XXXIV
A FREE-GIFT BAZAAR
Again it was February. The flag of Louisiana whose lone star and red andyellow stripes still hovered benignly over the Ionic marble porch of thecity hall, was a year old. A new general, young and active, was incommand of all the city's forces, which again on the great Twenty-secondparaded. Feebly, however; see letters to Irby and Mandeville underBrodnax in Tennessee, or to Kincaid's Battery and its commander inVirginia. For a third time the regimental standards were of a new sort.They were the battle-flag now. Its need had been learned at Manassas;eleven stars on St. Andrew's Cross, a field blood red, and the crossspanning all the field!
Again marched Continentals, Chasseurs, and so on. Yet not as before; alltheir ranks were of new men; the too old, the too frail, the too young,they of helpless families, and the "British subjects." Natives of Francemade a whole separate "French Legion," in red kepis, blue frocks, andtrousers shaped like inverted tenpins, as though New Orleans were Parisitself. The whole aspect of things was alert, anxious, spent.
But it was only now this spent look had come. Until lately you mighthave seen entire brigades of stout-hearted men in camps near by: CampsBenjamin, Walker, Pulaski and, up in the low pine hills of Tangipahoa,Camp Moore. From Camp Lewis alone, in November, on that plain whereKincaid's Battery had drilled before it was Kincaid's, the Bienville,Crescent City and many similar "Guards," Miles' Artillery, the OrleansLight Horse, the Orleans Howitzers, the Orleans Guards, the Tirailleursd'Orleans, etc., had passed in front of Governor Moore and half a dozengenerals, twenty-four thousand strong.
Now these were mostly gone--to Bragg--to Price--to Lee and Joe Johnston,or to Albert Sidney Johnston and Beauregard. For the foe swarmed there,refusing to stay "hurled back." True he was here also, and not merely byscores as battle captives, but alarmingly near, in arms and bythousands. Terrible Ship Island, occupied by the boys in gray andfortified, anathematized for its horrid isolation and torrid sands, hadat length been evacuated, and on New Year's Day twenty-four of theenemy's ships were there disembarking bluecoats on its gleaming whitedunes. Fair Carrollton was fortified (on those lines laid out byHilary), and down at Camp Callender the siege-guns were manned by newcannoneers; persistently and indolently new and without field-pieces orbrass music or carriage company.
The spent look was still gallant, but under it was a feeling of havingawfully miscalculated: flour twelve dollars a barrel and soon to betwenty. With news in abundance the papers had ceased their eveningissues, so scarce was paper, and morning editions told of Atlanticseaports lost, of Johnston's retreat from Kentucky, the fall of FortDonelson with its fifteen thousand men, the evacuation of Columbus (oneof the Mississippi River's "Gibraltars") and of Nashville, which hadcome so near being Dixie's capital. And yet the newspapers--
"'We see no cause for despondency,'" read Constance at the latebreakfast table--"oh, Miranda, don't you see that with that spirit wecan never be subjugated?" She flourished the brave pages, for which Annavainly reached.
"Yes!" said Anna, "but find the report of the Bazaar!"--while Constanceread on: "'Reverses, instead of disheartening, have aroused our peopleto the highest pitch of animation, and their resolution to conquer isinvincible.'"
"Oh, how true! and ah, dearie!"--she pressed her sister's hand amid thesilver and porcelain on the old mahogany--"that news (some item readearlier, about the battery), why, Miranda, just that is a sign ofimpending victory! Straws tell! and Kincaid's Battery is the--"
"Biggest straw in Dixie!" jeered Anna, grasping the paper, whichConstance half yielded with her eye still skimming its columns.
"Here it is!" cried both, and rose together.
'"Final Figures of the St. Louis Hotel Free-Gift Lottery and Bazaar'!"called Constance, while Anna's eyes flew over the lines.
"What are they?" exclaimed Miranda.
"Oh, come and see! Just think, Nan: last May, in Odd-Fellows' Hall, howproud we were of barely thirteen thousand, and here are sixty-eightthousand dollars!"
Anna pointed Miranda to a line, and Miranda, with their cheeks together,read out: "'Is there no end to the liberality of the Crescent City?'"
"No-o!" cried gesturing Constance, "not while one house stands onanother! Why, 'Randa, though every hall and hotel from here toCarrollton--"
Anna beamingly laid her fingers on the lips of the enthusiast:"Con!--Miranda!--_we_ can have a bazaar right in this house! Everyfriend we've got, and every friend of the bat'--Oh, come in, FloraValcour! you're just in the nick o' time--a second Kirby Smith atManassas!"
Thus came the free-gift lottery and bazaar of Callender House. For herown worth as well as to enlist certain valuable folk from Mobile, Florawas, there and then--in caucus, as it were--nominated chairman ofeverything. "Oh, no, no, no!"--"Oh, yes, yes, yes!"--she "yielded atlast to overpowering numbers."
But between this first rapturous inception and an all-forenoonargumentation on its when, who, how, what, and for what, other mattersclaimed notice. "Further news from Charlie! How was his wound? What! aletter from his own hand--with full account of--what was this one? not apitched battle, but--?"
"Anyhow a victory!" cried Constance.
"You know, Flora, don't you," asked Miranda, "that the battery's orderedaway across to Tennessee?"
Flora was genuinely surprised.
"Yes," put in Constance, "to rejoin Beauregard--and Brodnax!"
Flora turned to Anna: "You have that by letter?"
"No!" was the too eager reply, "It's here in the morning paper." Theyread the item. The visitor flashed as she dropped the sheet.
"Now I see!" she sorely cried, and tapped Charlie's folded letter. "MyGod! Anna, wounded like that, Hilary Kincaid is letting my brother gowith them!"
"Oh-h-h!" exclaimed the other two, "but--my dear! if he's so much betterthat he can be allowed--"
"Allowed!--and in those box-car'!--and with thatsnow--rain--gangrene--lockjaw--my God! And when 'twas already _arrange_'to bring him home!"
Slow Callenders! not to notice the word "bring" in place of "send": "Ah,good, Flora! ah, fine! You'll see! The dear boy's coming that far withthe battery only on his way home to us!"
"H-m-m!" Flora nodded in sore irony, but then smiled with recoveredpoise: "From Tennessee who will bring him--before they have firs' fightanother battle?--and he--my brother?"--her smile grew droll.
"Your brother sure to be in it!" gasped Anna. The Callenders lookedheart-wrung, but Flora smiled on as she thought what comfort it would beto give each of them some life-long disfigurement.
Suddenly Constance cheered up: "Flora, I've guessed something! Yes, I'veguessed who was intending--and, maybe, still intends--to bring him!"
Flora turned prettily to Anna: "Have you?"
Quite as prettily Anna laughed. "Connie does the guessing for thefamily," she said.
Flora sparkled: "But don't you _know_--perchanze?"
Anna laughed again and blushed to the throat as she retorted, "What hasthat to do with our bazaar?"
It had much to do with it.