delicate case. The four glasses emptied, he had explained that all
charges must be collected, of course, from the alien gentleman for whom
the plumage and fixative were destined. Hence a loud war of words, which
the barkeeper had almost smoothed out when the light-hearted Gibbs
suddenly decreed that the four should sing, march, pat and "cut the
pigeon-wing" to the new song (given nightly by Christy's Minstrels)
entitled "Dixie's Land."
Hot threats recurring, Gascony had turned to go, Maxime had headed him
off, Italy's hand had started into his flannel shirt, and "bing! bang!
pop!" rang Gibbs's repeater and one of Maxime's little derringers--shot
off from inside his sack-coat pocket. A whirlwind of epithets filled the
place. Out into the stinking dark leaped Naples and Gascony, and after
them darted their whooping assailants. The shutters of both barrooms
clapped to, over the way a pair of bull-drivers rushed to their
mustangs, there was a patter of hoofs there and of boots here and all
inner lights vanished. A watchman's rattle buzzed remotely. Then silence
reigned.
Now Sam and Maxime, deeming the incident closed, were walking up the
levee road beyond the stock-pens, in the new and more sympathetic
company of the two mounted bull-drivers, to whose love of patriotic
adventure they had appealed successfully. A few yards beyond a roadside
pool backed by willow bushes they set down tar-bucket and pillow, and
under a low, vast live-oak bough turned and waited. A gibbous moon had
set, and presently a fog rolled down the river, blotting out landscape
and stars and making even these willows dim and unreal. Ideal
conditions! Now if their guest of honor, with or without his friend,
would but stop at this pool to wash the Stock-Landing muck from his
horse's shins--but even luck has its limits.
Nevertheless, that is what occurred. A hum of voices--a tread of
hoofs--and the very man hoped for--he and Hilary Kincaid--recognized by
their voices--dismounted at the pool's margin. Sam and Maxime stole
forward.
VIII
ONE KILLED
The newcomers' talk, as they crouched busily over their horses' feet,
was on random themes: Dan Rice, John Owens, Adelina and Carlotta Patti,
the comparative merits of Victor's and Moreau's restaur'--hah! Greenleaf
snatched up his light cane, sprang erect, and gazed close into the mild
eyes of Maxime. Gibbs's more wanton regard had no such encounter; Hilary
gave him a mere upward glance while his hands continued their task.
"Good-evening," remarked Gibbs.
"Good-morning," chirped Hilary, and scrubbed on. "Do you happen to be
Mr. Samuel Gibbs?--Don't stop, Fred, Maxime won't object to your working
on."
"Yes, he will!" swore Gibbs, "and so will I!"
Still Hilary scrubbed: "Why so, Mr. Gibbs?"
"Bic-ause," put in Maxime, "he's got to go back through the same mud he
came!"
"Why, then," laughed Hilary, "I may as well knock off, too," and began
to wash his hands.
"No," growled Gibbs, "you'll ride on; we're not here for you."
"You can't have either of us without the other, Mr. Gibbs," playfully
remarked Kincaid. The bull-drivers loomed out of the fog. Hilary
leisurely rose and moved to draw a handkerchief.
"None o' that!" cried Gibbs, whipping his repeater into Kincaid's face.
Yet the handkerchief came forth, its owner smiling playfully and drying
his fingers while Mr. Gibbs went on blasphemously to declare himself
"no chicken."
"Oh, no," laughed Hilary, "none of us is quite that. But did you ever
really study--_boxing?_" At the last word Gibbs reeled under a blow in
the face; his revolver, going off harmlessly, was snatched from him,
Maxime's derringer missed also, and Gibbs swayed, bleeding and
sightless, from Hilary's blows with the butt of the revolver. Presently
down he lurched insensible, Hilary going half-way with him but
recovering and turning to the aid of his friend. Maxime tore loose from
his opponent, beseeching the bull-drivers to attack, but beseeching in
vain. Squawking and chattering like parrot and monkey, they spurred
forward, whirled back, gathered lassos, cursed frantically as Sam fell,
sped off into the fog, spurred back again, and now reined their ponies
to their haunches, while Kincaid halted Maxime with Gibbs's revolver,
and Greenleaf sprang to the bits of his own and Hilary's terrified
horses. For two other men, the Gascon and the Italian, had glided into
the scene from the willows, and the Gascon was showing Greenleaf two big
knives, one of which he fiercely begged him to accept.
"Take it, Fred!" cried Hilary while he advanced on the defiantly
retreating Maxime; but as he spoke a new cry of the drovers turned his
glance another way. Gibbs had risen to his knees unaware that the
Italian, with yet another knife, was close behind him. At a bound Hilary
arrested the lifted blade and hurled its wielder aside, who in the next
breath seemed to spring past him head first, fell prone across the
prostrate Gibbs, turned face upward, and slid on and away--lassoed.
Both bull-drivers clattered off up the road.
"Hang to the nags, Fred!" cried Hilary, and let Maxime leap to Gibbs's
side, but seized the Gascon as with murderous intent he sprang after
him. It took Kincaid's strength to hold him, and Gibbs and his partner
would have edged away, but--"Stand!" called Hilary, and they stood,
Gibbs weak and dazed, yet still spouting curses. The Gascon begged in
vain to be allowed to follow the bull-drivers.
"Stay here!" said Hilary in French, and the butcher tarried. Hilary
passed the revolver to his friend, mounted and dashed up the highway.
The Gascon stayed with a lively purpose which the enfeebled Gibbs was
the first to see. "Stand back, you hell-hound!" cried the latter, and
with fresh oaths bade Greenleaf "keep him off!"
Maxime put Gibbs on Greenleaf's horse (as bidden), and was about to lead
him, when Kincaid galloped back.
"Fred," exclaimed Hilary, "they've killed the poor chap." He wheeled.
"Come, all hands," he continued, and to Greenleaf added as they went,
"He's lying up here in the road with--"
Greenleaf picked up something. "Humph!" said Hilary, receiving it,
"knives by the great gross. He must have used this trying to cut the
lasso; the one he had back yonder flew into the pond." He reined in:
"Here's where they--Why, Fred--why, I'll swear! They've come back
and--Stop! there was a skiff"--he moved to the levee and peered
over--"It's gone!"
The case was plain, and while from Greenleaf's saddle Gibbs broke into
frantic revilings of the fugitives for deserting him and Maxime to sink
their dead in the mid-current of the fog-bound river, Kincaid and his
friend held soft counsel. Evidently the drovers had turned their horses
loose, knowing they would go to their stable. No despatch to stop
Greenleaf could be sent by anyone up the railroad till the Committee of
Public Safety had authorized it, so Hilary would drop them a line out of
his pocket note-book, and by daybreak these prisoners could go free.
"Mr. Gibbs"--he said as he wrote--"I have the sprout of a notion that
you and Mr. Lafontaine would be an ornament to a field-battery I'm about
to take command of. I'd like to talk with you about that presently." He
tore out the page he had written and beckoned the Gascon aside:
"_Mon ami_"--he showed a roll of "city money" and continued in
French--"do you want to make a hundred dollars--fifty now and fifty when
you bring me an answer to this?"
The man nodded and took the missive.
The old "Jackson Railroad" avoided Carrollton and touched the river for
a moment only, a short way beyond, at a small bunch of flimsy clapboard
houses called Kennerville. Here was the first stop of its early morning
outbound train, and here a dozen or so passengers always poked their
heads out of the windows. This morning they saw an oldish black man step
off, doff his hat delightedly to two young men waiting at the platform's
edge, pass them a ticket, and move across to a pair of saddled horses.
The smaller of the pair stepped upon the last coach, but kept his
companion's hand till the train had again started.
"Good-by, Tony," cried the one left behind.
"Good-by, Jake," called the other, and waved. His friend watched the
train vanish into the forest. Then, as his horse was brought, he mounted
and moved back toward the city.
Presently the negro, on the other horse, came up almost abreast of him.
"Mahs' Hil'ry?" he ventured.
"Well, uncle Jerry?"
"Dat's a pow'ful good-lookin' suit o' clo'es what L'tenant Greenfeel got
awn."
"Jerry! you cut me to the heart!"
The negro tittered: "Oh, as to dat, I don't 'spute but yone is betteh."
The master heaved a comforted sigh. The servant tittered again, but
suddenly again was grave. "I on'y wish to Gawd," he slowly said, "dat de
next time you an' him meet--"
"Well--next time we meet--what then?"
"Dat you bofe be in de same sawt o' clo'es like you got on now."
IX
HER HARPOON STRIKES
The home of the Callenders was an old Creole colonial plantation-house,
large, square, strong, of two stories over a stoutly piered basement,
and surrounded by two broad verandas, one at each story, beneath a great
hip roof gracefully upheld on Doric columns. It bore that air of
uncostly refinement which is one of the most pleasing outward features
of the aloof civilization to which it, though not the Callenders,
belonged.
Inside, its aspect was exceptional. There the inornate beauty of its
finish, the quiet abundance of its delicate woodwork, and the high
spaciousness and continuity of its rooms for entertainment won
admiration and fame. A worthy setting, it was called, for the gentle
manners with which the Callenders made it alluring.
They, of course, had not built it. The late Judge had acquired it from
the descendants of a planter of indigo and coffee who in the oldest
Creole days had here made his home and lived his life as thoroughly in
the ancient baronial spirit as if the Mississippi had been the mediaeval
Rhine. Only its perfect repair was the Judge's touch, a touch so
modestly true as to give it a charm of age and story which the youth and
beauty of the Callender ladies only enhanced, enhancing it the more
through their lack of a male protector--because of which they were
always going to move into town, but never moved.
Here, some nine or ten days after Greenleaf's flight, Hilary Kincaid, in
uniform at last, was one of two evening visitors, the other being
Mandeville. In the meantime our lover of nonsense had received a "hard
jolt." So he admitted in a letter to his friend, boasting, however, that
it was unattended by any "internal injury." In the circuit of a single
week, happening to be thrown daily and busily into "her" society, "the
harpoon had struck."
He chose the phrase as an honest yet delicate reminder of the compact
made when last the two chums had ridden together.
All three of the Callenders were in the evening group, and the five
talked about an illumination of the city, set for the following night.
In the business centre the front of every building was already being
hung with fittings from sidewalk to cornice. So was to be celebrated the
glorious fact (Constance and Mandeville's adjective) that in the
previous month Louisiana had seized all the forts and lighthouses in her
borders and withdrawn from the federal union by a solemn ordinance
signed in tears. This great lighting up, said Hilary, was to be the
smile of fortitude after the tears. Over the city hall now floated daily
the new flag of the state, with the colors of its stripes--
"Reverted to those of old Spain," murmured Anna, mainly to herself yet
somewhat to Hilary. Judge Callender had died a Whig, and politics
interested the merest girls those days.
Even at the piano, where Anna played and Hilary hovered, in pauses
between this of Mozart and that of Mendelssohn, there was much for her
to ask and him to tell about; for instance, the new "Confederate
States," a bare fortnight old! Would Virginia come into them?
Eventually, yes.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" cried Constance, overhearing. (Whatever did not
begin with oh, those times, began with ah.)
"And _must_ war follow?" The question was Anna's again, and Hilary sat
down closer to answer confidentially:
"Yes, the war was already a fact."
"And might not the Abolitionists send their ships and soldiers against
New Orleans?"
"Yes, the case was supposable."
"And might not Jackson's battlefield of 1815, in close view from these
windows, become a new one?"
To avoid confessing that old battlefields have that tendency the Captain
rose and took up a guitar; but when he would have laid it on her knee
she pushed it away and asked the song of him; asked with something
intimate in her smiling undertone that thrilled him, yet on the next
instant seemed pure dream stuff. The others broke in and Constance
begged a song of the new patriotism; but Miranda, the pretty stepmother,
spoke rather for something a thousand miles and months away from the
troubles and heroics of the hour; and when Anna seconded this motion by
one fugitive glance worth all their beseechings Hilary, as he stood,
gayly threw open his smart jacket lest his brass buttons mar the
instrument, and sang with a sudden fervor that startled and delighted
all the group:
"Drink to me only with thine eyes."
In the midst of which Constance lifted a knowing look across to Miranda,
and Miranda sent it back.
There was never an evening that did not have to end, and at last the
gentlemen began to make a show of leaving. But then came a lively chat,
all standing in a bunch. To-morrow's procession, the visitors said,
would form in Canal Street, move up St. Charles, return down Camp Street
into Canal, pass through it into Rampart, take the Bayou Road and march
to a grand review away out in the new camp of instruction at the Creole
Race-Course. Intermediately, from a certain Canal Street balcony, Flora
would present the flag! the gorgeous golden, silken, satin battle
standard which the Callenders and others had helped her to make. So
--good-night--good-night.
The last parting was with Mandeville, at the levee-road gate, just below
which he lived in what, during the indigo-planter's life, had been the
overseer's cottage. At a fine stride our artillerist started townward,
his horse being stabled near by in that direction. But presently he
halted, harkened after the Creole's receding step, thought long, softly
called himself names, and then did a small thing which, although it
resulted in nothing tragic at the time, marked a turning point in his
life. He leapt the grove fence, returned to the shadows of the garden,
and silently made his way to its eastern, down-river side. Already the
dwelling's lower lights were going out while none yet shone above, and
he paused in deep shade far enough away to see, over its upper veranda's
edge, the tops of its chamber windows.
X
SYLVIA SIGHS
The house was of brick. So being, in a land where most dwellings are of
wood, it had gathered beauty from time and dignity from tried strength,
and with satisfying grace joined itself to its grounds, whose abundance
and variety of flowering, broad-leaved evergreens lent, in turn, a
poetic authenticity to its Greek columns and to the Roman arches of its
doors and windows. Especially in these mild, fragrant, blue nights was
this charm potent, and the fair home seemed to its hidden beholder
forever set apart from the discords and distresses of a turbulent world.
And now an upper window brightened, its sash went up, and at the
veranda's balustrade Anna stood outlined against the inner glow.
She may have intended but one look at the stars, but they and the spiced
air were enchanting, and in confidence that no earthly eye was on her
she tarried, gazing out to the farthest gleam of the river where it
swung southward round the English Turn.
Down in the garden a mirthful ecstasy ran through all the blood of her
culprit observer and he drank to her only with his eyes. Against the
window's brightness her dark outline showed true, and every smallest
strand of her hair that played along the contours of brow and head
changed his merriment to reverence and bade his heart recognize how
infinitely distant from his was her thought. Hilary Kincaid! can you
read no better than that?
Her thought was of him. Her mind's eye saw him on his homeward ride. It
marked the erectness of his frame, the gayety of his mien, the dance of
his locks. By her inner ear she heard his horse's tread passing up the
narrow round-stone pavements of the Creole Quarter, presently to echo in
old St. Peter Street under the windows of Pontalba Row--one of which was
Flora's. Would it ring straight on, or would it pause between that
window and the orange and myrtle shades of Jackson Square? Constance had
said that day to Miranda--for this star-gazer to overhear--that she did
not believe Kincaid loved Flora, and the hearer had longed to ask her
why, but knew she could not tell. Why is a man's word. "They're as
helpless without it," the muser recalled having very lately written on a
secret page, "as women are before it. And yet a girl can be very hungry,
at times, for a why. They say he's as brave as a lion--why is he never
brave to me?"
So futilely ended the strain on the remembered page, but while his
unsuspected gaze abode on her lifted eyes her thought prolonged the
note: "If he meant love to-night, why did he not stand to his meaning
when I laughed it away? Was that for his friend's sake, or is he only
not brave enough to make one wild guess at me? Ah, I bless Heaven he's
the kind that cannot! And still--oh, Hilary Kincaid, if you were the
girl and I the man! I shouldn't be on my way home; I'd be down in this
garden--." She slowly withdrew.
Hilary, stepping back to keep her in sight, was suddenly aware of the
family coachman close at his side. Together they moved warily a few
steps farther.
"You mus' escuse me, Cap'n," the negro amiably whispered. "You all
right, o' co'se! Yit dese days, wid no white gen'leman apputtainin' onto
de place--"
"Old man!" panted Hilary, "you've saved my life!"
"Oh, my Lawd, no! Cap'n, I--"
"Yes, you have! I was just going into fits! Now step in and fetch me out
here--" He shaped his arms fantastically and twiddled his fingers.
Bending with noiseless laughter the negro nodded and went.
Just within her window, Anna, still in reverie, sat down at a slender
desk, unlocked a drawer, then a second one inside it, and drew forth--no
mere secret page but--a whole diary! "To Anna, from Miranda, Christmas,
1860." Slowly she took up a pen, as gradually laid it by again, and
opposite various dates let her eyes rest on--not this, though it was
still true:
"The more we see of Flora, the more we like her."
Nor this: "Heard a great, but awful, sermon on the duty of resisting
Northern oppression."
But this: "Connie thinks he 'inclines' to me. Ho! all he's ever said has
been for his far-away friend. I wish he would incline, or else go ten
times as far away! Only not to the war--God forbid! Ah, me, how I long
for his inclining! And while I long he laughs, and the more he laughs
the more I long, for I never, never so doted on any one's laugh. Oh,
shame! to love before--"
What sound was that below? No mocking-bird note, no south wind in the
foliage, but the kiss of fingers on strings! Warily it stole in at the
window, while softly as an acacia the diary closed its leaves. The bent
head stirred not, but a thrill answered through the hearer's frame as a
second cadence ventured up and in and a voice followed it in song.
Tremblingly the book slid into the drawer, inner and outer lock clicked
whisperingly, and gliding to a door she harkened for any step of the
household, while she drank the strains, her bosom heaving with equal
alarm and rapture.
If any song is good which serves a lover's ends we need claim no more
for the one that rose to Anna on the odors of the garden and drove her
about the room, darting, clinging, fluttering, returning, like her own
terrified bird above her in its cage.
When Sylvia sighs
And veils the worshipped wonder
Of her blue eyes
Their sacred curtains under,
Naught can so nigh please me as my tender anguish.
Only grief can ease me while those lashes languish.
Woe best beguiles;
Mirth, wait thou other whiles;
Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow
When Sylvia smiles.
But what a strange effect! Could this be that Anna. Callender who "would
no more ever again seem small, than the ocean?" Is this that maiden of
the "belated, gradual smile" whom the singer himself so lately named "a
profound pause?" Your eyes, fair girl, could hardly be more dilated if
they saw riot, fire, or shipwreck. Nor now could your brow show more
exaltation responsive to angels singing in the sun; nor now your frame
show more affright though soldiers were breaking in your door. Anna,
Anna! your fingers are clenched in your palms, and in your heart one
frenzy implores the singer to forbear, while another bids him sing on
though the heavens fall. Anna Callender! do you not know this? You have
dropped into a chair, you grip the corners of your desk. Now you are up
again, trembling and putting out your lights. And now you seek to
relight them, but cannot remember the place or direction of anything,
and when you have found out what you were looking for, do not know how
much time has flown, except that the song is still in its first stanza.
Are you aware that your groping hand has seized and rumpled into its
palm a long strand of slender ribbon lately unwound from your throat?
A coy tap sounds on her door and she glides to it. "Who--who?" But in
spite of her it opens to the bearer of a lamp, her sister Constance.
"Who--who--?" she mocks in soft glee. "That's the question! 'Who is
Sylvia?'"
"Don't try to come in! I--I--the floor is all strewn with matches!"
The sister's mirth vanishes: "Why, Nan! what is the matter?"
"Do-on't whisper so loud! He's right out there!"
"But, dearie! it's nothing but a serenade."
"It's an outrage, Con! How did he ever know--how did he dare to
know--this was my window? Oh, put out that lamp or he'll think I lighted
it--No! no! don't put it out, he'll think I did that, too!"
"Why, Nan! you never in your life--"
"Now, Connie, that isn't fair! I won't stay with you!" The speaker fled.
Constance put out the light.
A few steps down and across a hall a soft sound broke, and Anna stood in
Miranda's doorway wearing her most self-contained smile: "Dearie!" she
quietly said, "isn't it _too_ ridiculous!"
Miranda crinkled a smile so rife with love and insight that Anna's eyes
suddenly ran full and she glided to her knees by the seated one and into
her arms, murmuring, "You ought both of you to be ashamed of yourselves!
You're totally mistaken!"
Presently, back in the dusk of her own room, an audible breathing
betrayed her return, and Constance endeavoured to slip out, but Anna
clung: "You sha'n't go! You sha'--" Yet the fugitive easily got away.
Down among the roses a stanza had just ended. Anna tiptoed out half
across the dim veranda, tossed her crumpled ribbon over the rail,
flitted back, bent an ear, and knew by a brief hush of the strings that
the token had drifted home.
The die was cast. From brow and heart fled all perturbation and once
more into her eyes came their wonted serenity--with a tinge of
exultation--while the strings sounded again, and again rose the song:
When Sylvia smiles
Her eyes to mine inclining,
Like azure isles
In seas of lovelight shining,
With a merry madness find I endless pleasure--
Till she sighs--then sadness is my only treasure.
Woe best beguiles;
Mirth, wait thou other whiles,
Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow
When Sylvia smiles.
XI
IN COLUMN OF PLATOONS
Love's war was declared. From hour to hour of that night and the next
morning, in bed, at board, dressing for the thronged city, spinning with
Constance and Miranda up Love Street across Piety and Desire and on into
the town's centre, Anna, outwardly all peace, planned that war's
defensive strategy. Splendidly maidenly it should be, harrowingly
arduous to the proud invader, and long drawn out. Constance should see
what a man can be put through. But oh, but oh, if, after all, the
invasion should not come!