Kincaid's Battery

XVI

CONSTANCE TRIES TO HELP

Dropping to trifles they mentioned a knife, a rather glittering gewgaw, which, as evidence, ought--

"Oh, that one!" said Hilary. "Yes, I have it, mud, glass jewels and all. No," he laughed, "I can keep it quite as safely as you can."

So they passed to a larger matter. "For, really, as to Gibbs and Lafontaine--"

"You can't have them either," interrupted their Captain, setting the words to a tune. Then only less melodiously--"No, sir-ee! Why, gentlemen, they weren't trying to kill the poor devil, he was trying to kill them, tell your Committee of Public Safety. And tell them times are changed. You can take Sam and Maxime, of course, if you can take the whole battery; we're not doing a retail business. By the by--did you know?--'twas Sam's gun broke the city's record, last week, for rapid firing! Funny, isn't it!--Excuse me, I must speak to those ladies."

The ladies, never prettier, were Mrs. Callender and Constance. They were just reentering, from a shop, their open carriage. In amiable reproach they called him a stranger, yet with bewitching resignation accepted and helped out his lame explanations.

"You look--" began Constance--but "careworn" was a risky term and she stopped. He suggested "weather-beaten," and the ladies laughed.

"Yes," they said, "even they were overtasked with patriotic activities, and Anna had almost made herself ill. Nevertheless if he would call he should see her too. Oh, no, not to-day; no, not to-morrow; but--well-- the day after." (Miss Valcour passed so close as to hear the appointment, but her greeting smile failed to draw their attention.) "And oh, then you must tell us all about that fearful adventure in which you saved Lieutenant Greenleaf's life! Ah, we've heard, just heard, in a letter." The horses danced with impatience. "We shall expect you!"

As they drove into Royal Street with Constance rapturously pressing Miranda's hand the latter tried vainly to exchange bows with a third beauty and a second captain, but these were busy meeting each other in bright surprise and espied the carriage only when it had passed.

Might the two not walk together a step or so? With pleasure. They were Flora and Irby. Presently--

"Do you know," she asked, "where your cousin proposes to be day after to-morrow evening--in case you should want to communicate with him?"

He did not. She told him.

XVII

"OH, CONNIE, DEAR--NOTHING--GO ON"

Out in the mellow night a bird sang from the tip-top of a late-blooming orange tree, and inside, away inside, inside and through and through the poor girl's heart, the "years"--which really were nothing but the mantel clock's quarter-hours--"crept slowly by."

At length she laid her book aside, softly kissed each seated companion, and ascended to her room and window. There she stood long without sound or motion, her eyes beyond the stars, her head pressed wearily against the window frame. Then the lids closed while her lips formed soft words:

"Oh, God, he is not coming!" Stillness again. And then--"Oh, let me believe yet that only Thy hand keeps him away! Is it to save him for some one fairer and better? God, I ask but to know! I'm a rebel, but not against Thee, dear Lord. I know it's a sin for me to suffer this way; Thou dost not owe me happiness; I owe it Thee. Oh, God, am I clamoring for my week's wages before I've earned an hour's pay? Yet oh! yet oh!"--the head rocked heavily on its support--"if only--if only--"

She started--listened! A gate opened--shut. She sprang to her glass and then from it. In soft haste she needlessly closed the window and drew its shade and curtains. She bathed her eyelids and delicately dried them. At the mirror again she laid deft touches on brow and crown, harkening between for any messenger's step, and presently, without reason, began to set the room more exquisitely to rights. Now she faced the door and stood attentive, and now she took up a small volume and sat down by her lamp.

A tap: Constance entered, beaming only too tenderly. "It was better, wasn't it," she asked, hovering, "to come than to send?"

"Why, of course, dear; it always is."

A meditative silence followed. Then Anna languidly inquired, "Who is it?"

"Nobody but Charlie."

The inquirer brightened: "And why isn't Charlie as good as any one?"

"He is, to-night," replied the elder beauty, "except--the one exception."

"Oh, Connie"--a slight flush came as the seated girl smilingly drew her sister's hands down to her bosom--"there isn't any one exception, and there's not going to be any. Now, that smile is downright mean of you!"

The offender atoned with a kiss on the brow.

"Why do you say," asked its recipient, "'as good as any one, to-night'?"

"Because," was the soft reply, "to-night he comes from--the other--to explain why the other couldn't come."

"Why!"--the flush came back stronger--"why, Connie! why, that's positively silly--ha, ha, ha!"

"I don't see how, Nan."

"My dear Con! Isn't his absence equally and perfectly innocent whether he couldn't come or wouldn't come? But an explanation sent!--by courier!--to--to shorten--ah, ha, ha!--to shorten our agony! Why, Con, wouldn't you have thought better of him than that? H-oh, me! What a man's 'bound to be' I suppose he's bound to be. What is the precious explanation?"

With melting eyes Constance shook her head. "You don't deserve to hear 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!

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

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

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!"

"I'm gone, Miss Anna, I'm truly gone. I always am when I'm with you. 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

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.