But whaheveh--"
Suddenly he darkened imperiously and motioned Flora away. "Now! now"s your time! go! now! this instant go!" he exclaimed, and sang on:
"--I is sent--"
"Ah!" she cried, "they"ll h-ask me about her!"
"I don"t believe it!" cried he, and sang again:
"--dey mus" un-deh-stan"--"
"Yes," she insisted, "--muz" undehstan", and they will surely h-ask me!"
"Well, let them ask their heads off! Go! at once! before you"re further implicated!"
"And leave you to--?"
"Oh, doggon me. The moment that boat"s gun sounds--if only you"re out o" the way--I"ll make a try. Go! for Heaven"s sake, go!"
Instead, with an agony of fondness, she glided to him. Distress held him as fast and mute as at the flag presentation. But when she would have knelt he caught her elbows and held her up by force.
"No," he moaned, "you shan"t do that."
She crimsoned and dropped her face between their contending arms while for pure anguish he impetuously added, "Maybe in G.o.d"s eyes a woman has this right, I"m not big enough to know; but as I"m made it can"t be done. I"m a man, no more, no less!"
Her eyes flashed into his: "You are Hilary Kincaid. I will stan"!"
"No,"--he loosed his hold,--"I"m only Hilary Kincaid and you"ll go--in mercy to both of us--in simple good faith to every one we love--Oh, leave me!" He swung his head in torture: "I"d sooner be shot for a spy or a coward than be the imbecile this makes me." Then all at once he was fierce: "Go!"
Almost below her breath she instantly replied, "I will not!" She stood at her full, beautiful height. "Together we go or together stay. List-en!--no-no, not for that." (Meaning the gun.) In open anger she crimsoned again: ""Twill shoot, all right, and Anna, she"ll go. Yes, she will leave you. She can do that. And you, you can sen" her away!"
He broke in with a laugh of superior knowledge and began to draw back, but she caught his jacket in both hands, still pouring forth,--"She has leave you--to me! me to you! My G.o.d! Hilary Kincaid, could she do that if she love" you? She don"t! She knows not how--and neither you! But you, ah, you shall learn. She, she never can!" Through his jacket her knuckles felt the bare knife. Her heart leapt.
"Let go," he growled, backing away and vainly disengaging now one of her hands and now the other. "My trowel"s too silent."
But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: "You know, Hilary, you know? You love me. Oh, no-no-no, don" look like that, I"m not crazee." Her deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into the work-basket: "Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where we thing we do not, and oft-en thing we love where we do not--"
He would not hear: "Oh, Flora Valcour! You smother me in my own loathing--oh, G.o.d send that gun!" The four hands still strove.
"Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora Valcour. Could Flora Valcour do like this--ag-ains" the whole nature of a woman--if she--?"
"Stop! stop! you shall not--"
"If she di"n" know, di"n" feel, di"n" see, thad you are loving her?"
"Yet G.o.d knows I"ve never given cause, except as--"
"A ladies" man?" prompted the girl and laughed.
The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was on hers as he held her from him, rigid; "Enough!" he cried; "We"re caged and doomed. Yet you still have this one moment to save us, all of us, from life-long shame and sorrow."
She shook her head.
"Yes, yes," he cried. "You can. I cannot. I"m helpless now and forever. What man or woman, if I could ever be so vile as to tell it, could believe the truth of this from me? In G.o.d"s name, then, go!" He tenderly thrust her off: "Go, live to honor, happiness and true love, and let me--"
"Ezcape, perchanze, to Anna?"
"Yes, if I--" He ceased in fresh surprise. Not because she toyed with the dagger lying on Anna"s needlework, for she seemed not to know she did it; but because of a strange brightness of a.s.sent as she nodded twice and again.
"I will go," she said. Behind the brightness was the done-for look, plainer than ever, and with it yet another, a look of keen purpose, which the grandam would have understood. He saw her take the dirk, so grasping it as to hide it behind wrist and sleeve; but he said only, beseechingly, "Go!"
"Stay," said another voice, and at the small opening still left in the wall, lo! the face of Greenleaf and the upper line of his blue and gilt shoulders. His gaze was on Flora. She could do nothing but gaze again. "I know, now," he continued, "your whole two-years" business. Stay just as you are till I can come round and in. Every guard is doubled and has special orders."
She dropped into a seat, staring like one demented, now at door and windows, now from one man to the other, now to the floor, while Kincaid sternly said, "Colonel Greenleaf, the reverence due from any soldier to any lady--" and Greenleaf interrupted--
"The lady may be sure of."
"And about this, Fred, you"ll be--dumb?"
"Save only to one, Hilary."
"Where is she, Fred?"
"On that boat, fancying herself disguised. Having you, we"re only too glad not to have her."
The retaken prisoner shone with elation: "And those fellows of last night?--got them back?"
Greenleaf darkened, and shook his head.
"Hurrah," quietly remarked the smiling Hilary.
"Wait a moment," said the blue commander, and vanished.
LXVI
"WHEN I HANDS IN MY CHECKS"
Kincaid glanced joyfully to Flora, but her horrified gaze held him speechless.
"Now," she softly asked, "who is the helplezz--the cage"--the doom"? You "ave kill" me."
"I"ll save you! There"s good fighting yet, if--"
"H-oh! already, egcep" inside me, I"m dead."
"Not by half! There"s time for a last shot and I"ve seen it win!" He caught up the trowel, turned to his work and began to sing once more:
"When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies, Mighty little I espec"s, O, my ladies--"