EVELYN’S BOOK, CONTINUED

IT was Dorothy’s habit when reading a book to stop for an hour now and then, and devote that space to careful thinking. She explained her practice to Arthur one day, saying:—

“If a book be interesting, it is apt to dominate the mind, and sometimes to mislead the judgment. I think it well to suspend the reading now and then, and give myself a chance to shake off the glamour of the narrative, and to think out for myself what it means and to what it tends. One must do that, indeed, if one doesn’t want to surrender himself or herself completely to the dominance of an author’s thought, but chooses instead to do his or her own thinking.”

So Dorothy took an hour or two for thinking before going on with the reading of Evelyn’s book. Evelyn knew her habit, and she had recognised it by changing chapters at this point.

When Dorothy took up the pages again, she read as follows:—

Chapter the Tenth

WE stayed a long time among the whaling people, and they taught me many things. I learned from them how to tie all sorts of knots, and how to catch sea fish, and how to row, and best of all, how to sail a boat.

They were a curious kind of men. They swore all the time, in almost every sentence. But their swearing didn’t mean anything, and so it didn’t shock me in the least. They were not at all angry when they swore. They swore, I think, merely because they hadn’t any adjectives with which to express their thoughts. They called me a “damned nice gal,” and they meant it for a compliment. In the same way, they spoke of a tangle in a fish-line as “a damned ugly snarl,” or of a fish as “a damned big catch.” I suppose one might cure them of swearing by teaching them some adjectives. But nobody ever took the trouble to do that.

They were good fellows—strong and brave, and wonderfully enduring. When I went out fishing with them, and the tide was out on our return, so that we couldn’t come up to a pier, one of them would jump overboard in the mud, pick me up, swing me to his broad shoulders, and carry me ashore dry-shod, without seeming to think anything of it.

One day we had a storm while I was out in a fishing-boat. As soon as it came on, all the boats came to the side of ours, though it was dangerous to do so, just to make sure of my safety. The boat I was in was swamped, and I was spilled overboard. But I was no sooner in the angry sea than I was grabbed by the arms of a stout young fellow who gallantly bore me toward a little sloop that lay at hand. A mast broke off and fell. It hit the poor fellow, and, finding himself unable to do any more, he called to a comrade to take me, and he sank in the water and was drowned. He didn’t seem to care for himself at all, but only to save me, and all the rest of them seemed to think that that was a matter of course. I got my father to give me some money, and I hired a stone-cutter to put up a monument over the poor fellow’s grave; for we recovered his body, with both arms broken by the blow from the falling mast. There are lots of heroes, Dorothy, who are never engaged in wars.

At last my father took me away from the whaling town, and we went to New York in a little schooner. It took us a long time, because the winds were adverse, but we got there after a while, and went to a hotel. It was the Astor House, I think, and it had a beautiful little park nearly in front of it. I don’t think that is of any consequence, but, you see, I am trying to tell you everything. You can skip anything you don’t care for.

[“I’m not skipping anything,” wrote Dorothy in the margin.]

As soon as we were settled at the hotel, my father sent for the gentlewoman he had spoken about, and placed me in her care. Then something happened that I never understood. Before my father could take the papers from me and place them in the hands of the gentleman he intended to leave them with, he was somehow compelled to leave the city. He went away suddenly after midnight, and I never saw him again. I still kept the papers after he left New York so suddenly.

The lady was greatly excited when my father’s note came to her, saying that he had gone away, and she seemed to fear some danger for me. So, between midnight and morning, she packed our things, and we went to a boarding-house away up-town. Even there she didn’t feel safe, and so, within a day or so, we went on board a canal boat, and went up the river, and then along the canal for many days.

I asked the lady (Mrs. Dennison was her name) why we hadn’t taken a railroad train instead, so as to travel faster. She answered: “They were watching all the trains, dear, and would have caught you if we had tried to take one. They didn’t think of canal boats, because nobody travels by them in these days.”

After we had travelled by canal boat for several days (a week or more, I think), we left the boat at a very little village, and went away across country to a little house in a sparsely settled district. There Mrs. Dennison and I lived quite alone for more than a year. It was a very happy year, except that I couldn’t see my father, and except for another thing. Mrs. Dennison made me wear a boy’s clothes and call myself by a false name, “Charlie Dennison.” She did that to prevent Campbell from finding me. I suppose it really didn’t matter much, but somehow I didn’t like the thought of wearing a disguise and going by an assumed name.

Of course, as a boy, I couldn’t go much with the few girls there were in the neighbourhood, and at the same time, being in fact a girl, I couldn’t go out and associate with the boys. So my only companion was Mrs. Dennison. We lived together in a tiny bit of a house that belonged to her, and she was the only real teacher I ever had. I reckon she didn’t know much about books. At any rate, she didn’t care about them. But she let me read mine as much as I pleased, and she taught me how to do all sorts of household things. Especially she taught me to do needlework, and as I used to do it in our little porch in the summertime, the boys thought it strange for a boy to use a needle, so they used to call me “Miss Charlotte” and gibe and jeer at me a good deal. But I didn’t mind, particularly as there was a woodland near our house, so that I could see a great deal of my birds and squirrels. It was then, too, that I made acquaintance with many insects and bugs—pinch-bugs, ants, yellow-jackets, and a lot more. You can’t imagine how greatly interested I became in studying the ways of these creatures. They all have characters of their own; and when one really becomes acquainted with them, they are vastly more interesting than commonplace people are.

Chapter the Eleventh

AFTER we had lived for more than a year in the little cottage, Mrs. Dennison one day told me we must go away quickly, and we left within an hour. She let me put my girl’s clothes on before we started.

“They have found out that you are disguised as a boy,” she explained, “and when they set out to find us again, they’ll probably look for a lady and a boy. So, by wearing girl’s clothes again, you’ll have a better chance to escape their clutches.”

I was getting to be a pretty big girl by that time, and so I had been ashamed of wearing boy’s clothes for some time past. But when I put on my gowns again, they made me still more ashamed, because they were so short.

So, as soon as we got to a place where we could stop for a few days, Mrs. Dennison sent for two dressmakers to fashion some new gowns for me, and I really looked quite like another person when I put them on.

That must have been about four years ago. According to what I was afterward told, I was then thirteen years old. I know now that I was fifteen. But I’ll tell you all about that further on.

All this while, Mrs. Dennison was receiving money from my father at regular intervals, and there was plenty of it. But it never came directly from my father. It came from a bank, with a very formal note saying that the money was sent “by order of Mr. Jackson Byrd,” and asking Mrs. Dennison to sign and return a receipt for it. My father sent us no letters and no messages. This troubled me very much when I got to thinking about it. And that made me very unhappy, for I loved my father dearly, and I remembered how happy I had been with him. But after thinking more about it, I saw that he hadn’t forgotten his little girl and hadn’t quit caring about her, because if he had, the money wouldn’t have come so regularly.

Still, that troubled me more than ever, because it must mean that my father was in some kind of difficulty, that he could not send any letters to us. I learned afterward that this was so, but Mrs. Dennison would never tell me anything about it.

We were moving about a good deal at this time, generally starting suddenly—sometimes so suddenly as to leave many of our things behind. But I always carried the little satchel that contained the papers my father had given me.

At last, one day when we left the train at Chicago and entered a carriage to drive to a little hotel that we were to live at, a man came to the carriage door and handed Mrs. Dennison a paper. He said something which I did not understand, and Mrs. Dennison kissed me and got out of the carriage. The man got in, and ordered the carriage to drive away with us, leaving Mrs. Dennison standing there on the sidewalk.

I was terribly scared, and wanted to jump out. I tried to open the doors, but the man had placed his hands on the two latches, so that I couldn’t move them. I felt like shrieking, but I decided that it was best to control myself, keep my wits about me, and be ready to deal with the situation wisely, as soon as I should find out what it really was. So, summoning all my self-control, I entered into conversation with the man who sat on the front seat opposite me.

“Do you mind telling me,” I asked, “why you have kidnapped me in this fashion?”

“It ain’t kidnapping, young lady, an’ it ain’t anything else irregular. You see, I had a warrant. I’m a court officer, an’ I does what the court orders an’ nothin’ else.”

“Then a court ordered you to seize me?” I asked.

“Ya’as ’m,” he answered.

“But on what ground?”

“‘Tain’t my business to know that, Miss, an’ as a matter of fac’ I don’t know it. All I know is, I was give a warrant an’ tole to serve it, an’ bring you to the court. Don’t you worry about a-payin’ of the cabman. I’ll ten’ to all that.”

“But what do they want with me in court?” I asked insistently.

“Dunno, Miss.”

“But who is it that wants me?”

“Dunno, Miss, only the warrant head said, ‘Campbell vee ess Byrd and Dennison.’”

“But what right have they to bother me in this way? Am I not a free person? Haven’t I a right—”

“Dunno, Miss, ’tain’t my business to know. But I suppose you’re a gal under age, and I suppose gals under age ain’t got no rights in pertic’lar, leastways in opposition to their gardeens.”

By this time, we had arrived at the courthouse, and I was taken before the judge. I remember thinking that if I should displease him in any way, he could order me hanged. I know better now, but I thought so then; so I made up my mind to be very nice to the judge.

Campbell was there, and he had a lawyer with him. The lawyer told the judge that Campbell was—something in Latin—loco parentis, I think it was. Anyhow, it meant stepfather, or something like that. He said the courts in his State had made him my guardian; that I possessed valuable property; that I had been abducted by my father, who was a dissolute person, now serving out a sentence in the State’s prison for some crime. He gave the judge a lot of papers to prove all this.

I was so shocked and distressed to hear that my father was in prison, that for a while I couldn’t speak. At last I controlled myself and said to the judge:—

“I love my father. If he has been sent to prison, it was that man”—pointing to Campbell—“who got him sent there. My father is good and kind, and I love him. Campbell is wicked and cruel, and I hate him. Look at his flat nose! That’s where I smashed it with a heavy hair-brush when he tried to whip me for telling the truth about him. I don’t want to go with him. I want to go back to Mrs. Dennison, till my father can come after me. Please, Judge, let me do that.”

The judge asked Campbell’s lawyer how old I was, and he answered:—

“Thirteen years old, your Honour.”

Then the judge said:—

“She seems older. If she were fourteen, I should be bound by the law to let her choose her own guardian for so long at least as she shall remain in Illinois. But as the papers in the case seem to show that her age is only thirteen, I am bound to recognise the guardianship established by the courts of another State. I must remand the girl to the custody of her guardian, Mr. Campbell.”

Then, seeing in how desperate a strait I was, I summoned all my courage. I rose to my feet and faced the judge. I said:—

“But, please, Mr. Judge, this isn’t fair. That man Campbell hates me, and I hate him. Isn’t it better to send me to somebody else? Besides that, he has a lawyer, and I haven’t one. Can’t I hire a lawyer to speak for me? I’ve got two dollars in my pocketbook to pay him with.”

Everybody laughed when I said that. You see, I had no idea what the price of lawyers was. But just then an old gentleman arose and said to the judge:—

“If it please the court, I will appear as counsel for this persecuted girl. I have listened to these proceedings with indignation and horror. It is perfectly clear to my mind that this is a case of kidnapping under the forms of the law.”

There the judge interrupted him, saying:—

“The court will permit no reflections upon its proceedings.”

Then my lawyer answered:—

“I have cast no reflections upon the court. My challenge is to the integrity and good faith of this man, Campbell. I do not know the facts that lie behind this proceeding. I am going to ask the court for an adjournment, in order to find them out. It is obvious that this young girl—helpless and friendless here—looks not only unwillingly, but with positive horror, upon the prospect of being placed again in Campbell’s charge. Morally, and I think legally, she has a right to be heard in that behalf, to have the facts competently explored and fully presented to the court. To that end, I ask that the matter be adjourned for one week, and that the young girl be paroled, in the meanwhile, in the custody of her counsel.”

Then the dear old gentleman, whom everybody seemed to regard with special reverence, took his seat by my side, and held my hand in his. Campbell’s lawyer made a speech to the judge, and when he had finished, the judge said that my lawyer’s request was denied. He explained the matter in a way that I did not understand. It seemed to anger the old lawyer who had taken my case. He rose and said, as nearly as I can remember:—

“Your Honour’s denial of my motion is a denial of justice. This young girl, my client, is a minor child, utterly defenceless here except in so far as I have volunteered my services to defend her. But she is an American citizen, and as such is entitled to be heard in her own behalf. In this court she cannot get a hearing, for the reason that this court has corruptly prejudged the case, as it corruptly prejudges every case in which money or influence can be brought to bear.”

By this time the judge was pounding with his mallet, and the whole court-room was in an uproar. But, raising his voice, my dear old lawyer continued:—

“If justice were done, you, sir, would be dragged from the bench that you dishonour by sitting upon it. Oh, I know, you can send me to jail for speaking these truths in your presence. I trust you will try that. If, by any martyrdom of mine, I can bring the corruption of such judges as you are to the knowledge and attention of this community, I shall feel that my work is well done. In the meantime I shall set another to secure for this helpless girl a writ of habeas corpus which shall get for her, in another and more righteous court, the fair hearing which you insolently and criminally deny to her here. Now send me to jail in punishment of the immeasurable contempt I feel for a court where justice is betrayed for money, and where human rights are bartered away for a price.”

The judge was very angry, and a lot of men surrounded my old lawyer. But what happened afterward I have never known. For no sooner was I put in Campbell’s charge than I was hurried to a train, and the next morning I heard him say to one of the men he had with him:—

“We are out of Illinois now; we’ve beaten that writ of habeas corpus.”

Then he turned to me and said:—

“If you care for your own comfort, you will recognise me as your guardian, and behave yourself accordingly.”

I reckon you must be tired reading by this time, Dorothy, so you are to take a rest here, and I’ll write the remainder of my story in other chapters. I’m afraid I’m making my story tedious; but I’ve fully made up my mind to tell it all, because I don’t know what you will care for in it, and what will seem unimportant to you. If I try to shorten it by leaving out anything, the thing I leave out may happen to be precisely the thing that would change your opinion of me. I want to deal absolutely honestly with you; so I am telling you everything I remember.