looked as though he would falter, but he hardened his brow: "Some days
ago you were told not to expect marching orders for a week. Well the
week's up and we're told to wait another. Now that makes me every bit as
mad as it makes you! I feel as restless as any man in this battery, and
I told the commanding general to-day that you're the worst discontented
lot I've yet seen, and that I was proud of you for it. That's all I said
to him. But! if there's a man here who doesn't yet know the difference
between a soldierly discontent and unsoldierly _grumbling_ I want him to
GO! Kincaid's Battery is not for him. Let him transfer to infantry or
cavalry. Oh, I know it's only that you want to be in the very first
fight, and that's all right! But what we can't get we don't _grumble
for_ in Kincaid's Battery!"
He paused. With his inspired eyes on the splendid array, visions of its
awful destiny only exalted him. Yet signs which he dared not heed lest
he be confounded told him that every eye so fixed on his was aware of
some droll distraction. He must speak on.
"My boys! as sure as this war begins it's going to last. There'll be
lots of killing and dying, and I warn you now, your share'll be a double
one. So, then, no indecent haste. Artillery can't fight every day.
Cavalry can--in its small way, but you may have to wait months and
months to get into a regular hell on earth. All the same you'll get
there!--soon enough--times enough. Don't you know why, when we have to
be recruited--to fill up the shot holes--they'll go by the cavalry to
the infantry, and pick the best men there, and _promote_ them to your
ranks? It's because of how you've got to fight when your turn comes;
like devils, to hold up, for all you may know, the butt end of the whole
day's bloody business. That's why--and because of how you may have to
wait, _un-com-plain-ing_, in rotting idleness for the next tea party."
Again he ceased. What _was_ the matter? There sat his matchless hundred,
still and straight as stone Egyptians, welcoming his every word; yet
some influence not his was having effect and, strangest of all, was
enhancing his.
"One more word," he said. "You're sick of the drill-ground. Well, the
man that's spoiling for a fight and yet has no belly for drill--he--oh,
he belongs to the cavalry by birth! We _love_ these guns. We're mighty
dogg--we're extremely proud of them. Through thick and thin, through
fire and carnage and agony, remembering where we got them, we propose to
_keep_ them; and some proud day, when the trouble's all over, say two
years hence, and those of us who are spared come home, we propose to
come with these same guns unstained by the touch of a foe's hand, a
virgin battery still. Well, only two things can win that: infernal
fighting and perpetual toil. So, as you love honor and your country's
cause, wait. Wait in self-respectful patience. Wait and work, and you
shall be at the front--the foremost front!--the very first day and hour
my best licks can get you there. That's all."
Bartleson advanced from the line: "By section!" he called, "right
wheel--"
"Section," repeated each chief of section, "right wheel--"
"March!" commanded Bartleson.
"March," echoed the chiefs, and the battery broke into column. "Forward!
Guide right!" chanted Bartleson, and all moved off save Kincaid.
He turned his horse, and lo! on the grassy crest of the earthwork,
pictured out against the eastern pink and blue, their summer gauzes
filled with the light of the declining sun, were half a dozen smiling
ladies attended by two or three officers of cavalry, and among them
Flora, Constance, and Miranda.
Anna? Only when he had dismounted did his eager eye find her, where she
had climbed and seated herself on a siege gun and was letting a cavalier
show her how hard it would be for a hostile ship, even a swift steamer,
to pass, up-stream, this crater of destruction, and _ergo_ how
impossible for a fleet--every ship a terror to its fellows the moment it
was hurt--to run the gauntlet of Forts Jackson and St. Philip on a far
worse stretch of raging current some eighty miles farther down the
river.
Not for disbelief of the demonstration, but because of a general laugh
around a tilt of words between Kincaid and the cavalry fellows, Anna
lighted down and faced about, to find him, for the third time in five
days, at close range. With much form he drew nearer, a bright assurance
in his eyes, a sort of boyish yes, for a moment, but the next moment
gone as it met in hers a womanly no.
"You little artist," thought Flora.
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," said Anna more gravely, "I can't criticise it. I
can't even praise it--oh! but that's only be--because I haven't--the
courage!"
The lover's reply was low and full of meaning: "Would you praise it if
you had the courage?"
She could have answered trivially, but something within bade her not.
"Yes," she murmured, "I would." It was an awful venture, made
unpreparedly, and her eyes, trying to withstand his, dropped. Yet they
rallied splendidly--"They've got to!" said something within her--and, "I
could," she blushingly qualified, "but--I could criticise it too!"
His heart warmed at her defiant smile. "I'd rather have that honor than
a bag of gold!" he said, and saw his slip too late. Gold! Into Anna's
remembrance flashed the infatuation of the poor little schoolmistress,
loomed Flora's loss and distress and rolled a smoke of less definite
things for which this man was going unpunished while she, herself, stood
in deadly peril of losing her heart to him.
"Oh, Captain Kincaid!" Like artillery wheeling into action came her
inconsequent criticism, her eyes braving him at last, as bright as his
guns, though flashing only tears. "It was right enough for you to extol
those young soldiers' willingness to serve their country _when called_.
But, oh, how _could_ you commend their _chafing_ for battle and
slaughter?"
"Ah, Miss Anna, you--"
"Oh, when you know that the sooner they go the sooner comes the
heartache and heartbreak for the hundreds of women they so
light-heartedly leave behind them! I looked from Charlie to Flora--"
"You should have looked to Victorine. She wants the boy to go and her
dad to go with him."
"Poor thoughtless child!"
"Why, Miss Anna, if I were a woman, and any man--with war coming
on--could _endure_ to hang back at home for love of me, I should feel--"
"Captain Kincaid! What we womenkind may feel is not to the point. It's
how the men themselves feel toward the women who love them."
"They ought," replied the soldier, and his low voice thrilled like a
sounding-board, "to love the women--out of every fibre of their being."
"Ah!" murmured the critic, as who should say, "checkmate!"
"And yet--" persisted this self-sung "ladies' man"--
"Yet what?" she softly challenged. (Would he stand by his speech, or his
song?)
"Why, honestly, Miss Anna, I think a man can love a woman--even his
heart's perfect choice--too much. I know he can!"
The small lady gave the blunderer a grave, brief, now-you-_have_-done-it
glance and looked down. "Well, I know," she measuredly said, "that a man
who can _tell_ a woman that, isn't capable of loving her half enough."
She turned to go back, with a quickness which, I avow, was beautifully
and tenderly different from irritation, yet which caused her petticoat's
frail embroidery to catch on one of his spurs and cling till the whole
laughing bevy had gathered round to jest over Flora's disentanglement of
it.
* * * * *
"But really, Nan, you know," said Constance that evening in their home,
"you used to believe that yourself! The day Steve left you said almost
exact--"
"Con--? Ah, Con! I think the _sister_ who could remind a _sister_ of
that--!" The sufferer went slowly up to her room, where half an hour
later she was found by Miranda drying her bathed eyes at a mirror and
instantly pretending that her care was for any other part of her face
instead.
"Singular," she remarked, "what a dust that battery can raise!"
XXV
"HE MUST WAIT," SAYS ANNA
About the middle of the first week in April--when the men left in the
stores of Common, Gravier, Poydras, or Tchoupitoulas street could do
nothing but buy the same goods back and forth in speculation; loathed by
all who did not do it, or whittle their chairs on the shedded sidewalks
and swap and swallow flaming rumors and imprecate the universal inaction
and mis-management--there embarked for Pensacola--
"What? Kincaid's Bat--?"
"No-o, the Zouaves! Infantry! when the one only sane thing to do," cried
every cannoneer of Camp Callender--in its white lanes or on three-hours'
leave at home on Bayou Road or Coliseum Square or Elysian Fields or
Prytania street--"the one sane thing to do," insisted the growingly
profane lads to their elders, and assented the secretly pained elders to
them, "the one thing that, if only for shame's sake, ought to have been
done long ago, was to _knock_ Fort Pickens to HELL with SHELL!" Sadly
often they added the tritest three-monosyllabled expletive known to
red-hot English.
Charlie--mm-mm! how he could rip it out! Sam Gibbs, our veritable Sam,
sergeant of the boy's gun, "Roaring Betsy," privately remarked to the
Captain what a blank-blank shame it was, not for its trivial self, of
course, but in view of the corruptions to which it opened the way. And
the blithe commander, in the seclusion of his tent, standing over the
lad and holding him tenderly by both pretty ears, preached to him of his
sister and grandmother until with mute rage the youngster burned as red
as his jacket facings; and then of the Callenders--"who gave us our
guns, and one of whom is the godmother of our flag, Charlie"--until the
tears filled Charlie's eyes, and he said:
"I'll try, Captain, but it's--oh, it's no use! If anything could make me
swear _worse_"--he smiled despairingly--"it would be the hope of being
hauled up again for another talk like this!"
One Sunday, three days after the going of the Zouaves, while out in
Jackson Square "Roaring Betsy" sang a solo of harrowing thunder-claps,
the Callenders and Valcours, under the cathedral's roof, saw consecrated
in its sacred nave the splendid standard of the Chasseurs-à-Pied.
Armed guards, keeping the rabble out, passed the ladies in before the
procession had appeared in the old Rue Condé. But now here it came, its
music swelling, the crowd--shabbier than last month and more vacant of
face--parting before it. Carrying their sabres, but on foot and without
their pieces, heading the column as escort of honor, lo, Kincaid's
Battery; rearmost the Chasseurs, masses and masses of them; and in
between, a silver crucifix lifted high above a body of acolytes in white
lace over purple, ranks of black-gowned priests, a succession of
cloth-of-gold ecclesiastics, and in their midst the mitred archbishop.
But the battery! What a change since last February! Every man as spruce
as ever, but with an added air of tested capability that inspired all
beholders. Only their German musicians still seemed fresh from the mint,
and oh! in what unlucky taste, considering the ecclesiastics, the song
they brayed forth in jaunty staccato.
"They're offering us that hand of theirs again," murmured Anna to
Constance, standing in a side pew; but suddenly the strain ceased, she
heard Hilary's voice of command turning the column, and presently,
through a lane made by his men, the Chasseurs marched in to the nave,
packed densely and halted. Then in close order the battery itself
followed and stood. Now the loud commands were in here. Strange it was
to hear them ring through the holy place (French to the Chasseurs,
English to the battery), and the crashing musket-butts smite the paved
floor as one weapon, to the flash of a hundred sabres.
So said to itself the diary on the afternoon of the next day, and there
hurriedly left off. Not because of a dull rumble reaching the writer's
ear from the Lake, where Kincaid and his lieutenants were testing
new-siege-guns, for that was what she was at this desk and window to
hear; but because of the L.S.C.A., about to meet in the drawing-room
below and be met by a friend of the family, a famed pulpit orator and
greater potentate, in many eyes, than even the Catholic archbishop.
He came, and later, in the battery camp with the Callenders, Valcours,
and Victorine, the soldiers clamoring for a speech, ran them wild
reminding them with what unique honor and peculiar responsibility they
were the champions of their six splendid guns. In a jostling crowd, yet
with a fine decorum, they brought out their standard and--not to be
outdone by any Chasseurs under the sky--obliged Anna to stand beside its
sergeant, Maxime, and with him hold it while the man of God invoked
Heaven to bless it and bless all who should follow it afield or pray for
it at home. So dazed was she that only at the "amen" did she perceive
how perfectly the tables had been turned on her. For only then did she
discover that Hilary Kincaid had joined the throng exactly in time to
see the whole tableau.
Every officer of the camp called that evening, to say graceful things,
Kincaid last. As he was leaving he wanted to come to the same old point,
but she would not let him. Oh! how could she, a scant six hours after
such a _bid_ from herself? He ought to have seen she couldn't--and
wouldn't! But he never saw anything--of that sort. Ladies' man indeed!
He couldn't read a girl's mind even when she wanted it read. He went
away looking so haggard--and yet so tender--and still so determined--she
could not sleep for hours. Nevertheless--
"I can't help his looks, Con, he's got to wait! I owe that to all
womanhood! He's got to practise to me what he preaches to his men. Why,
Connie, if _I'm_ willing to wait, why shouldn't he be? Why--?"
Constance fled.
Next day, dining with Doctor Sevier, said the Doctor, "That chap's
working himself to death, Anna," and gave his fair guest such a stern
white look that she had to answer flippantly.
She and Hilary were paired at table and talked of Flora, he telling how
good a friend to her Flora was. The topic was easier, between them, than
at any other time since the loss of the gold. Always before, she had
felt him thinking of that loss and trying to guess something about her;
but now she did not, for on Sunday, in the cathedral, Flora had told her
at last, ever so gratefully and circumstantially, that she had repaid
the Captain everything! yes, the same day on which she had first told
Anna of the loss; and there was nothing now left to do but for her to
reimburse Anna the moment she could.
Hilary spoke of Adolphe's devotion to Flora--hoped he would win. Told
with great amusement how really well his cousin had done with her
government claim--sold it to his Uncle Brodnax! And Flora--how
picturesque everything she did!--had put--? yes, they both knew the
secret--had put the proceeds into one of those beautiful towboats that
were being fitted up as privateers! Hilary laughed with delight. Yes, it
was for that sort of thing the boys were so fond of her. But when Anna
avowed a frank envy he laughed with a peculiar tenderness that thrilled
both him and her, and murmured:
"The dove might as well envy the mocking-bird."
"If I were a dove I certainly should," she said.
"Well, you are, and you shouldn't!" said he.
All of which Flora caught; if not the words, so truly the spirit that
the words were no matter.
"Just as we were starting home," soliloquized, that night, our diary,
"the newsboys came crying all around, that General Beauregard had opened
fire on Fort Sumter, and the war has begun. Poor Constance! it's little
she'll sleep to-night."
XXVI
SWIFT GOING, DOWN STREAM
Strangely slow travelled news in '61. After thirty hours' bombardment
Fort Sumter had fallen before any person in New Orleans was sure the
attack had been made. When five days later a yet more stupendous though
quieter thing occurred, the tidings reached Kincaid's Battery only on
the afternoon of the next one in fair time to be read at the close of
dress parade. But then what shoutings! The wondering Callenders were
just starting for a drive up-town. At the grove gate their horses were
frightened out of all propriety by an opening peal, down in the camp,
from "Roaring Betsy." And listen!
The black driver drew in. From Jackson Square came distant thunders and
across the great bend of the river they could see the white puff of each
discharge. What _could_ it mean?
"Oh, Nan, the Abolitionists must have sued for peace!" exclaimed the
sister.
"No-no!" cried Miranda. "Hark!"
Behind them the battery band had begun--
"O, carry me back to old Vir--"
"Virginia!" sang the three. "Virginia is out! Oh, Virginia is out!" They
clapped their mitted hands and squeezed each other's and laughed with
tears and told the coachman and said it over and over.
In Canal Street lo! it was true. Across the Neutral Ground they saw a
strange sight; General Brodnax bareheaded! bareheaded yet in splendid
uniform, riding quietly through the crowd in a brilliantly mounted group
that included Irby and Kincaid, while everybody told everybody, with
admiring laughter, how the old Virginian, dining at the St. Charles
Hotel, had sallied into the street cheering, whooping, and weeping,
thrown his beautiful cap into the air, jumped on it as it fell, and
kicked it before him up to one corner and down again to the other. Now
he and his cavalcade came round the Clay statue and passed the carriage
saluting. What glory was in their eyes! How could our trio help but wave
or the crowd hold back its cheers!
Up at Odd Fellows' Hall a large company was organizing a great military
fair. There the Callenders were awaited by Flora and Madame, thither
they came, and there reappeared the General and his train. There, too,
things had been so admirably cut and dried that in a few minutes the
workers were sorted and busy all over the hall like classes in a
Sunday-school.
The Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine were a committee by themselves
and could meet at Callender House. So when Kincaid and Irby introduced a
naval lieutenant whose amazingly swift despatch-boat was bound on a
short errand a bend or so below English Turn, it was agreed with him in
a twinkling--a few twinklings, mainly Miranda's--to dismiss horses, take
the trip, and on the return be set ashore at Camp Callender by early
moonlight.
They went aboard at the head of Canal Street. The river was at a fair
stage, yet how few craft were at either long landing, "upper" or
"lower," where so lately there had been scant room for their crowding
prows. How few drays and floats came and went on the white, shell-paved
levees! How little freight was to be seen except what lay vainly begging
for export--sugar, molasses, rice; not even much cotton; it had gone to
the yards and presses. That natty regiment, the Orleans Guards, was
drilling (in French, superbly) on the smooth, empty ground where both to
Anna's and to Flora's silent notice all the up-river foodstuffs--corn,
bacon, pork, meal, flour--were so staringly absent, while down in yonder
streets their lack was beginning to be felt by a hundred and twenty-five
thousand consumers.
Backing out into mid-stream brought them near an anchored steamer lately
razeed and now being fitted for a cloud of canvas on three lofty masts
instead of the two small sticks she had been content with while she
brought plantains, guava jelly, coffee, and cigars from Havana. The
_Sumter_ she was to be, and was designed to deliver some of the many
agile counter-thrusts we should have to make against that "blockade" for
which the Yankee frigates were already hovering off Ship Island. So said
the Lieutenant, but Constance explained to him (Captain Mandeville
having explained to her) what a farce that blockade was going to be.
How good were these long breaths of air off the sea marshes, enlivened
by the speed of the craft! But how unpopulous the harbor! What a crowd
of steamboats were laid up along the "Algiers" shore, and of Morgan's
Texas steamers, that huddled, with boilers cold, under Slaughter-House
Point, while all the dry-docks stood empty. How bare the ship wharves;
hardly a score of vessels along the miles of city front. About as many
more, the lieutenant said, were at the river's mouth waiting to put to
sea, but the towboats were all up here being turned into gunboats or
awaiting letters of marque and reprisal in order to nab those very ships
the moment they should reach good salt water. Constance and Miranda
tingled to tell him of their brave Flora's investment, but dared not, it
was such a secret!
On a quarter of the deck where they stood alone, what a striking pair
were Flora and Irby as side by side they faced the ruffling air, softly
discussing matters alien to the gliding scene and giving it only a
dissimulative show of attention. Now with her parasol he pointed to the
sunlight in the tree tops of a river grove where it gilded the windows
of the Ursulines' Convent.
"Hum!" playfully murmured Kincaid to Anna, "he motions as naturally as
if that was what they were talking about."
"It's a lovely picture," argued Anna.
"Miss Anna, when a fellow's trying to read the book of his fate he
doesn't care for the pictures."
"How do you know that's what he's doing?"
"He's always doing it!" laughed Hilary.
The word was truer than he meant. The Irby-value of things was all that
ever seriously engaged the ever serious cousin. Just now his eyes had
left the shore, where Flora's lingered, and he was speaking of Kincaid.
"I see," he said, "what you think: that although no one of these
things--uncle Brodnax's nonsense, Greenleaf's claims, Hilary's own
preaching against--against, eh--"
"Making brides to-day and widows to-morrow?"
"Yes, that while none of these is large enough in his view to stop him
by itself, yet combined they--"
"All working together they do it," said the girl. Really she had no such
belief, but Irby's poor wits were so nearly useless to her that she
found amusement in misleading them.