Again the afternoon hour, the white shell-paved court, its two playing fountains, the roses, lilies, jasmines and violets, their perfume spicing all the air, and the oriole and mocking-bird enrapturing1 it with their songs, although it was that same dire2 twenty-fourth of April of which we have been telling. Townward across the wide plain the distant smoke of suicidal conflagration3 studded the whole great double crescent of the harbor. Again the slim railway, its frequent small trains from the city clanging round the flowery miles of its half-circle, again the highway on either side the track, and again on the highway, just reaching the gardens, whose dashing coach and span, but the Callenders'?
Dashing was the look of it, not its speed. Sedately4 it came. Behind it followed a team of four giant mules5, a joy to any quartermaster's vision, drawing a plantation7 wagon8 filled with luggage. On the old coachman's box sat beside him a slave maid, and in the carriage the three Callenders and Charlie. Anna and Miranda were on the rear seat and for the wounded boy's better ease his six-shooter lay in Anna's lap. A brave animation9 in the ladies was only the more prettily10 set off by a pinkness of earlier dejection about their eyes. Abreast11 the gate they halted to ask an armed sentry12 whether the open way up the river coast was through the gardens or--
He said there was no longer any open way without a pass from General Lovell, and when they affably commended the precaution and showed a pass he handed it to an officer, a heated, bustling13, road-soiled young Creole, who had ridden up at the head of a mounted detail. This youth, as he read it, shrugged14. "Under those present condition'," he said, with a wide gesture toward the remote miles of blazing harbor, "he could not honor a pazz two weeks ole. They would 'ave to rit-urn and get it renew'."
"Oh! how? How hope to do so in all yonder chaos15? And how! oh, how! could an army--in full retreat--leaving women and wounded soldiers to the mercy of a ravening16 foe--compel them to remain in the city it was itself evacuating17?" A sweet and melodious18 dignity was in all the questions, but eyes shone, brows arched, lips hung apart and bonnet-feathers and hat-feathers, capes19 and flounces, seemed to ruffle20 wider, with consternation21 and hurt esteem22.
The officer could not explain a single how. He could do no more than stubbornly regret that the questioners must even return by train, the dread23 exigencies24 of the hour compelling him to impress these horses for one of his guns and those mules for his battery-wagon.
Anna's three companions would have sprung to their feet but in some way her extended hand stayed them. A year earlier Charlie would have made sad mistakes here, but now he knew the private soldier's helplessness before the gold bars of commission, and his rage was white and dumb, as, with bursting eyes, he watched the officer pencil a blank.
"Don't write that, sir," said a clear voice, and the writer, glancing up, saw Anna standing25 among the seated three. Her face was drawn27 with distress28 and as pale as Charlie's, but Charlie's revolver was in her hand, close to her shoulder, pointed29 straight upward at full cock, and the hand was steady. "Those mules first," she spoke30 on, "and then we, sir, are going to turn round and go home. Whatever our country needs of us we will give, not sell; but we will not, in her name, be robbed on the highway, sir, and I will put a ball through the head of the first horse or mule6 you lay a hand on. Isaac, turn your team."
Unhindered, the teamster, and then the coachman, turned and drove. Back toward, and by and by, into the vast woe-stricken town they returned in the scented31 airs and athwart the long shadows of that same declining sun which fourteen years before--or was it actually but fourteen months?--had first gilded32 the splendid maneuverings of Kincaid's Battery. The tragi-comic rencounter just ended had left the three ladies limp, gay, and tremulous, with Anna aghast at herself and really wondering between spells of shame and fits of laughter what had happened to her reason.
With his pistol buckled33 on again, Charlie had only a wordy wrath34 for the vanished officer, and grim worship of Anna, while Constance and Miranda, behind a veil of mirthful recapitulations, tenderly rejoiced in the relief of mind and heart which the moment had brought to her who had made it amazing. And now the conditions around them in streets, homes, and marts awoke sympathies in all the four, which further eased their own distresses35.
The universal delirium36 of fright and horror had passed. Through all the city's fevered length and breadth, in the belief that the victorious37 ships, repairing the lacerations of battle as they came, were coming so slowly that they could not arrive for a day or two, and that they were bringing no land forces with them, thousands had become rationally, desperately38 busy for flight. Everywhere hacks39, private carriages, cabs, wagons40, light and heavy, and carts, frail41 or strong, carts for bread or meat, for bricks or milk, were bearing fugitives--old men, young mothers, grandmothers, maidens42 and children--with their trunks, bales, bundles, slaves and provisions--toward the Jackson Railroad to board the first non-military train they could squeeze into, and toward the New and Old Basins to sleep on schooner43 decks under the open stars in the all-night din26 of building deckhouses. Many of them were familiar acquaintances and chirruped good-by to the Callenders. Passes? No trouble whatever! Charlie need only do this and that and so and so, and there you were!
But Charlie was by this time so nervously44 spent and in such pain that the first thing must be to get him into bed again--at Callender House, since nothing could induce him to let sister, sweetheart or grandmother know he had not got away. To hurt his pride the more, in every direction military squads45 with bayonets fixed46 were smartly fussing from one small domicile to another, hustling47 out the laggards48 and marching them to encampments on the public squares. Other squads--of the Foreign Legion, appointed to remain behind in "armed neutrality"--patroled the sidewalks strenuously49, preserving order with a high hand. Down this street drums roared, fifes squealed50 and here passed yet another stately regiment51 on toward and now into and down, Calliope Street, silent as the rabble52 it marched through, to take train for Camp Moore in the Mississippi hills.
"Good Lord!" gasped53 Charlie, "if that isn't the Confederate Guards! Oh, what good under heaven can those old chaps do at the front?"--the very thing the old chaps were asking themselves.
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1
enrapturing
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| v.使狂喜( enrapture的现在分词 ) | |
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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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conflagration
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| n.建筑物或森林大火 | |
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sedately
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| adv.镇静地，安详地 | |
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mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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mule
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| n.骡子，杂种，执拗的人 | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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animation
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| n.活泼，兴奋，卡通片／动画片的制作 | |
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prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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sentry
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| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
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bustling
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| adj.喧闹的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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ravening
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| a.贪婪而饥饿的 | |
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evacuating
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| 撤离，疏散( evacuate的现在分词 )； 排空（胃肠），排泄（粪便）； （从危险的地方）撤出，搬出，撤空 | |
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18
melodious
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| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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capes
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| 碎谷； 斗篷( cape的名词复数 )； 披肩； 海角； 岬 | |
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ruffle
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| v.弄皱，弄乱；激怒，扰乱；n.褶裥饰边 | |
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consternation
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| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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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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31
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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32
gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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hacks
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| 黑客 | |
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wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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41
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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42
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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44
nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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45
squads
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| n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍 | |
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46
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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47
hustling
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| 催促（hustle的现在分词形式） | |
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laggards
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| n.落后者( laggard的名词复数 ) | |
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strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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50
squealed
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| v.长声尖叫，用长而尖锐的声音说( squeal的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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52
rabble
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| n.乌合之众，暴民；下等人 | |
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53
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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