Dorothy South

“Don’t worry about Arthur. I am worried only about you, and I’m going to take you to Branton. Am I not, Arthur?”

“I sincerely hope so,” he replied. “And there is not the slightest reason why you shouldn’t keep her for the night if you will. She is really not needed at the hospital till tomorrow. I’m honest and truthful when I say that, Dorothy. Dick and I can take care of everything till tomorrow, and I’ll see to it that Dick’s inspirations are restricted to poetry. So take her, Edmonia, and keep her till tomorrow. And don’t let her talk too much.”

“Oh, I’m going to take her. She is impolite enough not to want to go but she is much too young to have a will of her own – yet. As for Dick, he’s already in the throes. He is constructing a new ‘song ballad’ on the sorrowful fate of the turkey. It begins:

‘Tukkey in de bacca lot,
A pickin’ off de hoppa’s,’

but it goes no further as yet because Dick can’t find any rhyme for ‘hopper’ except ‘copper’ and ‘proper’ and ‘stopper,’ which I suggested, and they don’t serve his turn. He came to me to ask if ‘gobblers’ would not do, but I discouraged that extreme of poetic license.”

“Edmonia,” said Dorothy as soon as the carriage had renewed its journey, “did you really think it impolite in me not to want to go with you?”

“No, you silly girl.”

“I’m glad of that. You see I think there is nothing so unkind as impoliteness. But really I think it is wrong for me to go. Why didn’t you take Cousin Arthur instead? You don’t know how badly he needs rest.”

Edmonia made no direct reply to this. Instead, she said presently:

“Arthur is one of the best men I know. Don’t you think so, Dorothy?”

“Oh, he’s altogether the best. I can’t think of anybody to compare him with – not even Washington. He’s a hero you know. I often read over again all the newspapers that told about what he did in Norfolk, and of course he’s just like that now. He never thinks of himself, but always of others. There never was any man like him in all the world. That’s why I can’t bear to think of going to Branton and leaving him alone when if I were at my post, he might get some of the sleep that he needs so much. Edmonia, I’m not going to Branton! Positively I can’t and I won’t. So if you don’t tell the driver to turn back, I’ll open the carriage door and jump out and walk back.”

Curiously enough Edmonia made no further resistance. Perhaps she had already accomplished the object she had had in view. At any rate she bade the driver turn about, and upon her arrival at the camp she offered Arthur no further explanation than he might infer from her telling him:

“I’ve brought back the kidnapped nurse. I couldn’t win her away from you even for a few hours. See that you reward her devotion with all possible good treatment.”

“You are too funny for anything, Edmonia,” said Dorothy as she stepped from the carriage. “As if Cousin Arthur could treat me in any but the best of ways!”

“Oh, I’m not so sure on that point. He’ll bear watching anyhow. He’s ‘essenteric’ as Dick said the other day in a brave but hopeless struggle with the word ‘eccentric.’ But I must go now or I shall be late for dinner, and I’m expecting some friends who care more than Dorothy does for my hospitality.”

“Oh, please, Edmonia – ”

“Don’t mind me, child. I was only jesting. You are altogether good and sweet and lovable.”

She looked at Arthur significantly as she emphasized that last word.

The young man thereupon took Dorothy’s hands in his, looked her in the eyes, and said:

“Edmonia is right, dear. You are altogether good and sweet and lovable. But you ought to have taken some rest and recreation.”

“How could I, when I knew you needed me?”

XXIV

TO GIVE DOROTHY A CHANCE

IT was nearly the Christmas time when Arthur finally broke up the fever camp. He decided that the outbreak was at an end and the need of a hospital service no longer pressing. The half dozen patients who remained at the camp were now so far advanced on the road to recovery that he felt it safe to remove them to the new quarters at the Silver Spring.

He had sent Dorothy home a week before, saying:

“Now, Dorothy, dear, we have conquered the enemy – you and I – and a glorious conquest it has been. We have had forty-seven cases of the disease, some of them very severe, and there have been only two deaths. Even they were scarcely attributable to the fever, as both the victims were old and decrepit, having little vitality with which to resist the malady. It is a record that ought to teach the doctors and planters of Virginia something as to the way in which to deal with such outbreaks. I shall prepare a little account of it for their benefit and publish it in a medical journal. But I never can tell you how greatly I thank you for your help.”

“Please don’t talk in that way,” Dorothy hastily rejoined. “Other people may thank me for things whenever they please, but you never must.”

“But why not, Dorothy?”

“Why, because – well, because you are the Master. I won’t have you thanking me just like other people. It humiliates me. It is like telling me you didn’t expect me to do my duty. No, that isn’t just what I mean. It is like telling me that you think of Dorothy just as you do of other people, or something of that kind. I can’t make out just what I mean, but I will not let you thank me.”

“I think I understand,” he answered. “But at any rate you’ll permit me to tell you, that in my honest judgment as a physician, there would have been many more deaths than there have been, if I had not had you to help me. Your own tireless nursing, and the extraordinary way in which you have made all the negro nurses carry out my orders to the letter, have saved many lives without any possibility of doubt.”

“Then I have really helped?”

“Yes, Dorothy. I cannot make you know how much you have helped – how great an assistance, how great a comfort you have been to me in all this trying time.”

“I am very glad – very glad.”

That was all the answer she could make for tears. It was quite enough.

“Now I’m going to send you home, Dorothy, to get some badly needed rest and sleep, and to bring the color back to your cheeks. I am going home myself too. I need only ride over here twice a day to see that the getting well goes on satisfactorily, and in a week’s time I shall break up the camp entirely, and send the convalescents to their quarters. It will be safe to do so then. In the meantime I want you to think of Christmas. We must make it a red letter day at Wyanoke, to celebrate our victory. We’ll have a ‘dining day,’ as a dinner party is queerly called here in Virginia, with a dance in the evening. I’ll have some musicians up from Richmond. You are to send out the invitations at once, please, and we’ll make this the very gladdest of Christmases.”

“May I take my Mammy home with me?” the girl broke in. “She has been so good to me, you know.”

“Yes, Dorothy, and I wish you would keep her there ‘for all the time,’ as you sometimes say. There’s a comfortable house by the garden you know, and we’ll give her that for her home as long as she lives. You shall pick out one or two of the nicest of the negro girls to wait on her and keep house for her, and make her old age comfortable.”

Dorothy ejaculated a little laugh.

“Mammy would drive them all out of the house in ten seconds,” she said, “and call them ‘dishfaced devils’ and more different kinds of other ugly names than you ever heard of. Old as she is, she’s very strong, and she’ll never let anybody wait on her. She calls the present generation of servants ‘a lot o’ no ’count niggas, dat ain’t fit fer nothin’ but to be plaguesome.’ But you are very good to let me give her the house. Thank you, Cousin Arthur.”

“Oh, Dorothy,” answered Arthur, “I thought you always ‘played fair’ as the children say.”

“Why, what have I done?” the girl asked almost with distress in her tone.

“Why, you thanked me, after forbidding me to thank you for an immeasurably greater service.”

“Oh, but that’s different,” she replied. “You are the Master. I am only a woman.”

“Dorothy,” said Arthur seriously, “don’t you know I think there is nothing in the world better or nobler than a woman?”

“That’s because you are a man and don’t know,” she answered out of a wisdom so superior that it would not argue the point.

During the next week Arthur found time in which to prepare and send off for publication a helpful article on “The Plantation Treatment of Typhoid Epidemics.” He also found time in which to ride over to Branton and hold a prolonged conference with Edmonia Bannister. Before a hickory wood fire in the great drawing room they went over all considerations bearing upon Arthur’s affairs and plans and possibilities.

“This is the visitation you long ago threatened me with,” said Edmonia. “You said you would come when the stress of the fever should be over, and you told me you had some plan in your mind. Tell me what it was.”

“Oh, your past tense is correct there; that was before you wrote to me about Dorothy. Your letter put an end to that scheme at once.”

“Did it? I’m very glad.”