Kincaid's Battery Read online

  III

  THE GENERAL'S CHOICE

  Anna Callender. In the midst of the gay skirmish and while she yieldedGreenleaf her chief attention, Hilary observed her anew.

  What he thought he saw was a golden-brown profusion of hair with apeculiar richness in its platted coils, an unconsciously faultless poiseof head, and, equally unconscious, a dreamy softness of sweeping lashes.As she laughed with the General her student noted further what seemed tohim a rare silkiness in the tresses, a vapory lightness in the shortstrands that played over the outlines of temple and forehead, and theunstudied daintiness with which they gathered into the merest mist of ashort curl before her exquisite ear.

  Anna]

  But when now she spoke with him these charms became forgettable as hediscovered, or fancied he did, in her self-oblivious eyes, a depth ofthought and feeling not in the orbs alone but also in the brows andlids, and between upper and under lashes as he glimpsed them in profilewhile she turned to Mandeville. And now, unless his own insight misledhim, he observed how unlike those eyes, and yet how subtly mated withthem, was her mouth; the delicate rising curve of the upper lip, and thefloral tenderness with which it so faintly overhung the nether,wherefrom it seemed ever about to part yet parted only when she spoke orsmiled.

  "A child's mouth and a woman's eyes," he mused.

  When her smiles came the mouth remained as young as before,yet suddenly, as truly as the eyes, showed--showed him atleast--steadfastness of purpose, while the eyes, where fullyhalf the smile was, still unwittingly revealed their depths of truth.

  "Poor Fred!" he pondered as the General and Mandeville entered thecarriage and it turned away.

  A mile or two from Carrollton down the river and toward the city lay theold unfenced fields where Hilary had agreed with Irby to help himmanoeuvre his very new command. Along the inland edge of this plain therailway and the common road still ran side by side, but the river veereda mile off. So Mandeville pointed out to the two ladies as they, he, andthe General drove up to the spot with Kincaid and Greenleaf asoutriders. The chosen ground was a level stretch of wild turf maybe athousand yards in breadth, sparsely dotted with shoulder-high acacias.No military body was yet here, and the carriage halted at the first goodview point.

  Mrs. Callender, the only member of her family who was of Northern birthand rearing, was a small slim woman whose smile came whenever she spokeand whose dainty nose went all to merry wrinkles whenever she smiled. Itdid so now, in the shelter of her diminutive sunshade opened flatagainst its jointed handle to fend off the strong afternoon beams, whileshe explained to Greenleaf--dismounted beside the wheels withMandeville--that Constance, Anna's elder sister, would arrive by and bywith Flora Valcour. "Connie", she said, had been left behind in theclutches of the dressmaker!

  "Flora," she continued, crinkling her nose ever so kind-heartedly atGreenleaf, "is Lieutenant Mandeville's cousin, you know. Didn't he tellyou something back yonder in Carrollton?"

  Greenleaf smiled an admission and her happy eyes closed to mere chinks.What had been told was that Constance had yesterday accepted Mandeville.

  "Yes," jovially put in the lucky man, "I have divulge' him that, and heseem' almoze as glad as the young lady herseff!"

  Even to this the sweet widow's misplaced wrinkles faintly replied, whileGreenleaf asked, "Does the Lieutenant's good fortune account forthe--'clutches of the dressmaker'?"

  It did. The Lieutenant hourly expecting to be ordered to the front, thiswedding, like so many others, would be at the earliest day possible. "Agreat concession," the lady said, turning her piquant wrinkles this timeupon Mandeville. But just here the General engrossed attention. Hisvoice had warmed sentimentally and his kindled eye was passing back andforth between Anna seated by him and Hilary close at hand in the saddle.He waved wide:

  "This all-pervading haze and perfume, dew and dream," he was saying, "iswhat makes this the Lalla Rookh's land it is!" He smiled at himself andconfessed that Carrollton Gardens always went to his head. "Anna, didyou ever hear your mother sing--

  "'There's a bower of roses--'?"

  She lighted up to say yes, but the light was all he needed to be luredon through a whole stanza, and a tender sight--Ocean silvering tobrown-haired Cynthia--were the two, as he so innocently strove torecreate out of his own lost youth, for her and his nephew, thisatmosphere of poetry.

  "'To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song!'"

  he suavely ended--"I used to make Hilary sing that for me when he was aboy."

  "Doesn't he sing it yet?" asked Mrs. Callender.

  "My God, madame, since I found him addicted to comic songs I've neverasked him!"

  Kincaid led the laugh and the talk became lively. Anna was merrilyaccused by Miranda (Mrs. Callender) of sharing the General's abhorrenceof facetious song. First she pleaded guilty and then reversed her pleawith an absurd tangle of laughing provisos delightful even to herself.At the same time the General withdrew from his nephew all imputation ofa frivolous mind, though the nephew avowed himself nonsensical frombirth and destined to die so. It was a merry moment, so merry thatKincaid's bare mention of Mandeville as Mandy made even the Generalsmile and every one else laugh. The Creole, to whom any mention ofhimself, (whether it called for gratitude or for pistols and coffee,)was always welcome, laughed longest. If he was Mandy, he hurried torejoin, the absent Constance "muz be Candy--ha, ha, ha!" And when Annasaid Miranda should always thenceforth be Randy, and Mrs. Callender saidAnna ought to be Andy, and the very General was seduced into suggestingthat then Hilary would be Handy, and when every one read in every one'seye, the old man's included, that Brodnax would naturally be Brandy, theCreole bent and wept with mirth, counting all that fine wit exclusivelyhis.

  "But, no!" he suddenly said, "Hilary he would be Dandy, bic-ause he'scall' the ladies' man!"

  "No, sir!" cried the General. "Hil--" He turned upon his nephew, butfinding him engaged with Anna, faced round to his chum: "For Heaven'ssake, Greenleaf, does he allow--?"

  "He can't help it now," laughed his friend, "he's tagged it on himselfby one of his songs."

  "Oh, by Jove, Hilary, it serves you right for singing them!"

  Hilary laughed to the skies, the rest echoing.

  "A ladies' man!" the uncle scoffed on. "Of all things on God's earth!"But there he broke into lordly mirth: "Don't you believe _that_ of him,ladies, at any rate. If only for my sake, Anna, don't you _ever_believe a breath of it!"

  The ladies laughed again, but now Kincaid found them a distraction.Following his glance cityward they espied a broad dust-cloud floatingoff toward the river. He turned to Anna and softly cried, "Here comeyour guns, trying to beat the train!"

  The ladies stood up to see. An unseen locomotive whistled for a briefstop. The dust-cloud drew nearer. The engine whistled to start again,and they could hear its bell and quickening puff. But the dust-cloudcame on and on, and all at once the whole six-gun battery--six horsesto each piece and six to each caisson--captain, buglers, guidon,lieutenants, sergeants and drivers in the saddle, cannoneers on thechests--swept at full trot, thumping, swaying, and rebounding, up thehighway and off it, and, forming sections, swung out upon the field indouble column, while the roaring train rolled by it and slowed up to thelittle frame box of Buerthe's Station with passengers cheering fromevery window.

  The Callenders' carriage horses were greatly taxed in their nerves, yetthey kept their discretion. Kept it even when now the battery flashedfrom column into line and bore down upon them, the train meanwhilewhooping on toward Carrollton. And what an elated flock of brightlydressed citizens and citizenesses had alighted from the cars--many ofthem on the moment's impulse--to see these dear lads, with theirromantically acquired battery, train for the holiday task of scaring thedastard foe back to their frozen homes! How we loved the moment'simpulse those days!

  What a gay show! And among the very prettiest and most fetchinglyarrayed newcomers you would quickly have noticed three with whom thiscarriage group exchanged signals. Kinca
id spurred off to meet them whileGreenleaf and Mandeville helped Anna and Miranda to the ground. "There'sConstance," said the General.

  "Yes," Mrs. Callender replied, "and Flora and Charlie Valcour!" as ifthat were the gleefulest good luck of all.