“But there, I am wandering from my point again. Don’t you see that it is your duty to train Dorothy, to give to her mind a larger and better outlook than the narrow horizon of our Virginian life permits?
“Anyhow, you shall see it, and you shall see it now. For in spite of your unwillingness to hear, and in spite of your injunction that I shall not tell you now, I am going to tell you some things that you must know. Listen then.
“Certain circumstances which I may not tell you either now or hereafter, render Dorothy’s case a peculiar one. She was only a dozen years old, or so, when her father died, and he never dreamed of her moral and intellectual possibilities. He was oppressed with a great fear for her. He foresaw for her dangers so grave and so great that he ceaselessly planned to save her from them. To that end he decreed that she should learn nothing of music, or art or any other thing which he believed would prove a temptation to her. His one supreme desire was to save her from erratic ways of living, and so to hedge her life about that she should in due course marry into a good Virginia family and pass all her days in a round of commonplace duties and commonplace enjoyments. He had no conception of her character, her genius or her capacities for enjoyment or suffering. He fondly believed that she would be happy in the life he planned for her as the wife of young Jefferson Peyton, to whom, in a way, he betrothed her in her early childhood, when Jeff himself was a well ordered little lad, quite different from the arrogant, silly young donkey he has grown up to be, with dangerous inclinations toward dissoluteness and depravity.
“Dr. South and Mr. Madison Peyton planned this marriage, as something that was to be fulfilled in that future for which Dr. South was morbidly anxious to provide. Like many other people, Dr. South mistook himself for Divine Providence, and sought to order a life whose conditions he could not foresee. He wanted to save his daughter from a fate which he, perhaps, had reason to fear for her. On the other side of the arrangement Madison Peyton wanted his eldest son to become master of Pocahontas plantation, so that his own possessions might pass to his other sons and daughters. So these two bargained that Dorothy should become Jefferson Peyton’s wife when both should be grown up. Dr. South did not foresee what sort of man the boy was destined to become. Still less did he dream what a woman Dorothy would be. His only concern was that his daughter should marry into a family as good as his own.
“Now that Peyton sees what his son’s tendencies are he is more determined than ever to have that mistaken old bargain carried out. He is willing to sacrifice Dorothy in the hope of saving his son from the evil courses to which he is so strongly inclined.
“Are you going to let this horrible thing happen, Arthur Brent? You love Dorothy and she loves you. She does not yet suspect either fact, but you are fully aware of both. You alone can save her from a fate more unhappy than any that her father, in his foolishness, feared for her, and in doing so you can at the same time fulfil her father’s dearest wish, which was that she should marry into a Virginia family of high repute. Your family ranks as well in this commonwealth as any other—better than most. You are the head of it. You can save Dorothy from a life utterly unworthy of her, a life in which she must be supremely unhappy. You can give to her mind that opportunity of continuous growth which it needs. You can offer to her the means of culture and happiness, and of worthy intellectual exercise, which so rare and exceptional a nature must have for its full development.
“Are you going to do this, Arthur Brent, or are you not? Are you going to do the high duty that lies before you, or are you going to put it aside for some imagined duty which would be of less consequence even if it were real? Is it not better worth your while to save Dorothy than to save any number of life’s failures who dwell in New York’s tenements? Are not Dorothy South’s mind and soul and superb capacities of greater consequence than the lives of thousands of those whose squalor and unwholesome surroundings are after all the fruit of their own hereditary indolence and stupidity? Is not one such life as hers of greater worth in the world, than thousands or even millions of those for whose amelioration you had planned to moil and toil? You know, Arthur, that I have little sympathy with the thought that those who fail in life should be coddled into a comfort that they have not earned. I do not believe that you can rescue dulness of mind from the consequences of its own inertia. Nine tenths of the poverty that suffers is the direct consequence of laziness and drink. The other tenth is sufficiently cared for. I am a heretic on this subject, I suppose. I do not think that such a man as you are should devote his life to an attempt to uplift those who have sunk into squalor through lack of fitness for anything better. Your abilities may be much better employed in helping worthier lives. I never did see why we should send missionaries to the inferior races, when all our efforts might be so much more profitably employed for the betterment of worthier people. Why didn’t we let the red Indians perish as they deserve to do, and spend the money we have fruitlessly thrown away upon them, in providing better educational opportunities for a higher race?
“The moral of all this is that you have found your true mission in the rescue of Dorothy South from a fate she does not deserve. I’m going to help you in doing that, but I will not tell you my plans till you get through with your fever crusade and have time to listen attentively to my superior wisdom.
“In the meantime you are to humble yourself by reflecting upon your great need of such counsel as mine and your great good fortune in having a supply of it at hand.
“I hope your patients continue to do credit to your medical skill and to Dorothy’s excellent nursing. I have sent Dinah over this morning with some delicacies for the convalescent among them, and in the afternoon I shall go over to the camp myself and steal Dorothy from them and you, long enough to give her a good long drive.