commands and disregarding his dying request, in still refusing to
reconsider my decision. Yet I feel that I must do so in spite of
the decision of your court of honour, in spite of your friendly
insistence, in spite of everything. After all, Arthur, a man must
be judge in his own case, when his honour is involved. The most that
others can do—the most even that a court of honour can do—is to
excuse, to pardon, to permit. I could never submit to the humiliation
of excuse, of pardon, of permission, however graciously granted. I
sincerely wish you could understand me, Arthur. In aid of that, let me
state the case. I am a man condemned on an accusation of crime. I am
an escaped prisoner, a fugitive from justice. I am innocent. I know
that, and you are generous enough to believe it. But the hideous fact
of my conviction remains. It seems to me that even upon the award of
a court of honour, backed by something like the dying injunction of
our gallant cavalier, Stuart, I cannot honourably consent to accept a
commission and meet men of stainless reputation upon equal terms, or
perhaps even as their superior and commanding officer, without first
revealing to each and all of them the ugly facts that stand in the
way. Generous they may be; generous they are. But it is not for me to
impose myself upon their generosity, or to deceive them by a reserve
which I am bound to practise.
I have already sent back a captain’s commission which I had fairly
won by that little fight on the hill at Spottsylvania. With you I may
be frank enough to say that any sergeant-major doing what I did on
that occasion would have been entitled to his captaincy as a matter
of right, and not at all as a matter of favour. I had fairly won that
commission, yet I returned it to the war department, simply because
I could not forget the facts in my case. How much more imperative it
is that I should refuse the higher commission which you press upon
me, and which I have not won by any conspicuous service! Will you not
understand me, my friend? Will you not try to look at this matter from
my point of view? So long as I am a condemned criminal, a fugitive
from justice, I simply cannot consent to become a commissioned officer
entitled by my government’s certification to meet on equal terms men
against whom no accusation has been laid.
Let that matter rest here. I shall remain a sergeant-major to the
end—an enlisted man, a non-commissioned officer whose captain may
send him back to the gun whenever it pleases him to do so, a man
who must touch his cap to every officer he meets, a man subject to
orders, a man ready for any work of war that may be given him to do.
In view of the tedious slowness with which I am recovering from this
wound, and the great need I know Captain Pollard has for an executive
sergeant, I wrote to him, two weeks ago, resigning my place, and
asking him to select some other capable man in my stead. He replied in
his generous fashion, absolutely refusing to accept my resignation.
That was Kilgariff’s modest way of putting the matter. What Pollard had
actually written was this:—
By your gallantry and your capacity as a hard-fighting soldier,
you have won for my battery such honour and distinction as had not
come to it from all its previous good conduct. Do you imagine that
I am going to lose such a sergeant-major as you are, merely because
his honourable wounds temporarily incapacitate him? I had thought
to lose you by your richly earned promotion to a rank equal to my
own, or superior to it. That promotion you have refused—foolishly,
I think—but at any rate you have refused it. You are still my
sergeant-major, therefore, and will remain that until you consent to
accept a higher place.
This was the situation so far as Kilgariff was concerned, as it
revealed itself to Pollard and Arthur Brent. Dorothy knew another side
of it. For with Dorothy, Kilgariff had quickly established relations
of the utmost confidence and the truest friendship; and to Dorothy,
Kilgariff revealed every thought, as he had never done to any other
human being.
Indeed, revelation was not necessary. Dorothy was a woman of that high
type that loves sincerely and with courage, and Dorothy had seen
the daily and hourly growing fascination of Kilgariff for Evelyn.
She had seen Evelyn’s devoted ministry to him, and had understood
the unconscious love that lay behind its childlike reserve. She had
understood, as he had not, that, all unknown to herself, Evelyn had
made of Kilgariff the hero of her adoration, and that Kilgariff’s soul
had been completely enthralled by a devotion which did not recognise
its own impulse or the fulness of its meaning. Dorothy knew far more,
indeed, of the relations between these two than either of themselves
had come to know.
She was in no way unprepared, therefore, when one day Kilgariff said to
her, as they two sat in converse:—
“You know, of course, that I am deeply in love with Evelyn?”
“Yes,” Dorothy answered; “I must be blind if I did not see that.”
“Of course,” responded the man, “I have said nothing to her on the
subject, and I shall say nothing, to the end. I speak to you of it only
because I want your help in avoiding the danger-point. Evelyn is not in
the least in love with me.”
Dorothy made no response to that.
“She is grateful to me for having saved her life, and gratitude is a
sentiment utterly at war with love. Moreover, Evelyn is perfectly frank
and unreserved in her conversations with me. No woman is ever so with
the man she loves, until after he has made her his wife. So I regard
Evelyn, as for the present, safe. She is not in love with me, and I
shall do nothing to induce such sentiment on her part.”
Again Dorothy sat silent.
“But there is much that I can do for her, and I want to do it. You
must help me. And above all you must tell me the moment you discover
in her any shadow or trace of that reserve toward me which might mean
or suggest a dawning of love. I shall be constantly on the lookout
for such signs, but you, with your woman’s wit and intuitions, may be
quicker than I to see.”
“Precisely what do you mean, Kilgariff?” Dorothy asked, in her frank
way of going directly to the marrow of every matter with which she had
occasion to deal. “You say you are in love with Evelyn. Do you not wish
her to be in love with you?”
“No! By every consideration of propriety, by every sentiment of honour,
no!” he answered, with more of vehemence than he was accustomed to put
into his words.
“Do you not understand? I can never ask her to marry me; I am therefore
in honour bound not to win her love. I shall devote myself most
earnestly to the task of repairing such defects in her education as
I discover. But the moment I see or suspect the least disposition on
her part to think of me otherwise than with the indifference of mere
friendship, I shall take myself out of her life completely. I ask you
to aid me in watching for such indications of dawning affection, and in
forestalling them.”
“You shall have all the assistance you need to discover and do your
real duty,” said Dorothy. But that most womanly of women did not at all
share Kilgariff’s interpretation either of his own duty or of Evelyn’s
sentiment toward him. She knew from her own experience that a woman
grows shy and reserved with a man the moment she understands herself to
be in love with him. But equally she knew that love may long conceal
itself even from the one who cherishes it, and that reserve, when it
comes, comes altogether too late for purposes of safeguarding.
But Dorothy did not care. She wanted these two to love each other, and
she saw no reason why they should not. She recognised their peculiar
fitness for each other’s love, and as for the rest—wise woman that she
was—she trusted love to overcome all difficulties. In other words,
Dorothy was a woman, and she herself had loved and mated as God meant
that women should. So she was disposed to let well alone in this case.
Kilgariff’s wound was healing satisfactorily now, and little by little
his strength was coming back to him. So, every day, he sat in the
laboratory with Dorothy and Evelyn, helping in the work by advice and
suggestion, and often in more direct and active ways. For Arthur Brent
had written to Dorothy:—
I must remain with the army yet a while in order to keep the hospital
service in as efficient a state as adverse circumstances will permit,
and the constant shiftings from one place to another render this
difficult. When Kilgariff grows strong enough, set him at work in the
laboratory. He would never tell you so, but he is a better chemist
than I am, better even than you in some respects. Especially he
is expert in shortening processes, and the army’s pressing need
of medicines renders this a peculiarly valuable art just now. We
need everything at every hour, but especially we need opium and its
products, and quinine or quinine substitutes. Please give your own
special attention to your poppy fields, and get all you can of opium
from them. Send to Richmond all the product except so much as you can
use in the laboratory in extracting the still more valuable alkaloids.
Another thing: the dogwood-root bark bitters you are sending prove to
be a valuable substitute for quinine. Please multiply your product if
you can. Enlist the services of your friends everywhere in supplying
you with the raw material. Get them to set their little negroes at
work digging and drying the roots, so that you may make as much of
the bitters as possible. There are a good many wild cherry trees at
Wyanoke and on other plantations round about. Won’t you experiment,
with Kilgariff’s assistance, and see if you can’t produce some
quinine? Our need of that is simply terrible. Malaria kills five times
as many men as Federal bullets do, and, apart from that, hundreds of
sick or wounded men could be returned to duty a month earlier than
they now are if we had quinine enough. Tell Kilgariff I invoke his
aid, and you’ll get it.
Kilgariff responded enthusiastically to this appeal. He personally
investigated the quinine-producing capacity of every tree and plant
that grew at Wyanoke or in its neighbourhood.
“The dog fennel,” he said to Dorothy, “is most promising. It yields
quinine in greater quantity, in proportion to the time and labour
involved, than anything else we have. Of course, if ours were a
commercial enterprise, it would not pay to attempt any of these
manufactures. But our problem is simply to produce medicines for the
army at whatever cost. So I have taken the liberty of ordering all your
chaps”—the term “chaps” in Virginia meant juvenile negroes—“to gather
all the dog fennel they can, and to dry it on fence-rail platforms. I
am having the men put up some kettles in which to steep it. The rest we
must do in the laboratory. Our great lack is that of kettles enough.”
“Must they be of iron?” asked Evelyn, with earnest interest. “Must they
have fires under them?”
“N-no,” answered Kilgariff, hesitatingly. “I suppose washtubs or
anything that will hold water will do. We must use hot water to steep
the plants in, but we might pour hot water into vessels in which we
couldn’t heat it. Yes, Evelyn, any sort of vessel that will hold water
will answer our purpose.”
“Then I’ll provide all the tanks you need, if Dorothy will give me
leave to command the servant-men. I do know how.”
The leave was promptly given, and Evelyn instructed the negroes how to
make staves of large proportions, and how to put them together. Three
days later, with an adequate supply of these, and with a quantity of
binding hoops which she had herself fashioned out of hickory saplings
to the utter astonishment of her comrades, the girl manufactured a
number of wooden and water-tight tanks, each capable of holding many
scores of gallons.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Kilgariff asked, when the first of
the tanks was set up.
“Among the whale fishermen,” she answered. “But I mustn’t tell you
about that, and you mustn’t ask. But my tanks will hold oil as well as
water, and I am going to make a little one for castor oil. You know we
have five acres in castor beans. I reckon you two do know how to make
castor oil out of them.”
“Come here, Evelyn, and sit down,” said Dorothy. “Of course we know
how to extract castor oil from the beans, but we don’t know where or
how you got your peculiar English. Tell us about it.”
“I do not understand. Is my English not like your own?”
“In some respects, no. When you volunteered to make these tanks for us,
you said, ‘I do know how,’ and now you say, ‘You do know.’ We should
say, ‘I know,’ and ‘You know.’ Where did you get your peculiar usage?”
The girl flushed crimson. Presently she answered:—
“It is that I have not been taught. Pardon me. I am trying to learn.
I do listen—no, I should say—I listen to your speech, and I try to
speak the same. I have read books and tried to learn from them what
the right speech is. Am I not learning better now? I try, or I am
trying—which is it? And the big book—the dictionary—I am studying. I
never saw a dictionary until I came to Wyanoke.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kilgariff, tenderly. “You speak quite well enough
to make us glad to listen.”
And indeed they were glad to listen. For now that the girl had become
actively busy in the laboratory, she had lost much of her shy reserve,
and her conversation was full of inspiration and suggestiveness. It
was obvious that while her instruction had been meagre and exceedingly
irregular, she had done a world of thinking from such premises as were
hers, and the thinking had been sound.
Her ways were sweet and winning, chiefly because of their utter
sincerity, and they fascinated both Dorothy and Kilgariff.
“Kilgariff must marry her,” Dorothy wrote to Arthur Brent. “God
evidently intended that, when he made these two; but how it is to
come about, I do not at all know. Kilgariff has some foolish notions
that stand in the way, but of course love will overcome them. As for
Evelyn—well, she is a woman, and that is quite enough.”
Evelyn’s use of the intensives, ‘do’ and ‘did’ and the like, was not at
all uniform. Often she would converse for half an hour without a lapse
into that or any other of her peculiarities of speech. It was usually
excitement or embarrassment or enthusiasm that brought on what Dorothy
called “an attack of dialect,” and Kilgariff one day said to Dorothy:—
“The girl’s speech ‘bewrayeth her,’ as Peter’s did in the Bible.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, it is easy and perfectly safe to infer from her speech a good
deal of her life-history.”
“Go on, I am interested.”
“Well, you observe that she has almost a phenomenal gift of unconscious
imitation. She has been with you for only a very brief while, yet in
the main her pronunciation, her inflection, and even her choice of
words are those of a young woman brought up in Virginia. She says
‘gyarden,’ ‘cyart,’ and the like, and her _a_’s are quite as broad
as your own when she talks of the grass or the basket. Now when she
lapses into her own dialect, there is a distinctively French note in
her syntax, from which I argue that she has lived among French-speaking
people for a time, catching their construction. But, on the other hand,
her English is so good that I cannot think her life has been mainly
passed among French-speaking people. Have you tried her in French
itself?”
“Yes, and she speaks the most extraordinary French I ever heard.”
“Well, that fits in with the other facts. This morning she spoke of a
hashed meat at breakfast as ‘pemmican,’ though she quickly corrected
herself; she often uses Indian terms, too, by inadvertence. Then
again, her accomplishments all smell of the woods. Putting all things
together, I should say that she has spent a good deal of time among, or
at least in frequent contact with, Canadian Frenchmen and Indians.”
“I think you are right,” said Dorothy, “and yet some part of her life
has been passed in company with a well-bred and accomplished woman.”
“Your body of facts, please?” said Kilgariff.
“Her speech, for one thing; for in spite of its oddities it is mainly
the speech of a cultivated woman. She never uses slang; indeed, I’m
sure she knows no slang. Her constructions, though often odd, are
always grammatical, and her diction is that of educated people. Then
again, her scrupulous attention to personal neatness tells me much.
More important still, at least in my woman’s eyes, is the fact that
she perfectly knows how to make a bed and how to make the most of the
little ornaments and fripperies of a room. She did not learn these
things from squaws or half-breeds. Moreover, she does needlework of an
exquisite delicacy which I never saw matched anywhere. That tells of a
highly bred woman as an influence in her life and education.”
While these three were at dinner that day, the negro head-man—for even
in his enforced absence Arthur Brent would not commit his authority
over his negroes to the brutal instincts of any overseer—came to the
door and asked to speak with “Mis’ Dorothy.”
“Bring me a decanter and a glass, Elsie,” said Dorothy to the chief
serving-maid. She poured a dram into the glass, and handed it to the
girl.
“Take that out to Uncle Joe,” she said, “and tell him to come in after
he has drunk it.”
It was a peculiarity of the plantation negro in Virginia that he never
refused a dram from “the gre’t house,” and yet that he never drank to
excess. Those negroes that served about the house in one capacity or
another were always supplied with money—the proceeds of “tips”—and
could have bought liquor at will. Yet none of them ever formed the
drink habit.
When Uncle Joe came into the dining-room, he had a number of matters
concerning which he desired instruction. When these affairs had been
disposed of, and Dorothy had directed him to slaughter a shoat on the
following morning, the mistress asked:—
“How about the young mare, Uncle Joe? Are you ever going to have her
broken?”
“Well, you see, Missus, Dick’s de only pusson on de plantation what
dars to tackle dat dar mar’, an’ Dick he’s done gone off to de wah wid
Mahstah. ‘Sides dat, de mar’ she done trowed Dick hisse’f tree times.
Dey simply ain’t no doin’ nuffin’ wid dat dar mar’, Missus. I reckon de
only ting to do wid her is to sell her to de artillery, whah dey don’
ax no odds o’ no hoss whatsomever. She’s five year ole, an’ as strong
as two mules, an’ nobody ain’t never been able to break her yit.”
“Poor creature!” said Evelyn. “May I try what I can do with her,
Dorothy?”
“You, little Missus?” broke in Joe. “_You_ try to tackle de iron-gray
mar’? Why, she’d mash you like a potato wid her foh-feet, an’ den turn
roun’ an’ kick you to kingdom come wid de hind par.”
“May I try, Dorothy?” the girl calmly asked again, quite ignoring Uncle
Joe’s prophecies of evil.
“Hadn’t you better let some of the men or boys break her first?”
“No. To me it is plain they have done too much of that already. Let me
have her as she is. Have her brought up to the house, Uncle Joe, soon
after dinner, with nothing on her but a halter.”
“Why, little Mis’, you don’ know—”
“Do precisely as I tell you,” interrupted the girl, who could be very
imperious when so minded.
When the mare was brought, she was striking viciously at the negro who
led her. With ears laid back close to her head, and with the whites of
her eyes showing menacingly, she was striking out with her hoofs as if
intent upon committing homicide without further delay.
“Turn her loose, Ben,” said the girl, who sat idly in the porch as if
she had no task on her hands. “Then go away from her, and make all the
rest go away, too—” motioning toward the gang of little negroes who
had assembled, “to see de iron-gray mar’ kill little Missie.”
When all were gone, Evelyn began nibbling at a sugar lump. Presently,
after the mare had discovered that she was quite free and that her
tormentors were gone, Evelyn held out her hand with the sugar lump in
its palm. The animal was obviously unfamiliar with sugar lumps, but she
had the curiosity which is commonly—perhaps erroneously—attributed to
her sex. So, as Evelyn sat on the bench and made no motion indicative
of any purpose to seize the halter, the animal presently became
interested in the extended hand. Little by little, and with occasional
snortings and recessions, she approached the girl. Finally, finding
that the extended hand was not moved, she nosed the sugar lump, and
then with her long, flexible tongue, swept it into her mouth.
Evelyn did not withdraw the hand at once, but held it extended till
the mare had got the full flavour of the sweet. Meanwhile, she cooed
to the animal soothingly, and, after a little, she produced a second
sugar lump and laid it upon the extended palm. This time, as the mare
took the dainty, Evelyn, still talking soothingly, ventured with her
other hand to stroke the beast’s silky nose, caressingly. There was a
shrinking back on the part of the timid creature, but the lure of the
sugar was enticing, and after once the gentle hand had stroked the
mare’s face, she seemed rather to welcome than to resent the caress.
Thus, little by little, did the girl establish relations of amity
between herself and the spirited mare. After a while, Evelyn quitted
her seat, went out upon the lawn, and with a sugar-lump bribe tempted
the animal to approach her. Then she stroked its head and neck and
sides, gradually giving it to understand that she meant no harm and
accustoming it to the pleasant touch of her hands. Finally she stroked
its legs vigorously, and lifted one foot after another, examining each.
By this time the mare seemed to have concluded that the young woman,
who talked ceaselessly in her cooing, contralto voice, was an
altogether pleasant acquaintance. Wherever the girl went, around the
grounds, the mare followed, nosing her and seemingly soliciting her
attention.
At last the girl tolled the mare to a horse block, and for a time stood
upon it, gently stroking her silky back.
Then she made a motion as if to sit upon that shapely back. The mare
shied away, perhaps remembering former attempts of the kind which
she had resented as indignities. But as Evelyn did not insist upon
her apparent purpose, and as the mare was by this time very much in
sympathy, if not in love, with the gentle girl, she presently sidled
back into position, and Evelyn seated herself upon her back, at the
same time caressingly stroking the sides of her neck. She had neither
saddle on which to sit securely, nor bridle with which to control her
mount, but there was no need of either. The mare was nibbling grass by
this time, and Evelyn permitted her to do so, letting her wander about
the house grounds at will, in search of the most succulent tufts. As
the supper hour drew near, the girl slipped from the animal’s back and
led the way, the animal following, to the stables. There, with her own
hands she filled the manger and the hay-rack, and after an affectionate
farewell to her new friend, returned to the house. But first she said
to Ben, the hostler:—
“Let nobody feed the mare but me. I will be at the stables in time in
the morning. And let nobody touch her with a currycomb. I will myself
attend to all.”
Three or four days later the high-spirited mare was Evelyn Byrd’s very
humble servant indeed. The girl rode her everywhere, teaching her a
number of pretty tricks, the most astonishing of which was the art of
lifting a gate latch with her teeth, and letting herself and her rider
through the many barriers that Virginian law accommodatingly permitted
planters to erect across the public roads.
“But how did you learn all this?” asked Kilgariff, full of interest.
“Oh, I do not know. I reckon I never learned it at all. You see, the
animals fight us only because they think we mean to fight them. So long
as they are afraid of us, they fight, of course. When they learn that
we are friendly, they are glad to be friends. Anybody can tame any
animal if he goes to work in the right way. I once tamed a Canada lynx,
and it became so used to me that I let it sleep on the foot of my bed.
But the lynx has a great deal of sense and very little affection, while
a horse has a great deal of affection and very little sense. With the
lynx, I appealed to its good sense, but I did never—I mean, I never
trusted its affection.