Chapter 23

Any least thing now might tip the scale for life or death, and while at the head of the veranda steps she spoke of happiness her distressed thought was of Hilary's madcap audacity, how near at hand he might be even then, under what fearful risk of recognition and capture. She was keenly glad to hear two men complain that the guard about the house and grounds was to-day a new one awkward to the task. Of less weight now it seemed that out on the river the despatch-boat had shifted her berth down-stream and with steam up lay where the first few wheel turns would put her out of sight. Indoors, where there was much official activity, it relieved her to see that neither Hilary's absence nor her coming counted large in the common regard. The brace of big generals were in the library across the hall, busy on some affair much larger than this of "ourn."

The word was the old coachman Israel's. What a tender joy it was to find him in the wretched drawing-room trying to make it decent for her and dropping his tears as openly as the maid. With what a grace, yet how boldly, he shut the door between them and blue authority. While the girl arranged on a table, for Anna's use, a basket of needlework brought with them he honestly confessed his Union loyalty, yet hurriedly, under his breath, bade Anna not despair, and avowed a devotion to the safety and comfort of "ole mahs's and mis's sweet baby" as then and forever his higher law. He was still autocrat of the basement, dropsied with the favor of colonels and generals, deferential to "folks," but a past-master in taking liberties with things. As he talked he so corrected the maid's arrangement of the screen that the ugly hole in the wall was shut from the view of visitors, though left in range of Anna's work-table, and as Anna rose at a tap on the door, with the gentle ceremony of the old home he let in Doctor Sevier and Colonel Greenleaf and shut himself out.

"Anna," began the Doctor, "There's very little belief here that you're involved in this thing."

"Why, then," archly said Anna, "who is?"

"Ah, that's the riddle. But they say if you'll just take the oath of allegiance--"

Anna started so abruptly as to imperil her table. Her color came and her voice dropped to its lowest note as she said between long breaths: "No!--no!--no!"

But the Doctor spoke on:

"They believe that if you take it you'll keep it, and they say that the moment you take it you may go free, here or anywhere--to Mobile if you wish."

Again Anna flinched: "Mobile!" she murmured, and then lifting her eyes to Greenleaf's, repeated, "No! No, not for my life. Better Ship Island."

Greenleaf reddened. "Anna," put in the Doctor, but she lifted a hand:--

"They've never offered it to you, Doctor? H-oh! They'd as soon think of asking one of our generals. They'd _almost_ as soon"--the corners of her lips hinted a smile--"ask Hilary Kincaid."

"I've never advised any one against it, Anna."

"Well, I do!--every God-fearing Southern man and woman. A woman is all I am and I may be short-sighted, narrow, and foolish, but--Oh, Colonel Greenleaf, you shouldn't have let Doctor Sevier take this burden for you. It's hard enough--"

The Doctor intervened: "Anna, dear, this old friend of yours"--laying a finger on Greenleaf--"is in a tight place. Both you and Hilary--"

"Yes, I know, and I know it's not fair to him. Lieutenant--Colonel, I mean, pardon me!--you sha'n't be under odium for my sake or his. As far as I stand accused I must stand alone. The one who must go free is that mere child Victorine, on her pass, to-day, this morning. When I hear the parting gun of that boat down yonder I want to know by it that Victorine is safely on her way to Mobile, as she would be had she not been my messenger yesterday."

"She carried nothing but a message?"

"Nothing but a piece of writing--mine! Colonel, I tell you faithfully, whatever Major Kincaid broke prison with was not brought here yesterday by any one and was never in Victorine's hands."

"Nor in yours, either?" kindly asked Greenleaf.

Anna caught her breath and went redder than ever. Doctor Sevier stirred to speak, but Anna's maid gave her a soft thrust, pointed behind the screen, and covered a bashful smile with her apron. Anna's blush became one of mirth. Her eyes went now to the Doctor and again to the broken wall.

"Israel!" she laughed, "why do you enter--?"

"On'y fitten' way, missie. House so full o' comin' and goin', and me havin' dis cullud man wid me."

Out on the basement ladder, at the ragged gap of Israel's "on'y fittin' way," was visible, to prove his word, another man's head, white-turbaned like his own, and two dark limy hands passing in a pail of mortar. Welcome distraction. True, Greenleaf's luckless question still stood unanswered, but just then an orderly summoned him to the busy generals and spoke aside to Doctor Sevier.

"Miss Valcour," explained the Doctor to Anna.

"Oh, Doctor," she pleaded, "I want to see her! Beg them, won't you, to let her in?"

LXIV

"NOW, MR. BRICK-MASON,--"

Amid the much coming and going that troubled Israel--tramp of spurred boots, clank of sabres, seeking, meeting and parting of couriers and aides--Madame Valcour, outwardly placid, inwardly terrified, found opportunity to warn her granddaughter, softly, that unless she, the granddaughter, could get that look of done-for agony out of her eyes, the sooner and farther they fled this whole issue, this fearful entanglement, the better for them.

But brave Flora, knowing the look was no longer in the eyes alone but had for days eaten into her visage as age had for decades into the grandam's, made no vain effort to paint it out with smiles but accepted and wore it in show of a desperate solicitude for Anna. Yet this, too, was futile, and before Doctor Sevier had exchanged five words with her she saw that to him the make-up was palpable and would be so to Greenleaf. Poor Flora! She had wrestled her victims to the edge of a precipice, yet it was she who at this moment, this dazzling September morning, seemed doomed to go first over the brink. Had not both Hilary and Anna met again this Greenleaf and through him found answer for all their burning questions? She could not doubt her web of deceptions had been torn to shreds, cast to the winds. Not one of the three could she now hope to confront successfully, much less any two of them together. To name no earlier reason--having reached town just as Kincaid was being sent out of it, she had got him detained on a charge so frivolous that how to sustain it now before Greenleaf and his generals she was tortured to contrive.

Yet something must be done. The fugitive must be retaken and retained, the rival deported, and, oh, Hilary Kincaid! as she recalled her last moment with you on that firing-line behind Vicksburg, shame and rage outgrew despair, and her heart beat hot in a passion of chagrin and then hotter, heart and brain, in a frenzy of ownership, as if by spending herself she had bought you, soul and body, and if only for self-vindication would have you from all the universe.

"The last wager and the last card," she smilingly remarked to her kinswoman, "they sometimes win out," and as the smile passed added, "I wish I had that bread-knife."

To Doctor Sevier her cry was, "Oh, yes, yes! Dear Anna! Poor Anna! Yes, before I have to see any one else, even Colonel Greenleave! Ah, please, Doctor, beg him he'll do me that prizelezz favor, and that for the good God's sake he'll keep uz, poor Anna and me, not long waiting!"

Yet long were the Valcours kept. It was the common fate those days. But Flora felt no title to the common fate, and while the bustle of the place went on about them she hiddenly suffered and, mainly for the torment it would give her avaricious companion, told a new reason for the look in her eyes. Only a few nights before she had started wildly out of sleep to find that she had _dreamed_ the cause of Anna's irreconcilable distress for the loss of the old dagger. The dream was true on its face, a belated perception awakened by bitterness of soul, and Madame, as she sat dumbly marvelling at its tardiness, chafed the more against each minute's present delay, seeing that now to know if Kincaid, or if Anna, held the treasure was her liveliest hankering.

Meantime the captive Anna was less debarred than they. As Greenleaf and the Doctor, withdrawing, shut her door, and until their steps died away, she had stood by her table, her wide thought burning to know the whereabouts, doings, and plight of him, once more missing, with whom a scant year-and-a-half earlier--if any war-time can be called scant--she had stood on that very spot and sworn the vows of marriage: to know his hazards now, right now! with man; police, informer, patrol, picket, scout; and with nature; the deadly reptiles, insects, and maladies of thicketed swamp and sun-beaten, tide-swept marsh; and how far he had got on the splendid mission which her note, with its words of love and faith and of patriotic abnegation, had laid upon him.

Now eagerly she took her first quick survey of the room she knew so well. Her preoccupied maid was childishly questioning the busy Israel as he and the man out on the basement ladder removed bricks from the edges of the ragged opening between them.

"Can't build solid ef you don't staht solid," she heard the old coachman say. She glided to the chimney-breast, searching it swiftly with her eyes and now with her hands. Soilure and scars had kept the secret of the hidden niche all these months, and neither stain, scar, nor any sign left by Hilary or Flora betrayed it now. Surely _this_ was the very panel Flora had named. Yet dumbly, rigidly it denied the truth, for Hilary, having reaped its spoil, had, to baffle his jailors, cunningly made it fast. And time was flying! Tremblingly the searcher glanced again to the door, to the screen, to the veranda windows--though these Israel had rudely curtained--and then tried another square, keenly harkening the while to all sounds and especially to the old negro's incessant speech:

"Now, Mr. Brick-mason, ef you'll climb in hyuh I'll step out whah you is and fetch a bucket o' warteh. Gal, move one side a step, will you?"

While several feet stirred lightly Anna persisted in her trembling quest--not to find the treasure, dear Heaven, but only to find it gone. Would that little be denied? So ardent was the mute question that she seemed to have spoken it aloud, and in alarm looked once more at the windows, the door, the screen--the screen! A silence had settled there and as her eye fell on it the stooping mason came from behind it, glancing as furtively as she at windows and door and then exaltedly to her. She stiffened for outcry and flight, but in the same instant he straightened up and she knew him; knew him as right here she had known him once before in that same disguise, which the sad fortunes of their cause had prevented his further use of till now. He started forward, but with beseeching signs and whispers, blind to everything between them but love and faith, she ran to him. He caught her to his heart and drew her behind the screen under the enraptured eyes of her paralyzed maid. For one long breath of ecstasy the rest of the universe was nothing. But then--

"The treasure?" she gasped. "The dagger?"

He showed the weapon in its precious scabbard and sought to lay it in her hands, but--"Oh, why! why!" she demanded, though with a gaze that ravished his,--. "Why are you not on your way--?"

"Am!" he softly laughed. "Here, leave me the dirk, but take the sheath. Everything's there that we put there long ago, beloved, and also a cypher report of what I heard last night in the garden--never mind what!--_take it_, you will save Mobile! Now both of you slip through this hole and down the ladder and quietly skedaddle--quick--come!"

"But the guards?"

"Just brass it out and walk by them. Victorine's waiting out behind with all her aunt's things at a house that old Israel will tell you of--listen!" From just outside the basement, near the cisterns, a single line of song rose drowsily and ceased:

"Heap mo' dan worteh-million juice--"

"That's he. It means come on. Go!" He gathered a brick and trowel and rang them together as if at work. The song answered:

"Aw 'possum pie aw roasted goose--"

The trowel rang on. Without command from her mistress the maid was crouching into the hole. In the noise Anna was trying to press an anxious query upon Hilary, but he dropped brick and tool and snatched her again into his embrace.

"Aw soppin's o' de gravy pan--"

called the song. The maid was through!

"But you, Hilary, my life?" gasped Anna as he forced her to the opening.

"The swamp for me!" he said, again sounding the trowel. "I take this"--the trowel--"and walk out through the hall. Go, my soul's treasure, go!"

Anna, with that art of the day which remains a wonder yet, gathered her crinoline about her feet and twisted through and out upon the ladder. Hilary seized a vanishing hand, kissed it madly, and would have loosed it, but it clung till his limy knuckles went out and down and her lips sealed on them the distant song's fourth line as just then it came:

"De ladies loves de ladies' man!"

As mistress and maid passed in sight of the dark singer he hurried to them, wearing the bucket of water on his turban as lightly as a hat. "Is you got to go so soon?" he asked, and walked beside them. Swiftly, under his voice, he directed them to Victorine and then spoke out again in hearing of two or three blue troopers. "You mus' come ag'in, whensomeveh you like."

They drew near a guard: "Dese is ole folks o' mine, Mr. Gyuard, ef you please, suh, dess a-lookin' at de ole home, suh."

"We were admitted by Colonel Greenleaf," said Anna, with a soft brightness that meant more than the soldier guessed, and he let them out, feeling as sweet, himself, as he tried to look sour.

"Well, good-by, Miss Nannie," said the old man, "I mus' recapitulate back to de house; dey needs me pow'ful all de time. Good luck to you! Gawd bless you!... Dass ow ba-aby, Mr. Gyuard--Oh, Lawd, Lawd, de days I's held dat chile out on one o' dese ole han's!" He had Flora's feeling for stage effects.

Toiling or resting, the Southern slaves were singers. With the pail on his head and with every wearer of shoulder-straps busy giving or obeying some order, it was as normal as cock-crowing that he should raise yet another line of his song and that from the house the diligent bricklayer should reply.

Sang the water-carrier:

"I's natch-i-ully gallant wid de ladies,--"

and along with the trowel's tinkle came softly back,

"I uz bawn wid a talent fo' de ladies."

For a signal the indoor singer need not have gone beyond that line, but the spirit that always grew merry as the peril grew, the spirit which had made Kincaid's Battery the fearfulest its enemies ever faced, insisted:

"You fine it on de map o' de contrac' plan, I's boun' to be a ladies' man!"

LXV

FLORA'S LAST THROW

Normal as cock-crowing seemed the antiphony to the common ear, which scarcely noticed the rareness of the indoor voice. But Greenleaf's was not the common ear, nor was Flora Valcour's.

To her that closing strain made the torture of inaction finally unbearable. Had Anna heard? Leaving Madame she moved to a hall door of the room where they sat. Was Anna's blood surging like her own? It could not! Under what a tempest of conjectures she looked down and across the great hall to the closed and sentinelled door of that front drawing-room so rife with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was Anna. From within it, more faintly now, came those sounds of a mason at work which had seemed to ring with the song. But the song had ceased. About the hall highly gilded officers conferred alertly in pairs or threes, more or less in the way of younger ones who smartly crossed from room to room. Here came Greenleaf! Seeking her? No, he would have passed unaware, but her lips ventured his name.

Never had she seen such a look in his face as that with which he confronted her. Grief, consternation, discovery and wrath were all as one save that only the discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how for two days and nights he had been putting this and that and this and that and this and that together until he had guessed her out. Sternly in his eyes she perceived contumely withholding itself, yet even while she felt the done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor fail like a sinking deck, she clung to her stage part, babbled impromptu lines.

"Doctor Sevier--?" she began--

"He had to go."

Again she read the soldier's eyes. God! he was comparing her changed countenance--a fool could see he was!--with Anna's! both smitten with affliction, but the abiding peace of truth in one, the abiding war of falsehood in the other. So would Kincaid do if he were here! But the stage waited: "Ah, Colonel, Anna! poor Anna!" Might not the compassion-wilted supplicant see the dear, dear prisoner? She rallied all her war-worn fairness with all her feminine art, and to her amazement, with a gleam of purpose yet without the softening of a lineament, he said yes, waved permission across to the guard and left her.

She passed the guard and knocked. Quietly in the room clinked the brick-mason's work. He strongly hummed his tune. Now he spoke, as if to his helper, who seemed to be leaving him. Again she knocked, and bent her ear. The mason sang aloud:

"Some day dis worl' come to an en', I don't know how, I don't know when--"

She turned the door-knob and murmured, "Anna!"

The bricklaying clinked, tapped and scraped on. The workman hummed again his last two lines.

"Who is it?" asked a feigned voice which she knew so instantly to be Kincaid's that every beat of her heart jarred her frame.

"'Tis I, Anna, dear. 'Tis Flora." She was mindful of the sentry, but all his attention was in the busy hall.

There came a touch on the inner door-knob. "Go away!" murmured the manly voice, no longer disguised. "In God's name! for your own sake as well as hers, go instantly!"

"No," melodiously replied Flora, in full voice for the sentry's ear, but with resolute pressure on the door, "no, not at all.... No, I muz' not, cannot."

"Then wait one moment till you hear me at work!"

She waited. Presently the trowel sounded again and its wielder, in a lowered tone, sang with it:

"Dat neveh trouble Dandy Dan Whilst de ladies loves de ladies' man."

At the first note she entered with some idle speech, closed the door, darted her glance around, saw no one, heard only the work and the song and sprang to the chimney-breast. She tried the panel--it would not yield! Yet there, as if the mason's powerful hands had within that minute reopened and reclosed it, were the wet marks of his fingers. A flash of her instinct for concealment bade her wipe them off and she had barely done so when he stepped from the screen, fresh from Israel's water-bucket, drying his face on his hands, his hands on his face and un-turbaned locks, prison-worn from top to toe, but in Dixie's full gray and luminous with the unsmiling joy of danger.

"It's not there," he loudly whispered, showing the bare dagger. "Here it is. She has the rest, scabbard and all."

Flora clasped her hands as in ecstasy: "And is free? surely free?"

"Almost! Surely when that despatch-boat fires!" In a few rapid words Hilary told the scheme of Anna's flight, at the same time setting the screen aside so as to show the hole in the wall nearly closed, humming his tune and ringing the trowel on the brickwork.

Flora made new show of rapture. Nor was it all mere show. Anna escaping, the treasure would escape with her, and Flora be thrown into the dungeon of penury. Yet let them both go, both rival and treasure! Love's ransom! All speed to them since they left her Hilary Kincaid and left him at her mercy. But the plight was complex and suddenly her exultation changed to affright. "My God! Hilary Kincaid," she panted, "you 'ave save' her to deztroy yo'seff! You are--"

Proudly, gaily he shook his head: "No! No! against her will I've sent her, to save--" He hushed. He had begun to say a city, Flora's city. Once more a captive, he would gladly send by Flora also, could she contrive to carry it, the priceless knowledge which Anna, after all, might fail to convey. But something--it may have been that same outdone and done-for look which Greenleaf had just noted--silenced him, and the maiden resumed where she had broken off:

"My God, Hilary Kincaid, you are in denger to be hanged a spy! Thiz minute you 'ave hide yo' dizguise in that panel!"

"You would come in," said Hilary, with a playful wave of the trowel, and turned to his work, singing:

"When I hands in my checks--"

Flora ran and clung tenderly to his arm, but with a distressed smile he clasped her wrists in one hand and gently forced her back again while she asked in burning undertone, "And you 'ave run that h-awful risk for me? for me? But, why? why? why?"

"Oh!" he laughingly said, and at the wall once more waved the ringing trowel, "instinct, I reckon; ordinary manhood--to womanhood. If you had recognized me in that rig--"

"And I would! In any rigue thiz heart would reco'nize you!"

"Then you would have had to betray me or else go, yourself, to Ship Island"

"H-o-oh! I would have gone!"

"That's what I feared," said Hilary, though while he spoke she fiercely felt that she certainly would have betrayed him; not for horror of Ship Island but because now, _after this_, no Anna Callender nor all the world conspired should have him from her alive.

He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung her soul to see joy mount in his eyes as from somewhere below the old coachman sang:

"When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies!"

Yet she showed elation: "That means Anna and Victorine they have pazz' to the boat?"

With merry nods and airy wavings of affirmation he sang back, rang back:

"Mighty little I espec's, O, my ladies! 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 God'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!"