—was over at Wyanoke, when you had gone to Branton. So I had to entertain him.” Dorothy did not know that the youth had been sent to Wyanoke by his father for the express purpose of being entertained by herself. “I found him a pretty stupid fellow, as I always do, but as he pretends to have been a student at the University, I supposed he had read a great deal. So I talked to him about Virgil but he knew so little that I asked him if he had read ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and he told me a deliberate lie. He professed a full acquaintance with that book, and presently I found out that he had never read a line of it. I was so shocked that I forgot myself. I asked him, ‘Why did you lie to me?’ It was dreadfully rude, of course, but I could not help it. Now of course he couldn’t challenge me for that. But if he had been a man of spirit, he would have challenged you, and you see how terribly wrong I should have been to involve you in a quarrel of that kind. Of course if I had been a man, instead of a woman—if I had been answerable for my words—I should have been perfectly free to charge him with lying. But what possible right had I to risk your life in a duel by saying things that I might as well have left unsaid?”

“But you said the other day,” responded Arthur, “that you did not believe in duelling?”

“Of course I don’t. It is a barbarous thing. But it is the custom of our country and we can’t help it. I’ve noticed that if a man fights a duel on proper provocation, everybody says he ought not to have done it. But if he refuses to fight, everybody says he’s a coward. So, under certain circumstances, a man in Virginia who respects himself is absolutely compelled to fight. If Jefferson Peyton had asked you to meet him on account of what I said to him, you couldn’t have refused, could you, Cousin Arthur?”

“I wouldn’t,” was all the answer the young man made; but he put a strong stress upon the last word.

“Oh, I know you wouldn’t,” answered the girl, treating his response as quite a matter of course. “But you see now why a woman must keep silent where a man should speak out. If a man tells the truth he can be called to account for it; so if he is manly he will tell it and take the consequences. But a woman has to remember that if she tells the truth, and the truth happens to be ugly, some man must be shot at for her words.”

“Dorothy,” asked Arthur, with unusual seriousness, “are you afraid of anything?”

“Afraid? No. Of course not.”

“If you were needed very badly for the sake of other people—even negroes—if you could save their lives and ease their sufferings, you’d want to do it, wouldn’t you?”

“Why, of course, Cousin Arthur. I’ve read in Aunt Polly’s old newspapers, how you went to Norfolk in the yellow fever time, and how bravely you—never mind. I’ve read all about that, over and over again, and it’s part of what makes me like you.”

“But courage is not expected of women.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” quickly responded the girl. “Not the courage of fighting, of course—but that’s only because men won’t fight with women, except in mean ways. Women are expected to show courage in other ways, and they do it too. In the newspapers that tell about your heroism at Norfolk, there is a story of how one of your nurses went always to the most dangerous cases, and how, when she died, you officiated at her funeral, instead of the clergyman who had got scared and run away like a coward that did not trust his God. I remember what the newspaper says that you said at the grave, Cousin Arthur. I’ve got it all by heart. You said, at the end of your address:—‘We are accustomed to pay honor and to set up monuments to men who have dared, where daring offered its rich reward of fame and glory. Let us reverently bow our heads and abase our feeble, selfish souls, in presence of the courage of this frail woman, who, in her weakness, has achieved greater things in the sight of God than any that the valor and strength of man have ever accomplished since the foundations of the world were laid. Let us reverently and lovingly make obeisance to the courage of a devoted woman—a courage that we men can never hope to match.’ You see I remember all that you said then, Cousin Arthur, and so you needn’t tell me now that you do not expect courage at the hands of women.”

Arthur made no immediate reply, and the two rode on in silence for a time. After a while, as they neared the house gates, he spoke.

“Dorothy,” he said, “I need your help very badly. You cannot render me the help I want without very serious danger to yourself. So I don’t want you to give me any answer to what I am about to say until tomorrow. I want you to think the matter over very carefully first.”

“Tell me what it is, Cousin Arthur.”

“Why, I find that we are to have a very dangerous epidemic of typhoid fever among the negroes here. When the first case occurred ten days ago I hoped that might be all; but two days later I found two more cases; day before yesterday there were five more. So it is obvious that we are to have an epidemic. All the cases have appeared among the field hands and their families out at the far quarters, and so I hope that the house servants and the people around the stables will escape. But the outbreak is really very serious and the disease is of the most virulent type. I must literally fight it with fire. I have already set men at work building new quarters down by the Silver Spring, a mile away from the infected place, and as soon as I can I’m going to move all the people and set fire to all the old quarters. I’ve bought an old circus tent in Richmond, and I expect it by express today. As soon as it comes I’m going to set it up on the Haw Branch hill, and put all the sick people into it, so as to separate them from those that are well. As fast as others show symptoms of the disease, I’ll remove them also to the hospital tent, and for that purpose I have ordered forty cots and a lot of new blankets and pillows.”

Dorothy ejaculated her sorrow and sympathy with the poor blacks, and quickly added the question: “What is it that I can do, Cousin Arthur? Tell me; you know I will do it.”

“But, Dorothy, dear, I don’t want you to make up your mind till you have thought it all over.”

“My mind is already made up. You want me to nurse these poor sick people, and of course I’m going to do it. You are thinking that the disease is contagious—”

“No, it is only infectious,” he broke in with the instinct of scientific exactitude strong upon him.

“Well, anyhow, it’s catching, and you think I may catch it, and you want me to think out whether I’m afraid of that or not. Very well. I’ve already thought that out. You are going to be with the sick people night and day. Cousin Arthur, I am only a girl, but I’m no more a coward than you are. Tell me what I’m to do. It doesn’t need any thinking out.”

“But, Dorothy, listen to me. These are not your people. If this outbreak had occurred at Pocahontas, the matter would have been different. You might well think that you owed a duty to the people on your own plantation, but you owe none to these people of mine.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I live at Wyanoke. Besides they are human beings and they are in need of help. I don’t know how I can help, but you are going to tell me, and I’m going to do what you want. I will not waste a day in thinking.”

“But, my child, the danger in this case is really very great. Indeed it is extremely probable that if you do what you propose to do, you will have the fever, and as I have already said, it has assumed an unusually virulent form.”

“It can’t be more dangerous than the yellow fever was at Norfolk, and you braved that in order to save the lives of people you had never heard of—people to whom you owed nothing whatever. Cousin Arthur, do you think me less brave than you are?”

“No, dear, but—”

“Very well. You shall tell me after breakfast precisely what I can do, and then I’ll do it. Women are naturally bad, and so they mustn’t lose any opportunity of doing good when they can.”

At that moment they arrived at the house gates. Slipping from her saddle, Dorothy turned her great, earnest eyes full upon her companion, and said with tense lips:

“Promise me one thing, Cousin Arthur! Promise me that if I die in this work you won’t ask any clergyman to mutter worn-out words from a prayer book over my grave, but will yourself say to my friends that I did not shirk like a coward!”

Instantly, and without waiting for the promise she had besought, the girl turned, caught up her long riding skirt and fled like a deer to the house.

XI
THE WOMAN’S AWAKENING

IT was upon a momentary impulse that Arthur Brent had suggested to Dorothy that she should help him in the battle with pestilence which lay before him. As a physician he had been accustomed to practise his profession not in the ordinary, perfunctory way, and not for gain, but in the spirit of a crusader combating disease as the arch enemy of humanity, and partly too for the joy of conquering so merciless a foe. His first thought in this case therefore had been to call to his aid the best assistance available. His chief difficulty, he clearly foresaw, would be in getting his measures intelligently carried out. He must secure the accurate, prompt and intelligent execution of his directions, whether for the administration of medicines prescribed or for hygienic measures ordered. The ignorance, the prejudice, and the inert carelessness of the negroes, he felt, would be his mightiest and wiliest foes in this, and there could be no abler adjutant for this purpose than Dorothy, with her quick wit, her scrupulous conscientiousness and her habit of compelling exact and instant obedience to all her commands. So he had thought first of calling upon Dorothy for help. But when she had so promptly responded, he began to feel that he had made a mistake. The physician in him, and the crusader too, sanctioned and approved the use of the best means available for the accomplishment of his high purpose. But the man in him, the friend, the affectionate protector, protested against such an exposure of the child to dreadful danger.

When he reflected upon the matter and thought of the peril; when he conjured up a picture of dear little Dorothy stricken and perhaps dead in a service of humanity to which no duty called her, and to which she had been induced only by her loyalty to him, he shrank back in horror from the program he had laid out.

Yet he knew that he could not easily undo what he had done. There was a child side to Dorothy, and it was that which usually presented itself to his mind when he thought of her. But there was a strong woman side to her also, as he very well knew, and over that he had established no influence or control. He had won the love of the child. He had not yet won the love of the woman. He realized that it was the masterful, woman side of her nature that he had called into activity in this matter. Now that the heroism of the brave woman’s soul was enlisted, he knew that he could not easily bid it turn back.

Yet something might be done by adroit management, and he resolved upon that. After breakfast he sent for Dorothy and said, lightly:

“I’m glad I have taught you to handle drugs skilfully, Dorothy. I shall need certain medicines frequently in this conflict. They are our ammunition for the battle, and we must have them always ready. I’m going to write some prescriptions for you to fill. I want you to spend today and tomorrow in the laboratory preparing them. One of them will tax your skill a good deal. It may take you several days to get it ready. It involves some very careful chemical processes—for you must first manufacture a part of your chemicals out of their raw materials. I’ll write detailed instructions for that, but you may fail half a dozen times before you succeed. You must be patient and you’ll get it right. You always do in the end. Then there’s another thing I want you to do for me. I’m going to burn all the clothing, bedding and so forth at the quarters. I’ll make each of the well negroes put on the freshest clothing he has before removing to the sanitary camp, and I’ll burn all the rest. I sent Dick early this morning to the Court House, telling Moses to send me all the blankets and all the cloth he has of every kind, from calico and osnaburgs to heavy woollen goods, and I’ve written to Richmond for more. We must clothe the negroes anew—men, women and children. So I want you to get together all your seamstresses—every woman on the plantation indeed who can sew even a little bit—and set them all at work making clothes. I’ve cleared out the prize barn for the purpose, and the men are now laying a rough floor in it and putting up some tables on which you and Aunt Polly can ‘cut out’—that’s what you call it, isn’t it?”

“Cousin Arthur,” said the girl, looking at him with something of reproach in her great, dark blue eyes, “I’ll do all this of course, and everything else that you want done. But please, Cousin Arthur, don’t tell lies to me, even indirectly. I couldn’t stand that from you.”

“What do you mean, child?”

“Oh, you have made up your mind to keep me busy with all these things so that I shall not go into your hospital to serve as a nurse. I’ll do these things for you, but I’ll do the nursing too. So please let us be good friends and please don’t try to play tricks.”

The young man was astonished and abashed. Under ordinary circumstances he might truthfully have pleaded that the work he was thus laying out for her was really and pressingly necessary. But Dorothy anticipated him in that.

“Don’t tell me that these things are necessary, Cousin Arthur. I know that perfectly well. But you know that I am not necessary to them—except so far as the prescriptions are concerned. Aunt Polly can direct the clothes making better than I can, and her maid, Jane, is almost as good. So after I compound the prescriptions I shall go to my duty at the hospital. I don’t think I like you very well today, Cousin Arthur, and I’ll not like you at all if you go on trying to make up things to keep me busy, away from the sick people. If you do that again I’ll stop calling you ‘Cousin Arthur’ and you’ll be just ‘Dr. Brent’ to me.”

“Please don’t do that, Dorothy,” he said very pleadingly. “I only meant—”

“Oh, I know what you meant,” she interrupted. “But you shouldn’t treat me in that way. I won’t call you ‘Dr. Brent,’ unless you do that sort of thing again, and if you let me do my duty without trying to play tricks, I’ll go on liking you just as much as ever.”

“Thank you, Dorothy,” he replied with fervor. “You must forgive me, please. I didn’t want to expose you to this danger—that was all.”

“Oh, I understand all that,” she quickly responded. “But it wasn’t treating me quite fairly—and you know I hate unfairness. And—why shouldn’t I be exposed to the danger if I can do any good? Even if the worst should happen—even if I should take the fever and die, after saving some of these poor creatures’ lives, could you or anybody have made a better use of a girl like me than that?”

Arthur looked at the child earnestly, but the child was no longer there. The eyes that gazed into his were those of a woman!

XII
MAMMY

“But, Mahstah,” remonstrated Gilbert, “dey ain’t no clapboa’ds to roof wif. Dey ain’t no nuffin—”

“Use fence rails then and cover them with pine tops. I’ll ride over and direct you presently. Send me eight or ten of the strongest young women at once, and then get everybody to work on the shelters. Do you hear?”

When the women came he instructed them how to carry the sick on improvised litters, and half an hour later, with his own hand he set fire to the little negro village. He had allowed nothing to be carried away from it, and he left nothing to chance. One of the negroes came back in frantic haste to save certain “best clothes” and a banjo that he had laboriously made. Arthur ordered him instead to fill up the well with rubbish, so that no one might drink of its waters again.

As soon as the fire was completely in possession the young master rode away to Haw Branch hill to look after the sick ones and direct the work of building shelters for them. Dorothy was already there, tenderly looking to the comfort of the invalids. The litter-bearers would have set their burdens down anywhere and left them there but for Dorothy’s quiet insistence that they should place them in such shade as she could find, and gather an abundance of broomstraw grass for them to lie upon. To Arthur she offered no explanation of her presence, nor was any needed. Arthur understood, and all that he said was:

“God bless you, Dorothy!” a sentiment to which one of the stricken ones responded:

“He’ll do dat for shuah, Mahstah, ef he knows he business.”

“Dick has returned from the Court House,” said Dorothy reporting. “He says the big tent is there and I’ve sent a man with a wagon to fetch it. These shelters will do well enough for tonight, and we’ll get our hospital tent up soon tomorrow morning.”

“Very well,” responded Arthur. “Now, Dorothy, won’t you ride over to Silver Spring and direct the men there how to lay out the new quarters? I drew this little diagram as I rode over here. You see I want the houses built well apart for the sake of plenty of air. I’m going to put the quarters there ‘for all the time’ as you express it. That is to say I’m going to build permanent quarters. I’ve already looked over the ground carefully as to drainage and the like and roughly laid out the plan of the village so that it shall be healthy. Please go over there and show the men what I want, I’ll be over there in an hour and then you can come back here. I must remain here till the doctors come.”

“What doctors, Cousin Arthur?”

“All the doctors within a dozen miles. I’ve sent for all of them.”

“But what for? Surely you know more about fighting disease than our old-fashioned country doctors do.”

“Perhaps so. But there are several reasons for consulting them. First of all they know this country and climate better than I do. Secondly, they are older men, most of them, and have had experience. Thirdly, I don’t want all the responsibility on my shoulders, in case anything goes wrong, and above all I don’t want to offend public sentiment by assuming too much. These gentlemen have all been very courteous to me, and it is only proper for me to send for them in consultation. I shall get all the good I can out of their advice, but of course I shall myself remain physician in charge of all my cases.”

The explanation was simple enough, and Dorothy accepted it. “But I don’t like anybody to think that country doctors can teach you anything, Cousin Arthur,” she said as she mounted. “And remember you are to come over to Silver Spring as soon as you can. I must be back here in an hour or so at most.”

Just as she was about to ride away Dorothy was confronted with an old negro woman—obviously very old indeed, but still in robust health, and manifestly still very strong, if one might estimate her strength from the huge burden she carried on her well poised head.

“Why, Mammy, what are you doing here?” asked the girl in surprise. “You don’t belong here, and you must go back to Pocahontas at once.”

“What’s you a talkin’ ’bout, chile?” answered the old woman. “Mammy don’t b’long heah, don’t she? Mammy b’longs jes whah somever her precious chile needs her. So when de tidins done comes dat Mammy’s little Dorothy’s gwine to ’spose herself in de fever camp jes to take kyar of a lot o’ no ’count niggas what’s done gone an’ got dey selves sick, why cou’se dey ain’t nuffin fer Mammy to do but pack up some necessary ingridiments an come over and take kyar o’ her baby. So jes you shet up yer sweet mouf, you precious chile, an’ leave ole Mammy alone. I ain’t a gwine to take no nonsense from a chile what’s my own to kyar fer.”

“You dear old Mammy!” exclaimed the girl with tears in her voice. “But I really don’t need you, and I will not have you exposed to the fever.”

“What’s Mammy kyar fer de fever? Fever won’t nebber dar tetch Mammy. Mammy ain’t nebber tuk no fevers an’ no nuffin else. Lightnin’ cawn’t hu’t Mammy anymore’n it kin split a black gum tree. G’long ’bout yer business, chile, an don’t you go fer to give no impidence to yer ole Mammy. She’s come to take kyar o’ her chile an’ she’s a gwine to do it. Do you heah?”

Further argument and remonstrance served only to make plain the utter futility of any and every endeavor to control the privileged and devotedly loving old nurse. She had come to the camp to stay, and she was going to stay in spite of all protest and all authority.

“There’s nothing for it, Cousin Arthur,” said Dorothy, with the tears slipping out from between her eyelids, “but to let dear old Mammy have her way. You see she’s had charge of me ever since I was born, and I suppose I belong to her. It was she who taught me how badly women need somebody to control them and how bad they are if they haven’t a master. She’ll stay here as long as I do, you may be sure of that, and she’ll love me and scold me, and keep me in order generally, till this thing is over, no matter what you or anybody else may say to the contrary. So please, Cousin Arthur, make some of the men build a particularly comfortable shelter for her and me. She wouldn’t care for herself, even if she slept on the ground out of doors, but she’ll be a turbulent disturber of the camp if you don’t treat me like a princess—though personally I only want to serve and could make myself comfortable anywhere.”

“I’ll see that you have good quarters, Dorothy,” answered the young man in a determined tone. “I’d do that anyhow. But what’s all that you’ve got there in your big bundle, Mammy?”

“Oh, nuffin but a few dispensable ingridiments, Mas’ Arthur. Jes’ a few blankets an’ quilts an’ pillars an’ four cha’rs an’ a feather bed an’ a coffee pot an’ some andirons an’ some light wood, an’ a lookin’ glass, and a wash bowl and pitcher an’ jes a few other little inconveniences fer my precious chile.”

For answer Arthur turned to Randall, the head carpenter of the plantation, and said:

“Randall, there’s a lot of dressed lumber under the shed of the wheat barn. I’ll have it brought over here at once. I want you to take all the men you need—your Mas’ Archer Bannister is sending over four carpenters to help and your Mas’ John Meaux is sending three—and if you don’t get a comfortable little house for your Miss Dorothy built before the moon rises, I shall want to know why. Get to work at once. Put the house on this mound. Build a stick and mud chimney to it, so that there can be a fire tonight. Three rooms with a kitchen at the back will be enough, but mind you are to have it ready before the moon rises, do you hear?”

“It’ll be ready Mahstah, er Randall won’t let nobody call him a carpenter agin fer a mighty long time. Ef Miss Dorothy is a gwine to nuss de folks while dey’s sick you kin jes bet yer sweet life de folks what’s well an’ strong is a gwine to make her comfortable.”

“Amen!” shouted three or four of the others in enthusiastic unison. Dorothy was not there to hear. She had already ridden away on her mission to direct matters at the Silver Spring.

“It’s queer,” thought the young master of the plantation, “how devotedly loyal all the negroes are to Dorothy. Nobody—not even Williams the overseer,—was ever so exacting as she is in requiring the most rigid performance of duty. Ever since she punished Ben for bringing her an imperfectly groomed horse, that chronically lazy fellow has taken the trouble every night to put her mare’s mane and tail into some sort of equine crimping apparatus, so that they may flow gracefully in the morning. And he does it for affection, too, for when she told him, one night, that he needn’t do it, as we were late in returning from Pocahontas, I remember the fervor with which he responded: ‘Oh, yes, Miss Dorothy, I’ll do de mar’ up in watered silk style tonight cause yar’s a gwine to Branton fer a dinin’ day tomorrer, an’ Ben ain’t a gwine fer to let his little Missus ride in anything but de bes’ o’ style.’ The fact is,” continued Arthur, reflecting, “these people understand Dorothy. They know that she is always kindly, always compassionate, always sympathetic in her dealings with them. But they realize that she is also always just. She never grows angry. She never scolds. She punishes a fault severely in her queer way, but after it is punished she never refers to it again. She never ‘throws up things,’ to them. In a word, Dorothy is just, and after all it is justice that human beings most want, and it is the one thing of which they get least in this world. What a girl Dorothy is, anyhow!”