Torturing mystery! that with such words of doom she should yet blush piteously, beam pa.s.sionately.

"Good-by, then. I go. But I go--under your flag, don't I? Under your flag! captain of your guns!"

"Ah--one word--wait! Oh, Captain Kincaid, right is right! Not half those guns are mine. That flag is not mine."

There was no quick reply. From her concealment Flora, sinking noiselessly again to the carpet, harkened without avail. The soldier--so newly and poignantly hurt that twice when he took breath he failed to speak--gazed on the disclaiming girl until for; very distress she broke the silence: "I--you--every flag of our cause--wherever our brave soldiers--"

"Oh, but Kincaid's Battery!--and that flag, Anna Callender! The flag you gave us! That sacred banner starts for Virginia to-morrow--goes into the war, it and your guns, with only this poor beggar and his boys to win it honor and glory. Will you deny us--who had it from your hands--your leave to call it yours? Oh, no, no! To me--to me you will not!"

For reply there came a light in Anna's face that shone into his heart and was meant so to shine, yet her dissent was prompt: "I must. I must. Oh, Capt--Captain Kincaid, I love that flag too well to let it go misnamed. It's the flag of all of us who made it, us hundred girls--"

"Hundred--yes, yes, true. But how? This very morning I chanced upon your secret--through little Victorine--that every st.i.tch in all that flag's embroideries is yours."

"Yet, Captain Kincaid, it is the flag of all those hundred girls; and if to any one marching under it it is to be the flag of any one of us singly, that one can only be--you know!"

Majestically in her hiding-place the one implied lowered and lifted her head in frigid scorn and awaited the commander's answer.

"True again," he said, "true. Let the flag of my hundred boys be to all and each the flag of a hundred girls. Yet will it be also the flag of his heart's one choice--sister, wife, or sweetheart--to every man marching, fighting, or dying under it--and more are going to die under it than are ever coming back. To me, oh, to me, let it be yours. My tasks have spared me no time to earn of you what would be dearer than life, and all one with duty and honor. May I touch your hand? Oh, just to say good-by. But if ever I return--no, have no fear, I'll not say it now. Only--only--" he lifted the hand to his lips--"good-by. G.o.d's smile be on you in all that is to come."

"Good-by," came her answering murmur.

"And the flag?" he exclaimed. "The flag?" By the clink of his sabre Flora knew he was backing away. "Tell me--me alone--the word to perish with me if I perish--that to me as if alone"--the clinking came nearer again--"to me and for me and with your blessing"--again the sound drew away--"the flag--the flag I must court death under--is yours."

Silence. From out in the hall the lover sent back a last beseeching look, but no sound reached the hiding of the tense listener whose own heart's beating threatened to reveal her; no sound to say that now Anna had distressfully shaken her head, or that now her tears ran down, or that now in a mingled pain and rapture of confession she nodded--nodded! and yet imploringly waved him away.

It was easy to hear the door open and close. Faintly on this other hand the voices of the ladies returning from the garden foreran them. The soldier's tread was on the outer stair. Now theirs was in the rear veranda. With it tinkled their laughter. Out yonder hoofs galloped.

The hidden one stole forth. A book on a table was totally engaging the eyes of her hostess and at the instant grandma reentered laden with roses. Now all five were in, and Anna, pouring out words with every motion, and curiously eyed by Constance, took the flowers to give them a handier form, while Flora rallied her kinswoman on wasting their friends' morning these busy times, and no one inquired, and no one told, who had been here that now had vanished.

XXI

CONSTANCE CROSS-EXAMINES

It was like turning to the light the several facets of one of those old-fashioned jewels Flora was privately bearing away, to see the five beauties part company: "Good-by, good-by," kiss, kiss--ah, the sad waste of it!--kiss left, kiss right, "good-by."

As the Callenders came in again from the veranda, their theme was Flora. "Yet who," asked Constance, "ever heard her utter a moral sentiment?"

"Oh, her beauty does that," rejoined the kindly Miranda. "As Captain Kincaid said that evening he--"

"Yes, I know. He said he would pa.s.s her into heaven on her face, and I think it was a very strange thing for him to say!"

"Why?" daringly asked Miranda--and ran from the room.

The hater of whys turned upon her sister: "Nan, what's the matter?... Oh, now, yes, there is. What made you start when Miranda mentioned--Yes, you did. You're excited, you know you are. When we came in from the garden you and Flora were both--"

"Now, Connie--"

"Pshaw, Nan, I know he's been here, it's in your face. Who was with him; Charlie?"

"Yes. They just dropped in to say good-by. The battery's ordered to Virginia. Virginia hasn't seceded yet, but he feels sure she will before they can get there, and so do I. Don't you? If Kentucky and Maryland would only--"

"Now, Nan, just hush. When does he go?"

"To-morrow. But as to us"--the girl shrugged prettily while caressing her roses--"he's gone now."

"How did he talk?"

"Oh--quite as usual." The head bent low into the flowers. "In the one pretty way he has with all of us, you know."

Constance would not speak until their eyes met again. Then she asked, "Did Charlie and Flora give him any chance--to express himself?"

"Oh, Con, don't be foolish. He didn't want any. He as much as said so!"

"Ye-es," drawled the bride incredulously, "but--"

"Oh, he really did not, Con. He talked of nothing but the battery flag and how, because I'd presented it, they would forever and ever and ever and ever--" She waved her hands sarcastically.

"Nan, behave. Come here." The pair took the sofa. "How did he look and act when he first came in? Before you froze him stiff?"

"I didn't freeze him." The quiet, hurt denial was tremulous. "Wood doesn't freeze." The mouth drooped satirically: "You know well enough that the man who says his tasks have spared him no time to--to--"

"Nan, honest! Did you give him a fair chance--the kind I gave Steve?"

"Oh, Con! He had all the chance any man ever got, or will get, from me."

The sister sighed: "Nan Callender, you are the poorest fisherman--"

"I'm not! I'm none! And if I were one"--the disclaimant glistened with mirth--"I couldn't be as poor a one as he is; he's afraid of his own bait." She began to laugh but had to force back her tears: "I didn't mean that! He's never had any bait--for me, nor wanted any. Neither he nor I ever--Really, Con, you are the only one who's made any mistake as to either of us! You seem to think--"

"Oh, dearie, I don't think at all, I just know. I know he's furiously in love with you--Yes, furiously; but that he's determined to be fair to Fred Greenleaf--"

"Oh!"--a yet wickeder smile.

"Yes, and that he feels poor. You know that if the General--"

The hearer lifted and dropped both arms: "Oh!--to be continued!"

"Well, I know, too, that he doesn't believe, anyhow, in soldiers marrying. I've never told you, sweet, but--if I hadn't cried so hard--Steve would have challenged Hilary Kincaid for what he said on that subject the night we were married!"

Anna straightened, flashed, and then dropped again as she asked, "Is that all you know?"

"No, I know what counts for more than all the rest; I know you're a terror to him."

Remotely in the terror's sad eyes glimmered a smile that was more than half satisfaction. "You might as well call him a coward," she murmured.

"Not at all. You know you've been a terror to every suitor you've ever had--except Fred Greenleaf; he's the only one you couldn't keep frightened out of his wits. Now this time I know it's only because you're--you're bothered! You don't know how you're going to feel--"

"Now, Con--"

"And you don't want to mislead him, and you're just bothered to death! It was the same way with me."