“Now comes the curious part of the story. I told Monsieur your name and address, and his eyes instantly lighted up. ‘Ah, that accounts for all!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know the Dr. Brent. He was my own pupil till I could teach him nothing that he did not know. Then he taught me all the original things he had learned for himself during his stay in my laboratory and before that. Then we ceased to be master and pupil. We were after that two masters working together and every day finding out much that the world can never be enough grateful for. He is truly a wonder, Mister the Doctor Brent! I no longer am surprised at Mademoiselle Sout’s accomplishments and her enthusiasm. But why did she not want to speak to me his name? Is it that she loves him and he loves her not—ah, no, that cannot be! He must love Mademoiselle Sout’ after he has taught her. Nothing else is possible. But is it then that he is dull to find out, and that he doubts the reaction of her love in return for his? Ah, no! He is too great a chemist for that. There must be some other explanation and I cannot find it out. But Mister the Doctor Brent is after all only an American. The Americans are what you call alert in everything but one. Mister the Doctor Brent would quickly discover the smallest error in a reaction and he would know the cause of it. But he did not note the affinity in Mademoiselle for himself. I am not a greater chemist than he is, and yet I see it instantly, when she does not want to speak to me his name! He is a man most fortunate, in that I am old and have Madame at home and three young sons in the École Polytechnique! Ah, how ardently I should have wooed Mademoiselle, the charming, if she had come to me as a pupil twenty five years ago!’
“Now, I’m not quite sure Arthur that your danger in that quarter is altogether past. Yes, I am. That was a sorry jest. But I sincerely hope that on our return you may be a trifle more alert than you have hitherto been in discovering ‘reactions.’ You don’t at all deserve that I should thus enlighten and counsel you. And it may very easily prove to be too late when we return. For, in spite of her absorption in chemistry, and the horribly stained condition of her fingers sometimes, I drag her to all sorts of entertainments, and at the Tuileries especially she is a favorite. The Empress is so gracious to ‘the charming American,’ as she calls her, that she even summons me to her side for the sake of Dorothy’s company. The entire ‘eligible list’ of the diplomatic corps has gone daft about her beauty, her naïveté and her wonderful accomplishments. The Duc de Morny has even ventured to call twice at our hotel, begging the privilege of ‘paying his respects to the charming young American.’ But the Duc de Morny is a beast—an accomplished, fascinating beast, if you please, but a beast, nevertheless,—and I have used my woman’s privilege of fibbing so far as to send him word, each time, that Mademoiselle was not at home.
“ ‘Why did the Duc de Morny want to call upon me?’ queried the simple, honest minded Dorothy, when she heard of the visits of this greatest potentate in France next to the Emperor. I could not explain, so I fibbed a bit further and told her it was only his extreme politeness and the French friendship for Americans.
“Young Jefferson Peyton, you know, has been following us from the beginning. Dorothy expresses surprise, now and then, that his route happens, so singularly to coincide with our own. I think he will explain all that to her presently. He has greatly improved by travel. He has learned that his name and family count for nothing outside Virginia, and that he is personally a man of far less consequence than he has been brought up to consider himself. Now that he has been cured of a conceit that was due rather to his provincial bringing up than to any innate tendency in that direction, now that he has seen enough of the world to acquire a new perspective in contemplating himself, he has become in truth a very pleasing young man. His father did well to act upon Aunt Polly’s advice and send him abroad for education and culture. He is going to propose to Dorothy at the very first opportunity. He has told me so himself, and as she has a distinct liking for the amiable and really very handsome young fellow, I cannot venture upon any confident prediction as to the consequences.”
That letter came as a Christmas gift to Arthur Brent. One week later, on the New Year’s day, came one from Dorothy which made amends by reason of its resumption of much of the old tone of candor and confidence which he had so sadly missed from her letters during many months past.
“I want to go home, Cousin Arthur,” she began. “I want to go home at once. I want my dear old mammy to put her arms around me as she used to do when I was a little child, and croon me to sleep, so that I may forget all that has happened to me. And, I want to talk with you again, Cousin Arthur, as freely as I used to do when you and I rode together through the woodlands or the corn at sunrise, when we didn’t mind a wetting from the dew, and when our horses and my dear dogs seemed to enjoy the glory of the morning as keenly as we did. It is in memory of those mornings that I send you back the soiled handkerchief you mailed to me. I want you, please, to give it to Ben, and tell him I make him a present of it, because it is no longer fit for you to use. You needn’t tell him anything more than that. He will understand. But I mustn’t leave you any longer to the mercy of such neglect on the part of servants to whom you are always so good. I must get home again before this terrible war breaks out. I have read all your letters about it a hundred times each, and I have tried to fit myself for my part in it. When you told me how great the need was likely to be for somebody qualified to make medicines, and salt, and saltpetre and soda and potash for gunpowder—no, you didn’t tell me of all that, you wrote to Edmonia about it, and that hurt my feelings because it seemed to put me out of your life and work—but when Edmonia told me what you had written about it, I set myself to work again at my chemistry, and I have worked so diligently at it that my master, Mons. X. declares that I am capable of taking complete charge of a laboratory and doing the most difficult and delicate of all the work needed. I believe I am. Anyhow, he has somehow found out,—though I certainly never told him of it—that you taught me at the beginning and he insists upon giving me a letter to you about my qualifications.
“You say you hope Virginia will not secede, and that perhaps, after all, there will be no war. But I see clearly that you have no great confidence in your own hopes. So I am in a great hurry to get home before trouble comes. After it comes it may be too late for me to get home at all.
“So I should just compel Edmonia to take the first ship for New York, if we had any money. But we haven’t any, because I have spent all my own and borrowed and spent all of hers. We must wait now until you and Archer Bannister can send us new letters of credit or whatever it is that you call the papers on which the banking people here are so ready to give us all the money we want. Now I must ’fess up about the expenses. They have not been incurred for new gowns or for any other feminine frivolities. I’ve spent all my own money and all of Edmonia’s for chemicals and chemical apparatus, which I foresee that you and I will need in order to make medicines and salt and soda and saltpetre for our soldiers and people. I’ve ordered all these things sent by a ship that is going to Nassau, in the Bahama Islands, and the captain of the ship promises me that whether there is a blockade or not, he will get them through to you somehow or other. By the way the foolish fellow, who is a French naval officer, detailed for the merchant service, wanted me to marry him—isn’t it absurd?—and I told him we’d keep that question open till the chemicals and apparatus should be safe in your hands, and till he could come to you in the uniform of a Virginia officer, and ask you as my guardian, for permission to pay his addresses. Was it wrong, Cousin Arthur, thus to play with a fellow who never really loved anybody, but who simply wanted Pocahontas plantation? You see I’ve become very bad, and very knowing, since I’ve been without control, as I told you I would. But, anyhow, that Frenchman will get the things to you in safety.
“But all this nonsense isn’t what I wanted to write to you. I want to go home and I will go home, even if I have to accept Jefferson Peyton’s offer to furnish the money necessary. We simply mustn’t be shut out of Virginia when the war comes, and nobody can tell when it will come now. But of course I shall not let Jeff furnish the money. That was only a strong way of putting it. For Jeff has insulted me, I think. I’m not quite certain, but I think that is what it amounts to. You will know, and I’m going to tell you all about it, just as I used to tell you all about everything, before—well before all this sort of thing. Jeff has been travelling about ever since we began our journey, and he has really been very nice to us, and very useful sometimes. But a few days ago he proposed marriage to me. I was disposed to be very kindly in my treatment of him, because I rather like the poor fellow. But when I told him I didn’t in the least think of marrying him or anybody else, he lost his temper, and had the assurance to say that the time would come when I would be very grateful to him for being willing to offer me such a road out of my difficulties. He didn’t explain, for I instantly rang for a servant to show him out of the hotel parlor, and myself retired by another door. But, I think I know what he meant, because I have found out all about myself and my mother, all the things that people have been so laboriously endeavoring to keep me from finding out. And among other things I have found out that I must marry Jeff Peyton or nobody. So I will marry nobody, so long as I live. I’ll be like Aunt Polly, just good and useful in the world.
“I’ll write you all about this by the next steamer, if I can make up my mind to do it—that is to say if I find that in spite of all, I may go on thinking of you as my best friend on earth, and telling you everything that troubles me just as I used to tell dear old mammy, when the bees stung me or the daisies wilted before I could make them into a pretty chain. I have a great longing to tell you things in the old, frank, unreserved way, and to feel the comfort of your strong support in doing what it is right for me to do. Somehow, all this distance has seemed to make it difficult to do that. But now that my fate in life is settled and my career fully marked out as a woman whose only ambition is to be as useful as possible, I may talk to you, mayn’t I, in the old, unreserved way, in full assurance that you won’t let me make any mistakes?