Kincaids Battery | Page 4

could bring it
about. So, too, it must be Hilary for his adjutant-general, to keep him
near enough to teach him the management of the fortune coming to him
if he, Hilary, would only treat his kind uncle's wishes--reasonably.
With the cup half lifted he harkened. From a hidden walk and bower
close on the garden side of this vine-mantled fence sounded footsteps
and voices:
"But, Fred! where on earth did she get--let's sit in here--get that rich,
belated, gradual smile?"
A memory thrilled the listening General. "From her mother," thought
he, and listened on.
"It's like," continued his nephew--"I'll tell you what it's like. It's
like--Now, let me alone! You see, one has to learn her beauty--by
degrees. You know, there is a sort of beauty that flashes on you at first
sight, like--like the blaze of a ball-room. I was just now thinking of a
striking instance--"
"From Mobile? You always are."

"No such thing! Say, Fred, I'll tell you what Miss Anna's smile is like.
It's as if you were trying--say in a telescope--for a focus, and at last all
at once it comes and--there's your star!"
The Northerner softly assented.
"Fred! Fancy Flora Valcour with that smile!"
"No! Hilary Kincaid, I think you were born to believe in every
feminine creature God ever made. No wonder they nickname you as
they do. Now, some girls are quite too feminine for me."
In his own smoke the General's eyes opened aggressively. But hark!
His nephew spoke again:
"Fred, if you knew all that girl has done for that boy and that
grandmother--It may sound like an overstatement, but you must have
observed--"
"That she's a sort of overstatement herself?"
"Go to grass! Your young lady's not even an understatement; she's only
a profound pause. See here! what time is it? I prom--"
On the uncle's side of the fence a quick step brought a newcomer, a
Creole of maybe twenty-nine years, member of his new staff, in bright
uniform:
"Ah, Général, yo' moze ob-edient! Never less al-lone then when al-lone?
'T is the way with myseff--"
He seemed not unrefined, though of almost too mettlesome an eye; in
length of leg showing just the lack, in girth of waist just the excess, to
imply a better dignity on horseback and to allow a proud tailor to prove
how much art can overcome. Out on the road a liveried black coachman
had halted an open carriage, in which this soldier had arrived with two
ladies. Now these bowed delightedly from it to the General, while
Kincaid and his friend stood close hid and listened agape, equally

amused and dismayed.
"How are you, Mandeville?" said the General. "I am not nearly as much
alone as I seem, sir!"
A voice just beyond the green-veiled fence cast a light on this reply and
brought a flush to the Creole's very brows. "Alas! Greenleaf," it cried,
"we search in vain! He is not here! We are even more alone than we
seem! Ah! where is that peerless chevalier, my beloved, accomplished,
blameless, sagacious, just, valiant and amiable uncle? Come let us
press on. Let not the fair sex find him first and snatch him from us
forever!"
The General's scorn showed only in his eyes as they met the blaze of
Mandeville's. "You were about to remark--?" he began, but rose and
started toward the carriage.
There not many minutes later you might have seen the four men
amicably gathered and vying in clever speeches to pretty Mrs.
Callender and her yet fairer though less scintillant step-daughter Anna.

III
THE GENERAL'S CHOICE
Anna Callender. In the midst of the gay skirmish and while she yielded
Greenleaf her chief attention, Hilary observed her anew.
What he thought he saw was a golden-brown profusion of hair with a
peculiar richness in its platted coils, an unconsciously faultless poise of
head, and, equally unconscious, a dreamy softness of sweeping lashes.
As she laughed with the General her student noted further what seemed
to him a rare silkiness in the tresses, a vapory lightness in the short
strands that played over the outlines of temple and forehead, and the
unstudied daintiness with which they gathered into the merest mist of a
short curl before her exquisite ear.

[Illustration: Anna]
But when now she spoke with him these charms became forgettable as
he discovered, or fancied he did, in her self-oblivious eyes, a depth of
thought and feeling not in the orbs alone but also in the brows and lids,
and between upper and under lashes as he glimpsed them in profile
while she turned to Mandeville. And now, unless his own insight
misled him, he observed how unlike those eyes, and yet how subtly
mated with them, was her mouth; the delicate rising curve of the upper