be no crisis impending at Petersburg just now, and you can easily get
leave for two or three days, particularly as the distance between
Wyanoke and Petersburg is so small. In case of need, you can return
to your post quickly. A good horse would make the journey in a very
brief time. If pressed, he could cover it in two hours, or three at
most. So come to Wyanoke with as little delay as may be, and do your
duty bravely.
Kilgariff had no need to apply for a leave of absence. The wound in his
neck had been behaving badly for ten days past, and it was now very
angry indeed. Day by day a field-surgeon had treated it, to no effect.
So far from growing better, it had grown steadily worse.
Under the night-and-day strain of his ceaseless war work, Kilgariff
had grown emaciated, and so far enfeebled as to add greatly to the
danger threatened by the wound’s condition. On the morning of the day
which brought him Dorothy’s letter, the surgeon had found his condition
alarming, and had said to him:—
“Colonel, I have before advised you to go to a hospital and have this
wound treated. Now I must use my authority as your medical officer and
_order_ you to go at once. If I did not compel that, the service would
very soon lose a valuable officer.”
“Must it be a hospital, Doctor?” asked Kilgariff. “May I not run up to
Wyanoke, instead, and get my friend Doctor Brent to treat me?”
“Capital! Nothing could be better. Besides, the hospitals are full
to overflowing, and you’d get scant attention in most of them. Go to
Wyanoke by all means, but go at once. I’ll give you a written order to
go, and you can make it the basis of your application for sick leave.
Act at once, and I’ll go myself to headquarters to impress everybody
there with the urgency of the case and especially the necessity for
promptitude. You ought to have your leave granted by to-morrow morning.”
It was granted in fact earlier than that, so that before nightfall
Kilgariff set out on a horse purchased from an officer of his
acquaintance, a horse lean almost to emaciation, but strong, wiry,
and full of spirit still. He was an animal in which blood did indeed
“tell,” a grandson of that most enduring of racers, Red Eye.
“Give a good account of yourself, old fellow,” said Kilgariff to the
animal, caressingly, “and I promise you better rations at Wyanoke than
you have had for two months past.”
Whether the horse understood the promise or not, he acted as if he
did, and with a long, swinging stride, left miles behind him rapidly.
It was a little past midnight when the well-nigh exhausted officer
reached the hospitable plantation; but before going to the house,
he aroused the negro who slept on guard at the stables, and himself
remained there till the half-sleeping serving-man had thoroughly
groomed the animal and placed an abundance of corn and fodder in his
manger and rack.
Then the way-worn traveller went to the house, entered by the never
closed front door, and made his way to a bedroom, without waking any
member of the family.
XX
A MAN, A MAID, AND A HORSE
WHEN Evelyn went to the stables in the early morning, and found a
strange horse there, she could not learn how he came to be there, or
who had brought him. The negro man who had rubbed down the animal under
Kilgariff’s supervision during the night had already gone to the field,
and the stable boy who was now in attendance knew nothing of the matter.
The horse gently whinnied a welcome as the girl entered, and his
appearance interested her. She bade the stable boy lead him out,
so that she might look him over, and his symmetry and muscularity
impressed her mightily.
“Poor beastie!” she exclaimed, upon seeing his lean condition, “they
have treated you very badly. You haven’t had enough to eat in a month,
and you’ve been worked very hard at that. But you are strong and brave
and good-natured still, just as our poor, half-starved soldiers are.
You must be a soldier’s horse. Anyhow, you shall have a good breakfast.
Here, Ben, take this splendid fellow back to his stall and give him ten
ears of corn. Rub him down well, and when he has finished eating, turn
him into the clover field to graze. Poor fellow! I hope you’re going to
stay with us long enough to get sleek and strong again.”
As was always the case when Evelyn caressed an animal, the horse seemed
to understand and to respond. He held out his head for a caress, and
poked his nose under her arm as if asking to be hugged. Finally he
lifted one of his hoofs and held it out. The girl grasped the pastern,
saying:—
“So you’ve been taught to shake hands, have you? Well, you shall show
off your accomplishments as freely as you please. How do you do, sir?
I hope you have slept well! Now Ben has your breakfast ready, so I’ll
excuse you, and after breakfast you shall have a stroll in a beautiful
clover lot!”
As she finished her playful little speech and turned her head, she was
startled to see Kilgariff standing near, looking and listening.
“Oh, Mr. Kilgariff!” she exclaimed, in embarrassment, “I didn’t know
you were here. You must think me a silly girl to talk in that way with
a horse.”
“Not at all,” he answered; “the horse seemed to like your caressing,
and as for me, I enjoyed seeing it more than I can say.”
“Then you wanted to laugh at me.”
“By no means. I was only admiring the gentleness and kindliness of your
winning ways. The thought that was uppermost in my mind was that I no
longer wondered at the fascination you seem to exercise over animals.
Your manner with them is such, and your voice is such, that they cannot
help loving you. Even a man would be helpless if you treated him so.”
“Oh, but I could never do that—at least, well—I mean I could—” There
the speech broke down, simply because the girl, now flushing crimson,
knew not how to finish it. The thought that had suddenly come into her
mind she would not utter, and she could think of no other that she
might substitute for it.
But her flushed face and embarrassment told Kilgariff something that
the girl herself did not yet know—something that sent a thrill of
gladness through him in the first moment, but filled him in the next
with regretful apprehension. He saw at once that that had happened
which he had intended should never happen. Unconsciously, or at least
subconsciously, Evelyn Byrd had come to think of him—or, more strictly
speaking, to feel toward him without thinking—in a way that signified
something more than friendship, something quite unrecognised by
herself. Instantly the questions arose in his mind: “What shall I do?
Is it too late to prevent this mischief, if I go away at once? If not,
how shall I avoid a further wrong? Shall I go away, leaving her to work
out her own salvation as best she can? Or shall I abandon my purpose
and suffer myself to win her love completely? And in that case how
shall I ever atone to her for the wrong I do her? I must in that case
deal honestly and truthfully with her, telling her all about myself,
so that she may know the worst. Perhaps then she will be repelled and
no longer feel even friendship for a man living under such disgrace as
mine. It will be painful for me to do that, but I must not consider my
own feelings. It is my duty to face these circumstances in the same
spirit in which I must face the dangers and hardships of war.”
All this flashed through his mind in an instant, but, without working
out the problem to a conclusion, he set himself to relieve the
evident embarrassment of the girl—an embarrassment caused chiefly
by her consciousness that she had felt embarrassment and shown it.
He resolutely controlled himself in voice and manner and turned the
conversation into less dangerous channels.
“You were startled at seeing me,” he said, “because you did not know
I was here. I came ‘like a thief in the night.’ I got here about
midnight, after a hard ride from Petersburg. I saw the horse groomed
and fed, and then went to the house and crept softly up the stairs to
the room I occupied when I was at Wyanoke before. I came to let Arthur
have a look at my wound—”
“Oh, are you wounded again?” interrupted the girl, with a pained
eagerness over which a moment later she again flushed in shamed
embarrassment.
“Oh, no. It is only that the old wound has been behaving badly, like a
petted child, because it has been neglected. But tell me,” he quickly
added, in order to turn the conversation away from personal themes,
“tell me how the quinine experiments get on. I’m deeply interested in
them, particularly the one with dog fennel. Does it yield results?”
Evelyn was glad to have the subject thus changed, and she went eagerly
into particulars about the laboratory work, talking rapidly, as one is
apt to do who talks to occupy time and to shut off all reference to the
thing really in mind.
Kilgariff’s half of the conversation was of like kind, and it was
additionally distracted from its ostensible purpose by the fact that
he was all the time trying to work out in his own mind the problem
presented by his discovery, and to determine what course he should
pursue under the embarrassing circumstances. All the while, the pair
were slowly walking toward the house. As they neared it, a clock was
heard within, striking six. It reminded Evelyn of something.
“It is six o’clock,” she said, “and I must be off to the hospital camp
to see how my wounded soldiers have got through the night. I make my
first visit soon in the morning now, and Dorothy and I go together
later.”
Turning to a negro boy, she bade him go to the stables and bring her
mare.
Now it was very plainly Kilgariff’s duty to welcome this interruption,
which offered him three hours before the nine o’clock breakfast in
which to think out his problem and decide upon his course of action.
But a momentary impulse got the better of his discretion, so he said:—
“I will ride over there with you, if I may.”
The girl was mistress of herself by this time, so she said:—
“Certainly, if you wish. I shall be glad of your escort, if you are
strong enough to ride a mile.”
She said it politely, but with a tone of cool indifference which led
Kilgariff to wish he had not asked the privilege. Then, calling to the
negro boy, who had already started on his errand, she bade him:—
“Bring a horse for Colonel Kilgariff; not his own, but some other.”
This was the first time Evelyn had ever called Kilgariff by any
military title. “You see, Colonel, your splendid animal has been badly
overworked and underfed. I have promised him a restful morning in a
clover field, and it would be too bad to disappoint him, don’t you
think?”
“Yes, certainly. Thank you for thinking of that. How completely you
seem to have schooled yourself to think of dumb animals as if they
were human beings! You even assume—playfully, of course—that the big
sorrel understood your promise about the clover field.”
“Why should he not? Dumb animals understand a great deal more than
people think. Your sorrel understood, at any rate, that I regarded him
with affection and pity. That in itself was to him a promise of good
treatment, and just now good treatment means to him rest in a clover
field. So, while he may not have understood the exact meaning of the
words I used, he understood my promise. I am not so sure even about the
words. Animals understand our words oftener than we think.”
“How do you mean? Would you mind giving me an illustration of your
thought?”
“Oh, illustrations are plenty. But here are the horses. Let us mount
and be off. We can continue our talk as we ride. Are you really strong
enough?”
The man answered that he was, and the two set off.
When the horses had finished their first morning dash, Evelyn cried,
“Walk,” to them and they instantly slowed down to the indicated gait.
“There!” said the girl. “That’s an illustration. The horses perfectly
understood what I meant when I bade them walk. I am told that cavalry
horses understand every word of command, and that, even when riderless,
they sometimes join in the evolutions and make no mistakes.”
“That is true,” answered her companion. “I have seen them do it often.
Both in the cavalry and in the artillery we depend far more upon the
horses’ knowledge of the evolutions and the words of command, than upon
that of the men. They learn tactics more readily than the men do, and,
having once learned, they never make a mistake, while men often do.”
“How then can you doubt that horses understand words?”
“They understand words of command, but—”
“Yes? Well? ‘But’ what?”
“I really don’t know. The thought is so new to me that it seemed for
the moment a misinterpretation of the facts—that there must be some
other explanation.”
“But what other explanation can there be?”
“I don’t know. Indeed, I begin to see that there is no other possible.
Animals certainly do understand _some_ words. That is a fact, as you
have shown me, and one already within my own knowledge. I see no reason
to doubt that they understand many more than we are accustomed to
think. I wish you would write that book about them.”
“I am writing it,” she answered; “but I don’t think I’ll ever
let anybody see it—at any rate, not now—not for a long time to
come—maybe not for ever.”
As she ended, the pair reached the invalids’ camp, and the wounded men
gave Evelyn a greeting that astonished Kilgariff quite as much as it
pleased him.
“The little lady! The little lady!” they shouted, while those of them
who could walk eagerly gathered about her, with welcome in their eyes
and voices.
She briefly introduced Kilgariff, and together the two went the rounds
of those patients who were still unable to sit up. There were few
of these, but they must be the first attended to. After that, Evelyn
closely questioned each of the others concerning the condition of his
wounds, his sleep, his digestion, and everything else that Arthur
might wish to learn in preparation for his own rounds after breakfast.
Kilgariff was struck with the readiness Evelyn manifested in calling
each of the men by his name, and with the minuteness of her knowledge
of the special condition and the needs of each.
“How do you remember it all so minutely?” he asked, as they walked
together from one side of the camp to the other.
“Why, it is my duty to remember,” she replied, in a surprised tone, as
if that settled the whole matter. And in a woman of her character, it
did.
XXI
EVELYN LIFTS A CORNER OF THE CURTAIN
DURING the return ride, Kilgariff carefully avoided all reference to
the real purpose of his visit to Wyanoke. He had come to dread that
subject, and in his present unsettled state of mind he feared it also.
It might at any moment bring on an emotional crisis, and prompt him to
do or say things that must afterward cause regret. He wished to think
the matter out—the matter of his future relations with this girl—and
to determine finally the course of conduct which this morning’s
discovery might require of him.
He ought to have seized upon the opportunity for this that he had so
recklessly thrown away. He ought to have let Evelyn go to the invalid
camp alone, he remaining behind to think. But he had missed that
opportunity, and no other was likely to come to him. Certainly no other
so good could come. He must get through the matter of the papers on
this day, not only because the chances of war might compel him to
return to his post on the morrow, but because he might very probably
decide that it was his duty to take himself out of this girl’s life,
and, if that was to be, the sooner he should quit the house that held
her the better.
Both Arthur and Dorothy were present to welcome him when he and Evelyn
returned to the house, so that there was no chance then to do his
thinking. Then Arthur decided to examine his wound before the breakfast
hour; and when he did so, he grew grave of face and manner.
“I’m sorry to tell you, old fellow, that I must operate on your
neck to-day. Your wound is in a very dangerous condition indeed. It
should have been operated upon a week or ten days ago. You shall have
breakfast with us this morning, as you’ll need all your strength. Of
course I can’t chloroform you till your breakfast is digested, so I’ll
not operate till a little after noonday.”
“You needn’t give me the chloroform at all,” answered Kilgariff.
“But, my dear fellow, the pain will be—”
“I’ll stand it.”
“But the operation will be a very delicate one, so near to the carotid
artery that a mere flinch from the knife might end your life at once.”
“I’ll not flinch,” said the resolute young man.
“But what objection have you to an anæsthetic? Your heart and lungs are
in perfect condition. There’s not the slightest danger—”
“Danger be hanged!” interrupted Kilgariff. “I am not thinking of danger
or caring about it. But chloroform always leaves me helplessly ill for
many days, and I mustn’t be ill or helpless just now. I am going back
to the lines to-morrow. One night’s sleep after your operation will put
me sufficiently in condition.”
“But you’re not fit for duty.”
“Fit or not fit, I am going.”
“But it will kill you.”
“That doesn’t signify in my case, you know.”
“Listen to me, Owen Kilgariff. You have brooded over the unfortunate
circumstances of your life until you have grown morbid, particularly
since this wound has been sapping your vitality. You must brace
yourself up and take a healthier view of things. If you don’t, I
shall make you. Here you are imagining yourself disgraced at the very
time when others in high places are pressing honours upon you as the
well-earned reward of your superb conduct. It is all nonsense, I tell
you, and you must quit it; if not for your own sake, then for the sake
of us who love you and rejoice in your splendid manhood. Your present
attitude of mind is not to your credit. If you were not ill, it would
be positively discreditable to you.”
“Wait a minute, Arthur. You are judging me without knowing all the
facts. I’ll tell you of them after breakfast. Then, before you operate,
I must talk with Evelyn about her papers. When that matter is disposed
of, you shall operate without an anæthetic, and I must return to my
duty on the lines.”
“Your duty there is done. You’ve already taught those fellows how to
use mortars effectively. As to mere command, any other officer will
attend to that as well as you could. I must operate upon your neck,
and I will not do it without chloroform. Indeed, even from your own
point of view, there would be nothing gained by that, for after this
operation, whether done with or without an anæsthetic, you must not
only lie abed for some days to come, but be so braced and harnessed
that you cannot turn your head.”
Arthur then explained to his patient, as one surgeon to another, the
exact nature of what it was necessary to do, and Kilgariff knew his
surgery too well not to understand how imperatively necessary it would
be for him to be kept perfectly still, so far as motion with his head
was concerned, for a considerable period afterward.
“Very well,” Kilgariff responded. “Do as you will. But first I must
arrange the matter of the papers. I’ll do that during the forenoon.
Then I shall tell Dorothy the things I intended to tell you. There is
no need that I shall tell you, and it will be easier to tell Dorothy.”
“As you please,” said Arthur, satisfied that he had carried his point.
“Now we must go to breakfast.”
At the table, Kilgariff observed that, apart from the “coffee” made of
parched rye, neither Dorothy nor Evelyn took anything but fruit. There
was a cold ham on the table, and the customary loaf of hot bread, but
the two women partook of neither. When Kilgariff half suggested, half
asked, the reason for their abstemiousness, Dorothy replied:—
“We Virginia women are saving for the army every ounce of food we can.
So far as possible, we eat nothing that can be converted into rations.
Arthur compels Evelyn and me to take a little meat and a little bread
or some potatoes for dinner. He thinks that necessary to our health.
But for the rest, we do very well on fruits, vegetables, and other
perishable things, don’t we, Byrdie?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. For my own part, I like it. I have had other
experiences in living on a restricted diet. Once I had nothing to eat
for three or four months except meat, so in going without meat now I am
only bringing up the average.”
Kilgariff looked up in surprise.
“For three months or more you had no food but meat!” he exclaimed. “No
bread, no starchy food of any kind?”
“Nothing whatever. There weren’t even roots or grass there to be
chewed. The Indians often live in that way. Never mind that. At another
time I lived for a month in winter almost exclusively on raw potatoes,
with only now and then a bit of salt beef.”
“May I ask why you did not cook the potatoes? If it was winter, surely
you had fire.”
“Oh, yes, plenty of it. But there was scurvy, and raw potatoes are best
for that.”
“Are they? I never knew that.”
“Oh, yes. But for eating their potatoes raw, the people in the
lumber-camps would never survive the winter. But I don’t want to talk
about those things. I didn’t mean to. Perhaps I’ll put them all into
another book that I’m writing just for Dorothy to read and nobody else
in all the world.”
She looked at Dorothy as she spoke, and Dorothy understood. This was
the first she had heard of the proposed “book.” It was the first
reference Evelyn had made to their talk on the day when she had given
her hostess an exhibition of bareback riding.
Kilgariff did not understand. Yet, taken in connection with other
things that Evelyn had said to him during his former stay at Wyanoke,
what she now said seemed at least to lift a little corner of the thick
curtain of reserve which shrouded her life-history.
“She has lived,” he thought, “among the wildest of wild Indians, and
she has passed at least one winter in some northern lumber-camp. I
wonder why.”
He was not destined as yet to get any reply to the question in his
mind.
XXII
ALONE IN THE PORCH
WHEN Kilgariff asked Evelyn to go with him to the front porch, telling
her he had an important matter to discuss with her, she showed a
momentary embarrassment. She quickly controlled it, but not so quickly
that it escaped her companion’s recognition.
This troubled him at the outset. This young woman had been until now
as frank and free with him as any child might have been. Her present
embarrassment, momentary as it was, impressed him the more strongly
because the scene at the stables in the early morning was still fresh
in his memory, and because he had observed that ever since that time
she had uniformly addressed him by his military title.
All these things added to the difficulty of his present task, but it
was his habit to meet trouble of every kind half-way, to confront
difficulty with courage and not with any show of the shrinking there
might be in his mind.
He plunged at once into the matter in hand. Ordinarily he would have
begun by addressing his companion as “Evelyn,” but for some reason
which he did not stop to analyse, he felt now that he ought not to
do so. Yet to address her in any other way, after having for so long
called her by her first name, would be too marked a suggestion of
reserve. So he avoided addressing her at all in any direct fashion.
“I have asked you to give me this half-hour because I feel that I owe
you and myself a duty.”
He had no sooner uttered that sentence than he felt that it was a
particularly bad beginning. In his own ears it sounded uncommonly like
the introduction to a declaration of love, and he was annoyed with
himself for his blundering. He began again, and tried to do so more
circumspectly.
“I want to talk with you about a matter that touches your own happiness
very closely, and may indeed affect your entire life.”
Another blundering sentence! Even more than the first it sounded
to him like the preface to a formal courtship, and, realising the
fact, Kilgariff made the matter worse by manifesting precisely such
embarrassment as a lover might feel when about to put his fortune to
the touch.
Evelyn was quick to see his embarrassment, though she probably had no
clear idea of its cause, and she came to his relief by saying with a
well-controlled and perfectly placid intonation:—
“I am deeply interested. I didn’t imagine myself a person of sufficient
consequence for anybody to have important business affairs to discuss
with me. Go on, please. What is it?”