XXV AUNT POLLY’S VIEW OF THE RISKS

ODDLY enough Edmonia had very little of the difficulty she had anticipated in securing Aunt Polly’s consent to the proposed trip. Perhaps the old lady’s opinions with respect to the detrimental effects of travel were held like her views on railroads and the rotundity of the earth, humorously rather than with seriousness. Perhaps she appreciated, better than she would admit, the advantages Dorothy was likely to reap from an introduction to a larger world. Perhaps she did not like the task set her of cramping Dorothy’s mind and soul to the mould of a marriage with young Jeff Peyton. Certain it is that she did not look forward to that fruition of her labors as Dorothy’s personal guardian with anything like pleasure. While she felt herself bound to carry out her instructions, she felt no alarm at the prospect of having their purpose defeated in the end by an enlargement of horizon which would prompt Dorothy to rebellion. Perhaps all these things, and perhaps something else. Perhaps Aunt Polly suspected the truth, and rejoiced in it. Who shall say? Who shall set a limit to the penetration of so shrewd a woman, after she has lived for more than half a century with her eyes wide open and her mind always quick in sympathy with those whom she loves?

Whatever the reason of her complaisance may have been, she yielded quickly to Edmonia’s persuasions, offering only her general deprecation of travel as an objection and quickly brushing even that aside.

“I can’t understand,” she said, “why people who are permitted to live and die in Virginia should want to go gadding about in less desirable places. But we’ve let the Yankees build railroads down here, and we must take the consequences. Everybody wants to travel nowadays and Dorothy is like all the rest, I suppose. Anyhow, you’ll be with her, Edmonia, and so she can’t come to any great harm, unless it’s true that the world is round. If that’s so, of course your ship will fall off when you get over on the other side of it.”

“But Europe isn’t on the other side of it Aunt Polly, and besides I’ve been there twice already you know, and I didn’t fall off the earth either time.”

“No, you were lucky, and maybe you’ll be lucky this time. Anyhow you have all made up your minds and I’ll interpose no objections.”

It was by no means so easy to win Dorothy’s consent to the proposed journey.

“I ought not to run away from my duty,” she said, in objection to a proposal which opened otherwise delightful prospects to her mind.

“But it’s your duty to go, child,” Edmonia answered. “You need the trip and all the education it will give you. What is there for you to do here, anyhow?”

“Why, Cousin Arthur might need me! You know he never tells lies, and he says I have really helped him to save people’s lives in this fever time.”

“But that is all over now and it won’t occur again. Arthur has taken care of that by burning the old quarters and building new ones in a wholesome place. By the way, Dorothy, you’ll be glad to know that his example is already having its influence. Brother has decided to build new quarters for our servants at a spot which Arthur has selected as the best one for the purpose on the plantation. Anyhow there’ll be no further fever outbreaks at Wyanoke or at Pocahontas, now that Arthur is master there also.”

“But he might need me in other ways,” answered the persistently reluctant Dorothy. “And besides he is teaching me chemistry and other scientific things that will make me useful in life. No, I can’t go away now.”

“But, you absurd child,” answered Edmonia, “there will be plenty of time to learn all that when you come back. You are ridiculously young yet. You won’t be seventeen till March, and you know a great deal more about science than Arthur did at your age. Besides this is his plan for you, not mine. He wants you to learn the things this trip will teach you, a great deal more than he wants you to learn chemistry and that sort of thing. He knows what you need in the way of education, and it is at his suggestion that I’m going to take you North and to Europe. He appreciates your abilities as you never will, and it is his earnest wish that you shall make this trip as a part of your education.”

“Very well,” answered Dorothy. “I’ll ask him if he wants me to go, and if he says yes, I’ll go. Of course it will be delightful to see great cities and the ocean and Pompeii and pictures and all the rest of it. But a woman mustn’t think of enjoyment alone. That’s the way women become bad. My father often told me so, and I don’t want to be bad.”

“You never will, Dorothy, dear. You couldn’t become bad if you wanted to. And as for Arthur, I assure you it was he who planned this journey for you and asked me to take you on it. Don’t you think he knows what is best for you?”

“Why, of course, he does! I never questioned that. But maybe he isn’t just thinking of what is best for me. Maybe he is only thinking of what would give me pleasure. Anyhow I’ll ask him and make sure. He won’t deceive me. And he couldn’t if he tried. I always know when he’s making believe and when I get angry with him for pretending he always quits it and tells me the truth.”

“Then you’ll go if Arthur tells you he really wants you to go, and really thinks it best for you to go?”

“Of course, I will! I’ll do anything and everything he wants me to do, now and always. He’s the best man in the world, and the greatest, Edmonia. Don’t you believe that? If you don’t I shall quit loving you.”

“Oh, you may safely go on loving me then,” answered Edmonia bowing her head very low to inspect something minute in the fancy work she had in her lap, and in that way hiding her flushed face for the moment. “I think all the good things about Arthur that you do, Dorothy. As I know what his answer to your questions will be, we’ll order the seamstresses to begin work tomorrow morning. I’ll have everything made at Branton, so you are to come over there soon in the morning.”

The catechising of Arthur yielded the results that Edmonia had anticipated.

“Yes, Dorothy,” he said, “I am really very anxious that you shall make this trip. It will give you more of enjoyment than you can possibly anticipate, but it will do something much better than that. It will repair certain defects in your education, which have been stupidly provided for by people who did not appreciate your wonderful gifts and your remarkable character. For Dorothy, dear, though you do not know it, you are a person of really exceptional gifts both of mind and character—gifts that ought to be cultivated, but which have been suppressed instead. You do not know it, and perhaps you won’t quite believe it, but you have capacities such as no other woman in this community can even pretend to possess. You are very greatly the superior of any woman you ever saw.”

“Oh, not of Edmonia!” the girl quickly replied.

“Yes—even of Edmonia,” he answered.

The girl’s face was hotly flushed. She did not know why, but such praise, so sincerely given, and coming from the man whom she regarded as “the best man in the world, and the greatest,” was gladsome to her soul. Her native modesty forbade her to believe it, quite, “but,” she argued with herself, “of course he knows better than I do, better than anybody else ever can. And, of course, I must do all I can to improve myself in order that I may satisfy his expectations of me. I’ll ask him all about that before I leave.”

And she did.

“Cousin Arthur,” she said one evening as they two sat with Aunt Polly before a crackling fire in “the chamber”—let the author suspend that sentence in mid air while he explains.

The chamber, in an old plantation house, was that room on the ground floor in which the master of the plantation, whether married or unmarried, slept. It was the family room always. Into it came those guests whose intimacy was sufficient to warrant intrusion upon the penetralia. The others were entertained in the drawing room. The word chamber was pronounced “chawmber,” just as the word “aunt” was properly pronounced “awnt.” The chamber had a bed in it and a bureau. In a closet big enough for a modern bedroom there was a dressing case with its fit appurtenances. In the chamber there was a lounge that tempted to afternoon siestas, and there were great oaken arm chairs whose skilful fashioning for comfort rendered cushions an impertinence. In the chamber was always the broadest and most cavernous of fire places and the most satisfactory of fires when the weather was such as to render artificial heating desirable. In the chamber was usually a carpet softly cushioned beneath, itself and its cushions being subject to a daily flagellation out-of-doors in the “soon” hours of morning in order that they might be relaid before the breakfast-time. All other rooms in the house were apt to be carpetless, their immaculate white ash floors undergoing a daily polishing with pine needles and rubbing brushes. The chamber alone was carpeted in most houses. Why this distinction the author does not undertake to say. He merely records a fact which was well-nigh universal in the great plantation houses.

So much for the chamber. Let us return to the sentence it interrupted.

“Cousin Arthur,” Dorothy said, “I wish you would mark out a course of study for me to pursue during this journey, so that I may get out of it all the good I can.”

Arthur picked up a dry sponge and dropped it into a basin of water.

“Look, Dorothy,” he said. “That is the only course I shall mark out for you.”

“It is very dull of me, I suppose,” said the girl, “but I really don’t understand.”

“Why, I didn’t tell the sponge what to absorb, and yet as you see it has drunk up all the water it can hold. It is just so with you and your journey. You need no instruction as to what you shall learn by travel or by mingling in the social life of great cities. You are like that sponge. You will absorb all that you need of instruction, when once you are cast into the water of life. You have very superior gifts of observation. There is no fear that you will fail to get all that is best out of travel and society. It is only the stupid people who need be told what they should see and what they should think about it, and the stupid people would much better stay at home.”