A MAN, A MAID, AND A HORSE

WHEN Evelyn went to the stables in the early morning, and found a strange horse there, she could not learn how he came to be there, or who had brought him. The negro man who had rubbed down the animal under Kilgariff’s supervision during the night had already gone to the field, and the stable boy who was now in attendance knew nothing of the matter.

The horse gently whinnied a welcome as the girl entered, and his appearance interested her. She bade the stable boy lead him out, so that she might look him over, and his symmetry and muscularity impressed her mightily.

“Poor beastie!” she exclaimed, upon seeing his lean condition, “they have treated you very badly. You haven’t had enough to eat in a month, and you’ve been worked very hard at that. But you are strong and brave and good-natured still, just as our poor, half-starved soldiers are. You must be a soldier’s horse. Anyhow, you shall have a good breakfast. Here, Ben, take this splendid fellow back to his stall and give him ten ears of corn. Rub him down well, and when he has finished eating, turn him into the clover field to graze. Poor fellow! I hope you’re going to stay with us long enough to get sleek and strong again.”

As was always the case when Evelyn caressed an animal, the horse seemed to understand and to respond. He held out his head for a caress, and poked his nose under her arm as if asking to be hugged. Finally he lifted one of his hoofs and held it out. The girl grasped the pastern, saying:—

“So you’ve been taught to shake hands, have you? Well, you shall show off your accomplishments as freely as you please. How do you do, sir? I hope you have slept well! Now Ben has your breakfast ready, so I’ll excuse you, and after breakfast you shall have a stroll in a beautiful clover lot!”

As she finished her playful little speech and turned her head, she was startled to see Kilgariff standing near, looking and listening.

“Oh, Mr. Kilgariff!” she exclaimed, in embarrassment, “I didn’t know you were here. You must think me a silly girl to talk in that way with a horse.”

“Not at all,” he answered; “the horse seemed to like your caressing, and as for me, I enjoyed seeing it more than I can say.”

“Then you wanted to laugh at me.”

“By no means. I was only admiring the gentleness and kindliness of your winning ways. The thought that was uppermost in my mind was that I no longer wondered at the fascination you seem to exercise over animals. Your manner with them is such, and your voice is such, that they cannot help loving you. Even a man would be helpless if you treated him so.”

“Oh, but I could never do that—at least, well—I mean I could—” There the speech broke down, simply because the girl, now flushing crimson, knew not how to finish it. The thought that had suddenly come into her mind she would not utter, and she could think of no other that she might substitute for it.

But her flushed face and embarrassment told Kilgariff something that the girl herself did not yet know—something that sent a thrill of gladness through him in the first moment, but filled him in the next with regretful apprehension. He saw at once that that had happened which he had intended should never happen. Unconsciously, or at least subconsciously, Evelyn Byrd had come to think of him—or, more strictly speaking, to feel toward him without thinking—in a way that signified something more than friendship, something quite unrecognised by herself. Instantly the questions arose in his mind: “What shall I do? Is it too late to prevent this mischief, if I go away at once? If not, how shall I avoid a further wrong? Shall I go away, leaving her to work out her own salvation as best she can? Or shall I abandon my purpose and suffer myself to win her love completely? And in that case how shall I ever atone to her for the wrong I do her? I must in that case deal honestly and truthfully with her, telling her all about myself, so that she may know the worst. Perhaps then she will be repelled and no longer feel even friendship for a man living under such disgrace as mine. It will be painful for me to do that, but I must not consider my own feelings. It is my duty to face these circumstances in the same spirit in which I must face the dangers and hardships of war.”

All this flashed through his mind in an instant, but, without working out the problem to a conclusion, he set himself to relieve the evident embarrassment of the girl—an embarrassment caused chiefly by her consciousness that she had felt embarrassment and shown it. He resolutely controlled himself in voice and manner and turned the conversation into less dangerous channels.

“You were startled at seeing me,” he said, “because you did not know I was here. I came ‘like a thief in the night.’ I got here about midnight, after a hard ride from Petersburg. I saw the horse groomed and fed, and then went to the house and crept softly up the stairs to the room I occupied when I was at Wyanoke before. I came to let Arthur have a look at my wound—”

“Oh, are you wounded again?” interrupted the girl, with a pained eagerness over which a moment later she again flushed in shamed embarrassment.

“Oh, no. It is only that the old wound has been behaving badly, like a petted child, because it has been neglected. But tell me,” he quickly added, in order to turn the conversation away from personal themes, “tell me how the quinine experiments get on. I’m deeply interested in them, particularly the one with dog fennel. Does it yield results?”

Evelyn was glad to have the subject thus changed, and she went eagerly into particulars about the laboratory work, talking rapidly, as one is apt to do who talks to occupy time and to shut off all reference to the thing really in mind.

Kilgariff’s half of the conversation was of like kind, and it was additionally distracted from its ostensible purpose by the fact that he was all the time trying to work out in his own mind the problem presented by his discovery, and to determine what course he should pursue under the embarrassing circumstances. All the while, the pair were slowly walking toward the house. As they neared it, a clock was heard within, striking six. It reminded Evelyn of something.

“It is six o’clock,” she said, “and I must be off to the hospital camp to see how my wounded soldiers have got through the night. I make my first visit soon in the morning now, and Dorothy and I go together later.”

Turning to a negro boy, she bade him go to the stables and bring her mare.

Now it was very plainly Kilgariff’s duty to welcome this interruption, which offered him three hours before the nine o’clock breakfast in which to think out his problem and decide upon his course of action. But a momentary impulse got the better of his discretion, so he said:—

“I will ride over there with you, if I may.”

The girl was mistress of herself by this time, so she said:—

“Certainly, if you wish. I shall be glad of your escort, if you are strong enough to ride a mile.”

She said it politely, but with a tone of cool indifference which led Kilgariff to wish he had not asked the privilege. Then, calling to the negro boy, who had already started on his errand, she bade him:—

“Bring a horse for Colonel Kilgariff; not his own, but some other.” This was the first time Evelyn had ever called Kilgariff by any military title. “You see, Colonel, your splendid animal has been badly overworked and underfed. I have promised him a restful morning in a clover field, and it would be too bad to disappoint him, don’t you think?”

“Yes, certainly. Thank you for thinking of that. How completely you seem to have schooled yourself to think of dumb animals as if they were human beings! You even assume—playfully, of course—that the big sorrel understood your promise about the clover field.”

“Why should he not? Dumb animals understand a great deal more than people think. Your sorrel understood, at any rate, that I regarded him with affection and pity. That in itself was to him a promise of good treatment, and just now good treatment means to him rest in a clover field. So, while he may not have understood the exact meaning of the words I used, he understood my promise. I am not so sure even about the words. Animals understand our words oftener than we think.”

“How do you mean? Would you mind giving me an illustration of your thought?”

“Oh, illustrations are plenty. But here are the horses. Let us mount and be off. We can continue our talk as we ride. Are you really strong enough?”

The man answered that he was, and the two set off.

When the horses had finished their first morning dash, Evelyn cried, “Walk,” to them and they instantly slowed down to the indicated gait.

“There!” said the girl. “That’s an illustration. The horses perfectly understood what I meant when I bade them walk. I am told that cavalry horses understand every word of command, and that, even when riderless, they sometimes join in the evolutions and make no mistakes.”

“That is true,” answered her companion. “I have seen them do it often. Both in the cavalry and in the artillery we depend far more upon the horses’ knowledge of the evolutions and the words of command, than upon that of the men. They learn tactics more readily than the men do, and, having once learned, they never make a mistake, while men often do.”

“How then can you doubt that horses understand words?”

“They understand words of command, but—”

“Yes? Well? ‘But’ what?”

“I really don’t know. The thought is so new to me that it seemed for the moment a misinterpretation of the facts—that there must be some other explanation.”

“But what other explanation can there be?”

“I don’t know. Indeed, I begin to see that there is no other possible. Animals certainly do understand some words. That is a fact, as you have shown me, and one already within my own knowledge. I see no reason to doubt that they understand many more than we are accustomed to think. I wish you would write that book about them.”

“I am writing it,” she answered; “but I don’t think I’ll ever let anybody see it—at any rate, not now—not for a long time to come—maybe not for ever.”

As she ended, the pair reached the invalids’ camp, and the wounded men gave Evelyn a greeting that astonished Kilgariff quite as much as it pleased him.

“The little lady! The little lady!” they shouted, while those of them who could walk eagerly gathered about her, with welcome in their eyes and voices.

She briefly introduced Kilgariff, and together the two went the rounds of those patients who were still unable to sit up. There were few of these, but they must be the first attended to. After that, Evelyn closely questioned each of the others concerning the condition of his wounds, his sleep, his digestion, and everything else that Arthur might wish to learn in preparation for his own rounds after breakfast. Kilgariff was struck with the readiness Evelyn manifested in calling each of the men by his name, and with the minuteness of her knowledge of the special condition and the needs of each.

“How do you remember it all so minutely?” he asked, as they walked together from one side of the camp to the other.

“Why, it is my duty to remember,” she replied, in a surprised tone, as if that settled the whole matter. And in a woman of her character, it did.