So Anna had foreboded, yet it was not so for the causes she had in mind; not one fierce hum asked another where the bazaar1's money was. That earlier bazaar, in the St. Louis Hotel, had taken six weeks to report its results, and now, with everybody distracted by a swarm2 and buzz of far larger, livelier, hotter queries3, the bazaar's sponsors might report or not, as they chose. Meanwhile, was the city really in dire4 and shameful5 jeopardy6, or was it as safe as the giddiest boasted? Looking farther away, over across Georgia to Fort Pulaski, so tremendously walled and armed, was the "invader8" merely wasting lives, trying to take it? On North Carolina's coast, where our priceless blockade-runners plied9, had Newbern, as so stubbornly rumored10, and had Beaufort, already fallen, or had they really not? Had the Virginia not sunk the Monitor and scattered11 the Northern fleets? Was it not by France, after all (asked the Creoles), but only by Paraguay that the Confederacy had been "reco'nize'"? Was there no truth in the joyous12 report that McClellan had vanished from Yorktown peninsula? Was the loss of Cumberland Gap a trivial matter, and did it in fact not cut in two our great strategic front? Up yonder at Corinth, our "new and far better" base, was Sidney Johnston an "imbecile," a "coward," a "traitor"? or was he not rather an unparagoned strategist who, having at last "lured13 the presumptuous14 foe15" into his toils16, was now, with Beauregard, notwithstanding Beauregard's protracted17 illness, about to make the "one fell swoop18" of our complete deliverance? And after the swoop and its joy and 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 of anxieties only Anna was troubled when day after day no detective came back with the old mud-caked dagger19 and now both were away on some quite alien matter, no one could say where. She alone was troubled, for she alone knew it was the bazaar's proceeds which had disappeared. Of what avail to tell even Miranda, Connie, or Flora20 if they must not tell others? It would only bind21 three more souls on the rack. "Vanished with the dagger!" That would be all they could gasp22, first amazed, then scandalized, at a scheme of safe-keeping so fantastically reckless; reckless and fantastical as her so-called marriage. Yes, they would be as scandalized as they would have been charmed had the scheme prospered23. And then they would blame not her but Hilary. Blame him in idle fear of a calamity24 that was not going to befall!
She might have told that sternest, kindest, wisest of friends, Doctor Sevier. As the family's trustee he might yet have to be told. But on that night of fantastical recklessness he had been away, himself at Corinth to show them there how to have vastly better hospitals, and to prescribe for his old friend Beauregard. He had got back but yesterday. Or she might have told the gray detective, just to make him more careful, as Hilary, by letter, suggested. In part she had told him, through Flora; told him that to save that old curio she would risk her life. Surely, knowing that, he would safeguard it, in whatever hands, and return it the moment he could. Who ever heard of a detective not returning a thing the moment he could? Not Flora, not yet Madame, they said. To be sure, thought Anna, those professional masters of delay, the photographers, might be more jewel-wise than trustworthy, but what photographer could ever be so insane as to rob a detective? So, rather ashamed of one small solicitude25 in this day of great ones, she urged her committees for final reports--which never came--and felt very wisely in writing her hero for his consent to things, and to assure him that at the worst her own part of the family estate would make everything good, the only harrowing question being how to keep Miranda and Connie from sharing the loss.
On the first Sunday evening in April Doctor Sevier took tea with the Callenders, self-invited, alone and firmly oblivious26 of his own tardy27 wedding-gift to Anna as it gleamed at him on the board. To any of a hundred hostesses he would have been a joy, to share with as many friends as he would consent to meet; for in the last week he had eaten "hog28 and hominy," and sipped29 corn-meal coffee, in lofty colloquy30 with Sidney Johnston and his "big generals"; had talked confidentially31 with Polk, so lately his own bishop32; had ridden through the miry streets of Corinth with all the New Orleans commanders of division or brigade--Gibson, Trudeau, Ruggles, Brodnax; out on the parapets, between the guns, had chatted with Hilary and his loved lieutenants33; down among the tents and mess-fires had given his pale hand, with Spartan34 injunctions and all the home news, to George Gregory, Ned Ferry, Dick Smith, and others of Harper's cavalry36, and--circled round by Charlie Valcour, Sam Gibbs, Maxime, and scores of their comrades in Kincaid's Battery--had seen once more their silken flag, so faded! and touched its sacred stains and tatters. Now at the tea table something led him to remark that here at home the stubborn illness of this battery sister for whom Anna was acting37 as treasurer38 had compelled him to send her away.
Timely topic: How to go into the country, and whither. The Callenders were as eager for all the facts and counsel he could give on it as if they were the "big generals" and his facts and counsel were as to the creeks39, swamps, ridges40, tangled41 ravines, few small clearings, and many roads and by-roads in the vast, thinly settled, small-farmed, rain-drenched forests between Corinth and the clay bluffs42 of the Tennessee. For now the Callenders also were to leave the city, as soon as 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 stammered43 that she was told the banks themselves were sending their treasure into the country, and that even ten days earlier, when some one wanted to turn a fund into its safest portable form, three banks had declined to give foreign exchange for it at any price.
"Hmm!" he mused44. "Was that your, eh,--?"
"My husband, yes," said Anna, so quietly that the sister and stepmother exulted45 in her. As quietly her eyes held the doctor's, and his hers, while the colour mounted to her brow. He spoke46:
"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 gave me a letter for you. Did I--? Ah, yes, I have your written thanks. Anna, I thoroughly47 approve what you and he have done."
Constance and Miranda were overjoyed. He turned to them: "I told Hilary so 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, or where?"
"No!" put in the aggrieved48 Constance, "not even her blood kin7!"
"Wise again. Best for all of you. Now just hang to the lucre49. It comes too late to be of use here; this brave town will have to stand or fall without it. But it's still good for Mobile, and Mobile saved may be New Orleans recovered."
On a hint from the other women, and urged by their visitor, Anna brought the letter and read him several closely written pages on the strategic meaning of things. The zest50 with which he discussed the lines made her newly proud of their source.
"They're so like his very word o' mouth," said he, "they bring him right back here among us. Yes, and the whole theatre of action with him. They draw it about us so closely and relate it all to us so vitally that it--"
"Seems," broke in the delighted Constance, "as if we saw it all from the top of this house!"
The Doctor's jaw51 set. Who likes phrases stuffed into his mouth? Yet presently he allowed himself to resume. It confirmed, he said, Beauregard's word in his call for volunteers, that there, before Corinth, was the place to defend Louisiana. Soon he had regained52 his hueless53 ardor54, and laid out the whole matter on the table for the inspiration of his three confiding55 auditors56. Here at Chattanooga, so impregnably ours, issued Tennessee river and the Memphis and Charleston railroad from the mountain gateway57 between our eastern and western seats of war. Here they swept down into Alabama, passed from the state's north-east to its north-west corner and parted company. Here the railway continued westward58, here it crossed the Mobile and Ohio railroad at Corinth, here the Mississippi Central at Grand Junction35, and pressed on to Memphis, our back-gate key of the Mississippi.
"In war," said the Doctor, "rivers and railro'--"
"Are the veins59 and arteries60 of--oh, pardon!" The crime was Anna's this time.
"Are the lines fought for," resumed the speaker, "and wherever two or three of them join or cross you may look for a battle." His long finger dropped again to the table. Back here in Alabama the Tennessee turned north to seek the Ohio, and here, just over the Mississippi state line, in Tennessee, some twenty miles north of Corinth, it became navigable for the Ohio's steamboats--gunboats--transports--at a place called in the letter "Pittsburg Landing."
Yes, now, between Hilary's pages and the Doctor's logic61, with Hilary almost as actually present as the physician, the ladies saw why this great Memphis-Chattanooga fighting line was, not alone pictorially62, but practically, right at hand! barely beyond sight and hearing or the feel of its tremor63; a veritable back garden wall to them and their beloved city; as close as forts Jackson and St. Philip, her front gate. Yes, and--Anna ventured to point out and the Doctor grudgingly64 admitted--if the brave gray hosts along that back wall should ever--could ever--be borne back so far southward, westward, the last line would have to run from one to another of the Crescent City's back doorsteps and doors; from Vicksburg, that is, eastward65 through Jackson, Mississippi's capital, cross the state's two north-and-south railways, and swing down through Alabama to Mobile on the Gulf66. This, she silently perceived, was why the letter and the Doctor quite agreed that Connie, Miranda, and she ought to find their haven67 somewhere within the dim region between New Orleans and those three small satellite cities; not near any two railways, yet close enough to a single one for them to get news, public or 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 the Passes. Should they fall the city could not stand. But amid their illimitable sea marshes68 and their impenetrable swamp forests, chin-deep in the floods of broken levees, he truly believed, they would hold out. Let them do so only till the first hot breath of real Delta69 summer should bring typhoid, breakbone, yellow, and swamp fevers, the last by all odds70 the worst, and Butler's unacclimated troops would have to re?mbark for home pell-mell or die on Ship Island like poisoned fish. So much for the front gate. For the back gate, Corinth, which just now seemed--the speaker harkened.
"Seemed," he resumed, "so much more like the front--listen!" There came a far, childish call.
"An extra," laughed Constance. "Steve says we issue one every time he brushes his uniform."
"But, Con," argued Anna, "an extra on Sunday evening, brought away down here--" The call piped nearer.
"Victory!" echoed Constance. "I heard it as pl'--"
"Beauregard! Tennessee!" exclaimed both sisters. They flew to the veranda71, the other two following. Down in the gate could be seen the old coachman, already waiting to buy the paper. Constance called to him their warm approval. "I thought," murmured Miranda, "that Beauregard was in 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 was tauntingly72 vague. Anna's ear seemed best, yet even she could say only, "I never heard of such a place--out of the bible. It sounds like--Shiloh."
Shiloh it was. At a table lamp indoors the Doctor bent73 over the fresh print. "It's true," he affirmed. "It's Beauregard's own despatch74. 'A complete victory,' he says. 'Driving the enemy'--" The reader ceased and stared at the page. "Why, good God!" Slowly he lifted his eyes upon those three sweet women until theirs ran full. And then he stared once more into the page: "Oh, good God! Albert Sidney Johnston is dead."
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1
bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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dire
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| adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的 | |
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shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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jeopardy
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| n.危险；危难 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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invader
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| n.侵略者，侵犯者，入侵者 | |
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plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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rumored
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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toils
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| 网 | |
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protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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swoop
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| n.俯冲，攫取；v.抓取，突然袭击 | |
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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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calamity
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| n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件 | |
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solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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oblivious
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| adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的 | |
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tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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hog
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| n.猪；馋嘴贪吃的人；vt.把…占为己有，独占 | |
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29
sipped
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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colloquy
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| n.谈话，自由讨论 | |
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confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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lieutenants
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| n.陆军中尉( lieutenant的名词复数 )；副职官员；空军；仅低于…官阶的官员 | |
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spartan
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| adj.简朴的，刻苦的；n.斯巴达；斯巴达式的人 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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treasurer
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| n.司库，财务主管 | |
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creeks
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| n.小湾( creek的名词复数 )；小港；小河；小溪 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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41
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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bluffs
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| 恐吓( bluff的名词复数 )； 悬崖； 峭壁 | |
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43
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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45
exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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47
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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aggrieved
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| adj.愤愤不平的，受委屈的；悲痛的；（在合法权利方面）受侵害的v.令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式)；令委屈，令苦恼，侵害( aggrieve的过去式和过去分词) | |
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49
lucre
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| n.金钱，财富 | |
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50
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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51
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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52
regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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53
hueless
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ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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55
confiding
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| adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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56
auditors
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| n.审计员，稽核员( auditor的名词复数 )；（大学课程的）旁听生 | |
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57
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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pictorially
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| 绘画般地 | |
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tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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grudgingly
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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haven
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| n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所 | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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delta
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| n.（流的）角洲 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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tauntingly
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| 嘲笑地，辱骂地； 嘲骂地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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despatch
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| n./v.(dispatch)派遣；发送；n.急件；新闻报道 | |
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