“Neither do I, Dorothy, but in the present state of the public mind neither of us must say so.”
“Why not, Cousin Arthur? Is there any harm in telling the truth?”
“Sometimes I suppose it is better to keep silence,” answered Arthur, hesitating.
“For women, yes,” quickly responded the girl. “But men can fight. Why shouldn’t they tell the truth?”
“I don’t quite understand your distinction, Dorothy.”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, “that I understand it myself. Oh, yes, I do, now that I think of it. Women tell lies, of course, because they can’t fight. Or, if they don’t quite tell lies they at least keep silent whenever telling the truth would make trouble. That’s because they can’t fight. Men can fight, and so there’s not the slightest excuse for them if they tell lies or even if they keep silent.”
“But, Dorothy, I don’t yet understand. Women can’t fight, of course, but then they are never called upon to fight. Why—”
“That’s just it, Cousin Arthur. If a woman speaks out, nobody can hold her responsible. But anybody can hold her nearest male friend responsible and he must fight to maintain what she has said, whether he thinks she was right in saying it or not. The other day Jeff. Peyton—Mr. Madison Peyton’s son, you know,—was over at Wyanoke, when you had gone to Branton. So I had to entertain him.” Dorothy did not know that the youth had been sent to Wyanoke by his father for the express purpose of being entertained by herself. “I found him a pretty stupid fellow, as I always do, but as he pretends to have been a student at the University, I supposed he had read a great deal. So I talked to him about Virgil but he knew so little that I asked him if he had read ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and he told me a deliberate lie. He professed a full acquaintance with that book, and presently I found out that he had never read a line of it. I was so shocked that I forgot myself. I asked him, ‘Why did you lie to me?’ It was dreadfully rude, of course, but I could not help it. Now of course he couldn’t challenge me for that. But if he had been a man of spirit, he would have challenged you, and you see how terribly wrong I should have been to involve you in a quarrel of that kind. Of course if I had been a man, instead of a woman—if I had been answerable for my words—I should have been perfectly free to charge him with lying. But what possible right had I to risk your life in a duel by saying things that I might as well have left unsaid?”
“But you said the other day,” responded Arthur, “that you did not believe in duelling?”
“Of course I don’t. It is a barbarous thing. But it is the custom of our country and we can’t help it. I’ve noticed that if a man fights a duel on proper provocation, everybody says he ought not to have done it. But if he refuses to fight, everybody says he’s a coward. So, under certain circumstances, a man in Virginia who respects himself is absolutely compelled to fight. If Jefferson Peyton had asked you to meet him on account of what I said to him, you couldn’t have refused, could you, Cousin Arthur?”