After a while, the door was opened and Campbell came in. I could see that he was very angry, and I was particularly glad of that, because it showed me that my words had hurt his feelings very much. That was what I intended.
He had a little switch in his hand, and, as he stood over me, glowering in order to scare me before speaking, I saw it. I instantly seized a heavy hair-brush that a maid kept to brush my thick hair with.
“You mustn’t strike me.” That was all I said.
“I’m going to teach you better manners,” he began.
“You’d better not try,” I answered. “If you strike me, I’ll kill you.”
I meant that, Dorothy; and when, a minute later, he struck me with the switch, meaning to give me a dozen blows, I reckon, I leaped at him – slender, frail little child that I was – and with all the strength my baby arm had, I struck him full in the face with the edge of the heavy brush. I fully intended that the blow should brain him. It only broke his nose, but it made him groan with pain.
Now I want to be absolutely truthful with you, Dorothy. You mustn’t excuse my attempt to kill that man, on the ground that I was a mere child and did not know what I was doing. I was a mere child, of course, but I knew what I was doing or trying to do, and I felt no sort of regret afterward, when he had to send for a surgeon to mend his nose bone, and had to lie abed for a fortnight with a fever. Or, rather, I did feel regret; but it was only regret over the fact that I had done so little. I had meant to kill him, and I was very sorry that I had not succeeded. That is the fact, and you must know it. And more than that, it is the fact, that even now, when I am a grown-up woman and have thought out a code of morals for myself, I still cannot feel any regret over what I did, except that I didn’t succeed in doing more. I would do now what I tried to do then, if the situation could repeat itself.
I don’t know what you will think about all this. But I don’t want you to think about it without knowing that I am not sorry for it, but justify it in my own mind. I am trying to be perfectly honest and truthful with you; so that if you love me at all after reading my book, it shall be with full knowledge of all that is worst in me. If you don’t love me after you know all, I shall go away quickly and not pain you with my presence.
Now, Dorothy, I want you to stop reading this book and put it away for a few hours – long enough for you to think about what I have written, and make up your mind about this part of my story. After that, you can read the rest of it and make up your mind about that.
✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
Dorothy complied with this request. She laid the book aside for two hours. Then she came back to the reading; but before beginning again, she scribbled this paragraph at the bottom of the page last read: —
I have taken two hours of recess from the reading. There was no need of that. My whole soul sympathises with that poor, persecuted little creature. So far from condemning her words or acts, I rejoice in them. I approve them, absolutely and altogether. I see nothing to condemn, nothing to excuse.
Dorothy
XXV
MORE OF EVELYN’S BOOK
WHEN Dorothy resumed her reading, her sympathies were keenly alive and responsive. She had thought out the matter, and reached a definite conclusion which entirely satisfied her conscience.
“Ordinarily,” she thought, “I should think it excessively wrong to sympathise with a desire to kill, or even to tolerate it in my mind. But I see clearly that in that matter, as in most others, there are questions of circumstance to be considered. Every human being has a right to kill in self-defence. Both law and morals recognise that. In a state of nature, I suppose, every man is constantly at war on his own private account, and he has an entire right to make war in defence of himself and his family. The only reason he hasn’t that right in a state of civilisation is that society protects him, in return for his giving up his right to make private war. But when society, as represented by the state, refuses to protect him, or when the state cannot protect him, he has his right of private war in full force again.
“That was Evelyn’s case. She was a helpless child in the hands of a brute. There was no way in which she could secure protection from any wrong he might see fit to do her. So, when he came with evident intent to do her harm, she had a perfect right, I think, to fight for herself in any way she could. No human being is under obligation to submit to an insult or a blow.
“Besides – well, never mind that. I was thinking of the way in which we all recognise killing in war as entirely legitimate. But that is a large subject, which I haven’t thought out to the end as yet. For the present purpose it is enough to know that Evelyn had a right to make such war as she could – poor little mite of a girl that she was – upon that brutal man. I should have done the same under like circumstances. Yes; I heartily approve her conduct.”
With that, Dorothy turned again to the manuscript, and read what follows: —
Chapter the Sixth
I HAD hurt Campbell very badly indeed. I had shattered the bridge of his nose to bits, and there was a great commotion in the house – sending for a lot of doctors, and all that. My mother thought of nothing but staunching the blood and getting the doctors there. The servants were all excited and running about bringing hot water and towels and so forth, so that no attention was paid to me.
I took advantage of the confusion. I put on a little cloak and my sun-bonnet, and quietly slipped out through one of the back doors into the grounds. Then I called my dog, Prince, to go with me, and in the gloaming – for it was nearly nightfall – he and I waded across the little creek that ran at the back of the place. The house stood at the extreme edge of the little city, and there was no town on the farther side of the creek. So Prince and I went on down the road, meeting nobody.
My grandmother had left the town that day, to go back to her home somewhere in the East, so I made up my mind to walk toward the East every day till I should come to the village where she lived. I knew the name of the village, but I didn’t know what State it was in or how far away it might be; still, I hoped to find it after a while, by inquiring of people. But I feared a search would be made for me, so I decided not to reveal myself by making inquiries till I should be far away from the town where Campbell and my mother lived.
After walking along the road for what seemed to me many hours, Prince and I climbed over a fence and went far into the woods. There we hid ourselves in a clump of pawpaw bushes and went to sleep.
When we woke, there was a heavy rain falling, and we were very, very hungry. So we set out to find a road somewhere, so that we might come to a house and ask for something to eat. But there didn’t seem to be any end to the woods. We went on and on and on, without coming out anywhere. I ate two pawpaws that I found on the bushes, but poor Prince couldn’t eat pawpaws, so he had to go starving.
At last we grew so tired that we stopped to rest, and I fell asleep. When I waked, it was still raining hard, and my clothing was very wet, and I was very cold, and it was nearly night again. So I told Prince we must hurry, and find a house before it should grow dark.
But when I tried to hurry, my feet wouldn’t do as I wanted them to. My knees seemed to give way under me, and I grew very hot. My head ached for the first time in my life, and my eyes bulged so that I couldn’t see straight. Finally I seemed to forget who I was, or where I was trying to go. Then I went to sleep.
When I waked, I was lying in that bedroom in Campbell’s house, and a nurse was sitting by me. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. So I went off to sleep again, and when I waked once more, I understood that I was very ill and had been so for a considerable time. I asked somebody if Prince had been fed, and learned that he had. I never asked another question about the matter, and to this day I do not know how long I lay unconscious in the woods, or who found me there, or how, or anything about it.
I must have taken a good while to get well; for I remember how every morning I planned to run away again the following night, and how before night came I found myself still unable to do anything but lie in bed and take my medicine.
When at last I was able to sit in a rocking-chair for an hour or two at a time, my mother undertook to chide me a little about my conduct. I reckon she didn’t accomplish much, because she began at the wrong end of the affair.
“You hurt Mr. Campbell very badly,” she said.
“Did I? I’m glad of that.”
“You are a very wicked girl.”
To that statement I made no reply. I accepted it as true, but I was not sorry for it. Instead, I asked: —
“Is he going to die?”
“No. But he is very ill. That is to say, he is suffering a great deal of pain.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“You terrible child! What am I to do with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to run away again as soon as I can. You’d better let me stay runaway.”
Small as I was, I vaguely understood that my mother’s first care was for the man Campbell, and that so far as I was concerned, she cared only for the trouble she expected me to give her. If she had loved me a little, if she had taken me into her lap and seemed a little bit sorry for me, I reckon she might have had an easier time with me. But she did nothing of that kind. Instead of that, she managed to make me feel that she regarded me somewhat in the light of a criminal for whom she was responsible.
She set a watch upon me day and night, keeping me practically a prisoner in my own room. That was because I had made the mistake of telling her I meant to run away again. But even as a prisoner, I might have been tractable if she had spoken kindly and lovingly to me when she visited my room, which she did two or three times a day. Instead of that, she always looked at me as one might at a desperate criminal, and she talked to me of nothing but what she called my wickedness, saying that it would break her heart.
Even when I got well enough to go out, I was kept in my room until at last the doctor positively ordered that I should be sent out of doors every day. When that was done, a servant maid whom I particularly disliked was sent with me, under orders never to let me out of her sight for a moment. I was as completely a prisoner out of doors as in the house. But out of doors I could sit down at the root of a tree, shut my eyes, and bring my fairy friends to me. In that way I managed to make myself happy for little spells, as I could not do in my room, for I simply would not ask the fairy people to go to that horrible place.
But this relief was soon taken from me. The servant who watched me, seeing me sit with my eyes shut, reported that I spent all the time out of doors in sleep. She was directed by Campbell, who had assumed control of my affairs, not to let me sit down at all out of doors.
When this was reported to me, I simply refused to go out of doors again, and I stuck to that resolution in spite of all commands and threats. My health soon showed the results of confinement, and the doctor, who was a friendly sort of man, but strongly prejudiced by the bad things he had been told about me, did all he could to persuade me to go out. I absolutely refused. Then my health grew still worse, and finally the doctor insisted that I should be sent away somewhere.
Before that could be arranged, something else happened to affect me. I’ll tell you about that in another chapter.
Chapter the Seventh
THE servant who acted as my keeper suddenly changed her manner toward me about this time. She talked with me in a friendly way, and she sang to me, trying to teach me to sing with her. I refused to do that, because I was unhappy and did not feel like singing. But I rather liked to hear her sing, as she had a pretty good voice. Still, in my childish way, I distrusted the girl. I could not understand why she had been so unkind to me before, if her present kindness was sincere.
She begged me to go out of doors with her, and promised of her own accord that I should sit down and shut my eyes whenever I pleased. After a day or two, I so far yielded as to go out with her for an hour and have a romp with Prince. But I resolutely refused, then or on succeeding days, to sit down and shut my eyes, and call the fairy people. I felt, somehow, that it would compromise my dignity to accept surreptitiously and from a servant a privilege which was forbidden to me by the servant’s master and mistress.
Still, I went out for a little while every day. The girl called our outings “larks,” which puzzled me a good deal, as I knew there were no larks in the town. Finally, one brilliant moonlight night, as I sat looking out of the window, the girl, as if moved by some sudden impulse, said: —
“Let’s go out for a lark in the moonlight. I’ll put your cloak and bonnet on you, and it will do you good.”
I consented, and we quickly made ourselves ready. Just after we had got out of doors, I noticed that the girl had a satchel in her hand; and when I questioned her about it, she said that she wanted to make believe that we were two ladies going to travel; “and ladies always have satchels when they travel,” she explained.
We wandered about for a little while, and then the girl led the way to the extreme corner of the grounds, a spot which could not be seen from the house even in the daytime, because of the trees. There was a little gate there, which opened into a road, and the girl proposed that we should pass through it for some reason which I cannot now remember.
We had walked only a little way beyond the gate when we came to a carriage which was standing still, with a big man on the box and a tall, slender man standing by the open door of the vehicle. When this man turned his face toward me in the moonlight, I recognised him. He was my father! He stooped and put his arms about me tenderly, laughing a little, as he always had done when talking with me, but stopping the laugh every moment or two to kiss me. Then he told me to get into the carriage so that we might go for a drive. When I had got in, he gave the servant girl some money, and said: —
“If you keep your mouth shut and know nothing, there’ll be another hundred for you. I shall know if you talk, and if you do there’ll be no money for you. I’ll send the money, if you don’t talk, in two weeks, in care of the bank.”
Then we drove away in the moonlight, and I found presently that the girl had put the satchel into the carriage. I learned the next morning that it contained some of my clothes, and my combs and brushes.
We travelled in the carriage for several hours, and then got on board a railroad train, which took us to Chicago.
Chapter the Eighth
WE hadn’t been many days in Chicago when one morning about daybreak my father waked me and said that Campbell was after me, so that we must hurry. My father had bought me a lot of things in Chicago – clothes of many kinds, and a few books. I reckon he didn’t know much about clothes or books – poor papa – for all the clothes were red, and the books, as I now know, were intended for much older people than I was. But he said that red was the prettiest colour, and as for the books, the man that sold them had told him that they were “standard works.” I remember that one of them was called Burke’s Works, and another Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I simply couldn’t like Burke’s Works, but I reckon that was only because I didn’t know what Mr. Burke was talking about. I reckon I didn’t understand Gibbon very well, but I liked him, because he told some good stories, and because his sentences were musical. I liked Macaulay’s Miscellanies for the same reason, and I liked Macaulay’s History because it was so simple that I could understand it. Best of all, I liked Rasselas, The Vicar of Wakefield, Robinson Crusoe, and The British Drama, and Shakespeare – at least, in parts. I liked to read about Parolles, and the way he was tricked and his cowardice exposed. I identified him with Campbell, and rejoiced when he got into trouble. I suppose that was wicked, but I’m telling you all my thoughts, Dorothy, so that you may know the whole truth about me and not be deceived. I liked Falstaff, too.
I liked Rasselas, because in his happy valley there was no man like Campbell. And I liked Robinson Crusoe for the same reason. Somehow I liked to live with him on his island, because I knew that if Campbell should land there, Robinson Crusoe would shoot him.
But above all, I liked the British Drama, because it opened a new and larger life to me than any that I had ever known.
When my father waked me up on that morning, I hurriedly packed my books and clothes into a trunk. There were very few underclothes, for my father knew nothing about such things, but there were many red dresses and red cloaks and red hats. And there were two fur coats – big enough for a grown woman to wear.
We got on board a train and travelled all day. Then we took another train and travelled all night, till we came to the end of the railroad. Then we got into a cart and travelled three or four days into the woods.
Finally we came to a camp in the woods, where my father seemed to be master of everything and everybody. There were Indians there and half-breeds, and Canadian lumber-men, for it was a lumber-camp. There was a Great Lake there, and many little lakes not far away. I reckon the Great Lake was Lake Superior, but I don’t know for certain.
There were no women in the camp except squaws and half-breeds. They were pretty good people, but very dirty, so I could not live with them. My father made the men build a little log house for him and me, and he made them hew a bath-tub for me out of a big log. Then he hired a half-breed girl to heat water every day and fill the tub for me to bathe in. As for himself, he jumped into the lake every morning, even when he had to make the men cut a hole in the ice for his use.
I liked the lumber-camp life because I was free there, and because there were big fires at night, like bonfires. One of them was just before my door, and my father made an Indian boy keep it blazing all night for me, so that I might see the light of it whenever I waked. I used to sit by it and read my books, even when the snow was deep on the ground; for by turning first one side and then the other to the fire I could keep warm. And the Canadians and the half-breeds and the Indians used to squat on the ground near me and beg me to read the books aloud to them. As they all spoke French, and understood no word of English, of course they didn’t understand what I read to them, but they liked to hear me read, and it was sometimes hard to drive them away to their beds, even when midnight came.
They taught me French during the year I lived among them. You tell me it is very bad French, and I reckon it is; but it was all they knew: they did their best, and I reckon that is all that anybody can do. At any rate, they were kind to me, and they taught me all the ways of the birds and the animals. I tried to teach them to be kind to the birds and the animals, after I began to understand the wild creatures; but the camp people never would learn that. Their only idea of an animal or a bird was to eat its flesh and sell its skin.
There was a young priest there who knew better, and he ought to have loved the birds and animals. But he used to talk about God’s having given man dominion over the beasts and the birds, and that doctrine perverted his mind, I think. He killed a pretty little chipmunk, one day, to get its skin to stuff. That chipmunk was my friend. I had taught it to climb up into my lap and eat out of my hand. He persuaded it to climb into his lap, and then he betrayed its confidence and killed it. I was very angry with him. I picked up an ox-whip and struck him with it twice. I was only a little girl, but I had grown strong in the outdoor life of the camp, and it doesn’t take much strength to make an ox-whip hurt.
There was great commotion in the camp when this occurred. The people there were very religious in their way, but they seemed to me to worship the priest rather than God. They didn’t mind sinning as much as they pleased, because they knew that the priest would forgive their sins on easy terms; but they thought that my act in striking the priest with the ox-whip was a peculiarly heinous crime. Perhaps it was, but I can’t even yet so look upon it. They regarded him as a “man of God”; but if he was so, why did he deceive the poor little chipmunk, and persuade it to trust him, and then kill it cruelly? Dorothy, I am not a bit sorry, even now, that I chastised him with the ox-whip.
[“Neither am I,” wrote Dorothy in the margin of the manuscript.]
But the occurrence created a great disturbance in the camp, and so my father had to take me away, for fear that the lumber-men would kill me. Curious, isn’t it, that while they were so religious as to feel in that way about the priest, who after all was only a man, they were yet so wicked that they were ready to commit murder in revenge? But those people were very ignorant and very superstitious. They thought some terrible calamity would fall upon them if I were permitted to remain in the camp. I think they cared more about that than they did about the priest. Even those who had been kind to me, teaching me to ride bareback and to shoot and to fish and to make baskets, and all the rest of it, turned against me; so that my father had to stand by me with his pistols cocked and ready in his hand, till he could get me out of the camp.
Chapter the Ninth
FROM that camp my father took me way up to Hudson’s Bay. We travelled over the snow on sledges drawn by dogs, and I learned to know the dogs as nobody else did. They were savage creatures, and would bite anybody who came near them. But somehow they never bit me. They didn’t like to be petted, but they let me pet them. I don’t know why this was so, but it was so.
We did not remain long at Hudson’s Bay – only a few weeks. After that, we went somewhere – I don’t know where it was – where the whale-men came ashore and rendered out the blubber they had got out at sea.
You must remember that my father had many interests. He owned part of the lumber-camp we had stayed in, he had a fur trade at Hudson’s Bay, and he had an interest in some whaling-ships. Wherever we went, my father seemed to be at home and to be master of the men about him. I admired him greatly, and loved him very much. I wondered how my mother could have left him and married Campbell. I am wondering over that even yet.
It was while we were at Hudson’s Bay that I began to understand something about my father. He sat down with me one day (he didn’t often sit down for more than a few minutes at a time, but on this occasion he sat with me for nearly half a day) and explained things to me.
“I want to tell you some things, little girl,” he said, “and I want you to try to understand them. Above all, I want you to remember them. You know sometimes I have a great deal of money, and sometimes I have none at all. That is because my business is a risky one. Sometimes I make a great deal of money out of it, and sometimes I lose a great deal.
“Now, when your mother left me, I made up my mind to provide well for her and you, so that no matter what else should happen, you and she might never come to want. You see, I still loved your mother. I insured my life for a large sum, and as I had plenty of money then, I paid for the insurance cash down. You don’t understand about such things, and it isn’t necessary that you should. But by insuring my life and paying cash for the insurance, I made it certain that whenever I should die, a rich insurance company would pay you a big sum of money; I had purposely made it payable to you and not to your mother, because I knew you would take care of your mother, while she could never take care of anybody or anything. I also bought some bonds and stocks and put them in your name, and placed them in a bank in New York.
“Now, I want you to pay close attention and try to understand what I tell you. Here are some papers that I want you to keep always by you – always in your little satchel. Always have them by you when you go to bed, and always lock them up by day. Take them with you wherever you go.
“This one is my will. It gives you everything that I may happen to own when I die.” With that, he handed me the papers.
“This one is the life-insurance policy. When I die, you, or whoever is acting for you, will have to present that to the life-insurance company, together with doctors’ certificates that I am really dead. Then the company will pay you the money.
“This one is a list of the securities – the bonds and stocks – that I have deposited in your name in the Chemical Bank of New York. You see, it is signed by the cashier of that bank. It is a receipt for the bonds and stocks. So you must keep it very carefully.
“Now, another thing you must remember: you can’t draw the money on my life-insurance policy until I die; but you can get these bonds and stocks at any time that you please, merely by presenting the receipt and asking for them. So long as you are a little girl under age, you couldn’t do this for yourself. Somebody must do it for you. You must be very careful whom you select for that purpose.”
Then he gave me the names and addresses of several gentlemen, who, he said, were his friends and honest men, and advised me to apply to them to act for me if I ever had occasion to do anything of the kind. Then he went on to say:
“The scoundrel, Campbell, knows that you own all this, besides some houses and lands (here’s a memorandum of them) which I have deeded to you. In the hope of getting hold of your property, he, as your stepfather, has had himself appointed your guardian. It is a shame that the courts allow that, but he owns a judge or two, and he has managed to get it done. That is why he is following us and trying to get hold of you. He doesn’t know what your property is, or where, and he thinks you will have these papers. So, if he can get hold of you, he thinks he can get hold of the property also. If I can manage to get you to New York, I’ll take the papers out of your hands and place them in charge of some men there whom I can trust. But as I may fail in that, and as something may happen to me, I want you to have the papers.
“I am pretty well off just now, but my business is very uncertain. When I die, I may be very rich, or I may ‘go broke’ any day between now and then. That is why I have put this property into your hands while I have it. I am a reckless fellow. I ‘take the very longest chances’ sometimes in my business enterprises. Sometimes I suddenly lose pretty nearly everything I have in the world, and I might die just at such a time. So I have provided for you in any case.
“If I can get to New York with you, I am going to hide you completely from that man, Campbell. There is an excellent gentlewoman there in whose hands I intend to put you. She is a woman to be trusted, and she is rather poor, so she will be glad to take charge of you and keep you out of Campbell’s way, damn him! Pardon me, dear! I didn’t mean to swear in your presence. I only mean that I can give that lady plenty of money, and she can take you wherever she thinks you will be safe.”
“But I had much rather stay with you, Father,” I answered, with tears in my eyes.
“Yes, I know. And God knows,” he said, “that I had rather have you with me. But everything is a gamble with me. I have many enemies, child, and some one of them may make an end of me any day. The other way will be safest for you.”
“I don’t care for myself,” I answered. “I only care for you, and to be with you. I’ll take the risks, and if any of your enemies ever makes an end of you, as you say, I want to be there to wreak vengeance. You know I can shoot as straight as any man alive, whether with a pistol or a rifle or a shot-gun.”
“You dear child!” he responded, “I know all that. And that is why I want to house you safely. You have it in you to be as reckless as your dad is, and I don’t intend that you shall have occasion or opportunity.”
How I did love my father! I don’t believe he was ever bad, Dorothy, though they said he was. People who liked him used to say he was “uncommonly quick on trigger”; people who hated him called him a desperado. I call him my father, and I love his memory, for he is dead now, as you will hear later.
But I was anxious to remember all that he had told me, and to make no mistake about it. I had taught myself how to write, during my stay at the lumber-camp and on Hudson’s Bay, so I got some old blank books from the agency, books which had been partly written in by a clerk who made his lines so hairlike that I could write all over them and yet make my writing quite legible. In these I wrote all that my father had said, just as he had said it, meaning to commit it to memory if I had got it right. When it was done, I took it to him and he read it. He laughed when he came to the swear word, and said: —
“You might have omitted that. Still, I’m glad you didn’t, because it shows how bravely truthful you are, and I love that in you better than anything else.”
I have always remembered that, Dorothy. I don’t know how far those who have left us know what we do; but I always think that if my father knows, he will be glad to have me perfectly truthful, and I love him so much that I would make any sacrifice to make him glad.
After he had read over what I had written, and had corrected a word here and there, I set to work to commit it to memory, so that I should never forget a line or a word of it. That is how it comes about that I am able to report it all to you exactly.
Now I know you are tired, so I am going to begin a new chapter, and you can rest as long as you like before reading it.