"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, G.o.d bless them, were always free to pa.s.s the guard on the city side of that small camp and earthwork, where with the ladies" guns "the ladies" man" had worn the gra.s.s 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 pa.s.s? 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 "h.e.l.l-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.
"Soldiers!" It was his first attempt since the flag presentation, and it looked as though he would falter, but he hardened his brow: "Some days ago you were told not to expect marching orders for a week. Well the week"s up and we"re told to wait another. Now that makes me every bit as mad as it makes you! I feel as restless as any man in this battery, and I told the commanding general to-day that you"re the worst discontented lot I"ve yet seen, and that I was proud of you for it. That"s all I said to him. But! if there"s a man here who doesn"t yet know the difference between a soldierly discontent and unsoldierly grumbling I want him to GO! Kincaid"s Battery is not for him. Let him transfer to infantry or cavalry. Oh, I know it"s only that you want to be in the very first fight, and that"s all right! But what we can"t get we don"t grumble for in Kincaid"s Battery!"
He paused. With his inspired eyes on the splendid array, visions of its awful destiny only exalted him. Yet signs which he dared not heed lest he be confounded told him that every eye so fixed on his was aware of some droll distraction. He must speak on.
"My boys! as sure as this war begins it"s going to last. There"ll be lots of killing and dying, and I warn you now, your share"ll be a double one. So, then, no indecent haste. Artillery can"t fight every day. Cavalry can--in its small way, but you may have to wait months and months to get into a regular h.e.l.l on earth. All the same you"ll get there!--soon enough--times enough. Don"t you know why, when we have to be recruited--to fill up the shot holes--they"ll go by the cavalry to the infantry, and pick the best men there, and promote them to your ranks? It"s because of how you"ve got to fight when your turn comes; like devils, to hold up, for all you may know, the b.u.t.t end of the whole day"s b.l.o.o.d.y business. That"s why--and because of how you may have to wait, un-com-plain-ing, in rotting idleness for the next tea party."
Again he ceased. What was the matter? There sat his matchless hundred, still and straight as stone Egyptians, welcoming his every word; yet some influence not his was having effect and, strangest of all, was enhancing his.
"One more word," he said. "You"re sick of the drill-ground. Well, the man that"s spoiling for a fight and yet has no belly for drill--he--oh, he belongs to the cavalry by birth! We love these guns. We"re mighty dogg--we"re extremely proud of them. Through thick and thin, through fire and carnage and agony, remembering where we got them, we propose to keep them; and some proud day, when the trouble"s all over, say two years hence, and those of us who are spared come home, we propose to come with these same guns unstained by the touch of a foe"s hand, a virgin battery still. Well, only two things can win that: infernal fighting and perpetual toil. So, as you love honor and your country"s cause, wait. Wait in self-respectful patience. Wait and work, and you shall be at the front--the foremost front!--the very first day and hour my best licks can get you there. That"s all."
Bartleson advanced from the line: "By section!" he called, "right wheel--"
"Section," repeated each chief of section, "right wheel--"
"March!" commanded Bartleson.
"March," echoed the chiefs, and the battery broke into column. "Forward! Guide right!" chanted Bartleson, and all moved off save Kincaid.
He turned his horse, and lo! on the gra.s.sy crest of the earthwork, pictured out against the eastern pink and blue, their summer gauzes filled with the light of the declining sun, were half a dozen smiling ladies attended by two or three officers of cavalry, and among them Flora, Constance, and Miranda.
Anna? Only when he had dismounted did his eager eye find her, where she had climbed and seated herself on a siege gun and was letting a cavalier show her how hard it would be for a hostile ship, even a swift steamer, to pa.s.s, up-stream, this crater of destruction, and ergo how impossible for a fleet--every ship a terror to its fellows the moment it was hurt--to run the gauntlet of Forts Jackson and St. Philip on a far worse stretch of raging current some eighty miles farther down the river.
Not for disbelief of the demonstration, but because of a general laugh around a tilt of words between Kincaid and the cavalry fellows, Anna lighted down and faced about, to find him, for the third time in five days, at close range. With much form he drew nearer, a bright a.s.surance in his eyes, a sort of boyish yes, for a moment, but the next moment gone as it met in hers a womanly no.
"You little artist," thought Flora.
XXIV
A PARKED BATTERY CAN RAISE A DUST
Down in the camp the battery was forming into park; a pretty movement. The ladies watched it, the cavalrymen explaining. Now it was done. The command broke ranks, and now its lieutenants joined the fair company and drank its eulogies--grimly, as one takes a dram.
Back among the tents and mess fires--
"Fellows!" said the boys, in knots, "yonder"s how he puts in his "best licks" for us!" But their wanton gaze was also fond as it followed the procession of parasols and sword-belts, muslins and gold lace that sauntered down along the levee"s crest in couples, Hilary and Anna leading.
Flora, as they went, felt a most unusual helplessness to avert a course of things running counter to her designs. It is true that, having pledged herself to the old General to seek a certain issue and to Irby to prevent it, she might, whichever way the matter drifted, gather some advantage if she could contrive to claim credit for the trend; an if which she felt amply able to take care of. To keep two men fooled was no great feat, nor even to beguile her grandmother, whose gadfly insistence centred ever on the Brodnax fortune as their only true objective; but so to control things as not to fool herself at last--that was the pinch. It pinched more than it would could she have heard how poorly at this moment the lover and la.s.s were getting on--as such. Her subtle interferences--a mere word yesterday, another the day before--were having more success than she imagined, not realizing how much they were aided by that frantic untamableness to love"s yoke, which, in Hilary only less than in Anna, qualified every word and motion.
Early in the talk of these two Hilary had mentioned his speech just made, presently asking with bright abruptness how Anna liked it and, while Anna was getting her smile ready for a safe reply, had added that he never could have made it at all had he dreamed she was looking on. "Now if she asks why," he thought to himself in alarm, "I"ve got to blurt it out!"
But she failed to ask; only confessed herself unfit to judge anybody"s English.
"English! oh, pa.s.s the English!" he said, he "knew how bad that was." What he wanted her criticism on was--"its matter--its spirit--whichever it was, matter or spirit!" How comical that sounded! They took pains that their laugh should be noticed behind them. Flora observed both the laugh and the painstaking.
"Matter or spirit," said Anna more gravely, "I can"t criticise it. I can"t even praise it--oh! but that"s only be--because I haven"t--the courage!"
The lover"s reply was low and full of meaning: "Would you praise it if you had the courage?"
She could have answered trivially, but something within bade her not. "Yes," she murmured, "I would." It was an awful venture, made unpreparedly, and her eyes, trying to withstand his, dropped. Yet they rallied splendidly--"They"ve got to!" said something within her--and, "I could," she blushingly qualified, "but--I could criticise it too!"
His heart warmed at her defiant smile. "I"d rather have that honor than a bag of gold!" he said, and saw his slip too late. Gold! Into Anna"s remembrance flashed the infatuation of the poor little schoolmistress, loomed Flora"s loss and distress and rolled a smoke of less definite things for which this man was going unpunished while she, herself, stood in deadly peril of losing her heart to him.
"Oh, Captain Kincaid!" Like artillery wheeling into action came her inconsequent criticism, her eyes braving him at last, as bright as his guns, though flashing only tears. "It was right enough for you to extol those young soldiers" willingness to serve their country when called. But, oh, how could you commend their chafing for battle and slaughter?"
"Ah, Miss Anna, you--"
"Oh, when you know that the sooner they go the sooner comes the heartache and heartbreak for the hundreds of women they so light-heartedly leave behind them! I looked from Charlie to Flora--"
"You should have looked to Victorine. She wants the boy to go and her dad to go with him."
"Poor thoughtless child!"
"Why, Miss Anna, if I were a woman, and any man--with war coming on--could endure to hang back at home for love of me, I should feel--"
"Captain Kincaid! What we womenkind may feel is not to the point. It"s how the men themselves feel toward the women who love them."
"They ought," replied the soldier, and his low voice thrilled like a sounding-board, "to love the women--out of every fibre of their being."
"Ah!" murmured the critic, as who should say, "checkmate!"