Kincaid's Battery
Page 52
LII
HERE THEY COME!
What a night! Yet the great city slept. Like its soldiers at theirbivouac fires it lay and slumbered beside its burning harbor. Sleep wasduty.
Callender House kept no vigil. Lighted by the far devastation, its roofshone gray, its cornice white, its tree-tops green above the darkness ofgrove and garden. From its upper windows you might have seen thetownward bends of the river gleam red, yellow, and bronze, or theluminous smoke of destruction (slantingly over its flood and farthershore) roll, thin out, and vanish in a moonless sky. But from thosewindows 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 oneelse was up and about. Her maid came and she hastened to dress. Were thehostile ships in sight? Not yet. Was the city still undestroyed? Yes,though the cotton brought out to the harbor-side was now fifteenthousand bales and with its blazing made a show as if all the town wereafire. She was furiously hungry; was not breakfast ready? Yes, Constanceand Miranda--"done had breakfuss and gone oveh to de cottage fo' to fixit up fo' de surgeon ... No, 'm, not dis house; he done change' hismine." Carriage horses--mules? "Yass, 'm, done gone. Mahs' Chahlie gonewid '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 hemake his promise to Miss Flo'a he won't tech de gun hisseff." What! MissFlora--? "Oh, she be'n, but she gone ag'in. Law'! she a brave un! Ite'en a'most make me brave, dess to see de high sperits she in!" Thenarrator departed.
How incredible was the hour. Looking out on the soft gray sky and riverand down into the camp, that still kept such quiet show of routine, orpassing down the broad hall stair, through the library and into theflowery breakfast room, how keenly real everything that met the eye, howunreal whatever was beyond sight. How vividly actual this lovely home inthe sweet ease and kind grace of its lines and adornments. How hard tomove with reference to things unseen, when heart and mind and all powerof realizing unseen things were far away in the ravaged fields, mangledroads and haunted woods and ravines between Corinth and Shiloh.
But out in the garden, so fair and odorous as one glided through it tothe Mandeville cottage, things boldly in view made sight itself hard tobelieve. Was that bespattered gray horseman no phantom, who camegalloping up the river road and called to a servant at the gate that theenemy's fleet was in sight from English Turn? Was that truly NewOrleans, back yonder, wrapped in smoke, like fallen Carthage orJerusalem? Or here! this black-and-crimson thing drifting round the bendin mid-current and without a sign of life aboard or about it, was thisnot a toy or sham, but one more veritable ship in veritable flames? Andbeyond and following it, helpless as a drift-log, was that lifelesswhite-and-crimson thing a burning passenger steamer--and that behind itanother? Here in the cottage, plainly these were Constance and Miranda,and, on second view, verily here were a surgeon and his attendants. Butwere these startling preparations neither child's play nor dream?
Child's play persistently seemed, at any rate, the small bit of yellowstuff produced as a hospital flag. Oh, surely! would not a much largerbe far safer? It would. Well, at the house there was some yellowcurtaining packed in one of the boxes, Isaac could tell which--
"I think I know right where it is!" said Anna, and hurried away to findand send it. The others, widow and wife, would stay where they were andAnna would take command at the big house, where the domestics would soonneed to be emboldened, cheered, calmed, controlled. Time flies whenopening 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 wereshe remembered better, of course, and in the second they were found.Just as the stuff had been drawn forth and was being hurried away bythe hand of Dilsie, a sergeant and private from the camp, one with afield glass, the other with a signal flag, came asking leave to use themfrom the belvedere on the roof. Anna led them up to it.
How suddenly authentic became everything, up here. Flat as a map layriver, 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 toysoldier with a very real toy flag, on a green toy mound in the midst ofthe work (the magazine), he wigwagged in reply, and across the river amere speck of real humanity did the same from a barely definableparapet.
With her maid beside her Anna lingered a bit. She loved to be as nearany of the dear South's defenders as modesty would allow, but these twohad once been in Kincaid's Battery, her Hilary's own boys. As lookoutsthey were not yet skilled. In this familiar scene she knew things by theeye alone, which the sergeant, unused even to his glass, could hardly besure of through it.
Her maid looked up and around. "Gwine to rain ag'in," she murmured, andthe mistress assented with her gaze in the southeast. In this humid airand level country a waterside row of live-oaks hardly four miles offseemed 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 thesergeant. "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!" Shesprang 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'llhave Hettie or Dilsie."
"Missie,"--tears shone--"d' ain't nothin' in Gawd's worl' kin eveh makeme a runaway niggeh f'om you! But ef you tell me now fo' to go fetchev'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' placefo' to see de mos' sights!" She vanished and Anna turned to thesoldiers. Their flagging had paused while they watched the far-awaytop-gallants grow in height and numbers. Down in the works the long-rollwas sounding and from every direction men were answering it at a run.Across the river came bugle notes. Sighingly the sergeant lowered hisglass:
"Lordy, it's the whole kit and b'ilin'! Wag, John. When they swing upround 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 ofthose yards! And look at all their hulls, painted the color of theriver! And see that pink flutter--look!" he said to Anna, "do you getit? 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 havegot their answer ready and there won't be much to say after it." Thethree hurried down, the men to camp, Anna to the upper front veranda.There, save two or three with Constance and Miranda, came all theservants, shepherded by Isaac and Ben with vigilant eyes and smotheredvows to "kill de fuss he aw she niggeh dat try to skedaddle"; came andstood to gaze with her over and between the grove trees. Down in thefortification every man seemed to have sprung to his post. On its outercrest, with his adjutant, stood the gilded commander peering through hisglass.
"Missie," sighed Anna's maid, "see Mahs' Chahlie dah? stan'in' on dewoodworks o' dat big gun?"
"Yes," said Anna carelessly, but mutely praying that some one would makehim get down. Her brain teemed with speculations: Where, how occupiedand in what state of things, what frame of mind, was Victorine, wereFlora and Madame? Here at Steve's cottage with what details were 'Randaand Connie busy? But except when she smiled round on the slaves, hergaze, like theirs, abode on the river and the shore defenses, from whosehigh staffs floated brightly the Confederate flag. How many a time inthis las
t fearful year had her own Hilary, her somewhere still living,laughing, loving Hilary, stood like yon commander, about to deal havocfrom, and to draw it upon, Kincaid's Battery. Who would say that evennow he might not be so standing, with her in every throb of hisinvincible 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 Isaacto those around him.
"We all of us must and will!" said Anna elatedly, though with shamefulinward sinkings and with no sustaining word from any of the flock, whileout under the far gray sky, emerging from a slight angle of the shorewell down the water's long reach the battle line began to issue, eachship in its turn debouching into full relief from main-truck towater-line.