Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the War

by George Cary Eggleston

“IN THAT MUSIC MY SOUL LAID ITSELF BARE TO YOURS AND PRAYED FOR YOUR LOVE.”

be persuaded against my will, and mammy brought you in, in your cradle. I remember that you had a little pink sack over your night gown—a thing I had surreptitiously knitted for you without anybody’s knowledge, and without even the touch of a servant’s hand.

“ ‘You were crowing with glee at the lights and the great, flaring fire. Everybody in the room wanted to caress you, but I peremptorily ordered them off, and took you for a time into my own arms. At last, when the lights were turned down at my command, and the firelight hidden behind a screen, I took the violin—a rare old instrument for which your father had paid a king’s ransom—and began to play. After the prelude had been twice played, I began to sing. Never in my life had I been so overwhelmingly conscious of you—so completely unconscious of everybody else in the world. I played and sang only to my child. All other human beings were nonexistent. I played with a perfection of which I had never for a moment thought myself capable. I sang with a tenderness which I could never have commanded had I been conscious for the time of any other existence than your own. In that music my soul laid itself bare to yours and prayed for your love. I told you in every tone all that a mother love means—all that an intensely emotional woman is capable of feeling; I gave free rein to all there was in me of passion, and made all of it your own. I was in an ecstasy. I was entranced. My soul was transfigured and all was wrought into the music.

“ ‘In the midst of it all someone whispered a cold blooded, heartlessly appreciative comment upon my playing, or the music, or my voice, or the execution, or something else—it matters not what. It was the sort of thing that people say for politeness’ sake when some screeching girl sings “Hear Me, Norma.” It wakened me instantly from my trance. It brought me back to myself. It revealed to me how completely I had been wasting the sacred things of my soul upon a company of Philistines. It filled me with a wrath that considered not consequences. I ceased to play. I seized the precious violin by its neck—worn smooth by the touch of artist hands—and dashed it to pieces over the piano. Then I snatched my baby from the cradle and retreated to your nursery, where I double locked the door, and refused to admit anybody but mammy, whose affection for you I felt, had been wounded as sorely as my own. I sent your father word that I would pass the night in the nursery, and at daylight I left home forever, taking you and mammy with me in the carriage.

“ ‘I had taken pains to learn that your father had been summoned that night, on an emergency call, to the bedside of a patient, ten miles away. This gave me my opportunity. With you in my arms and mammy by my side, I drove to Richmond, and sending the carriage back, I drew what money there was to my credit in the bank, and took the steamer sailing that day for New York. All this was seventeen years ago, remember, when there were no railroads of importance, and no quicker way of going from Richmond to New York than by the infrequently sailing steamers. It was in the early forties.

“ ‘Your father had loaded my dressing case with splendid jewels, in the selection of which his taste was unusually good. I left them all behind, all but this ring, which he had given me when you were born and asked me to regard as his thank offering for you. I have kept it all these years. I have suffered and starved many times rather than profane it by pawning, though often my need has been so sore that I have had to put even my clothes in pledge for the money with which to buy a dinner of bread and red herrings.

“ ‘I had money enough at first, for your father’s generosity had made my bank deposit large. But I had to spend the money in keeping myself hidden away with you, and I could not earn more by my music, as that would make me easily found. It was then that I translated my name. Mammy remained with me, caring for nothing in the world but you.

“ ‘It was several years before your father found me out. I was shocked and distressed at the way in which sorrow had written its signature upon his face. I loved him then far better than I had ever done before. For the first time I fully understood how greatly good and noble he was. But I would not, I could not, go back with him to the home I had disgraced. I could have borne all the scorn and contempt with which his friends would have looked upon me. I could have faced all that defiantly and with an erect head, giving scorn for scorn and contempt for contempt, where I knew that my censors were such only because in their commonplaceness they could not understand a nature like mine or even believe in its impulses. But I could not bear to go back to Pocahontas and witness the pity with which everybody there would look upon him.

“ ‘I resisted all his entreaties for my return, but for your sake I tore my heart out by consenting to give you up to him. You were rapidly growing in intelligence and I perfectly knew that such bringing up as I could give you would ruin your life in one way or another. Never mind the painful memory of all that. I consented at last to let your father take you back to Pocahontas and bring you up in a way suited to your birth and condition. Mammy went with you of course. Your father begged for the privilege of providing for my support in comfort while I should live, but I refused. I begged him to go into the courts and free himself from me. He could have got his divorce in Virginia upon the ground of my desertion. I shall never forget his answer. ‘When I married you, Dorothy’—for your name, my child, is the same as my own—‘When I married you, Dorothy, it was not during good behavior but forever. You are my wife, and you will be always the one woman I love, the one woman whose name I will protect at all hazards and all costs. No complaint of you has ever passed my lips. I have suffered no human being to say aught to your hurt in my presence or within my knowledge. Nor shall I to the end. You are my wife. I love you. That is all of it.’