XXIV

A PARKED BATTERY CAN RAISE A DUST

Down in the camp the battery was forming into park; a pretty movement.
The ladies watched it, the cavalrymen explaining. Now it was done. The
command broke ranks, and now its lieutenants joined the fair company and
drank its eulogies--grimly, as one takes a dram.

Back among the tents and mess fires--

"Fellows!" said the boys, in knots, "yonder's how he puts in his 'best
licks' for us!" But their wanton gaze was also fond as it followed the
procession of parasols and sword-belts, muslins and gold lace that
sauntered down along the levee's crest in couples, Hilary and Anna
leading.

Flora, as they went, felt a most unusual helplessness to avert a course
of things running counter to her designs. It is true that, having
pledged herself to the old General to seek a certain issue and to Irby
to prevent it, she might, whichever way the matter drifted, gather some
advantage if she could contrive to claim credit for the trend; an _if_
which she felt amply able to take care of. To keep two men fooled was no
great feat, nor even to beguile her grandmother, whose gadfly insistence
centred ever on the Brodnax fortune as their only true objective; but so
to control things as not to fool herself at last--that was the pinch.
It pinched more than it would could she have heard how poorly at this
moment the lover and lass were getting on--as such. Her subtle
interferences--a mere word yesterday, another the day before--were
having more success than she imagined, not realizing how much they were
aided by that frantic untamableness to love's yoke, which, in Hilary
only less than in Anna, qualified every word and motion.

Early in the talk of these two Hilary had mentioned his speech just
made, presently asking with bright abruptness how Anna liked it and,
while Anna was getting her smile ready for a safe reply, had added that
he never could have made it at all had he dreamed she was looking on.
"Now if she asks why," he thought to himself in alarm, "I've got to
blurt it out!"

But she failed to ask; only confessed herself unfit to judge anybody's
English.

"English! oh, pass the English!" he said, he "knew how bad that was."
What he wanted her criticism on was--"its matter--its spirit--whichever
it was, matter or spirit!" How comical that sounded! They took pains
that their laugh should be noticed behind them. Flora observed both the
laugh and the painstaking.

"Matter or spirit