Then he told Arthur about the papers that the man who called himself Campbell had intrusted to his keeping.
“The matter sorely embarrasses me,” he explained. “I don’t know what I ought to do. Of course I am in no way bound by that fellow’s half-spoken, half-suggested injunction not to give the papers to Evelyn till she attains the age of twenty-one. I completely disregard that. But there are other things to be thought of. My command here on the lines is losing from twenty to thirty per cent of its personnel each month. Nothing is more likely than that I shall turn up among the ‘killed in action’ some morning. If I keep the papers with me, they are liable to fall into other and perhaps unfriendly hands at any moment. As I have not the remotest notion of what is recorded in them, of course I cannot even conjecture how much of harm that might work to Evelyn. You perfectly understand that her welfare, her comfort, her feelings, constitute the controlling consideration with me.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Arthur.
“Don’t jest, if you please,” broke in Kilgariff, with a note of offence in his voice.
“My dear fellow,” answered Arthur, with profound seriousness, “nothing could be farther from my thought than jesting on a subject so serious. I beg you to believe—”
“I do. I believe you implicitly. But somehow this explosion, and poor Johnny Garrett’s needless death, and my quarrel with that reckless incapable, Harbach, have set my nerves on edge, so that I am querulous. Forgive me, and let me go on. As to these papers, I want to do that which is best for Evelyn; but I don’t know what is best, and I can’t find out by questioning my own mind. You see, I not only do not know what is in the papers, but I do not even know what circumstances gave them birth, or what purpose of good or evil lies behind them, or what distressing revelations they may make for her affliction. The cold-blooded gambler, swindler, adventurer, cheat, who gave the papers to me is—or was, for I don’t know whether he is now dead or alive—capable of any atrocity. He admitted to me that he had cruelly persecuted the girl, his daughter. It would not be inconsistent with his character, I think, for him to send her from his deathbed a bundle of papers that should needlessly afflict and torture her. He cherished quite enough of enmity to me, I think, to make him happy in the conviction that he had made me his unwilling and unwitting agent in inflicting such wounds upon her spirit.
“Thus I dare not give her the papers, nor dare I withhold them, lest thereby I do her a wrong. Counsel me, my friend. Tell me what I should do!”
“Consult Dorothy,” answered Arthur. “Her judgment in such a case will be immeasurably wiser than yours or mine, or both combined.”
“Thank you. That is the best solution. I wonder I didn’t think of it before. I will act upon it at once. I’ll send the papers to Dorothy by your hand, and I’ll ask you also to bear her a letter in which I shall beg for her judgment. That’s the end of one of my perplexities, for the time being at least. Now let us talk of another thing that concerns me very deeply. I am a pretty rich man, as you know. I own some real estate in New York City. That will probably be confiscated when this war comes to an end, as you and I clearly see that it must do very soon. I own a good many stocks and bonds and other securities, which cannot be so easily confiscated, inasmuch as they are in possession of my bankers, who are like drums for tightness, and are besides my very good friends. In addition to these things, the bulk of my fortune is invested in Europe, where it cannot be confiscated at all. The securities are held by the Liverpool branch of Frazer, Trenholm, and Company, of Charleston, for my account, so that they are perfectly safe.
“Now the only relatives I have in the world, so far as I know, are my brother and his family. I have every reason for desiring that none of them shall ever get a single cent from my estate. So much on the negative side. Affirmatively, I very earnestly desire that every dollar I have in the world shall go at my death to the one woman I ever loved—Evelyn Byrd.