Evelyn Byrd

“Who did that?”

“Why – well, the people I was with – no, I mustn’t tell you about them. In another of my books I wrote all I had learned about birds and animals and trees and other things. I reckon I know a good deal about such things, but what I wrote was only what I had learned for myself by seeing so much of them. You see, I was alone a good deal then, except for the wild creatures, and I got pretty well acquainted with them. Even here, where they never knew me, I can call birds or squirrels to me out of the trees, and they soon get so they will come to me even without my calling them.”

“Is that book in existence still?” asked Kilgariff, with manifest eagerness.

“I reckon so, but maybe not. I really don’t know. Anyhow, I shall never see it again, of course, and nobody else would care for it.”

“Oh, yes, somebody else would. I would give a thousand dollars in gold for it at this moment.”

“Why, what for? It was only a childish thing, and besides I had never studied about such things.”

“Listen!” interrupted Kilgariff. “Do you know where science comes from, and what it is? Do you realise that absolutely every fact we know, of the kind we call scientific, was originally found out just by somebody’s looking and listening as you did with your animals and birds and flowers? And the persons who looked and listened and thought about what they saw, told other people about them in books, and so all our science was born? Those other people have put things together and given learned names to them, and classified the facts for convenience, but the ones who did the observing have always been the discoverers, the most profitable workers in science. Audubon was reckoned an idle, worthless fellow by the commonplace people about him, because he ‘wasted his time’ roaming about in the woods, making friends of the wild creatures and studying their habits. But scientific men, who are not commonplace or narrow-minded, were glad to listen when this idle fellow told them what he had learned in the woods. In Europe and America the great learned societies never tired of heaping honours upon him and the books he wrote; and the pictures he painted of his woodland friends sold for fabulous sums, bringing him fame and fortune.”

“I am glad of that,” answered the girl, simply; “for I like Audubon. I’ve been reading his Birds of America, since I came to Wyanoke. But I am not Audubon, and my poor, childish writings are not great like his.”

“They are if they record, as they must, observations that nobody else had made before. On the chance of that, I would give a thousand dollars in gold, as I said before, for that childish manuscript. Could you not reproduce it?”

“Oh, no; never. Of course, I remember all the things I put into it, but I set them down so childishly – ”

“You set them down truthfully, of course.”

“Oh, yes – but not in any proper order. I just wrote in my book each day the new things I had seen or learned or thought. Mostly I was interested in finding out what animals think, and how or in what queer ways plants behave under certain circumstances. There was nothing in all that – ”

“There was everything in all that, and it was worth everything. But of course, as you say, you cannot reproduce the book – not now at least. Perhaps some day you may.”

“But I don’t understand?” queried the girl. “If I can’t rewrite the book now – and I certainly can’t – how shall I ever be able to do it ‘some day’? Before ‘some day’ comes I shall have forgotten many things that I remember now.”

“No, you will not forget anything of vital interest. But now you are self-conscious and therefore shy and self-distrustful, as you were not in your childhood when you wrote the book, and as you will not be when you grow into a maturer womanhood and learn to be less impressed by what you now think the superiority of others. When that time comes, you will write the book again, adding much to its store of observed facts, for you are not going to stop observing any more than you are going to stop thinking.”

Evelyn shook her head.

“I could never write a book – a real book, I mean – fit to be printed.”

“We shall see about that later,” said Kilgariff. “You are a young woman of unusual intellectual gifts, and under Mrs. Brent’s influence you will grow, in ways that you do not now imagine.”

Kilgariff was profoundly interested, and he was rapidly talking himself into a fever. Evelyn was quick to see this, and she was also anxious to escape further praise and further talk about herself. So, with a demure little air of authority, she said: —

“You must stop talking now. It is very bad for you. You must take a few sips of broth and then a long sleep.”

All this occurred long after the day when Kilgariff handed her his captain’s commission and bade her “send it back,” saying, “I don’t want it.” At that time she was wholly ignorant of military formalities. She did not know that under military usage Kilgariff could not communicate with the higher authorities except formally and “through the regular channels”; that is to say, through a succession of officers, beginning with his captain. She saw that this commission was dated at the adjutant-general’s office in Richmond and signed, “S. Cooper, Adjutant-general.” Nothing could be simpler, she thought, than to relieve Kilgariff of all trouble in the matter by herself sending the document back, with a polite note to Mr. S. Cooper. So she wrote the note as follows: —

S. Cooper, Adj’t-general,

Richmond.

Dear Sir: —

Sergeant-major Kilgariff is too weak from his wound to write his own letters, so I’m writing this note for him, to send back the enclosed paper. Mr. Kilgariff doesn’t want it, but he thanks you for your courtesy in sending it.

    Yours truly,
    Evelyn Byrd.

Precisely what would have happened if this extraordinary note with its enclosure had reached the adjutant-general of the army, in response to his official communication, it is difficult to imagine. Fortunately, Evelyn was puzzled to know whether she should write on the envelope, “Mr. S. Cooper,” or “S. Cooper, Esq.” So she waited till Kilgariff should be awake and able to instruct her on that point.

When he saw what she had written, his first impulse was to cry out in consternation. His second was to laugh aloud. But he did neither. Instead, he quietly said: —

“We must be a little more formal, dear, and do this business in accordance with military etiquette. You see, these official people are very exacting as to formalities.”

Then he wrote upon the official letter which had accompanied the commission a respectful indorsement declining the commission, after which he directed his secretary-nurse to address it formally to Captain Marshall Pollard, who, he explained, would indorse it and forward it through the regular channels, as required by military usage.

“But why not accept the commission?” asked Evelyn, simply. She did not at all realise – and Kilgariff had taken pains that she should not realise – the enormity of her blunder or the ludicrousness of it. “Isn’t it better to be a captain than a sergeant-major?”

“For most men, yes,” answered Kilgariff; “but not for me.”

But he did not explain.

VIII

SOME REVELATIONS OF EVELYN

IN the meanwhile Arthur Brent had acted upon Dorothy’s suggestion. He had prepared a careful statement of Kilgariff’s case, withholding his name of course, and had submitted it to General Stuart, with the request that that typical exemplar of all that was best in chivalry should himself choose such officers as he deemed best, to constitute the court.

The verdict was unanimous. Stuart wrote to Arthur Brent: —

Every member of the court is of opinion that your own assurance of the innocence of the gentleman concerned is conclusive. They are all of opinion that he is entirely free and entitled to accept a commission, and that he is not under the slightest obligation to reveal to anybody the unfortunate circumstances that have caused him to hesitate in this matter. It is the further opinion of the court, and I am asked to express it with emphasis, that the course of the gentleman concerned, in refusing to accept a commission upon the point of honour that influenced him to that decision, is in itself a sufficient assurance of his character. Tell him from me that, without at all knowing who he is, I urge and, if I may, I command him to accept the post you offer him, in order that he may render his best services to the cause that we all love.

Arthur Brent hurried this letter to his friend at Wyanoke; but before it arrived, the writer of it, the “Chevalier of the Lost Cause,” had passed from earth. He fell at the Yellow Tavern, at the head of his troopers in one of the tremendous onsets which he knew so well how to lead, before this generous missive – perhaps the last that he ever wrote – fell under the eyes of the man, all unknown to him, whom he thus commanded to accept honour and duty with it.

The fact of Stuart’s death peculiarly embarrassed a man of Kilgariff’s almost boyish sensitiveness.

I feel [he wrote to Arthur Brent] as if I were disobeying Stuart’s commands and disregarding his dying request, in still refusing to reconsider my decision. Yet I feel that I must do so in spite of the decision of your court of honour, in spite of your friendly insistence, in spite of everything. After all, Arthur, a man must be judge in his own case, when his honour is involved. The most that others can do – the most even that a court of honour can do – is to excuse, to pardon, to permit. I could never submit to the humiliation of excuse, of pardon, of permission, however graciously granted. I sincerely wish you could understand me, Arthur. In aid of that, let me state the case. I am a man condemned on an accusation of crime. I am an escaped prisoner, a fugitive from justice. I am innocent. I know that, and you are generous enough to believe it. But the hideous fact of my conviction remains. It seems to me that even upon the award of a court of honour, backed by something like the dying injunction of our gallant cavalier, Stuart, I cannot honourably consent to accept a commission and meet men of stainless reputation upon equal terms, or perhaps even as their superior and commanding officer, without first revealing to each and all of them the ugly facts that stand in the way. Generous they may be; generous they are. But it is not for me to impose myself upon their generosity, or to deceive them by a reserve which I am bound to practise.

I have already sent back a captain’s commission which I had fairly won by that little fight on the hill at Spottsylvania. With you I may be frank enough to say that any sergeant-major doing what I did on that occasion would have been entitled to his captaincy as a matter of right, and not at all as a matter of favour. I had fairly won that commission, yet I returned it to the war department, simply because I could not forget the facts in my case. How much more imperative it is that I should refuse the higher commission which you press upon me, and which I have not won by any conspicuous service! Will you not understand me, my friend? Will you not try to look at this matter from my point of view? So long as I am a condemned criminal, a fugitive from justice, I simply cannot consent to become a commissioned officer entitled by my government’s certification to meet on equal terms men against whom no accusation has been laid.

Let that matter rest here. I shall remain a sergeant-major to the end – an enlisted man, a non-commissioned officer whose captain may send him back to the gun whenever it pleases him to do so, a man who must touch his cap to every officer he meets, a man subject to orders, a man ready for any work of war that may be given him to do. In view of the tedious slowness with which I am recovering from this wound, and the great need I know Captain Pollard has for an executive sergeant, I wrote to him, two weeks ago, resigning my place, and asking him to select some other capable man in my stead. He replied in his generous fashion, absolutely refusing to accept my resignation.

That was Kilgariff’s modest way of putting the matter. What Pollard had actually written was this: —

By your gallantry and your capacity as a hard-fighting soldier, you have won for my battery such honour and distinction as had not come to it from all its previous good conduct. Do you imagine that I am going to lose such a sergeant-major as you are, merely because his honourable wounds temporarily incapacitate him? I had thought to lose you by your richly earned promotion to a rank equal to my own, or superior to it. That promotion you have refused – foolishly, I think – but at any rate you have refused it. You are still my sergeant-major, therefore, and will remain that until you consent to accept a higher place.

This was the situation so far as Kilgariff was concerned, as it revealed itself to Pollard and Arthur Brent. Dorothy knew another side of it. For with Dorothy, Kilgariff had quickly established relations of the utmost confidence and the truest friendship; and to Dorothy, Kilgariff revealed every thought, as he had never done to any other human being.

Indeed, revelation was not necessary. Dorothy was a woman of that high type that loves sincerely and with courage, and Dorothy had seen the daily and hourly growing fascination of Kilgariff for Evelyn. She had seen Evelyn’s devoted ministry to him, and had understood the unconscious love that lay behind its childlike reserve. She had understood, as he had not, that, all unknown to herself, Evelyn had made of Kilgariff the hero of her adoration, and that Kilgariff’s soul had been completely enthralled by a devotion which did not recognise its own impulse or the fulness of its meaning. Dorothy knew far more, indeed, of the relations between these two than either of themselves had come to know.

She was in no way unprepared, therefore, when one day Kilgariff said to her, as they two sat in converse: —

“You know, of course, that I am deeply in love with Evelyn?”

“Yes,” Dorothy answered; “I must be blind if I did not see that.”