XXXVI THE OLD DOROTHY AND THE NEW

JUST as Arthur Brent was quitting his seat in the convention on that day so pregnant of historic happenings, a page put a note into his hands. It was from Edmonia, and it read:

“We have just arrived and are at the Exchange Hotel and Ballard House. We are all perfectly well, though positively dazed by what you statesmen in the convention have done today. I can hardly think of the thing seriously—of Virginia withdrawing from the Union which her legislature first proposed to the other states, which her statesmen—Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Madison, Mason, and the rest so largely contributed to form, and over which her Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Harrison and Tyler have presided in war and peace. And yet nothing could be more serious. It seems to me a bad dream from which we shall presently wake to find ourselves rejoicing in its untruth.

“You will come to the hotel to a six o’clock dinner, of course. I want to show you what a woman Dorothy has grown to be. Poor dear girl! She has been greatly disturbed by the hearing of her mother’s story, and she is a trifle morbid over it. However, you’ll see her for yourself this evening. We were charmingly considerate, I think in not telegraphing to announce our coming. We shall expect you to thank us properly for thus refraining from disturbing you. Come to the hotel the moment your public duties will let you.”

Arthur hastily left the convention hall and hurried across Capitol Square and on to the big, duplex hostelry. He entered on the Exchange Hotel side and learned by inquiry at the office that Edmonia’s rooms were in the Ballard House on the other side of the street. It had begun to rain and he had neither umbrella nor overcoat, having forgotten and left both in the cloak room of the convention. So he mounted the stairway, and set out to cross by the covered crystal bridge that spanned the street connecting the two great caravansaries. The bridge was full of people, gathered there to look at the pageant in the streets below, where companies of volunteer cavalry from every quarter of eastern Virginia were marching past, on their way to the newly-established camp of instruction on the Ashland race track. For Governor Letcher had so far anticipated the inevitable result of the long debate as to establish two instruction camps and to accept the tenders of service which were daily sent to him by the volunteer companies in every county.

As Arthur was making his way through the throng of sight-seers on the glass bridge some movement in the crowd brought him into contact with a gentlewoman, to whom he hastily turned with apologetic intent.

It was Dorothy! Not the Dorothy who had bidden him good-by a year ago, but a new, a statelier Dorothy, a Dorothy with the stamp of travel and society upon her, a Dorothy who had learned ease and self-possession and dignity by habit in the grandest drawing rooms in all the world. Yet the old Dorothy was there too—the Dorothy of straight-looking eyes and perfect truthfulness, and for the moment the new Dorothy forgot herself, giving place to the old.

“Oh, Master!” she cried, impulsively seizing both his hands, and, completely forgetful of the crowd about her, letting the glad tears slip out between her eyelashes. “I was not looking at the soldiers; I was looking for you, and wondering when you would come. Oh, I am so happy, and so glad!”

An instant later the new Dorothy reasserted herself, and Arthur did not at all like the change. The girl became so far self-conscious as to grow dignified, and in very shame over her impulsive outbreak, she exaggerated her dignity and her propriety of demeanor into something like coldness and stately hauteur.

“How you have grown!” Arthur exclaimed when he had led her to one of the parlors almost deserted now for the sight-seeing vantage ground of the bridge.

“No,” she answered as she might have done in a New York or a Paris drawing room, addressing some casual acquaintance. “I have not grown a particle. I was quite grown up before I left Virginia. It is a Paris gown, perhaps. The Parisian dressmakers know all the art of bringing out a woman’s ‘points,’ and they hold my height and my slenderness to be my best claims upon attention.”

Arthur felt as if she had struck him. He was about to remonstrate, when Edmonia broke in upon the conversation with her greeting. But Dorothy had seen his face and read all that it expressed. The old Dorothy was tempted to ask his forgiveness; the new Dorothy dismissed the thought as quite impossible. She had already sufficiently “compromised” herself by her impulsiveness, and to make amends she put stays upon her dignity and throughout the evening they showed no sign of bending.

Arthur was tortured by all this. Edmonia was delighted over it. So differently do a man and a woman sometimes interpret another woman’s attitude and conduct.

Arthur was compelled to leave them at nine to meet Governor Letcher, who had summoned him for consultation with respect to the organization of a surgical staff, of which he purposed to make Arthur Brent one of the chiefs. Before leaving he asked as to Edmonia’s and Dorothy’s home-going plans. Learning that they intended to go by the eight o’clock train the next morning, he said:

“Very well, I’ll send Dick up by the midnight train to have the Wyanoke carriage at the station to meet you.”

“Is Dick with you?” Dorothy asked with more of enthusiasm than she had shown since her outbreak on the bridge. “How I do want to see Dick! Can’t you send him here before train time, please?”

Already grieved and resentful, Arthur was stung by the manner of this request. For the moment he was disposed to interpret it as an intended affront. He quickly dismissed that thought and answered with a laugh:

“Yes, Dorothy, he shall come to you at once. Perhaps he has a ‘song ballad’ ready for your greeting. At any rate he at least will pleasantly remind you of the old life.”

“I wonder why he put it in that way—why he said ‘he at least,’ ” said Dorothy when Arthur had gone and the two women were left alone.

“I think I know,” Edmonia answered. But she did not offer the explanation. Neither did Dorothy ask for it.