XXXI
VIRGINIA GIRLS AND LOUISIANA BOYS
Thanks are due to Mr. Richard Thorndyke Smith for the loan of his copyof a slender and now extremely rare work which at this moment liesbefore me. "A History of Kincaid's Battery," it is called, "From ItsOrigin to the Present Day," although it runs only to February, '62, andwas printed (so well printed, on such flimsy, coarse paper) just beforethe dreadful days of Shiloh and the fall of New Orleans.
Let us never paint war too fair; but this small volume tells of littlebeyond the gold-laced year of 'Sixty-one, nor of much beyond Virginia,even over whose later war-years the color effects of reminiscence showblue and green and sun-lit despite all the scarlet of carnage, the blackand crimson of burning, and the grim hues of sickness, squalor, andsemi-starvation; show green and blue in the sunlight of victory,contrasted with those of the states west and south of her.
It tells--this book compiled largely from correspondence of persons wellknown to you and me--of the first "eight-days' crawl" that conveyed thechaffing, chafing command up through Mississippi, across East Tennesseeinto southeast Virginia and so on through Lynchburg to lovely Richmond;tells how never a house was passed in town or country but handkerchiefs,neckerchiefs, snatched-off sunbonnets, and Confederate flags wafted themon. It tells of the uncounted railway stations where swarmed the girlsin white muslin aprons and red-white-and-red bows, who waved them, in asthey came, and unconsciously squinted and made faces at them in theintense sunlight. It tells how the maidens gave them dainties and sweetglances, and boutonnieres of tuberoses and violets, and bloodthirstyadjurations, and blarney for blarney; gave them seven wild well-believedrumors for as many impromptu canards, and in their soft plantation drawlasked which was the one paramount "ladies' man," and were assured byevery lad of the hundred that it was himself. It tells how, having heardin advance that the more authentic one was black-haired, handsome, andovertowering, they singled out the drum-major, were set right only bythe roaring laughter, and huddled backward like caged quails fromKincaid's brazen smile, yet waved again as the train finally jogged onwith the band playing from the roof of the rear car,--
"I'd offer thee this hand of mine If I could love thee less!"
To Anna that part seemed not so killingly funny or so very interesting,but she was not one of the book's editors.
Two or three pages told of a week in camp just outside the Virginiancapital, where by day, by night, on its rocky bed sang James river; ofthe business quarter, noisy with army wagons--"rattling o'er the stonystreet," says the page; of colonels, generals, and statesmen byname--Hampton, Wigfall, the fiery Toombs, the knightly Lee, the wiseLamar; of such and such headquarters, of sentinelled warehouses, glowingironworks, galloping aides-de-camp and couriers and arriving anddeparting columns, some as trig (almost) as Kincaid's Battery, withtheir black servants following in grotesque herds along the sidewalks;and some rudely accoutred, shaggy, staring, dust-begrimed, in baggybutternut jeans, bearing flint-lock muskets and trudginground-shouldered after fifes and drums that squealed and boomed out thestrains of their forgotten ancestors: "The Campbells are coming,""Johnnie was a piper's son," or--
"My heart is ever turning back To the girl I left behind me."
"You should have seen the girls," laughs the book.
But there were girls not of the mountains or sand-hills, whom also youshould have seen, at battery manoeuvres or in the tulip-tree and mapleshade of proud Franklin street, or in its rose-embowered homes by night;girls whom few could dance with, or even sit long beside in thehoneysuckle vines of their porticos, without risk of acute hearttrouble, testifies the callow volume. They treated every lad in thebattery like a lieutenant, and the "ladies' man" like a king. You shouldhave seen him waltz them or in quadrille or cotillon swing, balance, andchange them, their eyes brightening and feet quickening whenever thetune became--
"Ole mahs' love' wine, ole mis' love' silk, De piggies, dey loves buttehmilk."
Great week! tarheel camp-sentries and sand-hill street-patrols mistakingthe boys for officers, saluting as they passed and always getting anofficer's salute in return! Hilary seen every day with men high andmighty, who were as quick as the girls to make merry with him, yetalways in their merriment seeming, he and they alike, exceptionallyupright, downright, heartright, and busy. It kept the boys straight andstrong.
Close after came a month or so on the Yorktown peninsula with thatmaster of strategic ruse, Magruder, but solely in the dreariesthardships of war, minus all the grander sorts that yield glory; rains,bad food, ill-chosen camps, freshets, terrible roads, horses sick andraw-boned, chills, jaundice, emaciation, barely an occasional bang atthe enemy on reconnoissances and picketings, and marches andcountermarches through blistering noons and skyless nights, with men,teams, and guns trying to see which could stagger the worst, along withcolumns of infantry mutinously weary of forever fortifying and neverfighting. Which things the book bravely makes light of, Hilarymaintaining that the battery boys had a spirit to bear them better thanmost commands did, and the boys reporting--not to boast the specialkindness everywhere of ladies for ladies' men--that Hilary himself,oftenest by sunny, but sometimes by cyclonic, treatment of commissaries,quartermasters, surgeons, and citizens, made their burdens trivial.
So we, too, lightly pass them. After all, the things most important hereare matters not military of which the book does not tell. Of suchVictorine, assistant editor to Miranda, learned richly from Anna--whomerely lent letters--without Anna knowing it. Yet Flora drew little fromVictorine, who was as Latin as Flora, truly loved Anna, and throughCharlie was a better reader of Flora's Latin than he or Flora or any onesuspected.
For a moment more, however, let us stay with the chronicle. At last,when all was suffered, the infuriated boys missed Ben Butler and BigBethel! One day soon after that engagement, returning through Richmondin new uniforms--of a sort--with scoured faces, undusty locks, fullranks, fresh horses, new harness and shining pieces, and with everygun-carriage, limber, and caisson freshly painted, they told their wrathto Franklin street girls while drinking their dippers of water.Also--"Good-by!--
"'I'd offer thee this hand of mine--'"
They were bound northward to join their own Creole Beauregard at arailway junction called--.