within two days, so that I may go home to Wyanoke. You know how much
I love you, so I needn’t put anything about that in this letter. But
Edmonia sends her love, and so does Mrs. Pegram. What a dear she is!
She wants me to call her ‘Agatha,’ and I’m beginning to do so. But I
would like it better if she would let me say ‘Cousin Agatha’ instead.
Somehow that seems more like what I feel.
I reckon Colonel Kilgariff will be going back to Petersburg about now.
If he hasn’t gone yet, please give him my regards and good wishes. I
hope he won’t get himself wounded again.
Dorothy faithfully delivered Evelyn’s peculiarly reserved message
to Kilgariff, whereupon the young gentleman declared his purpose of
returning to Petersburg on the third day following, that being the
earliest return that Arthur, as his surgeon, would permit.
“But I shall call at Branton to see Evelyn first,” he added. This
brought a queer look into Dorothy’s eyes, but whether it was a look of
pleasure, or of regret, or of simple surprise, he could not make out.
“After all,” he thought, “it doesn’t matter. I have decided to take
this affair into my own hands. And they shall be strong hands too—not
weak and irresolute, as they have been hitherto.”
Before opening the manuscript, Dorothy sent off a young negro to
Branton, with a little note to Evelyn, in which she wrote:—
I shall not read a line of what you have written until I have told
you how much gratified I am that you have wanted in this way to tell
me about yourself. It means much to me that you wish to tell me
those things, whatever they may be, that concern you. Another thing I
want to say to you before reading your manuscript, and that is that
no matter what it may reveal, I shall love and cherish you just the
same. You remember what I said to you once—that I _know you_, and
that no fact or circumstance of the past can in the least alter my
feelings toward you. Be very sure of that. Now I am going to read your
manuscript.
She began the task at once. This is what she read:—
EVELYN’S BOOK
WRITTEN FOR DOROTHY AND NOBODY ELSE
Preface
I AM going to tell you all about myself in this book, Dorothy—or at
least all that I know. I have wanted to tell you, ever since you began
being so good to me, and I began to love you. I reckon you won’t like
some of the things I must tell, but I can’t help that: I must tell
you all of them anyhow, because it is right that I should. I couldn’t
tell you so long as I thought I had sworn not to. Now that you have
explained to me about a parole, I am going to do it. But I am going to
put it in writing, because I can tell it better that way. And besides,
I might forget some things if I tried to tell them all with my tongue.
And there are some of the things which you may want to read about more
than once, so as to make up your mind about them.
Now that is all of the preface.
Chapter the First
I DON’T know where I was born. I reckon it must have been somewhere in
Virginia, because, when I first saw you and heard you speak, I felt as
if I had got back home again after a long stay away. Your voice and the
way you pronounced your words seemed so natural to me that I think the
people about me when I was a child must have talked in the same way.
You know how quickly I fell into the Virginia way of speaking. That was
because it all seemed so natural to me.
So I think I must have been born in Virginia. At any rate I had a black
mammy. I remember her very well. She was very, very big—taller than a
tall man, and very broad across her back. I know that, because she used
to get down on the floor and let me ride on her back, making believe
she was a horse.
Her name was Juliet. When I read about Romeo and Juliet years
afterward, I remember laughing at Shakespeare for not knowing that
Juliet was big and strong and black. That must have been while I was
still a little child, or I should have understood better. Besides, I
remember where I was when I read the play, and I know I was only a
little child when I was there.
That is all I remember about my life in Virginia, if it was in Virginia
that I was born. There must have been other people besides Juliet
around me at that time, but I do not remember anything about them.
I cannot recall what kind of a house we lived in; but I do remember
playing on a beautiful lawn under big trees. And I recollect that there
were a great many squirrels there, just as there are in the trees in
your Wyanoke grounds. It is strange, isn’t it, that I should remember
the squirrels and not the people? But perhaps that is because I used to
feed the squirrels and play with them, and one day one of them bit me
painfully. I must have been treating it badly.
Chapter the Second
THE next thing that I remember is being in a large city somewhere. We
lived in a hotel. My father and mother were with me, and a great many
men came to see my father, and talked with him about business things.
I didn’t know then, but I think now that my father was engaged in some
kind of speculation, and these men had something to do with it. At
any rate, my father was a speculator always, and I think he sometimes
gambled, for I heard some one say afterward that he would “gamble on
anything from the turn of a card to the wrecking of a railroad.” That
was long after, however, and I didn’t understand what the words meant.
I reckon I don’t quite understand even now, but at any rate I know
that my father was always busy; that he had something to do with a
water-works, and some railroads, and some steamboats, and some stores,
and many other things. Sometimes he seemed to have more money than he
knew what to do with, and sometimes he was very poor. My mother used to
cry a good deal, though I reckon my father never treated her badly, as
I never heard him scold her in any way. When she would cry, it seemed
to distress him terribly. He would go away, sometimes for days at a
time, and when he came back he would put a large pile of money in her
lap and beg her to cheer up and believe in him.
I didn’t know at that time what my father’s name was. Everybody called
him “Jack,” and that was all I heard. I was a very little girl at that
time, and if I ever heard his full name in those days, I can’t remember
the fact. But I loved him very much. He was always very good to me, and
he laughed a great deal in a way that I liked. I didn’t like to see
my mother cry so much, so I loved my father far better than I did my
mother.
Chapter the Third
THERE seems to be a gap in my memory at this point. I know I must have
been a very little girl at the time I have spoken of—only four or five
years old at most. The next thing I remember is that we landed from a
big ship that had big sails, and a good many people and a cow on the
top, and a great many pumps.
My father wasn’t with us, and as I can’t remember thinking about his
absence, I suppose I hadn’t seen him for a long time. There were only
my mother and my grandmother, and me—or should I say “I”?—I don’t
know.
I reckon I must have been six or seven years old then.
When the ship landed, a man named Campbell met us at the landing. His
name wasn’t really Campbell, as I have since found out, but he was
called by that name. I remembered him in a vague way. He had been
one of those who came to see my father when we lived in the hotel.
My father called him his partner, and once, when my father suddenly
became very poor, he called Campbell a swindler and a scoundrel, and
said he had ruined all of us. I didn’t know at that time what the words
“swindler” and “scoundrel” meant, but from the way in which my father
spoke them I knew they were something very bad; so I hated Campbell.
That was the only time I ever heard my father and mother quarrel. I
remember it, because it frightened me terribly. They seemed to be
quarrelling about Campbell. When my father called him by bad names,
my mother, as I now understand, seemed to defend him, and that made my
father angrier than ever.
So, when Campbell met us at the ship and seemed so glad to see my
mother, I thought of my father, and I hated Campbell. I remembered the
names my father used to call him, though I still didn’t know what the
words meant. So, when Campbell tried to pet me, I resented it in my
childish fashion, saying:—
“You’re a swindler, you know, and a scoundrel. I don’t want you to talk
to me.”
He pretended to laugh, but I know now that he was very angry with me.
Some time after that (I don’t know how long, but it was probably
not long) my mother and Campbell got married, out in a Western city
somewhere, and went away for a time, leaving me with my grandmother.
I couldn’t understand it, and I said so. Just before they started away
on a train, my mother told me in the railroad station that Campbell was
my new papa, and that I must love him very much. I remember what I said
in reply. I asked:—
“Is my father dead?”
“Don’t talk about that, dear,” said my mother, trying to hush me. But I
asked the question again:—
“Is my father dead?”
“No, dear, but your father has gone away, and we’ll never see him
again. So you mustn’t think about him.”
“Then you have two husbands at once,” I answered. “How can you have two
husbands at once?”
She tried to explain it by telling me that my father was no longer her
husband, but I couldn’t understand. And, Dorothy, I don’t understand
it now. Of course I know now that my parents had been divorced, but
I don’t and can’t understand how a woman who has been a man’s wife
can make up her mind to be any other man’s wife so long as her first
husband lives. I suppose I was a very uncompromising little girl at
that time, and I was very apt to say what I thought about things
without any flinching from ugly truths. So, when they went on trying
to hush me by telling me that Campbell was now my papa, I flew into a
great rage. I took hold of my hair and tore out great locks of it. I
tried to tear off my clothes, and all the time I was saying things
that caused all the passengers in the station to gather about us; some
of them laughing, and some looking on very solemnly, as I shrieked:—
“I won’t have him for my new papa! He’s a swindler and a scoundrel! My
papa told you so a long time ago! I hate him, and I’m going to hate you
now and for ever, amen!”
I didn’t know what the words meant, but they had been strongly
impressed upon my memory by the vehemence with which my father had
uttered them long before. As for the final phrase, with the “amen”
at the end of it, I had heard it in church, and had somehow got the
impression that it was some kind of highly exalted curse.
Campbell was angry almost beyond control. I think he would have liked
to kill me, and I think he would have done so but for all those people
standing by while I so bitterly vituperated him. As he could not do
that, he said angrily to my grandmother:—
“Take her away! Take her away quick!”
My grandmother then threw my little cloak over my head to suppress my
voice, and hurried me into a carriage. To some woman who drove with us
to our hotel, my grandmother said, thinking I would not understand:—
“I’m seriously afraid the child is right.”
I understood, and I liked my grandmother better than ever, after that.
Chapter the Fourth
WHEN Campbell and my mother came back from their journey, he seemed
determined to placate me. He brought me many toys. Among them was a big
doll that could open and shut its eyes and cry. I did not utter a word
of thanks. I didn’t feel any gratitude or pleasure. I took the toys,
and dealt with them in my own way. A very bad man had been hanged in
the town a little while before, and I had heard the matter talked of
a great deal. So I got a string, tied it around the doll’s neck, and
proceeded to hang it to the limb of a tree in our yard. The rest of the
toys I threw into a little stream near our house. When all was done,
I returned to the house and marched into the drawing-room, where a
good many people had gathered to greet my mother and her new husband.
Everybody grew silent when I entered the room. They had all heard of
the scene I had made at the railroad station, and they now held their
breath to wait for what I might say or do.
I walked straight up to Campbell and said, as loudly as I could:—
“I have hanged that doll you gave me, and I’ve pitched the other things
into the creek. You’re a swindler and a scoundrel, and I hate you.”
There was a great commotion, but I gave no heed to that or anything
else. Before anybody could think of what was best to be done, I turned
about and marched out of the room with all the dignity I could muster.
I am not sorry or ashamed over these things, Dorothy. I think I was
right, and I am glad I did as I did. But that was the beginning of
trouble for me.
Chapter the Fifth
WE were living then in Campbell’s big house, in some Western city.
It was a very fine and costly place, I reckon. A little bedroom had
been furnished for me, opening off the suite of rooms that Campbell
and my mother were to occupy. If it had been in anybody’s house but
Campbell’s, I should have loved that beautiful bedroom. As it was, I
hated it with all my soul. My grandmother and I had gone to the house
on the day before my mother’s return, and that night—the night before
they came back—I was put to bed in my room. I lay there with my eyes
wide open till I knew that everybody else in the house was asleep. Then
I slipped out of bed, crept downstairs, and out over the wet grass to a
kennel that had been assigned to my own big Saint Bernard dog, Prince.
I crept in, and slept beside the big, shaggy fellow till morning, when
a great outcry was raised because I was missing from my room.
All the servants said my behaviour was due to my loneliness in the
great house. That wasn’t so. I was never lonely in my life, because
whenever I began to feel lonely I always called the fairy people to me,
and they were glad to come. I had created them in my own fancy, and
they loved me very much. But I wouldn’t invite them into that room or
that house. So I went to Prince, as my only other friend.
But after my outbreak in the drawing-room, a servant was directed to
take me to my room and lock me in. I sat there in the window-seat for a
long time, wondering what would be done to me next, and wondering how I
was to escape from my prison; for I fully intended to escape, even if I
should find no other way than by leaping out of my second-story window.
After a while, the door was opened and Campbell came in. I could see
that he was very angry, and I was particularly glad of that, because it
showed me that my words had hurt his feelings very much. That was what
I intended.
He had a little switch in his hand, and, as he stood over me, glowering
in order to scare me before speaking, I saw it. I instantly seized a
heavy hair-brush that a maid kept to brush my thick hair with.
“You mustn’t strike me.” That was all I said.
“I’m going to teach you better manners,” he began.
“You’d better not try,” I answered. “If you strike me, _I’ll kill
you_.”
I meant that, Dorothy; and when, a minute later, he struck me with
the switch, meaning to give me a dozen blows, I reckon, I leaped at
him—slender, frail little child that I was—and with all the strength
my baby arm had, I struck him full in the face with the edge of the
heavy brush. I fully intended that the blow should brain him. It only
broke his nose, but it made him groan with pain.
Now I want to be absolutely truthful with you, Dorothy. You mustn’t
excuse my attempt to kill that man, on the ground that I was a mere
child and did not know what I was doing. I was a mere child, of course,
but I knew what I was doing or trying to do, and I felt no sort of
regret afterward, when he had to send for a surgeon to mend his nose
bone, and had to lie abed for a fortnight with a fever. Or, rather, I
did feel regret; but it was only regret over the fact that I had done
so little. I had meant to kill him, and I was very sorry that I had not
succeeded. That is the fact, and you must know it. And more than that,
it is the fact, that even now, when I am a grown-up woman and have
thought out a code of morals for myself, I still cannot feel any regret
over what I did, except that I didn’t succeed in doing more. I would
do now what I tried to do then, if the situation could repeat itself.
I don’t know what you will think about all this. But I don’t want you
to think about it without knowing that I am not sorry for it, but
justify it in my own mind. I am trying to be perfectly honest and
truthful with you; so that if you love me at all after reading my book,
it shall be with full knowledge of all that is worst in me. If you
don’t love me after you know all, I shall go away quickly and not pain
you with my presence.
Now, Dorothy, I want you to stop reading this book and put it away for
a few hours—long enough for you to think about what I have written,
and make up your mind about this part of my story. After that, you can
read the rest of it and make up your mind about that.
* * * * *
Dorothy complied with this request. She laid the book aside for two
hours. Then she came back to the reading; but before beginning again,
she scribbled this paragraph at the bottom of the page last read:—
I have taken two hours of recess from the reading. There was no need
of that. My whole soul sympathises with that poor, persecuted little
creature. So far from condemning her words or acts, I rejoice in them.
I approve them, absolutely and altogether. I see nothing to condemn,
nothing to excuse.
DOROTHY.
XXV
MORE OF EVELYN’S BOOK
WHEN Dorothy resumed her reading, her sympathies were keenly alive and
responsive. She had thought out the matter, and reached a definite
conclusion which entirely satisfied her conscience.
“Ordinarily,” she thought, “I should think it excessively wrong to
sympathise with a desire to kill, or even to tolerate it in my mind.
But I see clearly that in that matter, as in most others, there are
questions of circumstance to be considered. Every human being has a
right to kill in self-defence. Both law and morals recognise that. In a
state of nature, I suppose, every man is constantly at war on his own
private account, and he has an entire right to make war in defence of
himself and his family. The only reason he hasn’t that right in a state
of civilisation is that society protects him, in return for his giving
up his right to make private war. But when society, as represented by
the state, refuses to protect him, or when the state cannot protect
him, he has his right of private war in full force again.
“That was Evelyn’s case. She was a helpless child in the hands of a
brute. There was no way in which she could secure protection from any
wrong he might see fit to do her. So, when he came with evident intent
to do her harm, she had a perfect right, I think, to fight for herself
in any way she could. No human being is under obligation to submit to
an insult or a blow.
“Besides—well, never mind that. I was thinking of the way in which
we all recognise killing in war as entirely legitimate. But that is a
large subject, which I haven’t thought out to the end as yet. For the
present purpose it is enough to know that Evelyn had a right to make
such war as she could—poor little mite of a girl that she was—upon
that brutal man. I should have done the same under like circumstances.
Yes; I heartily approve her conduct.”
With that, Dorothy turned again to the manuscript, and read what
follows:—
Chapter the Sixth
I HAD hurt Campbell very badly indeed. I had shattered the bridge of
his nose to bits, and there was a great commotion in the house—sending
for a lot of doctors, and all that. My mother thought of nothing but
staunching the blood and getting the doctors there. The servants were
all excited and running about bringing hot water and towels and so
forth, so that no attention was paid to me.
I took advantage of the confusion. I put on a little cloak and my
sun-bonnet, and quietly slipped out through one of the back doors into
the grounds. Then I called my dog, Prince, to go with me, and in the
gloaming—for it was nearly nightfall—he and I waded across the little
creek that ran at the back of the place. The house stood at the extreme
edge of the little city, and there was no town on the farther side of
the creek. So Prince and I went on down the road, meeting nobody.
My grandmother had left the town that day, to go back to her home
somewhere in the East, so I made up my mind to walk toward the East
every day till I should come to the village where she lived. I knew
the name of the village, but I didn’t know what State it was in or
how far away it might be; still, I hoped to find it after a while, by
inquiring of people. But I feared a search would be made for me, so I
decided not to reveal myself by making inquiries till I should be far
away from the town where Campbell and my mother lived.
After walking along the road for what seemed to me many hours, Prince
and I climbed over a fence and went far into the woods. There we hid
ourselves in a clump of pawpaw bushes and went to sleep.
When we woke, there was a heavy rain falling, and we were very, very
hungry. So we set out to find a road somewhere, so that we might come
to a house and ask for something to eat. But there didn’t seem to be
any end to the woods. We went on and on and on, without coming out
anywhere. I ate two pawpaws that I found on the bushes, but poor Prince
couldn’t eat pawpaws, so he had to go starving.
At last we grew so tired that we stopped to rest, and I fell asleep.
When I waked, it was still raining hard, and my clothing was very wet,
and I was very cold, and it was nearly night again. So I told Prince
we must hurry, and find a house before it should grow dark.
But when I tried to hurry, my feet wouldn’t do as I wanted them to. My
knees seemed to give way under me, and I grew very hot. My head ached
for the first time in my life, and my eyes bulged so that I couldn’t
see straight. Finally I seemed to forget who I was, or where I was
trying to go. Then I went to sleep.
When I waked, I was lying in that bedroom in Campbell’s house, and a
nurse was sitting by me. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. So I went
off to sleep again, and when I waked once more, I understood that I
was very ill and had been so for a considerable time. I asked somebody
if Prince had been fed, and learned that he had. I never asked another
question about the matter, and to this day I do not know how long I lay
unconscious in the woods, or who found me there, or how, or anything
about it.
I must have taken a good while to get well; for I remember how every
morning I planned to run away again the following night, and how before
night came I found myself still unable to do anything but lie in bed
and take my medicine.
When at last I was able to sit in a rocking-chair for an hour or two
at a time, my mother undertook to chide me a little about my conduct. I
reckon she didn’t accomplish much, because she began at the wrong end
of the affair.
“You hurt Mr. Campbell very badly,” she said.
“Did I? I’m glad of that.”
“You are a very wicked girl.”
To that statement I made no reply. I accepted it as true, but I was not
sorry for it. Instead, I asked:—
“Is he going to die?”
“No. But he is very ill. That is to say, he is suffering a great deal
of pain.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“You terrible child! What am I to do with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to run away again as soon as I can. You’d
better let me stay runaway.”
Small as I was, I vaguely understood that my mother’s first care was
for the man Campbell, and that so far as I was concerned, she cared
only for the trouble she expected me to give her. If she had loved me a
little, if she had taken me into her lap and seemed a little bit sorry
for me, I reckon she might have had an easier time with me. But she did
nothing of that kind. Instead of that, she managed to make me feel that
she regarded me somewhat in the light of a criminal for whom she was
responsible.
She set a watch upon me day and night, keeping me practically a
prisoner in my own room. That was because I had made the mistake of
telling her I meant to run away again. But even as a prisoner, I might
have been tractable if she had spoken kindly and lovingly to me when
she visited my room, which she did two or three times a day. Instead of
that, she always looked at me as one might at a desperate criminal, and
she talked to me of nothing but what she called my wickedness, saying
that it would break her heart.
Even when I got well enough to go out, I was kept in my room until at
last the doctor positively ordered that I should be sent out of doors
every day. When that was done, a servant maid whom I particularly
disliked was sent with me, under orders never to let me out of her
sight for a moment. I was as completely a prisoner out of doors as in
the house. But out of doors I could sit down at the root of a tree,
shut my eyes, and bring my fairy friends to me. In that way I managed
to make myself happy for little spells, as I could not do in my room,
for I simply would not ask the fairy people to go to that horrible
place.