""I can"t stand the wilderness But a few days, a few days.""
Still swinging his cap he groaned to himself and dropped his head, then lifted it high, shook his locks like a swimmer, and with a soft word to his horse sped faster.
"Yo" pardon, sir," said Mandeville to Irby, declining the despatch, "I wou"n"t touch it. For why he di"n" h-ask me? But my stable is juz yondeh. Go, borrow you a horse--all night "f you like."
Thence Irby galloped to Bartleson"s tent, returned to Callender House, dismounted and came up the steps. There stood Anna, flushed and eager, twining arms with the placid Flora. "Ah," said the latter, as he offered her his escort home, "but grandma and me, we--"
Anna broke in: "They"re going to stay here all night so that you may ride at once to General Brodnax. Even we girls, Captain Irby, must do all we can to help your cousin get away with the battery, the one wish of his heart!" She listened, untwined and glided into the house.
Instantly Flora spoke: "Go, Adolphe Irby, go! Ah, s.n.a.t.c.h your luck, you lucky--man! Get him away to-night, cost what cost!" Her fingers pushed him. He kissed them. She murmured approvingly, but tore them away: "Go, go, go-o!"
Anna, pacing her chamber, with every gesture of self-arraignment and distress, heard him gallop. Then standing in her opened window she looked off across the veranda"s bal.u.s.trade and down into the camp, where at lines of mess-fires like strings of burning beads the boys were cooking three days" rations. A tap came on her door. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a toilet brush: "Come in?"
She was glad it was only Flora. "Cherie," tinkled the visitor, "they have permit" me!"
Anna beamed. "I was coming down," she recklessly replied, touching her temples at the mirror.
"Yes," said the messenger, ""cause Mandeville he was biggening to tell about Fort Sumter, and I asked them to wait--ah"--she took Anna"s late pose in the window--"how plain the camp!"
"Yes," responded Anna with studied abstraction, "when the window happens to be up. It"s so warm to-night, I--"
"Ah, Anna!"
"What, dear?" In secret panic Anna came and looked out at Flora"s side caressingly.
"At last," playfully sighed the Creole, ""tis good-by, Kincaid"s Battery. Good-by, you hun"red good fellows, with yo" hun"red horses and yo" hun"red wheels and yo" hun"red hurras."
"And hundred brave, true hearts!" said Anna.
"Yes, and good-by, Bartleson, good-by, Tracy, good-by ladies" man!--my dear, tell me once more! For him why always that name?" Both laughed.
"I don"t know, unless it"s because--well--isn"t it--because every lady has a piece of his heart and--no one wants all of it?"
"Ah! no one?--when so many?--"
"Now, Flora, suppose some one did! What of it, if he can"t, himself, get his whole heart together to give it to any one?" The arguer offered to laugh again, but Flora was sad:
"You bil-ieve he"s that way--Hilary Kincaid?"
"There are men that way, Flora. It"s hard for us women to realize, but it"s true!"
"Ah, but for him! For him that"s a dreadful!"
"Why, no, dear, I fancy he"s happiest that way."
"But not best, no! And there"s another thing--his uncle! You know ab-out that, I su"pose?"
"Yes, but he--come, they"ll be sending--"
"No,--no! a moment! Anna! Ah, Anna, you are too wise for me! Anna, do you think"--the pair stood in the room with the inquirer"s eyes on the floor--"you think his cousin is like that?"
Anna kissed her temples, one in pity, the other in joy: "No, dear, he"s not--Adolphe Irby is not."
On the way downstairs Flora seized her hands: "Oh, Anna, like always--this is just bit-win us? Ah, yes. And, oh, I wish you"d try not to bil-ieve that way--ab-out his cousin! Me, I hope no! And yet--"
"Yet what, love?" (Another panic.)
"Nothing, but--ah, he"s so ki-ind to my brother! And his cousin Adolphe," she whispered as they moved on down, "I don"t know, but I fear perchanze he don"t like his cousin Adolphe--his cousin Adolphe--on the outside, same as the General, rough--"t is a wondrous how his cousin Adolphe is fond of him!"
Poor Anna. She led the way into the family group actually wheedled into the belief that however she had blundered with her lover, with Flora she had been clever. And now they heard the only true account of how Captain Beauregard and General Steve had taken Fort Sumter. At the same time every hearer kept one ear alert toward the great open windows. Yet nothing came to explain that Kincaid"s detention up-town was his fond cousin"s contriving, and Sumter"s story was at its end when all started at once and then subsided with relief as first the drums and then the bugles sounded--no alarm, but only, drowsily, "taps," as if to say to Callender House as well as to the camp, "Go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-eep ... Go to bed, go to bed, go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-eep, go to slee-eep ... Go to slee-ee-eep."
XXIX
A CASTAWAY ROSE
Gone to sleep the camp except its sentinels, and all Callender House save one soul. Not Miranda, not the Mandevilles, nor Madame Valcour, nor any domestic. Flora knew, though it was not Flora. In her slumbers she knew.
Two of the morning. Had the leader, the idol of Kincaid"s Battery, failed in his endeavor? Anna, on her bed, half disrobed, but sleepless yet, still prayed he might not succeed. Just this one time, oh, Lord! this one time! With Thee are not all things possible? Canst Thou not so order all things that a day or two"s delay of Kincaid"s Battery need work no evil to the Cause nor any such rending to any heart as must be hers if Kincaid"s Battery should go to-night? Softly the stair clock boomed three. She lifted her head and for a full three minutes harkened toward the camp. Still no sound there, thank G.o.d! She turned upon her pillow.
But--what! Could that be the clock again, and had she slumbered? "Three, four," murmured the clock. She slipped from her bed and stole to the window. Just above the low, dim parapet, without a twinkle, the morning star shone large, its slender, mile-long radiance shimmering on the gliding river. In all the scented landscape was yet no first stir of dawn, but only clearness enough to show the outlines of the camp ground. She stared. She stared again! Not a tent was standing. Oh! and oh! through what bugling, what rolling of drums and noise of hoofs, wheels, and riders had she lain oblivious at last? None, really; by order of the commanding general--on a private suggestion of Irby"s, please notice, that the practice would be of value--camp had been struck in silence. But to her the sole fact in reach was that all its life was gone!
Sole fact? Gone? All gone? What was this long band of darkness where the gray road should be, in the dull shadow of the levee? Oh, G.o.d of mercy, it was the column! the whole of Kincaid"s Battery, in the saddle and on the chests, waiting for the word to march! Ah, thou ladies" man! Thus to steal away! Is this your profound--abiding--consuming love? The whisper was only in her heart, but it had almost reached her lips, when she caught her breath, her whole form in a tremor. She clenched the window-frame, she clasped her heaving side.
For as though in reply, approaching from behind the house as if already the producer had nearly made its circuit, there sounded close under the bal.u.s.trade the walking of a horse. G.o.d grant no other ear had noted it! Now just beneath the window it ceased. Hilary Kincaid! She could not see, but as sure as sight she knew. Her warrior, her knight, her emperor now at last, utterly and forever, she his, he hers, yet the last moment of opportunity flitting by and she here helpless to speak the one word of surrender and possession. Again she shrank and trembled. Something had dropped in at the window. There it lay, small and dark, on the floor. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. Its scant tie of ribbon, her touch told her, was a bit of the one she had that other time thrown down to him, and the thing it tied and that looked so black in the dusk was a red, red rose.
She pressed it to her lips. With quaking fingers that only tangled the true-love knot and bled on the thorns, she stripped the ribbon off and lifted a hand high to cast it forth, but smote the sash and dropped the emblem at her own feet. In pain and fear she caught it up, straightened, and glanced to her door, the knot in one hand, the rose in the other, and her lips apart. For at some unknown moment the door had opened, and in it stood Flora Valcour.
Furtively into a corner fluttered rose and ribbon while the emptied hands extended a counterfeit welcome and beckoned the visitor"s aid to close the window. As the broad sash came down, Anna"s heart, in final despair, sunk like lead, or like the despairing heart of her disowned lover in the garden, Flora"s heart the meantime rising like a recovered kite. They moved from the window with their four hands joined, the dejected girl dissembling elation, the elated one dejection.
"I don"t see," twittered Anna, "how I should have closed it! How chilly it gets toward--"
"Ah!" tremulously a.s.sented the subtler one. "And such a dream! I was oblige" to escape to you!"
"And did just right!" whispered and beamed poor Anna. "What did you dream, dear?"
"I dremp the battery was going! and going to a battle! and with the res" my brother! And now--"
"Now it"s but a dream!" said her comforter.
"Anna!" the dreamer flashed a joy that seemed almost fierce. She fondly pressed the hands she held and drew their owner toward the ill-used rose. "Dearest, behold me! a thief, yet innocent!"
Anna smiled fondly, but her heart had stopped, her feet moved haltingly. A mask of self-censure poorly veiled Flora"s joy, yet such as it was it was needed. Up from the garden, barely audible to ears straining for it, yet surging through those two minds like a stifling smoke, sounded the tread of the departing horseman.
"Yes," murmured Anna, hoping to drown the footfall, and with a double meaning though with sincere tenderness, "you are stealing now, not meaning to."
"Now?" whispered the other, "how can that be?" though she knew. "Ah, if I could steal now your heart al-so! But I"ve stolen, I fear, only--your--confidenze!" Between the words she loosed one hand, stooped and lifted the flower. Each tried to press it to the other"s bosom, but it was Anna who yielded.