“Curiously enough, her name is in effect the same as my own, translated into French. She is Madame Le Sud. That means Mrs. South, of course, and when I called her attention to the fact, she said: ‘perhaps that may suggest an additional bond of affection between us.’ ”
Several days passed before Dorothy resumed her writing.
“I haven’t added a line to my letter for two or three days past. That’s because I have been so busy learning to know and love Madame Le Sud. She is the very sweetest and most charming woman I ever saw in my life. She is a trifle less than forty—just old enough I tell her, to be my mother if it had happened in that way. Then she asked me about my real mother and I couldn’t tell her anything. I couldn’t even tell when she died, or what her name had been or anything about her. Isn’t it a strange thing, Cousin Arthur, that nobody has ever told me anything about my mother? It makes me ashamed when I think of it, and still more ashamed when I remember that I never asked anything about her, except once. That time I asked my father some question and he answered only by quickly rising and going out to mount his horse and ride away all alone. That is the way he always did when things distressed him, and as I didn’t want to distress him I never asked him anything more about my mother. But why haven’t I been told about her? Was she bad? And is that why everybody has been so anxious about me, fearing that I might be bad? Even if that were so they ought to have told me about my mother, especially after I began to grow up and know how to stand things bravely. May be when I was too little to understand it was better to keep silent. But when I grew older there was no excuse for not telling me the truth. I don’t think there ever is any excuse for that. The truth is the only thing in the world that a sane person ought to love. I’m only seventeen years old, but I’m old enough to have found out that much, and I don’t think I shall ever quite forgive those who have shut out from me the truth about my mother. You, Cousin Arthur, haven’t had any hand in that. I never asked you, but I know. If you had known about my mother you’d have told me. You could not have helped it. The only limitation to your ability that I ever discovered is your utter inability to tell lies. If you tried to do that you’d make such a wretched failure of the attempt that the truth would come out in spite of you. So, of course, you are as ignorant as I am about my mother.
“But I wanted to tell you about Madame Le Sud. To me she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet most people would call her hideously ugly. Indeed, I’ve heard people on the ship call her that way, for they’re beginning at last to come out on deck and try to get well. She has a terribly disfiguring scar. It begins in her hair and extends down over her left eye which it has put out, and down her cheek by the side of her nose, almost, but not quite to her upper lip. The scar is very ugly, of course, but the woman is altogether beautiful. She impresses me as wonderfully fine and fragile—delicate in the same way that a piece of old Sèvres china is. She plays the violin divinely. She wouldn’t play for me at first, and she has since confessed that she feared to make me afraid to play for her. ‘For I am a professional musician,’ she said, ‘or rather I was, till I got this disfiguring scar. After that how could I present myself to an audience?’ Then she told me how she got the scar. She was celebrating something or other with a company of friends. They drank champagne too freely, and one of them, taking from Madame Le Sud’s mantelpiece a perfume bottle, playfully emptied its contents on her head. It was a perfume bottle, but it held nitric acid which somebody had been using medicinally. In an instant the mischief was done and Madame Le Sud’s career as a famous musician was ended forever.
“When she got well she was very poor, having spent all her money during her illness. A manager came to her and wanted her to go on as ‘the veiled violinist,’ he pretending that she was some woman of distinguished family and high social position whose love of music tempted her to exercise her skill upon the stage, but whose social position forbade her to show her face or reveal her name. He offered her large sums if she would do this, but she refused to make herself a party to such a deception. She secured employment, as she puts it, in a much humbler capacity which enables her to turn her artistic taste to account in earning a living, and it is in connection with this employment that she is now on her way to Paris. She did not tell me what her employment is, and of course I did not ask her. But now that I have learned something of her misfortunes, and have seen how bravely she bears them, I love her better than ever.
“Diana has come upon deck at last, ‘dressed and in her right mind.’ She is very proud of having been ‘seasick jes’ like white folks.’ She so far asserts her authority as to order Edmonia—who is quite herself again—and me to array ourselves in some special gowns of her personal selection for the captain’s dinner today. It is to be a notable affair and Madame Le Sud is to play a violin solo. They asked me to play also, but I refused, till Madame Le Sud asked me to give ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ with her to play second violin. Think of it! This wonderful musical artist volunteering to ‘play second fiddle’ to a novice like me! But she insists upon liking my rendering of the dear old melody and she has taken the trouble to compose a special second part, which, she generously says, ‘will bring out the beauty’ of my performance.
“We expect to make land during tonight, and by day after tomorrow, I’ll mail this letter at Liverpool.”
XXXI
THE VIEWS AND MOODS OF ARTHUR BRENT
WHEN Dorothy had gone Arthur Brent felt a double necessity for diligence in the ordering of plantation affairs. He realized for the first time what he had done in thus sending Dorothy away. For the first time he began to understand his own condition of mind and the extent to which this woman had become a necessity to his life. Quite naturally, too, her absence and the loss of his daily association with her served to depress him, as nothing else had ever done before. The sensation of needing some one was wholly novel to him, and by no means agreeable. “What if I should never have her with me again—never as my Dorothy?” he reflected. “That may very easily happen. In fact I sent her away in order that it might happen, if it would. Her affection for me is still quite that of a child for one much older than herself. Edmonia does not so regard it, but perhaps she is wrong. Perhaps her conviction that Dorothy the woman loves me even more than Dorothy the child ever did, and that her love will survive acquaintance with other and more attractive men, and other and more attractive ways of life, is born only of her eager desire to have that come about. A year’s absence will not make Dorothy forget me or even love me less than she does now. But how much does she love me now, in very truth? May it not happen that when she returns a year hence she will have given her woman’s heart to some other, bringing back to me only the old, child love unchanged? I must be prepared for that at all events. I must school myself to think of it as a probability without the distress of mind it gives me now. And I must be ready, when it happens, to go away from here at once and take up again my life of strenuous endeavor and absorbing study. I mustn’t let this thing ruin me as it might some weakling in character.”
In order that he might be ready thus to leave Virginia when the time should come, rejoicing instead of grieving over Dorothy’s good fortune in finding some fitter life than his to share, Arthur knew that he must this year discharge the last dollar of debt that rested upon the Wyanoke estate. He must be a free man on Dorothy’s return—free to reënter the world of scientific work, free to make and keep himself master of his own mind, as he had always been until this strange thing had come over his life.