  EVELYN’S VIGIL EVELYN BYRD’S exceeding truthfulness of mind and soul made her a transparent person for loving eyes to look through, and Edmonia Bannister’s eyes were very loving ones for her. When she went to Branton for her ten days’ visit, Evelyn herself scarcely knew why she wished thus to separate herself from Kilgariff; but she went with a subconscious determination to avoid all mention of his name. She could hardly have adopted a surer means of revealing her state of mind to so wise and so experienced a woman as Edmonia. After much thought upon the subject, Edmonia sent a little note to Dorothy. In it she wrote:— You have never said a word to me on the subject, Dorothy, but I am certain that you know what the situation is between Evelyn and Kilgariff. So do I, now, and I am not satisfied to have it so. Unless you peremptorily forbid, I am going to bring on a crisis between those two. I am going to tell Evelyn what Kilgariff has done for her in the matter of this trust fund. When she knows that, there will be a scene of some sort between them, and I think we may trust love and human nature to bring it to a happy conclusion. If you will recall what occurred when the trust papers were executed and given to us three, you will remember that no promise of secrecy was exacted of us. It is true we quite understood that we were to say nothing to Evelyn about the matter until the proper time should come; but we three are sole judges as to what is the proper time, and Agatha and I are both of the opinion that the proper time is now. Unless you interpose your veto, therefore, I shall act upon that opinion, making myself spokeswoman for the trio. Please send me a line in a hurry. To this Dorothy replied by the messenger who had brought the note. She wrote but a single sentence, and that was a Biblical quotation. She wrote:— Now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation. On the evening before the day appointed for I don’t know whether we have done wisely or otherwise. For once Evelyn is inscrutable. We have told her of Kilgariff’s splendid generosity, and we can’t make out how she takes it. She has grown very silent and somewhat nervous. She is under a severe emotional strain of some kind, but of what kind we do not know. A storm of some sort is brewing, and we must simply wait to learn what its character is to be. Evelyn is proud and exceedingly sensitive, as we know. And there is a touch of the savage in her—or rather the potentiality of the savage—and in a case where she feels so strongly, it may result in an outbreak of savage anger and resentment. We needn’t worry, however, I think. Even such an outbreak would in all probability turn out well. Every storm passes, you know; and when the clouds clear away, the skies are all the bluer for it. When a man and a woman love each other and don’t know it, or don’t let each other know it, any sort of crisis, any sort of emotional collision, is apt to bring about a favourable result. Evelyn spent that evening in her room, writing incessantly, far into the night. She wrote a letter to Kilgariff. When she read it over, she tore it up. “It reads as if I were angry,” she said to herself, “and anger is not exactly what I feel. I wonder what I do feel.” Then she wrote another letter to Kilgariff, and put it aside, meaning to read it after a while. In the meantime she wrote long and lovingly to Dorothy, telling her she had decided not to return to Wyanoke, but to go to Petersburg instead, and help in nursing the soldiers. When she had read that letter over, she was wholly unsatisfied with it. Written words are apt to mean so much more or so much less than is intended. She put it aside and took up the one to Kilgariff. As she read it, it seemed even more unsatisfactory than the first. “It is too humble in parts, and too proud in parts,” she thought. Again she set to work and wrote both letters once more. The result was worse than before. The letters seemed to ring with a false note, and above all things she was determined to meet this crisis in her life with absolute truth and candour. Besides, she not only wanted to utter her thought to Kilgariff—she wanted to Suddenly she realised that she was very cold. The weather was growing severe now, and in her preoccupation she had neglected her fire until it had burned down to a mass of slowly expiring coals. Then she recovered her courage. “I have been trying the cowardly way,” she said aloud, but speaking only to herself. “I must face these things bravely. I’ve been planning to run away again, and I will not do that. I’ve been running away all my life. I’ll never run away again. I’ll go to Wyanoke in the morning.” With that, she gathered all the sheets on which she had written and dropped them upon the few coals which remained alive. The paper smouldered and smoked for a time. Then it broke into a flame and was quickly consumed. The girl prepared herself for bed, with a degree of composure which she had not been able to command at any time since the knowledge of Kilgariff’s act had come to her. When she blew “It is the first storm of the winter,” she thought, as she drew the draperies about her. “How those poor fellows must be suffering down there in the trenches at Petersburg to-night—half clad, and less than half fed!” Then, as she was sinking into sleep, she thought:— “I’m glad Mr. Kilgariff is not there to-night.” The thought startled her into wakefulness again, and during the remaining hours of the night she lay sleeplessly thinking, thinking, thinking. |
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