After half an hour or so over the rich, nutty wine, the gentlemen joined the gentlewomen in the drawing room, the hallway or the porches according to the weather, and a day well spent ended with a light supper at nine o’clock. Then there was an ordering of horses and a making of adieux on the part of such of the gentlemen as were not going to remain over night.
“You will stay, Cousin Arthur,” Edmonia said. “You will stay, of course. You and I have a compact to carry out. We are to learn to like each other. It will be very easy, I think, but we must set to work at it immediately. Will you ride with me in the morning – soon?”
She called him “Cousin Arthur,” of course. Had not a distant relative of his once married a still more distant kinswoman of her own? It would have been deemed in Virginia a distinct discourtesy in her not to call him “Cousin Arthur.”
IX
DOROTHY’S CASE
A FTER a few weeks of work Arthur Brent’s laboratory was ready for use, with all its apparatus in place and all its reserve supply of chemicals safely bestowed in a small, log built hut standing apart.
His books too had been brought to the house and unpacked. He provided shelf room for them in the various apartments, in the broad hallway, and even upon the stairs. There were a multitude of volumes – largely the accumulations of years of study and travel on his own and his father’s part. The collection included all that was best in scientific literature, and much that was best in history, in philosophy and in belles lettres. To this latter department he had ordered large additions made when sending for his books – this with an eye to Dorothy’s education.
There was already a library of some importance at Wyanoke, the result of irregular buying during two hundred years past. Swift was there in time stained vellum. The poets, from Dryden and Pope to the last quarter of the eighteenth century were well represented, and there were original editions of “Childe Harold,” and “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” on the shelves. Scott was present in leathern cuirass of binding – both in his novels and in his poems. But there was not a line of Coleridge or Wordsworth or Shelley or Rogers or Campbell or John Keats, not a suggestion of Matthew Arnold. Tennyson, Browning and their fellows were completely absent, though Bailey’s “Festus” was there to represent modern poetry.
The latest novels in the list, apart from Scott, were “Evelina,” “The Children of The Abbey,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” “Scottish Chiefs” and some others of their kind. But all the abominations of Smollett, all the grossness of Fielding, all the ribaldry of Richardson, and all the sentimental indecency of Laurence Sterne were present in full force – on top shelves, out of consideration for maidenly modesty.
In history there were Josephus and Rollin, and scarcely anything else. Hume was excluded because of his scepticism, and Gibbon had been passed over as a monster of unbelief.
Arthur found that Dorothy had browsed somewhat in this old library, particularly among the British Essayists and in some old volumes of Dramas. Her purity had revolted at Fielding, Smollett and their kind, and she had found the sentimentalities of Miss Burney insipid. But she knew her “Don Quixote” almost by heart, and “Gil Blas” even more minutely. She had read much of Montaigne and something of Rousseau in the original also, and the Latin classics were her familiars. For her father had taught her from infancy, French and Latin, not after the manner of the schools, as grammatical gymnastics, but with an eye single to the easy and intelligent reading of the rich literatures that those languages offer to the initiated. The girl knew scarcely a single rule of Latin grammar – in text book terms at least – but she read her Virgil and Horace almost as easily as she did her Bible.
It was with definite reference to the deficiencies of this and other old plantation libraries, that Arthur Brent ordered books. He selected Dorothy’s own sitting room – opening off her chamber – as the one in which to bestow the treasures of modern literature – Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer, Coleridge, Keats, Rogers, Campbell, Shelley and their later successors – Longfellow, Bryant, Willis, Halleck, and above all Irving, Paulding and Hawthorne.
In arranging these treasures in Dorothy’s outer room, Arthur resorted to a little trick or two. He would pick up a volume with ostensible purpose of placing it upon a shelf, but would turn to a favorite passage and read a little aloud. Then, suddenly stopping, he would say: —
“But you’ll read all that for yourself,” and would add some bit of comment or suggestion of a kind to awaken the girl’s attention and attract her to the author in question. Before he had finished arranging the books in that room Dorothy was almost madly eager to read all of them. A new world was opening to her, a world of modern thought far more congenial to her mind than the older literature which alone she had known before. Here was a literature of which she had scarcely known even the existence. It was a clean, wholesome, well-aired literature; a literature founded upon modern ways of thinking; a literature that dealt with modern life and character; a literature instinct with the thought and sentiment of her own time. The girl was at once bewildered by the extent of it and fascinated by its charm. Her sleep was cut short in her eagerness to read it all. Its influence upon her mind and character became at once and insistently manifest.
“Here endeth the first lesson,” quoted Arthur Brent when he had thus placed all that is best in modern literature temptingly at this eager girl’s hand. “It will puzzle them to stop her from thinking now,” he added, “or to confine her thinking within their strait-laced conventions. Now for science.”
The age of Darwin, Huxley and Herbert Spencer had not yet come, in 1859. Haeckel was still unheard of, outside of Berlin and Jena. The science of biology, in which all other science finds its fruition and justifies its being, was then scarcely “a borning.” Otherwise, Arthur Brent would have made of Dorothy’s amateurish acquaintance with botany the basis of a systematic study, leading up to that conception which came later to science, that all life is one, whether animal or vegetable; that species are the results of differentiation by selection and development, and that the scheme of nature is one uniform, consistent whole, composed of closely related parts. But this thought had not yet come to science. Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was not published until later in that year, Wallace was off on his voyages and had not yet reached those all embracing conclusions. Huxley was still only a young man of promise. Virchow was bound in those trammels of tradition from which he was destined never quite to disentangle himself, even with the stimulus of Haeckel, his wonderful pupil. But the thought that has since made science alive had been dreamed of even then. There were suggestions of it in the manuscripts, – written backwards – of Leonardo da Vinci, and Goethe had foreshadowed much of it.
Nevertheless, it was not for such sake or with a purpose so broad that Arthur Brent set out to interest Dorothy South in science. His only purpose was to teach her to think, to implant in her mind that divine thirst for sound knowledge which he clearly recognized as a specific remedy for conventional narrowness of mind.
The girl was quick to learn rudiments and general principles, and in laboratory work she soon surpassed her master as a maker of experiments. In such work her habits of exactitude stood her in good stead, and her conscientiousness had its important part to play.
But science did not become a very serious occupation with Dorothy. It was rather play than study at first, and when she had acquired some insight into it, so that its suggestions served to explain the phenomena about her, she was fairly well content. She had no passion for original research and of that Arthur was rather glad. “That sort of thing is masculine,” he reflected, “and she is altogether a woman. I don’t want her to grow into anything else.”
But to her passion for literature there was no limit. “Literature concerns itself with people,” she said to Arthur one day, “and I care more for people than for gases and bases and reactions.”
But literature, in its concern for people, records the story of human life through all the centuries, and the development of human thought. It includes history and speculative philosophy and Dorothy manifested almost a passion for these.
It was at this point that trouble first arose. So long as the girl was supposed to be devouring novels and poetry, the community admired and approved. But when it was noised abroad that she knew Gibbon as familiarly as she did her catechism, that she had read Hume’s Essays and Locke on the Understanding, together with the elder Mill, and Jeremy Bentham and much else of like kind, the wonder was not unmixed with doubt as to the fitness of such reading for a young girl.
For a time even Aunt Polly shared this doubt but she was quickly cured of it when Madison Peyton, with his customary impertinence protested. Aunt Polly was not accustomed to agree in opinion with Madison Peyton, and she resented the suggestion that the girl could come to any harm while under her care. So she combated Peyton’s view after a destructive fashion. When he spoke of this literature as unfit, Aunt Polly meekly asked him, “Why?” and naturally he could not answer, having never read a line of it in his life. He sought to evade the question but Aunt Polly was relentless, greatly to the amusement of John Meaux and Col. Majors, the lawyer of the old families. She insisted upon his telling her which of the books were dangerous for Dorothy to read. “How else can I know which to take away from her?” she asked. When at last he unwisely ventured to mention Gibbon – having somehow got the impression, which was common then, that the “Decline and Fall” was a sceptical work, Aunt Polly – who had been sharing Dorothy’s reading of it, – plied him with closer questions.
“In what way is it harmful?” she asked, and then, quite innocently, “what is it all about any how, Madison?”
“Oh, well, we can’t go into that,” he said evasively.
“But why not? That is precisely what we must go into if we are to direct Dorothy’s reading properly. What is this book that you think she ought not to read? What does it treat of? What is there in it that you object to?”
Thus baited on a subject that he knew nothing about, Peyton grew angry, though he knew it would not do for him to manifest the fact. He unwisely, but with an air of very superior wisdom, blurted out: —
“If you had read that book, Cousin Polly, you wouldn’t like to make it the subject of conversation.”
“So?” asked the old lady. “It is in consideration of my ignorance then that you graciously pardon my discretion?”
“It’s a very proper ignorance. I respect you for never having indulged in such reading,” he answered.
“Then you must respect me less,” calmly responded the old lady, “for I have read the book and I’m reading it a second time. I don’t see that it has hurt me, but I’ll bow to your superior wisdom if you’ll only tell me what there is in the book that is likely to undermine my morals.”
The laugh that followed from Col. Majors and John Meaux – for the idea that anything, literary or otherwise, could undermine the vigorous morals of this high bred dame was too ludicrous to be resisted – nettled Peyton anew. Still further losing his temper he broke out:
“How should I know what is in the book? I never read such stuff. But I know it is unfit for a young girl, and in this case I have a right to dictate. I tell you now, Cousin Polly, that I will not have Dorothy’s mind perverted by such reading. My interest in this case is paramount and I mean to assert it. I have been glad to have her with you for the sake of the social and moral training I expected you to give her. But I tell you now, that if you don’t stop all this kind of reading and all this slopping in a laboratory, trying to learn atheistical science – for all science is atheistical as you well know – ”
“Pardon me, Madison,” broke in the old lady, “I didn’t know that. Won’t you explain it to me, please?” – this with the meekness of a reverent disciple, a meekness which Peyton knew to be a mockery.
“Oh, everybody knows that,” testily answered the man. “And it is indecent as well. I hear that Arthur has been teaching Dorothy a lot about anatomy and that sort of thing that no woman ought to know, and – ”
“Why shouldn’t a woman know that?” asked Aunt Polly, still delivering her hot shot as if they had been balls of the zephyr she was knitting into a nubia. “Does it do her any harm to know how – ”
“Oh, please don’t ask me to go into that, Cousin Polly,” the man impatiently responded. “You see it isn’t a proper subject of conversation.”
“Oh, isn’t it? I didn’t know, you see. And as you will not enlighten me, let us return to what you were about to say. I beg pardon for interrupting.”
“I don’t remember what I was going to say,” said Peyton, anxious to end the discussion. “Besides it was of no consequence. Let’s talk of something else.”
“Not yet, please,” placidly answered the old lady. “I remember that you were about to threaten me with something. Now I never was threatened in my life, and I’m really anxious to know how it feels. So please go on and threaten me, Madison.”
“I never thought of threatening you, Cousin Polly, I assure you. You’re mistaken in that, surely.”
“Not at all. You said you had been pleased to have Dorothy under my charge. I thank you for saying that. But you added that if I didn’t stop her reading and her scientific studies you’d – you didn’t say just what you’d do. That is because I interrupted. I beg pardon for doing so, but now you must complete the sentence.”
“Oh, I only meant that if the girl was to be miseducated at Wyanoke, I should feel myself obliged to take her away to my own house and – ”
“You need not continue,” answered the old lady, rising in stately wrath. “You have said quite enough. Now let me make my reply. It is simply that if you ever attempt to put such an affront as that upon me, you’ll wish you had never been born.”
She instantly withdrew from the piazza of the house in which all were guests, John Meaux gallantly accompanying her. She paid no more heed to Peyton’s clamorous protestations of apology than to the buzzing of the bees that were plundering the honeysuckles of their sweets.
When she had gone Peyton began to realize the mistake he had made. In that Col. Majors, who was left alone with him, greatly assisted him. In the slow, deliberate way in which he always spoke, Col. Majors said:
“You know, Peyton, that I do not often volunteer advice before I am asked to give it, but in this case I am going to do so. It seems to me that you have overlooked certain facts which present themselves to my mind, as important, and of which I think the courts would take cognizance.”
“Oh, I only meant to give Cousin Polly a hint,” broke in Peyton. “Of course I didn’t seriously mean that I would take the girl away from her.”
“It is well that you did not,” answered the lawyer, “for the sufficient reason that you could not do that if you were determined upon it.”
“Why, surely,” Peyton protested. “I have a right to look after the girl’s welfare?”
“Absolutely none whatever.”
“Why, you forget the arrangement between me and Dr. South.”
“Not at all. That arrangement was at best a contract without consideration, and therefore nonenforcible. Even if it had been reduced to writing and formally executed, it would be so much waste paper in the eyes of a court. Dorothy is a ward in chancery. The court would never permit the enforcement of a contract of that kind upon her, so long as she is under age; and when she attains her majority she will be absolutely free, if I know anything of the law, to repudiate an arrangement disposing of her life, made by others without her consent.”
“Do you mean that on a mere whim of her own, that girl can upset the advantageous arrangements made for her by her father and undo the whole thing?”
“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.