ourselves!” he exclaimed, in thought. “If I had worked with pen and
paper for a month in an effort to describe Dorothy’s own character
fittingly, I couldn’t have done it so perfectly as she has done it in
describing the make-up of Evelyn. Yet she never for one moment suspects
the similarity. Just because the external circumstances are different
in the two cases, she is utterly blind to the parallel. It doesn’t
matter. It is far better to have such a character as Dorothy’s than to
try to create it—much better to have it than to know that she has it.”
It is worthy of observation and remark that in his thinking about this
matter of character, and admiring and loving it, Arthur Brent connected
the subject altogether with Dorothy, not at all with Evelyn.
That was because Arthur Brent was in love with his wife, and happy is
the man with whom such a love lingers and dominates after the honeymoon
is over!
One day Dorothy and Evelyn talked of this matter of Evelyn’s enthusiasm
for the Confederate cause and her passionate devotion to those who had
received wounds in the service of it. It was Evelyn who started the
conversation.
“The best thing about you, Dorothy,” she said, one morning while they
two were waiting for a decoction they were making to drip through the
filtering-paper, “is your devotion to Cousin Arthur.” Evelyn had come
to that stage of Virginian culture in which affection expressed itself
in the claiming of kinship where there was none. “It seems to me that
that is the way every woman should feel toward her husband, if he is
worthy of it, as Cousin Arthur is.”
“Tell me your whole thought, Byrdie,” answered Dorothy, who had
fastened that pet name upon her companion. “It interests me.”
“Well, you see I haven’t seen much of this sort of thing between
husbands and wives, though I am satisfied it ought to exist in
every marriage. I heard a woman lecture once on what she called the
‘Subjection of Women.’ She made me so angry that I wanted to answer
her—mere slip of a girl that I was—but they—well, I wasn’t let. That
isn’t good English, I know, but it is what I mean. The woman wanted to
strike the word ‘obey’ out of the marriage service, just as if the form
of a marriage ceremony had anything to do with a real marriage. As well
as I could make out her meaning, she wanted every woman to enter upon
wedlock with fixed bayonets, with her glove in the ring, and with a
challenge upon her lips. I don’t believe in any such marriage as that.
I regard it as an infamous degradation of a holy relation. It isn’t
marriage at all. It is a mere bargain, like a contract for supplies
or any other contract. You see, I had never seen a perfect marriage
like yours and Cousin Arthur’s at that time, but I had thought about
it, because I had seen the other kind. It was my idea that in a true
marriage the wife would obey for love, while for love the husband would
avoid commanding. I don’t think I can explain—but you understand me,
Dorothy—you must understand, because it is just so with you and Cousin
Arthur.”
“Yes, I understand,” answered Dorothy.
“Of course you do. You are never so happy as in doing whatever you
think Cousin Arthur would like you to do, and he never wants you to do
anything except what it pleases you to do. I reckon the whole thing may
be ciphered down to this: you love Cousin Arthur, and Cousin Arthur
loves you; each wants the other to be free and happy, and each acts as
is most likely to produce that result. I can’t think of any better way
than that.”
“Neither can I,” answered Dorothy, with two glad tears glistening
on her cheeks; “and I am glad that you understand. I can’t imagine
anything that could be better for you than to think in that way. But
tell me, Byrdie, why you are so enthusiastic in our Southern cause and
in your ministry to our wounded soldiers?”
“Because your cause is my cause. I haven’t any friends in the world but
you and Cousin Arthur, and—your friends.”
Dorothy observed that the girl paused before adding “—and your
friends,” and Dorothy understood that the girl was thinking of Owen
Kilgariff. To Dorothy it meant much that she avoided all mention of
Kilgariff’s name.
The girl had completely lost her mannerisms of speech in a very brief
while, a fact which Dorothy attributed to her rare gift of imitation.
Only once in a great while, when she was under excitement, did she
lapse into the peculiarities either of pronunciation or of construction
which had at first been so marked a characteristic of her utterance.
She read voraciously now, reading always, apparently, with minute
attention to language in her eager desire to learn. Her time for
reading was practically made time. That is to say, it consisted chiefly
of brief intervals between occupations. She was up every morning at
five o’clock, in order that she might go to the stables and personally
see to it that the horses and mules were properly fed and curried.
“The negroes neglect them shamefully when I am not there in Cousin
Arthur’s place,” she said, “and it is cruel to neglect poor dumb beasts
that cannot provide for themselves or even utter a complaint.”
As soon after seven as Dorothy’s nursery duties permitted, the two
mounted their horses and rode away for a half-intoxicating draught
of the air of a Virginia summer morning. Returning to a nine o’clock
“breakfast of rags,” as Dorothy called the scant, makeshift meal that
alone was possible to them in that time of stress, Evelyn went at once
to the laboratory. After setting matters going there, she mounted again
and rode away to the camp of the wounded soldiers to whose needs she
ministered with a skill and circumspection that had been born of her
peculiar experience in remote places.
“The best medicine she brings us,” said one of the wounded men, one
day, “is her laugh.” And yet Evelyn rarely laughed at all. It was her
ever present smile and the general joyousness of her countenance that
the invalids interpreted as laughter.
She always carried a light shot-gun with her, and she rarely returned
to the “gre’t house” without three or four squirrels for her own and
Dorothy’s dinner. Now and then she filled her bag with partridges—or
“quails,” as those most toothsome of game birds are generally, and
quite improperly, called at the North. When September came, she got an
occasional wild turkey also, her skill both in finding game and in the
use of her gun being unusually good.
One day Dorothy challenged her on this point.
“You are a sentimentalist on the subject of animals,” she said, “and
yet you are a huntswoman.”
“But why not?” asked Evelyn, in astonishment at the implied question.
“In the summer, the wild creatures multiply enormously. When the winter
comes, they starve to death because there is not food enough. In the
fall, the woods are full of them; in the spring, there are very few.
Nine tenths of them must die in any case, and if my gun hastens the
death of one, it betters the chance of another to survive. I could
never deceive them, or persuade them to trust me and then betray their
trust. I don’t think I am a sentimentalist, Dorothy, and—”
Just then Dorothy thought of something else and said it, and the
conversation was diverted into other channels.
Nearly always Evelyn had a book with her, which she read at odd
moments, and quite always she had one book or more lying around the
house, each open at the place at which she had last read, and each
lying ready to her hand whenever a moment of leisure should come in her
very busy day. For besides her attendance upon the sick, she relieved
Dorothy of the greater part of her household duties, and was tireless
in her work in the laboratory. Her knowledge of chemistry was scant, of
course, but she had quickly and completely mastered the processes in
use in the laboratory, and her skill in drug manufacture was greater
than that of many persons more familiar with the technical part of that
work.
She had from the first taken exclusive care of her own room,
peremptorily ordering all the maids to keep out of it.
“A maid always reminds me,” she said to Dorothy, by way of offering
an explanation that did not explain; for she did not complete her
sentence. But so earnest was her objection that, even to the daily
polishing of the white ash floor with a pine needle rubbing, she did
everything within those precincts with her own hands.
Dorothy let her have her way. It was Dorothy’s habit to let others do
as they pleased so long as their pleasing was harmless.
XVII
A GUN-PIT CONFERENCE
FOR full half an hour after Arthur Brent came out of the covered
way and greeted his friend, Kilgariff’s bombardment and the enemy’s
vigorous response continued. Arthur Brent stood by his friend in the
midst of it all quite as if “the scream of shot, the burst of shell,
and the bellowing of the mortars” had been nothing more than a harmless
exhibition of “pyrotechny for our neighbour moon,” as Bailey phrases it
in _Festus_.
It did not occur to Kilgariff to invite Doctor Brent to take refuge in
one of the bomb-proofs till the fierceness of the fire should be past.
It never did occur to Owen Kilgariff that a gentleman of education
and culture could think of shrinking from danger, even though, as in
this case, he had nothing to do with the war business immediately in
hand, but was, technically at least, a non-combatant. Indeed, that
gallant corps of doctors who constituted the medical field-service in
the Confederate army never did regard themselves as non-combatants, at
least so far as going into or keeping out of danger was concerned. They
fired no guns, indeed, but in all other ways they participated in the
field-fighting on quite equal terms with officers of the line. Wherever
their duty called them, wherever an errand of mercy demanded their
presence, they went without hesitation and stayed without flinching.
They performed the most delicate operations, where a moment’s
unsteadiness of hand must have cost a human life, while shells were
bursting about their heads and multitudinous bullets were whistling in
their ears. Sometimes their patients were blown out of their hands by a
cannon shot. Sometimes the doctors themselves went to their death while
performing operations on the battlefield.
In one case a surgeon was shot unto death while holding an artery end.
But while waiting for the death that he knew must come within the brief
space of a few minutes, the gallant fellow held his forceps firmly and
directed his assistant how to tie the blood vessel. Then he gave up the
ghost, in the very act of thus saving a human life perhaps not worth a
hundredth part of his own. The heroism of war does not lie altogether
with those who make desperate charges or desperately receive them.
Arthur Brent was high in rank in that medical corps, the cool courage
of whose members, if it could be adequately set forth, would constitute
as heroic a story as any that has ever been related in illustration of
daring and self-sacrifice, and he honoured his rank in his conduct. His
duty lay sometimes in the field, whither he went to organise and direct
the work of others, and sometimes in the laboratory, where no element
of danger existed. In either case he did his duty with never a thought
of self and never a question of the cost.
On this occasion he stood upon the exposed mound of the magazine,
watching Kilgariff’s splendid work with the guns, until at last the
bombardment ceased as suddenly and as meaninglessly as it had begun;
for that was the way with bombardments on those lines.
When at last the fire sank to its ordinary dead level of ceaseless
sharp-shooting, with only now and then a cannon shot to punctuate the
irregular rattle of the rifles, Kilgariff gave the order, “Cease
firing,” and the clamorous mortars were stilled. Then he turned to the
officers who had come to him for instruction, and said:—
“Some of my men have been quick to learn and are now experts. If any of
you gentlemen desire it, I will send some of the best of them to you
now and then to help you instruct your cannoniers and your gunners. You
will yourselves impress upon the magazine men the importance of not
compressing the powder in measuring it. A very slight inattention at
that point often makes a difference of twenty-five or fifty yards in
the range, and so renders worthless and ineffective a shell which might
otherwise do its work well. If you need the services of any of my men
as tutors to your own, pray call upon me. Now good evening. I’m sorry
I cannot invite you to sup with me, but I really haven’t so much as a
hard-tack biscuit to offer you.”
When the officers had gone, Kilgariff and Brent seated themselves on
top of the magazine mound and talked.
“First of all,” said Arthur Brent, “I want to hear about the things
personal to yourself. You put them aside, in your letter, as of smaller
consequence than the matters, whatever they were, which related to
others. I do not so regard them. So tell me first of them.”
“Oh, those things have pretty well settled themselves,” answered
Kilgariff, with a touch of disgust in his tone. “It was only that I
very much wanted to decline this captain’s commission, under which I
have been commanding sixty mortars and something like a battalion of
men here. General Early fairly forced the rank upon me, after Captain
Pollard lost his leg—”
“By the way,” interrupted Doctor Brent, “Pollard is at Wyanoke
and convalescent. With his superb constitution and his lifelong
wholesomeness of living, his recovery has been rapid. He very much
wants to see you. He would like you to continue in command of his
battery—or would have liked it if you had not been transferred to
Petersburg. He is a major now, you know, promoted for gallantry and
good service, and when he returns to duty (which will be within a day
or two) he will have command of his battalion. Of course, your special
qualification for the work you are doing here forbids you to go back to
your battery. The chief of artillery would never permit that. But I’m
interrupting. Tell me what you set out to say.”
“Well, it’s all simple enough. You know my reasons for wishing to be an
enlisted man rather than a commissioned officer. When I wrote to you,
I was acting as captain under General Early’s peremptory orders, but
the commission he had asked the authorities at Richmond to send me had
not yet come. I knew that if it should come while I was with Early, he
would never let me decline it. He would have refused even to forward my
declination through the regular channels. It was my hope to get myself
ordered to Petersburg before the commission could come.
“In that case, I thought, I could decline it and take service in my own
non-commissioned rank as sergeant-major and special drill-master for
the mortar batteries. But the commission came, through Early, on the
day before I left the valley, and when I reported here for duty, asking
to have it cancelled, the chief of artillery peremptorily refused.
He took me to General Lee’s headquarters and there explained the
situation. General Lee settled the matter by saying that I could render
much better service with a commission than without one, and that he
‘desired’ me to act in the capacity to which I had been commissioned.
I had no choice but to yield to his wish, of course, so I took command
here as captain, and immediately all the fragments of batteries that
had been disintegrated during the campaign, and especially those whose
officers had been killed or captured, were turned over to me to be
converted into mortar men.
“They number about two hundred and fifty men, some of whom are
non-commissioned officers, ranking all the way from corporal to
sergeant-major, so that it is impossible to handle the command
effectively under a single company organisation. I made a report on the
matter two days ago suggesting that the body be organised into a number
of small, compact companies, and that some major of artillery already
holding his commission be ordered to assume control of the whole.
To-day came my reply—about two hours ago. It was to the effect that
by recommendation of the chief of artillery, approved by General Lee,
I had been appointed lieutenant-colonel, in command of all the mortars
on this part of the line. I am instructed to organise this service
with a view to effectiveness, and to report only through the chief
of artillery, without the intervention of any colonel or brigadier or
major-general. I cannot refuse to obey such orders, given in aid of
effective service. I cannot even ask to be excused without offering an
affront to my superiors and seeming, at least, to shirk that service in
which they think I can make the best use of my capacities in behalf of
our cause.
“So that matter has settled itself. I shall have two stars sewed upon
my collar to-night, and to-morrow morning I shall begin the work of
reorganising the mortar service. I shall encounter very black looks in
the countenances of some of the courteous captains whom you saw here
half an hour ago. They are men who care for military rank, as I do not,
and they will not be pleased to find themselves overslaughed by my
promotion. They will never believe that I wish, even more heartily than
they can, that some one of them had been set to do this duty, and that
I might have returned to the ranks. But a soldier must take what comes.
I must accept their black looks, and their jealousies, and perhaps even
the lasting enmity of some of them, precisely as I accept the fact of
the shells flung at me by the enemy.”
At that moment a sergeant approached, and, saluting, said:—
“Captain Kilgariff”—for Kilgariff had not yet announced his promotion
even to his men—“one of the men is hurt by a fragment of the shell
that burst over us half a minute ago. He seems badly wounded.”
Instantly Kilgariff and Arthur Brent hurried to the pit where the
wounded man lay, and Doctor Brent dressed his wound, which was serious.
At his suggestion, Kilgariff ordered two of the men to carry the
stricken one to the rear through the covered way, and deliver him to
the surgeons of the nearest field-hospital.
Just as the party started, a huge fifteen-inch mortar shell descended
from a great height, struck the apex of the earth mound that covered
the magazine, where ten minutes before the two friends had been sitting
in converse, and there instantly exploded with great violence.
Kilgariff hastened to inspect. He found the magazine intact, so far, at
least, as its contents were concerned. There were more than a thousand
pounds of Dupont rifle powder there, secured in wooden boxes called
“monkeys,” and there were two thousand mortar shells there also, each
weighing twenty-four pounds, each terribly destructive, potentially at
least, and each loaded with a heavy charge of gunpowder. Fortunately
the explosion of the gigantic shell had not ignited the magazine. Had
it done so, neither a man nor a gun nor any trace of either would have
remained in all that circle of mortar pits, to tell the tale of their
occupancy.
But practically all of the earth that had constituted the mound had
been blown completely away, and some of the timbers that had supported
it had been crushed till they had broken and fallen in. The man who
had been in charge of the magazine was found crushed to a pulp by the
falling of the timbers.
When Kilgariff had fully explored, and discovered the extent of the
disaster, he swore. Pointing to the mangled body of the man who had
been caught in the ruin, he said to Arthur Brent:—
“There was never a better man than Johnny Garrett. He had a wife and
four children up in Fauquier County. The wife is a widow now, and the
children are orphans, and Johnny Garrett is a shapeless mass of inert
human flesh, all because of the incapacity of an engineer, damn him!
I know the fellow—” But before continuing, Kilgariff turned to a
sergeant and said:—
“Go at once to General Gracie’s headquarters, and say that
Lieutenant-colonel Kilgariff—be sure to say _Lieutenant-colonel
Kilgariff_—commanding the mortars, asks the instant attendance of a
capable engineer and at least twenty-five sappers and miners to repair
damages and guard against an imminent danger at Fort Lamkin. If General
Gracie cannot furnish the assistance needed, go to General Bushrod
Johnson’s headquarters and prefer a like request. Take a look first,
and you’ll understand how imperative it is to get help at once. There
lie a thousand pounds of rifle powder exposed to every spark that a
shell may fling into it; and there are two thousand loaded shells to
explode. Go quickly, and don’t return without the assistance required.”
Ten minutes later came the sappers and miners, armed with picks,
shovels, axes, and the other tools of their trade. At their head was
the engineer officer, Captain Harbach, who had constructed the magazine
in the first place.
Kilgariff was a cool, self-possessed person, who very rarely lost his
temper in any obvious fashion. But when he saw Harbach in command, he
had difficulty in controlling himself. Pointing to the ruined magazine,
he said:—
“See one result of your carelessness and gross ignorance.”
Then, pointing to the crushed and mangled body of Johnny Garrett, he
added:—
“Look upon another result of your criminality in seeking a commission
in the engineers when you perfectly knew you had no adequate knowledge
of engineering. When you were constructing that magazine, I warned you
that your single tier of timbers under the earth was insufficient.
I reminded you of the importance of adequately protecting the vast
amount of powder that must be stored there. I begged you to use longer
timbers for the sake of greater elasticity, and to use three tiers of
them instead of one. Your rank at that time was older than my own,
and I could only give you advice, which you disregarded. You now have
before you abundant evidence of your own criminal ignorance, your own
criminal neglect of plain duty, your own criminal folly. For these I
shall prefer charges against you before this night ends, and I shall
press those charges with vigour enough to offset even the personal and
political influence that secured a commission for an incapable like
you.”
Kilgariff was in a towering rage, and with the mangled body of Johnny
Garrett lying there before him for his text, he found it impossible to
restrain his speech; but to the very end, that speech was so far under
control that its tones, at least, gave no indication of the excitement
that inspired it. If the man speaking had been delivering a university
lecture, his voice and manner could scarcely have been under better
control.
When he paused, Harbach broke in:—
“Be careful of your words, Captain Kilgariff—”
“Lieutenant-colonel Kilgariff, if you please; that is my present rank,
and I’ll trouble you to recognise it.”
“Oh, well, Lieutenant-colonel Kilgariff, if that pleases you better. Be
careful of your words. You have already spoken some for which I shall
hold you responsible.”
“Quite right,” answered Kilgariff. “I hold myself responsible, and I’ll
answer for my words in any way and at any time and to any extent that
you may desire. But meanwhile, and as your superior officer, I now
order you to set to work to render that magazine safe. As your superior
officer, I shall assume authority to direct your work and to insist
that it shall be done as I command. Let your men shovel away all that
remains of the earth mound and send your axe-men into the timber there
to cut seventy or eighty sticks, each twenty-three feet long and eight
inches in diameter.”
The captain showed signs of standing on his dignity by refusing, but
Kilgariff promptly brought him to terms by saying:—
“Whenever you want to call me to account, I shall respond—I’ll do it
in an hour hence, if you choose. But for the sake of the lives of some
hundreds of men, I am going to have this magazine securely constructed
within the briefest possible time. After that, I shall be very much at
your service. You may either set your men at work in the way I have
suggested, or you may return to your quarters, in which case I shall
assume command of your men and do the work myself. If you elect to
return to your quarters, I pledge you my honour as an officer that I
shall not make your desertion of duty at a critical moment the subject
of an additional charge in the court-martial proceedings that I shall
surely institute against you to-morrow morning.”
Thus permitted, Captain Harbach retired through the covered way, and
Owen Kilgariff assumed command of the men he had left behind him.
Within two hours, the magazine was reconstructed, and so strongly that
no danger remained of the kind that had threatened the lives of Owen
Kilgariff’s men.
When all was done, Kilgariff turned again to Arthur Brent and said:—