severe now, and in her preoccupation she had neglected her fire until
it had burned down to a mass of slowly expiring coals.
Then she recovered her courage.
“I have been trying the cowardly way,” she said aloud, but speaking
only to herself. “I must face these things bravely. I’ve been planning
to run away again, and I will not do that. I’ve been running away all
my life. I’ll never run away again. I’ll go to Wyanoke in the morning.”
With that, she gathered all the sheets on which she had written and
dropped them upon the few coals which remained alive. The paper
smouldered and smoked for a time. Then it broke into a flame and was
quickly consumed.
The girl prepared herself for bed, with a degree of composure which
she had not been able to command at any time since the knowledge of
Kilgariff’s act had come to her. When she blew out her candle and
opened the window, a gust of snow was blown into her face, and she
heard the howling of the tempest without.
“It is the first storm of the winter,” she thought, as she drew the
draperies about her. “How those poor fellows must be suffering down
there in the trenches at Petersburg to-night—half clad, and less than
half fed!” Then, as she was sinking into sleep, she thought:—
“I’m glad Mr. Kilgariff is not there to-night.”
The thought startled her into wakefulness again, and during the
remaining hours of the night she lay sleeplessly thinking, thinking,
thinking.
XXX
BEFORE A HICKORY FIRE
EVELYN’S thinking accomplished its purpose. At the end of it she
understood herself, or thought she did. And when she returned to
Wyanoke the next morning, she thought she knew precisely what she was
going to say to Kilgariff. But who of us ever knows what we will say
in converse that involves emotion? Who of us can know what response
his utterance will draw forth from the other, or how far the original
intent may be turned into another by that response?
At any rate, Evelyn knew that she intended to ask Colonel Kilgariff for
an interview, and so far she carried out her purpose.
They were left alone in the great drawing-room at Wyanoke, where
hickory logs were merrily blazing in the cavernous fireplace, quite as
if there had been no war to desolate the land, and no man and woman
there with matters of grave import to discuss.
Evelyn began the conference abruptly, as soon as Kilgariff entered and
took a seat.
“I have heard,” she began, “of what you have done—of your great
generosity toward me. Of course I cannot permit that. You must cancel
those papers at once—to-day. I cannot sleep while they exist.”
“Who told you of the matter?” Kilgariff asked in reply.
“Edmonia, with Dorothy’s permission and Mrs. Pegram’s.”
“They should not have told you. I meant that you should not know till
I am dead, unless—unless I should live longer than I expect, and you
should fall into need when the war ends.”
“But what right had you to treat me so? Do you think me a beggar, that
I should accept a gift of money? Why did you do it?”
The girl was standing now and confronting him, in manifest anger.
Curiously enough, he did not seem to mind the anger. He had completely
mastered himself, and knew perfectly what he was to say. He answered:—
“I did this because I love you, Evelyn, and because I cannot provide
for your future in any ordinary way.”
Seeing that she was about to make some reply, he quickly forestalled
it, saying:—
“Please let me continue. Please do not speak yet. Let me explain.”
The girl was still standing, but the look of anger in her face had
given way to another expression—one more complex and less easily
interpreted. There was some pleasure in it, and some apprehension,
together with great astonishment.
“Go on,” she said.
“Only on even terms,” he answered, rising and standing in front of
her. “What I have to say to you must be said with my eyes looking into
yours. Now listen. By reason of a quite absurd convention, a young
woman may not receive gifts of value, and especially of money, from a
young man not her husband; yet she may freely take such gifts if they
come to her by his will, after he is dead.
“There are circumstances which render it impossible for me to leave my
possessions to you by will. Any will that I might make to that effect
would be contested and broken by those for whom I care so little that
I would rather sink everything I have in the world in the Atlantic
Ocean than let them inherit a dollar of it.
“There are also reasons which forbid me to ask you to be my wife—at
least until I shall have laid those reasons before you.”
Evelyn was pale and trembling. Kilgariff saw that it was difficult for
her to stand, so, taking her hand, he said:—
“Let us sit; I have a long story to tell.” Whether purposely or not, he
continued to hold her hand after they were seated. Whether consciously
or not, she permitted him to do so, without protest. He went on:—
“There was only one other way to accomplish my purpose. It was and
still is my wish that everything I have in the world shall be yours
when I die. You are the woman I love, and though I have no right to
say so to you now, my love for you is the one supreme passion of my
life—the first, the last, the only one. Pardon me for saying that, and
please forget it, at least for the present. I have relatives, but they
are worse than dead to me, as you shall hear presently. I would rather
destroy everything I have by fire or flood than allow one cent of it to
pass into their unworthy hands. Enough of that. Let me go on.
“There was only one way in which I could carry out my purpose, and that
was the one I adopted. I could not consult you about it or ask your
permission, for that would have been indeed to affront you in precisely
the way in which you now tell me I have affronted you. It would have
been to ask you to accept a money gift at my hands while I yet lived.
I intended, instead, to give you all I possess, only after my death
and in effect by my will or its equivalent. I did not intend you to be
embarrassed by any knowledge of my act, until a bullet or shell should
have laid me low. Now I want you to speak, please. I want you to say
that you understand, and that you forgive me.”
“I understand,” she said; “there is nothing to forgive; but now that I
know your purpose, I cannot permit it. You must cancel those papers.”
“Does it make no difference that I have told you I love you, and that I
should entreat you to be my wife if I were free to do so?”
“I do not see,” she replied, “that that makes a difference.”
“Do not decide the matter now, wait!” he half entreated, half
commanded. “Let me finish what I have to say. Let me tell you why I
must do this thing. Wait!”
He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. Then he told
her his life-story, omitting nothing, concealing nothing, palliating
nothing. That done, he went on:—
“You understand now why I was driven to the course I have adopted
with you. You understand that as an honourable man I could not ask
you for love, leaving you in ignorance of the fact that I am under a
conviction of felony. My sentence is at an end, of course, and I cannot
be rearrested, inasmuch as I am officially adjudged to be dead. But
that makes no difference in my duty. I could not honourably reveal my
love to you until you should know the facts. I do not now ask you to
accept my wrecked life and to forget the facts that have wrecked it.
I have no right to ask so great a sacrifice at your hands. I ask only
that you shall permit me to regard you as the woman I love, the woman
I should have sought to make my wife if I had been worthy. I ask your
permission so to arrange my affairs, or so to leave them as already
arranged, that at my death all that I have will pass into your hands.
You can never know or dream or imagine how I love you, Evelyn. Surely
it is only a little thing that I ask of you.”
As he delivered this passionate utterance, Kilgariff threw his arm
around the girl’s waist, and for a moment held her closely. She let her
head rest upon his shoulder, and did not resist or resent his impulse
when he kissed her reverently upon the forehead.
But an instant later, she suddenly realised the situation, and quickly
sprang to her feet, he rising with her and facing her with strained
nerves and eyes fixed upon her own, sternly but caressingly.
Evelyn Byrd was not given to tears, and for that reason the drops that
now trickled down her cheeks had far more meaning to Kilgariff than a
woman’s tears sometimes have for a man.
For a time, she looked him full in the face, not attempting to conceal
her tears even by brushing them away. She simply let them flow, as an
honest expression of her emotion.
Finally she so far composed herself as to speak.
“Owen Kilgariff,” she said—it was the first time she had ever so
addressed him—“Owen Kilgariff, you have dealt honestly with me; I want
to deal honestly with you. If I were worthy of your love, I should
rejoice in it. As it is, this is the greatest calamity of my life. You
do not know—but you shall. There are reasons that forbid me to accept
the love you have offered—peremptory reasons. You shall know them
quickly.”
With that she glided out of the room, and Owen Kilgariff was left
alone.
XXXI
THE LAST FLIGHT OF EVELYN
EVELYN went for a few minutes to her room. There she bathed her eyes;
for like all women, she was ashamed of the tears that did her honour by
attesting the tender intensity of her womanhood.
That done, she went to the laboratory, where she found Dorothy at work.
To her she said:—
“Please let me have my book. I want Mr. Kilgariff to read it.”
Dorothy asked no explanation. She needed none. She went at once and
fetched the manuscript. Evelyn took it and returned to the parlour,
where she placed it in Kilgariff’s hands.
“Please read that, carefully,” she said. “Then you will understand.”
“If you mean,” he replied, “that anything this manuscript may reveal
concerning your past life can lessen my love for you, you are utterly
wrong, and the reading is unnecessary. If you wish only that I shall
know you better, and more perfectly understand the influences that
have made you the woman you are, I shall be glad to read every line and
word that you have written.”
“Please read it.” That was all she said, and she instantly left the
room.
Five minutes later she told Dorothy she wanted the carriage.
“I want to go to Warlock,” she said, “on a little visit to Mrs. Pegram.
Oh, Dorothy! you understand.”
“Yes, dear,” answered Dorothy, “I understand. It is rather late to
start to Warlock. It is a thirty-mile drive. But I’ll give you Dick for
your coachman, and there is a moon. Dick is quite a military man now,
and he knows what a forced march means. He’ll get you to Warlock in
time for a late supper.”
Dick drove like a son of Jehu. After the manner of the family negro in
Virginia, he shrewdly conjectured what was in the wind; and when he put
up his horses at Warlock before even the regular supper was served, he
said to the stableman:—
“I reckon mebbe Mas’ Owen Kilgariff’ll want stablin’ here for a good
horse to-morrow, an’ purty soon in de mawnin’ at dat.”
XXXII
THE END OF IT ALL
DICK was right. Kilgariff read nearly all night, and finished Evelyn’s
book in the small hours of the morning. Then he slept more calmly than
he had done at any time during recent weeks.
At six o’clock he went to the kitchen and negotiated with Aunt Kizzey,
the cook, for an immediate cup of coffee. Then he mounted the war-horse
that had brought him to Wyanoke—sleek and strong, now, and full of
gallop—and set off for Warlock plantation.
When he got there, the nine o’clock breakfast was just ready, but he
had luckily met Evelyn in a strip of woodland, where she was walking in
spite of the snow that lay ankle-deep upon the ground. Dismounting, he
said to her:—
“I have read your book from beginning to end, Evelyn. I have come now
for your answer to my question.”
“What question?” she asked, less frankly than was her custom.
“Will you be my wife?”
“Yes—gladly,” she said, “if my story makes no difference.”
“It makes a great difference,” he responded. “It tells me, as nothing
else could, what a woman you are. It intensifies my love, and my
resolution to make all the rest of your life an atonement to you for
the suffering you have endured.”
The next day Evelyn cut short her visit to Warlock and returned to
Wyanoke. At the same time Kilgariff went back to Petersburg to bear his
part in the closing scenes of the greatest war of all time.
Grant was already in possession of the Weldon Railroad. With his
limitless numbers, he had been able to stretch his line southward
and westward until his advance threatened the cutting off of the two
other railroads that constituted Richmond’s only remaining lines
of communication southward. Lee’s small force, without hope of
reinforcement, had been stretched out into a line so long and so thin
that at many points the men holding the works stood fully a dozen yards
apart.
Still, they held on with a grim determination that no circumstance
could conquer.
They perfectly knew that the end was approaching. They perfectly knew
that that end could mean nothing to them but disaster. Nevertheless,
they stood to their guns and stubbornly resisted every force hurled
against them. With heroic cheerfulness, they fought on, never asking
themselves to what purpose. Throughout the winter they suffered
starvation and cold; for food was scarce, and of clothing there was
none.
Surely the spectacle was one in contemplation of which the angels might
have paused in admiration. Surely the heroism of those devoted men was
an exhibition of all that is best in the American character, a display
of courage which should be for ever cherished in the memory of all
American men.
When the spring came, and the roads hardened, Grant delivered the final
blow. Sherman had cut the Confederacy in two by his march to the sea,
and was now, in overwhelming force, pushing his way northward again,
with intent to unite his army with Grant’s for Lee’s destruction.
Then Grant concentrated a great army on his left and struck a crushing
blow. Lee withdrew from Richmond and Petersburg, and made a desperate
endeavour to retreat to some new line of defence farther south.
The effort was foredoomed to failure. It ended in the surrender at
Appomattox of a little fragment of that heroic Army of Northern
Virginia which had for so long stood its ground against overwhelming
odds, and so manfully endured hunger and cold and every other form of
suffering that may befall the soldier.
It was during that last retreat that Kilgariff and Evelyn met for the
first time since they had plighted troth, and for the last time as mere
man and woman, not husband and wife.
Kilgariff, a brigadier-general now, had been ordered to take command
of the guns defending the rear. By night and by day he was always in
action. But when the line of march passed near to Wyanoke, he sent a
messenger to Evelyn, bearing a note scrawled upon a scrap of paper
which he held against his saddle-tree, in lieu of a desk. In the note
he wrote simply:—
Come to me, wherever I am to be found. I want you to be my wife before
I die. You have courage. Come to me—we’ll be married in battle, and
the guns shall play the wedding march.
Evelyn responded to the summons, and these two were made one upon the
battlefield, with bullets flying about their heads and rifle shells
applauding.
The ceremony ended, Evelyn rode away to Wyanoke to await the end. A
week later Owen Kilgariff joined her there.
“We are beginning life anew,” he said, “and together.”
“Yes,” she answered, “and at last I have nothing to fear.”
THE END
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