Kincaid's Battery
Page 67
LXVII
MOBILE
About a green spot crowning one of the low fortified hills on a northernedge of Mobile sat Bartleson, Mandeville, Irby, Villeneuve and two orthree lieutenants, on ammunition-boxes, fire-logs and the sod, givingtheir whole minds to the retention of Anna and Miranda Callender, whosat on camp-stools. The absent Constance was down in the town, just thenbestowing favors not possible for any one else to offer so acceptablyto a certain duplicate and very self-centered Steve aged eightydays--sh-sh-sh!
The camp group's soft discourse was on the character of one whom thisearliest afternoon in August they had followed behind muffled drums tohis final rest. Beginning at Carrollton Gardens, they said, then in theflowery precincts of Callender House, later in that death-swept gardenon Vicksburg's inland bluffs, and now in this one, of Flora's, a gardenyet, peaceful and fragrant, though no part of its burnt house save thechimneys had stood in air these three years and a half, the old hero--
"Yes," chimed Miranda to whoever was saying it--
The old hero, despite the swarm of mortal perils and woes he and hisbrigade and its battery had come through in that period, had with apleasing frequency--to use the worn-out line just this time more--
"Sat in the roses and heard the birds' song."
The old soldier, they all agreed, had had a feeling for roses and song,which had gilded the edges and angles of his austere spirit and betrayeda tenderness too deep hid for casual discovery, yet so vital a part ofhim that but for its lacerations--with every new public disaster--henever need have sunk under these year-old Vicksburg wounds which haddragged him down at last.
Miranda retold the splendid antic he had cut in St. Charles Street theday Virginia seceded. Steve recounted how the aged warrior had regainedstrength from Chickamauga's triumph and lost it again after Chattanooga.Two or three recalled how he had suffered when Banks' Red RiverExpedition desolated his fair estate and "forever lured away" hishalf-a-thousand "deluded people." He must have succumbed then, theysaid, had not the whole "invasion" come to grief and been driven backinto New Orleans. New Orleans! younger sister of little Mobile, yettoward which Mobile now looked in a daily torture of apprehension. Andthen Hilary's beloved Bartleson put in what Anna sat wishing some onewould say.
"With what a passion of disowned anxiety," he remarked, "had theGeneral, to the last, watched every step, slip and turn in what Stevehad once called 'the multifurieuse carreer' of Hilary Kincaid."
So turned the talk upon the long-time absentee, and instances were citedof those outbreaks of utter nonsense which were wont to come from him inawful moments: gibes with which no one reporting them to the uncle couldever make the "old man" smile. The youngest lieutenant (a gun-corporalthat day the Battery left New Orleans) told how once amid a fearfulhavoc, when his piece was so short of men that Kincaid was himself downon the ground sighting and firing it, and an aide-de-camp galloped upasking hotly, "Who's in command here!" the powder-blackened Hilary hadrisen his tallest and replied,--
"I!... b, e, x, bex, Ibex!"
A gentle speculation followed as to which of all Hilary's utterances hadtaken finest effect on the boys, and it was agreed that most potent forgood was the brief talk away back at Camp Callender, in which he hadtold them that, being artillery, they must know how to wait unmurmuringthrough months of "rotting idleness" from one deadly "tea-party" toanother. For a year, now, they had done that, and done it the betterbecause he had all that same time been forced to do likewise in NewOrleans, a prisoner in hospital, long at death's door, and only nowgetting well.
Anna remained silent. While there was praise of him what more could shewant for sweet calm?
"True," said somebody, "in these forty-odd months between March,'Sixty-one, and August, 'Sixty-four, all hands had got their fill ofwar; laurels gained were softer to rest on than laurels unsprouted, andit ought to be as easy as rolling off a log for him to lie on hisprison-hospital cot in 'rotting idleness,' lulled in the proud assurancethat he had saved Mobile, or at least postponed for a year--"
"Hilary?" frowningly asked Adolphe.
"Yes," with a firm quietness said Anna.
Villeneuve gallantly amended that somebody else owned an undivided halfin the glory of that salvation and would own more as soon as the Unionfleet (daily growing in numbers) should try to enter the bay: a hint atAnna, of course, and at the great ram _Tennessee_, which the Confederateadmiral, Buchanan, had made his flag-ship, and whose completion, whilenothing else was ready but three small wooden gunboats, was due--theyhad made even Anna believe--to the safe delivery of the Bazaar fund.
So then she, forced to talk, presently found herself explaining how suchfull news of Hilary had so often come in these awful months; to wit, bythe long, kind letters of a Federal nurse--and Federal officer'swife--but for whose special devotion the captive must have perished,and who, Anna revealed, was the schoolmistress banished North in'Sixty-one. What she kept untold was that, by favor of Greenleaf, Hilaryhad been enabled to auction off the poor remains of his home belongingsand thus to restore the returned exile her gold. The speaker let hereyes wander to an approaching orderly, and a lieutenant took the chanceto mention that early drill near Carrollton, which the General hadviewed from the Callenders' equipage. Their two horses, surviving theshells and famine of Vicksburg, had been among the mere half-dozen ofgood beasts retained at the surrender by some ruse, and--
The orderly brought Bartleson a document and Mandeville a newspaper--
And it was touching, to-day, the lieutenant persisted, to see that onceso beautiful span, handsome yet, leading in the team of six that drewthe draped caisson which--
"Ah, yes!" assented all.
Mandeville hurried to read out the news from Virginia, which could stillreach them through besieged Atlanta. It was of the Petersburg mine andits slaughter, and thrilled every one. Yet Anna watched Bartleson openhis yellow official envelope.
"Marching orders?" asked Miranda, and while his affirming smile startledevery one, Steve, for some reason in the newspaper itself, put it up.
"Are the enemy's ships--?" began Anna--
"We're ordered down the bay," replied Bartleson.
"Then so are we," she dryly responded, at which all laughed, though thetwo women had spent much time of late on a small boat which daily madethe round of the bay's defenses. In a dingy borrowed rig they hastenedaway toward their lodgings.
As they drove, Anna pressed Miranda's hand and murmured, "Oh, for HilaryKincaid!"
"Ah, dear! not to be in this--'tea-party'?"
"Yes! Yes! His boys were in so many without him, from Shiloh to PortGibson, and now, with all their first guns lost forever--theirs andours--lost _for_ them, not by them--and after all this year ofidleness, and the whole battery hanging to his name as it does--oh,'Randy, it would do more to cure his hurts than ten hospitals, there orhere."
"But the new risks, Nan, as he takes them!"
"He'll take them wherever he is. I can't rest a moment for fear he'strying once more to escape."
(In fact, that is what, unknown to her, he had just been doing.)
"But, 'Randa?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Whether he's here or there, Kincaid's Battery, his other self, will bein whatever goes on, and so, of course, will the _Tennessee_."
"Yes," said Miranda, at their door.
"Yes, and it's not just all our bazaar money that's in her, nor all ourtoil--"
"Nor all your sufferings," interrupted Miranda, as Constance wonderinglylet them in.
"Oh, nor yours! nor Connie's! nor all--his; nor our whole past of thelast two interminable years; but this whole poor terrified city's fate,and, for all we know, the war's final issue! And so I--Here, Con,"(handing a newspaper), "from Steve, husband."
(Behind the speaker Miranda, to Constance, made eager hand and lipmotions not to open it there.)
"And so, 'Ran, I wish we could go ashore to-morrow, as far down the bayas we can make our usefulness an excuse, and stay!--day andnight!--t
ill--!" She waved both hands.
Constance stared: "Why, Nan Callender!"
"Now, Con, hush. You and Steve Second are non-combatants! Oh, 'Randa,let's do it! For if those ships--some of them the same we knew so welland so terribly at home--if they come I--whatever happens--I want to seeit!"