With mingled5 rapture6 and distress7, with a heart standing8 as still as his feet, as still as his lifted head and shining eyes, he listened and heard again. Swiftly, though not with the speed he would have chosen, he sprang toward the call; sped softly through the brush, softly and without voice, lest he draw the enemy's fire; softly and mutely, with futile9 backward wavings and frowning and imploring10 whispers to Flora as in a dishevelled glow that doubled her beauty she glided11 after him.
Strangely, amid a swarm12 of keen perceptions that plagued him like a cloud of arrows as he ran, that beauty smote13 his conscience; her beauty and the worship and protection it deserved from all manhood and most of all from him, whose unhappy, unwitting fortune it was to have ensnared her young heart and brought it to the desperation of an unnatural14 self-revealment; her uncoveted beauty, uncourted love, unwelcome presence, and hideous15 peril16! Was he not to all these in simplest honor peculiarly accountable? They lanced him through with arraignment17 as, still waving her beseechingly18, commandingly back, with weapons undrawn the more swiftly to part the way before him, his frenzy19 for Anna drew him on, as full of introspection as a drowning man, thinking a year's thoughts at every step. Oh, mad joy in pitiful employment! Here while the millions of a continent waged heroic war for great wrongs and rights, here on the fighting-line of a beleaguered20 and starving city, here when at any instant the peal21 of his own guns might sound a fresh onset22, behold23 him in a lover's part, loving "not honor more," setting the seal upon his painful alias24, filching25 time out of the jaws26 of death to pursue one maiden27 while clung to by another. Oh, Anna! Anna Callender! my life for my country, but this moment for thy life and thee! God stay the onslaught this one moment!
As he reached the edge of that narrow opening from whose farther side Anna had called he halted, glanced furtively28 about, and harkened forward, backward, through leafy distances grown ominously29 still. Oh, why did the call not come again? Hardly in a burning house could time be half so priceless. Not a breath could promise that in the next the lightnings, thunders, and long human yell of assault would not rend30 the air. Flora's soft tread ceased at his side.
"Stay back!" he fiercely breathed, and pointed31 just ahead: "The enemy's skirmishers!"
"Come away!" she piteously whispered, trembling with terror. For, by a glimpse as brief as the catch of her breath, yonder a mere32 rod or so within the farther foliage33, down a vista34 hardly wider than a man's shoulders, an armed man's blue shoulders she had seen, under his black hat and peering countenance35. Joy filled the depth of her heart in the belief that a thin line of such black hats had already put Anna behind them, yet she quaked in terror, terror of death, of instant, shot-torn death that might leave Hilary Kincaid alive.
With smiting36 pity he saw her affright. "Go back!" he once more gasped37: "In God's name, go back!" while recklessly he stepped forward out of cover. But in splendid desperation, with all her soul's battle in her eyes--horror, love, defiance38, and rending39 chagrin40 striving and smiting, she sprang after him into the open, and clutched and twined his arms. The blue skirmish-line, without hearing, saw him; saw, and withheld41 their fire, fiercely glad that tactics and mercy should for once agree. And Anna saw.
"Come with me back!" whispered Flora, dragging on him with bending knees. "She's lost! She's gone back to those Yankee, and to Fred Greenleaf! And you"--the whisper rose to a murmur42 whose pathos43 grew with her Creole accent--"you, another step and you are a deserter! Yes! to your country--to Kincaid' Batt'ree--to me-me-me!" The soft torrent44 of speech grew audible beyond them: "Oh, my God! Hilary Kincaid, listen-to-me-listen! You 'ave no right; no ri-ight to leave me! Ah, you shall not! No right--ri-ight to leave yo' Flora--sinze she's tol' you--sinze she's tol' you--w'at she's tol' you!"
In this long history of a moment the blue skirmishers had not yet found Anna, but it was their advance, their soft stir at her back as they came upon their fallen leader, that had hushed her cries. At the rift45 in the wood she had leaned on a huge oak and as body and mind again failed had sunk to its base in leafy hiding. Vaguely46 thence she presently perceived, lit from behind her by sunset beams, the farther edge of the green opening, and on that border, while she feebly looked, came suddenly a ghost!
Ah, Heaven! the ghost of Hilary Kincaid! It looked about for her! It listened for her call! By the tree's rough bark she drew up half her height, clung and, with reeling brain, gazed. How tall! how gaunt! how dingy47 gray! How unlike her whilom "ladies' man," whom, doubtless truly, they now called dead and buried. But what--what--was troubling the poor ghost? What did it so wildly avoid? what wave away with such loving, tender pain? Flora Valcour! Oh, see, see! Ah, death in life! what does she see? As by the glare of a bursting midnight shell all the empty gossip of two years justified--made real--in one flash of staring view. With a long moan the beholder48 cast her arms aloft and sank in a heap, not knowing that the act had caught Hilary's eye, but willingly aware that her voice had perished in a roar of artillery49 from the farther brink50 of the ravine, in a crackle and fall of tree-tops, and in the "rebel yell" and charge.
Next morning, in a fog, the blue holders51 of a new line of rifle-pits close under the top of a bluff52 talked up to the grays in a trench53 on its crest54. Gross was the banter55, but at mention of "ladies" it purified.
"Johnnie!" cried "Yank," "who is she, the one we've got?" and when told to ask her, said she was too ill to ask. By and by to "Johnnie's" inquiries56 the blues57 replied:
"He? the giant? Hurt? No-o, not half bad enough, when we count what he cost us. If we'd known he was only stunned58 we"--and so on, not very interestingly, while back in the rear of the gray line tearful Constance praised, to her face, the haggard Flora and, in his absence, the wounded Irby, Flora's splendid rescuer in the evening onslaught.
"A lifetime debt," Miranda thought Flora owed him, and Flora's meditative59 yes, as she lifted her eyes to her grandmother's, was--peculiar.
A few days later Anna, waking in the bliss60 of a restored mind, and feeling beneath her a tremor61 of paddlewheels, gazed on the nurse at her side.
"Am I a--prisoner?" she asked.
The woman bent62 kindly63 without reply.
"Anyhow," said Anna, with a one-sided smile, "they can't call me a spy." Her words quickened: "I'm a rebel, but I'm no spy. I was lost. And he's no spy. He was in uniform. Is he--on this boat?"
Yes, she was told, he was, with a few others like him, taken too soon for the general parole of the surrender. Parole? she pondered. Surrender? What surrender? "Where are we going?" she softly inquired; "not to New Orleans?"
The nurse nodded brightly.
"But how can we get--by?"
"By Vicksburg? We're already by there."
"Has Vicks--?... Has Vicksburg--fallen?"
The confirming nod was tender. Anna turned away. Presently--"But not Mobile? Mobile hasn't--?"
"No, not yet. But it must, don't you think?"
"No!" cried Anna. "It must not! Oh, it must not! I--if I--Oh, if I--"
The nurse soothed64 her smilingly: "My poor child," she said, "you can't save Mobile."
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1
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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skilfully
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| adv. (美skillfully)熟练地 | |
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sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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arraignment
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| n.提问，传讯，责难 | |
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beseechingly
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| adv. 恳求地 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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20
beleaguered
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| adj.受到围困[围攻]的；包围的v.围攻( beleaguer的过去式和过去分词)；困扰；骚扰 | |
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21
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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filching
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| v.偷（尤指小的或不贵重的物品）( filch的现在分词 ) | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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ominously
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| adv.恶兆地，不吉利地；预示地 | |
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rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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vista
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| n.远景，深景，展望，回想 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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36
smiting
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的现在分词 ) | |
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37
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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38
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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39
rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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40
chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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41
withheld
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| withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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42
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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43
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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44
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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45
rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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46
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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47
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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48
beholder
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| n.观看者，旁观者 | |
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49
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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50
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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51
holders
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| 支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物 | |
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52
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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53
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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54
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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55
banter
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| n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑 | |
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56
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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57
blues
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| n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐 | |
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58
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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59
meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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60
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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61
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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62
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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63
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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64
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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