“But, Edmonia, you said this thing would subject you to some inconvenience?”
“So it will. But that’s a trifle. I had half promised to spend July at the White Sulphur, but that can wait for another July. Now you are to tell me goodby a few minutes hence and ride away. For I must write a note to Dorothy—no, on second thoughts I’ll drive over and see her and Aunt Polly, and you are to remain here and dine with brother. Dorothy and I are going to talk about clothes, and we shan’t want any men folk around. I’ll dine at Wyanoke, and by tomorrow we’ll have half a dozen seamstresses at work making things enough to last us to Baltimore.”
“But tell me, Edmonia,” said Arthur, beginning to think of practical things, “can you and Dorothy travel alone?”
“We could, if it were necessary. You know I’ve been abroad twice and I know ‘the tricks and the manners’ of Europe. But it will not be necessary. I enjoy the advantage of having been educated at Le Febvre’s School, in Richmond. That sort of thing has its compensations. Among them is the fact that it is apt to locate one’s friendships variously as to place. I have a schoolmate in New York—a schoolmate of five or six years ago, and a very dear friend—Mildred Livingston. She is married and rich and restless. She likes nothing so much as travel and I happen to know that she is just now planning a trip to Europe. I’ll write to her today and we’ll go together. As her husband, Nicholas Van Rensselaer Livingston, hasn’t anything else to do he’ll go along just to look after the baggage and swear in English, which they don’t understand, at the Continental porters and their kind. He’s really very good at that sort of thing.”
“It is well for a man to be good at something.”
“Yes, isn’t it? I’ve often said so to Mildred. Besides he worships the ground—or the carpets, rather,—that she walks on. For he never lets her put her foot on the ground if he can help it. He’s a dear fellow—in his way—and Mildred is really fond of him—especially when he’s looking after the tickets and the baggage. Now you must let me run away. You are to stay here and dine with brother, you know.”
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.”