them at all, with big blocks of granite two feet by one. They came from
the North as ballast in those innumerable wide-armed ships whose cloud
of masts and cordage inspiringly darkened the sky of that far-winding
river-front where we lately saw Hilary Kincaid and Fred Greenleaf ride.
Beginning at the great steamboat landing, half a mile of Canal Street
had such a pavement on either side of its broad grassy "neutral ground."
So had the main streets that led from it at right angles. Long
afterward, even as late as when the Nineteenth Century died, some of
those streets were at the funeral, clad in those same old pavements,
worn as smooth and ragged as a gentleman-beggar's coat. St. Charles
Street was one. Another was the old Rue Royale, its squat ground-floor
domiciles drooping their mossy eaves half across the pinched sidewalks
and confusedly trying to alternate and align themselves with tall brick
houses and shops whose ample two-and three-story balconies were upheld,
balustraded, and overhung by slender garlandries of iron openwork as
graceful and feminine as a lace mantilla. With here and there the flag
of a foreign consul hanging out and down, such is the attire the old
street was vain of in that golden time when a large square sign on every
telegraph pole bade you get your shirts at S.N. Moody's, corner of Canal
and Royal Streets.
At this corner, on the day after the serenade, there was a dense,
waiting crowd. On the other corner of Royal, where the show-windows of
Hyde & Goodrich blazed with diamonds, and their loftily nested gold
pelican forever fed her young from her bleeding breast, stood an equal
throng. Across Canal Street, where St. Charles opens narrowly southward,
were similar masses, and midway between the four corners the rising
circles of stone steps about the high bronze figure of Henry Clay were
hidden by men and boys packed as close as they could sit or stand. A
great procession had gone up-town and would by and by return. Near and
far banners and pennons rose and fell on the luxurious air, and the
ranks and ranks of broad and narrow balconies were so many gardens of
dames and girls, parasols, and diaphanous gowns. Near the front of the
lowest Hyde & Goodrich balcony, close by the gilded pelican, sat the
Callenders, all gladness, holding mute dialogues with Flora and Madame
Valcour here on the balcony of Moody's corner. It was the birthday of
Washington.
Not of him, however, did Flora and her grandmother softly converse in
Spanish amid the surrounding babel of English and French. Their theme
was our battery drill of some ten days before, a subject urged upon
Flora by the mosquito-like probings of Madame's musically whined
queries. Better to be bled of almost any information by the antique
little dame than to have her light on it some other way, as she had an
amazing knack of doing. Her _acted_ part of things Flora kept untold;
but grandma's spirit of divination could unfailingly supply that, and
her pencilled brows, stiff as they were, could tell the narrator she had
done so.
Thus now, Flora gave no hint of the beautiful skill and quick success
with which, on her homeward railway trip with Greenleaf that evening,
she had bettered his impressions of her. By no more than a gentle play
of light and shade in her smile and an undulating melody of
voice--without a word that touched the wound itself, but with a timid
glow of compassionate admiration--she had soothed the torture of a heart
whose last hope Anna had that same hour put to death.
"But before he took the train with you," murmured the mosquito to the
butterfly, "when he said the General was going to take Irby upon his
staff and give the battery to Kincaid, what did you talk of?"
"Talk of? Charlie. He said I ought to make Charlie join the battery."
"Ah? For what? To secure Kincaid's protection of your dear little
brother's health--character--morals--eh?"
"Yes, 'twas so he put it," replied Flora, while the old lady's eyebrows
visibly cried:
"You sly bird! will you impute _all_ your own words to that Yankee, and
his to yourself?"
Which is just what Flora continued to do as the grandma tinkled: "And
you said--what?"
"I said if I couldn't keep him at home I ought to get him into the
cavalry. You know, dear, in the infantry the marches are so cruel, the
camps so--"
"But in the artillery," piped the small dame, "they ride, eh?" (It was a
trap she was setting, but in vain was the net spread.)
"No," said the serene girl, "they, too, go afoot. Often they must help
the horses drag the guns through the mire. Only on parade they ride, or
when rushing to and fro in battle, whips cracking, horses plunging, the
hills smoking and shaking!" The rare creature sparkled frankly, seeing
the battery whirling into action with its standard on the wind--this
very flag she expected presently to bestow.
"And with Kincaid at the head!" softly cried the antique.
The girl put on a fondness which suddenly became a withering droop of
the eyes: "Don't mince your smile so, grannie dear, I can hear the paint
crack."
The wee relic flashed, yet instantly was bland again: "You were about to
say, however, that in the artillery--?"
"The risks are the deadliest of all."
"Ah, yes!" sang the mosquito, "and for a sister to push her boy brother
into a battery under such a commander would be too much like murder!"
The maiden felt the same start as when Greenleaf had ventured almost
those words. "Yes," she beamingly rejoined, "that's what I told the
Lieutenant."
"With a blush?"
"No," carelessly said the slender beauty, and exchanged happy signals
with the Callenders.
"You tricksy wretch!" muttered the grandmother to herself. For though
Charlie was in the battery by his own choice, Hilary would have kept him
out had not the sister begged to have him let in.
Suddenly there was a glad stoppage of all by-play in the swarming
streets. Down St. Charles from LaFayette Square came the shock of
saluting artillery, and up Royal from Jackson Square rolled back
antiphonal thunders.
"Grandma!" softly cried Flora, as if sharing the general elation, but
had begun again to tell of Greenleaf, when from far over in Camp Street
her subtle ear caught a faint stray sigh of saxhorns.
"Well? well? about the Yankee--?" urged Madame.
"Oh, a trifle! He was to go that night, and thinking he might some day
return in very different fashion and we be glad to make use of him, I--"
The speaker's lithe form straightened and her gaze went off to the left.
"Here they come!" she said, and out where Camp Street emerges, a glint
of steel, a gleam of brass, a swarming of the people that way, and again
a shimmer of brass and steel, affirmed her word that the long, plumed,
bristling column had got back to the arms of its darling Canal Street.
"Yes," cried many, "they're turning this way!"
"Well?--Well?" insisted the old lady amid the rising din. "And so
you--you?"
"Be more careful," murmured the girl. "I told him that our
convictions--about this war--yours and mine--not Charlie's--_are the
same as his_."
A charming sight she was, even in that moment of public enthusiasm and
spectacle, holding the wondering stare of her companion with a gayety
that seemed ready to break into laughter. The dainty Madame went limp,
and in words as slow and soft as her smile, sighed, "You are a genius!"
"No, only the last thing you would suspect--a good housekeeper. I have
put him up in sugar."
The distant martial strains became more coherent. In remote balconies
handkerchiefs fluttered wildly, and under nearer and nearer ones the
people began to pack closer and choose their footing along the curb.
Presently from the approaching column came who but Hilary Kincaid,
galloping easily over the slippery pavements. Anna saw his eyes sweep
the bank of human flowers (with its occasional male caterpillar) on
Moody's balcony and light upon Flora. He lifted his képi and halted. One
could read his soft questions.
"All right? All ready? Where are the others?--Ah!" He sent an eager
salutation to the Callenders, and two joyfully bowed, but Anna gave no
sign. With great dignity her gaze was bent beyond him on the nearing
host, and when Constance plucked her arm she tardily looked three wrong
ways.
The rider could not wait. The police were pressing back the jubilant
masses, swarms of ladies on the rear forms were standing up, and Flora,
still seated, had leaned down beamingly and was using every resource of
voice and fan to send him some word through the tumult of plaudits and
drums. He spurred close. In a favoring hush--drum-corps inviting the
band--she bent low and with an arch air of bafflement tried once more,
but an outburst of brazen harmonies tore her speech to threads.
Suddenly--
"Ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming--"
pealed the cornets, pumped the trombones, whipping it out, cracking it
off, with a rigor of rhythm to shame all peace-time languishments--
"Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer.
Thou art the star--"
What could the balconies do but wave more joyously than ever? The
streets hurrahed! The head of the procession was here! The lone horseman
reined back, wheeled, cast another vain glance toward Anna, and with an
alarming rataplan of slipping and recovering hoofs sped down the column.
But what new rapture was this? Some glorious luck had altered the route,
and the whole business swung right into this old rue Royale! Now, now
the merry clamor and rush of the crowd righting itself! And behold! this
blazing staff and its commanding general--general of division! He
first, and then all they, bowed to Flora and her grandmother, bowed to
the Callenders, and were bowed to in return. A mounted escort followed.
And now--yea, verily! General Brodnax and his staff of brigade! Wave,
Valcours, wave Callenders! Irby's bow to Flora was majestic, and hers to
him as gracious as the smell of flowers in the air. And here was
Mandeville, most glittering in all the glitter. Flora beamed on him as
well, Anna bowed with a gay fondness, Miranda's dainty nose crimped
itself, and Constance, with a blitheness even more vivid, wished all
these balconies could know that Captain--he _was_ Lieutenant, but that
was away back last week--Captain Etienne Aristide Rofignac de Mandeville
was _hers_, whom, after their marriage, now _so_ near at hand, she was
going always to call Steve!
XII
MANDEVILLE BLEEDS
Two overflowing brigades! In the van came red-capped artillery. Not the
new battery, though happily known to Flora and the Callenders; the
Washington Artillery. Illustrious command! platoons and platoons of the
flower of the Crescent City's youth and worth! They, too, that day
received their battle-flag. They have the shot-torn rags of it yet.
Ah, the clanging horns again, and oh, the thundering drums! Another
uniform, on a mass of infantry, another band at its head braying another
lover's song reduced to a military tramp, swing, and clangor--
"I'd offer thee this hand of mine
If I could love thee less--"
Every soldier seemed to have become a swain. Hilary and Anna had lately
sung this wail together, but not to its end, she had called it "so
ungenuine." How rakishly now it came ripping out. "My fortune is too
hard for thee," it declared, "'twould chill thy dearest joy. I'd rather
weep to see thee free," and ended with "destroy"; but it had the swagger
of a bowling-alley.
All the old organizations, some dating back to '12-'15, had lately grown
to amazing numbers, while many new ones had been so perfectly uniformed,
armed, accoutred and drilled six nights a week that the ladies, in their
unmilitary innocence, could not tell the new from the old. Except in two
cases: Even Anna was aware that the "Continentals," in tasseled
top-boots, were of earlier times, although they had changed their buff
knee-breeches and three-cornered hats for a smart uniform of blue and
gray; while these red-and-blue-flannel Zouaves, drawing swarms of boys
as dray-loads of sugar-hogsheads drew flies, were as modern as 1861
itself. But oh, ah, one _knew_ so many young men! It was wave, bow,
smile and bow, smile and wave, till the whole frame was gloriously
weary.
Near Anna prattled a Creole girl of sixteen with whom she now and then
enjoyed a word or so: Victorine Lafontaine, daughter of our friend
Maxime.
"Louisiana Foot-Rifles--ah! but their true name," she protested, "are
the Chasseurs-à-Pied! 'Twas to them my papa billong' biffo' he join'
hisseff on the batt'rie of Captain Kincaid, and there he's now a
corporeal!"
What jaunty fellows they were! and as their faultless ranks came close,
their glad, buskined feet beating as perfect music for the roaring drums
as the drums beat for them, Anna, in fond ardor, bent low over the rail
and waved, exhorting Miranda and Constance to wave with her. So marched
the chasseurs by, but the wide applause persisted as yet other hosts,
with deafening music and perfect step and with bayonets back-slanted
like the porcupine's, came on and on, and passed and passed, ignoring in
grand self-restraint their very loves who leaned from the banquettes'
edges and from balustraded heights and laughed and boasted and
worshipped.
Finally artillery again! every man in it loved by some one--or dozen--in
these glad throngs. Clap! call! wave! Oh, gallant sight! These do not
enter Royal Street. They keep Canal, obliquing to that side of the way
farthest from the balconies--
"To make room," cries Victorine, "to form line pritty soon off horses,
in front those cannon'."
At the head rides Kincaid. Then, each in his place, lieutenants,
sergeants, drivers, the six-horse teams leaning on the firm traces, the
big wheels clucking, the long Napoleons shining like gold, and the
cannoneers--oh, God bless the lads!--planted on limbers and caissons,
with arms tight folded and backs as plumb as the meridian. Now three of
the pieces, half the battery, have gone by and--
"Well, well, if there isn't Sam Gibbs, sergeant of a gun! It is, I tell
you, it is! Sam Gibbs, made over new, as sure as a certain monosyllable!
and what could be surer, for Sam Gibbs?"
So laugh the sidewalks; but society, overhead, cares not for a made-over
Gibbs while round about him are sixty or seventy young heroes who need
no making over. Anna, Anna! what a brave and happy half-and-half of
Creoles and "Americans" do your moist eyes beam down upon: here a
Canonge and there an Ogden--a Zacherie--a Fontennette--Willie
Geddes--Tom Norton--a Fusilier! Nat Frellsen--a Tramontana--a
Grandissime!--and a Grandissime again! Percy Chilton--a Dudley--Arthur
Puig y Puig--a De Armas--MacKnight--Violett--Avendano--Rob Rareshide--
Guy Palfrey--a Morse, a Bien, a Fuentes--a Grandissme once more! Aleck
Moise--Ralph Fenner--Ned Ferry!--and lo! a Raoul Innerarity, image of
his grandfather's portrait--and a Jules St. Ange! a Converse--Jack
Eustis--two Frowenfelds! a Mossy! a Hennen--Bartie Sloo--McVey, McStea,
a De Lavillebuevre--a Thorndyke-Smith and a Grandissime again!
And ah! see yonder young cannoneer half-way between these two balconies
and the statue beyond; that foppish boy with his hair in a hundred curls
and his eyes wild with wayward ardor! "Ah, Charlie Valcour!" thinks
Anna; "oh, your poor sister!" while the eyes of Victorine take him in
secretly and her voice is still for a whole minute. Hark! From the head
of the column is wafted back a bugle-note, and everything stands.
Now the trim lads relax, the balcony dames in the rear rows sit down,
there are nods and becks and wafted whispers to a Calder and an Avery,
to tall Numa, Dolhonde and short Eugene Chopin, to George Wood and Dick
Penn and Fenner and Bouligny and Pilcher and L'Hommedieu; and Charlie
sends up bows and smiles, and wipes the beautiful brow he so openly and
wilfully loves best on earth. Anna smiles back, but Constance bids her
look at Maxime, Victorine's father, whom neither his long white
moustaches nor weight of years nor the lawless past revealed in his
daring eyes can rob of his youth. So Anna looks, and when she turns
again to Charlie she finds him sending a glance rife with conquest--not
his first--up to Victorine, who, without meeting it, replies--as she has
done to each one before it--with a dreamy smile into vacancy, and a
faint narrowing of her almond eyes.
Captain Kincaid comes ambling back, and right here in the throat of
Royal Street faces the command. The matter is explained to Madame
Valcour by a stranger:
"Now at the captain's word all the cannoneers will spring down, leaving
only guns, teams and drivers at their back, and line up facing us. The
captain will dismount and ascend to the balcony, and there he and the
young lady, whoever she is--" He waits, hoping Madame will say who the
young lady is, but Madame only smiles for him to proceed--"The captain
and she will confront each other, she will present the colors, he,
replying, will receive them, and--ah, after all!" The thing had been
done without their seeing it, and there stood the whole magnificent
double line. Captain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his
horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the vanished
procession--Mandeville. Slipping and clattering, he reined up and
saluted: "How soon can Kincaid's Battery be completely ready to go into
camp?"
"Now, if necessary."
"It will receive orders to move at seven to-morrow morning!" The
Creole's fervor amuses the rabble, and when Hilary smiles his
earnestness waxes to a frown. Kincaid replies lightly and the rider
bends the rein to wheel away, but the slippery stones have their victim
at last. The horse's feet spread and scrabble, his haunches go low.
Constance snatches both Anna's hands. Ah! by good luck the beast is up
again! Yet again the hoofs slip, the rider reels, and Charlie and a
comrade dart out to catch him, but he recovers. Then the horse makes
another plunge and goes clear down with a slam and a slide that hurl his
master to the very sidewalk and make a hundred pale women cry out.
Constance and her two companions bend wildly from the balustrade, a
sight for a painter. Across the way Flora, holding back her grandmother,
silently leans out, another picture. In the ranks near Charlie a
disarray continues even after Kincaid has got the battered Mandeville
again into the saddle, and while Mandeville is rejecting sympathy with a
begrimed yet haughty smile.
"Keep back, ladies!" pleads Madame's late informant, holding off two or
three bodily. "Ladies, sit down! Will you please to keep back!" Flora
still leans out. Some one is melodiously calling:
"Captain Kincaid!" It is Mrs. Callender. "Captain!" she repeats.
He smiles up and at last meets Anna's eyes. Flora sees their
glances--angels ascending and descending--and a wee loop of ribbon that
peeps from his tightly buttoned breast. Otherwise another sight,
elsewhere, could not have escaped her, though it still escapes many.
"Poor boy!" it causes two women behind her to exclaim, "poor boy!" but
Flora pays no heed, for Hilary is speaking to the Callenders.
"Nothing broken but his watch," he gayly comforts them as to Mandeville.
"He's bleeding!" moans Constance, very white. But Kincaid softly
explains in his hollowed hands:
"Only his nose!"
The nose's owner casts no upward look. Not his to accept pity, even from
a fiancée. His handkerchief dampened "to wibe the faze," two bits of wet
paper "to plug the noztril',"--he could allow no more!
"First blood of the war!" said Hilary.
"Yez! But"--the flashing warrior tapped his sword--"nod the last!" and
was off at a gallop, while Kincaid turned hurriedly to find that
Charlie, struck by the floundering horse, had twice fainted away.
In the balconies the press grew dangerous. An urchin intercepted Kincaid
to show him the Callenders, who, with distressed eyes, pointed him to
their carriage hurrying across Canal Street.
"For Charlie and Flora!" called Anna. They could not stir "themselves"
for the crush; but yonder, on Moody's side, the same kind citizen
noticed before had taken matters in hand:
"Keep back, ladies! Make room! Let these two ladies out!" He squeezed
through the pack, holding aloft the furled colors, which all this time
had been lying at Flora's feet. Her anxious eyes were on them at every
second step as she pressed after him with the grandmother dangling from
her elbow.
The open carriage spun round the battery's right and up its front to
where a knot of comrades hid the prostrate Charlie; the surgeon,
Kincaid, and Flora crouching at his side, the citizen from the balcony
still protecting grandmamma, and the gilded eagle of the unpresented
standard hovering over all. With tender ease Hilary lifted the sufferer
and laid him on the carriage's front seat, the surgeon passed Madame in
and sat next to her, but to Kincaid Flora exclaimed with a glow of
heroic distress:
"Let me go later--with Anna!" Her eyes overflowed--she bit her lip--"I
must present the flag!"
A note of applause started, a protest hushed it, and the overbending
Callenders and the distracted Victorine heard Hilary admiringly say:
"Come! Go! You belong with your brother!"
He pressed her in. For an instant she stood while the carriage turned, a
hand outstretched toward the standard, saying to Hilary something that
was drowned by huzzas; then despairingly she sank into her seat and was
gone down Royal Street.
"Attention!" called a lieutenant, and the ranks were in order. To the
holder of the flag Hilary pointed out Anna, lingered for a word with
his subaltern, and then followed the standard to the Callenders' balcony.
XIII
THINGS ANNA COULD NOT WRITE
"Charlie has two ribs broken, but is doing well," ran a page of the
diary; "so well that Flora and Madame--who bears fatigue
wonderfully--let Captain Irby take them, in the evening, to see the
illumination. For the thunderstorm, which sent us whirling home at
midday, was followed by a clear evening sky and an air just not too cool
to be fragrant.
"I cannot write. My thoughts jostle one another out of all shape, like
the women in that last crush after the flag-presentation. I begged not
to have to take Flora's place from her. It was like snatching jewels off
her. I felt like a robber! But in truth until I had the flag actually in
my hand I thought we were only being asked to take care of it for a
later day. The storm had begun to threaten. Some one was trying to say
to me--'off to camp and then to the front,' and--'must have the flag
now,' and still I said, 'No, oh, no!' But before I could get any one to
add a syllable there was the Captain himself with the three men of the
color guard behind him, the middle one Victorine's father. I don't know
how I began, but only that I went on and on in some wild way till I
heard the applause all about and beneath me, and he took the colors
from me, and the first gust of the storm puffed them half
open--gorgeously--and the battery hurrahed. And then came his part.
He--I cannot write it."
Why not, the diary never explained, but what occurred was this:
"Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" began Hilary and threw a
superb look all round, but the instant he brought it back to Anna, it
quailed, and he caught his breath. Then he nerved up again. To help his
courage and her own she forced herself to gaze straight into his eyes,
but reading the affright in hers he stood dumb and turned red.
He began again: "Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" and pulled
his moustache, and smote and rubbed his brow, and suddenly drove his
hand into an inside pocket and snatched out a slip of paper. But what
should come trailing out with it but a long loop of ribbon! As he pushed
it back he dropped the paper, which another whiff of wind flirted
straight over his head, sent it circling and soaring clear above Moody's
store and dropped it down upon the roof. And there gazed Anna and all
that multitude, utterly blank, until the martyr himself burst into a
laugh. Then a thousand laughs pealed as one, and he stood smiling and
stroking back his hair, till his men began to cry, "song! song!"
Upon that he raised the flag high in one hand, let it balloon to the
wind, made a sign of refusal, and all at once poured out a flood of
speech--pledges to Anna and her fellow-needlewomen--charges to his
men--hopes for the cherished cause--words so natural and unadorned, so
practical and soldier-like, and yet so swift, that not a breath was
drawn till he had ended. But then what a shout!