House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “For her age, yes.”

  “Too bad you can’t see more of her. Do your brothers and sisters get home more often than you?”

  “Faunt does, and Cinda; but she and Brett have been abroad all this last year.” He added, his thoughts still on farming: “Clayton’s managing the Plains. That’s their place, down near Camden. Clayton’s their oldest son, and he’s a good farmer. He came up here when he was eighteen and spent the summer, and I took him to see Mr. Ruffin. He wanted to learn all he could.” He reflected, half to himself: “Clayton could run Great Oak, but Brett needs him at the Plains. Brett’s more of a business man than a planter.”

  “If Clayton can’t do it, perhaps you should go back to Great Oak. The place needs you, and—you’d be with your mother. She won’t live many more years.”

  He hesitated, shook his head. “I can’t imagine leaving here.” Yet there was no finality in his tone. She smiled to herself, contented with the progress she had made; and that night before she slept she wrote to Tony.

  I came down for a little visit with Enid, shan’t be returning to Richmond. [To reassure him, to make him understand that he was free.] I’ll go from here to Lynchburg to visit Molly Rand, and on to Staunton. Sue Nicholson lives there and I haven’t seen her for ten years. Then to Washington. I put my house in Mr. Freedom’s hands, to sell or rent. I hope he does well with it. I’ll need the little it may bring. [To keep Tony mindful of old obligations.]

  Chimneys is beautiful, every field under cultivation, orchards and vineyards along the hills. Trav’s done wonders here. Mr. Fiddler, the overseer, is a thoroughly competent man. Trav says he could manage everything. I suppose you won’t want to take it over till the crops are made and ready for market, so that you will handle the money; but once Trav has gone back to Great Oak you could leave Mr. Fiddler in charge, wouldn’t need to stay here unless you chose. Trav hates to think Great Oak has run down. He’s itching to get his hands on it, I’m sure. And I suspect he’s homesick, too; would like to see more of his mother. It’s really lovely here, but Enid would be glad of a change. There aren’t many young folks, and she’s only twenty-six, and pretty as a picture. Darrell would flirt with her outrageously, the rascal! Remember me to him most kindly. [Jealousy was a useful weapon, if it were lightly used.]

  Affectionately,

  Nell

  She did not sleep at once, wishing she had seen Chimneys before she allowed Tony even temporarily to escape her. They were used to each other; and if he had Chimneys’ income at his disposal, they could be happy together. But that could be managed later; she must not hurry, must move carefully. A woman alone had to be wary and wise.

  4

  July, 1859

  ED BLANDY was proud of his small farm, fifty or sixty acres of forest and bottom land in a cove cradled between wooded ridges. Along the road to Martinston there were a dozen farmers better off in land and buildings than he; but he had made his place with his own hands, seasoned every acre with his sweat. When he bought it, with money painfully earned and laboriously saved, the fields were far gone in briers and buck brush, the old log house crumbling in decay. He and his bride came there like pioneers. They made the hut briefly habitable and it served till the babies began to come; then he built a better house, two big rooms with a chimney between. The corn crib, the stable, the spring house, every fence and building on the place was a product of his axe and his splitting maul and wedges, and his hammer and his saw. He had come here, newly married, soon after Trav took over Chimneys; and Trav, riding to and from Martinston, saw the quick fruits of Ed’s industry. So they came to be friends.

  Ed was not unique in the locality; for this was a region of yeoman farmers, most of them in straight descent from the first pioneers who settled the mountainous northwestern corner of the state when it was still dark wilderness. Ed worked no harder than other men, but a little more wisely. He had some education; and it was all the more surely his because it had been dug out of the few books upon which he had been able to lay his hands, rather than absorbed from some dull unskillful teacher as passively as a mule absorbs blows. One of the things which after they became acquainted drew him and Trav closer was their equal liking for figures. Before his marriage and his coming from Virginia to the Martinston region, Ed had worked for a man named Harvey Hill, a West Point graduate with a mathematical bent who after serving in Mexico resigned from the army to become a professor at Washington College in Virginia, and later at Davidson College. Professor Hill took an interest in Ed, advised him to study and make something of himself, set problems for him to do; and one summer on a vacation excursion to the mountains he rode this way to see how Ed progressed. Ed was proud to introduce him to Trav; and the three men, for each of whom a neat calculation had an almost musical harmony, relished that and subsequent encounters.

  Ed and Trav were forever comparing notes and records, checking the results of their agriculture. Other farmers had good years and bad, and so did they; but to the others it was simply that times were good or times were bad. Ed—as well as Trav—could leaf through a worn and much-thumbed book of accounts and tell you just how much each year had yielded, and what crops in the long run were best, and why.

  Mrs. Blandy, still pretty despite the marks left upon her by a dozen years of hard and steady work indoors and out, thought Ed was a man beyond all other men. He had taught her to read and write, but she knew she could never know as much, nor be as wise and wonderful, as he. She had proudly borne him four children and would presently bear another; she was as ready to die for him as she had been to live and toil for him through these dozen years. Since Trav was Ed’s friend, so was he hers. With strangers she was shy as a wild thing, but with Trav she was at ease. So when one day in a pelt of rain, he and James Fiddler stopped at the gate and the dogs barked greeting, she bade them ’light and come in out of the wet, and she sent one of the children to fetch Ed, who was carting mud from the swamp for his compost pens. Trav said they could ride and find him, but she declared it was high time Ed came in. He would be wet to the bone as it was, in the sluicing rain. So they sat, their damp clothes steaming by the fire, and Trav talked with her, and the wide-eyed children watched and listened till Ed presently appeared. He was as wet as she had predicted, and he allowed her tender scolding to shepherd him into the other room and into dry clothes. While he changed he wondered why these two had come today. There was purpose in their manner; something sober, something almost sad. When he joined them by the fire he was sure of it, yet waited without questions to hear what Trav had to say.

  It was worse than anything Ed might have imagined. Trav, like a man diving into icy water, put it at last without preamble.

  “I came to say good-by, Ed. I’m leaving Chimneys tomorrow.”

  Ed knew from the other’s manner and tone that Trav meant he was leaving for good and all, yet he refused to accept the sorrowful certainty. “Business?” he asked. He saw Mrs. Blandy watching them, knew she too was shaken, knew how much would go out of their lives if Trav no longer were their neighbor.

  “No, I’m not coming back, not to stay.” As though Ed’s silence accused him, Trav said defensively: “Greak Oak is run down. My mother wants me to take hold of it.”

  “Virginia farms are mostly all cropped to death with tobacco.” It was as though Ed argued against Trav’s departure. “You’ve got Chimneys to where there ain’t a plantation this end of the state can match it.”

  “My mother’s pretty old. I don’t see her much. And I can better things at Great Oak, some at least.”

  “Seems like you could come and go.” Their voices were level, but Ed was sick with sorrow and emptiness.

  “Oh, I’ll be back.” Trav chuckled, trying awkwardly to jest. “I’ll have to keep an eye on James Fiddler here, see that he keeps things going right.”

  Ed looked at the overseer. James Fiddler was a good man when he had Trav to direct him. How well would he stand alone? “You’ll be wanting to come back, yes.”

&nbs
p; As though Ed’s thoughts were words, as though to justify himself in the face of Ed’s unspoken protests, Trav explained: “Mrs. Currain wants to go.” Ed for a moment hated Trav’s wife; a stuck-up, conceited, lazy, useless critter too high and mighty to be civil if she rode past your door, half the time pretending not to see you tip your hat to her. “It’s pretty lonesome for her here,” Trav reminded him. “She’ll see more people at Great Oak.” See more people? Ed’s jaw set. There were people enough around here, as good as she was! Yes, a sight better, too, if it came to that! But she took mighty good care not to see them.

  “Likely,” he admitted, his tone blank.

  “My brother will live here,” Trav said appeasingly. “He’s older than I, a fine man. He’s here now, wanted to come today to make your acquaintance; but he had a chill and it was raining. He’ll be down the first good day. You and James Fiddler can tell him anything he needs to know.”

  “I heard he was here,” Ed assented, then said frankly: “We’re going to miss you, Mr. Currain. All of us. But specially Mrs. Blandy and the young ones and me.”

  “I never thought I’d leave here; but I reckon it’s what I ought to do.” Trav added honestly: “It’s going to be interesting, handling Great Oak, trying to bring it back.”

  “Who’s been farming there?”

  “Why, we’ve needed a good overseer. We’ve had five different ones, the last ten-twelve years; but unless you can get someone like James Fiddler, a man had better be his own overseer.”

  Trav’s interest in the task that awaited him at Great Oak was in his tones; he and Ed fell into long discussion of the wisest ways to proceed, James Fiddler now and then saying a word. Ed saw that the overseer was as depressed as he by Trav’s prospective departure.

  Mrs. Blandy, silent in the background, rocked slowly in her small chair. The baby fretted and she fed it and it slept in her arms. When Trav and James Fiddler departed Ed went out, heedless of the rain, to see them go. He came back to face her still sitting quietly; their eyes spoke without words. Ed sat down before the fire, his back to her; and after a moment she put the baby in its small bed and came to his side, her hand on his shoulder.

  “It’ll be some different with him gone.”

  Ed nodded, not turning his head. “He’s a real good man. I never knew a better. Yes, he’ll leave a hole.”

  “This brother of his prob’ly ain’t much like him.”

  “He’ll be made welcome. Everybody likes Mr. Currain. They’d go a long ways for his brother, even if he was a polecat.” He added hopefully: “You can’t tell. He might be real nice too.”

  “He’s bound to be, the same blood in the both of them.”

  Ed nodded. “I reckon he’s sickly, what Mr. Currain says; not wanting to come out in the rain.” He rose. “Well, I can’t set here, rain or no rain. Too much to do.” He felt tired, felt strength withdrawn from him. “Never thought I’d take anything so hard.”

  Next day the rain was over, the sun shone. They saw the carriage pass with Trav and Enid and Vigil and the children, a wagon loaded high with bags and boxes coming behind, the horses splashing through the mud from yesterday’s shower. Trav lifted his hat, and even Enid bowed to Ed’s salutation. When they were gone, Ed looked at Mrs. Blandy.

  “First time she ever took any notice of us,” he said in a dull tone.

  She came close to him to borrow comfort. “Oh Ed,” she murmured sadly, “I know how you feel. I do too, kind of like I’d watched a funeral go by.”

  5

  July–October, 1859

  ENID left Chimneys with no regrets, ridiculing Trav’s reluctance. “Oh, don’t be silly! I think you’d like to just stay here till you rot!”

  “Well, when you work hard to make something, you—I suppose you get to like it. Tony won’t feel the way I do about the place.”

  “Well, neither do I,” she retorted. “It’s been just a prison for me. I’ll be glad to see the last of it.” And in a sudden rapture at the prospect of release she forgave him even imagined grievances, clipping him ardently, kissing him over and over. “Oh, darling, darling, I’m so glad we’re going, so grateful to you. I’ll show you. Wait and see! I’m going to love you so.” But when his slow blood stirred and his arms tightened around her she freed herself. “There, Honey, now I’ve so much to do!” She had married when she was sixteen, had borne a baby a week after her seventeenth birthday. The first years of their marriage were a crowding succession of pregnancies, though only three of them came to fruition. Her abounding vitality survived the drain; but fear of having another baby taught her to curb the intemperate surrenders in which she as often as Trav had taken the initiative. Trav was easily put off; and though she did not admit it to herself this was one of her grievances against him, till the coldness she pretended became real enough. Only in such happy hours as this did her natural ardor reveal itself in brief tempestuous caresses.

  She was afraid Trav would rebel at last at surrendering his beloved Chimneys, so she hurried their departure. In Martinston while they waited on the tavern porch for the arrival of the stage that would take them to Statesville, men spoke to Trav, clumsily expressing their affection and respect, telling him how much he would be missed; and to see his pleasure in their friendly words made her eager to be gone. When the stage arrived she hurried the children and herself aboard, and fretted till he joined them. Only when the last house in the village was left behind did she fill her breathless lungs. At last, at last they were on their way, out of this wretched wilderness into the beautiful, the gay, the beckoning world!

  Her overflowing happiness infected the children; they laughed with her and sang with her till Trav and even Vigil, the dull-witted wench who held little Henrietta in her arms against the jolting of the stage, began to smile. She clung to Trav’s arm, pressing against him, teasing him, reaching up to kiss him; and she commanded that he sing their foolish songs with them, and seduced him at last to do so, and they laughed at his deep voice unused to song, and he said he had never seen her so happy. “Like a colt let out to pasture, feeling his oats.”

  “Oh, I never was so happy in my life,” she agreed. “Oh, darling, darling, we’re going to have such fun!” She kissed him again and whispered: “You’ll see, old sobersides! You just don’t know how sweet I’m going to be!” She saw his dull color, his quick uneasy glance at the children; and she laughed with new delight and kissed him again.

  She refused to be disturbed by the discomforts of the journey, lurching stage coaches, wretched taverns, hot and crowded cars of which the floors were stained and slippery with brown ambeer. It was dusk of a sultry summer day when they reached Richmond. Trav took them to the Atlantic Hotel, where in the past he had sometimes stayed; but the hotel had passed its best days, and their suffocating small rooms and the prospect of another long stage journey tomorrow brought Enid at last to a weary dismay. But Trav suggested that they wait over till Saturday morning and go down river on Captain Davis’s steamer, the Curtis Pack, and she welcomed that proposal with a new delight. She looked forward to the day in Richmond; but the stifling heat and the clouds of dust stirred up from the unpaved streets by every passing hack and carriage made her head ache, till at last she surrendered and spent most of the day abed, requiring Vigil to keep a sheet of brown paper soaked in vinegar upon her brow.

  But next day, though to rise in time for the half-past-six departure of the steamer was a nuisance, her spirits revived. Vigil tended the children while Trav identified the gracious houses along the river, telling old tales of Dutch Gap where Indians massacred the colonists Sir Thomas Dale had settled there; of Jordan’s Point where lovely Cissy Jordan had so many beaux that she betrothed herself to two at once and was haled into court by one disappointed suitor; of Berkeley, where pretty Sarah Harrison gave bond to marry William Roscow and within two months married Dr. Blair, and, though when the ceremony was performed she refused to promise to obey, settled sedately down as the wife of the founder of the college at Williamsb
urg; of Westover, whence Evelyn Byrd went to England and loved Charles Mordaunt, and after her disapproving father hurried her back to Virginia refused to wed any other, and died of a broken heart; of Brandon, where a disappointed lover shot a bride on her wedding day, and the bereaved husband hung the wedding ring on the crystal chandelier, and her ghost sometimes returned to try that ring again upon her finger. “They say in damp weather you can still see where her blood stained the heart-pine floor,” Trav said; and he told other tales, till Enid asked at last teasingly: “Mercy, Honey, how do you know so much about the lovely gay ladies?”

  Trav colored, grinning. “Why, I was always too shy to talk to pretty girls; but I used to like to read the old stories and imagine I was the hero of them.”

  She laughed in delight. “Why, Trav, I declare I didn’t suppose you ever read anything but that old Farmer’s Register!”

  He was glad to change the subject. “That was Mr. Ruffin’s paper. Remember I was telling your mother about him? His place is on the river. I’ll show you when we pass it.” And he told her, as he had told Mrs. Albion, how Edmund Ruffin, taking over as a boy of nineteen the worthless acres of his Beechwood inheritance, brought them back to fine fertility.

  “I don’t see how you can get so worked up over a farmer!” Enid protested, bored by his enthusiasm; and Trav said seriously:

  “Why, a great farmer’s a great man. George Washington did about as much for the South by raising the first mules in this country as by any battle he ever won. And Mr. Ruffin, finding out how to bring back Virginia lands, has put thirty million dollars in values into the pockets of Virginia farmers.” He added, thoughtfully: “He’s not interested in farming now. All he thinks about is politics, writing letters to the Enquirer, or to the South, saying we ought to withdraw from the Union and form a separate confederacy. He claims no one in Virginia has the courage to stand up for Southern rights, so he’s moved to South Carolina. They take politics more seriously down there.”