LXXI
SOLDIERS OF PEACE
In March, 'Sixty-five, the Confederacy lay dying. While yet in Virginiaand the Carolinas, at Mobile and elsewhere her armies daily, nightlystrove on, bled on, a stricken quiet and great languor had come overher, a quiet with which the quiet ending of this tale is only inreverent keeping.
On Mobile's eastern side Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely, her lastdefenses, were fighting forty thousand besiegers. Kincaid's Battery wasthere, and there was heavy artillery, of course, but this time the"ladies' men"--still so called--had field-guns, though but three. Theycould barely man that number. One was a unit of the original six lost"for them, not by them," at Vicksburg, and lately recovered.
Would there were time for its story! The boys had been sent up the stateto reinforce Forrest. Having one evening silenced an opposing battery,and stealing over in the night and bringing off its best gun, they hadslept about "her" till dawn, but then had laughed, hurrahed, danced, andwept round her and fallen upon her black neck and kissed her big lips onfinding her no other than their own old "Roaring Betsy." She might havehad a gentler welcome had not her lads just learned that while theyslept _the_ "ladies' man" had arrived from Mobile with a bit of newsglorious alike for him and them.
The same word reached New Orleans about the same date. Flora, returningfrom a call on Irby, brought it to her grandmother. In the middle oftheir sitting-room, with the worst done-for look yet, standing behind afrail chair whose back she gripped with both hands, she meditativelysaid--
"All privieuse statement' ab-out that court-martial on the 'vacuation ofFord Powell are prim-ature. It has, with highez' approval, _acquit_'every one concern' in it." She raised the light chair to the limit ofher reach and brought it down on another with a force that shiveredboth. Madame rushed for a door, but--"Stay!" amiably said the maiden."Pick up the pieces--for me--eh? I'll have to pick up the pieces of yousome day--soon--I hope--mm?"
She took a book to a window seat, adding as she went, "Victorine. You'venot heard ab-out that, neither? She's biccome an orphan. Hmm! Also--thelittle beggar!--she's--married. Yes. To Charles Valcour. My God! I wishI was a man."
Music "Um, hmm, hmm, hmm, Mm, hmm, hmm, hmm--"]
"_Leave the room!_"
But these were closed incidents when those befell which two or threefinal pages linger to recount. The siege of Spanish Fort was the war'slast great battle. From March twenty-sixth to April the eighth it wasdeadly, implacable; the defense hot, defiant, audacious. On the night ofthe eighth the fort's few hundred cannoneers spiked their heavy gunsand, taking their light ones along, left it. They had fought fullyaware that Richmond was already lost, and on the next day, a Sabbath,as Kincaid's Battery trundled through the town while forty thousandwomen and children--with the Callenders and little Steve--wept, its boysknew their own going meant Mobile had fallen, though they knew not thatin that very hour the obscure name of Appomattox was being made forevergreat in history.
"I reached Meridian," writes their general, "refitted the ...fieldbatteries and made ready to march across (country) and join GeneralJoseph E. Johnston in Carolina. The tidings of Lee's surrender sooncame.... But ...the little army of Mobile remained steadfastly together,and in perfect order and discipline awaited the final issue of events."
It was while they so waited that Kincaid's Battery learned of thedestruction, by fire, of Callender House, but took comfort in agreeingthat now, at last, come or fail what might, the three sweetest womenthat ever lived would live up-town.
One lovely May morning a Federal despatch-boat--yes, the one weknow--sped down Mobile Bay with many gray-uniformed men aboard, mostlyof the ranks and unaccoutred, but some of them officers still belted fortheir unsurrendered swords. Many lads showed the red artillery trim andwore jauntily on their battered caps K.B. separated by crossed cannon."Roaring Betsy" had howled her last forever. Her sergeant, Valcour, wasthere, with his small fond bride, both equally unruffled by anymisgiving that they would not pull through this still inviting worldhappily.
Mandeville was present, his gilt braid a trifle more gilt than any oneelse's. Constance and little Steve--who later became president of theCotton Exchange--were with him. Also Miranda. Out forward yonder on theupper deck, beside tall Hilary Kincaid, stood Anna. Greenleaf eyed themfrom the pilot-house, where he had retired to withhold the awkwardreminder inseparable from his blue livery. In Hilary's fingers was awriting which he and Anna had just read together. In reference to it hewas saying that while the South had fallen to the bottom depths ofpoverty the North had been growing rich, and that New Orleans, forinstance, was chock full of Yankees--oh, yes, I'm afraid that's what hecalled them--Yankees, with greenbacks in every pocket, eager to set upany gray soldier who knew how to make, be or do anything mutuallyprofitable. Moved by Fred Greenleaf, who could furnish funds butpreferred, himself, never to be anything but a soldier, the enterprisinghusband of the once deported but now ever so happily marriedschoolmistress who--
"Yes, I know," said Anna--
Well, for a trifle, at its confiscation sale, this man had boughtKincaid's Foundry, which now stood waiting for Hilary to manage, controland in the end recover to his exclusive ownership on the way to largerthings. What gave the subject an intense tenderness of unsordid interestwas that it meant for the pair--what so many thousands of paroled heroesand the women they loved and who loved them were hourly finding out--that they were not such beggars, after all, but they might even thereand then name their wedding day, which then and there they named.
"Let Adolphe and Flora keep the old estate and be as happy on it, andin it, as Heaven will let them; they've got each other to be happy with.The world still wants cotton, and if they'll stand for the old South'scotton we'll stand for a new South and iron; iron and a new South, Nan,my Nannie; a new and better South and even a new and better New Orl--seewhere we are! Right yonder the _Tennessee_--"
"Yes," interrupted Anna, "let's put that behind us--henceforth, as theboat is doing now."
The steamer turned westward into Grant's Pass. To southward lay Morganand Gaines, floating the ensign of a saved Union. Close here on theright lay the ruins of Fort Powell. From the lower deck the boys,pressing to the starboard guards to see, singly or in pairs smiled up toHilary's smile. Among them was Sam Gibbs, secretly bearing home thebattery's colors wrapped round him next his scarred and cross-scarredbody. And so, farewell Mobile. Hour by hour through the beautiful blueday, island after island, darkling green or glistering white, rose intoview, drifted by between the steamer and the blue Gulf and sunk into thedeep; Petit Bois, Horn Island, Ship Island, Cat Island. Now past RoundIsland, up Lake Borgne and through the Rigolets they swept intoPontchartrain, and near the day's close saw the tide-low, sombre butblessed shore beyond which a scant half-hour's railway ride lay the citythey called home.
Across the waters westward, where the lake's margin, black-rimmed withcypresses, lapsed into a watery horizon, and the sun was going down inmelancholy splendor, ran unseen that northbound railway by which fouryears earlier they had set off for the war with ranks full and stately,with music in the air and with thousands waving them on. Now not a note,not a drum-tap, not a boast nor a jest illumined their return. In thelast quarter-hour aboard, when every one was on the lower deck about theforward gangway, Hilary and Anna, having chanced to step up upon a coilof rope, found it easier, in the unconscious press, to stay there thanto move on, and in keeping with his long habit as a leader he fell intoa lively talk with those nearest him,--Sam and Charlie close in front,Bartleson and Mandeville just at his back,--to lighten the generalheaviness. At every word his listeners multiplied, and presently, in aquiet but insistent tone, came calls for a "speech" and the "ladies'man."
"No," he gaily replied, "oh, no, boys!" But his words went on and becamesomething much like what they craved. As he ceased came the silent,ungreeted landing. Promptly followed the dingy train's short run up theshore of the New Canal, and then its stop athwart St. Charles Street,under no roof, amid no throng, wit
hout one huzza or cry of welcome, andthe prompt dispersal of the outwardly burdenless wanderers, in smallknots afoot, up-town, down-town, many of them trying to say over againthose last words from the chief hero of their four years' trial by fire.The effort was but effort, no full text has come down; but their driftseems to have been that, though disarmed, unliveried, and disbanded,they could remain true soldiers: That the perfect soldier loves peace,loathes war: That no man can be such who cannot, whether alone or amongthousands of his fellows, strive, suffer and wait with magnanimouspatience, stake life and fortune, and, in extremity, fight like awhirlwind, for the victories of peace: That every setting sun will riseagain _if it is a true sun:_ That good-night was not good-by: and that,as for their old nickname, no one can ever be a whole true ladies' manwhose _aim_ is not at some title far above and beyond it--which last hesaid not of himself, but in behalf and by request of the mother of theguns they had gone out with and of the furled but unsullied banner theyhad brought home.
THE END.
Kincaid's Battery Page 71
