Kincaid's Battery

XXVIII

THE CUP OF TANTALUS

Or can any one say, in these lives of a thousand concealments and restraints, when things are happening and when not, within us or without, or how near we are now to the unexpected--to fate? See, Flora and Hilary. He gave no outward show that he was burning to flee the spot and swing his fists and howl and tear the ground.

Yet Flora knew; knew by herself; by a cold rage in her own fair bosom, where every faculty stood gayly alert for each least turn of incident, to foil or use it, while they talked lightly of Virginia's great step, or of the night's loveliness, counting the stars. "How small they look," she said, "how calm how still."

"Yes, and then to think what they really are! so fearfully far from small--or cold--or still!"

"Like ourselves," she prompted.

"Yes!" cried the transparent soldier. "At our smallest the smallest thing in us is that we should feel small. And how deep down are we calm or cold? Miss Flora, I once knew a girl--fine outside, inside. Lovers -she had to keep a turnstile. I knew a pair of them. To hear those two fellows separately tell what she was like, you couldn't have believed them speaking of the same person. The second one thought the first had--sort o'--charted her harbor for him; but when he came to sail in, 'pon my soul, if every shoal on the chart wasn't deep water, and every deep water a fortified shore--ha, ha, ha!"

Flora's smile was lambent. "Yes," she said, "that sweet Anna she's very intric-ate." Hilary flamed and caught his breath, but she met his eyes with the placidity of the sky above them.

Suddenly he laughed: "Now I know what I am! Miss Flora, I--I wish you'd be my pilot."

She gave one resenting sparkle, but then shook her averted head tenderly, murmured "Impossible," and smiled.

"You think there's no harbor there?"

"Listen," she said.

"Yes, I hear it, a horse."

"Captain Kincaid?"

"Miss Flora?"

"For dear Anna's sake and yours, shall I be that little bit your pilot, to say--?"

"What! to say. Don't see her to-night?"

Flora's brow sank.

"May I go with you, then, and learn why?" The words were hurried, for a horseman was in front and the others had so slackened pace that all were again in group. Anna caught Flora's reply:

"No, your cousin will be there. But to-morrow evening, bif-ore--"

"Yes," he echoed, "before anything else. I'll come. Why!"--a whinny of recognition came from the road--"why, that's my horse!"

The horseman dragged in his rein. Constance gasped and Kincaid exclaimed, "Well! since when and from where, Steve Mandeville?"

The rider sprang clanking to the ground and whipped out a document. All pressed round him. He gave his bride two furious kisses, held her in one arm and handed the missive to Kincaid:

"With the compliment of Général Brodnax!"

Irby edged toward Flora, drawn by a look.

Hilary spoke: "Miss Anna, please hold this paper open for me while I--Thank you." He struck a match. The horse's neck was some shelter and the two pressed close to make more, yet the match flared. The others listened to Mandeville:

"And 'twas me dizcover' that tranzportation, juz' chanzing to arrive by the railroad--"

"Any one got a newspaper?" called Hilary. "Steve--yes, let's have a wisp o' that."

The paper burned and Hilary read. "Always the man of the moment, me!" said Mandeville. "And also 't is thangs to me you are the firs' inform', and if you are likewise the firs' to ripport--"

"Thank you!" cried Kincaid, letting out a stirrup leather. "Adolphe, will you take that despatch on to Bartleson?" He hurried to the other stirrup.

"Tell him no!" whispered Flora, but in vain, so quickly had Anna handed Irby the order.

"Good-night, all!" cried Hilary, mounting. He wheeled, swung his cap and galloped.

"Hear him!" laughed Miranda to Flora, and from up the dim way his song came back:

"'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, snatch 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 balustrade 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 snatched up a toilet brush: "Come in?"

She was glad it was only Flora. "Chérie," 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

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 God! 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, God 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 balustrade the walking of a horse. God 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 snatched 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 assented 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.

"I'd make you take it," she protested as Flora pinned it on, "if I hadn't thrown it away."

"Dearest," cooed the other, "that would make me a thief ag-ain, and this time guilty."

"Can't I give a castaway rose to whom I please?"

"Not this one. Ah, sweet, a thousand thousand pardon!"--the speaker bent to her hearer's ear--"I saw you when you kiss' it--and before."

Anna's face went into her hands, and face and hands to Flora's shoulder; but in the next breath she clutched the shoulder and threw up her head, while the far strain of a bugle faintly called, "Head of column to the right."

The cadence died. "Flora! your dream is true and that's the battery! It's going, Flora. It's gone! Your brother's gone! Your brother, Flora, your brother! Charlie! he's gone." So crying Anna sprang to the window and with unconscious ease threw it up.

The pair stood in it. With a bound like the girl's own, clear day had come. Palely the river purpled and silvered. No sound was anywhere, no human sign on vacant camp ground, levee, or highroad. "Ah!"--Flora made a well pretended gesture of discovery and distress--"'tis true! That bugl' muz' have meant us good-by."

"Oh, then it was cruel!" exclaimed Anna. "To you, dear, cruel to you to steal off in that way. Run! dress for the carriage!"

Flora played at hesitation: "Ah, love, if perchanze that bugl' was to call you?"

"My dear! how could even he--the 'ladies' man,' ha, ha!--imagine any true woman would come to the call of a bugle? Go! while I order the carriage."

They had left the window. The hostess lifted her hand toward a bell-cord but the visitor stayed it, absently staring while letting herself be pressed toward the door, thrilled with a longing as wild as Anna's and for the same sight, yet cunningly pondering. Nay, waiting, rather, on instinct, which the next instant told her that Anna would inevitably go herself, no matter who stayed.

"You'll come al-long too?" she pleadingly asked.

"No, dear, I cannot! Your grandmother will, of course, and Miranda." The bell-cord was pulled.

"Anna, you must go, else me, I will not!"

"Ah, how can I? Dear, dear, you're wasting such golden moments! Well, I'll go with you! Only make haste while I call the others--stop!" Their arms fell lightly about each other's neck. "You'll never tell on me?... Not even to Miranda?... Nor h-his--his uncle?... Nor"--the petitioner pressed closer with brightening eyes--"nor his--cousin?"

Softly Flora's face went into her hands, and face and hands to Anna's shoulder, as neat a reduplication as ever was. But suddenly there were hoof-beats again. Yes, coming at an easy gallop. Now they trotted through the front gate. The eyes of the two stared. "A courier," whispered Anna, "to Captain Mandeville!" though all her soul hoped differently.

Only a courier it was. So said the maid who came in reply to the late ring, but received no command. The two girls, shut in together, Anna losing moments more golden than ever, heard the rider at the veranda steps accost the old coachman and so soon after greet Mandeville that it was plain the captain had already been up and dressing.

"It's Charlie!" breathed Anna, and Flora nodded.

Now Charlie trotted off again, and now galloped beyond hearing, while Mandeville's booted tread reascended to his wife's room. And now came Constance: "Nan, where on earth is Fl--? Oh, of course! News, Nan! Good news, Flora! The battery, you know--?"

"Yes," said Anna, with her dryest smile, "it's sneaked off in the dark."

"Nan, you're mean! It's marching up-town now, Flora. At least the guns and caissons are, so as to be got onto the train at once. And oh, girls, those poor, dear boys! the train--from end to end it's to be nothing but a freight train!"

"Hoh!" laughed the heartless Anna, "that's better than staying here."

The sister put out her chin and turned again to Flora. "But just now," she said, "the main command are to wait and rest in Congo Square, and about ten o'clock they're to be joined by all the companies of the Chasseurs that haven't gone to Pensacola and by the whole regiment of the Orleans Guards, as an escort of honor, and march in that way to the depot, led by General Brodnax and his staff--and Steve! And every one who wants to bid them good-by must do it there. Of course there'll be a perfect jam, and so Miranda's ordering breakfast at seven and the carriage at eight, and Steve--he didn't tell even me last night because--" Her words stuck in her throat, her tears glistened, she gnawed her lips. Anna laid tender hands on her.

"Why, what, Connie, dear?"

"St--Ste--Steve--"

"Is Steve going with them to Virginia?"

The face of Constance went into her hands, and face and hands to Anna's shoulder. Meditatively smiling, Flora slipped away to dress.

XXX

GOOD-BY, KINCAID'S BATTERY

Now he gave their words a frowning attention, and now answered abruptly: "Humph! That looks tremendously modest in you, gentlemen,--what?... Well, then, in your whole command if it's their notion. But it's vanity at last, sirs, pure vanity. Kincaid's Battery 'doesn't want to parade its dinginess till it's done something'--pure vanity! 'Shortest way'--nonsense! The shortest way to the train isn't the point! The point is to make so inspiring a show of you as to shame the damned stay-at-homes!"

"You'll par-ade," broke in the flaming Mandeville. "worse' dress than presently, when you rit-urn conqueror'!" But that wearied the General more.

"Oh, hell," he mumbled. "Captain Kincaid, eh--" He led that officer alone to a window and spoke low: "About my girl, Hilary,--and me. I'd like to decide that matter before you show your heels. You, eh,--default, I suppose?"

"No, uncle, she does that. I do only the hopeless loving."

"The wha-at? Great Lord! You don't tell me you--?"

"Yes, I caved in last night; told her I loved her. Oh, I didn't do it just in this ashes-of-roses tone of voice, but"--the nephew smiled--the General scowled--"you should have seen me, uncle. You'd have thought it was Mandeville. I made a gorgeous botch of it."

"You don't mean she--?"

"Yes, sir, adjourned me sine die. Oh, it's no use to look at me." He laughed. "The calf's run over me. My fat's in the fire."

The General softly swore and continued his gaze. "I believe," he slowly said, "that's why you wanted to slink out of town the back way."

"Oh, no, it's not. Or at least--well, anyhow, uncle, now you can decide in favor of Adolphe."

The uncle swore so audibly that the staff heard and exchanged smiles: "I neither can nor will decide--for either of you--yet! You understand? I don't do it. Go, bring your battery."

The city was taken by surprise. Congo Square was void of soldiers before half Canal street's new red-white-and-red bunting could be thrown to the air. In column of fours--escort leading and the giant in the bearskin hat leading it--they came up Rampart street. On their right hardly did time suffice for boys to climb the trees that in four rows shaded its noisome canal; on their left not a second too many was there for the people to crowd the doorsteps, fill windows and garden gates, line the banquettes and silently gather breath and ardor while the escort moved by, before the moment was come in which to cheer and cheer and cheer, as with a hundred flashing sabres at shoulder the dismounted, heavy-knapsacked, camp-worn battery, Kincaid's Battery--you could read the name on the flag--Kincaid's Battery! came and came and passed. In Canal street and in St. Charles there showed a fierceness of pain in the cheers, and the march was by platoons. At the hotel General Brodnax and staff joined and led it--up St. Charles, around Tivoli Circle, and so at last into Calliope street.

Meantime far away and sadly belated, with the Valcours cunningly to blame and their confiding hostesses generously making light of it, up Love street hurried the Callenders' carriage. Up the way of Love and athwart the oddest tangle of streets in New Orleans,--Frenchmen and Casacalvo, Greatmen, History, Victory, Peace, Arts, Poet, Music, Bagatelle, Craps, and Mysterious--across Elysian Fields not too Elysian, past the green, high-fenced gardens of Esplanade and Rampart flecked red-white-and-red with the oleander, the magnolia, and the rose, spun the wheels, spanked the high-trotters. The sun was high and hot, shadows were scant and sharp, here a fence and there a wall were as blinding white as the towering fair-weather clouds, gowns were gauze and the parasols were six, for up beside the old coachman sat Victorine. She it was who first saw that Congo Square was empty and then that the crowds were gone from Canal street. It was she who first suggested Dryads street for a short cut and at Triton Walk was first to hear, on before, the music,--ah, those horn-bursting Dutchmen! could they never, never hit it right?--

"When other lips and other hearts
Their tale of love shall tell--"

and it was she who, as they crossed Calliope street, first espied the rear of the procession, in column of fours again, it was she who flashed tears of joy as they whirled into Erato street to overtake the van and she was first to alight at the station.

The General and his staff were just reaching it. Far down behind them shone the armed host. The march ceased, the music--"then you'll rememb'"--broke off short. The column rested. "Mon Dieu!" said even the Orleans Guards, "quel chaleur! Is it not a terrib', thad sun!" Hundreds of their blue képis, hundreds of gray shakos in the Confederate Guards, were lifted to wipe streaming necks and throats, while away down beyond our ladies' ken all the drummers of the double escort, forty by count, silently came back and moved in between the battery and its band to make the last music the very bravest. Was that Kincaid, the crowd asked, one of another; he of the thick black locks, tired cheek and brow, and eyes that danced now as he smiled and talked? "Phew! me, I shou'n' love to be tall like that, going to be shot at, no! ha, ha! But thad's no wonder they are call' the ladies' man batt'rie!"

"Hah! they are not call' so because him, but because themse'v's! Every one he is that, and they didn' got the name in Circus street neither, ha, ha!--although--Hello, Chahlie Valcour. Good-by, Chahlie. Don't ged shoot in the back--ha, ha!--"

A command! How eternally different from the voice of prattle. The crowd huddled back to either sidewalk, forced by the opening lines of the escort backed against it, till the long, shelled wagon-way gleamed white and bare. Oh, Heaven! oh, home! oh, love! oh, war! For hundreds, hundreds--beat Anna's heart--the awful hour had come, had come! She and her five companions could see clear down both bayonet-crested living walls--blue half the sun-tortured way, gray the other half--to where in red képis and with shimmering sabres, behind their tall captain, stretched the dense platoons and came and came, to the crash of horns, the boys, the boys, the dear, dear boys who with him, with him must go, must go!

"Don't cry, Connie dear," she whispered, though stubborn drops were salting her own lips, "it will make it harder for Steve."

"Harder!" moaned the doting bride, "you don't know him!"

"Oh, let any woman cry who can," laughed Flora, "I wish I could!" and verily spoke the truth. Anna meltingly pressed her hand but gave her no glance. All eyes, dry or wet, were fixed on the nearing mass, all ears drank the rising peal and roar of its horns and drums. How superbly rigorous its single, two-hundred-footed step. With what splendid rigidity the escorts' burnished lines walled in its oncome.

But suddenly there was a change. Whether it began in the music, which turned into a tune every Tom, Dick, and Harry now had by heart, or whether a moment before among the blue-caps or gray-shakos, neither Anna nor the crowd could tell. Some father in those side ranks lawlessly cried out to his red-capped boy as the passing lad brushed close against him, "Good-by, my son!" and as the son gave him only a sidelong glance he seized and shook the sabre arm, and all that long, bristling lane of bayonets went out of plumb, out of shape and order, and a thousand brass-buttoned throats shouted good-by and hurrah. Shakos waved, shoulders were snatched and hugged, blue képis and red were knocked awry, beards were kissed and mad tears let flow. And still, with a rigor the superbest yet because the new tune was so perfect to march by, fell the unshaken tread of the cannoneers, and every onlooker laughed and wept and cheered as the brass rent out to the deafening drums, and the drums roared back to the piercing brass,--

De black-snake love' de blackbird' nes',
De baby love' his mamy's bres',
An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span,
De ladies loves de ladies' man.
I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies!
I loves to sympathize wid de ladies!
As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san'
I's bound to be a ladies' man.

So the black-hatted giant with the silver staff strode into the wide shed, the puffy-cheeked band reading their music and feeling for foothold as they followed, and just yonder behind them, in the middle of the white way, untouched by all those fathers, unhailed by any brother of his own, came Hilary Kincaid with all the battery at his neat heels, its files tightly serried but its platoons in open order, each flashing its sabres to a "present" on nearing the General and back to a "carry" when he was passed, and then lengthening into column of files to enter the blessed shade of the station.

In beside them surged a privileged throng of near kin, every one calling over every one's head, "Good-by!" "Good-by!" "Here's your mother, Johnnie!" and, "Here's your wife, Achille!" Midmost went the Callenders, the Valcours, and Victorine, willy-nilly, topsy-turvy, swept away, smothering, twisting, laughing, stumbling, staggering, yet saved alive by that man of the moment Mandeville, until half-way down the shed and the long box-car train they brought up on a pile of ordnance stores and clung like drift in a flood. And at every twist and stagger Anna said in her heart a speech she had been saying over and over ever since the start from Callender House; a poor commonplace speech that must be spoken though she perished for shame of it; that must be darted out just at the right last instant if such an instant Heaven would only send: "I take back what I said last night and I'm glad you spoke as you did!"

Here now the moment seemed at hand. For here was the officers' box-car and here with sword in sheath Kincaid also had stopped, in conference with the conductor, while his lieutenants marched the column on, now halted it along the train's full length, now faced it against the open cars and now gave final command to break ranks. In comic confusion the fellows clambered aboard stormed by their friends' fond laughter at the awkwardness of loaded knapsacks, and their retorting mirth drowned in a new flood of good-bys and adieus, fresh waving of hats and handkerchiefs, and made-over smiles from eyes that had wept themselves dry. The tear-dimmed Victorine called gay injunctions to her father, the undimmed Flora to her brother, and Anna laughed and laughed and waved hi all directions save one. There Mandeville had joined Kincaid and the conductor and amid the wide downpour and swirl of words and cries was debating with them whether it were safer to leave the shed slowly or swiftly; and there every now and then Anna's glance flitted near enough for Hilary to have caught it as easily as did Bartleson, Tracy, every lieutenant and sergeant of the command, busy as they were warning the throng back from the cars; yet by him it was never caught.

The debate had ended. He gave the conductor a dismissing nod that sent him, with a signalling hand thrown high, smartly away toward the locomotive. The universal clatter and flutter redoubled. The bell was sounding and Mandeville was hotly shaking hands with Flora, Miranda, all. The train stirred, groaned, crept, faltered, crept on--on--one's brain tingled to the cheers, and women were crying again.

Kincaid's eyes ran far and near in final summing up. The reluctant train gave a dogged joggle and jerk, hung back, dragged on, moved a trifle quicker; and still the only proof that he knew she was here--here within three steps of him--was the careful failure of those eyes ever to light on her. Oh, heart, heart, heart! would it be so to the very end and vanishment of all?

"I take back--I take--" was there going to be no chance to begin it? Was he grief blind? or was he scorn blind? No matter! what she had sown she would reap if she had to do it under the very thundercloud of his frown. All or any, the blame of estrangement should be his, not hers! Oh, Connie, Connie! Mandeville had clutched Constance and was kissing her on lips and head and cheeks. He wheeled, caught a hand from the nearest car, and sprang in. Kincaid stood alone. The conductor made him an eager sign. The wheels of the train clicked briskly. He glanced up and down it, then sprang to Miranda, seized her hand, cried "Good-by!" snatched Madame's, Flora's, Victorine's, Connie's,--"Good-by--Good-by!"--and came to Anna.

And did she instantly begin, "I take--?" Not at all! She gave her hand, both hands, but her lips stood helplessly apart. Flora, Madame, Victorine, Constance, Miranda, Charlie from a car's top, the three lieutenants, the battery's whole hundred, saw Hilary's gaze pour into hers, hers into his. Only the eyes of the tumultuous crowd still followed the train and its living freight. A woman darted to a car's open door and gleaned one last wild kiss. Two, ten, twenty others, while the conductor ran waving, ordering, thrusting them away, repeated the splendid theft, and who last of all and with a double booty but Constance! Anna beheld the action, though with eyes still captive. With captive eyes, and with lips now shut and now apart again as she vainly strove for speech, she saw still plainer his speech fail also. His hands tightened on hers, hers in his.

"Good-by!" they cried together and were dumb again; but in their mutual gaze--more vehement than their voices joined--louder than all the din about them--confession so answered worship that he snatched her to his breast; yet when he dared bend to lay a kiss upon her brow he failed once more, for she leaped and caught it on her lips.

Dishevelled, liberated, and burning with blushes, she watched the end of the train shrink away. On its last iron ladder the conductor swung aside to make room for Kincaid's stalwart spring. So! It gained one handhold, one foothold. But the foot slipped, the soldier's cap tumbled to the ground, and every onlooker drew a gasp. No, the conductor held him, and erect and secure, with bare locks ruffling in the wind of the train, he looked back, waved, and so passed from sight.

Archly, in fond Spanish, "How do you feel now?" asked Madame of her scintillant granddaughter as with their friends and the dissolving throng they moved to the carriage; and in the same tongue Flora, with a caressing smile, rejoined, "I feel like swinging you round by the hair."

Anna, inwardly frantic, chattered and laughed. "I don't know what possessed me!" she cried.

But Constance was all earnestness: "Nan, you did it for the Cause--the flag--the battery--anything but him personally. He knows it. Everybody saw that. Its very publicity--"

"Yes?" soothingly interposed Madame, "'t was a so verrie pewblic that--"

"Why, Flora," continued the well-meaning sister, "Steve says when he came back into Charleston from Fort Sumter the ladies--"

"Of course!" said Flora, sparkling afresh. "Even Steve understands that, grandma." Her foot was on a step of the carriage. A child plucked her flowing sleeve:

"Misses! Mom-a say'"--he pressed into her grasp something made of broadcloth, very red and golden--"here yo' husband's cap."

XXXI

VIRGINIA GIRLS AND LOUISIANA BOYS

Let us never paint war too fair; but this small volume tells of little beyond the gold-laced year of 'Sixty-one, nor of much beyond Virginia, even over whose later war-years the color effects of reminiscence show blue and green and sun-lit despite all the scarlet of carnage, the black and crimson of burning, and the grim hues of sickness, squalor, and semi-starvation; show green and blue in the sunlight of victory, contrasted with those of the states west and south of her.

It tells--this book compiled largely from correspondence of persons well known to you and me--of the first "eight-days' crawl" that conveyed the chaffing, chafing command up through Mississippi, across East Tennessee into southeast Virginia and so on through Lynchburg to lovely Richmond; tells how never a house was passed in town or country but handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, snatched-off sunbonnets, and Confederate flags wafted them on. It tells of the uncounted railway stations where swarmed the girls in white muslin aprons and red-white-and-red bows, who waved them, in as they came, and unconsciously squinted and made faces at them in the intense sunlight. It tells how the maidens gave them dainties and sweet glances, and boutonnières of tuberoses and violets, and bloodthirsty adjurations, and blarney for blarney; gave them seven wild well-believed rumors for as many impromptu canards, and in their soft plantation drawl asked which was the one paramount "ladies' man," and were assured by every lad of the hundred that it was himself. It tells how, having heard in advance that the more authentic one was black-haired, handsome, and overtowering, they singled out the drum-major, were set right only by the roaring laughter, and huddled backward like caged quails from Kincaid's brazen smile, yet waved again as the train finally jogged on with the band playing from the roof of the rear car,--

"I'd offer thee this hand of mine
If I could love thee less!"

To Anna that part seemed not so killingly funny or so very interesting, but she was not one of the book's editors.

Two or three pages told of a week in camp just outside the Virginian capital, where by day, by night, on its rocky bed sang James river; of the business quarter, noisy with army wagons--"rattling o'er the stony street," says the page; of colonels, generals, and statesmen by name--Hampton, Wigfall, the fiery Toombs, the knightly Lee, the wise Lamar; of such and such headquarters, of sentinelled warehouses, glowing ironworks, galloping aides-de-camp and couriers and arriving and departing columns, some as trig (almost) as Kincaid's Battery, with their black servants following in grotesque herds along the sidewalks; and some rudely accoutred, shaggy, staring, dust-begrimed, in baggy butternut jeans, bearing flint-lock muskets and trudging round-shouldered after fifes and drums that squealed and boomed out the strains of their forgotten ancestors: "The Campbells are coming," "Johnnie was a piper's son," or--

"My heart is ever turning back
To the girl I left behind me."

"You should have seen the girls," laughs the book.

But there were girls not of the mountains or sand-hills, whom also you should have seen, at battery manoeuvres or in the tulip-tree and maple shade of proud Franklin street, or in its rose-embowered homes by night; girls whom few could dance with, or even sit long beside in the honeysuckle vines of their porticos, without risk of acute heart trouble, testifies the callow volume. They treated every lad in the battery like a lieutenant, and the "ladies' man" like a king. You should have seen him waltz them or in quadrille or cotillon swing, balance, and change them, their eyes brightening and feet quickening whenever the tune became--

"Ole mahs' love' wine, ole mis' love' silk,
De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk."

Great week! tarheel camp-sentries and sand-hill street-patrols mistaking the boys for officers, saluting as they passed and always getting an officer's salute in return! Hilary seen every day with men high and mighty, who were as quick as the girls to make merry with him, yet always in their merriment seeming, he and they alike, exceptionally upright, downright, heartright, and busy. It kept the boys straight and strong.

Close after came a month or so on the Yorktown peninsula with that master of strategic ruse, Magruder, but solely in the dreariest hardships of war, minus all the grander sorts that yield glory; rains, bad food, ill-chosen camps, freshets, terrible roads, horses sick and raw-boned, chills, jaundice, emaciation, barely an occasional bang at the enemy on reconnoissances and picketings, and marches and countermarches through blistering noons and skyless nights, with men, teams, and guns trying to see which could stagger the worst, along with columns of infantry mutinously weary of forever fortifying and never fighting. Which things the book bravely makes light of, Hilary maintaining that the battery boys had a spirit to bear them better than most commands did, and the boys reporting--not to boast the special kindness everywhere of ladies for ladies' men--that Hilary himself, oftenest by sunny, but sometimes by cyclonic, treatment of commissaries, quartermasters, surgeons, and citizens, made their burdens trivial.

So we, too, lightly pass them. After all, the things most important here are matters not military of which the book does not tell. Of such Victorine, assistant editor to Miranda, learned richly from Anna--who merely lent letters--without Anna knowing it. Yet Flora drew little from Victorine, who was as Latin as Flora, truly loved Anna, and through Charlie was a better reader of Flora's Latin than he or Flora or any one suspected.

For a moment more, however, let us stay with the chronicle. At last, when all was suffered, the infuriated boys missed Ben Butler and Big Bethel! One day soon after that engagement, returning through Richmond in new uniforms--of a sort--with scoured faces, undusty locks, full ranks, fresh horses, new harness and shining pieces, and with every gun-carriage, limber, and caisson freshly painted, they told their wrath to Franklin street girls while drinking their dippers of water. Also--"Good-by!--

"'I'd offer thee this hand of mine--'"

They were bound northward to join their own Creole Beauregard at a railway junction called--.