Kincaid's Battery. George Washington Cable
began with ah.)
"And must war follow?" The question was Anna's again, and Hilary sat down closer to answer confidentially:
"Yes, the war was already a fact."
"And might not the Abolitionists send their ships and soldiers against New Orleans?"
"Yes, the case was supposable."
"And might not Jackson's battlefield of 1815, in close view from these windows, become a new one?"
To avoid confessing that old battlefields have that tendency the Captain rose and took up a guitar; but when he would have laid it on her knee she pushed it away and asked the song of him; asked with something intimate in her smiling undertone that thrilled him, yet on the next instant seemed pure dream stuff. The others broke in and Constance begged a song of the new patriotism; but Miranda, the pretty stepmother, spoke rather for something a thousand miles and months away from the troubles and heroics of the hour; and when Anna seconded this motion by one fugitive glance worth all their beseechings Hilary, as he stood, gayly threw open his smart jacket lest his brass buttons mar the instrument, and sang with a sudden fervor that startled and delighted all the group:
"Drink to me only with thine eyes."
In the midst of which Constance lifted a knowing look across to Miranda, and Miranda sent it back.
There was never an evening that did not have to end, and at last the gentlemen began to make a show of leaving. But then came a lively chat, all standing in a bunch. To-morrow's procession, the visitors said, would form in Canal Street, move up St. Charles, return down Camp Street into Canal, pass through it into Rampart, take the Bayou Road and march to a grand review away out in the new camp of instruction at the Creole Race-Course. Intermediately, from a certain Canal Street balcony, Flora would present the flag! the gorgeous golden, silken, satin battle standard which the Callenders and others had helped her to make. So--good-night--good-night.
The last parting was with Mandeville, at the levee-road gate, just below which he lived in what, during the indigo-planter's life, had been the overseer's cottage. At a fine stride our artillerist started townward, his horse being stabled near by in that direction. But presently he halted, harkened after the Creole's receding step, thought long, softly called himself names, and then did a small thing which, although it resulted in nothing tragic at the time, marked a turning point in his life. He leapt the grove fence, returned to the shadows of the garden, and silently made his way to its eastern, down-river side. Already the dwelling's lower lights were going out while none yet shone above, and he paused in deep shade far enough away to see, over its upper veranda's edge, the tops of its chamber windows.
X
SYLVIA SIGHS
The house was of brick. So being, in a land where most dwellings are of wood, it had gathered beauty from time and dignity from tried strength, and with satisfying grace joined itself to its grounds, whose abundance and variety of flowering, broad-leaved evergreens lent, in turn, a poetic authenticity to its Greek columns and to the Roman arches of its doors and windows. Especially in these mild, fragrant, blue nights was this charm potent, and the fair home seemed to its hidden beholder forever set apart from the discords and distresses of a turbulent world. And now an upper window brightened, its sash went up, and at the veranda's balustrade Anna stood outlined against the inner glow.
She may have intended but one look at the stars, but they and the spiced air were enchanting, and in confidence that no earthly eye was on her she tarried, gazing out to the farthest gleam of the river where it swung southward round the English Turn.
Down in the garden a mirthful ecstasy ran through all the blood of her culprit observer and he drank to her only with his eyes. Against the window's brightness her dark outline showed true, and every smallest strand of her hair that played along the contours of brow and head changed his merriment to reverence and bade his heart recognize how infinitely distant from his was her thought. Hilary Kincaid! can you read no better than that?
Her thought was of him. Her mind's eye saw him on his homeward ride. It marked the erectness of his frame, the gayety of his mien, the dance of his locks. By her inner ear she heard his horse's tread passing up the narrow round-stone pavements of the Creole Quarter, presently to echo in old St. Peter Street under the windows of Pontalba Row--one of which was Flora's. Would it ring straight on, or would it pause between that window and the orange and myrtle shades of Jackson Square? Constance had said that day to Miranda--for this star-gazer to overhear--that she did not believe Kincaid loved Flora, and the hearer had longed to ask her why, but knew she could not tell. Why is a man's word. "They're as helpless without it," the muser recalled having very lately written on a secret page, "as women are before it. And yet a girl can be very hungry, at times, for a why. They say he's as brave as a lion--why is he never brave to me?"
So futilely ended the strain on the remembered page, but while his unsuspected gaze abode on her lifted eyes her thought prolonged the note: "If he meant love to-night, why did he not stand to his meaning when I laughed it away? Was that for his friend's sake, or is he only not brave enough to make one wild guess at me? Ah, I bless Heaven he's the kind that cannot! And still--oh, Hilary Kincaid, if you were the girl and I the man! I shouldn't be on my way home; I'd be down in this garden--." She slowly withdrew.
Hilary, stepping back to keep her in sight, was suddenly aware of the family coachman close at his side. Together they moved warily a few steps farther.
"You mus' escuse me, Cap'n," the negro amiably whispered. "You all right, o' co'se! Yit dese days, wid no white gen'leman apputtainin' onto de place--"
"Old man!" panted Hilary, "you've saved my life!"
"Oh, my Lawd, no! Cap'n, I--"
"Yes, you have! I was just going into fits! Now step in and fetch me out here--" He shaped his arms fantastically and twiddled his fingers.
Bending with noiseless laughter the negro nodded and went.
Just within her window, Anna, still in reverie, sat down at a slender desk, unlocked a drawer, then a second one inside it, and drew forth--no mere secret page but--a whole diary! "To Anna, from Miranda, Christmas, 1860." Slowly she took up a pen, as gradually laid it by again, and opposite various dates let her eyes rest on--not this, though it was still true:
"The more we see of Flora, the more we like her."
Nor this: "Heard a great, but awful, sermon on the duty of resisting Northern oppression."
But this: "Connie thinks he 'inclines' to me. Ho! all he's ever said has been for his far-away friend. I wish he would incline, or else go ten times as far away! Only not to the war--God forbid! Ah, me, how I long for his inclining! And while I long he laughs, and the more he laughs the more I long, for I never, never so doted on any one's laugh. Oh, shame! to love before--"
What sound was that below? No mocking-bird note, no south wind in the foliage, but the kiss of fingers on strings! Warily it stole in at the window, while softly as an acacia the diary closed its leaves. The bent head stirred not, but a thrill answered through the hearer's frame as a second cadence ventured up and in and a voice followed it in song. Tremblingly the book slid into the drawer, inner and outer lock clicked whisperingly, and gliding to a door she harkened for any step of the household, while she drank the strains, her bosom heaving with equal alarm and rapture.
If any song is good which serves a lover's ends we need claim no more for the one that rose to Anna on the odors of the garden and drove her about the room, darting, clinging, fluttering, returning, like her own terrified bird above her in its cage.
When Sylvia sighs
And veils the worshipped wonder