Evelyn Byrd

But Dorothy interrupted him, quickly.

“Why do you persist in addressing me in that way?” she asked. “Are we not yet sufficiently friends for you to call me ‘Dorothy,’ as all my intimates do? You know, I exacted that of Evelyn in the first moment that I found myself fond of her and knew that she loved me.”

“But there is a difference,” answered Kilgariff. “You see – ”

“Yes, there is a difference, but it is altogether on the side of my contention. Evelyn is much younger than I am; for although, as you know, I am still only twenty-four, Evelyn has the advantage of several years of age. She thinks she is only seventeen, but as nearly as I can figure out from what she tells me she must be approaching nineteen. However that may be, you, at any rate, are nearly as old as Arthur. You and he have been intimates all your lives, and if that intimacy is well-founded, I see no reason why you should not include me in it, so far at least, as to call me by my Christian name. You see, I was ‘Dorothy’ long before I became ‘Mrs. Brent,’ and my given name has many pleasing associations in my ears. My father always called me that. So did my mother, after I came to know her. Arthur did so, too, after I learned to like him and gave him leave. Of course, to all outsiders I am ‘Mrs. Brent’ – a name that I am proud and glad to bear, because – well, because of Arthur. But to the insiders – to my friends – I have a strong inclination to be just ‘Dorothy.’ Don’t you think you have become an insider?”

Kilgariff hesitated for a time before answering. Finally he said: —

“It is very gracious of you – all this. But I wonder how much Arthur has told you about me?”

“He has told me everything he knows,” she answered, with an added touch of dignity. “We should not be man and wife if either were capable of practising reserve with the other in such a case as this.”

“Very well, then,” responded Kilgariff. “I do not like sailing under false colours; but, as you know all, why, it will be a special pleasure to me to be permitted to call you ‘Dorothy.’”

“Now, what were you going to say when I interrupted you?” asked Dorothy, the direct.

“I’m afraid I forget.”

“No, you don’t, or at least you can remember in such a case. So think a bit, Owen, and tell me what you were going to say. It was something about Evelyn.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Why, for several reasons. For one thing, you caught sight of Evelyn just at that moment, as she was teaching her mare to kneel down for her to mount. You heard her voice, too, as she chided the mare in half playful fashion for rising too abruptly after the mount. A woman’s voice means much to a man of sensitive nature. She talks in just that way to the children – my babies – and their liking for it is positively wonderful. Only this morning Mammy and I were having all sorts of trouble to get them out of their bath. Bob, the boy, was bent upon spending the rest of the day in the tub, and was disposed to raise a rumpus over every effort to lift him out, and Mildred, girl-like, took her cue from her ‘big brother.’ In the midst of the turmoil Evelyn came in. She assumed a look of astonishment, which attracted Bob’s attention and for the moment quieted him. Then she said: —

“‘Oh, Bob! I m sorry you’re bad. But you are. You’re very bad indeed, so I mustn’t tell you about the ten little Injuns. You’re getting to be bad just like them.’

“By that time she had lifted the boy out of the tub and dried him and slipped a garment upon him, he not protesting in the least. Then she stood him up in her lap, and, looking at him in seeming surprise, she exclaimed: —

“‘Why, Bob isn’t bad a bit! Evey made a great big mistake. Evey’s going to tell Bob about the ten little Injun boys.’ And from that moment there was no disturbance in the nursery except the noise of joyous laughter.

“I said to her: —

“‘You deal with them just as if they were wild animals to be tamed.’

“She answered: —

“‘So they are, only people often forget it, cruelly.’”

“Well, now,” said Kilgariff, “let me have your other reason, or reasons, for thinking that what I set out to say had some reference to Evelyn. I plead guilty to your charge that I caught sight of Evelyn teaching the mare, and that I was charmed by the sweetness and sympathetic jollity of her voice, as she addressed the animal in her winning way. But you were going to offer another fact in support of your assumption. What was it?”

“Why, simply that you hadn’t spoken for ten minutes before you addressed me. You were meditating, and whenever you meditate nowadays, you are thinking of Evelyn.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Absolutely. You are not always aware of the fact, but the fact is always there. I like it to be always there.”

“Why, Dorothy?”

“Why, because I want you to be that way with Evelyn. It will mean happiness in the future for both of you.”

“No; it will mean at best a gently mitigated unhappiness to me – and I shall be glad of the gentle mitigation. To her it will mean nothing more than a pleasant friendship. I do not intend that it ever shall mean more than that to her.”

“But why not? Why should it not mean everything to her that womanhood longs for? Why should you not win Evelyn’s love and make her your wife? I never knew two people better fitted to make each other happy, and fortunately you have possessions in Europe and at the North which will enable you to take a wife, no matter how disastrously this war may end for us of the South. Believe me, Owen, in creating men and women, God intended marriage and happiness in marriage for the common lot of humanity. He does not give it to all of us to be great, or to achieve great things, or to render great services, but, if we hearken to His voice as it whispers within us, He intends happiness for us, and His way of giving happiness is in marriage, prompted by love. We poor mortals interfere with Nature’s plan in many ways. Especially we sin by ‘match-making’ – by bringing about marriages without love and for the sake of convenience of one kind or another. We wed bonds to city lots. We trade girls for titles, giving a money boot. We profane the holiest of human relations in order to join one plantation to another, or to unite two distinguished houses, or for some other equally devilish reason.

“It is the best thing about this war that its tendency is to obliterate artificialities and restore men and women to natural conditions – at least here at the South. Believe me, Owen, the union of a man and a woman who really love each other, is the crowning fact of all existence. You and I are somewhat skilled in science. We know the truth that Nature is illimitably attentive not only to the preservation of the race, but to its improvement also; and we know that Nature takes no care whatever of the individual, but ruthlessly sacrifices him for the sake of the race. Nature is right, and we are criminally wrong when we thwart her purposes, as we do when we make marriages that have no love for their inspiration, or in any way bar marriage where love prompts it. I am old-fashioned, I suppose, but old fashions are sometimes good fashions. They are always so when they are the outgrowths of natural conditions.

“Now put all that aside. I have had my little say. Let me hear what it was that you were going to say to me concerning Evelyn. I recognise your right, as you do not, to criticise in that quarter.”

“Oh, I had no thought of criticising,” answered Kilgariff. “On the contrary, I am disposed to think you and I have made a valuable discovery in pedagogics.”

“What is it?”

“Why, that the best way to teach science is backward.”

“I confess I do not understand.”

“Well, look at the thing. If Evelyn had been sent to a scientific school to study chemistry, her professor would have set her to studying a book of general principles. Then, after three or four months of drudgery, she would have been permitted to perform a few experiments in the laboratory, by way of illustrating and verifying what the book had told her, the greater part of which she had known before she began. You and I have begun at the other end. We have set Evelyn to do practical work in the laboratory. I remember that her first task was to wash opium, and her next to manufacture blue mass out of rose petals and mercury. Incidentally we explained to her the general principles involved, and in that purely incidental way she has learned her general chemistry so thoroughly within a few weeks, and without opening a book, that she could pass any examination upon it that any college professor could put up. She has learned more in a month than any systematic class work would have taught her in a year.”

“I suppose you are right,” answered Dorothy. “But that is the only way I know. It is the way in which Arthur taught me.”

“Yes, I should suppose that Arthur is distinctly a man of original genius. He knows how to get things done. He is so immeasurably the superior of all the professors I ever knew that I am disposed to name none of them in comparison with him. If it is ever my lot to undertake the teaching of science, I shall adopt precisely that method. And I do not see why the same principle should not be applied to other departments of learning. We begin at the wrong end. The teacher makes the boy begin where he himself did. I think Arthur’s methods immeasurably better, and I spoke of Evelyn’s case only as an illustration of their superiority. That young woman knows much – very much – of science without having had any formal instruction in it at all. She has learned it in the natural way, and she is deeply imbued with the scientific spirit. Only yesterday she said to me, in answer to some question of mine, that she ‘looked straight at things, and thought about them.’ I cannot imagine a more perfect method than that.

“And what book ever taught her what she knows about animals and their ways? What lecturer in all the world could have told her how to subdue that wild and rebellious mare as she has done? She learned all that simply by ‘looking straight at things and thinking about them.’ The professional horse-tamers – Rarey and the rest – set to work, with their mechanical appliances, to convince a horse that they are mightier than he is. They succeed in a way. They make the horse afraid of them, and so long as they deal with him, he submits, in fear of their superior power. But let a timid novice undertake to ride horses thus broken, or to drive them, and disaster comes. Evelyn’s way is incalculably better and more scientific. She has studied animals and learned to understand them and sympathise with them. She makes her appeal to what is best in their natures, not to what is worst, and she gets results that no horse-tamer of them all could ever hope for. The horse-tamer’s processes belong to the domain of artifice. Hers are purely scientific.”

“Absolutely,” answered Dorothy; “and I often wonder where she learned it all, or rather where she got her inspiration, for it is not so much learning as a natural bent.”

“Well, she was born with an instinct of truthfulness for one thing,” said Kilgariff. “That is the only basis of the scientific temperament. I observed her yesterday trying to tempt a fox squirrel out of one of the trees. She chirped to him in her peculiar fashion, and, in response to her invitation, he would run down as far as the root of the tree; but there he would pause and shrewdly reconnoitre, after which he would run back up the tree.

“‘Why don’t you hold out your hand?’ I asked.

“She quickly answered: —

“‘That would be lying to him. Whenever I hold out my hand to him, I have something in it for him to eat. If I held it out empty, I should be saying there was something for him to eat in it, and that would be a lie. He would come to me then and find out that I had deceived him. You do quit believing – pardon me – you quit believing – anybody that tells you lies.’

“I admitted my propensity to distrust untruthful persons, and she gravely asked: —

“‘Why then do you wish me to deceive the poor little squirrel? Do you want him to think me a person not to be trusted?’

“I made some lame excuse about his being only a dumb animal, and she quickly responded: —

“‘But dumb animals are entitled to truthfulness, are they not, particularly when we ask them to confide in us? I should be ashamed of you, Monsieur’ – you know she always calls me ‘Monsieur’ when she is displeased with me – ‘if I did not understand. The human people do not know the animals – how trustful they want to be if only we would let them. We set traps for them, we deceive them in a hundred ways, and that is why they distrust us. I did read a few days ago – you smile, Monsieur; I should say, I read the other day – that the wild creatures are selfish, that they care for us only as a source of food supply. That is not true, as that squirrel shall teach you. It is true that all the wild creatures are hungry all the time. There is not food enough for all of them, and so when we offer them food, they come to us, even in fear. They have many of their young to feed, and their supplies are very scant. That is why they congregate around houses where there is waste thrown out. But oh, Monsieur, many hundreds of them do starve to death in the long winters. You notice that in the spring there are a dozen robins on the lawn; in the early summer, when they have brought forth their broods, there are scores and hundreds of them. But in the next spring there are only the dozens again. The rest have perished of cold and hunger. I have been reading Mr. Darwin’s book, and I know that this is the universal law of progress, of advancement by the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest under the law of heredity. But it is very cruel. That isn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to show you that even the wild creatures – hungry as they always are – have affection. I am going to make that squirrel come to me and sit on my shoulder without giving him any food as a temptation. You shall see. After that, I will give him plenty to eat.’

“And she did. She wheedled the squirrel till he came down his tree, crossed the lawn, and invaded her lap. It was only then that she gave him the peanuts with which she had filled her pockets. I tell you that girl is a born scientist, and that her knowledge is wonderful. Did it ever occur to you that the squirrels and birds that seem so happy here in the Wyanoke grounds are habitually in a state of starvation?”

Just then Evelyn came walking toward the porch. The mare was closely following her, and a squirrel perched upon one shoulder, while a robin clung to the other. She had pockets in her gown – she insisted upon pockets – and from these she fed the wild creatures. Upon getting a nut, the squirrel leaped to the ground, and upon receiving a bit of bread, the robin flew away.

“You see,” said Kilgariff, “how coldly selfish and calculating your wild creatures are. The moment they get something to eat, they quit your hospitality.”