Part 8

“Oh, I had no thought of criticising,” answered Kilgariff. “On the contrary, I am disposed to think you and I have made a valuable discovery in pedagogics.”

“What is it?”

“Why, that the best way to teach science is backward.”

“I confess I do not understand.”

“Well, look at the thing. If Evelyn had been sent to a scientific school to study chemistry, her professor would have set her to studying a book of general principles. Then, after three or four months of drudgery, she would have been permitted to perform a few experiments in the laboratory, by way of illustrating and verifying what the book had told her, the greater part of which she had known before she began. You and I have begun at the other end. We have set Evelyn to do practical work in the laboratory. I remember that her first task was to wash opium, and her next to manufacture blue mass out of rose petals and mercury. Incidentally we explained to her the general principles involved, and in that purely incidental way she has learned her general chemistry so thoroughly within a few weeks, and without opening a book, that she could pass any examination upon it that any college professor could put up. She has learned more in a month than any systematic class work would have taught her in a year.”

“I suppose you are right,” answered Dorothy. “But that is the only way I know. It is the way in which Arthur taught me.”

“Yes, I should suppose that Arthur is distinctly a man of original genius. He _knows how to get things done_. He is so immeasurably the superior of all the professors I ever knew that I am disposed to name none of them in comparison with him. If it is ever my lot to undertake the teaching of science, I shall adopt precisely that method. And I do not see why the same principle should not be applied to other departments of learning. We begin at the wrong end. The teacher makes the boy begin where he himself did. I think Arthur’s methods immeasurably better, and I spoke of Evelyn’s case only as an illustration of their superiority. That young woman knows much—very much—of science without having had any formal instruction in it at all. She has learned it in the natural way, and she is deeply imbued with the scientific spirit. Only yesterday she said to me, in answer to some question of mine, that she ‘looked straight at things, and thought about them.’ I cannot imagine a more perfect method than that.

“And what book ever taught her what she knows about animals and their ways? What lecturer in all the world could have told her how to subdue that wild and rebellious mare as she has done? She learned all that simply by ‘looking straight at things and thinking about them.’ The professional horse-tamers—Rarey and the rest—set to work, with their mechanical appliances, to convince a horse that they are mightier than he is. They succeed in a way. They make the horse afraid of them, and so long as they deal with him, he submits, in fear of their superior power. But let a timid novice undertake to ride horses thus broken, or to drive them, and disaster comes. Evelyn’s way is incalculably better and more scientific. She has studied animals and learned to understand them and sympathise with them. She makes her appeal to what is best in their natures, not to what is worst, and she gets results that no horse-tamer of them all could ever hope for. The horse-tamer’s processes belong to the domain of artifice. Hers are purely scientific.”

“Absolutely,” answered Dorothy; “and I often wonder where she learned it all, or rather where she got her inspiration, for it is not so much learning as a natural bent.”

“Well, she was born with an instinct of truthfulness for one thing,” said Kilgariff. “That is the only basis of the scientific temperament. I observed her yesterday trying to tempt a fox squirrel out of one of the trees. She chirped to him in her peculiar fashion, and, in response to her invitation, he would run down as far as the root of the tree; but there he would pause and shrewdly reconnoitre, after which he would run back up the tree.

“‘Why don’t you hold out your hand?’ I asked.

“She quickly answered:—

“‘That would be lying to him. Whenever I hold out my hand to him, I have something in it for him to eat. If I held it out empty, I should be saying there was something for him to eat in it, and that would be a lie. He would come to me then and find out that I had deceived him. You do quit believing—pardon me—you quit believing—anybody that tells you lies.’

“I admitted my propensity to distrust untruthful persons, and she gravely asked:—

“‘Why then do you wish me to deceive the poor little squirrel? Do you want him to think me a person not to be trusted?’

“I made some lame excuse about his being only a dumb animal, and she quickly responded:—

“‘But dumb animals are entitled to truthfulness, are they not, particularly when we ask them to confide in us? I should be ashamed of you, Monsieur’—you know she always calls me ‘Monsieur’ when she is displeased with me—‘if I did not understand. The human people do not know the animals—how trustful they want to be if only we would let them. We set traps for them, we deceive them in a hundred ways, and that is why they distrust us. I did read a few days ago—you smile, Monsieur; I should say, I read the other day—that the wild creatures are selfish, that they care for us only as a source of food supply. That is not true, as that squirrel shall teach you. It is true that all the wild creatures are _hungry all the time_. There is not food enough for all of them, and so when we offer them food, they come to us, even in fear. They have many of their young to feed, and their supplies are very scant. That is why they congregate around houses where there is waste thrown out. But oh, Monsieur, many hundreds of them do starve to death in the long winters. You notice that in the spring there are a dozen robins on the lawn; in the early summer, when they have brought forth their broods, there are scores and hundreds of them. But in the next spring there are only the dozens again. The rest have perished of cold and hunger. I have been reading Mr. Darwin’s book, and I know that this is the universal law of progress, of advancement by the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest under the law of heredity. But it is very cruel. That isn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to show you that even the wild creatures—hungry as they always are—have affection. I am going to make that squirrel come to me and sit on my shoulder without giving him any food as a temptation. You shall see. After that, I will give him plenty to eat.’

“And she did. She wheedled the squirrel till he came down his tree, crossed the lawn, and invaded her lap. It was only then that she gave him the peanuts with which she had filled her pockets. I tell you that girl is a born scientist, and that her knowledge is wonderful. Did it ever occur to you that the squirrels and birds that seem so happy here in the Wyanoke grounds are habitually in a state of starvation?”

Just then Evelyn came walking toward the porch. The mare was closely following her, and a squirrel perched upon one shoulder, while a robin clung to the other. She had pockets in her gown—she insisted upon pockets—and from these she fed the wild creatures. Upon getting a nut, the squirrel leaped to the ground, and upon receiving a bit of bread, the robin flew away.

“You see,” said Kilgariff, “how coldly selfish and calculating your wild creatures are. The moment they get something to eat, they quit your hospitality.”

“Not so, Monsieur,” the girl answered. “They have their babies to feed. They will come back to me when that is done,” and they did.

“Touch the squirrel,” she said to Kilgariff, “and he will fasten his long teeth in your flesh. But I may stroke his fur as much as I please. That is because he has made friends with me. And see! The robin is a wild bird. His first instinct is to keep his wings free for flying. Yet I may take him thus”—possessing herself of the bird—“and lay him on his back in my lap, so that his wings are useless to him, and he does not mind. It is because he knows me for his friend and trusts me. Ah, if only people would learn to know the wild creatures and teach them the lesson of love!”

Kilgariff felt like saying, “I know no such teacher of that lesson as you are,” but he refrained, and so it fell to Dorothy afterward to say:—

“Not many people have your gift, dear, of making other creatures love them.”

“But you have it,” the girl answered enthusiastically. “Oh, how I do love you, Dorothy!”

XI

ORDERS AND “NO NONSENSE”

WHEN General Grant, with one hundred and twenty thousand men, sat down before Petersburg and Richmond and called for reinforcements as a necessary preliminary to further operations, his plan was obvious, and its ultimate outcome was nearly as certain as any human event can be before it has happened.

Richmond lies on the north bank of the James River. Petersburg lies on the Appomattox River twenty-two miles due south of Richmond. Each river is navigable up to the gates of the city situated upon it, so that in besieging the two cities from the east, General Grant had an uninterrupted water communication over which to bring supplies and reinforcements at will. His line of fortifications stretched from a point on the north of Richmond, eastwardly and southwardly to the James River, and thence southwardly, with a westerly trend, to a point south of Petersburg. A rude outline map, which accompanies the text, will give a clearer understanding than words can.

A glance at the map will show the reader three lines of railway upon which Richmond depended for communication with the South and for supplies for Lee’s army. All of them lay south of the James River.

Grant’s problem was to break these three lines of railway, and thus to compel Richmond’s surrender or evacuation. If he could break the Weldon railway first, and the others later, as he purposed, his vastly superior army at the time of Richmond’s evacuation could be easily interposed between Lee and any point farther south to which the Confederate commander might plan to retreat.

That is what actually happened eight months later, with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House as the outcome of this successful strategy.

In the meanwhile, Lee, with less than forty thousand men, was called upon to defend a line more than thirty miles long against an enemy whose numbers were three or four times his own, and whose capacity of reinforcement was almost limitless.

Still more important was the fact that Lee must stand ready, by day and by night, to defend every point on this long line, while his adversary, with the assistance of ships and railroads in his rear, could concentrate irresistible forces at any point he pleased and at any time he pleased, without the knowledge of the Confederate commander. To the military on-looker it appeared easy for Grant to break through Lee’s lines whenever he pleased, by hurling an overwhelming force with irresistible momentum against any part of the attenuated thread that he might elect, breaking through with certainty and entire ease.

Such would have been the case but for the splendid fighting quality of that Army of Northern Virginia which was struggling almost literally in its “last ditch.” Time after time Grant massed his forces and threw them with all his might against the weakest points he could find in Lee’s defensive lines, only to be baffled and beaten by a fighting force that was absolutely unconquerable in its obstinate determination.

But Grant had other arrows in his well-stocked quiver. His enormous superiority in numbers, and his easy ability to manœuvre beyond his adversary’s sight or ken, made it possible for him continually to extend his lines to the left; pushing south and west, and compelling Lee to stretch out his already slender line to the point of hopeless thinness.

Grant could one day assail the defences below Richmond on the north side of the James River in vastly superior force, and the next morning at daybreak hurl five men to Lee’s one against the works defending the Weldon Railroad, thirty miles or more to the south.

Yet even under these conditions the brilliant Confederate strategist not only held his own, but detached from his all too meagre force a strong column under Early, and sent it to sweep the valley of Virginia, invade Maryland, and so far threaten Washington as to compel Grant either to send forces for the defence of the Federal capital or to forego for the time being the reinforcements which he was clamorously demanding for the strengthening of his lines at Petersburg.

Captain Marshall Pollard’s battery was included in the detail of troops made for this final and despairing invasion of the country north of the Potomac; and when the battery marched, Sergeant-major Owen Kilgariff rode by the side of his captain, ready for any duty that might fall to his lot.

The wound in his neck was not yet well, or even nearly so, but he was quite regardless of self in his eagerness to bear his part, and so, in spite of all the warnings of all the doctors, he had rejoined his command at the first moment in which he was strong enough to sit upright in the saddle.

Captain Pollard had but one commissioned officer with him on this dare-devil expedition, and that one officer was shot in the first skirmish, so that Owen Kilgariff, non-commissioned officer that he was, was second in command of the battery.

Early’s column swept like a hurricane down the valley, and like a cyclone burst upon Maryland and Pennsylvania. It marched fearlessly wherever it pleased and fought tremendously wherever it encountered a foe. Its invasion of the North at a time when Grant with three or four men to Lee’s one was beleaguering the Southern capital, was romantic, gallant, picturesque, startling. But it did not accomplish the purpose intended. It was Grant’s conviction that Washington City could take care of itself; that the authorities there had force enough at command, or within call, to meet and repel a Confederate invasion, without any assistance from him. He, first of all Federal generals, acted upon this conviction, and refused to weaken his lines at Petersburg and Richmond by sending any considerable forces to defend Washington against Early. Grant had little imagination, but he had a great fund of common sense.

Only one considerable action was the outcome of this expedition. In a minor encounter on the day before the battle was fought, Captain Marshall Pollard lost a leg, thus leaving his sergeant-major, Owen Kilgariff, in command of the battery, reduced now to four guns, with only four horses to each piece or caisson.

At Monocacy, Kilgariff fought the guns at their best, and by a dash of a kind which artillery is neither armed nor expected to make, captured two Federal rifled guns, with their full complement of horses. In his report he spoke of this feat of arms only as “an opportunity which offered to add two guns to the battery and to raise the tale of horses to the regulation number of six to each gun and caisson.”

But that night General Early sent for Kilgariff, in response to that non-commissioned officer’s request that a commissioned officer should be sent to take command of the battery.

“I don’t see the necessity,” said Early, in his abrupt way. “I don’t see how anybody could fight his guns better than you have done. Get yourself killed if you want somebody else to command Pollard’s battery. So long as you live, I shall send nobody else. How does it happen that you haven’t a commission?”

“I do not covet that responsibility,” Kilgariff answered evasively.

“Well, that responsibility will rest on your shoulders from this hour forth, till the end of this campaign, unless you escape it by getting yourself killed. I shall certainly not send anybody else to command your battery while you live. From this hour I shall regard you as Captain Kilgariff; and when I get myself into communication with General Lee or the war department, I’ll see that the title is made good.”

“Thank you, General,” answered Kilgariff. “But I sincerely wish you wouldn’t. I have already received and rejected one commission as captain, and I have declined a still higher rank offered me.”

“What an idiot you must be!” squeaked Early in his peculiar, falsetto voice. “But you know how to fight your guns, and I’ve got a use for such men as you are. You may do as you please after this campaign is over, but while you remain under my command you’ll be a captain. I’ll see to that, and there’ll be no nonsense about it, either.”

An hour later, an order, officially signed and certified, came to Kilgariff. It read in this wise:—

SPECIAL ORDER NO. 7. Sergeant-major Owen Kilgariff, of Captain Pollard’s Virginia Battery, is hereby ordered to assume command of said Battery as Acting Captain, and he will exercise the authority of that rank in all respects. He is ordered hereafter to sign his reports and orders as “Captain Commanding,” and all officers concerned are hereby directed, by order of the Commanding General, to recognise the rank thus conferred, not only in matters of ordinary obedience to orders, but also in making details for court-martial service and the like. This temporary appointment of Captain Kilgariff is made in recognition of peculiarly gallant and meritorious conduct, and in due time it will be confirmed by the War Department. In the meanwhile Captain Kilgariff’s rank, commission, and authority are to be fully recognised by all persons concerned, by virtue of this order.

This order was duly signed by General Early’s adjutant-general, as by his command.

There was nothing for Kilgariff to do but obey an order so peremptory, from a commander who was not accustomed to brook opposition with patience. Kilgariff’s first thought was to send through the regular military channels a written protest and declination. But an insuperable difficulty stood in the way. Under Early’s order, he must sign that document not as “Sergeant-major,” but as “Captain.” Otherwise, his act would be of that contumacious sort which military law defines as “conduct subversive of good order and military discipline.”

But aside from that consideration was the fact that General Early had sent Kilgariff a personal note, in which he had written:—

I have issued an order in your case. Obey it. I don’t want any damned nonsense.

Kilgariff was too good a soldier to protest further while the campaign under Early should continue. He meant to ask excuse later, but for the time being there was nothing for him to do except assume the captain’s rank and command to which Early had thus peremptorily assigned him.

XII

SAFE-CONDUCT OF TWO KINDS

AS Early was slowly making his way back into the valley of Virginia—fighting wherever there was a force to be fought—there came a messenger to Owen Kilgariff one night a little before midnight. He bore a slip of paper on which these words were written:—

Come to me quickly. I am mortally wounded, and it is very necessary for me to see you before I die—not for my sake, for you’d rejoice to see me in hell, but for the sake of others and for your own sake—though for yourself you don’t often care much. I’m in a farm-house hospital three miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Martinsburg road. My messenger will guide you. The Federals have possession, of course, but the bearer of this note has a safe-conduct for you. Of course, this might be a trick, but it is not. On the word of a gambler (and you know what that means) I am playing fair this time. You are a brave enough man to risk this thing anyhow. Come!

This note bore no signature, but Owen Kilgariff knew the hand that had written it. That handwriting had sent him to jail once upon a time. He had not forgotten. He was not given to forgetting.

He summoned the messenger who had brought him the note.

“You have a safe-conduct for me, I believe?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain,” and he produced the document.

“How did you manage to pass our picket lines? Did you come under a flag of truce?”

“No. That would have taken time, and there is no time to be wasted. Major Campbell is terribly wounded. I live in these parts. I ain’t a soldier, you know. So I slipped through the lines.”

For a moment Kilgariff regarded the fellow with indignant contempt. Then the indignation passed, and the contempt was intensified in his expression. Presently he said:—

“You low-lived, contemptible hound, I can’t make up my mind even to be angry with you. You and your kind are the pest in this war. You haven’t character enough to take sides. You serve either side at will, and betray both with jaunty indifference. Now listen to me. Within twenty-four hours I shall see Major Campbell, who sent me this note. But I shall not go to him under the safe-conduct you have brought.”

With that, Kilgariff tore the paper to bits and scattered its fragments to the night wind.

“I shall order you sent to the guard-house and manacled, until General Early shall have decided what to do with you. He doesn’t like your sort.”

The man fell at once into panic and pleaded for his life.

“Oh, what will become of me?” he piteously moaned.

“I really don’t know,” answered Kilgariff, quite as if the question had related to the disposition to be made of some inanimate object. “General Early may have you shot at sunrise, or he may decide to hang you instead. I don’t at all know, and after all it makes no real difference. The one death is about as painless as the other, and as for the matter of disgrace, of course you are hopelessly incapable of considering that. Perhaps—oh, well, I don’t know. General Early may conclude to turn you loose as a creature too contemptible to be seriously dealt with.”

“God grant that he may!” said the man, with fervour, as the guards took him away.

A minute later Kilgariff mounted his horse, Wyanoke—a special gift from Dorothy—and rode hurriedly to General Early’s headquarters; it was after midnight, but with this army sleeplessly “on service” very little attention was given to hours, either of the day or of the night. So, after a moment’s parley with a sentinel, Kilgariff was conducted to General Early’s presence, under a tree.

It was not Kilgariff’s habit to grow excited. He had passed through too much for that, he thought. But on this occasion his perturbation of spirit was so great that he had difficulty in enunciating his words.

“General,” he said, “I want a little cavalry force, if you please. I want to capture one of the enemy’s hospitals and hold it long enough for me to have a talk with the most infamous scoundrel who ever lived.”

“Calm yourself, Captain,” said Early. “Have a little apple brandy as a tonic. Your nerves are shaken.”

Kilgariff declined the stimulant, but at Early’s earnest solicitation he sat down upon a stump, and presently so far commanded his own spirit as to go on with what he had to say.