Kincaid's Battery Part 25

"Paste?"

"Mostly."

"And the rest--not worth--?"

"Your stealing," simpered the connoisseur, and, reading, herself, added meditatively, "I should hate anyhow, for you to have that thing. The devil would be always at your ear."

"Whispering--what?"

The grandmother shrugged: "That depends. I look to see you rise, yet, to some crime of dignity; something really tragic and Italian. Whereas at present--" 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 were gone, Flora handled the unlovely curiosity. She and Irby had seen Hilary and Anna and the Hyde & Goodrich man on guard just there draw near the gla.s.s 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 expressing confidentially a belief that it had once been set with real stones, and Hilary was privately having a sudden happy thought, when Flora and Adolphe came up only in time to hear the goldsmith's statement of its present poor value.

"But surely," said Kincaid, "this old jewellery lying all about it here--."

"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. As the knife was being laid back in place she recalled, with odd interest, her grandmother's mention of the devil, and remembered a time or two when 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 prompted Anna's request that the thing be brought forth again and Flora allowed to finger it; but while this was being done Flora's main concern was to note how the jeweller worked the hidden spring by which he opened the gla.s.s case. As she finally gave up the weapon: "Thank you," she sweetly said 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 fair woodwork of these rooms for any secret of construction it might hold. Lately, when the house began to fill with secretable things of large money value, she had done this again, and this time, in one side of a deep chimney-breast, had actually found a most innocent-looking panel which she fancied to be kept from sliding only by its paint. Now while she said her sweet thanks to Anna and Hilary she could almost believe in fairies, the panel was so near the store of old jewels. With the knife she might free the panel, and behind the panel hide the jewels till their scent grew cold, to make them her bank account when all the banks should 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 a form of a.s.set convenient for flight. So good-night, old dagger and jewels; see you again, but don't overdo your limited importance. Of the weapon Flora had further learned that it was given not to the Bazaar but to Anna, and of the jewels that they were not in that lottery of everything, with which the affair was to end and the proceeds of whose tickets were pouring in upon Anna, acting treasurer, the treasurer being ill.

Tormentingly in Hilary's way was this Lottery and Bazaar. Even from Anna, sometimes especially from Anna, he could not understand why certain things must not be told or certain things could not be done until 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; and true, as well, New Orleans could fall, and might be sacked. It was while confessing this that with eyes down and bosom heaving she accepted the old Italian knife. Certainly unless the pooh-poohing Mandeville was wrong, who declared the forts down the river impregnable and Beauregard, on the Tennessee, invincible, flight (into the Confederacy) was safest--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 her fingers and pressed her palms to his gray breast--"no more right--to be cowards--than you men."

Her touch brought back his lighter mood and he told the happy thought--project--which had come to him while they talked with the jeweller. He could himself "do the job," he said, "roughly but well enough." Anna smiled at the fanciful scheme. Yet--yes, its oddity was in its favor. So many such devices were succeeding, some of them to the vast advantage of the Southern cause.

When Flora the next evening stole a pa.s.sing glance at the ugly trinket in its place she was pleased to note how well it retained its soilure of clay. For she had that day used it to free the panel, behind which she had found a small recess so fitted to her want that she had only to replace panel and tool and await some chance in the closing hours of the show. Pleased she was, too, to observe that the old jewels lay in a careless heap. Now to conceal all interest and to divert all eyes, even grandmama's! Thus, however, night after night an odd fact eluded her: That Anna and her hero, always singly, and themselves careful to lure others away, glimpsed that disordered look of the gems and unmolested air of the knife with a content as purposeful as her own. Which fact meant, when came the final evening, that at last every sham jewel in the knife'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 and craftsmanship.

x.x.xIX

TIGHT PINCH

From Camp Villere, close below small Camp Callender, one more last regiment--Creoles--was to have gone that afternoon to the Jackson Railroad Station and take train to join their Creole Beauregard for the defence of their own New Orleans.

More than a day's and a night's journey away was "Corinth," the village around which he had gathered his forces, but every New Orleans man and boy among them knew, and every mother and sister here in New Orleans knew, that as much with those men and boys as with any one anywhere, lay the defence and deliverance of this dear Crescent City. With Grant swept back from the Tennessee, and the gunboats that threatened Island Ten and Memphis sunk, blown up; or driven back into the Ohio, New Orleans, they believed, could jeer at Farragut down at the Pa.s.ses and at Butler out on horrid Ship Island. "And so can Mobile," said the Callenders to the Valcours.

"The fortunes of our two cities are one!" cried Constance, and the smiling Valcours were inwardly glad to a.s.sent, believing New Orleans doomed, and remembering their Mobile home burned for the defence of the two cities of one fortune.

However, the Camp Villere regiment had not got off, but would move at midnight. On the train with them Hilary was sending recruits to the battery, younger brothers of those who had gone the year before. He had expected to conduct, not send, them, but important work justified--as Anna told Flora--his lingering until his uncle should bid him come. Which bidding Irby might easily have incited, by telegraph, had Flora let him. But Flora's heart was too hopelessly entangled to release Hilary even for the gain of separating him from Anna; and because it was so entangled (and with her power to plot caught in the tangle), she was learning to hate with a distemper of pa.s.sion that awed even herself.

"But I must clear out mighty soon," said Hilary that evening to Greenleaf, whose exchange he had procured at last and, rather rashly, was taking him to Callender House to say good-by. They talked of Anna. Greenleaf knew the paramount secret; had bravely given his friend a hand on it the day he was told. Now Hilary said he had been begging her again for practical steps, and the manly loser commended.

"But think of that from me, Fred! who one year ago--you know how I talked--about Steve, for instance. Shame!--how reckless war's made us. Here we are, by millions, in a perpetual crash of victory and calamity, and yet--take me for an example--in spite of me my one devouring anxiety--that wakes me up in the night and gives me dreams in the day--is how to get her before this next battle get's me. Yes, the instant I'm ordered I go, and if I'm not ordered soon I go anyhow. I wouldn't have my boys"--etc.

And still the prison-blanched Greenleaf approved. But the next revelation reddened his brow: Anna, Hilary said, had at last "come round--knuckled down! Yes, sir-ee, cav-ed in!" and this evening, after the Bazaar, to a few younger sisters of the battery whom she would ask to linger for a last waltz with their young heroes, she would announce her engagement and her purpose to be wed in a thrillingly short time.

The two men found the Bazaar so amusingly collapsed that, as Hilary said, you could spell it with a small b. A stream of vehicles coming and going had about emptied the house and grounds. No sentries saluted, no music chimed. In the drawing-rooms the bra.s.s gun valiantly held its ground, but one or two domestics clearing litter from the floors seemed quite alone there, and some gay visitors who still tarried in the library across the hall were hardly enough to crowd it. "Good," said Hilary beside the field-piece. "You wait here and I'll bring the Callenders as they can come."

But while he went for them whom should Greenleaf light upon around a corner of the panelled chimney-breast but that secret lover of the Union and all its defenders, Mademoiselle Valcour. Her furtive cordiality was charming as she hurriedly gave and withdrew a hand in joy for his liberation.

"Taking breath out of the social rapids?" he softly inquired.

"Ah, more! 'Tis from that deluge of--"

He understood her emotional gesture. It meant that deluge of disloyalty--rebellion--there across the hall, and all through this turbulent city and land. But it meant, too, that they must not be seen to parley alone, and he had turned away, when Miranda, to Flora's disgust, tripped in upon them with her nose in full wrinkle, archly surprised to see Flora here, and proposing to hale both into the general throng to applaud Anna's forthcoming "proclamation!"

Greenleaf de trop? Ah, nay! not if he could keep the old Greenleaf poise! and without words her merry nose added that his presence would only give happier point to what every one regarded as a great Confederate victory. At a subtle sign from Flora the hostess and he went, expecting her to follow.

But Flora was in a perilous strait. Surprised by Hilary's voice, with the panel open and the knife laid momentarily in the recess that both hands might bring the jewels from the case, she had just closed the opening with the dagger inside when Greenleaf confronted her. Now, in this last instant of opportunity at his and Miranda's back, should she only replace the weapon or still dare the theft? At any rate the panel must be reopened. But when she would have slid it her dainty fingers failed, failed, failed until a cold damp came to her brow and she trembled. Yet saunteringly she stepped to the show-case, glancing airily about. The servants had gone. She glided back, but turned to meet another footfall, possibly Kincaid's, and felt her anger rise against her will as she confronted only the inadequate Irby. A sudden purpose filled her, and before he could speak:

"Go!" she said, "telegraph your uncle! instantly!"

"I've done so."

Her anger mutinied again: "Without consult'--! And since when?"

"This morning."

She winced yet smiled: "And still--your cousin--he's receive' no order?" Her fingers tingled to maim some one--this dolt--anybody! Her eyes sweetened.

Irby spoke: "The order has come, but--"

"What! you have not given it?"

"Flora, it includes me! Ah, for one more evening with you I am risking--"

Her look grew fond though she made a gesture of despair: "Oh, short-sighted! Go, give it him! Go!"

Across the hall a prolonged carol of acclamation, confabulation, laughter, and cries of "Ah-r, indeed!" told that Anna's word was out. "What difference," Irby lingered to ask, "can an hour or two between trains--?"

But the throng was upon them. "We don't know!" cried Flora. "Give it him! We don't know!" and barely had time herself to force a light laugh when here were Charlie and Victorine, Hilary, Anna, Miranda, Madame, Constance, Mandeville, and twenty others.

"Fred!" called Hilary. His roaming look found the gray detective: "Where's Captain Greenleaf?"

"Gone."

"With never a word of good-by? Oh, bless my soul, he did say good-by!" There was a general laugh. "But this won't do. It's not safe for him--"

The gray man gently explained that his younger a.s.sociate was with Greenleaf as bodyguard. The music of harp and violins broke out and dancers swept round the bra.s.s gun and up and down the floors.

XL

THE LICENSE, THE DAGGER

Hilary had bent an arm around Anna when Flora called his name. Irby handed him the order. A glance made it clear. Its reader cast a wide look over the heads of the dancers and lifting the missive high beckoned with it to Mandeville. Then he looked for some one else: "Charlie!"

"Out on the veranda," said a pa.s.sing dancer.

"Send him here!" The commander's eye came back to Irby: "Old man, how long have you had this?"