The word was truer than he meant. The Irby-value of things was all that ever seriously engaged the ever serious cousin. Just now his eyes had left the sh.o.r.e, where Flora's lingered, and he was speaking of Kincaid. "I see," he said, "what you think: that although no one of these things--uncle Brodnax's nonsense, Greenleaf's claims, Hilary's own preaching against--against, eh--"

"Making brides to-day and widows to-morrow?"

"Yes, that while none of these is large enough in his view to stop him by itself, yet combined they--"

"All working together they do it," said the girl. Really she had no such belief, but Irby's poor wits were so nearly useless to her that she found amus.e.m.e.nt in misleading them.

"Hilary tells me they do," he replied, "but the more he says it the less I believe him. Miss Flora, the fate of all my uncle holds dear is hanging by a thread, a spider's web, a young girl's freak! If ever she gives him a certain turn of the hand, the right glance of her eye, he'll be at her feet and every hope I cherish--"

"Captain Irby," Flora softly asked with her tinge of accent, "is not this the third time?"

"Yes, if you mean again that--"

"That Anna, she is my dear, dear frien'! The fate of nothing, of n.o.body, not even of me--or of--you--" she let that p.r.o.noun catch in her throat--"can make me to do anything--oh! or even to wish anything--not the very, very best for her!"

"Yet I thought it was our understanding--"

"Captain: There is bitwin us no understanding excep'"--the voice grew tender--"that there is no understanding bitwin us." But she let her eyes so meltingly avow the very partnership her words denied, that Irby felt himself the richest, in understandings, of all men alive.

"What is that they are looking?" asked his idol, watching Anna and Hilary. The old battle ground had been pa.s.sed. Anna, gazing back toward its townward edge, was shading her eyes from the burnished water, and Hilary was helping her make out the earthwork from behind which peered the tents of Kincaid's Battery while beyond both crouched low against the bright west the trees and roof of Callender House--as straight in line from here, Flora took note, as any shot or sh.e.l.l might ever fly.

XXVII

HARD GOING, UP STREAM

Very pleasant it was to stand thus on the tremulous deck of the swiftest craft in the whole Confederate service. Pleasant to see on either hand the flat landscape with all its signs of safety and plenty; its orange groves, its greening fields of young sugar-cane, its pillared and magnolia-shaded plantation houses, its white lines of slave cabins in rows of banana trees, and its wide wet plains swarming with wild birds; pleasant to see it swing slowly, majestically back and melt into a skyline as low and level as the ocean's.

Anna and Kincaid went inside to see the upper and more shining portions of the boat's beautiful machinery. No one had yet made rods, cranks, and gauge-dials sing anthems; but she knew it was Hilary and an artisan or two in his foundry whose audacity in the remaking of these gliding, plunging, turning, vanishing, and returning members had given them their fine new speed-making power, and as he stood at her side and pointed from part to part they took on a living charm that was reflected into him. Pleasant it was, also, to hear two or three droll tales about his battery boys; the personal traits, propensities, and soldierly value of many named by name, and the composite character and temper that distinguished the battery as a command; this specific quality of each particular organic unit, fighting body, among their troops being as needful for commanders to know as what to count on in the individual man. So explained the artillerist while the pair idled back to the open deck. With hidden vividness Anna liked the topic. Had not she a right, the right of a silent partner? A secret joy of the bond settled on her like dew on the marshes, as she stood at his side.

Hilary loved the theme. The lives of those boys were in his hands; at times to be h.o.a.rded, at times to be spent, in sudden awful junctures to be furiously squandered. He did not say this, but the thought was in both of them and drew them closer, though neither moved. The boat rounded to, her engines stopped, an officer came aboard from a skiff, and now she was under way again and speeding up stream on her return, but Hilary and Anna barely knew it. He began to talk of the boys' sweethearts. Of many of their tender affairs he was confidentially informed. Yes, to be frank, he confessed he had prompted some fellows to let their hearts lead them, and to pitch in and win while--

"Oh! certainly!" murmured Anna in compa.s.sion, "some of them."

"Yes," said their captain, "but they are chaps--like Charlie--whose hearts won't keep unless they're salted down and barrelled, and I give the advice not in the sweethearts' interest but--"

"Why not? Why shouldn't a--" The word hung back.

"A lover?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't he confess himself in her interest? That needn't pledge her."

"Oh! do you think that would be fair?"

"Perfectly!"

"Well, now--take an actual case. Do you think the mere fact that Adolphe truly and stick-to-it-ively loves Miss Flora gives her a right to know it?"

"I do, and to know it a long, long time before he can have any right to know whether--"

"Hum! while he goes where glory waits him--?"

"Yes."

"And lets time--?"

"Yes."

"And absence and distance and rumor try his unsupported constancy?"

"Yes."

With tight lips the soldier drew breath. "You know my uncle expects now to be sent to Virginia at once?"

"Yes."

"Adolphe, of course, goes with him."

"Yes."

"Yet you think--the great principle of so-much-for-so-much to the contrary notwithstanding--he really owes it to her to--"

Anna moved a step forward. She was thinking what a sweet babe she was, thus to accept the surface of things. How did she know that this laughing, light-spoken gallant, seemingly so open and artless--oh! more infantile than her very self!--was not deep and complex? Or that it was not he and Flora on whose case she was being lured to speculate? The boat, of whose large breathings and pulsings she became growingly aware, offered no reply. Presently from the right sh.o.r.e, off before them, came a strain of band music out of Camp Callender.

"Anna."

"What hosts of stars!" said she. "How hoveringly they follow us."

The lover waited. The ship seemed to breathe deeper--to glide faster. He spoke again: "May I tell you a secret?"

"Doesn't the boat appear to you to tremble more than ever?" was the sole response.

"Yes, she's running up-stream. So am I. Anna, we're off this time--sure shot--with the General--to Virginia. The boys don't know it yet, but--listen."

Over in the unseen camp the strain was once more--

"I'd offer thee this hand of mine--"

"We're turning in to be landed, are we not?" asked Anna as the stars began to wheel.

"Yes. Do you really believe, Anna, that that song is not the true word for a true lover and true soldier, like Adolphe, for instance--to say to himself, of course, not to her?"

"Oh, Captain Kincaid, what does it matter?"

"Worlds to me. Anna, if I should turn that song into a solemn avowal--to you--"

"Please don't!--Oh, I mean--I don't mean--I--I mean--"

"Ah, I know your meaning. But if I love you, profoundly, abidingly, consumingly--as I do, Anna Callender, as I do!--and am glad to pledge my soul to you knowing perfectly that you have nothing to confess to me--"