Chapter 4

The die was cast. From brow and heart fled all perturbation and once more into her eyes came their wonted serenity--with a tinge of exultation--while the strings sounded again, and again rose the song:

When Sylvia smiles Her eyes to mine inclining, Like azure isles In seas of lovelight shining, With a merry madness find I endless pleasure-- Till she sighs--then sadness is my only treasure. Woe best beguiles; Mirth, wait thou other whiles, Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow When Sylvia smiles.

XI

IN COLUMN OF PLATOONS

Love's war was declared. From hour to hour of that night and the next morning, in bed, at board, dressing for the thronged city, spinning with Constance and Miranda up Love Street across Piety and Desire and on into the town's centre, Anna, outwardly all peace, planned that war's defensive strategy. 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. Beginning at the great steamboat landing, half a mile of Canal Street had such a pavement on either side of its broad grassy "neutral ground." So had the main streets that led from it at right angles. Long afterward, even as late as when the Nineteenth Century died, some of those streets were at the funeral, clad in those same old pavements, worn as smooth and ragged as a gentleman-beggar's coat. St. Charles Street was one. Another was the old Rue Royale, its squat ground-floor domiciles drooping their mossy eaves half across the pinched sidewalks and confusedly trying to alternate and align themselves with tall brick houses and shops whose ample two-and three-story balconies were upheld, balustraded, and overhung by slender garlandries of iron openwork as graceful and feminine as a lace mantilla. With here and there the flag of a foreign consul hanging out and down, such is the attire the old street was vain of in that golden time when a large square sign on every telegraph pole bade you get your shirts at S.N. Moody's, corner of Canal and Royal Streets.

At this corner, on the day after the serenade, there was a dense, waiting crowd. On the other corner of Royal, where the show-windows of Hyde & Goodrich blazed with diamonds, and their loftily nested gold pelican forever fed her young from her bleeding breast, stood an equal throng. Across Canal Street, where St. Charles opens narrowly southward, were similar masses, and midway between the four corners the rising circles of stone steps about the high bronze figure of Henry Clay were hidden by men and boys packed as close as they could sit or stand. A great procession had gone up-town and would by and by return. Near and far banners and pennons rose and fell on the luxurious air, and the ranks and ranks of broad and narrow balconies were so many gardens of dames and girls, parasols, and diaphanous gowns. Near the front of the lowest Hyde & Goodrich balcony, close by the gilded pelican, sat the Callenders, all gladness, holding mute dialogues with Flora and Madame Valcour here on the balcony of Moody's corner. It was the birthday of Washington.

Not of him, however, did Flora and her grandmother softly converse in Spanish amid the surrounding babel of English and French. Their theme was our battery drill of some ten days before, a subject urged upon Flora by the mosquito-like probings of Madame's musically whined queries. Better to be bled of almost any information by the antique little dame than to have her light on it some other way, as she had an amazing knack of doing. Her _acted_ part of things Flora kept untold; but grandma's spirit of divination could unfailingly supply that, and her pencilled brows, stiff as they were, could tell the narrator she had done so.

Thus now, Flora gave no hint of the beautiful skill and quick success with which, on her homeward railway trip with Greenleaf that evening, she had bettered his impressions of her. By no more than a gentle play of light and shade in her smile and an undulating melody of voice--without a word that touched the wound itself, but with a timid glow of compassionate admiration--she had soothed the torture of a heart whose last hope Anna had that same hour put to death.

"But before he took the train with you," murmured the mosquito to the butterfly, "when he said the General was going to take Irby upon his staff and give the battery to Kincaid, what did you talk of?"

"Talk of? Charlie. He said I ought to make Charlie join the battery."

"Ah? For what? To secure Kincaid's protection of your dear little brother's health--character--morals--eh?"

"Yes, 'twas so he put it," replied Flora, while the old lady's eyebrows visibly cried:

"You sly bird! will you impute _all_ your own words to that Yankee, and his to yourself?"

Which is just what Flora continued to do as the grandma tinkled: "And you said--what?"

"I said if I couldn't keep him at home I ought to get him into the cavalry. You know, dear, in the infantry the marches are so cruel, the camps so--"

"But in the artillery," piped the small dame, "they ride, eh?" (It was a trap she was setting, but in vain was the net spread.)

"No," said the serene girl, "they, too, go afoot. Often they must help the horses drag the guns through the mire. Only on parade they ride, or when rushing to and fro in battle, whips cracking, horses plunging, the hills smoking and shaking!" The rare creature sparkled frankly, seeing the battery whirling into action with its standard on the wind--this very flag she expected presently to bestow.

"And with Kincaid at the head!" softly cried the antique.

The girl put on a fondness which suddenly became a withering droop of the eyes: "Don't mince your smile so, grannie dear, I can hear the paint crack."

The wee relic flashed, yet instantly was bland again: "You were about to say, however, that in the artillery--?"

"The risks are the deadliest of all."

"Ah, yes!" sang the mosquito, "and for a sister to push her boy brother into a battery under such a commander would be too much like murder!"

The maiden felt the same start as when Greenleaf had ventured almost those words. "Yes," she beamingly rejoined, "that's what I told the Lieutenant."

"With a blush?"

"No," carelessly said the slender beauty, and exchanged happy signals with the Callenders.

"You tricksy wretch!" muttered the grandmother to herself. For though Charlie was in the battery by his own choice, Hilary would have kept him out had not the sister begged to have him let in.

Suddenly there was a glad stoppage of all by-play in the swarming streets. Down St. Charles from LaFayette Square came the shock of saluting artillery, and up Royal from Jackson Square rolled back antiphonal thunders.

"Grandma!" softly cried Flora, as if sharing the general elation, but had begun again to tell of Greenleaf, when from far over in Camp Street her subtle ear caught a faint stray sigh of saxhorns.

"Well? well? about the Yankee--?" urged Madame.

"Oh, a trifle! He was to go that night, and thinking he might some day return in very different fashion and we be glad to make use of him, I--" The speaker's lithe form straightened and her gaze went off to the left. "Here they come!" she said, and out where Camp Street emerges, a glint of steel, a gleam of brass, a swarming of the people that way, and again a shimmer of brass and steel, affirmed her word that the long, plumed, bristling column had got back to the arms of its darling Canal Street.

"Yes," cried many, "they're turning this way!"

"Well?--Well?" insisted the old lady amid the rising din. "And so you--you?"

"Be more careful," murmured the girl. "I told him that our convictions--about this war--yours and mine--not Charlie's--_are the same as his_."

A charming sight she was, even in that moment of public enthusiasm and spectacle, holding the wondering stare of her companion with a gayety that seemed ready to break into laughter. The dainty Madame went limp, and in words as slow and soft as her smile, sighed, "You are a genius!"

"No, only the last thing you would suspect--a good housekeeper. I have put him up in sugar."

The distant martial strains became more coherent. In remote balconies handkerchiefs fluttered wildly, and under nearer and nearer ones the people began to pack closer and choose their footing along the curb. Presently from the approaching column came who but Hilary Kincaid, galloping easily over the slippery pavements. Anna saw his eyes sweep the bank of human flowers (with its occasional male caterpillar) on Moody's balcony and light upon Flora. He lifted his képi and halted. One could read his soft questions.

"All right? All ready? Where are the others?--Ah!" He sent an eager salutation to the Callenders, and two joyfully bowed, but Anna gave no sign. With great dignity her gaze was bent beyond him on the nearing host, and when Constance plucked her arm she tardily looked three wrong ways.

The rider could not wait. The police were pressing back the jubilant masses, swarms of ladies on the rear forms were standing up, and Flora, still seated, had leaned down beamingly and was using every resource of voice and fan to send him some word through the tumult of plaudits and drums. He spurred close. In a favoring hush--drum-corps inviting the band--she bent low and with an arch air of bafflement tried once more, but an outburst of brazen harmonies tore her speech to threads. Suddenly--

"Ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming--"

pealed the cornets, pumped the trombones, whipping it out, cracking it off, with a rigor of rhythm to shame all peace-time languishments--

"Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer. Thou art the star--"

What could the balconies do but wave more joyously than ever? The streets hurrahed! The head of the procession was here! The lone horseman reined back, wheeled, cast another vain glance toward Anna, and with an alarming rataplan of slipping and recovering hoofs sped down the column.

But what new rapture was this? Some glorious luck had altered the route, and the whole business swung right into this old rue Royale! Now, now the merry clamor and rush of the crowd righting itself! And behold! this blazing staff and its commanding general--general of division! He first, and then all they, bowed to Flora and her grandmother, bowed to the Callenders, and were bowed to in return. A mounted escort followed. And now--yea, verily! General Brodnax and his staff of brigade! Wave, Valcours, wave Callenders! Irby's bow to Flora was majestic, and hers to him as gracious as the smell of flowers in the air. And here was Mandeville, most glittering in all the glitter. Flora beamed on him as well, Anna bowed with a gay fondness, Miranda's dainty nose crimped itself, and Constance, with a blitheness even more vivid, wished all these balconies could know that Captain--he _was_ Lieutenant, but that was away back last week--Captain Etienne Aristide Rofignac de Mandeville was _hers_, whom, after their marriage, now _so_ near at hand, she was going always to call Steve!

XII

MANDEVILLE BLEEDS

Two overflowing brigades! In the van came red-capped artillery. Not the new battery, though happily known to Flora and the Callenders; the Washington Artillery. Illustrious command! platoons and platoons of the flower of the Crescent City's youth and worth! They, too, that day received their battle-flag. They have the shot-torn rags of it yet.

Ah, the clanging horns again, and oh, the thundering drums! Another uniform, on a mass of infantry, another band at its head braying another lover's song reduced to a military tramp, swing, and clangor--

"I'd offer thee this hand of mine If I could love thee less--"

Every soldier seemed to have become a swain. Hilary and Anna had lately sung this wail together, but not to its end, she had called it "so ungenuine." How rakishly now it came ripping out. "My fortune is too hard for thee," it declared, "'twould chill thy dearest joy. I'd rather weep to see thee free," and ended with "destroy"; but it had the swagger of a bowling-alley.

All the old organizations, some dating back to '12-'15, had lately grown to amazing numbers, while many new ones had been so perfectly uniformed, armed, accoutred and drilled six nights a week that the ladies, in their unmilitary innocence, could not tell the new from the old. Except in two cases: Even Anna was aware that the "Continentals," in tasseled top-boots, were of earlier times, although they had changed their buff knee-breeches and three-cornered hats for a smart uniform of blue and gray; while these red-and-blue-flannel Zouaves, drawing swarms of boys as dray-loads of sugar-hogsheads drew flies, were as modern as 1861 itself. But oh, ah, one _knew_ so many young men! It was wave, bow, smile and bow, smile and wave, till the whole frame was gloriously weary.

Near Anna prattled a Creole girl of sixteen with whom she now and then enjoyed a word or so: Victorine Lafontaine, daughter of our friend Maxime.

"Louisiana Foot-Rifles--ah! but their true name," she protested, "are the Chasseurs-à-Pied! 'Twas to them my papa billong' biffo' he join' hisseff on the batt'rie of Captain Kincaid, and there he's now a corporeal!"

What jaunty fellows they were! and as their faultless ranks came close, their glad, buskined feet beating as perfect music for the roaring drums as the drums beat for them, Anna, in fond ardor, bent low over the rail and waved, exhorting Miranda and Constance to wave with her. So marched the chasseurs by, but the wide applause persisted as yet other hosts, with deafening music and perfect step and with bayonets back-slanted like the porcupine's, came on and on, and passed and passed, ignoring in grand self-restraint their very loves who leaned from the banquettes' edges and from balustraded heights and laughed and boasted and worshipped.

Finally artillery again! every man in it loved by some one--or dozen--in these glad throngs. Clap! call! wave! Oh, gallant sight! These do not enter Royal Street. They keep Canal, obliquing to that side of the way farthest from the balconies--

"To make room," cries Victorine, "to form line pritty soon off horses, in front those cannon'."

At the head rides Kincaid. Then, each in his place, lieutenants, sergeants, drivers, the six-horse teams leaning on the firm traces, the big wheels clucking, the long Napoleons shining like gold, and the cannoneers--oh, God bless the lads!--planted on limbers and caissons, with arms tight folded and backs as plumb as the meridian. Now three of the pieces, half the battery, have gone by and--

"Well, well, if there isn't Sam Gibbs, sergeant of a gun! It is, I tell you, it is! Sam Gibbs, made over new, as sure as a certain monosyllable! and what could be surer, for Sam Gibbs?"

So laugh the sidewalks; but society, overhead, cares not for a made-over Gibbs while round about him are sixty or seventy young heroes who need no making over. Anna, Anna! what a brave and happy half-and-half of Creoles and "Americans" do your moist eyes beam down upon: here a Canonge and there an Ogden--a Zacherie--a Fontennette--Willie Geddes--Tom Norton--a Fusilier! Nat Frellsen--a Tramontana--a Grandissime!--and a Grandissime again! Percy Chilton--a Dudley--Arthur Puig y Puig--a De Armas--MacKnight--Violett--Avendano--Rob Rareshide-- Guy Palfrey--a Morse, a Bien, a Fuentes--a Grandissme once more! Aleck Moise--Ralph Fenner--Ned Ferry!--and lo! a Raoul Innerarity, image of his grandfather's portrait--and a Jules St. 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.

Now the trim lads relax, the balcony dames in the rear rows sit down, there are nods and becks and wafted whispers to a Calder and an Avery, to tall Numa, Dolhonde and short Eugene Chopin, to George Wood and Dick Penn and Fenner and Bouligny and Pilcher and L'Hommedieu; and Charlie sends up bows and smiles, and wipes the beautiful brow he so openly and wilfully loves best on earth. Anna smiles back, but Constance bids her look at Maxime, Victorine's father, whom neither his long white moustaches nor weight of years nor the lawless past revealed in his daring eyes can rob of his youth. So Anna looks, and when she turns again to Charlie she finds him sending a glance rife with conquest--not his first--up to Victorine, who, without meeting it, replies--as she has done to each one before it--with a dreamy smile into vacancy, and a faint narrowing of her almond eyes.

Captain Kincaid comes ambling back, and right here in the throat of Royal Street faces the command. The matter is explained to Madame Valcour by a stranger:

"Now at the captain's word all the cannoneers will spring down, leaving only guns, teams and drivers at their back, and line up facing us. The captain will dismount and ascend to the balcony, and there he and the young lady, whoever she is--" He waits, hoping Madame will say who the young lady is, but Madame only smiles for him to proceed--"The captain and she will confront each other, she will present the colors, he, replying, will receive them, and--ah, after all!" The thing had been done without their seeing it, and there stood the whole magnificent double line. Captain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the vanished procession--Mandeville. Slipping and clattering, he reined up and saluted: "How soon can Kincaid's Battery be completely ready to go into camp?"

"Now, if necessary."

"It will receive orders to move at seven to-morrow morning!" The Creole's fervor amuses the rabble, and when Hilary smiles his earnestness waxes to a frown. Kincaid replies lightly and the rider bends the rein to wheel away, but the slippery stones have their victim at last. The horse's feet spread and scrabble, his haunches go low. Constance snatches both Anna's hands. Ah! by good luck the beast is up again! Yet again the hoofs slip, the rider reels, and Charlie and a comrade dart out to catch him, but he recovers. Then the horse makes another plunge and goes clear down with a slam and a slide that hurl his master to the very sidewalk and make a hundred pale women cry out.

Constance and her two companions bend wildly from the balustrade, a sight for a painter. Across the way Flora, holding back her grandmother, silently leans out, another picture. In the ranks near Charlie a disarray continues even after Kincaid has got the battered Mandeville again into the saddle, and while Mandeville is rejecting sympathy with a begrimed yet haughty smile.

"Keep back, ladies!" pleads Madame's late informant, holding off two or three bodily. "Ladies, sit down! Will you please to keep back!" 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.

"He's bleeding!" moans Constance, very white. But Kincaid softly explains in his hollowed hands:

"Only his nose!"

The nose's owner casts no upward look. Not his to accept pity, even from a fiancée. His handkerchief dampened "to wibe the faze," two bits of wet paper "to plug the noztril',"--he could allow no more!

"First blood of the war!" said Hilary.

"Yez! But"--the flashing warrior tapped his sword--"nod the last!" and was off at a gallop, while Kincaid turned hurriedly to find that Charlie, struck by the floundering horse, had twice fainted away.

In the balconies the press grew dangerous. An urchin intercepted Kincaid to show him the Callenders, who, with distressed eyes, pointed him to their carriage hurrying across Canal Street.

"For Charlie and Flora!" called Anna. They could not stir "themselves" for the crush; but yonder, on Moody's side, the same kind citizen noticed before had taken matters in hand:

"Keep back, ladies! Make room! Let these two ladies out!" He squeezed through the pack, holding aloft the furled colors, which all this time had been lying at Flora's feet. Her anxious eyes were on them at every second step as she pressed after him with the grandmother dangling from her elbow.

The open carriage spun round the battery's right and up its front to where a knot of comrades hid the prostrate Charlie; the surgeon, Kincaid, and Flora crouching at his side, the citizen from the balcony still protecting grandmamma, and the gilded eagle of the unpresented standard hovering over all. With tender ease Hilary lifted the sufferer and laid him on the carriage's front seat, the surgeon passed Madame in and sat next to her, but to Kincaid Flora exclaimed with a glow of heroic distress:

"Let me go later--with Anna!" Her eyes overflowed--she bit her lip--"I must present the flag!"

A note of applause started, a protest hushed it, and the overbending Callenders and the distracted Victorine heard Hilary admiringly say:

"Come! Go! You belong with your brother!"

He pressed her in. For an instant she stood while the carriage turned, a hand outstretched toward the standard, saying to Hilary something that was drowned by huzzas; then despairingly she sank into her seat and was gone down Royal Street.

"Attention!" called a lieutenant, and the ranks were in order. To the holder of the flag Hilary pointed out Anna, lingered for a word with his subaltern, and then followed the standard to the Callenders' balcony.

XIII

THINGS ANNA COULD NOT WRITE

"Charlie has two ribs broken, but is doing well," ran a page of the diary; "so well that Flora and Madame--who bears fatigue wonderfully--let Captain Irby take them, in the evening, to see the illumination. For the thunderstorm, which sent us whirling home at midday, was followed by a clear evening sky and an air just not too cool to be fragrant.