X
DOROTHY VOLUNTEERS
A LL this while Arthur Brent was a very busy man. It was true, as Madison Peyton had said, that he knew little of planting, but he had two strong coadjutors in the cultivation of his crops. John Meaux – perhaps in unconscious spite of Peyton – frequently rode over to Wyanoke and visited all its fields in company with the young master of the plantation. There was not much in common between Meaux and Arthur, not much to breed a close intimacy. Meaux was an educated man, within the rather narrow limits established by the curriculum at West Point – for Robert E. Lee had not yet done his work of enlargement and betterment at the military academy when Meaux was a cadet in that institution – but he was not a man of much reading, and intellectually he was indolent. Nevertheless he was a pleasant enough companion, his friendship for Arthur was genuine, and he knew more about the arts of planting than anybody else in that region. He freely gave Arthur the benefit of his judgment and skill greatly to the advantage of the growing crops at Wyanoke.
Archer Bannister, too, was often Arthur’s guest. He came and went as he pleased, sometimes remaining for three or four days at a time, sometimes staying only long enough to advise Arthur to have a tobacco lot cut before a rain should come to wash off the “molasses” – as the thick gum on a ripening tobacco leaf was called. He was himself a skilful planter and his almost daily counsel was of great value to Arthur’s inexperience.
But it was not of things agricultural only that these two were accustomed to talk with each other. There had quickly grown up between them an almost brotherly intimacy. They were men of congenial tastes and close intellectual sympathies, and there was from the first a strong liking on either side which was referable rather to similarity of character than to anything merely intellectual. Both men cherished high ideals of conduct, and both were loyal to those ideals. Both were thoroughly educated, and both had been broadened by travel. Both indulged in intellectual activities not always attractive even to men of culture. Arthur loved science with the devotion of a disciple; Archer rejoiced in a study of its conclusions and their consequences rather than of its processes, its methods, its details. Above all, so far as intellectual sympathies were concerned, both young men were almost passionately devoted to literature. Between two such men, thrown together in that atmosphere of leisure which was the crowning glory of Virginia plantation life, it was inevitable that something more and stronger than ordinary friendship should grow up. And between them stood also Archer’s sister Edmonia – a woman whom both held in tender affection, the one loving her as a sister, the other as – he scarcely knew what. She shared the ideas, the impulses, the high principles of both, and in her feminine way she shared also their intellectual tastes and aspirations.
Arthur had still another coadjutor in his management of affairs, in the person of Dorothy. Throughout the summer and autumn the girl rode with him every morning during the hours before breakfast, and, in her queer, half childish, half womanly way, she instructed him mightily in many things. Her habits of close observation had given her a large and accurate knowledge of plantation affairs which was invaluable to him, covering as it did many points of detail left unmentioned by Meaux and Bannister.
But his interest in the girl was chiefly psychological. The contradiction he observed between her absolutely child-like simplicity and the strangely sage and old way she had of thinking now and then, interested him beyond measure. Her honesty was phenomenal – her truthfulness astonishing.
One morning as the two rode together through the corn they came upon a watermelon three fourths grown. Instantly the girl slipped to the ground with the request: —
“Lend me your knife, please.”
He handed her the knife wondering what she would do with it. After an effort to open it she handed it back, saying: “Won’t you please open it? Knives are not fit for women’s use. Our thumb nails are not strong enough to open them. But we use them, anyhow. That’s because women’s masters are not severe enough with them.”
Receiving the knife again, with a blade opened, the girl stooped and quickly scratched Arthur’s initials “A. B.,” upon the melon.
“I’ve observed you do that before, Dorothy,” said Arthur as the girl again mounted Chestnut, without assistance. “Why do you do it?”
“To keep the servants from stealing the melon,” she replied. “Everybody does that. I wonder if it’s right.”
“But how can that keep a negro from taking the melon some dark night after it is ripe and secretly eating it?”
“Oh, that’s because of their ignorance. They are very ignorant – much more so than you think, Cousin Arthur. I may call you ‘Cousin Arthur,’ may I not? You see I always called your uncle ‘Uncle Robert,’ and if your uncle was my uncle, of course you and I are cousins. Besides I like to call you ‘Cousin Arthur.’ ”
“And I like to have you call me so. But tell me about the marking of the watermelon.”
“Oh, that’s simple enough. When you have marked your initials on a melon, the negroes know you have seen it and so they are afraid to steal it.”
“But how should I know who took it?”
“That’s their ignorance. They never think of that. Or rather I suppose they think educated people know a great deal more than they do. I wonder if it is right?”
“If what is right, Dorothy?”
“Why, to take advantage of their ignorance in that way. Have educated people a right to do that with ignorant people? Is it fair?”
“I see your point, Dorothy, and I’m not prepared to give you an answer, at least in general terms. But, at any rate, it is right to use any means we can to keep people from stealing.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve thought of that. But is it stealing for the negroes to take a watermelon which they have planted and cultivated? They do the work on the plantation. Aren’t they entitled to all they want to eat?”
“Within reasonable bounds, yes,” answered Arthur, meditatively. “They are entitled to all the wholesome food they need, and to all the warm clothing, and to comfortable, wholesome quarters to live in. But we mustn’t leave the smoke house door unlocked. If we did that the dishonest ones among them would take all the meat and sell it, and the rest would starve. Besides, the white people are entitled to something. They take care of the negroes in sickness and in childhood and in old age. They must feed and clothe them and nurse them and have doctors for them no matter what it may cost. It is true, the negroes do the work that produces the food and clothing and all the rest of it, but their masters contribute the intelligent management that is quite as necessary as the work. Imagine this plantation, Dorothy, or your own Pocahontas, left to the negroes. They could do as much work as they do now, but do you suppose their crops would feed them till Christmas if there were no white man to manage for them?”
“Of course not. Indeed they never would make a crop. Still I don’t like the system.”
“Neither do I, Dorothy, but in the present state of the public mind neither of us must say so.”
“Why not, Cousin Arthur? Is there any harm in telling the truth?”
“Sometimes I suppose it is better to keep silence,” answered Arthur, hesitating.
“For women, yes,” quickly responded the girl. “But men can fight. Why shouldn’t they tell the truth?”
“I don’t quite understand your distinction, Dorothy.”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, “that I understand it myself. Oh, yes, I do, now that I think of it. Women tell lies, of course, because they can’t fight. Or, if they don’t quite tell lies they at least keep silent whenever telling the truth would make trouble. That’s because they can’t fight. Men can fight, and so there’s not the slightest excuse for them if they tell lies or even if they keep silent.”
“But, Dorothy, I don’t yet understand. Women can’t fight, of course, but then they are never called upon to fight. Why – ”
“That’s just it, Cousin Arthur. If a woman speaks out, nobody can hold her responsible. But anybody can hold her nearest male friend responsible and he must fight to maintain what she has said, whether he thinks she was right in saying it or not. The other day Jeff. Peyton – Mr. Madison Peyton’s son, you know, – was over at Wyanoke, when you had gone to Branton. So I had to entertain him.” Dorothy did not know that the youth had been sent to Wyanoke by his father for the express purpose of being entertained by herself. “I found him a pretty stupid fellow, as I always do, but as he pretends to have been a student at the University, I supposed he had read a great deal. So I talked to him about Virgil but he knew so little that I asked him if he had read ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and he told me a deliberate lie. He professed a full acquaintance with that book, and presently I found out that he had never read a line of it. I was so shocked that I forgot myself. I asked him, ‘Why did you lie to me?’ It was dreadfully rude, of course, but I could not help it. Now of course he couldn’t challenge me for that. But if he had been a man of spirit, he would have challenged you, and you see how terribly wrong I should have been to involve you in a quarrel of that kind. Of course if I had been a man, instead of a woman – if I had been answerable for my words – I should have been perfectly free to charge him with lying. But what possible right had I to risk your life in a duel by saying things that I might as well have left unsaid?”
“But you said the other day,” responded Arthur, “that you did not believe in duelling?”
“Of course I don’t. It is a barbarous thing. But it is the custom of our country and we can’t help it. I’ve noticed that if a man fights a duel on proper provocation, everybody says he ought not to have done it. But if he refuses to fight, everybody says he’s a coward. So, under certain circumstances, a man in Virginia who respects himself is absolutely compelled to fight. If Jefferson Peyton had asked you to meet him on account of what I said to him, you couldn’t have refused, could you, Cousin Arthur?”
“I wouldn’t,” was all the answer the young man made; but he put a strong stress upon the last word.
“Oh, I know you wouldn’t,” answered the girl, treating his response as quite a matter of course. “But you see now why a woman must keep silent where a man should speak out. If a man tells the truth he can be called to account for it; so if he is manly he will tell it and take the consequences. But a woman has to remember that if she tells the truth, and the truth happens to be ugly, some man must be shot at for her words.”
“Dorothy,” asked Arthur, with unusual seriousness, “are you afraid of anything?”
“Afraid? No. Of course not.”
“If you were needed very badly for the sake of other people – even negroes – if you could save their lives and ease their sufferings, you’d want to do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Why, of course, Cousin Arthur. I’ve read in Aunt Polly’s old newspapers, how you went to Norfolk in the yellow fever time, and how bravely you – never mind. I’ve read all about that, over and over again, and it’s part of what makes me like you.”
“But courage is not expected of women.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” quickly responded the girl. “Not the courage of fighting, of course – but that’s only because men won’t fight with women, except in mean ways. Women are expected to show courage in other ways, and they do it too. In the newspapers that tell about your heroism at Norfolk, there is a story of how one of your nurses went always to the most dangerous cases, and how, when she died, you officiated at her funeral, instead of the clergyman who had got scared and run away like a coward that did not trust his God. I remember what the newspaper says that you said at the grave, Cousin Arthur. I’ve got it all by heart. You said, at the end of your address: – ‘We are accustomed to pay honor and to set up monuments to men who have dared, where daring offered its rich reward of fame and glory. Let us reverently bow our heads and abase our feeble, selfish souls, in presence of the courage of this frail woman, who, in her weakness, has achieved greater things in the sight of God than any that the valor and strength of man have ever accomplished since the foundations of the world were laid. Let us reverently and lovingly make obeisance to the courage of a devoted woman – a courage that we men can never hope to match.’ You see I remember all that you said then, Cousin Arthur, and so you needn’t tell me now that you do not expect courage at the hands of women.”
Arthur made no immediate reply, and the two rode on in silence for a time. After a while, as they neared the house gates, he spoke.
“Dorothy,” he said, “I need your help very badly. You cannot render me the help I want without very serious danger to yourself. So I don’t want you to give me any answer to what I am about to say until tomorrow. I want you to think the matter over very carefully first.”
“Tell me what it is, Cousin Arthur.”
“Why, I find that we are to have a very dangerous epidemic of typhoid fever among the negroes here. When the first case occurred ten days ago I hoped that might be all; but two days later I found two more cases; day before yesterday there were five more. So it is obvious that we are to have an epidemic. All the cases have appeared among the field hands and their families out at the far quarters, and so I hope that the house servants and the people around the stables will escape. But the outbreak is really very serious and the disease is of the most virulent type. I must literally fight it with fire. I have already set men at work building new quarters down by the Silver Spring, a mile away from the infected place, and as soon as I can I’m going to move all the people and set fire to all the old quarters. I’ve bought an old circus tent in Richmond, and I expect it by express today. As soon as it comes I’m going to set it up on the Haw Branch hill, and put all the sick people into it, so as to separate them from those that are well. As fast as others show symptoms of the disease, I’ll remove them also to the hospital tent, and for that purpose I have ordered forty cots and a lot of new blankets and pillows.”
Dorothy ejaculated her sorrow and sympathy with the poor blacks, and quickly added the question: “What is it that I can do, Cousin Arthur? Tell me; you know I will do it.”
“But, Dorothy, dear, I don’t want you to make up your mind till you have thought it all over.”
“My mind is already made up. You want me to nurse these poor sick people, and of course I’m going to do it. You are thinking that the disease is contagious – ”
“No, it is only infectious,” he broke in with the instinct of scientific exactitude strong upon him.
“Well, anyhow, it’s catching, and you think I may catch it, and you want me to think out whether I’m afraid of that or not. Very well. I’ve already thought that out. You are going to be with the sick people night and day. Cousin Arthur, I am only a girl, but I’m no more a coward than you are. Tell me what I’m to do. It doesn’t need any thinking out.”
“But, Dorothy, listen to me. These are not your people. If this outbreak had occurred at Pocahontas, the matter would have been different. You might well think that you owed a duty to the people on your own plantation, but you owe none to these people of mine.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I live at Wyanoke. Besides they are human beings and they are in need of help. I don’t know how I can help, but you are going to tell me, and I’m going to do what you want. I will not waste a day in thinking.”
“But, my child, the danger in this case is really very great. Indeed it is extremely probable that if you do what you propose to do, you will have the fever, and as I have already said, it has assumed an unusually virulent form.”
“It can’t be more dangerous than the yellow fever was at Norfolk, and you braved that in order to save the lives of people you had never heard of – people to whom you owed nothing whatever. Cousin Arthur, do you think me less brave than you are?”
“No, dear, but – ”
“Very well. You shall tell me after breakfast precisely what I can do, and then I’ll do it. Women are naturally bad, and so they mustn’t lose any opportunity of doing good when they can.”
At that moment they arrived at the house gates. Slipping from her saddle, Dorothy turned her great, earnest eyes full upon her companion, and said with tense lips:
“Promise me one thing, Cousin Arthur! Promise me that if I die in this work you won’t ask any clergyman to mutter worn-out words from a prayer book over my grave, but will yourself say to my friends that I did not shirk like a coward!”
Instantly, and without waiting for the promise she had besought, the girl turned, caught up her long riding skirt and fled like a deer to the house.
XI
THE WOMAN’S AWAKENING
I T was upon a momentary impulse that Arthur Brent had suggested to Dorothy that she should help him in the battle with pestilence which lay before him. As a physician he had been accustomed to practise his profession not in the ordinary, perfunctory way, and not for gain, but in the spirit of a crusader combating disease as the arch enemy of humanity, and partly too for the joy of conquering so merciless a foe. His first thought in this case therefore had been to call to his aid the best assistance available. His chief difficulty, he clearly foresaw, would be in getting his measures intelligently carried out. He must secure the accurate, prompt and intelligent execution of his directions, whether for the administration of medicines prescribed or for hygienic measures ordered. The ignorance, the prejudice, and the inert carelessness of the negroes, he felt, would be his mightiest and wiliest foes in this, and there could be no abler adjutant for this purpose than Dorothy, with her quick wit, her scrupulous conscientiousness and her habit of compelling exact and instant obedience to all her commands. So he had thought first of calling upon Dorothy for help. But when she had so promptly responded, he began to feel that he had made a mistake. The physician in him, and the crusader too, sanctioned and approved the use of the best means available for the accomplishment of his high purpose. But the man in him, the friend, the affectionate protector, protested against such an exposure of the child to dreadful danger.
When he reflected upon the matter and thought of the peril; when he conjured up a picture of dear little Dorothy stricken and perhaps dead in a service of humanity to which no duty called her, and to which she had been induced only by her loyalty to him, he shrank back in horror from the program he had laid out.
Yet he knew that he could not easily undo what he had done. There was a child side to Dorothy, and it was that which usually presented itself to his mind when he thought of her. But there was a strong woman side to her also, as he very well knew, and over that he had established no influence or control. He had won the love of the child. He had not yet won the love of the woman. He realized that it was the masterful, woman side of her nature that he had called into activity in this matter. Now that the heroism of the brave woman’s soul was enlisted, he knew that he could not easily bid it turn back.
Yet something might be done by adroit management, and he resolved upon that. After breakfast he sent for Dorothy and said, lightly:
“I’m glad I have taught you to handle drugs skilfully, Dorothy. I shall need certain medicines frequently in this conflict. They are our ammunition for the battle, and we must have them always ready. I’m going to write some prescriptions for you to fill. I want you to spend today and tomorrow in the laboratory preparing them. One of them will tax your skill a good deal. It may take you several days to get it ready. It involves some very careful chemical processes – for you must first manufacture a part of your chemicals out of their raw materials. I’ll write detailed instructions for that, but you may fail half a dozen times before you succeed. You must be patient and you’ll get it right. You always do in the end. Then there’s another thing I want you to do for me. I’m going to burn all the clothing, bedding and so forth at the quarters. I’ll make each of the well negroes put on the freshest clothing he has before removing to the sanitary camp, and I’ll burn all the rest. I sent Dick early this morning to the Court House, telling Moses to send me all the blankets and all the cloth he has of every kind, from calico and osnaburgs to heavy woollen goods, and I’ve written to Richmond for more. We must clothe the negroes anew – men, women and children. So I want you to get together all your seamstresses – every woman on the plantation indeed who can sew even a little bit – and set them all at work making clothes. I’ve cleared out the prize barn for the purpose, and the men are now laying a rough floor in it and putting up some tables on which you and Aunt Polly can ‘cut out’ – that’s what you call it, isn’t it?”
“Cousin Arthur,” said the girl, looking at him with something of reproach in her great, dark blue eyes, “I’ll do all this of course, and everything else that you want done. But please, Cousin Arthur, don’t tell lies to me, even indirectly. I couldn’t stand that from you.”
“What do you mean, child?”
“Oh, you have made up your mind to keep me busy with all these things so that I shall not go into your hospital to serve as a nurse. I’ll do these things for you, but I’ll do the nursing too. So please let us be good friends and please don’t try to play tricks.”
The young man was astonished and abashed. Under ordinary circumstances he might truthfully have pleaded that the work he was thus laying out for her was really and pressingly necessary. But Dorothy anticipated him in that.
“Don’t tell me that these things are necessary, Cousin Arthur. I know that perfectly well. But you know that I am not necessary to them – except so far as the prescriptions are concerned. Aunt Polly can direct the clothes making better than I can, and her maid, Jane, is almost as good. So after I compound the prescriptions I shall go to my duty at the hospital. I don’t think I like you very well today, Cousin Arthur, and I’ll not like you at all if you go on trying to make up things to keep me busy, away from the sick people. If you do that again I’ll stop calling you ‘Cousin Arthur’ and you’ll be just ‘Dr. Brent’ to me.”
“Please don’t do that, Dorothy,” he said very pleadingly. “I only meant – ”
“Oh, I know what you meant,” she interrupted. “But you shouldn’t treat me in that way. I won’t call you ‘Dr. Brent,’ unless you do that sort of thing again, and if you let me do my duty without trying to play tricks, I’ll go on liking you just as much as ever.”
“Thank you, Dorothy,” he replied with fervor. “You must forgive me, please. I didn’t want to expose you to this danger – that was all.”
“Oh, I understand all that,” she quickly responded. “But it wasn’t treating me quite fairly – and you know I hate unfairness. And – why shouldn’t I be exposed to the danger if I can do any good? Even if the worst should happen – even if I should take the fever and die, after saving some of these poor creatures’ lives, could you or anybody have made a better use of a girl like me than that?”
Arthur looked at the child earnestly, but the child was no longer there. The eyes that gazed into his were those of a woman!