George Washington Cable

“ All at once, in plain sight, right at hand, along a mask of young willows in the near left angle of the two roads, from a double line of gray infantry whose sudden apparition had startled Anna and Miranda, rang a long volley. From a fringe of woods on the far opposite border the foe's artillery pealed, and while the Callenders' mules went into agonies of fright the Federal shells began to stream and scream across the space and to burst before and over the gray line lying flat in the furrows and darting back fire and death. ”

“ Why, Anna, you're Anna Kincaid now. You're my wed'--"
Her start of distress stopped him short. "Don't call me that,--my--my own," she faltered.
"But if you are that--?"
"Oh, I am! thank God, I am! But don't name the name. It's too fearfully holy. We're married for an emergency, love, an awful crisis! which hasn't come to you yet, and may not come at all. When it does, so will I! in that name! and you shall call me by it!"
"Ah, if then you can come! But what do we know?"
"We know in whom we trust, Hilary; must, must, must trust, as we trust and must trust each other." ”

“ Both Constance and Victorine flashed to retort, but saw the smiling critic as pale as Anna and recalled the moment's truer business, the list still darting innumerably around them always out of reach. The carriage had to push into the very surge, and Victorine to stand up and call down to this man and that, a fourth and fifth, before one could be made to hear and asked to buy for the helpless ladies. Yet in this gentlewomen's war every gentlewoman's wish was a military command, and when at length one man did hear, to hear was to vanish in the turmoil on their errand. ”

“ To him it seemed impossible to speak to her--even to Fred Greenleaf had Fred been there!--without betraying another maiden, one who had sealed his lips forever by confessing a heart which had as much--had more right to love than he to live. True, Anna, above all, had right to live, to love, to know; but in simplest honor to commonest manhood, in simplest manhood's honor to all womankind, to Flora, to Anna herself, this knowledge should come from any other human tongue rather than from his. ”

“ Flora still fine in the role of Anna's devotee and Hilary's "pilot," rich in long-thought-out fabrications, but giving forth only what was wrung from her and parting with each word as if it cost her a pang. Starving and sickening, fighting and falling, the haggard boys watched; yet so faultless was the maiden's art that when in a fury of affright at the risks of time she one day forced their commander to see her heart's starvation for him the battery saw nothing, and even to him she yet appeared faultless in modesty and utterly, marvelously, splendidly ignorant of what she had done. ”

“ The ever genuine Constance felt a mortifying speciousness in her words and so piled them on. "We know the city is best--unless it should fall, and it won't--oh, it won't, God's not going to let so many prayers go unanswered, Flora! But we've tossed reason aside and are going by instinct, the way I always feel safest in, dear. Ah, poor Anna! Oh, Flora, she's so sweet about it!" ”

“ Out afield yet another manoeuvre was on, and while Anna and her suitor stood close below her helplessly becalmed each by each, Flora rose to her feet and caught a great breath of delight. Her gaze was on the glittering mass of men, horses, and brazen guns that came thundering across the plain in double column--Irby at its head, Kincaid alone on the flank--and sweeping right and left deployed into battery to the front with cannoneers springing to their posts for action. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rising sun made a golden path across the tranquil bay and lighted up the three forts and the starry battlecross softly stirring over each. Dauphin Island and Mobile Point were moss-green and pearly white. The long, low, velvety pulsations of the bay were blue, lilac, pink, green, bronze. But angry smoke poured from the funnels of the Tennessee and her three dwarf consorts, they four also showing the battle-flag, and some seven miles away, out in the Gulf, just beyond the gleaming eastern point of Sand Island, was one other sign of unrest.
"You see they're under way?" asked Anna. ”

“ Splendidly maidenly it should be, harrowingly arduous to the proud invader, and long drawn out. Constance should see what a man can be put through. But oh, but oh, if, after all, the invasion should not come!
In those days New Orleans paved her favorite streets, when she paved 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. ”

“ Out in that rear garden-path where Madame Valcour had once been taken to see the head-high wealth of roses two generals, who had been there through all the singing, still paced to and fro and talked, like old Brodnax at Carrollton in that brighter time, "not nearly as much alone as they seemed." One by one five men in gray, each, for all his crouching and gliding, as true and gallant a gentleman as either of those commanders, stole from the house's basement and slipped in and out among the roses. ”

“ Oh, mad joy in pitiful employment! Here while the millions of a continent waged heroic war for great wrongs and rights, here on the fighting-line of a beleaguered and starving city, here when at any instant the peal of his own guns might sound a fresh onset, behold him in a lover's part, loving "not honor more," setting the seal upon his painful alias, filching time out of the jaws of death to pursue one maiden while clung to by another. Oh, Anna! Anna Callender! ”

“ He charged her of never having forgiven Hilary for making Anna godmother of their flag, and of being in some dark league against him--"hell only knew what"--along with that snail of a cousin whom everybody but Kincaid himself and the silly old uncle knew to be the fallen man's most venomous foe. Throughout the storm the grandmother's fingers pattered soothing caresses, while Flora stood as unruffled by his true surmises as by any, a look of cold interest in her narrowed eyes, and her whole bodily and spiritual frame drinking relief from his transport. ”

“ On a certain midday of that awful half-week the Callenders, driving, took up Victorine at her gate and Flora at her door and sped up-town to the newspaper offices in Camp street to rein in against a countless surge of old men in fine dress, their precious dignity thrown to the dogs, each now but one of the common herd, and each against all, shouldering, sweating, and brandishing wide hands to be the first purchaser and reader of the list, the long, ever-lengthening list of the killed and wounded. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, by a glimpse as brief as the catch of her breath, yonder a mere rod or so within the farther foliage, down a vista hardly wider than a man's shoulders, an armed man's blue shoulders she had seen, under his black hat and peering countenance. Joy filled the depth of her heart in the belief that a thin line of such black hats had already put Anna behind them, yet she quaked in terror, terror of death, of instant, shot-torn death that might leave Hilary Kincaid alive. ”

“ At any rate so were flutteringly construed the crisp declarations of our pale friend of old, Doctor Sevier, as in Callender House he stood (with Anna seated half behind him as near as flounced crinoline would allow) beside a small table whose fragile beauty shared with hers the enthralled contemplation of every member of a numerous flock that nevertheless hung upon the Doctor's words; such a knack have women of giving their undivided attention to several things at once. Flora was getting her share. ”

“ Oh, God of mercy! where is Hilary Kincaid?" A storm of shell burst directly overhead. Men and beasts in the whirling battery, and men and beasts close about her wailed, groaned, fell. Anna was tossed into the wagon, the plunging guns, dragging their stricken horses, swept out across the field, the riot of teams, many with traces cut, whipped madly away, and still, thrown about furiously in the flying wagon, she gazed from her knees and mutely prayed, but saw no Hilary because while she looked for a rider his horse lay fallen. ”

“ Out on the road a liveried black coachman had halted an open carriage, in which this soldier had arrived with two ladies. Now these bowed delightedly from it to the General, while Kincaid and his friend stood close hid and listened agape, equally amused and dismayed.
"How are you, Mandeville?" said the General. "I am not nearly as much alone as I seem, sir!"
A voice just beyond the green-veiled fence cast a light on this reply and brought a flush to the Creole's very brows. "Alas! Greenleaf," it cried, "we search in vain! He is not here! We are even more alone than we seem! Ah! ”

“ But there were girls not of the mountains or sand-hills, whom also you should have seen, at battery manoeuvres or in the tulip-tree and maple shade of proud Franklin street, or in its rose-embowered homes by night; girls whom few could dance with, or even sit long beside in the honeysuckle vines of their porticos, without risk of acute heart trouble, testifies the callow volume. They treated every lad in the battery like a lieutenant, and the "ladies' man" like a king. ”

“ Meantime far away and sadly belated, with the Valcours cunningly to blame and their confiding hostesses generously making light of it, up Love street hurried the Callenders' carriage. Up the way of Love and athwart the oddest tangle of streets in New Orleans,--Frenchmen and Casacalvo, Greatmen, History, Victory, Peace, Arts, Poet, Music, Bagatelle, Craps, and Mysterious--across Elysian Fields not too Elysian, past the green, high-fenced gardens of Esplanade and Rampart flecked red-white-and-red with the oleander, the magnolia, and the rose, spun the wheels, spanked the high-trotters. ”

“ Hilary's mother had been in heaven these many years, the mother of Adolphe eighteen months; months quite enough to show the lone brother how vast a loss is the absence of the right mistress from such very human interests as those of a great plantation. Not only must there be but one heir, but he must have the right wife.
The schemer sipped. So it was Anna for Hilary if he could bring it about. So, too, it must be Hilary for his adjutant-general, to keep him near enough to teach him the management of the fortune coming to him if he, Hilary, would only treat his kind uncle's wishes--reasonably. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There Anna, in low daily fevers, with her "heart in New Orleans," had to be "kept quiet" by Miranda and Constance, the latter as widowed as Anna, wondering whether "Steve was alive or not."
This is a history of hearts. Yet, time flying as it does, the wild fightings even in those hearts, the famishing, down-breaking sieges in them, must largely be left untold--Hilary's, Anna's, Flora's, all. Kincaid was in greater temptation than he knew. Many a battery boy, sick, sound or wounded--Charlie for one--saw it more plainly than he. ”

“ As he reached the edge of that narrow opening from whose farther side Anna had called he halted, glanced furtively about, and harkened forward, backward, through leafy distances grown ominously still. Oh, why did the call not come again? Hardly in a burning house could time be half so priceless. Not a breath could promise that in the next the lightnings, thunders, and long human yell of assault would not rend the air. Flora's soft tread ceased at his side. ”

“ Rise, Anna, Constance, Miranda--all. Ah, Albert Sidney Johnston! Weep, daughters of a lion-hearted cause. The eyes of its sons are wet. Yet in your gentle bosoms keep great joy for whoever of your very own and nearest the awful carnage has spared; but hither comes, here passes slowly, and yonder fades at length from view, to lie a day in state and so move on to burial, a larger hope of final triumph than ever again you may fix on one mortal man. ”

“ H-oh, me! What a man's 'bound to be' I suppose he's bound to be. What is the precious explanation?"
With melting eyes Constance shook her head. "You don't deserve to hear it," she replied. Her tears came: "My little sister, I'm on the man's side in this affair!"
"That's not good of you," murmured Anna.
"I don't claim to be good. But there's one thing, Nan Callender, I never did; I never chained up my lover to see if he'd stay chained. When Steve--"
"Oh-h! Oh-h!" panted Anna, "you're too cruel! Hilary Kincaid wears no chain of mine!" ”

“ In the ground-floor dining-room of that unanimated hotel sat an old gentleman named Brodnax, once of the regular army, a retired veteran of the Mexican war, and very consciously possessed of large means. He sat quite alone, in fine dress thirty years out of fashion, finishing a late lunch and reading a newspaper; a trim, hale man not to be called old in his own hearing. He had read everything intended for news or entertainment and was now wandering in the desert of the advertising columns, with his mind nine miles away, at the other end of New Orleans. ”

“ Let its northernmost corner be Vicksburg, the famous, on the Mississippi. Let the easternmost be Mobile, and let the most southerly and by far the most important, that pivotal corner of the fan from which all its folds radiate and where the whole pictured thing opens and shuts, be New Orleans. Then let the grave moment that gently ushers us in be a long-ago afternoon in the Louisiana Delta. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Amid the eager carriage talk, in which Anna kept her part, her mind's eye still saw the farther scene as it changed again and the gray dawn and gray host furtively rose together and together silently spread through the deep woods. She watched the day increase and noon soar up and sink away while the legions of Hardee, Bragg, Polk and Breckinridge slowly writhed out of their perplexed folds and set themselves, still undetected in their three successive lines of battle. ”

“ With mingled rapture and distress, with a heart standing as still as his feet, as still as his lifted head and shining eyes, he listened and heard again. Swiftly, though not with the speed he would have chosen, he sprang toward the call; sped softly through the brush, softly and without voice, lest he draw the enemy's fire; softly and mutely, with futile backward wavings and frowning and imploring whispers to Flora as in a dishevelled glow that doubled her beauty she glided after him. ”

“ The ladies, God bless them, were always free to pass the guard on the city side of that small camp and earthwork, where with the ladies' guns "the ladies' man" had worn the grass off all the plain and the zest of novelty out of all his nicknamers, daily hammering--he and his only less merciful lieutenants--at their everlasting drill.
Such ladies! Why shouldn't they pass? Was it not safe for the cause and just as safe for them? Was not every maid and matron of them in the "Ladies' Society of the Confederate Army"--whereof Miss Callender was a secretary and Miss Valcour one of the treasurers? ”

“ That boat was now lying off Callender House! Did Anna not know that her shattered home, so long merely the headquarters of a blue brigade, had lately become of large, though very quiet, importance as a rendezvous of big generals who by starlight paced its overgrown garden alleys debating and planning something of great moment? Doctor Sevier had found that out and had charged Victorine to tell it with all secrecy to the biggest general in Mobile the instant she should reach there. For she was to go by that despatch-boat. ”

“ It was for a large dwelling hard by them, a fine old plantation house with wide verandas, though it also was shut from view, in its ancient grove.
"Fred," said Hilary, "didn't she tell you why?"
"No," replied the lover when they had turned away and were moving up the harbor front, "except that it isn't because I'm for the Union."
Hilary's eyes went wide: "That's wonderful, old man! But I don't believe she likes a soldier of any sort. If I were a woman I'd be doggoned if I'd ever marry a soldier!"
"Yet the man who gets her," said Greenleaf, "ought to be a soldier in every drop of his blood. ”

“ Yet through all this impersonal interchange love shone out to love like lamplight through the blinds of two opposite closed windows, and every heart-hiding letter bore enough interlinear revealment of mind and character to keep mutual admiration glowing and growing. We might very justly fancy either correspondent saying at any time in those ten months to impatient or compassionate Cupid what Hilary is reported to have said on one of the greatest days between Manassas and Shiloh, in the midst of a two-sided carnage: "Yes, General, hard hit, but please don't put us out of action." ”

“ Would it ring straight on, or would it pause between that window and the orange and myrtle shades of Jackson Square? Constance had said that day to Miranda--for this star-gazer to overhear--that she did not believe Kincaid loved Flora, and the hearer had longed to ask her why, but knew she could not tell. Why is a man's word. "They're as helpless without it," the muser recalled having very lately written on a secret page, "as women are before it. And yet a girl can be very hungry, at times, for a why. They say he's as brave as a lion--why is he never brave to me?" ”

“ While he mused, Flora, enraged both for him and against him, and with the rage burning in her eye and on her brow, stood before her seated grandmother, mutely giving gaze for gaze until the elder knew.
The old woman resumed her needle. "And all you have for it," was the first word, "is his pity, eh?"
"Wait!" murmured the girl. "I will win yet, if I have to lose--"
"Yes?" skeptically simpered the grandam, "--have to lose yourself to do it?"
The two gazed again until the maiden quietly nodded and her senior sprang half up:
"No, no! ah, no-no-no! There's a crime awaiting you, but not that! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ah, Anna! Even so, the shattered, steam-scalded thing came on and the last of the fleet was in. Yonder, a mere league eastward, it moved up the bay. Yet proudly hope throbbed on while still Mobile, behind other defenses, lay thirty miles away, while her gunboats still raked the ships, while on Powell, Gaines and Morgan still floated the Southern cross, and while, down in the pass, still unharmed, paused only for breath the Tennessee.
"Prisoners! they are all our prisoners!" tearfully exulted the fond Callenders. ”

“ A long lane to any one, was such waiting, lighted, for Anna, only by a faint reflection of that luster of big generals' strategy and that invincibility of the Southern heart which, to all New Orleans and even to nations beyond seas, clad Dixie's every gain in light and hid her gravest disasters in beguiling shadow. ”