MJVEJSTHEStM 
 OF IT 
 
 GEORGE GARY EGCLESTON 
 
A.F. PENDLETOM, 
 
 Bookseller and Statiooet 
 
 Next to Dyer Building, 
 
&&+*" 
 
Love Is the Sum of It All 
 
As SHE SANG RHF.TT ROSE FROM HIS CHATR. 
 
 .9.-?- 
 
LOVE IS THE SUM 
 OF IT ALL 
 
 A PLANTATION ROMANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE GARY EGGLESTON 
 Jf 
 
 AUTHOR OF "DOROTHY SOUTH," "A CAROLINA CAVALIER," "THE 
 
 MASTER OF WARLOCK," "EVELYN BYRD," "A DAUGHTER 
 
 OF THE SOUTH," "BLIND ALLEYS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY HERMANN HEYER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Published, August, 1907 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD Co. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 LOVB Is THE SUM OP IT ALL 
 
 
 BBRWICK & SMITH Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass. 
 
 U. S. A. 
 
I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK WITH SINCERE 
 AFFECTION TO 
 
 WHO WROTE THE MUSICAL SCORE TO THE SONG THAT GIVES 
 THE BOOK ITS TITLE, AND TO 
 
 Jessie Stanlep 
 
 WHO HAS SUNG THE SONG DIVINELY ON SEVERAL 
 
 OCCASIONS BEFORE THE MANHATTAN 
 
 BRANCH OF THE DICKENS 
 
 FELLOWSHIP AND 
 
 ELSEWHERE 
 
 912735 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTn 
 
 I. A BELATED BREAKFAST 
 
 II. THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 
 
 III. ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 IV. KATE 
 
 V. HAZEL 
 
 VI. A LOVE -SONG IN THE PORCH . 
 
 VII. A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE . 
 
 VIII. THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 
 
 IX. A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY . 
 
 X. THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE . 
 
 XI. MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 
 
 XII. A REVELATION FROM KATE 
 
 XIII. WARREN RHETT STEADIES His MIND 
 
 XIV. THE TEST OF A WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 
 
 XV. IN THE PORCH 
 
 XVI. A MIDNIGHT RIDE . 
 
 XVII. KATE'S DIPLOMACY AND MUSHROOMS 
 
 XVIII. THE BEGINNING OF HAZEL'S STORY . 
 
 XIX. KATE'S STRATAGEM . 
 
 XX. HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 
 
 XXI. WARREN RHETT'S SURRENDER . 
 
 XXII. THE REST OF HAZEL'S STORY . 
 
 XXIII. A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 
 
 XXIV. HAZEL INTERRUPTS . 
 XXV. THE SUM OF IT ALL . 
 
 PACK 
 
 I 
 
 23 
 
 44 
 59 
 7i 
 82 
 100 
 
 ii3 
 124 
 141 
 161 
 
 175 
 185 
 196 
 
 211 
 234 
 
 243 
 
 255 
 281 
 
 293 
 312 
 321 
 
 347 
 372 
 382 
 
Illustrations 
 
 As SHE SANG, RHETT ROSE FROM HIS CHAIR 
 
 (See page 93) ..... Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 A JOINT APOLOGY FROM HENRY AND THE COOK 
 FOR THE INEXCUSABLE MEAGRENESS OF THE 
 REPAST ...... IO 
 
 " PARDON ME, I DIDN'T KNOW YOU GENTLEMEN 
 
 WERE STILL AT WORK HERE " . . 126 
 
 " I NEEDN'T HESITATE TO PAY YOU A TRIBUTE 
 
 OF FLOWERS, I SUPPOSE "... 256 
 HE MADE SHORT WORK OF HIS TALK WITH THE 
 
 NEGROES ...... 316 
 
 " JES' LIKE WHITE FOLKS " . . . . 346 
 
Love Is the Sum of It All 
 
 I 
 
 A BELATED BREAKFAST 
 
 THREE bars of the gate were broken. 
 The gate, in its totality, consisted of five 
 bars, after the custom of orthodox gates. 
 
 It stood open of necessity. How could it do 
 otherwise, seeing that its diagonal backbone 
 the board that ran slantwise from its lower left- 
 hand corner to its upper right-hand corner, 
 had yielded to the persistent persuasions of gravity 
 and had parted in the middle ? 
 
 The young man who stood contemplating the 
 structure was dressed in a loosely careless fashion, 
 though an observant woman, looking him over, 
 would have seen that his carelessly worn garments 
 were made of a superior cloth and fashioned by 
 highly skilled hands. 
 
 Women observe these things closely. Men 
 
2 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 aever do ar-los? they happen to be tailors or de- 
 tectives. 
 
 His trousers were worn inside his high boots, 
 the tops of which reached nearly to his knees, 
 and were decorated or the reverse with 
 mud stains in various stages of drying. 
 
 He was a robust specimen of vigorous man- 
 hood approaching thirty years of age fully 
 six feet high even if the boots had been removed, 
 and well proportioned as to breadth of chest and 
 size of limb. For head- piece he wore a limp felt 
 hat which had never had any particular shape, 
 and had lost that. 
 
 His appearance and attitude were suggestive 
 of the intentional deliberateness of a man ac- 
 customed to vigorous and, if need be, hurried 
 activity. His mood at this moment was a delib- 
 erate, observant one. His habit was to decide 
 quickly and to act as the lightning flash does. 
 
 Turning his gaze from the gate, he ran his eye 
 along the fence that was supposed to enclose the 
 house grounds of the the old Southern mansion. 
 
 " The march of improvement is still slow 
 here," he said to himself, with a half -laugh. 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 3 
 
 " When I was last here that fence had five breaks 
 in it. It has nine now. In any other part of the 
 world the breaks would have multiplied much 
 faster than that." Then after a minute of medi- 
 tation, he added: 
 
 " I wonder what it was ever built for, anyhow? 
 There is nothing for it to shut out or shut in, and 
 if there were, it utterly fails of its function by 
 reason of the breaks in it and the decrepit condi- 
 tion of the gate." 
 
 At that moment the young man caught sight of a 
 negro within the house grounds who was lazily 
 trying to persuade himself that he was busy 
 weeding out a flower-bed. 
 
 The young man walked over to the bed and for 
 a time stood behind, watching the negro who 
 seemed to be deliberating over a little bunch of 
 yellow dock that grew detrimentally among the 
 flowering plants. 
 
 " I think on the whole I'd pull it up, Henry," 
 he said, presently. 
 
 At the sound of the voice the young negro 
 sprang to his feet with the first show of energy 
 that he had given for hours, and the greeting be- 
 
4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 tween the two was cordial in the extreme, in spite 
 of its informality. 
 
 In those old days that seemed so long gone by, 
 Henry had been body-servant to Warren Rhett. 
 Better still, they two master and servant 
 had been companions in many a 'coon hunt, 
 and devoted friends each in his place as su- 
 perior or inferior, and neither ever questioning 
 the superiority or the inferiority in the pure de- 
 mocracy of their comradery. The superiority and 
 the inferiority were real, and both the white and 
 the black recognized the actuality. It was alto- 
 gether well. 
 
 After that time Warren Rhett had gone away 
 into the great world and had done things there, 
 it was rumored on the old plantation, while Henry 
 had remained, rejoicing in his slow promotion 
 from dining-room boy to head dining-room serv- 
 ant at Mannamac, the plantation birthplace 
 of both. 
 
 Not until the greeting was over, not until the 
 white man and the negro had affectionately and 
 fraternally asked all possible questions, each 
 concerning the well-being of the other, did Warren 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 5 
 
 Rhett ask concerning the " Great House " and 
 its inmates or inmate, for he knew of but one. 
 He had observed outgoing carriage tracks at the 
 gate and no incoming ones. He knew, therefore, 
 that his stepmother had driven away that morn- 
 ing and had not returned, and when he revealed 
 this inference of acumen to Henry, that ardent 
 admirer of his superiority promptly assumed the 
 wondering mood of mind that secures success to 
 a Sherlock Holmes story. 
 
 " Where has my mother gone ? " the young 
 man asked. 
 
 "Your mother, Mas' Warren 1" half-asked 
 and half-ejaculated the negro youth, " Why, you 
 know you ain't got no mother." 
 
 " Well, yes, I know that. I mean my step- 
 mother, Mrs. Rhett." 
 
 1 Now that's funny, Mas' Warren," answered 
 the negro, laughing. " You see you an' Miss 
 Kate was boy an' girl together, you bein' older'n 
 she was. So it do seem funny when you calls 
 her your mother." 
 
 Warren Rhett had thrown himself down upon 
 the grass lying face downward, with head and 
 
6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 shoulders supported by his elbows, a posture that 
 had been a favorite one with him in boyhood. 
 Henry was laboriously and very slowly formulat- 
 ing the thought, " It's like ole times to see him 
 lay that way on the grass," when the young 
 white man interrupted the intellectual effort by 
 saying : 
 
 " I suppose you never heard of atavism, did 
 you, Henry ? " 
 
 "No. What's that?" 
 
 " Never mind what it is. You've got it and 
 you've got it bad. Didn't they teach you in 
 school to talk like white folks? And didn't they 
 specially impress upon your mind that as a man 
 and a brother, you owed it to yourself never to 
 call any white man master? Of course they 
 instructed you to say ' Mister ' instead and 
 they didn't tell you, because they didn't know, 
 that * Mister ' is precisely the same word as 
 * Master,' though meanly and unworthily spelled." 
 
 " Now look a heah, Mas' Warren, you'se at 
 your ole jokin' tricks agin. You know a po' 
 nigga' like me don't know what any o' dem big 
 words means. But if you mean I'm to implicate 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 7 
 
 all dem schoolmasters, an' call you ' Mr. Rhett ' 
 instead o' ' Mas' Warren,' why you kin jes' tell 
 de schoolmasters to go to de devil ! " 
 
 " Thank you," said the young man, under- 
 standing. " I'll not trouble to deliver the message 
 to the worthy pedagogues that means school- 
 masters, Henry. But you haven't* told me yet 
 where Mrs. Rhett is." 
 
 " Oh, she's done gone away to a dinin' day, 
 an* a stay all night, over at de abandoned place 
 'tother side o' the river." 
 
 " The abandoned place ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Well, maybe that ain't its right name. It's 
 de place where de Bandons is come to live. It's 
 de same we used to call Cassatts." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I see. You mean Bandonnais ; new- 
 comers have bought it, and renamed it." 
 
 " Dat's jes' ezac'ly it. Well, she's done gone 
 over thah to dine an' stay all night, an' maybe 
 everi longer I dunno. Anyhow she tole me 
 not to bother 'bout meals to-day at Mannamac. 
 She said she'd be home when she got home, or 
 somethin' like that. You see they's what Miss 
 Kate calls, a fascinatin' young lady a stayin' 
 
8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 here, and they went over to dine at de abandoned 
 place." 
 
 " Oh, there is, is there? Well, we won't bother 
 to talk about her just yet. You see it is now 
 twelve o'clock, noon, and I haven't had a mouthful 
 of breakfast yet." 
 
 The negro 'sprang to his feet, appalled, horrified, 
 distressed to the centres of his hospitable being. 
 
 Henry was a Virginian, with a pedigree. For 
 two hundred years, or nearly that, his forebears 
 had been house servants at Mannamac. For 
 two hundred years, or nearly that, they had 
 learned the lessons of hospitality which every 
 Virginia plantation house inculcated by virtue of 
 its very existence. If Warren Rhett had come 
 to Mannamac as the veriest stranger at any time 
 during all those two hundred years, the first 
 instinct of the place whether in black or white 
 would have been to offer him food and drink, 
 quite irrespective of the time of day, or of his 
 quality, or of anything else. And here young 
 Warren Rhett, son of the house, long-time de- 
 scendant of its ancient owners, and himself poten- 
 tial master there, had been kept for an hour or 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 9 
 
 more without his breakfast and without even an 
 inquiry as to his possible hunger. 
 
 Henry was horrified! But young Rhett was 
 self-composed. 
 
 " Don't get excited, Henry," he said. " Go 
 and get me some breakfast instead. I suppose 
 there's a knuckle of cold ham about, and that'll 
 serve for a relish. But I am really hungry. So 
 see if you can't get me a roe herring and a pone 
 of corn bread and a pitcher of buttermilk. Let 
 me have the ham and a pot of coffee first, just 
 to amuse me while the cook is getting the other 
 things ready. And by the way, I suppose the 
 tomatoes are ripe. Let me have two or three of 
 them, good, firm, fat fellows, well ripened, but 
 not soft, and don't you dare slice or dress them. 
 You see I'm an invalid, and must be careful 
 about what I eat." 
 
 The jest was lost upon Henry. The enormous 
 breakfast ordered, seemed to him, with his life- 
 long familiarity with healthy Virginia appetites, 
 an exceedingly modest and moderate repast, well- 
 suited to the needs of an invalid. 
 
 " Fm sorry you'se sick, Mas' Warren," he said 
 
io LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 as he hurried away, " but 'twont take us long to 
 build you up again if you'll only stay here at 
 Mannamac." 
 
 With that generously recuperative purpose the 
 servitor hurried away, and when, a little later, the 
 breakfast was served in the broad front porch 
 under the honeysuckles, there were added to it 
 some hot griddle-cakes, some soft boiled eggs, 
 a dish of radishes, some young onions, a lettuce 
 salad, and a joint apology from Henry and the 
 cook for the inexcusable meagreness of the repast, 
 prepared as it had been in a hurry. To set and 
 bake a loaf of hot, light bread and a skillet of 
 rolls traditional breakfast necessities in Vir- 
 ginia would have required more time than the 
 hospitality of Mannamac could spare in such an 
 emergency; but, anyhow, there was a supply 
 of hot beaten biscuit coming if only Mas' Warren 
 would " eat jest a little slow to let 'em brown." 
 
 " Mas' Warren " had no objection to eating 
 " jest a little slow." He hadn't tasted a beaten 
 biscuit for years, and he so far longed for a 
 renewal of that gustatory delight as to be willing 
 to wait for it. 
 
A JOINT APOLOGY FKOM HENRY AND THE COOK FOB THE IN 
 EXCUSABLE MEAGRENES8 OF THE REPAST. Page 10. 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST n 
 
 But apart from that he had much to think of, 
 and the thinking entertained him as he sat there 
 in the porch and meditated to the music of the 
 bees and the humming-birds that were busy with 
 the honeysuckles all about him. 
 
 " What a beautiful conception of life it was," 
 he reflected, " with its lavish abundance, and its 
 passionate ministry to human comfort as the one 
 thing in all the world worthy of consideration! 
 And what a pity it is that it was so utterly un- 
 economic and so far beyond the reach of the 
 great majority of mankind ! It would be the 
 best of all worlds to live in if everybody could 
 breakfast at leisure every day amid honeysuckles 
 and surrounded by butterflies and bees and 
 humming-birds, with six times as much of tempting 
 food to eat as any reasonable palate could desire, 
 with a perfect climate to breathe in, and with 
 no sense of obligation or care or hurry to harass the 
 soul. How the very memory of it tempts one to 
 indulgence regardless of consequences ! How 
 it lures the soul to lethargy and the mind to 
 meditation ! 
 
 " I suppose my first concern ought to be for 
 
12 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the countless millions of toiling human beings 
 who cannot have even the smallest fraction of 
 the joy that such a life should bring with every 
 moment of the living but in fact my first 
 thought is of how to arrange matters so that Kate 
 shall not be compelled to give up all that remains 
 of it and lapse into some more wisely economic 
 way of living that must rob life so far as she 
 is concerned of all its desirability." 
 
 He sat still for a time, sipping his coffee and 
 letting his soul rest in sensuous but psychological 
 delight. Then he took up the problem from an- 
 other point of view. 
 
 " After all," he asked himself, " what is the 
 truth of the matter and what is best, and what 
 is right? I wonder if the world would or could 
 be in any way bettered by any scheme for the 
 equalization of enjoyment among men? Per- 
 haps the inequality belongs to nature's scheme 
 of progress for the human race, by means of a 
 struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. 
 Certain it is that the cultured ease of this old 
 Southern life gave to the American people yes, 
 and to the whole world, for the whole world has 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 13 
 
 benefited by it the work of Washington and 
 Jefferson and Patrick Henry and John Marshall 
 and James Madison and the rest. Is not every 
 man now living under American institutions, or 
 under the inspiration of those institutions in other 
 lands, isn't every such man the better off 
 because Washington and Jefferson and Madison 
 and the rest had ease and leisure in which to 
 ripen their minds and do the thinking that created 
 this republic and its institutions? And has it 
 not been well for us that the Adamses of Massa- 
 chusetts, the Otises, the Hancocks, and the rest 
 of that great company of patriots were men so 
 well-to-do in the world that they had leisure for 
 thought and for that higher education that comes 
 only with ease? Add Ben Franklin, who had 
 made a fortune before he began to serve the 
 country in conspicuous ways, and the Morrises, 
 whose financial ability, acquired in the admin- 
 tration of their own great possessions, enabled 
 them to carry the republic over the shoals of 
 bankruptcy at the most critical period of our 
 national history and the question is a fair 
 one, Do not all the people profit more by the 
 
i 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 advantages the well-to-do enjoy, than they would 
 by any possible scheme of equalization? Isn't 
 nature's scheme best, after all the scheme of 
 struggle with the reward of advantage for those 
 who win in the struggle? " 
 
 At that point in his meditations Warren Rhett 
 was interrupted by the advent of a process server. 
 The man explained that, while the lawyers con- 
 cerned and their clients also were exceedingly 
 reluctant to make themselves in any way disagree- 
 able to Mrs. Rhett, they felt bound to protect 
 their own interests, and really, at the rate at which 
 things seemed to be going to the bad on Manna- 
 mac plantation, they had no choice but to levy 
 upon the small droves of hogs and the smaller 
 flocks of sheep which the negroes of the region 
 round about were nightly depleting in aid of an 
 evangelistic " revival " at that time in progress. 
 Delay in making the levy might soon and easily 
 result, the bailiff explained, in there being no 
 herds or flocks left to levy upon. 
 
 " Henry," said Rhett, assuming the duties of 
 host, " bring a decanter of spirits for this gentle- 
 man, and some pipes." 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 15 
 
 When the agent of the law was served with the 
 refreshment, Rhett turned to him and said : 
 
 " I wish you'd tell me all you know of the con- 
 dition of things here. You see, I've come to 
 find out and, if possible, to remedy whatever is 
 wrong." 
 
 The bailiff laughed, inwardly. Then he said : 
 " I reckon 'most everything's gone to pieces 
 round here. Fact is it's a race now to see who'll 
 get what there is left of personal property. You 
 see things have gone at such loose ends for so long 
 that it's come to be a scramble for the leavings. 
 I met Mrs. Rhett's carriage this morning, and if 
 I'd 'a' done my duty I'd 'a' levied upon the horses. 
 But she's such a nice young lady and well, I 
 just couldn't make the levy when I knew she was 
 on her way to a dining day. So I thought I'd 
 come over here and levy on the hogs and sheep 
 instead." 
 
 " Whose claim is it you're set to satisfy? " 
 
 Rhett asked the question quite indifferently, 
 
 as if his interest in the reply were altogether casual 
 
 and impersonal. Then suddenly reassuming his 
 
 more habitual method of procedure, that of 
 
1 6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 a man accustomed to do things and get things 
 done, he turned upon the bailiff and asked: 
 
 " Who is the lawyer for the people you repre- 
 sent?" 
 
 " Mr. Charles Danforth, sir; and he is really 
 distressed " 
 
 " I can very well understand that, " interrupted 
 Rhett with a laugh which he hastily suppressed. 
 " Never mind about that. Now let me explain. 
 / suppose I own this plantation if anybody does. 
 I don't know. I have no control over it for the 
 present, but I think I can have whenever I please. 
 The claims are all personal, and only the personal 
 property is liable for them ! The plantation itself 
 is in no way responsible and cannot be held 
 responsible. Charley Danforth is too good a 
 lawyer not to understand that. Besides that, / 
 am in no way liable for any of these claims, and 
 Charley Danforth knows that, too." 
 
 The bailiff chuckled in a way that irritated 
 Rhett, and replied: 
 
 " I reckon you're right about that, and I reckon 
 that's what bothers him. You see " 
 
 In that tone which he had acquired during 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 17 
 
 years in the command of men, Rhett inter- 
 rupted : 
 
 " I didn't ask your opinion or your comments. 
 Reserve them, please. Listen to me. I want all 
 this thing stopped right now, and I am going to 
 stop it right now. You are not to make any levies 
 under the executions you have in your breast- 
 pocket. Instead of that, you are to carry a note 
 from me to Charley Danforth which I promise 
 you will relieve you of all responsibility in the 
 matter and hold you harmless. I think you know 
 who I am, and that my promise is good for its 
 face value ? " 
 
 " That's all right," answered the bailiff, surrep- 
 titiously pouring another drink of the rare old 
 peach brandy upon the honey that already oc- 
 cupied the bottom of his glass, and lovingly stirring 
 the mixture; "that's all right, and I'm mighty 
 glad to settle the thing that way. You see even a 
 fellow like me don't find it a nice sort o' business 
 to go round levyin' on stock an' persecutin' a lady 
 like Mrs. Rhett. That's why I didn't execute on 
 the carriage horses. You see it's awful hard on 
 us fellers " 
 
1 8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 "^Have just a taste more of the peach and 
 honey," interrupted Rhett, "and while you're 
 absorbing it, I'll write the note to Danforth. 
 Henry, bring me some stationery pens, ink, and 
 paper, with envelopes, don't you understand ? " 
 
 Presently Henry apologetically brought his 
 mistress's lap writing-desk, and Rhett found 
 within it a half -ream of highly expensive, embossed 
 paper, with envelopes to match. 
 
 " The paper and envelope," he reflected, 
 11 must cost a good deal more than the postage 
 stamp, every time Kate writes a note, even if she 
 confines herself to a single sheet of utterance a 
 thing she couldn't do to save her life. I remember 
 once she wrote me a ' note ' to tell me she had a 
 pansy in blossom, and she used up ten sheets of 
 paper in the process." 
 
 At that moment his eye lighted upon a sheet of 
 the letter-paper, upon which Kate had made 
 memoranda with respect to some proposed church 
 fair memoranda, of cake, sandwiches, pickles, 
 preserves, nasturtium seeds, and the like, which 
 she, presumably, intended to furnish for the 
 occasion. He did not follow up the search. He 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 19 
 
 was too truly a gentleman for that but he could 
 not help seeing that there were many other sheets 
 of the costly paper, covered in like fashion with 
 memoranda that might as well have been made 
 upon foolscap, or still better, on a five-cent pad. 
 But in all the recesses of the desk he found no 
 scrap of ordinary paper, no sheet upon which a 
 duchess might not have been proud to write her 
 invitations to dinner. 
 
 " I think I understand the situation," he said to 
 himself, " and I think I shall be safe in assuming 
 all responsibility now that I am to be in 
 charge." 
 
 So, on one of the sheets of embossed paper, 
 in the absence of anything less costly, he wrote: 
 
 " DEAR CHARLEY: I've come down here to 
 straighten out Kate's affairs. I've told your 
 bailiff not to serve his executions, and that I would 
 hold him harmless. I'm sending you this note by 
 him. Kate's away, to be gone overnight. Please 
 come over and spend the night with me, so that 
 I may get the hang of things here. And in the 
 meantime, if there are any other lawyers at the 
 
20 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 county- seat, who have judgments against Kate, 
 please tell them to hold up their executions and 
 processes and all that kind of thing till I can see 
 them. Tell them I make myself personally 
 responsible for everything to the extent of the 
 plantation's value. I don't suppose that's legal, 
 but it's good faith anyhow, and between you and 
 me, good faith is better than a document ' signed, 
 sealed, and delivered.' Of course you and I don't 
 want Kate bedevilled. Come over and we'll 
 arrange things." 
 
 The bailiff took the note, after still another 
 drink of peach and honey, and two hours later 
 a negro messenger brought a letter from Charles 
 Danforth to Warren Rhett, in which the writer 
 said: 
 
 " Welcome, old fellow ! I'll be with you at 
 supper. It's a good thing that you've come down 
 here good for Kate and especially good for 
 me. I have already imperilled my position at 
 the bar in my efforts to protect her against the 
 interests of my own clients. The situation has 
 been horrible. So, apart from the joy I shall 
 
A BELATED BREAKFAST 21 
 
 feel in being with you again, I send you a cordial 
 welcome. 
 
 "I'll be at Mannamac by eight o'clock or at 
 any rate before nine for supper and the night." 
 
 Rhett read the note with a smile. 
 
 " It's a funny situation," he said to himself. 
 " Charley was madly in love with Kate before she 
 was married. I doubt that he has quite got over 
 it yet - especially now that she's a widow ; and 
 yet, as a lawyer he has had to do all sorts of dis- 
 agreeable things to her. It's funny, though 
 tragic. I wonder he doesn't solve the riddle by 
 marrying her. Still, I don't know. That would 
 put him in the complicated position of being him- 
 self defendant when he's already counsel for the 
 plaintiff. Yes, it's a funny situation all around." 
 
 Then suddenly another thought arose in his 
 mind. " I wonder how far or for how much I 
 have made myself liable by that letter of mine? 
 I have a shadowy impression that a promise, 
 without consideration, to pay the debt of another 
 is not legally binding. But I don't know just 
 what constitutes a consideration in the legal 
 sense. Besides, in such a case, the law cuts no 
 
22 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 figure. I suppose that in honor I have made 
 myself liable for Kate's debts, at least up to the 
 value of the plantation. Anyhow, I mean to 
 see her through. I wonder how much she owes. 
 I've a notion to ride over to ' the abandoned 
 place,' as Henry calls it, and ask her. Henry 
 suggests that there is a fascinating young woman 
 with her, so there might be worse ways of spending 
 the evening. There! That's another case of 
 atavism. It has been years since I thought of 
 calling the afternoon * evening,' and yet I find 
 myself reverting to the usage, before I've been in 
 the old atmosphere long enough to take a second 
 meal. That reminds me of my manners. Henry 
 said there was a * dining day ' over there. That 
 means dinner at four o'clock, with every table 
 seat ' reserved.' I should be an unwelcome and 
 unmannerly intruder upon the carefully prear- 
 ranged festivity. Besides, I doubt that there is 
 a riding- horse on the plantation. On the whole " 
 On the whole he went to sleep in a great, 
 roomy, oaken armchair in the porch, thus again 
 reverting to the customs that had been prevalent 
 there for generations past. 
 
II 
 
 THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 
 
 IT was not altogether in jest that Rhett had 
 spoken of himself to Henry as an invalid. He 
 had in fact been overworking in unwholesome 
 surroundings. He had spent many hours through- 
 out many weeks and months in tunnel headings. 
 He had stood for many days throughout many 
 other months in trenches, cuts, and deep excava- 
 tions, up to his knees and sometimes up to his 
 thighs in mud that reeked of miasm. Strong 
 man that he was, he had endured these exposures, 
 but little by little they had begun to tell upon 
 him. Of late, he had had strange unaccustomed 
 headaches, with lassitude and loss of appetite as 
 an accompaniment. In short, he had found 
 himself in that physical condition which is famil- 
 iarly known as " run down," as if a man were a 
 clock. 
 
 In obedience to the advice of his wise young 
 23 
 
24 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 doctor friends, he had taken a little vacation in 
 the Adirondacks, incidentally catching some fish 
 that were worth talking about. That not sufficing, 
 he had made a little trip to Bermuda and another 
 to the Azores, but on his return he had found 
 the headaches and the lassitude still his com- 
 panions, and in addition a certain cough had 
 come upon him. Concerning that, he had con- 
 sulted a specialist, who, after a variety of sound- 
 ings and thumpings and listenings and all the 
 rest of it, had given his pronouncement in this 
 fashion : 
 
 " There isn't a thing the matter with your 
 lungs. You have a slightly elongated uvula, but 
 the elongation is not of enough consequence to 
 justify me in clipping off the offending member. 
 Your trouble is partly malarious and partly 
 nervous. Generous food will combat the malaria, 
 but for the nervous disturbance there is no remedy 
 but a prolonged rest. Why don't you go down 
 to Virginia for a year you tell me you've some 
 sort of old home down there and get the rest 
 and good feeding you need ? " 
 
 Things sometimes fall out as they should do, 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 25 
 
 even in this ill-ordered world of ours, and they 
 did so in this case. It happened that Warren 
 Rhett had just completed a piece of engineering 
 construction which had agreeably fattened his 
 bank-account. It happened that there was no 
 other immediate job in sight that tempted his 
 tired mind. Most important of all, it happened 
 that he had that morning received a letter from 
 his very young stepmother and old playmate, 
 entreating him to come to her and extricate her 
 from difficulties with which she needlessly assured 
 him she was quite unable to cope. 
 
 " The idea of Kate dealing with a difficulty," he 
 laughed, "or extricating herself from a financial 
 embarrassment of any kind, is too ridiculous to 
 be accepted, even if presented as a jest in pro- 
 fessedly comic opera. After all, why shouldn't 
 I run down there for a time and straighten out 
 her affairs ? I've nothing of consequence on hand, 
 and I suppose the doctors are right in ordering 
 me to take a rest. Anyhow, Kate is a dear good 
 girl, and she needs help, and I can afford a vaca- 
 tion at Mannamac." 
 
 Warren Rhett was the son and only child of 
 
26 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 an old Virginia planter. He had come into the 
 world about the time at which the Civil War came 
 to an end. The family seat, Mannamac, had 
 been so fortunately placed, geographically, that 
 it had pretty completely escaped spoliation by 
 the military forces on either side of the great con- 
 flict. 
 
 So when Warren Rhett's father, Col. Lasseter 
 Rhett, returned to his plantation after the sur- 
 render of Lee's army at Appomattox, he found 
 everything as he had left it, except that the negroes 
 were free. 
 
 The plantation embracing several thousand 
 acres remained, and it was Col. Lasseter Rhett's 
 plan to convert the broad domain into a " landed 
 estate " of the English sort ; to divide the arable 
 lands into farms of convenient size, letting them 
 to the negroes who had been " born and raised " 
 on the plantation, and thus to continue the old 
 patriarchal life in its essentials, if not quite in 
 its previously existing form. The acres were 
 many and fertile, and they were well placed for 
 division into little farms. It was Col. Lasseter 
 Rhett's plan to establish tenants upon most of 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 27 
 
 them, reserving the fields near the great house for 
 cultivation by hired negro field hands, under his 
 own direction. 
 
 Colonel Rhett was accustomed to believe im- 
 plicitly in his ideas and to act upon them. His 
 first step, therefore, was to employ a surveyor to 
 lay out the farms, and his next to build a com- 
 fortable cabin on each of them, and to dig for 
 each a well. 
 
 His plan met with disappointments. Not many 
 of the negroes consented to undertake the culti- 
 vation of farms on their own account. Not many 
 of them had the ambition, the instinct of enter- 
 prise to do so. The greater number of them were 
 dazed and dazzled by their new-found freedom. 
 They vaguely understood that they were to be 
 free " like white folks," thereafter, and their con- 
 ception, both of the freedom and of the likeness 
 to white folks, was that they should live at ease, 
 without toil. That, as they understood it, was 
 the measure and test of freedom. Precisely how 
 they were to live without work, they did not pause 
 to inquire. Perhaps the government that had 
 set them free would take care of that. Why 
 
28 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 should it not do so? Was it not omnipotent? 
 And had it not the power to manufacture money 
 without limit ? Was not it their new master, upon 
 whom to lean as they had been accustomed to 
 lean upon their old masters? 
 
 The one obvious way to accept and enjoy free- 
 dom was to quit the work they had been required 
 to do in slavery. 
 
 To many others among them the obvious way 
 to accept and assert their newly acquired freedom 
 was to quit the plantations to whose boundaries 
 the slave system had limited their residence, and 
 to go elsewhere. These were lured by their 
 gregarious instincts to the cities, and the cities 
 also tempted them with noise and glare and 
 glitter, and with a promise of the excitement for 
 which their childish souls hungered and thirsted. 
 They had seen city negroes now and then, 
 dandies, smartly dressed in the well " tailored " 
 cast-off clothing of their employers, and still 
 more smartly equipped with self-assertive man- 
 ners borrowed from the same source of supply, 
 and they could not help envying these fortunate 
 ones of the earth. Many a gawky, lumbering, 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 29 
 
 plantation negro, with big feet and shapeless 
 hands and muscularly ungraceful form, fell into 
 the mistake of supposing that it was only necessary 
 for him to migrate to a city in order to transform 
 himself into one of these admirable beings. And 
 many of these mistaken ones starved in the process 
 of learning how great a mistake he had made in 
 quitting the plantation. 
 
 A few, a very few of the most trustworthy of 
 Colonel Rhett's old field hands most of them 
 middle-aged or elderly men with families be- 
 came tenants of his farms, agreeing to pay a por- 
 tion of their agricultural produce in lieu of rent. 
 In the main these depended upon their grown or 
 half-grown children to help them out as laborers 
 upon the farms thus rented. In the main they 
 were disappointed by the fact that the younger 
 ones, upon whom they depended for labor, migrated 
 to the cities instead, leaving them to make such 
 meagre crops as they could, and leaving Colonel 
 Rhett with a rent return so small that it did not 
 pay the interest on the cost of the improvements 
 he had put upon the farms. 
 
 Many of the farms remained unrented, and for 
 
30 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the cultivation of these and of the home acres, 
 he hired such negroes as he could secure. A few 
 of them fairly earned their wages. The rest were 
 an expense to him rather than a source of profit. 
 They plundered his orchards of fruit that he had 
 planned to sell in northern markets. They robbed 
 his hen-roosts and his pig-pens and his sheepfolds, 
 and even stripped his patches of early corn, 
 melons, beans, and vegetables of their yield, 
 surreptitiously selling the plunder in those early 
 city markets to which he had looked for revenue. 
 
 There remained a score or two of more or 
 less useless house servants who loyally stuck to 
 their old master, literally " for all he was worth," 
 and fared sumptuously every day upon his 
 bounty. 
 
 In the meanwhile the elder Rhett had gone on 
 living as he had done before the war generously, 
 and with a lavishness of hospitality which he could 
 not afford. It was his undying purpose to " live 
 like a gentleman " so long as he lived at all, and 
 he had no other conception of a gentleman's way 
 of living than the lordly one that he daily practised. 
 In maintaining that, he drew upon such resources 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 31 
 
 as he possessed, outside the plantation, slowly 
 but surely depleting them to the point of exhaus- 
 tion. 
 
 His son Warren early saw what the end must 
 be, and personally set to work to provide himself 
 with the means of living at all when his father's 
 methods should have made an end of the means of 
 living like a gentleman. The boy worked hard 
 at his books, and after taking his degree at the 
 University of Virginia, a thing he regarded as 
 useless, involving as it did a considerable waste 
 of time, but a thing that his conservative father 
 insisted upon, he went North for a course in 
 one of the great schools of engineering. 
 
 After his graduation there, he went back to 
 Mannamac for a vacation, and while there he 
 narrowly escaped falling in love with Kate Oberly, 
 his father's ward and at the time mistress of 
 Mannamac. Warren Rhett's mother had died 
 during his infancy, and Col. Lasseter Rhett had 
 no daughter to rule over his household. Things 
 there had gone at loose ends until Kate Oberly, 
 the orphaned ward of Col. Lasseter Rhett, who 
 had lived at Mannamac from her earliest child- 
 
32 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 hood, had grown old enough to carry the keys 
 and do the " giving out." 
 
 She was scarcely more than a child when 
 Warren Rhett went away to study engineering, 
 and his attitude toward her had been that of an 
 older brother who was also a good comrade. 
 When he returned, after his graduation as an 
 engineer, Kate had grown into a charming young 
 womanhood, without losing anything of her 
 girlish frankness and simplicity. She was utterly 
 inconsequent in her methods of thinking, but the 
 inconsequence was amusing and it seemed to 
 Warren an added charm. 
 
 Under other circumstances than those that 
 actually existed, he would very certainly have 
 fallen in love with her. He was saved from that 
 at first by the old boy and girl comradery, 
 and a little later, when she saw that the com- 
 radery threatened to become something warmer 
 on his part, she saved him again by her frank- 
 ness. 
 
 " Warren," she said to him one morning, 
 apropos of some show of tenderness on his part, 
 " you mustn't let yourself fall in love with me, you 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 33 
 
 know. You're inclined to do that, but you 
 simply mustn't." 
 
 In half-bantering fashion he answered: 
 
 " Without for one moment admitting the truth 
 of your accusation, Kate, and still more emphat- 
 ically, without disputing it, may I ask why I 
 should not fall in love with you if I want to? 
 Surely you are a very lovable young woman, and 
 if I fall a victim to your charms, as many another 
 man will doubtless do, why should I not risk " 
 
 She held up her hand to check his speech. 
 
 "Hush!" she commanded. "Let me tell 
 you. You mustn't fall in love with me though, 
 if things were different, I should be awfully glad 
 to have you do so, because I don't know anybody 
 so nice as you are, or so strong and so manly 
 but, as I say, you simply mustn't fall in love with 
 me, because. 11 
 
 " Because what, Kate? " 
 
 She hesitated, pulling a rose to pieces and 
 scattering its petals as if trying to make a mosaic 
 pattern of them on the porch. Presently she 
 seemed to pull herself together, and with resolu- 
 tion she said : 
 
34 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Your father is going to many me, Warren. I 
 don't think he ought to do that, but I can't help it. 
 He has told me of his intentions and of course " 
 
 " Of course, Kate, I wish you every joy in the 
 world, and I will say this honestly, that if my 
 father has made up his mind to marry anybody, 
 I had rather it should be you than any other 
 woman I know. I've just time to say this, as I 
 had a letter this morning that calls me to the north 
 at once. I'm sorry to miss seeing father to bid 
 him good-by, but he's gone away for the day, 
 and I simply must catch the earliest train. Good- 
 by ! and God bless you ! " 
 
 She called him back as he was leaving: 
 
 "You don't mind?" she asked. 
 
 " I could not think of making myself my 
 father's rival," he answered. 
 
 "That isn't it," she rather petulantly inter- 
 rupted. " I mean, you understand ? Of course 
 your father " 
 
 " Of course. I perfectly understand. I must 
 go now, or I'll miss my train. If you are ever in 
 difficulty and need a friend, you know whom to 
 call upon." 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 35 
 
 A moment more and he was gone. He had not 
 kissed the girl, even in the brotherly fashion that 
 had once been accepted between them as a matter 
 of course. She was glad of that, though, to save 
 her life, she could not have given a reason for her 
 gladness. 
 
 The letter that Warren said he had received 
 that morning was purely mythical, as Kate 
 Oberly would have known if she had questioned 
 his statement in her own mind. For she had 
 herself distributed the contents of the mail-bag 
 at the breakfast-table, and there had been no 
 missive in it for Warren. It was not her habit 
 of mind, however, to question things in that 
 fashion. And besides, it was far better that War- 
 ren should go away to the north better for him 
 and for her, better in every way. 
 
 A few months later, Col. Lasseter Rhett carried 
 out his purpose of marrying his ward, Kate Oberly. 
 At the time that occurred Warren Rhett was in 
 the mountains of Peru, in the double capacity 
 of expert engineer and superintendent of con- 
 struction, building a railroad from the coast to a 
 long abandoned but very rich Inca mine which his 
 
36 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 associates and employers intended to " develop." 
 He was too far away to attend the wedding, 
 he had thought of that in accepting the Peruvian 
 appointment, but he had deft fingers and a 
 mechanical knack that often stood him in good 
 stead. Bringing these to bear, he took an ancient 
 goblet of virgin gold, the handiwork of some 
 antique Inca goldsmith, which was supposed to 
 have magic qualities of some kind, and with his 
 own hands encircled it with precious stones, im- 
 bedding them firmly in the metal of the cup. This 
 he sent to Kate as a wedding-present, making a 
 jest of the matter in an accompanying letter in 
 which he set forth his own utter isolation there 
 in the mountains, and his inability to find a shop 
 in which to purchase any orderly gift for the 
 occasion. 
 
 With all her inconsequence of mind, Kate had 
 understood. Thus had ended the first romance 
 in the life of Warren Rhett, and fortunately the 
 experience had left no scar. 
 
 A few years later Col. Lasseter Rhett was 
 gathered to his fathers. At the time, Warren was 
 in the Yaqui country of Mexico, engaged in 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 37 
 
 bringing a great scheme of irrigation to com- 
 pletion. His first news of his bereavement did 
 not reach him until a month or two after the 
 event. It came to him in a long delayed letter 
 from Kate, in which she explained the disposition 
 his father had made of his property. 
 
 That disposition was an entirely characteristic 
 one. The lordly old gentleman had in no degree 
 realized his own gradual impoverishment. In 
 his will, as in his way of living, he had assumed 
 that he was the owner of a great estate a man 
 who could do as he pleased in the generous dis- 
 position of wealth. He had left his plantation, 
 Mannamac, to his widow Kate, during her 
 natural life, subject, however, to a charge of some 
 thousands of dollars a year, which were to be 
 paid by her to his only son, Warren Rhett, to 
 whom he directed that the plantation itself, and 
 all else that he owned, should revert upon Kate's 
 death. 
 
 Poor Kate ! The plantation wasn't earning the 
 sum she was charged to pay, and there was no 
 reason to believe that it ever would earn any such 
 sum. 
 
38 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Kate consulted the family lawyer, or, more 
 accurately speaking, she peremptorily directed 
 the family lawyer to remit to Warren Rhett the 
 sum to which he was annually entitled under the 
 will. The lawyer told her that there were no 
 funds from which to draw the amount, but the 
 information made no impression upon her mind. 
 
 " That is what Colonel Rhett directed," she 
 answered, as if ending the discussion, " and 
 of course we must do what he directed." 
 
 " But, my dear Mrs. Rhett," the lawyer pleaded, 
 " the estate is not earning any such sum, and 
 there is no reserve fund anywhere upon which to 
 draw for it. I simply cannot " 
 
 " Then I don't see what you are a lawyer for," 
 Kate interrupted. " Why, Colonel Rhett directed 
 it, and of course he knew. Anyhow, it must be 
 done. It would be awful to violate his will. Of 
 course you see that as clearly as I do, don't 
 you?" 
 
 " Of course," the lawyer replied. " We won't 
 talk any more about it. I'll arrange it some- 
 how." 
 
 And he did. He wrote to Warren Rhett, ex- 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 39 
 
 plaining the situation, and Warren Rhett replied, 
 suggesting that the lawyer should send him every 
 year a formal document which he would sign and 
 return, setting forth his receipt of the money in 
 due form. The delivery of this paper to Kate, he 
 pointed out, would satisfy her mind that Colonel 
 Rhett's last will and testament was being executed 
 to the letter. " Of course Kate will never think 
 to inquire how or where you got the money," he 
 wrote, " and the main thing is to keep her satisfied 
 and comfortable." 
 
 So Kate went on living in comfort and satis- 
 faction. The only style of living that she knew 
 anything about was that which had always 
 obtained at Mannamac, and she continued that. 
 She kept a generously open house, with four or 
 five times as many servants as were needed, and 
 these justly counted themselves as among the 
 fortunate ones of the earth. They had no fixed 
 wages, it is true, but they were in the same case 
 with soldiers who are " living off the country," 
 in the enemy's domain. They had food in abun- 
 dance from the Mannamac smoke-house and the 
 Mannamac storeroom. Kate could not bear to 
 
40 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 have any one about her ill-dressed, and so she 
 gave them clothes whenever the need arose. 
 
 She was particularly fond of good horses, and 
 she had a stableman who always knew when 
 there was a desirable animal for sale anywhere 
 in the neighborhood. She availed herself of his 
 skill hi horse-flesh, and did not herself pretend to 
 know what price ought to be paid for a horse. 
 " And after all it is a small matter," she used to 
 say, " as I keep only a very few riding animals 
 besides the carriage-horses. It really can't matter 
 much, and Blanton knows what he ought to pay." 
 
 Col. Lasseter Rhett had been a man of excellent 
 credit. It had always been understood, not only 
 among the people round about, but in the office 
 of his Richmond commission merchants, that 
 Colonel Rhett was a man well " able to owe his 
 debts." This credit Kate inherited with the 
 plantation, and on the strength of it she ordered 
 whatever she wanted and continued to live in the 
 old way, while little by little, for lack of attention 
 and direction, the plantation was losing what 
 was left of its earning capacity. 
 
 The home fields were cultivated only in such 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 41 
 
 fashion as the negro hands she hired saw fit to 
 bring to bear. Many of the farms were without 
 tenants, and if a tenant was very poor and had 
 " bad luck " with his crops, Kate could not bring 
 her kindly soul to exact her share of his little 
 yield as her rent. 
 
 The story of decay need not be told in detail. 
 Its end was inevitable. As Kate had only a life 
 estate in the land, it could not serve as a basis of 
 credit or as a security for her debts. Her creditors 
 were many, and after awhile they began to be 
 insistent. But it was not until executions were 
 levied upon her favorite riding-horses, that Kate 
 became seriously alarmed and appealed to Warren 
 Rhett for help and guidance. 
 
 He was just finishing some construction work 
 in New York when her letter came to him. He 
 had been successful, not only as an engineer, but 
 still more as the head of a contracting firm. He 
 had made money enough to be very comfortable, 
 and his firm was in the way to go on making 
 money with ease and certainty. But for the time 
 being, he had nothing of pressing importance on 
 his hands, nothing that his partners could not 
 
42 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 manage without his presence. In brief, the time 
 had come when he could conveniently take the 
 vacation he needed. 
 Kate wrote : 
 
 " MY DEAR WARREN : I reckon you will just 
 have to come down here and fix things. I don't 
 understand what's the matter, but these lawyers 
 and bailiffs and people are persecuting me with 
 papers that I don't know the meaning of, and as 
 I've never done any harm to anybody, I can't see 
 why they shouldn't let me alone. I didn't so 
 much mind so long as it was only papers and 
 things of that kind, but you'll hardly believe 
 it, but it's true they have actually come here 
 to Mannamac and carried away all my horses 
 except the carriage-horses, and a lot of other 
 things of mine. I am too badly bothered in my 
 mind to tell you all the things they have done, but 
 you being a man, I suppose you can guess at most 
 of it. Anyhow, I am pestered to death and I want 
 you please to come down and stop them from 
 annoying me. You know you wrote me a month 
 ago that you thought of coming to Mannamac 
 
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KATE 43 
 
 for a good long rest, so I know you can come now, 
 and you'll be more welcome than I can tell you. 
 We haven't any hounds now or any of the setters. 
 You see I couldn't look after the creatures, so 
 I gave them all away. But if you want to hunt 
 while you are here, I think you might borrow 
 some dogs, though there aren't many about here 
 since the big plantations were divided up and sold 
 off in pieces." % 
 
 She added a number of sheets over which her 
 pen had travelled to no particular purpose. 
 Upon reading the missive, Warren laughed in his 
 careless way and ejaculated, " Poor Kate ! I 
 suppose I'll have to go to her rescue." 
 
 Thus it came about that he was now at Man- 
 namac, awaiting the return of its mistress, whom 
 he had not informed of his coming. 
 
 " It would only bother her," he had said. 
 
Ill 
 
 ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 
 
 WARREN RHETT was not much given 
 to somnolence in other hours than 
 those that he spent in bed. Tired as 
 he was with an all-night journey and with 
 his long walk that morning, he did not sleep for 
 many minutes in his 1 chair in the porch. When 
 he had had his " forty winks," he aroused him- 
 self and summoned Henry. 
 
 " Who is head man now? " he asked the negro. 
 
 " Ole Isaac," answered the servitor. 
 
 " Do you know where to find him at this hour ? " 
 
 Henry laughed half-outwardly, half-inwardly. 
 " Reckon he's up roun' de bawn, 'bout now. 
 Leastways he ginerally takes a nap there 'bout 
 this time of day." 
 
 Young Rhett was not surprised. He had 
 traversed half the cultivated part of the plantation 
 in his morning's approach to the house, and his 
 
 44 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 45 
 
 quick observation of the fields and growing crops 
 or those that were supposed to be growing 
 had prepared him to believe that not only the 
 head man, but all the men under him were accus- 
 tomed to sleep a good deal during the daylight 
 hours. 
 
 " Go and find him. Throw a bucket of water 
 over him to wake him up, and tell him I want to 
 see him here right away." 
 
 Henry departed on his mission with an elasticity 
 in his step which was suggestive of eagerness to 
 obey his orders. As a matter of fact, there had 
 long been something akin to war between Isaac, 
 the head man of the fields, and Henry, the head 
 man in the house, and Henry rejoiced in an 
 errand that involved permission to throw a pail 
 of water over his sleeping adversary. 
 
 It happened, however, that at this particular 
 time Isaac was not asleep. He had entered the 
 barn a little while before, intent upon seeking his 
 midday repose. But a colony of energetic hornets 
 had recently established themselves there, and by 
 ill luck Isaac had managed in some way to disturb 
 their adverse possession. When Henry reached 
 
46 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the barn Isaac was diligently engaged in an effort 
 to effect a retreat without incidental destruction, 
 while the hornets were opposing that strategic 
 endeavor with all the generalship they could 
 bring to bear. So when Henry, with his bucket 
 of water in hand, opened the barn door and threw 
 the water with admirable precision over the head 
 and shoulders of his adversary, he made of him- 
 self the most effective possible reinforcement to 
 Isaac. Before the hornets could recover from 
 the watery assault and the consequent confusion, 
 Isaac had made good his retreat, closing the 
 barn door behind him. 
 
 He was badly stung in many places, but at 
 least and at last he was out of the zone of fire and 
 was free to reckon up damages. 
 
 Henry, who was not at all a bad-natured fellow, 
 laughed a little under his breath, and then rejoiced 
 that he had saved his adversary from a punish- 
 ment severer than even he deserved. 
 
 After Isaac had done all the rubbing and mut- 
 tering and disguised swearing that seemed likely 
 to serve emollient purposes, Henry informed him 
 of Warren Rhett's presence at the Great House, 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OP VIEW 47 
 
 and of his desire to see Isaac as promptly as 
 possible. 
 
 If it had been Rhett's purpose to criticize the 
 work of cultivation as conducted under Isaac's 
 direction, or to question him in any wise concern- 
 ing it, he changed his mind before Isaac presented 
 himself at the porch. Perhaps he had decided 
 to deal with that subject in a larger and more 
 vigorous way or perhaps he had merely decided 
 to let it await further inquiry on the morrow. 
 However that may be, he in fact made no mention 
 of the matter to Isaac. Instead he said: 
 
 " I want you to set all your people at work at 
 once on that fence," pointing to the enclosure 
 of the house grounds. " Set all the house servants 
 at work upon it and everybody else you can get. 
 I want every rail and post and stick of it removed 
 to the wood- pile and stacked up there not in 
 your usual slovenly way, but neatly. And I want 
 every stick of wood there is in the wood- pile 
 corded up in the same way. Then I want all 
 those chips that litter the ground out there 
 picked up and piled. You can set the chaps at 
 that." 
 
48 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Chaps," in Virginia, signified negro children 
 always. 
 
 " Well, I never ! " exclaimed the head man. 
 " Is you a gwine to build a teetotally new fence, 
 Mas' Warren?" 
 
 Here again was a case of reversion of atavism. 
 Isaac had attended an educational institute for 
 a time. He had there been drilled out of the 
 dialect, and ordinarily he did not use it. But upon 
 coming into contact with his old young master, 
 and hearing again the superior tones of command, 
 he lapsed at once into the speech and the sub- 
 missiveness of his youth, as the retired cavalry- 
 horse obeys the bugle-calls. 
 
 " Never mind what I mean to do," answered 
 the master. " What I want you to do is to remove 
 that fence to the wood-pile where it belongs. It 
 is composed of hickory and ash all good fire 
 wood, well seasoned. But I want it piled neatly, 
 you understand, and not in the slovenly way 
 common down here. However, I'll go to the wood- 
 pile and superintend that myself. You call every- 
 body and set 'em all at work." 
 
 By this time Isaac had recovered his institute 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 49 
 
 breeding and the speech that belonged to it. He 
 answered : 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Rhett. I'll set the entire force 
 at work the first thing to-morrow morning.'* 
 
 " To-morrow morning, no ! " answered the 
 young man. " At sunrise to-morrow morning I 
 shall have every hand on the plantation at work 
 in the fields, each with a hoe in his hand, and 
 I'll be there to see that every one of them uses 
 his hoe in a way to earn his wages. This little 
 job must be done this afternoon. So hustle 
 yourself." 
 
 The man obeyed, but there was deep resent- 
 ment in the manner of his obeying. The resent- 
 ment was many-sided. It was first of all temper- 
 amental. In the very fibre of his being, Isaac 
 resented the requirement that he should do now 
 what he might as well do to-morrow. In the 
 second place, the resentment was habitual. 
 Isaac had not been used, for years, to have any 
 one compel his action, and he resented the neces- 
 sity of submitting to such compulsion. Thirdly, 
 his resentment was racial. During all the years 
 of his freedom he had rejoiced above all things 
 
50 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 in the thought that no white man was or could be 
 his master. He had rolled that thought like a 
 sweet morsel under his tongue, never learning the 
 first lesson of freedom submission to authority 
 where authority is rightly constituted and right- 
 fully used. After a fashion common enough in 
 the crude thinking of uneducated or miseducated 
 minds, he had interpreted liberty to mean exemp- 
 tion from duty, and especially from the duty of 
 obedience. 
 
 Because no white man could claim mastery 
 over him by virtue of being a white man, Isaac 
 had fallen into the habit of thinking that under 
 any and all circumstances he was entitled to 
 resent and resist the assertion of authority by 
 any white man. Such education as he had re- 
 ceived in the schools strongly tended to confirm 
 him in this mistaken view of human obligations. 
 He had learned to regard all authority as slave 
 driving, all obedience to authority as slavish sub- 
 mission. That was the net result of education 
 in Isaac's case, as it was in the case of many an- 
 other, and in obedience to such teachings he would 
 have refused to obey the order given him if he 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 51 
 
 had dared. But he did not dare. He knew that 
 in some way, which he did not at all understand, 
 Warren Rhett was, or could at will make himself, 
 master of this plantation, and even the education 
 of insolence which he had received had not 
 robbed him of the capacity to understand that he 
 must obey Warren Rhett' s orders or quit the 
 plantation. As he did not want to quit the planta- 
 tion, he obeyed the orders, sullenly and re- 
 luctantly. 
 
 Young Rhett did not concern himself with the 
 man's mood. He was accustomed to command 
 men in large numbers, and he was familiar with 
 all the moods and tenses of obedience and dis- 
 obedience. He cared nothing whatever for the 
 mood so long as the tense of obedience was the 
 present. 
 
 It was his own habit of mind to regard the 
 present tense as the only one in which the work 
 of this world is done, or can be effectively done. 
 So, when the fence had been removed to the wood- 
 pile, and the wood- pile had been reconstructed 
 upon orderly lines, after a fashion that every 
 negro on the plantation secretly regarded as 
 
52 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 absurdly " fussy," he summoned Isaac to the 
 porch and questioned him. 
 
 " How many field hands have you ? " he asked. 
 
 Isaac couldn't answer on the instant. He had 
 to reckon up his working force before he could 
 report its strength. 
 
 " How many acres of corn have you ? " inter- 
 posed the exigent questioner, before his first 
 inquiry had 'been answered. Then followed 
 other questions, as if fired from a Catling gun. 
 
 "How many acres of wheat? How many 
 tobacco hills ? How much spinach ? How many 
 beans? How many tomatoes? " and so on to the 
 end of the list. 
 
 The net result of the inquiry was to show that 
 Isaac had planted about one-half, or a little less, 
 of the crop that his working force ought to culti- 
 vate. Rhett called attention to the fact, and then 
 opened another line of inquiry. 
 
 " As you planted less than half a crop, why 
 haven't you cultivated that half?" he asked. 
 " The weeds are choking the corn to death. The 
 worms are eating up the tobacco, much of which 
 hasn't been topped or primed as it ought to be. 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 53 
 
 The truck patches are badly neglected, and the 
 wheat ought to have been cradled a week ago. 
 It is overripe, and the grain is being wasted on 
 the ground. I observed a field of oats that has been 
 lost entirely. It was ripe two weeks ago, and it 
 wasn't cut. It isn't worth cutting now. What 
 is the matter with you? Why haven't you tried 
 to do your duty or some small part of it ? " 
 
 The man began to make apologies. Chiefly 
 he urged the fact that the mules, or at any rate 
 the best of them, had been seized upon executions 
 for debt. That seemed to him a sufficient excuse 
 for his neglect of the crops. It did not impress 
 Warren Rhett in that way. 
 
 " Mules are not needed in cutting oats or 
 cradling wheat," he responded. " And as for 
 the rest of the crops, you have hands enough to 
 cultivate them all with the hoe, and you're going 
 to do it and do it right, beginning to-morrow 
 morning at sunrise. First of all, I want all the 
 men who know how to handle a cradle put into 
 the wheat to save what is left of it. I want all 
 the hogs that are left on the plantation turned 
 into the oat-field this afternoon to get what good 
 
54 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 they can out of it. Then I want everybody but 
 the cradlers to turn out to-morrow morning with 
 hoes. I'll be there to tell them what to do." 
 
 All this was to Isaac a new method of proce- 
 dure a new and utterly unreasonable mani- 
 festation of energy. He began to offer objections, 
 excuses, pleas in abatement, as it were, of such 
 activity. Rhett did not listen. 
 
 " You have your orders," he said. " Obey 
 them to the letter or quit the plantation." 
 
 Isaac promptly took his stand upon his priv- 
 ileges. 
 
 " But you can't turn me off the plantation," 
 he said. " I've got a cawntrac' for the year." 
 
 Rhett' s first impulse was to reply angrily. His 
 second thought seized upon the humor of the 
 situation and upon its pathos also, for the 
 thought of such a man as Isaac venturing to 
 oppose the will of such a man as Warren Rhett 
 in a contest of wits and intelligence was really 
 pathetic. So instead of answering angrily or 
 peremptorily, young Rhett took up the matter 
 persuasively. 
 
 " So you've a contract, have you, Isaac? " 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 55 
 
 " Yessir." 
 
 " Might I inquire what your notion of a con- 
 tract is?" 
 
 " It's a agreement for a year," answered the 
 man. 
 
 " Oh, I see. It binds Mrs. Rhett to keep you 
 as her head man for a year? " 
 
 " Yes, dat's it " Isaac had relapsed again 
 into the dialect. 
 
 " And doesn't it bind you to anything? " 
 
 " Why, yes, of course I'se got to stay out 
 de year." 
 
 " Is that all? Doesn't it bind you to do your 
 work in a capable way? Doesn't it bind you to 
 manage the crops here as they ought to be man- 
 aged?" 
 
 " I dunno. I never thought o' that." 
 
 " So I had supposed. Well, now do you under- 
 stand that a contract is a mutual agreement an 
 agreement between two persons each of whom 
 binds himself to do something in return for what 
 the other promises to do? You know perfectly 
 well that you haven't done your duty under this 
 contract. Perhaps you don't know that that 
 
56 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 annuls the contract as completely as if the paper 
 were torn to bits and burned in the fire. But that 
 is the fact. Now understand me. I've come 
 down here to straighten things out, and before 
 I finish they'll be as straight as a chalk-line. I 
 may have to drive everybody off the plantation 
 who is now on it. I hope not. But if I meet with 
 opposition of any sort, that is what will happen. 
 Now Isaac, Henry will bring you some spirits, 
 and I want you to drink to the new order of things. 
 To-morrow morning I want everybody on the 
 plantation to set to work in the way I have ex- 
 plained to you. I don't know how long I shall 
 stay here, but so long as I do stay I am going to 
 be master and my word shall be law." 
 
 Isaac was questioning his soul as to all this. 
 
 " Den we ain't free, after all? " he asked. 
 
 " Free ? Yes. You can go whenever you 
 please. But while you stay you must obey me. 
 Sit down on the steps again and let me repair 
 some of the defects of the education your school- 
 masters gave you." 
 
 The negro sat down, listening, and the young 
 white man took up his parable. 
 
ISAAC'S POINT OF VIEW 57 
 
 " You negroes have been taught a totally false 
 gospel of liberty. You have been taught that 
 when a man's free he may do as he pleases, 
 regardless of all other men. Now there is not in 
 all the world a man who is free in any such sense 
 as that, and there never was and there never will 
 be. Do you understand that, Isaac ? " 
 
 Isaac did not respond. He had secured a com- 
 fortable corner of the steps, with a pillar to lean 
 his head against, and he was sound asleep. 
 
 " That is the trouble with the whole race," 
 muttered the young man of affairs. " They are 
 sound asleep, and yet there are men and women 
 especially women who dream of equality 
 between that race and our own, and who would 
 have us spend multi-millions in an effort to lift 
 those chronically sleepy ones to the level of a 
 race of men who have kept themselves awake 
 through countless centuries." 
 
 With the toe of his boot inserted into the 
 intercostal spaces of the negro, he stirred the 
 man to consciousness. Having done so, he said : 
 
 " I freely pardon your somnolent inattention. 
 But bear in mind that at sunrise to-morrow I 
 
5 8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 expect every cradler to be in the wheat, and every 
 other hand to be in the fields with his hoe. I'll 
 be there myself and I'll take no excuses. In the 
 meantime you are to go and turn the hogs into 
 the oat-field. I'll go out at sunset to see that 
 you have done it." 
 
 That night a doleful rumor spread over the 
 plantation. The burden of it was: " We's got 
 to wuk, jes' like in slarery times." 
 
IV 
 
 KATE 
 
 IT was an hour or so before the appointed time 
 when Charley Danforth dismounted at the 
 door of Mannamac. In the meanwhile 
 Warren Rhett's trunks had come and he had 
 made some changes in his costume. The high 
 boots had given place to low-cut shoes, with 
 silver buckles on their insteps. For trousers 
 he wore white ducks, and his coat of blue flannel 
 had no vest beneath it to obscure the whiteness 
 of his starchless negligee shirt. 
 
 Dinner had been served at the traditional hour 
 of four o'clock, and after dinner young Rhett had 
 strolled out to the oat-field to see how many hogs 
 were feeding upon the waste grain. 
 
 Incidentally he encountered Isaac, the head 
 man. 
 
 " I will have some mules here before night," 
 he said. " I have sent a chap over to the court- 
 59 
 
60 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 house with a note to a drover who is there. I 
 want you to put the ploughs into this field and 
 every other field that hasn't a growing crop on 
 it." 
 
 " Good Lawd ! " responded the negro. " What 
 you gwine to do wid 'em this time o' year? It's 
 too late to plant corn or tobacco, an' it ain't late 
 enough to sow wheat. So what is you a settin' 
 us a ploughin' for? " 
 
 "Turnips, for one thing," Rhett answered. 
 " Winter lettuce and spinach for two others. 
 Winter wheat for still another. That's enough 
 to occupy your mind for a week or so to come. 
 Then I'll mention other things. In the mean- 
 while I want every arable acre of this plantation, 
 that isn't now growing a crop, to be ripped up 
 with a plough and got ready for such planting as 
 can be done this late in the season." 
 
 " Good Lawd 1 " again ejaculated the negro, 
 tired even unto death by the very suggestion of 
 such activity. 
 
 " That's all right," answered the young man, 
 jauntily. " We'll look to the good Lord for rams 
 and sunshine, and he has already put fertility 
 
KATE 6 i 
 
 into the ground. So what we've got to do is to 
 plough and harrow and plant and hoe, and we're 
 going to do our part." 
 
 Again the negro, weary to the centres of his 
 soul, ejaculated: 
 
 " Good Lawd ! " but young Rhett paid no 
 heed. He had given his orders. He meant that 
 they should be obeyed. Isaac understood that 
 and grieved. 
 
 Rhett had sent a note to the drover, saying: 
 " Besides the mules, I want a horse a good 
 one, strong enough to carry my hundred and 
 seventy pounds of weight. I don't care whether 
 he is broken or not. I can attend to that my- 
 self. If you have such a horse bring him 
 over to be looked at. But it won't be worth 
 your while to bring over any spindle-legged, 
 narrow-chested, thin-hipped animals. I know 
 a good horse when I see him. If you've a 
 really good one, bring him over for me to look 
 at. If you haven't a good one, don't bother 
 me." 
 
 The drover understood. He knew he was 
 dealing with an expert, whom it was of no use to 
 
62 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 try to deceive. He was convinced also that he was 
 dealing with a man who would not hesitate to 
 pay a fair price for a really good animal. So he 
 picked out of his drove a young mare, utterly 
 unbroken and altogether demoniacal of dis- 
 position. 
 
 " I reckon she'll amuse him for a few days, 
 anyhow," he said. " Maybe he can ride her, and 
 then again maybe he can't, but anyhow he seems 
 to think he's ready to take the risk." 
 
 The drover " personally conducted " the mare 
 to Mannamac, not caring to entrust her way- 
 wardness to any of his assistants, who took mules 
 over for inspection. She was a beautiful creature, 
 large and strong, with lean neck and slender 
 pasterns, deep chest, high withers, and the sloping 
 hips that in a mare indicate a kicker. 
 
 The mules and the mare arrived about six 
 o'clock. Warren looked over the mules, selected 
 those that he wanted, and after a little bargaining 
 bought a dozen or so of them. 
 
 Then he examined the mare. She was ex- 
 cessively nervous and excited at the time. 
 
 " Poor girl ! " the young man said, soothingly. 
 
KATE 63 
 
 " They've been tormenting you and you're un- 
 strung. Never mind. We'll give you a good quiet 
 stall to-night and let you get rested. Sometime 
 to-morrow, after you've got over their rudeness, 
 you and I will come to an understanding." 
 
 The drover had already named his price for the 
 animal ; Warren Rhett had deducted fifty dollars 
 from it, and had said : 
 
 " Of course you'll take what I offer, and so 
 I'll take the mare." 
 
 The drover was delighted. He had tried to 
 sell the beautiful creature to each of a dozen 
 other men, each of whom had declined to take her, 
 after trying her and finding himself thrown to the 
 ground with a degree of violence that he did not 
 care to have repeated. The drover had expected 
 Rhett to try her in like manner, and while he was 
 glad enough to make a sale, he had enough of 
 honesty in him to suggest a trial before the con- 
 clusion of the bargain. 
 
 " It is not necessary," young Rhett answered. 
 " The mare suits me, and I can ride her." 
 
 " Well, kin you ? " asked the drover his 
 interest in horsemanship overcoming his concern 
 
6 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 for the profits of a sale. " A good many other 
 folks has thought they could, and has changed 
 their minds." 
 
 " Yes, I know. The mare has been tortured 
 by experiments of that kind, and she is at present 
 in a state of intense nervous irritability. I don't 
 blame her. It is the misfortune of every perfect 
 horse to have a contest with a lot of human fools. 
 If my price is right I'll take the mare, and if you 
 have curiosity enough, you may ride over here to- 
 morrow and see her carrying me about the planta- 
 tion and never making trouble over anything that 
 she understands." 
 
 "You must 'a' had experience with bosses?" 
 said the drover, with a note of incredulity in his 
 voice. 
 
 " A little, yes," answered Rhett. He did not 
 care to add that in addition to the fact of his 
 bringing up as a Virginia boy, he had found 
 occasion to " bust " many a broncho in Mexico, 
 New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, or that on the 
 pampas of South America he had lassoed many 
 a wild horse and subdued him to his will. He 
 said only: 
 
KATE 65 
 
 " I think I can ride the mare when she quiets 
 down. At any rate, I'll pay the price I've offered 
 and take the chances. Is it a bargain? " 
 
 The transaction ended. Rhett dismissed all 
 the gaping negroes who had come to see him 
 killed, and, gently caressing the mare, led her to 
 the stall he had selected for her. There he gave 
 her a pail of water, for which she thirsted. Then 
 with his own hands he rubbed her down, taking 
 pains during the process to handle all her feet, 
 and especially to caress her head and to deal 
 gently with her sensitive ears, rubbing them and 
 her head until she recognized the massage as a 
 kindly attention and welcomed it. All the while 
 he talked to the animal. " In company/' he said, 
 " your name is to be Dolly Varden, but just 
 between you and me, you're simply Dolly. Don't 
 you think that sounds more affectionate and 
 chummy ? And you and I are going to be chums, 
 you know, and you aren't to be bothered any 
 more by those rude fellows that have been trying 
 to ride you against your will. I don't blame you 
 for objecting. There, old girl, are you comfortable 
 now? I'll give you ten ears of corn and a rack 
 
66 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 full of fodder and another pail of water for the 
 night, and I'll lock the stable door so that nobody 
 shall come near you till I come to give you your 
 breakfast and a good rubbing down in the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 With that he quitted the stable, giving orders 
 that nobody was to go near the mare to whose 
 care he would himself attend and returning 
 to the house just in time to receive his visitor. 
 
 " I'm glad you sent me word that Kate 
 Mrs. Rhett I mean was to be gone overnight," 
 Charley Danforth said after the first greetings of 
 the old schoolmates were over. " You see, even 
 as it is, my coming to Mannamac is a bit awk- 
 ward, I am distinctly persona non grata, you 
 know." 
 
 " Stuff and nonsense," responded Warren 
 Rhett. " Why, if Kate were to drive up at this 
 moment, she would welcome you as cordially as 
 if there had never been a lawsuit or an execution 
 or anything else. She might try to be dignifiedly 
 repellent in her manner, but the moment she 
 tried to remember why she should be so, she'd 
 find herself puzzled and appeal to you helplessly 
 
KATE 67 
 
 for information and guidance in the matter. 
 Then, if you laughed, as you probably would, she 
 would laugh with you and challenge you to say 
 why you hadn't been here to see her all these 
 many moons. I'm astonished at you, Charley. 
 You know Kate, or you ought to." 
 
 "Yes, I understand all that, but " 
 
 At that moment a carriage entered the grounds, 
 rolled around " the circle," and stopped at the 
 stone carriage block. 
 
 The two young men gallantly hurried forward 
 and opened the door of the vehicle, from which 
 descended Mrs. Kate Rhett and a young woman 
 whom she introduced as " Miss Hazel Cameron." 
 
 Kate's first attention was given to Warren 
 Rhett, of course. 
 
 " I'm so glad youVe come ! " she began, 
 " because now I sha'n't be bothered any more, 
 and besides it has been so long since I saw you, 
 and of course there isn't anybody else so nice. 
 Oh, Warren, I'm so glad ! You see, even the 
 servants knew how anxious I was to have you 
 here, so as soon as you came three of the chaps 
 came over to Bandonnais to tell me. I was to 
 
68 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 stay overnight there, but as soon as I heard you 
 were at Mannamac I ordered the carriage, and 
 of course Hazel came back with me. I want you 
 to know her, though I think you mustn't fall in 
 love with her, just as you mustn'ted with me 
 ages ago. I wonder if that's right ' mustn'ted ? ' 
 It don't sound right, but it's what I mean." 
 
 Warren laughingly interrupted, 
 
 " I believe the grammarians contend that the 
 verb ' must/ in all its moods and tenses, has no 
 inflection, but that is no reason why you, Kate, 
 shouldn't give it one if you want to. You're a 
 privileged person, you know." 
 
 This seemingly playful interruption was gal- 
 lantly meant to rescue Hazel Cameron from an 
 embarrassment. When Kate said what she did 
 concerning the possibility of Warren's falling in 
 love with her, and the prohibition, the young 
 woman exclaimed, protestingly, " Oh, Kate!" 
 and immediately hid her face behind her handker- 
 chief. But the action was not quick enough to 
 rob Warren Rhett of a glimpse of her cheeks, 
 which revealed a degree of color not sufficiently 
 accounted for by the glow of a sunset sky. that 
 
KATE 69 
 
 suffused the porch in which the quartet stood. 
 So Warren Rhett came to the young woman's 
 rescue with his exposition of grammatical re- 
 quirements. To make the rescue complete, he 
 added : 
 
 " Thanks for your cordial welcome of me, 
 Kate, but you haven't half welcomed Danforth. 
 You see when I found you gone away I sent for 
 him, just to console me for your absence, and " 
 
 " Oh, I didn't mean to neglect you, Charley ! " 
 she exclaimed, cordially grasping the young man's 
 hand again. " Still, I've a quarrel with you, you 
 know." 
 
 " Not a serious one, I hope," he answered. 
 
 " Oh, yes, it is. Indeed it's very serious. You 
 haven't been to see me since I don't know when, 
 and I feel myself very greatly aggrieved. Still, 
 now that you're here, I'll forgive you, and we 
 won't talk about that any more. Come, Hazel, 
 these two men are very entertaining, but we 
 mustn't let their ceaseless chatter keep us standing 
 here. Diana has taken our wraps up-stairs, so 
 we must go. Warren, I leave you to entertain 
 Charley." 
 
70 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " I've offered already," Warren replied, " but 
 he tells me he never takes any." 
 
 Kate stopped for a moment on the stairs, her 
 brow puckered in puzzlement. Then she under- 
 stood, and for reply she seemed to toss to Dan- 
 forth the words: 
 
 " Good boy ! I like that." 
 
HAZEL 
 
 SUPPER was served at the usual time a 
 little before nine o'clock. It was the same 
 supper that had been served in that house 
 every night from " the time whereof the memory 
 of man runneth not to the contrary." There 
 was the cold ham of the razorback variety, for. a 
 relish and a stimulant to appetite. There were 
 plates piled high with what the Virginians call 
 "wafer biscuit" dainty sheets of pastry, as 
 thin as paper itself, baked to a crisp in a hot 
 oven. There was a pan of that most perfect of 
 all combinations of corn-meal, eggs, and cream, 
 known as batter bread. There were berries and 
 other fruits, with tea and coffee, and butter fresh 
 from the churn. There were other things 
 there were always other things upon the hos- 
 pitable Virginia table but in substance the 
 supper consisted of these. 
 
72 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 The two young men had hoped for half an hour 
 in the porch in company with the two young 
 women before the supper-hour, but in that they 
 were disappointed. They passed the time before 
 supper, therefore, partly in talking over the 
 situation of Kate's affairs, but still more in ar- 
 ranging to talk it over more thoroughly after the 
 women should have gone to bed. 
 
 " I'm here to straighten everything out," young 
 Rhett explained, " and first of all I must know 
 the condition of things as completely as may be. 
 Of course Kate doesn't know anything about it " 
 
 " Of course not," Danforth interrupted, " but 
 I think I can give you all the information you 
 want. Indeed, I should have volunteered my 
 services to Kate long ago if it had been possible. 
 But you don't know how peculiarly embar- 
 rassing my position has been. Did she ever tell 
 you?" 
 
 " No. You see, I haven't seen her since her 
 marriage to my father or since long before 
 that, in fact. But perhaps I can guess." 
 
 " No, don't. It would be unfair to her. You 
 see she's peculiar." 
 
HAZEL 73 
 
 " Yes, I know. She's unique in fact. But tell 
 me about it, that is to say if you care to do 
 so." 
 
 " Well, it was this way. She and I were en- 
 gaged, or at least half-engaged, when well, when 
 your father decided to marry her. Of course he 
 didn't know that. He was the soul of honor. 
 And Kate didn't tell him. That wouldn't have 
 been her way." 
 
 " No," answered Warren, a smile playing over 
 his face. " No, of course not. As you say, Kate 
 is peculiar. But go on, I didn't mean to inter- 
 rupt." 
 
 " Well, one day Kate sent me a letter telling 
 me the engagement must be called off. She ex- 
 plained, in her queer way, that your father had 
 decided to marry her, and that while she was 
 ' awfully sorry,' I would understand that she 
 couldn't help it, and she did hope I wouldn't go 
 and feel bad about it. You can imagine the rest 
 of the letter. It filled twenty-two pages, I remem- 
 ber. Well, of course, knowing Kate as I did, 
 I couldn't blame her as I should have blamed 
 any other woman in the world under like circum- 
 
74 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 stances. You know one simply must forgive 
 anything and everything to Kate, and go on liking 
 her just as well as ever. To resent anything she 
 does would be like cuffing a baby's ears for smiling 
 at the color of your hair or your cravat. Besides, 
 I don't suppose it ever occurred to her, even as a 
 remote possibility, that she might refuse your 
 father's offer of marriage on the ground that she 
 was already engaged. Her submission to his 
 authority was so absolute that I think it would 
 have been the same if she had been already 
 married. She would have called her marriage 
 off, just as she called off the engagement." 
 
 At this point the conversation was interrupted 
 by the descent of the gentlewomen from the upper 
 regions and Henry's announcement that supper 
 was ready. 
 
 Warren Rhett had his first good look at Hazel 
 Cameron as she entered the supper- room. He 
 had thought her beautiful when he had seen her 
 in the gloaming. Now that the lights fell full 
 upon her, she seemed to him a veritable dream. 
 
 She had changed her gown, of course, and she 
 appeared now in a costume that was Greek in its 
 
HAZEL 75 
 
 suggestions and in its simplicity. It was made 
 of gray crepe de chine. In a sense it was like 
 creation itself without form and void. That 
 is to say, it had no pronounced lines, and no 
 latitudinal lines at all. There were no flounces and 
 no ruffles, and no waist-line of any kind appeared. 
 The garment seemed to Warren Rhett's mascu- 
 line apprehension simply to be swathed in grace- 
 ful spiral curves about the rather tall but not 
 too tall form of the shapely young woman, 
 nowhere asserting itself, nowhere suggesting con- 
 struction, but flowing as the water flows, and 
 seeming to be a creation of nature rather than 
 of art, or still less of artisanship. 
 
 Warren Rhett was pleased with the costume, 
 and he quickly observed that the young woman 
 wore no ornaments of any kind not even so 
 much as a rose or a ribbon. But his glance at 
 her costume was instantly lost in his glance at 
 her countenance. She was fair, and her creamy 
 white skin had a glint of pink in it that could 
 quickly ripen into red under momentary emotion. 
 Her features were fairly regular, but in confronting 
 her one forgot to observe their regularity because 
 
7 6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 of the ceaseless play of expression that from 
 moment to moment changed their aspect. As 
 Warren Rhett looked at her, he thought her the 
 most beautiful woman he had ever seen. But the 
 picture she presented seemed to him to lack some- 
 thing something exceedingly small and inconse- 
 quent, and yet something necessary to its per- 
 fection. He instantly decided what it was, and 
 as he seated her at table he asked her to excuse 
 him for one moment. Going to the porch, he 
 returned instantly with a spray of honeysuckle 
 cream- white and a rose intensely red. 
 
 " I want my homecoming to be celebrated," 
 he said, " with all of beauty that is possible." 
 
 With that he went first to Kate and fastened 
 the red rose in the masses of her raven black hair. 
 Then, with a courteous " permit me," he advanced 
 to Hazel and entwined the spray of honeysuckle 
 in the copper-colored waves above her forehead. 
 Both the women observed the peculiar dexterity 
 with which he entangled the flowers in the hair. 
 Kate said nothing. Hazel said: 
 
 " Evidently you've done that before, Mr. 
 Rhett. Your touch tells of practice." 
 
HAZEL 77 
 
 " Never with results so satisfactory," he said, 
 gallantly, " though I once had the pleasure, in 
 Vera Cruz, of helping to make a beautiful maiden's 
 hair radiant with fireflies, and in the half-lights 
 of the open-air ballroom the effect was impressive. 
 But permit me to say the present effect " 
 
 " We'll permit you nothing," interrupted Kate, 
 who saw the signal reds in Hazel's cheeks. 
 " Speaking of hair, that's why we were delayed in 
 coming down to supper." 
 
 " Oh, you got into trouble with your tresses, 
 did you?" 
 
 " No. But you know my carriage- horses are 
 white, and they are shedding terribly. So Hazel 
 and I were covered with white horsehairs when 
 we got here. You see, it was so warm, I had the 
 carriage top down. Why, when I looked in the 
 glass, I actually thought I had turned gray over 
 your coming, Warren." 
 
 " May I ask, Kate," said Warren, " which one 
 of your servitors is supposed to look after your 
 carriage- horses ? " 
 
 " Why, Everard, of course." 
 
 Young Rhett turned to Hazel and insisted 
 
78 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 upon placing a dainty, paper-thin slice of ham 
 on her plate. Then he quietly secured audience 
 of Henry, and said to him: 
 
 " Send one of the chaps to find Everard, and 
 tell him to come to me here when we have finished 
 supper." 
 
 When the table had been cleared, and the two 
 gentlemen with permission had lighted their 
 long- stemmed pipes, Everard presented himself. 
 Rhett looked at him earnestly for a moment. 
 Then he said: 
 
 11 The ladies found themselves covered with 
 horsehairs when they got home this evening." 
 
 He added no question to the statement, but 
 Everard understood. He answered: 
 
 ".Well, you see, Mister Mas' Warren, I 
 mean de bosses is a sheddinV 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " W'y, you know, Mas' Warren, as well as I 
 do, dat bosses always sheds once a year." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 The meagre sententiousness of Rhett's ques- 
 tioning was a sore affliction to Everard, for the 
 reason that it compelled him to think, and 
 
HAZEL 79 
 
 with him thinking involved a deal of painful 
 effort. 
 
 " Well, mostly it happens in de spring/' he 
 answered. 
 
 " And this is past midsummer," answered the 
 white man. " Horses do not shed in midsummer 
 on any plantation over which I exercise control. 
 If I hear of a horsehair falling upon the clothing 
 of Mrs. Rhett or her guests again " He paused, 
 not completing the sentence. He knew that 
 Everard would mentally complete it for him, and 
 he was satisfied. 
 
 " Henry," he said, " give Everard a dram before 
 he goes." 
 
 When the man had gone, Hazel Cameron, who 
 was not a Virginian, turned to Rhett and asked : 
 
 " But, Mr. Rhett, how can the poor fellow help 
 it if the horses are shedding out of season ? " 
 
 Rhett laughed. " He knows how to help it," 
 he said. " He knows that it is a matter of proper 
 or improper grooming. I noticed the horses when 
 the carriage drove up this evening. They haven't 
 been washed down for weeks, and they haven't 
 been properly curried for months. One trouble 
 
8o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 is that the bucket of the stable well has fallen 
 to pieces, and Everard has been too indolent 
 either to repair it or to carry water from the house 
 well. There has been dry weather recently, and 
 the rain-water barrels up there have run out. So, 
 in the absence of conscience or energy on Everard's 
 part, the horses have not been washed down as 
 they should have been. As to currying, Everard 
 has neglected that, simply because he didn't want 
 to do any more work than he must. Like every- 
 body else on this plantation, he has fallen into 
 bad habits. Why, even Henry here hasn't yet 
 cleaned the muddy boots I took off a good many 
 hours ago." 
 
 Henry fairly shrank into himself with mortifi- 
 cation. But Henry still had some remains of a 
 conscience, and Rhett knew that with him, at 
 least, repentance was likely to. bring forth " fruits 
 meet." Henry was washing the supper dishes, 
 while his mistress, Kate, was scalding and drying 
 them, after the immemorial custom of Virginia 
 housewives. He was far too well-bred to make 
 any reply to his master's remark, but he looked 
 at Warren in a way which that young gentleman 
 
HAZEL 81 
 
 rightly interpreted to mean : "I beg yo' pardon, 
 Mas' Warren, an' you may be sartin' sure it 
 won't happen never again no more ! " 
 
 Warren nodded in answer to the look, and 
 presently the negro, having finished with the 
 dishes, hurried yes, actually hurried to find 
 those boots and put them in order. He was sin- 
 cerely resolved that his young " Mas' Warren " 
 should have no further occasion to complain of 
 neglect on his part. 
 
VI 
 
 A LOVE - SONG IN THE PORCH 
 
 THE housewifely duties done, Kate sug- 
 gested a migration of the company to the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 " There's a moon nearly full," answered Rhett, 
 " and the thermometer stands at seventy-two. 
 Why not sit out in the porch ? You know, Miss 
 Cameron, there are no mosquitoes at Mannamac." 
 
 The suggestion met with general approval, 
 and the party moved out into the great front 
 porch. 
 
 " May I ask you a wholly impertinent question, 
 Mr. Rhett?" queried Hazel, as he led her off 
 the porch to show her a well-remembered moon- 
 light effect of leaf shadows upon the paved 
 walk. 
 
 " Ask any question you please," he answered. 
 
 " I shall not consider it impertinent." 
 82 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 83 
 
 " Then how came you to know that the ther- 
 mometer stood at seventy-two?" 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Oh, that's simple enough. You see, I'm an 
 engineer and a contractor for construction work, 
 and it is often necessary that I shall know the 
 temperature. Methods and materials often de- 
 pend upon that. So I always carry in my pocket 
 a little thermometer, enclosed in a safety case 
 that I had made for the purpose of protecting it 
 and keeping it always handy. When you and 
 Kate arrived I began to plan for an altogether 
 pleasant evening. The weather was clear, and 
 I knew we should have a fine moon, so I wanted to 
 know whether or not we might sit outside and 
 enjoy the weather conditions. To that end I 
 removed the little thermometer from its case and 
 set it on the railing of the porch. When I went out 
 to get the flowers you and Kate are wearing, I 
 struck a match and looked at the instrument. 
 There, that is a complete resolution of the 
 mystery of Warren Rhett's extraordinary sagacity 
 and prescience and all the rest of it. It's as simple 
 as the explanation of a ghost-story usually is." 
 
84 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Now you are laughing at me," she answered, 
 "but " 
 
 " No, I'm not laughing at you. I feel no dis- 
 position to do that. It was very natural that you 
 should wonder how I knew the state of the ther- 
 mometer, when seemingly I had had no oppor- 
 tunity to observe it. But as I offered the per- 
 fectly simple explanation, it occurred to me that 
 most of the mysteries that make men's and 
 women's eyes saucer-like with wonder are equally 
 easy of explanation if one only knows the 
 facts." 
 
 " Then you don't believe in the existence of 
 mysteries?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do. Nothing in all the world is 
 so borne in upon me as mystery. There's the 
 attraction of gravitation, for example. I have to 
 wrestle with it and reckon with it every hour of 
 every day. Practically, I can deal with it. That 
 is to say, I can recognize it and accommodate 
 myself to its inexorable demands but to say 
 that I understand it no. I know not what it 
 is, or whence it conies, or why it acts in the way 
 it does. I can convert it into heat by arresting its 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 85 
 
 manifestation. I can tame it to my uses and 
 make it turn wheels for me. I can in that way 
 convert it into light, electricity, or sound, I can 
 make it rock a cradle or crush a casemate, 
 gently crack a nut or mash a mass of cold iron 
 into such shape as I desire, making it white-hot 
 in the process. But I no more knew what that 
 limitless force is, or whence it comes, or whither 
 it goes, than does any new-born babe. And there 
 is another of the multitudinous mysteries that 
 surround us. How does the new-born babe, by 
 the assimilation of food, particle by particle, 
 r.cOm by atom, molecule by molecule, build up its 
 body and brain into a prize-fighter or a poet or 
 a student or a statesman? If I plant two seeds 
 in the earth, each inconsequent in size and struc- 
 ture, how is it that the one will with certainty 
 produce a deliciously edible fruit, and the other 
 a noxious one of totally different character and 
 appearance? The soil from which the two are 
 nourished is the same, the air in which the two 
 grow is the same all the conditions are abso- 
 lutely identical. Yet the one seed with certainty 
 converts the materials accessible to it into one 
 
86 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 thing, and the other, with equal certainty, con- 
 verts the same materials into another. Again, 
 see here." He took a penknife out of his pocket. 
 " The force that holds the particles of one of 
 those steel blades together is sufficient to destroy 
 a city or a fleet of battle-ships instantly, if it could 
 be released suddenly. Whence comes that ter- 
 rific force? What holds it to its duty of main- 
 taining the integrity of the steel, instead of per- 
 mitting its particles to resolve themselves into an 
 expansive gas, and blow everything around into 
 atoms ? I have frequent occasion to employ high 
 explosives. They are simply substances in wh. "h 
 the bond of union between the particles is so weak 
 that a trifling heat or a slight jar destroys that 
 bond instantaneously. Why is it that in some 
 substances the bond of union is so weak, while 
 in others it is so incalculably strong ? I do not 
 know. Neither does anybody else. These, and 
 things like these, are the mysteries of nature. 
 We pretend to explain them by classifying and 
 naming the phenomena, but our explanations do 
 not explain. If I were to talk all night and all 
 day, and all the nights and all the days of my life, 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 87 
 
 I could not begin to catalogue the mysteries that 
 my mind must encounter every day. These things 
 constitute the riddle of the universe, and the 
 universe is a sphinx whose mysteries no mortal 
 may even pretend to understand. Be careful! 
 There's a break in the step there. I have given 
 orders to have it repaired." 
 
 Before the girl could thank him for the caution, 
 Kate called to her, saying: 
 
 " Come, Hazel, Mr. Danforth wants to hear 
 you sing, and I'll give you a guitar accompani- 
 ment, so that we needn't quit the porch for the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 Then Kate, the incorrigible chatterer, rattled 
 on, after her wont. 
 
 " Anyhow, it isn't fair for you and Warren to 
 stand talking out there in the moonlight, leaving 
 poor Charley to me who don't know how to 
 talk at all, except just in a commonplace way. 
 What have you two been talking about, anyhow ? 
 It's too soon for Warren to have fallen in love with 
 you, Hazel, even in such moonlight as this, so 
 you must have been talking philosophy or some- 
 thing else that Charley and I don't understand. 
 
88 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Come and be sociable and sing. You know, 
 Warren, Hazel is a genius who can do every- 
 thing " 
 
 " Will you be quiet, Kate ? " exclaimed the 
 girl, with nervous dread of more to come. 
 
 " That means I'm to shut up, I suppose. 
 Very well, I will but it's all true, Warren. I'll 
 tell you about it some other time. What will you 
 sing, Hazel ? " 
 
 " Anything that is honest and sincere," an- 
 swered the girl. " Let it be ' Home, Sweet Home ' 
 first, just by way of a welcome to Mr. Rhett." 
 
 One song followed another, there in the moon- 
 light, Hazel singing in a voice that Warren who 
 was not an unskilled critic thought one of the 
 sweetest and most sympathetic he had ever 
 heard. 
 
 After awhile the singing seemed to come to 
 an end of its own accord, and the little company, 
 still under its spell, sat well-nigh silent for a 
 time speaking only a word now and then. 
 After a little while, Hazel, as if moved by a sudden 
 impulse, took the guitar from Kate's lap and, 
 accompanying herself, sang this: 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 89 
 
 Love is the life of the life that we live 
 
 Yes, Love is the sum of it all ; 
 It is not what we get, and it's not what we 
 
 give 
 
 Not what we bestow, nor what we receive, 
 That makes up the sum of it all ; 
 It's loving loving loving ! 
 
 It's not what we think of, nor what we forget, 
 
 That makes up the sum of it all ; 
 Not what we rejoice in, not what we regret 
 Not the things that delight us, nor those that beset, 
 That make up the sum of it all ; 
 It's loving loving loving ! 
 
 " The mother who croons o'er her baby asleep, 
 
 Knows Love as the sum of it all ; 
 Over other things she may rejoice or may weep, 
 But into her soul doubt never can creep 
 
 That Love is the sum of it all 
 
 That it's loving loving loving. 
 
 w And so the world over the truth is the same 
 
 That Love is the sum of it all ; 
 It's so with the maiden and so with the dame, 
 With the youth and the sage whatever the 
 
 name 
 
 That Love is the sum of it a 1 ! 
 That it's loving loving loving ! " 
 
9 o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 This was the rather unusual melody to which 
 she sang the song. 
 
 Moderate. 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 91 
 
 & 
 
 .*- 
 
 ^ H 
 
 * b* 
 
 Love is the life of the life that we live, Yes, 
 
 I I 
 
 
 m 
 
 Love is the sum of it all; 
 
 **=*=== 
 
 It's 
 
 not what we get, and it's not what we give, Not 
 
 I 
 
 $rt 
 
 / 
 
 m 
 
 ores, . 
 
 S 
 
 =fef 
 
 ^U2 
 
 ^'^&=* 
 
 tK 
 
92 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 
 what we be - stow, nor yet what we re - ceive, That 
 
 makes up the sum of it all : It's 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 93 
 
 As she sang, Rhett rose from his chair and 
 listened with an eagerness of attention far greater 
 than that which listeners usually give to any song. 
 When she had finished, he asked: 
 
 "Where did you get that?" 
 
 " I got the words out of an old magazine, where 
 they were published over your name, Mr. Rhett. 
 I did not know then who you were, and I cer- 
 tainly did not imagine that I should ever meet 
 you. But the song seemed to me to express a 
 truth, and the rhythm pleased me. I wanted to 
 sing it, so I wrote the little melody myself. Tell 
 me about the words, please. May I know what 
 prompted you to write them? " 
 
 " It is very strange," he said ; " very strange 
 that the thing should come back to me in this 
 way." He paused before offering the explana- 
 tion paused as if recalling. At last he said : 
 
 " I have never been in the habit of writing 
 verse. But this thought came to me under 
 peculiar circumstances, and it seemed to demand 
 expression in words. The words took metrical 
 form almost in spite of me certainly not of 
 my will." 
 
94 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " But why did the thought come to you ? 
 Thoughts are always the result of suggestion, are 
 they not ? " 
 
 "I do not know. I never questioned as to 
 that," he answered ; " but in this case, as I see 
 clearly now, the thought was obviously born of 
 suggestion and circumstance. But it is not always 
 a single suggestion or a single circumstance that 
 gives birth to thought. Perhaps it is not always 
 an objective fact at all that serves as a suggestion. 
 In this case I think there were both objective 
 and subjective influences at work. Let me tell 
 you the story, and leave you to judge for your- 
 self. 
 
 " As I recall the circumstances, I was at the time 
 engaged in construction work up in the Peruvian 
 Cordilleras. I was utterly without human com- 
 panionship of any kind as completely alone as if 
 I had been the only human being there. Around 
 me there dwelt no one with whom I could ex- 
 change even the most commonplace thought no 
 one to whom I could say even that it was a fine 
 morning, with any hope of a response. The men 
 working under my command there were two 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 95 
 
 thousand of them were Chinese coolies, Mex- 
 ican peons, convicts condemned to the service as 
 a punishment for crime the dregs and lees of 
 humanity, the offscourings, the refuse, of civiliza- 
 tion and semicivilization. 
 
 " In brief, I had absolutely no possibility of 
 human comradeship about me, and if I looked 
 afar, with the eyes of the spirit, the landscape 
 there seemed equally barren. I had neither father 
 nor mother, neither wife nor sweetheart, neither 
 brother nor sister. In all the world, whose vast- 
 ness and remoteness was borne in upon me by the 
 mountain solitudes, there was nowhere any 
 human being to whom I was of anything more 
 than passing consequence. If I should die there 
 in the Cordilleras, they would bury my body, 
 precisely as they would bury that of a defunct 
 mule to get it out of the way. After a month 
 or two perhaps after six months one of 
 those remotely residing persons whom I had been 
 accustomed to call my friends would accidentally 
 hear of my death, and say, * Poor fellow ! Yes, I 
 remember him well.' 
 
 " You will say that all this was morbid, and 
 
96 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 perhaps it was. But I doubt that any man of 
 character, any man possessed of an imagination, 
 could have escaped morbidity under the circum- 
 stances. However that may be, I didn't escape 
 it. I was making money lavishly almost 
 absurdly it seemed to me. The men who had sent 
 me there to do their work had known something 
 of the human sacrifice that its doing involved, 
 and they had multiplied the temptation of dollars, 
 until the monthly arrival of my salary by caravan 
 made me laugh at the absurdity of it all. 
 
 " The dollars came to me in bags, carried by 
 pack- mules. I foresaw that I must hire a cara- 
 van to carry the accumulated and accumulating 
 pile back to the coast when the work should be 
 done. But what could I do with it up there 
 in the mountains? I could buy a few eggs, 
 some grapes, some sweet potatoes, and some 
 onions of a native woman who lived near, and 
 that was all. 
 
 " Day after day the question more and more 
 insistently pressed itself upon my mind, whether 
 the game was worth the candle whether the 
 lavish sums I was receiving for my skill and my 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 97 
 
 work, or whether ten times or a hundred times 
 those sums, could compensate a man of intelli- 
 gence for the utter isolation the work involved 
 the utter loss of all human sympathy and kindli- 
 ness the loss of love in all its forms. While I 
 was in this questioning mood of mind I went one 
 morning to the hut of the native woman from 
 whom I was accustomed to buy eggs and grapes 
 and onions and the like. As I approached her 
 hut she was crooning her baby to sleep, and al- 
 though I was her best almost her only cus- 
 tomer who had money with which to pay she 
 lifted her free hand and beckoned me to go away 
 all in behalf of the sleeping child. There was 
 mother love, dominating need and greed alike, 
 and its manifestation set me thinking. I wrote 
 the verses you have just sung. I sent them by 
 the monthly mail to a friend in New York. I 
 never heard from them again, or thought of them 
 again. You will readily understand the surprise 
 and the interest I felt when I heard you sing 
 them." 
 
 At this point Kate interposed with the ejacula- 
 tion : " Poor fellow, I suppose you couldn't 
 
98 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 even get your laundry work done decently in 
 that out-of-the-way place ! " 
 
 It was fortunate that she did so, for it is doubtful 
 that Hazel, who had been greatly moved by the 
 story, could have made any answer at all on the 
 instant. The interruption gave her a chance to 
 recover, and presently she said: 
 
 "It is very, very interesting, but, Kate, 
 you are yawning surreptitiously. Don't you 
 think we'd better bid the gentlemen good 
 night?" 
 
 Kate assenting, the two women withdrew from 
 the porch and were courteously escorted to the 
 foot of the stairs. There the good nights were 
 said, but as the feminine pair mounted the 
 stairs Rhett called out : 
 
 " I suppose breakfast is served at nine o'clock, 
 as of old, Kate?" 
 
 " Yes, of course." 
 
 " Well, if I shouldn't be present on time, won't 
 you please excuse me, and go on without me? I 
 bought the most beautiful young mare to-day 
 that anybody ever saw, and I'm going to break 
 her in the morning. When I get her under con- 
 
A LOVE-SONG IN THE PORCH 99 
 
 trol I shall give her a ten or fifteen mile ride, just 
 to impress it upon her mind that I'm her master. 
 So I may not get back in time for breakfast, 
 though I'll try." 
 
VII 
 
 A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE 
 
 THE two young men sat up most of the 
 night studying Kate's affairs and the con- 
 dition into which she had got them by 
 her incapacity to understand business. The de- 
 tails need not be set forth here. The conclu- 
 sion was a compact between the two men to 
 " straighten them out somehow." 
 
 It was fortunate, as both of them recognized, 
 that Kate's interest in the plantation was only 
 for life, and that therefore no claim against her 
 could become a lien upon anything except per- 
 sonal property. 
 
 " But let me tell you, Charley," said Warren 
 Rhett, after the situation had been pretty well 
 worked out, " that I don't intend to have Kate 
 bothered in this way. She's my father's widow, 
 and she is only carrying on things as he taught 
 her to carry them on. The only trouble is that 
 
 100 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE '' 
 
 101 
 
 she doesn't know how to :nake the plantation 
 yield a revenue equal to her expenditures. Nei- 
 ther did my father, but I think I do. At any rate, 
 I'm going to study the subject and try. I'm con- 
 demned by my doctors to at least a year's idleness, 
 and I don't know where I could idle so pleasantly 
 as here at Mannamac. So I'm going to see what 
 can be done to make a Virginia plantation pay 
 as great a revenue under the new conditions as 
 it did under the old. I think it can be done. If 
 not, then at any rate my own business is well 
 organized and it will go on paying largely. Any- 
 how, I have enough to the good to take care of 
 Kate and her affairs. She simply shall not be 
 compelled, either to change her way of living, 
 or to submit to humiliation because of it." 
 
 " I applaud your sentiment," answered the 
 other, " and I so far sympathize with it that you 
 may count upon me for any help I can render 
 you in carrying out your programme." 
 
 " Well, now, may I ? " eagerly questioned 
 Rhett. " You see I don't know any other lawyer 
 in the county, and, as I understand, you are 
 already engaged on the other side in cases against 
 
102 LOVE IS- THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 at*f' ' *!' skjir't know your confounded professional 
 ethics or etiquette or whatever you call it, and I 
 don't care a continental about it. What I want 
 is your help in taking care of Kate " 
 
 " That you shall have with a right good- will," 
 answered Danforth. 
 
 " All right then," responded Rhett. " So far 
 as I can see, the claims against her amount only 
 to two or three thousand dollars " 
 
 " Less than half that, if you deduct those that 
 have already been satisfied by levies and other- 
 wise," interposed Danforth. 
 
 " So much the better. Now I am prepared, 
 personally, not only to assume responsibility for 
 every claim against her, but instantly to discharge 
 every just claim by my draft on New York, the 
 moment you say it is just and correct. If there 
 are any unjust claims and there often are in 
 such cases we'll fight them to a finish in the 
 courts, even if it costs me ten times their amount. 
 You see when there's only a woman to deal 
 with " 
 
 " I know," interrupted Danforth ; " and you 
 are quite right. Every rascal in the community 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE 103 
 
 has sought an opportunity to take advantage of 
 the situation in this case, and they have hired 
 shysters to help them. It was for that reason 
 alone that I ever took cases against her just 
 to prevent the shysters from persecuting her. 
 By the way, that reminds me of something. You 
 know Kate is fond of riding horseback, and she 
 had two favorite nags, Patty, a palfrey of excellent 
 quality, and Ingomar, a superb horse fit for 
 severe work. Well, I simply had to take both 
 of them last week, under an execution, in order 
 to prevent that reprobate Jack Wood, who also had 
 a judgment, from doing so. I took the animals 
 and had them sold by the sheriff. I didn't want 
 Kate to lose them, and as I had heard that you 
 were probably coming down here, I bought them 
 in, myself, thinking that if you came we could 
 so arrange that she should have the horses back 
 again as your property, without danger of any- 
 body levying upon them. Now that you're 
 here, I'll give you a bill of sale for them, 
 and I'll send them back to Kate's stables 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " That is very generous, and therefore it is 
 
io 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 in character, Charley. But can you really afford 
 to do it? -I ask frankly." 
 
 " And I answer frankly, yes. You know I am 
 unmarried ; I have nobody dependent upon me ; 
 I have a fairly lucrative practice, and I owe no 
 man anything but good-will, except perhaps a 
 few dollars to Levy, the storekeeper, for a box 
 or two of cigars." 
 
 " Then you smoke cigars? " 
 
 " No, of course not. I'm a Virginian. I smoke 
 a pipe. I give the cigars to my friends and 
 especially to my enemies." 
 
 " Very well. Send the horses back. But bear 
 in mind, you and I personally divide the loss. I 
 insist upon that. For the rest, I want you, if you 
 are free to do so, to become my counsel while I 
 am settling Kate's affairs. To your own clients 
 who have claims against her, you can say that I 
 assume all her just obligations and stand ready 
 to pay them. To all others, say what your learn- 
 ing in the law suggests, and I'll stand by it." 
 
 " There'll be some fights, I think." 
 
 " Well, we'll make the fights. I say to you now 
 that I won't have Kate robbed or wronged, and 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE 105 
 
 the rascals may as well understand the matter 
 in that way at the outset. I'll pay every claim 
 that you decide to be just, but I want you to fight 
 every unjust claim to the utmost limit of the law, 
 even if it costs ten times the amount involved." 
 
 " You're a born fighter, aren't you, Warren ? 
 predestined to that, as the Presbyterians say." 
 
 " I don't know. I have a conviction that right 
 is right and wrong wrong, and well, I suppose 
 it is instinctive in a gentleman to fight wrong, 
 precisely as we fight fire or smallpox, because 
 wrong is a public enemy, just as fire and pesti- 
 lence are." 
 
 He paused a moment reflecting. Then he said : 
 
 " Of course, when the fight comes, I have a 
 certain joy in it. How can a fellow help that? 
 I like to trample upon wrong, and crush it under 
 my feet." 
 
 " Yes, I understand. You weren't born to be 
 a lawyer. You were born to be a great, big, 
 strong man instead, a man who would scorn 
 to defend wrong or to enforce it against right, in 
 consideration of a fee. I tell you frankly, Warren, 
 that I detest my own profession I loath it I 
 
io6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 abhor it. It requires of those who would success- 
 fully practise it a complete surrender of man- 
 hood, an absolute abnegation of conscience, a 
 slavish subservience to the client for pay. The 
 lawyer who hopes for success must stand ready 
 to take a retainer on either side of any case, 
 wholly regardless of the merits of the case. What 
 would you think of a newspaper that accepted 
 retainers in that way, standing ready, for pay, 
 to advocate either side of any question? And 
 having accepted a retainer for the wrong, the 
 lawyer must maintain the pretence of believing 
 that the wrong is the right ; he must stultify him- 
 self by insisting upon misinterpretations of the 
 law. He must employ all the ingenuity of mind 
 that he possesses, to secure the triumph of the 
 wrong over the right. He must sacrifice his very 
 soul for his client. He must make himself parti- 
 ceps criminis in fact, if not in legal definition, 
 every day of his life. He must dicker and deal. 
 He must quibble and quirk. He is a man with a 
 ' to let ' sign on his conscience, a man whose 
 brains are for hire to the highest bidder an 
 intellectual hireling and a moral prostitute." 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE 107 
 
 " That is an awful indictment of your own 
 profession, Charley." 
 
 " Awful? Yes. And the awfullest thing about 
 it is that it is all true. The clients who stand 
 ready to pay best and to give the largest employ- 
 ment to a lawyer are precisely those who want 
 wrong done, rascality defended, and criminality 
 saved from its legitimate punishment." 
 
 Warren Rhett paced the floor backwards and 
 forwards half a dozen times before he answered. 
 Then he approached his friend and, taking his 
 hand, said: 
 
 " I sympathize with you, old fellow. What do 
 you intend to do ? " 
 
 " Thank you for the sympathy. I am going 
 to obey the dictates of a conscience that is still 
 reasonably clean. I have decided that hereafter 
 I will take no case that I do not believe to be just 
 and right, and that after I have taken a case I 
 will resolutely refuse to do anything in my client's 
 behalf which I do not believe to be just and right. 
 If my clients want something else done, they 
 must employ another lawyer. For the rest there 
 is a good deal of entirely honest work for a lawyer 
 
io8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 to do, in verifying land titles, in framing contracts, 
 in administering estates, in the prosecution of 
 honest claims and in defence against dishonest 
 ones, these things I may do as an honorable 
 man and maintain my self-respect. If I can make 
 a living in such a practice of law, I shall be con- 
 tent. If not, then I shall do something else. 
 I'll keep myself clean, anyhow. Perhaps I shall 
 ask you for a place as timekeeper, or whatever 
 else you call the man who makes record of the 
 hours at which your workmen begin and quit 
 work." 
 
 " All right, 1*11 give you a place whenever you 
 want it, which will be two days after never. Why, 
 don't you understand, you sublimated idiot, that 
 if you conduct your law practice on the lines you 
 have indicated, it is bound to become the greatest 
 and most successful law practice in this part of 
 the State? Don't you see that when once it 
 becomes known that you won't take a case till 
 you are convinced of its righteousness, and that 
 you won't do or ask anything in behalf of a client 
 till you are satisfied that it is right and just 
 don't you see that when you shall have built up 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE 109 
 
 that kind of reputation, every man who has a case 
 in court will eagerly strive to secure your services ? 
 Don't you see that the very fact of your appear- 
 ance in behalf of a client will carry weight with 
 judge and jury alike? And if it doesn't, what 
 matter? What is commonly called l success ' is 
 often the worst of all possible failures. You may 
 not make money as rapidly as the rascals do, 
 though I'm not so sure of that, but, at any rate, 
 you'll enjoy the respect of Charles Danforth and 
 of Charles Danforth' s fellow citizens and that 
 is a good deal better than money. Some day 
 perhaps they will make you a judge of our highest 
 court if they don't it will be a mistake on the 
 people's part. But whether that comes to you 
 or not as a reward, you will know, and everybody 
 else will know, that Charles Danforth is an honest 
 man and a lawyer with a conscience. 
 
 " I tell you, old fellow, there are sounder ways 
 of looking at these things than those that are 
 common among men. I was speaking to-night 
 of a time in my life when I was receiving the very 
 highest pay I ever received, and when I felt that 
 I was getting less out of life than every man has 
 
no LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 a right to expect and to exact. My ' pay ' came 
 to me in bags of silver dollars. I had to send 
 them back to the coast again by the selfsame 
 pack-mules that had toilsomely * toted ' them up 
 through the mountain passes. At the coast town 
 they were converted into paper drafts on 
 New York and in New York they were con- 
 verted into figures on the pages of a bank's ledgers. 
 Meanwhile, I couldn't spend a dollar of it all 
 for anything that I wanted in the world. I wanted 
 companionship. Not the wealth of Croesus could 
 have purchased it for me up there in the desolate 
 mountains. I would gladly have given a thousand 
 of the silver dollars that uselessly lay there in my 
 tent, awaiting transportation, to hear a plantation 
 darkey strum upon the banjo or sing absurd 
 ditties in a huskily false voice. I would gladly 
 have given other thousands of those dollars just 
 to hear the sound of human laughter for the 
 peons and the coolies never laugh. They have 
 never had occasion to learn that art and I could 
 not hear laughter at any price. I would gladly 
 have paid out thousands of those useless dollars 
 for the privilege of passing a scant half-hour in 
 
A PACT AND A PRINCIPLE in 
 
 the company of a dozen barroom loafers, simply 
 in order that I might hear human beings talk 
 again of the things that interested them, however 
 unworthy those things might be in themselves. 
 
 " When I thus fully realized how worthless 
 money is when it will not buy those things that 
 its possessor wants, I began to understand that 
 money is merely a tool, just as a wheelbarrow or 
 a crowbar or a chisel is an implement with 
 which to work when you have the materials to 
 work upon. Except as a tool it is the most value- 
 less thing in all this world, and the saddest men 
 on earth ought to be those who have spent their 
 lives in accumulating it. I can imagine nothing 
 else so tragical as the death of a man who has 
 devoted his life to mere accumulation. 
 
 " However that may be, I think you have 
 chosen not only the wiser, but the manlier part. 
 There is plenty of good, honest work for a lawyer, 
 embarrassed by a conscience, to do, and the doing 
 of it will bring him a success superior to that 
 which awaits his fellow of more elastic views of 
 human obligations. Anyhow, life means some- 
 thing more than lucre, and to win the affection of 
 
ii2 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 your fellow men and women is of far greater 
 consequence than to win the pecuniary rewards 
 of their confidence in your skill and acumen. For 
 it is true that ' Love is the sum of it all.' Good 
 night, old fellow. Sleep well, and jealously 
 cherish your high ideals of manhood ! " 
 
VIII 
 
 THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 
 
 WHEN Warren Rhett got out of bed at 
 daybreak next morning, he found his 
 cold bath awaiting him. Henry had 
 not forgotten the existence of what he could not 
 help regarding as a species of insanity on his 
 young master's part the desire, namely, to 
 get into a tub of cold water upon waking in 
 the morning. Henry was a servant of generous 
 mind, disposed to tolerate, if he could not 
 approve, the idiosyncrasies of the man he 
 served. There was nothing of the propagandist 
 or missionary spirit in Henry, and so he made 
 no attempt to convert his master to his own view, 
 that baths are evils to be avoided on general 
 principles, and that cold baths, especially in the 
 early morning, are " somethin' that no sensible 
 person would ever submit to on no account what- 
 "3 
 
ii 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 somever." He pardoned his master's imbecility, 
 and provided the hat-shaped bath-tub with 
 the cold water that his " Mas' Warren " desired. 
 
 It was not yet sunrise when young Rhett tip- 
 toed down the stairs in an effort to avoid waking 
 the sleepers, and passed out into the glorious 
 morning. 
 
 In the grounds he stumbled as it were upon 
 Hazel Cameron, who had set up an easel there, but 
 was apparently doing nothing. He greeted her 
 cordially and expressed his delighted surprise 
 that painting was one of her accomplishments. 
 
 " Oh, it isn't an accomplishment," she an- 
 swered. " It's my trade, you know. I make my 
 living by it." 
 
 Then, as if to forestall comments and compli- 
 ments, she hastily added : 
 
 " But I must give this picture up. A week ago, 
 I began to paint a picture which I intended to 
 call ' The Broken Fence.' I came out this morning 
 to work upon it, but somebody has removed the 
 fence, so that I cannot go on." 
 
 " I fear I'm the guilty person," he said. " I 
 didn't imagine there ever could be any use for 
 
THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 115 
 
 that fence. But if I may I will have it restored 
 this morning breaks and all." 
 
 " Certainly not," she answered. " I can under- 
 stand that from the point of view of an engineer, 
 whose habit it is to have things shipshape, that 
 fence was an eyesore. Besides, you couldn't 
 restore it as it was. The restoration would look 
 ' fixed up ' artificial, unreal." 
 
 " Then I have robbed you of a picture." 
 
 " Yes, in a way. But it wouldn't have been 
 much of a picture at best, and you can easily 
 replace the loss, if you will." 
 
 " I will, if you'll tell me how." 
 
 " Let me go with you to the stables and see you 
 conquer the beautiful mare you mentioned last 
 night. You see, horses are what I mostly paint, 
 and I specially like to paint them/ in vigorous 
 action. I should like to see the contest between 
 you and the mare." 
 
 He paused a moment in reflection. Then he 
 said: 
 
 " You may, if you don't mind going up into 
 the stable loft and sitting at the opening of the 
 haymow while you look. I should be afraid to 
 
u6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 have you anywhere below, as I suppose the mare 
 is really demoniacal. They tell me so, and she 
 looks the part." 
 
 " I'll be very good," she said. 
 
 " Very well, come on." 
 
 " I doubt if you find as much trouble with the 
 mare as you expect," she said, as they walked 
 toward the stables a quarter of a mile 
 away. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Well, for one thing I think you know, better 
 than the people that have handled her, how to 
 deal with her. I have always observed that a man 
 of sense but that isn't what I was really thinking 
 of. You have a peculiarly commanding manner. 
 I observed it when you were disciplining that 
 negro man last night. You didn't scold, and you 
 didn't threaten, and you didn't bluster. You 
 quietly told him what you required of him, but 
 somehow you did it in a way that made it impos- 
 sible for him to do otherwise than as you said. 
 I think some men are born with the gift of com- 
 mand, and such men secure obedience almost 
 without effort. I have noticed, too, that such men 
 
THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 117 
 
 are obeyed by animals just as they are obeyed 
 by men simply as a matter of course." 
 
 The two walked on side by side, he making 
 no reply. As they reached the stables he faced 
 her and said : 
 
 " I hope you will not misunderstand me. I 
 suppose my manner is sometimes arrogantly 
 dictatorial. It is a manner that in part I inherited 
 from my father, I suppose, but in far greater part 
 it has been acquired. You see, in the conduct of 
 my business I must not only be master I must 
 be masterful. I am set to command men in large 
 numbers, and they are mostly inferior men. They 
 have been used to obey the sharp word of com- 
 mand, so that obedience to the sharp word has 
 become habitual with them, while their disposi- 
 tion to revolt and to refuse obedience is so strong 
 that they would yield to it eagerly if they could, 
 even to the extent of slaying the man who con- 
 trols them, if they dared. In the remote moun- 
 tain regions of South America I have had as 
 many as two thousand Chinese coolies under my 
 command. Not a man among them had any 
 interest in life except to shirk work and eat and 
 
ii8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 drink in idleness. There wasn't so much as a 
 rudimentary conscience in all that company. 
 There wasn't a creature in the crowd who would 
 have hesitated, upon any moral ground, to kill 
 me and take possession of the food supplies that 
 I had in charge. The only reason they didn't 
 do that was that they feared me. Why, I know 
 not. There were two thousand of them to one of 
 me, and of course in any physical contest with 
 them I should have been immeasurably helpless. 
 As for moral suasion in the ordinary sense, it was 
 wholly out of the question. There was no moral 
 sense in any of their minds to appeal to, no per- 
 ception of right and wrong, no glimmering notion 
 of a difference between the two. But these men 
 were used to obey the word of command spoken 
 by their master. If he had spoken haltingly, or 
 with hesitation, or with any suggestion of doubt 
 as to their obedience, they would have buried 
 him that day, or more probably they would have 
 thrown his corpse to the condors, while they took 
 possession of the food stores. I hope you 
 do not think it unpardonable that under such 
 circumstances I acquired a peremptoriness of 
 
THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 119 
 
 speech and manner which seems to you offen- 
 sive." 
 
 " Oh, but it isn't offensive. It is lovely. You 
 are the kind of man who has a right I mean 
 well, I mean you don't assume you don't 
 command except when you have a right to com- 
 mand." 
 
 What the girl really meant was that Warren 
 Rhett was entitled to command, simply by virtue 
 of what she deemed his personal superiority, and 
 she narrowly missed saying something of the sort. 
 By way of escape she said : 
 
 " I think the mare will recognize your authority 
 as soon as she understands that you intend her 
 no harm." 
 
 Her prediction was fulfilled. There was a bad 
 quarter of an hour of controversy between Rhett 
 and the powerful animal, but at the end of that 
 time the mare had learned two things that 
 this man was her master, and that he was alto- 
 gether a friendly master, who meant no harm to 
 her. 
 
 When her subjection was complete, Rhett bade 
 the young woman adieu and rode away to inspect 
 
120 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the beginning of the plantation work he had 
 ordered the day before. 
 
 Once yielded, the mare's submission was so 
 complete that Rhett did not think it necessary 
 to give her the discipline of a long ride, as he had 
 intended. He deemed it enough to ride her to 
 the several points on the plantation where he had 
 ordered work begun, and so he returned to the 
 house in time for the nine o'clock breakfast, for 
 which he had an appreciative appetite. 
 
 " I suppose you have enjoyed your ride, War- 
 ren," said Kate, as she poured his coffee. 
 
 " Intensely but selfishly. To-morrow morn- 
 ing I hope I shall have you and Miss Cameron 
 for company." 
 
 " But we haven't any horses, Warren. You 
 know they've taken them all away." 
 
 " That was only for a time," he answered, 
 " and only to save them from the clutches of Jack 
 Wood. Charley Danforth here has them safe 
 in his stable, and he's going to send them back 
 here to-day. He has so fixed it that nobody can 
 ever take them away again." 
 
 " Thank you ever so much, Charley," said the 
 
THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 121 
 
 inconsequent Kate. " Of course I could have 
 bought some other riding-horses, and I was plan- 
 ning to do so. But it wouldn't have been just the 
 same as having Patty and Ingomar." 
 
 Neither of the young men had expected Kate 
 to understand, and therefore neither of them was 
 astonished by her speech. But it wasn't easy for 
 either of them to know what to say in reply. After 
 a moment of hesitation, Warren said : 
 
 " I'm sorry you didn't keep the hounds, Kate. 
 I need them very much just now." 
 
 " Well, you see there wasn't any gentleman on 
 the plantation to use them, and I didn't know 
 when you were coming back, so I thought I might 
 as well give them away. But if you really want 
 to go fox-hunting, I think I could borrow them 
 back from Mr. Talcott." 
 
 " My dear Kate, we don't go fox-hunting at 
 midsummer, with the tobacco uncut, and the corn 
 and wheat standing." 
 
 " Then what did you want the hounds 
 for?" 
 
 " Oh, only to run down your business affairs. 
 Charley and I worked nearly all night over them, 
 
122 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 and we haven't even yet run some of them to 
 cover." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so sorry you didn't tell me. I'd have 
 sent you the coffee urn and some sandwiches. 
 But how could the dogs have helped you ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't explain, but I'd like an- 
 other cup of your delicious coffee, if you 
 please." 
 
 After a little he asked : 
 
 " Have you any papers anywhere, Kate 
 receipts, bills, business letters, or anything of 
 that sort? If you have, perhaps you'd better 
 turn them over to Charley, so that he and I can 
 sort them out and arrange them." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have almost a trunk full. Your 
 father taught me always to keep business papers, 
 and I've always done it. I put them all in a trunk 
 up in the attic. I'll have it brought down after 
 breakfast, but I give you warning you mustn't 
 ask me anything about any of them, for I never 
 read one of them in my life. I'm so glad you and 
 Charley are going to take charge of them. You 
 see a woman really isn't fit for that sort of thing." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I see that clearly," answered the 
 
THE EVENTS OF A MORNING 123 
 
 young man. Then he turned to Hazel Cameron, 
 and asked : 
 
 " When do you want Dolly Yard en my 
 mare to give you a sitting ? " 
 
IX 
 
 A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 
 
 AFTER breakfast, Rhett and Danforth de- 
 voted two or three hours to a careful 
 examination of Kate's business papers. 
 Some of them were advertisements. Some 
 were bills mostly unpaid. Some were " state- 
 ments of account " from Skene & Somers, 
 the commission merchants in Richmond to 
 whom, annually, the tobacco and wheat and 
 other products of the plantation had been 
 sent for sale, and through whom orders 
 had been given for supplies. These state- 
 ments of account covered the entire period 
 that had elapsed since the death of Warren 
 Rhett's father, and they showed an annually 
 increasing indebtedness of the plantation to the 
 merchants who handled its products. 
 124 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 125 
 
 " Those fellows have been very decent, don't 
 you think?" said Danforth, after the two had 
 worked out the problem. 
 
 " Yes " answered Rhett, with a note as of 
 meditation in his utterance. " Yes very decent 
 indeed. Skene & Somers have certainly been 
 very lenient. I wonder if " 
 
 He paused in his speech, and the other took 
 it up. 
 
 " You wonder if Somers hasn't been hoping to 
 marry Kate? The little whelp, it would be just 
 like him. Miserable little manikin that he is, 
 five feet two in height and weighing not more 
 than a hundred and ten pounds, he has the assur- 
 ance " 
 
 " Come, Charley, don't let your jealousy get 
 the better of your judgment. There is not the 
 smallest danger that a woman like Kate will ever 
 seriously entertain the suit of a man like Somers. 
 In the meanwhile, Skene & Somers have cer- 
 tainly behaved very well toward Kate. Let us 
 figure up just what her indebtedness to them is, 
 and I'll draw a check for the amount and dis- 
 charge it. Then I'll look out for some other com- 
 
126 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 mission house to handle the products of Manna- 
 mac plantation." 
 
 " But why should you do that, if you think they 
 have behaved so well ? Are you jealous, too ? " 
 
 " Not in the least," laughed the other. " I'm 
 immune on that score, as you will readily see when 
 you reflect that Kate was my father's wife. But 
 I don't intend to leave the plantation's affairs 
 in the hands of any but alert business men. Skene 
 & Somers are not good business men other- 
 wise they would never have left things at loose 
 ends as they have done. They would at the very 
 least have required that Kate should give them 
 her note for the money due them. No, I thank 
 them sincerely for their lenity to Kate, but I shall 
 certainly not do business with men so negligent. 
 They'll ' go broke ' some fine morning, and it 
 might happen that they should owe Mannamac 
 the entire proceeds of a year's crop at the 
 time." 
 
 At that moment Hazel Cameron came down 
 the stairway into the great entrance- hall where 
 the two men sat. 
 
 " Pardon me," she said, shrinking back as if 
 
PARDON ME, I DIDN'T KNOW YOU GENTLEMEN WERE STILL 
 AT WORK HERE." Page 126. 
 

 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 127 
 
 in retreat. " I didn't know you gentlemen were 
 still at work here. I'll go to the garden." 
 
 " Indeed you shall not," answered Rhett. " Or 
 at any rate you shall not go alone. I haven't in- 
 spected the garden as yet, and if I may I will go 
 with you. After that, you and I will go to the 
 stables and I'll make Dolly pose for you. You 
 see, I must get her used to me, and this will be 
 a good opportunity. Henry will order your horse 
 for you, Charley, when you get ready to go. 
 And, Henry, as soon as Mr. Danforth closes and 
 locks that trunk, I want you to have a man take 
 it over to the Court- House in a cart, and deliver 
 it at his office. See to it at once, do you hear? 
 You'll be back to-night, Charley ? Then ta ta 
 so long and all the rest of the partings. Come 
 as early as you can, and be sure to be here before 
 supper, or Kate will be distressed." 
 
 With that he gently took Hazel's elbow in his 
 hand and piloted her to the garden. 
 
 The walks there were a good deal grass grown, 
 and no bed in all that acre of highly fertilized 
 land had been properly weeded. The glass of 
 the cold frames was broken in many places but 
 
128 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 that could wait, as the cold frames were needed 
 only in the spring, and the paling fence that 
 surrounded the enclosure, and was intended 
 to keep the hares out, was in many places out of 
 repair. 
 
 Rhett took in the situation at a glance, but for 
 the moment he said nothing. Instead he went 
 to some rose-bushes and gathered a handful of 
 American beauties, which he presented to Hazel. 
 Then he called to the head gardener, who was not 
 far away, and when the negro came to him he 
 spoke with him in an entirely unemotional voice. 
 
 " Your garden is in very bad shape," he said. 
 " Would you mind telling me why ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, you see I'se a little short o' help in 
 de gyarden." 
 
 " How many assistants have you ? " 
 
 " Four; but one on 'em's only a boy." 
 
 " And the garden covers a little less than an 
 acre? Four men and a boy, cultivating so small 
 a space, ought not to leave a weed in existence. 
 Call your assistants and set them at work at once 
 on those beds " pointing. 
 
 " But I can't call 'em now, Mas' Warren." It 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 129 
 
 was the first time the negro had lapsed into the 
 old form of address. 
 
 " Why not ? Have you lost your voice ? " 
 
 " No, sir, but you see, sir " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I see, clearly enough. I see weeds 
 everywhere and the grossest kind of neglect. 
 Call your assistants at once." 
 
 " But I can't, Mas' Warren. You see dey's a 
 succus " the man meant circus " over at 
 de Court- House, an* all de boys is gone to see it." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ? How happens it that you are 
 not there, too ? " 
 
 " Well, you see, Mis' Kate, she done sot me a 
 job to do this morning, an* so I made up my min' 
 not to go till 'twas time to go into de tent. Dat'll 
 be long 'bout two o'clock." 
 
 "Oh, I see," answered Rhett, still speaking 
 in the level and unimpassioned voice that had 
 been his from the first. " So you are going to the 
 Court-House to see the circus, too, and your 
 assistants went early this morning to make a day 
 of it. Have any of you asked permission of your 
 Mis' Kate?" 
 
 " W'y, no, of course not, Mas' Warren. Since 
 
1 30 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 we's been sot free we don't have to ask no per- 
 mission." 
 
 " Oh, you don't ? Then you are a good deal 
 freer than any white man is, who works for wages. 
 Miss Cameron, here is something that will interest 
 you. It is a dwarf morning-glory convolvulus 
 major, you know and the history of it is pecul- 
 iar. When I was a boy here at Mannamac, I 
 sowed some morning- glory seeds in a bed of barren 
 gravel, where I wanted to cover up some ugliness. 
 They sprouted, but the vines reached only an 
 inch or two or perhaps three in height, and they 
 bore diminutive flowers, like these not over a 
 quarter of an inch in their greatest dimension. 
 They made seed, however, and I sowed the seed 
 here in good soil. It produced the dwarf flowers 
 again, to my astonishment, and obviously, it is 
 producing them still. Don't you think it is very 
 interesting?" 
 
 " Perhaps the dwarf form is natural to the 
 plant," she answered, conjecturally. " Perhaps 
 it has been brought into larger form only by 
 cultivation, and has seized upon an opportunity 
 to revert." 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 131 
 
 " I thought of that, but it isn't the right answer. 
 You see the morning-glory grows wild all over the 
 South. In Mississippi it is one of the most prolific 
 of the weeds that fret the cotton- fields. It is 
 beneficent in its way. It covers every old stump 
 and converts every neglected rail pile into an 
 object of beauty. But it tries to clamber over all 
 the cotton-plants as well, choking them to death, 
 and its suppression involves a world of labor. 
 But everywhere, in its wild state, the morning- 
 glory bears full-sized and very brilliant blossoms. 
 It is curious that in all these years of self-seeding 
 in rich soil these dwarfed morning-glories haven't 
 reverted to their norm." 
 
 " Perhaps," the girl answered, " it is because 
 it is much easier for men and animals and plants 
 to degenerate than to recover from degeneracy. 
 I think it is." 
 
 " That is a fruitful thought," he answered, 
 eagerly. Then with one of those sudden transi- 
 tions which were common with this alert-minded 
 young man, and which had become a matter of 
 interested observation to the young woman, he 
 turned again to the gardener and asked: 
 
132 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Are you going to the circus this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mas' Warren, of course, 1 couldn't miss 
 dat." 
 
 " Very well. It may interest you to know that 
 if you leave the plantation for any such purpose 
 without first asking and receiving Mrs. Rhett's 
 permission to do so, you will not be permitted 
 to come back." 
 
 " But, Mas' Warren " began the man. Rhett 
 interrupted : 
 
 " You heard what I said. I mean it. You 
 have your warning. The others were not warned. 
 I shall make their punishment lighter." 
 
 Then turning to Hazel, he said : 
 
 " Come, Miss Cameron, let's go to the stables 
 and interview Dolly Varden. Would you like 
 to have sketching materials with you, or shall 
 this be only a visit of preliminary study ? " 
 
 " You are very good," she answered, with a 
 certain suggestion of emotional disturbance in 
 her voice which Rhett did not understand. " I'll 
 take a little sketch-book and some pencils with 
 me. I might need them, you know." 
 
 But while Rhett did not understand the occa- 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 133 
 
 sion for the girl's emotion, he recognized it, and, 
 being a gentleman, he sought to provide against 
 her embarrassment. 
 
 " I wonder where Kate is? " he said. " She 
 loves a good horse, too, and if she isn't too, much 
 absorbed in some problem of ruchings or feathers 
 or furnishings of her dinner- table, she'll be glad 
 to go with us. Let's find her." 
 
 The girl stopped in the middle of the walk, 
 and, facing him almost angrily, asked: 
 
 " Why do you make fun of Kate? Don't you 
 know she is one of the noblest, as well as one of 
 the sweetest of women ? " 
 
 Rhett confronted her with all that was possible 
 of earnestness and sincerity in his eyes, and, after 
 a moment, answered : 
 
 " I know all that, and Kate knows that I know 
 it. She knows that the man who should seriously 
 affront her would have to answer to me, with a 
 rigid accounting. But it has been my habit to 
 laugh at Kate and to hear her laugh back, ever 
 since she and I were boy and girl together. And 
 in view of some things that have happened, per- 
 haps it is just as well that I am able to laugh at 
 
i 34 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Kate and Kate able to laugh back at me. Ask 
 her, in some moment of confidence. If she 
 doesn't want me to laugh at her, I'll never do it 
 again." 
 
 The girl was silent for a time, and the two 
 walked on to the house, where they were to look 
 for Kate. As they mounted the steps of the back 
 porch, Hazel said: 
 
 " I was impertinent, Mr. Rhett, and I'm sorry. 
 I hope you will forgive me." 
 
 " You were not impertinent in the least. It 
 is only that you misunderstood. Your jealousy 
 of Kate's dignity altogether pleases me. You 
 heard what I said to the gardener ? " 
 
 " Yes. But do you mean to be so hard upon 
 him as that?" 
 
 " Yes. I mean to be very hard. These negroes 
 have been taught a false doctrine by their school- 
 masters, and they must unlearn it all if they are 
 to remain at Mannamac. They have been taught 
 that their freedom carries with it a license to dis- 
 regard all obligation even the obligation of a 
 contract. It will be for their own good if I teach 
 them otherwise. At any rate, I will not have 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 135 
 
 them treat Kate who feeds them and pays them 
 as if she were of no consequence, and had no 
 authority. They must learn to respect her 
 authority and her dignity, or they must get off the 
 plantation, and that lesson is already called for 
 recitation. Just before you and I went into the 
 garden, I sent a messenger to the fields with an 
 instruction to Isaac concerning the work I had 
 ordered done to-day. I did not expect that the 
 messenger would find Isaac or any of the hands 
 at work, and he did not. They have all gone 
 to see the circus parade, and not one of them has 
 so much as asked leave. They all knew that 
 leave would be theirs for the asking. But they 
 are insolently determined not to ask leave. Very 
 well, I will teach them a truer gospel of freedom, 
 or I will drive every man jack of them off the 
 plantation. They have misinterpreted their 
 liberty in the same way with reference to their 
 work. They expect Kate to feed them and pay 
 them in strict accordance with their contracts, 
 but on their part they feel free to violate the 
 contracts at will, to neglect the work at their good 
 pleasure. It is my function to awaken their 
 
136 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 minds, as it were, to impress upon them a sense 
 of the mutuality of contracts." 
 
 "What will you do?" 
 
 " Take possession of the smoke-house key. 
 To-morrow is the day for the issue of three days' 
 rations. I shall issue only two days' supplies to 
 those who have quitted their work to-day without 
 asking leave." 
 
 " But isn't that rather hard upon them ? " 
 
 " I hope they will so regard it. Otherwise the 
 discipline would be lost upon them. At any rate, 
 it is not in the least unjust. They have contracted 
 to do three hundred days' work for three hundred 
 days' pay, and three hundred and sixty-five days' 
 food supplies. They have not done their work at 
 all faithfully, and as a consequence Kate's affairs 
 are in a state of stress. I cannot deal with that 
 now. But with to-day's malfeasance I can deal, 
 and I will, in a way that ought to enlighten their 
 minds. They have quitted pressingly needed 
 work without even asking permission. They have 
 abandoned for a day the duty for the doing of 
 which Kate is expected to pay them a day's wages 
 and give them a day's food. I shall accept their 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 137 
 
 terms. I shall dock every man of them the 
 equivalent of a day's pay and cut off a day's 
 rations. There isn't a labor union in all the land 
 that would not approve that as just and right." 
 
 " But negroes are so different, you know. Of 
 course they can't resist the temptation of a circus." 
 
 " True. But if they take their pleasure they 
 must pay for it as all other people must do, or at 
 the very least they must ask leave. They have no 
 right to expect Kate to pay them for a day's work 
 that they haven't done, unless they have her 
 permission. The fundamental error of the negroes, 
 Miss Cameron, is in supposing that they can 
 enjoy the privileges of free men without paying 
 the price that all other free men pay. They ex- 
 pect to be free and at the same time to be cared 
 for as they were in slavery. They want all the 
 persimmons and they don't want to wield the 
 pole." 
 
 " But nobody else holds them to so rigid a rule. 
 What if they refuse to submit to what you pro- 
 pose?" 
 
 " Then of course they must leave the plantation 
 at once. So long as they remain upon it, they must 
 
138 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 obey orders and fulfil the obligations of their con- 
 tracts. Their case is not different from that of 
 other men under contract to labor." 
 
 " But what about Kate ? Suppose all her hands 
 should leave in a body? Who would cultivate 
 her fields?" 
 
 " A gang of Italians under a padrone. I would 
 telegraph to my partners for them, and have them 
 here within twenty-four hours. And each man 
 of them would do more work in a day than any 
 negro has ever done on this plantation in a week. 
 Now let me make myself understood, Miss Cam- 
 eron. I know you think me hard and cruel " 
 
 " I do not think you cruel," she answered. 
 " It is only that I don't understand." 
 
 " Very well, then. You shall understand." 
 
 At that moment Kate came out of the house, 
 key basket in hand, and said: 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad to find you, Warren ! To 
 save my life, I can't make out how much seven 
 times one and three-quarters is or are, bother 
 the grammar of it the thing is serious. It 
 pertains to rations." 
 
 " Turn it over to me, Kate," the young man 
 
A DWARFED MORNING-GLORY 139 
 
 answered, " and let me have the smoke-house 
 key. For a time, at least, I'll take all these prob- 
 lems off your hands and I know how to multiply 
 one and three-quarters by seven." 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad ! You don't know how these 
 things bother me. I don't think it was fair to 
 invent fractions, anyhow. Why couldn't they 
 have left arithmetic in whole numbers? It is so 
 much easier. You see I can remember that six 
 times eight is forty-two, but when it comes to 
 fractions I'm all at sea." 
 
 " Six times eight are forty-eight, Kate," an- 
 swered Rhett, " but that isn't a matter of any 
 importance. The thing of real consequence is 
 that you shall turn your smoke-house keys over 
 to me for a time, and let me manage the distribu- 
 tion of rations. Come. Don't you want to go to 
 the stables with Miss Cameron and me? She's 
 going to make a picture of my new mare, Dolly 
 Varden." 
 
 " Why, of course I'll go. You see Hazel is a 
 genius and she'll idealize your mare or ought 
 I to say idolize? You see in girls' schools, they 
 teach things so much more loosely than they do 
 
i 4 o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 in boys' schools. Now there was that mistake 
 I made a few minutes ago, when I said that six 
 times eight was forty- eight when really it is forty- 
 two. You see no boy would be capable of a 
 blunder like that. But it's time for snack, so we 
 can't go to the stables yet. Oh, Warren, you don't 
 know how good it is to have you here to look after 
 things and especially to do the sums and slice the 
 ham. You know I can't help cutting it thick, 
 and of course that's a crime." 
 
X 
 
 THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 
 
 THE days went on agreeably at Mannamac. 
 Charley Danforth who had not visited 
 the plantation for years before came 
 every day now. Usually he arrived in the dusk 
 of the evening, though often he came in time for 
 the four o'clock dinner. In either event he 
 remained overnight, so that the evenings moon 
 or no moon saw a pleasant company assembled 
 in the porch if the weather permitted, in the 
 great drawing-room if the weather happened to 
 be unfavorable as usually it did not. The 
 weather of the Virginian midsummer rarely plays 
 tricks upon those who are disposed to rejoice. 
 On about three days out of five it furnishes what 
 the Virginians call tc a thunder-cloud," during 
 the afternoon. But the " thunder-cloud " only 
 clears the air for an evening in the porch. If there 
 
 ever was anywhere on earth a finer or more 
 141 
 
1 42 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 enjoyable climate than that of Virginia in sum- 
 mer-time, it is that of summer-time in Virginia. 
 
 And nobody ever appreciated the conditions 
 thus furnished by the climate more gratefully 
 than did the two women and the two men who 
 at this time constituted the company in the great, 
 colonnaded porch at Mannamac. 
 
 Now and then a carriage full of callers would 
 drive up, and these always received a sufficiently 
 cordial welcome to satisfy their minds. But if 
 they did not come, the four who constituted the 
 resident company there in the porch made no 
 complaint of the fortune that kept others away. 
 After all, the callers were apt to be " new people " 
 in Virginia, and " Well, we can be happy with- 
 out them," Kate was accustomed to say. 
 
 It had been so very long since Charley Dan- 
 forth had been at Mannamac, that naturally he 
 had a great deal to say to Kate, and she a great 
 deal to communicate to him. This, of course, 
 threw Warren Rhett and Hazel Cameron each 
 upon the other as the only available conversa- 
 tional resource, and of necessity the personal 
 acquaintance of the two rapidly ripened. 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 143 
 
 Warren had been attracted by the peculiar 
 charm of Hazel's manner, as she had been fas- 
 cinated with his personality and with his character 
 as it little by little unfolded itself. She rarely 
 spoke of herself or of her affairs never, indeed, 
 except in answer to direct questions so that it 
 was very slowly that Warren learned anything 
 about her. He might have got the whole story 
 from Kate, of course if Kate could have kept 
 her attention upon the telling of it long enough 
 to enlighten him, without going off at a tangent 
 of thought or memory. Indeed, Kate really 
 wanted to tell him about Hazel, and to that end 
 she one evening deliberately " changed partners," 
 as it were, sending Danforth out into the shrub- 
 bery to talk with Hazel, while she herself retired 
 with Rhett to the back porch with the avowed 
 purpose of " telling him all about Hazel." But 
 she made no very great success out of the effort, 
 as a report of what happened upon that occasion 
 will perhaps show. 
 
 " There," Kate said, as the two began to 
 promenade the rear porch, " there ! I've got 
 those two off at last, and I am going to tell you 
 
144 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 all about Hazel. You see, Warren, she's the very 
 dearest, sweetest girl in the world " 
 
 " Oh, that's like a deaf and dumb asylum," 
 he interrupted. 
 
 "A deaf and dumb asylum? How on earth 
 do you mean, Warren?" 
 
 " Why, simply that it ' goes without saying.'" 
 
 " I don't understand you at all." 
 
 " Of course not. Don't try to. Just believe 
 that I am well, let us say, very greatly pleased 
 with your friend, Miss Hazel Cameron, so greatly 
 pleased as to need no praise of her at your hands. 
 Then go on and tell me about her. Give her a 
 local habitation and a name. Where did you find 
 her? Who is she? Whence cometh she? Tell 
 me about her." 
 
 " But I can't if you go on interrupting me in 
 that way. You see I started to tell you how 
 charming she is " 
 
 " And I had discovered all that for myself " 
 
 " There you go, interrupting me again ! How 
 can I tell you about her if you won't let me talk ? 
 You see, men can be interrupted and then come 
 back to what they wanted to say and say it straight. 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 145 
 
 Women can't do that. Yes, Hazel can, and often 
 she does. That's one of the things about her that 
 fascinate me. Where was I ? Oh, I know but 
 you interrupt so. I was going to say that I sup- 
 pose the difference between women and men is 
 due to the different ways they are taught at school. 
 Still, there's Hazel, of course. She was in the 
 same school with me, and yet she's different. Of 
 course she was much younger than me and I 
 suppose that makes a difference. Or ought I to 
 say she was younger than I ? I never can remem- 
 ber which is right, and Hazel always knows. Isn't 
 it queer? But as I was about to say, of course, 
 under the circumstances you simply mustn't fall 
 in love with Hazel, though if I were a man I'd 
 do it anyhow, and take the consequences." 
 
 Rhett was about to ask, " What circumstances 
 do you refer to, Kate? You haven't mentioned 
 any that seem to forbid me to fall in love with 
 your friend, as I am strongly disposed to do," but 
 he felt in his soul that the query would result in 
 nothing. Furthermore, he vaguely realized that 
 he had already done the thing that Kate's utterly 
 unrevealed " circumstances " forbade him to do; 
 
146 LOVE IS THE SUM OP IT ALL 
 
 and still furthermore, at that moment Hazel and 
 Danforth having exhausted interest in each 
 other's conversational resources perhaps 
 marched through the great passageway and con- 
 fronted the other two with the announcement that 
 the gibbous moon was just then beginning to 
 climb the eastern sky, and that certain of its light 
 and shadow effects, as revealed among the trees 
 in front, were " really too fine to be missed." 
 
 Thus ended Kate's carefully arranged effort 
 to tell Warren " all about Hazel." Kate was sure 
 she had done so, and her soul was satisfied. 
 
 Warren was not seriously disappointed. He 
 felt that he knew a good deal about Hazel already, 
 and he had confidence in his ability to discover 
 the rest, particularly as he and Hazel were now 
 riding together every morning, while Danforth 
 and Kate managed somehow to keep a hundred 
 yards or so in the rear. Sometimes the hundred 
 yards' interval stretched itself to half a mile or 
 more. 
 
 As he and Hazel rode they talked, but that was 
 by no means all of it. The two were comrades 
 in other ways. They discussed books and art; 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 147 
 
 they exchanged views as to social relations, moral- 
 ities, and the like, little by little coming to under- 
 stand each other and more and more to appre- 
 ciate each other. 
 
 There were certain characteristics of Warren 
 Rhett that filled Hazel with amazement and 
 admiration, though the individual manifestations 
 of the qualities were in themselves trifling. She 
 had already been much impressed by his peculiar 
 gift of securing obedience even from the unwilling, 
 and without any sort of bluster. She had spoken 
 of this to Kate, and Kate had answered : 
 
 " Oh, yes. He's just like his father, only more 
 so. Whatever he makes up his mind for you to 
 do you've simply got to do, and that's all there is 
 about it. Sometimes you don't want to, or you 
 think you don't want to, or at least you think that 
 you think you don't want to I've got that mixed, 
 but you know what I mean. It was always so, 
 even when he and I were boy and girl together. 
 That's what made it so hard for me when his 
 father decided to marry me, so hard to tell him 
 about it, you know, but I must say he made it 
 .as easy as he could for me. Why, he didn't 
 
148 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 even laugh, Hazel! Don't you think that was 
 very nice of him? " 
 
 " I think Mr. Rhett's conduct on that occasion 
 was exemplary," the girl replied. " You've told 
 me all about it before, you know ? " 
 
 " Did I ? I had forgotten. Well, then let's talk 
 of something else. Do you know, I don't think 
 green is becoming to me, do you ? " 
 
 "Why not consult Mr. Rhett on that point? 
 His taste seems to be excellent, so far as I can 
 discover." 
 
 " Oh, I know what he would advise. He'd 
 dress me in deep reds, if he had his way. He 
 always did when when I was a girl and he 
 cared about it." There was just a touch of 
 melancholy in her tone. " Once when I had only 
 one red gown and it got a bit worn, he wouldn't 
 let me wear anything else, till I simply had to send 
 and get some others like it. That's what we were 
 talking about, isn't it ? his way of making every- 
 body do as he says ? " 
 
 " Yes, that is what we were talking about," 
 answered Hazel, abstractedly. Hazel understood 
 Kate better than anybody else ever did. Perhaps 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 149 
 
 that is why the two were bound together in so 
 perfect a friendship. 
 
 One morning, when the little cavalcade was 
 setting out for a ride of a dozen miles before 
 breakfast, Dolly Varden seemed a good deal more 
 restless than usual. She wanted to do things to 
 run, to jump fences, to break her own or her 
 rider's neck to do anything that might break 
 monotony anything that might enable her to 
 express herself and to work off some of the 
 pent-up energy within her. She bit at the other 
 horses. She kicked at them viciously. She struck 
 out with a fore foot at the negro who was holding 
 her head, so terrifying him that he abandoned his 
 duty and fled. 
 
 Rhett soothed the excited creature with caresses 
 of voice and hand. Then he mounted to the saddle 
 and with one sharp command to her to " be still," 
 reduced her to subjection. She continued, how- 
 ever, to tremble with suppressed excitement, and 
 Rhett, taking pity upon her, turned to his com- 
 panions and said: 
 
 " Excuse me for a brief while. The poor 
 creature wants a little run, just to relieve her over- 
 
150 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 wrought nerves. Ride out along the Pine Quarter 
 road, and I'll join you after she has had her spin." 
 
 Then turning the mare in an opposite di- 
 rection, he gave her her head, permitting her to 
 choose her own pace. She chose full speed, and 
 when, after half a mile of it, he turned her about, 
 she voluntarily fell into a graceful gallop, which 
 ended in a trot, as he caught up with the rest of 
 the company on the Pine Quarter road. As he 
 rode up by the side of Hazel, he called to his mare 
 to " Walk ! " and she instantly obeyed having 
 worked off the nervous excitement that had 
 tormented her. 
 
 A few moments later the party met a negro 
 boy mounted bareback on a mule a boy whom 
 Kate had sent with certain notes of hers to neigh- 
 bors, summoning the elect among them to be her 
 guests at dinner that day ; for Kate was troubled 
 that she had in no formal fashion marked Warren's 
 return to the home of his fathers. 
 
 Warren stopped the boy with a question : 
 
 "Why didn't you curry and water that mule 
 before you started ? " 
 
 "Well sir, you see " 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 151 
 
 "Yes, I see. That's enough. The mule's 
 coat is rough and dirty, and its hollow flanks 
 show clearly that it is suffering for want of water. 
 Go on home. Give the beast all the water it wants, 
 and then curry it properly. I'll look at it when I 
 get back. After you've done that after it, 
 remember tell Everard I want him to build a 
 fence enclosing the ground around this mare's 
 stable about an acre of it for a paddock. 
 Tell him there are a lot of rails in piles down in 
 the dense woods by the second bridge over the 
 creek, where the fence was removed a year or so 
 ago. He can use them for the paddock." 
 
 Then turning to the girl by his side, he said : 
 
 " The mare needs a little more liberty, and a 
 paddock will give it to her." 
 
 " I'm glad you look at liberty in that way," 
 said Hazel. 
 
 "Precisely, how do you mean?" he asked, 
 adding : " I'm interested." 
 
 " Why, that liberty is something to which every 
 living creature is entitled, but that its enjoyment 
 must be regulated, restricted, restrained." 
 
 He thought a moment, and then said: 
 
152 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " I wish you would enlarge upon your thought. 
 There is back of it something that it might be 
 intellectually profitable for me to hear." 
 
 " Well, it seems to me that restraint upon 
 liberty is necessary to the highest enjoyment of 
 liberty itself. You plan to give Dolly Varden a 
 certain liberty, liberty to walk or run about 
 over an acre or so of ground, liberty to lie down 
 and roll, when she pleases. But you are going to 
 put a fence around her paddock. If you didn't 
 she would wander away into the corn-fields or 
 the wheat-fields, and to-morrow she would die 
 of founder. Absolute liberty would be fatal to 
 her." 
 
 " I see," he said, after a moment's pause. 
 "But how about intelligent human beings? I 
 have a theory that every human being born into 
 this world has a right to do precisely as he pleases, 
 so long as in doing as he pleases he does not, 
 directly or indirectly, interfere with or abridge 
 the equal right of any other human being to do 
 as he pleases." 
 
 The two rode on for a space before the girl 
 replied : 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 153 
 
 " Your doctrine is sound enough, I think, but 
 in practical effect we are too apt to forget the 
 ' so long as ' the qualification, the necessary 
 limitation upon liberty." 
 
 " Would you mind illustrating? " he asked. 
 
 " Well, if you were minded to make all that 
 is possible of discordant noise, and if you came out 
 here into these woodlands that belong to you, and 
 that are remote from the dwellings of your fellow 
 men, you might whoop and halloo, and beat tom- 
 toms to your heart's content, and you would be 
 within your right. But if you invaded the residence 
 streets of a city with such noises, thereby robbing 
 other people of their right to peace, you would be 
 justly arrested and punished. Most of the injus- 
 tices that afflict us in life, it seems to me, are due 
 solely to that kind of forgetfulness of the limita- 
 tions of liberty." 
 
 The girl had never made so long a speech in 
 her life, before, but under inspiration of this man's 
 mind she had begun to think seriously, and her 
 utterance was a first fruit of that serious thinking. 
 She shrank a little from further expression, but 
 there was one more thought in her mind that it 
 
i 5 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 seemed necessary to utter, if only to complete 
 what she had said. 
 
 " In brief," she continued, " every obligation 
 that we assume in life, and not only so, but every 
 obligation that circumstances impose upon us, 
 is a limitation upon liberty. The very existence 
 of other people in the same world with us is a 
 paddock fence around us, restraining us from 
 straying into forbidden fields." 
 
 As they talked, they came to a plantation gate 
 across the public road. Rhett forced his mare 
 unwillingly up to it and opened it, without inter- 
 rupting the conversation. A little later they came 
 upon that one of the negroes who posed as the 
 carpenter and general master mechanic of the 
 plantation, and Warren addressed him : 
 
 " Tom," he said, " that gate across the road 
 back there is in a bad way. The top hinge has 
 three of its screw-holes rusted out, and it is cracked 
 all the way across. The gate will be sagging 
 presently and difficult to open or shut. I want 
 you to fix it at once. If you'll look in the passage- 
 way of the big corn- crib about half-way back, 
 on the third log from the top, you'll find a good 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 155 
 
 hinge that has never been used. Put it on the 
 gate and don't use screws in doing so. Use 
 wrought nails the biggest you've got and 
 clinch them thoroughly." 
 
 The man answered sullenly: 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Thereupon Rhett called back to him : 
 
 " I'll inspect the work after it is done. See 
 that it is well done." 
 
 A few minutes later the girl asked: 
 
 "Why did you do that?" 
 
 "Why did I do what?" 
 
 " Why did you call back at him in that way, 
 saying you would inspect the work?" 
 
 " Oh, I see," he answered, with a little laugh. 
 " Well, Tom knows he ought to have discovered 
 and remedied the condition of that gate long ago. 
 He knows he is under my censure for not having 
 done so, and he resents it. If I hadn't warned 
 him that I would inspect his work he would have 
 done it in a fashion to defeat my purpose. You 
 see the negroes on this plantation are beginning 
 to resent my coming. They have had a good, easy, 
 indolent time of it, and my coming has made an 
 
156 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 end of all that. I am insisting that they shall earn 
 their wages, and that seems to them a cruel hard- 
 ship. They resent it as an injustice, a wrong, 
 an invasion of their rights, a trespass upon their 
 liberty, or, as they call it, their freedom. They 
 are planning resistance, and they don't know how 
 to resist. Tom doesn't want to put that hinge on 
 the gate, not because of the little work involved, 
 but because I have ordered it. If he dared, he 
 would so put it on as to defeat my purpose. He 
 would set it so that the gate would sag and be 
 hard to open and shut the very thing I wish 
 to avoid. But now that I have warned him that 
 I will inspect his work, he will not dare do that." 
 
 Hazel made no reply for a time. After awhile 
 she said: 
 
 " It seems to me very wonderful." 
 
 "What does?" 
 
 " Why, the way in which you see things. When 
 we met that chap on the mule, back there, your 
 mind was certainly upon something else, but you 
 instantly observed that the mule had not been 
 curried and that its hollow flanks indicated a want 
 of water." 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 157 
 
 " All that," he replied, " was obvious enough. 
 I must have been blind not to see it at a 
 glance." 
 
 " Perhaps so. But how on earth did you see 
 the top hinge of that gate, and count the broken 
 screw- holes, or whatever they were, while you 
 were busily engaged forcing Dolly up to the latch 
 and at the same time carrying on a conversation 
 with me about a matter that required very careful 
 thought? And again how came you to know 
 precisely where those rails were, and precisely 
 where that hinge was, and all the rest of it ? It 
 seems to me very wonderful." 
 
 " I think perhaps I understand that," he 
 replied. " And yet it seems simple enough. In 
 my profession everything depends upon the 
 engineer's alert observation. A weak spot unob- 
 served anywhere may cost scores or even hun- 
 dreds of human lives. I remember once observ- 
 ing a very little sipe of water from above, when I 
 was constructing a tunnel under a stream. I 
 saw instantly that there was a dangerously weak 
 point in construction, and tracing it to its source 
 I saw that there was a pillar out of plumb because 
 
158 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 of a defective foundation. An enormous weight 
 a weight that it would not be worth while to 
 express to you in figures rested upon that 
 pillar, which was in danger of giving way at any 
 moment. If it had given way, nearly a hundred 
 men at work in that hole would have perished." 
 
 " What did you do ? " asked the girl, nearly 
 choking with emotion. 
 
 " I ordered the men to run for their lives." 
 
 "And you ran, too, of course?" 
 
 " No, of course not. It was my duty to stay 
 there, to inspect, to devise a remedy. You see 
 the threatened collapse, if it had occurred, would 
 have cost my employers a million dollars or 
 more." 
 
 " Let's gallop our horses ! " said the girl ex- 
 citedly, and the next half-mile was quickly covered. 
 When the horses settled down to a dog- trot again, 
 which presently lapsed into a walk, Hazel turned 
 her face full upon her escort and said: 
 
 11 Will it be an impertinence if I beg you to tell 
 me the rest of that story? " 
 
 " Oh, there isn't any story to tell. I only men- 
 tioned the incident to explain why a man of my 
 
THE BIRTH OF ACQUAINTANCE 159 
 
 profession must cultivate habits of quick observa- 
 tion." 
 
 " Yes, I understand that. But what did you 
 do ? How long did you remain there ? And what 
 happened afterwards? I simply must know the 
 sequel to the story." 
 
 Rhett smiled, but did not laugh. He under- 
 stood and profoundly respected the girl's excited 
 enthusiasm. In a placid voice, he answered : 
 
 " I suppose I stayed there for three or four 
 hours. I didn't time it, but I remember the 
 measurements 1 had to take and the calculations 
 I had to make, and so I think it must have taken 
 me three or four hours to plan the work of recon- 
 struction." 
 
 " But what did you do then ? " asked the girl 
 in a tone so eager that it seemed almost angry. 
 
 " Why, I went out to the mouth of the bore, 
 ordered the tools and materials needed, and called 
 for volunteers to do the work of safeguarding. 
 I could not order any man to put his life in such 
 danger, of course." 
 
 " And did any of them volunteer? " 
 
 " Yes, every man of them. There wasn't a 
 
160 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 coward among them. There rarely is a coward 
 among the men who do the world's work in 
 America." 
 
 " And so you took them all back ? " 
 
 " No ; only ten of them. It was not necessary 
 to risk the lives of more." 
 
 " Let's gallop again ! " she said, and at the 
 end of the gallop she turned to him appealingly 
 and pleaded: 
 
 " Let's go home now ! " 
 
 When she and Kate went above stairs to change 
 their gowns the turned to her friend with passion 
 and said : 
 
 " Kate, there are heroes in this world who never 
 heard a bullet whistle, or faced a cannon fire ! " 
 
 " I suppose there are," said Kate, placidly. 
 " Diana, won't you come here and unhook this 
 thing? I've got it caught in something." 
 
XI 
 
 MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 
 
 AFTER a month or so, there came certain 
 evenings when Charley Danforth's some- 
 what neglected professional engagements 
 peremptorily forbade him to pass the time at 
 Mannamac. He had clients to see at his office. 
 He had consultations to attend in Richmond. 
 He had papers of importance to draw. Whatever 
 the reason, he reluctantly stayed away from 
 Mannamac now and then, and the reluctance 
 was very real. 
 
 On such evenings Kate was apt to have a 
 headache, whether consequently or merely coin- 
 cidently, both Rhett and Hazel were too polite 
 even to conjecture. The not unpleasing result 
 was that about twice a week there was a long 
 tete-a-tete conversation between Rhett and the 
 young woman. 
 
 On one of these occasions he said to her: 
 161 
 
i62 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " You haven't yet painted Dolly Varden. 
 Doesn't she please you ? " 
 
 " Yes, she pleases me very much so much 
 that I'm going to ask you to let me try to ride her 
 soon." 
 
 " You shall do that, if you think you can man- 
 age her, and I'll be there to help keep her in sub- 
 jection. But why haven't you painted the pic- 
 ture? The sketch seemed to me excellent." 
 
 " I've given it up," she answered, " because 
 I really have no capacity. You see, a picture of 
 the mare without her rider would look just like 
 Dolly or any other mare. The differences would 
 all be in the pigments. She should be painted 
 with you on her back, if painted at all. I realized 
 that on that first morning, out there at the stable. 
 Then I tried to paint the picture that way, and 
 failed miserably, as I always do when I try to 
 paint real pictures." 
 
 " But, I don't understand." 
 
 " Why, you see, Mr. Rhett, I have no real 
 ability. I have only a certain technical facility. 
 When a proud horse-owner wants a portrait of 
 his animal, I can produce it for him. I can draw 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 163 
 
 the form correctly, and reproduce every detail 
 of color and of light or shade. But such things 
 aren't pictures. The only horse pictures I ever 
 painted the only ones I mean that are anything 
 more than mere portraits are hanging in bar- 
 rooms." 
 
 She said this with a disgust that had a trace 
 of bitterness in it. 
 
 Very gently he asked : 
 
 " Would you mind telling me how that comes 
 about? Don't say a word if the subject dis- 
 tresses you." 
 
 " I have wanted to tell you about this," she 
 said. " You know Kate and her ways. She has 
 several times told you that I'm a * genius ' and 
 can do anything. I have tried to hush her, but 
 she persists, and her persistence puts me in a 
 false position. It makes me seem to pose as a 
 .gifted woman, when I am nothing of the sort, and 
 I am glad of an opportunity to set myself right 
 in your eyes. Of course there are no real geniuses 
 among women there never was one, there 
 never will be one, and to say truth there never 
 .ought to be one." 
 
1 6 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," he answered. " I 
 have never thought the matter out. However, 
 that will keep till another time. At present I 
 want to hear about yourself whatever you are 
 disposed to tell me." 
 
 " The other subject is much the more inter- 
 esting," she replied. " Or at any rate it ought to 
 be, and would be, if it were not that personal 
 gossip is, after all, the one thing of chief interest 
 to human beings." 
 
 " Just how do you mean ? I am interested in 
 that suggestion." 
 
 " Why, you have been a guest at many dinner- 
 parties, of course, and you have attended many 
 receptions. You must have observed that nine- 
 tenths of the conversation at such functions is 
 personal talk about other people in short, 
 gossip, whether of a pleasant sort or the reverse. 
 Indeed, as you very well know, it is considered 
 * bad form ' to indulge in any other sort of conver- 
 sation on such occasions. I suppose that is 
 because if you should happen to say anything 
 intelligent, anything thoughtful, anything really 
 worth saying, your interlocutor might not be able 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 165 
 
 to respond intelligently. That would expose his 
 or her ignorance or lack of brains, uncomfortably. 
 Anyhow, the talk upon such occasions is all 
 chatter, chatter, chatter, and mostly it is personal. 
 We discuss Miss X's peculiar lack of color sense, 
 as illustrated by her gowns, or we talk of the lack 
 of sympathy in Miss Y's voice when she sings 
 with exquisite correctness, or we discuss Miss 
 Z's irrepressible tendency to giggle on all occa- 
 sions, and so on to the end of the chapter. It is 
 all personal, and mainly it is all carpingly cen- 
 sorious." 
 
 " Yes. And that is why so many men of brains 
 withdraw themselves from social functions and 
 always have a headache or a severe cold or a 
 ' previous engagement ' when such functions are 
 on. That is why we have no salons in which 
 brilliant men and women meet to discuss and to 
 influence literature, art, and public affairs. The 
 majority of the company in every case is stupid 
 and uninformed. Upon humane considerations 
 society decrees that serious subjects shall not be 
 mentioned upon social occasions lest the vacuous, 
 the uninformed, the thoughtless, be put at a 
 
1 66 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 disadvantage. But I want to hear about the horse 
 pictures." 
 
 " Oh, it is a simple story. I have painted many 
 stupid portraits of horses just about as valu- 
 able or as valueless as so many colored photo- 
 graphs might be. They are cherished by the 
 owners of the horses, just as family photographs 
 are kept in an album or framed and hung upon the 
 walls. Twice in my life I have made real pictures 
 of horses twice only because only twice have 
 I had the opportunity. One of those pictures is 
 called ' The Finish.' It represents the head and 
 fore-quarters only of a race-horse, coming directly 
 toward you as he crosses the line a winner. The 
 face of the horse and the face of his rider con- 
 stitute the picture. You will believe that the 
 painting of it interested me when I tell you that 
 in order to make my studies of those intensely 
 eager faces of winning horses and winning men, 
 I fifteen times placed myself just in front of the 
 finish wire and depended upon my agility and my 
 good luck to save my life. 
 
 " The other picture is called ' Afterwards.' 
 It is the picture of a noble trotter grazing 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 167 
 
 luxuriously in a blue grass pasture, after his 
 owner has finally withdrawn him from the 
 turf as a horse that has done his work well. 
 I tried to put into it some suggestion of the fiery 
 vigor still remaining in the horse's soul, the 
 grit, the spirit, the self-confidence, and the readi- 
 ness to try conclusions upon fair terms, to- 
 gether with some suggestion of the noble animal's 
 enjoyment of his well-earned rest there in the blue 
 grass pasture. I painted both pictures lovingly. 
 I painted them both upon commission from a 
 dealer in pictures, and he sold both to be hung in 
 a sumptuous barroom where horsemen, book- 
 makers, and * sporting men ' congregate. Of 
 course I can never see either of them 
 again." 
 
 ." Of course not," he answered, " and it seems a 
 pity. But I should like to see them myself . Would 
 you mind telling me where to find them the next 
 time I go to New York? I don't mind visiting 
 barrooms." 
 
 She told him. 
 
 Early the next morning he sent a chap to the 
 railroad station, to send off a telegram. Ten days 
 
1 68 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 later the two pictures were hung upon the walls 
 of the great hall at Mannamac. 
 
 That, however, occurred ten days later. To- 
 night the conversation went on with no suggestion 
 in it of the purpose thus later fulfilled. 
 
 " I want to bring you back," he said presently, 
 " to what you were saying about women that 
 there has never been a really great genius among 
 women. Here comes Kate to help us discuss the 
 subject." 
 
 " Oh, that's all nonsense," said Kate, cuddling 
 herself into a corner. The spacious hall and porch 
 chairs did not appeal to the little woman. She 
 preferred a door-step, a nook, a corner, or, if none 
 of these was available, she preferred to collect her- 
 self, as it were, Turkish fashion, upon the floor. 
 " Why, Hazel, you're a great genius yourself. 
 You paint lovely pictures, and you're pretty, and 
 you talk charmingly. Besides that you can do 
 exquisite wood-carving, you can sing, you can 
 play the mandolin divinely, and I never in my 
 life saw apple dumplings that equalled those you 
 made for me a little while ago. By the way, you 
 are to make some more to-morrow. And when are 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 169 
 
 mince pies in season, anyhow? I want you to 
 try your hand at them. And you know you are 
 the only woman I ever saw who knew how to 
 carve thin slices from a ham. That reminds me, 
 I must tell Henry to sharpen two or three of the 
 case-knives that have been worn thin by scouring. 
 Don't you agree with me, Warren, that Hazel is a 
 genius and that there's nothing so good to slice a 
 cold ham with as a case-knife that has been worn 
 down by scouring till it's a mere film of 
 steel?" 
 
 " My dear Kate, I make it a rigid rule of con- 
 duct to agree with you in all your opinions, 
 whether they relate to genius or to ham, whether 
 they concern themselves with creation or with 
 cutlery." 
 
 " Now you are laughing at me. I know by 
 your way of putting it. But I don't mind. 
 You see, Hazel, I got used to Warren when he and 
 I were boy and girl together. But go on and tell 
 him what you were going to." 
 
 " Oh, it was nothing. I only said that there 
 never had been a really great genius among 
 women, and I think that is true." 
 
1 7 o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " There was Sappho, you know," suggested 
 Rhett. 
 
 " But was she a really great poet ? If so, why 
 is it that her work has not survived ? Practically 
 all that we know about it is from hearsay upon 
 the testimony of the critics of her time, and they 
 were confessedly her personal admirers, her 
 lovers, in fact. If her poetry was really great, 
 why has none of it survived as the verses of Homer 
 and ^Eschylus and the other Greek poets have 
 done?" 
 
 "There was Elizabeth Barrett Browning," 
 suggested Rhett. 
 
 " She was a woman of delightful personality," 
 answered the girl; "she was the heroine of a 
 tenderly interesting romance ; she was the wife of 
 a great poet ; and she was undoubtedly a woman 
 of rare gifts. But was she really a woman of 
 genius? As a poet, would you think of classing 
 her with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Keats, 
 Byron, or Shelley ? Is there a poem of hers or 
 a stanza or a line that lingers in your memory 
 so that you are irresistibly compelled to recall it 
 when her name is mentioned ? Is there anything 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 171 
 
 in her work that sticks to you in the same way that 
 Bayard Taylor's ' Song of the Camp ' does, or 
 in the same way that Owen Meredith's * Aux 
 Italiens ' does ? I should not class either Owen 
 Meredith or Bayard Taylor with Byron, Shelley, 
 Keats, Wordsworth, Scott, and Coleridge, but at 
 any rate each of them has written something that 
 so strongly appeals to the mind as to become an 
 integral, structural part of one's thinking. I 
 cannot recall that Mrs. Browning ever did that. 
 That she was a poet, I admit, but that she was a 
 great poet, no. So far as I can discover no woman 
 has won that place none has ever risen to the 
 highest levels of achievement, though many have 
 attained a creditably high level." 
 
 " I believe you are right," said Rhett, medita- 
 tively, " and it seems very strange." 
 
 "Why so strange?" 
 
 " Why, because poetry is the one art in which 
 we should naturally expect women to excel. 
 With their exalted sensitiveness, and with their 
 extreme inclination to sentiment, it would seem 
 that they ought to excel men in poetry and 
 romance and painting." 
 
172 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " It is your gallantry, Mr. Rhett, that suggests 
 that," said Hazel. 
 
 " I do not think so. But it may perhaps be 
 my gallantry supplementing whatever logical 
 faculty I have which suggests an explanation." 
 
 "Good! good!" exclaimed Kate. "What is 
 the explanation ? " 
 
 " Why, that women are themselves poems 
 in their personality and in their lives. They 
 stand always too close to poetic things to see 
 them in perspective as men may do. Now that I 
 think of it most of the men who have written great 
 poetry led lives so far removed from the finer 
 things as to give them a very full perspective 
 view indeed. Scott was a publisher, Milton a 
 secretary, Byron a drunkard, Shelley a libertine, 
 and Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ben Jonson, 
 so far as we know anything about them, were 
 habitue's of tavern tap- rooms, and perhaps 
 brawlers there Marlowe died in a tavern 
 brawl, you know. All of them stood far enough 
 away from the finer sentiments to admire them 
 unstintedly far enough away to reflect them in 
 full perspective in the mirrors of their minds." 
 
MEN, WOMEN, AND GENIUS 173 
 
 Kate clapped her little hands, with a joyous 
 laugh, and said: 
 
 " Now I'm satisfied, Warren. I've been 
 thinking that work and the world had changed 
 you, but they haven't. You're the same dear, 
 romantic, chivalric boy you were when you used 
 to take me fishing down at the creek. Hazel, he 
 was fond of fishing and not at all fond of me, I 
 think. Yet if I wanted to go with him he always 
 let me, and he spoiled his own fishing for my sake. 
 He baited my hook and took the fish off, whenever 
 I caught one, to the neglect of his own line. I 
 remember once he was playing a splendidly big 
 and gamey trout when I lifted a little gudgeon 
 out of the water. He instantly threw his rod down, 
 abandoning his fish, and came to my assistance. 
 After all, I suppose that is a part of the explana- 
 tion about men and women doing things. Men 
 like to do things for women and women like 
 to let them." 
 
 Hazel rose from her seat and moved toward 
 the stairs, saying: 
 
 " I should have expected precisely that from 
 Mr. Rhett, Kate, but why did you permit it? 
 
i 7 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Why didn't you let the gudgeon get away and 
 leave him to play his trout ? " 
 
 " I suppose it's because I am a woman," 
 answered Kate, as the two said good night to 
 Rhett and started up the stairs. 
 
XII 
 
 A REVELATION FROM KATE 
 
 WARREN RHETT continued to press 
 his experiment with negro labor. Its 
 success was not entirely satisfactory. 
 He had two classes of farm hands to deal with 
 those who rented little patches, under contract 
 to give up a prescribed portion of their crops in 
 payment of rent, and those who were hired by 
 the year to till the rest of the plantation. With 
 the first class he found that he could do nothing 
 whatever. Their standard of living was exceed- 
 ingly low. All that they wanted was enough to 
 fill their stomachs with, and they found it easy to 
 get that in great part by irregular means, not 
 nominated in the bond. It was not the custom 
 for the landowner to take any part of anything 
 except the " selling crops," wheat, corn, and 
 tobacco. They grew little gardens in which he 
 
i 7 6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 had no interest. Even in their turnip fields, 
 their sweet potato beds, their watermelon patches, 
 and the like, the owner was supposed to have no 
 share, and they grew little else than these. For 
 the rest there was game in the woods, and it was 
 always easy to supplement that source of meat 
 supply by the surreptitious killing of a pig or a 
 sheep now and then a pig or a sheep that be- 
 longed to some one else or by a raid upon the 
 poultry yards. 
 
 The net result was that the rented lands brought 
 almost no return to their owner, and they were in 
 no way improved by a culture that took no account 
 of the future. The negroes renting them not only 
 planted no orchards, no grape-vines, no currant 
 or gooseberry bushes that might yield fruit for 
 ten or twenty years to come ; they neglected even 
 to put in asparagus and horseradish beds and 
 the like, because they were not sure they should 
 retain their tenure of the land long enough to 
 reap a benefit from such labor and addition- 
 ally because providence of the future was not a 
 part of their nature. They might get a chance 
 to go to some town and live off the work of their 
 
A REVELATION FROM KATE 177 
 
 womenkind, and by the doing of odd jobs of 
 their own. Every one of them held that hope as 
 a cherished ambition a dream of luxurious 
 existence that might some day be fulfilled. Why 
 then should they make asparagus beds, or plant 
 horseradish or gooseberry or currant bushes, or 
 do any other thing which required a year or two 
 of preliminary growth before yielding a return of 
 any kind? Why should they spread upon the 
 land that they might or might not want to culti- 
 vate next year, the scrapings of their mule stables, 
 which they could sell to the Yankee or the foreign 
 truck farmers round about for precious dollars? 
 Why should they pay out good money for hens, 
 turkeys, and other fowls, and breed poultry for 
 themselves, when there were the easily accessible 
 poultry yards of the plantation owners always 
 " on tap " as it were ? Why should they trouble 
 themselves to feed hogs when the plantation 
 owner's hogs were running wild in woods so dense 
 that it really required no great ingenuity to secure 
 a shoat whenever, one was wanted ? In brief, why 
 should they weary themselves with work when 
 they could satisfy all their wants without work? 
 
178 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 With the other class the hired hands who 
 were expected to cultivate the greater part of the 
 plantation Warren Rhett found it somewhat 
 easier to deal, but the results were not much more 
 satisfactory. These hired negroes had put in less 
 than half a crop and they had grievously neglected 
 even that. By dint of personal supervision and 
 ceaseless inspection, he was able to make them 
 amend these conditions somewhat. Late as it 
 was in the summer, there were crops that might 
 still be planted with a reasonable prospect that in 
 that favorable climate they could be brought to 
 maturity. There were excellent facilities at hand 
 for marketing such crops in the Northern cities, 
 and Rhett insisted that every acre available for 
 their cultivation should be deeply ploughed and 
 promptly seeded. 
 
 It wasn't easy to get this done in face of the 
 obstinate determination of the negroes to do as 
 little work as possible, and more especially to 
 resent and resist any and every assertion of 
 authority over them, as a trespass upon their 
 liberty, the nature of which they utterly failed 
 to understand. 
 
A REVELATION FROM KATE 179 
 
 But by diligent insistence, and still more by 
 reason of his gift of commanding men and com- 
 pelling their obedience, Warren Rhett got it done 
 in some degree at least. 
 
 Meanwhile he was learning a good deal with 
 regard to the problem he was working over, and 
 what he learned came out in conversation one 
 evening, when the guests at Mannamac included 
 a number of strangers newcomers, unfamiliar 
 with the customs of the old regime in the Old 
 Dominion, but in their own various ways ac- 
 quainted with existing conditions. 
 
 All of these had been invited after the 
 old Virginian custom to " dine and spend 
 the evening." To some of the persons whose 
 names were on the invitation list that War- 
 ren submitted to Kate, Kate had objected. They 
 were not " recognized people," she urged. 
 
 " But my dear Kate," Warren answered, 
 " they will be ' recognized persons ' after they 
 have once dined at Mannamac upon your invita- 
 tion. By the way, you ought to pay some heed 
 to the distinction between the words ' persons ' 
 and ' people.' " 
 
i8o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Oh, whatever you want you can have, at 
 Mannamac, you know. If you want these 
 persons is that right ? they shall be in- 
 vited most cordially. And I dare say they're 
 not so terrible, after all. You think, don't you, 
 Warren, that most of them eat with their forks 
 and know what a napkin is for? " 
 
 " My dear Kate, you ought to know me well 
 enough to know that I would never ask you to 
 invite anybody to your dinner-table who was not 
 really a gentleman or a gentlewoman. I have 
 invited a very distinguished negro educator of 
 negroes to join us " 
 
 " Not at dinner ! " she exclaimed in genuine 
 alarm. 
 
 " No, not at dinner and not at supper. I do 
 not recognize the social equality of the negro, any 
 more than you do. But this man has some in- 
 formation that I want to get at, and he is alto- 
 gether a gentleman in his way so much a 
 gentleman that he wouldn't think of expecting or 
 accepting an invitation to dine or sup at your 
 house. I have asked him to join us after supper, 
 in order that he may tell me some of his experi- 
 
A REVELATION FROM KATE 181 
 
 ences and give me some of his opinions. I have 
 been perfectly frank with him and he has frankly 
 accepted the situation. He will be here to speak 
 for his race, when I ask him to do so, and to give 
 us the results of his efforts to educate his fellow 
 negroes. He'll come to us, in the porch of course. 
 He is an old friend of mine. He and I were boys 
 together, his ' mammy ' having been the cook at 
 Mannamac. And years ago, when I found that 
 he had so much more common and uncommon 
 sense than any of his fellows had, I myself sent 
 him north to be educated. Dollars were difficult 
 things for me to get in those days, and so I'm 
 afraid he had to put up with some privations, but 
 at any rate he got his education and he is to-day 
 doing a notably good work among the negroes." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "Bob," answered the man; "better known 
 now as the Rev. Robert Ryman D.D., but you 
 remember him as Bob, who used to play marbles 
 with me when we were boys together and who used 
 to bring you buttermilk when you were thirsty." 
 
 " Oh, if it's only Bob, of course it's all right. 
 I didn't understand you." 
 
i82 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Yes, it's only Bob," he answered, " but you 
 must bear in mind that Bob is a graduate of 
 Harvard College and on his own account the master 
 of a school for negroes that is doing a really great 
 work." 
 
 " Why, I thought you didn't believe in the 
 education of negroes?" 
 
 " I do not believe in their miseducation, Kate 
 but in their education, yes, most heartily. 
 And he is of one mind with me about that. You 
 shall see when we come to discuss the matter." 
 
 " Then you plan to " 
 
 " I'm planning nothing, Kate, except to have 
 a lot of pleasant people to dinner. If after dinner 
 we get to discussing the question of the future of 
 the negroes, it will be no more than what we 
 generally do after dinner in Virginia." 
 
 " That is all right," said Kate, " and I hope 
 Hazel will wear the new gown I've been making 
 frr her out of two old ones. It is just lovely, 
 and you know how charmingly she sings, if they'll 
 only be polite enough to give her a chance. I 
 think you are the one to see to that, Warren, and 
 really you do look so handsome in white ducks! 
 
A REVELATION FROM KATE 183 
 
 Ought I to serve ice-cream with supper or after- 
 wards in the porch if it doesn't rain? And if it 
 does it won't make any difference except ex- 
 cept what was I going to say, Warren ? I 
 declare I've forgotten." 
 
 " So have I, Kate. Don't let's bother to re- 
 member. You must ' get busy ' with the notes of 
 invitation. Hazel will help you, I've no doubt." 
 
 " So it has reached that stage, has it? " broke 
 in Kate. " You're thinking of her by her first 
 name ? I was afraid of that. But I gave you fair 
 warning at the outset that you mustn't do that." 
 
 " Mustn't do what, Kate? " 
 
 " Mustn't fall in love with Hazel, of course." 
 
 " But why not ? Surely she is a very charming 
 young woman and a very lovable one." 
 
 " Yes, I know." Kate said this slowly, medi- 
 tatively, as if weighing the words and carefully 
 considering those she should utter next. After a 
 little she added : 
 
 " She's married already. Her marriage doesn't 
 amount to anything, but all the same you mustn't 
 fall in love with her, or at least you mustn'ted, as 
 I told you, and you've gone and done it in spite of 
 
1 84 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 my solemn warning. I don't blame you a bit. If 
 I were a man I should fall in love with Hazel even 
 if she were not only married but dead and buried. 
 She's the very noblest, sweetest, and beautifullest 
 woman in the world. Go on and win her, War- 
 ren. She's worth it, and you can do it if you are 
 half the man I think you are. Don't ask me to 
 explain. I have promised not to do so, and I 
 always keep my promises except when I forget. 
 Ask Hazel." 
 
 At that moment Hazel herself entered the 
 dining-room, where the two had held their 
 conference, and Kate greeted her coming with 
 gladness. 
 
 " Come, Hazel," she exclaimed ; " Warren 
 wants me to invite a lot of people to a dining- 
 day, and of course I've got to do it. He has 
 promised that you'll help me with the invitations, 
 and of course you've got to do it." 
 
 Warren Rhett went away sorrowing, bewil- 
 dered and half-stunned by the words that Kate 
 had so carelessly spoken. 
 
XIII 
 
 WARREN RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 
 
 WARREN RHETT was a man not easily 
 daunted or dismayed. He had faced 
 difficulties and dangers of many kinds 
 and always he had borne himself bravely in con- 
 fronting them. But now he was both daunted 
 and dismayed. The situation revealed by Kate's 
 words seemed to be one with which neither 
 courage nor resolution, neither determination 
 nor desperation, might deal with any hope of a 
 satisfactory outcome. If Hazel Cameron was 
 already a married woman there was nothing that 
 even the most desperate daring or the most 
 persuasive persistence could do. And yet Kate 
 a typical representative of social propriety 
 had urged him to go on and win the woman, 
 assuring him that he could do so. He simply 
 
 could not understand. 
 
 185 
 
i86 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Two thoughts arose in his mind. One was 
 that he must fathom the mystery of all this ; the 
 other was that he must arrange at once for his 
 own retreat from a position that was utterly un- 
 tenable, or might become so. 
 
 Leaving the two women in consultation over 
 the invitations, he went to the stables, mounted 
 his mare, bade a negro follow him on a mule, 
 and rode to the Court-House village, which was 
 also the railroad station. 
 
 After sending off half a dozen telegrams, the 
 transmission of which very nearly wrecked the 
 nervous system of the old station-master, who was 
 also the " plug operator " on the telegraph line, 
 he wrote a note and sent it to Kate by the negro 
 boy who was to lead his mare back to Mannamac. 
 In it he wrote : 
 
 " HI be back in time for the dinner-party 
 next Thursday. Meantime I must go to New 
 York to arrange a business matter of importance. 
 Till I see you again I shall be, of course, 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " WARREN RHETT. 
 
RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 187 
 
 " P. S. Please make my apologies to Miss 
 Cameron, and bid her ride Dolly Varden as often 
 and as long as she likes. w. R." 
 
 Then he took a train for New York. He had 
 not so much as a hand-satchel by way of baggage, 
 but he knew from frequent experience how to get 
 on without the conveniences of life. He could 
 buy shirts, collars, cuffs, underwear, combs, 
 brushes, and the like in New York. His ward- 
 robe was at Mannamac, but he didn't want his 
 wardrobe. He did not intend to visit anybody 
 or to accept invitations of any kind. He was to 
 be in New York for purposes of business, and he 
 addressed himself to those purposes. 
 
 It was seven o'clock in the morning when he let 
 himself into his office with his latch-key the 
 office boy not having arrived as yet. By half- 
 past seven, when the office boy came, he had 
 written a dozen telegrams and had them ready 
 for transmission. 
 
 When the office boy at last appeared Rhett 
 turned to him and asked : 
 
 " Will you kindly tell me what time it is by 
 
1 88 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 your watch, I mean I know what time it is 
 by the clock on the wall." 
 
 " It's twenty-eight minutes of eight," answered 
 the boy. 
 
 " Are you sure your watch is right ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. I set it every morning by the electric 
 observatory clock." 
 
 " Then my watch has lost two minutes," said 
 Rhett, " and you have lost half a dollar. I shall 
 dock you that for being late. Your hour is seven 
 o'clock, you know." 
 
 " But Mr. Rhett," pleaded the boy, " you see 
 the other gentlemen don't get here as you do, at 
 seven o'clock. They're never here till eight, and 
 I didn't know you were in town." 
 
 " Well now, fix it firmly in your thinking ap- 
 paratus that I am always in town, or likely to be 
 here, and don't be late again. I'll forgive you 
 this time and remit the fine. Take these tele- 
 grams over to the Western Union office, and these 
 to the Postal, and send them off at once. 
 Have them charged to our office account as 
 usual." 
 
 As the boy went out a clerk entered. Rhett 
 
RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 189 
 
 gave him a cordial but hasty greeting, and then 
 said : 
 
 " Will you please bring me the specifications 
 as to the African trestles and the Zambesi 
 bridge?" 
 
 " I'm not sure that I can put my hands on them, 
 sir. You see the firm decided not to bid for that 
 contract." 
 
 " Yes, I know. But the firm sometimes changes 
 its mind, and you remember my orders, that every 
 paper relating to business that comes into this 
 office or that is written in this office shall be filed 
 and indexed and preserved." 
 
 " Here they are, sir," answered the clerk who 
 had been anxiously searching. " But we've 
 marked that thing off our list of possible under- 
 takings." 
 
 " Go at once and put it on again." 
 
 " But that's in another department, and " 
 
 " Go and record it as a thing to be considered. 
 And notify the clerk who should be here to make 
 the entry, that he must hereafter present himself 
 at the hour appointed, or hunt another job. I do 
 not trust men to do their work accurately who 
 
i 9 o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 cannot keep their watches so regulated as to 
 appear at the office promptly at the prescribed 
 hour. Impress that upon the mind of the young 
 man in question, will you? " 
 
 " I will, of course, but " The man hesitated. 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " Well, you see, Mr. Rhett, Denning's situation 
 is different from the rest of us's ; he's got a poor 
 old mother and three little nieces to take care of 
 they're tiny things and their mother's dead, and 
 Denning's mother has had a stroke lately, so he's 
 got to get breakfast and dress the children, and 
 make the old woman comfortable before he comes 
 down and " 
 
 " That will do. Do you write shorthand ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then please take down this memorandum : 
 ' Mr. Denning's salary is to be increased by 
 twenty per cent., the increase to be charged to my 
 personal account. Mr. Denning's hour of attend- 
 ance at the office is extended to nine o'clock, and 
 if at any time he finds it necessary to be late in 
 coming, he is excused in advance.' Communicate 
 that to the cashier and the managing clerk, as a 
 
RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 191 
 
 message from me. Now will you let me have Mr. 
 Denning' s address, please? " 
 
 He made a memorandum of the address, and 
 then, with that extraordinary readiness of transi- 
 tion which made him seem a marvel to the men 
 in his employ, he set to work to study the specifica- 
 tions for the Zambesi bridge and trestle. 
 
 After awhile his two partners juniors in 
 every sense came in. A little later there began 
 to come responses to his telegrams. Some of 
 these had been addressed to European houses 
 and some to firms, in different parts of this country, 
 that manufactured steel and other materials 
 needed for this Zambesi bridge and its approaches. 
 The latter despatches had asked two questions, 
 " At what price can you furnish the materials 
 wanted, and how soon ? " 
 
 When the replies were all in and Warren 
 Rhett had carefully studied them, he said to his 
 partners : 
 
 " We can take that contract and make a very 
 satisfactory profit on it. The thing those people 
 are most concerned about is time. My cablegrams 
 from English steel men show that the best they 
 
1 92 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 can do is to furnish the materials for the structure 
 within six months. We can do the whole job in 
 six weeks. We'll put in a bid on a basis of eight 
 weeks, so as to give ourselves a margin of time. 
 We'll make our bid about twice what theirs is 
 likely to be in price or a little less for security's 
 sake and it will be accepted because of our 
 superior time offer. Mr. McCarthy," addressing 
 the head clerk, " make up a bid for this work. 
 We offer to do all of it concrete, steel, earth 
 approaches, trestles, cross- ties everything 
 for the sum named upon that slip, and to finish 
 the work within eight weeks after the contract is 
 signed. Walter," addressing one of his partners, 
 " make out a check for the deposit sum they 
 require, and have it certified, so that McCarthy 
 can enclose it with the bid. The award will be 
 made in London, of course. It will take from 
 three weeks to a month to send over the bid and 
 get back the acceptance. That means that we 
 have eleven or twelve weeks in which to get ready. 
 Call a stenographer, please. I'll order the struc- 
 tural steel and the other things by telegraph at 
 
RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 193 
 
 "But Mr. Rhett," interposed one of the 
 partners, a man to whom Rhett had given an 
 interest in the firm's business in return for his 
 services and without exacting any tribute on his 
 part to the capital stock, " what if we shouldn't 
 get the contract ? We'd be left with a lot of useless 
 material on our hands." 
 
 " Not at all. Structural steel is always usable 
 somewhere, and besides, we shall get the contract." 
 
 " Why are you so sure of that? " 
 
 " Because I have cabled to every foreign firm 
 that will bid, under a pretence of asking for sub- 
 contracts, and the answers unmistakably indicate 
 that the very shortest time that any one of them 
 will name is six months. In a hurry as these 
 people are, our offer of eight weeks will take the 
 contract, although our price is much higher than 
 theirs. Now I want you fellows to hold your- 
 selves in readiness to go to Africa, either of you, 
 at a moment's notice, to superintend the work 
 there. It is altogether likely that I shall go myself, 
 but in case I decide not to go, I want you to be 
 ready. Johnny, get me my hat and coat, please." 
 
 He left the ofiice as abruptly as he had entered 
 
i 9 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 it. He went at once to the home of the clerk Den- 
 ning, where he made a minute inquiry into the 
 condition of things. Satisfied that nothing more 
 than he had done could be done, he took the next 
 train for Richmond, and returned to Mannamac. 
 It had been his purpose, in making this trip to 
 New York, to steady his own mind, and he had 
 steadied it. He had discovered a queer con- 
 tradiction in Kate's words a contradiction that 
 needed clearing up. Kate had told him that 
 Hazel was already a married woman. If the 
 matter had rested there his own course of action 
 would have been obvious. He would not have 
 returned to Virginia at all, but would have de- 
 voted himself to the management of his various 
 undertakings. But Kate had added something 
 to her statement something that he could not 
 understand or in any wise explain even con- 
 jecturally. And Kate had spoken the words 
 earnestly. It was always easy to know whether 
 Elate was in earnest or not. That gentlewoman 
 was as transparent as polished plate glass, 
 especially to Warren Rhett, who had been her 
 companion in childhood and youth. But to feel 
 
RHETT STEADIES HIS MIND 195 
 
 sure that Kate had spoken the words earnestly 
 was one thing, and to extract an explanation of 
 them from Kate was quite another. That little 
 lady was not good at explaining, for one thing, 
 and for another she was scrupulously, almost 
 morbidly, averse to the revelation, by any words 
 of hers, of other people's affairs. Warren Rhett 
 had thought this matter out. He had definitely 
 decided that it would be futile to ask Kate to 
 explain. So he had also definitely decided to 
 confront Hazel herself with the problem and ask 
 her to solve it. 
 
 But his train was delayed, and when he arrived 
 at Mannamac, the guests were already assembling 
 for the dinner-party he had planned. He had the 
 briefest possible opportunity of speech with 
 Hazel. In that brief moment he said to her : 
 
 " Kate tells me you are married. Why didn't 
 you tell me ? I shall ask you to explain at the first 
 opportunity." 
 
 " And I will explain," she said. The next 
 moment brought others into the conversation. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE TEST OF A WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 
 
 THE company assembled included a con- 
 siderable variety of persons. There were 
 two who represented the old life a 
 planter and his wife. The planter was a Colonel 
 Forrest. He had fought through the Civil War 
 and, as he put it, he had " faced a somewhat 
 ameliorated form of starvation ever since." He 
 had managed to retain possession of his plantation 
 in spite of the incumbrances upon it. He had 
 somehow managed to make the land yield him a 
 living under inefficient negro culture, and, being 
 something of an optimist, he hoped that " the 
 thing may last out my time and my wife's." 
 
 There was a visiting planter from Mississippi 
 and his wife and daughter. 
 
 There was a newcomer, a Mr. Bandon, who 
 had bought a part of a neighboring plantation 
 two or three hundred acres, including the " great 
 196 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 197 
 
 house. " He and his wife and his daughter, who 
 accompanied him, had been the entertainers of 
 Kate and Hazel on the day of Warren Rhett's 
 first arrival at Mannamac. They were altogether 
 " nice " people refined, educated, and accus- 
 tomed to the most gracious social intercourse, 
 but the daughter impressed Rhett as rather too 
 intellectual. There were some other newcomers 
 obviously gentlefolk, but less well known to the 
 company at Mannamac. There was Charley 
 Danforth of course, and equally of course his 
 sister, Miss Sallie. There were three or four 
 others who need not be catalogued here. 
 
 Warren Rhett's purpose in giving the dinner- 
 party, or " dining-day," as a function of that sort 
 was called in Virginia, was primarily to make 
 acquaintance with his new neighbors and to 
 reestablish relations with those who had been 
 his neighbors during his father's life. But he had 
 in mind also the fact that some discussion of the 
 negro question as it presented itself under the new 
 conditions in Virginia was sure to arise, and he 
 very greatly wanted to learn the views of the 
 varied company on that subject. 
 
i 9 8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 The dinner-party, by his direction, was con- 
 ducted upon the old plan, prevalent in Virginia 
 before the Civil War. The various dishes were 
 placed upon the table, each in front of one who 
 was expected to serve it. Before each gentle- 
 woman there was a vegetable to which she was 
 expected to help; before each gentleman there 
 was a joint or a fowl which he was expected to 
 carve. No wine accompanied the dinner. That 
 under Virginian traditions would have been a 
 barbarism, as much so as the service of dessert in 
 advance of the soup. There was toddy, with 
 toast in it, served to those of the gentlemen who 
 wanted it, before dinner. But not until the dinner 
 and dessert were done not until the cloth was 
 finally removed from the mahogany that for two 
 hundred years had been polished every morning 
 with beeswax and cork was the wine brought 
 on. When it came, it was an old sherry, brought 
 from the cellar in dusty and thickly cobwebbed 
 bottles, and decanted in the presence of the com- 
 pany. When it came the host filled his own glass 
 first in memory of those charming old savage 
 days when the practice of poisoning one's guests 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 199 
 
 was sufficiently prevalent to render some reassur- 
 ance necessary and then pushed the decanter, 
 in its velvet-shod silver stand, to the guest on his 
 right. It was the custom, when all the glasses 
 were filled, for the host to rise and propose " The 
 ladies, God bless them." It was the custom for 
 the gentlemen to rise and drink the toast heartily, 
 the gentlewomen taking a single sip in response. 
 It was the custom for the ladies then to rise and 
 file out of the room, the gentlemen meanwhile 
 standing and the host gallantly holding open the 
 door. 
 
 On this occasion Warren Rhett set aside some 
 of these customs in behalf of a more genial and 
 congenial civilization. 
 
 "We will pledge the ladies/' he said, " but 
 we'll ask them not to leave us. In a more barbaric 
 time their departure from the dinner-table when 
 the wine came on was necessary in order that the 
 savages then known as gentlemen might be free 
 to get drunk if they pleased. The custom of 
 dismissing the womankind survived in Virginia 
 long after the gentlemen ceased to get drunk 
 after dinner. I ask that it be abolished for to-day 
 
200 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 I beg the gentlewomen of the company to re- 
 main with us." 
 
 " But, Warren," Kate said, " you gentlemen 
 mustn't miss your smoke, and if we stay you won't 
 smoke till we all go out into the porch together. 
 Of course every man is as disagreeable as he knows 
 how to be after dinner, until he has had his pipe 
 or cigar." 
 
 " But why shouldn't the gentlemen smoke 
 while we are here? " asked Hazel. " They do it 
 at dinner-parties in New York, where the dining- 
 rooms are not half so well ventilated as this one 
 is. And, after all, women do not really object to 
 smoking. They pretend to, but it is chiefly an 
 affectation." 
 
 " Oh, Hazel ! " interrupted Kate, " you mustn't 
 give away our sex's secrets in that way. But of 
 course there's not the slightest reason why the 
 gentlemen shouldn't smoke here, with seven win- 
 dows wide open. We'll stay. Bring on the pipes 
 and cigars, Henry." 
 
 " I wonder," said Miss Bandon, " whether the 
 professed objection of women to smoking may 
 not be attributable, in part at least, to jealousy." 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 201 
 
 "Would you mind explaining?" asked Dan- 
 forth, who had taken her in to dinner. All the 
 company had heard her question and they awaited 
 the explanation in silence. 
 
 " I'm not quite sure I know what I mean," 
 the girl answered. " Yes, I guess I do." She 
 was not a Virginian and therefore she said " guess " 
 and not " reckon." " I mean that many women 
 smoke in secret, and when a banquet is on you 
 know a banquet is likely to grow tedious in its 
 length, especially after the speaking and the 
 story-telling begin they grow impatient for 
 the little quiet smoke they are accustomed to 
 take after a dinner. If they cannot or will not 
 have it, it seems to me quite natural that they 
 should object to all smoking, as they cannot share 
 in it. I've known them to take short cuts." 
 
 " Tell us about that please," said Warren Rhett, 
 with a twinkle of recognition in his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, you remember it, Mr. Rhett," said the 
 girl, " though when you met me this afternoon 
 you did not know we had seen each other before." 
 
 " Frankly, I didn't," he answered, " but you 
 really must excuse " 
 
202 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Oh, there is no apology necessary. There is 
 not the slightest reason why you should remember 
 so casual a meeting with an insignificant person 
 especially in such a crush and I doubt if I 
 should remember it myself, but for but for 
 never mind that. Let me tell the story to the 
 company." 
 
 She gave a little, playful wave of her hand 
 to Rhett, which had the effect of checking his 
 further interposition. Then she went on with 
 what she had to say. 
 
 " It was at a great literary function. We 
 were celebrating the seventieth birthday of a 
 great author. We were gathered at Delmonico's 
 two or three hundred of us. I was there because I 
 had written a few stories that had been published 
 in a magazine. Mr. Rhett was there as he 
 wouldn't himself tell you because he was the 
 author of two novels and a volume of verse pub- 
 lished by the firm that gave the dinner. Now 
 to get down to my story. We were seated at 
 round tables eight at a table. The feeding 
 was over and the speaking had just begun. 
 But there was no smoking because there were 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 203 
 
 'ladies present/ and the men were very melan- 
 choly. You see there was a prospect of three 
 hours or more of this repletion without replevin 
 as it were, and so they mourned. At the psycho- 
 logical moment a certain woman the daintiest 
 of our magazine poets and story writers, really 
 and truly the daintiest and most reserved and most 
 refined leaned back in her chair at the next 
 table to ours and, catching Mr. Rhett's ear, said : 
 
 " ' Have you such a thing as a cigarette upon 
 your person ? I am dying.' 
 
 " He answered ' No, but I have the price. What 
 brand do you prefer ? ' 
 
 " She named her choice and within a few minutes 
 he brought her a box of twenty-five, and she 
 proceeded to fumigate. Her example was in- 
 stantly and wildly contagious. Practically every 
 man in the room lighted a cigar or a cigarette, 
 and the melancholy proceedings became joyous 
 again. Discourses that had been funereal in tone 
 took upon themselves the optimistic character of 
 college commencement addresses ; lips that had 
 been drawn down in grief and melancholy were 
 relaxed into such smiles as theoretically ought 
 
204 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 to accompany the reading of the comic news- 
 papers, but in fact do not. From that moment 
 onward every jest hit its mark, every pleasantry 
 accomplished its purpose, and every speaker felt 
 that he had succeeded in carrying off the honors 
 of the evening. But I could not avoid overhear- 
 ing a good many critical comments upon the 
 young woman's behavior in starting the fumiga- 
 tion in that way. I refrain from quoting those 
 comments as I refrain from giving the young 
 gentlewoman's name because, personally, I do 
 not approve of women's smoking, and I detest 
 cigarettes. Still I think that young woman 
 saved the situation as no man could have done." 
 
 Rhett was quick to see that the girl would be 
 promptly beset with questions, some of which it 
 might embarrass her to answer. So he gallantly 
 came to her relief. 
 
 " I think I had the pleasure of being presented 
 to you on that occasion, Miss Bandon," he said. 
 
 " Why, of course," she answered, and then, 
 with purely mischievous intent, she added : " You 
 took me in to dinner our host having personally 
 introduced us. For three or four hours we were 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 205 
 
 good comrades, and then of course you forgot all 
 about me, after the manner of men." 
 
 " Believe me, Miss Bandon " 
 
 " Believe me, Mr. Rhett," she interrupted, 
 " that no apology is needed. New York is a great 
 wilderness of all sorts and conditions of men 
 and of women also. And a vast, mixed company 
 like that in which you and I met is not the place 
 for the making of acquaintance. But tell me 
 your opinion of women smoking. I've already 
 told you mine, so you are at advantage with me." 
 
 " It all depends," he answered thoughtfully. 
 
 " That's a most conveniently cowardly phrase," 
 answered the girl. " It doesn't mean anything, 
 but it saves the situation." 
 
 " Let me make it less evasive and less cowardly," 
 said Rhett, a trifle nettled. " I mean that it all 
 depends upon the country I am in. You see I 
 have lived in many remote parts of the earth. 
 Customs differ. In Mexico everybody smokes 
 men, women, and little children; and everybody 
 smokes everywhere in street-cars, steam-cars, 
 parlors, dining-rooms, churches everywhere. 
 The best-dressed and most distinguished dames 
 
206 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 of a Mexican city smoke openly as they take the 
 air in their carriages of an afternoon. Even their 
 little girls, not yet in long skirts, think nothing of 
 following their mothers' example. The sight of 
 women smoking in Mexico and other Latin- 
 American countries neither shocks nor distresses 
 me, but I frankly confess that I was both shocked 
 and distressed when that young woman of whom 
 you have told us lighted a cigarette and kept 
 the thing going as a continuous performance 
 until the box of twenty-five was exhausted. So 
 much for prejudice, I suppose." 
 
 " I cannot agree with you in that," said Hazel, 
 gently but with manifest earnestness. 
 
 " What is your thought? " 
 
 " Why, that prejudice has nothing to do with 
 the matter. Your prejudices whatever their 
 nature may be do not change or cease to be 
 when you cross a geographical line." 
 
 " What is it then that makes the difference? " 
 asked Isabel Bandon with a note of challenge in 
 her tone. 
 
 " Why, simply this, that undue boldness in 
 women in whatever way it is manifested is 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 207 
 
 always and everywhere unlovely detestable, 
 abominable. In a country in which it is the uni- 
 versal custom for women to smoke, a woman's 
 smoking in no way implies or suggests undue 
 boldness, and therefore it does not shock or dis- 
 tress the onlooker. But in our country, where 
 smoking is not common among women, where 
 in truth it is so very unusual that public indulgence 
 in it is forbidden in all well-regulated restaurants, 
 the woman who openly smokes does something 
 else that is far more objectionable, more unlovely, 
 and more unwomanly than the mere smoking 
 can be." 
 
 " And what is that? " asked the other, with the 
 note of challenge and even of defiance in her 
 voice. 
 
 " She lays aside her self-respect, she quits her 
 womanhood, she forgets that modesty of de- 
 meanor which is an essential of good behavior 
 in a woman." 
 
 Hazel spoke with vehemence almost with 
 anger, as if in recognition of the challenge of the 
 other. That other made no open reply, but to 
 her nearest neighbor, Danforth, she said : 
 
208 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " I wonder if it is any worse than for a woman 
 to visit racing stables and paint portraits of horses 
 for jockeys to rejoice in." 
 
 Kate overheard the remark, though she did not 
 hear Danforth's placative reply. She instantly 
 said to the company: 
 
 " Our gentlemen are very temperate. They are 
 drinking no wine. Why then should we not 
 adjourn to the porch without further ado ? " 
 
 On their way out Kate, whose feminine per- 
 ceptions were exceedingly quick, and whose 
 loyalty was undying, seized Rhett's elbow and 
 whispered into his ear : 
 
 " That woman's a cat. She's in love with you 
 and she's jealous of Hazel. Look out for 
 her." 
 
 He had no opportunity to say even a word in 
 answer. Perhaps it wasn't necessary. Kate had 
 an abiding faith in Warren Rhett's readiness of 
 perception and in his ability to take care of 
 himself. 
 
 She presently reinforced that ability. When 
 the great oaken chairs were distributed in the 
 porch and Warren took one of them, Isabel 
 
TEST OF WOMAN'S BEHAVIOR 209 
 
 Bandon, by accident of course, sat down in the 
 one next to him. He said something pleasant to 
 her, and then suddenly found that his long- 
 stemmed Powhatan pipe would not draw. He 
 rose and walked out into the grounds to clear it 
 with the broom straw which he had requested 
 Henry to bring. When it was cleared he did not 
 return to the chair he had before occupied, for 
 the reason that Kate had seated herself in it and 
 was engaged in earnest converse with Isabel 
 Bandon. 
 
 Kate had tact as well as temperament. She 
 perfectly knew how to baffle a young woman's 
 purposes while winning the young woman's 
 favor and esteem. So Warren Rhett seated him- 
 self on the steps of the porch, and leaning against 
 one of the pillars seemed entirely satisfied with 
 the situation. Kate's tactics amused him. 
 
 There was no early moon that evening, but as 
 the darkness fell, Kate directed Henry to light 
 three hanging lamps Venetian iron- work as to 
 their frames, and encased in softly colored glass. 
 Hazel had manufactured the things for porch 
 purposes. They shed a softly subdued light 
 
210 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 throughout the porch, without offending even the 
 most sensitive eyes with glare. 
 
 The conditions and the company seemed so 
 well reconciled to each other that when the time 
 for supper came Kate ordered that rather imagin- 
 ary than real repast served " lap fashion," as she 
 said, in the porch. 
 
 Then it was that something happened to turn 
 the conversation into the channel that Warren 
 Rhett desired and had predetermined for it. But 
 the thing came about in a way of which he had 
 not dreamed. 
 
 Hazel was singing by request, Kate accom- 
 panying her upon the guitar, and all the company 
 listening with delight when Isaac the negro 
 head man came shambling up to the porch, 
 with evident desire to say something. 
 
XV 
 
 IN THE PORCH 
 
 ISAAC had some difficulty in presenting his 
 thought. He managed at last, however, to 
 say: 
 
 " The folks don't like the way you is a workin' 
 'em, an' they's a thinkin' o' quittin', leastways for 
 a few days." 
 
 Isaac had hoped that this note of warning might 
 impress and depress Rhett. It seemed to have no 
 such effect. Rhett said, somewhat languidly: 
 
 " I'm very glad to hear that, Isaac," and he 
 left it to Isaac to make the next remark. Isaac 
 did not find it easy to do so, but after awhile he 
 said: 
 
 " Yes, sir, they don't like the way they's a bein' 
 worked, an' in partic'lar they don't like the way 
 their liberty is bein' took away from them." 
 
 " Might I inquire it is a matter of psycholog- 
 
 211 
 
212 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 ical interest to me, Isaac might I venture to 
 inquire in what respects the liberty of the farm- 
 hands upon this plantation has been invaded or 
 abridged?" 
 
 " Your words is a little bit too big for me, Mas' 
 Warren " the negro had not intended to lapse 
 into old habits on this occasion, but he was too 
 much interested now to remember to say " Mr. 
 Rhett " instead of " Mas' Warren " " but I 
 think I make out your meanin'. You want to 
 know what it is the folks is a complainin' of. Well, 
 for one thing, you come out to the stables 'bout 
 daylight an' you stan' round to see the mules fed 
 an' curried, an' then you go out to the fields an' 
 see the work started, an' all day long you're 
 liable to turn up an' keep it a goin'. You say we 
 must ask permission if we want to lay off a day^ 
 and you see it's jes' like ole overseer times." 
 
 " I think I understand the gist of the grievance," 
 said Rhett. " Having entered into a contract to 
 render a year's service as plantation laborers, for 
 a stipulated wage, and for stipulated rations, 
 house rent, et cetera, you and your folks while 
 ready enough to draw the rations and the wages 
 
IN THE PORCH 213 
 
 object to my impertinence in insisting that you 
 shall also do the work agreed upon. Isn't that 
 about the size of it ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, you see, if we is to be drove an' has 
 to ask leave, we ain't free." 
 
 " I see," answered Rhett. Then adopting the 
 Socratic method, he asked : 
 
 " What are you going to do about it, Isaac 
 you and the others ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, they's to be a camp-meetin' beginnin' 
 to-morrow, an' we've decided to be thar." 
 
 "Very well," answered Rhett, "I have no 
 objection to that. But where do you purpose to 
 go after the camp-meeting is over ? " 
 
 " W'y, we'll come back home ag'in, of course." 
 
 Warren Rhett waited awhile before replying. 
 Finally he said : 
 
 " Isaac, you had better go now and tell the 
 folks that if they go on strike, as they are planning 
 to do, I mean if they quit the plantation for a 
 single day in protest against my insistence upon 
 honest work for honest pay, not one man, woman, 
 or child of them shall ever come back so long as 
 I live. Do you hear? " 
 
2i 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " But Mas' Warren, we ain't got nowhere else 
 to go. Whar else is we to live ? " 
 
 " I really don't know," answered the young 
 man. He paused to let the thought soak in as it 
 were. Then he said : 
 
 " You and the rest are free, you know. You 
 can go anywhere you please. But of course I am 
 free too, and I tell you if you and the others quit 
 work for camp-meeting or for anything else, 
 you cannot come back to Mannamac, now or 
 hereafter." 
 
 Isaac was in a daze. He could not understand. 
 He could not see how it could be that men legally 
 free could still be held to an obligation by any 
 other man. In the meanwhile Robert had arrived 
 and had modestly seated himself upon the steps, 
 near his old playfellow and later benefactor, 
 Warren Rhett. At the smallest hint from Rhett 
 he took up the r61e of instructor to his fellow 
 black man. 
 
 " Listen to me, Isaac," he commanded. " You 
 and the rest of you do not understand what 
 freedom means. Let me explain it a little. I am 
 a free man, but when I get on board a railroad 
 
IN THE PORCH 215 
 
 train I must pay my fare. If I don't the conductor 
 will put me off, and serve me right, too. You and 
 the rest of the folks are living on this plantation 
 under contract to cultivate it. If you don't do 
 your work you've no right to your wages, your 
 rations, or your rent-free houses. Can't you 
 understand that? Can't you understand that no 
 man is free enough to get all that he thinks 
 coming to him and give nothing in return ? Your 
 notion of freedom is all wrong. No man in all the 
 world was ever free in the way you regard free- 
 dom. Here is our good friend Mas' Warren if 
 he will let me call him by the name that was dear 
 to me in our boyhood days even he isn't free 
 in any such fashion as that. He is a rich man I 
 hear at any rate he is a prosperous one and 
 I'm glad of that but even he cannot do as he 
 pleases. He must respect the rights of others, 
 and especially he must respect and fulfil his own 
 obligations. He takes contracts to build railroads, 
 dig tunnels, construct bridges, and the like. Do 
 you imagine for a moment that he is free to leave 
 his work undone and still expect the people on 
 the other side to pay him what their contract 
 
216 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 calls for? That isn't all of it. If he should refuse 
 or neglect to do what he has agreed to do, the 
 people on the other side of the contract would 
 not only have the right to refuse to pay him any- 
 thing they could go into court and compel him 
 to pay them damages for his failure to fulfil his 
 obligations." 
 
 " For the Lawd's sake ! " ejaculated Isaac, to 
 whom this was a totally new view of human 
 obligations. 
 
 " It is as I tell you," said Robert, " and it is 
 time for you and others like you to try to under- 
 stand what freedom and liberty mean. If you 
 like I'll lecture to all of you on that subject and 
 try to make you understand it. But in the mean- 
 while I strongly and earnestly advise you to do 
 your duty like men, to fulfil your contract of work, 
 and to obey the orders of a man who has a right 
 to give orders at Mannarhac." 
 
 " Well, for the Lawd's sake ! " exclaimed Isaac 
 as he shambled away. " An' Bob's a nigga' too ! 
 Well, who'd a thought it ! I reckon may be, just, 
 for safety like, us folks had better let the camp- 
 meetin' be what they call ' slenderly attended.' " 
 
IN THE PORCH 217 
 
 After he had gone Colonel Forrest, the old 
 Virginian planter, asked : 
 
 " Don't you think you are rather hard on the 
 poor darkeys, Warren? " 
 
 " Yes, of course I am. But it is for their own 
 good. It is the one thing needed the one thing 
 that will improve and upbuild the race. The 
 trouble is that the rest of you do not recognize 
 and insist upon the fundamental law of all prog- 
 ress human and other." 
 
 "Just what do you mean by that, please?" 
 asked Hazel. 
 
 " Well, my theory is based upon a law of nature. 
 From the lowest to the highest forms of life 
 from the primordial germ to the ultimate de- 
 velopment of human genius from the polyp 
 to the poet, from the oyster to the orator, from 
 the stamen to the statesman all progress is 
 conditioned upon struggle, and due to it, directly. 
 Without struggle there is no strenuosity and 
 without strenuosity there is no advancement, no 
 betterment, no development. In the case of 
 human beings even more than in the case of 
 lower forms of animated existence this necessity 
 
2 i8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 is imperative, for the reason that human beings 
 have mastered other secrets of survival than that 
 of fitness. They know how to take unfair advan- 
 tage of nature in a thousand ways that are im- 
 possible to plants and the lower animals. 
 
 " But the law of progress is absolutely inexor- 
 able. It is the law of a struggle for existence and 
 the survival of the fittest not necessarily the 
 best, but those best fitted to survive under the 
 conditions of the struggle. An unfair advantage 
 counts for just as much as a fair advantage, and 
 often the human being profits by it." 
 
 " Just how do you mean? " asked Hazel, who 
 seemed excitedly interested. " There is a thought 
 behind that, or I am mistaken." 
 
 "Yes, there is a thought behind that," he 
 answered. " But the thought is not mine. It is 
 Alexander Von Humboldt's. He characterized 
 the banana as * the curse of the tropics,' on the 
 ground that it relieved tropical men of the neces- 
 sity of work, of struggle, of enterprise of any kind. 
 It is true, as he said, that the man who plants one 
 banana-tree, by that act provides food for himself 
 and his descendants to the tenth generation, in a 
 
IN THE PORCH 219 
 
 climate where clothes and shelter are not really 
 necessary to comfort. The result is that having 
 planted the banana-tree, the man excuses himself 
 from all further work in the world, and his 
 children do the same thing after him. Emerson 
 has somewhere said that every man is as lazy as 
 he dares be. That isn't quite true, but it suggests 
 a truth of human nature. The man who has 
 planted his banana-tree is apt to quit. His son 
 and heir is apt to regard the paternal banana-tree 
 as inheritance enough. In other words, ease of 
 living is a paralyzing influence, a check upon 
 endeavor, a ministry of indolence. Now knowing 
 the negro as I do having known him from my 
 youth up I am convinced that ease of living in 
 this southern land of ours has been his curse, just 
 as it is the curse of the poor whites. Their 
 standards of living are low. Their wants are few, 
 and they find it easy to supply them with very 
 little effort. Consequently they make the 
 minimum of endeavor, and you planters by 
 your indolent neglect of insistence render the 
 negro's problem of indolence easier. What I 
 contend is that all this is excessively bad for the 
 
220 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 negro, as it certainly is for the poor white. I 
 hold that the negro or the poor white will never 
 and can never advance in civilization till he shall 
 in the expressive slang of the time be put ' up 
 against it.' Not until he has to fight for his place 
 in the world, will he amount to anything or 
 achieve anything. At the north, and particularly 
 in New York City, where rents are very high and 
 must be paid on the first day of the month, the 
 negro is constantly ' up against it.' He must 
 pay his rent or get out. He must pay for his 
 meats and his vegetables, or go without them. 
 In a word he must hustle and he does so, and he 
 is the better man for it. But here at Mannamac 
 and on other plantations round about, no such 
 conditions have prevailed. The negroes here 
 have had no need to hustle. Their living has 
 come to them easily. They can live whether they 
 work or not. I think these conditions very un- 
 fortunate for them, and so far as I can I purpose 
 to change them. I have the kindliest possible 
 feeling for the negroes " 
 
 At that point Bob or the Rev. Robert 
 Ryman, D.D. distinctly chuckled. Rhett, 
 
IN THE PORCH 221 
 
 thus interrupted in his discourse, asked, " What 
 are you laughing at, Bob ? " 
 
 " If I laughed it was unseemly," answered the 
 man, " or at any rate my laughter only reflected 
 my joy. Let me tell the gentlemen and gentle- 
 women here you taught me to say gentlewomen 
 instead of ladies, and the word is better what 
 I know of your attitude in this matter. I was 
 born a slave just about a year before Mr. 
 Rhett was born. He and I played together and 
 I want to say, he always played fair." 
 
 " Don't lay it on too thick, Bob," Rhett said, 
 interrupting. " Remember that I still have 
 some scraps and shreds of modesty left, and I 
 really think you ought to spare them." 
 
 " As I was saying," said Bob, beginning where 
 he had left off, " he always played fair. Well, 
 he did more than that. He played more than 
 fair. He sent me to school. After that he sent 
 me to college. That was after he had to earn his 
 own money by hard work, and the money didn't 
 come easily either. He sent me to a preparatory 
 school and then to Harvard, and now I want to 
 tell you ladies and gentlemen something that he'll 
 
222 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 never tell you, no, Mas' Warren, you can't 
 shut me up now " this in response to a manifes- 
 tation on Rhett's part " he lived on tea and 
 crackers in New York in order to give me my 
 education. Sometimes he couldn't afford the 
 tea and sometimes he couldn't afford the crackers, 
 and once he pawned his own fraternity pin it 
 had a diamond in it to help me make a man 
 of myself. He wants me to shut up now, but I 
 won't. I'm going to tell God all about all those 
 things when the judgment-day comes and leave 
 it to God to say what ought to be done to him 
 on account of them." 
 
 The situation was emotionally strained. Hazel 
 relieved it with a tact beyond measure. She rose 
 from her chair and advanced to the negro, who 
 was standing now and full of enthusiasm. She 
 shook hands with him fervently and said : 
 
 " Thank you ! Tell God all that when your 
 chance comes. But now we want to hear your 
 views about the education of negroes." 
 
 Her little speech gave time for the swallowing 
 of lumps in several throats, and Robert was 
 prompt to respond. 
 
IN THE PORCH 223 
 
 " Well, Miss Hazel," he said, using the Vir- 
 ginian negro's license to address any young 
 woman by her first name with the respectful pre- 
 fix of " Miss." " Well, Miss Hazel, that is the 
 work I'm trying to do in the world, and naturally 
 I've thought a good deal about it. But Mr. Rhett 
 I mean Mas' Warren, for he'll always be that 
 to me knows more about it than I do, and it is 
 more fitting that he should speak. He and I 
 have talked over the subject, and we are fully 
 agreed regarding it. So let him speak in my 
 stead." 
 
 " No," answered Rhett. " It's your turn to 
 shoot, Robert, as we used to say when we played 
 marbles. You have had practical experience in 
 negro education I have nothing better than 
 theories." 
 
 " Well, I don't mind telling you what I think 
 if you want to hear. I reckon you can't take a 
 whole race of ignorant and half-developed people 
 by the nape of the neck, and lift them up, and it 
 seems to me that that's what people have been 
 trying to do with the negroes. 
 
 " I reckon the average intelligence of any race, 
 
224 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the average morality, the average education, 
 isn't very high. I reckon if you averaged it up on 
 the east side of New York, or on the west side for 
 that matter, you'd not find the level very high. 
 I reckon if you averaged up the farmers of the 
 north you'd get a rather low percentage of culture. 
 And if you ruled out a few highly achieving in- 
 dividuals in each case, your average would be very 
 much lower than it is. It is by virtue of a few 
 individuals in each case that the average is kept 
 up. Now I really suppose that the only thing to 
 be done in any such matter is to give every man 
 a chance, and to let the average take care of itself. 
 As to the negroes, it is obvious that only here and 
 there there is one of them capable of highly 
 intellectual development. The fundamental 
 trouble is misdirected endeavor an effort to 
 educate all alike, regardless of their individual 
 capacities. There is a fetich in education as in 
 most other things. If I understand the purpose 
 of education it is to develop and cultivate each 
 man's capacity, and to make the most of what he's 
 fit for. What is good for one man in the way of 
 education may be very bad for another. What 
 
IN THE PORCH 225 
 
 brings out and makes the mpst of one man's 
 capacities may cripple the capacities of another 
 man. The accepted theory of education is that 
 all men should be taught the same things in the 
 same way and out of the same books. It seems 
 to me all wrong. It seems to me that some people 
 could be best educated without any books at all. 
 It seems to me a sad mistake to spoil a good car- 
 penter trying to make a rhetorician of him. I 
 have a clipping here from the New York Sun 
 a brilliant editorial which sets forth some in- 
 teresting historical facts and presents what I 
 regard as the true philosophy of negro education 
 better than I can do it. Miss Hazel, you've got 
 better eyes than mine, would you mind reading 
 it?" 
 
 Hazel took the clipping and standing close to 
 one of the shaded lamps read aloud as follows : 
 
 CONCERNING NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 It will perhaps astonish a great many com- 
 placent and unsuspecting persons in this part of 
 the country to hear it said that a very considerable 
 number, if not a majority, of the old-time great 
 Southern slaveholders were heartily opposed to 
 " the institution." Such is the truth, neverthe- 
 
226 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 less, as every one familiar with the inner history 
 of that section knows full well. There is no room 
 for argument. When we enter the domain of 
 imperishable fact we shake from our heels the 
 dust of controversy. But a still more novel and 
 disturbing truth is that long before the civil war 
 certain Louisiana landowners of the magnificent, 
 patriarchal type conceived a plan for " educating " 
 their slaves, so wise, so enlightened, and, as it 
 proved, so substantially beneficent, that modern 
 paternalism could advantageously hark back to 
 it at least in some particular respects. 
 
 To put it briefly, we may say that long before 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin " saw the light, and while 
 as yet the great slaveholding magnates of the 
 South regarded slavery as an establishment 
 beyond the reach of social agitation or political 
 vicissitude, wise and kindly members of the ruling 
 class had conceived and set in operation a system 
 whereby slavery could be robbed of all its most 
 repulsive aspects and transformed into an agency 
 of exaltation. They were not doctrinaires, these 
 well-meaning men, but they loved their slaves and 
 they felt it their duty, as it already was their earnest 
 wish, to lift them out of the mire of degradation 
 and subjection, if such a thing were possible. 
 Thus it came about that schools were established 
 on hundreds of plantations; nothing like our 
 modern schools, of course, but just plain, simple 
 agencies of experiment and observation. The 
 idea was to disclose the special gift, proclivity, or 
 talent of the individual, not to set up a Procrustes 
 bed in the way of a smug curriculum. The idea 
 
IN THE PORCH 227 
 
 was to encourage and disclose any special talent 
 and proclivity in the individual. The young were 
 subjected to a benevolent and enlightened in- 
 quisition. There was no cut and dried formula of 
 appraisement. The born artisan was not drilled 
 to death in botany or ethics; the appointed 
 cooper, mason, or blacksmith was not required to 
 qualify as a pianist or a mathematician. Special 
 gifts and tendencies were ascertained, developed, 
 perfected. And so it followed that thousands of 
 slaves became bricklayers, carpenters, black- 
 smiths, tailors, engineers, sugar boilers, artisans 
 of every kind, even musicians, and were permitted 
 to pursue their vocations in perfect freedom, 
 merely paying to their masters a small percentage 
 on the assessed value of the individual. In all 
 respects they were at liberty. They lived where 
 they pleased, acquired their own homes, and 
 accumulated their own properties, and in all 
 these respects were protected by the law. It is a 
 fact that the negro who dwelt under this dispen- 
 sation, seventy-five years ago, enjoyed more 
 actual freedom and received more substantial 
 consideration than do his descendants of to-day, 
 who strut about, inflated and misled by the 
 worthless " education " of the latter-day public 
 schools. 
 
 A detailed record of the fruits of this system 
 would astound the philanthropists of the present 
 generation. It is a fact, notwithstanding, that 
 the slaveholders of the last century did more to 
 uplift and help the negro than all the doctrinaires 
 and societies and governments of our day are 
 
228 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 doing or are likely to do ; and that, considering 
 the results in view, is a very inadequate and pallid 
 statement of the case. 1 
 
 " There you have my view," said Warren 
 Rhett. " I believe heartily in the education of 
 the negro, but I do not at all believe in his mis- 
 education. I once went through the establish- 
 ment of Robert Hoe & Co., the greatest manu- 
 facturers of wonderfully complicated printing 
 machinery in the world. They have to educate 
 their own workmen. To that end they maintain 
 a night-school, and in order that their two or three 
 hundred boys may attend it, they give all of them 
 supper at a restaurant every evening. The 
 managing partner of that great firm once said to 
 me in answer to a question : 
 
 " ' I'd rather have a boy with no education at all 
 than a boy who has been graduated from the 
 grammar school or from the high school. * 
 
 " When I asked him why, he told me, sub- 
 stantially this : 
 
 " ' The boy who has been through the schools 
 
 1 This statement of historical fact, with its enlightening 
 comment, is reprinted here with the generous permission 
 of the editor of the New York Sun AUTHOR. 
 
IN THE PORCH 229 
 
 thinks of his employment here rather as a step- 
 ping-stone to something else, than as a lifelong 
 occupation. He has been taught that he may 
 become a Congressman after awhile or a Sena- 
 tor or even President of the United States. From 
 the very word " go " he treats his employment here 
 as a temporary makeshift, while the boy who 
 has had no education at all looks upon it as his 
 life's career, and proceeds to do the best he can 
 to equip himself for it. If there is anything to be 
 learned that will help him he struggles to learn it. 
 If he has any special ability, he does his best to 
 develop it with such aid as our school gives him. 
 His ambition is to make of himself the very best 
 workman he can in the establishment of Robert 
 Hoe & Co., while the ambition of the school- 
 educated boy who comes to us is, as soon as 
 possible, to quit our service for something that he 
 regards as higher and better.' 
 
 " Now," continued Rhett, " there is much of 
 this same kind of thing in the education of the 
 negro. Men who ought to have been taught to 
 do expert blacksmithing, have been taught in- 
 stead to write worthless compositions. Boys 
 
230 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 who ought to have been taught how to run engines, 
 or how to plough or how to cultivate plants, have 
 been taught paradigms instead. There is a good 
 deal of the same thing done in the education of 
 white boys, but it is especially conspicuous in 
 negro education. Books are made the basis of it 
 all, when the majority of the negro boys and girls 
 have very little if any need of book learning, very 
 little if any capacity for it. I stood on the docks 
 at Savannah one day not long ago, and talked 
 with a numerous company of negro boys and 
 girls who were idling there. Every one of them 
 had attended school, some of them for as long 
 as ten years, but I could not discover one who 
 had advanced beyond the first reader, or one who 
 had any desire to do so. How much better it 
 would have been to train those boys to some 
 useful handicraft and to teach those girls the high 
 art of good cooking ! Such a training would 
 have equipped them for useful work in the world. 
 It would have secured to them the certainty of 
 employment at good wages the certainty of a 
 prosperous and useful life, instead of the shiftless 
 existence they are now destined to lead." 
 
IN THE PORCH 231 
 
 u Then you think manual training and the like 
 should take the place of scholastic instruction in 
 negro schools ? " asked Miss Bandon, who was 
 an apostle of negro education. 
 
 " In a large degree, yes. Bob has told you how 
 I educated him in the best schools and colleges 
 there are in America. That was because he was 
 intellectually fit for that sort of education. I am 
 ready to do the same for a dozen others if Bob 
 can find them for me. I doubt if there is another 
 negro on this plantation who would be benefited 
 by the kind of education Bob has received. That, 
 however, isn't the marrow of the matter. The 
 book teaching in the schools is converted into the 
 mere husks of learning, because it is not directed 
 to any rational purpose. In Bob's case the pur- 
 pose was obvious and advantageous. He has 
 brains and character, he is fit to be a leader of 
 his people, he knows their weaknesses and their 
 strength, he knows their needs, and he is qualified 
 by nature to think soundly. I helped him to 
 educate himself because I was sure that in no 
 other way could I render a better service to his 
 race or to the country, and I am sure of that yet. 
 
232 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 He is diligently engaged in teaching young negroes 
 the things that it is best for them to learn, and in 
 teaching their teachers how to teach them. I 
 am so well pleased with his work that if a contract 
 I have just taken proves half as profitable as I 
 think it will, I am going to endow his school in a 
 way that will enable him greatly to extend its 
 usefulness." 
 
 " He is a greatly good man ! " Hazel whispered 
 to Kate, and Rhett overheard. By way of avoid- 
 ing discussion of that subject, he made haste to 
 add: 
 
 " It is my objection to socialism that its funda- 
 mental purpose is to excuse men from the struggle 
 for existence, and in that way to rob them of the 
 only effective incentive to endeavor. It is possible 
 that under the paternal governance of a socialis- 
 tic state a good deal of human suffering might be 
 avoided; but it seems clear to me that under a 
 system which should secure a comfortable living 
 to every man, there could be no advancement, no 
 progress, no race improvement, because under 
 such conditions there would be no struggle and 
 no necessity of struggle. The human race would 
 
IN THE PORCH . 233 
 
 simply stagnate and degenerate. There would 
 be an end of endeavor, an end of enterprise, an 
 end of progress, because the very conditions that 
 alone stimulate endeavor invite men to enter- 
 prise, and promote progress, would be no longer 
 present in the world. Henry " calling to the 
 dining-room servant "I wish you'd find Isaac 
 to-night and tell him that if he'll get the ploughing 
 done down in the Cooper new grounds by noon 
 to-morrow, or by two o'clock, he and all the rest 
 of the field-hands shall have permission to attend 
 the camp-meeting for two days. But tell him that 
 any one of them who stays away longer, needn't 
 come back at all. 
 
 " Miss Hazel, won't you and Kate give us a 
 little music now?" 
 
XVI 
 
 A MIDNIGHT RIDE 
 
 KATE accompanied on the guitar and Hazel 
 sang to the delight of the company, while 
 Rhett chafed sorely under the restraint 
 that the presence of company imposed. He 
 wanted to talk with Hazel. He wanted to draw 
 from her the information that Kate had refused 
 to give him, while she at the same time urged 
 upon him a course that would be simply impossible 
 if her statement of the case was correct. 
 
 If it had been anybody other than Kate who had 
 told him that Hazel was already a married woman 
 and then had urged him to win her in spite of the 
 fact, saying that the marriage didn't amount to 
 much anyhow, if it had been anybody other 
 than Kate, he would have decided without hesita- 
 tion that there must be some other fact which 
 opened a way out. But with Kate as his inform- 
 234 
 
A MIDNIGHT RIDE 235 
 
 ant the case was far more perplexing. It was 
 Kate's habit of mind to have her own way. Rhett 
 perfectly understood that if Kate wished him to 
 make Hazel his wife, as she obviously did, Kate 
 would not pay much heed, in her mind, to any 
 legal or social or conventional obstacles that 
 might stand in the way. It could never be made 
 clear to Kate's inconsequent intelligence that the 
 people she loved should be in any measure re- 
 stricted in their liberty of action, in any degree re- 
 strained by obligations. " I want it so," was quite 
 enough for her. She had always had the things 
 she wanted, and it was therefore impossible for 
 her to understand, in any case, why she should 
 not have what she wanted. In this case she 
 very earnestly wanted Warren Rhett to marry 
 Hazel Cameron. The trifling fact that for some 
 unexplained reason the law forbade that made 
 no impression upon Kate's mind. 
 
 Knowing this temper of hers, Warren Rhett 
 could not conclude, as he would have done under 
 other circumstances, and with some informant 
 less erratic and wilful than Kate, that the alleged 
 marriage and wifehood of the woman he loved 
 
 
236 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 were in some fashion a fiction, a myth that could 
 be dismissed from consideration. Knowing Kate 
 as he did, he took seriously her first statement 
 that Hazel was already married, and he attached 
 very little importance to her suggestion that the 
 marriage amounted to nothing. He knew that 
 that would be Kate's view of anything that might 
 stand in the way of the fulfilment of her desires. 
 
 Obviously it was necessary that he should 
 challenge the facts at Hazel Cameron's hands, 
 and he was exceedingly impatient of conditions 
 that prevented or postponed that challenge. 
 
 At last the evening was done, the carriages were 
 ordered, and one after another the guests departed. 
 Even Danforth asked for his horse and pleaded, 
 as his excuse for leaving, the necessity of an early 
 appointment at his office. 
 
 This was an additional grievance to Warren 
 Rhett. It interfered with the plans he had sud- 
 denly formed, but he resolved to carry out those 
 plans in spite of circumstances. 
 
 As the last of the guests left, the late rising 
 moon crept up above the tree-tops of the wood- 
 lands to the east, and without even consulting his 
 
A MIDNIGHT RIDE 237 
 
 watch, Rhett directed Henry to " order the 
 horses." 
 
 " We'll ride in this glorious night-time," he 
 said to Hazel. " You will chaperon us, Kate 
 I had hoped that Charley would make a fourth." 
 
 " Two are company," answered Kate, " and 
 three constitute a crowd. Besides that, I don't 
 approve of chaperons. Their presence is an 
 insult to both the man and the woman who are 
 supposed to be watched. And then again the 
 bread has been distinctly below grade for three 
 mornings." 
 
 " What on earth has the bread to do with it, 
 Kate?" asked Hazel, in an astonishment that 
 she ought not to have felt knowing Kate as 
 she did. 
 
 " Oh, it's only that I'm going to supervise its 
 mixing to-night, just as Warren does things on the 
 plantation to see that it is done right. So you 
 two are to go for a ride, and I'll have the bread 
 right in the morning." 
 
 With that benediction the two set off. They 
 galloped for half a mile, chiefly because their 
 horses stabled all day delighted in the ex- 
 
238 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 ercise. Then they fell into a walk and presently 
 the young man said to the girl : 
 
 " I want you to tell me all about yourself I 
 have a right to ask the right of a man who wants 
 to make you his wife." 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said, and she put whip to her 
 horse by way of preventing further conversation 
 for a space. They galloped for another half- 
 mile. Then she realized or perhaps she had 
 realized it before that his words to her had 
 been such as a woman must answer. At her in- 
 stigation the horses slowed down to a walk, and 
 presently she said : 
 
 " I had rather tell you that story by daylight 
 at Mannamac so that I may tell it calmly and 
 judiciously, and not under the inspiration of a 
 night ride and the moonlight. Sometimes the 
 moonlight affects me strangely. It induces a 
 certain exaltation of spirit which prompts me to 
 throw discretion to the winds." 
 
 " That is precisely what I want," said Rhett. 
 11 1 want you to tell me your life-story at a time 
 when impulse and not discretion is dominant. So 
 tell me the story now." 
 
A MIDNIGHT RIDE 239 
 
 " It is a long story," she said, deprecatingly. 
 
 " We have good horses under us," he replied, 
 " and we have all the night before us all the 
 night for the telling and the hearing. But tell me 
 first are you or are you not a married 
 woman ? " 
 
 " I am, and I am not," she replied. " Only 
 the story can explain that." 
 
 " Tell me the story, then." 
 
 " It would be easier for me to tell it at Manna- 
 mac in the daytime." 
 
 " I dare say it would. But I want to hear it 
 now. Go on and tell it, please." 
 
 The girl waited a moment before speaking. 
 Then she said : 
 
 " You are so like my father." 
 
 " Just how do you mean ? " he asked. 
 
 " Why I hardly know but you have a com- 
 manding way, just as he had. Whatever you 
 order must be done. In his case I always liked to 
 do what he wanted." 
 
 " In my case it is different? " 
 
 " I do not say that," she answered; and there 
 she stopped speaking, leaving it to him to revive 
 
2 4 o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the conversation. She had a habit of doing that 
 sort of thing, and usually Rhett rejoiced in it. 
 But just now it embarrassed him. 
 
 " What is it then that you mean to say ? " 
 
 " Only what I have said," she answered. 
 Then suddenly she changed her tone and her 
 attitude, and almost as if bursting into tears 
 she threw out her hand and took possession of 
 his, saying: 
 
 " It is a terrible story, Mr. Rhett. You have 
 been good to me ever since I have known you, 
 and I ought to tell you of all this now, because 
 you wish it. But please let it go over till to-morrow. 
 Please give me a little time ! Please wait ! The 
 very motion of the horses disturbs my thinking, 
 and I must tell this story right whenever I tell it 
 at all. Would you mind galloping now and 
 toward Mannamac ? " 
 
 The emotion of the girl was manifest, and Rhett 
 was very tenderly touched by it. Pressing the 
 hand he held in his own, he said : 
 
 " Everything shall be as you wish. So far as 
 I am able to control affairs everything on earth 
 shall be as you wish always. I love you, Hazel. 
 
A MIDNIGHT RIDE 241 
 
 I don't know whether I have a right to tell you so 
 or not, that depends upon what the story is, 
 but I take the right. Whatever the condition of 
 things may be, I love you, and I shall do all that 
 is in my power to compel circumstances to your 
 will." 
 
 The girl rode on in silence for the gallop 
 she had suggested as a means of relieving the 
 emotional strain had not yet begun. He waited 
 awhile for some answer from her, but no answer 
 came. It was not Warren Rhett's habit to wait 
 long, without taking active measures to secure 
 his answer. So presently he broke the silence : 
 
 " I have told you, Hazel, that I love you. 
 Have you no answer to make? Do you love 
 me?" 
 
 " I am not free to answer that question," she 
 said. " Wait, wait, wait ! You shall know to- 
 morrow what my situation is. Then you shall 
 take whatever answer you think best. I love you 
 so well, so wholly, so utterly, that I place all 
 things in your hands myself and my life 
 and my future and my past. But you must first 
 know the story in order that you may judge 
 
242 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 wisely. I'll tell you all of it to-morrow. I can't 
 now. Let's run our horses ! " 
 
 And they did, with the result that they speedily 
 parted in the great hall of Mannamac house 
 Hazel hurrying up the stairs, to escape from a 
 presence which she felt to be a benediction, but 
 at the same time a danger, and he lighting a pipe 
 by way of calming his perturbed spirit. 
 
XVII 
 
 KATE'S DIPLOMACY AND MUSHROOMS 
 
 WITH all her seeming inconsequence of 
 thought, Kate Rhett was a woman of 
 exceeding sagacity. She knew how to 
 " put two and two together," though she was apt 
 to be a trifle uncertain as to whether two and 
 two made three or four. 
 
 Hazel said not one word to her that night with 
 respect to what had occurred between herself 
 and Warren Rhett, but Kate thought she under- 
 stood. There was something of perturbation in 
 the manner of both on their return to Mannamac, 
 and Hazel hastily retired to her room after kissing 
 Kate " good night." Kate argued that the two 
 had not yet " had the thing out," a conclusion 
 in which she was confirmed by the fact that War- 
 ren, instead of going to bed at midnight his 
 customary hour walked the porch for half the 
 remainder of the night smoking incessantly, 
 243 
 
244 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 as she was able to determine by the fact that 
 frequently she heard the click of his pipe upon 
 the edge of the jar she had provided as a receptacle 
 for ashes. 
 
 " They're going to fight the thing out to-mor- 
 row," she argued, " and I must take myself out 
 of the way." 
 
 So Kate left her bed at five o'clock and made a 
 personal inspection of the bread that she had set 
 overnight. Deciding that it needed half an hour 
 more of " rising " before being kneaded, she set 
 to work to write a note to her intimate friend, 
 Hallie Harvey, who lived on a neighboring plan- 
 tation. The " note " covered sixteen pages of 
 deckel-edged letter-paper, of course, but the gist 
 of it was embraced in a paragraph which ran as 
 follows : 
 
 " You must send for me at once. It mustn't 
 be by my messenger, but by one of your own, and 
 he must get here at breakfast-time. You see, if 
 you used my messenger, they would suspect 
 collusion, and that's like the leaven refusing to 
 raise your bread, or raising it too soon. It is 
 curious about cooks and bread. I suppose you 
 
KATE'S DIPLOMACY 245 
 
 have the same experience. Every three weeks 
 or is it every six, I declare I forget which it is 
 my cook begins to run down in her bread and I 
 have to teach her all over again how to make it. 
 It's very provoking, isn't it ? You'd think it was 
 easy and simple and all that sort of thing, but you 
 know they forget, and my cook actually sent in 
 the roe herrings horribly overdone a few mornings 
 ago. Hazel and Warren were awfully nice about 
 it, saying that ' occasionally ' they liked them 
 done that way, but all the same it is provoking. 
 
 " As I was saying, you must send me a summons 
 to come to you at once and for the day. I don't 
 suppose it will take them more than one day to 
 talk the thing out. Your message must get here 
 while we're at breakfast. You can easily arrange 
 it. You can have a new bonnet, or a headache, 
 or a bad liver, or a lawsuit, or even a fever, that you 
 want to consult me about. Anyhow you must 
 want to consult me, and you must want me as soon 
 ajter breakfast as possible, so that I can excuse my- 
 self at once. I'll leave Hazel to dry the breakfast 
 things, and he can stay and talk with her. I 
 mean Warren, of course. I think a woman never 
 
246 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 looks so fascinating to a man as when she is 
 sitting, queen-like, drying the breakfast things. 
 I have tried hard to think out why but I can't. 
 It's a fact, however, so don't fail to send me a 
 peremptory summons to come to you just as soon 
 after breakfast as possible. And by the way, I 
 want you to see Hazel in her new gown, so if you 
 don't mind, I'll bring you back with me to dinner. 
 They're sure to be through talking the thing out 
 by that time, don't you think ? " 
 
 Hallie Harvey was a woman of responsive 
 humor in all ways, so she promptly dismissed 
 Kate's little darkey and wrote the desired sum- 
 mons, sending it by a servitor of her own, with 
 instructions to deliver it between nine and half- 
 past nine of the clock. 
 
 " I want you to come to me," she wrote, " as 
 soon as you have drunk one cup of coffee. I'll 
 give you a second cup, if you want it. I'm in all 
 sorts of trouble. That Baltimore milliner has 
 sent me a hat so beautiful in itself that I long to 
 wear it, but so out of harmony with the color 
 scheme of my new gown that I can't. I'm simply 
 in despair. A misfit suitor couldn't give me half so 
 
KATE'S DIPLOMACY 247 
 
 much trouble. Come to me at once, I pray 
 you." 
 
 Then, wise woman that she was, she added a 
 postscript, saying: 
 
 " Of course Hazel will look after things at 
 Mannamac for the day. Now that Mr. Rhett is 
 there, the plantation can't be left even for a day 
 without a woman in presence. Men have no 
 use or tolerance for Edens with no Eves in them. 
 But, if you don't mind, you're going to take me 
 back with you to Mannamac for dinner and the 
 night, so I'll see Hazel then and we'll talk chiffon 
 without limit. Men always have new stories to 
 tell each other ; we women must content ourselves 
 with a talk of new rags. But the main thing is 
 that you must come over at the very earliest 
 moment possible just as soon as you can 
 decently quit the breakfast-table. If you don't 
 I vow I'll go away somewhere, look up a comely 
 coachman, and ask him to run away with me." 
 
 Without a hint that she had by her own iii- 
 itiative induced this urgent letter of invitation, 
 Kate read it aloud at the breakfast-table, and the 
 " consensus of opinion " was entirely unanimous 
 
248 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 that she must order the carriage at once and go to 
 her friend with the least possible delay. 
 
 If any cynic is disposed to suggest that women 
 are not without guile, he may be reminded that 
 their guile is in itself guileless, and is instigated 
 in many cases at least by considerations of the 
 happiness of others. Who would harshly con- 
 demn the subterfuges and kindly deceptions of 
 Christmas conspirators? 
 
 However that may be, no such ethical questions 
 presented themselves to Kate's mind. If they 
 had done so she would have dismissed them as the 
 grossest of impertinences. She wanted things 
 arranged for the day as she had planned, so that 
 Hazel and Warren might " talk their talk out." 
 The fact that she wanted it so was quite all 
 of justification her self-contained conscience 
 required. 
 
 She hurriedly ordered the carriage; she hur- 
 riedly dressed herself for the day's visit, and she 
 hurriedly left Hazel in charge at Mannamac 
 placing the key basket in her hands and saying : 
 
 " Now, dear, I must leave it to you to order 
 what you think best for dinner. This hurried and 
 
KATE'S DIPLOMACY 249 
 
 passionate appeal from Hallie for counsel and as- 
 sistance has upset me so, you know, that I can't 
 think of anything. Just order what you think 
 best. Only remember that Hallie will be with us 
 at dinner, and Charley is pretty certain to come. 
 There's a roast of beef in the ice-box, and a 
 young turkey, and a pair of ducks, and some 
 broiling chickens; and of course there's a shoat 
 in the ice-house, or half of one, and " 
 
 " For heaven's sake, Kate, stop. You're not 
 going to entertain a regiment of troopers or a 
 battalion of artillerymen. You've catalogued 
 enough food for either of such occasions. I shall 
 have a due regard to circumstances. I shall plan 
 and serve strictly a studio dinner what the 
 French call a ' little dinner,' and if you don't 
 like it your guests will. The carriage is waiting 
 for you. Go ! " 
 
 For the sake of compact completeness it should 
 here be recorded that with the exception of the 
 ptice de resistance Hazel cooked that dinner her- 
 self greatly to the consternation and disgust 
 of the negro queen of the kitchen. The weather 
 was feeling a touch of autumn coolness now, so 
 
LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 that there was a brisk wood fire in the dining- 
 room, by aid of which, and with the assistance of 
 a chafing-dish, the girl prepared all the dishes, 
 other than the roast, with a skill acquired by 
 long years of living in a studio where the make- 
 shift was the masterpiece in the art of dining. 
 
 But in the meanwhile, during the day, she had 
 told Warren Rhett the first part, at least, of the 
 story that explained it all the story of her own 
 life, and in the light of it he had watched her 
 preparation of the dinner with an interest so 
 eager and a disposition so aggressively helpful 
 that on two or three occasions he came near 
 spoiling results. 
 
 Nevertheless he was really helpful, in his 
 clumsy, manly fashion. 
 
 " I wish I had some mushrooms that I could 
 be sure were not toadstools," she said, as she 
 began to prepare for the fray. 
 
 " Come with me," he said in his commanding 
 way, "and we will find some." Their day's 
 converse was over by that time or rather it 
 had been interrupted by the coming of Isabel 
 Bandon, and the effect of it upon Warren Rhett 
 
KATE'S DIPLOMACY 251 
 
 had been to make him a more imperiously 
 dictatorial personage than ever. 
 
 " Very well," Hazel answered submissively. 
 " I suppose you know edible from poisonous 
 mushrooms with as much certainty as you know 
 everything else that you profess to know at all." 
 
 " Do you mean that as an accusation of arro- 
 gance and self -conceited assumption ? " he asked. 
 
 " Not at all. I have a great even a reverent 
 admiration of the way in which you know things. 
 I was thinking only of that. I didn't know you 
 knew how to distinguish edible from poisonous 
 mushrooms, but I ought to have understood that 
 of course you knew. Come on, Isabel." 
 
 " Not at all," he answered. " It is by pure 
 accident that I know anything about it pure 
 accident. May I tell you the story? " 
 
 " Certainly. I shall be delighted to hear it and 
 so will Isabel." The three were walking in the 
 pastures now. 
 
 " Well, at one time, when business opportuni- 
 ties had not opened themselves to me in any very 
 satisfactory way, I used to write a little for the 
 newspapers not regular articles, you know, or 
 
252 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 news revelations or anything of that sort, but just 
 odds and ends and chatter. One day I took my 
 lunch, as I often did, at Sutherland's in Liberty 
 Street. He had the best cold roast beef in the 
 world, because he nursed it week after week into 
 perfection. He had everything else in perfection, 
 too, from old Virginia hams to cutlets of wild 
 boar from the Black Forest in Germany. His 
 specialty was knowing how to handle food prod- 
 ucts in a way to make the most and the best of 
 them. While I was lunching there that day, my 
 attention was attracted by two great colored 
 charts that hung on the wall, the one purporting 
 to show every detail of the edible mushroom, the 
 other every detail of the poisonous varieties. 
 He explained to me, in answer to my questions, 
 that he had imported these two carefully colored 
 charts from Vienna, with a public-spirited intent. 
 It had been his plan to have lithographic copies 
 made of them, and to hang them on the walls of 
 every school in New York State. ' Thousands of 
 tons/ he said to me, ' of food as nutritious as 
 beefsteak itself go to waste every day, simply 
 because people don't know about mushrooms. 
 
KATE'S DIPLOMACY 253 
 
 They don't know one variety from another 
 the edible from the poisonous and worst of 
 all, they don't know how to handle them. I 
 imported those charts, in the hope that by fur- 
 nishing copies of them to all the public schools 
 in the State, I might be instrumental in teaching 
 the children of the State how to save this wealth 
 of nutritious food. But the school-teachers had 
 grammar to teach, and geography and rhetoric 
 and all the rest of it, and so they couldn't be 
 bothered to learn and teach mushrooms. It is 
 the old story. The schools busy themselves with 
 the husks of learning and have no time left for 
 anything that has juice in it.' 
 
 " The thing seemed to me to furnish good 
 material, so I wrote and printed an article, in 
 which I told the story of the restaurateur's effort, 
 at his own expense, to benefit the people, and of 
 the way in which conventionalism had defeated 
 his purpose. A little later I was taking luncheon 
 there again, when Sutherland came to me and 
 bade me eat slowly, for the reason that he had 
 something in preparation that he wanted me to 
 eat. Presently he brought me a dish of stewed 
 
254 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 mushrooms, and while I ate of it I asked him 
 what the mushrooms were. He replied, * There 
 are eleven varieties in the dish, and every one 
 belongs in the poisonous class.' Then he ex- 
 plained, citing, as an illustration of his meaning, 
 the manioc root, the juice of which is so poisonous 
 that even a whiff from it, inhaled through the 
 nostrils, will kill almost instantly; while when it 
 is set in the sun and allowed to evaporate it leaves 
 as a residuum that most innocent of food stuffs, 
 tapioca. In the same way, he said, all mushrooms 
 may be made innocuous by proper handling. All 
 are edible except that a few varieties have an 
 unpleasant flavor. The incident led me to study 
 the subject a little. I mastered his charts and 
 then I bought Gibson's book on the subject, and 
 with the aid of that I made myself so far an expert 
 that you may confidently serve to us any fungus 
 growth that I commend to you." 
 
 " It is all very wonderful," said Hazel. 
 
 "About the mushrooms?" he asked. 
 
 " No. About you." 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF HAZEL'S STORY 
 
 THE talk about mushrooms and all the 
 rest of it occurred in the afternoon, long 
 after Hazel had told her story, or a part 
 of it, to Warren Rhett. That story was told, so 
 far as it was told at all, before an open fire in the 
 great drawing-room, partly because although 
 the mushrooms were still growing in the pasture 
 lands, there was a chill of autumn in the air, 
 and partly because Hazel preferred to tell the 
 story under cover of drawn curtains and with 
 only the flickering firelight for an accompaniment. 
 " Nothing about me has ever been regular," 
 she said, " or what would be called respectable. 
 I was born in a studio, I suppose. At any rate 
 my father and mother lived in a studio when I 
 was born, and if they had any more regular 
 dwelling-place I never heard of it." 
 255 
 
256 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Here the girl stopped and taking from a vase 
 some of the late-blooming honeysuckles, she pro- 
 ceeded to fasten them upon the lapel of Rhett's 
 coat. Presently she resumed : 
 
 " After the wild, mad things I said to you last 
 night that I and my life and everything else 
 were yours to do with as you pleased I needn't 
 hesitate to pay you a tribute of flowers, I suppose. 
 I am not instructed in such matters. I have had 
 no education no proper bringing up. I have 
 never lived in society. I don't know what is 
 proper and what isn't but I know when my 
 own impulses are really right, even though they 
 be conventionally wrong, and my impulse now is 
 to pin honeysuckles on your coat lapel because 
 you are the great, generous, broad-minded man 
 that you are ! " 
 
 This speech, and the act accompanying it, were 
 obviously nothing more than subterfuges, meant 
 to cover the emotional disturbance of the girl at 
 thought of telling her life story. Rhett under- 
 stood, and for reply he said : 
 
 " Conventionalities are nothing more than rules 
 made for people who, without them, would go 
 

 '- 
 
 'I NEEDN'T HESITATE TO PAY YOU A TRIBUTE OF FLOWERS, 
 I SUPPOSE." Page 256. 
 
HAZEL'S STORY 257 
 
 wrong ignorant people, ill-disposed people. 
 Persons of real intelligence and refinement are no 
 more bound by them than authors of high repute 
 are bound by the rules laid down in schoolbooks 
 of rhetoric." 
 
 " Thank you," said Hazel, and she at once 
 resumed her story. 
 
 " My father was a sculptor, a man of genius 
 I know, but a man who could never manage his 
 own business affairs in such fashion as to keep 
 himself out of debt. I never knew my mother. 
 She died so soon after my birth that I do not 
 remember her at all. I was brought up in the 
 studio, without any woman to attend me or in- 
 struct me. Sometimes we lived in New York 
 my father and I sometimes in Paris or Milan 
 or Florence or Rome. It all depended upon the 
 commissions my father could get. I suppose I 
 got such instruction as I got at all mainly from the 
 people who visited the studio, and they were of 
 many kinds. Some of them were artists, some of 
 them vulgar rich people, some of them art lovers 
 of refinement and cultivation. They all made 
 much of me perhaps because I was a poor 
 
258 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 little motherless girl. At any rate they talked with 
 me a great deal. From them and the street chil- 
 dren I learned French and Italian, not regularly, 
 you know, but in a pickup way, so that I speak 
 both those languages more fluently than correctly. 
 
 " In the meanwhile I was learning something 
 of art, partly from my father and partly by in- 
 cessant contact with it, together with ceaseless 
 talk about it. I used to model a good deal in 
 clay, but that had to be only in the way of figurines 
 and miniature busts, because I wasn't physically 
 strong enough to handle larger pieces. Besides, 
 I had no real gift. Like most other sculptors, my 
 father sometimes painted, and I took to that 
 eagerly. I learned a good deal about the technique 
 of it, and especially about how to produce color 
 effects, though I had no regular instruction. If 
 I had possessed any real artistic ability I might 
 have become a successful painter. As it was I 
 learned all the tricks of painting, so that after- 
 wards I was able to earn my living by it, as I shall 
 tell you presently. But I could never become a 
 real artist, of course, because I have no gift." 
 
 " Will you pardon me if I do not agree with 
 
HAZEL'S STORY 259 
 
 you? In my opinion those two horse pictures 
 that hang in the hall out there seem to me to 
 suggest a very genuine gift." 
 
 "But your judgment is not a well-informed 
 one. Those pictures have an intensity that 
 pleases, a certain passion of endeavor and triumph, 
 and the coloring is good. But does it occur to 
 you that such pictures must be measured with 
 Rosa Bonheur's ' Horse Fair,' if they are to be 
 properly judged as works of art? " 
 
 " Yes," he answered with emphasis, " and I 
 have made that comparison. The result of it is 
 altogether in favor of your pictures. The ' Horse 
 Fair ' is the most overvalued picture in existence. 
 It is a pleasing work, of course, but so are many 
 thousands of other paintings. It is overvalued 
 because it is the work of a woman. Those who 
 look upon it say, ' That is a wonderful picture for 
 a woman to have painted ! ' After a little while 
 they say, ' That is a wonderful picture,' and they 
 leave off the qualifying clause. I do not think 
 the picture really great. I think its reputation 
 is largely based upon the fact that a woman 
 painted it, and is, in effect, a reflection upon 
 
26o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 women as inferior to men. It is as if one should 
 exhibit a work done by a child and challenge 
 admiration of it upon the ground that it was the 
 production of a ten-year-old. Anyhow, I am 
 going to subject critical judgment to a test." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " By offering those two horse pictures of yours 
 as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
 It is my conviction that they are in all respects 
 superior to Rosa Bonheur's * Horse Fair/ but as 
 they bear no distinguished name, as that does, 
 the committee may perhaps reject them. At any 
 rate, I purpose to put the committee ' up against 
 it ' and to find out how much the members of it 
 really know about pictures. The truth is, we 
 have no such thing as competent criticism, either 
 of art or of letters in this country. Let me tell 
 you an illustrative story. When William Hamilton 
 Gibson published one of his masterfully illustrated 
 books, the most pretentious and the most highly 
 esteemed art critic of the time assailed it bitterly. 
 He was the man who had challenged the genuine- 
 ness of some of the collections in the Museum of 
 Art itself. He said in print of Gibson's book that 
 
IN THE PORCH 213 
 
 object to my impertinence in insisting that you 
 shall also do the work agreed upon. Isn't that 
 about the size of it ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, you see, if we is to be drove an' has 
 to ask leave, we ain't free." 
 
 " I see," answered Rhett. Then adopting the 
 Socratic method, he asked : 
 
 " What are you going to do about it, Isaac 
 you and the others ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, they's to be a camp-meetin' beginnin' 
 to-morrow, an' we've decided to be thar." 
 
 "Very well," answered Rhett, "I have no 
 objection to that. But where do you purpose to 
 go after the camp- meeting is over? " 
 
 " W'y, we'll come back home ag'in, of course." 
 
 Warren Rhett waited awhile before replying. 
 Finally he said : 
 
 " Isaac, you had better go now and tell the 
 folks that if they go on strike, as they are planning 
 to do, I mean if they quit the plantation for a 
 single day in protest against my insistence upon 
 honest work for honest pay, not one man, woman, 
 or child of them shall ever come back so long as 
 I live. Do you hear?" 
 
2i 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " But Mas' Warren, we ain't got nowhere else 
 to go. Whar else is we to live ? " 
 
 " I really don't know," answered the young 
 man. He paused to let the thought soak in as it 
 were. Then he said : 
 
 " You and the rest are free, you know. You 
 can go anywhere you please. But of course I am 
 free too, and I tell you if you and the others quit 
 work for camp-meeting or for anything else, 
 you cannot come back to Mannamac, now or 
 hereafter." 
 
 Isaac was in a daze. He could not understand. 
 He could not see how it could be that men legally 
 free could still be held to an obligation by any 
 other man. In the meanwhile Robert had arrived 
 and had modestly seated himself upon the steps, 
 near his old playfellow and later benefactor, 
 Warren Rhett. At the smallest hint from Rhett 
 he took up the r61e of instructor to his fellow 
 black man. 
 
 " Listen to me, Isaac," he commanded. " You 
 and the rest of you do not understand what 
 freedom means. Let me explain it a little. I am 
 a free man, but when I get on board a railroad 
 
IN THE PORCH 215 
 
 train I must pay my fare. If I don't the conductor 
 will put me off, and serve me right, too. You and 
 the rest of the folks are living on this plantation 
 under contract to cultivate it. If you don't do 
 your work you've no right to your wages, your 
 rations, or your rent-free houses. Can't you 
 understand that? Can't you understand that no 
 man is free enough to get all that he thinks 
 coming to him and give nothing in return ? Your 
 notion of freedom is all wrong. No man in all the 
 world was ever free in the way you regard free- 
 dom. Here is our good friend Mas' Warren if 
 he will let me call him by the name that was dear 
 to me in our boyhood days even he isn't free 
 in any such fashion as that. He is a rich man I 
 hear at any rate he is a prosperous one and 
 I'm glad of that but even he cannot do as he 
 pleases. He must respect the rights of others, 
 and especially he must respect and fulfil his own 
 obligations. He takes contracts to build railroads, 
 dig tunnels, construct bridges, and the like. Do 
 you imagine for a moment that he is free to leave 
 his work undone and still expect the people on 
 the other side to pay him what their contract 
 
2i 6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 calls for ? That isn't all of it. If he should refuse 
 or neglect to do what he has agreed to do, the 
 people on the other side of the contract would 
 not only have the right to refuse to pay him any- 
 thing they could go into court and compel him 
 to pay them damages for his failure to fulfil his 
 obligations." 
 
 " For the Lawd's sake ! " ejaculated Isaac, to 
 whom this was a totally new view of human 
 obligations. 
 
 " It is as I tell you," said Robert, " and it is 
 time for you and others like you to try to under- 
 stand what freedom and liberty mean. If you 
 like I'll lecture to all of you on that subject and 
 try to make you understand it. But in the mean- 
 while I strongly and earnestly advise you to do 
 your duty like men, to fulfil your contract of work, 
 and to obey the orders of a man who has a right 
 to give orders at Mannamac." 
 
 " Well, for the Lawd's sake ! " exclaimed Isaac 
 as he shambled away. " An' Bob's a nigga' too I 
 Well, who'd a thought it ! I reckon may be, just, 
 for safety like, us folks had better let the camp- 
 meetin' be what they call ' slenderly attended.' " 
 
IN THE PORCH 217 
 
 After he had gone Colonel Forrest, the old 
 Virginian planter, asked : 
 
 " Don't you think you are rather hard on the 
 poor darkeys, Warren ? " 
 
 " Yes, of course I am. But it is for their own 
 good. It is the one thing needed the one thing 
 that will improve and upbuild the race. The 
 trouble is that the rest of you do not recognize 
 and insist upon the fundamental law of all prog- 
 ress human and other." 
 
 "Just what do you mean by that, please?" 
 asked Hazel. 
 
 " Well, my theory is based upon a law of nature. 
 From the lowest to the highest forms of life 
 from the primordial germ to the ultimate de- 
 velopment of human genius from the polyp 
 to the poet, from the oyster to the orator, from 
 the stamen to the statesman all progress is 
 conditioned upon struggle, and due to it, directly. 
 Without struggle there is no strenuosity and 
 without strenuosity there is no advancement, no 
 betterment, no development. In the case of 
 human beings even more than in the case of 
 lower forms of animated existence this necessity 
 
218 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 is imperative, for the reason that human beings 
 have mastered other secrets of survival than that 
 of fitness. They know how to take unfair advan- 
 tage of nature in a thousand ways that are im- 
 possible to plants and the lower animals. 
 
 " But the law of progress is absolutely inexor- 
 able. It is the law of a struggle for existence and 
 the survival of the fittest not necessarily the 
 best, but those best fitted to survive under the 
 conditions of the struggle. An unfair advantage 
 counts for just as much as a fair advantage, and 
 often the human being profits by it." 
 
 " Just how do you mean? " asked Hazel, who 
 seemed excitedly interested. " There is a thought 
 behind that, or I am mistaken." 
 
 " Yes, there is a thought behind that," he 
 answered. " But the thought is not mine. It is 
 Alexander Von Humboldt's. He characterized 
 the banana as ' the curse of the tropics,' on the 
 ground that it relieved tropical men of the neces- 
 sity of work, of struggle, of enterprise of any kind. 
 It is true, as he said, that the man who plants one 
 banana-tree, by that act provides food for himself 
 and his descendants to the tenth generation, in a 
 
IN THE PORCH 219 
 
 climate where clothes and shelter are not really 
 necessary to comfort. The result is that having 
 planted the banana-tree, the man excuses himself 
 from all further work in the world, and his 
 children do the same thing after him. Emerson 
 has somewhere said that every man is as lazy as 
 he dares be. That isn't quite true, but it suggests 
 a truth of human nature. The man who has 
 planted his banana-tree is apt to quit. His son 
 and heir is apt to regard the paternal banana-tree 
 as inheritance enough. In other words, ease of 
 living is a paralyzing influence, a check upon 
 endeavor, a ministry of indolence. Now knowing 
 the negro as I do having known him from my 
 youth up I am convinced that ease of living in 
 this southern land of ours has been his curse, just 
 as it is the curse of the poor whites. Their 
 standards of living are low. Their wants are few, 
 and they find it easy to supply them with very 
 little effort. Consequently they make the 
 minimum of endeavor, and you planters by 
 your indolent neglect of insistence render the 
 negro's problem of indolence easier. What I 
 contend is that all this is excessively bad for the 
 
220 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 negro, as it certainly is for the poor white. I 
 hold that the negro or the poor white will never 
 and can never advance in civilization till he shall 
 in the expressive slang of the time be put * up 
 against it.' Not until he has to fight for his place 
 in the world, will he amount to anything or 
 achieve anything. At the north, and particularly 
 in New York City, where rents are very high and 
 must be paid on the first day of the month, the 
 negro is constantly * up against it.' He must 
 pay his rent or get out. He must pay for his 
 meats and his vegetables, or go without them. 
 In a word he must hustle and he does so, and he 
 is the better man for it. But here at Mannamac 
 and on other plantations round about, no such 
 conditions have prevailed. The negroes here 
 have had no need to hustle. Their living has 
 come to them easily. They can live whether they 
 work or not. I think these conditions very un- 
 fortunate for them, and so far as I can I purpose 
 to change them. I have the kindliest possible 
 feeling for the negroes " 
 
 At that point Bob or the Rev. Robert 
 Ryman, D.D. distinctly chuckled. Rhett, 
 
IN THE PORCH 221 
 
 thus interrupted in his discourse, asked, " What 
 are you laughing at, Bob ? " 
 
 " If I laughed it was unseemly," answered the 
 man, " or at any rate my laughter only reflected 
 my joy. Let me tell the gentlemen and gentle- 
 women here you taught me to say gentlewomen 
 instead of ladies, and the word is better what 
 I know of your attitude in this matter. I was 
 born a slave just about a year before Mr. 
 Rhett was born. He and I played together and 
 I want to say, he always played fair." 
 
 " Don't lay it on too thick, Bob," Rhett said, 
 interrupting. " Remember that I still have 
 some scraps and shreds of modesty left, and I 
 really think you ought to spare them." 
 
 " As I was saying," said Bob, beginning where 
 he had left off, " he always played fair. Well, 
 he did more than that. He played more than 
 fair. He sent me to school. After that he sent 
 me to college. That was after he had to earn his 
 own money by hard work, and the money didn't 
 come easily either. He sent me to a preparatory 
 school and then to Harvard, and now I want to 
 tell you ladies and gentlemen something that he'll 
 
222 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 never tell you, no, Mas' Warren, you can't 
 shut me up now " this in response to a manifes- 
 tation on Rhett's part "he lived on tea and 
 crackers in New York in order to give me my 
 education. Sometimes he couldn't afford the 
 tea and sometimes he couldn't afford the crackers, 
 and once he pawned his own fraternity pin it 
 had a diamond in it to help me make a man 
 of myself. He wants me to shut up now, but I 
 won't. I'm going to tell God all about all those 
 things when the judgment-day comes and leave 
 it to God to say what ought to be done to him 
 on account of them." 
 
 The situation was emotionally strained. Hazel 
 relieved it with a tact beyond measure. She rose 
 from her chair and advanced to the negro, who 
 was standing now and full of enthusiasm. She 
 shook hands with him fervently and said : 
 
 " Thank you ! Tell God all that when your 
 chance comes. But now we want to hear your 
 views about the education of negroes." 
 
 Her little speech gave time for the swallowing 
 of lumps in several throats, and Robert was 
 prompt to respond. 
 
IN THE PORCH 223 
 
 " Well, Miss Hazel," he said, using the Vir- 
 ginian negro's license to address any young 
 woman by her first name with the respectful pre- 
 fix of " Miss." " Well, Miss Hazel, that is the 
 work I'm trying to do in the world, and naturally 
 I've thought a good deal about it. But Mr. Rhett 
 I mean Mas' Warren, for he'll always be that 
 to me knows more about it than I do, and it is 
 more fitting that he should speak. He and I 
 have talked over the subject, and we are fully 
 agreed regarding it. So let him speak in my 
 stead." 
 
 " No," answered Rhett. " It's your turn to 
 shoot, Robert, as we used to say when we played 
 marbles. You have had practical experience in 
 negro education I have nothing better than 
 theories." 
 
 " Well, I don't mind telling you what I think 
 if you want to hear. I reckon you can't take a 
 whole race of ignorant and half -developed people 
 by the nape of the neck, and lift them up, and it 
 seems to me that that's what people have been 
 trying to do with the negroes. 
 
 " I reckon the average intelligence of any race, 
 
224 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the average morality, the average education, 
 isn't very high. I reckon if you averaged it up on 
 the east side of New York, or on the west side for 
 that matter, you'd not find the level very high. 
 I reckon if you averaged up the farmers of the 
 north you'd get a rather low percentage of culture. 
 And if you ruled out a few highly achieving in- 
 dividuals in each case, your average would be very 
 much lower than it is. It is by virtue of a few 
 individuals in each case that the average is kept 
 up. Now I really suppose that the only thing to 
 be done in any such matter is to give every man 
 a chance, and to let the average take care of itself. 
 As to the negroes, it is obvious that only here and 
 there there is one of them capable of highly 
 intellectual development. The fundamental 
 trouble is misdirected endeavor an effort to 
 educate all alike, regardless of their individual 
 capacities. There is a fetich in education as in 
 most other things. If I understand the purpose 
 of education it is to develop and cultivate each 
 man's capacity, and to make the most of what he's 
 fit for. What is good for one man in the way of 
 education may be very bad for another. What 
 
IN THE PORCH 225 
 
 brings out and makes the most of one man's 
 capacities may cripple the capacities of another 
 man. The accepted theory of education is that 
 all men should be taught the same things in the 
 same way and out of the same books. It seems 
 to me all wrong. It seems to me that some people 
 could be best educated without any books at all. 
 It seems to me a sad mistake to spoil a good car- 
 penter trying to make a rhetorician of him. I 
 have a clipping here from the New York Sun 
 a brilliant editorial which sets forth some in- 
 teresting historical facts and presents what I 
 regard as the true philosophy of negro education 
 better than I can do it. Miss Hazel, you've got 
 better eyes than mine, would you mind reading 
 it?" 
 
 Hazel took the clipping and standing close to 
 one of the shaded lamps read aloud as follows : 
 
 CONCERNING NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 It will perhaps astonish a great many com- 
 placent and unsuspecting persons in this part of 
 the country to hear it said that a very considerable 
 number, if not a majority, of the old-time great 
 Southern slaveholders were heartily opposed to 
 " the institution." Such is the truth, neverthe- 
 
226 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 less, as every one familiar with the inner history 
 of that section knows full well. There is no room 
 for argument. When we enter the domain of 
 imperishable fact we shake from our heels the 
 dust of controversy. But a still more novel and 
 disturbing truth is that long before the civil war 
 certain Louisiana landowners of the magnificent, 
 patriarchal type conceived a plan for " educating " 
 their slaves, so wise, so enlightened, and, as it 
 proved, so substantially beneficent, that modern 
 paternalism could advantageously hark back to 
 it at least in some particular respects. 
 
 To put it briefly, we may say that long before 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin " saw the light, and while 
 as yet the great slaveholding magnates of the 
 South regarded slavery as an establishment 
 beyond the reach of social agitation or political 
 vicissitude, wise and kindly members of the ruling 
 class had conceived and set in operation a system 
 whereby slavery could be robbed of all its most 
 repulsive aspects and transformed into an agency 
 of exaltation. They were not doctrinaires, these 
 well-meaning men, but they loved their slaves and 
 they felt it their duty, as it already was their earnest 
 wish, to lift them out of the mire of degradation 
 and subjection, if such a thing were possible. 
 Thus it came about that schools were established 
 on hundreds of plantations; nothing like our 
 modern schools, of course, but just plain, simple 
 agencies of experiment and observation. The 
 idea was to disclose the special gift, proclivity, or 
 talent of the individual, not to set up a Procrustes 
 bed in the way of a smug curriculum. The idea 
 
IN THE PORCH 227 
 
 was to encourage and disclose any special talent 
 and proclivity in the individual. The young were 
 subjected to a benevolent and enlightened in- 
 quisition. There was no cut and dried formula of 
 appraisement. The born artisan was not drilled 
 to death in botany or ethics; the appointed 
 cooper, mason, or blacksmith was not required to 
 qualify as a pianist or a mathematician. Special 
 gifts and tendencies were ascertained, developed, 
 perfected. And so it followed that thousands of 
 slaves became bricklayers, carpenters, black- 
 smiths, tailors, engineers, sugar boilers, artisans 
 of every kind, even musicians, and were permitted 
 to pursue their vocations in perfect freedom, 
 merely paying to their masters a small percentage 
 on the assessed value of the individual. In all 
 respects they were at liberty. They lived where 
 they pleased, acquired their own homes, and 
 accumulated their own properties, and in all 
 these respects were protected by the law. It is a 
 fact that the negro who dwelt under this dispen- 
 sation, seventy-five years ago, enjoyed more 
 actual freedom and received more substantial 
 consideration than do his descendants of to-day, 
 who strut about, inflated and misled by the 
 worthless " education " of the latter-day public 
 schools. 
 
 A detailed record of the fruits of this system 
 would astound the philanthropists of the present 
 generation. It is a fact, notwithstanding, that 
 the slaveholders of the last century did more to 
 uplift and help the negro than all the doctrinaires 
 and societies and governments of our day are 
 
228 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 doing or are likely to do ; and that, considering 
 the results in view, is a very inadequate and pallid 
 statement of the case. 1 
 
 " There you have my view," said Warren 
 Rhett. " I believe heartily in the education of 
 the negro, but I do not at all believe in his mis- 
 education. I once went through the establish- 
 ment of Robert Hoe & Co., the greatest manu- 
 facturers of wonderfully complicated printing 
 machinery in the world. They have to educate 
 their own workmen. To that end they maintain 
 a night-school, and in order that their two or three 
 hundred boys may attend it, they give all of them 
 supper at a restaurant every evening. The 
 managing partner of that great firm once said to 
 me in answer to a question : 
 
 " ' I'd rather have a boy with no education at all 
 than a boy who has been graduated from the 
 grammar school or from the high school.' 
 
 " When I asked him why, he told me, sub- 
 stantially this : 
 
 " * The boy who has been through the schools 
 
 1 This statement of historical fact, with its enlightening 
 comment, is reprinted here with the generous permission 
 of the editor of the New York Sun. AUTHOR. 
 
HAZEL'S STORY 277 
 
 for by the surgeons. By that time his mother had 
 secured a private room for him in the hospital and 
 had sent for three of the most eminent men in the 
 profession to attend him. Many days passed 
 before he was sufficiently recovered to begin to 
 have wants. By that time I was quite myself 
 again, thanks to the tender care of his mother, 
 to whose home I had been taken. 
 
 " His first want was to see me, and I went with 
 his mother to see him, every day when the doctors 
 would permit the visit. Sometimes they forbade 
 it, because of a fever that beset him. 
 
 " At last he was given up to die. The doctors 
 could not, or would not, say positively that he 
 must die, but they equally refused to give us any 
 hope that he might live. It was a terrible time, 
 and the most terrible part of it was that we were so 
 helpless. We could do nothing to save the poor 
 fellow's life or to alleviate his sufferings. 
 
 " After awhile he began himself to anticipate 
 the worst. He lost all hope of recovery and began 
 planning to arrange his affairs with a view to his 
 death. First of all he made a will. I do not 
 know what its provisions were, but presently he 
 
278 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 became apprehensive that it might not be carried 
 out, - that it might be set aside on the ground 
 that he was not in his right mind when he made it. 
 For three or four days he raved and raged about 
 that. Then suddenly one day an idea was born 
 in his brain. Speaking to me he said : * If you 
 were my wife, Hazel, even the abrogation of my 
 will couldn't rob you of everything. You would 
 still have your dower rights. That's a good 
 thought and a glad one. You must send for a 
 preacher or a magistrate or the mayor or an alder- 
 man to marry us at once.' I half promised that I 
 would do so on the morrow, but he angrily re- 
 sented the suggestion. ' To-morrow may be too 
 late,' he said. ' This thing must be done now, 
 now, NOW ! ' 
 
 " His mother was with us at the time and so 
 was his physician. The physician, in answer to 
 the mother's question, said that any baffling of his 
 desire might hasten his death, and must certainly 
 render his last hours unhappy. Thereupon the 
 mother, in tears, begged me to consent to his wish, 
 in order that he might at least die happy. She 
 had completely lost hope. She regarded his death 
 
HAZEL'S STORY 279 
 
 as a thing certain and very near at hand. She 
 urged me, therefore, to consent, saying, ' It will 
 be nothing more than a form, dear, and it will not 
 even change your name, which is the same as his.' 
 
 " In wretchedness and despair I consented. 
 We sent for somebody to this day I don't know 
 whether it was a clergyman or a magistrate or an 
 alderman and there, by what we supposed was 
 his dying bed, he and I were married." 
 
 At this point the narrative was interrupted by 
 the arrival of a carriage full of callers, among 
 them Isabel Bandon, who, upon learning that 
 Kate was to return with Hallie Harvey in time for 
 dinner, decided to accept the invitation that Vir- 
 ginian hospitality always keeps open, and remain 
 for that meal. The fact that her friends declared 
 it impossible for them to stay made no change in 
 her resolution. 
 
 " Mr. Rhett is a rider," she said, " and he has 
 an excellent habit of keeping good mounts in his 
 stable. Doubtless he will see me home after 
 supper." 
 
 Presently in an aside, Hazel said to Rhett: 
 
 " I have all I can bear. Please do not ask me 
 
2 8o LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 anything about you know what till some 
 other time. Let's be just commonplace and un- 
 emotional." 
 
 He pressed her hand for answer, and household 
 affairs became thereafter the profoundest subjects 
 of discussion. Then it was that .the talk about 
 mushrooms arose. 
 
XIX 
 
 KATE'S STRATAGEM 
 
 AFTER the mushrooms had been secured 
 and Hazel had prepared them under 
 Rhett's direction and Isabel's criticism, 
 the three, with warm wraps about them, seated 
 themselves in the broad porch to await the coming 
 of Kate with Hallie Harvey. The talk was of 
 books, music, art, and the problems of human 
 life. On these latter Isabel Bandon was equipped 
 with a complete " line " of opinions professor- 
 made, and thoroughly " tailored to fit " by a 
 female lecturer who knew all that it is possible to 
 know about marriage and divorce and sociolog- 
 ical servant girls and all the rest of it. Isabel 
 Bandon had taken her degree as Ph. D. Why 
 then should she not display, for admiration, her 
 remarkable collection of opinions, all of them war- 
 ranted not to come out in the wash ? They were 
 281 
 
282 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 second-hand opinions, of course. Most people's 
 opinions are so, but she thought them " as good 
 as new," and confidently spread them out for ex- 
 hibition as her own. 
 
 After some other things had been discussed, she 
 recalled in order to controvert it Warren 
 Rhett's suggestion that the education needed by 
 the great majority of negroes and " poor whites " 
 at the South was industrial and not scholastic. 
 She reminded him of what he had said on the 
 evening before, and sharply challenged it. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I am convinced that unde- 
 veloped people, backward people and even the 
 majority of people everywhere are incapable 
 of benefiting by instruction in the routine of the 
 schools beyond the rudiments. Only here and 
 there a negro or a ' poor white ' has a brain suf- 
 ficiently alert to profit by the education of the 
 schools and colleges as they are at present consti- 
 tuted. I would give to every one of such all of 
 scholastic education he cares to receive " 
 
 Hazel, whose soul was in instinctive antago- 
 nism to Isabel Bandon, interrupted him to say: 
 
 "You did that in Robert's case." 
 
KATE'S STRATAGEM 283 
 
 Without replying he went on to say: 
 
 " For the great majority of such people the 
 education needed is purely industrial. They 
 should be taught to do things well and skilfully " 
 
 " In order that their ' betters ' may profit by 
 their skill, I suppose?" said Miss Bandon. 
 
 " I think I hadn't that in mind," he answered. 
 " We all profit by each other's work, whether it 
 be with hand or brain, but there is a great deal 
 more hand work than brain work to be done in the 
 world, and there are more people capable of learn- 
 ing how to do hand work than there are who can 
 do head work. We need more laborers than 
 bosses. We need more skilled workmen in every 
 handicraft than scholars, professors, or learned 
 men of any other sort, and as the great majority 
 are intellectually unfit to become learned men, it 
 seems to me it would be well to organize our sys- 
 tems of education everywhere with reference to 
 those two facts. Our public schools everywhere 
 yes, and our colleges, too should provide 
 means for the education of every child in the di- 
 rection in which he is best fit to do something 
 worth while in the world. The negroes, especially, 
 
284 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 are robbed of their rights in not being industrially 
 educated." 
 
 " Then you undervalue culture ? " 
 " Not at all. But culture, in the sense in which 
 you employ the term, is simply impossible to the 
 many, and particularly is this true of negroes. 
 Using the word in a broader and truer sense, I 
 think that if a boy has a gift of mechanical con- 
 struction, or carpentry, or blacksmith's work, 
 there is far more of culture for him in an educa- 
 tion that develops that gift than in one which 
 teaches him the classics and intellectual philos- 
 ophy and psychology. But of course, I am a 
 good deal of a barbarian, probably because I have 
 lived much in out-of-the-way parts of the world, 
 and have had to direct the work of multitudes of 
 men who could never have been taught the rudi- 
 ments of scholastic education, even if they had 
 been kept in school from infancy to age. I do not 
 wish to press my views upon you for acceptance. 
 Let us talk of other things." 
 
 He said this by way of ending a discussion which 
 he saw might assume the aspects of a quarrel 
 between Hazel and the other, if continued too 
 
KATE'S STRATAGEM 285 
 
 long. For Hazel had interposed some pertinent 
 words now and then which suggested a mood not 
 placative. But the woman still had the argu- 
 mentum ad personam in reserve, and she fired it as 
 a parting shot : 
 
 " How would you have liked it, if set to learn 
 the blacksmith's trade?" 
 
 "Oh, I liked that very much," he replied; 
 " and I positively enjoyed learning the trade of a 
 machinist." 
 
 " But how do you mean ? You use past 
 tenses." 
 
 " Well, I think the grammar will bear in- 
 spection. You see I am a skilled blacksmith 
 and a skilled machinist. I was required to learn 
 both trades thoroughly in connection with a 
 course which I took in mechanical engineering, 
 after I had graduated as a civil engineer. It is 
 a great comfort to me, because, you see, if I 
 ever fail as an engineer and contractor, I can 
 always get good work and good wages in a 
 blacksmith's shop or a machine shop, as I did 
 many times while waiting for a start. There 
 comes Kate." 
 
286 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 A moment later he was at the carriage door, 
 assisting Kate and Hallie to descend. 
 
 It was perhaps half an hour later that Kate got 
 speech apart with Hazel. She asked eagerly: 
 " Was it you or Warren who quarrelled with 
 Isabel Bandon? I must know for sure." 
 
 " Why do you assume that there was any 
 quarrel ? " 
 
 " Oh, because she forgot to seek a ray of sun- 
 light to stand in as we approached the porch. 
 Why, her whole head was in shadow, and of 
 course that meant she was agitated." 
 
 " Well, you may possess your soul in patience. 
 There was no quarrel though I don't say there 
 wouldn't have been one between her and me, if 
 Mr. Rhett hadn't prevented it " 
 
 " So you still call him Mr. Rhett, eh? Then 
 you haven't told him the story and come to an un- 
 derstanding? Why, I went away on purpose to 
 give you a chance." 
 
 " I have told him part of the story," the girl 
 answered, " but we were interrupted by Miss 
 Bandon's coming, and I have promised to tell him 
 the rest at some other time. But what is the use, 
 
KATE'S STRATAGEM 287 
 
 Kate? As I am already married, of course any 
 sort of ' understanding/ as you call it, between 
 him and me, is simply out of the question. I 
 think I had better leave for New York very 
 quietly to-morrow morning." 
 
 " How preposterous ! Why, there's Warren to be 
 considered, and my hat to be trimmed, and I've two 
 new novels for us to read together, and Warren 
 would be sure to follow you to get the rest of the 
 story, and then I should be quite alone and you 
 know Charley is coming over a good deal nowa- 
 days. By the way, I forgot. He's coming to 
 dinner this afternoon. Do gentlemen really en- 
 joy the sort of dinner you're going to give us - 
 what do you call it ? 'A studio affair ? ' Don't 
 be silly, Hazel!" 
 
 And with that Kate, without waiting for an an- 
 swer, called to another of the company, thus pre- 
 cluding further confidential talk. It was Kate's 
 habit thus to avoid listening when she did not 
 wish to hear what her interlocutor was likely to 
 say. 
 
 The little chafing-dish dinner was so great a 
 success in its way that Kate prompted Charley 
 
288 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 to exact a promise from Hazel to repeat it a week 
 later. Charley demanded the promise urgently 
 and enthusiastically, and after it was given, Kate 
 said to Charley, in an aside: 
 
 " That settles it." 
 
 " Settles what, Kate?" 
 
 " Why, now she can't go away. She always 
 keeps her promises." 
 
 " But was she thinking of " 
 
 " Don't ask me. Miss Bandon is listening. 
 Hazel, let's adjourn to the porch. Is it warm 
 enough, Warren? " 
 
 " No. The mercury stands well below sixty. 
 I ordered the parlor fire replenished while we were 
 at dinner." 
 
 So the adjournment was made to the spacious 
 oak- wainscoted parlor, where a fire of logs six feet 
 long and " larded," as it were, with sticks of the 
 fat pine known as " lightwood," rendered lamps 
 not only unnecessary but an impertinence, al- 
 though the dusk was coming on and the thick 
 damask curtains were closely drawn. Three or 
 four other guests had come after dinner for the 
 evening, so that the company was numerous 
 
KATE'S STRATAGEM 289 
 
 enough to make a considerable semicircle in front 
 of the great, roaring fire, with Hazel and Kate 
 crouching down on the hearth by the chimney 
 jambs, after their favorite fashion. 
 
 No sooner was the company comfortably seated 
 than Isabel Bandon brought up again the subject 
 that had been talked of in the afternoon; or 
 rather, she returned to what had been said at the 
 end of that talk. 
 
 " You told us this afternoon, Mr. Rhett, that 
 you had learned the blacksmith's and the machin- 
 ist's trades. That, of course, was only incidental 
 to professional study? " 
 
 " Incidental? Yes, in a way. But apart from 
 that I think it well for every man who can, to learn 
 a trade, to acquire some definite skill by which he 
 may earn a living if need be." 
 
 " What I was thinking was that of course your 
 learning of those trades was purely perfunctory, 
 and therefore superficial." 
 
 " Why, how can that be? " asked Kate. " I 
 don't know anything about it, but I know Warren 
 never does anything in the way you suggest. If 
 he told me he had studied millinery I'd shut my 
 
290 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 eyes and let him trim the most costly hat I ever 
 expected to own." Here Kate went off at a tan- 
 gent, after her habit. " By the way, Warren, 
 won't you write for some oysters ? They're in 
 season now and you'd better order Back Rivers, 
 or is it York Rivers that we all like, or may be 
 it's Lynn Havens or Cherry Stones. I declare I 
 forget, but you'll know when you come to write 
 for them." 
 
 " I have already anticipated your need, Kate, 
 and have ordered a barrel to be shipped twice a 
 week." 
 
 Isabel Bandon regarded this interruption as an 
 impertinence, but she did not say so. She re- 
 turned to her thesis instead. 
 
 " What I meant to suggest, Mr. Rhett, was 
 that in a great engineering school of course a stu- 
 dent would not be expected to work at the anvil, 
 but would learn by observation while hired black- 
 smiths did the hard, dirty work. Is it not so?" 
 
 " Not in any reputable engineering school I ever 
 heard of," he answered. " Certainly not in mine." 
 
 " You mean that you actually did the work 
 yourself ? " 
 
KATE'S STRATAGEM 291 
 
 " Yes every sort of work known to the trade, 
 and we had to do every part and detail of it over 
 and over again, until we could do it as well as the 
 master blacksmiths themselves. Before any one 
 of us could get his diploma, he must present a cer- 
 tificate showing that he was a competent master 
 blacksmith, a competent steam-fitter, and a com- 
 petent machinist." 
 
 " Oh, of course, in the way of professional 
 study, I suppose such things are required." 
 
 " Not only required, but requisite. No man 
 can hope to succeed as a mechanical engineer who 
 does not know those trades just as no man can 
 become a civil engineer without skill in mechan- 
 ical drawing. Besides, it is a good thing in itself 
 for a man to have a trade to fall back upon. As 
 I told you before, I found it exceedingly handy, 
 while I was waiting for practice in my profession, 
 to earn my bread and butter by working as a 
 journeyman in a blacksmith's shop." 
 
 " Did you work for wages ? " 
 
 " Yes, certainly. Why else should I have 
 worked?" 
 
 The woman paused. Perhaps she was care- 
 
LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 fully framing her next question. However that 
 may be, Hazel anticipated her. 
 
 " Why should not any man of brains and char- 
 acter be proud of being a blacksmith ? " she asked. 
 " There was Elihu Burritt, the learned black- 
 smith and distinguished writer, who gained his 
 wonderful knowledge of languages and literature, 
 with his forge, his anvil, and his sledge for com- 
 panions. Better still, there is the Rev. Dr. Robert 
 Collyer whose character is everywhere an in- 
 fluence for good, whose eloquence has persuaded 
 many thousands to right living, and whose very 
 presence is a benediction. He was a blacksmith, 
 first in England and later in this country. It 
 seems to me we ought to regard blacksmithing 
 as one of the learned professions, and the black- 
 smith's shop as an educational institution which 
 turns out some wonderful graduates." 
 
 Rhett was glad when Hazel finished her sen- 
 tence, and by way of preventing further discus- 
 sion upon what he felt to be dangerous lines, now 
 that Hazel had joined in it, he quickly asked: 
 
 " Kate, may we not have some music? " 
 
XX 
 
 HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 
 
 WHEN the other guests had gone and 
 the time came for Isabel Bandon to set 
 out for home under Rhett's escort, that 
 gentleman directed a dining-room boy to order 
 the horses, naming Dolly Varden for himself and 
 the palfrey for his guest. Kate, with a look of 
 absolutely childish innocence in her face, which 
 covered the deepest guile, asked : 
 
 " Why not order three horses, and let Hazel go 
 too ? It would be lonely for you, Warren, coming 
 home by yourself." 
 
 The look that flashed for the tenth of a second 
 in Isabel Bandon's face and then disappeared 
 before a ripple of smiles was quite inscrutable to 
 Warren and Hazel. But Kate, who was serenely 
 and justly confident of her judgments in cases 
 that involved the motives of women, had no hes- 
 293 
 
294 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 itation in interpreting it in her own mind as mean- 
 ing jealousy and vexation of spirit. So sure was 
 she of her interpretation that she had anticipated 
 some such manifestation and was looking for 
 it in Isabel's face and manner while making her 
 suggestion. It is said that the test of science is its 
 ability to predict, and in such cases as this Kate's 
 predictions very rarely failed. Her shrewd worn* 
 anly instinct stood the test as science. 
 
 After that little flash, Isabel Bandon greeted 
 the suggestion with seeming enthusiasm, but 
 proceeded at once to enlarge it, saying: 
 
 " But why shouldn't we all go? Surely you 
 and Mr. Danforth will enjoy a night ride better 
 than a lonely vigil here at Mannamac? " 
 
 Again Kate's insight into the woman's motive 
 was fully self-confident, and she declined the invi- 
 tation in her inconsequent way, saying: 
 
 " Oh, no, I can't go. You see my maid, Diana, 
 never knows what to do when I am away of an 
 evening, and besides she has gone to a party to be 
 gone overnight, and still again, I'm seriously 
 afraid there'll be a frost to-night to nip our deli- 
 * cious late peas. So of course I can't go." 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 295 
 
 Warren Rhett and Charley Danforth looked at 
 each other with a little, low chuckle which im- 
 plied understanding and, perhaps, admiration for 
 Kate's adroit innocence. So only three horses 
 were ordered. 
 
 The distance between Mannamac and Bandon- 
 nais was about four miles. As the evening was 
 cool and the horses fresh the party of three cov- 
 ered it, mainly at an easy gallop, within about 
 half an hour. Either the road was longer, as 
 Warren Rhett and Hazel Cameron returned, or 
 the horses were less energetic, or for some other 
 reason, the time consumed in the return ride was 
 a full hour. Something had happened just as the 
 party was leaving Mannamac, which became the 
 subject of a very earnest conversation between 
 Hazel and Rhett on the return journey. The 
 happening was this : 
 
 As the party passed the stables, old Joe, the 
 most faithful of the negroes on the plantation, and 
 the one of highest character, stopped the caval- 
 cade to speak with the master of the plantation. 
 
 " We got the ploughin' done," he reported, 
 "but so many of the folks had lef in the 
 
296 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 mawnin' 'thout helpin' with the ploughin' at 
 all, we had to work clean tell dark to finish it." 
 
 " Yes, I know," answered Rhett. " The folks 
 held a meeting last night and decided to go on 
 strike." 
 
 " What's that, Mas 1 Warren?" 
 
 " Why, they decided that they wouldn't obey 
 orders, that they wouldn't accept my permission 
 to go to the camp-meeting after the ploughing was 
 done, but would go in the morning, leaving the 
 ploughing to take care of itself." 
 
 " How did you know that, Mas' Warren?" 
 
 " Oh, I take pains to know what I want to 
 know. You and some others, faithful to your 
 obligations, stayed to do the ploughing. Now I 
 want you to come to me in the morning and tell 
 me, not the names of those who went on strike 
 because they'd call you a telltale if you did that 
 but the name of every one who guided a plough 
 to-day. There's an extra dollar of pay for each 
 of you, and as the new Yankee holiday, Thanks- 
 giving, is proclaimed in Virginia for next Thurs- 
 day, I intend to give a turkey for that celebration 
 to each of the men who ploughed. There's a lot of 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 297 
 
 clapboards under the shed of the prize barn, and 
 a keg of nails in the corn-house. I want you to- 
 morrow to take them and board up the doors and 
 windows of every quarter whose occupant has 
 gone to the camp-meeting on strike. Put all their 
 things outside first. You understand they are not 
 to live on this plantation hereafter." 
 
 " But, Mas' Warren, where is they to live?" 
 
 " I don't know. They must look to that them- 
 selves. They had fair warning and fair terms. 
 They have chosen to quit the plantation. They 
 must stay quit. Good night, Joe. Do as I tell 
 you and come to me for the turkeys and the extra 
 pay for you who were faithful." 
 
 With that he ended the conversation and set 
 the cavalcade in motion again. 
 
 He and Hazel had scarcely cleared the house 
 grounds of Bandonnais on their return journey, 
 when Hazel brought up this subject for discus- 
 sion. The horses had galloped for a few hundred 
 yards, when by mutual consent the young woman 
 and the young man reined them down to a walk. 
 At a gallop there can be no conversation except 
 in ejaculations; at the trot there can be none that 
 
298 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 is not jolty ; but at a walk, riders may calmly dis- 
 cuss the profoundest problems of the universe. 
 
 Soon after the walking gait was established, 
 Hazel entered her plea for mercy. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't do that," she said. 
 
 "You wish I wouldn't do what, Hazel? "he 
 asked. 
 
 " Why, what you said to old Joe, as we passed 
 the stables." 
 
 "But why not? It is simple justice. Those 
 people have engaged to cultivate Kate's planta- 
 tion for her in return for a certain wage, and cer- 
 tain rations, together with rent free quarters and 
 garden grounds of their own. They knew as well 
 as I did how necessary it was to get this plough- 
 ing done, in order that a winter wheat crop may 
 be sowed while the fit weather lasts ; moreover, I 
 gave them special orders on the subject, and I have 
 a right to give orders which, under their contracts 
 they are bound to obey. They know perfectly well 
 that under their contracts they have no right to 
 quit their work without permission; yet after I 
 had given them permission to absent themselves 
 for two days on condition that they should first do 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 299 
 
 this half -day's ploughing, or less, they conspired 
 to reject my terms, defy me, neglect a necessary 
 and by no means onerous duty, and go off in the 
 early morning. They had fair warning that if 
 they did that they could not return to the planta- 
 tion. It seems to me that I have no choice but to 
 enforce the terms I have prescribed." 
 
 The girl did not immediately reply to this. She 
 was thinking how best to set forth the thought that 
 was in her mind. Presently Rhett resumed : 
 
 " I heartily wish every negro farm-hand on the 
 plantation had joined in the strike." 
 
 "Why?" she asked. 
 
 " Why, you see if I could completely rid the 
 place of them, my problem would be easy. 
 The leases of little places to the renters will ex- 
 pire on the first of January. I do not intend to 
 renew them, because the negroes who hold them 
 practically pay no rent at all. They cultivate no 
 selling crops and so, in effect, Kate gets next to 
 nothing at all from their use of her land and her 
 quarters. I have investigated, and I find that she 
 has paid out for repairs on their houses nearly a 
 hundred dollars more than the total amount of 
 
300 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 rent paid by them. That system must cease at 
 the end of the year. Now, if at the same time I 
 could rid the plantation of the hired negro farm- 
 hands, I should be free to inaugurate a new system 
 one that would render Kate financially inde- 
 pendent." 
 
 " Tell me about that, please." 
 
 " Why, I should telegraph to my partners to 
 hire a competent Italian gardener, and send him 
 to me with a sufficient corps of assistants hired 
 and controlled by himself, under the padrone 
 system, you know, and I should then convert 
 the arable part of the plantation into a vast and 
 skilfully cultivated truck farm, worked for all it is 
 worth. For the padrone always sees to it that the 
 men he hires do their work. But the fact that five 
 or six families of the field negroes remain faithful 
 bothers me. You see I can't combine the two 
 systems of labor, and of course I cannot cast these 
 faithful ones adrift. I think I shall solve the 
 problem in a heroic way by giving to each of the 
 faithful ones a little farm, rent free, and convert- 
 ing the rest of the land into a great truck farm cul- 
 tivated by Italians under a padrone who knows 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 301 
 
 his business. That will pay Kate better than any 
 other disposition of the matter that I can think 
 of." 
 
 " You do not consider your own interest in the 
 plantation, then?" 
 
 " Practically I have no interest. Kate is 
 younger than I am, and she is an exceedingly 
 healthy and well-ordered woman. She will out- 
 live me almost to a certainty. At any rate I hope 
 she will. She has a life estate. My interest is only 
 a reversionary one after her death. That need not 
 concern me, as I shall probably not live to come 
 into the property. As to my heirs, at present they 
 are only some distant cousins whom I never saw 
 and for whom I do not care a wag of Dolly Var- 
 den's ears. Besides I am abundantly able to 
 take care of myself, without waiting for a dead 
 woman's shoes. So as soon as I succeed in putting 
 this plantation upon a securely paying basis, I 
 intend to relinquish to Kate all my reversionary 
 interest in it, making her its absolute owner." 
 
 " What if Kate should marry ? " asked Hazel, 
 with a peculiarly significant note in her voice. 
 
 " Oh, how I wish she would ! " he replied. 
 
302 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " That would relieve me of much perplexity. In 
 that case I could turn the whole problem over to 
 her husband. As matters now stand I feel that it 
 is my imperative duty to look out for her interests, 
 for which she is utterly incapable of looking out 
 herself." 
 
 They rode on in silence for a little while. 
 Presently Hazel said : 
 
 "I think you are in some ways a very generous 
 man." 
 
 " Finish your sentence, please," he answered. 
 " What about the other ways? " 
 
 " Why, I think that in some other ways your 
 experiences and the conditions of your work have 
 made you much harder, more exigent even 
 more despotic than you would naturally be." 
 
 " I wish you would explain that," he said. 
 " Believe me, Hazel, it is my dominant purpose 
 to be always just, always right, and always kindly 
 in my dealings with my fellow men." 
 
 " I know that perfectly. That is why I so dis- 
 like to see you warped by your experiences to the 
 doing of injustice and cruelty." 
 
 The girl spoke with a sincerity and an intensity 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 303 
 
 of feeling that must have commanded respect 
 from the most arrogantly self-conceited of men, 
 and Warren Rhett was very far indeed from being 
 such a man. Indeed his success in life had in 
 large measure come from his teachableness. 
 
 " Go on," he said. " Tell me all that is in your 
 mind. My own is receptive, I assure you." 
 
 " I know that. Otherwise I should not have 
 ventured to speak at all. You have been accus- 
 tomed to deal with a class of men very different 
 from these poor negroes, in their mental condi- 
 tion, in their ways of thinking and in their attitude 
 toward life. They were men controlled abso- 
 lutely by self-interest, men utterly destitute of any 
 sense of abstract right and wrong, men accus- 
 tomed in self-interest to accommodate them- 
 selves to circumstance. These poor plantation 
 negroes are not such as they. They have all their 
 lives, and for generations past, been taught to 
 think of themselves as entitled to a living from the 
 plantation on which they were born. No sense 
 of reciprocal obligation has ever been awakened 
 in their minds. Having been emancipated from 
 slavery, they are very naturally jealous of their 
 
304 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 new-found freedom. They are ignorant. Their 
 minds are not sufficiently instructed, or even 
 sufficiently awake, to comprehend the mutuality 
 of obligation, and especially they cannot under- 
 stand the compatibility of freedom with obliga- 
 tions of obedience." 
 
 " That is precisely what I am trying to teach 
 them," said Rhett. 
 
 " Yes, I understand that," answered Hazel 
 with a suggestion in her voice of the admiration 
 she felt for this great, strong man. " But you 
 make a mistake, I think. You are trying to do 
 in detail what must be done more largely if it is to 
 be profitably done at all." 
 
 " Just how do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, I mean this : I quite agree with you 
 that the negroes will never advance much in the 
 scale of civilization the masses of them, at 
 least until, in the expressive slang you used, 
 they are put * up against it,' in other words, sub- 
 jected to that struggle for existence which is 
 always and everywhere the inspiration, the insti- 
 gation of progress. But what good of that kind 
 can come from the proceedings you purpose to 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 305 
 
 take in this case ? If all the negroes in the South, 
 or even a considerable proportion of them, could 
 be put ' up against it,' we might hope for very be- 
 neficent results. But no such results can flow from 
 your endeavor to put the negroes of Mannamac 
 plantation ' up against it.' You merely make 
 martyrs of them. You really teach them no les- 
 son. If you close their houses to them they will 
 camp out-of-doors for awhile, supplying them- 
 selves with food by predatory methods, and little 
 by little they will find places in which to live on 
 other plantations. And their last state will cer- 
 tainly be no better than their first." 
 
 " I see a certain measure of justice in what you 
 say," said Warren, " but there are other consider- 
 ations. It is my duty so to organize things on 
 Kate's plantation that the land shall pay her a 
 living instead of being merely a refuge for preda- 
 tory idlers and paupers. These people are under 
 a contract of work, and they will not work. I 
 purpose to rid the plantation of them and to put 
 into their places a lot of men who will work, be- 
 cause they will have a contract master of their own 
 kind who knows how to make them work." 
 
3 o6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " But there is the human consideration," she 
 suggested. 
 
 " True ! " he said. " But I have no right, now 
 that I have taken hold of Kate's affairs, to convert 
 her plantation into an eleemosynary institution. 
 It is my duty so to organize it as to make it yield 
 to her the return it ought to yield. And I am sat- 
 isfied that to compel that will be the best possible 
 thing for the negroes themselves. I have seen 
 much of the negroes who have gone North and sub- 
 jected themselves to the struggle for existence. 
 They are handicapped in many ways particu- 
 larly those of them who know how to do something. 
 I remember one night in an elevated railroad 
 train hearing a number of rather intelligent 
 negroes discuss that subject. One of them spoke 
 bitterly of the South and of Southern conditions, 
 whereupon another a man of some education 
 and more brains delivered his opinion. * I tell 
 you,' he said, ' that the negro has a better chance, 
 and more liberty, at the South than at the North. 
 I am a puddler by trade. I know my trade as 
 well as any other man knows it. I have worked 
 at it at Anniston, Hot Blast, and Birmingham, and 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 307 
 
 never a man interfered with me. Seeing that 
 puddlers' wages were higher at Pittsburg than in 
 the South, I went there. There I found that my 
 color completely excluded me. Nobody was 
 allowed to work there without being a member of 
 the Union, and I was not allowed to become a 
 member of the Union, because I am a negro. I 
 tell you the South offers to the negro a far freer 
 chance than the North does. The only trouble 
 is that the majority of the negroes down there are 
 too lazy to take advantage of their opportunities. 1 
 There was an expert opinion from one who had 
 suffered wrong. But the plantation negroes 
 seem incapable of seizing their opportunities. 
 With a favorable climate, a fruitful soil, and an in- 
 dulgent public sentiment, they ought to enrich 
 themselves rapidly by work. But they won't 
 work, and they remain poor." 
 
 The girl waited awhile before answering. 
 Finally she said : 
 
 " Did it ever occur to you to compare them 
 with the peasants of Continental Europe?" 
 
 "No. I had not thought of that. But of 
 course there is room for the comparison." 
 
308 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Yes, and I think such a comparison may be 
 instructive. The negro farm-hand is a residuum. 
 The more intelligent negroes have found employ- 
 ment in other ways, and they are prospering. 
 The negroes who continue as farm-hands are 
 essentially peasants. They are equally hopeless 
 of betterment, equally incapable of pushing their 
 fortunes to a higher level, equally ignorant, and 
 equally content to remain ignorant. But there 
 are differences. The negro's standard of living is 
 lower in some respects and higher in others than 
 that of the peasant. He wants food in abundance, 
 and especially meat food, and under the conditions 
 that prevail here, he is able to get it. The Euro- 
 pean peasant who gets meat once a week reckons 
 himself peculiarly fortunate. Many of them, 
 particularly in Italy, do not taste meat oftener than 
 once a year. On the other hand, the European 
 peasant is thrifty. He looks forward. He is alert 
 to seize upon every advantage, every opportunity 
 that may present itself. The negro, accustomed 
 through long generations to ease of living, through 
 dependence upon others, knows nothing of thrift, 
 but trusts to-morrow to take care of itself." 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 309 
 
 " Your analysis seems to me sound," answered 
 Rhett, " but what lesson do you draw from it ? " 
 
 " Why, this, that in dealing with the Southern 
 negro peasant, you should take account of his 
 moral and intellectual condition as well as of his 
 physical status, and of the obligation he owes 
 under his contracts of work. I have seen a good 
 deal upon several plantations, and it seems to me 
 chiefly the fault of the planters themselves that 
 the negroes do not work in a way to make their 
 work profitable." 
 
 " Tell me of that." 
 
 " Why, on very few plantations that I have 
 visited is there any real, vigilant superintendence. 
 The planters do not stay in the fields with their 
 hands. Many of them scarcely visit their fields 
 at all. It is their own habit of mind to let things 
 take care of themselves, just as it is the habit of 
 mind of the negroes to leave matters at loose ends. 
 Every successful business at the North is under 
 the constant surveillance of its owner, or of some 
 one acting in his stead and responsible to him. 
 Otherwise the business would speedily end in 
 failure. Is it not so ? " 
 
3 io LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Of course it is. But go on." 
 
 " Well, I think that if the planters would super- 
 intend their own affairs in the same diligent way, 
 instead of taking their ease, the plantations would 
 be much more profitable. But especially I think 
 such constant supervision would educate the 
 negroes to diligence and faithfulness in work, and 
 that would be a valuable lesson for them to learn. 
 Under the present practice every inducement is 
 offered to them to idle, to shirk, and to waste sub- 
 stance in a score of ways. I think the greatest 
 possible benefaction to the negroes, and the best 
 educational influence that could be brought to 
 bear upon them would be their subjection to the 
 constant presence and supervision of the man who 
 employs them, or of some one acting in his stead." 
 
 They had reached Mannamac by this time, and 
 dismounted. 
 
 " Pardon me," said Hazel. " It is altogether 
 probable that I have been talking too confidently 
 about matters that I don't understand, but I have 
 a very strong feeling that for you to carry out the 
 orders you gave to old Joe to-night, thus matching 
 your intelligence and your authority against the 
 
HAZEL'S INTERFERENCE 311 
 
 ignorance and helplessness of those poor creatures, 
 would be a thing unworthy of such a man. Good 
 night!" 
 
 And she fairly ran into the house and up the 
 stairs. 
 
 Rhett turned to the negro boy who was about 
 to lead the horses to the stables and said : 
 
 " Tell Uncle Joe to come to the Great House and 
 see me in the morning before he does what I 
 ordered him to do." 
 
XXI 
 
 WARREN RHETT'S SURRENDER 
 
 WARREN RHETT was sorely perplexed. 
 He still had Hazel's unfinished story to 
 wrestle with in his mind, wondering 
 what the rest of it might be. He had hoped that 
 she would finish the narrative during that night 
 ride, but she had carefully avoided it, plunging 
 instead into the subject of his dealings with the 
 negroes. 
 
 There, too, was a puzzle. He had fully wrought 
 out in his own mind a course of procedure which 
 he firmly believed to be altogether right and wise 
 best for Kate, best even for the negroes them- 
 selves. But this extraordinary girl who pre- 
 tended to no definite knowledge, and who, when 
 ordinary subjects were up for discussion, was 
 accustomed to sit as a silent listener, shielding 
 herself behind the mask of inexperience this 
 312 
 
RHETT'S SURRENDER 313 
 
 extraordinary girl had offered considerations so 
 profound as to shake even his determination. 
 He would have liked to argue the question out 
 with her, but she had run away, woman-like, giv- 
 ing him no opportunity. 
 
 He walked the porch for half of what remained 
 of the night, trying by the cudgelling of his brains 
 to find a way out a way that should satisfy his 
 own convictions of justice, policy, and the ultimate 
 advantage of the negroes themselves, and that at 
 the same time should not wound or offend the 
 sentiments and sympathies of Hazel Cameron. 
 How he longed to have her with him, in order that 
 he might discuss the matter further with her, that 
 he might have the benefit of her suggestions as to 
 the various plans that formulated themselves in 
 his mind and still more that he might have the 
 joy of her presence. But she had run away, 
 leaving him alone, and leaving him to guess the 
 greater part of what was in her mind, and 
 probably to guess wrong. 
 
 Strong man that he was, he was not opinionated 
 beyond the common. He recognized the justice 
 of much that Hazel had said in behalf of the 
 
314 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 errant negroes, but it did not seem to him suf- 
 ficient to justify him in abandoning his original 
 purpose. 
 
 But as he weighed the matter in his mind there 
 was another and a ponderous weight always in 
 the scale. In spite of himself, in spite of circum- 
 stances that seemed to forbid, Warren Rhett 
 loved Hazel Cameron with all the passionate 
 intensity of a strong, virile nature and, as he 
 had said in his song, " Love is the sum of it all." 
 That strange marriage of hers, whatever its out- 
 come might have been, might be a bar to his mar- 
 riage with her, either now or hereafter; but in his 
 soul he was determined that it should offer no bar 
 whatever to his loving her, and he loved her with 
 the utmost intensity of passion of which he was 
 capable. 
 
 " After all," he reflected, when he had thrashed 
 the matter out in his mind, " after all, the thing I 
 am most concerned about is to satisfy Hazel's 
 scruples. Fortunately I can do that without 
 quite relinquishing my authority or abandoning 
 my purpose." 
 He had determined upon a compromise the 
 
RHETT'S SURRENDER 315 
 
 most dangerous of all things in a case involv- 
 ing principle and conscience. When Joe came 
 to him in the very early morning, he said to 
 him: 
 
 " Joe, I have decided not to be too hard on the 
 folks. You needn't board up their houses, or set 
 their things out-of-doors. They'll be back on the 
 plantation this afternoon " 
 
 " They'se a comin' this mornin', sir," answered 
 Joe, " and most of 'em is heah already." 
 
 " How did that come about?" 
 
 " Why, when I called the folks together what 
 stayed on the plantation, an' tole 'em we was to 
 board up all the houses an' they must be ready to 
 help, some of 'em went over to the camp-meetin' 
 an' give the alarm, tellin' every one of the folks 
 there that they'd better mosey home, an' they're 
 a moseyin'." 
 
 " So much the better," said Rhett. " I'll be at 
 the stables when the sun rises, half an hour hence, 
 and I'll tell them what I am going to do about 
 this thing. Have them all there, Joe." 
 
 When the negroes assembled at the stables 
 they were in sulky and sullen mood. This man, 
 
3 i6 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Warren Rhett, had abridged their liberty, denied 
 to them their freedom, invaded their rights or 
 so they held. He had compelled them to relin- 
 quish the intoxicating delights of highly emotional 
 religion as offered to them at camp-meeting. He 
 had asserted his right to compel them to fulfil 
 their contract obligations, and he had sug- 
 gested a plan by which he could do that success- 
 fully. To their dull minds this seemed a resto- 
 ration of slavery ; for if a man cannot do precisely 
 as he pleases, they argued, he is a slave. 
 
 Rhett quickly interpreted their thought and 
 their mood in the light of such mutterings as he 
 heard. His own mood was not an over-patient 
 one. He was vexed that he had, for Hazel's sake, 
 relinquished a purpose which he still believed to 
 have been right and wise. He made short work 
 of his talk with the negroes. 
 
 " You men are under contract to work this 
 plantation," he said. "You haven't done it 
 faithfully, as you perfectly well know. Yet you 
 have had your rations and your wages. Your 
 neglect has been dishonest in you and disastrous 
 to Mrs. Rhett's interests. This year the planta- 
 
HE MADE SHORT WORK OF HIS TALK WITH THE NEGROES. 
 
 Page 316. 
 
RHETT'S SURRENDER 317 
 
 tion hasn't paid expenses, simply because you who 
 are paid to cultivate it have shirked and idled. 
 Late as it was in the year when I came down here, 
 it was still possible to pull the plantation through 
 the year without loss, if you men would work, but 
 you wouldn't. You went off to the circus when 
 your work here was far behind. Then you made 
 up your minds to go to the camp-meeting, al- 
 though every one of you knew how important it 
 was to finish the ploughing first, so that a crop of 
 winter wheat might be sowed. Not one of you 
 could be spared for an hour, but I didn't want to 
 be too hard on you, so I gave you leave to go 
 away for two days, provided you should finish the 
 ploughing first. With all of you at work it could 
 have been finished in half a day. But you wouldn't 
 work. You wouldn't wait. You held a meeting 
 and the majority of you decided to defy my 
 authority, abandon the ploughing, and go off to 
 the camp-meeting early in the morning. When I 
 heard of that I decided that none of those who 
 deserted in that way should ever come back. I 
 ordered your houses boarded up and your things 
 set out-of-doors. I still think that would have 
 
3 i8 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 been my right course, but I have been persuaded 
 to be more merciful. I have let you come back to 
 finish out the year for which you were hired. A 
 little more than a month of it remains. But I 
 want to tell you now that I shall hire none of you 
 for next year. I am going to hire white laborers 
 from the north. Those of you who have re- 
 mained at your work instead of going away to 
 camp-meeting, shall remain here, but not as hired 
 plantation hands. I am going to give to Joe and 
 to each of the other faithful ones, a house and a 
 field, rent free. The rest of you must look out for 
 employment elsewhere next year. I give you 
 more than a month's notice, and if any of you 
 want to take a day off to hunt for another place, 
 he has only to ask me and he shall have all the 
 time he needs. That's all I have to say to you. 
 You may go to your work now." 
 
 With that he turned upon his heel and returned 
 to the house. Hazel was standing in the porch 
 and he had just time for a few words with her 
 before Danforth, who had passed the night at 
 Mannamac, joined them. 
 
 " I have surrendered," he said, " not to the 
 
RHETT'S SURRENDER 319 
 
 negroes, but to your pleadings. I still think my 
 original purpose was both right and wise, but " 
 
 " Then you should have adhered to it," she 
 interjected. 
 
 " But you begged me not to do so, and for your 
 sake I have modified it." 
 
 " I think that was wrong," she said. " You 
 are a strong man, experienced, able and accus- 
 tomed to deal with men. I am only a woman, 
 utterly without such experience, and as a woman 
 I suppose my sympathies are apt sometimes to get 
 the better of such judgment as I have. It was 
 right enough for you to listen to what I said, to 
 weigh it, and to give it such force as in your better 
 judgment it deserved; but you should not have 
 acted upon it further than it convinced your own 
 mind. But tell me what you have done." 
 
 He hurriedly outlined it. She said : 
 
 " That seems to me just and fair. You are in 
 duty bound to arrange things here wisely. You 
 are certainly under no obligation to hire people 
 you don't want to hire, particularly when your 
 reason for not wanting them is their unfaithful- 
 ness. But what about those who rent lands?" 
 
320 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " I have notified all of them that I shall not re- 
 new their leases for another year. They pay 
 practically no rent, and I can make the land 
 profitable in other ways." 
 
 " There again you are right," she said. " Thank 
 you for considering me in the matter, and for 
 tempering justice with mercy." 
 
 Here Danforth joined them and there was no 
 opportunity for further talk of an intimate char- 
 acter. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE REST OF HAZEI/S STORY 
 
 AT breakfast Kate was disturbed by the 
 absence of a roe herring for Warren, a 
 dainty of which he was very fond. As if 
 the matter had been one of public consequence, 
 like a bank defalcation or a railroad disaster, she 
 sent Henry to investigate, to find out who was at 
 fault, and if possible to repair the omission. 
 
 " I'm perfectly certain I ordered your herring 
 served, Warren, because I was kneading the bread 
 when I did it, and I find, by the way, that we're 
 running low in our coffee supply, so I am going to 
 write to Richmond to-day for another bag, unless 
 you will do it for me, Warren won't you, dear ? 
 You see I sha'n't have any too much time." 
 
 " Why, what have you on the tapis, Kate ? " he 
 asked. " Of course I'll order the coffee, but what 
 is it that so presses you for time?" 
 321 
 
322 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Why, you know the best train the one that 
 has a drawing-room car on it leaves the Court- 
 House at eleven o'clock." 
 
 " Yes, I know; but pardon my peculiar imbe- 
 cility if I fail quite to understand the relation be- 
 tween that undoubted fact, and your allotment of 
 time for the writing of any letters of a business 
 or social character that you may wish to 
 write." 
 
 "Now you're laughing at me," said Kate, 
 cheerily; " I always know that when you use pom- 
 pous sentences. But I don't mind. By the way, 
 I wonder if any of you heard the parrot this morn- 
 ing. You know I call him ' pompous ' because 
 he struts so, though he is moulting badly just 
 now. He was shut up in the back entry, where 
 he sleeps, and Harriet was late in cleaning his 
 cage and hanging him out in the porch, so a little 
 after sunrise he raised a racket, calling for Har- 
 riet, and denouncing her as ' a naughty girl.' He 
 is almost human in his intelligence." 
 
 " He is more than human," said Warren; " he 
 is positively demoniacal. But you, Kate, have 
 switched off your theme. You've forgotten to 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 323 
 
 answer my question or did you purposely omit 
 to do so?" 
 
 "What question?" 
 
 " Why, I asked what bearing the time-table of 
 the arrivals and departures of trains had upon the 
 question of your leisure to write letters ? " 
 
 "Oh, you mean about the coffee? Well, of 
 course I don't want to go down to Shockhoe slip 
 just to tell the commission merchant to send me a 
 bag of coffee. You see, Hazel, they unload all 
 sorts of things there, even onions and garlic and 
 guano and stale cabbages. So of course I'd 
 rather have Warren write for the coffee." 
 
 By this time Warren, who was used to Kate's 
 intellectual and conversational methods, began 
 to have some glimmering notion of her meaning. 
 
 " Are you thinking of going to Richmond by 
 the eleven o'clock train, Kate ? " he asked. 
 
 " Why, yes, of course. Didn't I tell you that ? 
 It's what I have been trying to tell you all the 
 time. But you interrupt one so." 
 
 "Will you take Hazel with you?" 
 
 " No, certainly not. You'd forget that there 
 ever was such a thing as dinner at Mannamac if 
 
3 2 4 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 there weren't some woman here to remind you. 
 Hazel is going to stay and keep house while I run 
 down to Richmond or is it up ? I declare I 
 always forget. Anyhow, Charley is going to 
 escort me." 
 
 "Oh, that's the arrangement, is it? And 
 when shall I send the carriage to meet you at the 
 Court-House on your return, Kate?" 
 
 " Well, I'm going to stay overnight with Cousin 
 Mildred, you know. Don't you think she's 
 charming, Hazel? But of course you do, and 
 really I haven't time to wait for you to tell Warren 
 what a dear she is. She can tell you that after I'm 
 gone, Warren, and anything else she pleases. 
 But please, Warren, don't forget to order the bag 
 of coffee. It is Java and Mocha, you know or 
 else it's Mocha and Java. You can look on the 
 last bag and see. I haven't time to attend to 
 details. I must run and dress." 
 
 " But Kate " he began. But Kate was 
 already above stairs. 
 
 " Never mind," said Hazel, " I'll find out be- 
 fore she goes when she wants the carriage to 
 meet her." 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 325 
 
 It is here to be observed that so far as anybody 
 concerned was ever able to discover, Kate Rhett's 
 visit to Richmond on that day had no other insti- 
 gation than her desire that Warren Rhett and 
 Hazel Cameron should be left alone together at 
 Mannamac, to " talk the thing out." It is in 
 evidence that need not be presented here that 
 Kate neither shopped, except to buy some ribbon 
 and the like, nor visited a dressmaker or a mil- 
 liner during her stay in the capital city. So far 
 as can be learned, her sole purchase there, apart 
 from some ribbon for Hallie, was a glass of ice- 
 cream soda. But Kate was a peculiar person, 
 and not the least admirable of her peculiarities 
 was her ingenious activity in making opportu- 
 nities for those to whose love-making she wished 
 well. 
 
 When she and Danforth had gone, Hazel set 
 about her housekeeping duties, and young Rhett 
 addressed himself to the task of writing letters. 
 First of all, in loyalty to Kate, he wrote for the 
 needed bag of coffee. Then he wrote to one of 
 his partners in New York, asking him to engage a 
 thoroughly competent Italian gardener and truck 
 
326 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 farmer, and a competent assistant, to take charge 
 of the cultivation of Mannamac plantation during 
 the coming year, beginning with the first of Jan- 
 uary. With that precision which always distin- 
 guishes the work of an educated engineer, he 
 made an exact statement of the number of acres 
 of arable land, the average amount of fertilizer 
 yielded by the stables and poultry yards, the char- 
 acter and needs of the various soils, and every- 
 thing else that might have a bearing upon the 
 matter. Then he added : 
 
 " I want you to make a hard and fast contract 
 with the padrone, and to exact a bond security for 
 its fulfilment. He must judge for himself how 
 many men he needs, but he must make himself 
 responsible under bonds for the cultivation of the 
 plantation in the most efficient way possible. It 
 is results that I want. It is for him to manage 
 processes. The plantation is fertile, and the 
 water road to the markets of New York and other 
 Northern cities is very easy and very cheap. The 
 plantation can afford to pay a good price to the 
 right man." 
 
 Finding upon inquiry that Hazel had no letters 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 327 
 
 to send, he despatched these two by a young 
 negro, to the Court-House. 
 
 After a little while Hazel finished the house- 
 hold duties of the morning, and joined him in the 
 parlor, where a cheerful fire was blazing. He 
 greeted her coming with a welcome, and said to 
 her: 
 
 " Perhaps you will now finish the life story you 
 started to tell me the other day." 
 
 " I think that is why Kate went to Richmond," 
 she replied, " and I shall be glad to have the dis- 
 tressing thing over with." 
 
 She seated herself, not in any one of the great 
 easy chairs, but upon a stiff, straight-backed, 
 carved contrivance of the kind then known in 
 Virginia as " Elizabethan," and she sat bolt up- 
 right, disdaining even the uncomfortable support 
 that its rigid and knob-studded back might have 
 afforded. Evidently she was nerving herself for 
 a task that seemed to her exceedingly hard. 
 Presently she began in a low, suppressed, nerv- 
 ously agitated voice: 
 
 " When I went through that bedside marriage 
 ceremony, in the hospital, it was the opinion of all 
 
328 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the doctors that Edward Cameron could not live 
 three days probably not one day. I went 
 through the ceremony reluctantly, in order that 
 he might not be vexed with opposition on his 
 dying bed, but might die satisfied. I had abso- 
 lutely no other thought in the matter, and that 
 thought was earnestly pressed upon me by his 
 mother who was well-nigh distracted by his 
 sufferings. 
 
 " But he did not die. After the meaningless 
 ceremony was over he became quiet and sank to 
 sleep. Little by little he grew better of his phys- 
 ical hurts, and after awhile it became evident 
 that he was going to recover. 
 
 " But there was a taint in his blood of which I 
 had not heard before. His father, his father's 
 sister, and his father's brother had all died in in- 
 sane asylums, and when Edward Cameron re- 
 covered from his physical maladies he was a 
 raving maniac." 
 
 Here Hazel ceased to speak for a time, as if her 
 emotions had been too much for her. When she 
 had recovered her self-control she went on: 
 
 " I was not really in love with him, as I now 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 329 
 
 understand such things, but I had liked him 
 mightily. I admired his heroism in rescuing us 
 women, and I very tenderly pitied his sufferings. 
 All that was the cruellest part of it, for in his 
 mania he conceived an intense hatred and dis- 
 trust of his gentle mother and of me. After an 
 effort on our part to soothe and placate him an 
 effort which resulted only in exciting his maniacal 
 antagonism to a homicidal impulse the physi- 
 cians forbade either of us to see him again. His 
 sister got herself appointed the guardian of his 
 person and estate, and she did the only thing 
 that could be done for him. That is to say, she 
 placed him in a private insane asylum, where she 
 personally fitted up rooms for him, so that he 
 might be comfortable. At my suggestion, she 
 employed two male attendants, so that he might 
 walk abroad or go driving in their company with- 
 out danger to any one, and thus might not feel 
 that he was under restraint of any kind. 
 
 " His dear old mother was in feeble health even 
 before all this happened. The shock, and the 
 strain, and the horror of it all and especially 
 her son's insane antipathy to herself, proved too 
 
330 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 much for her. She took to her bed, and insisted 
 that I should be always with her. She called me 
 1 daughter,' and seemed to cling to me and to look 
 to me for the sympathy and tenderness which her 
 own daughter gave her in exceedingly scant 
 measure, if at all. 
 
 " After a little while the dear old lady seemed 
 to give up trying to live, and one night she sank 
 into the final sleep." 
 
 Here again the girl suspended her narrative 
 and quitted the room for a time. On her return 
 she resumed her narrative in a strong and not 
 tremulous voice, as if some impulse of self-defence 
 against remembered wrong had nerved her to this 
 part of her task. 
 
 " I loved that gentle old lady as I might have 
 loved my own mother if I had ever known her. 
 My grief I need not tell you of that. Then 
 came a blow in the face a cruel, merciless, 
 brutal blow. The daughter Edward Cam- 
 eron's sister Beatrice came to me while her 
 mother lay awaiting the ministry of loving hands 
 in preparation for the grave, and in a cold, hard 
 voice said : 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 331 
 
 " ' Miss Cameron, now that my mother is dead, 
 so that you can expect no more favors from her, 
 perhaps you will have the goodness to quit the 
 house and leave us alone with our sorrow.' 
 
 " You can imagine what I felt I who had 
 never thought of benefit of any kind from that old 
 lady, except the blessing of her affection. Only 
 my pride saved me from a nervous breakdown. 
 That pride came to my rescue as resolutely as 
 Edward Cameron had done on the occasion of the 
 fire. I said in answer, that I had loved her 
 mother very tenderly, and that I had intended to 
 attend her funeral, and then go about my own 
 affairs, which sorely needed my attention, since 
 all my belongings, including even my clothing 
 and my toilet appliances, had been destroyed in 
 the fire ; but that as my presence at the funeral 
 would be unwelcome to the daughter, I would 
 leave at once and would she have one of the 
 servants call a cab for me. 
 
 " Then I went to the room that had been mine 
 in the house, and carefully laid out everything 
 that Edward Cameron's mother had provided for 
 me, even to some little velvet hair-ribbons. All 
 
332 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 those things I left upon the dressing-case, in order 
 that I might not be accused of having profited by 
 so much as a cent's worth from my ministry. 
 
 " I had no clothes except those in which I had 
 been rescued from the fire. I had no money 
 with which to pay the cabman who was to drive 
 me back to the denser part of the city, but I 
 thought I knew how to arrange that, and at any 
 rate I was proudly determined to leave that house 
 with my head erect. If worse came to worst I had 
 my watch with which to satisfy the cabman, and I 
 had studio friends with whom I could live for a 
 few days if necessary for it is not the rich or the 
 well-to-do who are readiest to come to one's 
 assistance in time of sore need, but those who 
 know what sore need is by virtue of frequent ex- 
 perience of it. But I did not intend to appeal to 
 any of these for anything more than a night's 
 lodging if I could help it, and I thought I knew 
 how to help it. 
 
 " There was a small picture-dealer to whom and 
 through whom I had sold many pot-boilers, and I 
 directed the cabman to drive to his little shop in 
 upper Seventh Avenue. There I bade the Jehu 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 333 
 
 wait for me. I told the dealer how I had been 
 burned out, and, without telling him how utterly 
 destitute I was of clothes and everything else, I 
 frankly said to him that I was in present and 
 pressing need of a little money. I mentioned 
 twenty or twenty-five dollars, and I told him if 
 he would let me have that sum as an advance 
 upon work to be done, I would do absolutely noth- 
 ing else than paint pot-boilers for him until the 
 debt was discharged. He was a Russian Jew, 
 born in St. Petersburg a man alert, business- 
 like and, as it proved, generous. 
 
 " He had a comely wife and a beautiful little 
 boy, to whom I had taken a fancy, and for whom 
 a little while before I had painted a number of 
 comic picture-cards as a present. The man said 
 to me at once, * You shall have the money in ad- 
 vance of course/ and with that he opened a wallet ; 
 1 but I happen to know you have lost everything, 
 and twenty or twenty-five dollars will not be 
 enough to set you up again. I am going to count 
 out ten ten-dollar bills for you, and then I'm going 
 to ask a favor. I have a customer, a lady a 
 very fine lady and a very good customer. She has 
 
334 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 seen you here several times, and she has asked me 
 to get from you a portrait of yourself idealized 
 if you please, so as to make a picture of it and not 
 a slavish portrait, but still preserving your features 
 and your expression, and, above all, your com- 
 plexion and coloring. I want you to paint that 
 picture for me, about half life size. It will sat- 
 isfy your debt to me, and I shall make a handsome 
 profit on the frame. You know that is where I 
 make most of my profits. Still in this case ' 
 and he shrugged his shoulders ' there will be 
 fifty dollars' profit on the picture itself, for the lady 
 is rich and liberal, and I'll divide that with you.' 
 
 " ' You shall do nothing of the kind,' I an- 
 swered. ' If I paint the picture at all, the profit 
 on its sale shall be entirely your own. But I do 
 not see how I can paint it at all* 
 
 "'But why not?' he asked. 
 
 " I answered : ' A woman possessed of any 
 modesty can't paint and sell her own portrait.' 
 
 " ' But that is not what I ask. You remember 
 seeing a little Irish girl in here several times a 
 girl with frowzy red hair, and freckles all over her 
 face?' 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 335 
 
 "I remembered the girl, and told him so, 
 " ' WeU, look at this, and this, and this,' he said, 
 showing me some really beautiful pictures. ' If 
 you remember her well, you'll see that all three of 
 these pictures were painted from her as a model. 
 They are not portraits, yet knowing her, you can 
 find her in each of them. That is what I want 
 you to do. Set a mirror in front of yourself, study 
 your own countenance and expression and com- 
 plexion ; bring all you have of imagination to bear, 
 and paint me not a portrait but a picture/ 
 
 " After a little thought, and a glance into the 
 mirror which he swung around for that purpose, 
 I saw how easily I might do this thing, and I was 
 almost persuaded. He completed the persuasion 
 by saying : ' I am very anxious about this, be- 
 cause the lady is a very good customer. I buy 
 pictures for her in the big shops, and she pays me 
 liberal commissions. She is so anxious for this 
 picture from your own hand that she has threat- 
 ened to withdraw her patronage if I do not get it 
 for her. My dear young lady, let me tell you : I 
 would rather never get back a penny of the money 
 I am advancing to you I would rather sacrifice 
 
336 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 that and pay you a hundred dollars more than to 
 miss getting this picture.' 
 
 " What could I do ? Here was a man not 
 rich but poor, rather who was advancing his 
 money liberally to me at a time of sore need, and 
 who asked of me in return nothing more than a 
 service that would save to him his best customer, 
 and at the same time pay him a liberal profit. He 
 had already stood my friend when I needed friend- 
 ship. There was only one course open to me. I 
 answered that I would paint the picture. I ac- 
 cepted his advance of a hundred dollars. I rented 
 a studio flat, found a girl to share it with me, and 
 set to work. 
 
 " The result was altogether satisfactory. I so 
 far idealized the woman I saw in the mirrors 
 round about me, that I think even you or Kate 
 would not recognize the picture as a portrait of 
 me; but it was far more beautiful than any one 
 woman ever was, and it delighted the woman who 
 had ordered it. She was so pleased, indeed, that 
 she came to me with three other, though smaller 
 commissions. It seems she was furnishing a 
 home for her daughter, who was presently to be 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 337 
 
 married, and further than that, it was her practice 
 to give pictures for birthday and Christmas 
 presents. 
 
 " But all this is apart from the story I have to 
 tell. A few weeks after I had established myself 
 in my new studio, Edward Cameron's sister 
 visited me not in friendship, but with purely 
 business intent. She was brutally and insult- 
 ingly frank. She explained to me that she now 
 had complete control of her brother's affairs, and 
 that it was her duty to arrange them to the best 
 advantage of the estate. Then she told me 
 something else. 
 
 " * During her last illness,' she said, ' my 
 mother added a codicil to her will, in which she 
 left to you five government, four per cent, bonds, 
 of the face value of one thousand dollars each, 
 and of a market value nearly or quite one-third 
 greater. But I have consulted my lawyers and 
 they tell me the bequest can probably be success- 
 fully contested on the ground of undue influence. 
 I have come to suggest a compromise, to save 
 trouble and expense all around.' " 
 
 " And what did you reply ? " asked Warren 
 
338 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Rhett. " I sincerely hope you did not consent to 
 any compromise." 
 
 " No, I did not. I told her she might have 
 saved the expense of the consultation with her 
 lawyers, for that, in view of her attitude, I was 
 altogether too proud a woman to accept one dol- 
 lar of the legacy. I told her that if she would, at 
 her own expense, have her lawyers draw up a 
 paper by which I could relinquish the bequest I 
 would execute it under their direction. She 
 asked me to call upon her lawyers for that pur- 
 pose, but I answered that it was for them to call 
 upon me, and that, too, at my convenience. I 
 appointed an hour for their call, and added: 
 ' You will bear in mind that they are your lawyers, 
 on your business, and that they must look to you 
 for pay for their time in visiting me. And another 
 thing: lawyers are apt to keep people waiting 
 even when there is a positive appointment made. 
 It may be worth your while to tell yours that I will 
 not be kept waiting. I have set two o'clock sharp 
 on next Wednesday afternoon for their call. If 
 they are here at that hour I will give them half an 
 hour and sign the papers. If they are one minute 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 339 
 
 later they will find me gone, and as I am going to 
 leave the city, it may be many moons before they 
 can secure another appointment, even if I should 
 not change my mind and deciJe not to sign the 
 papers at all.' 
 
 " She promised to have the lawyers wait upon 
 me promptly, and then she turned to another 
 subject. 
 
 " ' Now about this so-called marriage of yours 
 with my brother,' she said. ' My lawyers tell me 
 that so long as you hold to it, it is probably bind- 
 ing, but that upon your suit it would be declared 
 null and void from the beginning that there 
 never was any marriage at all, and that both my 
 brother and you are entirely free of entanglement 
 in the matter.' 
 
 " I sought to interrupt her, but she asked me to 
 hear her out. She went on to explain that of 
 course, so long as I should hold the legal relation 
 of wife to her brother, I could claim maintenance 
 from his estate. But even that, she said, might 
 be contested in the courts, and she added, ' Of 
 course you have no money with which to carry on 
 litigation. So as I want to be generous and con- 
 
340 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 siderate, I make this proposition. If you will 
 consent to have a suit brought in your name to 
 annul the marriage, I will give you an allowance 
 of one hundred dollars a month from my brother's 
 estate, so long as you live.' " 
 
 " What answer did you make to that ? " Rhett 
 asked. 
 
 " None. I simply rose, opened the door, and 
 told her to be gone. She tried to argue, she tried 
 to plead; but I resolutely refused to listen or to 
 answer. You see I wanted nothing from Edward 
 Cameron's estate, but I could not consent to have 
 it decreed by a court that my marriage with him 
 had been a mockery, and still less could I do that 
 for money." 
 
 Rhett was standing now, and bending over the 
 girl in his eagerness to hear the last detail of her 
 story. With intense solicitude he asked: 
 
 " You did not accept any money from that 
 woman then or afterward ? " 
 
 " Of course not. How could I ? What do you 
 mean? " 
 
 " Only that if you had done so, I should have 
 taken the next train for New York, and should 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 341 
 
 myself have returned the last dollar of it with 
 compound interest. I love you, Hazel, as you 
 very well know, and it is my self-assumed priv- 
 ilege to protect you even against any mistakes you 
 may have made under the distressing circum- 
 stances you have described." 
 
 " But surely you could not have suspected me 
 of so mean and humiliating a thing as that ? " 
 
 " Not for an instant ! I only asked assur- 
 ance from your own lips. Go on. Tell me the 
 rest. " 
 
 " There isn't much else to tell. The lawyers 
 after the manner of lawyers failed to appear at 
 the time appointed. I had said that I would not 
 wait one minute beyond the hour, but, to make 
 allowance for unavoidable delays, I waited for full 
 fifteen minutes beyond the time set. Then I left 
 for Mannamac. You see I had a commission to 
 make some humorous pictures for reproduction 
 on Christmas cards and the like, and I wanted to 
 use the quaint and comical little darkeys down 
 here as my models. Kate had been pressing me 
 to come to her in her loneliness, and I had en- 
 gaged my passage by an Old Dominion steam- 
 
342 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 ship which was to sail at three-thirty that day, so 
 I had barely time in which to reach my ship. As 
 we sailed down the coast I thought the matter 
 over, and I was glad I had signed no papers of any 
 description. I was and I still am fully de- 
 termined never to receive so much as a dollar or a 
 cent either of the legacy the dear old lady left me, 
 or of moneys that I might claim from Edward 
 Cameron's estate, but in view of the insulting 
 treatment I have received, I have decided to sign 
 nothing, and to leave that woman to wrestle with 
 the difficulty as best she can. 
 
 " I left no word at the studio or elsewhere, as to 
 my future whereabouts. Indeed, as my girl com- 
 panion had to go away at the same time that I 
 did, we sub-let the studio, and neither of us left any 
 address behind. That was six months ago, and I 
 have been here ever since. But they seem some- 
 how to have found me out." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, yesterday, while you were out in the 
 fields, one of the lawyers called here, but, when he 
 announced himself, Kate was equal to the emer- 
 gency. She always is, you know, when there is a 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 343 
 
 real emergency. I had told her that if any one of 
 the lawyers should follow me up, which I did not 
 expect, though I feared it as a possibility, I should 
 not see him. So when he appeared, I ran up- 
 stairs, and Kate calmly told him she didn't know 
 where I could be found, which was true enough 
 for she didn't know in which room I was hid- 
 ing. Charley Danforth was standing by her side, 
 but, without a moment's hesitation, and without 
 ' turning a hair,' as you horsemen say, she coolly 
 told the man that my attorney was Mr. Charles 
 Danforth, whose office was at the Court-House 
 village, and that perhaps his best course would 
 be to consult Mr. Danforth. Charley bore it all 
 beautifully. He even played host in your stead, 
 and, without revealing himself, gave the visitor a 
 glass of peach and honey, and then bade him a 
 cordial farewell. I suppose the lawyer will call 
 upon him as soon as he gets back from Richmond, 
 but I have asked him to say that as the papers I 
 was to sign were not presented at the time ap- 
 pointed, and as I have no interest in signing them, 
 I now decline to do anything whatever." 
 " Perfectly right. Sign nothing. ' Stand pat ' 
 
344 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 upon that determination. Now I want you to 
 make me your attorney in fact, as Charley Dan- 
 forth is your attorney at law, so that I may act for 
 you in case of necessity. I have an idea that that 
 lawyer will come hither again when he finds that 
 Danforth has gone to Richmond. I imagine he 
 thinks it would be easier to deal with a young 
 woman than with a shrewd lawyer like Danforth. 
 Say that you authorize me to act for you, and 
 if he comes, as he pretty certainly will, you need 
 have no fear of consequences." 
 
 " Of course you may act for me," she answered, 
 and then, with that childlike innocence which even 
 her experiences had not sufficed to impair, she 
 added : 
 
 " Who could have a better right ? You remem- 
 ber what I said to you that night on horse- 
 back?" 
 
 " Wait a minute," said Rhett, going to a desk 
 that stood in the wide hallway, or passage, through 
 the house after the custom of plantation houses 
 "I want to be fully armed with authority 
 to represent you." 
 
 With that he wrote upon a sheet of paper: 
 

 **JES' LIKE WHITE FOLKS." Page 345. 
 
REST OF HAZEL'S STORY 345 
 
 "Warren Rhett, Esq., 
 
 " I hereby appoint you my attorney in fact to 
 represent all my interests, to act for me and in my 
 name, and whatsoever you may do under this 
 general power of attorney, I hereby ratify and con- 
 firm as fully as if I were personally present, doing 
 the same. Given under my hand and seal this 
 twenty-fifth day of November, 18 ." 
 
 Then he called Henry, the dining-room servant, 
 and Diana, Kate's maid, both of whom were proud 
 of their ability to write, and still prouder of being 
 called upon to witness a legal document, "jes' 
 like white folks," as Diana said, and the power of 
 attorney was executed. 
 
 Hazel's was a supersensitive nature, in spite of 
 her superb capacity for self-control, and Rhett, 
 whose perceptions were tenderly alert in every- 
 thing that concerned her, observed that the telling 
 of her story, and the recalling of all its painful 
 incidents, had seriously unnerved her. He turned 
 to her and said : 
 
 " Now the first use I shall make of my authority 
 as your attorney in fact, is to order you to go to 
 
346 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 bed. Diana, prepare a hot bath for your Miss 
 Hazel, and after she has taken it, put her to bed, 
 close the shutters, draw the curtains so closely 
 that no ray of sunlight shall peep into her room, 
 and then see to it that there shall be no noises any- 
 where about the place. There's a boy flailing 
 rugs out there under the trees at the back of the 
 house. Stop that at once. Your Miss Hazel 
 must have peace and quietude, and I shall hold 
 you responsible for that." 
 
 " But " interrupted Hazel, " who is to look 
 after the household affairs ? " 
 
 " I will," he answered. " And believe me, I 
 am not inexperienced. I've run this house many 
 a time for weeks together with nobody but myself 
 to give an order, and I've entertained guests under 
 those conditions. And besides, you know my 
 gospel, that ' Love is the sum of it all.' You need 
 rest, and I have told you that I love you. Noth- 
 ing else matters." 
 
XXIII 
 
 A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 
 
 WHEN Diana came down the stairs half 
 an hour later, Rhett called her to him 
 and asked: 
 
 " Has your Miss Hazel gone regularly to bed ? " 
 It should be explained that in Virginia there 
 was always a well-recognized distinction between 
 lying down in a wrapper and going " regularly to 
 bed." The latter phrase meant that one com- 
 pletely disrobed, put on night-clothes, and put one- 
 self between the sheets as if going to bed for the 
 night. 
 
 " Yes, sir. She's tuckered out," answered 
 Diana, whose education had not involved the evil 
 of eliminating an expressive dialect. " She's had 
 her bath an' she's gone regularly to bed, jes' as ef 
 it was night, or as ef she was sick, an' I've used up 
 mos' all of a paper o' pins a stickin' the curtains to 
 the window jambs so's no sunlight kin creep in. 
 347 
 
348 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 You'se mighty precious o' Miss Hazel, ain't you, 
 Mas' Warren?" 
 
 " Yes, Diana. And she's worth it, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 " Cou'se she is. She's the sweetest young lady 
 as ever come to Mannamac in my time. She's so 
 gentle, you know. W'y, she dpn't even order me 
 about not even me. Ef she wants a pail o' hot 
 water she says ' Diana/ an' she don't interrupt 
 it into ' Dinah,' neither, but says ' Diana ' clear 
 out plain she says, ' Diana, won't you please 
 bring me a pail o' hot water from the kitchen,' 
 an' then I feel jes' as ef I'd ruther die than have 
 that hot water short o' the bilin' p'int. You see 
 she's so sweet an' persuadin', an' she's so well 
 you know how it is, Mas' Warren anybody as 
 wouldn't be more'n happy to wait on her would 
 be a contumacious idiot." 
 
 " Where did you get that word, c contumacious,' 
 Diana?" asked Rhett, quizzically. 
 
 " It was in one o' my lessons at school," an- 
 swered the young mulatto woman, proudly. 
 " You see I remember my education. Ain't 
 ' contumacious ' the right word, Mas' Warren ? " 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 349 
 
 "Of course it is," he answered. "Coupled 
 with the noun ' idiot/ and applied as you apply it, 
 it seems to me admirable. But now, Diana, I 
 want your Miss Hazel to sleep and rest as long as 
 she can. Here you ! " he cried to a housemaid 
 who was starting up the stairs with a pail and a 
 scrubbing-brush. " Come here. You are not to 
 do anything up-stairs till Diana tells you. Go off 
 and busy yourself with something else. Go and 
 scrub the back porch it needs it and mind 
 you, if you make any noise in doing it I shall want 
 to know why. Diana, I want you to get your 
 knitting or your needlework, or whatever else you 
 have in hand, and seat yourself at the foot of those 
 stairs in the most comfortable chair you can find. 
 I want you to stay there till your Miss Hazel calls 
 for you, even if it takes all day and all night, and 
 till she does call you, you are not to allow anybody 
 white or black or mixed to go up those 
 stairs upon any pretext. Here's a dollar to buy 
 some pretty thing with. Now you understand 
 your duty? " 
 
 Diana accepted the dollar and indicated that 
 she understood. She wondered " what in the 
 
350 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 name o' kingdom come " was to become of the 
 up-stairs scrubbing and window washing, but she 
 ventured no protest no suggestion of remon- 
 strance. She slipped the dollar bill into her 
 corsage, seated herself at the foot of the stairs, and 
 reflected that, for this day at least, Mas' Warren 
 was " a runnin' o' the house." It was a part of 
 Diana's duty to see that the housemaids should 
 on this day of the week do the necessary scouring 
 above stairs, and Diana was a duty-loving person. 
 But like everybody else on the plantation 
 white and black alike she recognized the mas- 
 ter's word as law. Moreover, it was easy for 
 Diana to shed responsibility, and, fortified behind 
 Warren Rhett's command, she would very cheer- 
 fully have left every bed in the house unmade, if 
 that task had not been fulfilled some hours be- 
 fore. 
 
 Having arranged for Hazel's quietude and rest, 
 Rhett mounted his mare and rode out to the fields 
 to inspect the work in progress there. 
 
 On his return to the Great House the day 
 having become comfortably warm he seated 
 himself in the porch to await the lawyer's coming. 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 351 
 
 For Kate had sent him a hurried note by special 
 messenger while waiting for her train, and in it 
 she had said : 
 
 " You must put Hazel out of the way some- 
 where before he gets there of course I mean 
 that lawyer even if you have to send her over 
 to Hallie Harvey's, and if you do that, please ask 
 her to tell Hallie I have forgotten what width rib- 
 bon it was that she wanted, but I'll get several 
 widths and those she don't want I'll keep myself. 
 You know a woman can always make use of rib- 
 bon. No, I suppose you don't Men never do 
 know anything except politics and business, and 
 Latin and a lot of other useless things anyhow 
 you tell Hazel to tell Hallie what I have said. 
 And don't let that fellow see Hazel. You see 
 when I got here I was thirsty, and the soda-water 
 at the store is good enough, and I really like soda- 
 water, but I see they wash their glasses only in 
 cold water after everybody has drunk out of them, 
 so I simply had to go to the tavern for a drink of 
 water, and Sallie the maid there, who used to 
 be at Mannamac I'm sure she wants to come 
 back now, but I didn't say anything about that 
 
352 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 well, Sallie told me the lawyer had ordered a horse 
 and buggy for just after dinner, and you know the 
 tavern dinner is served at noon, though I never 
 could understand how people could want their 
 dinner at that hour, and of course he's going out 
 to Mannamac to see Hazel, and he mustn't. 
 You'll know how to manage it some way, won't 
 you, Warren, dear? The train is here and wait- 
 ing for me these conductors are very nice, don't 
 you think? " 
 
 Rhett had said nothing to Hazel about the re- 
 ceipt of this note of warning, but having got her 
 to bed, and having done everything possible to 
 prevent the disturbance of her rest, he lay in wait, 
 as it were, for the lawyer. In anticipation of that 
 person's probable coming, Warren Rhett fell into 
 one of his half- humorous, half- cynical moods, re- 
 solving to get some amusement out of the coming 
 game of fence with the lawyer, but at the same 
 time determining to find out a good deal more 
 than Hazel knew as to the facts of the case as they 
 now stood, and as to the attitude of Edward Cam- 
 eron's sister, whom, of course, the lawyer rep- 
 resented. 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 353 
 
 It was three o'clock an hour before the Man- 
 namac dinner-time when the lawyer drove up 
 to the horse-block on the inner curve of " the 
 circle." Rhett received him cordially, introduc- 
 ing himself and saying, " I believe this is not our 
 first meeting, Mr. Farlow. I remember that you 
 cross-examined me once in a case in which you 
 represented my antagonist." 
 
 "Why, to be sure," answered Farlow; "and 
 I'm delighted to meet you again, though I have a 
 very vivid impression that you distinctly got the 
 better of me in that cross-examination." 
 
 " Oh, that was only because the facts were all 
 against your clients. I do not understand that 
 counsel are expected to manufacture their facts 
 it is enough if they color and distort them. How- 
 ever, we need not hark back to that. As I com- 
 pletely won in that litigation I bear no malice, and 
 I hope you bear none." 
 
 "Malice? Why, my dear Mr. Rhett, if a 
 lawyer went about hating the people opposed to 
 his clients, or even those of them who beat his 
 clients in the courts, he would not only become a 
 very malevolent and a very unhappy person, but 
 
354 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 he would presently have to close his office for want 
 of business. It has very often happened to me to 
 be retained by the very people whom I had beaten 
 in court. You see " 
 
 " I quite understand. But permit me. Here, 
 boy take this gentleman's horse to the stable ; 
 have him fed and curried, and have his fetlocks 
 thoroughly washed. They haven't been cleansed 
 in a month. Tell Bob to comb out his mane and 
 tail. He would be a very presentable animal if 
 Botts would only take decent care of him. You 
 hired him from Botts, did you not ? " 
 
 " I suppose that's his name. At any rate he's 
 the hotel- keeper." 
 
 " That's Botts," answered Rhett. " But the 
 shack he keeps is a tavern, not a hotel. The dis- 
 tinction seems to me important. Does it not im- 
 press you in the same way, in view of the meals, 
 and especially the service that you get or rather 
 do not get there ? " 
 
 In spite of the seriousness of purpose that had 
 inspired his visit, Farlow laughed and answered : 
 
 " Well, perhaps the word ' tavern ' would 
 describe that hostelry more accurately than 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 355 
 
 ' hotel ' does. But I know nothing whatever 
 about horses, except that their heads are on their 
 front ends, and so I raised no objection when this 
 one was brought to me. He seems to be an ani- 
 mal of peculiar disposition. Several times on my 
 way over here he suddenly stopped in the middle 
 of the road and refused to proceed further. If I 
 touched him with the whip, or otherwise urged 
 him, he backed in a way that threatened to dump 
 me and the buggy into the bushes by the road- 
 side." 
 
 "Balky, eh? Well, it is just like Botts to 
 provide a stranger with a balky horse, because 
 the longer and the more frequently the horse 
 balks, the longer your journey must be. He is 
 charging you by the hour, I suppose? " 
 
 " Yes seventy-five cents an hour, he said." 
 " Don't think of paying it. Twenty-five cents 
 an hour is the established price at the Court- 
 House. Offer him that and ' stand pat.' How- 
 ever, that's your business, not mine. Take a 
 seat. It is pleasanter here in the porch than in- 
 doors. Dinner will be served in an hour, and you 
 must share it with me. My stepmother, who is 
 
356 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 the mistress here, went to Richmond this morning, 
 so we shall have no gracious feminine presence 
 at the head of the table, but you and I may enjoy 
 our dinner, in spite of that." 
 
 " I had hoped," said Farlow, " to meet Miss 
 or Mrs. Hazel Cameron to-day. Is she 
 not here?" 
 
 "Which?" asked Rhett, and he added no 
 word of explanation. 
 
 " I'm afraid I don't catch your meaning," 
 answered the other. 
 
 " Why, which is it that you want to meet 
 Miss or Mrs. Hazel Cameron ? " 
 
 " Surely there are not two of them. I mean 
 only that it still remains for the courts to deter- 
 mine whether it is Miss or Mrs. Cameron. You 
 see there was a certain ceremony supposed at 
 the time to be a marriage but the courts have 
 not yet passed upon that." 
 
 " Pardon me for interrupting," said Rhett, in 
 the drawling tone which he always adopted when 
 he had either a very serious or a humorous purpose 
 to serve, " but it may clear things up a bit and 
 enable us to discuss matters to better advantage, 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 357 
 
 if I tell you that / am both Miss and Mrs. Hazel 
 Cameron." 
 
 The man rose from his chair in astonishment. 
 Here was a great, hulking, aggressively mascu- 
 line man, tall, broad of shoulder, muscular, and 
 massive, claiming to be the daintily delicate 
 woman whom he had driven over to Mannamac 
 to see. 
 
 " I confess I don't understand you," said the 
 lawyer. 
 
 " Oh, it is simple enough. I hold a general 
 and sweeping and all- comprehensive power of 
 attorney from Hazel Cameron be she Miss or 
 Mistress which you may read if you choose." 
 
 With that he handed the paper to Farlow. 
 After the lawyer had read it, Rhett continued: 
 
 " Now you understand that from this hour 
 forth, all the dealings of your clients, or of your- 
 self as attorney, with Hazel Cameron, must be 
 direct dealings with me. What is it you want ? " 
 
 " Well, we are trying to arrange things," an- 
 swered the other, vaguely. " You see there was 
 a pretended marriage " 
 
 " There was nothing of the kind," answered 
 
358 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Rhett quickly almost angrily. Then he con- 
 trolled himself and adopted the Socratic method 
 of asking questions. 
 
 " There was a regular license for that marriage, 
 was there not ? " 
 
 The lawyer, careful not to commit himself, 
 answered : 
 
 " I really don't know, I suppose there was. I 
 never saw the document." 
 
 " Is a license necessary to the validity of a mar- 
 riage in New York State?" asked Rhett. 
 
 " Well no," answered the other. 
 
 " Were not Edward Cameron's mother and 
 Edward Cameron's sister present at that marriage, 
 consenting to it, and urging and instigating it? " 
 
 " On those points I am not informed." 
 
 " Then as a lawyer you seem to me strangely 
 remiss. Pardon me if I say that while I do not 
 believe your statement, I recognize your right, 
 diplomatically, to withhold that bit of informa- 
 tion. Fortunately I am able to prove the facts, 
 not only by the hospital attendants who were 
 there, but also by many autographic letters 
 written, before and after the event, by Edward 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 359 
 
 Cameron's mother to Hazel Cameron. So I have 
 no need of admissions from you." 
 
 This was a pure guess on Rhett's part. Hazel 
 had told him nothing whatever about any letters 
 that had passed between her and Mrs. Cameron ; 
 but knowing as he did the propensity of women, 
 especially under emotional conditions, to write 
 letters to each other, he very safely assumed the 
 existence of the letters. 
 
 " However, we will not discuss that matter fur- 
 ther. What is it that you want Hazel Cameron 
 to do?" 
 
 " Well, I have come down here to see if we 
 couldn't amicably adjust the matters in dispute, 
 and, under instruction of my client, I am prepared 
 to deal very generously with Miss or Mrs. 
 Cameron, if I may see her." 
 
 " And precisely what is your notion of generous 
 dealing in such a case?" asked Rhett. " You 
 see, as we are dealing with matters of law and 
 equity, and as you are a lawyer, while I am not, it 
 is desirable to agree upon the precise meaning of 
 terms. Would you mind saying exactly what you 
 mean?" 
 
360 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Well, of course, under the circumstances, we 
 are prepared to concede that Miss Cameron is 
 entitled to some consideration. She has relin- 
 quished the legacy left her by Edward Cameron's 
 mother, and " 
 
 " Has she?" 
 
 " Yes. She agreed with Miss Beatrice Cam- 
 eron about that." 
 
 " Have you the papers with you? And may I 
 look at them?" 
 
 " There are no papers. The two women agreed 
 upon that, but Miss or Mrs. Hazel Cameron left 
 New York so suddenly that the papers were not 
 signed." 
 
 "Have you anything to show for that? You 
 see, as Hazel Cameron's attorney, I must take 
 nothing for granted, and particularly nothing to 
 the detriment of her interests." 
 
 " Surely she will not deny the conversation " 
 
 " Pardon me. It is not a question of what she 
 will deny or what she will admit. She has placed 
 her affairs absolutely in my hands, and I have no 
 right to admit anything, until evidence of it is 
 presented." 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 361 
 
 " Well, she voluntarily offered to relinquish all 
 claim to that legacy.'* 
 
 "What papers have you to show for that?" 
 
 " None. The promise was oral." 
 
 "And therefore worthless," said Rhett. 
 "Were there any conditions?" 
 
 "Well, yes. She set an hour at which the 
 papers should be brought to her for execution, but 
 as I was engaged in court that day, I simply could 
 not keep the appointment, and when I called later 
 Miss or Mrs. Cameron was gone." 
 
 " I really do not see what I, as Hazel Cameron's 
 attorney in fact, have to do with your failure to 
 keep an appointment. However, that is a matter 
 aside and quite indifferent. What is it that you 
 now want Hazel Cameron to do? I'm not a 
 lawyer, you know, but a plain man of business. 
 So it will be best if you come straight to the 
 point and tell me in simple words what you 
 want." 
 
 " That is precisely what I wish to do, Mr. Rhett. 
 You see we wish to avoid litigation with all of its 
 unpleasant features. To that end we are pre- 
 pared to deal generously with Miss or Mrs. 
 
362 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Cameron, if only she will sign certain papers that 
 I have in my gripsack." 
 
 " Again I must ask you what you mean by 
 * dealing generously.' Would you mind trans- 
 lating that into terms that I a mere business 
 man can understand ? " 
 
 " Well, we are prepared to settle upon Miss 
 or Mrs. Hazel Cameron, an income of five 
 thousand dollars a year so long as she shall live, if 
 she will relinquish all her claims upon the estate of 
 Edward Cameron, as his widow I should say 
 his wife." 
 
 " When did Edward Cameron die ? " asked 
 Rhett, catching at the slip of the tongue, but speak- 
 ing in a tone as calm and even as if he had been 
 asking at what hour his interlocutor had driven 
 away from the Court-House village. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't mean to imply that he was 
 dead ! " exclaimed the other. " I only meant " 
 
 " I quite understand. The truth slipped out 
 by sheer accident. When did Edward Cameron 
 die?" 
 
 " I did not say he was dead," said the lawyer. 
 
 " I know you didn't. But you may as well tell 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 363 
 
 me all about it now, for by a brief telegram to my 
 partners in New York I can set men at work who 
 will to-morrow telegraph me the day and the hour 
 and the minute of his death, together with such 
 details as I may desire as to his funeral, his will, 
 and all the rest of it. Come, man ! Tell me the 
 truth. When did Edward Cameron die? No 
 matter what you tell me, or refuse to tell me, I 
 shall know all the facts within twenty-four or 
 forty-eight hours at furthest. Now we may as 
 well come to an explicit understanding. Hazel 
 Cameron's affairs are absolutely in my hands. 
 Without in any way consulting her or permitting 
 you to see her, I am going to insist upon every 
 shadow of right that is hers. Neither you nor 
 your client shall in any way smirch her name by 
 the pretence that there was aught of fraud or 
 falsity in her marriage with Edward Cameron. 
 His sister knows, and you know, that she entered 
 into that marriage very reluctantly, and only in 
 response to the earnest, passionate pleadings of 
 himself, his sister, and his mother. Your client 
 wants to represent her as an adventuress who took 
 advantage of his condition to secure the rights of 
 
364 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 a wife in his estate. You propose to pay her for 
 relinquishing her claim to be an honest widow 
 that is to say, you propose to pay her blackmail, 
 and treat her as a blackmailer who must be 
 silenced. You shall do nothing of the kind. She 
 will fight this thing out in the courts, yielding no 
 jot or tittle of her right." 
 
 " Allow me to suggest that that will be very 
 expensive," said Farlow. 
 
 " And your client is reckoning upon the fact that 
 Hazel Cameron has no money as her safeguard? 
 Very well. You are reckoning without your host. 
 I told you awhile ago that I am Hazel Cameron, 
 and it so happens that I have not only a comfort- 
 ably fat bank account, but a business that pays me 
 every year more money than I can conveniently 
 dispose of. It will be something more than a 
 pleasure to me to pay the cost of whatever litiga- 
 tion this controversy may involve. I shall con- 
 front you with the very ablest lawyers at the New 
 York bar, and at every step I shall fight you for 
 Hazel Cameron's good name. Pardon me a 
 moment." 
 
 With that he went to the desk in the hall and 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 365 
 
 wrote something on a sheet of paper. At the 
 dining-room door he spoke to Henry: 
 
 " Have one of the chaps bring the palfrey, and 
 carry this message to the Court-House," he said. 
 Then, turning to the lawyer, he handed him the 
 despatch he had written. It read in this wise: 
 
 " Retain best lawyers in New York for me in 
 case of Cameron against Cameron. Get Evarts, 
 Southmayd & Choate, Carter, Coudert, Sands, 
 Bowers, and whoever else is best all that are 
 best. It is a fight for a good name. Money 
 doesn't figure in it. Do this to-day. All expense 
 mine." 
 
 " There ! " he said. " Now you understand 
 in what spirit and with what determination I am 
 going to fight this thing to a finish. My sole con- 
 cern is for Hazel Cameron's good name. In 
 defence of that I am prepared to spend ten times 
 the money that may be coming to her from Mrs. 
 Cameron's legacy and from Edward Cameron's 
 estate. I know nothing of court procedure, but 
 that telegram here, Jake," to the negro boy who 
 had ridden up on the palfrey, " take this tele- 
 gram to the Court-House and have it sent off at 
 
3 66 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 once. Here's a two-dollar bill. Pay for it out of 
 that." 
 
 Then he turned to the lawyer and said: 
 
 " Now I've given you my whole case. What is 
 yours? I've told you what I mean to do. Now 
 be a good fellow and tell me in return what your 
 programme is." 
 
 Farlow hesitated for awhile, and then, carefully 
 weighing his words, said : 
 
 "It is always the policy of our firm to settle 
 things out of court by compromise. It saves 
 friction and hard feeling and expense. Why 
 should we not agree upon a compromise in this 
 case?" 
 
 Rhett rose, emptied his pipe, refilled it, and 
 called to a negro chap to bring him a coal from the 
 kitchen with which to light it anew. Only after 
 that was done did he reply, and then it was 
 interrogatively. 
 
 " Does it occur to you to reflect what a com- 
 promise means in a case like this ? " 
 
 " Well, for one thing, it means a great sav- 
 ing of expense and worry, and all the rest of 
 it." 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 367 
 
 " Those are details of no importance whatever. 
 I am prepared to take upon myself the expense, 
 the worry, and all the rest of it. But a compro- 
 mise would mean something else. It would be 
 an admission of dishonor. Hazel Cameron, in 
 perfectly good faith and very reluctantly, mar- 
 ried Edward Cameron. Edward Cameron's 
 mother, at whose earnest solicitation Hazel con- 
 sented to the marriage, took the girl to her heart 
 as a daughter, and when she died, she left her a 
 legacy as a testimonial of her affection and her 
 esteem. Every step that has since been taken by 
 your client has been in derogation of Hazel Cam- 
 eron's dignity, and in denial of the sincerity of 
 her action and attitude. That is something that 
 I will not tolerate. Any compromise even 
 though it should abate no more than one dollar, 
 or one cent, of Hazel Cameron's claim would 
 be an acknowledgment by her, or on her behalf, 
 that her position and her rights were open to some 
 sort of question. I will consent to nothing of the 
 kind. Whatever else happens, her reputation 
 must be protected from every shadow of sus- 
 picion, and fortunately I am in a position to do 
 
368 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 that perfectly. I shall see to it that the case is 
 made clear." 
 
 "What, then, do you insist upon?" asked 
 Farlow; and he made haste to add: " You see 
 our firm always regards a settlement out of court 
 as preferable to litigation, and we shall advise our 
 client to consent to any reasonable terms that will 
 avoid a contest in the courts." 
 
 " What I insist upon is this : that Hazel Cam- 
 eron's rights, both as the legatee of Edward 
 Cameron's mother, and as the lawful widow of 
 Edward Cameron, shall be fully recognized ; that 
 the legacy left her by the elder Mrs. Cameron in 
 the will of which your client, Miss Beatrice Cam- 
 eron, is executrix, shall be promptly paid to her; 
 that her rights of dower in Edward Cameron's 
 estate shall be recognized, and the sums due her 
 on that account paid. Those are my terms, and 
 I shall insist upon them without any shadow of 
 turning because in that way only can Hazel 
 Cameron's womanhood be vindicated against the 
 aspersions your client has wantonly cast upon it." 
 
 " Your demand is a merciless one," said the 
 lawyer. 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 369 
 
 " Yes as merciless as the multiplication 
 table. I have meant that it should be so. 
 Now understand me. It is not money that we 
 fight for in this case, for not one dollar or one 
 penny of the money involved will Hazel Cameron 
 ever use for herself. Every dollar of it will go to 
 the Children's Aid Society, the Home for Incur- 
 ables, the Actors' Benevolent Fund, and other 
 charities. But every dollar of it must be paid 
 into her hands, to do with as she pleases. That 
 is my ultimatum. If your client accepts it there 
 will be peace. If she refuses there will be war, 
 with Warren Rhett for commander-in-chief of the 
 enemy's forces, and with the very ablest lieutenant- 
 generals that the bar of New York can furnish for 
 the campaign. Now which shall it be peace 
 or war?" 
 
 Farlow hesitated before answering. After 
 awhile he said : 
 
 " On the whole, I should advise peace and I 
 think that would be the advice of my firm. But 
 there are difficulties." 
 
 " I quite understand that," answered Rhett. 
 " You mean that your client has taken out letters 
 
370 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 of administration upon her brother's estate, and 
 incidentally has sworn that he was unmarried? 
 Of course he left a will, but he made his mother 
 his executrix, and she died before he did so 
 that his sister, as next of kin, and indeed as the 
 only kin, applied for letters of administration 
 and got them." 
 
 Warren Rhett was " fishing " for information. 
 He knew absolutely nothing of what had been 
 done in the case, but he shrewdly guessed it all, 
 and confidently set it forth as a body of facts that 
 served to explain the difficulties of which the 
 lawyer had spoken. As his conjecture was par- 
 tially, though not wholly correct, it served his 
 purpose well. 
 
 Farlow was the senior member of his firm, and 
 he was a thoroughly well- equipped lawyer. He 
 saw clearly how completely Warren Rhett was 
 master of the situation in this case. He asked 
 Rhett's permission to stroll about the grounds 
 alone for awhile, in order that he might think out 
 a course of action. 
 
 "Certainly," answered Rhett. "You shall 
 stroll to your heart's content, or if you prefer I 
 
A GENTLEMAN'S ULTIMATUM 371 
 
 will have you shown to a room where you shall be 
 uninterrupted while you think. At this moment 
 I see Henry coming to announce dinner. Let us 
 dismiss the whole matter while we eat. After 
 dinner you shall be left alone in any fashion that 
 suits you, and for so long as you please. But 
 during dinner let us forget everything but good 
 fellowship." 
 
 Before ushering his guest into the dining-room, 
 Rhett briefly spoke apart with Diana. 
 
 " Tell your Miss Hazel if she is awake, that she 
 is not to come below stairs upon any account until 
 you notify her that this man is gone. Take her 
 dinner up to her on a tray." 
 
 Diana, proud of her responsibility, gave assur- 
 ances of her faithfulness and her discretion, and 
 the two gentlemen went to dinner. 
 
XXIV 
 
 HAZEL INTERRUPTS 
 
 WHEN the dinner was over Farlow and 
 Rhett lighted their long- stemmed pipes, 
 with a chap in attendance to renew the 
 coals from the kitchen whenever renewal should 
 be needed. Farlow was obviously thinking, and 
 Rhett gave him the fullest possible leisure in 
 which to think. He was satisfied that he had 
 given him adequate occasion for thought. Sev- 
 eral times the lawyer strolled out into the house 
 grounds, while Rhett sat still in the porch, await- 
 ing results with that calm self-confidence which 
 is apt to dominate the mind of a man who feels 
 and knows that his case is one in which no possible 
 loophole can be discovered. 
 
 Finally Farlow, relighting his pipe, seated him- 
 self in a large oaken armchair and reopened the 
 conversation. 
 
 372 
 
HAZEL INTERRUPTS 373 
 
 " I may as well say to you," he began, " that 
 in certain details your conjectures are inaccurate. 
 My client is executor of her mother's will, as you 
 have assumed, but no will of Edward Cameron's 
 has been found, and as yet no application has been 
 made for letters of administration upon his estate. 
 We advised against that, until such time as mat- 
 ters could be adjusted with Miss or Mrs. 
 Hazel Cameron." 
 
 " Might I inquire why you gave that advice? 
 Was it because your client had destroyed the will 
 that you say has not been found, thereby lay- 
 ing herself liable to criminal prosecution? You 
 needn't answer that question unless you choose. 
 I can easily discover all the facts for myself, and I 
 recognize your right to maintain silence." 
 
 Farlow, as if sorely beset with perplexing un- 
 certainty, again strolled out into the grounds. 
 Returning presently, he said : 
 
 " Mr. Rhett, you know how arbitrarily and un- 
 advisedly women sometimes act in a case like this. 
 You are a chivalrous gentleman, and I want to 
 remind you that it is a helpless woman you are 
 dealing with in this case. You have taken pains 
 
374 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 strongly to impress it upon my mind that it is not 
 money your client is combating for, but dignity, 
 recognition of right, and all else that concerns her 
 as a woman. Now, without even consulting my 
 partners for this case is completely in my hands 
 I am going to make an appeal to you, for mercy 
 to a woman who may have been unjust, and who 
 may have made mistakes of a more serious char- 
 acter. I do not say that she has done either. I 
 only say that she may have done both. Now sup- 
 pose she should be willing to make every possible 
 atonement to put Miss or Mrs. Hazel 
 Cameron securely in possession of all her rights 
 and dignities, so that no breath of scandal or 
 suspicion shall ever fall upon her now in that 
 case would you not enter into some arrangement 
 whereby we may avoid a litigation that might 
 involve very uncomfortable consequences to the 
 gentlewoman who is my client ? I appeal to your 
 generosity of mind." 
 
 Rhett answered promptly : " I have no dispo- 
 sition to persecute Miss Beatrice Cameron, and 
 certainly the gentlewoman whom I represent has 
 no such disposition. If you can devise a means 
 
HAZEL INTERRUPTS 375 
 
 by which Hazel Cameron's marital rights shall be 
 absolutely and unequivocally recognized by Miss 
 Beatrice Cameron recognized, I mean, in a 
 way of which the law and the courts would take 
 cognizance I shall certainly not feel moved to 
 proceed to extremities, and to prosecute Miss 
 Beatrice Cameron for having destroyed her 
 brother's will." 
 
 " You will bear witness, Mr. Rhett, that I have 
 not admitted the destruction of the will." 
 
 " Oh, of course, and very willingly. I have 
 other and quite adequate means of information. 
 But let me complete what I was saying. The 
 recognition of Hazel Cameron's rights must come 
 from Miss Beatrice Cameron, and it must be com- 
 plete, exhaustive, and unequivocal. It must be ac- 
 companied by a certified check for the amount of 
 Mrs. Cameron's legacy to Hazel Cameron, and by 
 a request that Hazel Cameron, as the widow of Ed- 
 ward Cameron, shall take out letters of administra- 
 tion upon his estate. When such a request comes, 
 accompanied by the certified check I have men- 
 tioned, you shall have such reply as Hazel Cam- 
 eron, acting under my advice, shall see fit to give." 
 
376 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 " Then you demand that we shall give up our 
 whole case ? " 
 
 " I don't think you have any case. For the 
 rest, I demand that everything which has been 
 done to humiliate Hazel Cameron, and to cast 
 reflection of wrong-doing upon her, shall be un- 
 done. Miss Beatrice Cameron practically ordered 
 her out of her house after her mother's death, and 
 before her mother's funeral. In return Miss 
 Beatrice Cameron must send her an invitation to 
 be her guest in that house, with no conditions 
 whatever, and the invitation must be a warmly 
 cordial one. Those are my terms. It is that or 
 a fight to a finish in the courts." 
 
 " And what do you promise in return for all 
 these concessions ? " 
 
 " Absolutely nothing whatsoever. I am not 
 bargaining. I am dictating terms of surrender. 
 You and your client can accept or reject them at 
 will. You can have peace or war as you please. 
 But if you choose war, it shall be war in 
 earnest." 
 
 Farlow sat silent for awhile. Then he said : 
 
 " I wonder if you would let me hold this matter 
 
HAZEL INTERRUPTS 377 
 
 open until to-morrow afternoon. I want to com- 
 municate by telegraph with my partners and my 
 client in cipher of course, so that there shall be 
 no scandal bred at the Court-House." 
 
 " Certainly. There is no hurry. Come over 
 to dinner to-morrow afternoon, and tell me what 
 your answer is. I should urge you to stay over- 
 night except that you want to telegraph. And by 
 the way, even that can be managed, if you have 
 your private cipher code with you. You can 
 write your despatches here and I will send messen- 
 gers to the Court-House with them, and with in- 
 structions to the station-master to send all replies 
 to you here." 
 
 " No, I think I shall go back to the tavern. I 
 can think more calmly there. But I want to say 
 to you, Mr. Rhett, that Miss Beatrice Cameron is 
 a very ill woman largely in consequence of 
 these complexities, and that it may require some 
 time to fulfil your conditions, if indeed we can 
 fulfil them at all." 
 
 " I am very sorry," he said. " Pray give her 
 all the time she may want, and assure her that all 
 I demand is the complete exoneration of Hazel 
 
378 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Cameron from all charges of mercenary self-seek- 
 ing. That exoneration I must insist upon." 
 
 Fifteen minutes before this time, the negro boy 
 whose function it was to bring the mail from the 
 Court-House, had ridden up to the back door and 
 delivered his parcel of letters. One of these had 
 been sent up to Hazel. Just as the two men stood 
 there awaiting the coming from the stable of the 
 vehicle that was to bear Mr. Farlow away, Hazel 
 descended the stairs and confronted the pair. 
 
 " I think you two gentlemen need not go any 
 further with your negotiations," she said ; " War- 
 ren, I wish you would order the carriage for ten 
 o'clock to-night. I am going to New York by the 
 eleven o'clock train." 
 
 And by way of explanation she handed to him 
 the letter she had received. 
 
 " Read that," she said, " and you will under- 
 stand." 
 
 The letter was from Beatrice Cameron, and he 
 read it eagerly the more so because, instead of 
 a formal address, it began " My Dear Sister." 
 
 The letter went on: 
 
 " I have longed to write to you, but I have not 
 
HAZEL INTERRUPTS 379 
 
 known where you were until now. I want you to 
 forgive me and if you can, I want you to love 
 me. I am ill unto death I think and I want 
 to see you and hear from your own lips that I am 
 forgiven. I beg you to come to me. For Ed- 
 ward's sake, for the sake of the memory of my 
 mother who loved you and whom you loved, I beg 
 you to come to me and tell me you forgive me. It 
 is fittest that I should go to you, because I am the 
 offender and not you but I am helpless, bed- 
 ridden, hopelessly incapable of activity of any 
 kind. Will you not, in your great generosity of 
 soul, come to me in my hour of need and tell me 
 you forgive? I am too nervous, too weak, too 
 utterly helpless to write more particularly. I can 
 only say I am sorry, and ask you to forgive. If I 
 must die, as I think I must, I want your arms 
 about me at the last, so that I may feel that the 
 wrong I did you is forgiven." 
 
 When he handed the letter back to Hazel after 
 reading it, Rhett said : 
 
 " You are right. Go!" 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " ' Love is the sum of it 
 all.' " 
 
380 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 Turning to Farlow, the girl said: 
 
 " You came here as a lawyer, representing my 
 sister, Beatrice Cameron. There is no longer 
 any controversy between her and me. I am go- 
 ing to New York to-night to care for her in her 
 illness. You and Mr. Rhett need not go further 
 with your negotiations. When she and I throw 
 our arms about each other lovingly, there will be 
 nothing to settle. But you, Mr. Farlow, must 
 remain to supper. Mr. Rhett will have one of 
 the servants drive your horse back to the Court- 
 House, and you will ride back with him and me 
 in the Mannamac carriage." 
 
 " And may I escort you to New York ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Mr. Rhett will escort me, I think," she said, 
 and Rhett answered promptly, " Of course," 
 whereupon she added : 
 
 " But we shall be glad to have you with us as a 
 member of the party, Mr. Farlow." 
 
 Seeing that he had at no time been introduced 
 to this gracious gentlewoman, Farlow thought of 
 her courteous recognition of himself as something 
 peculiarly " complimentary." That was the word 
 
HAZEL INTERRUPTS 381 
 
 he thought of, for want of a better one to express 
 his appreciation of her graciousness. 
 
 He remained to supper, and a little before ten 
 o'clock the three set out to catch the eleven o'clock 
 train at the Court-House. On the way they were 
 silent, except that Hazel hummed a tune. It was 
 the melody she had written to the words : " Love 
 is the sum of it all." 
 
 As Farlow was present, there was, naturally 
 and necessarily, no private converse between 
 Warren Rhett and Hazel Cameron. 
 
 Possibly Hazel had meant that matters should 
 be so arranged. Who knows? Who erer does 
 know what a woman means, particularly when 
 she loves? 
 
XXV 
 
 THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 IT was Warren Rhett's habit to do things and 
 to get things done. The moment he learned 
 of Hazel's purpose to start for New York by 
 the eleven o'clock train, he reflected that the Pull- 
 man cars on that train were scheduled to go no 
 farther than Richmond, and that Hazel would 
 have to make a change of cars there at two o'clock 
 in the morning. He went to the desk and wrote 
 some telegrams. He sent a boy with them to the 
 Court-House, instructing him to wait for replies. 
 Just before the little party entered the carriage 
 the answers came back. Rhett read them and 
 said to Hazel : 
 
 " I have engaged the stateroom on the sleeping- 
 car for you, Hazel, and fortunately you'll not 
 have to make that awkward change at Richmond. 
 The car will go through to New York." 
 382 
 
THE SUM OF IT ALL 383 
 
 " You arranged that ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes why not ? It is very disagreeable to 
 change cars in the middle of the night." 
 
 The two were talking apart. The girl looked 
 at him intently, with tears in her eyes, but she 
 spoke no word. Perhaps she could not. He 
 bent forward and caressed her, taking his suf- 
 ficient answer in that way. Then he said to her : 
 
 " Edward Cameron has gone to his final rest. 
 You are all mine now." 
 
 " Yes I guessed that, and I am all yours 
 now, for ' Love is the sum of it all.' " 
 
 In New York Rhett learned that his firm's bid 
 for the Zambesi bridges had been accepted, as he 
 had anticipated that it would be. He sent a hur- 
 ried note to Hazel, saying : 
 
 " I believe you like travel. My firm has just 
 secured a very profitable contract to build some 
 railroad bridges and the like in Africa. One of 
 my partners will superintend the construction 
 work, but as ours is a very short-time contract, I 
 very greatly want to superintend in person the 
 landing of materials at Alexandria and their ship- 
 
384 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 ment to the interior. Why should we not be 
 married at once and sail for the Mediterranean 
 immediately? If you like, when we get there, 
 we'll get a dahabeah that's a kind of boat 
 you know and go up to the second cataract 
 of the Nile. I think the trip will rest and 
 interest you. But we must decide quickly." 
 
 For reply Hazel wrote back : 
 
 " It shall be as you say. Henceforth erery thing 
 shall be as you say, for ' Love is the sum of it 
 all,' and I am very happy." 
 
 While waiting for her answer Rhett telegraphed 
 to Kate asking: 
 
 " When are you and Charley to be married ? " 
 
 Kate, whose inconsequent way of thinking had 
 never acquired the smallest respect for tele- 
 graphic brevity, replied by wire: 
 
 " How in the world did you guess our secret ? 
 I rather think Hazel did that. Anyhow, it is very 
 disappointing, because we intended to surprise 
 you with it. We'll be married the day before 
 Christmas, or rather that was our plan till to-day, 
 when Charley came over to tell me we must be 
 
THE SUM OF IT ALL 385 
 
 married three days sooner because he has a case 
 or something in Washington that will come on for 
 a hearing or something else very dignified. I 
 can't make it clear in a telegram, but perhaps 
 you'll understand, though I don't. Anyhow, you 
 and Hazel are to come home for the occasion 
 because we sha'n't feel as if we were really mar- 
 ried unless you two are here to sanction the pro- 
 ceeding. By the way, please ask Hazel to buy 
 me some rose-colored silk she'll know what 
 it's for and you sha'n't know, because you're a 
 mere man. Tell her I want six yards, and she 
 knows the exact shade. 
 
 " When are you two coming home ? " 
 
 
 Rhett replied : 
 
 " Sorry, but we are not coming home. Going 
 to Africa on wedding journey. Details by mail." 
 
 Then he called a stenographer and dictated a 
 letter to Charles Danforth, in which he ex- 
 plained the plans he had made for the conversion 
 of Mannamac plantation into a vast market 
 garden, with Italians to cultivate it. 
 
 " I invented that scheme," he wrote, " as a 
 
3 86 LOVE IS THE SUM OF IT ALL 
 
 solution of the negro problem, but it isn't anything 
 of the kind. Most of the plantations are far less 
 favorably situated than Mannamac, with its easy 
 access to the Northern markets by water. But 
 at any rate, this arrangement will solve the prob- 
 lem of making Mannamac pay you and Kate the 
 income it ought to pay. We sail for the Med- 
 iterranean three days hence. On our return we 
 shall expect to be invited to Mannamac. If we 
 aren't, we'll go there anyhow. You know I 
 want to execute papers making the plantation 
 entirely Kate's, by relinquishing my absurd 
 reversionary interest in it." 
 
 Having finished dictating his letter to Dan- 
 forth, Rhett turned to his desk and with his own 
 hand wrote to Hazel. 
 
 " I have employed three women and two men," 
 he wrote, " to make all arrangements for our 
 marriage in Grace Church on Tuesday morning at 
 eight o'clock. We will drive thence directly to 
 our ship, which sails at ten. In the meantime I 
 want you to go down to Mrs. T. Lynch's you 
 know where it is and buy the beautiful string 
 of pearls that I have told them to show you, and 
 
THE SUM OF IT ALL 387 
 
 send it as your wedding present to Kate. / shall 
 send her nothing except something like a car-load 
 of flowers that I have ordered expressed from 
 Richmond. I enclose a check with which you 
 are to pay for the pearls." 
 
 The ship was well out at sea when Hazel said : 
 
 " It seems a pity, Warren, that you couldn't 
 have stayed at Mannamac long enough to see 
 your experiment wrought out." 
 
 " My dear Hazel, so far as results are con- 
 cerned, my visit to Mannamac was completely 
 satisfactory. Now sing it, please." 
 
 And, to her own accompaniment on the guitar, 
 she sang : " Love is the sum of it all." 
 
 The passengers thought she sang with unusual 
 sympathy and appreciation of the song. 
 
 Warren Rhett thought so, too. 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE GROSSET AND DUNLAP SPECIAL 
 
 EDITIONS OF POPULAR NO VELS THA T 
 
 HAVE BEEN DRAMATIZED. 
 
 BREWSTER'S MILLIONS: By George Barr 
 McCutcheon. 
 
 A clever, fascinating tale, with a striking and un- 
 usual plot. With illustrations from the original New 
 York production of the play. 
 
 THE LITTLE MINISTER : By J. M. Barrie. 
 
 With illustrations from the play as presented by 
 Maude Adams, and a vignette in gold of Miss Adams 
 on the cover. 
 
 CHECKERS : By Henry M. Blossom, Jr. 
 
 A story of the Race Track. Illustrated with scenes 
 from the play as originally presented in New York 
 by Thomas W r . Ross who created the stage character. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN : By Hall Caine. 
 THE ETERNAL CITY : By Hall Caine. 
 
 Each has been elaborately and successfully staged. 
 
 IN THE PALACE OF THE KING: By F. Marion 
 Crawford. 
 
 A love story of Old Madrid, with full page illustra- 
 tions. Originally played with great success by Viola 
 Allen. 
 JANICE MEREDITH : By Paul Leicester Ford. 
 
 New edition with an especially attractive cover, 
 a really handsome book. Originally played by Mary 
 Mannering, who created the title role. 
 
 These books are handsomely bound in cloth, are 
 well-made in every respect, and aside from their un- 
 usual merit as stories, are particularly interesting to 
 those who like things theatrical. Price, postpaid, 
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 52 DUANE STREET :: NEW YORK 
 
2 'HE GROSSET AND DUNLAP SPECIAL 
 
 EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS THAT 
 
 HA VE BEEN DRAMATIZED. 
 
 MISTRESS NELL, A Merry Tale of a 
 Merry Time. (Twixt Fact and Fancy.) By George 
 Hazelton. 
 
 A dainty, handsome volume, beautifully printed 
 on fine laid paper and bound in extra vellum 
 cloth. A charming story, the dramatic version 
 of which, as produced by Henrietta Crosman, 
 was one of the conspicuous stage successes of 
 recent years. With a rare portrait of Nell Gwyn 
 in duotone, from an engraving of the painting by 
 Sir Peter Lely, as a frontispiece. 
 
 BY RIGHT OF SWORD, 
 
 By Arthur W. Marchmont. 
 
 With full page illustrations, by Powell Chase. 
 This clever and fascinating tale has had a large 
 sale and seems as popular to-day as when first 
 published. It is full of action and incident and 
 will arouse the keen interest of the reader at the 
 very start. The dramatic version was very suc- 
 cessfully produced during several seasons by 
 Ralph Stuart. 
 
 These books are handsomely bound in cloth, 
 are well made in every respect, and aside from 
 their unusual merit as stories, are particularly in- 
 teresting to those who like things theatrical. 
 Price, postpaid, seventy-five cents each. 
 
 GEOSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS 
 52 DUANE STREET :: NEW YORK 
 
THE GROSSET AND DUNLAP SPECIAL 
 EDITIONS OF POPULAR NO VELS THAT 
 HA VE BEEN DRAMATIZED. 
 
 CAPE COD FOLKS: By Sarah P. McLean Greene. 
 
 Illustrated with scenes from the play, as originally 
 produced at the Boston Theatre. 
 
 IF I WERE KING : By Justin Huntly McCarthy. 
 
 Illustrations from the play, as produced by E. H. 
 Sothern. 
 
 DOROTHY VERNON OF HADDON HALL: 
 By Charles Major. 
 
 The Bertha Galland Edition, with illustrations from 
 the play. 
 
 WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER: 
 
 By Charles Major. 
 
 Illustrated with scenes from the remarkably suc- 
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 THE VIRGINIAN : By Owen Wister. 
 
 With full page illustrations by A. I. Keller. 
 Dustin Farnum has made the play famous by his 
 creation of the title role. 
 
 THE MAN ON THE BOX: By Harold MacGrath. 
 
 Illustrated with scenes from the play, as originally 
 produced in New York, by Henry E. Dixey. A piquant, 
 charming story, and the author's greatest success. 
 
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 GKOSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS 
 r 52 DUANE STREET :: NEW YORK 
 
HERETOFORE PUBLISHED AT $1.50 
 
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 THE CALL OF THE WILD : 
 
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 *'A big story in sober English, and with thorough art in the 
 construction ... a wonderfully perfect bit of work. The dog 
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 THE SEA WOLF : Illustrated by W. J. Aylward. 
 
 " This story surely has the pure Stevenson ring, the adven- 
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 to all appearances his helpless prey." Critic. 
 
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 book. Profusely illustrated from photographs. 
 
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 A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS : 
 
 It is a book about a woman, whose personality and plan in 
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 which have interested so many in his tales. The illustrations 
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 the Twentieth Century." 
 
 " I should be afraid to trust myself to tell how it affects 
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 Cloth, 12 mo. Price, seventy-five cents, postpaid. 
 
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 PORTANT BOOKS ON SOCIAL AND 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 BENJAMIN KIDD, 
 
 SOCIAL EVOLUTION, 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION. 
 
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 HENRY GEORGE, JR. 
 
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 ROBERT HUNTER, 
 
 POVERTY. 
 
 An exhaustive study of present day conditions among 
 the poorer classes. 
 JAMES BRYCE, 
 
 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. < 
 
 The author's recent appointment as the representative 
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 interest to this timely and important work. 
 RICHARD T. ELY, 
 
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 most eminent authority. 
 
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THE GROSSET 6- DUNLAP EDITIONS 
 
 OF GARDEN BOOKS. 
 Each volume in cloth binding. Price, postpaid, 750. each. 
 
 GARDEN MAKING, by PROFESSOR L. H. BAILEY, 
 Professor of Horticulture, Cornell University. 
 Suggestions for the Utilizing of Home 
 Grounds. 12 mo., cloth, 250 illustrations. 
 Here is a book literally "for the million" who in broad 
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 use, and cannot fail to instruct, inspire and educate the reader. 
 THE PRACTICAL GARDEN BOOK, by C. E. 
 
 HUNN AND L. H. BAILEY. 
 
 Containing the simplest directions for growing the common- 
 est things about the house and garden. Profusely illustrated. 
 12 mo., cloth. Just the book for the busy man or woman who 
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 A WOMAN'S HARDY GARDEN, by HELENA 
 RUTHERFURD ELY. With forty-nine illustra- 
 tions from photographs taken in the author's 
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PRINCESS MARITZA 
 
 A NOVEL OF RAPID ROMANCE. 
 
 BY PERCY BREBNER 
 With Harrison Fisher Illustrations in Color. 
 
 *" Offers more real entertainment and keen enjoyment than 
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 color and a delightful love-story. The scene of the story is 
 Wallaria, one of those mythical kingdoms in Southern Europe. 
 Maritza is the rightful heir to the throne, but is kept away from 
 her own country. The hero is a young Englishman of noble 
 family. It is a pleasing book of fiction. Large 12 mo. size. 
 Handsomely bound in cloth. White coated wrapper, with 
 Harrison Fisher portrait in colors. Price 75 cents, postpaid. 
 
 Books by George Barr McCutcheon 
 
 BREWSTER'S MILLIONS 
 
 Mr. Montgomery Brewster is required to spend a million 
 dollars in one year in order to inherit seven millions. He must 
 be absolutely penniless at that time, and yet have spent the 
 million in a way that will commend him as fit to inherit the 
 larger sum. How he does it forms the basis for one of the 
 most crisp and breezy romances of recent years. 
 CASTLE CRANEYCROW 
 
 The story revolves around the abduction of a young Ameri- 
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 The title is taken from the name of an old castle on the Con- 
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 GRAUSTARK: A Story of a Love Behind a Throne. 
 
 This work has been and is to-day one of the most popular 
 works of fiction of this decade. The meeting of the Princess 
 of Graustark with the hero, while travelling incognito in this 
 country, his efforts to find her, his success, the defeat of con- 
 spiracies to dethrone her, and their happy marriage, provide 
 entertainment which every type of reader will enjoy. 
 THE SHERRODS. With illustrations by C. D.Williams 
 
 A novel quite unlike Mr. McCutcheon's previous works in 
 the field of romantic fiction and yet possessing the charm in- 
 separable from anything he writes. The scene is laid in In- 
 diana and the theme is best described in the words, " Whom 
 God hath joined, let no man put asunder." 
 
 Each volume handsomely bound in cloth. Large izmo. size. 
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 BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK. By George Barr McCut- 
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 HALF A ROGUE. By Harold MacGrath. With illustra- 
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 Munn. With illustrations by Frank T. Merrill. 
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 women." 
 and in 
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 SUSAN. By Ernest Oldmeadow. With a color frontispiece 
 
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 WHEN PATTY WENT TO COLLEGE. By Jean Web- 
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 BIRDS THAT HUNT AND ARE HUNTED. Life 
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 A SPECTRE OF POWER. By Charles Egbert Craddock. 
 
 Miss Murf ree has pictured Tennessee mountains and the mountain 
 people in striking colors and with dramatic vividness, but goes back 
 to the time of the struggles of the French and English in the early 
 eighteenth century for possession of the Cherokee territory. The 
 story abounds in adventure, mystery, peril and suspense. 
 
 THE STORM CENTRE. By Charles Egbert Craddock. 
 
 A war story , but more of flirtation, love and courtship than of 
 fighting or history. The tale is thoroughly readable and takes its 
 readers again into golden Tennessee, into the atmosphere which has 
 distinguished all of Miss Murfree's novels. 
 
 THE ADVENTURESS. By Coralie Stanton. With color 
 frontispiece by Harrison Fisher, and attractive inlay cover 
 in colors, 
 
 As a penalty for her crimes, her evil nature, her flint-like callous- 
 ness, her more than inhuman cruelty, her contempt for the laws of 
 God and man, she was condemned to bury her magnificent personal- 
 ty, her transcendent beauty, her superhuman charms, in gilded 
 obscurity at a King's left hand. A powerful story powerfully told. 
 
 THE GOLDEN GREYHOUND. A Novel by Dwight 
 
 Tilton. With illustrations by E. Pollak. 
 A thoroughly good story that keeps you guessing to the very end, 
 and never attempts to instruct or reform you. It is a strictly up-to- 
 date story of love and mystery with wireless telegraphy and all the 
 modern improvements. The events nearly all take place on a big 
 Atlantic liner and the romance of the deep is skilfully made to serve 
 as a setting for the romance, old as mankind, yet always new, in- 
 volving our hero. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, T" NEW YORK 
 
BOOKS ON GARDENING AND FARMING 
 
 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY. By Bolton Hall. 
 Shows the value gained by intensive culture. Should be 
 in the hands of every landholder. Profusely illustrated. 
 i2mo. Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 Every chapter in the book has been revised by a specialist The 
 author clearly brings out the full value that is to be derived from in- 
 tensive culture and intelligent methods given to small land holdings. 
 Given untrammelled opportunity, agriculture will not only care well 
 for itself and for those intelligently engaged in it, but it will give 
 stability to all other industries and pursuits. (From the Preface.) 
 " The author piles fact upon authenticated instance and successful 
 experiment upon proved example, until there is no doubt what can 
 be done with land intensively treated. He shows where the land 
 may be found, what kind we must have, what it will cost, and -A hat 
 to do with it. It is seldom we find so much enthusiasm tempered 
 by so much experience and common sense. The book points out in 
 a practical way the possiblities of a very small farm intensively cul- 
 tivated. It embodies the results of actual experience and it is in- 
 tended to be workable in every detail." Providence Journal. 
 
 NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE. By W. S. Har- 
 
 wood and Luther Burbank. An Authoritative Account 
 
 of the Work of Luther Burbank. With 48 full-page 
 
 half-tone plates. i2mo. Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 Mr. Burbank has produced more new forms of plant life than any 
 
 other man who has ever lived. These have been either for the 
 
 adornment of the world, such as new and improved flowers, or for 
 
 the enrichment of the world, such as new and improved fruits, nuts, 
 
 vegetables, grasses, trees and the like. This volume describes his 
 
 life and work in detail, presenting a clear statement of his methods, 
 
 showing how others may follow the same lines, and introducing much 
 
 never before made public. " Luther Burbank is unquestionably the 
 
 greatest student of human life and philosophy of living things in 
 
 America, if not in the world." S. H. Comings, Cor. Sec. American 
 
 League of Industrial Education. 
 
 A WOMAN'S HARDY GARDEN. By Helena Rutherfurd 
 Ely. Superbly illustrated with 49 full-page halftone en- 
 gravings from photographs by Prof. C. F. Chandler. 
 i2mo. Cloth. 
 
 " Mrs. Ely is the wisest and most winsome teacher of the fascinat- 
 ing art of gardening that we have met in modern print. * * * A 
 book to be welcomed with enthusiasm." New York Tribune. "Let 
 us sigh with gratitude and read the volume with delight. For here 
 it all is : What we should plant, and when we shonld plant it; how 
 to care for it after it is planted and growing ; what to do if it does 
 not grow and blossom ; what will blossom, and when it will blossom, 
 and what the blossom will be. It is full of garden lore ; of the spirit 
 of happy out-door life. A good and wholesome book. The Dial. 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP, - NEW YORK 
 
912735 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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