LXX
GAINS AND LOSSES
They kissed.
It looks strange written and printed, but she did not see how to holdoff when he made it so tenderly manful a matter of course after hisfrank hand-shake with Miranda, and when there seemed so little time forwords.
An ambulance drawn by the Callenders' horses had brought him and two orthree others down the West Side. A sail-boat had conveyed them from thenearest beach. Here it was, now, in tow beside the steamboat as shegathered headway toward Fort Powell. He was not so weak or broken but hecould point rapidly about with his crutches, the old light of command inhis eyes, while with recognized authority he spoke to the boat's masterand these companions.
He said things freely. There was not much down here to be secret about.Mobile had not fallen. She would yet be fought for on land, furiously.But the day was lost; as, incidentally, might be, at any moment, if notshrewdly handled, this lonesome little boat.
Her captain moved to the pilot-house. Miranda and the junior officersleft Hilary with Anna. "Did you say 'the day,'" she softly asked, "or'the bay'?"
"Both," he murmured, and with his two crutches in one hand directed hereyes: to the fleet anchored midway off Morgan, Gaines, and Powell; tothe half-dozen gunboats on Mississippi Sound; to others still out in theGulf, behind Morgan, off Mobile Point; to the blue land force entrenchedbehind Gaines, and to the dunes east of Morgan, where similar besiegerswould undoubtedly soon be landed.
"Yes ... Yes," she said to his few explanations. It was all so sadlyclear.
"A grand fort yet," he musingly called Morgan, "but it ought to be leftand blown to fare-you-well to-night before it's surroun--I wish mycousin were there instead of in Gaines. 'Dolphe fights well, but heknows when not to fight and that we've come, now, to where every manwe've got, and every gun, counts bigger than to knock out any two of theenemy's. You know Fred's over yonder, don't you? and that Kincaid'sBattery, without their field-pieces, are just here in Powell behind herheavy guns?... Yes, Victorine said you did; I saw her this morning, withConstance." He paused, and then spoke lower:
"Beloved?"
She smiled up to him.
"Our love's not through all the fire, yet," he said, but her smile onlyshowed more glow.
"My soul's-mate, war-mate soldier-girl," he murmured on.
"Well?"
"If you stand true in what's before us now, before just you and me, nowand for weeks to come, I want your word for it right here that yourstanding true shall not be for the sake of any vow you've ever made tome, or for me, or with me, in the past, the blessed, blessed past. Youpromise?"
"I promise," she breathed. "What is it?"
"A thing that takes more courage than I've got."
"Then how will you do it?" she lightly asked.
"By borrowing all yours. May I?"
"You may. Is it to save--our battery?"
"Our battery, yes, against their will, with others, if I can persuadethe fort's commander. At low tide to-night when the shoals can be fordedto Cedar Point, I shall be"--his words grew hurried--the steamer wastouching the fort's pier--the sail-boat, which was to take Anna andMiranda to where the ambulance and their own horses awaited them hadcast off her painter--"I shall be the last man out of Powell and shallblow it up. Come, it may be we sha'n't meet again until I've"--hesmiled--"been court-martialed and degraded. If I am, we--"
"If you are," she murmured, "you may take me to the nearest church--orthe biggest--that day."
"No, no!" he called as she moved away, and again, with a darkening brow,"no, no!"
But, "Yes, yes," she brightly insisted as she rejoined Miranda. "Yes!"
For the horses' sake the ladies went that afternoon only to "Frascati,"lower limit of the Shell Road, where, in a small hour of the night Annaheard the sudden boom and long rumble that told the end of Fort Powelland salvation of its garrison.
That Gaines held out a few days, Morgan a few weeks, are heroic facts ofhistory, which, with a much too academic shrug, it calls "magnifique,mais--!" Their splendid armament and all their priceless men fell intotheir besiegers' hands. Irby, haughtily declining the strictly formalcourtesies of Fred Greenleaf, went to prison in New Orleans. What a NewOrleans! The mailed clutch on her throat (to speak as she felt) hadgrown less ferocious, but everywhere the Unionist civilian--the oncebrow-beaten and still loathed "Northern sympathizer," with grudges topay and losses to recoup and re-recoup--was in petty authority.Confiscation was swallowing up not industrial and commercial propertiesmerely, but private homes; espionage peeped round every street cornerand into every back window, and "A. Ward's" ante-bellum jest, that "awhite man was as good as a nigger as long as he behaved himself," was ajest no more. Miss Flora Valcour, that ever faithful and daringSoutherner, was believed by all the city's socially best to beliving--barely living--under "the infamous Greenleaf's" year-long threatof Ship Island for having helped Anna Callender to escape to Mobile.Hence her haunted look and pathetic loss of bloom. Now, however, withhim away and with General Canby ruling in place of Banks, she and herdear fragile old grandmother could breathe a little.
They breathed much. We need not repeat that the younger was a giftedborrower. She did other things equally well; resumed a sagaciousactivity, a two-sided tact, and got Irby paroled. On the anniversary ofthe day Hilary had played brick-mason a city paper (Unionist) joyfullyproclaimed the long-delayed confiscation of Kincaid's Foundry and ofCallender House, and announced that "the infamous Kincaid" himself hadbeen stripped of his commission by a "rebel" court-martial. Irbypromptly brought the sheet to the Valcours' lodgings, but Flora was out.When she came in, before she could lay off her pretty hat:--
"You've heard it!" cried the excited grandam. "But why so dead-alive?Once more the luck is yours! Play your knave! play Irby! He's just beenhere! He will return! He will propose this evening if you allow him! Lethim do it! Let him! Mobile may fall any day! If you dilly-dally tillthose accursed Callenders get back, asking, for instance, for their--ha,ha!--their totally evaporated chest of plate--gr-r-r! Take him! He hasjust shown me his uncle's will--as he calls it: a staring forgery, butyou, h-you won't mind _that_, and the 'ladies' man'--ah, the 'ladies'man,' once you are his cousin, he'll never let on. Take Irby! he is, asyou say, a nincompoop"--she had dropped into English--"and seldomsober, _mais_ take him! 't is the las' call of the auctioneer, yo'fav-oreet auctioneer--with the pointed ears and the forked black tail."
Flora replied from a mirror with her back turned: "I'll thing ab-out it.And maybee--yes! Ezpecially if you would do uz that one favor, lazdthing when you are going to bed the night we are married. Yez, if youwould--ahem!--juz' blow yo' gas without turning it?"
That evening, when the accepted Irby, more nearly happy than ever beforein his life, said good-night to his love they did not kiss. At the firststir of proffer Flora drew back with a shudder that reddened his brow.But when he demanded, "Why not?" her radiant shake of the head waspurely bewitching as she replied, "No, I haven' fall' that low yet."
When after a day or so he pressed for immediate marriage and was coylyreferred to Madame, the old lady affectionately--thoughreluctantly--consented. With a condition: If the North should win thewar his inheritance would be "confiz-_cate_'" and there would be nothingto begin life on but the poor child's burned down home behind Mobile,unless, for mutual protection, nothing else,--except "one dollar andother valuable considerations,"--he should preconvey the Brodnax estateto the poor child, who, at least, had never been "foun' out" to havedone anything to subject property of hers to confiscation.
This transfer Irby, with silent reservations, quietly executed, and theday, hour and place, the cathedral, were named. A keen social flutterensued and presently the wedding came off--stop! That is not all.Instantly upon the close of the ceremony the bride had to be more liftedthan led to her carriage and so to her room and couch, whence she sentloving messages to the bridegroom that she would surely be well enoughto see him next day. But he had no such fortune, and here claims recorda
fact even more wonderful than Anna's presentiment as to Hilary thatmorning in Mobile Bay. The day after his wedding Irby found his parolerevoked and himself, with others, back in prison and invited to take theoath and go free--stand up in the war-worn gray and forswear it--or staywhere they were to the war's end. Every man of them took it--when thewar was over; but until then? not one. Not even the bridegroom robbed ofhis bride. Every week or so she came and saw him, among his fellows, andbade him hold out! stand fast! It roused their great admiration, but nottheir wonder. The wonder was in a fact of which they knew nothing: Thatthe night before her marriage Flora had specifically, minutelyprophesied this whole matter to her grandmother, whose only response wasthat same marveling note of nearly four years earlier--
"You are a genius!"
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