LII
HERE THEY COME!
Callender House kept no vigil. Lighted by the far devastation, its roof shone gray, its cornice white, its tree-tops green above the darkness of grove and garden. From its upper windows you might have seen the townward bends of the river gleam red, yellow, and bronze, or the luminous smoke of destruction (slantingly over its flood and farther shore) roll, thin out, and vanish in a moonless sky. But from those windows no one looked forth. After the long, strenuous, open-air day, sleep, even to Anna, had come swiftly.
Waking late and springing to her elbow she presently knew that every one else was up and about. Her maid came and she hastened to dress. Were the hostile ships in sight? Not yet. Was the city still undestroyed? Yes, though the cotton brought out to the harbor-side was now fifteen thousand bales and with its blazing made a show as if all the town were afire. She was furiously hungry; was not breakfast ready? Yes, Constance and Miranda--"done had breakfuss and gone oveh to de cottage fo' to fix it up fo' de surgeon ... No, 'm, not dis house; he done change' his mine." Carriage horses--mules? "Yass, 'm, done gone. Mahs' Chahlie gone wid 'm. He gone to be boss o' de big gun what show' f'om dese windehs." Oh, but that was an awful risk, wounded as he was! "Yass, 'm, but he make his promise to Miss Flo'a he won't tech de gun hisseff." What! Miss Flora--? "Oh, she be'n, but she gone ag'in. Law'! she a brave un! It e'en a'most make me brave, dess to see de high sperits she in!" The narrator departed.
How incredible was the hour. Looking out on the soft gray sky and river and down into the camp, that still kept such quiet show of routine, or passing down the broad hall stair, through the library and into the flowery breakfast room, how keenly real everything that met the eye, how unreal whatever was beyond sight. How vividly actual this lovely home in the sweet ease and kind grace of its lines and adornments. How hard to move with reference to things unseen, when heart and mind and all power of realizing unseen things were far away in the ravaged fields, mangled roads and haunted woods and ravines between Corinth and Shiloh.
But out in the garden, so fair and odorous as one glided through it to the Mandeville cottage, things boldly in view made sight itself hard to believe. Was that bespattered gray horseman no phantom, who came galloping up the river road and called to a servant at the gate that the enemy's fleet was in sight from English Turn? Was that truly New Orleans, back yonder, wrapped in smoke, like fallen Carthage or Jerusalem? Or here! this black-and-crimson thing drifting round the bend in mid-current and without a sign of life aboard or about it, was this not a toy or sham, but one more veritable ship in veritable flames? And beyond and following it, helpless as a drift-log, was that lifeless white-and-crimson thing a burning passenger steamer--and that behind it another? Here in the cottage, plainly these were Constance and Miranda, and, on second view, verily here were a surgeon and his attendants. But were these startling preparations neither child's play nor dream?
Child's play persistently seemed, at any rate, the small bit of yellow stuff produced as a hospital flag. Oh, surely! would not a much larger be far safer? It would. Well, at the house there was some yellow curtaining packed in one of the boxes, Isaac could tell which--
"I think I know right where it is!" said Anna, and hurried away to find and send it. The others, widow and wife, would stay where they were and Anna would take command at the big house, where the domestics would soon need to be emboldened, cheered, calmed, controlled. Time flies when opening boxes that have been stoutly nailed and hooped over the nails. When the goods proved not to be in the one where Anna "knew" they were she remembered better, of course, and in the second they were found. Just as the stuff had been drawn forth and was being hurried away by the hand of Dilsie, a sergeant and private from the camp, one with a field glass, the other with a signal flag, came asking leave to use them from the belvedere on the roof. Anna led them up to it.
How suddenly authentic became everything, up here. Flat as a map lay river, city, and plain. Almost under them and amusingly clear in detail, they looked down into Camp Callender and the Chalmette fortifications. When they wigwagged, "Nothing in sight," to what seemed a very real toy soldier with a very real toy flag, on a green toy mound in the midst of the work (the magazine), he wigwagged in reply, and across the river a mere speck of real humanity did the same from a barely definable parapet.
With her maid beside her Anna lingered a bit. She loved to be as near any of the dear South's defenders as modesty would allow, but these two had once been in Kincaid's Battery, her Hilary's own boys. As lookouts they were not yet skilled. In this familiar scene she knew things by the eye alone, which the sergeant, unused even to his glass, could hardly be sure of through it.
Her maid looked up and around. "Gwine to rain ag'in," she murmured, and the mistress assented with her gaze in the southeast. In this humid air and level country a waterside row of live-oaks hardly four miles off seemed at the world's edge and hid all the river beyond it.
"There's where the tips of masts always show first," she ventured to the sergeant. "We can't expect any but the one kind now, can we?"
"'Fraid not, moving up-stream."
"Then yonder they come. See? two or three tiny, needle-like--h-m-m!--just over that farth'--?"
He lowered the glass and saw better without it.
The maid burst out: "Oh, Lawd, I does! Oh, good Gawd A'mighty!" She sprang to descend, but with a show of wonder Anna spoke and she halted.
"If you want to leave me," continued the mistress, "you need only ask."
"Law, Miss Nannie! Me leave you? I--"
"If you do--now--to-day--for one minute, I'll never take you back. I'll have Hettie or Dilsie."
"Missie,"--tears shone--"d' ain't nothin' in Gawd's worl' kin eveh make me a runaway niggeh f'om you! But ef you tell me now fo' to go fetch ev'y dahky we owns up to you--"
"Yes! on the upper front veranda! Go, do it!"
"Yass, 'm! 'caze ef us kin keep 'em anywahs it'll be in de bes' place fo' to see de mos' sights!" She vanished and Anna turned to the soldiers. Their flagging had paused while they watched the far-away top-gallants grow in height and numbers. Down in the works the long-roll was sounding and from every direction men were answering it at a run. Across the river came bugle notes. Sighingly the sergeant lowered his glass:
"Lordy, it's the whole kit and b'ilin'! Wag, John. When they swing up round this end of the trees I'll count 'em. Here they come! One, ... two, ... why, what small--oh, see this big fellow! Look at the width of those yards! And look at all their hulls, painted the color of the river! And see that pink flutter--look!" he said to Anna, "do you get it? high up among the black ropes? that pink--"
"Yes," said Anna solemnly, "I see it--"
"That's the old--"
"Yes. Must we fire on that? and fire first?"
"We'd better!" laughed the soldier, "if we fire at all. Those chaps have got their answer ready and there won't be much to say after it." The three hurried down, the men to camp, Anna to the upper front veranda. There, save two or three with Constance and Miranda, came all the servants, shepherded by Isaac and Ben with vigilant eyes and smothered vows to "kill de fuss he aw she niggeh dat try to skedaddle"; came and stood to gaze with her over and between the grove trees. Down in the fortification every man seemed to have sprung to his post. On its outer crest, with his adjutant, stood the gilded commander peering through his glass.
"Missie," sighed Anna's maid, "see Mahs' Chahlie dah? stan'in' on de woodworks o' dat big gun?"
"Yes," said Anna carelessly, but mutely praying that some one would make him get down. Her brain teemed with speculations: Where, how occupied and in what state of things, what frame of mind, was Victorine, were Flora and Madame? Here at Steve's cottage with what details were 'Randa and Connie busy? But except when she smiled round on the slaves, her gaze, like theirs, abode on the river and the shore defenses, from whose high staffs floated brightly the Confederate flag. How many a time in this last fearful year had her own Hilary, her somewhere still living, laughing, loving Hilary, stood like yon commander, about to deal havoc from, and to draw it upon, Kincaid's Battery. Who would say that even now he might not be so standing, with her in every throb of his invincible heart?
Something out in the view disturbed the servants.
"Oh, Lawd 'a' massy!" moaned a woman.
"Trus' Him, Aun' Jinnie!" prompted Anna's maid. "Y' always is trus' Him!"
"Whoeveh don't trus' Him, I'll bus' him!" confidentially growled Isaac to those around him.
"We all of us must and will!" said Anna elatedly, though with shameful inward sinkings and with no sustaining word from any of the flock, while out under the far gray sky, emerging from a slight angle of the shore well down the water's long reach the battle line began to issue, each ship in its turn debouching into full relief from main-truck to water-line.
LIII
SHIPS, SHELLS, AND LETTERS
But, ah! how swiftly, threateningly they grew: the smaller, two-masted fore-and-afts, each seemingly unarmed but for one monster gun pivoted amidships, and the towering, wide-armed three-masters, the low and the tall consorting like dog and hunter. Now, as they came on, a nice eye could make out, down on their hulls, light patches of new repair where our sunken fleet had so lately shot and rammed them, and, hanging over the middle of each ship's side in a broad, dark square to protect her vitals, a mass of anchor chains. Their boarding-netting, too, one saw, drawn high round all their sides, and now more guns--and more!--and more! the huger frowning over the bulwarks, the lesser in unbroken rows, scowling each from its own port-hole, while every masthead revealed itself a little fort bristling with arms and men. Yes, and there, high in the clouds of rigging, no longer a vague pink flutter now, but brightly red-white-and-blue and smilingly angry--what a strange home-coming for it! ah, what a strange home-coming after a scant year-and-a-half of banishment!--the flag of the Union, rippling from every peak.
"Ain' dey neveh gwine shoot?" asked a negro lad.
"Not till they're out of line with us," said Anna so confidently as to draw a skeptical grunt from his mother, and for better heart let a tune float silently in and out on her breath:
"I loves to be a beau to de
ladies.
I loves to shake a toe wid de
ladies--"
She felt her maid's touch. Charlie was aiming his great gun, and on either side of her Isaac and Ben were repeating their injunctions. She spoke out:
"If they all shoot true we're safe enough now."
"An' ef de ships don't," put in Isaac, "dey'll mighty soon--"
The prophecy was lost. All the shore guns blazed and crashed. The white smoke belched and spread. Broken window-panes jingled. Wails and moans from the slave women were silenced by imperious outcries from Isaac and Ben. There followed a mid-air scream and roar as of fifty railway trains passing each other on fifty bridges, and the next instant a storm of the enemy's shells burst over and in the batteries. But the house stood fast and half a dozen misquotations of David and Paul were spouted from the braver ones of Anna's flock. In a moment a veil of smoke hid ships and shore, yet fearfully true persisted the enemy's aim. To home-guards, rightly hopeless of their case and never before in action, every hostile shot was like a volcano's eruption, and their own fire rapidly fell off. But on the veranda, amid a weeping, prattling, squealing and gesturing of women and children, Anna could not distinguish the bursting of the foe's shells from the answering thunder of Confederate guns, and when in a bare ten minutes unarmed soldiers began to come out of the smoke and to hurry through the grove, while riders of harnessed horses and mules--harnessed to nothing--lashed up the levee road at full run, and Isaac and Ben proudly cried that one was Mahs' Chahlie and that the animals were theirs of Callender House, she still asked over the balustrade how the fight had gone.
For reply despairing hands pointed her back toward the river, and there, as she and her groaning servants gazed, the great black masts and yards, with headway resumed and every ensign floating, loomed silently forth and began to pass the veranda. Down in the intervening garden, brightly self-contained among the pale stragglers there, appeared the one-armed reporter, with a younger brother in the weather-worn gray and red of Kincaid's Battery. They waved a pocket-soiled letter and asked how to get in and up to her; but before she could do more than toss them a key there came, not from the ships but from close overhead under a blackening sky, one last, hideous roar and ear-splitting howl. The beautiful treasure-laden home heaved, quivered, lurched and settled again, the women shrieked and crouched or fell prone with covered heads, and a huge shell, sent by some pain-crazed fugitive from a gun across the river, and which had entered at the roof, exploded in the basement with a harrowing peal and filled every corner of the dwelling with blinding smoke and stifling dust.
Constance and Miranda met Anna groping and staggering out of the chaos. Unharmed, herself, and no one badly hurt? Ah, hear the sudden wail of that battery boy as he finds his one-armed brother! Anna kneels with him over the writhing form while women fly for the surgeon, and men, at her cry, hasten to improvise a litter. No idle song haunts her now, yet a clamoring whisper times itself with every pulsation of her bosom: "The letter? the letter?"
Pity kept it from her lips, even from her weeping eyes; yet somehow the fallen boy heard, but when he tried to answer she hushed him. "Oh, never mind that," she said, wiping away the sweat of his agony, "it isn't important at all."
"Dropped it," he gasped, and had dropped it where the shell had buried it forever.
Each for the other's sake the lads rejected the hospital, with its risk of capture. The younger had the stricken one hurried off toward the railway and a refugee mother in the hills, Constance tenderly protesting until the surgeon murmured the truth:
"It'll be all one to him by to-morrow."
As the rearmost ship was passing the house Anna, her comeliness restored, half rose from her bed, where Miranda stood trying to keep her. From all the far side of the house remotely sounded the smart tramp and shuffle of servants clearing away wreckage, and the din of their makeshift repairs. She was "all right again," she said as she sat, but the abstraction of her eyes and the harkening droop of her head showed that inwardly she still saw and heard the death-struck boy.
Suddenly she stood. "Dear, brave Connie!" she exclaimed, "we must go help her, 'Randa." And as they went she added, pausing at the head of a stair, "Ah, dear! if we, poor sinners all, could in our dull minds only multiply the awful numbers of war's victims by the woes that gather round any one of them, don't you think, 'Randa--?"
Yes, Miranda agreed, certainly if man--yes, and woman--had that gift wars would soon be no more.
On a high roof above their apartment stood our Valcour ladies. About them babbling feminine groups looked down upon the harbor landings black with male vagabonds and witlings smashing the precious food freight (so sacred yesterday), while women and girls scooped the spoils from mire and gutter into buckets, aprons or baskets, and ran home with it through Jackson Square and scurried back again with grain-sacks and pillow-slips, and while the cotton burned on and the ships, so broadly dark aloft, so pale in their war paint below and so alive with silent, motionless men, came through the smoking havoc.
"No uze to hope," cooed the grandmother to Flora, whose gaze clung to the tree-veiled top of Callender House. "It riffuse' to burn. 'Tis not a so inflammab' like that rope and tar." The rope and tar meant their own burnt ship.
"Ah, well," was the light reply, "all shall be for the bes'! Those who watch the game close and play it with courage--"
"And cheat with prudenze--?"
"Yes! to them God is good. How well you know that! And Anna, too, she's learning it--or she shall--dear Anna! Same time me, I am well content."
"Oh, you are joyful! But not because God is good, neither juz' biccause those Yankee' they arrive. Ah, that muz' bring some splandid news, that lett'r of Irbee, what you riscieve to-day and think I don't know it. 'T is maybe ab-out Kincaid's Batt'rie, eh?" At Flora's touch the speaker flinched back from the roof's edge, the maiden aiding the recoil.
"Don't stand so near, like that," she said. "It temp' me to shove you over."
They looked once more to the fleet. Slowly it came on. Near its line's center the flag-ship hovered just opposite Canal Street. The rear was far down by the Mint. Up in the van the leading vessel was halting abreast St. Mary's Market, a few hundred yards behind which, under black clouds and on an east wind, the lone-star flag of seceded Louisiana floated in helpless defiance from the city hall. All at once heaven's own thunders pealed. From a warning sprinkle the women near about fled down a roofed hatchway. One led Madame. But on such a scene Flora craved a better curtain-fall and she lingered alone.
It came. As if all its millions of big drops raced for one prize the deluge fell on city, harbor, and fleet and on the woe-smitten land from horizon to horizon, while in the same moment the line of battle dropped anchor in mid-stream. With a swirling mist wetting her fair head she waved in dainty welcome Irby's letter and then pressed it to her lips; not for his sake--hah!--but for his rueful word, that once more his loathed cousin, Anna's Hilary! was riding at the head of Kincaid's Battery.
LIV
SAME APRIL DAY TWICE
On Saturday the two sides parleyed while Lovell withdrew his forces. On Sunday the Foreign Legion preserved order of a sort highly displeasing to "a plain sailor," as Farragut, on the Hartford, called himself, and to all the plain sailors of his fleet--who by that time may have been hard to please. On Monday the "plain sailor" bade the mayor, who had once been a plain stevedore, remove the city's women and children within forty-eight hours. But on Tuesday, in wiser mood, he sent his own blue-jackets, cutlasses, muskets and hand-dragged howitzers, lowered the red-and-yellow-striped flag of one star and on mint and custom-house ran up the stars and stripes. Constance and Miranda, from their distant roof, saw the emblem soar to the breeze, and persuaded Anna to an act which cost her as many hours as it need have taken minutes--the destruction of the diary. That was on the twenty-ninth of April.
Let us not get dates confused. "On the twenty-ninth of April," says Grant, "the troops were at Hard Times (Arkansas), and the fleet (another fleet), under Admiral Porter, made an attack upon Grand Gulf (Mississippi), while I reconnoitered." But that twenty-ninth was a year later, when New Orleans for three hundred and sixty-five separate soul-torturing days had been sitting in the twilight of her captivity, often writhing and raving in it, starved to madness for news of Lee's and Stonewall's victories and of her boys, her ragged, gaunt, superb, bleeding, dying, on-pressing boys, and getting only such dubious crumbs of rumor as could be smuggled in, or such tainted bad news as her captors delighted to offer her through the bars of a confiscated press. No? did the treatment she was getting merely--as Irby, with much truth, on that twenty-ninth remarked in a group about a headquarters camp-fire near Grand Gulf--did it merely seem so bad to poor New Orleans?
Oh, but!--as the dingy, lean-faced Hilary cried, springing from the ground where he lay and jerking his pipe from his teeth--was it not enough for a world's pity that to her it seemed so? How it seemed to the Callenders in particular was a point no one dared raise where he was. To them had come conditions so peculiarly distressing and isolating that they were not sharers of the common lot around them, but of one strangely, incalculably worse. Rarely and only in guarded tones were they spoken of now in Kincaid's Battery, lately arrived here, covered with the glory of their part in Bragg's autumn and winter campaign through Tennessee and Kentucky, and with Perryville, Murfreesboro' and Stone River added to the long list on their standard. Lately arrived, yes; but bringing with them as well as meeting here a word apparently so authentic and certainly so crushing, (as to those sweet Callenders), that no one ever let himself hint toward it in the hearing even of Charlie Valcour, much less of their battle-scarred, prison-wasted, march-worn, grief-torn, yet still bright-eyed, brave-stepping, brave-riding Major. Major of Kincaid's Battalion he was now, whose whole twelve brass pieces had that morning helped the big iron batteries fight Porter's gunboats.
"Finding Grand Gulf too strong," says Grant, "I moved the army below, running the batteries there as we had done at Vicksburg. Learning here that there was a good road from Bruinsburg up to Port Gibson" (both in Mississippi), "I determined to cross--"
How pleasantly familiar were those names in New Orleans. Alike commercially and socially they meant parterres, walks, bowers in her great back-garden. From the homes of the rich planters around the towns and landings so entitled, and from others all up and down the river from Natchez to Vicksburg and the Bends, hailed many a Carondelet Street nabob and came yearly those towering steamboat-loads--those floating cliffs--of cotton-bales that filled presses, ships and bank-boxes and bought her imports--plows, shoes, bagging, spices, silks and wines: came also their dashing sons and daughters, to share and heighten the splendors of her carnivals and lure away her beaux and belles to summer outings and their logical results. In all the region there was hardly a family with which some half-dozen of the battery were not acquainted, or even related.
"Home again, home again from a foreign shore,"
sang the whole eighty-odd, every ladies' man of them, around out-of-tune pianos with girls whose brothers were all away in Georgia and Virginia, some forever at rest, some about to fight Chancellorsville. Such a chorus was singing that night within ear-shot of the headquarters group when Ned Ferry, once of the battery, but transferred to Harper's cavalry, rode up and was led by Hilary to the commanding general to say that Grant had crossed the river. Piano and song hushed as the bugles rang, and by daybreak all camps had vanished and the gray columns were hurrying, horse, foot, and wheels, down every southerly road to crush the invader.
At the head of one rode General Brodnax. Hearing Hilary among his staff he sent for him and began to speak of Mandeville, long gone to Richmond on some official matter and daily expected back; and then he mentioned "this fellow Grant," saying he had known him in Mexico. "And now," he concluded, "he's the toughest old he one they've got."
On the face of either kinsman there came a fine smile that really made them look alike. "We'll try our jaw-teeth on him to-morrow," laughed the nephew.
"Hilary, you weren't one of those singers last evening, were you?"
"Why, no, uncle, for once you'll be pleased--"
"Not by a dam-site!" The smile was gone. "You know, my boy, that in such a time as this if a leader--and above all such a capering, high-kicking colt as you--begins to mope and droop like a cab-horse in the rain, his men will soon not be worth a--what?... Oh, blast the others, when you do so you're moping, and whether your men can stand it or not, I can't!--what?... Well, then, for God's sake don't! For there's another point, Hilary: as long as you were every night a 'ladies' man' and every day a laugher at death you could take those boys through hell-fire at any call; but if they once get the notion--which you came mighty near giving them yesterday--that you hold their lives cheap merely because you're tired of your own, they'll soon make you wish you'd never set eyes on a certain friend of ours, worse than you or they or I have ever wished it yet."
"I've never wished it yet, uncle. I can't. I've never believed one breath of all we've heard. It's not true. It can't be, simply because it can't be."
"Then why do you behave as if it were?" "I won't, uncle. Honor bright! You watch me." And next day, in front of Port Gibson, through all the patter, smoke, and crash, through all the charging, cheering and volleying, while the ever-thinning, shortening gray lines were being crowded back from rise to rise--back, back through field, grove, hedge, worm-fence and farmyard, clear back to Grindstone Ford, Bayou Pierre, and with the cavalry, Harper's, cut off and driven up eastward through the town--the enraged old brigadier watched and saw. He saw far, saw close, with blasphemous exultation, how Hilary and his guns, called here, sent there, flashed, thundered, galloped, blazed, howled and held on with furious valor and bleeding tenacity yet always with a quick-sightedness which just avoided folly and ruin, and at length stood rock fast, honor bright, at North Fork and held it till, except the cavalry, the last gray column was over and the bridges safely burning.
That night Ned Ferry--of the cavalry withdrawn to the eastward uplands to protect that great source of supplies and its New Orleans and Jackson Railroad--was made a lieutenant, and a certain brave Charlotte, whom later he loved and won, bringing New Orleans letters to camp, brought also such news of the foe that before dawn, led by her, Ferry's Scouts rode their first ride. All day they rode, while the main armies lay with North Fork between them, the grays entrenching, the blues rebridging. When at sundown she and Ned Ferry parted, and at night he bivouacked his men for a brief rest in a black solitude from which the camp-fires of both hosts were in full sight and the enemy's bridge-building easily heard, he sought, uncompanioned, Kincaid's Battery and found Hilary Kincaid. War is what Sherman called it, who two or three days later, at Grand Gulf (evacuated), crossed into this very strife. Yet peace (so-called) and riches rarely bind men in such loving pairs as do cruel toil, deadly perils, common griefs, exile from woman and daily experience of one another's sweetness, valor, and strength, and it was for such things that this pair, loving so many besides, particularly loved each other.
With glad eyes Kincaid rose from a log.
"Major," began the handsome scout, dapper from képi to spurs in contrast to the worn visage and dress of his senior, but Hilary was already speaking.
"My gentle Ned!" he cried. "Lieutenant--Ferry!"
Amid kind greetings from Captain Bartleson and others the eyes of the two--Hilary's so mettlesome, Ferry's so placid--exchanged meanings, and the pair went and sat alone on the trail of a gun; on Roaring Betsy's knee, as it were. There Hilary heard of the strange fair guide and of news told by her which brought him to his feet with a cry of joy that drew the glad eyes of half the battery.
"The little mother saint of your flag, boys!" he explained to a knot of them later, "the little godmother of your guns!" The Callenders were out of New Orleans, banished as "registered enemies."
LV
IN DARKEST DIXIE AND OUT
When the Ship Island transports bore their blue thousands up the river, and the streets roared a new drum-thunder, before the dark columns had settled down in the cotton-yards, public squares, Carrollton suburb and Jackson Barracks, Callender House--you may guess by whose indirection--had come to the notice of a once criminal lawyer, now the plumed and emblazoned general-in-chief, to whom, said his victims (possibly biased), no offense or offender was too small for his hectoring or chastisement.
The women in that house, that nest of sedition, he had been told, at second-hand, had in the very dawn of secession completely armed the famous "Kincaid's Battery" which had early made it hot for him about Yorktown. Later in that house they had raised a large war-fund--still somewhere hidden. The day the fleet came up they had sent their carriage-horses to Beauregard, helped signal the Chalmette fortifications, locked ten slaves in the dwelling under shell fire and threatened death to any who should stir to escape. So for these twelve months, with only Isaac, Ben, and their wives as protectors and the splendid freedom to lock themselves in, they had suffered the duress of a guard camped in the grove, their every townward step openly watched and their front door draped with the stars and stripes, under which no feminine acquaintance could be enticed except the dear, faithful Valcours.
But where were old friends and battery sisters? All estranged. Could not the Callenders go to them and explain? Explain! A certain man of not one-fifth their public significance or "secesh" record, being lightly asked on the street if he had not yet "taken the oath" and as lightly explaining that he "wasn't going to," had, fame said, for that alone, been sent to Ship Island--where Anna "already belonged," as the commanding general told the three gentle refusers of the oath, while in black letters on the whited wall above his judgment seat in the custom-house they read, "No distinction made here between he and she adders."
But could not the Valcours, those strangely immune, yet unquestioned true-lovers of poor Dixie, whose marvelous tact won priceless favors for so many distressed Dixie-ites, have explained for the Callenders? Flora had explained!--to both sides, in opposite ways, eagerly, tenderly, over and over, with moist eyes, yet ever with a cunning lameness that kept convincement misled and without foothold. Had the Callenders dwelt up-town the truth might have won out; but where they were, as they were, they might as well have been in unspeakable Boston. And so by her own sweet excusings she kept alive against them beliefs or phantoms of beliefs, which would not have lived a day in saner times.
Calumny had taken two forms: the monstrous black smoke of a vulgar version and the superior divinings of the socially elect; a fine, hidden flame fed from the smoke. According to the vulgate the three ladies, incensed at a perfectly lawful effort to use their horses for the Confederate evacuation and actually defying it with cocked revolver, had openly abjured Dixie, renounced all purpose to fly to it and, denying shelter to their own wounded, had with signal flags themselves guided the conquering fleet past the town's inmost defenses until compelled to desist by a Confederate shell in their roof. Unable to face an odium so well earned they had clung to their hiding, glad of the blue camp in their grove, living fatly on the bazaar's proceeds, and having high times with such noted staff-officers as Major Greenleaf, their kindness to whom in the days of his modest lieutenancy and first flight and of his later parole and exchange, was not so hard now to see through.
Greenleaf had come back with General Banks when Banks had succeeded Butler. Oppressed with military cares, he had barely time to be, without scrutiny, a full believer in the Valcours' loyalty to the Union. Had they not avowed it to him when to breathe it was peril, on that early day when Irby's command became Kincaid's Battery, and in his days of Parish Prison and bazaar? How well those words fitly spoken had turned out! "Like apples of gold," sang Flora to the timorous grandmother, "in wrappers of greenbacks."
All the more a believer was he because while other faithfuls were making their loyalty earn big money off the government this genteel pair reminding him, that they might yet have to risk themselves inside the gray lines again to extricate Charlie, had kept their loyalty as gracefully hidden as of old except from a general or two. Preoccupied Greenleaf, amiable generals, not to see that a loyalist in New Orleans stood socially at absolute zero, whereas to stand at the social ebullition point was more to the Valcours than fifty Unions, a hundred Dixies and heaven beside. It was that fact, more than any other, save one, which lent intrepidity to Flora's perpetual, ever quickening dance on the tight-rope of intrigue; a performance in which her bonny face had begun to betray her discovery that she could neither slow down nor dance backward. However, every face had come to betray some cruel strain; Constance's, Anna's, even Victorine's almond eyes and Miranda's baby wrinkles. Yes, the Valcours, too, had, nevertheless, their monetary gains, but these were quiet and exclusively from their ever dear, however guilty, "rebel" friends, who could not help making presents to Madame when brave Flora, spurning all rewards but their love, got for them, by some spell they could not work, Federal indulgences; got them through those one or two generals, who--odd coincidence!--always knew the "rebel" city's latest "rebel" news and often made stern use of it.
Full believer likewise, and true sorrower, was Greenleaf, in Hilary's death, having its seeming proof from Constance and Miranda as well as from Flora. For in all that twelvemonth the Callenders had got no glad tidings, even from Mandeville. Battle, march and devastation, march, battle and devastation had made letters as scarce as good dreams, in brightest Dixie. But darkest Dixie was New Orleans. There no three "damned secesh" might stop on a corner in broadest sunlight and pass the time of day. There the "rebel" printing-presses stood cold in dust and rust. There churches were shut and bayonet-guarded because their ministers would not read the prayers ordered by the "oppressor," and there, for being on the street after nine at night, ladies of society, diners-out, had been taken to the lock-up and the police-court. In New Orleans all news but bad news was contraband to any "he or she adder," but four-fold contraband to the Callenders, the fairest member of whose trio, every time a blue-and-gold cavalier forced her conversation, stung him to silence with some word as mild as a Cordelia's. And yet,(you demur,) in the course of a whole year, by some kind luck, surely the blessed truth--Ah, the damsel on the tight-rope took care against that! It was part of her dance to drop from that perch as daintily as a bee-martin way-laying a hive, devour each home-coming word as he devours bees, and flit back and twitter and flutter as a part of all nature's harmony, though in chills of dismay at her peril and yet burning to go to Hilary, from whom this task alone forever held her away.
So throughout that year Anna had been to Greenleaf the veiled widow of his lost friend, not often or long, and never blithely met; loved more ardently than ever, more reverently; his devotion holding itself in a fancied concealment transparent to all; he defending and befriending her, yet only as he could without her knowledge, and incurring-a certain stigma from his associates and superiors, if not an actual distrust. A whole history of itself would be the daily, nightly, monthly war of passions between him, her, Flora, and those around them, but time flies.
One day Greenleaf, returning from a week-long circuit of outposts, found awaiting him a letter bearing Northern imprints of mailing and forwarding, from Hilary Kincaid, written long before in prison and telling another whole history, of a kind so common in war that we have already gone by it; a story of being left for dead in the long stupor of a brain hurt; of a hairbreadth escape from living burial; of weeks in hospital unidentified, all sense of identity lost; and of a daring feat of surgery, with swift mental, not so swift bodily, recovery. Inside the letter was one to Anna. But Anna was gone. Two days earlier, without warning, the Callenders--as much to Flora's affright as to their relief, and "as much for Fred's good as for anything," said his obdurate general when Flora in feigned pity pleaded for their stay--had been deported into the Confederacy.
"Let me carry it to her," cried Flora to Greenleaf, rapturously clasping the letter and smiling heroically. "We can overtague them, me and my gran'mama! And then, thanks be to God! my brother we can bring him back! Maybe also--ah! maybee! I can obtain yo' generals some uzeful news!"
After some delay the pair were allowed to go. At the nearest gray outpost, in a sudden shower of the first true news for a week--the Mississippi crossed, Grant victorious at Port Gibson and joined by Sherman at Grand Gulf--Flora learned, to her further joy, that the Callenders, misled by report that Brodnax's brigade was at Mobile, had gone eastward, as straight away from Brodnax and the battery as Gulf-shore roads could take them, across a hundred-mile stretch of townless pine-barrens with neither railway nor telegraph.
Northward, therefore, with Madame on her arm, sprang Flora, staggeringly, by the decrepit Jackson Railroad, along the quiet eastern bound of a region out of which, at every halt, came gloomy mention of Tallahala River and the Big Black; of Big Sandy, Five Mile and Fourteen Mile creeks; of Logan, Sherman and Grant; of Bowen, Gregg, Brodnax and Harper, and of daily battle rolling northward barely three hours' canter away. So they reached Jackson, capital of the state and base of General Joe Johnston's army. They found it in high ferment and full of stragglers from a battle lost that day at Raymond scarcely twenty miles down the Port Gibson road, and on the day following chanced upon Mandeville returning at last from Richmond. With him they turned west, again by rail, and about sundown, at Big Black Bridge, ten miles east of Vicksburg, found themselves clasping hands in open air with General Brodnax, Irby and Kincaid, close before the torn brigade and the wasted, cheering battery. Angels dropped down they seemed, tenderly begging off from all talk of the Callenders, who, Flora distressfully said, had been "grozzly exaggerated," while, nevertheless, she declared herself, with starting tears, utterly unable to explain why on earth they had gone to Mobile--"unlezz the bazaar." No doubt, however, they would soon telegraph by way of Jackson. But next day, while she, as mistress of a field hospital, was winning adoration on every side, Jackson, only thirty miles off but with every wire cut, fell, clad in the flames of its military factories, mills, foundries and supplies and of its eastern, Pearl River, bridge.
LVI
BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES
On the evening when the camps of Johnston and Grant with burning Jackson between them put out half the stars a covered carriage, under the unsolicited escort of three or four gray-jacketed cavalrymen and driven by an infantry lad seeking his command after an illness at home, crossed Pearl River in a scow at Ratcliff's ferry just above the day's battlefield.
"When things are this bad," said the boy to the person seated beside him and to two others at their back, his allusion being to their self-appointed guard, "any man you find straggling to the front is the kind a lady can trust."
This equipage had come a three hours' drive, from the pretty town of Brandon, nearest point to which a railway train from the East would venture, and a glimpse into the vehicle would have shown you, behind Constance and beside Miranda, Anna, pale, ill, yet meeting every inquiry with a smiling request to push on. They were attempting a circuit of both armies to reach a third, Pemberton's, on the Big Black and in and around Vicksburg.
Thus incited they drove on in the starlight over the gentle hills of Madison county and did not accept repose until they had put Grant ten miles behind and crossed to the south side of the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad at Clinton village with only twenty miles more between them and Big Black Bridge. The springs of Anna's illness were more in spirit than body. Else she need not have lain sleepless that night at Clinton's many cross-roads, still confronting a dilemma she had encountered in Mobile.
In Mobile the exiles had learned the true whereabouts of the brigade, and of a battery then called Bartleson's as often as Kincaid's by a public which had half forgotten the seemingly well-established fact of Hilary's death. Therein was no new shock. The new shock had come when, as the three waited for telegrams, they stood before a vast ironclad still on the ways but offering splendid protection from Farragut's wooden terrors if only it could be completed, yet on which work had ceased for lack of funds though a greater part of the needed amount, already put up, lay idle solely because it could not be dragged up to a total that would justify its outlay.
"How much does it fall short?" asked Anna with a heart at full stop, and the pounding shock came when the shortage proved less than the missing proceeds of the bazaar. For there heaved up the problem, whether to pass on in the blind hope of finding her heart's own, or to turn instead and seek the two detectives and the salvation of a city. This was the dilemma which in the last few days had torn half the life out of her and, more gravely than she knew, was threatening the remnant.
Constance and Miranda yearned, yet did not dare, to urge the latter choice. They talked it over covertly on the back seat of the carriage, Anna sitting bravely in front with the young "web-foot," as their wheels next day plodded dustily westward out of Clinton. Hilary would never be found, of course; and if found how would he explain why he, coming through whatever vicissitudes, he the ever ready, resourceful and daring, he the men's and ladies' man in one, whom to look upon drew into his service whoever looked, had for twelve months failed to get so much as one spoken or written word to Anna Callender; to their heart-broken Nan, the daily sight of whose sufferings had sharpened their wits and strung their hearts to blame whoever, on any theory, could be blamed. Undoubtedly he might have some dazzling explanation ready, but that explanation they two must first get of him before she should know that her dead was risen.
Our travellers were minus their outriders now. At dawn the squad, leaving tender apologies in the night's stopping-place, had left the ladies also, not foreseeing that demoralized servants would keep them there with torturing delays long into the forenoon. When at length the three followed they found highways in ruin, hoof-deep in dust and no longer safe from blue scouts, while their infantry boy proved as innocent of road wisdom as they, and on lonely by-ways led them astray for hours. We may picture their bodily and mental distress to hear, at a plantation house whose hospitality they craved when the day was near its end, that they were still but nine miles from Clinton with eleven yet between them and Big Black Bridge.
Yet they could have wept for thanks as readily as for chagrin or fatigue, so kindly were they taken in, so stirring was the next word of news.
"Why, you po' city child'en!" laughed two sweet unprotected women. "Let these girls bresh you off. You sho'ly got the hafe o' Hinds County on you ... Pemberton's men? Law, no; they wuz on Big Black but they right out here, now, on Champion's Hill, in sight f'om our gin-house ... Brodnax' bri'--now, how funny! We jess heard o' them about a' hour ago, f'om a bran' new critter company name' Ferry's Scouts. Why, Ferry's f'om yo' city! Wish you could 'a' seen him--oh, all of 'em, they was that slick! But, oh, slick aw shabby, when our men ah fine they ah fine, now, ain't they! There was a man ridin' with him--dressed diff'ent--he wuz the batteredest-lookin', gayest, grandest--he might 'a' been a gen'al! when in fact he was only a majo', an' it was him we heard say that Brodnax was some'uz on the south side o' the railroad and couldn't come up befo' night ... What, us? no, we on the nawth side. You didn't notice when you recrossed the track back yondeh? Well, you must 'a' been ti-ud!"
Anna dropped a fervid word to Miranda that set their hostesses agape. "Now, good Lawd, child, ain't you in hahdship and dangeh enough? Not one o' you ain't goin' one step fu'ther this day. Do you want to git shot? Grant's men are a-marchin' into Bolton's Depot right now. Why, honey, you might as well go huntin' a needle in a haystack as to go lookin' fo' Brodnax's brigade to-night. Gen'al Pemberton himself--why, he'd jest send you to his rear, and that's Vicksburg, where they a-bein' shelled by the boats day and night, and the women and child'en a-livin' in caves. You don't want to go there?"
"We don't know," drolly replied Anna.
"Well, you stay hyuh. That's what that majo' told us. Says 'e, 'Ladies, we got to fight a battle here to-morrow, but yo'-all's quickest way out of it'll be to stay right hyuh. There'll be no place like home to-morrow, not even this place,' says 'e, with a sort o' twinkle that made us laugh without seein' anything to laugh at!"