Kincaid's Battery Part 33

"Oh, Hilary, my soldier, my flag's, my country's defender, come back to me--here!--now!--my yet living hero, my Hilary Kincaid!"

Reluctantly, she let Constance draw her down, and presently, in a voice rich with loyal pride, as the carriage moved on, bade Charlie and Miranda observe that only things made contraband by the Richmond Congress were burning, while all the Coast Landing's wealth of Louisiana foodstuffs, in barrels and hogsheads, bags and tierces, lay unharmed. Yet not long could their course hold that way, and--it was Anna who first proposed retreat. The very havoc was fascinating and the courage of Constance and Miranda, though stripped of its mirth, remained undaunted; but the eye-torture of the cotton smoke was enough alone to drive them back to the inner streets.

Here the direction of their caravan, away from all avenues of escape, no less than their fair faces, drew the notice of every one, while to the four themselves every busy vehicle--where none was idle,--every sound remote or near, every dog in search of his master, and every man--how few the men had become!--every man, woman or child, alone or companioned, overladen or empty-handed, hurrying out of gates or into doors, standing to stare or pressing intently or distractedly on, calling, jesting, scolding or weeping--and how many wept!--bore a new, strange interest of fellowship. So Callender House came again to view, oh, how freshly, dearly, appealingly beautiful! As the Callender train drew into its gate and grove, the carriage was surrounded, before it could reach the veranda steps, by a full dozen of household slaves, male and female, grown, half-grown, clad and half-clad, some grinning, some t.i.ttering, all overjoyed, yet some in tears. There had been no such gathering at the departure. To spare the feelings of the mistresses the dominating "mammy" of the kitchen had forbidden it. But now that they were back, Glory! Hallelujah!

"And had it really," the three home-returning fair ones asked, "seemed so desolate and deadly perilous just for want of them? What!--had seemed so even to stalwart Tom?--and Scipio?--and Habakkuk? And were Hettie and Dilsie actually so in terror of the Yankees?"

"Oh, if we'd known that we'd never have started!" exclaimed Constance, with tears, which she stoutly quenched, while from all around came sighs and moans of love and grat.i.tude.

And were the three verily back to stay?

Ah! that was the question. While Charlie, well attended, went on up and in they paused on the wide stair and in mingled distress and drollery asked each other, "Are we back to stay, or not?"

A new stir among the domestics turned their eyes down into the garden. Beyond the lingering vehicles a lieutenant from Camp Callender rode up the drive. Two or three private soldiers hung back at the gate.

"It's horses and mules again, Nan," gravely remarked Constance, and the three, facing toward him, with Miranda foremost, held soft debate. Whether the decision they reached was to submit or resist, the wide ears of the servants could not be sure, but by the time the soldier was dismounting the ladies had summoned the nerve to jest.

"Be a man, Miranda!" murmured Constance.

"But not the kind I was!" prompted Anna.

"No," said her sister, "for this one coming is already scared to death."

"So's Miranda," breathed Anna as he came up the steps uncovering and plainly uncomfortable. A pang lanced through her as she caught herself senselessly recalling the flag presentation. And then--

"--oh! oh!"

"Mrs. Callender?" asked the stranger.

"Yes, sir," said that lady.

"My business"--he glanced back in nervous protest as the drivers beneath gathered their reins--"will you kindly detain--?"

"If you wish, sir," she replied, visibly trembling. "Isaac--"

From the rear of the group came the voice of Anna: "Miranda, dear, I wouldn't stop them." The men regathered the lines. She moved half a step down and stayed herself on her sister's shoulder. Miranda wrinkled back at her in an ecstasy of relief:

"Oh, Anna, do speak for all of us!"

The teams started away. A distress came into the soldier's face, but Anna met it with a sober smile: "Don't be troubled, sir, you shall have them. Drive round into the bas.e.m.e.nt, Ben, and unload." The drivers went. "You shall have them, sir, on your simple word of honor as--"

"Of course you will be reimbursed. I pledge--"

"No, sir," tearfully put in Constance, "we've given our men, we can't sell our beasts."

"They are not ours to sell," said Anna.

"Why, Nan!"

"They belong to Kincaid's Battery," said Anna, and Constance, Miranda, and the servants smiled a proud approval. Even the officer flushed with a fine ardor:

"You have with you a member of that command?"

"We have."

"Then, on my honor as a Southern soldier, if he will stay by them and us as far as Camp Moore, to Kincaid's Battery they shall go. But, ladies--"

"Yes," knowingly spoke Miranda. "Hettie, Scipio, Dilsie, you-all can go 'long back to your work now." She wrinkled confidentially to the officer.

"Yes," he replied, "we shall certainly engage the enemy's ships to-morrow, and you ladies must--"

"Must not desert our home, sir," said Anna.

"Nor our faithful servants," added the other two.

"Ah, ladies, but if we should have to make this house a field hospital, with all the dreadful--"

"Oh, that settles it," cried the three, "we stay!"

LII

HERE THEY COME!

What a night! Yet the great city slept. Like its soldiers at their bivouac fires it lay and slumbered beside its burning harbor. Sleep was duty.

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 sh.o.r.e) 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? "Ya.s.s, '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! "Ya.s.s, '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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.senger 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 gla.s.s, 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 gla.s.s, could hardly be sure of through it.

Her maid looked up and around. "Gwine to rain ag'in," she murmured, and the mistress a.s.sented 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."