XXVI
SWIFT GOING, DOWN STREAM
Strangely slow travelled news in '61. After thirty hours' bombardmentFort Sumter had fallen before any person in New Orleans was sure theattack had been made. When five days later a yet more stupendous thoughquieter thing occurred, the tidings reached Kincaid's Battery only onthe afternoon of the next one in fair time to be read at the close ofdress parade. But then what shoutings! The wondering Callenders werejust starting for a drive up-town. At the grove gate their horses werefrightened out of all propriety by an opening peal, down in the camp,from "Roaring Betsy." And listen!
The black driver drew in. From Jackson Square came distant thunders andacross the great bend of the river they could see the white puff of eachdischarge. What _could_ it mean?
"Oh, Nan, the Abolitionists must have sued for peace!" exclaimed thesister.
"No-no!" cried Miranda. "Hark!"
Behind them the battery band had begun--
"O, carry me back to old Vir--"
"Virginia!" sang the three. "Virginia is out! Oh, Virginia is out!" Theyclapped their mitted hands and squeezed each other's and laughed withtears and told the coachman and said it over and over.
In Canal Street lo! it was true. Across the Neutral Ground they saw astrange sight; General Brodnax bareheaded! bareheaded yet in splendiduniform, riding quietly through the crowd in a brilliantly mounted groupthat included Irby and Kincaid, while everybody told everybody, withadmiring laughter, how the old Virginian, dining at the St. CharlesHotel, had sallied into the street cheering, whooping, and weeping,thrown his beautiful cap into the air, jumped on it as it fell, andkicked it before him up to one corner and down again to the other. Nowhe and his cavalcade came round the Clay statue and passed the carriagesaluting. What glory was in their eyes! How could our trio help but waveor the crowd hold back its cheers!
Up at Odd Fellows' Hall a large company was organizing a great militaryfair. There the Callenders were awaited by Flora and Madame, thitherthey came, and there reappeared the General and his train. There, too,things had been so admirably cut and dried that in a few minutes theworkers were sorted and busy all over the hall like classes in aSunday-school.
The Callenders, Valcours, and Victorine were a committee by themselvesand could meet at Callender House. So when Kincaid and Irby introduced anaval lieutenant whose amazingly swift despatch-boat was bound on ashort errand a bend or so below English Turn, it was agreed with him ina twinkling--a few twinklings, mainly Miranda's--to dismiss horses, takethe trip, and on the return be set ashore at Camp Callender by earlymoonlight.
They went aboard at the head of Canal Street. The river was at a fairstage, yet how few craft were at either long landing, "upper" or"lower," where so lately there had been scant room for their crowdingprows. How few drays and floats came and went on the white, shell-pavedlevees! How little freight was to be seen except what lay vainly beggingfor export--sugar, molasses, rice; not even much cotton; it had gone tothe yards and presses. That natty regiment, the Orleans Guards, wasdrilling (in French, superbly) on the smooth, empty ground where both toAnna's and to Flora's silent notice all the up-river foodstuffs--corn,bacon, pork, meal, flour--were so staringly absent, while down in yonderstreets their lack was beginning to be felt by a hundred and twenty-fivethousand consumers.
Backing out into mid-stream brought them near an anchored steamer latelyrazeed and now being fitted for a cloud of canvas on three lofty mastsinstead of the two small sticks she had been content with while shebrought plantains, guava jelly, coffee, and cigars from Havana. The_Sumter_ she was to be, and was designed to deliver some of the manyagile counter-thrusts we should have to make against that "blockade" forwhich the Yankee frigates were already hovering off Ship Island. So saidthe Lieutenant, but Constance explained to him (Captain Mandevillehaving explained to her) what a farce that blockade was going to be.
How good were these long breaths of air off the sea marshes, enlivenedby the speed of the craft! But how unpopulous the harbor! What a crowdof steamboats were laid up along the "Algiers" shore, and of Morgan'sTexas steamers, that huddled, with boilers cold, under Slaughter-HousePoint, while all the dry-docks stood empty. How bare the ship wharves;hardly a score of vessels along the miles of city front. About as manymore, the lieutenant said, were at the river's mouth waiting to put tosea, but the towboats were all up here being turned into gunboats orawaiting letters of marque and reprisal in order to nab those very shipsthe moment they should reach good salt water. Constance and Mirandatingled to tell him of their brave Flora's investment, but dared not, itwas such a secret!
On a quarter of the deck where they stood alone, what a striking pairwere Flora and Irby as side by side they faced the ruffling air, softlydiscussing matters alien to the gliding scene and giving it only adissimulative show of attention. Now with her parasol he pointed to thesunlight in the tree tops of a river grove where it gilded the windowsof the Ursulines' Convent.
"Hum!" playfully murmured Kincaid to Anna, "he motions as naturally asif that was what they were talking about."
"It's a lovely picture," argued Anna.
"Miss Anna, when a fellow's trying to read the book of his fate hedoesn't care for the pictures."
"How do you know that's what he's doing?"
"He's always doing it!" laughed Hilary.
The word was truer than he meant. The Irby-value of things was all thatever seriously engaged the ever serious cousin. Just now his eyes hadleft the shore, where Flora's lingered, and he was speaking of Kincaid."I see," he said, "what you think: that although no one of thesethings--uncle Brodnax's nonsense, Greenleaf's claims, Hilary's ownpreaching against--against, eh--"
"Making brides to-day and widows to-morrow?"
"Yes, that while none of these is large enough in his view to stop himby itself, yet combined they--"
"All working together they do it," said the girl. Really she had no suchbelief, but Irby's poor wits were so nearly useless to her that shefound amusement in misleading them.
"Hilary tells me they do," he replied, "but the more he says it the lessI believe him. Miss Flora, the fate of all my uncle holds dear ishanging by a thread, a spider's web, a young girl's freak! If ever shegives him a certain turn of the hand, the right glance of her eye, he'llbe at her feet and every hope I cherish--"
"Captain Irby," Flora softly asked with her tinge of accent, "is notthis the third time?"
"Yes, if you mean again that--"
"That Anna, she is my dear, dear frien'! The fate of nothing, of nobody,not even of me--or of--you--" she let that pronoun catch in herthroat--"can make me to do anything--oh! or even to wish anything--notthe very, very best for her!"
"Yet I thought it was our understanding--"
"Captain: There is bitwin us no understanding excep'"--the voice grewtender--"that there is no understanding bitwin us." But she let her eyesso meltingly avow the very partnership her words denied, that Irby felthimself the richest, in understandings, of all men alive.
"What is that they are looking?" asked his idol, watching Anna andHilary. The old battle ground had been passed. Anna, gazing back towardits townward edge, was shading her eyes from the burnished water, andHilary was helping her make out the earthwork from behind which peeredthe tents of Kincaid's Battery while beyond both crouched low againstthe bright west the trees and roof of Callender House--as straight inline from here, Flora took note, as any shot or shell might ever fly.