it," she replied. Her tears came: "My little sister, I'm on the man's
side in this affair!"
"That's not good of you," murmured Anna.
"I don't claim to be good. But there's one thing, Nan Callender, I never
did; I never chained up my lover to see if he'd stay chained. When
Steve--"
"Oh-h! Oh-h!" panted Anna, "you're too cruel! Hilary Kincaid wears no
chain of mine!"
"Oh, yes, he does! He's broken away, but he's broken away, chain and
all, to starve and perish, as one look into his face would show you!"
"He doesn't show his face. He sends--"
"An explanation. Yes. Which first you scorn and then consent to hear."
"Don't scorn _me_, Connie. What's the explanation?"
"It's this: he's been sent back to those Mobile fortifications--received
the order barely in time to catch the boat by going instantly. Nan, the
Valcours' house is found to stand right on their proposed line, and he's
gone to decide whether the line may be changed or the house must be
demolished."
Anna rose, twined an arm in her sister's and with her paced the chamber.
"How perfectly terrible!" she murmured, their steps ceasing and her eyes
remote in meditation. "Poor Flora! Oh, the poor old lady! And oh, oh,
poor Flora!--But, Con! The line will be changed! He--you know what the
boys call him!"
"Yes, but there's the trouble. He's no one lady's man. Like Steve, he's
so absolutely fair--"
"Connie, I tell you it's a strange line he won't change for Flora
Valcour!"
"Now, Nan Callender! The line will go where it ought to go. By the by,
Charlie says neither Flora nor her grandmother knows the house is in
danger. Of course, if it is harmed, the harm will be paid for."
"Oh, paid for!"
"Why, Nan, I'm as sorry for them as you. But _I_ don't forget to be
sorry for Hilary Kincaid too."
"Connie"--walk resumed, speaker's eyes on the floor--"if you'd only see
that to me he's merely very interesting--entertaining--nothing more
whatever--I'd like to say just a word about him."
"Say on, precious."
"Well--did you ever see a man so fond of men?"
"Oh, of course he is, or men wouldn't be so fond of him."
"_I_ think he's fonder of men than of women!"
Constance smiled: "Do you?"
"And I think," persisted Anna, "the reason some women find him so
agreeable is that our collective society is all he asks of us, or ever
will ask."
"Nan Callender, look me in the eye! You can't! My little sister, you've
got a lot more sense than I have, and you know it, but I can tell you
one thing. When Steve and I--"
"Oh, Connie, dear--nothing--go on."
"I won't! Except to say some lovers take love easy and some--can't. I
must go back to Charlie. I know, Nan, it's those who love hardest that
take love hardest, and I suppose it's born in Hilary Kincaid, and it's
born in you, to fight it as you'd fight fire. But, oh, in these strange
times, don't do it! Don't do it. You're going to have trouble a-plenty
without."
The pair, moving to the door with hands on each other's shoulders,
exchanged a melting gaze. "Trouble a-plenty," softly asked Anna, "why do
you--?"
"Oh, why, why, why!" cried the other, with a sudden gleam of tears. "I
wish you and Miranda had never learned that word."
XVIII
FLORA TELLS THE TRUTH!
You ask how the Valcour ladies, living outwardly so like the most of us
who are neither scamps nor saints, could live by moral standards so
different from those we have always thought essential to serenity of
brow, sweetness of bloom or blitheness of companionship, and yet could
live so prettily--remain so winsome and unscarred.
Well, neither of them had ever morally _fallen_ enough even to fret the
brow. It is the fall that disfigures. They had lived up to inherited
principles (such as they were), and one of the minor of these was, to
adapt their contours to whatever they impinged upon.
We covet solidity of character, but Flora and Madame were essentially
fluid. They never let themselves clash with any one, and their private
rufflings of each other had only a happy effect of aerating their
depths, and left them as mirror-smooth and thoroughly one as the bosom
of a garden lake after the ripples have died behind two jostling swans.
To the Callenders society was a delightful and sufficient end. To the
Valcours it was a means to all kinds of ends, as truly as commerce or
the industries, and yet they were so fragrantly likable that to call
them accomplices seems outrageous--clogs the pen. Yes, they were actors,
but you never saw that. They never stepped out of their parts, and they
had this virtue, if it is one: that behind all their rôles they were
staunchly for each other in every pinch. When Kincaid had been away a
few days this second time, these two called at the Callender house.
To none was this house more interesting than to Flora. In her adroit
mind she accused it of harboring ancient secrets in its architecture,
shrewd hiding-places in its walls. Now as she stood in the panelled
drawing-rooms awaiting its inmates, she pointed out to her seated
companion that this was what her long-dead grandsire might have made
their own home, behind Mobile, had he spent half on its walls what he
had spent in them on wine, cards, and--
"Ah!" chanted the old lady, with a fierce glint and a mock-persuasive
smile, "add the crowning word, the capsheaf. You have the stamina to do
it."
"Women," said the girl of stamina beamingly, and went floating about,
peering and tapping for hollow places. At one tap her eye, all to
itself, danced; but on the instant Anna, uninformed of their presence,
and entering with a vase of fresh roses, stood elated. Praise of the
flowers hid all confusion, and Flora, with laughing caresses and a droll
hardihood which Anna always enjoyed, declared she would gladly steal
roses, garden, house and all. Anna withdrew, promising instant return.
"Flora dear!" queried the grandmother in French, "why did you tell her
the truth? For once you must have been disconcerted!"
The sparkling girl laughed: "Why, isn't that--with due
modifications--just what we're here for?"
Madame suddenly looked older, but quickly brightened again as Flora
spoke on: "Don't you believe the truth is, now and then, the most
effective lie? I've sometimes inferred you did."
The old lady rather enjoyed the gibe: "My dear, I can trust you never to
give any one an overdose of it. Yet take care, you gave it a bit too
pure just now. Don't ever risk it so on that fool Constance, she has the
intuitive insight of a small child--the kind you lost so early."
The two exchanged a brief admiring glance. "Oh, I'm all right with
Constance," was the reply. "I'm cousin to 'Steve'!"
There the girl's gayety waned. The pair were at this moment in desperate
need of money. Mandeville was one of the old coffee-planter's
descendants. Had fate been less vile, thought Flora, this house might
have been his, and so hers in the happy event of his demise. But now, in
such case, to Constance, as his widow, would be left even the leavings,
the overseer's cottage; which was one more convenient reason for
detesting--not him, nor Constance--that would be to waste good
ammunition; but--
"Still thinking of dear Anna?" asked the dame.
The maiden nodded: "Grandma"--a meditative pause--"I love Anna. Anna's
the only being on earth I can perfectly trust."
"Ahem!" was the soft rejoinder, and the two smilingly held each other's
gaze for the larger part of a minute. Then one by one came in the ladies
of the house, and it was kiss and chirrup and kiss again.
"_Cousin_ Constance--ah, ha, ha!--_cousin_ Flora!"
The five talked of the wedding. Just to think! 'Twas barely a month ago,
they said.
Yet how much had occurred, pursued Miranda, and how many things hoped
and longed for had not occurred, and how time had dragged! At those
words Flora saw Anna's glance steal over to Miranda. But Miranda did not
observe, and the five chatted on. How terrifying, at still noon of the
last Sabbath--everybody in church--had been that explosion of the
powder-mill across the river. The whole business blown to dust. Nothing
but the bare ground left. Happily no workmen there. No, not even a
watchman, though the city was well known to be full of the enemy's
"minions" (Flora's term). Amazing negligence, all agreed. Yet only of a
piece--said Constance--etc.
And how sad to find there was a victim, after all, when poor, threadbare
old Doctor Visionary, inventor of the machine-gun and a new kind of
powder, began to be missed by his landlady, there being, in Captain
Kincaid's absence, no one else to miss him. Yes, it was the Captain who
had got him a corner to work in at the powder-mill. So much the worse
for both. Now plans, models, formulae, and inventor were gone in that
one flash and roar that shook the whole city and stopped all talk of
Captain Kincaid's promotion as an earthquake stops a clock.
"Well," cried Constance to Flora, who had grown silent, "the battery
will love him all the more!"
"And so will we all!" said Madame, also to Flora; and Flora, throwing
off a look of pain, explained to Anna, "He is so good to my brother!"
"Naturally," quizzed Miranda, with her merriest wrinkles. Flora
sparkled, made a pretty face at her and forced a change of theme; gave
Anna's roses new praise, and said she had been telling grandma of the
swarms of them in the rear garden. So the old lady, whom she had told no
such thing, let Constance and Miranda conduct her there. But Flora
softly detained Anna, and the moment they were alone seized both her
hands. Whereat through all Anna's frame ran despair, crying, "He has
asked her! He has asked her!"
XIX
FLORA ROMANCES
"Dearest," warily exclaimed the Creole beauty, with a sudden excess of
her pretty accent, "I am in a situation perfectly dreadful!"
Anna drew her to a sofa, seeing pictures of her and Hilary together, and
tortured with a belief in their exquisite fitness to be so. "Can I help
you, dear?" she asked, though the question echoed mockingly within her.
"Ah, no, except with advice," said Flora, "only with advice!"
"Ho-o-oh! if I were worthy to advise you it wouldn't flatter me so to be
asked."
"But I muz' ask. 'Tis only with you that I know my secret will be--to
everybody--and forever--at the bed of the ocean. You can anyhow promise
me that."
"Yes, I can anyhow promise you that."
"Then," said Flora, "let me speak whiles--" She dropped her face into
her hands, lifted it again and stared into her listener's eyes so
piteously that through Anna ran another cry--"He has not asked! No girl
alive could look so if he had asked her!"
Flora seemed to nerve herself: "Anna, every dollar we had, every
picayune we could raise, grandma and I, even on our Mobile house and our
few best jewels, is--is--"
"Oh, what--what? Not lost? Not--not stolen?"
"Blown up! Blown up with that poor old man in the powder-mill!"
"Flora, Flora!" was all Anna, in the shame of her rebuked conjectures,
could cry, and all she might have cried had she known the very truth:
That every dollar, picayune, and other resource had disappeared
_gradually_ in the grist-mill of daily need and indulgence, and never
one of them been near the powder-mill, the poor old man or any of his
devices.
"His theories were so convincing," sighed Flora.
"And you felt so pitiful for him," prompted Anna.
"Grandma did; and I was so ambitious to do some great patriotic
service--like yours, you Callenders, in giving those cannon--and--"
"Oh, but you went too far!"
"Ah, if we had only gone no farther!"
"You went farther? How could you?"
"Grandma did. You know, dear, how suddenly Captain Kincaid had to leave
for Mobile--by night?"
"Yes," murmured Anna, with great emphasis in her private mind.
"Well, jus' at the las' he gave Charlie a small bag of gold, hundreds
of dollars, for--for--_me to keep for him till his return_. Anna! I was
offended."
"Oh, but surely he meant no--"
"Ah, my dear, did I ever give him the very least right to pick me out in
that manner? No. Except in that one pretty way he has with all of
us--and which you know so well--"
An uncourageous faint smile seemed the safest response.
"Yes," said Flora, "you know it. And I had never allowed myself--"
With eyes down the two girls sat silent. Then the further word came
absently, "I refused to touch his money," and there was another
stillness.
"Dear," slowly said Anna, "I don't believe it was his. It would not have
been in gold. Some men of the battery were here last evening--You know
the Abolition schoolmistress who was sent North that day?"
"Yes, I know, 'twas hers."
"Well, dear, if she could entrust it to him--"
"Ah! _she_ had a sort of right, being, as the whole battery knows, in
love with him"--the beauty swept a finger across her perfect brows--"up
to there! For that I don't know is he to blame. If a girl has no more
sense--"
"No," murmured Anna as the cruel shaft went through her. "What did
Charlie do with the money?"
Flora tossed a despairing hand: "Gave it to grandma! And poor innocent
grandma lent it to the old gentleman! 'Twas to do wonders for the powder
and gun, and be return' in three days. But the next--"
"I see," sighed Anna, "I see!"
"Yes, next day 'twas Sunday, and whiles I was _kneeling in the church_
the powder, the gun, the old man and the money--Oh, Anna, what shall I
do?"
"My dear, I will tell you," began Anna, but the seeker of advice was not
quite ready for it.
"We have a few paltry things, of course," she spoke on, "but barely
would they pay half. They would neither save our honor, neither leave us
anything for rent or bread! Our house, to be sure, is worth more than we
have borrowed on it, but in the meantime--"
"In the meantime, dear, you shall--" But still Flora persisted:
"Any day, any hour, Captain Kincaid may return. Oh, if 'twere anybody in
this worl' but him! For, Anna, I must take all the blame--all!" The face
went again into the hands.
"My dear, you shall take none. You shall hand him every dollar, every
picayune, on sight."
"Ah, how is that possible? Oh, no, no, no. Use your money? Never, never,
never!"
"It isn't money, Flora. And no one shall ever know. I've got some old
family jewellery--"
"Family--Oh, sweet, for shame!"
"No shame whatever. There's a great lot of it--kinds that will never be
worn again. Let me--" The speaker rose.
"No, no, no! No, Anna, no! For Heaven's sake--"
"Just a piece or two," insisted Anna. "Barely enough to borrow the
amount." She backed away, Flora clinging to her fingers and faltering:
"No, blessed angel, you must not! No, I will not wait. I'll--I'll--"
But Anna kissed the clinging hands and vanished.
A high elation bore her quite to her room and remained with her until
she had unlocked the mass of old jewels and knelt before them. But then
all at once it left her. She laid her folded hands upon them, bent her
brow to the hands, then lifted brow and weeping eyes and whispered to
Heaven for mercy.
"Oh"--a name she could not speak even there went through her heart in
two big throbs--"if only we had never met! I never set so much as a
smile to snare you, you who have snared me. Can Connie be right? Have
you felt my thraldom, and are you trying to throw me off? Then I must
help you do it. Though I covet your love more than life I will not
tether it. Oh, it's because I so covet that I will not tether it! With
the last gem from my own throat will I rather help you go free if you
want to go. God of mercy, what else can I do!"
In grave exultancy Flora moved up and down the drawing-room enjoying her
tread on its rich carpet. She would have liked to flit back to the side
of yonder great chimney breast, the spot where she had been surprised
while sounding the panel work, but this was no time for postponable
risks. She halted to regale her critical eye on the goodly needlework of
a folding-screen whose joints, she noticed, could not be peered through,
and in a pretty, bird-like way stole a glance behind it. Nothing there.
She stepped to a front window and stood toying with the perfect round of
her silken belt. How slimly neat it was. Yet beneath the draperies it
so trimly confined lay hid, in a few notes of "city money," the proceeds
of the gold she had just reported blown into thin air with the old
inventor--who had never seen a glimmer of it. Not quite the full amount
was there; it had been sadly nibbled. But now by dear Anna's goodness
(ahem!) the shortage could be restored, the entire hundreds handed back
to Captain Kincaid, and a snug sum be retained "for rent and bread." Yet
after all--as long as good stories came easy--why hand anything back--to
anybody--even to--him?
He! In her heart desire and odium beat strangely together. Fine as
martial music he was, yet gallingly out of her rhythm, above her key.
Liked her much, too. Yes, for charms she had; any fool could be liked
that way. What she craved was to be liked for charms she had not, graces
she scorned; and because she could not be sure how much of that sort she
was winning she tingled with heat against him--and against Anna--Anna
giver of guns--who _had the money_ to give guns--till her bosom rose
and fell. But suddenly her musing ceased, her eyes shone.
A mounted officer galloped into the driveway, a private soldier
followed, and the private was her brother. Now they came close. The
leader dismounted, passed his rein to Charlie and sprang up the veranda
steps. Flora shrank softly from the window and at the same moment Anna
reëntered gayly, showing a glitter of values twice all expectation:
"If these are not enough--" She halted with lips apart. Flora had made
sign toward the front door, and now with a moan of fond protest covered
the gem-laden hand in both her palms and pushed it from her.
"Take them back," she whispered, yet held it fast, "'tis too late!
There--the door-bell! 'Tis Hilary Kincaid! All is too late, take them
back!"
"Take them, you!" as vehemently whispered Anna. "You must take them! You
must, you shall!"
Flora had half started to fly, but while she hung upon Anna's words she
let her palms slip under the bestowing hand and the treasure slide into
her own fingers.
"Too late, too late! And oh, I can never, never use them any'ow!" She
sprang noiselessly aside. To a maid who came down the hall Anna quietly
motioned to show the newcomer into an opposite room, but Flora saw that
the sign was misinterpreted: "She didn't understan'! Anna, she's going
to bring him!" Before the words were done the speaker's lithe form was
gliding down the room toward the door by which the other ladies had gone
out, but as she reached it she turned with a hand-toss as of some
despairing afterthought and flitted back.
Out in the hall the front door opened and closed and a sabre clinked:
"Is Miss Callender at home?"
Before the question was half put its unsuspected hearers had recovered a
faultless poise. Beside a table that bore her roses she whom the
inquirer sought stood retouching them and reflecting a faint excess of
their tint, while Flora, in a grave joy of the theatrical, equal to her
companion's distress of it, floated from view behind the silken screen.
XX
THE FIGHT FOR THE STANDARD
His red képi in hand and with all the stalwart briskness of the
flag-presentation's day and hour Hilary Kincaid stepped into the room
and halted, as large-eyed as on that earlier occasion, and even more
startled, before the small figure of Anna.
Yet not the very same Hilary Kincaid. So said her heart the instant
glance met glance. The tarnish of hard use was on all his trappings;
like sea-marshes on fire he was reddened and browned; about him hung
palpably the sunshine and air of sands and waves, and all the stress and
swing of wide designs; and on brow and cheek were new lines that looked
old. From every point of his aspect the truth rushed home to her
livelier, deadlier than ever hitherto, that there was War, and that he
and she were already parts of it.
But the change was more than this. A second and quieter look, the
hand-grasp lingering, showed something deeper; something that wove and
tangled itself through and about all designs, toils, and vigils, and
suddenly looking out of his eyes like a starved captive, cried,
"you--you--" and prophesied that, whether they would or not, this war
was to be his and hers together. A responding thrill must have run from
her fingers into his and belied the unaccountable restraint of her
welcome, for a joy shone from him which it took her ignoring smile and
her hand's withdrawal to quench.
"Miss Anna--"
They sat down. His earlier boyishness came again somewhat, but only
somewhat, as he dropped his elbows to his knees, looking now into his
cap and now into her face. A glance behind her had assured Anna that
there was no shadow on the screen, behind which sat Flora on the carpet,
at graceful ease listening while she eagerly appraised the jewels in her
hands and lap.
"Miss Anna," said the soldier again, "I've come--I've come to tell you
something. It's mighty hard to tell. It's harder than I thought it would
be. For, honestly, Miss Anna, you--from the first time I ever saw you,
you--you--Were you going to speak?"
Behind the screen Flora smiled malignly while Anna said, "No, I--I was
only--no, not at all; go on."
"Yes, Miss Anna, from the first time I--"
"When did you get back from Mobile?" asked Anna seeing he must be headed
off.
"From Mobile? Just now, almost. You don't sup--"
"Oh! I hope"--she must head him off again--"I hope you bring good news?"
There was risk in the question, but where was there safety? At her back
the concealed listener waited keenly for the reply.
"Yes," said Hilary, "news the very best and hardly an hour old. Didn't
you hear the battery cheering? That's what I've come to tell you. Though
it's hard to tell, for I--"
"It's from Mobile, you say?"
"No, I can tell you the Mobile news first, but it's bad. Miss Flora's
home--"
Anna gave a start and with a hand half upthrown said quietly, "Don't
tell me. No, please, don't, I don't want to hear it. I can't explain,
but I--I--" Tears wet her lashes, and her hands strove with each other.
"I don't like bad news. You should have taken it straight to Flora. Oh,
I wish you'd do that now, won't you--please?"
Behind the screen the hidden one stiffened where she crouched with
fierce brow and fixed eyes.
Kincaid spoke: "Would you have me pass you by with my good news to go
first to her with the bad?"
"Oh, Captain Kincaid, yes, yes! Do it yet. Go, do it now. And tell her
the good news too!"
"Tell her the good first and then stab her with the bad?"
"Oh, tell her the bad first. Do her that honor. She has earned it.
She'll bear the worst like the heroine she is--the heroine and patriot.
She's bearing it so now!"
"What! she knows already?"
In her hiding Flora's intent face faintly smiled a malevolence that
would have startled even the grandam who still killed time out among the
roses with her juniors.
"Yes," replied Anna, "she knows already."
"Knows! Miss Anna--that her home is in ashes?"
Anna gave a wilder start: "Oh, no-o-oh! Oh, yes--oh, no--oh, yes, yes!
Oh, Captain Kincaid, how could you? Oh, monstrous, monstrous!" She made
all possible commotion to hide any sound that might betray Flora, who
had sprung to her feet, panting.
"But, but, Miss Anna!" protested Hilary. "Why, Miss Anna--"
"Oh, Captain Kincaid, how could you?"
"Why, you don't for a moment imagine--?"
"Oh, it's done, it's done! Go, tell her. Go at once, Captain Kincaid.
Please go at once, won't you?... Please!"
He had risen amazed. Whence such sudden horror, in this fair girl, of a
thing known by her already before he came? And what was this beside?
Horror in the voice yet love beaming from the eyes? He was torn with
perplexity. "I'll go, of course," he said as if in a dream. "Of course
I'll go at once, but--why--if Miss Flora already--?" Then suddenly he
recovered himself in the way Anna knew so well. "Miss Anna"--he
gestured with his cap, his eyes kindling with a strange mixture of
worship and drollery though his brow grew darker--"I'm gone now!"
"In mercy, please go!"