Evelyn Byrd

THE LAST FLIGHT OF EVELYN

EVELYN went for a few minutes to her room. There she bathed her eyes; for like all women, she was ashamed of the tears that did her honour by attesting the tender intensity of her womanhood.

That done, she went to the laboratory, where she found Dorothy at work. To her she said: —

“Please let me have my book. I want Mr. Kilgariff to read it.”

Dorothy asked no explanation. She needed none. She went at once and fetched the manuscript. Evelyn took it and returned to the parlour, where she placed it in Kilgariff’s hands.

“Please read that, carefully,” she said. “Then you will understand.”

“If you mean,” he replied, “that anything this manuscript may reveal concerning your past life can lessen my love for you, you are utterly wrong, and the reading is unnecessary. If you wish only that I shall know you better, and more perfectly understand the influences that have made you the woman you are, I shall be glad to read every line and word that you have written.”

“Please read it.” That was all she said, and she instantly left the room.

Five minutes later she told Dorothy she wanted the carriage.

“I want to go to Warlock,” she said, “on a little visit to Mrs. Pegram. Oh, Dorothy! you understand.”

“Yes, dear,” answered Dorothy, “I understand. It is rather late to start to Warlock. It is a thirty-mile drive. But I’ll give you Dick for your coachman, and there is a moon. Dick is quite a military man now, and he knows what a forced march means. He’ll get you to Warlock in time for a late supper.”

Dick drove like a son of Jehu. After the manner of the family negro in Virginia, he shrewdly conjectured what was in the wind; and when he put up his horses at Warlock before even the regular supper was served, he said to the stableman: —

“I reckon mebbe Mas’ Owen Kilgariff’ll want stablin’ here for a good horse to-morrow, an’ purty soon in de mawnin’ at dat.”

XXXII

THE END OF IT ALL

DICK was right. Kilgariff read nearly all night, and finished Evelyn’s book in the small hours of the morning. Then he slept more calmly than he had done at any time during recent weeks.

At six o’clock he went to the kitchen and negotiated with Aunt Kizzey, the cook, for an immediate cup of coffee. Then he mounted the war-horse that had brought him to Wyanoke – sleek and strong, now, and full of gallop – and set off for Warlock plantation.

When he got there, the nine o’clock breakfast was just ready, but he had luckily met Evelyn in a strip of woodland, where she was walking in spite of the snow that lay ankle-deep upon the ground. Dismounting, he said to her: —

“I have read your book from beginning to end, Evelyn. I have come now for your answer to my question.”

“What question?” she asked, less frankly than was her custom.

“Will you be my wife?”

“Yes – gladly,” she said, “if my story makes no difference.”

“It makes a great difference,” he responded. “It tells me, as nothing else could, what a woman you are. It intensifies my love, and my resolution to make all the rest of your life an atonement to you for the suffering you have endured.”

The next day Evelyn cut short her visit to Warlock and returned to Wyanoke. At the same time Kilgariff went back to Petersburg to bear his part in the closing scenes of the greatest war of all time.

Grant was already in possession of the Weldon Railroad. With his limitless numbers, he had been able to stretch his line southward and westward until his advance threatened the cutting off of the two other railroads that constituted Richmond’s only remaining lines of communication southward. Lee’s small force, without hope of reinforcement, had been stretched out into a line so long and so thin that at many points the men holding the works stood fully a dozen yards apart.

Still, they held on with a grim determination that no circumstance could conquer.

They perfectly knew that the end was approaching. They perfectly knew that that end could mean nothing to them but disaster. Nevertheless, they stood to their guns and stubbornly resisted every force hurled against them. With heroic cheerfulness, they fought on, never asking themselves to what purpose. Throughout the winter they suffered starvation and cold; for food was scarce, and of clothing there was none.

Surely the spectacle was one in contemplation of which the angels might have paused in admiration. Surely the heroism of those devoted men was an exhibition of all that is best in the American character, a display of courage which should be for ever cherished in the memory of all American men.

When the spring came, and the roads hardened, Grant delivered the final blow. Sherman had cut the Confederacy in two by his march to the sea, and was now, in overwhelming force, pushing his way northward again, with intent to unite his army with Grant’s for Lee’s destruction.

Then Grant concentrated a great army on his left and struck a crushing blow. Lee withdrew from Richmond and Petersburg, and made a desperate endeavour to retreat to some new line of defence farther south.

The effort was foredoomed to failure. It ended in the surrender at Appomattox of a little fragment of that heroic Army of Northern Virginia which had for so long stood its ground against overwhelming odds, and so manfully endured hunger and cold and every other form of suffering that may befall the soldier.

It was during that last retreat that Kilgariff and Evelyn met for the first time since they had plighted troth, and for the last time as mere man and woman, not husband and wife.

Kilgariff, a brigadier-general now, had been ordered to take command of the guns defending the rear. By night and by day he was always in action. But when the line of march passed near to Wyanoke, he sent a messenger to Evelyn, bearing a note scrawled upon a scrap of paper which he held against his saddle-tree, in lieu of a desk. In the note he wrote simply: —

Come to me, wherever I am to be found. I want you to be my wife before I die. You have courage. Come to me – we’ll be married in battle, and the guns shall play the wedding march.

Evelyn responded to the summons, and these two were made one upon the battlefield, with bullets flying about their heads and rifle shells applauding.

The ceremony ended, Evelyn rode away to Wyanoke to await the end. A week later Owen Kilgariff joined her there.

“We are beginning life anew,” he said, “and together.”

“Yes,” she answered, “and at last I have nothing to fear.”

THE END

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