IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT

OWEN KILGARIFF was now beset with perplexities. So long as he should continue to serve with Early in the valley, he must retain the rank of captain which that commander had forced upon him, and this he was determined not to do. He knew that Early had reported upon his case, and that very certainly a commission would come to him in regular form from Richmond. He foresaw that its coming would greatly increase his embarrassment. He could not decline it except officially through General Early, to whom, of course, he could give no satisfactory reason for his erratic course.

Then, too, he was puzzled about the papers that Campbell had given him. These clearly belonged to Evelyn, and his first impulse was to send them to her and let her do what she would with them. But he remembered that Campbell’s injunction had been, or seemed to be, to deliver the documents into her hands only when she attained the age of twenty-one years. Not knowing what might be in the papers, Kilgariff could not know what or how much of harm might come to her from their premature delivery.

It is true that he had given no promise to Campbell, and as for the wishes of the adventurer, Kilgariff was in no way bound to respect them, and certainly he was not disposed to do so. His sole concern in the matter was for Evelyn’s welfare, and he could not make up his mind what his course of conduct ought to be with respect to that. He needed counsel very sorely, and there was only one man in all the South of whom he could freely ask counsel. That man was Arthur Brent, who might be still at Petersburg, or might have gone back to his laboratory work at Wyanoke.

In either case, consultation with him seemed equally out of the question. No confidence was to be placed in mails at that disturbed time, and of course Kilgariff would not ask for or accept even the sick furlough which the increasing inflammation of his neglected wound rendered exceedingly desirable, so long as there was well-nigh continuous fighting in progress at the front.

Altogether, Owen Kilgariff was sorely beset with puzzling uncertainty of mind. He was in action during most of the day after the night he had spent with Campbell, but neither weariness nor loss of sleep enabled him to close his eyes during the following night. He lay throughout the hours of darkness stretched upon the ground under a great chestnut tree, weary but with wide-open eyes, staring upward at the stars that showed through the leaves, and thinking to no purpose.

One thought occurred to him at last which caused him suddenly to sit up, and for a moment made his heart bound.

His vigil of ceaseless thought and perplexity had taught him much of his own soul’s condition which he had but vaguely guessed at before. It had shown him clearly what his feeling was toward Evelyn Byrd. He understood now, as he had not done before, that his love for the girl was the supreme passion of his life—the limitless, all-embracing, all-conquering impulse of a strong nature which had schooled itself to repression and self-sacrifice. He saw clearly that all this self-discipline—greatly as it had enabled him to endure and to make sacrifice—had given him no strength adequate to his present need. He had thought to conquer his passionate love; he knew now that he could never conquer it. He had thought to put it out of his mind as a longing for the unattainable; he knew now that it would for ever refuse to be dismissed.

“So long as I live,” he thought, “I must bear this burden; so long as I live, I must suffer and be still. For I shall at any rate retain too much of manhood and courage to win Evelyn’s love or to sadden her life by linking it with my own. My honour, at any rate, shall remain unspotted. Fortunately, a bullet or a sabre stroke is likely to solve all my riddles for me before this year comes to an end—and so much the more imperative is it that I arrange quickly for the disposal of her papers to her best advantage. But what is best? If these papers reveal to her the cruel fact that her father was an adventurer, a gambler, a swindler—and they must if they reveal anything—will it not be a great wrong to let her have them at all? And yet who but herself has a right to decide that she shall not receive whatever revelation the documents may make?”

Then it was that the thought came to Kilgariff which made him sit up suddenly.

“She is the daughter of that man. Is there not in that fact an offset to my disability? Am I not free to tell her concerning myself, after she has learned her own origin, and to stand with eyes on a level with her own, asking her to be my wife?”

No sooner had he formulated the thought thus than he rejected it as unworthy. For a time he scourged himself for permitting the suggestion to arise in his mind, but presently he comforted himself by recalling the words of a great divine who, speaking of evil thoughts quickly dismissed, said:—

“I cannot prevent the birds from flying over my head, but I can forbid them to make nests in my hair.”

“I will not let that bird make a nest in my hair,” thought Kilgariff, resolutely, and greatly to the relief of his troubled conscience.

At that moment the reveille sounded in all the camps, and Kilgariff rose to his feet, stripped himself to the waist, sluiced his head, shoulders, and chest in the cold water of a neighbouring spring, resumed his clothing, and was ready for the day’s duties, whatever their nature might be. But his vigil had not brought him any nearer than he was before to the solution of the problems that so greatly perplexed him. It had only added a new and distressing self-knowledge to the burdens that weighed upon his mind. He had never feared death; now he looked upon it as a chance of welcome release from a sorely burdened life. Thenceforth he thought of the bullets as friendly messengers, one of which might bear a message for him.