Fred said it would be so. You scare the nonsense out of me, and when
that goes I go--the bubble bursts! Miss Anna--oh, hear me--it's my last
chance--I'll vanish in a moment. The fellows tell me I always know just
what to say to any lady or to anything a lady says; but, on my soul, I
don't think I've ever once known what to say to you or to anything
you've ever said to me, and I don't know now, except that I must and
will tell you--"
"That you did not order the torch set! Oh, say that!"
"No one ordered it. It was a senseless mistake. Some private soldiers
who knew that my lines of survey passed through the house--"
"Ah-h! ah-h!"
"Miss Anna, what would you have? Such is war! Many's the Southern home
must go down under the fire of--of Kincaid's Battery, Miss Anna, before
this war is over, else we might as well bring you back your flag and
guns. Shall we? We can't now, they're ordered to the front. There! I've
got it out! That's my good news. Bad enough for mothers and sisters. Bad
for the sister of Charlie Valcour. Good for you. So good and bad in one
for me, and so hard to tell and say no more! Don't you know why?"
"Oh, I've no right to know--and you've no right--oh, indeed, you
mustn't. It would be so unfair--to you. I can't tell you why, but it--it
would be!"
"And it wouldn't be of--?"
"Any use? No, no!"
Torturing mystery! that with such words of doom she should yet blush
piteously, beam passionately.
"Good-by, then. I go. But I go--under your flag, don't I? Under your
flag! captain of your guns!"
"Ah--one word--wait! Oh, Captain Kincaid, right is right! Not half those
guns are mine. That flag is not mine."
There was no quick reply. From her concealment Flora, sinking
noiselessly again to the carpet, harkened without avail. The soldier--so
newly and poignantly hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to
speak--gazed on the disclaiming girl until for; very distress she broke
the silence: "I--you--every flag of our cause--wherever our brave
soldiers--"
"Oh, but Kincaid's Battery!--and _that_ flag, Anna Callender! The flag
you gave us! That sacred banner starts for Virginia to-morrow--goes into
the war, it and your guns, with only this poor beggar and his boys to
win it honor and glory. Will you deny us--who had it from your
hands--your leave to call it yours? Oh, no, no! To me--to me you will
not!"
For reply there came a light in Anna's face that shone into his heart
and was meant so to shine, yet her dissent was prompt: "I must. I must.
Oh, Capt--Captain Kincaid, I love that flag too well to let it go
misnamed. It's the flag of all of us who made it, us hundred girls--"
"Hundred--yes, yes, true. But how? This very morning I chanced upon your
secret--through little Victorine--that every stitch in all that flag's
embroideries is yours."
"Yet, Captain Kincaid, it is the flag of all those hundred girls; and if
to any one marching under it it is to be the flag of any one of us
singly, that one can only be--you know!"
Majestically in her hiding-place the one implied lowered and lifted her
head in frigid scorn and awaited the commander's answer.
"True again," he said, "true. Let the flag of my hundred boys be to all
and each the flag of a hundred girls. Yet will it be also the flag of
his heart's one choice--sister, wife, or sweetheart--to every man
marching, fighting, or dying under it--and more are going to die under
it than are ever coming back. To me, oh, to me, let it be yours. My
tasks have spared me no time to earn of you what would be dearer than
life, and all one with duty and honor. May I touch your hand? Oh, just
to say good-by. But if ever I return--no, have no fear, I'll not say it
now. Only--only--" he lifted the hand to his lips--"good-by. God's smile
be on you in all that is to come."
"Good-by," came her answering murmur.
"And the flag?" he exclaimed. "The flag?" By the clink of his sabre
Flora knew he was backing away. "Tell me--me alone--the word to perish
with me if I perish--that to me as if alone"--the clinking came nearer
again--"to me and for me and with your blessing"--again the sound drew
away--"the flag--the flag I must court death under--is yours."
Silence. From out in the hall the lover sent back a last beseeching
look, but no sound reached the hiding of the tense listener whose own
heart's beating threatened to reveal her; no sound to say that now Anna
had distressfully shaken her head, or that now her tears ran down, or
that now in a mingled pain and rapture of confession she nodded--nodded!
and yet imploringly waved him away.
It was easy to hear the door open and close. Faintly on this other hand
the voices of the ladies returning from the garden foreran them. The
soldier's tread was on the outer stair. Now theirs was in the rear
veranda. With it tinkled their laughter. Out yonder hoofs galloped.
The hidden one stole forth. A book on a table was totally engaging the
eyes of her hostess and at the instant grandma reëntered laden with
roses. Now all five were in, and Anna, pouring out words with every
motion, and curiously eyed by Constance, took the flowers to give them a
handier form, while Flora rallied her kinswoman on wasting their
friends' morning these busy times, and no one inquired, and no one
told, who had been here that now had vanished.
XXI
CONSTANCE CROSS-EXAMINES
It was like turning to the light the several facets of one of those
old-fashioned jewels Flora was privately bearing away, to see the five
beauties part company: "Good-by, good-by," kiss, kiss--ah, the sad waste
of it!--kiss left, kiss right, "good-by."
As the Callenders came in again from the veranda, their theme was Flora.
"Yet who," asked Constance, "ever heard her utter a moral sentiment?"
"Oh, her beauty does that," rejoined the kindly Miranda. "As Captain
Kincaid said that evening he--"
"Yes, I know. He said he would pass her into heaven on her face, and I
think it was a very strange thing for him to say!"
"Why?" daringly asked Miranda--and ran from the room.
The hater of whys turned upon her sister: "Nan, what's the matter?...
Oh, now, yes, there is. What made you start when Miranda mentioned--Yes,
you did. You're excited, you know you are. When we came in from the
garden you and Flora were both--"
"Now, Connie--"
"Pshaw, Nan, I know he's been here, it's in your face. Who was with him;
Charlie?"
"Yes. They just dropped in to say good-by. The battery's ordered to
Virginia. Virginia hasn't seceded yet, but he feels sure she will before
they can get there, and so do I. Don't you? If Kentucky and Maryland
would only--"
"Now, Nan, just hush. When does he go?"
"To-morrow. But as to us"--the girl shrugged prettily while caressing
her roses--"he's gone now."
"How did he talk?"
"Oh--quite as usual." The head bent low into the flowers. "In the one
pretty way he has with all of us, you know."
Constance would not speak until their eyes met again. Then she asked,
"Did Charlie and Flora give him any chance--to express himself?"
"Oh, Con, don't be foolish. He didn't want any. He as much as said so!"
"Ye-es," drawled the bride incredulously, "but--"
"Oh, he really did not, Con. He talked of nothing but the battery flag
and how, because I'd presented it, they would forever and ever and ever
and ever--" She waved her hands sarcastically.
"Nan, behave. Come here." The pair took the sofa. "How did he look and
act when he first came in? Before you froze him stiff?"
"I didn't freeze him." The quiet, hurt denial was tremulous. "Wood
doesn't freeze." The mouth drooped satirically: "You know well enough
that the man who says his tasks have spared him no time to--to--"
"Nan, honest! Did _you_ give him a fair chance--the kind I gave Steve?"
"Oh, Con! He had all the chance any man ever got, or will get, from
me."
The sister sighed: "Nan Callender, you are the _poorest_ fisherman--"
"I'm not! I'm none! And if I were one"--the disclaimant glistened with
mirth--"I couldn't be as poor a one as he is; he's afraid of his own
bait." She began to laugh but had to force back her tears: "I didn't
mean that! He's never had any bait--for me, nor wanted any. Neither he
nor I ever--Really, Con, you are the only one who's made any mistake as
to either of us! You seem to think--"
"Oh, dearie, I don't think at all, I just know. I know he's furiously in
love with you--Yes, furiously; but that he's determined to be fair to
Fred Greenleaf--"
"Oh!"--a yet wickeder smile.
"Yes, and that he feels poor. You know that if the General--"
The hearer lifted and dropped both arms: "Oh!--to be continued!"
"Well, I know, too, that he doesn't believe, anyhow, in soldiers
marrying. I've never told you, sweet, but--if I hadn't cried so
hard--Steve would have challenged Hilary Kincaid for what he said on
that subject the night we were married!"
Anna straightened, flashed, and then dropped again as she asked, "Is
that all you know?"
"No, I know what counts for more than all the rest; I know you're a
terror to him."
Remotely in the terror's sad eyes glimmered a smile that was more than
half satisfaction. "You might as well call him a coward," she murmured.
"Not at all. _You_ know you've been a terror to every suitor you've
ever had--except Fred Greenleaf; he's the only one you couldn't keep
frightened out of his wits. Now this time I know it's only because
you're--you're bothered! You don't know how you're going to feel--"
"Now, Con--"
"And you _don't_ want to mislead him, and you're just bothered to death!
It was the same way with me."
"It wasn't!" silently said Anna's lips, her face averted. Suddenly she
turned and clutched her sister's hands: "Oh, Con, while we talk trifles
Flora's home lies in ashes!... Yes, he told me so just now."
"Didn't he tell her too?"
"Why, no, Connie, he--he couldn't very well. It--it would have been
almost indelicate, wouldn't it? But he's gone now to tell her."
"He needn't," said Constance. "She knows it now. The moment I came in
here I saw, through all her lightness, she'd got some heavy news. She
must have overheard him, Nan."
"Connie, I--I believe she did!"
"Well, that's all right. What are you blushing for?"
"Blushing! Every time I get a little warm--" The speaker rose to go, but
the sister kept her hand:
"Keep fresh for this evening, honey. He'll be back."
"No, he won't. He doesn't propose to if he could and he couldn't if he
did. To get the battery off to-morrow--"
"It won't get off to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next. You know
how it always is. When Steve--"
"Oh, I don't know anything," said Anna, pulling free and moving off.
"But you, oh, you know it all, you and Steve!"
But the elder beauty was right. The battery did not go for more than a
fortnight, and Hilary came again that evening. Sitting together alone,
he and Anna talked about their inner selves--that good old sign! and
when she gave him a chance he told her what Greenleaf had said about her
and the ocean. Also he confided to her his envy of small-statured
people, and told how it hurt him to go about showing the bigness of his
body and hiding the pettiness of his soul. And he came the next evening
and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next.
XXII
SAME STORY SLIGHTLY WARPED
Not literally. That evening, yes, an end of it, but not the very next
four, did Kincaid spend with Anna. It merely looked so to Flora Valcour.
Even on that first day, after his too prompt forenoon gallop from
Callender House to the Valcour apartment had, of course, only insured
his finding Flora not at home, all its evening except the very end was
passed with her, Flora, in her open balcony overlooking the old Place
d'Armes. His head ringing with a swarm of things still to be done and
ordered done, he had purposed to remain only long enough to tell his
dire news manfully, accept without insistent debate whatever odium it
might entail, and decently leave its gentle recipients to their grief
and dismay. What steps they should take to secure compensation it were
far better they should discuss with Adolphe, who would be here to aid
them when he, Kincaid, would be in far Virginia. The only other
imperative matter was that of the young schoolma'am's gold, which must
be left in bank. Awkward business, to have to ask for it in scrambling
haste at such a moment.
But on a starlit balcony with two such ladies as the Valcours, to do
one's errands, such errands, in scrambling haste proved not even a
military possibility. Their greeting inquiries had to be answered:
"Yes, Charlie was well. He would be along soon, with fresh messages from
division headquarters. The battery was at last--Pardon?... Yes, the
Callenders were well--he supposed! He had seen only Miss Anna, and her
only for so brief an instant--"
No, Madame Valcour had merely cleared her throat. "That climate is hard
on those throat'."
He had seen Miss Anna, he resumed, "for so brief an instant--on an
errand--that he had not made civil inquiry after the others, but had
left good-by for them about as a news-carrier wads and throws in the
morning paper!"
It was so pretty, the silvery way the questioning pair laughed to each
other--at his simile, if that was the genuine source of their
amusement--that he let himself laugh with them.
"But how?" they further asked. "He had left good-by? Good-day, yes! But
for what good-by when juz' returning?"
"Ah, because here to them, also, it must be good-by, and be as brief as
there! The battery--he had sent word to them at sunrise, but had just
learned that his messenger had missed them--the battery was at last
ordered"--etc.
"_Mon Dieu!_" gasped the old lady as if this was too cruelly sudden,
and, "Oh, my brother! Oh, Captain Kincaid!" beautifully sighed Flora,
from whom the grandmother had heard the news hours before.
Yet, "Of course _any_ time 'twould have to be sudden," they had
presently so recovered as to say, and Flora, for both, spoke on in
accents of loveliest renunciation. She easily got the promise she
craved, that no ill should come to Charlie which a commander's care
could avert.
The loss of their Mobile home, which also Madame had perfectly known
since morning, was broken to them with less infelicity, though they
would talk cheerily of the house as something which no evil ever would
or could befall, until suddenly the girl said, "Grandma, dearest, that
night air is not so pretty good for your rheum; we better pass inside,"
and the old lady, insistently unselfish, moved a step within, leaving
the other two on the balcony. There, when the blow came at last, Flora's
melodious grievings were soon over, and her sweet reasonableness, her
tender exculpation not alone of this dear friend but even of the silly
fellows who had done the deed, and her queenly, patriotic
self-obliteration, were more admirable than can be described. Were, as
one may say, good literature. The grateful soldier felt shamed to find,
most unaccountably, that Anna's positively cruel reception of the same
news somehow suited him better. It was nearer his own size, he said to
himself. At any rate the foremost need now, on every account, was to be
gone. But as he rose Flora reminded him of "those few hundred gold?"
Goodness! he had clean forgotten the thing. He apologized for the
liberty taken in leaving it with her, but--"Oh!" she prettily
interrupted, "when I was made so proud!"
Well, now he would relieve her and take it at once to a bank cashier who
had consented to receive it at his house this very night. She assured
him its custody had given her no anxiety, for she had promptly passed it
over to another! He was privately amazed:
"Oh--o-oh--oh, yes, certainly. That was right! To whom had she--?"
She did not say. "Yes," she continued, "she had at once thought it ought
to be with some one who could easily replace it if, by any strange
mishap--flood, fire, robbery--it should get lost. To do which would to
her be impossible if at Mobile her house--" she tossed out her hands and
dropped them pathetically. "But I little thought, Captain Kincaid--" she
began a heart-broken gesture--
"Now, Miss Flora!" the soldier laughingly broke out, "if it's lost it's
lost and no one but me shall lose a cent for it!"
"Ah, that," cried the girl, with tears in her voice, "'tis impossible!
'Twould kill her, that mortification, as well as me, for you to be the
loser!"
"Loser! mortification!" laughed Hilary. "And what should I do with _my_
mortification if I should let you, or her, be the loser? Who is she,
Miss Flora? If I minded the thing, you understand, I shouldn't ask."
Flora shrank as with pain: "Ah, you must not! And you must not guess,
for you will surely guess wrong!" Nevertheless she saw with joy that he
had guessed Anna, yet she suffered chagrin to see also that the guess
made him glad. "And this you must make me the promise; that you never,
never will let anybody know you have discover' that, eh?"
"Oh, I promise."
"And you must let her pay it me back--that money--and me pay it you.
'Twill be easy, only she mus' have time to get the money, and without
needing to tell anybody for why, and for why in gold. Alas! I could have
kept that a secret had it not have been you are to go to-morrow morning"
"Oh, rest easy," said the cheerful soldier, "mum's the word. But, Miss
Flora, tell me this: How on earth did she lose it?"
"Captain Kincaid, by the goodness of the heart!"
"But how did it go; was it--?"
"Blown up! Blown up with that poor old man in the powder-mill! Ah, what
do we know about money, Captain Kincaid, we silly women? That poor,
innocent child, she lent it to the old gentleman. His theories, they
were so convincing, and she, she was so ambitious to do a great
patriotic service. 'Twas to make wonders for the powder and gun, and to
be return' in three days. But that next day 'twas Sunday, and whiles I
was _kneeling in the church_ the powder, the gun, the old man and the
money--"
Hilary gestured facetiously for the narrator: "That's how millions have
got to go in this business, and this driblet--why, I might have lent it,
myself, if I'd been here! No, I'm the only loser, and--"
"Ah, Captain Kincaid, no, no! I implore you, no!--and for her sake! Oh,
what are those few hundred for her to lose, if so she can only wipe that
mistake? No, they shall be in the charge of that cashier before you're
at Virginia, and that shall be my first news written to my
brother--though he'll not comprehend except that he is to tell it you."
So it was arranged and agreed. As again he moved to go she won a new
pledge of unending secrecy, and Charlie came with a document. Beside the
parlor lamp, where, with one tiny foot covertly unslippered for the
easement of angry corns, Madame sat embroidering, Kincaid broke the seal
and read. He forced a scowl, but through it glimmered a joy in which
Flora discerned again the thought of Anna. "Charlie," he said as a smile
broke through, "prepare yourself."
"Now, Captain, if those old imbeciles--"
The commander's smile broadened: "Our battery, ladies and gentlemen,
can't go for a week."
All laughed but Charlie. He swore at the top of his voice and threw
himself from the room.
When his Captain had followed, Flora, standing and smiling, drew from
her bosom a small, well-filled jewel-bag, balanced it on her uplifted
palm and, rising to her toes, sang, "At last, at last, _grâce au ciel_,
money is easy!"
"Yet at the same time my gifted granddaughter," remarked the old lady,
in her native tongue and intent on her embroidery, "is uneasy, eh?"
Flora ignored the comment. She laid a second palm, on the upraised
booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and
subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share
these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"--she
returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper
proceeds of the schoolmistress's gold still hid--"you shall never handle
a dime." She sparkled airily.
"No?" said Madame, still moving the needle and still in French.
"Nevertheless, morning and evening together, our winnings are--how
much?"
"Ours?" melodiously asked the smiling girl, "they are not ours, they are
mine. And they are--at the least"--she dropped to her senior's footstool
and spoke caressingly low--"a clean thousand! Is not that sweet enough
music to the ear of a venerable"--she whispered--"cormorant?" She
sparkled anew.
"I am sorry," came the mild reply, "you are in such torture you have to
call me names. But it is, of course, entirely concerning--the
house--ahem!"
Flora rose, walked to a window, and, as she gazed out across the old
plaza, said measuredly in a hard voice: "Never mind! Never mind her--or
him either. I will take care of the two of them!"
A low laugh tinkled from the ancestress: "Ha, ha! you thought the fool
would be scandalized, and instead he is only the more enamored."
The girl flinched but kept her face to the window: "_He_ is not the
fool."
"No? We can hardly tell, when we are--in love."
Flora wheeled and flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room,
returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily
vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just
enough fluttered to play defiance while shifting her attack--
"Home, sweet home! For our ravished one you will, I suppose, permit his
beloved country to pay--in its new paper money at 'most any
discount--and call it square, eh?" Half the bitterness of her tone was
in its sweetness.
In a sudden white heat the granddaughter clutched one aged knee with
both hands: "Wait! If I don't get seven times all it was ever worth, the
Yankees shall!" Then with an odd gladness in her eyes she added, "And
_she_ shall pay her share!"
"You mean--his?" asked the absorbed embroiderer. But on her last word
she stiffened upward with a low cry of agony, shut her eyes and swung
her head as if about to faint. Flora had risen.
"Oh-h-h!" the girl softly laughed, "was that your foot?"
XXIII
"SOLDIERS!"
With what innocent openness did we do everything in '61! "Children and
fools" could not tell the truth any faster or farther than did our
newspapers--_Picayune, Delta, True Delta, Crescent, L'Abeille, and
L'Estafette du Sud._ After every military review the exact number in
line and the name of every command and commander were hurried into
print. When at last we began to cast siege guns, the very first one was
defiantly proclaimed to all the Confederacy's enemies: an eight-inch
Dahlgren, we would have them to know. Kincaid and his foundry were
given full credit, and the defence named where the "iron monster" was to
go, if not the very embrasure designated into which you must fire to
dismount it.
The ladies, God bless them, were always free to pass the guard on the
city side of that small camp and earthwork, where with the ladies' guns
"the ladies' man" had worn the grass off all the plain and the zest of
novelty out of all his nicknamers, daily hammering--he and his only less
merciful lieutenants--at their everlasting drill.
Such ladies! Why shouldn't they pass? Was it not safe for the cause and
just as safe for them? Was not every maid and matron of them in the
"Ladies' Society of the Confederate Army"--whereof Miss Callender was a
secretary and Miss Valcour one of the treasurers? And had not the
fellows there, owing to an influence or two in the camp itself and
another or two just outside it, all become, in a strong, fine sense and
high degree, ladies' men? It was good for them spiritually, and good for
their field artillery evolutions, to be watched by maidenly and matronly
eyes. Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice
with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie
and others called them, whose tapering black snouts lay out on the
parapet's superior slope, fondled by the soft Gulf winds that came up
the river, and snuffing them for the taint of the enemy.
One afternoon when field-gun manoeuvres were at a close, Kincaid spoke
from the saddle. Facing him stood his entire command, "in order in the
line," their six shining pieces and dark caissons and their twice six
six-horse teams stretching back in six statuesque rows; each of the
three lieutenants--Bartleson, Villeneuve, Tracy--in the front line,
midway between his two guns, the artificers just six yards out on the
left, and guidon and buglers just six on the right. At the commander's
back was the levee. Only now it had been empty of spectators, and he was
seizing this advantage.