XXXVII
"TILL HE SAID, 'I'M COME HAME, MY LOVE'"
How absurdly poor the chance! Yet they bade the old coachman turn thatway, and indeed the facts were better than the hope of any one of them.Charlie, very gaunt and battered, but all the more enamored of himselftherefor and for the new chevrons of a gun corporal on his dingy sleeve,was actually aboard that boat. In one of the small knots of passengerson her boiler deck he was modestly companioning with a captain ofinfantry and two of staff, while they now exchanged merry anecdotes ofthe awful retreat out of Tennessee into Mississippi, now grimly damnedthis or that bad strategy, futile destruction, or horrible suffering,now re-discussed the comical chances of a bet of General Brodnax's,still pending, and now, with the crowd, moved downstairs to the freightdeck as the boat began to nose the wharf.
Meanwhile the Callenders' carriage had made easy speed. Emerging by theFree Market, it met an open hack carrying six men. At the moment everyone was cringing in a squall of dust, but as well as could be seen thesesix were the driver, a colored servant at his side, an artillerycorporal, and three officers. Some army wagons hauling pine-knots to thefire-fleet compelled both carriages to check up. Thereupon, the gustpassing and Victorine getting a better glance at the men, she tossedboth hands, gave a stifled cry and began to laugh aloud.
"Charlie!" cried Anna. "Steve!" cried Constance.
"And Captain Irby!" remarked Miranda.
The infantry captain, a transient steamboat acquaintance, used oftenafterward to say that he never saw anything prettier than those fourwildly gladdened ladies unveiling in the shade of their parasols. Idoubt if he ever did. He talked with Anna, who gave him so sweet anattention that he never suspected she was ravenously taking in everyword the others dropped behind her.
"But where he is, that Captain Kincaid?" asked Victorine of Charlie asecond time.
"Well, really," stammered the boy at last, "we--we can't say, just now,where he is."
("He's taken prisoner!" wailed Anna's heart while she let the infantrycaptain tell her that hacks, in Nashville on the Sunday after Donelson,were twenty-five dollars an hour.)
"He means," she heard Mandeville put in, "he means--Charlie--only thatwe _muz_ not tell. 'Tis a sicret."
"You've sent him into the enemy's lines!" cried Constance to Irby in oneof her intuitions.
"We?" responded the grave Irby, "No, not we."
"Captain Mandeville," exclaimed Victorine, "us, you don't need to tellus some white lies."
The Creole shrugged: "We are telling you only the whitess we can!"
("Yes," the infantry captain said, "with Memphis we should lose thelargest factory of cartridges in the Confederacy.")
But this was no place for parleying. So while the man next thehack-driver, ordered by Mandeville and laden with travelling-bags,climbed to a seat by the Callenders' coachman the aide-de-camp crowdedin between Constance and Victorine, the equipage turned from theremaining soldiers, and off the ladies spun for home, Anna and Mirandariding backward to have the returned warrior next his doting wife.Victorine was dropped on the way at the gate of her cottage. When theothers reached the wide outer stair of their own veranda, and thecoachman's companion had sprung down and opened the carriage, Mandevillewas still telling of Mandeville, and no gentle hearer had found anychance to ask further about that missing one of whom the silentest wasfamishing to know whatever--good or evil--there was to tell. Was Steveavoiding their inquiries? wondered Anna.
Up the steps went first the married pair, the wife lost in the hero, thehero in himself. Was he, truly? thought Anna, or was he only trying,kindly, to appear so? The ever-smiling Miranda followed. A step withinthe house Mandeville, with eyes absurdly aflame, startled first his wifeby clutching her arm, and then Miranda by beckoning them into a door attheir right, past unheeded treasures of the Bazaar, and to a frontwindow. Yet through its blinds they could discover only what they hadjust left; the carriage, with Anna still in it, the garden, the grove,an armed soldier on guard at the river gate, another at the foot of thesteps, a third here at the top.
It was good to Anna to rest her head an instant on the cushioningbehind it and close her eyes. With his rag of a hat on the ground andhis head tightly wrapped in the familiar Madras kerchief of the slavedeck-hand, the attendant at the carriage side reverently awaited therelifting of her lids. The old coachman glanced back on her.
"Missy?" he tenderly ventured. But the lids still drooped, though sherose.
"Watch out fo' de step," said the nearer man. His tone was even moremusically gentle than the other's, yet her eyes instantly opened intohis and she started so visibly that her foot half missed and she had tocatch his saving hand.
"Stiddy! stiddy!" He slowly let the cold, slim fingers out of his as shestarted on, but she swayed again and he sprang and retook them. For halfa breath she stared at him like a wild bird shot, glanced at thesentinels, below, above, and then pressed up the stair.
Constance, behind the shutters, wept. "Go away," she pleaded to herhusband, "oh, go away!" but pushed him without effect and peered downagain. "He's won!" she exclaimed in soft ecstasy, "he's won at last!"
"Yes, he's win!" hoarsely whispered the aide-de-camp. "He's win thebet!"
Constance flashed indignantly: "What has he bet?"
"Bet. 'He has bet three-ee general' he'll pazz down Canal Street andthrough the middl' of the city, unreco'nize! And now he's done it,they'll let him do the rest!" From his Creole eyes the enthusiast blazeda complete argument, that an educated commander, so disguised andtraversing an enemy's camp, can be worth a hundred of the common runwho go by the hard name of spy, and may decide the fortunes of a wholecampaign: "They'll let him! and he'll get the prom-otion!"
"Ho-oh!" breathed the two women, "he's getting all the promotion _he_wants, right now!" The three heard Anna pass into the front drawing-roomacross the hall, the carriage move off and the disguised man enter thehall and set down the travelling-bags. They stole away through thelibrary and up a rear stair.
It was not yet late enough to set guards within the house. No soul wasin the drawing-rooms. In the front one, on its big wheels between twostacks of bayoneted rifles, beneath a splendor of flags and surroundedby innumerable costly offerings, rested as mutely as a seated idol thatsuperior engine of death and woe, the great brass gun. Anna stole to it,sunk on her knees, crossed her trembling arms about its neck and restedher brow on its face.
She heard the tread in the hall, quaked to rise and flee, and yet couldnot move. It came upon the threshold and paused. "Anna," said the voicethat had set her heart on fire across the carriage step. She sprang up,faced round, clutched the great gun, and stood staring. Her follower wasstill in slave garb, but now for the first time he revealed his fullstature. His black locks were free and the "Madras" dropped from hisfingers to the floor. He advanced a pace or two.
"Anna," he said again, "Anna Callender,"--he came another step--"I'vecome back, Anna, to--to--" he drew a little nearer. She gripped thegun.
He lighted up drolly: "Don't you know what I've come for? I didn'tknow, myself, till just now, or I shouldn't have come in this rig,though many a better man's in worse these days. I didn'tknow--because--I couldn't hope. I've come--" he stole close--his armsbegan to lift--she straightened to her full height, but helplesslyrelaxed as he smiled down upon it.
"I've come not just to get your promise, Anna Callender, but to musteryou in; to _marry_ you."
She flinched behind the gun's muzzle in resentful affright. He loweredhis palms in appeal to her wisdom. "It's the right thing, Anna, the onlysafe way! I've known it was, ever since Steve Mandeville's wedding. Oh!it takes a colossal assurance to talk to you so, Anna Callender, butI've got the _colossal assurance_. I've got that, beloved, and you'vegot all the rest--my heart--my soul--my life. Give me yours."
Anna had shrunk in against the farther wheel, but now rallied and moveda step forward. "Let me pass," she begged. "Give me a few moments tomyself. You can wait here. I'll come back."
He made room. She moved by. But hardly had she passed when a soft wordstopped her. She turned inquiringly and the next instant--Heaven onlyknows if first on his impulse or on hers--she was in his arms, halfstifled on his breast, and hanging madly from his neck while his kissesfell upon her brow--temples--eyes--and rested on her lips.
Flora sat reading a note just come from that same "A.C." Her brother hadgone to call on Victorine. Irby had just bade the reader good-by, toreturn soon and go with her to Callender House to see the Bazaar.Madame Valcour turned from a window with a tart inquiry:
And the next instant she was in his arms]
"And all you had to do was to say yes to him?"
"That would have been much," absently replied the reader, turning apage.
"'Twould have been little!--to make him rich!--and us also!"
"Not us," said the abstracted girl; "me." Something in the missivecaused her brows to knit.
"And still you trifle!" nagged the grandam, "while I starve! And whileat any instant may arrive--humph--that other fool."
Even this did not draw the reader's glance. "No." she responded. "Hecannot. Irby and Charlie lied to us. He is already here." She wasre-reading.
The grandmother stared, tossed a hand and moved across the floor. As shepassed near the girl's slippered foot it darted out, tripped her andwould have sent her headlong, but she caught by the lamp table. Florasmiled with a strange whiteness round the lips. Madame righted theshaken lamp, quietly asking, "Did you do that--h-m-m--for hate of thelady, or, eh, the ladies' man?"
"The latter," said the reabsorbed girl.
"Strange," sighed the other, "how we can have--at the same time--for thesame one--both feelings."
But Flora's ears were closed. "Well," she audibly mused, "he'll get arecall."
"Even if it must be forged?" twittered the dame.