Dorothy South

When he returned, full of a carefully formed purpose to “have it out” with Dorothy, he found guests in the house who had driven to Wyanoke for supper and a late moonlight drive homeward. From that moment until the time of the guests’ departure, he was eagerly beset with questions concerning the political situation and the prospects of war.

“The war is already on,” he answered, “and we are not half prepared for it. Fortunately the North is in no better case, and still more fortunately, we are to have with us the ablest soldier in America.”

“Who? Beauregard?”

“No, Robert E. Lee, to whom the Federal administration a little while ago offered the command of all the United States armies. He has resigned and is now in Richmond to organize our forces.”

Arthur talked much, too, of the seriousness of the war, of the certainty in his mind, that it would last for years, taxing the resources of the South to the point of exhaustion. For this some of his guests called him a pessimist, and applauded the prediction of young Jeff Peyton, that “within twenty days we shall have twenty thousand men on the Potomac, and after perhaps one battle of some consequence we shall dictate terms of peace in Washington.” He added: “You must make haste to get into the service, Doctor, if you expect to see the fun.”

“I do not expect to see the fun,” Arthur answered quietly. “I do not see the humorous side of slaughter. But in my judgment you, sir, will have ample time in which to wear out many uniforms as gorgeous as the one you now have on, before peace is concluded at Washington or anywhere else. An army of twenty thousand men will be looked upon as a mere detachment before this struggle is over. We shall hear the tramp of armies numbering hundreds of thousands, and their tramping will desolate Virginia fields that are now as fair as any on earth. We shall see historic mansions vanish in smoke, and thousands of happy homes made prey by the demon War. War was never yet a pastime for any but the most brutish men. It is altogether horrible; it is utterly hellish, if the ladies will pardon the term, and only fools can welcome it as a holiday pursuit. Unhappily there are many such on both sides of the Potomac.”

As he paused there was a complete hush among the company for thirty seconds or so. Then Dorothy advanced to Arthur, took his hand, and said:

“Thank you, Master!”

Arthur answered only by a look. But it was a look that told her all that she wanted to know.

When the guests were gone, Dorothy prepared for a hasty retreat to her room, but Arthur called to her as she reached the landing of the stairs, and asked:

“Shall we have one of our old time horseback rides ‘soon’ in the morning, Dorothy?”

“Yes. It delights me to hear our Virginia phrase ‘soon in the morning.’ Thank you, I’ll be ready. Good night.”

XXXVIII

SOON IN THE MORNING

IT was Dick who brought the horses on that next morning – Dick grown into a tall and comely fellow, and no longer dressed in the careless fashion of a year ago. For had not Dick spent two months in Richmond as his master’s body servant? And had he not there developed his native dandy instincts? And had not the sight of the well-nigh universal uniforms of that time bred in him a great longing to wear some sort of “soldier clothes”?

His master had indulged the fancy. He meant to keep Dick as his body servant throughout the coming war, and, at any rate while he sat as a member of that august body the constitutional convention, he wanted his “boy” to present the appearance of a gentleman’s servitor. So, when he took Dick to a tailor to be dressed in suitable fashion, he readily acquiesced in the young negro’s preference for a suit of velveteen and corduroys with brass buttons shining all over it like the stars in Ursa Major. The tailor, recognizing the shapeliness of the young negro’s person as something that afforded him an opportunity to display his skill in the matter of “fit” had brought all his art to bear upon the task of perfecting Dick’s livery.

Dick in his turn had employed strategy in securing an opportunity to show himself in his new glory to his “Mis’ Dorothy.” Ben, the hostler who usually brought the horses had recently “got religion” – a bilious process which at that time was apt to render a negro specially indifferent to the obligations of morality with respect to “chickens fryin’ size,” and gloomily unfit for the performance of his ordinary duties. Dick had labored over night with “Bro’ Ben,” persuading him that he was really ill, and inducing him to swallow two blue mass pills – the which Dick had adroitly filched from the medicine chest in the laboratory. And as Dick, since his service “endurin’ of de feveh,” had enjoyed the reputation of knowing “ ‘mos as much as a sho’ ’nuff doctah,” Ben readily acquiesced in Dick’s suggestion that he, Ben, should lie abed in the morning, Dick kindly volunteering to feed and curry his mules for him and “bring de hosses.”

Dick’s strategy accomplished its purpose, and so it was Dick, resplendent in a livery that might have done credit to a field marshal on dress parade, who presented himself at the gate that morning in charge of his master’s and Dorothy’s mounts.

Arthur looked at him and asked:

“Why are you in full-dress uniform today, General Dick?”

“It’s my respec’ful compliments to Mis’ Dorothy, sah,” answered the boy.

“Thank you, Dick!” said the girl. “I appreciate the attention. But where is Ben?”

“Bro’ Ben he dun got religion, Mis’ Dorothy, an’ he dun taken two blue pills las’ night, an’ – ”

“Give him a dose of Epsom salts at once, Dick,” broke in Arthur, “or he’ll be salivated. And don’t give him oxalic acid by mistake. I’ll trouble you to keep your fingers out of the medicine chest hereafter. Come, Dorothy!”

But as Dorothy was about to put her foot into Arthur’s hand and spring from it into the saddle, Dick drew forth a white handkerchief, heavily perfumed with a cooking extract of lemon, and offered it to Dorothy, saying:

“You haint rubbed de hosses, Mis’ Dorothy, to see ef dey’s clean ’nuff fer dis suspicious occasion.”

Dick probably meant “auspicious,” but he was accustomed, both in prose and in verse, to require complaisant submission to his will on the part of the English language.

“Did you clean them, Dick?” asked Dorothy with a little laugh.

“I’se proud to say I did,” answered the boy.

“Then there is no need for me to rub them,” she replied. “You always do your work well. Your master tells me so. And now I want you to take this handkerchief of mine, and keep it for your own. I bought it in Paris, Dick. You can carry it in your breast pocket, with a corner of the lace protruding – sticking out, you know. And if you will come to me when we get back from our ride, I’ll give you a bottle of something better than a cooking extract to perfume it with.”

With that the girl handed him a dainty, lace-edged mouchoir, for which she had paid half a hundred francs in Paris, and which she had carried at the Tuileries.

“It is just in celebration of my home-coming,” she said to Arthur in explanation, “and because we are going to have one of our old ‘soon in the morning’ rides together.”

As she mounted, Dorothy turned to Dick and commanded:

“Turn the hounds loose, Dick, and put them on our track.” Then to Arthur:

“It is a glorious morning, and I want the dogs to enjoy it.”

The horses were full of the enthusiasm of the morning. They broke at once into a gallop, which neither of the riders was disposed to restrain. Five minutes later the hounds, bellowing as they followed the trail, overtook the riders. Dorothy brought her mare upon her haunches, and greeted the dogs as they leaped to caress her hands. Then she cracked her whip and blew her whistle, and sent the excited animals to heel, with moans and complainings on their part that they were thus banished from the immediate presence of their beloved mistress.

“Your dogs still love and obey you, Dorothy,” said Arthur as they resumed their ride more soberly than before.

“Yes,” she answered. “They are better in that respect than women are.”

Arthur thought he understood. At any rate he accepted the remark as one implying an apology, and he saw no occasion for apology.

“Never mind that,” he said. “A woman is entitled to her perfect freedom. Every human being born into this world has an absolute right to do precisely as he pleases, so long as in doing as he pleases he does not trespass upon or abridge the equal right of any other human being to do as he pleases. It is this equality of right that furnishes the foundation of all moral codes which are worthy of respect. And this equality of right belongs to women as fully as to men.”

“In a way, yes,” answered Dorothy. “Yet in another way, no. I control my hounds, chiefly for their own good. My right to control them rests upon my superior knowledge of what their conduct ought to be. It is the same way with women. They do not know as much as men do, concerning what their conduct ought to be. Take my dear mother’s case for example. If she had frankly told my father that she could not be happy in the life into which he had brought her, that in fact it tortured her, he would have taken her away out of it. Her mistake was in taking the matter into her own hands. She needed a master. She ought to have made my father her master. She ought to have told him what she suffered, and why she suffered. She ought to have trusted him to find the remedy. Instead of that – well, you know the story. My father loved my mother with all his soul. She loved him in return. He could have been her master, if he had so willed. For when any woman loves any man that man has only to assume that he is her master in order to be so, and in order to make her supremely happy in his being so. If my father had understood that, there would have been no stain upon me now.”

“What on earth do you mean, Dorothy?” asked Arthur, intensely, as the girl broke into tears. “There is no stain upon you. I will horsewhip anybody that shall so much as suggest such a thing.”

“Yes, I know. You are good and true always. But think of it, Cousin Arthur. My mother is in hiding in Richmond, because of her shame. And my father has posthumously insulted her – pure, clean woman that she is – and insulted me, too, in my helplessness. Let me tell you all about it, please. Oh, Cousin Arthur, you do not know how I have longed for an opportunity to tell you! You alone of all people in this world are broad enough to sympathize with me in my wretchedness. You alone are true to Truth and Justice and Right. Let me tell you!”

“Tell me, Dorothy,” he answered tenderly. “I beg of you tell me absolutely all that is in your mind. Tell me as freely as you told me once why you marked a watermelon with my initials. But please, Dorothy, do not tell me anything at all, unless you can put aside the strange reserve that you have lately set up as a barrier between us, and talk to me in the old, free, unconstrained way. It was in hope of that that I asked you to take this ride.”

She replied, “I beg your pardon for that. I could not help the constraint, and it pained me as greatly as it distressed you. We are free now, on our horses. We can talk without restraint, and when we have talked the matter out, perhaps you will understand. Listen, then!”

She waited a full minute, the horses walking meanwhile, before she resumed. Finally Arthur said: “I am listening, Dorothy.”

Then she answered.

“My mother was never a bad woman, Arthur Brent. I want you to understand that clearly before we go on. She abandoned my father because she could not endure the life he provided for her. But she was always a pure woman, in spite of all her surroundings and conditions. She offered freedom to my father, but she asked no freedom for herself. She made no complaint of him, and his memory is still to her the dearest thing on earth. It is convention alone that censures her; convention alone that forbids her to come to Pocahontas; convention alone that refuses to me permission to love her openly as my mother and to honor her as such. If I had my way, I should bring her to Pocahontas, and set up housekeeping there; and I should send out a proclamation to everybody, saying in effect: ‘My mother, Mrs. South, is with me. You who shall come promptly to pay your respects to her, I will count my friends. All the rest shall be my enemies.’ But that may not be. My mother forbids, and I bow to my mother’s command. Then comes my father’s command, and to that I will never bow.”

“What is it, Dorothy?”

“Aunt Polly has shown me his letter. He tells me that because of my mother’s misbehavior, he has great fear on my account. He explains that he forbids me to learn music because he thought it was music that led my mother into wrong ways. He tells me that in order to preserve my ‘respectability’ he has arranged that I shall marry into a Virginia family as good as my own, and as if to make the matter of my inconsequence as detestably humiliating as possible he tells me as I learned before and wrote to you from Paris, that he has betrothed me to Jeff Peyton. If there had been any chance that I would submit to be thus disposed of like a hogshead of tobacco or a carload of wheat, Jeff Peyton’s conduct would have destroyed it. The last time I met him in Europe you remember, he threatened me with this command of my father, and I instantly ordered him out of my presence. He had the impudence to come to Wyanoke last night – knowing that I was there, and that I was acting as hostess. It was nearly as bad as if I had been entertaining at Pocahontas. He made it worse by asking me if I had read my father’s letter, and if I did not now realize the necessity of marrying him in order that I might ally myself with a good Virginia family. He had just finished that insolence when you made your little speech, not only calling him a fool by plain implication, but proving him to be one. That’s why I thanked you, as I did.”