Evelyn Byrd

When it came time to go to the circus, I was surprised to find that a special carriage, drawn by two large, white horses with long, flowing tails, had been provided for me. I learned afterward that this was one of the Grand Panjandrum’s devices for advertising his “matchless equestrienne.” It gave the people the impression that Mademoiselle Fifine was a person of so much consequence that she must be treated like a queen, and it led to many wild, exaggerated stories of the royal salary the manager had to pay in order to secure so distinguished an “artiste.” It was popularly believed that “ten thousand a year wouldn’t touch her”; that she had her own carriage and coachman and footman and maid, and always the finest rooms in the hotel. My salary, in fact, was fifty dollars a month, and the “coachman” was one of the ring attendants. But I did have the best rooms in all the hotels. The Grand Panjandrum insisted upon that, and he did it rather noisily, too, complaining that the hotels really had no rooms fit for such a person to live in. All this was advertising, of course, but at any rate I was made as comfortable as could be.

I succeeded very well indeed in the bareback riding, and at my suggestion the manager sent an agent to Campbell’s ranch and bought the five or six horses there that I had trained. I soon drilled them to perform little acts in the ring which seemed to please the public. For this the manager added ten dollars a month to my salary. He and his wife were always very good to me, but some of the actors in the circus seemed jealous of the attention shown me and of the applause I got. I was already miserable, because I hated the business and especially my own part of it.

The whole thing seemed to me vulgar, and the people I had to associate with were very coarse. But what could I do? Anything was better than being Campbell’s daughter, and the circus gave me a living at the least.

Chapter the Fifteenth

I DID not remain long with the circus – not more than four or five months, I think – before Campbell found out where I was and came after me. If the manager had been a man of any courage, I should have refused to go with Campbell. But when Campbell threatened him with all sorts of lawsuits and prosecutions, he agreed to discharge me. Even then I should not have gone with Campbell if I could have got the money due me for my riding. But after the first month the manager had paid me almost nothing, on the plea of bad business (though his tent was always packed), and as he was paying all my expenses except for my plain clothes, I hadn’t pressed him for the money. He owed me nearly two hundred dollars when Campbell came, and I asked him for it, meaning to run away and find some other employment. But Campbell told him he was my father and my guardian, and that the money must be paid to him and not to me. The manager weakly yielded, and so I hadn’t enough money even to pay a railroad fare.

Under the circumstances, there was nothing for me to do but go with Campbell. He had sold the ranch, and was now keeping a big wholesale store in the city of Austin. He had built a very big house, and had a great many negro servants in it. Soon after I got to Austin, Campbell’s store was burned, and I thought at first that he was ruined. But he seemed richer after that than ever. My mother told me it was the insurance money, and a good many people used to think he had burned the store himself. There was a lawsuit about it, but Campbell won.

One day I concluded to have a talk with him. I asked him why he wanted to keep me with him, and why he wouldn’t give me the money I had earned in the circus, and let me go away.

He laughed at me, and told me it was because he didn’t choose to have his daughter riding in a circus. So I got no satisfaction out of him then. But in the letter he sent me in the bundle of papers that Colonel Kilgariff brought me, he explained the matter. It was because he feared I would get somebody else to be my guardian, and any new guardian would come upon him for the stocks and bonds my father had given me. Campbell had sold all of them that he could, and was using the money himself.

After a while, Campbell became interested in some kind of business – I don’t know what – out in Arizona; and when he had to go out there to stay for several months, he broke up his house in Austin, and took my mother and me with him. We lived in tents on the journey, and Campbell grew very uneasy after a time, because there were reports of a threatened Indian war. Still, we travelled on, until at last we got among the Indians themselves. They were very angry about something, but Campbell seemed to know how to deal with them, in some measure at least. But presently the war broke out in earnest, and Campbell told my mother he was completely ruined, as he had put all his money into the business, and this Indian war had destroyed it.

One day he had a parley with a big Indian chief, and that night he took my mother and went away somewhere, leaving me in the tent alone. About midnight a band of Indians came to the tent, howling like so many demons. They took me and carried me away on one of their horses.

I was greatly frightened, but I pretended not to be, and the Indians liked me for that. They always like people who are not afraid. They treated me well – or at any rate they did me no harm – but they carried me away to their camp, where all their squaws and children were; for they were on the war-path now, and Indians always take their families with them when they go to war.

When I found that they were not disposed to treat me badly I was almost glad they had captured me; for at least they had taken me away from Campbell, and I liked them much better than I did him.

In the letter Campbell sent me by Colonel Kilgariff, he told me that he had himself planned my capture by the Indians. He had arranged it with the chief when he had the parley with him; and when he went away with my mother, leaving me in the tent alone, he knew the Indians were to catch me that night. He wanted them to get me because then I couldn’t get another guardian, and he thought I could never come back to trouble him about my money when I grew up. I don’t know why he wrote all these things to me, except that he was dying and wanted me to know the whole story. He sent me back all my papers, so that I might some day get what was left of the property my father had given me. Among other things, he told me that my father was dead, and that he himself had killed him in a fight.

Chapter the Sixteenth

I STAYED with the Indians for several months – as long as the war lasted. It was then that I lived on buffalo meat alone, with no other food. Finally the soldiers conquered the Indians and forced them to go back on their reservation. Then Campbell came to see if I was still alive, and, finding me, he took me with him to New York, where he was practising law and doing something in a bank. That lasted a year or so. Nothing ever lasted long with Campbell. But when he left New York and went to Missouri to live, he seemed to have plenty of money again.

Soon afterward, this war came on, and Campbell raised a company, got himself appointed its captain, and went into the Confederate service. After a while, he came home on a leave of absence. He and my mother had been on very bad terms for a long time, and things seemed worse than ever.

One day, when he had been drinking a good deal, he insulted my mother frightfully, and she turned upon him at last, saying she intended to expose his rascalities and “bring him to book” – that was her phrase – for embezzling my property.

Dorothy, I can’t tell you all about that scene. I was so shocked and frightened that it gives me a nightmare even now to recall it. Campbell killed my mother by choking her to death in my presence!

As I was the only person who saw him do it, I think he would have killed me, too, if I had not run from him. As it was, he followed me presently, and with a pistol in his hand told me I must go with him, adding that if I ever told anybody what had happened he would kill me.

He took off his uniform and put on a suit of citizen’s clothing. Then he made me mount a horse, he mounting another, and we rode all night. In the morning we were in a Federal camp.

I don’t know what Campbell told the Federal officers, but he satisfied them somehow, and, taking me with him, he went East. He put me in charge of a very ugly old woman and her daughter, somewhere up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, not near any town or even village. Then he went away, and for three years I lived with those people, practically a prisoner. They never for a moment let me out of their sight, and at night I had to sleep in an upper room, a kind of loft, which had no window and no door – nothing but a trap-door over the stairs. Every night the younger woman closed the trap-door, fastening it below. The two women slept in the room beneath.

If I could have got away, I should have gone, even if I had been obliged to go into the woods and starve. For the women treated me horribly, and I could not forget the scene when my mother was killed. I thought of her always as she lay there on the floor, dead, with her face purple and – I can’t write about that.

Once I tried to escape. By hard work I made a hole in the roof above me, one night, and tried to climb up to it. But I missed my hold and fell heavily to the floor. That brought the two women up the stairs, and after that they took away every stitch of my clothing every night before I went to bed, not leaving me even a nightgown. So I made no further efforts to escape.

But I set to work in another way. I had learned that Campbell was now an officer in the Federal army, and I managed to find out how to reach him with a letter, so I wrote to him. I told him I intended to have him hanged for killing my mother, and that it didn’t matter how long he kept me in the mountains; that some time or other, sooner or later, I should get free; and that whenever that time came, I meant to go to a lawyer and tell him all about the crime.

I knew that this would make Campbell uneasy. I thought it not improbable that he would come up into the mountains and kill me, though I thought he might be afraid to do that. You see, when he killed my mother there was nobody but me to tell about it, and he knew he could go to the other side in the war and not be followed; while if he should do anything to me up there in the Pennsylvania mountains, everybody would know of it. For in that country everybody knew when a stranger came into the neighbourhood, and when he went away again. So I thought Campbell would be afraid to kill me there. I thought my letter would frighten him, and that he would take me away from that place. That was what I wanted. I thought that if I were taken to any other place, I should have a better chance of escaping.

Chapter the Seventeenth

THAT was not long before you saw me, Dorothy, and it turned out as I had expected. Campbell grew alarmed. He ordered the two women to bring me to him in Washington. When I got there, he told me that I had relatives in Virginia who wanted me to come to them, and that he had arranged to send me through the lines under a flag of truce. I know now that he was not telling me the truth, but I believed him then, and I was ready to do anything and go anywhere if only I could get out of his clutches.

He took me into another room, where an officer was writing, and there they made me swear to a parole. Then Campbell took me down to the Rapidan, and we went into that house from which Colonel Kilgariff rescued me. Campbell said that the flag of truce would start from there, but that we must wait there for the soldiers in charge of it to come.

When the shells struck the house and set it on fire, Campbell took me to the cellar and left me there, saying that he would be back in a few minutes, and that there was no danger in the cellar. I know now what his intention was. He expected me to be burned to death there in the cellar, and it would have happened that way, but for Colonel Kilgariff.

There, Dorothy, dear: now you know all about me that I know about myself.

The End of Evelyn’s Book

XXIX

EVELYN’S VIGIL

EVELYN BYRD’S exceeding truthfulness of mind and soul made her a transparent person for loving eyes to look through, and Edmonia Bannister’s eyes were very loving ones for her.

When she went to Branton for her ten days’ visit, Evelyn herself scarcely knew why she wished thus to separate herself from Kilgariff; but she went with a subconscious determination to avoid all mention of his name. She could hardly have adopted a surer means of revealing her state of mind to so wise and so experienced a woman as Edmonia.

After much thought upon the subject, Edmonia sent a little note to Dorothy. In it she wrote: —

You have never said a word to me on the subject, Dorothy, but I am certain that you know what the situation is between Evelyn and Kilgariff. So do I, now, and I am not satisfied to have it so.

Unless you peremptorily forbid, I am going to bring on a crisis between those two. I am going to tell Evelyn what Kilgariff has done for her in the matter of this trust fund. When she knows that, there will be a scene of some sort between them, and I think we may trust love and human nature to bring it to a happy conclusion.

If you will recall what occurred when the trust papers were executed and given to us three, you will remember that no promise of secrecy was exacted of us. It is true we quite understood that we were to say nothing to Evelyn about the matter until the proper time should come; but we three are sole judges as to what is the proper time, and Agatha and I are both of the opinion that the proper time is now. Unless you interpose your veto, therefore, I shall act upon that opinion, making myself spokeswoman for the trio.

Please send me a line in a hurry.

To this Dorothy replied by the messenger who had brought the note. She wrote but a single sentence, and that was a Biblical quotation. She wrote: —

Now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation.

On the evening before the day appointed for Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke, Dorothy received a second note from Edmonia, saying: —

I don’t know whether we have done wisely or otherwise. For once Evelyn is inscrutable. We have told her of Kilgariff’s splendid generosity, and we can’t make out how she takes it. She has grown very silent and somewhat nervous. She is under a severe emotional strain of some kind, but of what kind we do not know. A storm of some sort is brewing, and we must simply wait to learn what its character is to be.

Evelyn is proud and exceedingly sensitive, as we know. And there is a touch of the savage in her – or rather the potentiality of the savage – and in a case where she feels so strongly, it may result in an outbreak of savage anger and resentment.

We needn’t worry, however, I think. Even such an outbreak would in all probability turn out well. Every storm passes, you know; and when the clouds clear away, the skies are all the bluer for it. When a man and a woman love each other and don’t know it, or don’t let each other know it, any sort of crisis, any sort of emotional collision, is apt to bring about a favourable result.

Evelyn spent that evening in her room, writing incessantly, far into the night.

She wrote a letter to Kilgariff. When she read it over, she tore it up.

“It reads as if I were angry,” she said to herself, “and anger is not exactly what I feel. I wonder what I do feel.”

Then she wrote another letter to Kilgariff, and put it aside, meaning to read it after a while. In the meantime she wrote long and lovingly to Dorothy, telling her she had decided not to return to Wyanoke, but to go to Petersburg instead, and help in nursing the soldiers.