The Master of Warlock: A Virginia War Story. Eggleston George Cary

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СКАЧАТЬ you'll surely send her to school?"

      "Not if I retain my senses. I remember my humanities well enough to teach her all the Latin, Greek, and mathematics she needs. We'll read history and literature together, and as for French, I speak that language a good deal better than most of the dapper little dancing-masters do who keep 'young ladies' seminaries.' We'll ride horseback together every day, and I'll teach her French while I'm teaching her how to take an eight-rail fence at a gallop."

      The remonstrances were continued for a time, until one day the old gentleman made an end of them by saying:

      "I have heard all I want to hear on that subject. It is not to be mentioned to me again."

      Everybody who knew Colonel Archer knew that when he spoke in that tone of mingled determination and self-restraint, it was a dictate of prudence to respect his wish. So after that Agatha and he lived alone at Willoughby, a plantation in Northern Virginia three or four days distant by carriage from The Oaks.

      Morning, noon, and night, these two were inseparable companions. "Chummie" was the pet name she gave him in her childish days, and he would never permit her to address him by any other as she grew up.

      Old soldier that he was, – for he had commanded a company under Jackson at New Orleans, and had been a colonel during the war with Mexico, – it was his habit to exact implicit obedience within his own domain. He was the kindliest of masters, but his will was law on the plantation, and as everybody there recognised the fact, he never had occasion to give an order twice, or to mete out censure for disobedience. But for Agatha there was no law. Colonel Archer would permit none, while she in her turn made it her one study in life to be and do whatever her "Chummie" liked best.

      Colonel Archer had a couple of gardeners, of course, but their work was mainly to do the rougher things of horticulture. He and Agatha liked to do the rest for themselves. They prepared the garden-beds, seeded them, and carefully nursed their growths into fruitage, he teaching her, as they did so, that love of all growing things which is botany's best lesson.

      "And the plants love us back again, Chummie," she one day said to him, while she was still a little child. "They smile when we go near them, and sometimes the pansies whisper to me. I'm sure of that."

      She was at that time a slender child, with big, velvety brown eyes and a tangled mass of brown hair which her maid Martha struggled in vain to reduce to subjection. She usually put on a sunbonnet when she went to the garden in the early morning; but when it obstructed her vision, or otherwise annoyed her, she would push it off, letting it fall to her back and hang by its strings about her neck. Even then it usually became an annoyance, particularly when she wanted to climb a fruit-tree, and Martha would find it later, resting upon a cluster of rose-bushes, or hung upon a fence-paling.

      The pair of chums – the sturdy old gentleman and the little girl – had no regular hours for any of their employments, but at some hour of every day, they got out their books and read or studied together.

      They were much on horseback, too, and when autumn came they would tramp together through stubble fields and broom-straw growths, shooting quails on the wing – partridges, they correctly called them, as it is the habit of everybody in Virginia to do, for the reason that the bird which the New York marketman calls "quail," is properly named "Partridge Virginiensis," while the bird that the marketman sells as a partridge is not a partridge at all, but a grouse. The girl became a good shot during her first season, and a year later she challenged her grandfather to a match, to see who could bag the greater number of birds. At the end of the morning's sport, her bag outnumbered her companion's by two birds; but when the count was made, she looked with solemn eyes into her grandfather's face and, shaking her head in displeasure, said:

      "Chummie, you've been cheating! I don't like to think it of you, but it's true. You've missed several birds on purpose to let me get ahead of you. I'll never count birds with you again."

      The old gentleman tried to laugh the matter off, but the girl would not consent to that. After awhile she said: "I'll forgive you this time, Chummie; but I'll never count birds with you again."

      "But why not, Ladybird?"

      "Why, because you don't like to beat me, and I don't like to beat you. So if we go on counting birds and each trying to lose the match, we'll get to be very bad shots. Besides that, Chummie, cheating will impair your character."

      But the girl was not left without the companionship of girls of her own age. Colonel Archer was too wise a student of human nature for that. So from the beginning he planned to give her the companionship she needed.

      "You are the mistress of Willoughby, you know, Agatha," he said to her one day, "and you must keep up the reputation of the place for hospitality. You must have your dining-days like the rest, and invite your friends."

      And she did so. She would send out her little notes, written in a hand that closely resembled that of her grandfather, begging half a dozen girls, daughters of the planters round about, to dine with her, and they would come in their carriages, attended by their negro maids. It was Colonel Archer's delight to watch Agatha on these occasions, and observe the very serious way in which she sought to discharge her duties as a hospitable hostess in becoming fashion.

      A little later he encouraged her to invite two or three of her young friends, now and then, to stay for a few days or a week with her, after the Virginian custom. But not until she was twelve years old did he consent to spare her for longer than a single night. Then he agreed with The Oaks ladies that she should spend a few weeks in the spring and a few in the late summer or autumn of every year with them. They welcomed the arrangement as one which would at least give them an opportunity to "form the girl." During her semi-annual visits to The Oaks they very diligently set themselves to work drilling her in the matter of respect for the formalities of life.

      The process rather interested Agatha, and sometimes it even amused her. She was solemnly enjoined not to do things that she had never thought of doing, and as earnestly instructed to do things which she had never in her life neglected to do.

      At first she was too young to formulate the causes of her interest and amusement in this process. But her mind matured rapidly in association with her grandfather, and she began at last to analyse the matter.

      "When I go to The Oaks," she wrote to her "Chummie" one day, "I feel like a sinner going to do penance; but the penance is rather amusing than annoying. I am made to feel how shockingly improper I have been at Willoughby with you, Chummie, during the preceding six months, and how necessary it is for me to submit myself for a season to a control that shall undo the effects of the liberty in which I live at Willoughby. I am made to understand that liberty is the very worst thing a girl or a woman can indulge herself in. Am I very bad, Chummie?"

      For answer the old gentleman laughed aloud. Then he wrote:

      "You see how shrewdly I have managed this thing, Ladybird. I wouldn't let you go to The Oaks till you had become too fully confirmed in your habit of being free, ever to be reformed."

      Later, and more seriously, he said to the girl:

      "Every human being is the better for being free – women as well as men. Liberty to a human being is like sunshine and fresh air. Restraint is like medicine – excellent for those who are ill, but very bad indeed for healthy people. Did it ever occur to you, Agatha, that you never took a pill or a powder in your life? You haven't needed medicine because you've had air and sunshine; no more do you need restraint, and for the same reason. You are perfectly healthy in your mind as well as in your body."

      "But, Chummie, you don't know how very ill regulated I am. Aunt Sarah and Aunt Jane disapprove very seriously of many things that СКАЧАТЬ