the first of the questions that must be asked in order to discover the
girl’s identity.
“No—yes. I don’t know. You see, they made me swear to tell nothing. I
mustn’t tell after that, must I?”
“No, you dear girl; no. You needn’t tell me anything. I was only
wondering what girls do when they haven’t a good old mammy like mine
to coddle them and regulate them and make them happy. Why, you can’t
imagine what a bad girl I should have been if I hadn’t had Mammy here
to scold me and keep me straight. Can she, Mammy?”
“Humph!” ejaculated the old coloured nurse. “Much good my scoldin’ o’
you done do, Mis’ Dorothy. Dere nebber was a chile so cantankerous as
you is always been an’ is to dis day. I’d be ’shamed to tell dis heah
young lady ’bout your ways an’ your manners. Howsomever, she kin jedge
fer herse’f, seein’ as she fin’s you heah ’mong all de soldiers, when
you oughter be at Wyanoke a-givin’ o’ dinin’-days, an’ a-entertainin’
o’ yer frien’s. I’se had a hard time with you, Mis’ Dorothy, all my
life. What fer you always a-botherin’ ’bout a lot o’ sick people an’
wounded men, jes’ as yo’ done do ’bout dem no-’count niggas down at
Wyanoke when dey done gone an’ got deyselves sick? Ah, well, I spec
dat’s what ole mammies is bawn fer—jes’ to reg’late dere precious
chiles when de’re bent on habin’ dere own way anyhow. Don’ you go fer
to listen to Mis’ Dorothy ’bout sich things, nohow, Mis’—what’s yer
name, honey?”
“I don’t think I can tell,” answered the girl, frightened again,
apparently; “at least, not certainly. It is Evelyn Byrd, but there was
something else added to it at last, and I don’t want to tell what the
rest of it is.”
“Then you are a Virginian?” said Dorothy, quickly, surprised into a
question when she meant to ask none.
“I think so,” said the girl; “I’m not quite sure.”
She looked frightened again, and Dorothy pursued the inquiry no
further, saying:—
“Oh, we won’t bother about that. Evelyn Byrd is name enough for
anybody to bear, and it is thoroughly Virginian. Here comes your
breakfast”—as Dick knocked at the door with a tray which Mammy took
from his hands and herself brought to the bed in which the girl had
been placed after her bath. “We won’t bother about anything now. Just
take your breakfast, and then try to sleep a little. You must be
utterly worn out.”
The girl looked at her wistfully, but said nothing. She ate sparingly,
but apparently with the relish of one who is faint for want of food,
the which led Dorothy to say:—
“It was just like a man to send you on here without giving you
something to eat.”
“You are very good to me.” That was all the girl said in reply.
When she had rested, Dorothy sitting sewing in the meanwhile, the girl
turned to her hostess and asked:—
“Might I put on my clothes again, now?”
“Why, certainly. Now that you are rested, you are to do whatever you
wish.”
“Am I? I was never allowed to do anything I wished before this time—at
least not often.”
The remark opened the way for questioning, but Dorothy was too discreet
to avail herself of the opportunity. She said only:—
“Well, so long as you stay with me, Evelyn, you are to do precisely as
you please. I believe in liberty for every one. You heard what Mammy
said about me. Dear old Mammy has been trying to govern me ever since I
was born, and never succeeding, simply because she never really wanted
to succeed. Don’t you think people are the better for being left free
to do as they please in all innocent ways?”
There was a fleeting expression as of pained memory on the girl’s face.
She did not answer immediately, but sat gazing as any little child
might, into Dorothy’s face. After a little, she said:—
“I don’t quite know. You see, I know so very little. I think I would
like best to do whatever you please for me to do. Yes. That is what I
would like best.”
“Would you like to go with me to my home, and live there with me till
you find your friends?”
“I would like that, yes. But I think I haven’t any friends—I don’t
know.”
“Well,” said Dorothy, “sometime you shall tell me about that—some day
when you have come to love me and feel like telling me about yourself.”
“Thank you,” said the girl. “I think I love you already. But I mustn’t
tell anything because of what they made me swear.”
“We’ll leave all that till we get to Wyanoke,” said Dorothy. “Wyanoke,
you should know, is Doctor Brent’s plantation. It is my home. You and
I will go to Wyanoke within a day or two. Just as soon as my husband,
Doctor Brent, can spare me.”
The girl was manifestly losing something of her timidity under the
influence of her new-found trust and confidence in Dorothy, and Dorothy
was quick to discover the fact, but cautious not to presume upon it.
The two talked till supper time, and the girl accompanied her hostess
to that meal, where, for the first time, she met Arthur Brent. That
adept in the art of observation so managed the conversation as to
find out a good deal about Evelyn Byrd, without letting her know or
suspect that he was even interested in her. He asked her no questions
concerning herself or her past, but drew her into a shy participation
in the general conversation. That night he said to Dorothy:—
“That girl has brains and a character. Both have been dwarfed, or
rather forbidden development, whether purposely or by accidental
circumstances I cannot determine. You will find out when you get her to
Wyanoke, and it really doesn’t matter. Under your influence she will
grow as a plant does in the sunshine. I almost envy you your pupil.”
“She will be yours, too, even more than mine.”
“After a while, perhaps, but not for some time to come. I have much
more to do here than I thought, and shall have to leave the laboratory
work at Wyanoke to you for the present. You’d better set out to-morrow
morning. The railroads are greatly overtaxed just now, as General Lee
is using every car he can get for the transportation of troops and
supplies—mainly troops, for heaven knows there are not many supplies
to be carried. I have promised the surgeon-general that the laboratory
at Wyanoke shall be worked to its full capacity in the preparation of
medicines and appliances, so you are needed there at once. But under
present conditions it is better that you travel across country in a
carriage. I’ve arranged all that. You will have a small military escort
as far as the James River. After that, you will have no need. How I do
envy you the interest you are going to feel in this Evelyn Byrd!”
IV
THE LETTING DOWN OF THE BARS
NOT many days after Pollard’s fruitless talk with Kilgariff, the
sergeant-major asked leave, one morning, to visit Orange Court House.
He said nothing of his purpose in going thither, and Pollard had no
impulse to ask him, as he certainly would have been moved to ask any
other enlisted man under his command, especially now that the hasty
movements of troops in preparation for the coming campaign had brought
the army into a condition resembling fermentation.
When Kilgariff reached the village, he inquired for Doctor Brent’s
quarters, and presently dismounted in front of the house temporarily
occupied by that officer.
As he entered the office, Arthur Brent raised his eyes, and instantly a
look of amazed recognition came over his face. Rising and grasping his
visitor’s hand—though that hand had not been extended—he exclaimed:—
“Kilgariff! You here?”
“Thank you,” answered the sergeant-major. “You have taken my
hand—which I did not venture to offer. That means much.”
“It means that I am Arthur Brent, and glad to greet Owen Kilgariff once
more in the flesh.”
“It means more than that,” answered Kilgariff. “It means that you
generously believe in my innocence—jail-bird that I am.”
“I have never believed you guilty,” answered the other.
“But why not? The evidence was all against me.”
“No, it was not. The _testimony_ was. But between evidence and
testimony there is a world of difference.”
“Just how do you mean?”
“Well, you and I know our chemistry. If a score of men should swear
to us that they had seen a jet of oxygen put out fire, and a jet of
carbonic acid gas rekindle it from a dying coal, we should instantly
reject their testimony in favour of the evidence of our own knowledge.
In the same way, I have always rejected the testimony that convicted
you, because I have, in my knowledge of you, evidence of your
innocence. You and I were students together both in this country and
in Europe. We were friends, roommates, comrades, day and night. I
learned to know your character perfectly, and I hold character to be as
definite a fact as complexion is, or height, or anything else. I had
the evidence of my own knowledge of you. The testimony contradicted it.
Therefore I rejected the testimony and believed the evidence.”
“Believe me,” answered Kilgariff, “I am grateful to you for that. I did
not expect it. I ought to, but I did not. If I had reasoned as soundly
as you do, I should have known how you would feel. But I am morbid
perhaps. Circumstances have tended to make me so.”
“Come with me to my bedroom upstairs,” said Arthur Brent. “There is
much that we must talk about, and we are subject to interruption here.”
Then, summoning his orderly, Arthur Brent gave his commands:—
“I shall be engaged with Sergeant-major Kilgariff upstairs for some
time to come, and I must not be interrupted on any account. Say so to
all who may ask to see me, and peremptorily refuse to bring me any card
or any name or any message. You understand.”
Then, throwing his arm around his old comrade’s person, he led the way
upstairs. When the two were seated, Arthur Brent said:—
“Tell me now about yourself. How comes it that you are here, and
wearing a Confederate uniform?”
“Instead of prison stripes, eh? It is simple enough. By a desperate
effort I escaped from Sing Sing, and after a vast deal of trouble and
some hardship, I succeeded in making my way into the Confederate lines.
Thinking to hide myself as completely as possible, I enlisted in a
battery that has no gentlemen in its ranks, but has a habit of getting
itself into the thick of every fight and staying there. You know the
battery—Captain Pollard’s?”
“Marshall Pollard’s? Yes. He is one of my very best friends. But tell
me—”
“Permit me to finish. I wanted to hide myself. I thought that as
a cannonier in such a battery I should escape all possibility of
observation. But that battery has very little material out of which
to make non-commissioned officers. Very few of the men can read or
write. So it naturally came about that I was put into place as a
non-commissioned officer, and I am now sergeant-major, greatly to my
regret. In that position I must be always with Captain Pollard. When I
learned that he and you were intimates, and that your duty often called
you to the front, I saw the necessity of coming to you to find out on
what terms you and I might meet after—well, in consideration of the
circumstances.”
Arthur Brent waited for a time before answering. Then he stood erect,
and said:—
“Stand up, Owen, and let me look you in the eyes. I have not asked you
if you are innocent of the crimes charged against you. I never shall
ask you that. I _know_, because I know _you_!”
“I thank you, Arthur, for putting the matter in that way. But it is due
to you—due to your faith in me—that I should voluntarily say to you
what you refuse to ask me to say. As God sees me, I am as innocent as
you are. I could have established my innocence at the critical time,
but I would not. To do that would have been to condemn—well, it would
have involved—”
“Never mind that. I understand. You made a heroic self-sacrifice. Let
me rejoice only in the fact that you are free again. You are enlisted
under your own name?”
“Of course. I could never take an alias. It was only when I learned
that you and Captain Pollard were friends—”
“But suppose you fall into the hands of the enemy? Suppose you are made
prisoner?”
“I shall never be taken alive,” was the response.
“But you may be wounded.”
“I am armed against all that,” the other replied. “I have my
pistols, of course. I carry an extra small one in my vest pocket for
emergencies. Finally, I have these”—drawing forth two little metallic
cases, one from the right, the other from the left trousers pocket.
“They are filled with pellets of cyanide of potassium. I carry them
in two pockets to make sure that no wound shall prevent me getting at
them. I shall not be taken alive. Even if that should happen, however,
I am armed against the emergency. Two men escaped from Sing Sing with
me. One of them was shot to death by the guards, his face being
fearfully mutilated. The other was wounded and captured. The body
of the dead man was identified as mine, and my death was officially
recorded. I do not think the law of New York would go behind that. But
in any case, I am armed against capture, and I shall never be taken
alive.”
A little later Arthur Brent turned the conversation.
“Let us talk of the future,” he said, “not of the past. I am
reorganising the medical staff for the approaching campaign. I am
sorely put to it to find fit men for the more responsible places. My
simple word will secure for you a commission as major-surgeon, and I
will assign you to the very best post at my disposal. I need just such
men as you are—a dozen, a score, yes, half a hundred of them. You must
put yourself in my hands. I’ll apply for your commission to-day, and
get it within three days at most.”
“If you will think a moment, Arthur,” said the other, “you will
see that I could not do that without dishonour. Branded as I am
with a conviction of felony, I have no right to impose myself as a
commissioned officer upon men who would never consent to associate
with me upon such terms if they knew.”
“I respect your scruple,” answered Doctor Brent, after a moment of
reflection, “but I do not share it. In the first place, the disability
you mention is your misfortune, not your fault. You _know_ yourself to
be innocent, and as you do not in any way stand accused in the eyes of
the officers of this army, there is absolutely no reason why you should
not become one of them, as a man conscious of his own rectitude.
“Besides all that, we are living in new times, under different
conditions from those that existed before the war. It used to be said
that in Texas it was taking an unfair advantage of any man to inquire
into his life before his migration to that State. If he had conducted
himself well since his arrival there, he was entitled to all his
reserves with regard to his previous course of life in some other part
of the country. Now a like sentiment has grown strong in the South
since this war broke out. I don’t mean to suggest that we have lowered
our standards of honourable conduct in the least, for we have not done
so. But we have revised our judgments as to what constitutes worth.
The old class distinctions of birth and heritage have given place to
new tests of present conduct. There are companies by the score in this
army whose officers, elected by their men, were before the war persons
of much lower social position than that of a majority of their own men.
In any peacetime organisation these officers could never have hoped
for election to office of any kind; but they are fighters and men of
capacity; they know how to do the work of war well, and, under our new
and sounder standards of fitness, the men in the ranks have put aside
old social distinctions and elected to command them the men fittest
to command. The same principle prevails higher up. One distinguished
major-general in the Confederate service was a nobody before the war;
another was far worse; he was a negro trader who before the war would
not have been admitted, even as a merely tolerated guest, into the
houses of the gentlemen who are to-day glad to serve as officers and
enlisted men under his command. Still another was an ignorant Irish
labourer who did work for day’s wages in the employ of some of the men
to whom he now gives orders, and from whom he expects and receives
willing obedience. I tell you, Kilgariff, a revolution has been wrought
in this Southern land of ours, and the results of that revolution will
permanently endure, whatever the military or political outcome of the
war may be. In your case there is no need to cite these precedents,
except to show you that the old quixotism—it was a good old quixotism
in its way; it did a world of good, together with a very little of
evil—is completely gone. There is no earthly reason, Kilgariff, why
you should not render a higher and better service to the Confederacy
than that which you are now rendering. There is no reason—”
“Pardon me, Arthur; in my own mind there is reason enough. And besides,
I am thoroughly comfortable as I am. You know I am given to being
comfortable. You remember that when you and I were students at Jena,
and afterward in the Latin Quarter in Paris, I was always content
to live in the meagre ways that other students did, though I had a
big balance to my credit in the bank and a large income at home. As
sergeant-major under our volunteer system, I am the intimate associate
not only of Captain Pollard, whose scholarship you know, but also
of all the battery officers, some of whom are men worth knowing. For
the rest, I like the actual fighting, and I am looking forward to
this summer’s campaign with positively eager anticipations. So, if
you don’t mind, we will let matters stand as they are. I will remain
sergeant-major till the end of it all.”
With that, the two friends parted.
V
DOROTHY’S OPINIONS
IT was not Arthur Brent’s habit to rest satisfied in the defeat of any
purpose. He was deeply interested to induce Owen Kilgariff to become
a member of the military medical staff. Having exhausted his own
resources of persuasion, he determined to consult Dorothy, as he always
did when he needed counsel. That night he sent a long letter to her.
In it he told her all he knew about the matter, reserving nothing—he
never practised reserve with her—but asking her to keep Kilgariff’s
name and history to herself. Having laid the whole matter before that
wise young woman, he frankly asked her what he should do further in the
case. For reply, she wrote:—
I am deeply interested in Kilgariff’s case. I have thought all day and
nearly all night about it. It seems to me to be a case in which a man
is to be saved who is well worth saving. Not that I regard service in
the ranks as either a hardship or a shame to any man, when the ranks
are full of the best young men in all the land. If that were all, I
would not have you turn your hand over to lift this man into place as
a commissioned officer.
If I interpret the matter aright, Kilgariff is simply morbid, and if
you can induce him to take the place you have pressed upon him, you
will have cured him of his morbidity of mind. And I think you can do
that. You know how I contemn the duello, and fortunately it seems
passing out of use. In these war times, when every man stands up every
day to be shot at by hundreds of men who are not scared, it would be
ridiculous for any man to stand up and let one scared man shoot at
him, in the hope of demonstrating his courage in that fashion.
That is an aside. What I want to say is, that while the duello
has always been barbarous, and has now become ridiculous as well,
nevertheless it had some good features, one of which I think you might
use effectively in Owen Kilgariff’s case. As I understand the matter,
it was the custom under the code duello, sometimes to call a “court of
honour” to decide in a doubtful case precisely what honour required
a man to do, and, as I understand, the decision of such a court was
final, so far as the man whose duty was involved was concerned. It was
deemed the grossest of offences to call in question the conduct of a
man who acted in accordance with the finding of a court of honour.
Now why cannot you call a court of honour to sit upon this case?
Without revealing Kilgariff’s identity—which of course you could not
do except by his permission—you could lay before the court a succinct
but complete statement of the case, and ask it to decide whether or
not the man concerned can, with honour, accept a commission in the
service without making the facts public. I am sure the verdict will be
in the affirmative, and armed with such a decision you can overcome
the poor fellow’s scruples and work a cure that is well worth working.
Try my plan if it commends itself to your judgment, not otherwise.
Little by little, I am finding out a good deal about our Evelyn
Byrd. Better still, I am learning to know her, and she interests me
mightily. She has a white soul and a mind that it is going to be a
delight to educate. She has already read a good deal in a strangely
desultory and unguided fashion, but her learning is utterly unbalanced.
For example, she has read the whole, apparently, of the _Penny
Cyclopædia_—in a very old edition—and she has accepted it all as
unquestionable truth. Nobody had ever told the poor child that the
science of thirty years ago has been revised and enlarged since that
time, until I made the point clear to her singularly quick and
receptive mind in the laboratory yesterday. She seems also to have
read, and well-nigh committed to memory, the old plays published
fifty or sixty years ago under the title of _The British Drama_, but
she has hardly so much as heard of our great modern writers. She can
repeat whole dialogues from _Jane Shore_, _She Stoops to Conquer_, _A
New Way to Pay Old Debts_, _High Life Below Stairs_, and many plays
of a much lower moral character; but even the foulest of them have
manifestly done her no harm. Her own innocence seems to have performed
the function of the feathers on a duck’s back in a shower. She is so
unconscious of evil, indeed, that I do not care to explain my reasons
to her when I suggest that she had better not repeat to others some of
the literature that she knows by heart.
I still haven’t the faintest notion of her history, or of whence she
came. She is docile in an extraordinary degree, but I think that is
due in large measure to her exaggerated sense of what she calls my
goodness to her. Poor child! It is certain that she never before knew
much of liberty or much of considerate kindness. She seems scarcely
able to realise, or even to believe, that in anything she is really
free to do as best pleases her, a fact from which I argue that she
has been subject always to the arbitrary will of others. She is by
no means lacking in spirit, and I suspect that those others who have
arbitrarily dominated her life have had some not altogether pleasing
experiences with her. She is capable of very vigorous revolt against
oppression, and her sense of justice is alert. But apparently she has
never before been treated with justice or with any regard whatever to
the rights of her individuality. She has been compelled to submit to
the will of others, but she has undoubtedly made trouble for those
who compelled her. At first with me she seemed always expecting some
correction, some assertion of authority, and she is only now beginning
to understand my attitude toward her, especially my insistence upon
her right to decide for herself all things that concern only herself.
The other day in the laboratory, she managed somehow to drop a beaker
and break it. She was about to gather up the fragments, but, as the
beaker had been filled with a corrosive acid, I bade her let them
alone, saying that I would have them swept up after the day’s work
should be done. She stood staring at me for a moment, after which she
broke into a little rippling laugh, threw her arms around my neck, and
said:—
“I forgot. You never scold me, even when I am careless and break
things.”
I tried hard to make her understand that I had no right to scold her,
besides having no desire to do so. It seemed a new gospel to her.
Finally she said, more to herself than to me:—
“It is so different here. There was never anybody so good to me.”