Dorothy South

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Eggleston George Cary. Dorothy South

I. TWO ENCOUNTERS

II. WYANOKE

III. DR. ARTHUR BRENT

IV. DR. BRENT IS PUZZLED

V. ARTHUR BRENT’S TEMPTATION

VI “NOW YOU MAY CALL ME DOROTHY”

VII. SHRUB HILL CHURCH

VIII. A DINNER AT BRANTON

IX. DOROTHY’S CASE

X. DOROTHY VOLUNTEERS

XI. THE WOMAN’S AWAKENING

XII. MAMMY

XIII. THE “SONG BALLADS” OF DICK

XIV. DOROTHY’S AFFAIRS

XV. DOROTHY’S CHOICE

XVI. UNDER THE CODE

XVII. A REVELATION

XVIII. ALONE IN THE CARRIAGE

XIX. DOROTHY’S MASTER

XX. A SPECIAL DELIVERY LETTER

XXI. HOW A HIGH BRED DAMSEL CONFRONTED FATE AND DUTY

XXII. THE INSTITUTION OF THE DUELLO

XXIII. DOROTHY’S REBELLION

XXIV. TO GIVE DOROTHY A CHANCE

XXV. AUNT POLLY’S VIEW OF THE RISKS

XXVI. AUNT POLLY’S ADVICE

XXVII. DIANA’S EXALTATION

XXVIII. THE ADVANCING SHADOW

XXIX. THE CORRESPONDENCE OF DOROTHY

XXX. AT SEA

XXXI. THE VIEWS AND MOODS OF ARTHUR BRENT

XXXII. THE SHADOW FALLS

XXXIII “AT PARIS IT WAS”

XXXIV. DOROTHY’S DISCOVERY

XXXV. THE BIRTH OF WAR

XXXVI. THE OLD DOROTHY AND THE NEW

XXXVII. AT WYANOKE

XXXVIII. SOON IN THE MORNING

Отрывок из книги

H ALF an hour later Arthur Brent entered the house grounds of Wyanoke – the home of his ancestors for generations past and his own birthplace. The grounds about the mansion were not very large – two acres in extent perhaps – set with giant locust trees that had grown for a century or more in their comfortable surrounding of closely clipped and luxuriant green sward. Only three trees other than the stately locusts, adorned the house grounds. One of these was a huge elm, four feet thick in its stem, with great limbs, branching out in every direction and covering, altogether, a space of nearly a quarter acre of ground, but so high from the earth that the carpet of green sward grew in full luxuriance to the very roots of the stupendous tree. How long that aboriginal monarch had been luxuriating there, the memory of man could make no report. The Wyanoke plantation book, with its curiously minute record of everything that pertained to the family domain, set forth the fact that the “new mansion house” – the one still in use, – was built in the year 1711, and that its southeasterly corner stood “two hundred and thirty nine feet due northwest of the Great Elm which adorns the lawn.” A little later than the time of Arthur Brent’s return, that young man of a scientific mental habit made a survey to determine whether or not the Great Elm of 1859 was certainly the same that had been named “the Great Elm” in 1711. Finding it so he reckoned that the tree must be many hundreds – perhaps even a thousand years of age. For the elm is one of the very slowest growing of trees, and Arthur Brent’s measurements showed that the diameter of this one had increased not more than six inches during the century and a half since it had been accepted as a conspicuous landmark for descriptive use in the plantation book.

The other trees that asked of the huge locusts a license to live upon that lawn, were two quick-growing Asiatic mulberries, planted in comparatively recent times to afford shade to the front porch.

.....

If this slip of a girl had talked Greek or Sanscrit or the differential calculus at him, Arthur could not have been more astounded than he was. Surely a girl so young, so fresh, and so obviously wholesome of mind could never have formulated such a philosophy of life for herself, even had she been thrown all her days into the most complex of conditions and surroundings, instead of leading the simplest of lives as this girl had manifestly done, and seeing only other living like her own. But he forbore to question her, lest he trespass again upon delicate ground, as he had done with respect to music. He was quick to remember that he had already asked her where she had learned her philosophy, and that she had nimbly evaded the question – defending her philosophy as a thing obvious to the mind, instead of answering the inquiry as to whence she had drawn the teaching.

Altogether, Arthur Brent’s mind was in a whirl as he left the luncheon table. Simple as she seemed and transparent as her personality appeared to him to be, the girl’s attitude of mind seemed inexplicable even to his practised understanding. Her very presence in the house was a puzzle, for Aunt Polly had offered no explanation of the fact that she seemed to belong there, not as a guest but as a member of the household, and even as one exercising authority there. For not only had the girl apologized for leaving Aunt Polly to order the luncheon, but at table and after the meal was finished, it was she, and not the elder woman who gave directions to the servants, who seemed accustomed to think of her as the source of authority, and finally, as she withdrew from the dining room, she turned to Arthur and said:

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