“Such matters are easy enough when one has friends, as I have, who may be trusted implicitly. I have thought this matter out, and I think I know how to handle the situation.”
“Tell me your plan, if you wish.”
“Of course I wish. My first thought was to give everything I have in the world to Evelyn now, giving her deeds for the real estate and absolute bills of sale for the securities. But of course I could not do that. I could never gain her consent to such an arrangement without first winning her love and making her my affianced bride.”
“Do you think that would be impossible?”
“I do not know – perhaps so. At any rate, it is out of the question.”
“I confess I do not see why.”
“I am a convicted criminal, you know – a fugitive from justice.”
“No. You are officially dead. The courts of New York will not hold a dead man to be a fugitive from justice. And morally you are nothing of the kind. It was not justice, but infamous injustice, that condemned you.”
“However that may be, I can never ask Evelyn Byrd to be my wife, to share the life of a man who might even possibly be sent back to Sing Sing. I can never ask her to make of her children the sons and daughters of a convicted criminal. I will not do that. So I have thought out another plan. My second thought was to turn over all I have to you in trust for Evelyn. When I am dead, she need not refuse the gift. But there again is a difficulty. When this war ends in the complete conquest of the South, as it soon must, political passion at the North is well-nigh certain to find expression in acts of wholesale confiscation, directed against men of wealth at the South, and men who have served as officers in our army. They may, indeed, include all who have served at all, even as privates. At any rate, you are an officer of high rank, and between you and Dorothy you are one of the greatest plantation owners in Virginia. You are pretty sure to be included in whatever is done in this way.
“It will not do, therefore, to make you my trustee for Evelyn. I must have some non-combatant to serve in that capacity, and, with your permission, I am going to ask Dorothy to accept the duty.”
“You have my permission, certainly. But I see another danger. Suppose anything should happen to Dorothy? – God forbid it! Suppose she should die?”
“I have thought of all that,” answered Kilgariff, “and I think I see a way out. I shall ask Dorothy to select some friend, some woman whom she can absolutely trust, to serve with her as a joint trustee, giving full power to the survivor to carry out the trust in case of the death of either of the two. I haven’t a doubt she knows such a woman.”
“She does – two of them. There is Edmonia Bannister, one of God’s elect in character, and there is Mrs. Baillie Pegram – she who was Agatha Ronald. Either of them would serve the purpose perfectly.”
“I’ll get Dorothy to ask both of them,” responded Kilgariff. “Then all possible contingencies will be fully met and provided for.
“Now for present concerns. If I can make a Confederate taper burn for an hour, I’ll write my letter to Dorothy, to accompany the papers, and to ask her to serve me in this matter of the trusteeship. I have a very capable young lawyer under my command here as a sergeant. Early in the morning I shall set him to work preparing the trust conveyances. He is a rapid worker, and will have the documents ready by nightfall. Then I’ll send them to Wyanoke by a courier. In the meanwhile I have Captain Harbach on my hands. I’m afraid I must ask you to act for me in that matter. While we have been talking, it has occurred to me that when I prefer my charges against Captain Harbach, he will be placed under arrest. In that position he would not be permitted to send me the hostile message he threatened to-night. It would be extremely unfair to him to place him in such a position. I want you to write to him, if you will, as my friend. Say to him that in view of his expressed desire to hold me responsible for words spoken to-night, and in order to give him opportunity to do so without embarrassment, I shall postpone for twenty-four hours, or for a longer time, if for any reason he cannot conveniently act within twenty-four hours, the preferring of my official charges against him. Ask him, please, to advise you of his wishes in the matter in order that I may comply with them.”
“You are a very cool hand, Kilgariff,” said Arthur, “and your courtesy to an enemy is extreme.”
“Oh, courtesy in such a case is a matter of course. Let me say to you, now, that when I meet Captain Harbach on the field, I shall fire high in the air. I have no desire to kill him or to inflict the smallest hurt upon him. I am merely giving him the opportunity he desires to kill me, by way of avenging himself upon me for the severe criticisms I have made upon his character, his conduct, and his assumption of functions that he is incapable of discharging with tolerable safety to other men. Let me make this matter plainer to your mind, Arthur. I do not at all believe in the duello. I think it barbarous in intent and usually ridiculous in its conduct. But I had the best of good reasons for saying what I did to Captain Harbach, and so I said it. What I said was exceedingly offensive to him, and the only way he knows of ‘vindicating’ himself is by challenging me to a duel. It would be a gross injustice on my part to refuse to meet him, and to do an injustice is to commit an immorality. So, of course, I shall meet him. As I have no desire to do him other harm than to get him removed from a position which he is incapable of filling with safety to others and benefit to the service, I shall not think of shooting at him. But I shall give him the privilege he craves of shooting at me. I really don’t mind, you know, under the circumstances, except that in any case I shall postpone his shooting at me till I can execute the documents relating to my property.”
“In view of your explanation,” answered Arthur, “I must decline to act as your friend in this matter.”
“But why?”
“Because I will have no part nor lot in a murder. I detest duelling, as you do; I regard it as a relic of feudalism which ought to give place to something better in our enlightened and law-governed time. But while it lasts, I am forced to consent to it, however unwillingly. I recognise the fact that the right of the individual to make private war on his own account is the only basis on which nations can logically or even sanely claim the right to make public war. Nations are only aggregations of individuals, and their rights are only the sum of the rights previously possessed by the individuals composing them. But while I feel in that way about duelling, I can have no part in a contest in which I know in advance that one of the contestants is going to shoot to kill, while the other is merely standing up to be shot at and does not himself intend to make war at all.”
“Very well,” answered Kilgariff. “I’ll get some one else to send the letter.”
He summoned an orderly and directed him to go to a neighbouring camp and ask an officer there to call upon Lieutenant-colonel Kilgariff, “concerning a purely personal matter, and not at all with reference to any matter of service.”
The officer, a fiery little fellow, responded at once to the summons, and he promptly wrote – spelling it very badly – the message which Kilgariff had asked Arthur to send.
Half an hour later, the messenger who had borne the note returned with it unopened. For explanation, he said: —
“Captain Harbach had his head blown off in the trenches just before daylight this morning.”
XVIII
EVELYN’S REVELATION
IT was during Arthur’s absence at Petersburg that Evelyn began talking with Dorothy about herself.
“It isn’t nice,” she said, as the two sat together in the porch one day, “for me to have reserves and secrets with you, Dorothy.”
“But why not? Every one is entitled to have reserves. Why should not you?”
“Oh, because – well, things are different with me. You are good to me – nobody was ever so good to me. I am living here, and loving you and letting you love me, and all the time you know nothing at all about me. It isn’t fair. I hate unfairness.”
“So do I,” answered Dorothy. “But this isn’t unfair. I never asked you to tell me anything about yourself.”
“That’s the worst of it. That’s what makes it so mean and ugly and unfair for me to go on in this way. Why should you be so good to me when you don’t know anything about me?”
“Why, because, although I do not know your history, I know you. If it is painful for you to tell me about yourself – ”
“It wouldn’t be painful,” the girl answered, with an absent, meditative look in her eyes. But she added nothing to the sentence. She merely caressed Dorothy’s hand. After a little silence, she suddenly asked: —
“What’s a ‘parole,’ Dorothy?”
Dorothy explained, but the explanation did not seem to satisfy.
“What does it mean? How much does it include? How long does it last?”
Dorothy again explained. Then Evelyn said: —
“It was a parole I took. I don’t know what or how much it bound me not to tell. I wish I could make that out.”
“If you could tell me something about the circumstances,” answered the older woman, “perhaps I could help you to find out. But you mustn’t tell me anything unless you wish.”
“I should like to tell you everything. You see, they were trying to send me South, through the lines somehow. They said I was to be sent to some relatives – but I reckon that wasn’t true. Anyhow, they wanted to send me through the lines, and they had to get permission. So they took me to a military man of some sort, and he took my parole. I had to swear not to tell anything to the enemy, and after I had sworn that I wouldn’t, he looked very sternly at me and told me I mustn’t forget that I had taken an oath not to tell anything I knew.”
Dorothy answered without hesitation that the parole referred only to military matters, and not at all to things that related only to the girl herself and her life.
“But, Dorothy, I didn’t know anything about military affairs – how could I? So I reckon they couldn’t have meant that.”
“They could not know what information you might have, or what messages some one might send through you. You may be entirely sure, dear, that your oath meant nothing in the world beyond that. The military authorities at the North care nothing about your private affairs or how much you may talk of them. Still, you are not to tell anything that you have doubts about. You are not to wound your own conscience. I sometimes think our own consciences are all there is of Judgment Day. You are always to remember that Arthur and I are perfectly satisfied to take you for what you are, asking no questions as to the rest. We are vain enough to think ourselves capable of forming our own judgment concerning the character of a girl like you. We are not afraid of making any mistake about that.”
Evelyn did not reply. She sat still, continuing to caress Dorothy’s hand. She was thinking in some troubled fashion, and Dorothy was wise enough to let her go on thinking without interruption.
After a while the girl suddenly dropped the hand, arose, and went out upon the lawn. Her mare was grazing there, and Evelyn called the animal to her. Leaping upon the unsaddled and unbridled mare, she started off at a gallop. Presently she slipped off her low shoes, and in her stocking feet stood erect upon the galloping animal’s back. With low, almost muttered commands she directed the mare’s course, making her leap a fence twice, while her rider sometimes stood erect, sometimes knelt, and sometimes sat for a moment, only to rise again with as great apparent ease as if she had been occupying a chair.
Finally she brought her steed to a halt, leaped nimbly to the ground, and resumed her slippers. She walked rapidly back to the porch, and, with a look of positively painful earnestness in her face, demanded: —
“Does that make a difference? Does it alter your opinion? Do you still believe in me?”
Her tone was so eager, so intense, that it seemed almost angry. Dorothy only answered: —
“It makes no difference.”
“You know what that means? You guess where I learned to do that?”
“Yes.”
“And still you do not cast me out? Still you do not command me to go away?”
“Not at all. Why should I?”
“But why not? Most women of your class and in your position would send me away.”
“I am perhaps not like most women of my class and condition. At any rate, as I told you a while ago, I know you, I trust you, I believe in you. You are you. What else matters? Let me tell you a little life-story. My mother was a musician, who performed in public. Everybody about here scorned her for that. But she was the superior of all of them. She was a woman of genius and strong character. She hated shams and conventionalities, and she was a good woman. When the war came, she set to work nursing the wounded. She was shot to death a little while ago, and the soldiers loved her so that they rolled a great boulder over her grave and carved a loving inscription upon it with their own hands. Many of them were killed in doing that; but whenever one fell, another took his place. Do you think, Evelyn, that I, her daughter, could ever scorn a good woman like you, merely because she was or had been an actor in a show? I tell you, Evelyn Byrd, I know you, and that is quite enough for me.”
“Is it enough for Cousin Arthur?”
“Yes, assuredly.”
“And for – well, for others?”
“If you mean Kilgariff, yes. If you mean the conventional people, no. So you had better never say anything about it to them.”
At Dorothy’s mention of Kilgariff’s name, Evelyn started as if shocked. But quickly recovering herself, she said with passion in her tones: —
“You are the very best woman in the world, Dorothy. I shall not long have any secrets from you.”
The girl’s agitation was ungovernable. Emotionally she had passed through a greater crisis than she had ever known before, and her nerves were badly shaken. Without trying to utter the words that would not rise to her quivering lips, she took refuge in the laboratory, where she set to work with the impatience of one who must open a safety valve of some kind, or suffer collapse. Most women of her age, similarly agitated, would have gone to their chambers instead, and vented their feelings in paroxysms of weeping. Evelyn Byrd was not given to tears. Perhaps bitter experience had conquered that feminine tendency in her, though very certainly it had not robbed her of her intense femininity in any other way.
When Dorothy joined her in the laboratory an hour later, the girl was engaged in an operation so delicate that the tremor of a finger, the jarring of a sharply closed door, or even a sudden breath of air would have ruined the work.
“Step lightly, please,” was all that she said. Dorothy saw that the girl had completely mastered herself.
And Dorothy admired and rejoiced.
XIX
DOROTHY’S DECISION
KILGARIFF had not long to wait for Dorothy’s answer, nor was the reply an uncertain one. It was not Dorothy’s habit to be uncertain of her own mind, especially where any question of right and wrong was involved. She never hesitated to do or advise the right as she saw it, and she never on any account juggled with the truth or avoided it.
So far as the trusteeship was concerned, she accepted the appointment for herself and also for Edmonia Bannister and Agatha Pegram, both of whom were within an hour’s ride of Wyanoke, as Agatha was staying for a time at Edmonia’s home, Branton. Dorothy had gone to them at once on receipt of Kilgariff’s letter, and both had consented to accept the trust.
That matter out of the way, Dorothy took up the other with that directness of mind which made her always clear-sighted and well-nigh unerring in judgment, at least where questions of conduct were concerned.
I am rather surprised, Kilgariff [she wrote], and not quite pleased with you. Can you not see that you have no more right to let me read Evelyn’s papers than to read them yourself? They are hers to do with as she pleases, and neither you nor I may so much as read a line of them without her voluntary consent.
Neither, I think, have you any right to withhold them from her. They are her property, and you must give them to her, as you would her purse, had it come into your possession. The fact that these papers may hurt her feelings in the reading has no bearing whatever on the case. It is not your function to protect her against unpleasantness by withholding from her anything to which she has a right, whether it be property or information or anything else. You are not her father, or her brother, or her husband, or even a man affianced to her – this last mainly by your own fault, I think. It is just like a man to think that he has a right to wrong a woman by way of protecting her and sparing her feelings.
Let me tell you that Evelyn Byrd stands in need of no such protection. Little as I know of her life-experiences, that little is far more than you know. She has suffered; she has known wrong and oppression; she has had to work out for herself even the fundamental principles of morality in conduct. Her experience has been such that it has made her wonderfully strong, especially in the matter of endurance. She is tender, loving, sensitive – yes, exquisitely sensitive – but she has a self-control which amounts to stoicism – to positive heroism, I should say, if that word were not a badly overworked one.
Nevertheless, I have some fear that these papers may contain things that it will be very painful for her to read, and I strongly sympathise with your desire to spare her. I condemn only the method you have wished to adopt. I must not examine the papers. I have no right, and you can give me no right, to do that. Still less must I think of deciding whether they are to be given to her or withheld. That is a thing that decides itself. They are absolutely hers. You must yourself place them in her hands. In doing so, you can make whatever explanation or suggestions you please, and she can act upon your suggestions or disregard them, as shall seem best to her.
To do this thing properly, you must come to Wyanoke. There seems to be no crisis impending at Petersburg just now, and you can easily get leave for two or three days, particularly as the distance between Wyanoke and Petersburg is so small. In case of need, you can return to your post quickly. A good horse would make the journey in a very brief time. If pressed, he could cover it in two hours, or three at most. So come to Wyanoke with as little delay as may be, and do your duty bravely.
Kilgariff had no need to apply for a leave of absence. The wound in his neck had been behaving badly for ten days past, and it was now very angry indeed. Day by day a field-surgeon had treated it, to no effect. So far from growing better, it had grown steadily worse.
Under the night-and-day strain of his ceaseless war work, Kilgariff had grown emaciated, and so far enfeebled as to add greatly to the danger threatened by the wound’s condition. On the morning of the day which brought him Dorothy’s letter, the surgeon had found his condition alarming, and had said to him: —
“Colonel, I have before advised you to go to a hospital and have this wound treated. Now I must use my authority as your medical officer and order you to go at once. If I did not compel that, the service would very soon lose a valuable officer.”
“Must it be a hospital, Doctor?” asked Kilgariff. “May I not run up to Wyanoke, instead, and get my friend Doctor Brent to treat me?”
“Capital! Nothing could be better. Besides, the hospitals are full to overflowing, and you’d get scant attention in most of them. Go to Wyanoke by all means, but go at once. I’ll give you a written order to go, and you can make it the basis of your application for sick leave. Act at once, and I’ll go myself to headquarters to impress everybody there with the urgency of the case and especially the necessity for promptitude. You ought to have your leave granted by to-morrow morning.”
It was granted in fact earlier than that, so that before nightfall Kilgariff set out on a horse purchased from an officer of his acquaintance, a horse lean almost to emaciation, but strong, wiry, and full of spirit still. He was an animal in which blood did indeed “tell,” a grandson of that most enduring of racers, Red Eye.
“Give a good account of yourself, old fellow,” said Kilgariff to the animal, caressingly, “and I promise you better rations at Wyanoke than you have had for two months past.”
Whether the horse understood the promise or not, he acted as if he did, and with a long, swinging stride, left miles behind him rapidly.
It was a little past midnight when the well-nigh exhausted officer reached the hospitable plantation; but before going to the house, he aroused the negro who slept on guard at the stables, and himself remained there till the half-sleeping serving-man had thoroughly groomed the animal and placed an abundance of corn and fodder in his manger and rack.
Then the way-worn traveller went to the house, entered by the never closed front door, and made his way to a bedroom, without waking any member of the family.