Kincaid's Battery
Page 38
XXXVIII
ANNA'S OLD JEWELS
A Reporters' heaven, the Bazaar. So on its opening night Hilary named itto Flora.
"A faerye realm," the scribes themselves itemed it; "myriadlights--broad staircases gracef'y asc'd'g--ravish'g perfumes--met ourgaze--garlandries of laurel and magn'a--prom'd'g from room to room--metour gaze--directed by masters of cerem'y in Conf'te G'd's unif'm--hereturn'g to the right--fair women and brave men--carried thither by thedense throng--music with its volup's swell--met our gaze--againdescend'g--arriv'g at din'g-hall--new scene of ench't bursts--refr'ttables--enarched with ev'gr's and decked with labarums andburgees--thence your way lies through--costly volumes and shimm'gbijoutries--met our gaze!"
It was Kincaid who saw their laborious office in this flippant light,and so presented it to Anna that she laughed till she wept; laughing wasnow so easy. But when they saw one of the pencillers writing awkwardlywith his left hand, aided by half a right arm in a pinned-up sleeve, hermirth had a sudden check. Yet presently it became a proud thrill, as thepoor boy glowed with delight while Hilary stood and talked with him ofthe fearful Virginia day on which that ruin had befallen him at Hilary'sown side in Kincaid's Battery, and then brought him to converse withher. This incident may account for the fervor with which a nextmorning's report extolled the wonders of the "fair chairman's"administrative skill and the matchless and most opportune executivesupervision of Captain Hilary Kincaid. Flora read it with interest.
With interest of a different kind she read in a later issue anotherpassage, handed her by the grandmother with the remark, "to warn you, mydear." The matter was a frothy bit of tragical romancing, purporting tohave been gathered from two detectives out of their own experience of ayear or so before, about a gift made to the Bazaar by Captain Kincaid,which had--"met our gaze jealously guarded under glass amid a brilliantcollection of reliques, jewels, and bric-a-brac; a large, evil-lookingknife still caked with the mud of the deadly affray, but bearing legiblyin Italian on its blade the inscription, 'He who gets me in his bodynever need take a medicine,' and with a hilt and scabbard encrusted withgems."
Now, one of the things that made Madame Valcour good company amonggentlewomen was her authoritative knowledge of precious stones. So whenFlora finished reading and looked up, and the grandmother faintly smiledand shook her head, both understood.
"Paste?"
"Mostly."
"And the rest--not worth--?"
"Your stealing," simpered the connoisseur, and, reading, herself, addedmeditatively, "I should hate anyhow, for you to have that thing. Thedevil would be always at your ear."
"Whispering--what?"
The grandmother shrugged: "That depends. I look to see you rise, yet, tosome crime of dignity; something really tragic and Italian. Whereas atpresent--" she pursed her lips and shrugged again.
The girl blandly laughed: "You venerable ingrate!"
At the Bazaar that evening, when Charlie and grandma and the crowd weregone, Flora handled the unlovely curiosity. She and Irby had seen Hilaryand Anna and the Hyde & Goodrich man on guard just there draw near theglass case where it lay "like a snake on a log," as Charlie had said,take it in their hands and talk of it. The jeweller was expressingconfidentially a belief that it had once been set with real stones, andHilary was privately having a sudden happy thought, when Flora andAdolphe came up only in time to hear the goldsmith's statement of itspresent poor value.
"But surely," said Kincaid, "this old jewellery lying all about ithere--."
"That? that's the costliest gift in the Bazaar!"
Irby inquired whose it was, Anna called it anonymous, and Flora,divining that the giver was Anna, felt herself outrageously robbed. Asthe knife was being laid back in place she recalled, with odd interest,her grandmother's mention of the devil, and remembered a time or twowhen for a moment she had keenly longed for some such bit of steel;something much more slender, maybe, and better fitting a dainty hand,but quite as long and sharp. A wave from this thought may have promptedAnna's request that the thing be brought forth again and Flora allowedto finger it; but while this was being done Flora's main concern was tonote how the jeweller worked the hidden spring by which he opened theglass case. As she finally gave up the weapon: "Thank you," she sweetlysaid to both Anna and Hilary, but with a meaning reserved to herself.
You may remember how once she had gone feeling and prying along the fairwoodwork of these rooms for any secret of construction it might hold.Lately, when the house began to fill with secretable things of largemoney value, she had done this again, and this time, in one side of adeep chimney-breast, had actually found a most innocent-looking panelwhich she fancied to be kept from sliding only by its paint. Now whileshe said her sweet thanks to Anna and Hilary she could almost believe infairies, the panel was so near the store of old jewels. With the knifeshe might free the panel, and behind the panel hide the jewels tilltheir scent grew cold, to make them her bank account when all the banksshould be broken, let the city fall or stand. No one need ever notice,so many were parting with their gems perforce, so many buying them as aform of asset convenient for flight. So good-night, old dagger andjewels; see you again, but don't overdo your limited importance. Of theweapon Flora had further learned that it was given not to the Bazaar butto Anna, and of the jewels that they were not in that lottery ofeverything, with which the affair was to end and the proceeds of whosetickets were pouring in upon Anna, acting treasurer, the treasurer beingill.
Tormentingly in Hilary's way was this Lottery and Bazaar. Even fromAnna, sometimes especially from Anna, he could not understand whycertain things must not be told or certain things could not be doneuntil this Bazaar--etc. Why, at any hour he might be recalled! Yes,Anna saw that--through very moist eyes. True, also, she admitted,Beauregard and Johnston _might_ fail to hold off Buell and Grant; andtrue, as well, New Orleans _could_ fall, and might be sacked. It waswhile confessing this that with eyes down and bosom heaving she acceptedthe old Italian knife. Certainly unless the pooh-poohing Mandeville waswrong, who declared the forts down the river impregnable and Beauregard,on the Tennessee, invincible, flight (into the Confederacy) wassafest--but--the Bazaar first, flight afterward. "We women," she said,rising close before him with both hands in his, "must stand by _our_guns. We've no more right"--it was difficult to talk while he kissed herfingers and pressed her palms to his gray breast--"no more right--to becowards--than you men."
Her touch brought back his lighter mood and he told the happythought--project--which had come to him while they talked with thejeweller. He could himself "do the job," he said, "roughly but wellenough." Anna smiled at the fanciful scheme. Yet--yes, its oddity was inits favor. So many such devices were succeeding, some of them to thevast advantage of the Southern cause.
When Flora the next evening stole a passing glance at the ugly trinketin its place she was pleased to note how well it retained its soilure ofclay. For she had that day used it to free the panel, behind which shehad found a small recess so fitted to her want that she had only toreplace panel and tool and await some chance in the closing hours of theshow. Pleased she was, too, to observe that the old jewels lay in acareless heap. Now to conceal all interest and to divert all eyes, evengrandmama's! Thus, however, night after night an odd fact eluded her:That Anna and her hero, always singly, and themselves careful to lureothers away, glimpsed that disordered look of the gems and unmolestedair of the knife with a content as purposeful as her own. Which factmeant, when came the final evening, that at last every sham jewel in theknife's sheath had exchanged places with a real one from the loose heap,while, nestling between two layers of the sheath's material, reposed,payable to bearer, a check on London for thousands of pounds sterling.Very proud was Anna of her lover's tremendous versatility andcraftsmanship.