Dorothy South

“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?”