Dorothy South

“ ‘In the midst of it all someone whispered a cold blooded, heartlessly appreciative comment upon my playing, or the music, or my voice, or the execution, or something else – it matters not what. It was the sort of thing that people say for politeness’ sake when some screeching girl sings “Hear Me, Norma.” It wakened me instantly from my trance. It brought me back to myself. It revealed to me how completely I had been wasting the sacred things of my soul upon a company of Philistines. It filled me with a wrath that considered not consequences. I ceased to play. I seized the precious violin by its neck – worn smooth by the touch of artist hands – and dashed it to pieces over the piano. Then I snatched my baby from the cradle and retreated to your nursery, where I double locked the door, and refused to admit anybody but mammy, whose affection for you I felt, had been wounded as sorely as my own. I sent your father word that I would pass the night in the nursery, and at daylight I left home forever, taking you and mammy with me in the carriage.

“ ‘I had taken pains to learn that your father had been summoned that night, on an emergency call, to the bedside of a patient, ten miles away. This gave me my opportunity. With you in my arms and mammy by my side, I drove to Richmond, and sending the carriage back, I drew what money there was to my credit in the bank, and took the steamer sailing that day for New York. All this was seventeen years ago, remember, when there were no railroads of importance, and no quicker way of going from Richmond to New York than by the infrequently sailing steamers. It was in the early forties.

“ ‘Your father had loaded my dressing case with splendid jewels, in the selection of which his taste was unusually good. I left them all behind, all but this ring, which he had given me when you were born and asked me to regard as his thank offering for you. I have kept it all these years. I have suffered and starved many times rather than profane it by pawning, though often my need has been so sore that I have had to put even my clothes in pledge for the money with which to buy a dinner of bread and red herrings.

“ ‘I had money enough at first, for your father’s generosity had made my bank deposit large. But I had to spend the money in keeping myself hidden away with you, and I could not earn more by my music, as that would make me easily found. It was then that I translated my name. Mammy remained with me, caring for nothing in the world but you.

“ ‘It was several years before your father found me out. I was shocked and distressed at the way in which sorrow had written its signature upon his face. I loved him then far better than I had ever done before. For the first time I fully understood how greatly good and noble he was. But I would not, I could not, go back with him to the home I had disgraced. I could have borne all the scorn and contempt with which his friends would have looked upon me. I could have faced all that defiantly and with an erect head, giving scorn for scorn and contempt for contempt, where I knew that my censors were such only because in their commonplaceness they could not understand a nature like mine or even believe in its impulses. But I could not bear to go back to Pocahontas and witness the pity with which everybody there would look upon him.

“ ‘I resisted all his entreaties for my return, but for your sake I tore my heart out by consenting to give you up to him. You were rapidly growing in intelligence and I perfectly knew that such bringing up as I could give you would ruin your life in one way or another. Never mind the painful memory of all that. I consented at last to let your father take you back to Pocahontas and bring you up in a way suited to your birth and condition. Mammy went with you of course. Your father begged for the privilege of providing for my support in comfort while I should live, but I refused. I begged him to go into the courts and free himself from me. He could have got his divorce in Virginia upon the ground of my desertion. I shall never forget his answer. ‘When I married you, Dorothy’ – for your name, my child, is the same as my own – ‘When I married you, Dorothy, it was not during good behavior but forever. You are my wife, and you will be always the one woman I love, the one woman whose name I will protect at all hazards and all costs. No complaint of you has ever passed my lips. I have suffered no human being to say aught to your hurt in my presence or within my knowledge. Nor shall I to the end. You are my wife. I love you. That is all of it.’

“ ‘He went away sorrowful, leaving me broken hearted. I could appear in public now and I returned to my profession. The beauty which had been so great an aid to me before, was impaired, and the old vivacity was gone. But I could play still and sing, and with my violin and my voice I easily earned enough for all my wants, until I got the scar. After that I sank into a wretched poverty, and was glad at last to secure employment as a stage dresser. My illness here has lost me that – .’

“I cannot tell you any more, Cousin Arthur. It pains me too much. But I am going to take my mother with me to America and provide for her in some way that she will permit. She has recovered from the surgery now, and I have simply taken possession of her. She refuses to go to Pocahontas, or in any other way to take her position as my father’s widow. But if this war comes, as you fear it will, she has decided to go into service as a field nurse, and you must arrange that for her.

“I understand now why my father forbade me to learn music, and why he taught me that a woman must have a master. I can even guess what Jefferson Peyton meant when I rejected his suit. My father, I suppose, planned to provide a master for me; but I decline to serve the one he selected. I am a woman and a proud one. I will never consent to be disposed of in marriage by the orders of other people as princesses and other chattel women are. But, oh, you cannot know how sorrowful my soul is, and how I long to be at home again! I hope the war will come. That is wicked in me, I suppose, but I cannot help it. I must have occupation or I shall go mad. I shall set to work at once, on my return, fitting up our laboratory, and there I’ll find work enough to fill all my hours, and it will be useful, humane, patriotic work, such as it is worth a woman’s while to do.”

XXXV

THE BIRTH OF WAR

IT was the seventeenth of April, 1861. It was the fateful day on which the greatest, the most terrible, the most disastrous of modern wars was born.

On that day the long struggle of devoted patriots to keep Virginia in the Union and to throw all her influence into the scale of peace, had ended in failure.

A few days before, Fort Sumter had been bombarded and had fallen. Still the Virginia convention had resisted all attempts to drag or force the Mother State into secession. Then had come Mr. Lincoln’s call upon Virginia for her quota of troops with which to make war upon the seceding sister states of the South and the alternative of secession or dishonor presented itself to this body of Union men. They decided at once, and on that seventeenth day of April they made a great war possible and indeed inevitable, by adopting an ordinance of secession and casting Virginia’s fate, Virginia’s strength, and Virginia’s matchless influence, into the scale of disunion and war.

Richmond was in delirium – a delirium which moved men to ecstatic joy or profound grief, or deeply rooted apprehension, according to their several temperaments. The thoughtless went parading excitedly up and down the streets singing songs, and making a gala time of it, wearing cockades by day and carrying torches by night, precisely as if some long hoped for and supremely desired good fortune had come upon the land of their birth. The more thoughtful looked on and kept silent. But mostly the spirit manifested was one of grim determination to meet fate – be it good or bad – with stout hearts and calmly resolute minds.

In that purpose all men were as one now. The vituperation with which the people’s representatives in the convention had been daily assailed for their hesitation to secede, was absolutely hushed. The sentiment of affection for the Union which had been growing for seventy years and more, gave way instantly to a determination to win a new independence or sacrifice all in the attempt.

Jubal A. Early, who had from the beginning opposed secession with all his might, reckoning it not only insensate folly but a political crime as well, voted against it to the last, and then, instantly sent to Gov. Letcher a tender of his services in the war, in whatever capacity his state might see fit to employ him. In the same way William C. Wickham, an equally determined opponent of secession, quitted his seat in the convention only to make hurried preparation for his part as a military leader on the Southern side.

No longer did men discuss the merits and demerits of one policy or another; there could be but one policy now, one course of action, one sentiment of devotion to Virginia, and an undying determination to maintain her honor at all hazards and at all costs.

The state of mind that was universal among Virginians at that time, has never been quite understood in other parts of the Union. These men’s traditions extended back to a time before ever the Union was thought of, before ever Virginia had invited her sister states to unite with her, in a convention at Annapolis, called for the purpose of forming that “more perfect Union,” from which, in 1861, Virginia decided to withdraw. Devotion to the Union had been, through long succeeding decades, as earnest and as passionate in Virginia as the like devotion had been in any other part of the country. Through three great wars the Virginians had faltered not nor failed when called upon to contribute of their substance or their manhood to the national defence.

The Virginians loved the Union of which their state had been so largely the instigator, and they were self-sacrificingly loyal to it. But they held their allegiance to it to be solely the result of their state’s allegiance, and when their state withdrew from it, they held themselves absolved from all their obligations respecting it. Their very loyalty to it had been a prompting of their state, and when their state elected to transfer its allegiance to another Confederacy, they regarded themselves as bound by every obligation of law, of honor, of tradition, of history and of manhood itself, to obey the mandate.

Return we now to Richmond, on that fateful seventeenth day of April, 1861. There had been extreme secessionists, and moderate ones, uncompromising Union men, and Union men under conditions of qualification. There were none such when that day was ended. Waitman T. Willey and a few others from the Panhandle region, who had served in the convention, departed quickly for their homes, to take part with the North in the impending struggle, in obedience to their convictions of right. The rest accepted the issue as determinative of Virginia’s course, and ordered their own courses accordingly. They were, before all and above all Virginians, and Virginia had decided to cast in her lot with the seceding Southern States. There was an end of controversy. There was an end of all division of sentiment. The supreme moment had come, and all men stood shoulder to shoulder to meet the consequences.

XXXVI

THE OLD DOROTHY AND THE NEW

JUST as Arthur Brent was quitting his seat in the convention on that day so pregnant of historic happenings, a page put a note into his hands. It was from Edmonia, and it read:

“We have just arrived and are at the Exchange Hotel and Ballard House. We are all perfectly well, though positively dazed by what you statesmen in the convention have done today. I can hardly think of the thing seriously – of Virginia withdrawing from the Union which her legislature first proposed to the other states, which her statesmen – Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, Mason, and the rest so largely contributed to form, and over which her Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison and Tyler have presided in war and peace. And yet nothing could be more serious. It seems to me a bad dream from which we shall presently wake to find ourselves rejoicing in its untruth.

“You will come to the hotel to a six o’clock dinner, of course. I want to show you what a woman Dorothy has grown to be. Poor dear girl! She has been greatly disturbed by the hearing of her mother’s story, and she is a trifle morbid over it. However, you’ll see her for yourself this evening. We were charmingly considerate, I think in not telegraphing to announce our coming. We shall expect you to thank us properly for thus refraining from disturbing you. Come to the hotel the moment your public duties will let you.”

Arthur hastily left the convention hall and hurried across Capitol Square and on to the big, duplex hostelry. He entered on the Exchange Hotel side and learned by inquiry at the office that Edmonia’s rooms were in the Ballard House on the other side of the street. It had begun to rain and he had neither umbrella nor overcoat, having forgotten and left both in the cloak room of the convention. So he mounted the stairway, and set out to cross by the covered crystal bridge that spanned the street connecting the two great caravansaries. The bridge was full of people, gathered there to look at the pageant in the streets below, where companies of volunteer cavalry from every quarter of eastern Virginia were marching past, on their way to the newly-established camp of instruction on the Ashland race track. For Governor Letcher had so far anticipated the inevitable result of the long debate as to establish two instruction camps and to accept the tenders of service which were daily sent to him by the volunteer companies in every county.

As Arthur was making his way through the throng of sight-seers on the glass bridge some movement in the crowd brought him into contact with a gentlewoman, to whom he hastily turned with apologetic intent.

It was Dorothy! Not the Dorothy who had bidden him good-by a year ago, but a new, a statelier Dorothy, a Dorothy with the stamp of travel and society upon her, a Dorothy who had learned ease and self-possession and dignity by habit in the grandest drawing rooms in all the world. Yet the old Dorothy was there too – the Dorothy of straight-looking eyes and perfect truthfulness, and for the moment the new Dorothy forgot herself, giving place to the old.

“Oh, Master!” she cried, impulsively seizing both his hands, and, completely forgetful of the crowd about her, letting the glad tears slip out between her eyelashes. “I was not looking at the soldiers; I was looking for you, and wondering when you would come. Oh, I am so happy, and so glad!”

An instant later the new Dorothy reasserted herself, and Arthur did not at all like the change. The girl became so far self-conscious as to grow dignified, and in very shame over her impulsive outbreak, she exaggerated her dignity and her propriety of demeanor into something like coldness and stately hauteur.

“How you have grown!” Arthur exclaimed when he had led her to one of the parlors almost deserted now for the sight-seeing vantage ground of the bridge.

“No,” she answered as she might have done in a New York or a Paris drawing room, addressing some casual acquaintance. “I have not grown a particle. I was quite grown up before I left Virginia. It is a Paris gown, perhaps. The Parisian dressmakers know all the art of bringing out a woman’s ‘points,’ and they hold my height and my slenderness to be my best claims upon attention.”

Arthur felt as if she had struck him. He was about to remonstrate, when Edmonia broke in upon the conversation with her greeting. But Dorothy had seen his face and read all that it expressed. The old Dorothy was tempted to ask his forgiveness; the new Dorothy dismissed the thought as quite impossible. She had already sufficiently “compromised” herself by her impulsiveness, and to make amends she put stays upon her dignity and throughout the evening they showed no sign of bending.

Arthur was tortured by all this. Edmonia was delighted over it. So differently do a man and a woman sometimes interpret another woman’s attitude and conduct.

Arthur was compelled to leave them at nine to meet Governor Letcher, who had summoned him for consultation with respect to the organization of a surgical staff, of which he purposed to make Arthur Brent one of the chiefs. Before leaving he asked as to Edmonia’s and Dorothy’s home-going plans. Learning that they intended to go by the eight o’clock train the next morning, he said:

“Very well, I’ll send Dick up by the midnight train to have the Wyanoke carriage at the station to meet you.”

“Is Dick with you?” Dorothy asked with more of enthusiasm than she had shown since her outbreak on the bridge. “How I do want to see Dick! Can’t you send him here before train time, please?”

Already grieved and resentful, Arthur was stung by the manner of this request. For the moment he was disposed to interpret it as an intended affront. He quickly dismissed that thought and answered with a laugh:

“Yes, Dorothy, he shall come to you at once. Perhaps he has a ‘song ballad’ ready for your greeting. At any rate he at least will pleasantly remind you of the old life.”

“I wonder why he put it in that way – why he said ‘he at least,’ ” said Dorothy when Arthur had gone and the two women were left alone.

“I think I know,” Edmonia answered. But she did not offer the explanation. Neither did Dorothy ask for it.

XXXVII

AT WYANOKE

IT was three days later before Arthur Brent was able to leave the duties that detained him in Richmond. When at last he found himself free, one of the infrequent trains of that time had just gone, and there would be no other for many hours to come. His impatience to be at Wyanoke was uncontrollable. For three days he had brooded over Dorothy’s manner to him at the hotel, and wondered, with much longing, whether she might not meet him differently at home. He recalled the frankly impulsive eagerness with which she had greeted him in the first moment of their meeting, and he argued with himself that her later reserve might have been simply a reaction from that first outburst of joy, a maidenly impulse to atone to her pride for the lapse into old, childlike manners. This explanation seemed a very probable one, and yet – he reflected that there were no strangers standing by when she had relapsed into a reserve that bordered upon hauteur – nobody before whom she need have hesitated to be cordial. He had asked her about her mother, thinking thus to awaken some warmth of feeling in her and reëstablish a footing of sympathy. But her reply had been a business-like statement that Madame Le Sud would remain in New York for a few days, to secure the clothing she would need for her field ministrations to the wounded, after which she would take some very quiet lodging in Richmond until duty should call her.

Altogether Arthur Brent’s impatience to know the worst or best – whichever it might be – grew greater with every hour, and when he learned that he must idly wait for several hours for the next train, he mounted Gimlet and set out upon the long horseback journey, for which Gimlet, weary of the stable, manifested an eagerness quite equal to his own.

When the young man dismounted at Wyanoke, Dorothy was the first to meet him, and there was something in her greeting that puzzled him even more than her manner on the former occasion had done. For Dorothy too had been thinking of the hotel episode, and repenting herself of her coldness on that occasion. She understood it even less than Arthur did. She had not intended to be reserved with him, and several times during that evening she had made an earnest effort to be natural and cordial instead, but always without success, for some reason that she could not understand. So she had carefully planned to greet him on his home-coming, with all the old affection and without reserve. To that end she had framed in her own mind the things she would say to him and the manner of their saying. Now that he had come, she said the things she had planned to say, but she could not adopt the manner she had intended.

The result was something that would have been ludicrous had it been less painful to both the parties concerned. It left Arthur worse puzzled than ever and obviously pained. It sent Dorothy to her chamber for that “good cry,” which feminine human nature holds to be a panacea.

At dinner Dorothy “rattled” rather than conversed, as young women are apt to do when they are embarrassed and are determined not to show their embarrassment. She seemed bent upon alternately amusing and astonishing Aunt Polly, with her grotesquely distorted descriptions of things seen and people encountered during her travels. Arthur took only so much part in the conversation as a man thinking deeply, but disposed to be polite, might.

When the cloth was removed he lighted a cigar and went to the stables and barns, avowedly to inquire about matters on the plantation.