Chapter 5

"I cannot write. My thoughts jostle one another out of all shape, like the women in that last crush after the flag-presentation. I begged not to have to take Flora's place from her. It was like snatching jewels off her. I felt like a robber! But in truth until I had the flag actually in my hand I thought we were only being asked to take care of it for a later day. The storm had begun to threaten. Some one was trying to say to me--'off to camp and then to the front,' and--'must have the flag now,' and still I said, 'No, oh, no!' But before I could get any one to add a syllable there was the Captain himself with the three men of the color guard behind him, the middle one Victorine's father. I don't know how I began, but only that I went on and on in some wild way till I heard the applause all about and beneath me, and he took the colors from me, and the first gust of the storm puffed them half open--gorgeously--and the battery hurrahed. And then came his part. He--I cannot write it."

Why not, the diary never explained, but what occurred was this:

"Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" began Hilary and threw a superb look all round, but the instant he brought it back to Anna, it quailed, and he caught his breath. Then he nerved up again. To help his courage and her own she forced herself to gaze straight into his eyes, but reading the affright in hers he stood dumb and turned red.

He began again: "Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" and pulled his moustache, and smote and rubbed his brow, and suddenly drove his hand into an inside pocket and snatched out a slip of paper. But what should come trailing out with it but a long loop of ribbon! As he pushed it back he dropped the paper, which another whiff of wind flirted straight over his head, sent it circling and soaring clear above Moody's store and dropped it down upon the roof. And there gazed Anna and all that multitude, utterly blank, until the martyr himself burst into a laugh. Then a thousand laughs pealed as one, and he stood smiling and stroking back his hair, till his men began to cry, "song! song!"

Upon that he raised the flag high in one hand, let it balloon to the wind, made a sign of refusal, and all at once poured out a flood of speech--pledges to Anna and her fellow-needlewomen--charges to his men--hopes for the cherished cause--words so natural and unadorned, so practical and soldier-like, and yet so swift, that not a breath was drawn till he had ended. But then what a shout!

It was over in a moment. The great black cloud that had been swelling up from the south gave its first flash and crash, and everybody started pell-mell for home. The speaker stood just long enough for a last bow to Anna while the guard went before him with the colors. Then he hurried below and had the whole battery trotting down Canal Street and rounding back on its farther side, with the beautiful standard fluttering to the storm, before the Callenders could leave the balcony.

Canal Street that evening was a veritable fairyland. When, growing tired of their carriage, the Callenders and Mandeville walked, and Kincaid unexpectedly joined them, fairyland was the only name he could find for it, and Anna, in response, could find none at all. Mallard's, Zimmerman's, Clark's, Levois's, Laroussini's, Moody's, Hyde & Goodrich's, and even old Piffet's were all aglow. One cannot recount half. Every hotel, every club-house, all the theatres, all the consul's offices in Royal and Carondelet streets, the banks everywhere, Odd Fellows' Hall--with the Continentals giving their annual ball in it--and so forth and so on! How the heart was exalted!

But when the heart is that way it is easy to say things prematurely, and right there in Canal Street Hilary spoke of love. Not personally, only at large; although when Anna restively said no woman should ever give her heart where she could not give a boundless and unshakable trust, his eyes showed a noble misery while he exclaimed:

"Oh, but there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent, but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not rather die than doubt.

"Do you believe there are such women?" he asked.

"I know there are," she said, her eyes lifted to his, but the next instant was so panic-smitten and shamed that she ran into a lamp post. And when he called that his fault her denial was affirmative in its feebleness, and with the others she presently resumed the carriage and said good-night.

"Flippantly!" thought the one left alone on the crowded sidewalk.

Yet--"It is I who am going to have the hardest of it," said the diary a short hour after. "I've always thought that when the right one came I'd never give in the faintest bit till I had put him to every test and task and delay I could invent. And now I can't invent one! His face _quenches_ doubt, and if he keeps on this way--Ah, Flora! _is_ he anything to you? Every time he speaks my heart sees you. I see you now! And somehow--since Charlie's mishap--more yours than his if--"

For a full minute the pen hovered over the waiting page, then gradually left it and sank to rest on its silver rack.

XIV

FLORA TAPS GRANDMA'S CHEEK

Meanwhile, from a cluster of society folk sipping ices at "Vincent's" balcony tables, corner of Carondelet Street (where men made the most money), and Canal (where women spent the most), Flora and her grandmother, in Irby's care, made their way down to the street.

Kincaid, once more on horseback with General Brodnax, saw them emerge beside his cousin's hired carriage, and would have hurried to them, if only to inquire after the injured boy; but the General gave what he was saying a detaining energy. It was of erecting certain defences behind Mobile; of the scarcity of military engineers; and of his having, to higher authority, named Hilary for the task. The Captain could easily leave the battery in camp for a day or two, take the Mobile boat--He ceased an instant and scowled, as Hilary bowed across the way.

There was a tender raillery in the beam with which Flora held the young man's eye a second, and as she turned away there was accusation in the faint toss and flicker of the deep lace that curtained her hat. Both her companions saw it, but Irby she filled with an instant inebriation by one look, the kindest she had ever given him.

"Both barrels!" said the old lady to herself.

As Irby reached the carriage door Flora's touch arrested him. It was as light as a leaf, but it thrilled him like wine--whose thrill he well knew.

"I've lost one of my gloves," she said.

He looked about her feet.

"You mus' have drop' it on the stair," said grandmamma, discerning the stratagem, and glad to aid it.

Problem in tactics: To hunt the glove all the way up to the balcony and return before Hilary, if he was coming, could reach Flora's side. Irby set his teeth--he loathed problems--and sprang up the steps.

"No use," chanted Madame with enjoyment; "the other one is not coming."

But Flora remained benign while the old lady drew a little mocking sigh. "Ah," said the latter, "if the General would only stop changing his mind about his two nephews, what a lot of hard work that would save you!"

"It isn't hard!" cried Flora; so radiantly that passing strangers brightened back, "I love it!"

"It!" mocked the grandmother as the girl passed her into the carriage. "It!"

"You poor tired old thing!" sighed the compassionate beauty. "Never mind, dear; how the General may choose no longer gives me any anxiety."

"Oh, you lie!"

"No," softly laughed the girl, "not exactly. Don't collapse, love, you'll get your share of the loot yet. My choice shall fit the General's as this glove (drawing on the one Irby was still away in search of) fits this hand."

Madame smiled her contempt: "Nevertheless you will risk all just to show Anna--"

Flora made a gesture of delight but harkened on--

"That she cannot have her Captain till--"

"Till I'm sure I don't want him!" sang the girl.

"Which will never be!" came the quiet response.

The maiden flushed: "On the contrary, my dear, I was just going to say, you will please begin _at once_ to be more civil to _our_ Captain--Irby."

Madame gazed: "My God!"

"Ho!" said Flora, "I'd rather somebody else's." She cheerily smoothed the bonnet-bows under the old lady's chin: "Now, _chère_, you know the assets are all you care for--even if with them you have to take a nincompoop for a grandson."

She was laughing merrily when Irby reappeared in the crowd, motioning that he had found nothing. Her gloved hands raised in fond apology, and Hilary's absence, appeased him, and he entered the vehicle.

So to Jackson Square, where it was good-by to Irby and the carriage, and Age and Beauty climbed their staircase together. "To-morrow's Saturday," gayly sighed the girl. "I've a good mind to lie abed till noon, counting up the week's successes."

"Especially to-day's," smirked weary Age.

"Ho-o-oh!" laughed the maiden, "you and to-day be--" The rest was whispered close, with a one-fingered tap on the painted cheek. In the gloom of the upper landing she paused to murmur, "hear this: Two things I have achieved this week worth all to-day's bad luck ten times over--you don't believe me?"

"No, you pretty creature; you would have told me sooner, if only for vanity."

"I swear to you it is true!" whispered the lithe boaster, with a gleeful quiver from head to foot. "Listen! First--purely, of course, for love of Anna--I have conspired with the General to marry her to Kincaid. And, second, also purely for love of her, I have conspired with Irby to keep her and Kincaid forever and a day apart!"

She tapped both the aged cheeks at once: "I hate to share anything so delicious with you, but I must, because--"

"Ah-h! because, as usual--"

"Yes! Yes, you sweet old pelican! Because you are to turn the crank! But it's all for love of Anna. Ah, there's no inspiration like exasperation!"

"Except destitution!" said the grandmother.

They came before Charlie with arms about each other and openly enjoyed his only comment--a scornful rounding of his eyes.

In the Callender house, as the stair clock sounded the smallest hour of the night, Miranda, seeing the chink under Anna's door to be still luminous, stole to the spot, gently rapped, and winning no response warily let herself in.

From the diary on her desk Anna lifted her cheek, looked up, reclosed her lids, smiled and reopened them. Miranda took the blushing face between her palms, and with quizzing eyes--and nose--inquired:

"Is there any reason under heaven why Anna Callender shouldn't go to bed and have glad dreams?"

"None that I know of," said Anna.

XV

THE LONG MONTH OF MARCH

Ole mahs' love' wine, ole mis' love' silk, De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk, An' eveh sence dis worl' began, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to sing a song to de ladies! I loves to dance along o' de ladies! Whilse eveh I can breave aw see aw stan' I's bound to be a ladies' man.

So sang Captain Hilary Kincaid at the Mandeville-Callender wedding feast, where his uncle Brodnax, with nearly everyone we know, was present. Hilary had just been second groomsman, with Flora for his "file leader," as he said, meaning second bridesmaid. He sat next her at table, with Anna farthest away.

Hardly fortunate was some one who, conversing with the new Miss Callender, said the charm of Kincaid's singing was that the song came from "the entire man." She replied that just now it really seemed so! In a sense both comments were true, and yet never in the singer's life had so much of "the entire man" refused to sing. All that night of the illumination he had not closed his eyes, except in anguish for having tried to make love on the same day when--and to the same Anna Callender before whom--he had drawn upon himself the roaring laugh of the crowded street; or in a sort of remorse for letting himself become the rival of a banished friend who, though warned that a whole platoon of him would make no difference, suddenly seemed to plead a prohibitory difference to one's inmost sense of honor.

At dawn he had risen resolved to make good his boast and "fight like a whale." Under orders of his own seeking he had left the battery the moment its tents were up and had taken boat for Mobile. Whence he had returned only just in time to stand beside Flora Valcour, preceded by a relative of the bridegroom paired with Anna.

Yet here at the feast none was merrier than Kincaid, who, charmingly egged on by Flora, kept those about him in gales of mirth, and even let himself be "cajoled" (to use his own term) into singing this song whose title had become his nickname. Through it all Anna smiled and laughed with the rest and clapped for each begged-for stanza. Yet all the time she said in her heart, "He is singing it at me!"

De squir'l he love' de hick'ry tree, De clover love' de bummle-bee, De flies, dey loves mullasses, an'-- De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to be de beau o' de ladies! I loves to shake a toe wid de ladies! Whilse eveh I'm alive, on wateh aw Ian', I's bound to be a ladies' man.

The General, seeing no reason why Hilary should not pay Anna at least the attentions he very properly paid his "file leader," endured the song with a smile, but took revenge when he toasted the bride:

"In your prayers to-night, my dear Constance, just thank God your husband is, at any rate, without the sense of humor--Stop, my friends! Let me finish!"

A storm of laughter was falling upon Mandeville, but the stubborn General succeeded after all in diverting it to Hilary, to whom in solemn mirth he pointed as--"_that_ flirtatious devotee of giddiness, without a fault big enough to make him interesting!" ["Hoh!"--"Hoh!"--from men and maidens who could easily have named huge ones.] Silent Anna knew at least two or three; was it not a fault a hundred times too grave to be uninteresting, for a big artillerist to take a little frightened lassie as cruelly at her word as he was doing right here and now?

Interesting to her it was that his levity still remained unsubmerged, failing him only in a final instant: Their hands had clasped in leave-taking and her eyes were lifted to his, when some plea with which "the entire man" seemed overcharged to the very lips was suddenly, subtly, and not this time by disconcertion, but by self-mastery, withheld. Irby put in a stiff good-by, and as he withdrew, Hilary echoed only the same threadbare word more brightly, and was gone; saying to himself as he looked back from the garden's outmost bound:

"She's _cold;_ that's what's the matter with Anna; cold and cruel!"

Tedious was the month of March. Mandeville devise' himself a splandid joke on that, to the effect that soon enough there would be months of tedieuse marches--ha, ha, ha!--and contribute' it to the news-pape'. Yet the tedium persisted. Always something about to occur, nothing ever occurring. Another vast parade, it is true, some two days after the marriage, to welcome from Texas that aged general (friend of the Callenders) who after long suspense to both sides had at last joined the South, and was to take command at New Orleans. Also, consequent upon the bursting of a gun that day in Kincaid's Battery, the funeral procession of poor, handsome, devil-may-care Felix de Gruy; saxhorns moaning and wailing, drums muttering from their muffled heads, Anna's ensign furled in black, captain and lieutenants on foot, brows inclined, sabres reversed, and the "Stars and Bars," new flag of the Confederacy, draping the slow caisson that bore him past the Callenders' gates in majesty so strange for the gay boy.

Such happenings, of course; but nothing that ever brought those things for which one, wakening in the night, lay and prayed while forced by the songster's rapture to "listen to the mocking-bird."

While the Judge lived the Callenders had been used to the company of men by the weight of whose energies and counsel the clock of public affairs ran and kept time; senators, bishops, bank presidents, great lawyers, leading physicians; a Dr. Sevier, for one. Some of these still enjoyed their hospitality, and of late in the old house life had recovered much of its high charm and breadth of outlook. Yet March was tedious.

For in March nearly all notables felt bound to be up at Montgomery helping to rock the Confederacy's cradle. Whence came back sad stories of the incapacity, negligence, and bickerings of misplaced men. It was "almost as bad as at Washington." Friends still in the city were tremendously busy; yet real business--Commerce--with scarce a moan of complaint, lay heaving out her dying breath. Busy at everything but business, these friends, with others daily arriving in command of rustic volunteers, kept society tremendously gay, by gas-light; and courage and fortitude and love of country and trust in God and scorn of the foe went clad in rainbow colors; but at the height of all manner of revels some pessimist was sure to explain to Anna why the war must be long, of awful cost, and with a just fighting chance to win.

"Then why do we not turn about right here?"

"Too late now."

Such reply gave an inward start, it seemed so fitted to her own irrevealable case. But it was made to many besides her, and women came home from dinings or from operas and balls for the aid of this or that new distress of military need, and went up into the dark and knelt in all their jewels and wept long. In March the poor, everywhere, began to be out of work, and recruiting to be lively among them too, because for thousands of them it was soldier's pay or no bread. Among the troops from the country death had begun to reap great harvests ere a gun was fired, and in all the camps lovers nightly sang their lugubrious "Lorena," feeling that "a hundred months had passed" before they had really dragged through one. March was so tedious, and lovers are such poor arithmeticians. Wherever Hilary Kincaid went, showing these how to cast cannon (that would not burst), those where to build fortifications, and some how to make unsickly camps, that song was begged of him in the last hour before sleep; last song but one, the very last being always--that least liked by Anna.

Tedious to Kincaid's Battery were his absences on so many errands. Behind a big earthwork of their own construction down on the river's edge of the old battle ground, close beyond the Callenders', they lay camped in pretty white tents that seemed to Anna, at her window, no bigger than visiting-cards. Rarely did she look that way but the fellows were drilling, their brass pieces and their officers' drawn sabres glinting back the sun, horses and men as furiously diligent as big and little ants, and sometimes, of an afternoon, their red and yellow silk and satin standard unfurled--theirs and hers. Of evenings small bunches of the boys would call to chat and be sung to; to threaten to desert if not soon sent to the front; and to blame all delays on colonels and brigadiers "known" by them to be officially jealous of--They gave only the tedious nickname.

"Why belittle him with that?" queried Miranda, winning Anna's silent gratitude.

"It doesn't belittle _him_," cried Charlie. "That's the joke. It makes _him_ loom larger!"

Others had other explanations: Their guns were "ladies' guns!" Were the guns the foremost cause? Some qualified: "Foremost, yes; fundamental, no." Rather the fact that never was a woman cited in male gossip but instantly he was her champion; or that no woman ever brought a grievance to any camp where he might be but she wanted to appeal it to him.

Anna "thought the name was all from the song."

"Oh, fully as much from his hundred and one other songs! Had he never sung to her--

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

Frankly, it was agreed, he did most laughably love ladies' company; that he could always find it, as a horse can find water; that although no evening in their society could be so gay or so long that he would not be certain to work harder next day than any one else, no day could be so cruelly toilsome that he could not spend half the next night dancing with the girls; and lastly, that with perfect evenness and a boyish modesty he treated them all alike.

Anna laughed with the rest, but remembered three separate balls to which, though counted on, he had not come, she uninformed that military exigencies had at the last moment curtly waved him off, and he unaware that these exigencies had been created by Irby under inspiration from the daintiest and least self-assertive tactician in or about New Orleans.

XVI

CONSTANCE TRIES TO HELP

One day, in Canal Street, Kincaid met "Smellemout and Ketchem." It was pleasant to talk with men of such tranquil speech. He proposed a glass of wine, but just then they were "strictly temperance." They alluded familiarly to his and Greenleaf's midnight adventure. The two bull-drivers, they said, were still unapprehended.

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"