“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.”
The girl looked at her wistfully, but said nothing. She ate sparingly, but apparently with the relish of one who is faint for want of food, the which led Dorothy to say: —
“It was just like a man to send you on here without giving you something to eat.”
“You are very good to me.” That was all the girl said in reply.
When she had rested, Dorothy sitting sewing in the meanwhile, the girl turned to her hostess and asked: —
“Might I put on my clothes again, now?”
“Why, certainly. Now that you are rested, you are to do whatever you wish.”
“Am I? I was never allowed to do anything I wished before this time – at least not often.”
The remark opened the way for questioning, but Dorothy was too discreet to avail herself of the opportunity. She said only: —
“Well, so long as you stay with me, Evelyn, you are to do precisely as you please. I believe in liberty for every one. You heard what Mammy said about me. Dear old Mammy has been trying to govern me ever since I was born, and never succeeding, simply because she never really wanted to succeed. Don’t you think people are the better for being left free to do as they please in all innocent ways?”
There was a fleeting expression as of pained memory on the girl’s face. She did not answer immediately, but sat gazing as any little child might, into Dorothy’s face. After a little, she said: —
“I don’t quite know. You see, I know so very little. I think I would like best to do whatever you please for me to do. Yes. That is what I would like best.”
“Would you like to go with me to my home, and live there with me till you find your friends?”
“I would like that, yes. But I think I haven’t any friends – I don’t know.”
“Well,” said Dorothy, “sometime you shall tell me about that – some day when you have come to love me and feel like telling me about yourself.”
“Thank you,” said the girl. “I think I love you already. But I mustn’t tell anything because of what they made me swear.”
“We’ll leave all that till we get to Wyanoke,” said Dorothy. “Wyanoke, you should know, is Doctor Brent’s plantation. It is my home. You and I will go to Wyanoke within a day or two. Just as soon as my husband, Doctor Brent, can spare me.”
The girl was manifestly losing something of her timidity under the influence of her new-found trust and confidence in Dorothy, and Dorothy was quick to discover the fact, but cautious not to presume upon it. The two talked till supper time, and the girl accompanied her hostess to that meal, where, for the first time, she