Evelyn Byrd

“Damn opinions and standards! – especially yours. I want the facts – all of them, to the last detail. Go on, and don’t waste time.”

“Well, your brother is a fool, as I said before, though in the end he did ‘make his jack’ and win a pot of money. But that was good luck – not good play.”

“Don’t fall into reflections,” interrupted Kilgariff, seeing that Campbell was in a reminiscent mood. “We’ve no time for that sort of thing. Go on with the facts.”

“Well, you see your brother was that sort of man about whom people say that he was ‘more sinned against than sinning.’ He always wanted to do right, and if he could have got a good steady job as a millionaire, I don’t know anybody who would have been more scrupulously upright than he. You see, he really thought he had principles – moral character and that sort of thing – when he hadn’t anything of the kind. Many people deceive themselves in that way. I never did. I was born of as good a family as yours, or any other. I was raised in the most honourable traditions, and as a young man I was reckoned a pattern of high-minded conduct. I knew all the time that I had no moral character, no principles. Or rather, I gradually became conscious of that fact.”

Kilgariff was exceedingly impatient of this autobiography, but he thought the shortest way to the man’s facts was to let him talk on in his own way. So he forebore to interrupt, and Campbell continued: —

“I would have killed any man who called me a liar, but I never hesitated to lie when lying seemed to me of advantage. I was scrupulous in paying my debts and discharging every social duty, but I knew myself well enough to know that if an opportunity came to me to rob any man without being found out, I would do it and not hesitate or repent over it. Like the great majority of men, I was honest only as a matter of policy. I had no moral character. Most people haven’t any, but they go on thinking they have and pretending about it until they completely deceive themselves. They refuse to take the old sage’s advice to ‘know thyself.’ I took it. I early learned to know myself.

“But if I had no principles, I at least had sentiments. One of those sentiments was pride in my family. When I saw clearly that I was going to be an adventurer, a gambler, a swindler, a man living by his wits, I did not shrink from that, but I shuddered at the thought of disgracing the name I bore. So I decided not to bear that name, but to choose another. At first I thought of calling myself ‘George Washington Bib’ – just for the humour of the thing. The sudden slump from the resonance of ‘George Washington’ to the monosyllabic inconsequence of ‘Bib’ struck me as funny. But I reflected that while I had never heard of anybody named Bib, there might be people by that name. Still further, it occurred to me that anybody on being introduced to George Washington Bib would be sure to remember the name, and in the career I had marked out for myself that might be inconvenient. So I made up my mind to call myself Campbell. There are so many families of that name, and they are so prolific, that the mere name means nothing – not even a probability of kinship. But you’re not interested in all this. You want to hear about your brother.”

“Yes,” answered Kilgariff.

“Well, your brother was highly respectable, as you know. He was comfortably rich at the first, and after he lost most of his money he struggled hard to keep up the pretence of being still comfortably rich. He did the thing very cleverly, and it let him into several pretty good things in Wall Street. But it let him into a good many very bad things also, and in his over-anxiety to become really rich again, he went into the bad things headforemost and blindfold. I was posing as a lawyer then, you know, and cutting a large swath. I really had no regular practice of any consequence, but I kept two large suites of offices and any number of clerks, as a blind, and I managed every now and then to find out things that I could turn to account – ”

“Blackmail, I suppose.”

“Yes, I suppose you’d call it that, but always with a weather eye on the law. You see, when an active lawyer finds out that a big banker has been doing things he oughtn’t, the big banker is apt to conclude that he needs the services of precisely that particular lawyer as private counsel. There are big fees in the business sometimes, but it’s risky and uncertain. So I had my ups and downs. I was in one of the very worst of my downs when this bank affair fell in. I had been a bank examiner at one time, and had twice examined the affairs of this bank. I knew that its deposits were enormous and its assets sufficient, if properly handled, to pay out everything and leave a large surplus, besides something for the receiver. So I decided to become in effect, though not in fact, the receiver. I owned a judge. He owed me money which he couldn’t pay, and that money was owing on account of things which he couldn’t on any consideration allow to be inquired into in ‘proceedings.’ Moreover, I knew a lot of other things which in themselves made me his master. Still again, his term was nearly at an end, and I had the political influence necessary to secure or defeat his renomination and re-election, as I might choose. In short, I owned him body and soul. So, when it fell to him to appoint a receiver for this bank, he naturally sent for me in consultation. His idea was to appoint me to the receivership, but I saw clearly that that would not do. It would raise a row, for I was pretty well known to the big financiers, many of whom had been obliged to employ me by way of silencing me at one time or another. But more important than that was the fact that the plans I had formed for the handling of the bank’s affairs involved a good deal of risk to the receiver. The bank had a great many investments that must be closed out in order to put the institution on its feet again, and there are various ways of closing out such investments. It was my idea that they should be so closed out as to leave the bank just barely solvent and able to pay its depositors, you understand – ”

“Yes – and that you and your pals should pocket the surplus.”

“Precisely. I didn’t imagine you had so good a head for business.”

“Never mind my head. Consider your own neck, and go on with the story.”

“Now won’t you understand,” said the adventurer, “that I’m not thinking about my neck? I’ve staked that as my ’ante’ in this game, and I never ask the ante back. Well, I showed my judge that it wouldn’t do at all to make me receiver, but I told him I would find him the right man. Your brother had already occurred to me as available. He was in extreme financial difficulties at that time. He was in arrears in his club dues, and his tailor’s bills, and even to his servants. He had sold out every bond and every share of stock he owned, and still his debts were sorely pressing him. He lived at a fine though small place just out of town, where he and his wife and daughters entertained sumptuously. For even to his wife and daughters he kept up the pretence of being comfortably rich, so that they had no hesitation in giving orders at the caterers’ and the florists’ and directing that the bills be sent to him.

“I knew his condition. I knew that he was passing sleepless nights in dreadful apprehension of the quickly coming time when the florists and the caterers would surely refuse to fill the orders of his wife and daughters on the ground that he owed them and didn’t pay.

“One day I sent for him to dine with me in a private room at an expensive hotel. I vaguely suggested to him that his fortune was made; that within a few days I should be able to put him in position to twiddle his fingers at the florists and the caterers. But I gave him no details. I gave him limitless champagne instead, and, as my digestion resented champagne at that time, I excused myself from drinking more than a very small share of the enticing beverage. We decided to play poker, after dinner, just for amusement. The chips were valued high – a dollar for a white chip, two and a half for a red, and five dollars for a blue.

“For a time your brother had marvellous ‘luck.’ He won enough of my paper promises to pay to make him feel already quite independent of the caterers and the florists, and to convince him that at poker I was exceedingly easy prey to a man who ‘really understood the game,’ as he conceitedly thought he did. Well, we played on till morning; and when sunrise came, he had given me his I O U’s for more money than he had ever owned in his life.”

“That is to say, you had made him drunk on champagne, and then had cheated him without limit?”

“Well, yes, that’s about it. Anyhow, I owned him. After he had got over the headache and the champagne, he came to me at my office to see what could be done by way of compromise. I told him that I had no money and no resources except my wits; I frankly confessed that but for certain cash payments he had made early in the game, I could not have paid for the hotel room and tipped the waiters to the tune that waiters set when they are privy to a game of that kind.

“‘But it’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘Don’t bother about the I O U’s. They’ll keep. They are debts of honour, of course, but they needn’t be paid till it is convenient to pay them; and when you go into the position that I’ve secured for you, it will be not only convenient, but exceedingly easy.’

“Then I told him about the receivership and my purpose to have him appointed. I explained that in the mere matter of commissions it would give him a princely income, to say nothing of perquisites. I didn’t explain what ‘perquisites’ in such a case meant. That was because I had no moral character. He didn’t ask. That was because he thought he had a moral character and wished to spare it affront.

“It was easily arranged that the judge I owned should appoint as receiver the man I owned. But I didn’t own my man completely, as yet. He owed me more money, as a debt of honour, than he could pay at that time; but once in the receivership, he could quickly pay off all that, and then I shouldn’t own him at all. Indeed, he might have repudiated the I O U’s as illegal gambling debts; he might have refused to pay them at all. But I wasn’t afraid of that. Your brother fondly imagined that he was a man of honour, of high moral principle, and so I knew that in order to keep up that pretence with himself he would stand by his debts of honour. But I foresaw that he might presently discharge them all, out of the proceeds of the receivership, and send me adrift. I must get a stronger grip on him. So I told my judge to send for him and say certain things to him.

“‘You must setup a house,’ the judge told him, ‘in a fashionable quarter of the town, by way of maintaining your position. You see, it won’t do for me to put anybody in charge of those many millions who isn’t recognised as himself a man of independent wealth. You must have a good house and enlarge your establishment. The receivership will abundantly recoup you in the end, but from the beginning we must keep up appearances.’

“Your brother came to me in great distress of mind to tell me what the judge had required of him. He frankly told me he hadn’t the money necessary to make a first payment on the lease of a town house, to furnish it suitably, and to establish himself in it. I pretended to be worried over the matter, and I took twenty-four hours in which to think about it. Then I sent for your brother again and told him I saw a way out; that certain clients of mine had money to invest on bond and mortgage, and had placed it in my hands; that by a little stretching of my authority I could let him have the amount he needed, as a mortgage loan on his place in the country. I saw his face fall when I suggested this, as I had expected to see it fall. Presently he explained that in order to give a mortgage on his country place, which really stood in his wife’s name and had in fact come to her as a dowry, he must get her to execute the papers. That would be very awkward, he explained, as he had never thought it necessary to bother his womankind about his affairs. To ask his wife to execute a mortgage would necessitate a statement to her of his financial position, and a whole lot more of that sort, which I had expected. I told him I thought I could arrange the matter; that my clients had placed their affairs completely in my hands; that all they wanted was the prompt payment of interest and adequate security for their invested money; that the profits of the receivership would be ample to secure all this; and that any arrangement I might make would never be questioned by my clients. I told him that the mortgage security was after all only a matter of form in a case where the other security was so ample, and that the whole thing was in my hands. So I suggested that he should – as a mere matter of form – execute the mortgage, himself signing his wife’s name in her stead. I would take care of the document, not even recording it, and the loan could be paid off presently, with nobody the wiser. Your brother fell into the trap. He executed the mortgage, signing his wife’s name to it, and he was at once made receiver of the bank.

“From that hour, of course, he was my property. No negro slave in all the South was ever more completely owned, or more absolutely under the control of his master.

“I had only to reveal the facts at any moment in order to send him to jail. He had committed a felony – he, the highly respectable receiver of a savings bank, and a man regarded as a leader in social and even in religious movements of every kind. I held complete proofs of his felony in my own hands. He must do my bidding or go to State’s prison.

“My first order to him was to put me into the bank as counsel to the receiver, at a good salary, and also as expert accountant, at another good salary. The bank could afford all this and vastly more. Its assets were easily three times its liabilities – if properly handled, and I knew how to handle them. I meant no harm to your brother. On the contrary, I meant to make him rich and let him retire from the completed receivership with the commendation of the court for the masterly manner in which he had so handled the affairs of the institution as to make good every dollar of its deposits with interest, and to deliver it into the hands of its trustees again in a perfectly solvent condition. You see, the assets were ample for that, and to provide for my future besides. The only trouble before had been bad management and a deficient knowledge of the art of bookkeeping on the part of the respectable old galoots who had been in control of the bank. They might easily have straightened out everything without any court proceedings at all, if they had known how. Their violations of the law had been purely technical – such as occur in every bank every day – and these things can always be arranged on a good basis of assets, if the people in charge only know how.

“Now, when I began operations in the bank, your brother was inclined to object to some of the things I did. I had only to remind him of the mortgage papers in order to reduce him to subjection. He still thought he had a moral character, and so when I proposed to sell out the bank’s securities at ten or twenty or fifty per cent less than their value, and take a commission of five or ten or forty per cent for ourselves from the buyers, he raised grave moral objections. But he was in no position to insist upon them, and besides he was largely profiting by the transactions. Meanwhile, I was slowly getting the bank’s affairs into shape – very slowly, for there were the salaries of him and myself to be considered. Then came the revolt of the chief bookkeeper, and his complaint that we were robbing the bank. I tried hard to square him, but he wouldn’t square. That fellow really had a moral character, and, worse still, he couldn’t be scared. I showed him that as he had already permitted false entries in the bank’s books, he must himself be involved in any exposure that might be made. He answered that he knew that, and was prepared to explain matters in court and ‘take the consequences.’ Then your brother got scared half to death, and consulted you. If he had waited for forty-eight hours, I should have had that bookkeeper in jail, and your brother would have got credit for extreme vigilance. But when he sent for you, all was up. You came into the bank and practically took your brother’s place and function. But you neglected to provide yourself with legal authority to be in the bank at all. Another thing you didn’t reckon upon was my foresight. I had taken pains to win several of the clerks and bookkeepers to my side. I had ‘let them in,’ so that when you angrily dismissed me, I still had daily and hourly information of what was going on. You found out that the bank’s securities had been sold for less than they were worth, and you set to work to repair the wrong. You couldn’t cancel the sales that had been made, but you could and did pay your own money into the bank to make good what you regarded as the defalcations. That made it easy for me. I went to my judge – the one I owned – and laid before him the fact that you were handling the bank’s assets without a shadow of legal authority; that you had dismissed me – the receiver’s counsel and expert accountant – upon discovering that I knew of defalcations, and all the rest of it. You know that part of the story, for you suffered from it. To save your brother, you had sacrificed large sums of money. When that failed and you found that either he or you must go to prison for these defalcations, you decided to sacrifice your liberty and your reputation in order to save him and his wife and daughters. You refused to defend yourself. I thought your plan was to get a stay, give bail, and skip it. But you had the disadvantage of having a moral character, so you stood your hand and were sent to prison. Your brother, having no moral character, let you do this thing and pretended great grief over your dishonesty and perfidy. But he had learned the business by that time, and so he got away with the swag, and with the reputation of a man of truly Roman virtue who suffered acutely over the misbehaviour of his ‘black sheep’ brother. What a farce it all is anyhow – life, I mean – if one tries to take it seriously! Let me have a little brandy, please! I’m growing very faint.”

The brandy did its appointed work of stimulation, and presently Campbell resumed: —

“I don’t in the least understand why you should care for your brother, but, as you do, it may gratify you to know that he is leading a quiet life of luxury in the country on the Hudson. He is a comfortably rich man; for he kept the money he got out of the bank and invested it prudently – a thing I never could do when I had money. He highly disapproved of me, of course; but when I quitted the Southern army and went North – ”

“When you deserted, you mean.”

“Yes, if you look at it in that way – he used his influence to get me my present commission. That was cheaper than supporting me, which he must otherwise have done, for I had lost and squandered everything. That brings me to what I really want to talk to you about. I have a daughter somewhere in the South, if she is still alive. She was captured a few months ago during an effort on the part of – well, never mind whom – to smuggle her through the lines into the South, where she has some relatives, though I don’t believe she knows who they are. It doesn’t matter. They say I’ve persecuted the girl – and I suppose in a way I have.

“Never mind that. I’m sinking fast now and haven’t any time for explanations. I have some papers here that may mean everything to her after she comes of age. She has been taught that she is only seventeen years old. In fact, she is nineteen, and she must have these papers when she is twenty-one. I sent for you to ask you to find her and deliver them. You really have a moral character, and so you won’t trade on this matter. With your wide acquaintance, you’ll know how to find the girl. Her name is Evelyn Byrd.”

If a shell had exploded in the room, Kilgariff would not have been so startled as he was by this announcement. But he had no time for questions. He had heard picket-firing for several minutes past, and his practised ear told him with certainty that the rattle of the musketry was steadily drawing nearer. He knew what that meant. The Federals were advancing in adequate force for the recapture of the position and the destruction of Major Irby’s little handful of men.

A few minutes before Campbell made his startling announcement, a note had come to Kilgariff from Major Irby, saying: —

“Enemy advancing in considerable force, but I can hold place for an hour or more if absolutely necessary. You needn’t hurry. Only cut it as short as you can.”

But just at the moment of the mention of Evelyn Byrd’s name, the voices of two rifled cannon were heard near at hand, and Kilgariff knew the guns for his own. Instantly he sprang up, and, taking the papers from Campbell’s hand, passed out of the house without a word of farewell, leaped upon his horse, and galloped to the little hill where his guns had been posted.

It was in the gray of early dawn, and even considerable bodies of troops could not be seen except at short distances. But the enemy was pressing Major Irby hard, apparently bent upon capturing his force. Both his flanks were threatened, while his centre was specially hard pressed.

No sooner had Kilgariff reported that his mission was finished, and that he was himself with the guns, than Irby gave some rapid commands, threw his whole force upon the enemy with great impetuosity, and then, while the recoil before his charge lasted, swung his little band about and made good its escape at a gallop.

XIV

IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT

OWEN KILGARIFF was now beset with perplexities. So long as he should continue to serve with Early in the valley, he must retain the rank of captain which that commander had forced upon him, and this he was determined not to do. He knew that Early had reported upon his case, and that very certainly a commission would come to him in regular form from Richmond. He foresaw that its coming would greatly increase his embarrassment. He could not decline it except officially through General Early, to whom, of course, he could give no satisfactory reason for his erratic course.

Then, too, he was puzzled about the papers that Campbell had given him. These clearly belonged to Evelyn, and his first impulse was to send them to her and let her do what she would with them. But he remembered that Campbell’s injunction had been, or seemed to be, to deliver the documents into her hands only when she attained the age of twenty-one years. Not knowing what might be in the papers, Kilgariff could not know what or how much of harm might come to her from their premature delivery.

It is true that he had given no promise to Campbell, and as for the wishes of the adventurer, Kilgariff was in no way bound to respect them, and certainly he was not disposed to do so. His sole concern in the matter was for Evelyn’s welfare, and he could not make up his mind what his course of conduct ought to be with respect to that. He needed counsel very sorely, and there was only one man in all the South of whom he could freely ask counsel. That man was Arthur Brent, who might be still at Petersburg, or might have gone back to his laboratory work at Wyanoke.

In either case, consultation with him seemed equally out of the question. No confidence was to be placed in mails at that disturbed time, and of course Kilgariff would not ask for or accept even the sick furlough which the increasing inflammation of his neglected wound rendered exceedingly desirable, so long as there was well-nigh continuous fighting in progress at the front.

Altogether, Owen Kilgariff was sorely beset with puzzling uncertainty of mind. He was in action during most of the day after the night he had spent with Campbell, but neither weariness nor loss of sleep enabled him to close his eyes during the following night. He lay throughout the hours of darkness stretched upon the ground under a great chestnut tree, weary but with wide-open eyes, staring upward at the stars that showed through the leaves, and thinking to no purpose.

One thought occurred to him at last which caused him suddenly to sit up, and for a moment made his heart bound.

His vigil of ceaseless thought and perplexity had taught him much of his own soul’s condition which he had but vaguely guessed at before. It had shown him clearly what his feeling was toward Evelyn Byrd. He understood now, as he had not done before, that his love for the girl was the supreme passion of his life – the limitless, all-embracing, all-conquering impulse of a strong nature which had schooled itself to repression and self-sacrifice. He saw clearly that all this self-discipline – greatly as it had enabled him to endure and to make sacrifice – had given him no strength adequate to his present need. He had thought to conquer his passionate love; he knew now that he could never conquer it. He had thought to put it out of his mind as a longing for the unattainable; he knew now that it would for ever refuse to be dismissed.

“So long as I live,” he thought, “I must bear this burden; so long as I live, I must suffer and be still. For I shall at any rate retain too much of manhood and courage to win Evelyn’s love or to sadden her life by linking it with my own. My honour, at any rate, shall remain unspotted. Fortunately, a bullet or a sabre stroke is likely to solve all my riddles for me before this year comes to an end – and so much the more imperative is it that I arrange quickly for the disposal of her papers to her best advantage. But what is best? If these papers reveal to her the cruel fact that her father was an adventurer, a gambler, a swindler – and they must if they reveal anything – will it not be a great wrong to let her have them at all? And yet who but herself has a right to decide that she shall not receive whatever revelation the documents may make?”