seeing me sit with my eyes shut, reported that I spent all the time
out of doors in sleep. She was directed by Campbell, who had assumed
control of my affairs, not to let me sit down at all out of doors.
When this was reported to me, I simply refused to go out of doors
again, and I stuck to that resolution in spite of all commands and
threats. My health soon showed the results of confinement, and the
doctor, who was a friendly sort of man, but strongly prejudiced by the
bad things he had been told about me, did all he could to persuade me
to go out. I absolutely refused. Then my health grew still worse, and
finally the doctor insisted that I should be sent away somewhere.
Before that could be arranged, something else happened to affect me.
I’ll tell you about that in another chapter.
Chapter the Seventh
THE servant who acted as my keeper suddenly changed her manner toward
me about this time. She talked with me in a friendly way, and she sang
to me, trying to teach me to sing with her. I refused to do that,
because I was unhappy and did not feel like singing. But I rather liked
to hear her sing, as she had a pretty good voice. Still, in my childish
way, I distrusted the girl. I could not understand why she had been so
unkind to me before, if her present kindness was sincere.
She begged me to go out of doors with her, and promised of her own
accord that I should sit down and shut my eyes whenever I pleased.
After a day or two, I so far yielded as to go out with her for an
hour and have a romp with Prince. But I resolutely refused, then or
on succeeding days, to sit down and shut my eyes, and call the fairy
people. I felt, somehow, that it would compromise my dignity to accept
surreptitiously and from a servant a privilege which was forbidden to
me by the servant’s master and mistress.
Still, I went out for a little while every day. The girl called our
outings “larks,” which puzzled me a good deal, as I knew there were
no larks in the town. Finally, one brilliant moonlight night, as I
sat looking out of the window, the girl, as if moved by some sudden
impulse, said:—
“Let’s go out for a lark in the moonlight. I’ll put your cloak and
bonnet on you, and it will do you good.”
I consented, and we quickly made ourselves ready. Just after we had
got out of doors, I noticed that the girl had a satchel in her hand;
and when I questioned her about it, she said that she wanted to make
believe that we were two ladies going to travel; “and ladies always
have satchels when they travel,” she explained.
We wandered about for a little while, and then the girl led the way to
the extreme corner of the grounds, a spot which could not be seen from
the house even in the daytime, because of the trees. There was a little
gate there, which opened into a road, and the girl proposed that we
should pass through it for some reason which I cannot now remember.
We had walked only a little way beyond the gate when we came to a
carriage which was standing still, with a big man on the box and a
tall, slender man standing by the open door of the vehicle. When this
man turned his face toward me in the moonlight, I recognised him. He
was my father! He stooped and put his arms about me tenderly, laughing
a little, as he always had done when talking with me, but stopping the
laugh every moment or two to kiss me. Then he told me to get into the
carriage so that we might go for a drive. When I had got in, he gave
the servant girl some money, and said:—
“If you keep your mouth shut and know nothing, there’ll be another
hundred for you. I shall know if you talk, and if you do there’ll be no
money for you. I’ll send the money, if you don’t talk, in two weeks, in
care of the bank.”
Then we drove away in the moonlight, and I found presently that the
girl had put the satchel into the carriage. I learned the next morning
that it contained some of my clothes, and my combs and brushes.
We travelled in the carriage for several hours, and then got on board a
railroad train, which took us to Chicago.
Chapter the Eighth
WE hadn’t been many days in Chicago when one morning about daybreak my
father waked me and said that Campbell was after me, so that we must
hurry. My father had bought me a lot of things in Chicago—clothes
of many kinds, and a few books. I reckon he didn’t know much about
clothes or books—poor papa—for all the clothes were red, and the
books, as I now know, were intended for much older people than I was.
But he said that red was the prettiest colour, and as for the books,
the man that sold them had told him that they were “standard works.”
I remember that one of them was called _Burke’s Works_, and another
_Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. I simply couldn’t like
_Burke’s Works_, but I reckon that was only because I didn’t know what
Mr. Burke was talking about. I reckon I didn’t understand Gibbon very
well, but I liked him, because he told some good stories, and because
his sentences were musical. I liked _Macaulay’s Miscellanies_ for the
same reason, and I liked _Macaulay’s History_ because it was so simple
that I could understand it. Best of all, I liked _Rasselas_, _The
Vicar of Wakefield_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _The British Drama_, and
Shakespeare—at least, in parts. I liked to read about Parolles, and
the way he was tricked and his cowardice exposed. I identified him with
Campbell, and rejoiced when he got into trouble. I suppose that was
wicked, but I’m telling you all my thoughts, Dorothy, so that you may
know the whole truth about me and not be deceived. I liked Falstaff,
too.
I liked _Rasselas_, because in his happy valley there was no man like
Campbell. And I liked _Robinson Crusoe_ for the same reason. Somehow I
liked to live with him on his island, because I knew that if Campbell
should land there, Robinson Crusoe would shoot him.
But above all, I liked the _British Drama_, because it opened a new and
larger life to me than any that I had ever known.
When my father waked me up on that morning, I hurriedly packed my books
and clothes into a trunk. There were very few underclothes, for my
father knew nothing about such things, but there were many red dresses
and red cloaks and red hats. And there were two fur coats—big enough
for a grown woman to wear.
We got on board a train and travelled all day. Then we took another
train and travelled all night, till we came to the end of the railroad.
Then we got into a cart and travelled three or four days into the woods.
Finally we came to a camp in the woods, where my father seemed to
be master of everything and everybody. There were Indians there and
half-breeds, and Canadian lumber-men, for it was a lumber-camp. There
was a Great Lake there, and many little lakes not far away. I reckon
the Great Lake was Lake Superior, but I don’t know for certain.
There were no women in the camp except squaws and half-breeds. They
were pretty good people, but very dirty, so I could not live with them.
My father made the men build a little log house for him and me, and
he made them hew a bath-tub for me out of a big log. Then he hired a
half-breed girl to heat water every day and fill the tub for me to
bathe in. As for himself, he jumped into the lake every morning, even
when he had to make the men cut a hole in the ice for his use.
I liked the lumber-camp life because I was free there, and because
there were big fires at night, like bonfires. One of them was just
before my door, and my father made an Indian boy keep it blazing all
night for me, so that I might see the light of it whenever I waked. I
used to sit by it and read my books, even when the snow was deep on the
ground; for by turning first one side and then the other to the fire I
could keep warm. And the Canadians and the half-breeds and the Indians
used to squat on the ground near me and beg me to read the books aloud
to them. As they all spoke French, and understood no word of English,
of course they didn’t understand what I read to them, but they liked
to hear me read, and it was sometimes hard to drive them away to their
beds, even when midnight came.
They taught me French during the year I lived among them. You tell me
it is very bad French, and I reckon it is; but it was all they knew:
they did their best, and I reckon that is all that anybody can do. At
any rate, they were kind to me, and they taught me all the ways of the
birds and the animals. I tried to teach them to be kind to the birds
and the animals, after I began to understand the wild creatures; but
the camp people never would learn that. Their only idea of an animal
or a bird was to eat its flesh and sell its skin.
There was a young priest there who knew better, and he ought to have
loved the birds and animals. But he used to talk about God’s having
given man dominion over the beasts and the birds, and that doctrine
perverted his mind, I think. He killed a pretty little chipmunk, one
day, to get its skin to stuff. That chipmunk was my friend. I had
taught it to climb up into my lap and eat out of my hand. He persuaded
it to climb into his lap, and then he betrayed its confidence and
killed it. I was very angry with him. I picked up an ox-whip and struck
him with it twice. I was only a little girl, but I had grown strong in
the outdoor life of the camp, and it doesn’t take much strength to make
an ox-whip hurt.
There was great commotion in the camp when this occurred. The people
there were very religious in their way, but they seemed to me to
worship the priest rather than God. They didn’t mind sinning as much
as they pleased, because they knew that the priest would forgive their
sins on easy terms; but they thought that my act in striking the priest
with the ox-whip was a peculiarly heinous crime. Perhaps it was, but
I can’t even yet so look upon it. They regarded him as a “man of God”;
but if he was so, why did he deceive the poor little chipmunk, and
persuade it to trust him, and then kill it cruelly? Dorothy, I am not a
bit sorry, even now, that I chastised him with the ox-whip.
[“Neither am I,” wrote Dorothy in the margin of the manuscript.]
But the occurrence created a great disturbance in the camp, and so my
father had to take me away, for fear that the lumber-men would kill
me. Curious, isn’t it, that while they were so religious as to feel in
that way about the priest, who after all was only a man, they were yet
so wicked that they were ready to commit murder in revenge? But those
people were very ignorant and very superstitious. They thought some
terrible calamity would fall upon them if I were permitted to remain
in the camp. I think they cared more about that than they did about
the priest. Even those who had been kind to me, teaching me to ride
bareback and to shoot and to fish and to make baskets, and all the rest
of it, turned against me; so that my father had to stand by me with
his pistols cocked and ready in his hand, till he could get me out of
the camp.
Chapter the Ninth
FROM that camp my father took me way up to Hudson’s Bay. We travelled
over the snow on sledges drawn by dogs, and I learned to know the dogs
as nobody else did. They were savage creatures, and would bite anybody
who came near them. But somehow they never bit me. They didn’t like to
be petted, but they let me pet them. I don’t know why this was so, but
it was so.
We did not remain long at Hudson’s Bay—only a few weeks. After that,
we went somewhere—I don’t know where it was—where the whale-men came
ashore and rendered out the blubber they had got out at sea.
You must remember that my father had many interests. He owned part of
the lumber-camp we had stayed in, he had a fur trade at Hudson’s Bay,
and he had an interest in some whaling-ships. Wherever we went, my
father seemed to be at home and to be master of the men about him. I
admired him greatly, and loved him very much. I wondered how my mother
could have left him and married Campbell. I am wondering over that even
yet.
It was while we were at Hudson’s Bay that I began to understand
something about my father. He sat down with me one day (he didn’t often
sit down for more than a few minutes at a time, but on this occasion he
sat with me for nearly half a day) and explained things to me.
“I want to tell you some things, little girl,” he said, “and I want you
to try to understand them. Above all, I want you to remember them. You
know sometimes I have a great deal of money, and sometimes I have none
at all. That is because my business is a risky one. Sometimes I make a
great deal of money out of it, and sometimes I lose a great deal.
“Now, when your mother left me, I made up my mind to provide well for
her and you, so that no matter what else should happen, you and she
might never come to want. You see, I still loved your mother. I insured
my life for a large sum, and as I had plenty of money then, I paid
for the insurance cash down. You don’t understand about such things,
and it isn’t necessary that you should. But by insuring my life and
paying cash for the insurance, I made it certain that whenever I should
die, a rich insurance company would pay you a big sum of money; I had
purposely made it payable to you and not to your mother, because I knew
you would take care of your mother, while she could never take care of
anybody or anything. I also bought some bonds and stocks and put them
in your name, and placed them in a bank in New York.
“Now, I want you to pay close attention and try to understand what
I tell you. Here are some papers that I want you to keep always by
you—always in your little satchel. Always have them by you when you go
to bed, and always lock them up by day. Take them with you wherever you
go.
“This one is my will. It gives you everything that I may happen to own
when I die.” With that, he handed me the papers.
“This one is the life-insurance policy. When I die, you, or whoever
is acting for you, will have to present that to the life-insurance
company, together with doctors’ certificates that I am really dead.
Then the company will pay you the money.
“This one is a list of the securities—the bonds and stocks—that I
have deposited in your name in the Chemical Bank of New York. You see,
it is signed by the cashier of that bank. It is a receipt for the bonds
and stocks. So you must keep it very carefully.
“Now, another thing you must remember: you can’t draw the money on my
life-insurance policy until I die; but you can get these bonds and
stocks at any time that you please, merely by presenting the receipt
and asking for them. So long as you are a little girl under age, you
couldn’t do this for yourself. Somebody must do it for you. You must be
very careful whom you select for that purpose.”
Then he gave me the names and addresses of several gentlemen, who, he
said, were his friends and honest men, and advised me to apply to them
to act for me if I ever had occasion to do anything of the kind. Then
he went on to say:
“The scoundrel, Campbell, knows that you own all this, besides some
houses and lands (here’s a memorandum of them) which I have deeded
to you. In the hope of getting hold of your property, he, as your
stepfather, has had himself appointed your guardian. It is a shame
that the courts allow that, but he owns a judge or two, and he has
managed to get it done. That is why he is following us and trying to
get hold of you. He doesn’t know what your property is, or where, and
he thinks you will have these papers. So, if he can get hold of you, he
thinks he can get hold of the property also. If I can manage to get you
to New York, I’ll take the papers out of your hands and place them in
charge of some men there whom I can trust. But as I may fail in that,
and as something may happen to me, I want you to have the papers.
“I am pretty well off just now, but my business is very uncertain. When
I die, I may be very rich, or I may ‘go broke’ any day between now and
then. That is why I have put this property into your hands while I have
it. I am a reckless fellow. I ‘take the very longest chances’ sometimes
in my business enterprises. Sometimes I suddenly lose pretty nearly
everything I have in the world, and I might die just at such a time. So
I have provided for you in any case.
“If I can get to New York with you, I am going to hide you completely
from that man, Campbell. There is an excellent gentlewoman there in
whose hands I intend to put you. She is a woman to be trusted, and she
is rather poor, so she will be glad to take charge of you and keep you
out of Campbell’s way, damn him! Pardon me, dear! I didn’t mean to
swear in your presence. I only mean that I can give that lady plenty of
money, and she can take you wherever she thinks you will be safe.”
“But I had much rather stay with you, Father,” I answered, with tears
in my eyes.
“Yes, I know. And God knows,” he said, “that I had rather have you with
me. But everything is a gamble with me. I have many enemies, child, and
some one of them may make an end of me any day. The other way will be
safest for you.”
“I don’t care for myself,” I answered. “I only care for you, and to be
with you. I’ll take the risks, and if any of your enemies ever makes an
end of you, as you say, I want to be there to wreak vengeance. You know
I can shoot as straight as any man alive, whether with a pistol or a
rifle or a shot-gun.”
“You dear child!” he responded, “I know all that. And that is why I
want to house you safely. You have it in you to be as reckless as your
dad is, and I don’t intend that you shall have occasion or opportunity.”
How I did love my father! I don’t believe he was ever bad, Dorothy,
though they said he was. People who liked him used to say he was
“uncommonly quick on trigger”; people who hated him called him a
desperado. I call him my father, and I love his memory, for he is dead
now, as you will hear later.
But I was anxious to remember all that he had told me, and to make no
mistake about it. I had taught myself how to write, during my stay at
the lumber-camp and on Hudson’s Bay, so I got some old blank books from
the agency, books which had been partly written in by a clerk who made
his lines so hairlike that I could write all over them and yet make my
writing quite legible. In these I wrote all that my father had said,
just as he had said it, meaning to commit it to memory if I had got it
right. When it was done, I took it to him and he read it. He laughed
when he came to the swear word, and said:—
“You might have omitted that. Still, I’m glad you didn’t, because it
shows how bravely truthful you are, and I love that in you better than
anything else.”
I have always remembered that, Dorothy. I don’t know how far those who
have left us know what we do; but I always think that if my father
knows, he will be glad to have me perfectly truthful, and I love him so
much that I would make any sacrifice to make him glad.
After he had read over what I had written, and had corrected a word
here and there, I set to work to commit it to memory, so that I should
never forget a line or a word of it. That is how it comes about that I
am able to report it all to you exactly.
Now I know you are tired, so I am going to begin a new chapter, and you
can rest as long as you like before reading it.
XXVI
EVELYN’S BOOK, CONTINUED
IT was Dorothy’s habit when reading a book to stop for an hour now and
then, and devote that space to careful thinking. She explained her
practice to Arthur one day, saying:—
“If a book be interesting, it is apt to dominate the mind, and
sometimes to mislead the judgment. I think it well to suspend the
reading now and then, and give myself a chance to shake off the glamour
of the narrative, and to think out for myself what it means and to what
it tends. One must do that, indeed, if one doesn’t want to surrender
himself or herself completely to the dominance of an author’s thought,
but chooses instead to do his or her own thinking.”
So Dorothy took an hour or two for thinking before going on with the
reading of Evelyn’s book. Evelyn knew her habit, and she had recognised
it by changing chapters at this point.
When Dorothy took up the pages again, she read as follows:—
Chapter the Tenth
WE stayed a long time among the whaling people, and they taught me many
things. I learned from them how to tie all sorts of knots, and how to
catch sea fish, and how to row, and best of all, how to sail a boat.
They were a curious kind of men. They swore all the time, in almost
every sentence. But their swearing didn’t mean anything, and so it
didn’t shock me in the least. They were not at all angry when they
swore. They swore, I think, merely because they hadn’t any adjectives
with which to express their thoughts. They called me a “damned nice
gal,” and they meant it for a compliment. In the same way, they spoke
of a tangle in a fish-line as “a damned ugly snarl,” or of a fish as
“a damned big catch.” I suppose one might cure them of swearing by
teaching them some adjectives. But nobody ever took the trouble to do
that.
They were good fellows—strong and brave, and wonderfully enduring.
When I went out fishing with them, and the tide was out on our return,
so that we couldn’t come up to a pier, one of them would jump overboard
in the mud, pick me up, swing me to his broad shoulders, and carry me
ashore dry-shod, without seeming to think anything of it.
One day we had a storm while I was out in a fishing-boat. As soon as
it came on, all the boats came to the side of ours, though it was
dangerous to do so, just to make sure of my safety. The boat I was in
was swamped, and I was spilled overboard. But I was no sooner in the
angry sea than I was grabbed by the arms of a stout young fellow who
gallantly bore me toward a little sloop that lay at hand. A mast broke
off and fell. It hit the poor fellow, and, finding himself unable to do
any more, he called to a comrade to take me, and he sank in the water
and was drowned. He didn’t seem to care for himself at all, but only
to save me, and all the rest of them seemed to think that that was a
matter of course. I got my father to give me some money, and I hired a
stone-cutter to put up a monument over the poor fellow’s grave; for we
recovered his body, with both arms broken by the blow from the falling
mast. There are lots of heroes, Dorothy, who are never engaged in wars.
At last my father took me away from the whaling town, and we went to
New York in a little schooner. It took us a long time, because the
winds were adverse, but we got there after a while, and went to a
hotel. It was the Astor House, I think, and it had a beautiful little
park nearly in front of it. I don’t think that is of any consequence,
but, you see, I am trying to tell you everything. You can skip anything
you don’t care for.
[“I’m not skipping anything,” wrote Dorothy in the margin.]
As soon as we were settled at the hotel, my father sent for the
gentlewoman he had spoken about, and placed me in her care. Then
something happened that I never understood. Before my father could
take the papers from me and place them in the hands of the gentleman
he intended to leave them with, he was somehow compelled to leave the
city. He went away suddenly after midnight, and I never saw him again.
I still kept the papers after he left New York so suddenly.
The lady was greatly excited when my father’s note came to her, saying
that he had gone away, and she seemed to fear some danger for me. So,
between midnight and morning, she packed our things, and we went to a
boarding-house away up-town. Even there she didn’t feel safe, and so,
within a day or so, we went on board a canal boat, and went up the
river, and then along the canal for many days.
I asked the lady (Mrs. Dennison was her name) why we hadn’t taken a
railroad train instead, so as to travel faster. She answered: “They
were watching all the trains, dear, and would have caught you if we had
tried to take one. They didn’t think of canal boats, because nobody
travels by them in these days.”
After we had travelled by canal boat for several days (a week or more,
I think), we left the boat at a very little village, and went away
across country to a little house in a sparsely settled district. There
Mrs. Dennison and I lived quite alone for more than a year. It was a
very happy year, except that I couldn’t see my father, and except for
another thing. Mrs. Dennison made me wear a boy’s clothes and call
myself by a false name, “Charlie Dennison.” She did that to prevent
Campbell from finding me. I suppose it really didn’t matter much, but
somehow I didn’t like the thought of wearing a disguise and going by an
assumed name.