Chapter 8

Flora ignored the comment. She laid a second palm, on the upraised booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"--she returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper proceeds of the schoolmistress's gold still hid--"you shall never handle a dime." She sparkled airily.

"No?" said Madame, still moving the needle and still in French. "Nevertheless, morning and evening together, our winnings are--how much?"

"Ours?" melodiously asked the smiling girl, "they are not ours, they are mine. And they are--at the least"--she dropped to her senior's footstool and spoke caressingly low--"a clean thousand! Is not that sweet enough music to the ear of a venerable"--she whispered--"cormorant?" She sparkled anew.

"I am sorry," came the mild reply, "you are in such torture you have to call me names. But it is, of course, entirely concerning--the house--ahem!"

Flora rose, walked to a window, and, as she gazed out across the old plaza, said measuredly in a hard voice: "Never mind! Never mind her--or him either. I will take care of the two of them!"

A low laugh tinkled from the ancestress: "Ha, ha! you thought the fool would be scandalized, and instead he is only the more enamored."

The girl flinched but kept her face to the window: "_He_ is not the fool."

"No? We can hardly tell, when we are--in love."

Flora wheeled and flared, but caught herself, musingly crossed the room, returned half-way, and with frank design resumed the stool warily vacated by the unslippered foot; whose owner was mincing on, just enough fluttered to play defiance while shifting her attack--

"Home, sweet home! For our ravished one you will, I suppose, permit his beloved country to pay--in its new paper money at 'most any discount--and call it square, eh?" Half the bitterness of her tone was in its sweetness.

In a sudden white heat the granddaughter clutched one aged knee with both hands: "Wait! If I don't get seven times all it was ever worth, the Yankees shall!" Then with an odd gladness in her eyes she added, "And _she_ shall pay her share!"

"You mean--his?" asked the absorbed embroiderer. But on her last word she stiffened upward with a low cry of agony, shut her eyes and swung her head as if about to faint. Flora had risen.

"Oh-h-h!" the girl softly laughed, "was that your foot?"

XXIII

"SOLDIERS!"

With what innocent openness did we do everything in '61! "Children and fools" could not tell the truth any faster or farther than did our newspapers--_Picayune, Delta, True Delta, Crescent, L'Abeille, and L'Estafette du Sud._ After every military review the exact number in line and the name of every command and commander were hurried into print. When at last we began to cast siege guns, the very first one was defiantly proclaimed to all the Confederacy's enemies: an eight-inch Dahlgren, we would have them to know. Kincaid and his foundry were given full credit, and the defence named where the "iron monster" was to go, if not the very embrasure designated into which you must fire to dismount it.

The ladies, God bless them, were always free to pass the guard on the city side of that small camp and earthwork, where with the ladies' guns "the ladies' man" had worn the grass off all the plain and the zest of novelty out of all his nicknamers, daily hammering--he and his only less merciful lieutenants--at their everlasting drill.

Such ladies! Why shouldn't they pass? Was it not safe for the cause and just as safe for them? Was not every maid and matron of them in the "Ladies' Society of the Confederate Army"--whereof Miss Callender was a secretary and Miss Valcour one of the treasurers? And had not the fellows there, owing to an influence or two in the camp itself and another or two just outside it, all become, in a strong, fine sense and high degree, ladies' men? It was good for them spiritually, and good for their field artillery evolutions, to be watched by maidenly and matronly eyes. Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black snouts lay out on the parapet's superior slope, fondled by the soft Gulf winds that came up the river, and snuffing them for the taint of the enemy.

One afternoon when field-gun manoeuvres were at a close, Kincaid spoke from the saddle. Facing him stood his entire command, "in order in the line," their six shining pieces and dark caissons and their twice six six-horse teams stretching back in six statuesque rows; each of the three lieutenants--Bartleson, Villeneuve, Tracy--in the front line, midway between his two guns, the artificers just six yards out on the left, and guidon and buglers just six on the right. At the commander's back was the levee. Only now it had been empty of spectators, and he was seizing this advantage.

"Soldiers!" It was his first attempt since the flag presentation, and it looked as though he would falter, but he hardened his brow: "Some days ago you were told not to expect marching orders for a week. Well the week's up and we're told to wait another. Now that makes me every bit as mad as it makes you! I feel as restless as any man in this battery, and I told the commanding general to-day that you're the worst discontented lot I've yet seen, and that I was proud of you for it. That's all I said to him. But! if there's a man here who doesn't yet know the difference between a soldierly discontent and unsoldierly _grumbling_ I want him to GO! Kincaid's Battery is not for him. Let him transfer to infantry or cavalry. Oh, I know it's only that you want to be in the very first fight, and that's all right! But what we can't get we don't _grumble for_ in Kincaid's Battery!"

He paused. With his inspired eyes on the splendid array, visions of its awful destiny only exalted him. Yet signs which he dared not heed lest he be confounded told him that every eye so fixed on his was aware of some droll distraction. He must speak on.

"My boys! as sure as this war begins it's going to last. There'll be lots of killing and dying, and I warn you now, your share'll be a double one. So, then, no indecent haste. Artillery can't fight every day. Cavalry can--in its small way, but you may have to wait months and months to get into a regular hell on earth. All the same you'll get there!--soon enough--times enough. Don't you know why, when we have to be recruited--to fill up the shot holes--they'll go by the cavalry to the infantry, and pick the best men there, and _promote_ them to your ranks? It's because of how you've got to fight when your turn comes; like devils, to hold up, for all you may know, the butt end of the whole day's bloody business. That's why--and because of how you may have to wait, _un-com-plain-ing_, in rotting idleness for the next tea party."

Again he ceased. What _was_ the matter? There sat his matchless hundred, still and straight as stone Egyptians, welcoming his every word; yet some influence not his was having effect and, strangest of all, was enhancing his.

"One more word," he said. "You're sick of the drill-ground. Well, the man that's spoiling for a fight and yet has no belly for drill--he--oh, he belongs to the cavalry by birth! We _love_ these guns. We're mighty dogg--we're extremely proud of them. Through thick and thin, through fire and carnage and agony, remembering where we got them, we propose to _keep_ them; and some proud day, when the trouble's all over, say two years hence, and those of us who are spared come home, we propose to come with these same guns unstained by the touch of a foe's hand, a virgin battery still. Well, only two things can win that: infernal fighting and perpetual toil. So, as you love honor and your country's cause, wait. Wait in self-respectful patience. Wait and work, and you shall be at the front--the foremost front!--the very first day and hour my best licks can get you there. That's all."

Bartleson advanced from the line: "By section!" he called, "right wheel--"

"Section," repeated each chief of section, "right wheel--"

"March!" commanded Bartleson.

"March," echoed the chiefs, and the battery broke into column. "Forward! Guide right!" chanted Bartleson, and all moved off save Kincaid.

He turned his horse, and lo! on the grassy crest of the earthwork, pictured out against the eastern pink and blue, their summer gauzes filled with the light of the declining sun, were half a dozen smiling ladies attended by two or three officers of cavalry, and among them Flora, Constance, and Miranda.

Anna? Only when he had dismounted did his eager eye find her, where she had climbed and seated herself on a siege gun and was letting a cavalier show her how hard it would be for a hostile ship, even a swift steamer, to pass, up-stream, this crater of destruction, and _ergo_ how impossible for a fleet--every ship a terror to its fellows the moment it was hurt--to run the gauntlet of Forts Jackson and St. Philip on a far worse stretch of raging current some eighty miles farther down the river.

Not for disbelief of the demonstration, but because of a general laugh around a tilt of words between Kincaid and the cavalry fellows, Anna lighted down and faced about, to find him, for the third time in five days, at close range. With much form he drew nearer, a bright assurance in his eyes, a sort of boyish yes, for a moment, but the next moment gone as it met in hers a womanly no.

"You little artist," thought Flora.

XXIV

A PARKED BATTERY CAN RAISE A DUST

Down in the camp the battery was forming into park; a pretty movement. The ladies watched it, the cavalrymen explaining. Now it was done. The command broke ranks, and now its lieutenants joined the fair company and drank its eulogies--grimly, as one takes a dram.

Back among the tents and mess fires--

"Fellows!" said the boys, in knots, "yonder's how he puts in his 'best licks' for us!" But their wanton gaze was also fond as it followed the procession of parasols and sword-belts, muslins and gold lace that sauntered down along the levee's crest in couples, Hilary and Anna leading.

Flora, as they went, felt a most unusual helplessness to avert a course of things running counter to her designs. It is true that, having pledged herself to the old General to seek a certain issue and to Irby to prevent it, she might, whichever way the matter drifted, gather some advantage if she could contrive to claim credit for the trend; an _if_ which she felt amply able to take care of. To keep two men fooled was no great feat, nor even to beguile her grandmother, whose gadfly insistence centred ever on the Brodnax fortune as their only true objective; but so to control things as not to fool herself at last--that was the pinch. It pinched more than it would could she have heard how poorly at this moment the lover and lass were getting on--as such. Her subtle interferences--a mere word yesterday, another the day before--were having more success than she imagined, not realizing how much they were aided by that frantic untamableness to love's yoke, which, in Hilary only less than in Anna, qualified every word and motion.

Early in the talk of these two Hilary had mentioned his speech just made, presently asking with bright abruptness how Anna liked it and, while Anna was getting her smile ready for a safe reply, had added that he never could have made it at all had he dreamed she was looking on. "Now if she asks why," he thought to himself in alarm, "I've got to blurt it out!"

But she failed to ask; only confessed herself unfit to judge anybody's English.

"English! oh, pass the English!" he said, he "knew how bad that was." What he wanted her criticism on was--"its matter--its spirit--whichever it was, matter or spirit!" How comical that sounded! They took pains that their laugh should be noticed behind them. Flora observed both the laugh and the painstaking.

"Matter or spirit," said Anna more gravely, "I can't criticise it. I can't even praise it--oh! but that's only be--because I haven't--the courage!"

The lover's reply was low and full of meaning: "Would you praise it if you had the courage?"

She could have answered trivially, but something within bade her not. "Yes," she murmured, "I would." It was an awful venture, made unpreparedly, and her eyes, trying to withstand his, dropped. Yet they rallied splendidly--"They've got to!" said something within her--and, "I could," she blushingly qualified, "but--I could criticise it too!"

His heart warmed at her defiant smile. "I'd rather have that honor than a bag of gold!" he said, and saw his slip too late. Gold! Into Anna's remembrance flashed the infatuation of the poor little schoolmistress, loomed Flora's loss and distress and rolled a smoke of less definite things for which this man was going unpunished while she, herself, stood in deadly peril of losing her heart to him.

"Oh, Captain Kincaid!" Like artillery wheeling into action came her inconsequent criticism, her eyes braving him at last, as bright as his guns, though flashing only tears. "It was right enough for you to extol those young soldiers' willingness to serve their country _when called_. But, oh, how _could_ you commend their _chafing_ for battle and slaughter?"

"Ah, Miss Anna, you--"

"Oh, when you know that the sooner they go the sooner comes the heartache and heartbreak for the hundreds of women they so light-heartedly leave behind them! I looked from Charlie to Flora--"

"You should have looked to Victorine. She wants the boy to go and her dad to go with him."

"Poor thoughtless child!"

"Why, Miss Anna, if I were a woman, and any man--with war coming on--could _endure_ to hang back at home for love of me, I should feel--"

"Captain Kincaid! What we womenkind may feel is not to the point. It's how the men themselves feel toward the women who love them."

"They ought," replied the soldier, and his low voice thrilled like a sounding-board, "to love the women--out of every fibre of their being."

"Ah!" murmured the critic, as who should say, "checkmate!"

"And yet--" persisted this self-sung "ladies' man"--

"Yet what?" she softly challenged. (Would he stand by his speech, or his song?)

"Why, honestly, Miss Anna, I think a man can love a woman--even his heart's perfect choice--too much. I know he can!"

The small lady gave the blunderer a grave, brief, now-you-_have_-done-it glance and looked down. "Well, I know," she measuredly said, "that a man who can _tell_ a woman that, isn't capable of loving her half enough." She turned to go back, with a quickness which, I avow, was beautifully and tenderly different from irritation, yet which caused her petticoat's frail embroidery to catch on one of his spurs and cling till the whole laughing bevy had gathered round to jest over Flora's disentanglement of it.

* * * * *

"But really, Nan, you know," said Constance that evening in their home, "you used to believe that yourself! The day Steve left you said almost exact--"

"Con--? Ah, Con! I think the _sister_ who could remind a _sister_ of that--!" The sufferer went slowly up to her room, where half an hour later she was found by Miranda drying her bathed eyes at a mirror and instantly pretending that her care was for any other part of her face instead.

"Singular," she remarked, "what a dust that battery can raise!"

XXV

"HE MUST WAIT," SAYS ANNA

About the middle of the first week in April--when the men left in the stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, or Tchoupitoulas street could do nothing but buy the same goods back and forth in speculation; loathed by all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the shedded sidewalks and swap and swallow flaming rumors and imprecate the universal inaction and mis-management--there embarked for Pensacola--

"What? Kincaid's Bat--?"

"No-o, the Zouaves! Infantry! when the one only sane thing to do," cried every cannoneer of Camp Callender--in its white lanes or on three-hours' leave at home on Bayou Road or Coliseum Square or Elysian Fields or Prytania street--"the one sane thing to do," insisted the growingly profane lads to their elders, and assented the secretly pained elders to them, "the one thing that, if only for shame's sake, ought to have been done long ago, was to _knock_ Fort Pickens to HELL with SHELL!" Sadly often they added the tritest three-monosyllabled expletive known to red-hot English.

Charlie--mm-mm! how he could rip it out! Sam Gibbs, our veritable Sam, sergeant of the boy's gun, "Roaring Betsy," privately remarked to the Captain what a blank-blank shame it was, not for its trivial self, of course, but in view of the corruptions to which it opened the way. And the blithe commander, in the seclusion of his tent, standing over the lad and holding him tenderly by both pretty ears, preached to him of his sister and grandmother until with mute rage the youngster burned as red as his jacket facings; and then of the Callenders--"who gave us our guns, and one of whom is the godmother of our flag, Charlie"--until the tears filled Charlie's eyes, and he said:

"I'll try, Captain, but it's--oh, it's no use! If anything could make me swear _worse_"--he smiled despairingly--"it would be the hope of being hauled up again for another talk like this!"

One Sunday, three days after the going of the Zouaves, while out in Jackson Square "Roaring Betsy" sang a solo of harrowing thunder-claps, the Callenders and Valcours, under the cathedral's roof, saw consecrated in its sacred nave the splendid standard of the Chasseurs-à-Pied.

Armed guards, keeping the rabble out, passed the ladies in before the procession had appeared in the old Rue Condé. But now here it came, its music swelling, the crowd--shabbier than last month and more vacant of face--parting before it. Carrying their sabres, but on foot and without their pieces, heading the column as escort of honor, lo, Kincaid's Battery; rearmost the Chasseurs, masses and masses of them; and in between, a silver crucifix lifted high above a body of acolytes in white lace over purple, ranks of black-gowned priests, a succession of cloth-of-gold ecclesiastics, and in their midst the mitred archbishop.

But the battery! What a change since last February! Every man as spruce as ever, but with an added air of tested capability that inspired all beholders. Only their German musicians still seemed fresh from the mint, and oh! in what unlucky taste, considering the ecclesiastics, the song they brayed forth in jaunty staccato.

"They're offering us that hand of theirs again," murmured Anna to Constance, standing in a side pew; but suddenly the strain ceased, she heard Hilary's voice of command turning the column, and presently, through a lane made by his men, the Chasseurs marched in to the nave, packed densely and halted. Then in close order the battery itself followed and stood. Now the loud commands were in here. Strange it was to hear them ring through the holy place (French to the Chasseurs, English to the battery), and the crashing musket-butts smite the paved floor as one weapon, to the flash of a hundred sabres.

So said to itself the diary on the afternoon of the next day, and there hurriedly left off. Not because of a dull rumble reaching the writer's ear from the Lake, where Kincaid and his lieutenants were testing new-siege-guns, for that was what she was at this desk and window to hear; but because of the L.S.C.A., about to meet in the drawing-room below and be met by a friend of the family, a famed pulpit orator and greater potentate, in many eyes, than even the Catholic archbishop.

He came, and later, in the battery camp with the Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine, the soldiers clamoring for a speech, ran them wild reminding them with what unique honor and peculiar responsibility they were the champions of their six splendid guns. In a jostling crowd, yet with a fine decorum, they brought out their standard and--not to be outdone by any Chasseurs under the sky--obliged Anna to stand beside its sergeant, Maxime, and with him hold it while the man of God invoked Heaven to bless it and bless all who should follow it afield or pray for it at home. So dazed was she that only at the "amen" did she perceive how perfectly the tables had been turned on her. For only then did she discover that Hilary Kincaid had joined the throng exactly in time to see the whole tableau.

Every officer of the camp called that evening, to say graceful things, Kincaid last. As he was leaving he wanted to come to the same old point, but she would not let him. Oh! how could she, a scant six hours after such a _bid_ from herself? He ought to have seen she couldn't--and wouldn't! But he never saw anything--of that sort. Ladies' man indeed! He couldn't read a girl's mind even when she wanted it read. He went away looking so haggard--and yet so tender--and still so determined--she could not sleep for hours. Nevertheless--

"I can't help his looks, Con, he's got to wait! I owe that to all womanhood! He's got to practise to me what he preaches to his men. Why, Connie, if _I'm_ willing to wait, why shouldn't he be? Why--?"

Constance fled.

Next day, dining with Doctor Sevier, said the Doctor, "That chap's working himself to death, Anna," and gave his fair guest such a stern white look that she had to answer flippantly.

She and Hilary were paired at table and talked of Flora, he telling how good a friend to her Flora was. The topic was easier, between them, than at any other time since the loss of the gold. Always before, she had felt him thinking of that loss and trying to guess something about her; but now she did not, for on Sunday, in the cathedral, Flora had told her at last, ever so gratefully and circumstantially, that she had repaid the Captain everything! yes, the same day on which she had first told Anna of the loss; and there was nothing now left to do but for her to reimburse Anna the moment she could.

Hilary spoke of Adolphe's devotion to Flora--hoped he would win. Told with great amusement how really well his cousin had done with her government claim--sold it to his Uncle Brodnax! And Flora--how picturesque everything she did!--had put--? yes, they both knew the secret--had put the proceeds into one of those beautiful towboats that were being fitted up as privateers! Hilary laughed with delight. Yes, it was for that sort of thing the boys were so fond of her. But when Anna avowed a frank envy he laughed with a peculiar tenderness that thrilled both him and her, and murmured:

"The dove might as well envy the mocking-bird."

"If I were a dove I certainly should," she said.

"Well, you are, and you shouldn't!" said he.

All of which Flora caught; if not the words, so truly the spirit that the words were no matter.

"Just as we were starting home," soliloquized, that night, our diary, "the newsboys came crying all around, that General Beauregard had opened fire on Fort Sumter, and the war has begun. Poor Constance! it's little she'll sleep to-night."

XXVI

SWIFT GOING, DOWN STREAM

Strangely slow travelled news in '61. After thirty hours' bombardment Fort Sumter had fallen before any person in New Orleans was sure the attack had been made. When five days later a yet more stupendous though quieter thing occurred, the tidings reached Kincaid's Battery only on the afternoon of the next one in fair time to be read at the close of dress parade. But then what shoutings! The wondering Callenders were just starting for a drive up-town. At the grove gate their horses were frightened out of all propriety by an opening peal, down in the camp, from "Roaring Betsy." And listen!