George Eggleston - Dorothy South

“Yes, about that. But whose horse is Gimlet?”

“He’s mine, and he’ll suit you I’m sure. He is five years old, nearly seventeen hands high and as strong as a young ox.”

“But are you going to sell him to me?”

“Sell him? No, of course not. He is my pet. He has eaten out of my hand ever since he was a colt, and I was the first person that ever sat on his back. Besides, I wouldn’t sell a horse to you . I’m going to lend him to you till – till I make up my mind. Then, if I like you I’ll give him to you. If I don’t like you I’ll send him back to Pocahontas. Hurry up, Ben. Ride the gray mare and lead Gimlet back, do you hear?”

“You are very kind to me, Miss Dorothy, and I – ”

“Oh, no. I’m only polite and neighborly. You see Wyanoke and Pocahontas are adjoining plantations. There comes Jo with your trunks, so we shall not have time for the June apples to-day – or may be we might stop long enough to get just a few, couldn’t we?”

With that she took the young man’s hand as a little girl of ten might have done, and skipping by his side, led the way into the orchard. The thought of the June apples seemed to have awakened the child side of her nature, completely banishing the womanly dignity for the time being.

D URINGthe next three or four days Arthur was too much engaged with affairs and social duties to pursue his scientific study of the young girl – half woman, half child – with anything like the eagerness he would have shown had his leisure been that of the Virginians round about him. He had much to do, to “find out where he stood,” as he put the matter. He had with him for two days Col. Majors the lawyer, who had the estate’s affairs in charge. That comfortable personage assured the young man that the property was “in good shape” but that assurance did not satisfy a man accustomed to inquire into minute details of fact and to rest content only with exact answers to his inquiries.

“I will arrange everything for you,” said the lawyer; “the will gives you everything and it has already been probated. It makes you sole executor with no bonds, as well as sole inheritor of the estate. There is really nothing for you to do but hang up your hat. You take your late uncle’s place, that is all.”

“But there are debts,” suggested Arthur.

“Oh, yes, but they are trifling and the estate is a very rich one. None of your creditors will bother you.”

“But I do not intend to remain in debt,” said the young man impatiently. “Besides, I do not intend to remain a planter all my life. I have other work to do in the world. This inheritance is a burden to me, and I mean to be rid of it as soon as possible.”

“Allow me to suggest,” said the lawyer in his self-possessed way, “that the inheritance of Wyanoke is a sort of burden that most men at your time of life would very cheerfully take upon their shoulders.”

“Very probably,” answered Arthur. “But as I happen not to be ‘most men at my time of life’ it distinctly oppresses me. It loads me with duties that are not congenial to me. It requires my attention at a time when I very greatly desire to give my attention to something which I regard as of more importance than the growing of wheat and tobacco and corn.”

“Every one to his taste,” answered the lawyer, “but I confess I do not see what better a young man could do than sit down here at Wyanoke and, without any but pleasurable activities, enjoy all that life has to give. Your income will be large, and your credit quite beyond question. You can buy whatever you want, and you need never bother yourself with a business detail. No dun will ever beset your door. If any creditor of yours should happen to want his money, as none will, you can borrow enough to pay him without even going to Richmond to arrange the matter. I will attend to all such things for you, as I did for your late uncle.”

“Thank you very much,” Arthur answered in a tone which suggested that he did not thank him at all. “But I always tie my own shoe strings. I do not know whether I shall go on living here or not, whether I shall give up my work and my ambitions and settle down into a life of inglorious ease, or whether I shall be strong enough to put that temptation aside. I confess it is a temptation. Accustomed as I am to intensity of intellectual endeavor, I confess that the prospect of sitting down here in lavish plenty, and living a life unburdened by care and unvexed by any sense of exacting duty, has its allurements for me. I suppose, indeed, that any well ordered mind would find abundant satisfaction in such a life programme, and perhaps I shall presently find myself growing content with it. But if I do, I shall not consent to live in debt.”

“But everybody has his debts – everybody who has an estate. It is part of the property, as it were. Of course it would be uncomfortable to owe more than you could pay, but you are abundantly able to owe your debts, so you need not let them trouble you. All told they do not amount to the value of ten or a dozen field hands.”

“But I shall never sell my negroes.”

“Of course not. No gentleman in Virginia ever does that, unless a negro turns criminal and must be sent south, or unless nominal sales are made between the heirs of an estate, simply by way of distributing the property. Far be it from me to suggest such a thing. I meant only to show you how unnecessary it is for you to concern yourself about the trifling obligations on your estate – how small a ratio they bear to the value of the property.”

“I quite understand,” answered Arthur. “But at the same time these debts do trouble me and will go on troubling me till the last dollar of them is discharged. This is simply because they interfere with the plans I have formed – or at least am forming – for so ordering my affairs that I may go back to my work. Pray do not let us discuss the matter further. I will ask you, instead, to send me, at your earliest convenience, an exact schedule of the creditors of this estate, together with the amount – principal and interest – that is owing to each. I intend to make it my first business to discharge all these obligations. Till that is done, I am not my own master, and I have a decided prejudice in favor of being able to order my own life in my own way.”

Behind all this lay the fact that Arthur Brent was growing dissatisfied with himself and suspicious of himself. The beauty and calm of Wyanoke, the picturesque contentment of that refined Virginia life which was impressed anew upon his mind every time a neighboring planter rode over to take breakfast, dinner, or supper with him, or drove over in the afternoon with his wife and daughters to welcome the new master of the plantation – all this fascinated his mind and appealed strongly to the partially developed æsthetic side of his nature, and at times the strong, earnest manhood in him resented the fact almost with bitterness.

There was never anywhere in America a country life like that of Virginia in the period before the war. In that state, as nowhere else on this continent, the refinement, the culture, the education and the graceful social life of the time were found not in the towns, but in the country. There were few cities in the state and they were small. They existed chiefly for the purpose of transacting business for the more highly placed and more highly cultivated planters. The people of the cities, with exceptions that only emphasized the general truth, were inferior to the dwellers on the plantations, in point of education, culture and social position. It had always been so in Virginia. From the days of William Byrd of Westover to those of Washington, and Jefferson and Madison and John Marshall, and from their time to the middle of the nineteenth century, it had been the choice of all cultivated Virginians to live upon their plantations. Thence had always come the scholars, the statesmen, the great lawyers and the masterful political writers who had conferred untold lustre upon the state.