but I have won its affection completely, and I trust that. The animal
has so little sense that it would scare at a scrap of paper lying in
the road, and go almost frantic if it saw a man pulling a buggy. But if
I were on its back, it would not run or do anything that might throw me
off. You see, one must know which is stronger in each animal—sense or
sentiment. With a horse it is sentiment, so I curry the mare myself,
talking to her all the while in a loving way, and I never let anybody
else go into the stall. Another thing: a horse loves liberty better
than anything else, so I have taken off the halter with which the mare
used to be tied in her stall, and, as you know, I turn her loose every
morning when she has finished her fodder, and she follows me up here
to the house grounds where she is perfectly free to nibble grass. But
she loves me so much that she often quits the grass and comes up here
to the porch just to get me to rub her nose or stroke her neck. She is
strong, and I am light, so she likes me to sit upon her back, as you
have seen me do for an hour at a time. She doesn’t quite like a saddle
yet—and neither do I. I would never use anything more than a blanket,
just for the protection of my clothes, only that Dorothy thinks that
people would wonder, if I should go visiting or to church riding
bareback. Why do people wonder in that way, Mr. Kilgariff, about other
people’s doings?”
“Upon my word, I don’t know, unless it is that we are all like the
Pharisee in the parable, and want to emphasise our own superiority by
criticising others.”
“But why shouldn’t the others criticise, too? The ways of the people
they criticise are no more different from their ways, than their ways
are different from those of the people they criticise. I confess I
don’t quite understand.”
“Neither do I, Evelyn, except that it is the habit of people to set up
their own ways as a standard and model, and to regard every departure
from them as a barbarism. If it were not an accepted fact that the
Venus of Milo is the most perfect exemplification we have of feminine
beauty, and that it is the fashion to go into raptures over that piece
of sculpture, I imagine that nine fashionable women in every ten would
ridicule the way in which her hair is done up, simply because they do
not do up theirs in the same way.”
“Yes, I know,” answered the girl, dreamily, and as if in a reverie.
“That was the trouble in the circus.”
“In the circus? What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Don’t ask me.”
IX
THE GREAT WAR GAME
ALL this while the war was going on tremendously and Kilgariff was
chafing at the restraint of a wound which forbade him to bear his part
in it.
As we have seen, General Grant had crossed into the Wilderness with
a double strategic purpose. He had hoped to turn Lee’s right flank
and compel the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. Failing in
that, he had hoped, with his enormously superior numbers, to crush and
destroy Lee’s army in battle.
He had failed in that purpose also. By his promptitude and vigour in
assailing Grant’s army in flank, Lee had compelled his adversary to
abandon his flanking purpose, and to withdraw his advance columns over
a distance of more than ten miles in order to reinforce his sorely
beset divisions in the Wilderness and to save his own army from the
destruction he had hoped to inflict upon his adversary.
After suffering a far heavier loss than he inflicted, Grant had
summoned reinforcements and moved by his left flank to Spottsylvania
Court House. By this movement he had again hoped to turn Lee’s right
flank, place himself between the Confederates and their capital, and
in that way compel the surrender or dispersal of the Army of Northern
Virginia. Again he had been foiled by Lee’s alertness and by the
marvellous mobility of an army that moved without a baggage-train, and
whose men carried no blankets, no extra clothing, no overcoats, no
canteens, no tin cups, no cooking-utensils—nothing, in fact, except
their rifles and their ammunition.
Those men were on the verge of starvation all the while. Often they had
no rations at all for two days or more at a time. When rations were
fullest, they consisted of one, two, or three hard-tack biscuits a day
for each man, and perhaps a diminutive slice of salt pork or bacon,
which was eaten raw.
But these men, who had formerly fought with the courage of hope,
inspired by splendid victory, were fighting now with the courage
of utter despair. A great wave of religious fervour had passed over
the army and the South. It took upon itself the fatalistic forms of
Calvinism, for the most part. The men of the army came to believe that
every event which occurs in this world was foreordained of God to
occur, decreed “before ever the foundations of the world were laid.”
They had not ceased to trust the genius and sagacity of Lee, but they
had accepted the rule and guidance of a greater than Lee—of God
Almighty himself. With a faith that was sublime even in its perversion,
these men committed themselves and their cause to God, and ceased to
reckon upon human probabilities as factors in the problem.
There were prayer meetings in every tent and at every bivouac fire,
every day and every night. At every pause in the fighting, were it only
for a few minutes, the men on the firing-line threw themselves upon
their knees and besought God to crown their efforts and their arms with
victory, submissively leaving it to Him to determine the where, the
when, the how. And in this worship of God and this absolute dependence
upon His will the men of that army learned to regard themselves
personally as mere pawns upon the chess-board of the divine purpose.
They came to regard their own lives as dust in the balance, to be blown
away by the breath of God’s will, to be sacrificed, as fuel is, for the
maintenance of a flame.
Believing firmly and without question that their cause was in God’s
charge, they executed every order given to them with an indifference to
personal consequences for the like of which one may search history in
vain.
In his movement from the Wilderness to Spottsylvania, General Grant
again failed to turn the flank of his wily adversary, and, after a
prolonged endeavour to break and destroy Lee’s army there, the Federal
commander again moved by his left flank, in the hope of reaching
Hanover Court House in advance of the arrival there of the Army of
Northern Virginia.
Again he was baffled of his purpose. Again Lee got there first, and
took up a position in which, by reason of the river’s tortuous course
and the conformation of the ground, Grant could not assail him without
dividing his own army into three parts, no one of which could be
depended upon to support either of the others.
At one point the Federal general very nearly succeeded. There was a
bridge across the stream near Hanover Court House. If that could be
seized, the Federal forces might cross and assail Lee’s left flank with
effect. A strong column of Federals was thrown forward to possess the
bridge, and for a time it looked as if they would succeed and bring the
war to an end right there.
But two Confederate batteries—utterly unsupported—were thrown
forward. One was Captain Pollard’s; the other was a battery from the
battalion of Major Baillie Pegram. Advancing at a full run, the two
batteries planted their guns at the head of the bridge, just as the
Federal columns were beginning to cross it, and within five minutes the
bridge had ceased to be.
Has the reader ever seen Shepard’s spirited painting called “Virginia,
1864”? The sketch from which that painting was made was drawn on this
hotly contested field, the artist having three pencils carried away
from his grasp by rifle bullets and half a dozen rents made in his
drawing-paper while he worked.
Thus, for the third time baffled in his effort to place his army
between Lee and Richmond, Grant moved again by his left flank to the
neighbourhood of Cold Harbour, where one of the severest battles of the
seven days’ fight between Lee and McClellan had been waged.
Again Lee discovered his purpose, and again he got there first. He
seized upon a line of hills and hastily fortified them. He was now
in front of Richmond and only a few miles in advance of that city’s
defences. He thought it not imprudent, therefore, to call to his
assistance such troops as were engaged in garrisoning the works about
Richmond; thus for the first time in all that strenuous campaign having
an opportunity in some small degree to make good the waste of war,
by way of preparing himself to meet an enemy who had been reinforced
almost daily since the beginning of the campaign, and whose army at
that time outnumbered the Confederate force by more than three to one.
At Lee’s back lay the now bridgeless Chickahominy—an erratic stream
which might at any moment cut him off from all possibility of retreat.
If Grant could defeat him where he lay, or even seriously cripple him,
the pathway of the Army of the Potomac into Richmond would be scarcely
at all obstructed.
In hope of this result, Grant determined upon an assault in force.
In the gray of the morning of June 3, he assailed Lee with all of
impetuosity and all of force that an army of one hundred and fifty
thousand men could bring to bear against an army of less than fifty
thousand.
The result was disastrous in the extreme to the Federals. They
marched into a very slaughter pen, where they lost about ten thousand
men within twenty minutes, for the reason that Lee had previously
discovered their purpose and had prepared himself to receive their
onslaught with all the enginery of slaughter.
In effect, this disaster to the Federal arms ended the field campaign
of 1864. It had been four times demonstrated that in strategy Lee
was more than a match for his adversary. It had been four times
demonstrated that in field fighting the little Army of Northern
Virginia could not be overcome by the force, three times as great,
which Grant had so often and so determinedly hurled against it.
There was nothing left to the Federal commander except to besiege
Richmond, either directly on the north and east, or indirectly by way
of Petersburg, twenty-two miles south and commanding the main lines of
Confederate military communication.
Butler already lay on the south side of the James River with a strong
detachment and within easy striking distance of Petersburg, a city
defended by an exceedingly inadequate force under Beauregard. Grant
ordered Butler to seize upon Petersburg quickly, before the place
could be defended. If that plan had been successful, Richmond must
have surrendered or been evacuated, and the war must have ended in the
early summer of 1864, instead of dragging its slow length along for
nearly a year more. But Beauregard’s extraordinary alertness and vigour
baffled Butler’s purpose. In spite of the exceeding meagreness of the
Confederate defending force, before Grant could push the head of his
column into Petersburg, Lee was there; and within a few hours the Army
of Northern Virginia, equally skilled in the use of bayonet and spade,
had created that slender line of earthworks behind which Lee’s thin and
constantly diminishing force defended itself for two thirds of a year
to come.
X
THE LAW OF LOVE
“MRS. BRENT—” Kilgariff so began a sentence one morning.
But Dorothy interrupted him, quickly.
“Why do you persist in addressing me in that way?” she asked. “Are we
not yet sufficiently friends for you to call me ‘Dorothy,’ as all my
intimates do? You know, I exacted that of Evelyn in the first moment
that I found myself fond of her and knew that she loved me.”
“But there is a difference,” answered Kilgariff. “You see—”
“Yes, there is a difference, but it is altogether on the side of my
contention. Evelyn is much younger than I am; for although, as you
know, I am still only twenty-four, Evelyn has the advantage of several
years of age. She _thinks_ she is only seventeen, but as nearly as
I can figure out from what she tells me she must be approaching
nineteen. However that may be, you, at any rate, are nearly as old as
Arthur. You and he have been intimates all your lives, and if that
intimacy is well-founded, I see no reason why you should not include me
in it, so far at least, as to call me by my Christian name. You see,
I was ‘Dorothy’ long before I became ‘Mrs. Brent,’ and my given name
has many pleasing associations in my ears. My father always called
me that. So did my mother, after I came to know her. Arthur did so,
too, after I learned to like him and gave him leave. Of course, to all
outsiders I am ‘Mrs. Brent’—a name that I am proud and glad to bear,
because—well, because of Arthur. But to the insiders—to my friends—I
have a strong inclination to be just ‘Dorothy.’ Don’t you think you
have become an insider?”
Kilgariff hesitated for a time before answering. Finally he said:—
“It is very gracious of you—all this. But I wonder how much Arthur has
told you about me?”
“He has told me everything he knows,” she answered, with an added touch
of dignity. “We should not be man and wife if either were capable of
practising reserve with the other in such a case as this.”
“Very well, then,” responded Kilgariff. “I do not like sailing under
false colours; but, as you know all, why, it will be a special pleasure
to me to be permitted to call you ‘Dorothy.’”
“Now, what were you going to say when I interrupted you?” asked
Dorothy, the direct.
“I’m afraid I forget.”
“No, you don’t, or at least you can remember in such a case. So think
a bit, Owen, and tell me what you were going to say. It was something
about Evelyn.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Why, for several reasons. For one thing, you caught sight of Evelyn
just at that moment, as she was teaching her mare to kneel down for
her to mount. You heard her voice, too, as she chided the mare in half
playful fashion for rising too abruptly after the mount. A woman’s
voice means much to a man of sensitive nature. She talks in just that
way to the children—my babies—and their liking for it is positively
wonderful. Only this morning Mammy and I were having all sorts of
trouble to get them out of their bath. Bob, the boy, was bent upon
spending the rest of the day in the tub, and was disposed to raise a
rumpus over every effort to lift him out, and Mildred, girl-like, took
her cue from her ‘big brother.’ In the midst of the turmoil Evelyn came
in. She assumed a look of astonishment, which attracted Bob’s attention
and for the moment quieted him. Then she said:—
“‘Oh, Bob! I m sorry you’re bad. But you are. You’re very bad indeed,
so I mustn’t tell you about the ten little Injuns. You’re getting to be
bad just like them.’
“By that time she had lifted the boy out of the tub and dried him and
slipped a garment upon him, he not protesting in the least. Then she
stood him up in her lap, and, looking at him in seeming surprise, she
exclaimed:—
“‘Why, Bob isn’t bad a bit! Evey made a great big mistake. Evey’s going
to tell Bob about the ten little Injun boys.’ And from that moment
there was no disturbance in the nursery except the noise of joyous
laughter.
“I said to her:—
“‘You deal with them just as if they were wild animals to be tamed.’
“She answered:—
“‘So they are, only people often forget it, cruelly.’”
“Well, now,” said Kilgariff, “let me have your other reason, or
reasons, for thinking that what I set out to say had some reference
to Evelyn. I plead guilty to your charge that I caught sight of
Evelyn teaching the mare, and that I was charmed by the sweetness and
sympathetic jollity of her voice, as she addressed the animal in her
winning way. But you were going to offer another fact in support of
your assumption. What was it?”
“Why, simply that you hadn’t spoken for ten minutes before you
addressed me. You were meditating, and whenever you meditate nowadays,
you are thinking of Evelyn.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Absolutely. You are not always aware of the fact, but the fact is
always there. I like it to be always there.”
“Why, Dorothy?”
“Why, because I want you to be that way with Evelyn. It will mean
happiness in the future for both of you.”
“No; it will mean at best a gently mitigated unhappiness to me—and I
shall be glad of the gentle mitigation. To her it will mean nothing
more than a pleasant friendship. I do not intend that it ever shall
mean more than that to her.”
“But why not? Why should it not mean everything to her that womanhood
longs for? Why should you not win Evelyn’s love and make her your
wife? I never knew two people better fitted to make each other happy,
and fortunately you have possessions in Europe and at the North which
will enable you to take a wife, no matter how disastrously this war
may end for us of the South. Believe me, Owen, in creating men and
women, God intended marriage and happiness in marriage for the common
lot of humanity. He does not give it to all of us to be great, or to
achieve great things, or to render great services, but, if we hearken
to His voice as it whispers within us, He intends happiness for us, and
His way of giving happiness is in marriage, prompted by love. We poor
mortals interfere with Nature’s plan in many ways. Especially we sin by
‘match-making’—by bringing about marriages without love and for the
sake of convenience of one kind or another. We wed bonds to city lots.
We trade girls for titles, giving a money boot. We profane the holiest
of human relations in order to join one plantation to another, or to
unite two distinguished houses, or for some other equally devilish
reason.
“It is the best thing about this war that its tendency is to obliterate
artificialities and restore men and women to natural conditions—at
least here at the South. Believe me, Owen, the union of a man and
a woman who really love each other, is the crowning fact of all
existence. You and I are somewhat skilled in science. We know the truth
that Nature is illimitably attentive not only to the preservation of
the race, but to its improvement also; and we know that Nature takes no
care whatever of the individual, but ruthlessly sacrifices him for the
sake of the race. Nature is right, and we are criminally wrong when we
thwart her purposes, as we do when we make marriages that have no love
for their inspiration, or in any way bar marriage where love prompts
it. I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but old fashions are sometimes good
fashions. They are always so when they are the outgrowths of natural
conditions.
“Now put all that aside. I have had my little say. Let me hear what it
was that you were going to say to me concerning Evelyn. I recognise
your right, as you do not, to criticise in that quarter.”
“Oh, I had no thought of criticising,” answered Kilgariff. “On the
contrary, I am disposed to think you and I have made a valuable
discovery in pedagogics.”
“What is it?”
“Why, that the best way to teach science is backward.”
“I confess I do not understand.”
“Well, look at the thing. If Evelyn had been sent to a scientific
school to study chemistry, her professor would have set her to studying
a book of general principles. Then, after three or four months of
drudgery, she would have been permitted to perform a few experiments
in the laboratory, by way of illustrating and verifying what the book
had told her, the greater part of which she had known before she
began. You and I have begun at the other end. We have set Evelyn to do
practical work in the laboratory. I remember that her first task was to
wash opium, and her next to manufacture blue mass out of rose petals
and mercury. Incidentally we explained to her the general principles
involved, and in that purely incidental way she has learned her general
chemistry so thoroughly within a few weeks, and without opening a book,
that she could pass any examination upon it that any college professor
could put up. She has learned more in a month than any systematic class
work would have taught her in a year.”
“I suppose you are right,” answered Dorothy. “But that is the only way
I know. It is the way in which Arthur taught me.”
“Yes, I should suppose that Arthur is distinctly a man of original
genius. He _knows how to get things done_. He is so immeasurably
the superior of all the professors I ever knew that I am disposed
to name none of them in comparison with him. If it is ever my lot
to undertake the teaching of science, I shall adopt precisely that
method. And I do not see why the same principle should not be applied
to other departments of learning. We begin at the wrong end. The
teacher makes the boy begin where he himself did. I think Arthur’s
methods immeasurably better, and I spoke of Evelyn’s case only as an
illustration of their superiority. That young woman knows much—very
much—of science without having had any formal instruction in it at
all. She has learned it in the natural way, and she is deeply imbued
with the scientific spirit. Only yesterday she said to me, in answer to
some question of mine, that she ‘looked straight at things, and thought
about them.’ I cannot imagine a more perfect method than that.
“And what book ever taught her what she knows about animals and their
ways? What lecturer in all the world could have told her how to subdue
that wild and rebellious mare as she has done? She learned all that
simply by ‘looking straight at things and thinking about them.’ The
professional horse-tamers—Rarey and the rest—set to work, with their
mechanical appliances, to convince a horse that they are mightier than
he is. They succeed in a way. They make the horse afraid of them, and
so long as they deal with him, he submits, in fear of their superior
power. But let a timid novice undertake to ride horses thus broken,
or to drive them, and disaster comes. Evelyn’s way is incalculably
better and more scientific. She has studied animals and learned to
understand them and sympathise with them. She makes her appeal to what
is best in their natures, not to what is worst, and she gets results
that no horse-tamer of them all could ever hope for. The horse-tamer’s
processes belong to the domain of artifice. Hers are purely scientific.”
“Absolutely,” answered Dorothy; “and I often wonder where she learned
it all, or rather where she got her inspiration, for it is not so much
learning as a natural bent.”
“Well, she was born with an instinct of truthfulness for one thing,”
said Kilgariff. “That is the only basis of the scientific temperament.
I observed her yesterday trying to tempt a fox squirrel out of one of
the trees. She chirped to him in her peculiar fashion, and, in response
to her invitation, he would run down as far as the root of the tree;
but there he would pause and shrewdly reconnoitre, after which he would
run back up the tree.
“‘Why don’t you hold out your hand?’ I asked.
“She quickly answered:—
“‘That would be lying to him. Whenever I hold out my hand to him, I
have something in it for him to eat. If I held it out empty, I should
be saying there was something for him to eat in it, and that would be a
lie. He would come to me then and find out that I had deceived him. You
do quit believing—pardon me—you quit believing—anybody that tells
you lies.’
“I admitted my propensity to distrust untruthful persons, and she
gravely asked:—
“‘Why then do you wish me to deceive the poor little squirrel? Do you
want him to think me a person not to be trusted?’
“I made some lame excuse about his being only a dumb animal, and she
quickly responded:—