up from the south gave its first flash and crash, and everybody started
pell-mell for home. The speaker stood just long enough for a last bow to
Anna while the guard went before him with the colors. Then he hurried
below and had the whole battery trotting down Canal Street and rounding
back on its farther side, with the beautiful standard fluttering to the
storm, before the Callenders could leave the balcony.
Canal Street that evening was a veritable fairyland. When, growing tired
of their carriage, the Callenders and Mandeville walked, and Kincaid
unexpectedly joined them, fairyland was the only name he could find for
it, and Anna, in response, could find none at all. Mallard's,
Zimmerman's, Clark's, Levois's, Laroussini's, Moody's, Hyde &
Goodrich's, and even old Piffet's were all aglow. One cannot recount
half. Every hotel, every club-house, all the theatres, all the consul's
offices in Royal and Carondelet streets, the banks everywhere, Odd
Fellows' Hall--with the Continentals giving their annual ball in it--and
so forth and so on! How the heart was exalted!
But when the heart is that way it is easy to say things prematurely, and
right there in Canal Street Hilary spoke of love. Not personally, only
at large; although when Anna restively said no woman should ever give
her heart where she could not give a boundless and unshakable trust, his
eyes showed a noble misery while he exclaimed:
"Oh, but there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There
his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent,
but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be
very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not rather die
than doubt.
"Do you believe there are such women?" he asked.
"I know there are," she said, her eyes lifted to his, but the next
instant was so panic-smitten and shamed that she ran into a lamp post.
And when he called that his fault her denial was affirmative in its
feebleness, and with the others she presently resumed the carriage and
said good-night.
"Flippantly!" thought the one left alone on the crowded sidewalk.
Yet--"It is I who am going to have the hardest of it," said the diary a
short hour after. "I've always thought that when the right one came I'd
never give in the faintest bit till I had put him to every test and task
and delay I could invent. And now I can't invent one! His face
_quenches_ doubt, and if he keeps on this way--Ah, Flora! _is_ he
anything to you? Every time he speaks my heart sees you. I see you now!
And somehow--since Charlie's mishap--more yours than his if--"
For a full minute the pen hovered over the waiting page, then gradually
left it and sank to rest on its silver rack.
XIV
FLORA TAPS GRANDMA'S CHEEK
Meanwhile, from a cluster of society folk sipping ices at "Vincent's"
balcony tables, corner of Carondelet Street (where men made the most
money), and Canal (where women spent the most), Flora and her
grandmother, in Irby's care, made their way down to the street.
Kincaid, once more on horseback with General Brodnax, saw them emerge
beside his cousin's hired carriage, and would have hurried to them, if
only to inquire after the injured boy; but the General gave what he was
saying a detaining energy. It was of erecting certain defences behind
Mobile; of the scarcity of military engineers; and of his having, to
higher authority, named Hilary for the task. The Captain could easily
leave the battery in camp for a day or two, take the Mobile boat--He
ceased an instant and scowled, as Hilary bowed across the way.
There was a tender raillery in the beam with which Flora held the young
man's eye a second, and as she turned away there was accusation in the
faint toss and flicker of the deep lace that curtained her hat. Both her
companions saw it, but Irby she filled with an instant inebriation by
one look, the kindest she had ever given him.
"Both barrels!" said the old lady to herself.
As Irby reached the carriage door Flora's touch arrested him. It was as
light as a leaf, but it thrilled him like wine--whose thrill he well
knew.
"I've lost one of my gloves," she said.
He looked about her feet.
"You mus' have drop' it on the stair," said grandmamma, discerning the
stratagem, and glad to aid it.
Problem in tactics: To hunt the glove all the way up to the balcony and
return before Hilary, if he was coming, could reach Flora's side. Irby
set his teeth--he loathed problems--and sprang up the steps.
"No use," chanted Madame with enjoyment; "the other one is not coming."
But Flora remained benign while the old lady drew a little mocking sigh.
"Ah," said the latter, "if the General would only stop changing his mind
about his two nephews, what a lot of hard work that would save you!"
"It isn't hard!" cried Flora; so radiantly that passing strangers
brightened back, "I love it!"
"It!" mocked the grandmother as the girl passed her into the carriage.
"It!"
"You poor tired old thing!" sighed the compassionate beauty. "Never
mind, dear; how the General may choose no longer gives me any anxiety."
"Oh, you lie!"
"No," softly laughed the girl, "not exactly. Don't collapse, love,
you'll get your share of the loot yet. My choice shall fit the General's
as this glove (drawing on the one Irby was still away in search of) fits
this hand."
Madame smiled her contempt: "Nevertheless you will risk all just to show
Anna--"
Flora made a gesture of delight but harkened on--
"That she cannot have her Captain till--"
"Till I'm sure I don't want him!" sang the girl.
"Which will never be!" came the quiet response.
The maiden flushed: "On the contrary, my dear, I was just going to say,
you will please begin _at once_ to be more civil to _our_
Captain--Irby."
Madame gazed: "My God!"
"Ho!" said Flora, "I'd rather somebody else's." She cheerily smoothed
the bonnet-bows under the old lady's chin: "Now, _chère_, you know the
assets are all you care for--even if with them you have to take a
nincompoop for a grandson."
She was laughing merrily when Irby reappeared in the crowd, motioning
that he had found nothing. Her gloved hands raised in fond apology, and
Hilary's absence, appeased him, and he entered the vehicle.
So to Jackson Square, where it was good-by to Irby and the carriage, and
Age and Beauty climbed their staircase together. "To-morrow's Saturday,"
gayly sighed the girl. "I've a good mind to lie abed till noon, counting
up the week's successes."
"Especially to-day's," smirked weary Age.
"Ho-o-oh!" laughed the maiden, "you and to-day be--" The rest was
whispered close, with a one-fingered tap on the painted cheek. In the
gloom of the upper landing she paused to murmur, "hear this: Two things
I have achieved this week worth all to-day's bad luck ten times
over--you don't believe me?"
"No, you pretty creature; you would have told me sooner, if only for
vanity."
"I swear to you it is true!" whispered the lithe boaster, with a gleeful
quiver from head to foot. "Listen! First--purely, of course, for love of
Anna--I have conspired with the General to marry her to Kincaid. And,
second, also purely for love of her, I have conspired with Irby to keep
her and Kincaid forever and a day apart!"
She tapped both the aged cheeks at once: "I hate to share anything so
delicious with you, but I must, because--"
"Ah-h! because, as usual--"
"Yes! Yes, you sweet old pelican! Because you are to turn the crank! But
it's all for love of Anna. Ah, there's no inspiration like
exasperation!"
"Except destitution!" said the grandmother.
They came before Charlie with arms about each other and openly enjoyed
his only comment--a scornful rounding of his eyes.
In the Callender house, as the stair clock sounded the smallest hour of
the night, Miranda, seeing the chink under Anna's door to be still
luminous, stole to the spot, gently rapped, and winning no response
warily let herself in.
From the diary on her desk Anna lifted her cheek, looked up, reclosed
her lids, smiled and reopened them. Miranda took the blushing face
between her palms, and with quizzing eyes--and nose--inquired:
"Is there any reason under heaven why Anna Callender shouldn't go to bed
and have glad dreams?"
"None that I know of," said Anna.
XV
THE LONG MONTH OF MARCH
Ole mahs' love' wine, ole mis' love' silk,
De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk,
An' eveh sence dis worl' began,
De ladies loves de ladies' man.
I loves to sing a song to de ladies!
I loves to dance along o' de ladies!
Whilse eveh I can breave aw see aw stan'
I's bound to be a ladies' man.
So sang Captain Hilary Kincaid at the Mandeville-Callender wedding
feast, where his uncle Brodnax, with nearly everyone we know, was
present. Hilary had just been second groomsman, with Flora for his "file
leader," as he said, meaning second bridesmaid. He sat next her at
table, with Anna farthest away.
Hardly fortunate was some one who, conversing with the new Miss
Callender, said the charm of Kincaid's singing was that the song came
from "the entire man." She replied that just now it really seemed so! In
a sense both comments were true, and yet never in the singer's life had
so much of "the entire man" refused to sing. All that night of the
illumination he had not closed his eyes, except in anguish for having
tried to make love on the same day when--and to the same Anna Callender
before whom--he had drawn upon himself the roaring laugh of the crowded
street; or in a sort of remorse for letting himself become the rival of
a banished friend who, though warned that a whole platoon of him would
make no difference, suddenly seemed to plead a prohibitory difference
to one's inmost sense of honor.
At dawn he had risen resolved to make good his boast and "fight like a
whale." Under orders of his own seeking he had left the battery the
moment its tents were up and had taken boat for Mobile. Whence he had
returned only just in time to stand beside Flora Valcour, preceded by a
relative of the bridegroom paired with Anna.
Yet here at the feast none was merrier than Kincaid, who, charmingly
egged on by Flora, kept those about him in gales of mirth, and even let
himself be "cajoled" (to use his own term) into singing this song whose
title had become his nickname. Through it all Anna smiled and laughed
with the rest and clapped for each begged-for stanza. Yet all the time
she said in her heart, "He is singing it at me!"
De squir'l he love' de hick'ry tree,
De clover love' de bummle-bee,
De flies, dey loves mullasses, an'--
De ladies loves de ladies' man.
I loves to be de beau o' de ladies!
I loves to shake a toe wid de ladies!
Whilse eveh I'm alive, on wateh aw Ian',
I's bound to be a ladies' man.
The General, seeing no reason why Hilary should not pay Anna at least
the attentions he very properly paid his "file leader," endured the song
with a smile, but took revenge when he toasted the bride:
"In your prayers to-night, my dear Constance, just thank God your
husband is, at any rate, without the sense of humor--Stop, my friends!
Let me finish!"
A storm of laughter was falling upon Mandeville, but the stubborn
General succeeded after all in diverting it to Hilary, to whom in solemn
mirth he pointed as--"_that_ flirtatious devotee of giddiness, without
a fault big enough to make him interesting!" ["Hoh!"--"Hoh!"--from men
and maidens who could easily have named huge ones.] Silent Anna knew at
least two or three; was it not a fault a hundred times too grave to be
uninteresting, for a big artillerist to take a little frightened lassie
as cruelly at her word as he was doing right here and now?
Interesting to her it was that his levity still remained unsubmerged,
failing him only in a final instant: Their hands had clasped in
leave-taking and her eyes were lifted to his, when some plea with which
"the entire man" seemed overcharged to the very lips was suddenly,
subtly, and not this time by disconcertion, but by self-mastery,
withheld. Irby put in a stiff good-by, and as he withdrew, Hilary echoed
only the same threadbare word more brightly, and was gone; saying to
himself as he looked back from the garden's outmost bound:
"She's _cold;_ that's what's the matter with Anna; cold and cruel!"
Tedious was the month of March. Mandeville devise' himself a splandid
joke on that, to the effect that soon enough there would be months of
tedieuse marches--ha, ha, ha!--and contribute' it to the news-pape'. Yet
the tedium persisted. Always something about to occur, nothing ever
occurring. Another vast parade, it is true, some two days after the
marriage, to welcome from Texas that aged general (friend of the
Callenders) who after long suspense to both sides had at last joined
the South, and was to take command at New Orleans. Also, consequent upon
the bursting of a gun that day in Kincaid's Battery, the funeral
procession of poor, handsome, devil-may-care Felix de Gruy; saxhorns
moaning and wailing, drums muttering from their muffled heads, Anna's
ensign furled in black, captain and lieutenants on foot, brows inclined,
sabres reversed, and the "Stars and Bars," new flag of the Confederacy,
draping the slow caisson that bore him past the Callenders' gates in
majesty so strange for the gay boy.
Such happenings, of course; but nothing that ever brought those things
for which one, wakening in the night, lay and prayed while forced by the
songster's rapture to "listen to the mocking-bird."
While the Judge lived the Callenders had been used to the company of men
by the weight of whose energies and counsel the clock of public affairs
ran and kept time; senators, bishops, bank presidents, great lawyers,
leading physicians; a Dr. Sevier, for one. Some of these still enjoyed
their hospitality, and of late in the old house life had recovered much
of its high charm and breadth of outlook. Yet March was tedious.
For in March nearly all notables felt bound to be up at Montgomery
helping to rock the Confederacy's cradle. Whence came back sad stories
of the incapacity, negligence, and bickerings of misplaced men. It was
"almost as bad as at Washington." Friends still in the city were
tremendously busy; yet real business--Commerce--with scarce a moan of
complaint, lay heaving out her dying breath. Busy at everything but
business, these friends, with others daily arriving in command of
rustic volunteers, kept society tremendously gay, by gas-light; and
courage and fortitude and love of country and trust in God and scorn of
the foe went clad in rainbow colors; but at the height of all manner of
revels some pessimist was sure to explain to Anna why the war must be
long, of awful cost, and with a just fighting chance to win.
"Then why do we not turn about right here?"
"Too late now."
Such reply gave an inward start, it seemed so fitted to her own
irrevealable case. But it was made to many besides her, and women came
home from dinings or from operas and balls for the aid of this or that
new distress of military need, and went up into the dark and knelt in
all their jewels and wept long. In March the poor, everywhere, began to
be out of work, and recruiting to be lively among them too, because for
thousands of them it was soldier's pay or no bread. Among the troops
from the country death had begun to reap great harvests ere a gun was
fired, and in all the camps lovers nightly sang their lugubrious
"Lorena," feeling that "a hundred months had passed" before they had
really dragged through one. March was so tedious, and lovers are such
poor arithmeticians. Wherever Hilary Kincaid went, showing these how to
cast cannon (that would not burst), those where to build fortifications,
and some how to make unsickly camps, that song was begged of him in the
last hour before sleep; last song but one, the very last being
always--that least liked by Anna.
Tedious to Kincaid's Battery were his absences on so many errands.
Behind a big earthwork of their own construction down on the river's
edge of the old battle ground, close beyond the Callenders', they lay
camped in pretty white tents that seemed to Anna, at her window, no
bigger than visiting-cards. Rarely did she look that way but the fellows
were drilling, their brass pieces and their officers' drawn sabres
glinting back the sun, horses and men as furiously diligent as big and
little ants, and sometimes, of an afternoon, their red and yellow silk
and satin standard unfurled--theirs and hers. Of evenings small bunches
of the boys would call to chat and be sung to; to threaten to desert if
not soon sent to the front; and to blame all delays on colonels and
brigadiers "known" by them to be officially jealous of--They gave only
the tedious nickname.
"Why belittle him with that?" queried Miranda, winning Anna's silent
gratitude.
"It doesn't belittle _him_," cried Charlie. "That's the joke. It makes
_him_ loom larger!"
Others had other explanations: Their guns were "ladies' guns!" Were the
guns the foremost cause? Some qualified: "Foremost, yes; fundamental,
no." Rather the fact that never was a woman cited in male gossip but
instantly he was her champion; or that no woman ever brought a grievance
to any camp where he might be but she wanted to appeal it to him.
Anna "thought the name was all from the song."
"Oh, fully as much from his hundred and one other songs! Had he never
sung to her--
"'I'd offer thee this hand of mine--'?"
Frankly, it was agreed, he did most laughably love ladies' company;
that he could always find it, as a horse can find water; that although
no evening in their society could be so gay or so long that he would not
be certain to work harder next day than any one else, no day could be so
cruelly toilsome that he could not spend half the next night dancing
with the girls; and lastly, that with perfect evenness and a boyish
modesty he treated them all alike.
Anna laughed with the rest, but remembered three separate balls to
which, though counted on, he had not come, she uninformed that military
exigencies had at the last moment curtly waved him off, and he unaware
that these exigencies had been created by Irby under inspiration from
the daintiest and least self-assertive tactician in or about New
Orleans.
XVI
CONSTANCE TRIES TO HELP
One day, in Canal Street, Kincaid met "Smellemout and Ketchem." It was
pleasant to talk with men of such tranquil speech. He proposed a glass
of wine, but just then they were "strictly temperance." They alluded
familiarly to his and Greenleaf's midnight adventure. The two
bull-drivers, they said, were still unapprehended.
Dropping to trifles they mentioned a knife, a rather glittering gewgaw,
which, as evidence, ought--
"Oh, that one!" said Hilary. "Yes, I have it, mud, glass jewels and all.
No," he laughed, "I can keep it quite as safely as you can."
So they passed to a larger matter. "For, really, as to Gibbs and
Lafontaine--"
"You can't have them either," interrupted their Captain, setting the
words to a tune. Then only less melodiously--"No, sir-ee! Why,
gentlemen, they weren't trying to kill the poor devil, he was trying to
kill them, tell your Committee of Public Safety. And tell them times are
changed. You can _take_ Sam and Maxime, of course, _if_ you can take the
whole battery; we're not doing a retail business. By the by--did you
know?--'twas Sam's gun broke the city's record, last week, for rapid
firing! Funny, isn't it!--Excuse me, I must speak to those ladies."
The ladies, never prettier, were Mrs. Callender and Constance. They were
just reentering, from a shop, their open carriage. In amiable reproach
they called him a stranger, yet with bewitching resignation accepted and
helped out his lame explanations.
"You look--" began Constance--but "careworn" was a risky term and she
stopped. He suggested "weather-beaten," and the ladies laughed.
"Yes," they said, "even they were overtasked with patriotic activities,
and Anna had almost made herself ill. Nevertheless if he would call he
should see her too. Oh, no, not to-day; no, not to-morrow; but--well--
the day after." (Miss Valcour passed so close as to hear the
appointment, but her greeting smile failed to draw their attention.)
"And oh, then you must tell us all about that fearful adventure in which
you saved Lieutenant Greenleaf's life! Ah, we've heard, just heard, _in
a letter_." The horses danced with impatience. "We shall expect you!"
As they drove into Royal Street with Constance rapturously pressing
Miranda's hand the latter tried vainly to exchange bows with a third
beauty and a second captain, but these were busy meeting each other in
bright surprise and espied the carriage only when it had passed.
Might the two not walk together a step or so? With pleasure. They were
Flora and Irby. Presently--
"Do you know," she asked, "where your cousin proposes to be day after
to-morrow evening--in case you should want to communicate with him?"
He did not. She told him.
XVII
"OH, CONNIE, DEAR--NOTHING--GO ON"
The third evening came. On all the borders of dear Dixie more tents than
ever whitened sea-shores and mountain valleys, more sentinels paced to
and fro in starlight or rain, more fifers and trumpeters woke the echoes
with strains to enliven fortitude, more great guns frowned silently at
each other over more parapets, and more thousands of lovers reclined
about camp fires with their hearts and fancies at home, where mothers
and maidens prayed in every waking moment for God's mercy to keep the
brave truants; and with remembrance of these things Anna strove to
belittle her own distress while about the library lamp she and Miranda
seemed each to be reading a book, and Constance the newspaper sent from
Charleston by Mandeville.
Out in the mellow night a bird sang from the tip-top of a late-blooming
orange tree, and inside, away inside, inside and through and through the
poor girl's heart, the "years"--which really were nothing but the mantel
clock's quarter-hours--"crept slowly by."
At length she laid her book aside, softly kissed each seated companion,
and ascended to her room and window. There she stood long without sound
or motion, her eyes beyond the stars, her head pressed wearily against
the window frame. Then the lids closed while her lips formed soft words:
"Oh, God, he is not coming!" Stillness again. And then--"Oh, let me
believe yet that only Thy hand keeps him away! Is it to save him for
some one fairer and better? God, I ask but to know! I'm a rebel, but not
against Thee, dear Lord. I know it's a sin for me to suffer this way;
Thou dost not _owe_ me happiness; I owe it Thee. Oh, God, am I clamoring
for my week's wages before I've earned an hour's pay? Yet oh! yet
oh!"--the head rocked heavily on its support--"if only--if only--"
She started--listened! A gate opened--shut. She sprang to her glass and
then from it. In soft haste she needlessly closed the window and drew
its shade and curtains. She bathed her eyelids and delicately dried
them. At the mirror again she laid deft touches on brow and crown,
harkening between for any messenger's step, and presently, without
reason, began to set the room more exquisitely to rights. Now she faced
the door and stood attentive, and now she took up a small volume and sat
down by her lamp.
A tap: Constance entered, beaming only too tenderly. "It was better,
wasn't it," she asked, hovering, "to come than to send?"
"Why, of course, dear; it always is."
A meditative silence followed. Then Anna languidly inquired, "Who is
it?"
"Nobody but Charlie."
The inquirer brightened: "And why isn't Charlie as good as any one?"
"He is, to-night," replied the elder beauty, "except--the one
exception."
"Oh, Connie"--a slight flush came as the seated girl smilingly drew her
sister's hands down to her bosom--"there isn't any one exception, and
there's not going to be any. Now, that smile is downright mean of you!"
The offender atoned with a kiss on the brow.
"Why do you say," asked its recipient, "'as good as any one,
_to-night_'?"
"Because," was the soft reply, "to-night he comes from--the other--to
explain why the other couldn't come."
"Why!"--the flush came back stronger--"why, Connie! why, that's
positively silly--ha, ha, ha!"
"I don't see how, Nan."
"My dear Con! Isn't his absence equally and perfectly innocent whether
he couldn't come or wouldn't come? But an explanation sent!--by
courier!--to--to shorten--ah, ha, ha!--to shorten our agony! Why, Con,
wouldn't you have thought better of him than that? H-oh, me! What a
man's 'bound to be' I suppose he's bound to be. What is the precious
explanation?"