"De ladies loves de ladies' man!"

As mistress and maid pa.s.sed in sight of the dark singer he hurried to them, wearing the bucket of water on his turban as lightly as a hat. "Is you got to go so soon?" he asked, and walked beside them. Swiftly, under his voice, he directed them to Victorine and then spoke out again in hearing of two or three blue troopers. "You mus' come ag'in, whensomeveh you like."

They drew near a guard: "Dese is ole folks o' mine, Mr. Gyuard, ef you please, suh, dess a-lookin' at de ole home, suh."

"We were admitted by Colonel Greenleaf," said Anna, with a soft brightness that meant more than the soldier guessed, and he let them out, feeling as sweet, himself, as he tried to look sour.

"Well, good-by, Miss Nannie," said the old man, "I mus' recapitulate back to de house; dey needs me pow'ful all de time. Good luck to you! Gawd bless you!... Da.s.s ow ba-aby, Mr. Gyuard--Oh, Lawd, Lawd, de days I's held dat chile out on one o' dese ole han's!" He had Flora's feeling for stage effects.

Toiling or resting, the Southern slaves were singers. With the pail on his head and with every wearer of shoulder-straps busy giving or obeying some order, it was as normal as c.o.c.k-crowing that he should raise yet another line of his song and that from the house the diligent bricklayer should reply.

Sang the water-carrier:

"I's natch-i-ully gallant wid de ladies,--"

and along with the trowel's tinkle came softly back,

"I uz bawn wid a talent fo' de ladies."

For a signal the indoor singer need not have gone beyond that line, but the spirit that always grew merry as the peril grew, the spirit which had made Kincaid's Battery the fearfulest its enemies ever faced, insisted:

"You fine it on de map o' de contrac' plan, I's boun' to be a ladies' man!"

LXV

FLORA'S LAST THROW

Normal as c.o.c.k-crowing seemed the antiphony to the common ear, which scarcely noticed the rareness of the indoor voice. But Greenleaf's was not the common ear, nor was Flora Valcour's.

To her that closing strain made the torture of inaction finally unbearable. Had Anna heard? Leaving Madame she moved to a hall door of the room where they sat. Was Anna's blood surging like her own? It could not! Under what a tempest of conjectures she looked down and across the great hall to the closed and sentinelled door of that front drawing-room so rife with poignant recollections. There, she thought, was Anna. From within it, more faintly now, came those sounds of a mason at work which had seemed to ring with the song. But the song had ceased. About the hall highly gilded officers conferred alertly in pairs or threes, more or less in the way of younger ones who smartly crossed from room to room. Here came Greenleaf! Seeking her? No, he would have pa.s.sed unaware, but her lips ventured his name.

Never had she seen such a look in his face as that with which he confronted her. Grief, consternation, discovery and wrath were all as one save that only the discovery and wrath meant her. She saw how for two days and nights he had been putting this and that and this and that and this and that together until he had guessed her out. Sternly in his eyes she perceived contumely withholding itself, yet even while she felt the done-for cry heave through her bosom, and the floor fail like a sinking deck, she clung to her stage part, babbled impromptu lines.

"Doctor Sevier--?" she began--

"He had to go."

Again she read the soldier's eyes. G.o.d! he was comparing her changed countenance--a fool could see he was!--with Anna's! both smitten with affliction, but the abiding peace of truth in one, the abiding war of falsehood in the other. So would Kincaid do if he were here! But the stage waited: "Ah, Colonel, Anna! poor Anna!" Might not the compa.s.sion-wilted supplicant see the dear, dear prisoner? She rallied all her war-worn fairness with all her feminine art, and to her amazement, with a gleam of purpose yet without the softening of a lineament, he said yes, waved permission across to the guard and left her.

She pa.s.sed the guard and knocked. Quietly in the room clinked the brick-mason's work. He strongly hummed his tune. Now he spoke, as if to his helper, who seemed to be leaving him. Again she knocked, and bent her ear. The mason sang aloud:

"Some day dis worl' come to an en', I don't know how, I don't know when--"

She turned the door-k.n.o.b and murmured, "Anna!"

The bricklaying clinked, tapped and sc.r.a.ped on. The workman hummed again his last two lines.

"Who is it?" asked a feigned voice which she knew so instantly to be Kincaid's that every beat of her heart jarred her frame.

"'Tis I, Anna, dear. 'Tis Flora." She was mindful of the sentry, but all his attention was in the busy hall.

There came a touch on the inner door-k.n.o.b. "Go away!" murmured the manly voice, no longer disguised. "In G.o.d's name! for your own sake as well as hers, go instantly!"

"No," melodiously replied Flora, in full voice for the sentry's ear, but with resolute pressure on the door, "no, not at all.... No, I muz' not, cannot."

"Then wait one moment till you hear me at work!"

She waited. Presently the trowel sounded again and its wielder, in a lowered tone, sang with it:

"Dat neveh trouble Dandy Dan Whilst de ladies loves de ladies' man."

At the first note she entered with some idle speech, closed the door, darted her glance around, saw no one, heard only the work and the song and sprang to the chimney-breast. She tried the panel--it would not yield! Yet there, as if the mason's powerful hands had within that minute reopened and reclosed it, were the wet marks of his fingers. A flash of her instinct for concealment bade her wipe them off and she had barely done so when he stepped from the screen, fresh from Israel's water-bucket, drying his face on his hands, his hands on his face and un-turbaned locks, prison-worn from top to toe, but in Dixie's full gray and luminous with the unsmiling joy of danger.

"It's not there," he loudly whispered, showing the bare dagger. "Here it is. She has the rest, scabbard and all."

Flora clasped her hands as in ecstasy: "And is free? surely free?"

"Almost! Surely when that despatch-boat fires!" In a few rapid words Hilary told the scheme of Anna's flight, at the same time setting the screen aside so as to show the hole in the wall nearly closed, humming his tune and ringing the trowel on the brickwork.

Flora made new show of rapture. Nor was it all mere show. Anna escaping, the treasure would escape with her, and Flora be thrown into the dungeon of penury. Yet let them both go, both rival and treasure! Love's ransom! All speed to them since they left her Hilary Kincaid and left him at her mercy. But the plight was complex and suddenly her exultation changed to affright. "My G.o.d! Hilary Kincaid," she panted, "you 'ave save' her to deztroy yo'seff! You are--"

Proudly, gaily he shook his head: "No! No! against her will I've sent her, to save--" He hushed. He had begun to say a city, Flora's city. Once more a captive, he would gladly send by Flora also, could she contrive to carry it, the priceless knowledge which Anna, after all, might fail to convey. But something--it may have been that same outdone and done-for look which Greenleaf had just noted--silenced him, and the maiden resumed where she had broken off:

"My G.o.d, Hilary Kincaid, you are in denger to be hanged a spy! Thiz minute you 'ave hide yo' dizguise in that panel!"

"You would come in," said Hilary, with a playful wave of the trowel, and turned to his work, singing:

"When I hands in my checks--"

Flora ran and clung tenderly to his arm, but with a distressed smile he clasped her wrists in one hand and gently forced her back again while she asked in burning undertone, "And you 'ave run that h-awful risk for me? for me? But, why? why? why?"

"Oh!" he laughingly said, and at the wall once more waved the ringing trowel, "instinct, I reckon; ordinary manhood--to womanhood. If you had recognized me in that rig--"

"And I would! In any rigue thiz heart would reco'nize you!"

"Then you would have had to betray me or else go, yourself, to Ship Island"

"H-o-oh! I would have gone!"

"That's what I feared," said Hilary, though while he spoke she fiercely felt that she certainly would have betrayed him; not for horror of Ship Island but because now, after this, no Anna Callender nor all the world conspired should have him from her alive.

He lifted his tool for silence, and fresh anger wrung her soul to see joy mount in his eyes as from somewhere below the old coachman sang:

"When I hands in my checks, O, my ladies!"

Yet she showed elation: "That means Anna and Victorine they have pazz' to the boat?"

With merry nods and airy wavings of affirmation he sang back, rang back:

"Mighty little I espec's, O, my ladies!