Evelyn Byrd

During the winter of 1863-4 Captain Pollard’s battery was stationed at Lindsay’s Turnout, on the Virginia Central Railroad a few miles west of Gordonsville. Indescribable, almost inconceivable mud was the characteristic of that winter, and General Lee had taken advantage of it, and of the complete veto it placed upon even the smallest military operations, to retire the greater part of his army from the Rappahannock and the Rapidan to the railroads in the rear, where it was possible to feed the men and the horses, at least in some meagre fashion.

It was during this stay in winter quarters that Owen Kilgariff had come to the battery. Whence he came, or how he got there, nobody knew and nobody could guess. There were only two trains a day on the railroad; one going east, and the other going west. It was the duty of strong guards from Pollard’s battery to man the station whenever a train arrived and inspect the passports of every passenger who descended from the cars to the platform or passed from the platform to the cars. Owen Kilgariff had not come by any of the trains. That much was absolutely certain, and nobody knew any other way by which he could have come. Yet one evening he appeared in Pollard’s battery at retreat roll-call and stood looking on and listening while the orders for the night were being read to the men.

He was a singularly comely young man of thirty years, or a little less – tall, rather slender, though very muscular, symmetrical in an unusual degree, and carrying his large and well-shaped head with the ease and grace of a trained athlete.

When the military function was ended and the men had broken ranks, Kilgariff approached Captain Pollard, and with a faultlessly correct military salute said: —

“Captain, I crave your permission to pass the night with some of your men. In the morning I think I shall ask you to enlist me in your battery.”

There was something in the man’s speech and manner which strongly appealed to Marshall Pollard’s sympathy and awakened his respect.

“You shall be my own personal guest for the night,” he said; “I can offer you some bacon and corn bread for supper, and a bundle of dry broom-straw grass to sleep upon. As for enlistment, we’ll talk further about that in the morning.”

The evening passed pleasantly. The stranger was obviously a gentleman to his finger tips. He conversed with rare intelligence and interest, upon every subject that happened to arise among the officers who were accustomed to gather in the captain’s hut every evening, making a sort of club of his headquarters. Incidentally some one made reference during the evening to some reported Japanese custom. Instantly but very modestly Kilgariff said: —

“Pardon me, but that is one of many misapprehensions concerning the Japanese. They have no such custom. The notion arose originally out of a misunderstanding – a misinterpretation; it got into print, and has been popularly accepted ever since. Let me tell you, if you care to listen, what the facts really are.”

Then he went on, by eager invitation, to talk long and interestingly about Japan and the Japanese – matters then very slightly known – speaking all the while with the modest confidence of one who knows his subject, but who is in no sense disposed to display the extent of his knowledge.

Finally, inquiry brought out the modestly reluctant information that Kilgariff had been a member – though he avoided saying in what capacity – of Commodore Perry’s expedition which compelled the opening of the Japanese ports, and that instead of returning with the expedition, he had somehow quitted it and made his way into the interior of the hermit empire, where he had passed a year or two in minute exploration.

All this was drawn out by questioning only, and in no case did Kilgariff go beyond the question asked, to volunteer information. Especially he avoided speaking of himself or of his achievements at any point in his conversation. He would say, “An American” did this, “An English-speaking man” saw that, “A foreigner had an experience,” and so forth. The first personal pronoun singular was almost completely absent from his conversation.

One of the lieutenants was a Frenchman, and to him Kilgariff spoke in French whenever that officer seemed at a loss to understand a statement made in English. The surgeon was a German, and with him Kilgariff talked in German about scientific matters, and in such fashion that the doctor said to Pollard next morning: —

“It is that this man an accomplished physician is, or I mightily mistaken am already.”

In the morning Owen Kilgariff warmly thanked Captain Pollard for his entertainment, adding: —

“As one gentleman with another, you have been free to offer, and I free to accept, your hospitality. Be very sure that I shall not presume upon this after I become a common soldier under your command, as I intend to do this morning if I have your permission.”

Pollard protested that his battery was not a proper one for a man of Kilgariff’s culture and refinement to enlist in, explaining that such of the men as were not ex-criminals were illiterate mountaineers, wholly unfit for association on equal terms with him. For answer, Kilgariff said: —

“I am told that you yourself enlisted here, Captain, when the conditions were even less alluring than now.”

“Well, yes, certainly. But my case was peculiar.”

“Perhaps mine is equally so,” answered the man. “At any rate, I very much want to enlist under your command, in a battery that, as I learn, usually manages to get into the thick of every fight and to stay there to the end.”

A question was on Pollard’s lips, which he greatly wanted to ask, but he dared not. With the instinctive shrinking of a gentleman from the impertinence of personal questioning, Pollard found it impossible to ask this man how it happened that he was not already a soldier somewhere. And yet the matter was one which very naturally prompted questioning. The Confederate conscription laws had long ago brought into the army every able-bodied man in the South. How happened it, then, that this man of twenty-eight or thirty years of age, perfect in physique, had managed to avoid service until this fourth year of the war? And how was it, that one so manifestly eager now for service of the most active kind had been willing to keep out of the army for so long a time?

As if divining the thought which Captain Pollard could not bring himself to formulate, Kilgariff said: —

“Some day, perhaps, I shall be able to tell you how and why it is that I am not already a soldier. At present I cannot. But I assure you, on my honour as a gentleman, that there is absolutely no obstacle in the way of your enlistment of me in your command. I earnestly ask you to accept me as one of your cannoniers.”

Accordingly, the man was enrolled as a private in the battery, and from that hour he never once presumed upon the acquaintance he had been privileged to form with the officers. With a scrupulosity greater than was common even in that rigidly disciplined command, he observed the distinction between officers and enlisted men. His behaviour indeed was that of one bred under the strict surveillance of martinet professors in a military school. He did all his military duties of whatever kind with a like attention to every detail of good conduct; always obeying like a soldier, never like a servant. That distinction is broad and very important as an index of character.

The officers liked him, and Pollard especially sought him out for purposes of conversation. The men liked him, too, though they felt instinctively that he was their superior. Perhaps their liking for him was in large part due to the fact that he never asserted or in any wise assumed his superiority – never recognised it, in fact, even by implication.

He nearly always had a book somewhere about his person – a book borrowed in most cases, but bought when there was no opportunity to borrow, for the man seemed always to have money in plenty. Now and then he would go to a quartermaster or a paymaster with a gold piece and exchange it for a great roll of the nearly worthless Confederate notes. These he would spend for books or whatever else he wanted.

On one occasion, when the men of the battery had been left for thirteen bitterly cold days and nights with no food except a meagre dole of corn meal, Kilgariff bought a farmer’s yoke of oxen that had become stalled in the muddy roadway near the camp. These were emphatically “lean kine,” and their flesh would make very tough beef, but the toughest beef imaginable was better than no meat at all, and so Kilgariff paid what looked like a king’s ransom for the half-starved and wholly “stalled” oxen, got two of the men who had had experience in such work to slaughter and dress them, and asked the commissary-sergeant to distribute the meat among the men.

The next day he exchanged another gold piece for Confederate notes enough to paper a goodly sized wall, and the men rightly guessed that for some reason, known only to himself, this stranger among them carried a supply of gold coin in a belt buckled about his waist. But not one of them ever ventured to ask him concerning the matter. He was clearly not a man to be questioned with regard to his personal affairs.

Thus it came about that Captain Pollard, who had made this man successively corporal, sergeant, and finally sergeant-major, solely on grounds of obvious fitness, actually knew nothing about him, except that he was an ideally good soldier and a man of education and culture.

Now that he had become sergeant-major, his association with the captain was close and constant. The two occupied the same tent or hut – when they had a tent or hut – messed together, slept together, and rode side by side whithersoever the captain had occasion to go on duty. They read together, too, in their idle hours, and talked much with each other about books, men, and affairs. But never once did Captain Pollard ask a personal question of his executive sergeant and intimate personal associate.

Nor did Kilgariff ever volunteer the smallest hint of information concerning himself, either to the captain or to anybody else. On the contrary, he seemed peculiarly to shrink even from the accidental or incidental revelation of anything pertaining to himself.

One day, in winter quarters, a gunner was trying to open a shell which had failed to explode when fired from the enemy’s battery into the Confederate lines. The missile burst while the gunner was handling it, and tore off the poor fellow’s hand. The surgeon had ridden away somewhither – nobody knew whither – and it was at least a mile’s distance to the nearest camp where a surgeon might be found. Meanwhile, the man seemed doomed to bleed to death. The captain was hurriedly wondering what to do, when Kilgariff came quietly but quickly, pushed his way through the group of excited men, knotted a handkerchief, and deftly bound it around the wounded man’s arm.

“Hold that firmly,” he said to a corporal standing by. “Watch the stump, and if the blood begins to flow again, twist the loop a trifle tighter, but not too tight, only enough to prevent a free hemorrhage – bleeding, I mean.”

Then, touching his cap brim, he asked the captain: —

“May I go to the surgeon’s tent and bring some necessary appliances? I think I may save this poor fellow’s life, and there is no time to be lost.”

The captain gave permission, of course, and a few minutes later Kilgariff returned with a score of things needed. Kneeling, he arranged them on the ground. Then he examined the wounded man’s pulse, and with a look of satisfaction saturated a handkerchief with chloroform from a bottle he had brought. He then turned again to Captain Pollard, saying: —

“Will you kindly hold that over the man’s nose and mouth? And will you put your finger on his uninjured wrist, observing the pulse-beats carefully? Tell me, please, if any marked change occurs.”

“Why, what are you going to do?” asked the captain.

“With your permission, I am going to amputate this badly shattered wrist. There is no time to be lost.”

With that, he set to work, pausing only to direct one of the corporals to keep the men back and prevent too close a crowding around the patient.

With what seemed to Captain Pollard incredible quickness, Kilgariff amputated the arm above the wrist, took up the arteries, and neatly bandaged the wound. Then he bade some of the men bear the patient on a litter to his hut, and place him in his bunk. He remained by the poor fellow’s side until the effects of shock and chloroform had subsided. Then he returned to his quarters quite as if nothing out of the ordinary routine had happened.

Captain Pollard had seen enough of field surgery during his three years of active military service to know that Kilgariff’s work in this case had been done with the skill of an expert, and his astonishment over this revelation of his sergeant-major’s accomplishment was great. Nevertheless, he shrank from questioning the man about the matter, or saying anything to him which might be construed as an implied question. All that he said was: —

“I thank you, Kilgariff, and congratulate you! You have saved a good man’s life this day, and God does not give it to many men to do that.”

“I hope the surgeon will find my work satisfactory,” responded the sergeant-major. “Is there any soup in the kettle, Tom?” – addressing the coloured cook. “Bring me a cup of it, please.”

The man’s nerves had gone through a fearful strain, of course, as every surgeon’s do when he performs a capital operation, and the captain saw that Kilgariff was exhausted. He offered to send for a drink of whiskey, but Kilgariff declined it, saying that the hot soup was quite all he needed. The bugle blowing the retreat call a moment later, Kilgariff went, quite as if nothing had happened, to call the roll and deliver the orders for the night.

A little later the surgeon returned and was told what had happened. After looking at the bandages, and without removing them, he muttered something in German and walked away to the captain’s quarters. He was surgeon to this battery only, for the reason that the company was for the time detached from its battalion, and must have a medical officer of its own.

Entering the captain’s quarters, the bluff but emotional German doctor grasped Kilgariff’s hand, and broke forth: —

“It is that you are a brother then as well as a frient already. Why then haf you not to me that you are a surgeon told it? Ach! I haf myself that you speak the German forgot. It is only in the German that I can what I wish to tell you say.”

Then in German the excited doctor went on to lavish praise upon the younger man for his skill. Presently the captain, seeing how sorely Kilgariff was embarrassed by the encomiums, came to his relief by asking: —

“Have you taken off the bandages, Doctor, and examined the wound?”

“Shade of Esculapius, NO! What am I, that I should with such a bandaging tamper? One glance – one, what you call, look – quite enough tells me. This the work of a master is – it is not the work with which for me to interfere. The man who those bandages put on, that man knows what the best masters can teach. It is not under the bandages that I need to look to find out that. Ach, Herr Sergeant-major, I to you my homage offer. Five years I in the hospitals of Berlin am, and four years in Vienna. In the army of Austria I am surgeon for six years. Do I not know?”

Then the doctor began to question Kilgariff in German, to the younger man’s sore embarrassment. But, fortunately for his reserve, Kilgariff had the German language sufficiently at his command to parry every question, and when tattoo sounded, the excited surgeon returned to his own quarters, still muttering his astonishment and admiration.

In the morning Captain Pollard asked Kilgariff to ride with him, in order that they two might the better talk together. But even on horseback Pollard found it difficult to approach this man upon any subject that seemed in the least degree personal. It was not that there was anything repellent, anything combative, and still less anything pugnacious in Kilgariff’s manner; for there was never anything of the sort. It was only that the man was so full of a gentle dignity, so saturated with that reserve which a gentleman instinctively feels concerning his own affairs that no other gentleman wishes to intrude upon them.

Still, Pollard had something to say to his sergeant-major on this occasion, and presently he said it: —

“I did not know until yesterday,” he began, “that you were a surgeon, Kilgariff.”

“Perhaps I should not call myself that,” interrupted the man, as if anxious to forestall the captain’s thought. “One who has knocked about the world as much as I have naturally picks up a good many bits of useful information – especially with regard to the emergency care of men who get themselves hurt.”

“Now listen to me, Kilgariff,” said Pollard, with determination. “Don’t try to hoodwink me. I have never asked you a question about your personal affairs, and I don’t intend to do so now. You need not seek by indirection to mislead me. I shall not ask you whether you are a surgeon or not. There is no need. I have seen too much with my own eyes, and I have heard too much from our battery surgeon as to your skill, to believe for one moment that it is of the ‘jack-at-all-trades’ kind. But I ask you no questions. I respect your privacy, as I demand respect for my own. But I want to say to you that this army is badly in need of surgeons, especially surgeons whose skill is greater than that of the half-educated country doctors, many of whom we have been obliged to commission for want of better-equipped men. I learn this from my friend Doctor Arthur Brent, who tells me he is constantly embarrassed by his inability to find really capable and experienced surgeons to do the more difficult work of the general hospitals. He said to me only a week ago, when he came to the front to reorganise the medical service for this year’s campaign, that ‘many hundreds of gallant men will die this summer for lack of a sufficient number of highly skilled surgeons.’ He explained that while we have many men in the service whose skill is of the highest, we have not nearly enough of such to fill the places in which they are needed. Now I want you to let me send you to Doctor Brent with a letter of introduction. He will quickly procure a commission for you as a major-surgeon. It isn’t fit that such a man as you should waste himself in the position of a non-commissioned officer.”

Not until he had finished the speech did Pollard turn his eyes upon his companion’s face. Then he saw it to be pale – almost cadaverous. Obviously the man was undergoing an agonising struggle with himself.

“I beg your pardon, Kilgariff,” hastily spoke Captain Pollard, “if I have said anything to wound you; I could not know – ”

“It is not that,” responded the sergeant-major. But he added nothing to the declaration for a full minute afterward, during which time he was manifestly struggling to control himself. Finally recovering his calm, he said: —

“It is very kind of you, Captain, and I thank you for it. But I cannot accept your offer of service. I must remain as I am. I ought to have remained a private, as I at first intended. It is very ungracious in me not to tell you the wherefore of this, but I cannot, and your already demonstrated respect for my privacy will surely forbid you to resent a reserve concerning myself which I am bound to maintain. If you do resent it, or if it displeases you in the least, I beg you to accept my resignation as your sergeant-major, and let me return to my place among the men as a private in the battery.”

“No,” answered Pollard, decisively. “If the army cannot have the advantage of your service in any higher capacity, I certainly shall not let myself lose your intelligence and devotion as my staff-sergeant. Believe me, Kilgariff, I spoke only for your good and the good of the service.”

“I quite understand, Captain, and I thank you. But with your permission we will let matters remain as they are.”

All this occurred about a week before the events related in the first chapter of this story.

III

EVELYN BYRD

WHEN the girl whom Kilgariff had rescued from the burning building was delivered into Dorothy Brent’s hands, that most gracious of gentlewomen received her quite as if her coming had been expected, and as if there had been nothing unusual in the circumstances that had led to her visit. Dorothy was too wise and too considerate to question the frightened girl about herself upon her first arrival. She saw that she was half scared and wholly bewildered by what had happened to her, added to which her awe of Dorothy herself, stately dame that the very young wife of Doctor Brent seemed in her unaccustomed eyes, was a circumstance to be reckoned with.

“I must teach her to love me first,” thought Dorothy, with the old straightforwardness of mind. “Then she will trust me.”

So, after she had hastily read Pollard’s note and characterised it as “just like a man not to find out the girl’s name,” she took the poor, frightened, fawnlike creature in her arms, saying, with caresses that were genuine inspirations of her nature: —

“Poor, dear girl! You have had a very hard day of it. Now the first thing for you to do is to rest. So come on up to my room. You shall have a refreshing little bath – I’ll give it to you myself with Mammy’s aid – and then you shall go regularly to bed.”

“But,” queried the doubting girl, “is it permitted to – ”

“Oh, yes, I know you are faint with hunger, and you shall have your breakfast as soon as Dick can get it ready. Queer, isn’t it, to take breakfast at three o’clock in the afternoon? But you shall have it in bed, with nobody to bother you. Fortunately we have some coffee, and Dick is an expert in making coffee. I taught him myself. I don’t know, of course, how much or how little experience you have had with servants, but I have always found that when I want them to do things in my way, I must take all the trouble necessary to teach them what my way is. Get her shoes and stockings off quick, Mammy.”

“I have had little to do with servants,” said the girl, simply, “and so I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you ever have a dear old mammy? queried Dorothy, thus asking the first of the questions that must be asked in order to discover the girl’s identity.

“No – yes. I don’t know. You see, they made me swear to tell nothing. I mustn’t tell after that, must I?”

“No, you dear girl; no. You needn’t tell me anything. I was only wondering what girls do when they haven’t a good old mammy like mine to coddle them and regulate them and make them happy. Why, you can’t imagine what a bad girl I should have been if I hadn’t had Mammy here to scold me and keep me straight. Can she, Mammy?”

“Humph!” ejaculated the old coloured nurse. “Much good my scoldin’ o’ you done do, Mis’ Dorothy. Dere nebber was a chile so cantankerous as you is always been an’ is to dis day. I’d be ’shamed to tell dis heah young lady ’bout your ways an’ your manners. Howsomever, she kin jedge fer herse’f, seein’ as she fin’s you heah ’mong all de soldiers, when you oughter be at Wyanoke a-givin’ o’ dinin’-days, an’ a-entertainin’ o’ yer frien’s. I’se had a hard time with you, Mis’ Dorothy, all my life. What fer you always a-botherin’ ’bout a lot o’ sick people an’ wounded men, jes’ as yo’ done do ’bout dem no-’count niggas down at Wyanoke when dey done gone an’ got deyselves sick? Ah, well, I spec dat’s what ole mammies is bawn fer – jes’ to reg’late dere precious chiles when de’re bent on habin’ dere own way anyhow. Don’ you go fer to listen to Mis’ Dorothy ’bout sich things, nohow, Mis’ – what’s yer name, honey?”

“I don’t think I can tell,” answered the girl, frightened again, apparently; “at least, not certainly. It is Evelyn Byrd, but there was something else added to it at last, and I don’t want to tell what the rest of it is.”

“Then you are a Virginian?” said Dorothy, quickly, surprised into a question when she meant to ask none.

“I think so,” said the girl; “I’m not quite sure.”

She looked frightened again, and Dorothy pursued the inquiry no further, saying: —

“Oh, we won’t bother about that. Evelyn Byrd is name enough for anybody to bear, and it is thoroughly Virginian. Here comes your breakfast” – as Dick knocked at the door with a tray which Mammy took from his hands and herself brought to the bed in which the girl had been placed after her bath. “We won’t bother about anything now. Just take your breakfast, and then try to sleep a little. You must be utterly worn out.”