BEFORE A HICKORY FIRE

EVELYN’S thinking accomplished its purpose. At the end of it she understood herself, or thought she did. And when she returned to Wyanoke the next morning, she thought she knew precisely what she was going to say to Kilgariff. But who of us ever knows what we will say in converse that involves emotion? Who of us can know what response his utterance will draw forth from the other, or how far the original intent may be turned into another by that response?

At any rate, Evelyn knew that she intended to ask Colonel Kilgariff for an interview, and so far she carried out her purpose.

They were left alone in the great drawing-room at Wyanoke, where hickory logs were merrily blazing in the cavernous fireplace, quite as if there had been no war to desolate the land, and no man and woman there with matters of grave import to discuss.

Evelyn began the conference abruptly, as soon as Kilgariff entered and took a seat.

“I have heard,” she began, “of what you have done—of your great generosity toward me. Of course I cannot permit that. You must cancel those papers at once—to-day. I cannot sleep while they exist.”

“Who told you of the matter?” Kilgariff asked in reply.

“Edmonia, with Dorothy’s permission and Mrs. Pegram’s.”

“They should not have told you. I meant that you should not know till I am dead, unless—unless I should live longer than I expect, and you should fall into need when the war ends.”

“But what right had you to treat me so? Do you think me a beggar, that I should accept a gift of money? Why did you do it?”

The girl was standing now and confronting him, in manifest anger.

Curiously enough, he did not seem to mind the anger. He had completely mastered himself, and knew perfectly what he was to say. He answered:—

“I did this because I love you, Evelyn, and because I cannot provide for your future in any ordinary way.”

Seeing that she was about to make some reply, he quickly forestalled it, saying:—

“Please let me continue. Please do not speak yet. Let me explain.”

The girl was still standing, but the look of anger in her face had given way to another expression—one more complex and less easily interpreted. There was some pleasure in it, and some apprehension, together with great astonishment.

“Go on,” she said.

“Only on even terms,” he answered, rising and standing in front of her. “What I have to say to you must be said with my eyes looking into yours. Now listen. By reason of a quite absurd convention, a young woman may not receive gifts of value, and especially of money, from a young man not her husband; yet she may freely take such gifts if they come to her by his will, after he is dead.

“There are circumstances which render it impossible for me to leave my possessions to you by will. Any will that I might make to that effect would be contested and broken by those for whom I care so little that I would rather sink everything I have in the world in the Atlantic Ocean than let them inherit a dollar of it.

“There are also reasons which forbid me to ask you to be my wife—at least until I shall have laid those reasons before you.”

Evelyn was pale and trembling. Kilgariff saw that it was difficult for her to stand, so, taking her hand, he said:—

“Let us sit; I have a long story to tell.” Whether purposely or not, he continued to hold her hand after they were seated. Whether consciously or not, she permitted him to do so, without protest. He went on:—

“There was only one other way to accomplish my purpose. It was and still is my wish that everything I have in the world shall be yours when I die. You are the woman I love, and though I have no right to say so to you now, my love for you is the one supreme passion of my life—the first, the last, the only one. Pardon me for saying that, and please forget it, at least for the present. I have relatives, but they are worse than dead to me, as you shall hear presently. I would rather destroy everything I have by fire or flood than allow one cent of it to pass into their unworthy hands. Enough of that. Let me go on.

“There was only one way in which I could carry out my purpose, and that was the one I adopted. I could not consult you about it or ask your permission, for that would have been indeed to affront you in precisely the way in which you now tell me I have affronted you. It would have been to ask you to accept a money gift at my hands while I yet lived. I intended, instead, to give you all I possess, only after my death and in effect by my will or its equivalent. I did not intend you to be embarrassed by any knowledge of my act, until a bullet or shell should have laid me low. Now I want you to speak, please. I want you to say that you understand, and that you forgive me.”

“I understand,” she said; “there is nothing to forgive; but now that I know your purpose, I cannot permit it. You must cancel those papers.”

“Does it make no difference that I have told you I love you, and that I should entreat you to be my wife if I were free to do so?”

“I do not see,” she replied, “that that makes a difference.”

“Do not decide the matter now, wait!” he half entreated, half commanded. “Let me finish what I have to say. Let me tell you why I must do this thing. Wait!”

He paused for a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. Then he told her his life-story, omitting nothing, concealing nothing, palliating nothing. That done, he went on:—

“You understand now why I was driven to the course I have adopted with you. You understand that as an honourable man I could not ask you for love, leaving you in ignorance of the fact that I am under a conviction of felony. My sentence is at an end, of course, and I cannot be rearrested, inasmuch as I am officially adjudged to be dead. But that makes no difference in my duty. I could not honourably reveal my love to you until you should know the facts. I do not now ask you to accept my wrecked life and to forget the facts that have wrecked it. I have no right to ask so great a sacrifice at your hands. I ask only that you shall permit me to regard you as the woman I love, the woman I should have sought to make my wife if I had been worthy. I ask your permission so to arrange my affairs, or so to leave them as already arranged, that at my death all that I have will pass into your hands. You can never know or dream or imagine how I love you, Evelyn. Surely it is only a little thing that I ask of you.”

As he delivered this passionate utterance, Kilgariff threw his arm around the girl’s waist, and for a moment held her closely. She let her head rest upon his shoulder, and did not resist or resent his impulse when he kissed her reverently upon the forehead.

But an instant later, she suddenly realised the situation, and quickly sprang to her feet, he rising with her and facing her with strained nerves and eyes fixed upon her own, sternly but caressingly.

Evelyn Byrd was not given to tears, and for that reason the drops that now trickled down her cheeks had far more meaning to Kilgariff than a woman’s tears sometimes have for a man.

For a time, she looked him full in the face, not attempting to conceal her tears even by brushing them away. She simply let them flow, as an honest expression of her emotion.

Finally she so far composed herself as to speak.

“Owen Kilgariff,” she said—it was the first time she had ever so addressed him—“Owen Kilgariff, you have dealt honestly with me; I want to deal honestly with you. If I were worthy of your love, I should rejoice in it. As it is, this is the greatest calamity of my life. You do not know—but you shall. There are reasons that forbid me to accept the love you have offered—peremptory reasons. You shall know them quickly.”

With that she glided out of the room, and Owen Kilgariff was left alone.