"Well, well, if there isn"t Sam Gibbs, sergeant of a gun! It is, I tell you, it is! Sam Gibbs, made over new, as sure as a certain monosyllable! and what could be surer, for Sam Gibbs?"
So laugh the sidewalks; but society, overhead, cares not for a made-over Gibbs while round about him are sixty or seventy young heroes who need no making over. Anna, Anna! what a brave and happy half-and-half of Creoles and "Americans" do your moist eyes beam down upon: here a Canonge and there an Ogden--a Zacherie--a Fontennette--Willie Geddes--Tom Norton--a Fusilier! Nat Frellsen--a Tramontana--a Grandissime!--and a Grandissime again! Percy Chilton--a Dudley--Arthur Puig y Puig--a De Armas--MacKnight--Violett--Avendano--Rob Rareshide--Guy Palfrey--a Morse, a Bien, a Fuentes--a Grandissme once more! Aleck Moise--Ralph Fenner--Ned Ferry!--and lo! a Raoul Innerarity, image of his grandfather"s portrait--and a Jules St. Ange! a Converse--Jack Eustis--two Frowenfelds! a Mossy! a Hennen--Bartie Sloo--McVey, McStea, a De Lavillebuevre--a Thornd.y.k.e-Smith and a Grandissime again!
And ah! see yonder young cannoneer half-way between these two balconies and the statue beyond; that foppish boy with his hair in a hundred curls and his eyes wild with wayward ardor! "Ah, Charlie Valcour!" thinks Anna; "oh, your poor sister!" while the eyes of Victorine take him in secretly and her voice is still for a whole minute. Hark! From the head of the column is wafted back a bugle-note, and everything stands.
Now the trim lads relax, the balcony dames in the rear rows sit down, there are nods and becks and wafted whispers to a Calder and an Avery, to tall Numa, Dolhonde and short Eugene Chopin, to George Wood and d.i.c.k Penn and Fenner and Bouligny and Pilcher and L"Hommedieu; and Charlie sends up bows and smiles, and wipes the beautiful brow he so openly and wilfully loves best on earth. Anna smiles back, but Constance bids her look at Maxime, Victorine"s father, whom neither his long white moustaches nor weight of years nor the lawless past revealed in his daring eyes can rob of his youth. So Anna looks, and when she turns again to Charlie she finds him sending a glance rife with conquest--not his first--up to Victorine, who, without meeting it, replies--as she has done to each one before it--with a dreamy smile into vacancy, and a faint narrowing of her almond eyes.
Captain Kincaid comes ambling back, and right here in the throat of Royal Street faces the command. The matter is explained to Madame Valcour by a stranger:
"Now at the captain"s word all the cannoneers will spring down, leaving only guns, teams and drivers at their back, and line up facing us. The captain will dismount and ascend to the balcony, and there he and the young lady, whoever she is--" He waits, hoping Madame will say who the young lady is, but Madame only smiles for him to proceed--"The captain and she will confront each other, she will present the colors, he, replying, will receive them, and--ah, after all!" The thing had been done without their seeing it, and there stood the whole magnificent double line. Captain Kincaid dismounted and had just turned from his horse when there galloped up Royal Street from the vanished procession--Mandeville. Slipping and clattering, he reined up and saluted: "How soon can Kincaid"s Battery be completely ready to go into camp?"
"Now, if necessary."
"It will receive orders to move at seven to-morrow morning!" The Creole"s fervor amuses the rabble, and when Hilary smiles his earnestness waxes to a frown. Kincaid replies lightly and the rider bends the rein to wheel away, but the slippery stones have their victim at last. The horse"s feet spread and scrabble, his haunches go low. Constance s.n.a.t.c.hes both Anna"s hands. Ah! by good luck the beast is up again! Yet again the hoofs slip, the rider reels, and Charlie and a comrade dart out to catch him, but he recovers. Then the horse makes another plunge and goes clear down with a slam and a slide that hurl his master to the very sidewalk and make a hundred pale women cry out.
Constance and her two companions bend wildly from the bal.u.s.trade, a sight for a painter. Across the way Flora, holding back her grandmother, silently leans out, another picture. In the ranks near Charlie a disarray continues even after Kincaid has got the battered Mandeville again into the saddle, and while Mandeville is rejecting sympathy with a begrimed yet haughty smile.
"Keep back, ladies!" pleads Madame"s late informant, holding off two or three bodily. "Ladies, sit down! Will you please to keep back!" Flora still leans out. Some one is melodiously calling:
"Captain Kincaid!" It is Mrs. Callender. "Captain!" she repeats.
He smiles up and at last meets Anna"s eyes. Flora sees their glances--angels ascending and descending--and a wee loop of ribbon that peeps from his tightly b.u.t.toned breast. Otherwise another sight, elsewhere, could not have escaped her, though it still escapes many.
"Poor boy!" it causes two women behind her to exclaim, "poor boy!" but Flora pays no heed, for Hilary is speaking to the Callenders.
"Nothing broken but his watch," he gayly comforts them as to Mandeville.
"He"s bleeding!" moans Constance, very white. But Kincaid softly explains in his hollowed hands:
"Only his nose!"
The nose"s owner casts no upward look. Not his to accept pity, even from a fiancee. His handkerchief dampened "to wibe the faze," two bits of wet paper "to plug the noztril","--he could allow no more!
"First blood of the war!" said Hilary.
"Yez! But"--the flashing warrior tapped his sword--"nod the last!" and was off at a gallop, while Kincaid turned hurriedly to find that Charlie, struck by the floundering horse, had twice fainted away.
In the balconies the press grew dangerous. An urchin intercepted Kincaid to show him the Callenders, who, with distressed eyes, pointed him to their carriage hurrying across Ca.n.a.l Street.
"For Charlie and Flora!" called Anna. They could not stir "themselves" for the crush; but yonder, on Moody"s side, the same kind citizen noticed before had taken matters in hand:
"Keep back, ladies! Make room! Let these two ladies out!" He squeezed through the pack, holding aloft the furled colors, which all this time had been lying at Flora"s feet. Her anxious eyes were on them at every second step as she pressed after him with the grandmother dangling from her elbow.
The open carriage spun round the battery"s right and up its front to where a knot of comrades hid the prostrate Charlie; the surgeon, Kincaid, and Flora crouching at his side, the citizen from the balcony still protecting grandmamma, and the gilded eagle of the unpresented standard hovering over all. With tender ease Hilary lifted the sufferer and laid him on the carriage"s front seat, the surgeon pa.s.sed Madame in and sat next to her, but to Kincaid Flora exclaimed with a glow of heroic distress:
"Let me go later--with Anna!" Her eyes overflowed--she bit her lip--"I must present the flag!"
A note of applause started, a protest hushed it, and the overbending Callenders and the distracted Victorine heard Hilary admiringly say:
"Come! Go! You belong with your brother!"
He pressed her in. For an instant she stood while the carriage turned, a hand outstretched toward the standard, saying to Hilary something that was drowned by huzzas; then despairingly she sank into her seat and was gone down Royal Street.
"Attention!" called a lieutenant, and the ranks were in order. To the holder of the flag Hilary pointed out Anna, lingered for a word with his subaltern, and then followed the standard to the Callenders" balcony.
XIII
THINGS ANNA COULD NOT WRITE
"Charlie has two ribs broken, but is doing well," ran a page of the diary; "so well that Flora and Madame--who bears fatigue wonderfully--let Captain Irby take them, in the evening, to see the illumination. For the thunderstorm, which sent us whirling home at midday, was followed by a clear evening sky and an air just not too cool to be fragrant.
"I cannot write. My thoughts jostle one another out of all shape, like the women in that last crush after the flag-presentation. I begged not to have to take Flora"s place from her. It was like s.n.a.t.c.hing jewels off her. I felt like a robber! But in truth until I had the flag actually in my hand I thought we were only being asked to take care of it for a later day. The storm had begun to threaten. Some one was trying to say to me--"off to camp and then to the front," and--"must have the flag now," and still I said, "No, oh, no!" But before I could get any one to add a syllable there was the Captain himself with the three men of the color guard behind him, the middle one Victorine"s father. I don"t know how I began, but only that I went on and on in some wild way till I heard the applause all about and beneath me, and he took the colors from me, and the first gust of the storm puffed them half open--gorgeously--and the battery hurrahed. And then came his part. He--I cannot write it."
Why not, the diary never explained, but what occurred was this:
"Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" began Hilary and threw a superb look all round, but the instant he brought it back to Anna, it quailed, and he caught his breath. Then he nerved up again. To help his courage and her own she forced herself to gaze straight into his eyes, but reading the affright in hers he stood dumb and turned red.
He began again: "Ladies and gentlemen and comrades in arms!" and pulled his moustache, and smote and rubbed his brow, and suddenly drove his hand into an inside pocket and s.n.a.t.c.hed out a slip of paper. But what should come trailing out with it but a long loop of ribbon! As he pushed it back he dropped the paper, which another whiff of wind flirted straight over his head, sent it circling and soaring clear above Moody"s store and dropped it down upon the roof. And there gazed Anna and all that mult.i.tude, utterly blank, until the martyr himself burst into a laugh. Then a thousand laughs pealed as one, and he stood smiling and stroking back his hair, till his men began to cry, "song! song!"
Upon that he raised the flag high in one hand, let it balloon to the wind, made a sign of refusal, and all at once poured out a flood of speech--pledges to Anna and her fellow-needlewomen--charges to his men--hopes for the cherished cause--words so natural and unadorned, so practical and soldier-like, and yet so swift, that not a breath was drawn till he had ended. But then what a shout!
It was over in a moment. The great black cloud that had been swelling up from the south gave its first flash and crash, and everybody started pell-mell for home. The speaker stood just long enough for a last bow to Anna while the guard went before him with the colors. Then he hurried below and had the whole battery trotting down Ca.n.a.l Street and rounding back on its farther side, with the beautiful standard fluttering to the storm, before the Callenders could leave the balcony.
Ca.n.a.l Street that evening was a veritable fairyland. When, growing tired of their carriage, the Callenders and Mandeville walked, and Kincaid unexpectedly joined them, fairyland was the only name he could find for it, and Anna, in response, could find none at all. Mallard"s, Zimmerman"s, Clark"s, Levois"s, Laroussini"s, Moody"s, Hyde & Goodrich"s, and even old Piffet"s were all aglow. One cannot recount half. Every hotel, every club-house, all the theatres, all the consul"s offices in Royal and Carondelet streets, the banks everywhere, Odd Fellows" Hall--with the Continentals giving their annual ball in it--and so forth and so on! How the heart was exalted!
But when the heart is that way it is easy to say things prematurely, and right there in Ca.n.a.l Street Hilary spoke of love. Not personally, only at large; although when Anna restively said no woman should ever give her heart where she could not give a boundless and unshakable trust, his eyes showed a n.o.ble misery while he exclaimed:
"Oh, but there are women of whom no man can ever deserve that!" There his manner was all at once so personal that she dared not be silent, but fell to generalizing, with many a stammer, that a woman ought to be very slow to give her trust if, once giving it, she would not rather die than doubt.
"Do you believe there are such women?" he asked.
"I know there are," she said, her eyes lifted to his, but the next instant was so panic-smitten and shamed that she ran into a lamp post. And when he called that his fault her denial was affirmative in its feebleness, and with the others she presently resumed the carriage and said good-night.
"Flippantly!" thought the one left alone on the crowded sidewalk.
Yet--"It is I who am going to have the hardest of it," said the diary a short hour after. "I"ve always thought that when the right one came I"d never give in the faintest bit till I had put him to every test and task and delay I could invent. And now I can"t invent one! His face quenches doubt, and if he keeps on this way--Ah, Flora! is he anything to you? Every time he speaks my heart sees you. I see you now! And somehow--since Charlie"s mishap--more yours than his if--"
For a full minute the pen hovered over the waiting page, then gradually left it and sank to rest on its silver rack.
XIV
FLORA TAPS GRANDMA"S CHEEK
Meanwhile, from a cl.u.s.ter of society folk sipping ices at "Vincent"s" balcony tables, corner of Carondelet Street (where men made the most money), and Ca.n.a.l (where women spent the most), Flora and her grandmother, in Irby"s care, made their way down to the street.
Kincaid, once more on horseback with General Brodnax, saw them emerge beside his cousin"s hired carriage, and would have hurried to them, if only to inquire after the injured boy; but the General gave what he was saying a detaining energy. It was of erecting certain defences behind Mobile; of the scarcity of military engineers; and of his having, to higher authority, named Hilary for the task. The Captain could easily leave the battery in camp for a day or two, take the Mobile boat--He ceased an instant and scowled, as Hilary bowed across the way.
There was a tender raillery in the beam with which Flora held the young man"s eye a second, and as she turned away there was accusation in the faint toss and flicker of the deep lace that curtained her hat. Both her companions saw it, but Irby she filled with an instant inebriation by one look, the kindest she had ever given him.
"Both barrels!" said the old lady to herself.