XXXIII
LETTERS
Hardly any part of this picture had come to Anna from Hilary himself.
Yes, they were in correspondence--after a fashion. That signifiednothing, she would have had you understand; so were Charlie andVictorine, so were--oh!--every girl wrote to somebody at the front; onecould not do less and be a patriot. Some girl patriots had a dozen ontheir list. Some lads had a dozen on theirs.
Ah, me! those swan-white, sky-blue, rose-pink maidens who in every townand on every plantation from Memphis to Charleston, from Richmond to NewOrleans, despatched their billets by the forlornly precarious post onlywhen they could not send them by the "urbanity" of such or such a one!Could you have contrasted with them the homeless, shelterless,pencil-borrowing, elbow-scratching, musty, fusty tatterdemalions whostretched out on the turfless ground beside their mess fires to extortor answer those cautious or incautious missives, or who for the fortiethtime drew them from hiding to reread into their guarded or unguardedlines meanings never dreamed by their writers, you could not havelaughed without a feeling of tears, or felt the tears without smiling.Many a chap's epistle was scrawled, many a one even rhymed, in arifle-pit with the enemy's shells bursting over. Many a one was feeblydictated to some blessed, unskilled volunteer nurse in a barn orsmoke-house or in some cannon-shattered church. From the like of thatwho with a woman's heart could withhold reply? Yes, Anna and Hilary werein correspondence.
So were Flora and Irby. So were Hilary and Flora. Was not Flora Anna'sparticular friend and Hilary's "pilot"? She had accepted the office oncondition that, in his own heart's interest, their dear Anna should notknow of it.
"The better part of life"--she wrote--"is it not made up of such lovingconcealments?"
And as he read the words in his tent he smilingly thought, "That lookstrue even if it isn't!"
Her letters were much more frequent than Anna's and always told of Annafondly, often with sweet praises--not so sweet to him--of her impartialgraciousness to her semicircle of brass-buttoned worshippers. LatelyFlora had mentioned Greenleaf in a modified way especially disturbing.
If Anna could have made any one a full confidante such might have beenFlora, but to do so was not in her nature. She could trust withoutstint. Distrust, as we know, was intolerable to her. She could not doubther friends, but neither could she unveil her soul. Nevertheless, morethan once, as the two exchanged--in a purely academical way--theircriticisms of life, some query raised by Anna showed just what had beenpassing between her and Hilary and enabled Flora to keep them steeredapart.
No hard task, the times being so highly calculated to make the course oftrue love a "hard road to travel," as the singing soldier boys called"Jordan." Letters, at any time, are sufficiently promotive ofmisunderstandings, but in the Confederacy they drifted from camp tocamp, from pocket to pocket, like letters in bottles committed to thesea. The times being such, I say, and Hilary and Anna as they were: he awinner of men, yes! but by nature, not art; to men and women equally, agrown up, barely grown up, boy. That is why women could afford to likehim so frankly. The art of courtship--of men or women--was not in him.Otherwise the battery--every gun of which, they say, counted for two aslong as he was by--must have lost him through promotion before thatfirst year was half out. The moment he became a conscious suitor, to manor woman, even by proxy, his power went from him; from pen, from tongue,from countenance. And Anna--I may have shown the fact awkwardly, butcertainly you see--Anna was incurably difficult.
Too much else awaits our telling to allow here a recital of theirhearts' war while love--and love's foes--hid in winter quarters, as itwere. That is to say, from the season of that mad kiss which she hadnever forgiven herself (much less repented), to the day of Beauregard'sappeal, early in '62, to all the plantations and churches in Dixie'sLand to give him their bells, bells, bells--every bit of bronze or brassthey could rake up or break off--to be cast into cannon; and to his ownLouisiana in particular to send him, hot speed, five thousand more mento help him and Albert Sidney Johnston drive Buel and Grant out ofTennessee.
Before the battery had got half way to Virginia Hilary had written backto Anna his inevitable rhapsody over that amazing performance of hers,taking it as patent and seal of her final, utter, absoluteself-bestowal. And indeed this it might have turned out to be had he butapproached it by a discreet circuit through the simplest feminineessentials of negative make-believe. But to spring out upon it in thatstraightforward manner--! From May to February her answer to this wasthe only prompt reply he ever received from her. It crowds our storybackward for a moment, for it came on one of those early Peninsula daysprevious to Manassas, happening, oddly, to reach him--by the hand ofVilleneuve--as he stood, mounted, behind the battery, under a smartskirmish fire. With a heart leaping in joyous assurance he opened thesmall missive and bent his eyes upon its first lines.
As he did so a hostile shell, first that had ever come so near, burstjust in front of his guns. A big lump of metal struck one of them on thechase, glanced, clipped off half the low top of his forage-cap andstruck in the trunk of an oak behind him, and as his good horse flinchedand quivered he looked unwillingly from the page toward a puff of whitesmoke on a distant hill, and with a broad smile said--a mere nonsenseword; but the humor of such things has an absurd valuation andpersistency in camps, and for months afterward, "Ah-r?--indeed!" wasthe battery's gay response to every startling sound. He had luck incatchwords, this Hilary. He fought the scrimmage through with thoseunread pages folded slim between a thumb and forefinger, often usingthem to point out things, and when after it he had reopened them andread them through--and through again--to their dizzying close, thebattery surgeon came murmuring privately--
"Cap, what's wrong; bad news?"
"Oh!" said Hilary, looking up from a third reading, "what, this? No-o!nothing wrong in this. I was wrong. I'm all right now."
"No, you're not, Captain. You come along now and lie down. The windageof that chunk of iron has--"
"Why, Doc, I shouldn't wonder! If you'll just keep everybody away fromme awhile, yourself included, I will lie down," said the unnervedcommander, and presently, alone and supine, softly asked himself withgrim humor, "Which chunk of iron?"
The actual text of Anna's chunk was never divulged, even to Flora. We donot need it. Neither did Flora. One of its later effects was to give theslender correspondence which crawled after it much more historical valueto the battery and the battery's beloved home city than otherwise itmight have had. From Virginia it told spiritedly of men, policies, andmovements; sketched cabinet officers, the president, and the greatleaders and subleaders in the field--Stuart, Gordon, Fitzhugh Lee. Itgave droll, picturesque accounts of the artillerist's daily life; of thehard, scant fare and the lucky feast now and then on a rabbit or asquirrel, turtles' eggs, or wild strawberries. It depicted moonlightrides to dance with Shenandoah girls; the playing of camp charades; andthe singing of war, home, and love songs around the late camp fire,timed to the antic banjo or the sentimental guitar. Drolly, yet withtenderness for others, it portrayed mountain storm, valley freshet, andheart-breaking night marches beside tottering guns in the straining,sucking, leaden-heavy, red clay, and then, raptly, the glories ofsunrise and sunset over the contours of the Blue Ridge. And it explainedthe countless things which happily enable a commander to keep himself asbusy as a mud-dauber, however idle the camp or however torn his ownheart.
From Anna's side came such stories as that of a flag presentation to the_Sumter_, wherein she had taken some minor part; of seeing that slimterror glide down by Callender House for a safe escape through theblockading fleet to the high seas and a world-wide fame; of Flora'stowboat privateer sending in one large but empty prize whose sale didnot pay expenses, and then being itself captured by the blockaders; of"Hamlet" given by amateurs at the St. Charles Theatre; of great distressamong the poor, all sorts of gayeties for their benefit, bad money, badmanagement, a grand concert for the army in Arkansas, women in mourningas numerous as men in uniform, an
d both men and women breaking down inbody and mind under the universal strain.
Historically valuable, you see. Yet through all this impersonalinterchange love shone out to love like lamplight through the blinds oftwo opposite closed windows, and every heart-hiding letter bore enoughinterlinear revealment of mind and character to keep mutual admirationglowing and growing. We might very justly fancy either correspondentsaying at any time in those ten months to impatient or compassionateCupid what Hilary is reported to have said on one of the greatest daysbetween Manassas and Shiloh, in the midst of a two-sided carnage: "Yes,General, hard hit, but please don't put us out of action."