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?”
“A little while ago,” he began again, this time approaching the subject with some directness, “I was summoned to meet a wounded Federal officer, who believed himself to be dying. Probably he was right. I do not know. However that may be, he believed that his end was near, and I think he tried to tell the truth – an art in which he has not had much practice in his evil life. I had known him for some years. He had injured me as no other man in all the world ever did or ever can again. There were many things that I wanted him to tell me about, and the time was very short; for I had got at the house in which he lay wounded only under escort of an armed force, and I knew that my escort could not long hold the position. By the time I had finished questioning him concerning the matters in which I was personally interested, the enemy was upon us in superior force, and we were compelled to retire. Just as I was quitting his bedside, he told me something that surprised and shocked me – something that deeply concerned you.”
“What was it, please?” asked the girl, now pale to the lips and nervously twisting her fingers together.
“I should not tell you that, I think; not now, at any rate. It would only distress you and do no good. Perhaps it may not have been true.”
“You must tell me that, or you must tell me nothing!” exclaimed the girl, rising in a passion of excitement, and speaking as if utterance involved painful effort. “Understand me, Colonel Kilgariff. I am not a child, whose feelings must be spared by reservations and concealments. I have not been much used to that sort of coddling, and I will not submit to it. My life has been such as to teach me how to endure. You have some things, you say, which you want to tell me – some things that have somehow grown out of whatever it was that this man said to you. Very well, I will not hear them, unless you can tell me all. I will not listen to half-truths. I must hear all of this matter, or none of it. You say it concerns me closely. I am entitled, therefore, to know all of it, if I am to know any of it. You are free to tell me nothing, if you choose. But if you tell me a part and keep back the rest, you wrong me, and I will not submit to the wrong. I have endured enough of that in my life.”
She paused for a moment, and then resumed: —
“Pardon me if I have seemed to speak angrily or resentfully to you. I did not mean that. Such anger as I felt was aroused by bitter memories of wrong, which were called up by your proposal to put me off with a half-truth. Let me explain myself. You are doubtless thinking that I myself have been practising reserve and concealment ever since I came to Wyanoke. That is true, but it has been only because I have firmly believed that I was oath-bound to do so; and at any rate I have not told any half-truths. Whenever I have told anything, I have told all of it. Another thing: I so hate concealments that at the first moment after I learned that I might do so, I decided to tell Dorothy everything that I myself know about my life. I feared to attempt that orally, lest I should grow excited and break down; so I decided to write out the whole story and give it to her. That is what I meant this morning when I said I was writing a book for Dorothy alone to read. After she has read it, it will be hers to do with as she pleases. It will be an honest book, telling the whole truth and not half-truths.”
Kilgariff did not interrupt this passionate speech. It revealed to him a new and stronger side than he had imagined to exist in the nature of the woman he loved. He rejoiced that she felt and thought as she did, and he was not sorry that an error of judgment on his part had brought forth this character-revealing outburst. He promptly told her so.
“You are altogether right,” he said. “I apologise for my mistake, but, frankly, I do not regret it. It has shown me the strength and truthfulness of your nature with an emphasis that altogether pleases me. I had miscalculated that strength, underestimating it. I sought to spare your feelings, not knowing how brave you are to endure. I know you better now, and the knowledge is altogether pleasing.”
“Thank you sincerely. And you will be generous and forgive me?”
As she said this, Evelyn resumed her familiar tone and manner of almost childlike simplicity.
“There is nothing whatever for me to forgive,” the man answered, in a way that carried conviction of his perfect sincerity with it. “Let me go on with my story.”
“Please do.”
“Just as I was hurrying to leave the wounded man and go to my guns, which were already bellowing, he handed me a bundle of papers. He said that he had a daughter who must be somewhere in the South, if she had not been shot in passing through the lines. He begged me to find her, if possible, and give the papers to her. When I asked him the name of his daughter, he answered that it was Evelyn Byrd.”
The girl was livid and trembling, but what passion it was that so shook her Kilgariff could not make out. He paused, to give her time for recovery. She slowly rose from the bench on which she was sitting, and with a firm, elastic step walked out into the grounds, where her mare was grazing. The animal abandoned the grass, and trotted up to her mistress to be caressed.
As the young woman stood there, stroking the mare’s nose, Kilgariff thought it the most beautiful picture he had ever looked upon – the lithe, slender girl, who carried herself with the grace of an athlete not overtrained, caressing the beautiful mare and seeming to hold mute but loving converse with a boundlessly loyal friend.
“And how much it means!” he thought. “What a nature that woman has! And what a life hers must have been so far!”
Then came over him a great and loving longing to be himself the agent of atonement to her for all the wrong that had vexed her young life, to make her future so bright and joyous that her past should seem to her only a troubled dream from which he had been privileged to waken her. But with this longing came the bitter thought that this could never be – that he was debarred by his own misfortunes from the privilege of winning or seeking to win Evelyn Byrd’s love.
Then arose again in his mind the questions of the early morning – the question of duty, the question of the possibility of avoiding the wrong he so dreaded to do. Was there yet time for him to take himself out of Evelyn Byrd’s life? Or was it already too late? What and how much did her embarrassment in his presence mean? Had she indeed already, and all unconsciously, learned to return the great, passionate love he felt for her? Had he blundered beyond remedy in making himself mean so much to her? Could he now go away and leave her out of his life without inflicting upon her even a greater wrong and a severer suffering than that which his leaving would be meant to avert? If not, then what should he do? What could he do?
He felt himself in a blind alley from which there was no escape. Unhappy indeed is the man who is confronted with a divided duty, a problem of right and wrong which he feels himself powerless to solve. In that hour Owen Kilgariff was more acutely unhappy than he had ever been, even in the darkest period of his great calamity.
Presently Evelyn returned to the porch and seated herself, quite as if nothing had occurred out of the commonplace.
“What was the man’s name?” she asked, with no sign of excitement or emotion of any kind in her voice or manner.
“He called himself Campbell, but he told me that it was an assumed name, and not his own. I do not know his real name.”
“Nor do I,” said the young woman, in the tone of one who is recalling events of the past. “I never knew that. But go on, please. What else did he tell you – what else that concerns me, I mean?”
“Nothing. The enemy was upon us hotly, and I had no time for further talk. Oh, yes, he did say that he had persecuted you ‘in a way’ – that was his phrase.”
“I wonder what ‘in a way’ signified to him,” said the young woman, with an intensity of bitterness in her tone, the like of which Owen Kilgariff had never heard in the utterance of man or woman before.
“Never mind that,” Evelyn said, an instant later, the look of agony leaving her face as suddenly as it had appeared. “You have more to tell me?”
“Yes. I must make a confession of grave fault in myself, and ask your forgiveness. The man, Campbell, your father, gave me a bundle of papers, as I told you a little while ago, and I have been impertinently asking myself ever since what I ought to do with them. It did not occur to me then that there was no question for me to decide; that my undoubted duty was simply to place the papers in your hands, as I now do” – withdrawing the parcel from a pocket and placing it in her lap. Dorothy had returned it to him for that purpose. He continued: —