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

by George Cary Eggleston

It seemed to him absurd that he should really be in love with the mere child whom he had never thought of as other than that. And yet—yes, he must admit that of late he had half unconsciously come to think of the womanhood of her oftener than of the childhood. He saw clearly, when he thought of it, that his fear that he might come to love the girl had been born of a subconsciousness that he had come to love her already.

It was a strange condition of mind in which he found himself. His strongest impulse was to run away and thus save the girl from himself and his love. But would that save her? She was not the kind of woman—he caught himself thinking of her now as a woman and not as a child—she was not the kind of woman to love lightly or to lay a love aside as one might do with a misfit garment. What if it should be true, as Edmonia had declared, that Dorothy had already given him her heart? What would happen to her in that case, should he go away and leave her? “But, psha!” he thought; “that cannot be true. The child does not know what love is. And yet, and yet. Why did she choose me to be her guardian, and why, when I expressed regret that she had done so, did she look at me so, out of those great, solemn, sad eyes of hers, and ask me, with so much intensity if I did not want to be her guardian? Was it not that she instinctively, and in obedience to her love, longed to place her life in my keeping? After all she is not a child. It is only habit that makes me think of her in that way—habit and her strangely childlike confidence in me. But is that confidence childlike, after all? Do not women feel in that way toward the men they love? Dorothy is fully grown and sixteen years of age. Many a woman is married at sixteen.”

Of his own condition of mind Arthur had now no doubt. The thought had come to him that should he go away she would forget him, and he had angrily rejected it as a lie. He knew she would never forget. The further thought had come to him that in such case she would marry some other man, and it stung him like a whip lash to think of that. In brief he knew now, though until a few hours ago he had not so much as suspected it, that he loved Dorothy as he had never dreamed of loving any woman while he lived. He remembered how thoughts of her had colored all his thinking for a month agone and had shaped every plan he had formed.

But what was he now to do? “My life—the life I have marked out for myself,” he reflected, “would not be a suitable one for her.” He had not fully formulated the thought before he knew it to be a falsehood. “She would be supremely happy in such a life. It would give zest and interest to her being. She would rejoice in its sacrifices and share mightily in its toil and its triumphs. She cares nothing for the life of humdrum ease and luxury that has been marked out for her to live. She would care intensely for a life of high endeavor. And yet I must save her from the sacrifice if I can. I must save her from myself and from my love if it be not indeed too late.”

His horse had long ago slowed down to a walk, and was pursuing a course of its own selection. It brought him now to the hickory plantation near the outer gate of the Wyanoke property. Awakening to consciousness of his whereabouts, Arthur drew rein.

“It was here that I first met Dorothy”—he liked now the sound of her name in his ears—“on that glorious June morning when the hickory leaves that now strew the ground were in the full vigor of their first maturity. How confidently she whistled to her hounds, and how promptly they obeyed her call! What a queen she seemed as she disciplined them, and with what stately grace she passed me by without recognition save that implied in a sweeping inclination of her person! That was a bare five months ago! It seems five years, or fifty! How much I have lived since then! And how large a part of my living Dorothy has been!”

Presently he turned and set off at a gallop on his return to the fever camp, his mien that of a strong man who has made up his mind. His plan of action was formed, and he was hastening to carry it out.

It was growing dark when he arrived at the camp, and Dorothy met him with her report as to the condition of the sick. She took his hand as he dismounted, and held it between her own, as was her custom, quite unconscious of the nature of her own impulses.

“I’m very tired, Cousin Arthur,” she said after her report was made. “The journey to Court and all the rest of it have wearied me; and I sat up with Sally last night. You’re glad she’s better, aren’t you?”

“I certainly am,” he replied. “I feared yesterday for her life, but your nursing has saved her, just as it has saved so many others. Sally has passed the crisis now, and has nothing to do but obey you and get well.”