“You can see a bit of spar. And the rosy water all around—rosy as hope. Do you hear that bird over there in the swamp? Boom—boom—boom! Mournful as a whip-poor-will.... Heavens! if I could hear the whip-poor-wills in Virginia!—Have you got any tobacco?”
The soldier from the lawyer’s office sat up. “Grand Rounds? No. It’s the General by himself! Heard him say once he had a taste for sunsets.”
Loring, one-armed since Mexico, impatiently brave, with a gift for phrases, an air, and a bearing, came down the threadlike path through the palmetto scrub. With three guns and fifteen hundred men he held this absurd structure called Fort Pemberton, and from hour to hour glanced up the Tallahatchie with an experienced and careless eye. If he expected anything more than a play flotilla of cock-boats, his demeanour did not show it. In practice, however, he kept a very good drill and outlook, his pieces trained, his earthworks stout as they might be in the water-soaked bottom lands, and he had with discretion sunk the Star of the West where she lay, cross channel, above the fort. He was very well liked by his soldiers.
The seven on the river bank rose and saluted. He made the answering gesture, then after a moment of gazing up the Tallahatchie walked over to a great piece of driftwood and seated himself, drawing his cloak about him with his one hand.
“I want to study that water a bit. Go on with your pipes, men.—I thought I smelled coffee.”
“It was made of sweet potato, sir,” said the sergeant-major regretfully, “and I’m afraid we didn’t leave a drop. We’re mighty sorry, sir.”
“Well,” said Loring amicably, “I don’t really like sweet potato coffee, though I’d drink brimstone coffee if there were no other kind of coffee around. That’s one of the things I never could understand about General Jackson—he never drinks coffee. The time we could all have sold our souls for coffee was that damned Bath and Romney trip.... Ugh!” He gazed a moment longer on the rosy, narrow stream and the violet woods across, then turned his eyes. “You’re ——th Virginia? There isn’t one of you a Cary by chance?”
“I am Edward Cary, sir.”
“Come across,” said Loring; and when he came gave him a knotted arm of the driftwood. “I heard from Fauquier Cary not long ago, and he said you were down this way and to look out for you. He said he didn’t know whether you were a survival or a prophecy, but that anyhow your family idolized you. He said that from all he had read and observed War had an especial spite against your kind—which, perhaps,” said Loring, “is not a thing to tell you.”
Edward laughed. “As to War, sir, the feeling is reciprocal. He’s of those personalities who do not improve on acquaintance.—Dear Fauquier! The family idolizes him now, if you like!”