House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Faunt would not come with them; but no matter, she would surely see him soon again.

  13

  July–December, 1860

  TONY had enjoyed that discussion with Brett and Faunt and Trav and Streean, when because he was just come from Washington with that biography of Mr. Lincoln he held for a while the center of the stage. There was an intoxication in being listened to, in the fact that these men heard him respectfully; but that intoxication had led him too far, had betrayed him into the remark about Negro women at which the others, in unspoken reprobation, rose and left the room. He saw Streean look back at him in derisive amusement, and Tony damned Streean for grinning, and damned his own loose tongue. When in the past men thus made clear their distaste for something he had said or done, he had pretended he did not care; but at Chimneys he had tasted the respectful attention of his neighbors and liked its flavor. With Brett and Faunt and Trav he would be careful not to offend again.

  He paid a brief visit to his mother at Great Oak and then returned to Richmond and spent Sunday with Brett and Cinda there before continuing on his homeward way. After dinner Brett said he must call on Mr. Daniel. “He’s the new president of the Fredericksburg railroad,” he explained to Tony. “I’ve put a good deal of Currain money into that road and I’m thinking of reducing our commitments there. I don’t like keeping too many eggs in one basket, so I want to talk things over with him.”

  Tony proposed that he go with Brett. “I don’t know anything about business, but I might learn.” Brett hesitated, and Tony added almost humbly: “I’ll not say anything. You needn’t fear I’ll embarrass you.”

  Brett assented, and they walked together the few blocks to Mr. Dan. iel’s house on Eighth Street near Leigh. Tony, listening to the conversation between these two, felt like a novice admitted to the mysteries of the temple. After the first polite exchanges, Brett came at once to the point. “I’m inclined to think I have too much of an investment in your securities,” he explained. “I bought some of the Ashland land around the hotel for our account when the railroad put it on sale six years ago, but I’ve disposed of most of that and put the money into the seven percent guaranteed stock; and I did the same thing with the 1857 debt certificates, and I already had some of the London bonds. But if all this talk means anything, if—trouble comes, the company may be in difficulties.”

  “If the company finds itself in difficulties, so will Virginia,” Mr. Daniel suggested. “We’re thoroughly sound, Mr. Dewain. Operating revenue was a hundred and sixty thousand dollars for the year ending last March. That reduced our London obligations, paid seven percent on all our stock, and left enough to make some needed improvements and to enlarge our equipment. We’re laying rail from Fredericksburg to Acquia Creek, we’ve ten big locomotives and one four-wheeler, twenty-seven cars in good condition to carry passengers and mail, better than a hundred and sixty box cars and flats and stock cars, plenty of cash in the treasury. I don’t know where you’ll find a better risk.”

  Brett said soberly: “War would hit you hard. If Virginia were involved, your territory would be the battle ground.”

  “Nonsense! Who looks for war?”

  “It may come,” Brett replied. “This presidential campaign isn’t just the beginning; it’s the culmination of years of accumulated Northern aggression and Southern resentment. It has already destroyed the Democratic party. The South has compromised and yielded and sacrificed; but I doubt whether any concessions we make will satisfy the Republicans in the North. We may have to rely on procedures more stern than compromises and surrenders.”

  Mr. Daniel persisted. “I know. I know. The Republicans want to ruin us, and they’ve picked a good tool in this man Lincoln; a typical border ruffian, a nigger-lover, and a hater of all gentleness and ease and leisure. And the abolition rabble will follow him. But the bank ing interests in the North, the business men, won’t let him go too far, even if he’s elected. They have to have our cotton and they know it.”

  “You sound like some of my Charleston friends,” Brett admitted. “They say if it comes to a fight, England and France will be on our side—if only to get our cotton. But I tell you they won’t, not as long as we cling to slavery. The English are abolitionists too—in spite of the fact that their white laborers are worse off than our black ones.”

  “We’re crying before we’re hurt,” Mr. Daniel argued. “The North hasn’t hurt us yet, except with words. Lincoln’s election would be a catastrophe, yes; but even if he is elected, Congress will tie his hands.”

  “I don’t like waiting till we’re helpless before we act.” Brett shook his head. “I don’t know just what I do think. My emotions get in the way of straight thinking. Politics is strange country to me. But this matter of business——”

  So they returned to facts and figures, and Tony watched Brett, seeing the lines of strain and concern around his eyes. He thought Mr. Daniel was not so confident as he pretended; and when at last they walked home again, he suggested this to Brett.

  Brett nodded. “Yes, that’s true,” he agreed. “There’s been so much bitter, passionate talk, we’re probably bound to come to blows. I wish more Southerners knew the North as I do, knew its power and capacities. They wouldn’t be so ready to believe in our superiority. Nor so ready to hate Northerners. I suppose anyone who begins to be sure that he’s a better man than his neighbor is just confessing his own ignorance; and probably it’s out of ignorance and the feeling of superiority that goes with it that most wars arise.”

  When Tony went on his way to Chimneys he looked forward to that homecoming. His neighbors would have many questions; he had much to tell them. In the days after his return, at the mill and the store and the tavern, he found intent listeners for all he had to say; but he quickly realized that there was in these simple men none of that loud belligerence which he had heard in Richmond. Daily achieving by hard toil and careful husbandry a precarious security for themselves and their families, they dreaded change. To challenge the North over slavery, a matter in which they had no personal concern, was a folly they would avoid if they could. Tony, anxious only for their good opinion, readily learned to say the things they wished to hear, putting into words the thoughts they could not always clearly state themselves.

  Here in these quiet mountain coves it was easy to forget, as summer slipped away, the distant tumult of the coming storm. He had a letter from Nell, who said Washington was full of corrupt lobbyists and quarrelling politicians and feverish social gaiety and absurd extravagance. She said one could not, without being ridiculous, appear twice in public in the same gown. Tony smiled understandingly and sent her money. He and Nell had had good years together; she had been completely reasonable about their parting, and to be generous, since Chimneys prospered, was easy. To give Nell money bestowed on him an illusion of magnanimity which he found pleasurable. In Washington he had made no move to get in touch with her, but now he began to regret this.

  She wrote again in October to thank him, and she said everyone in Washington was sure, since Ohio and Indiana and Pennsylvania had gone for Lincoln, that he would be elected. “And the Southern Congressmen all say that means war. If that happens, I shall return to Richmond. My heart and my loyalty are there. Mr. Freedom hasn’t sold my house, and I’ve written him not to do so.”

  Tony looked forward to seeing Nell again. She had known how to make him as happy as he had ever been anywhere except here at Chimneys. He might bring her here; might even, for the sake of appearances, marry her. The thought pleased him. If war did come, Chimneys with Nell would be a pleasant haven.

  Martinston men so often asked his opinion that he took a conscientious interest in political developments. He went to the great rally of the Constitutional Union party in Salisbury, where Congressman Vance and half a dozen other outstanding men were the morning speakers, and there was a lavish dinner followed by a torchlight procession and more speeches at night. He heard over and over the accusation that such men as Yancey of Alabama and th
e hotheads of South Carolina were blazing the certain way to ruinous war; and with a developing instinct to take the popular side of any argument, he shouted as loudly as anyone against secession.

  Brett, as the business man of the family, always reported to Trav and Faunt and Tony his decisions on matters of finance; and on the news of Lincoln’s election he wrote Tony: “So now the uncertainty is over. I think there’s no doubt that the Gulf States will secede. Faunt tells me Colonel Lee says secession is revolution; but most people seem to think peaceful secession will be permitted. I don’t. I expect war. So I’m calling in what money we have out at interest, and making no new loans till we see more clearly what is likely to happen.” Tony, reading this, decided to keep ample cash in hand for his own needs before turning over any plantation moneys to Brett. “Now that they’ve elected Lincoln, the Northern papers seem to be in a panic at what they’ve done,” Brett continued. “They’re all talking peace, all willing to let the South secede if she wants to; but my New York correspondents think Mr. Lincoln will never permit dissolution of the Union if he can help it, and I’m acting on that advice.”

  Tony thought Brett’s fears were characteristic. Men of business were always cautious, and money was a timid thing. But the solid reality of Chimneys could not be touched by what old Abe Lincoln or any other man did far away. He for a while forgot that distant, angry world in the hilarious activities of the harvest season. For the corn shucking he invited all the neighborhood, and everyone came, men and their wives and their hosts of children. The crisp air was fragrant with the smell of meat cooking over the barbecue pits; there was fiery liquor, enough and to spare; every man with a horse was ready for a race; someone organized a mule race for the Negroes; and at dusk, the day’s work done, a fiddle’s squeak set every foot tapping. The night was half spent before the last of them departed, and Tony from the big house heard the people still singing, down in the quarter, till pale dawn.

  The first hog killing was another saturnalia. Long before day Tony was waked by the glare of many fires, smoke columns glowing red in the dusk of morning; and he heard the whine of grindstones as the knives were sharpened. When he reached the scene he saw huge kettles coming to the boil on every fire; saw the last casks for the scalding being bedded slantwise in the ground; saw the heavy scraping tables ready, and the long racks where hot carcasses would hang to cool.

  He and James Fiddler stood clear of the tumult, looking on. Into the pens where the troubled swine, as though scenting death, uneasily milled and grunted, sprang a dozen Negroes. They were naked to the waist, firelight gleaming on their sweating bodies, bright knives in their hands. With an indescribable dexterity they darted to and fro, working in pairs, catching an ear hold on each victim, driving home with a shrewd twist the long blade, then turning at once to new prey. The stuck pigs, their throats spouting a red fountain, ran at first in panic aimless flight, then slowed to a troubled walk, then stood in stupid bewilderment while their lives drained away; and at first their squeals rose in an ear-splitting crescendo to an intolerable peak of sound, then began to diminish and faded, faded, till the last beast expired. The reek of spilled blood was stifling in the morning air.

  Before the last hog was dead, the first of them, dragged by strong hands to the scalding casks, were soused and soused again and thrown upon the tables for the scrape-scrape of the knives. No sooner was one borne away to be hung on the rack than on the tables another took its place. Kerchiefed old women thrust tubs under each hanging carcass; the splitters ripped each open; when the tubs brimmed with shining entrails, fresh tubs were brought. By full day the long racks were heavy with cooling carcasses. Small black boys went to and fro collecting bladders to be dried for Christmas; and by each fire a circle of Negroes squatted, frying pig tails on the blazing coals, thrusting spitted spare ribs into the flames, chewing crisp cracklin’. Every Negro was smeared head to foot with blood or grease; every black face grinned with voracious appetite that hours of gorging would not sate.

  Tony went back to the big house, exhausted by the emotional impact of the scene, drained and shaken, vague terror beating like a pulse in his veins. How many hogs had died? Suppose they had been not swine but men? Suppose these lean Negroes, with their red knives, flame-sharp, piercing butter-soft flesh, turned to the butchery of men; yes, even of white men, men like him? He had seen the lust for killing in their gleaming eyes. This was hog-killing time, but suppose from all these years of angry talk came a man-killing time? Would men die as easily as these hogs? How many thousands? How many tens of thousands? The carcasses of these slain hogs would be devoured, but who would eat the carcasses of slain men? Rats? Yes, perhaps even hogs, grunting and gobbling across a stricken battlefield.

  With the first snows of winter there was a time of leisure and a time for talk; and whenever two men came together this talk was of the North, of Lincoln and of what when he took office he would do South Carolina was moving toward secession; there was talk of a North Carolina convention to consider the matter. Among his neighbors Tony with all the eloquence he could command opposed it; and when Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, President Buchanan’s Secretary of the Interior, came to Raleigh to urge secession, Tony damned the man.

  He went from Raleigh to Richmond, on his way to Great Oak for Christmas, and found Vesta and Cinda alone in the house on Fifth Street. Brett and Burr were at the Plains, expected daily. Cinda said Brett was worn out with long anxieties. “He eats and sleeps and talks, but it’s just the outside of him that does it. Even when he’s here, I feel as though he were a thousand miles away. He never laughs any more.”

  Vesta said smilingly: “He laughed at the way Dolly acted when the Prince of Wales was here. Remember, Mama?”

  “Oh, of course he does laugh sometimes,” Cinda agreed. “And Dolly did make a perfect idiot of herself. So did most of Richmond, for that matter. The day the Prince came there was such a crowd waiting at the Broad Street station that the committee took him off to the hotel and no one saw anything of him but his white hat. Dolly had waited at Broad Street and she was furious! That tickled Brett. I was disgusted, but he thought she was cunning.”

  “Well, she was, sort of,” Vesta urged. “You’re too hard on Dolly, Mama. After all she’s still a child.”

  “Child? She’s eighteen! Old enough to know better! Tony, she devoured every word the newspapers printed, even before the Prince got here. She knew what kind of bed he slept on in Montreal, as if that was any of her business. When he went to St. Paul’s on Sunday the place was mobbed.”

  “You went yourself, Mama,” Vesta reminded her, and Tony saw Cinda color, and smiled, and Cinda retorted:

  “Of course I did. I always do! But I didn’t go to see him. I didn’t care a fig about him! But Dolly tried to get in and couldn’t and she hopped up and down in the vestibule trying to see over the heads of the people standing in front of her. And when the Prince left town, Dolly and a hundred other little fools swarmed into the rooms he had occupied looking for souvenirs. Dolly got the soap he had used, and she vows she’s going to keep it always!”

  Tony chuckled. “I’m not surprised Brett laughed at that!”

  Vesta asked: “Did you hear the real scandal, Uncle Tony?” He had not, and she told him. Through the last decade many German folk had come to live in Richmond, and there were turnvereins and volksgartens; and some young blades suggested to the Prince that he elude the gentlemen of his suite and join them and sample the local lager.

  “He had to climb out of his window on a ladder,” Vesta explained, her eyes dancing. “Darrell told us he furnished the ladder, and the Prince climbed down and no one knew anything about it. But about four o‘clock in the morning one of the watchmen met eight young gentlemen marching down Broad Street arm in arm and singing, and he challenged them, and each one said he was the Prince of Wales!” Tony laughed as Vesta went on: “So the watchman marched seven of them—Darrell slipped away—off to jail and locked them all up. There’d have been a fine to-do in
the morning, but Darrell rushed off to wake Mr. Hunton, and they got Judge Crump out of bed, and he released the prisoners and tore that page out of the register at the jail. Darrell says the register had ‘Prince of Wales’, ‘Prince of Wales’, ‘Prince of Wales’, seven times!”

  Cinda exclaimed: “Well, it’s nothing to laugh at. Imagine what the Queen will think of us!”

  “Oh, it probably did the Prince good,” Tony suggested.

  “Well, it certainly did Papa good,” Vesta declared. “He thought it was a great joke.”

  Tony asked whether they had seen Trav, or Faunt. Cinda said Trav had come to Richmond for the Agricultural Fair, he and Enid. “Faunt was here at the same time. We tried to make things pleasant for Enid. Travis is a darling man, but I expect he’s a pretty dull husband. We took them to hear Patti sing at Corinthian Hall, and to see Joseph Jefferson at the theatre, and she loved it.”

  Vesta said smilingly: “She thinks Uncle Faunt was just made and handed down, Uncle Tony.”

  Cinda shrugged. “Oh, Faunt and that sad look of his always fascinates women. If he weren’t so levelheaded, he’d have as many girls sighing after him as Jennings Wise!” Tony thought her tone was almost too casual, and he wondered why.

  Next day Brett and Burr returned from the Plains, and Tony saw at once that Cinda was right. Brett was changed, he seemed older, there was a shadow in his eyes.

  “South Carolina’s going to secede,” he told them, as soon as the first greetings were over. “There’s no doubt of that. Yet I think there’s already some drawing back from the final break. Yancey weakened at the convention last spring; and Mr. Rhett, though he likes to be called the Father of the Secession, was only seventh on the list of delegates elected, and he had to withdraw from the race for governor. It was actually a repudiation. There’s a strong wave of sentiment for staying in the Union, but the delegates are pledged to secede.”