Aunt Jane hesitated a moment looking towards a certain flower-bed where tulips and hyacinths stood half-smothered in a drift of dead leaves. The morning hours were passing and the garden needed the work of her hands, but my clasp was firm and the call of the past was still sounding in her heart.
"I meant jest what I said, honey," she answered, settling herself again on the old garden seat. "There's such a thing as a man lovin' a woman too well to marry her, and that's the way it was with the doctor. You might think, maybe, Dr. Pendleton come of plain folks, bein' jest a country doctor. But, no; his people was among the best and the richest in the county, and he'd had all the chances that rich people can give their children. He'd been to college and he'd travelled around and seen the world, and no young man could 'a' had a prettier prospect before him than Arthur Pendleton,—that was the doctor's name,—when he come home from his studyin' and his travellin' and started out to practisin' medicine with his father. Young and handsome and rich, and then there was Miss Dorothy Schuyler, and he was in love with her and she was in love with him. Father used to say when a man had all that, there wasn't standin' room for a wish.
"Miss Dorothy was one o' the Virginia Schuylers, and the first time she come to visit her Kentucky cousins, she met the young doctor, and they fell in love with each other jest like Hamilton Schuyler and Miss Amaryllis, and before she went back to her home it was all settled that they'd be married the next spring. The young doctor, he made a journey to Virginia to git her father's and mother's consent; for in that day and time, child, a young man couldn't jest pick up a gyirl and walk off with her. He had to say 'By your leave' and do a little courtin' with the old folks before he could claim the gyirl.
"Well, it all looked like plain sailin' for the young doctor. His father begun givin' up his practice—took off his own shoes, you might say, and let his son step into 'em—and the weddin' day was comin', when all at once the banks got to failin' all over the country, and the Pendletons lost pretty near everything they had except their land. Then, to make a bad matter worse, the old doctor's name was on a note, and that fell due about the time the banks failed, and he had to sell the family place and a good deal o' the land.
"They said when he got through settlin' up his affairs he says, 'Well, I've lost my money and my lands and my home, but I've saved my good name.'
"I reckon it must 'a' taken the young doctor a good while to come to an understandin' of what he'd lost. By the time you're old, losin' comes natural to you, but it's hard for young folks to take in a big loss. But as soon as Arthur Pendleton understood that all his father had was a good name, and all he had was his father's practice, he wrote to Miss Dorothy and set her free from her promise to marry him.
"The old doctor begged him not to do it. Says he, 'Son, you've lost pretty near everything, and now you're throwing away the best of what's left.' Says he, 'Don't strip your life bare of every chance for happiness. Hold on to love, even if you have lost your money.'
"But the young doctor says, says he, 'When a man's money's gone it's no time for him to be thinkin' about love.' Says he, 'Unless a man loves a woman well enough to give her up when he's too poor to take care of her, his love's not worth much. In her father's house,' says he, 'she's lived like the lilies of the field, and the man that loves her mustn't be the one to bring her down to poverty and hard work.' So he wrote to her and told her to forget him as soon as she could, and love some other man who could give her what a woman ought to have, and she told him that if she ever loved anybody else, she'd send back the ring he'd given her. But, honey, that ring stayed on Miss Dorothy's finger till her dyin' day, and I reckon it was buried with her. Folks said they never wrote to each other any more, but every year or so Miss Dorothy'd come back to visit the Schuylers and the doctor he'd go to see her, and they used to say that he'd look at her finger before he'd look at her face, and when he'd see his ring there he'd be too happy to say a word. He'd take both her hands in his, and his eyes'd fill up with tears and he'd look down at her face, and she'd look up at him and laugh and ask him if he didn't want his ring back to give to some other gyirl.
"Well, things went on this way one year after another, the doctor workin' and Miss Dorothy comin' and goin' and both of 'em hopin', I reckon, and lookin' forward to marryin' some day; for she was young and so was he, and when folks are young they always feel certain of havin' their own way with life, and it's easy for 'em to wait and hope for the things that's out o' reach. But nothin' seemed to go right with the doctor. If he saved up a little money and put it in the bank, or bought a piece o' property, bad luck was sure to come along and pull down everything he'd built up. His father's health broke down, and of course he had to ease the old man's way to the grave; his youngest brother had to be educated, and first one thing and then another kept comin' up and puttin' Miss Dorothy further off.
"But the older they got, the more they loved each other; and Miss Dorothy, she'd come and go every summer, till finally one summer she didn't come; and the next summer the doctor went to Virginia to see her, and come back lookin' like an old, old man; and not long afterwards he come into church one Sunday with a band o' black crape around his hat, and then we knew Miss Dorothy was dead."