Chapter V: Part 5

As for Peyton, who was present in Court, having come for the purpose of accepting the guardianship, his rage exceeded even his astonishment. He had in his youth gone through what was then the easy process of securing admission to the bar, and so, although he had never pretended to practise law, he was entitled to address the Court as an attorney. He had never done so before, but on this occasion he rose, almost choking for utterance and plunged at once into a passionate protest, in which the judge, who was calm, presently checked him, saying:

“Your utterance seems to the Court to be uncalled for, while its manner is distinctly such as the Court must disapprove. The person named by the ward as her choice for the guardianship, bears a high reputation for integrity, intelligence and character. Unless it can be shown to the Court that this reputation is undeserved, the ward’s choice will be confirmed. At present the Court is aware of nothing whatever in Dr. Brent’s character, circumstances or position that can cast doubt upon his fitness. If you have any information that should change the Court’s estimate of his character you will be heard.”

“He is unfit in every way,” responded the almost raving man. “He has deliberately undermined my fatherly influence over the girl. He has taken a mean advantage of me. He has overpersuaded the girl to set aside an arrangement made for her good and--”

“Oh, no, Mr. Peyton,” broke in Dorothy, utterly heedless of court formalities, “he has done nothing of the kind. He knows nothing about this. I don’t think he will even like it.”

“Pardon me, Miss Dorothy,” interrupted the judge. “Please address the Court--me--and not Mr. Peyton. Tell me, have you made your choice of your own free will?”

“Why, certainly, Judge, else I wouldn’t have made it.”

“Has anybody said anything to you on the subject?”

“No, sir. Nobody has ever mentioned the matter to me except Col. Majors, and he told me I was to choose Mr. Peyton, but you told me I could choose for myself, you know. I suppose Col. Majors didn’t know you’d let me do that.”

A little laugh went up in the bar, and even the judge smiled. Presently he said:

“The Court knows of no reason why it should not confirm the choice made by the ward. Accordingly it is ordered that Dr. Arthur Brent of Wyanoke be appointed guardian of the property and estate of Dorothy South, with full authority, subject only to such instructions as this Court may from time to time see fit to give for his guidance. Mr. Clerk, make the proper record, and call the next case. This proceeding is at an end. You are at liberty now to withdraw, Miss Dorothy, you and Miss Polly.”

Aunt Polly rose and bowed her acknowledgments in silence. Dorothy bowed with equal grace, but added: “Thank you, Judge. I am anxious to get back to my sick people. So I will bid you good morning. You have been extremely nice to me.”

With that she bowed again and swept out of the court room, quite unconscious of the fact that even by her courteous adieu she had offended against all the traditions of etiquette in a court of Justice. The judge bowed and smiled, and every lawyer at the bar instinctively arose, turned his face respectfully toward the withdrawing pair, and remained standing till they had passed through the outer door, Col. Majors escorting them.

XVI

UNDER THE CODE

_I_t was Madison Peyton’s habit to have his own way, and he greatly prided himself upon getting it, in other people’s affairs as well as in those that concerned himself. He loved to dominate others, to trample upon their wills and to impose his own upon them. In a large degree he accomplished this, so that he regarded himself and was regarded by others as a man of far more than ordinary influence. He was so, in a certain way, but it was not a way that tended to make men like him. On the contrary, the aggressive self assertion by which he secured influence, secured for him also the very general dislike of his neighbors, especially of those who most submissively bowed to his will. They hated him because they felt themselves obliged to submit their wills to his.

There was, therefore, a very general chuckle of pleasure among the crowd gathered at the Court House--a crowd which included nearly every able-bodied white man in the county--as the news of his discomfiture and of his outbreak of anger over it, was discussed. There were few who would have cared to twit him with it, and if he had himself maintained a discreet and dignified silence concerning the matter, he would have heard little or nothing about it. But he knew that everybody was in fact talking of it, out of his hearing. He interpreted aright the all pervading atmosphere of amused interest, and the fact that every group of men he approached became silent and seemed embarrassed when he joined it. After his aggressive manner, therefore, he refused to remain silent. He thrust the subject upon others’ attention at every turn. He protested, he declaimed, at times he very nearly raved over what he called the outrage. He even went further in some cases and demanded sympathy and acquiescence in his complainings. For the most part he got something quite different. His neighbors were men not accustomed to fear, and while they were politely disposed to refrain from voluntary expressions of opinion on this matter, at least in his presence, they were ready enough with answers unwelcome to him when he demanded their opinions.

“Isn’t it an outrage,” he asked of John Meaux, “that Arthur Brent has undermined me in this way?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Meaux with a drawl which always affected his speech when he was most earnest, “I cannot see it in that light. Dorothy declares that he knew nothing of her intentions, and we all know that Dorothy South never tells anything but the truth. Besides, I don’t see why he isn’t entitled to serve as her guardian if she wants him to do so. He is a man of character and brains, and I happen to know that he has a good head for business.”

“Yes,” snarled Peyton, “I know you’ve been cultivating him--”

“I’ll trouble you to leave me out of your remarks, Mr. Peyton,” interrupted Meaux. “If you don’t you may have a quarrel on your hands.”

“Oh, you know me, Meaux; you know I didn’t mean any harm so far as you are concerned. You know my way--”

“Yes, I know your way, and I don’t like it. In fact I won’t tolerate it.”

“Oh, come now, come now, John, don’t fly off the handle like that. You see I’m not angry with you, but how you can like this interloper--”

“His family is as old in Virginia as your own is,” answered Meaux, “and he is the master of the very oldest plantation in this county. Besides he was born in Virginia and--but never mind that. I’m not counsel for his defence. I only interrupted to tell you that I am accustomed to choose my own friends, and that I fully intend to adhere to that custom.”

In another group Peyton used even less temperate terms than “interloper” in characterizing Arthur, and added:

“He didn’t even dare come to court and brazen out his treachery. He left the job, like a sneak, to the little girl whose mind he has poisoned.”

Archer Bannister was standing near, and heard the offensive words. He interrupted:

“Mr. Peyton, I earnestly advise you to retract what you have just said, and to put your retraction into writing, giving it to me to deliver to my friend Dr. Brent; who is absent today, as you very well know, simply because he has imperative duties of humanity elsewhere. I assure you that I shall report your offensive utterance to him, and it will be well for you if your retraction and apology can be delivered to him at the same time. Arthur Brent is rapidly falling into Virginia ways--adopting the customs of the country, he calls it--and there is one of those customs which might subject you to a deal of inconvenience, should he see fit to adopt it.”

“What have you to do with my affairs?” asked Peyton in a tone of offence.

“Nothing whatever--_at present_,” answered the young man, turning upon his heel.

But the warning sobered Peyton’s anger. It had not before occurred to him that Arthur might have become so far indoctrinated with Virginia ways of thinking as to call him to account for his words, in the hostile fashion usual at that time. Indeed, relying upon the fixed habit of Virginians never to gossip, he had not expected that Arthur would ever hear of his offensive accusations. Bannister’s notification that he would exercise the privilege accorded by custom to the personal friend of a man maligned when not present to defend himself, suggested grave possibilities. He knew that custom fully warranted Bannister in doing what he had threatened to do, and he had not the smallest doubt that the young man would do it.

It was in a mood of depression, therefore, that Peyton ordered his horse and rode homeward. His plantation lay within two or three miles of the Court House, but by the time that he had arrived there he had thought out a plan of procedure. He knew that Bannister would remain at the village inn over night, having jury service to perform the next morning. There was time, therefore, in which to reach him with a placative message, and Peyton set himself at once to work upon the preparation of such a message.

“I hope you will forgive me,” he wrote, “for the rudeness with which I spoke to you today. I was extremely angry at the time, and I had reasons for being so, of which you know nothing, and of which I must not tell you anything. Perhaps in my extreme irritation, I used expressions with regard to Dr. Brent, which I should not have used had I been calmer. For my discourtesy to you personally, I offer very sincere apologies, which I am sure your generous mind will accept as an atonement. For the rest I must trust your good feeling not to repeat the words I used in a moment of extreme excitement.”

Archer Bannister wrote in reply:

“The apology you have made to me was quite unnecessary. I had not demanded it. As for the rest, I shall do my duty as a friend unless you make apology where it is due, namely to Dr. Arthur Brent whom you have falsely accused, and to whom you have applied epithets of a very offensive character. If you choose to make me the bearer of your apology to him, I will gladly act for you. I prefer peace to war, at all times.”

This curt note gave Peyton a very bad quarter hour. He was not a coward; or, to put the matter more accurately, he was not that kind of a coward that cannot face physical danger. But he was a man of middle age or a trifle more. He was the father of a family and an elder in the Presbyterian church. Conscience did not largely influence him in any case, but he was keenly sensitive to public opinion. He knew that should he fight a duel, all the terrors of religious condemnation would fall upon him. Worse still, he would be laughed at for having so entangled himself in a matter his real relation to which he was not free to explain. Madison Peyton dreaded and feared nothing in the world so much as being laughed at. Added to this, he knew that the entire community would hold him to be altogether in the wrong. Arthur Brent’s reputation achieved by his heroic devotion under fearful danger at Norfolk, had been recalled and emphasized by his conduct in the present fever outbreak on his own plantation. It was everywhere the subject of admiring comment, and Peyton very well knew that nobody in that community would for a moment believe that Arthur Brent was guilty of any meanness or cowardly treachery. His own accusations, unless supported by some sort of proof, would certainly recoil upon himself with crushing force. He could in no way explain the anger that had betrayed him into the error of making such accusations. He could not make it appear to anybody that he had been wronged by the fact that Dorothy South had chosen another than himself for her guardian. His anger, upon such an occasion, would be regarded as simply ridiculous, and should he permit the matter to come to a crisis he must at once become the butt of contemptuous jesting.

There was but one course open to him, as he clearly saw. He wrote again to Archer Bannister, withdrawing his offensive words respecting Arthur, apologizing for them on the ground of momentary excitement, asking Archer to convey this his apology to Dr. Brent, and authorizing the latter to make any other use of the letter which he might deem proper.

This apology satisfied all the requirements of “the code.”

XVII

A REVELATION

_I_t was Dorothy who gave Arthur the first news of his appointment as her guardian. On her return from court to the fever camp she went first to see Sally and the two or three others whose condition was particularly serious. Then she went to Arthur, and told him what had happened.

“The judge was very nice to me, Cousin Arthur, and told me I might choose anybody I pleased for my guardian, and of course I chose you.”

“You did?” asked the young man in a by no means pleased astonishment. “Why on earth did you do that, Dorothy?”

“Why, because I wanted you to be my guardian, of course. Don’t you want to be my guardian, Cousin Arthur?”

“I hardly know, child. It involves a great responsibility and a great deal of hard work.”

“Won’t you take the responsibility and undertake the work for my sake, Cousin Arthur?”

“Certainly I will, my child. I wasn’t thinking of that exactly--but of some other things. But tell me, how did you come to do this? Who suggested it to you?”

“Why, nobody. That’s what I told the judge, and when Mr. Peyton got angry and said you had persuaded me to do it, I told him he was wrong. Then the judge stopped him from speaking and asked me about the matter and I told him. Then he said very nice things about you, and said you were to be my guardian, and then he told me I might go home and I thanked him and said good day, and Col. Majors escorted us to the carriage. I wonder why Mr. Peyton was so angry about it. He seems to have been very anxious to be my guardian. I wonder why?”

“I wonder, too,” said Arthur, to whom of course the secret of Peyton’s concern with Dorothy’s affairs was a mystery. He had not been present on the occasion when Peyton entered his protest against the girl’s reading, nor had any one told him of the occurrence. Neither had he heard of Peyton’s visit to Aunt Polly on the occasion of the outbreak of fever. He therefore knew of no reason for Peyton’s desire to intermeddle in Dorothy’s affairs, beyond his well known disposition to do the like with everybody’s concerns. But Arthur had grown used to the thought of mystery in everything that related to Dorothy.

Presently the girl said, “I’m going to write a note to Mr. Peyton, now, and send it over by Dick.”

“What for, Dorothy?”

“Oh, I want to tell him how wrong and wicked he is when he says you persuaded me to do this.”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes, I told you so before, but you weren’t paying attention. Perhaps you were thinking about the poor sick people, so I’ll forgive you and you needn’t apologize. I must run away now and write my note.”

“Please don’t, Dorothy.”

“But why not?”

“He will say I persuaded you to do that, too. It would embarrass me very seriously if you should send him any note now.”

Dorothy was quick to see this aspect of the matter, though without suggestion it would never have occurred to her extraordinarily simple and candid mind.

It was not long after Dorothy left him when Edmonia Bannister made her daily visit to the fever camp, accompanied by her maid and bearing delicacies for the sick. After her visit to Dorothy’s quarters Arthur engaged her in conversation. He told her of what had happened, and expressed his repugnance to the task thus laid upon him.

“I cannot sympathize with you in the least,” said the young woman. “I am glad it has happened--glad on more accounts than one.”

“Yes, I suppose you are,” he answered, meditatively, “but that’s because you do not understand. I wish I could have a good, long talk with you, Edmonia, about this thing--and some other things.”

He added the last clause after a pause, and in a tone which suggested that perhaps the “other things” were weightier in his mind than this one.

“Why can’t you?” the girl asked.

“Why, I can’t leave my sick people long enough for a visit to Branton. It will be many weeks yet before I shall feel free to leave this plantation.”

The girl thought a moment, and then said, with unusual deliberation:

“I can spare an hour now; surely you might give a like time. Why can’t we sit in Dorothy’s little porch and have our talk now? Dorothy has gone to the big tent, and is busy with the sick, and if you should be needed you will be here to respond to any call. I see how worried you are, and perhaps I may be able to help you with advice--or at the least with sympathy.”

Arthur gladly assented and the two repaired to the little shaded verandah which Dick had built out of brushwood and boughs across the front of Dorothy’s temporary dwelling.

“This thing troubles me greatly, Edmonia,” Arthur began, “and it depresses me as pretty nearly everything else does nowadays. It completely upsets my plans and defeats all my ambitions. It adds another to the ties of obligation that compel me to remain here and neglect my work.”

“Is it not possible, Arthur”--their friendship had passed the “cousining” stage and they used each other’s names now without prefix--“Is it not possible, Arthur, for you to find work enough here to occupy your life and employ your abilities worthily? There is no doubt that you have already saved many lives by the skill and energy with which you have met this fever outbreak, and your work will bear still better fruit. You have taught all of us how to save lives in such a case, how to deal with the epidemics that are common enough on plantations. You may be sure that nobody in this region will ever again let a dozen or twenty negroes perish in unwholesome quarters after they have seen how easily and surely you have met and conquered the fever. Dorothy tells me you have had only two deaths out of forty-two cases, and that no new cases are appearing. Surely your conscience should acquit you of neglecting your work, or burying your talents.”

“Oh, if there were such work for me to do all the time,” the young man answered, “I should feel easy on that score. But this is an extraordinary occasion. It will pass in a few weeks, and then--”

“Well, and then--what?”

“Why, then a life of idleness and ease, with no duties save such as any man of ordinary intelligence could do as well as I, or better--a life delightful enough in its graceful repose, but one which must condemn me to rust in all my faculties, to stand still or retrograde, to leave undone all that I have spent my youth and early manhood in fitting myself to do. Please understand me, Edmonia. I love Virginia, its people, and all its traditions of honor and manliness. But I am not fit for the life I must lead here. All the education, all the experience I have had have tended to unfit me for it in precisely that degree in which they have helped to equip me for something quite different. Then again the work I had marked out for myself in the world needs me far more than you can easily understand. There are not many men so circumstanced that they could do it in my stead. Other men as well or better equipped with scientific acquirements, and all that, are not free as I am--or was before this inheritance in Virginia came to blight my life. They have their livings to make and must work only in fields that promise a harvest of gain. I was free to go anywhere where I might be needed, and to minister to humanity in ways that make no money return. My annuities secured me quite all the money I needed for my support so that I need never take thought for the morrow. I have never yet received a fee for my ministry--for I regard my work as a ministry, for which I am set apart. Other men have families too, and owe a first duty to them, while I--well, I decided at the outset that I would never marry.”

Arthur did not end that sentence as he would have ended it a year or even half a year before. He was growing doubtful of himself. Presently he continued:

“I am free to work for humanity. My time is my own. I can spend it freely in making experiments and investigations that can hardly fail to benefit mankind. Few men who are equipped for such studies can spare time for them from the breadwinning. Then again when great epidemics occur anywhere, and multitudes need me, I am free to go and serve them. I have no family, no wife, no children, nobody dependent upon me, in short no obligations of any kind to restrain me from such service. Such at least was my situation before my Uncle Robert died. His death imposed upon me the duty of caring for all these black people. My first thought was of how I might most quickly free myself of this restraining obligation. Had the estate consisted only of houses and lands and other inanimate property I should have made short work of the business. I should have sold the whole of it for whatever men might be willing to give me for it; I should have devoted the proceeds to some humane purpose, and then, being free again I should have returned to my work. Unfortunately, however, in succeeding to my uncle’s estate I succeeded also to his obligations. I planned to fulfil them once for all by selling the plantation and using the proceeds in carrying the negroes to the west and establishing them upon farms of their own. I still cherish that purpose, but I am delayed in carrying it out by the fact that other obligations must first be discharged. There are debts--the hereditary curse of us Virginians--and I find that the value of the plantation, without the negroes, would not suffice to discharge them and leave enough to give the negroes the little farms that I must provide for them if I take the responsibility of setting them free. Still I see ways in which I think I can overcome that difficulty within two or three years, by selling crops that Virginians never think of selling and devoting their proceeds to the discharge of debts. But now comes this new and burdensome duty of caring for Dorothy’s estate. She is now sixteen years of age, so that this new burden must rest upon my shoulders for five full years to come.”

“I quite understand,” Edmonia slowly replied, “and in great part I sympathize with you. But not altogether. For one thing I do not share your belief in freedom for the negroes. I am sure they are unfit for it, and it would be scarcely less than cruelty to take them out of the happy life to which they were born, exile them to a strange land, and condemn them to a lifelong struggle with conditions to which they are wholly unused, with poverty for their certain lot and starvation perhaps for their fate. They are happy now. Why should you condemn them to unhappy lives? They are secure now in the fact that, sick or well, in age and decrepitude as well as in lusty health, they will be abundantly fed and clothed and well housed. Why should you condemn them to an incalculably harder lot?”

“So far as the negroes are concerned, you may be right. Yet I cannot help thinking that if I make them the owners of fertile little farms in that rapidly growing western country, without a dollar of debt, they will find it easy enough to put food into their mouths and clothes on their backs and keep a comfortable roof over their heads. However that is a large question and perhaps a difficult one. If it could have been kept out of politics Virginia at least would long ago have found means to free herself of the incubus. But it is not of the negroes chiefly that I am thinking. I am trying to set Arthur Brent free while taking care not to do them any unavoidable harm in the process. I want to return to my work, and I am sufficiently an egotist to believe that my freedom to do that is of some importance to the world.”

“Doubtless it is,” answered the young woman, hesitatingly, “but there are other ways of looking at it, Arthur. I have read somewhere that the secret of happiness is to reconcile oneself with one’s environment.”

“Yes, I know. That is an abominable thought, a paralyzing philosophy. In another form the privileged classes have written it into catechisms, teaching their less fortunate fellow beings that it is their duty to ‘be content in that state of existence to which it hath pleased God’ to call them. As a buttress to caste and class privilege and despotism of every kind, that doctrine is admirable, but otherwise it is the most damnable teaching imaginable. It is not the duty of men to rest content with things as they are. It is their duty to be always discontented, always striving to make conditions better. ‘Divine discontent’ is the very mainspring of human progress. The contented peoples are the backward peoples. The Italian lazzaroni are the most contented people in the world, and the most worthless, the most hopeless. No, no, no! No man who has brains should ever reconcile himself to his environment. He should continually struggle to get out of it and into a better. We have liberty simply because our oppressed ancestors refused to do as the prayer book told them they must. Men would never have learned to build houses or cook their food if they had been content to live in caves or bush shelters and eat the raw flesh of beasts. We owe every desirable thing we have--intellectual, moral and physical--to the fact that men are by nature discontented. Contentment is a blight.”

Edmonia thought for a while before answering. Then she said:

“I suppose you are right, Arthur. I never thought of the matter in that way. I have always been taught that discontent was wicked--a rebellion against the decrees of Providence.”

“You remember the old story of the miller who left to Providence the things he ought to have done for himself, and how he was reminded at last that ‘ungreased wheels will not go?’”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, in my view the most imperative decree of Providence is that we shall use the faculties it has bestowed upon us in an earnest and ceaseless endeavor to better conditions, for ourselves and for others.”

“But may it not sometimes be well to accept conditions as a guide--to let them determine in what direction we shall struggle?”

“Certainly, and that is precisely my case. When I consider the peculiar conditions that specially fit me to do my proper work in the world it is my duty, without doubt, to fight against every opposing influence. I feel that I must get rid of the conditions that are now restraining me, in order that I may fulfil the destiny marked out for me by those higher conditions.”

“Perhaps. But who knows? It may be that some higher work awaits you, here, some nobler use of your faculties, to which the apparently adverse conditions that now surround you, are leading, guiding, compelling you. It may be that in the end your unwilling detention here will open to you some opportunity of service to humanity, of which you do not now dream.”

“Of course that is possible,” Arthur answered doubtfully, “but I see no such prospect. I see only danger in my present situation, danger of falling into the lassitude and inertia of contentment. I saw that danger from the first, especially when I first knew you. I felt myself in very serious danger of falling in love with you like the rest. In that case I might possibly have won you, as none of the rest had done. Then I should joyfully, and almost without a thought of other things, have settled into the contented life of a well to do planter, leaving all my duties undone.”

Edmonia flushed crimson as he so calmly said all this, but he, looking off into the nothingness of space, failed to see it, and a few seconds later she had recovered her self-control. Presently he added, still unheeding the possible effect of his words:

“You saved me from that danger. You put me under bonds not to fall in love with you, and you have helped me to keep the pact. That danger is past, but I begin to fear another, and my only safety would be to go back to my work if that were possible.”

For a long time Edmonia did not speak. Perhaps she did not trust herself to do so. Finally, in a low, soft voice, she asked:

“Would you mind telling me what it is you fear? We are sworn friends and comrades, you know.”

“It is Dorothy,” he answered. “From the first I have been fond of the child, but now, to my consternation, I find myself thinking of her no longer as a child. The woman in her is dawning rapidly, especially since she has been called upon to do a woman’s part in this crisis. She still retains her childlike simplicity of mind, her extraordinary candor, her trusting truthfulness. She will always retain those qualities. They lie at the roots of her character. But she has become a woman, nevertheless, a woman at sixteen. You must have observed that.”

“I have,” the young woman answered in a voice that she seemed to be managing with difficulty. “And with her womanhood her beauty has come also. You must have seen how beautiful she has become.”

“Oh, yes,” he answered; “no one possessed of a pair of eyes could fail to observe that. Now that we are talking so frankly and in the sympathy of close friendship, let me tell you all that I fear. I foresee that if I remain here, as apparently I must, I shall presently learn to love Dorothy madly. If that were all I might brave it. But in an intercourse so close and continual as ours must be, there is danger that her devoted, childlike affection for me, may presently ripen into something more serious. In that case I could not stifle her love as I might my own. I could not sacrifice her to my work as I am ready to sacrifice myself. I almost wish you had let me fall in love with you as the others did.”

Again Edmonia paused long before answering. When she spoke at last, it was to say:

“It is too late now, Arthur.”

“Oh, I know that. The status of things between you and me is too firmly fixed now--”

“I did not mean that,” she answered, “though that is a matter of course. I was thinking of the other case.”

“What?”

“Why, Dorothy. It is too late to prevent her from loving you. She has fully learned that lesson already though she does not know the fact. And it is too late for you also, though you, too, do not know it--or did not till I told you.”

It was now Arthur’s turn to pause and think before replying. Presently, in a voice that was unsteady in spite of himself, he asked:

“Why do you think these dreadful things, Edmonia?”

“I do not think them. I know. A woman’s instinct is never at fault in such a case--at least when she feels a deep affection for both the parties concerned. And there is nothing dreadful about it. On the contrary it offers the happiest possible solution of Dorothy’s misfortune, and it assures you of something far better worth your while to live for than the objects you have heretofore contemplated. I must go now. Of course you will say nothing of this to Dorothy for the present. That must wait for a year or two. In the meantime in all you do toward directing Dorothy’s education, you must remember that you are educating your future wife. Help me into my carriage, please. I will not wait for my maid. Dick can bring her over later, can’t he?”

“But tell me, please,” Arthur eagerly asked as the young woman seated herself alone in the carriage, “what is this ‘misfortune’ of Dorothy’s, this mystery that is so closely kept from me, while it darkly intervenes in everything done or suggested with regard to her.”

“I cannot--not now at least.” Then after a moment’s meditation she added:

“And yet you are entitled to know it--now. You are her guardian in a double sense. Whenever you can find time to come over to Branton, I’ll tell you. Good-bye!”

As the carriage was starting Edmonia caught sight of Dick and called him to her.

“Have you any kittens at Wyanoke, Dick?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Mony, lots uv ’em.”

“Will you pick out a nice soft one, Dick, and bring it to me at Branton? Every old maid keeps a cat, you know, Dick, and so I want one.”

All that was chivalric in Dick’s soul responded.

“I’ll put a Voodoo[A] on anybody I ever heahs a callin’ you a ole maid, Miss Mony, but I’ll git you de cat.”

As she sank back among the cushions the girl relaxed the rein she had so tightly held upon herself, and the tears slipped softly and silently from her eyes. For the first time in her life this brave woman was sorry for herself.

XVIII

ALONE IN THE CARRIAGE

_A_fter the blind and blundering fashion of a man, Arthur Brent was utterly unconscious of the blow he had dealt to this woman who had given him the only love of her life. For other men she had felt friendship, and to a few she had willingly given that affection which serves as a practical substitute for love in nine marriages out of ten, and which women themselves so often mistake for love. But to this woman love in its divinest form had come, the love that endureth all things and surpasseth all things, the love that knows no ceasing while life lasts, the love that makes itself a willing sacrifice. Until that day she had not herself known the state of her own soul. She had not understood how completely this man had become master of her life, how utterly she had given herself to him. And in the very moment that revealed the truth to her the man she loved had, with unmeant cruelty, opened her eyes also to that other truth that her love for him was futile and must ever remain hopeless.

She bade her driver go slowly, that she might think the matter out alone, and she thought it out. She was too proud a woman to pity herself for long. She knew and felt that Arthur had never dreamed of the change which had so unconsciously come upon her. She knew that had he so much as entertained a hope of her love a little while ago, he would have bent all the energies of his soul to the winning of her. She knew in brief that this man to whom she had unconsciously given the one love of her life, would have loved her in like manner, if she had permitted that. She knew too that it was now too late.

As the carriage slowly toiled along the sandy road, she meditated, sometimes even uttering her thought in low tones.

“There is no fault in him,” she reflected. “It is not that he is blind, but that I have hoodwinked him. In deceiving myself, I have deceived him.”

Then came the pleasanter thought:

“At any rate in ruining my own life, I have not ruined his, but glorified it. Had he loved and married me he would have been happy, but it would have been in a commonplace way. His ambitions would have died slowly but surely. That discontent, which he has taught me to understand as the mainspring of all that is highest and noblest in human endeavor, would have given place to a blighting contentment in such a life as that which he and I would have led together. It will be quite different when he marries Dorothy. She too has the ‘divine discontent’ that does things. She will be a help immeasurably more meet for him than I could ever have hoped to be. She will share his enthusiasms, and strengthen them. And it is his enthusiasm that makes him worthy of a woman’s love. It is that which takes him out of the commonplace. It is that which sets him apart from other men. It is that which makes him Arthur Brent.”

Then her thought reverted for a moment to her own pitiful case.

“What am I to do?” she asked herself. “What use can I make of my life that shall make it worthy of him? First of all I must be strong. He must never so much as suspect the truth, and of course nobody else must be permitted even to guess it. I must be a help to him, and not a hindrance. He must feel that my friendship, on which he places so high an estimate, is a friendship to be trusted and leant upon. I must more and more make myself his counsellor, a stimulating helpful influence in his life. His purposes are mainly right, and I must encourage him to seek their fulfilment. Such a man as he should not be wasted upon a woman like me, or led by such into a life of inglorious ease and inert content. After all perhaps I may help him as his friend, where, as his wife, my influence over his life and character would have been paralyzing. If I can help, him, my life will not be lost or ruined. It need not even be unhappy. If my love for him is such as he deserves, it will meet disappointment bravely. It will discipline itself to service. It will scorn the selfishness of idle bemoaning. The sacrifice that is burnt upon the altar is not in vain if the odors of it placate the gods. Better helpful sacrifice than idle lamentation.”

Then after a little her mind busied itself with thoughts less subjective and more practical.

“How shall I best help?” she asked herself. “First of all I must utterly crush selfishness in my heart. I must be a cheerful, gladsome influence and not a depressing one. From this hour there are no more tears for me, but only gladdening laughter. I must help toward that end which I see to be inevitable. I must do all that is possible to make it altogether good. I must help to prepare Dorothy to be the wife he needs. She has not been educated for so glorious a future. She has been carefully trained, on the contrary, for a humdrum life for which nature never intended her, the life of submissive wifehood to a man she could never love, a man whom she could not even respect when once her eyes were opened to better things in manhood. I must have her much with me. I must undo what has been done amiss in her education. I must help to fit her for a high ministry to the unselfish ambitions of the one man who is worthy of such a ministry. I must see to it that she is taught the very things that she has been jealously forbidden to learn. I must introduce her to that larger life from which she has been so watchfully secluded. So shall I make of my own life a thing worth while. So shall my love find a mission worthy of its object. So shall it be glorified.”

XIX

DOROTHY’S MASTER

_W_hen Edmonia drove away, leaving Arthur alone, he bade Dick bring his horse, and, mounting, he set off at a gallop toward the most distant part of the plantation. He was dazed by the revelation that Edmonia’s words had made to him as to the state of his own mind, and almost frightened by what she had declared with respect to Dorothy’s feeling. He wanted to be alone in order that he might think the matter out.

It seemed to him absurd that he should really be in love with the mere child whom he had never thought of as other than that. And yet--yes, he must admit that of late he had half unconsciously come to think of the womanhood of her oftener than of the childhood. He saw clearly, when he thought of it, that his fear that he might come to love the girl had been born of a subconsciousness that he had come to love her already.

It was a strange condition of mind in which he found himself. His strongest impulse was to run away and thus save the girl from himself and his love. But would that save her? She was not the kind of woman--he caught himself thinking of her now as a woman and not as a child--she was not the kind of woman to love lightly or to lay a love aside as one might do with a misfit garment. What if it should be true, as Edmonia had declared, that Dorothy had already given him her heart? What would happen to her in that case, should he go away and leave her? “But, psha!” he thought; “that cannot be true. The child does not know what love is. And yet, and yet. Why did she choose me to be her guardian, and why, when I expressed regret that she had done so, did she look at me so, out of those great, solemn, sad eyes of hers, and ask me, with so much intensity if I did not _want_ to be her guardian? Was it not that she instinctively, and in obedience to her love, longed to place her life in my keeping? After all she is not a child. It is only habit that makes me think of her in that way--habit and her strangely childlike confidence in me. But is that confidence childlike, after all? Do not women feel in that way toward the men they love? Dorothy is fully grown and sixteen years of age. Many a woman is married at sixteen.”

Of his own condition of mind Arthur had now no doubt. The thought had come to him that should he go away she would forget him, and he had angrily rejected it as a lie. He knew she would never forget. The further thought had come to him that in such case she would marry some other man, and it stung him like a whip lash to think of that. In brief he knew now, though until a few hours ago he had not so much as suspected it, that he loved Dorothy as he had never dreamed of loving any woman while he lived. He remembered how thoughts of her had colored all his thinking for a month agone and had shaped every plan he had formed.

But what was he now to do? “My life--the life I have marked out for myself,” he reflected, “would not be a suitable one for her.” He had not fully formulated the thought before he knew it to be a falsehood. “She would be supremely happy in such a life. It would give zest and interest to her being. She would rejoice in its sacrifices and share mightily in its toil and its triumphs. She cares nothing for the life of humdrum ease and luxury that has been marked out for her to live. She would care intensely for a life of high endeavor. And yet I must save her from the sacrifice if I can. I must save her from myself and from my love if it be not indeed too late.”

His horse had long ago slowed down to a walk, and was pursuing a course of its own selection. It brought him now to the hickory plantation near the outer gate of the Wyanoke property. Awakening to consciousness of his whereabouts, Arthur drew rein.

“It was here that I first met Dorothy”--he liked now the sound of her name in his ears--“on that glorious June morning when the hickory leaves that now strew the ground were in the full vigor of their first maturity. How confidently she whistled to her hounds, and how promptly they obeyed her call! What a queen she seemed as she disciplined them, and with what stately grace she passed me by without recognition save that implied in a sweeping inclination of her person! That was a bare five months ago! It seems five years, or fifty! How much I have lived since then! And how large a part of my living Dorothy has been!”

Presently he turned and set off at a gallop on his return to the fever camp, his mien that of a strong man who has made up his mind. His plan of action was formed, and he was hastening to carry it out.

It was growing dark when he arrived at the camp, and Dorothy met him with her report as to the condition of the sick. She took his hand as he dismounted, and held it between her own, as was her custom, quite unconscious of the nature of her own impulses.

“I’m very tired, Cousin Arthur,” she said after her report was made. “The journey to Court and all the rest of it have wearied me; and I sat up with Sally last night. You’re glad she’s better, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am,” he replied. “I feared yesterday for her life, but your nursing has saved her, just as it has saved so many others. Sally has passed the crisis now, and has nothing to do but obey you and get well.”

He said this in a tone of perplexity and sadness, which Dorothy’s ears were quick to catch.

“You’re tired too, Cousin Arthur?” she half said, half asked.

“Oh, no. I’m never tired. I--”

“Then you are troubled. You are unhappy, and you must never be that. You never deserve it. Tell me what it is! I won’t have you troubled or unhappy.”

“I’m troubled about you, Dorothy. You’ve been over-straining your strength. There are dark shadows under your eyes, and your cheeks are wan and pale. You must rest and make up your lost sleep. Here, Dick! Go over to the great house and bring Chestnut for your Miss Dorothy, do you hear?”

“No, no, no!” Dorothy answered quickly. “Don’t go, Dick. I do not want the mare. No, Cousin Arthur, I’m not going to quit my post. I only want to sleep now for an hour or two,--just to rest a little. The sick people can’t spare me now.”

“But they must, Dorothy. I will not have you make yourself ill. You must go back to the great house tonight and get a good night’s rest. I’ll look after your sick people.”

Dorothy loosened her hold of his hand, and retreated a step, looking reproachfully at him as she said:

“Don’t you want me here, Cousin Arthur? Don’t you care?”

“I do care, Dorothy, dear! I care a great deal more than I can ever tell you. That is why I want you to go home for a rest tonight. I am seriously anxious about you. Let me explain to you. When one is well and strong and gets plenty of sleep, there is not much danger of infection. But when one is worn out with anxiety and loss of sleep as you are, the danger is very great. You are not afraid of taking the fever. I don’t believe you are afraid of anything, and I am proud of you for that. But I am afraid for you. Think how terrible it would be for me, Dorothy, if you should come down with this malady. Will you not go home for my sake, and for my sake get a good night’s sleep, so that you may come back fresh and well and cheery in the morning? You do not know, you can’t imagine how much I depend upon you for my own strength and courage. Several things trouble me just now, and I have a real need to see you bright and well and strong in the morning. Won’t you try to be so for my sake, Dorothy? Won’t you do as I bid you, just once?”

“Just once?” she responded, with a rising inflection. “Just _always_, you ought to say. As long as I live I’ll do whatever you tell me to do--at least when you tell me the truth as you are doing now. You see I always know when you are telling the truth. With other people it is different. Sometimes I can’t tell how much or how little they mean. But I know you so well! And besides you’re always clumsy at fibbing, even when you do it for a good purpose. That’s why I like you so much--or,” pausing,--“that’s one of the reasons. Has Dick gone for Chestnut?”

“Yes, Dick always obeys me.”

“Oh, but that’s quite different. You are Dick’s master you know--” Then she hesitated again, presently adding, “of course you are my master too--only in a different way. Oh, I see now; you’re my guardian. Of course I must obey my guardian, and I’ll show him a bright, fresh face in the morning. Here comes Dick with Chestnut. Good night--Master!”

From that hour Dorothy thought of Arthur always by that title of “master,” though in the presence of others she never so addressed him.

Arthur watched her ride away in the light of the rising November moon, Dick following closely as her groom. And as he saw her turn at the entrance to the woodlands to wave him a final adieu, he said out loud:

“I fear it is indeed too late!”

XX

A SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER

_W_hen Dorothy had disappeared, Arthur became conscious of a great loneliness, which he found it difficult to shake off. Presently he remembered that he had a letter to write, a letter which he had decided upon out there under the hickory trees. He had writing materials and a table in his own small quarters, but somehow he felt himself impelled to write this letter upon Dorothy’s own little lap desk and in Dorothy’s own little camp cottage.

“Positively, I am growing sentimental!” he said to himself as he walked toward Dorothy’s house. “I didn’t suspect such a possibility in myself. After all a man knows less about himself than about anybody else. I can detect tuberculosis in another, at a glance. I doubt if I should recognize it in myself. I can discover cardiac trouble by a mere look at the eyes of the man afflicted with it. I know instantly when I look at a man, what his temperament is, what tendencies he has, what probabilities, and even what possibilities inhere in his nature. But what do I know about Arthur Brent? I suppose that any of my comrades at Bellevue could have told me years ago the things I am just now finding out concerning myself. If any of them had predicted my present condition of mind a year ago, I should have laughed in derision of the stupid misconception of me. I thought I knew myself. What an idiot any man is to think that!”

Touching a match to the little camphene lamp on Dorothy’s table, he opened her desk and wrote.

“MY DEAR EDMONIA: