Kincaid's Battery

by George Washington Cable

  XLII

  "VICTORY! I HEARD IT AS PL'--"

  The last few days of March and first three or four of April, since thebattery boys and the three captains had gone, were as full of frightenedand angry questions as the air is of bees around a shaken hive.

  So Anna had foreboded, yet it was not so for the causes she had in mind;not one fierce hum asked another where the bazaar's money was. Thatearlier bazaar, in the St. Louis Hotel, had taken six weeks to reportits results, and now, with everybody distracted by a swarm and buzz offar larger, livelier, hotter queries, the bazaar's sponsors might reportor not, as they chose. Meanwhile, was the city really in dire andshameful jeopardy, or was it as safe as the giddiest boasted? Lookingfarther away, over across Georgia to Fort Pulaski, so tremendouslywalled and armed, was the "invader" merely wasting lives, trying to takeit? On North Carolina's coast, where our priceless blockade-runnersplied, had Newbern, as so stubbornly rumored, and had Beaufort, alreadyfallen, or had they really not? Had the _Virginia_ not sunk the_Monitor_ and scattered the Northern fleets? Was it _not_ by France,after all (asked the Creoles), but only by Paraguay that the Confederacyhad been "reco'nize'"? Was there _no_ truth in the joyous report thatMcClellan had vanished from Yorktown peninsula? _Was_ the loss ofCumberland Gap a trivial matter, and did it in fact not cut in two ourgreat strategic front? Up yonder at Corinth, our "new and far better"base, was Sidney Johnston an "imbecile," a "coward," a "traitor"? orwas he not rather an unparagoned strategist who, having at last "luredthe presumptuous foe" into his toils, was now, with Beauregard,notwithstanding Beauregard's protracted illness, about to make the "onefell swoop" of our complete deliverance? And after the swoop and its joyand its glory, when Johnnie should come marching home, whose Johnnies,and how many, would never return? As to your past-and-gone bazaar, law,honey--!

  So, as to that item, in all the wild-eyed city shaking with its ague ofanxieties only Anna was troubled when day after day no detective cameback with the old mud-caked dagger and now both were away on some quitealien matter, no one could say where. She alone was troubled, for shealone knew it was the bazaar's proceeds which had disappeared. Of whatavail to tell even Miranda, Connie, or Flora if they must not tellothers? It would only bind three more souls on the rack. "Vanished withthe dagger!" That would be all they could gasp, first amazed, thenscandalized, at a scheme of safe-keeping so fantastically reckless;reckless and fantastical as her so-called marriage. Yes, they would beas scandalized as they would have been charmed had the scheme prospered.And then they would blame not her but Hilary. Blame him in idle fear ofa calamity that was not going to befall!

  She might have told that sternest, kindest, wisest of friends, DoctorSevier. As the family's trustee he might yet have to be told. But onthat night of fantastical recklessness he had been away, himself atCorinth to show them there how to have vastly better hospitals, and toprescribe for his old friend Beauregard. He had got back but yesterday.Or she might have told the gray detective, just to make him morecareful, as Hilary, by letter, suggested. In part she had told him,through Flora; told him that to save that old curio she would risk herlife. Surely, knowing that, he would safeguard it, in whatever hands,and return it the moment he could. Who ever heard of a detective notreturning a thing the moment he could? Not Flora, _not_ yet Madame, theysaid. To be sure, thought Anna, those professional masters of delay, thephotographers, might be more jewel-wise than trustworthy, but whatphotographer could ever be so insane as to rob a detective? So, ratherashamed of one small solicitude in this day of great ones, she urged hercommittees for final reports--which never came--and felt very wisely inwriting her hero for his consent to things, and to assure him that atthe worst her own part of the family estate would make everything good,the only harrowing question being how to keep Miranda and Connie fromsharing the loss.

  On the first Sunday evening in April Doctor Sevier took tea with theCallenders, self-invited, alone and firmly oblivious of his own tardywedding-gift to Anna as it gleamed at him on the board. To any of ahundred hostesses he would have been a joy, to share with as manyfriends as he would consent to meet; for in the last week he had eaten"hog and hominy," and sipped corn-meal coffee, in lofty colloquy withSidney Johnston and his "big generals"; had talked confidentially withPolk, so lately his own bishop; had ridden through the miry streets ofCorinth with all the New Orleans commanders of division orbrigade--Gibson, Trudeau, Ruggles, Brodnax; out on the parapets, betweenthe guns, had chatted with Hilary and his loved lieutenants; down amongthe tents and mess-fires had given his pale hand, with Spartaninjunctions and all the home news, to George Gregory, Ned Ferry, DickSmith, and others of Harper's cavalry, and--circled round by CharlieValcour, Sam Gibbs, Maxime, and scores of their comrades in Kincaid'sBattery--had seen once more their silken flag, so faded! and touched itssacred stains and tatters. Now at the tea table something led him toremark that here at home the stubborn illness of this battery sister forwhom Anna was acting as treasurer had compelled him to send her away.

  Timely topic: How to go into the country, and whither. The Callenderswere as eager for all the facts and counsel he could give on it as ifthey were the "big generals" and his facts and counsel were as to thecreeks, swamps, ridges, tangled ravines, few small clearings, and manyroads and by-roads in the vast, thinly settled, small-farmed,rain-drenched forests between Corinth and the clay bluffs of theTennessee. For now the Callenders also were to leave the city, as soonas they could be ready.

  "Don't wait till then," crisply said the Doctor.

  "We must wait till Nan winds up the bazaar."

  He thought not. In what bank had she its money?

  When she said not in any he frowned. Whereupon she smilingly stammeredthat she was told the banks themselves were sending their treasure intothe country, and that even ten days earlier, when some one wanted toturn a fund into its safest portable form, three banks had declined togive foreign exchange for it at any price.

  "Hmm!" he mused. "Was that your, eh,--?"

  "My husband, yes," said Anna, so quietly that the sister and stepmotherexulted in her. As quietly her eyes held the doctor's, and his hers,while the colour mounted to her brow. He spoke:

  "Still he got it into some good shape for you, the fund, did he not?"Then suddenly he clapped a hand to a breast pocket and stared: "He gaveme a letter for you. Did I--? Ah, yes, I have your written thanks. Anna,I thoroughly approve what you and he have done."

  Constance and Miranda were overjoyed. He turned to them: "I told Hilaryso up in camp. I told Steve. Yes, Anna, you were wise. You are wise.I've no doubt you're doing wisely about that fund."

  It was hard for the wise one not to look guilty.

  "Have you told anybody," he continued, "in what form you have it, orwhere?"

  "No!" put in the aggrieved Constance, "not even her blood kin!"

  "Wise again. Best for all of you. Now just hang to the lucre. It comestoo late to be of use here; this brave town will have to stand or fallwithout it. But it's still good for Mobile, and Mobile saved may be NewOrleans recovered."

  On a hint from the other women, and urged by their visitor, Anna broughtthe letter and read him several closely written pages on the strategicmeaning of things. The zest with which he discussed the lines made hernewly proud of their source.

  "They're so like his very word o' mouth," said he, "they bring him rightback here among us. Yes, and the whole theatre of action with him. Theydraw it about us so closely and relate it all to us so vitally thatit--"

  "Seems," broke in the delighted Constance, "as if we saw it all from thetop of this house!"

  The Doctor's jaw set. Who likes phrases stuffed into his mouth? Yetpresently he allowed himself to resume. It confirmed, he said,Beauregard's word in his call for volunteers, that there, beforeCorinth, was the place to defend Louisiana. Soon he had regained hishueless ardor, and laid out the whole matter on the table for theinspiration of his three confiding auditors. Here at Chattanooga, soimpregnably ours, issued Tennessee river and the Memphis and C
harlestonrailroad from the mountain gateway between our eastern and western seatsof war. Here they swept down into Alabama, passed from the state'snorth-east to its north-west corner and parted company. Here the railwaycontinued westward, here it crossed the Mobile and Ohio railroad atCorinth, here the Mississippi Central at Grand Junction, and pressed onto Memphis, our back-gate key of the Mississippi.

  "In war," said the Doctor, "rivers and railro'--"

  "Are the veins and arteries of--oh, pardon!" The crime was Anna's thistime.

  "Are the lines fought for," resumed the speaker, "and wherever two orthree of them join or cross you may look for a battle." His long fingerdropped again to the table. Back here in Alabama the Tennessee turnednorth to seek the Ohio, and here, just over the Mississippi state line,in Tennessee, some twenty miles north of Corinth, it became navigablefor the Ohio's steamboats--gunboats--transports--at a place called inthe letter "Pittsburg Landing."

  Yes, now, between Hilary's pages and the Doctor's logic, with Hilaryalmost as actually present as the physician, the ladies saw why thisgreat Memphis-Chattanooga fighting line was, not alone pictorially, butpractically, right at hand! barely beyond sight and hearing or the feelof its tremor; a veritable back garden wall to them and their belovedcity; as close as forts Jackson and St. Philip, her front gate. Yes,and--Anna ventured to point out and the Doctor grudgingly admitted--ifthe brave gray hosts along that back wall should ever--could ever--beborne back so far southward, westward, the last line would have to runfrom one to another of the Crescent City's back doorsteps and doors;from Vicksburg, that is, eastward through Jackson, Mississippi'scapital, cross the state's two north-and-south railways, and swing downthrough Alabama to Mobile on the Gulf. This, she silently perceived, waswhy the letter and the Doctor quite agreed that Connie, Miranda, and sheought to find their haven somewhere within the dim region between NewOrleans and those three small satellite cities; not near any tworailways, yet close enough to a single one for them to get news, publicor personal, in time to act on it.

  At leave-taking came the guest's general summing up of fears and faiths.All his hope for New Orleans, he said, was in the forts down at thePasses. Should they fall the city could not stand. But amid theirillimitable sea marshes and their impenetrable swamp forests, chin-deepin the floods of broken levees, he truly believed, they would hold out.Let them do so only till the first hot breath of real Delta summershould bring typhoid, breakbone, yellow, and swamp fevers, the last byall odds the worst, and Butler's unacclimated troops would have toreembark for home pell-mell or die on Ship Island like poisoned fish. Somuch for the front gate. For the back gate, Corinth, which just nowseemed--the speaker harkened.

  "Seemed," he resumed, "so much more like the front--listen!" There camea far, childish call.

  "An extra," laughed Constance. "Steve says we issue one every time hebrushes his uniform."

  "But, Con," argued Anna, "an extra on Sunday evening, brought away downhere--" The call piped nearer.

  "Victory!" echoed Constance. "I heard it as pl'--"

  "Beauregard! Tennessee!" exclaimed both sisters. They flew to theveranda, the other two following. Down in the gate could be seen the oldcoachman, already waiting to buy the paper. Constance called to himtheir warm approval. "I thought," murmured Miranda, "that Beauregard wasin Miss'--"

  Anna touched her, and the cry came again: "Great victory--!" Yes, yes,but by whom, and where? Johnston? Corinth? "Great victory at--!" Where?Where, did he say? The word came again, and now again, but still it wastauntingly vague. Anna's ear seemed best, yet even she could say only,"I never heard of such a place--out of the bible. It soundslike--Shiloh."

  Shiloh it was. At a table lamp indoors the Doctor bent over the freshprint. "It's true," he affirmed. "It's Beauregard's own despatch. 'Acomplete victory,' he says. 'Driving the enemy'--" The reader ceased andstared at the page. "Why, good God!" Slowly he lifted his eyes uponthose three sweet women until theirs ran full. And then he stared oncemore into the page: "Oh, good God! Albert Sidney Johnston is dead."