Kincaid's Battery

by George Washington Cable

  LXV

  FLORA'S LAST THROW

  Normal as cock-crowing seemed the antiphony to the common ear, whichscarcely noticed the rareness of the indoor voice. But Greenleaf's wasnot the common ear, nor was Flora Valcour's.

  To her that closing strain made the torture of inaction finallyunbearable. Had Anna heard? Leaving Madame she moved to a hall door ofthe room where they sat. Was Anna's blood surging like her own? It couldnot! Under what a tempest of conjectures she looked down and across thegreat hall to the closed and sentinelled door of that front drawing-roomso rife with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was Anna. Fromwithin it, more faintly now, came those sounds of a mason at work whichhad seemed to ring with the song. But the song had ceased. About thehall highly gilded officers conferred alertly in pairs or threes, moreor less in the way of younger ones who smartly crossed from room toroom. Here came Greenleaf! Seeking her? No, he would have passedunaware, but her lips ventured his name.

  Never had she seen such a look in his face as that with which heconfronted her. Grief, consternation, discovery and wrath were all asone save that only the discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how fortwo days and nights he had been putting this and that and this and thatand this and that together until he had guessed her out. Sternly in hiseyes she perceived contumely withholding itself, yet even while she feltthe done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor fail like asinking 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 changedcountenance--a fool could see he was!--with Anna's! both smitten withaffliction, but the abiding peace of truth in one, the abiding war offalsehood in the other. So would Kincaid do if he were here! But thestage waited: "Ah, Colonel, Anna! poor Anna!" Might not thecompassion-wilted supplicant see the dear, dear prisoner? She ralliedall her war-worn fairness with all her feminine art, and to heramazement, with a gleam of purpose yet without the softening of alineament, he said yes, waved permission across to the guard and lefther.

  She passed the guard and knocked. Quietly in the room clinked thebrick-mason's work. He strongly hummed his tune. Now he spoke, as if tohis helper, who seemed to be leaving him. Again she knocked, and benther 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 againhis last two lines.

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

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

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

  "No," melodiously replied Flora, in full voice for the sentry's ear, butwith 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 alowered 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 songand sprang to the chimney-breast. She tried the panel--it would notyield! Yet there, as if the mason's powerful hands had within thatminute reopened and reclosed it, were the wet marks of his fingers. Aflash of her instinct for concealment bade her wipe them off and she hadbarely done so when he stepped from the screen, fresh from Israel'swater-bucket, drying his face on his hands, his hands on his face andun-turbaned locks, prison-worn from top to toe, but in Dixie's full grayand luminous with the unsmiling joy of danger.

  "It's not there," he loudly whispered, showing the bare dagger. "Here itis. 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 wordsHilary told the scheme of Anna's flight, at the same time setting thescreen aside so as to show the hole in the wall nearly closed, humminghis 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 dungeonof 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 hermercy. But the plight was complex and suddenly her exultation changed toaffright. "My God! Hilary Kincaid," she panted, "you 'ave save' her todeztroy yo'seff! You are--"

  Proudly, gaily he shook his head: "No! No! against her will I've senther, 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 shecontrive to carry it, the priceless knowledge which Anna, after all,might fail to convey. But something--it may have been that same outdoneand done-for look which Greenleaf had just noted--silenced him, and themaiden resumed where she had broken off:

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

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

  "When I hands in my checks--"

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

  "Oh!" he laughingly said, and at the wall once more waved the ringingtrowel, "instinct, I reckon; ordinary manhood--to womanhood. If you hadrecognized 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 ShipIsland"

  "H-o-oh! I would have gone!"

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

  He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung her soul to seejoy 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'syour 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 furtherimplicated!"

  "And leave you to--?"

  "Oh, doggon _me_. The moment that boat's gun sounds--if only you're outo' 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 himas fast and mute as at the flag presentation. But when she would haveknelt 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 whilefor pure anguish he impetuously added, "Maybe in God's eyes a woman hasthis right, I'm not big enough to know; but as _I'm made_ it can't bedone. I'm a man, no more, no less!"

  Her eyes flash
ed into his: "You are Hilary Kincaid. I will stan'!"

  "No,"--he loosed his hold,--"I'm _only_ Hilary Kincaid and you'll go--inmercy 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 spyor a coward than be the imbecile this makes me." Then all at once he wasfierce: "Go!"

  Almost below her breath she instantly replied, "I will not!" She stoodat her full, beautiful height. "Together we go or together stay.List-en!--no-no, not for _that_." (Meaning the gun.) In open anger shecrimsoned 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!"

  He broke in with a laugh of superior knowledge and began to draw back,but she caught his jacket in both hands, still pouring forth,--"She_has_ leave you--to me! me to you! My God! Hilary Kincaid, could she dothat if she love' you? She don't! She knows not how--and neither you!But you, ah, you shall learn. She, she never can!" Through his jackether knuckles felt the bare knife. Her heart leapt.

  "Let go," he growled, backing away and vainly disengaging now one of herhands and now the other. "My trowel's too silent."

  But she clung and dragged, speaking on wildly: "You know, Hilary, youknow? _You love me_. Oh, no-no-no, don' look like that, I'm not crazee."Her deft hands had got the knife, but she tossed it into thework-basket: "Ah, Hilary Kincaid, oft-en we love where we thing we donot, and oft-en thing we love where we do not--"

  He would not hear: "Oh, Flora Valcour! You smother me in my ownloathing--oh, God send that gun!" The four hands still strove.

  "Hilary, list-en me yet a moment. See me. Flora Valcour. Could FloraValcour do like this--_ag-ains' the whole nature of a woman_--if she--?"

  "Stop! stop! you shall not--"

  "If she di'n' know, di'n' feel, di'n' see, thad you are loving her?"

  "Yet God knows I've never given cause, except as--"

  "A ladies' man?" prompted the girl and laughed.

  The blood surged to his brow. A wilder agony was on hers as he held herfrom him, rigid; "Enough!" he cried; "We're caged and doomed. Yet youstill have this one moment to save us, _all of us_, from life-long shameand sorrow."

  She shook her head.

  "Yes, yes," he cried. "You can. I cannot. I'm helpless now and forever.What man or woman, if I could ever be so vile as to tell it, couldbelieve the truth of this from me? In God's name, then, go!" He tenderlythrust her off: "Go, live to honor, happiness and true love, and letme--"

  "Ezcape, perchanze, to Anna?"

  "Yes, if I--" He ceased in fresh surprise. Not because she toyed withthe dagger lying on Anna's needlework, for she seemed not to know shedid it; but because of a strange brightness of assent as she noddedtwice and again.

  "I will go," she said. Behind the brightness was the done-for look,plainer than ever, and with it yet another, a look of keen purpose,which the grandam would have understood. He saw her take the dirk, sograsping it as to hide it behind wrist and sleeve; but he said only,beseechingly, "Go!"

  "Stay," said another voice, and at the small opening still left in thewall, lo! the face of Greenleaf and the upper line of his blue and giltshoulders. His gaze was on Flora. She could do nothing but gaze again."I know, now," he continued, "your whole two-years' business. Stay justas you are till I can come round and in. Every guard is doubled and hasspecial orders."

  She dropped into a seat, staring like one demented, now at door andwindows, now from one man to the other, now to the floor, while Kincaidsternly said, "Colonel Greenleaf, the reverence due from any soldier toany lady--" and Greenleaf interrupted--

  "The lady may be sure of."

  "And about this, Fred, you'll be--dumb?"

  "Save only to one, Hilary."

  "Where is she, Fred?"

  "On that boat, fancying herself disguised. Having you, we're only tooglad not to have her."

  The retaken prisoner shone with elation: "And those fellows of lastnight?--got them back?"

  Greenleaf darkened, and shook his head.

  "Hurrah," quietly remarked the smiling Hilary.

  "Wait a moment," said the blue commander, and vanished.