“Uncle Robert was quite right,” said Arthur meditatively. “And now that I am charged with the responsibility for these black people, I will not delegate my power to any overseer, least of all to one whom you have found out to be a cruel coward. Where do you suppose we could find him now?”
“Down in the tobacco new grounds,” the girl answered. “I was going there to-day to set my dogs on him, but I remembered that you were master now.”
“What was the special occasion for your anger this time?” Arthur asked in a certain quiet, seemingly half indifferent tone which Dorothy found inscrutable.
“He whipped poor old Michael, the gardener last night,” answered the girl with a glint as of fire in her eyes. “He had no right to do that. Michael isn’t a field hand, and he isn’t under the overseer’s control.”
“Do you mean the shambling old man I saw in the garden yesterday? Surely he didn’t whip that poor decrepit old man!”
“Yes, he did. I told you he was a cruel coward.”
“Let’s ride to the tobacco new grounds at once,” said Arthur quite as he might have suggested the most indifferent thing. But Dorothy observed that on the way to the new grounds Arthur Brent spoke no word. Twice she addressed him, but he made no response.
Arrived at the new grounds Arthur called the overseer to him and without preface asked him:
“Did you strike old Michael with your whip last night?”
“Yes, and there wan’t a lick amiss unless I made a lick at him and missed him.”
The man laughed at his own clumsy witticism, but the humor of it seemed not to impress the new master of the plantation. For reply he said:
“Go to your house at once and pack up your belongings. Come to me after I have had my breakfast, and we’ll have a settlement. You are to leave my plantation to-day and never set foot upon it again. Come, Miss Dorothy, let’s continue our ride!”
With that the two wheeled about, the girl saying:
“Let’s run our horses for a stretch.” Instantly she set off at breakneck speed across the fields and over two stiff fences before regaining the main plantation road. There she drew rein and turning full upon her companion she said:
“Now you may call me Dorothy.”
VII
SHRUB HILL CHURCH
T HE following day was Sunday, and to Arthur’s satisfaction it was one of the two Sundays in the month, on which services were held at Shrub Hill Church. For Arthur remembered the little old church there in the woods, with the ancient cemetery, in which all the Brents who had lived before him were buried, and in which rested also all the past generations of all the other good families of the region round about.
Shrub Hill Church represented one of the most attractive of Virginia traditions. Early in his career as statesman, Thomas Jefferson had rendered Virginia a most notable service. He had secured the complete separation of church from state, the dissolution of that unholy alliance between religion and government, with which despotism and class privilege have always buttressed the fabric of oppression. But church and family remained, and in the course of generations that relation had assumed characteristics of a most wholesome, ameliorating and liberalizing character.
Thus at Shrub Hill all the people of character and repute in the region round about, found themselves at home. They were in large degree Baptists and Presbyterians in their personal church relations, but all of them deemed themselves members of Shrub Hill – the Episcopal church which had survived from that earlier time when to be a gentleman carried with it the presumption of adherence to the established religion. All of them attended service there. All contributed to the cost of keeping the edifice and the graveyard grounds in repair. All of them shared in the payment of the old rector’s salary and he in his turn preached scrupulously innocuous sermons to them – sermons ten minutes in length which might have been repeated with entire propriety and acceptance in any Baptist or Presbyterian pulpit.
When the Easter elections came, all the gentlemen of the neighborhood felt themselves entitled to vote for the wardens and vestrymen already in office, or for the acceptable person selected by common consent to take the place of any warden or vestryman who might have been laid to rest beneath the sod of the Shrub Hill churchyard during the year. And the wardens and vestrymen were Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians or gentlemen professing no faith, quite indifferently.
These people were hot debaters of politics and religion – especially religion. When the question of immersion or pedo-baptism was up, each was ready and eager to maintain the creed of his own church with all the arguments that had been formulated for that purpose generations before and worn smooth to the tongue by oft-repeated use. But this fervor made no difference whatever in the loyalty of their allegiance to their old family church at Shrub Hill. There they found common ground of tradition and affection. There they were all alike in right of inheritance. There all of them expected to be buried by the side of their forefathers.
It has been said already that services were held at Shrub Hill on two Sundays of the month. As the old rector lived within a few minutes’ walk of the church, and had no other duty than its ministry, there might have been services there every Sunday in the year, except that such a practice would have interfered with the desire of those who constituted its congregation to attend their own particular Baptist or Presbyterian churches, which held services on the other Sundays. It was no part of the spirit or mission of the family church thus to interfere with the religious preferences of its members, and so, from time immemorial, there had been services at Shrub Hill only upon two Sundays of the month.
Everybody attended those services – every gentleman and every gentlewoman at least. That is to say, all went to the church and the women with a few of the older men went in. The rest of the gentlemen gathered in groups under the trees outside – for the church stood in the midst of an unbroken woodland – and chatted in low tones while the service was in progress. Thus they fulfilled their gentlemanly obligations of church going, without the fatigue of personal participation in the services.
The gentlemen rode to church on horseback. The ladies, old and young alike, went thither in their family carriages. Many of these, especially the younger ones, were accustomed to go everywhere else in the saddle, but to church, propriety and tradition required them to go decorously in the great lumbering vehicles of family state.
The gentlemen arrived first and took their places at the church door to greet the gentlewomen and give them a hand in alighting from the high-hung carriages.
As soon as the service was over the social clearing-house held its session. It was not known by that name, but that in fact was what it amounted to. Every young woman present invited every other young woman present to go home with her to dinner and to stay for a few days or for a week. There was a babel of insistent tongues out of which nothing less sagacious than feminine intelligence could have extracted a resultant understanding. But after a few minutes all was as orderly as the domestic arrangements over which these young women were accustomed to preside. Two or three of them had won all the others to their will, and the company, including all there was of young and rich voiced femininity in the region round about, was divided into squads and assigned to two or three hospitable mansions, whither trunks would follow in the early morning of the Monday.
The young men accommodated themselves at once to these arrangements, each accepting at least a dinner invitation to the house, to which the young woman most attractive to himself had elected to go. As there was no afternoon or evening service, the religious duties of the day were at an end before one of the clock.
Out under the trees before and during the service the men discussed affairs of interest to themselves, and on this his first Sunday, Arthur found that his own affairs constituted the subject of most general interest. He was heartily welcomed as the new master of Wyanoke, the welcome partaking somewhat of the nature of that given to one who returns to right ways of living after erratic wanderings. There was a kindly disposition to recognize Arthur’s birthright as a Virginian, together with a generous readiness to forgive his youthful indiscretion in living so much elsewhere.
Only one man ventured to be censorious, and that was Madison Peyton, who was accustomed to impress himself upon the community in ways which were sometimes anything but agreeable, but to which everybody was accustomed to submit in a nameless sort of fear of his sharp tongue – everybody, that is to say, except Aunt Polly and John Meaux.
Aunt Polly was not afraid of Madison Peyton for several reasons. The first was that Aunt Polly was not accustomed to stand in awe of anybody. The second was that her blood was quite the bluest in all that part of the State and she had traditions behind her. Finally she was a shrewdly penetrative person who had long ago discovered the nature of Madison Peyton’s pretensions and subjected them to sarcastic analysis. As for John Meaux, everybody knew him as by odds the most successful planter and most capable man of business in the county. Madison Peyton could teach him nothing, and he had a whiplash attachment to his tongue, the sting of which Peyton did not care to invoke.
For the rest, Madison Peyton was dominant. It was his habit to lecture his neighbors upon their follies and short-comings and rather arrogantly, though with a carefully simulated good nature, to dictate to them what they should or should not do, assuming with good-natured insolence an authority which in no way belonged to him. In this way, during the late Robert Brent’s last illness, Peyton had installed as overseer at Wyanoke, a man whom the planters generally refused to employ because of his known cruelty, but whose capacity to make full crops was well attested by experience.
Arthur Brent had summarily dismissed this man as we know, and Peyton was distinctly displeased with him for doing so. Taking the privilege of an old friend of the young man’s uncle, Peyton called him by his first name, without any prefix whatever.
“Why in the world, Arthur,” he said by way of introducing the subject, “why in the world have you sent Williams away?”
Something in Peyton’s manner, something that was always in his manner, had given Arthur a feeling of resentment when the man had called upon him soon after his arrival. This direct interrogatory concerning a matter exclusively his own, almost angered the young man, as the others saw when, instead of answering it directly, he asked:
“Are you specially interested in Williams’s welfare, Mr. Peyton?”
Peyton was too self-satisfied to be sensitive, so he took the rebuff with a laugh.
“Oh, no,” he answered. “It is you that I’m troubled about. Knowing nothing of planting you need a capable overseer more than anybody else does, and here you’ve sent away the best one in the county without even consulting anybody.”
“I did not need to consult anybody,” answered Arthur, “in order to know that I did not want that man on my plantation.”
“Oh, of course! But you can’t get another overseer at this time of year, you know.”
“On the whole, I don’t think I want another at any time of year.”
“You imagine perhaps that you know something about planting. I’ve known other young men to make the same mistake.”
“Perhaps I can learn,” answered Arthur in placid tones. “I have learned some things quite as difficult in my life.”
“But you don’t know anything about planting, and if you try it without an overseer you’ll find your account at your commission merchant’s distressingly short at the end of the year.”
“I don’t know about that,” broke in John Meaux. “You predicted the same thing in my case, you remember, Mr. Peyton, when I came back after graduating at West Point, and yet I’ve managed to keep some hams in my meat house for fifteen years now, – and I never had an overseer.”
Ignoring Meaux’s interruption Peyton said to Arthur:
“And you know you’ve got a law-suit on your hands.”
“Have I? I didn’t know it.”
“Why, of course, Williams will sue. You see he was engaged for the year, and the contract lasts till January.”
“Who made the contract?” asked Arthur.
“Well, I did – acting for your uncle.”
“Had you my uncle’s power of attorney to bind him to a year’s arrangement?”
“Of course not. He was ill and I merely did a neighbor’s part.”
“Then suppose Williams should sue you instead of me? You see it is you who are liable for non-fulfilment of that contract. You bargained with this man to serve you for a year as overseer on my plantation, and I have declined to accept the arrangement. If he has a right of action against anybody, it is against you. However, I don’t think he will sue you, for I have paid him his wages for the full year. Fortunately I happened to have money enough in bank for that. There is the voluntary – let’s go into church.”
Arthur Brent entered the place of service, one or two of the gentlemen following him.
He had made an enemy of Madison Peyton – an enemy who would never admit his enmity but would never lose an opportunity to indulge it.
VIII
A DINNER AT BRANTON
I T fell to Arthur Brent’s share to dine on that Sunday at Branton, the seat of the most princely hospitality in all that part of Virginia. The matter was not at all one of his own arranging, although it was altogether agreeable to him. The master of Branton – a young man scarcely older than himself, who lived there with his only sister, Edmonia Bannister, had been the first of all the neighbors to visit Arthur, dining with him and passing the night at Wyanoke. He had been most kindly and cordial in his welcome and Arthur had been strongly drawn to him as a man of character, intelligence and very winning manners. No sooner had Arthur dismounted at church on that first Sunday, than young Archer Bannister had come to shake his hand and say – “I want to preëmpt you, Doctor Brent. All your neighbors will clamor for your company for the dinner and the night, but I have done my best to establish the priority of my claim. Besides my good sister wants you – and as a confidence between you and me, I will tell you that when my sister wants anything she is extremely apt to get it. I’m something of a laggard at dressing myself for church, but this morning she began upon me early, sending three servants to help me put on my clothes, and laying her particular commands upon me to be the first man to arrive at Shrub Hill, lest some other get before me with an invitation to dinner. So you are to be my guest, please, and I’ll send one of my people over to Wyanoke for anything you want. By the way I’ve cleared out a wardrobe for you at Branton, and a dressing case. You’ll need to send over a supply of linen, coats, boots, underwear, and the like and leave it in your room there, so that you shall be quite at home to come and go at your will, with the certainty of always finding ready for you whatever you need in the way of costume.”
Arthur Brent’s one extravagance was in the matter of clothes. He always dressed himself simply, but he was always dressed well, and especially it was his pleasure to change his garments as often as the weather or the circumstances might suggest the desirability of a change. Accordingly he had brought fat trunks to Wyanoke, but by the time that three others of his new neighbors had informed him, quite casually and as a matter of course, that they had prepared rooms for him and expected him to send to those rooms a supply of clothing sufficient for any need, he was pleased to remember that he had left careful measurements with his tailor, his shirt maker, his fabricator of footwear, and his “gents’ furnisher” in New York. And he had also acquired a new and broader conception than ever before, of the comprehensive heartiness of Virginia hospitality.
“You see,” said young Bannister, later in the day, “Branton is to be one of your homes. As a young man you will be riding about a good deal, and you mustn’t be compelled to ride all the way to Wyanoke every time you want to change your coat or substitute low quarter shoes for your riding boots. If you’ll ask little Miss Dorothy to show you my room at Wyanoke you’ll find that I have everything there that any gentleman could possibly need with which to dress himself properly for any occasion, from a fish fry to a funeral, from a fox hunt to a wedding. You are to do the same at Branton. You don’t do things in that way in a city, of course, but here it is necessary, because of the distance between plantations. A man doesn’t want all his belongings in one place when that place may be ten or a dozen miles away when he wants them.”
Arthur found Branton to be substantially a reproduction of Wyanoke, except that the great gambrel-roofed house had many wings and extensions, and several one storied, two roomed “offices” built about the grounds for the accommodation of any overflow of guests that might happen there. The house had been built about the time at which the Wyanoke mansion had come into being. It was of wood, but by no means of such structure as we now expect in a wooden house. The frame was made of great hewn timbers of forest pine, twelve inches square as to floor beams and rafter plates, and with ten inch timbers in lieu of studding. The vast chimneys were supported, not upon arches nicely calculated to sustain their superincumbent weight with a factor of safety, but upon a solid mass of cellar masonry that would have sustained the biggest of Egyptian monoliths. The builders of the old colonial time may not have known the precise strength of materials or the niceties of calculation by which the supporting capacity of an arch is determined, but they knew – and they acted upon the knowledge – that twelve inch, heart pine timbers set on end will sustain any weight that a dwelling is called upon to bear, and that a chimney built upon a solid mass of masonry, twenty feet in diameter, is not likely to fall down for lack of underpinning.
One full half of the ground floor of the great mansion constituted the single drawing room, wainscoted to the ceiling and provided with three huge fire places built for the burning of cord wood. The floors were as white as snow, the wainscoting as black as night with age and jealous polishing with beeswax. After the architectural manner of the country, there was a broad porch in front and another in rear, each embowered in honeysuckles and climbing rose bushes. A passageway, more than twenty feet in width ran through the building, connecting the two porches and constituting the most generally used sitting room of the house. It had broad oaken doors reaching across its entire width. They stood always open except during the very coldest days of the mild Virginia winter, there being no thought of closing them even at night. For there were no criminal classes in that social fabric, and if there had been, the certainty that the master of the mansion slept upon its ground floor and knew what to do with a shot gun, would have been a sufficient deterrent to invasion of the premises.
There were two large fire places in the hall for winter use. But the glory of the place was the stairway, with its broad ashen steps and its broader landings. Up and down it had passed generations of happy maidens and matrons. Up and down it, prattling children had played and romped and danced in happy innocence. Up and down it wedding guests and funeral attendants had come and gone, carrying their burdens of flowers for the bride and blossoms for the bier. Upon it had been whispered words of love and tenderness that prepared the way for lives of happiness, and sorrowful utterances that soothed and softened grief. Upon its steps young men of chivalric soul had wooed maidens worthy of their devotion. Upon its landings young maidens had softly spoken those words of consent which ushered in lives of rejoicing.
The furniture of the house was in keeping with its spaciousness and its solidity. Huge sofas were everywhere, broad enough for beds and long enough for giants to stretch their limbs upon. Commodious, plantation-made chairs of oak invited every guest to repose in the broad hallway. In the drawing room, and in the spacious dining hall the sedate ticking of high standing clocks marked time only to suggest its abundance in that land of leisure, and to invite its lavish use in enjoyment.
Now add to all this still life, the presence of charming people – men of gracious mien and young women of immeasurable charm, young women whose rich and softly modulated voices were exquisite music, and whose presence was a benediction – and you may faintly understand the surroundings in which Arthur Brent found himself on that deliciously perfect Sunday afternoon in June, in the year of our Lord, 1859.
Is it surprising that the glamour of it all took hold upon his soul and tempted him to rest content with a life so picturesquely peaceful? Is it surprising that his set purpose of speedily returning to his own life of strenuous, scientific endeavor, somewhat weakened in presence of a temptation so great? All this was his for the taking. All of it was open to him to enjoy if he would. All of it lay before him as a gracious inheritance. Why should he not accept it? Why should he return to the struggle of science, the pent life of cities? Why should he prowl about tenement houses in an endeavor to solve the problem of mephitic gases, when all this free, balsamic air offered itself gratis to his breathing? He had but one life to live, he reflected. Why should he not live it here in sweet and wholesome ways? Why should he not make himself a part of this exquisitely poised existence?
All these vexed and vexing questions flitted through his brain even before he had opportunity to meet his hostess in her own home, surrounded by her bevy of variously attractive young women.
Edmonia Bannister was everywhere recognized as the belle of the state in which she lived. Suitors for her hand had come from afar and anear to woo this maiden of infinite charm, and one by one they had gone away sorrowing but with only the kindliest memory of the gentleness with which she had withheld her consent to their wooings.
She was scarcely beautiful. The word “comely” seemed a better one with which to describe her appearance, but her comeliness was allied to a charm at once indefinable and irresistible. John Meaux had said that “it is a necessary part of every young man’s education to fall in love with Edmonia Bannister at least once,” and had predicted that fate for Arthur Brent. Whether the prediction was destined to be fulfilled or not, Arthur could not decide on this his first day as a guest at Branton. He was sure that he was not in love with the girl at the end of his visit, but he drew that assurance chiefly from his conviction that it was absurd to fall in love with any woman upon acquaintance so slight. While holding firmly to that conviction he nevertheless felt strongly that the girl had laid a spell upon him, under control of which he was well nigh helpless. He was by no means the first young man to whom this experience had come, and he was not likely to be the last.
And yet the young woman was wholly free from intent thus to enslave those who came into her life. Her artlessness was genuine, and her seriousness profound. There was no faintest suggestion of frivolity or coquetry in her manner. She was too self-respecting for that, and she had too much of character. One of those who had “loved and lost” her, had said that “the only art she used was the being of herself,” and all the rest who had had like experience were of the same mind. So far indeed was she from seeking to bring men to her feet that on more than one occasion she had been quick to detect symptoms of coming love and had frankly and solemnly said to prospective wooers for whom she felt a particular kindness – “please don’t fall in love with me. I shall never be able to reciprocate the sentiment, and it would distress me to reject your suit.” It is not upon record, however, that any one of those who were thus warned profited by the wise counsel. On the contrary, in many instances, this mark of kindliness on her part had served only to precipitate the catastrophe she sought to avert.
Arthur Brent had a stronger shield. He saw clearly that for him to marry this or any other of that fair land’s maidens would make an end of his ambitions.
“If I should fall in love down here in Virginia,” he reflected, “I should never have strength of mind enough to shake off the glamour of this life and go back to my work. The fascination of it all is already strong upon me. I must not add another to the sources of danger. I must be resolute and strong. That way alone safety lies for me. I will set to work at once to carry out my mission here, and then go away. I shall know this week how matters stand with the estate. I shall busy myself at once with my fixed purpose. I shall find means of discharging all the debts of the plantation. Then I shall sell the land and with the proceeds take the negroes to the west and settle them there on little farms of their own. Then I shall be free again to resume my proper work in the world. Obviously I must not complicate matters by marrying here or even falling in love. A man with such a duty laid upon him has no right to indulge himself in soft luxury. I must be strong and resolute.”
Nevertheless Arthur Brent felt an easily recognizable thrill of delight when at dinner he found himself assigned to a seat on Edmonia Bannister’s left hand.
There were sixteen at dinner, and all were happy. Arthur alone was a guest unused to occupy that place at Branton, and to him accordingly all at table devoted special attention. Three at least of the younger men present, had been suitors in their time for their hostess’s hand, for it was a peculiarity of Edmonia’s rejections of her wooers, that they usually soothed passion into affection and made of disappointed lovers most loyal friends. Before the dinner came to an end, Arthur found himself deliberately planning to seek this relation of close friendship without the initiatory process of a love making. For he found his hostess to be wise in counsel and sincere in mind, beyond her years. “She is precisely the person to advise me in the delicate affairs that I must manage,” he thought. “For in the present state of public feeling” – it was the era of Kansas-Nebraska bills and violent agitation – “it will require unusual tact and discretion to carry out my plans without making of myself an object of hatred and loathing. This young woman has tact in infinite measure; she has discretion also, and an acquaintance with sentiment here, such as I cannot even hope to acquire. Above all she has conscience, as I discover every time she has occasion to express an opinion. I’ll make her my friend. I’ll consult her with regard to my plans.”
By way of preparation for this he said to Edmonia as they sat together in the porch one evening: “I am coming often to Branton, because I want you to learn to know me and like me. I have matters in hand concerning which I very much want your counsel. Will you mind giving it to me if I behave well, resist the strong temptation to pay court to you as a lover, and teach you after a while to feel that I am a friend to whom your kindliness will owe counsel?”
“If you will put matters on that level, Cousin Arthur, and keep them there I shall be glad to have it so. I don’t know that I can give you advice of any account, but, at any rate, as I think your impulses will be right and kindly, I can give you sympathy, and that is often a help. I’ll give you my opinion also, whenever you want it – especially if I think you are going wrong and need admonition. Then I’ll put on all the airs of a Minerva and advise you oracularly. But remember that you must win all this, by coming often to Branton and – and the rest of it.”
“I’ll come often to Branton, be sure of that,” he answered. But he did not feel himself quite strong enough of purpose, to promise that he would not make love to the mistress of the mansion.
At the dinner each gentleman had a joint or a pair of fowls before him to carve, and every gentleman in that time and country was confidently expected to know how to carve whatever dish there might be assigned to him. Carving was deemed as much a necessary part of every gentleman’s education as was the ability to ride and shoot and catch a mettlesome fish. The barbarity of having the joints clumsily cut up by a butler at a side table and served half cold in an undiscriminating way, had not then come into being. Dining was a fine art in that time and country, a social function, in which each carver had the joy of selecting tidbits for those he served, and arranging them daintily and attractively upon the plate brought to him for that purpose by a well trained servant. Especially each took pleasure in remembering and ministering to the particular fancies of all the rest in the act of helping. Refined people had not yet borrowed from barbaric Russians the practice of having themselves fed, like so many cattle, by servitors appointed to deal out rations.
There was no wine served with the meal. That came later in its proper place. Each gentleman had been invited to partake of a “toddy” – a mild admixture of whiskey, water, sugar and nutmeg – before sitting down to the meal. After that there was no drink served until the meal was over. When the cloth was removed after the dessert, there came upon the polished board some dishes of walnuts of which all partook sparingly. Then came the wine – old sherry or, if the house were a fortunate one, rare old Madeira, served from richly carved decanters, in daintily stemmed cut glasses. The wine was poured into all the glasses. Then the host proposed “the ladies,” and all drank, standing. Then the host gallantly held the broad dining room door open while the ladies, bowing and smiling, graciously withdrew. After that politics and walnuts, religion and raisins, sherry and society divided the attention of the gentlemen with cigars that had been kept for a dozen years or more drying in a garret. For the modern practice of soaking cigars in a refrigerator and smoking them limp and green was an undreamed of insult to the tongues and palates of men who knew all about tobacco and who smoked for flavor, not for the satisfaction of a fierce and intemperate craving for narcotic effect.