Arthur gladly assented and the two repaired to the little shaded verandah which Dick had built out of brushwood and boughs across the front of Dorothy’s temporary dwelling.
“This thing troubles me greatly, Edmonia,” Arthur began, “and it depresses me as pretty nearly everything else does nowadays. It completely upsets my plans and defeats all my ambitions. It adds another to the ties of obligation that compel me to remain here and neglect my work.”
“Is it not possible, Arthur”—their friendship had passed the “cousining” stage and they used each other’s names now without prefix—“Is it not possible, Arthur, for you to find work enough here to occupy your life and employ your abilities worthily? There is no doubt that you have already saved many lives by the skill and energy with which you have met this fever outbreak, and your work will bear still better fruit. You have taught all of us how to save lives in such a case, how to deal with the epidemics that are common enough on plantations. You may be sure that nobody in this region will ever again let a dozen or twenty negroes perish in unwholesome quarters after they have seen how easily and surely you have met and conquered the fever. Dorothy tells me you have had only two deaths out of forty-two cases, and that no new cases are appearing. Surely your conscience should acquit you of neglecting your work, or burying your talents.”
“Oh, if there were such work for me to do all the time,” the young man answered, “I should feel easy on that score. But this is an extraordinary occasion. It will pass in a few weeks, and then—”
“Well, and then—what?”
“Why, then a life of idleness and ease, with no duties save such as any man of ordinary intelligence could do as well as I, or better—a life delightful enough in its graceful repose, but one which must condemn me to rust in all my faculties, to stand still or retrograde, to leave undone all that I have spent my youth and early manhood in fitting myself to do. Please understand me, Edmonia. I love Virginia, its people, and all its traditions of honor and manliness. But I am not fit for the life I must lead here. All the education, all the experience I have had have tended to unfit me for it in precisely that degree in which they have helped to equip me for something quite different. Then again the work I had marked out for myself in the world needs me far more than you can easily understand. There are not many men so circumstanced that they could do it in my stead. Other men as well or better equipped with scientific acquirements, and all that, are not free as I am—or was before this inheritance in Virginia came to blight my life. They have their livings to make and must work only in fields that promise a harvest of gain. I was free to go anywhere where I might be needed, and to minister to humanity in ways that make no money return. My annuities secured me quite all the money I needed for my support so that I need never take thought for the morrow. I have never yet received a fee for my ministry—for I regard my work as a ministry, for which I am set apart. Other men have families too, and owe a first duty to them, while I—well, I decided at the outset that I would never marry.”
Arthur did not end that sentence as he would have ended it a year or even half a year before. He was growing doubtful of himself. Presently he continued:
“I am free to work for humanity. My time is my own. I can spend it freely in making experiments and investigations that can hardly fail to benefit mankind. Few men who are equipped for such studies can spare time for them from the breadwinning. Then again when great epidemics occur anywhere, and multitudes need me, I am free to go and serve them. I have no family, no wife, no children, nobody dependent upon me, in short no obligations of any kind to restrain me from such service. Such at least was my situation before my Uncle Robert died. His death imposed upon me the duty of caring for all these black people. My first thought was of how I might most quickly free myself of this restraining obligation. Had the estate consisted only of houses and lands and other inanimate property I should have made short work of the business. I should have sold the whole of it for whatever men might be willing to give me for it; I should have devoted the proceeds to some humane purpose, and then, being free again I should have returned to my work. Unfortunately, however, in succeeding to my uncle’s estate I succeeded also to his obligations. I planned to fulfil them once for all by selling the plantation and using the proceeds in carrying the negroes to the west and establishing them upon farms of their own. I still cherish that purpose, but I am delayed in carrying it out by the fact that other obligations must first be discharged. There are debts—the hereditary curse of us Virginians—and I find that the value of the plantation, without the negroes, would not suffice to discharge them and leave enough to give the negroes the little farms that I must provide for them if I take the responsibility of setting them free. Still I see ways in which I think I can overcome that difficulty within two or three years, by selling crops that Virginians never think of selling and devoting their proceeds to the discharge of debts. But now comes this new and burdensome duty of caring for Dorothy’s estate. She is now sixteen years of age, so that this new burden must rest upon my shoulders for five full years to come.”
“I quite understand,” Edmonia slowly replied, “and in great part I sympathize with you. But not altogether. For one thing I do not share your belief in freedom for the negroes. I am sure they are unfit for it, and it would be scarcely less than cruelty to take them out of the happy life to which they were born, exile them to a strange land, and condemn them to a lifelong struggle with conditions to which they are wholly unused, with poverty for their certain lot and starvation perhaps for their fate. They are happy now. Why should you condemn them to unhappy lives? They are secure now in the fact that, sick or well, in age and decrepitude as well as in lusty health, they will be abundantly fed and clothed and well housed. Why should you condemn them to an incalculably harder lot?”
“So far as the negroes are concerned, you may be right. Yet I cannot help thinking that if I make them the owners of fertile little farms in that rapidly growing western country, without a dollar of debt, they will find it easy enough to put food into their mouths and clothes on their backs and keep a comfortable roof over their heads. However that is a large question and perhaps a difficult one. If it could have been kept out of politics Virginia at least would long ago have found means to free herself of the incubus. But it is not of the negroes chiefly that I am thinking. I am trying to set Arthur Brent free while taking care not to do them any unavoidable harm in the process. I want to return to my work, and I am sufficiently an egotist to believe that my freedom to do that is of some importance to the world.”