Evelyn Byrd

I was terribly scared, and wanted to jump out. I tried to open the doors, but the man had placed his hands on the two latches, so that I couldn’t move them. I felt like shrieking, but I decided that it was best to control myself, keep my wits about me, and be ready to deal with the situation wisely, as soon as I should find out what it really was. So, summoning all my self-control, I entered into conversation with the man who sat on the front seat opposite me.

“Do you mind telling me,” I asked, “why you have kidnapped me in this fashion?”

“It ain’t kidnapping, young lady, an’ it ain’t anything else irregular. You see, I had a warrant. I’m a court officer, an’ I does what the court orders an’ nothin’ else.”

“Then a court ordered you to seize me?” I asked.

“Ya’as ’m,” he answered.

“But on what ground?”

“‘Tain’t my business to know that, Miss, an’ as a matter of fac’ I don’t know it. All I know is, I was give a warrant an’ tole to serve it, an’ bring you to the court. Don’t you worry about a-payin’ of the cabman. I’ll ten’ to all that.”

“But what do they want with me in court?” I asked insistently.

“Dunno, Miss.”

“But who is it that wants me?”

“Dunno, Miss, only the warrant head said, ‘Campbell vee ess Byrd and Dennison.’”

“But what right have they to bother me in this way? Am I not a free person? Haven’t I a right – ”

“Dunno, Miss, ’tain’t my business to know. But I suppose you’re a gal under age, and I suppose gals under age ain’t got no rights in pertic’lar, leastways in opposition to their gardeens.”

By this time, we had arrived at the courthouse, and I was taken before the judge. I remember thinking that if I should displease him in any way, he could order me hanged. I know better now, but I thought so then; so I made up my mind to be very nice to the judge.

Campbell was there, and he had a lawyer with him. The lawyer told the judge that Campbell was – something in Latin —loco parentis, I think it was. Anyhow, it meant stepfather, or something like that. He said the courts in his State had made him my guardian; that I possessed valuable property; that I had been abducted by my father, who was a dissolute person, now serving out a sentence in the State’s prison for some crime. He gave the judge a lot of papers to prove all this.

I was so shocked and distressed to hear that my father was in prison, that for a while I couldn’t speak. At last I controlled myself and said to the judge: —

“I love my father. If he has been sent to prison, it was that man” – pointing to Campbell – “who got him sent there. My father is good and kind, and I love him. Campbell is wicked and cruel, and I hate him. Look at his flat nose! That’s where I smashed it with a heavy hair-brush when he tried to whip me for telling the truth about him. I don’t want to go with him. I want to go back to Mrs. Dennison, till my father can come after me. Please, Judge, let me do that.”

The judge asked Campbell’s lawyer how old I was, and he answered: —

“Thirteen years old, your Honour.”

Then the judge said: —

“She seems older. If she were fourteen, I should be bound by the law to let her choose her own guardian for so long at least as she shall remain in Illinois. But as the papers in the case seem to show that her age is only thirteen, I am bound to recognise the guardianship established by the courts of another State. I must remand the girl to the custody of her guardian, Mr. Campbell.”

Then, seeing in how desperate a strait I was, I summoned all my courage. I rose to my feet and faced the judge. I said: —

“But, please, Mr. Judge, this isn’t fair. That man Campbell hates me, and I hate him. Isn’t it better to send me to somebody else? Besides that, he has a lawyer, and I haven’t one. Can’t I hire a lawyer to speak for me? I’ve got two dollars in my pocketbook to pay him with.”

Everybody laughed when I said that. You see, I had no idea what the price of lawyers was. But just then an old gentleman arose and said to the judge: —

“If it please the court, I will appear as counsel for this persecuted girl. I have listened to these proceedings with indignation and horror. It is perfectly clear to my mind that this is a case of kidnapping under the forms of the law.”

There the judge interrupted him, saying: —

“The court will permit no reflections upon its proceedings.”

Then my lawyer answered: —

“I have cast no reflections upon the court. My challenge is to the integrity and good faith of this man, Campbell. I do not know the facts that lie behind this proceeding. I am going to ask the court for an adjournment, in order to find them out. It is obvious that this young girl – helpless and friendless here – looks not only unwillingly, but with positive horror, upon the prospect of being placed again in Campbell’s charge. Morally, and I think legally, she has a right to be heard in that behalf, to have the facts competently explored and fully presented to the court. To that end, I ask that the matter be adjourned for one week, and that the young girl be paroled, in the meanwhile, in the custody of her counsel.”

Then the dear old gentleman, whom everybody seemed to regard with special reverence, took his seat by my side, and held my hand in his. Campbell’s lawyer made a speech to the judge, and when he had finished, the judge said that my lawyer’s request was denied. He explained the matter in a way that I did not understand. It seemed to anger the old lawyer who had taken my case. He rose and said, as nearly as I can remember: —

“Your Honour’s denial of my motion is a denial of justice. This young girl, my client, is a minor child, utterly defenceless here except in so far as I have volunteered my services to defend her. But she is an American citizen, and as such is entitled to be heard in her own behalf. In this court she cannot get a hearing, for the reason that this court has corruptly prejudged the case, as it corruptly prejudges every case in which money or influence can be brought to bear.”

By this time the judge was pounding with his mallet, and the whole court-room was in an uproar. But, raising his voice, my dear old lawyer continued: —

“If justice were done, you, sir, would be dragged from the bench that you dishonour by sitting upon it. Oh, I know, you can send me to jail for speaking these truths in your presence. I trust you will try that. If, by any martyrdom of mine, I can bring the corruption of such judges as you are to the knowledge and attention of this community, I shall feel that my work is well done. In the meantime I shall set another to secure for this helpless girl a writ of habeas corpus which shall get for her, in another and more righteous court, the fair hearing which you insolently and criminally deny to her here. Now send me to jail in punishment of the immeasurable contempt I feel for a court where justice is betrayed for money, and where human rights are bartered away for a price.”

The judge was very angry, and a lot of men surrounded my old lawyer. But what happened afterward I have never known. For no sooner was I put in Campbell’s charge than I was hurried to a train, and the next morning I heard him say to one of the men he had with him: —

“We are out of Illinois now; we’ve beaten that writ of habeas corpus.”

Then he turned to me and said: —

“If you care for your own comfort, you will recognise me as your guardian, and behave yourself accordingly.”

I reckon you must be tired reading by this time, Dorothy, so you are to take a rest here, and I’ll write the remainder of my story in other chapters. I’m afraid I’m making my story tedious; but I’ve fully made up my mind to tell it all, because I don’t know what you will care for in it, and what will seem unimportant to you. If I try to shorten it by leaving out anything, the thing I leave out may happen to be precisely the thing that would change your opinion of me. I want to deal absolutely honestly with you; so I am telling you everything I remember.

XXVII

KILGARIFF’S PERPLEXITY

DURING the two days that Dorothy had thus far given to the reading of Evelyn’s book, Kilgariff had been chafing impatiently. He wanted to go back to Petersburg and active duty, and he wanted, before doing so, to ride over to Branton and “talk it out with Evelyn,” as he formulated his thoughts in his own mind.

He could do neither, for the reason that his wound began to trouble him again, and Arthur Brent, upon examining it, condemned him to spend another week or ten days in the house.

So far as “talking it out with Evelyn” was concerned, it was perhaps fortunate that he was compelled to submit to an enforced delay. For he really did not know what he was to say to Evelyn; and the more he thought about the matter, the more he did not know.

The question was indeed a very perplexing one. How should he even begin the proposed conversation? Should he begin by abruptly telling Evelyn that he loved her, but that there were reasons why he did not want her to give him love in return? That was not the way in which a woman had a right to expect to be wooed. It would be a direct affront to her womanly and maidenly pride, which she would promptly, and bitterly, and quite properly, resent. Moreover, by arousing her anger and resentment, it would utterly defeat his purpose, which was to find out his own duty by finding out how far Evelyn had already learned to think of him as a possible lover.

Should he, then, ask her that question, in her own singularly direct and truthful way of dealing?

That would be to affront and wound her by the assumption that she had given her love unasked.

Should he begin by explaining to her the circumstances which prompted him to shrink from wooing her, and then offer her his love if she wanted it?

Nothing could be more preposterous than that.

Should he simply pay her his addresses, ask her for her love, and then, if she should give it, proceed to explain to her the reasons why she should not have permitted herself to love such a man as he?

That question also promptly answered itself in the negative, with emphasis.

What, then, should he do?

Clearly it would be better to await Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke, and trust to good luck to open some possible way. At any rate, he might there approach the subject in indirect ways; while if he could have ridden over to Branton for the express purpose of having a conference with her, no such indirection would have been possible. His very going to her there would have been a declaration of some purpose which he must promptly explain.

Obviously, therefore, it was better that he should not go to Branton, but should await such opportunity as good fortune might give him after Evelyn’s return to Wyanoke. But that necessity postponed the outcome, and Kilgariff was in a mood to be impatient of delay, particularly as every hour consciously intensified his own love, and rendered him less and less capable of saying nay to his passion.

With her woman’s quickness of perception, Dorothy shrewdly guessed what was going on in his mind, and she rejoiced in it. But she made no reference to the matter, even in the most remotely indirect way. She simply went about her tasks with a pleased and amused smile on her face.

XXVIII

EVELYN’S BOOK, CONCLUDED

WHEN Dorothy took up Evelyn’s manuscript again, it was nine o’clock in the evening of the second day, and, moved by her eagerness to follow the story, even more than by her conscientious desire to finish it before the author’s return on the morrow, she read late into the night. But she had sent Evelyn a note in the late afternoon, in which she had written: —

My Evelyn is not to fail in her promise to come back to me to-morrow. I have not yet completed the reading of the manuscript, though I hope to do so to-night, if a late vigil shall enable me to accomplish that purpose. I have asked Arthur to let me sleep in the nursery to-night, if I finish the reading in time to sleep at all. So I can sit up as late as I please without fear of disturbing him. Poor fellow, he is working too hard and thinking too hard even for his magnificent strength.

But whether I finish your manuscript to-night or not, Evelyn dear, I have read enough of it to know that your life-story only confirms the judgment I had formed of your character, and draws you nearer to my sympathies. So come home in the morning, and don’t disappoint me.

When she took up the manuscript again, this is what she read: —

Chapter the Twelfth

WE travelled by the railroad as far as it went. Then we had to get into a big wagon, drawn by six mules.

The country we passed through was wild, and quite uninhabited, I think. At any rate, we saw no houses, and no people except now and then a little party of Indians. There were no roads, only dim trails, and there were no bridges, so that it sometimes took us three or four days to get across a river.

We carried all our provisions in the wagon, and when we stopped for the night we cooked our suppers by great big fires, built out of doors. It was usually about nightfall when we pitched our camp, and so long as our way lay through the woods, I used to lie awake for hours every night, looking up and watching the light from the camp-fire as it played hide and seek among the great trees. When at last we got out of the woods and began travelling over a vast prairie, the camping was far less pleasant, particularly when a norther blew, making it bitter cold. Still, I insisted on sleeping out of doors, although Campbell had fitted up a cosy little bedroom for me in the big wagon. That was because it was Campbell’s wagon. Out of doors I felt a sort of freedom, while if I even looked into the wagon I realised that I was that man’s prisoner.

He was trying to be good to me then. That is to say, he was trying to make me think him kind and to make me like him. Among other things, he gave me a horse to ride on. He had intended at first that I should travel in the wagon, but I would not do that. I preferred to walk, instead. So, after the second day, when we met a party of Indians, he bought a horse of them and gave it to me to ride. It was a vicious brute, bent upon breaking my neck, but I knew how to ride, and within a day or two I had taught the animal to like me a little, and to obey me altogether. I had no saddle, of course, but I never did like a saddle, and I don’t, even now, as you know. So I got one of the men to strap a blanket on my horse’s back with a surcingle, and I rode upon that.

The men who drove our mules were very rough fellows, but they soon got to liking me. I suppose that was because I knew how to ride and wasn’t afraid of anything. However that may be, they seemed to like me. They would do their best to make me comfortable, giving me the best they could get to eat – birds, squirrels, and the like – and always making for me a pallet of dry grass or leaves to sleep upon.

Finally, one evening, when Campbell had gone away from the camp for some purpose or other, one of the rough men came to me and said: —

“Little Missy” – that is what they always called me – “little Missy, you don’t like Campbell an’ you want to get away from him. Now he’s pretty quick on trigger, but I’m a bit quicker’n he is, an’ anyhow I’ll take the chances for you. Ef you say the word, I’ll pick a quarrel with him an’ kill him in fair fight. Then my pards an’ me’ll take you to some civilised town an’ leave you there, so’s you kin git back to your friends. Only say the word, an’ I’ll git him ready for his funeral afore mornin’.”

Of course this horrified me, particularly the indifference with which the man thought of murder. I told him he must never think of doing anything of the kind, and asked him to promise me.

“It’s jest as you says, little Missy,” he answered. “Only me an’ my pards wants you to know how ready we are to do you any little favour like that ef you want it done.”

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay all night looking up at the stars and thinking with horror of the light way in which this man had proposed to commit a murder for me. Then the thought came to me that I had myself tried to kill Campbell once with a hair-brush, and for a while I felt that after all I was no better than these murderous men. But, after thinking the thing out, I saw that the two cases were quite different. I had hit Campbell in self-defence, and I could not even yet feel sorry that I had wanted to kill him.

Chapter the Thirteenth

CAMPBELL was living, at that time, in a little town somewhere in Texas, and we got there after two or three weeks.

It was a dismal-looking place. All the houses were built of rough boards, set upon end, and most of them were saloons. Campbell’s house was like all the rest, and when I asked my mother why he lived in so small a house, and what he had done with the fine one that I remembered, she told me he had lost most of his money.

Almost immediately after I got to his house, Campbell took me before a sort of judge who had two pistols and a knife in his belt. Campbell told the judge that he wanted to adopt me as his daughter. When the judge asked him how old I was, he said I was thirteen, and then the judge said that my consent to his adoption of me was not necessary.

The reason he said that was because I had told him that I didn’t want to be Campbell’s daughter. The judge signed the papers, and told me that Campbell was my father now, and that I must obey him in everything. Campbell told me that my name would hereafter be Evelyn Byrd Campbell. I supposed then that he was telling the truth.

When he got home that evening, he had been drinking heavily, and he seemed particularly happy. He told my mother that he had “fixed things,” so that they wouldn’t be poor any longer. He said he was going to buy a big ranch and raise horses.

That night when I went to my bed, I found that somebody had broken into my closet and taken the satchel in which I kept my papers. When I raised an alarm, Campbell told me he had taken the papers and put them in a secure place, lest I should lose them. He said he was my father now, and that it was his duty to take care of my property.

I was terribly angry – so angry that if the teamster who had offered to kill Campbell for me had been there, I think I should have asked him to get my papers for me, although I knew that he would probably kill Campbell in doing so. But the teamster was gone from the town, and I was helpless.

Campbell and my mother did not get on together very well at this time. They never exactly quarrelled, at least in my presence, but I think that was because my mother regarded quarrelling as vulgar. She was a refined woman, or had been. She seemed now to be very unhappy, and I was sorry for her, though I could not love her. I never had loved her since she had married Campbell while her real husband, my father, was still living. One day I asked her if she didn’t think she had made a mistake in doing that, and if she didn’t think it wrong and wicked and vulgar for a woman to have two husbands alive at the same time. She rebuked me severely for what she called my insolence, and bade me never mention that subject again. I never did – to her.

Chapter the Fourteenth

VERY soon after this, Campbell bought a large ranch, as he said he would do, and we moved away from the town to live on the ranch.

I know now that he bought it with my money. When he had me made his daughter, and got hold of my papers, the law somehow allowed him to sell the stocks and bonds my father had given me, and he did so. I never knew this until a very little time ago – since I have been at Wyanoke. I’ll tell you about that in the proper place.

There were many horses on the ranch, and I spent nearly all my time riding them bareback and teaching them little tricks. It was the only thing I could do to amuse myself; for I did not like to be with my mother, and I hated the very sight of Campbell.

I had already learned to ride standing on the back of a horse, and I decided to learn all about that sort of riding. I enjoyed the danger involved in it, for one thing, especially when I learned to ride two horses at once in that way. But I did not practise these things for the sake of the excitement alone. I had a plan to carry out. I had determined to run away with the first circus that should come to that part of the country. I thought that if I could learn to be a really good bareback rider, the circus people would be glad to take me with them, and in that way I should get away from Campbell.

So I practised my riding every day, growing steadily surer of myself and more expert. I practised jumping through hoops, too – forward and backward – and standing on my hands on horseback, and throwing somersaults.

At last a circus came to the town twelve miles from the ranch, and Campbell offered to take me to see it. He was in one of his placative moods just then, and thought he would please me by this. But I declined the invitation. I did that because I meant to run away and join that circus, and I wanted him to think I cared nothing about a circus, so that he shouldn’t look for me among the show people. I still had the horse he had bought from the Indians and given to me, so that I could take that without being accused of horse-stealing. The horse was a tough, wiry fellow, who liked nothing so much as to run with all his might. I think he could have travelled at half-speed for twenty or thirty miles without growing tired.

One night, while the circus was in the town, I mounted my horse just after dark and set off for a ride. As I often rode for half the night, I knew Campbell would think nothing of my doing this. As soon as I was well away from the house, I turned into the road that led to the town, and put my horse – Little Chief – at a rapid gallop. Within less than two hours, I reached the town. Just before getting there, I turned Little Chief loose, set his head toward the ranch, and bade him “scamper.” I had taught him always to go to his stable as quickly as possible when I said that word “scamper” to him. This time I had removed the blanket from his back and the bridle from his head. I knew, therefore, he would be found in his stall next morning with nothing on him to show that he had been ridden.

As soon as Little Chief had started on his scamper, I turned and walked into the town. The circus performance was not quite over, so I went to the door of the big tent and told the man there that I wanted to see the proprietor of the show on important business. I hadn’t a cent of money, so I didn’t expect to go in. But the man at the door politely invited me to enter and see the end of the show. For a moment I thought of accepting his invitation, but then I remembered that all the ranch-men for twenty miles round would be there, and that they all knew me by sight as “that wild gal of Campbell’s.” I didn’t want any of them to see me at the circus, lest they should tell of it when the search for me began. So I told the man that I would not go in, and asked him where and how I could see the owner of the show after the performance. He called a man and told him to take me to “the Lady Superior, in the dressing-tent.” I found out presently that all the people in the circus called the manager’s wife by that name, and the manager they called “the Grand Panjandrum.” In fact, they had a nickname of some sort for every one in authority.

The Lady Superior received me as a queen might. She had just been riding around the ring in a red and gold chariot drawn by six white horses, and playing Cleopatra in what they called “the magnificent and gorgeous historical panorama of human splendour.” As Cleopatra, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, George Washington, Genghis Khan, Julius Cæsar, and a great many others took part in the spectacle, the people in the audience must have got their notions of history considerably mixed up, but at any rate the Lady Superior always seemed to enjoy her part, and particularly her gorgeous raiment. I had a hard time trying not to laugh in her face when I was first presented to her on that night. She was still dressed in her robe of flaming, high-coloured silk, trimmed with ermine and spangles, with her crown still on her head, and she was almost greedily eating a dish of beef à la mode with roast onions. But in spite of her gorgeous apparel and her defective grammar, she proved to be a good-natured creature, and she received me very kindly.

I told her what I could do as a bareback rider, and she took me to her hotel in her carriage as soon as she had put on some plain clothes. I told her that I didn’t want anybody in that town to see me, so she drove up to a back door of the little tavern and smuggled me into her room. I remember that the tavern was a little two-story, wooden building, with the inside partition walls made of rough boards set on end so loosely that one could see through the cracks into the next room. But it was called the Transcontinental Hotel, and the painter had found some difficulty in getting the big name into one line across the narrow front of the building.