front of the main ridge fell into hot dispute. Its possession by the
Federals would greatly weaken the Confederate line, and it was deemed
essential by the Confederate commanders present to secure it at all
hazards, while the Federals, seeing the importance of the little hill,
concentrated the fire of twenty guns upon it, sweeping its top as with
a broom, whenever a Confederate force, large or small, showed itself
there.
Three times Confederate infantry were advanced to the crest, and three
times they were driven back by a storm of cannon shot before they could
throw up a dozen shovelfuls of earth.
Kilgariff, again detached with his two guns, sat upon his horse,
looking on at all this and wondering what the result would be.
Presently a brigade of North Carolinians moved up into line just in
front of him, at the moment when the third of the charging bodies was
hurled back, baffled, beaten, and broken into fragments.
Just then the chief of artillery of the corps with which Kilgariff was
temporarily serving rode up and said to him:—
“Do you want your opportunity for distinction and a commission?”
“I want all the opportunity I can get to render service,” was
Kilgariff’s answer.
“Then take your guns to the crest of that hill and _stay there_!”
fairly shouted the officer.
Kilgariff fully realised the desperate character of the attempt, and
the practical certainty that his guns, his men, and his horses would
be quickly swept off the face of the earth when he should appear upon
that shell-furrowed hilltop. But he had no thought of faltering. On the
contrary, just as he gave the order, “Forward,” a whimsical thought
occurred to him. “The general need not have been at the trouble to
order us to ‘stay there.’ We’ll stay there, whether we wish to or not.
The enemy will take care of that.” Then came the more serious thought
that unless he could bring his guns into battery almost instantly upon
reaching the hilltop, the slaughter of his horses might prevent the
proper placing of the pieces. So, at a full run, he carried the guns
up the slope, shouting the orders, “Fire to the front! In battery!” at
the moment of coming within sight of the Federal guns, less than half
a thousand yards away, and already partially protected by a hastily
constructed earthwork.
Fortunately, the men of Captain Pollard’s battery were perfect in drill
to their very finger tips, and their alert precision brought the guns
into position within a second or two, and the twelve-pounders were
bellowing before the horses began falling just in the rear.
Kilgariff ordered the horses and caissons to be retired a little way
down the hill, for the sake of such protection as the ground afforded,
but scarcely one of the animals lived to enjoy such protection even
briefly.
Meantime, Kilgariff, dismounted now (for his horse had been the first
to fall), stood there working his two utterly unsupported guns under
the fiercely destructive fire of a score of pieces on the enemy’s side.
His men fell one after another, like autumn leaves in a gale. Within
half a minute he had called all the drivers to the guns to take the
places of their dead or dying comrades, and still each gun was being
operated by a detachment too scant in numbers for effectiveness of fire.
It was obviously impossible that any of them could long survive under
a fire so concentrated and so terrific. Kilgariff reckoned upon three
minutes as the utmost time that any man there could live; and when
one of his guns was dismounted at its fifth discharge, and two of his
limber-chests exploded almost at the same moment, he hastily counted
the cannoniers left to him and found their number to be just seven, all
told.
But he had not been ordered to undertake this desperate enterprise
without a purpose. Reckoning upon the almost superstitious reverence
that the infantry cherish for cannon, the generals in command had
sent Kilgariff’s guns into this caldron of fire as a means of luring
the infantry to a desperate attempt to take and hold the little hill.
Before Kilgariff had traversed half the distance toward the crest, the
commander of that North Carolina brigade had called out a message that
was quickly passed from mouth to mouth down his line. The message was:—
“We must save those guns and hold that hill. They call us tar heels.
Let us show _how tar sticks_.”
Instantly, and with a yell that might have come from the throats of so
many demons, the brigade of about two thousand men bent their heads
forward, rushed up the hill, and swarmed around Kilgariff’s guns.
Their deployment into line quickly diverted the enemy’s attention to
a larger front. Other guns were hurriedly brought up to the hill, and
half an hour later a substantial line of earthworks covered its crest.
The three minutes that Kilgariff had allowed for the complete
destruction of his little command were scarcely gone when this relief
came. He was ordered to withdraw his remaining gun by hand down the
hill—by hand, for the reason that not a horse remained of the thirty
odd that had so lately galloped up the steep.
VII
WITH EVELYN AT WYANOKE
AS if bearing a charmed life, Kilgariff had gone through all this
without a scratch. He had galloped up that hill in the face of a
heavy infantry fire; he had planted his section under the murderous
cannonading of twenty well-served guns firing at point-blank range;
he had fought his pieces under a bombardment so fierce that within
the brief space of three minutes his command was well-nigh destroyed.
Yet not a scratch of bullet or shell-fragment had so much as rent his
uniform.
By one of those grim jests of which war is full, he fell after all this
was over, his neck pierced and torn by a stray bullet that had missed
its intended billet in front and sped on in search of some human target
in the rear.
He was carried immediately to one of the field-hospitals which Doctor
Arthur Brent was hurriedly establishing just in rear of the newly
formed line of defence. There he fell into Doctor Brent’s own friendly
hands; for that officer, the moment he saw who the patient was, left
his work of supervision and himself knelt over the senseless form of
the sergeant-major to discover the extent of his injury and to repair
it if possible. He found it to be severe, but not necessarily fatal. He
proceeded to stop the dangerous hemorrhage, cleansed and dressed the
wound, and within half an hour Kilgariff regained consciousness.
A few hours later, finding that the temporary hospital was exposed to
both artillery and musketry fire, Doctor Brent ordered the removal
of the wounded men to a point a mile or so in the rear; and finding
Kilgariff, thanks to his elastic constitution, able to endure a little
longer journey, he took him to his own quarters, still farther to the
rear.
Here Captain Pollard managed to visit his sergeant-major during the
night.
“General Anderson, who is in command of Longstreet’s corps, now that
Longstreet is wounded,” he said, during the interview, “has asked for
your report of your action on the hill. If you are strong enough to
answer a question or two, I’ll make the report in your stead.”
“I think I can write it myself,” answered Kilgariff; “and I had rather
do that.”
Paper and a pencil were brought, and, with much difficulty, the wounded
man wrote:—
Under orders this day, I took the left section of Captain Pollard’s
Virginia Battery to the crest of a hill in front.
After three minutes of firing, infantry having come up, I was ordered
to retire, and did so. My losses were eighteen men killed and fifteen
wounded, of a total force of thirty-eight men. One of my gun carriages
was destroyed by an enemy’s shell, and two limber-chests were blown
up. All of the horses having fallen, I brought off the remaining
gun and the two caissons by hand, in obedience to orders. I was
fortunately able also to bring off all the wounded. Every man under my
command behaved to my satisfaction.
All of which is respectfully submitted.
OWEN KILGARIFF,
_Sergeant-major_.
“Is that all you wish to say?” asked Pollard, when he had read the
report.
“Quite all.”
“You make no mention of your own wound.”
“That was received later. It has no proper place in this report.”
“True. That is for me to mention in my report for the day.”
But in his indorsement upon the sergeant-major’s report Pollard wrote:—
I cannot too highly commend to the attention of the military
authorities the extraordinary courage, devotion, and soldierly skill
manifested by Sergeant-major Kilgariff, both in this affair and in the
fighting of the last few days in the Wilderness.
In the meantime General Ewell had mentioned in one of his reports the
way in which Kilgariff had done his work in the Wilderness, and now
General Anderson wrote almost enthusiastically in commendation of this
young man’s brilliant and daring action, so that when the several
reports reached General Lee’s headquarters, the great commander was
deeply impressed. Here was a young enlisted man whose conduct in action
had been so conspicuously gallant and capable as to attract favourable
mention from two corps commanders within a brief period of three
or four days. General Lee officially recommended that a captain’s
commission should be issued at once to a man so deserving of promotion
and so fit to command.
The document did not reach Kilgariff until a fortnight later, after
Arthur Brent had sent him to Wyanoke for treatment and careful nursing.
Kilgariff took the commission in his enfeebled hands and carefully read
it through, seeming to find some species of pleasure in perusing the
formal words with which he was already familiar. Across the sheet was
written in red ink:—
This commission is issued in accordance with the request of General R.
E. Lee, commanding, in recognition of gallant and meritorious conduct
in battle.
That rubric seemed especially to please the sick man. For a moment it
brought light to his eyes, but in the next instant a look of trouble,
almost of despair, overspread his face.
“Send it back,” he said to Evelyn, who was watching by the side of the
couch that had been arranged for him in the broad, breeze-swept hall at
Wyanoke. “Send it back; I do not want it.”
Ever since Kilgariff’s removal to the house of the Brents, Evelyn had
been his nurse and companion, tireless in her attention to his comfort
when he was suffering, and cheerily entertaining at those times when he
was strong enough to engage in conversation.
“You know, it was he who took me out of the burning house,” she said
to Dorothy, by way of explanation, not of apology; for in the innocent
sincerity of her nature, she did not understand or believe that there
can ever be need of an apology for the doing of any right thing.
For one thing, she was accustomed to write the brief and infrequent
letters that Kilgariff wished written. These were mostly in
acknowledgment of letters of inquiry and sympathy that came to him from
friends in the army.
Usually he dictated the notes to her, and she wrote them out in a hand
that was as legible as print and not unlike a rude print in appearance.
At first glance her manuscript looked altogether masculine, by reason
of the breadth of stroke and the size of the letters, but upon closer
scrutiny one discovered in it many little peculiarities that were
distinctly feminine.
Kilgariff asked her one day:—
“Who taught you to write, Evelyn?”
“Nobody. Nobody ever taught me much of anything till I came to live at
Wyanoke.”
“How, then, did you learn to read and write, and especially to spell so
well?”
The girl appeared frightened a bit by these questions, which seemed
to be master keys of inquiry into the mystery of her early life.
Kilgariff, observing her hesitation, said quickly but very gently:—
“There, little girl, don’t answer my ‘sick man’s’ questions. I didn’t
mean to ask them. They are impertinent.”
“No,” she said reflectively, “nothing that comes from you can be
impertinent, I reckon,”—for she was rapidly adopting the dialect of
the cultivated Virginians. “You see, you took me out of that house
afire, and so you have a right—”
“I claim no right whatever, Evelyn,” he said, “and you must quit
thinking about that little incident up there on the Rapidan.”
“Oh, but I can never quit thinking about that. You were great and good,
and oh, so strong! and you did the best thing that ever anybody did for
me.”
“But I would have done the same for a negro.”
“But you didn’t do it for a negro. You did it for me. So you see I am
right about it. Am I not?”
“I suppose so. Your logic is a trifle lame, perhaps, but your heart is
right. Never mind that now.”
“But I want to tell you all I can,” the girl resumed. “You see, I can’t
tell you much, because I don’t know much about myself, and because
they made me swear. But I can answer this question of yours. I don’t
know just how I learned to read. I reckon somebody must have taught me
that when I was so little that I have forgotten all about it. Anyhow,
I don’t remember. But after I had read a good many books, there came a
time when I couldn’t get any books, except three that I was carrying
with me. That was when I was a little boy, and—”
“A little boy? A little girl, you mean.”
“No, I mean a little boy, but I mustn’t tell you about that, only I
have already told you that once I was a little boy. It slipped out,
and you must forget it, please, for I didn’t mean to say it. I wasn’t
really a boy, of course, but I had to wear a boy’s clothes and a boy’s
name. Never mind that. You mustn’t ask me about it. As I was saying,
when I grew tired of reading my three books over and over again, I
decided to write some new ones for myself. The only trouble was that
I had never learned to write. That didn’t bother me much, because I
had seen writing and had read a little of it sometimes; so I knew that
it was just the same as print, only that the letters were made more
carelessly and some of them just a little differently in shape. I knew
I could do it, after a little practice. I got some eagle’s quills
from—” here the girl checked herself, and bit her lip. Presently she
continued:—
“I got some eagle’s quills from a man who had them, and I made myself
some pens. I had some blank-books that had been partly written in at
the—well, partly written in. But there wasn’t any ink there, so I made
myself some out of oak bark and nutgalls, ‘setting’ the colour with
copperas, as I had seen the people at the—well, as I had seen somebody
do it in that way. It made very good ink, and I soon taught myself how
to write. As for the spelling, I tried to remember how all the words
looked in the books I had read, and when I couldn’t remember, I would
stop writing and look through the three books I still had till I came
upon the word I wanted. After that, I never had any trouble about
spelling that word.”
“I should imagine not,” said Kilgariff. “But did you succeed in writing
any books for yourself?”
“Yes, two of them.”
“What were they about?”
“Well, in one of them I wrote all I could remember about myself; they
got hold of that and threw it into the fire.”
“Who did that?”
“Why—well, the people I was with—no, I mustn’t tell you about them.
In another of my books I wrote all I had learned about birds and
animals and trees and other things. I reckon I know a good deal about
such things, but what I wrote was only what I had learned for myself by
seeing so much of them. You see, I was alone a good deal then, except
for the wild creatures, and I got pretty well acquainted with them.
Even here, where they never knew me, I can call birds or squirrels to
me out of the trees, and they soon get so they will come to me even
without my calling them.”
“Is that book in existence still?” asked Kilgariff, with manifest
eagerness.
“I reckon so, but maybe not. I really don’t know. Anyhow, I shall never
see it again, of course, and nobody else would care for it.”
“Oh, yes, somebody else would. I would give a thousand dollars in gold
for it at this moment.”
“Why, what for? It was only a childish thing, and besides I had never
studied about such things.”
“Listen!” interrupted Kilgariff. “Do you know where science comes
from, and what it is? Do you realise that absolutely every fact we
know, of the kind we call scientific, was originally found out just
by somebody’s looking and listening as you did with your animals and
birds and flowers? And the persons who looked and listened and thought
about what they saw, told other people about them in books, and so all
our science was born? Those other people have put things together and
given learned names to them, and classified the facts for convenience,
but the ones who did the observing have always been the discoverers,
the most profitable workers in science. Audubon was reckoned an idle,
worthless fellow by the commonplace people about him, because he
‘wasted his time’ roaming about in the woods, making friends of the
wild creatures and studying their habits. But scientific men, who
are not commonplace or narrow-minded, were glad to listen when this
idle fellow told them what he had learned in the woods. In Europe and
America the great learned societies never tired of heaping honours upon
him and the books he wrote; and the pictures he painted of his woodland
friends sold for fabulous sums, bringing him fame and fortune.”
“I am glad of that,” answered the girl, simply; “for I like Audubon.
I’ve been reading his _Birds of America_, since I came to Wyanoke. But
I am not Audubon, and my poor, childish writings are not great like
his.”
“They are if they record, as they must, observations that nobody else
had made before. On the chance of that, I would give a thousand dollars
in gold, as I said before, for that childish manuscript. Could you not
reproduce it?”
“Oh, no; never. Of course, I remember all the things I put into it, but
I set them down so childishly—”
“You set them down truthfully, of course.”
“Oh, yes—but not in any proper order. I just wrote in my book each
day the new things I had seen or learned or thought. Mostly I was
interested in finding out what animals think, and how or in what queer
ways plants behave under certain circumstances. There was nothing in
all that—”
“There was everything in all that, and it was worth everything. But of
course, as you say, you cannot reproduce the book—not now at least.
Perhaps some day you may.”
“But I don’t understand?” queried the girl. “If I can’t rewrite the
book now—and I certainly can’t—how shall I ever be able to do it
‘some day’? Before ‘some day’ comes I shall have forgotten many things
that I remember now.”
“No, you will not forget anything of vital interest. But now you are
self-conscious and therefore shy and self-distrustful, as you were not
in your childhood when you wrote the book, and as you will not be when
you grow into a maturer womanhood and learn to be less impressed by
what you now think the superiority of others. When that time comes, you
will write the book again, adding much to its store of observed facts,
for you are not going to stop observing any more than you are going to
stop thinking.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“I could never write a book—a real book, I mean—fit to be printed.”
“We shall see about that later,” said Kilgariff. “You are a young woman
of unusual intellectual gifts, and under Mrs. Brent’s influence you
will grow, in ways that you do not now imagine.”
Kilgariff was profoundly interested, and he was rapidly talking himself
into a fever. Evelyn was quick to see this, and she was also anxious to
escape further praise and further talk about herself. So, with a demure
little air of authority, she said:—
“You must stop talking now. It is very bad for you. You must take a few
sips of broth and then a long sleep.”
All this occurred long after the day when Kilgariff handed her his
captain’s commission and bade her “send it back,” saying, “I don’t want
it.” At that time she was wholly ignorant of military formalities. She
did not know that under military usage Kilgariff could not communicate
with the higher authorities except formally and “through the regular
channels”; that is to say, through a succession of officers,
beginning with his captain. She saw that this commission was dated
at the adjutant-general’s office in Richmond and signed, “S. Cooper,
Adjutant-general.” Nothing could be simpler, she thought, than to
relieve Kilgariff of all trouble in the matter by herself sending the
document back, with a polite note to Mr. S. Cooper. So she wrote the
note as follows:—
S. COOPER, Adj’t-general,
Richmond.
DEAR SIR:—
Sergeant-major Kilgariff is too weak from his wound to write his own
letters, so I’m writing this note for him, to send back the enclosed
paper. Mr. Kilgariff doesn’t want it, but he thanks you for your
courtesy in sending it.
Yours truly,
EVELYN BYRD.
Precisely what would have happened if this extraordinary note with its
enclosure had reached the adjutant-general of the army, in response to
his official communication, it is difficult to imagine. Fortunately,
Evelyn was puzzled to know whether she should write on the envelope,
“Mr. S. Cooper,” or “S. Cooper, Esq.” So she waited till Kilgariff
should be awake and able to instruct her on that point.
When he saw what she had written, his first impulse was to cry out
in consternation. His second was to laugh aloud. But he did neither.
Instead, he quietly said:—
“We must be a little more formal, dear, and do this business in
accordance with military etiquette. You see, these official people are
very exacting as to formalities.”
Then he wrote upon the official letter which had accompanied the
commission a respectful indorsement declining the commission, after
which he directed his secretary-nurse to address it formally to Captain
Marshall Pollard, who, he explained, would indorse it and forward it
through the regular channels, as required by military usage.
“But why not accept the commission?” asked Evelyn, simply. She did
not at all realise—and Kilgariff had taken pains that she should not
realise—the enormity of her blunder or the ludicrousness of it. “Isn’t
it better to be a captain than a sergeant-major?”
“For most men, yes,” answered Kilgariff; “but not for me.”
But he did not explain.
VIII
SOME REVELATIONS OF EVELYN
IN the meanwhile Arthur Brent had acted upon Dorothy’s suggestion.
He had prepared a careful statement of Kilgariff’s case, withholding
his name of course, and had submitted it to General Stuart, with the
request that that typical exemplar of all that was best in chivalry
should himself choose such officers as he deemed best, to constitute
the court.
The verdict was unanimous. Stuart wrote to Arthur Brent:—
Every member of the court is of opinion that your own assurance of the
innocence of the gentleman concerned is conclusive. They are all of
opinion that he is entirely free and entitled to accept a commission,
and that he is not under the slightest obligation to reveal to anybody
the unfortunate circumstances that have caused him to hesitate in this
matter. It is the further opinion of the court, and I am asked to
express it with emphasis, that the course of the gentleman concerned,
in refusing to accept a commission upon the point of honour that
influenced him to that decision, is in itself a sufficient assurance
of his character. Tell him from me that, without at all knowing who he
is, I urge and, if I may, I command him to accept the post you offer
him, in order that he may render his best services to the cause that
we all love.
Arthur Brent hurried this letter to his friend at Wyanoke; but before
it arrived, the writer of it, the “Chevalier of the Lost Cause,” had
passed from earth. He fell at the Yellow Tavern, at the head of his
troopers in one of the tremendous onsets which he knew so well how
to lead, before this generous missive—perhaps the last that he ever
wrote—fell under the eyes of the man, all unknown to him, whom he thus
commanded to accept honour and duty with it.
The fact of Stuart’s death peculiarly embarrassed a man of Kilgariff’s
almost boyish sensitiveness.