“Brett Dewain, I just can’t believe it!” There was anguish and anger too in Cinda’s tone. “What has South Carolina to complain of, more than the rest of us? Even if we’re all going to make fools of ourselves, why must she be the first?”
“She’s been threatening so long, I suppose it’s a habit,” he suggested; and he said to Tony: “We’re great threateners, we Southerners. Governor Wise threatens that Virginia will secede and take the Government along with her, march into Washington and seize the archives and the Treasury.” His lips twisted in a mirthless fashion. “Of course he admits Virginia might need a little help from Maryland!” And he asked: “What do you think North Carolina will do?”
“Nothing,” Tony assured him, gratified that Brett should seek his opinion. “Secretary Thompson has been down there trying to persuade us, but he made no converts. We’re conservative, Brett; not easily blown to and fro by idle talk.”
“Thompson talking secession?” Brett protested. “Why, he’s still a member of the Cabinet.”
“They say he went to Raleigh with the President’s knowledge and approval.”
Brett shook his head. “No man’s approval would justify me to myself if I were he. Howell Cobb has resigned the Treasury. He’s a man of honor. I suppose Thompson and John Floyd have persuaded themselves they needn’t resign till their states secede.”
They found Streean and Tilda, Dolly and Darrell at Great Oak before them. Mrs. Currain and Enid were worried about the baby. Henrietta’s eye had never recovered from that injury last spring. It was still suppurating, swollen and inflamed.
“I declare I think she’d be all right if old April would let her alone,” Enid told them. “April keeps the poor little eye smeared and poulticed with horrible messes she brews out of flax seed and calamus and ginseng and angelica and I don’t know what all. She even hangs a conjuring necklace around baby’s shoulders, made of bones out of a frog’s skull and a snake’s spine, and an alligator’s tooth all strung on an eel’s skin.”
“Well, the doctor doesn’t seem to do Hetty any good,” Mrs. Currain reminded her. “And I’m sure April doesn’t do her any harm. Of course, Hetty’s teething now, too, and that makes her fussy.”
“I know,” Enid agreed. “April’s waiting for one of the men to bring her a live rabbit so she can rub hot brains on Hetty’s gums to soften them. I’m worn out arguing with her.”
Cinda said reassuringly: “Well, dear, sometimes those old women do seem to cure people. Let’s go see Henrietta. I’ve had sick babies myself!”
The day after they heard that South Carolina had seceded, Clayton arrived with Jenny and the children, and he said a delegation would go at once to Washington to arrange the details of the state’s separation from the Union.
“If President Buchanan receives them,” Brett commented, “it amounts to a recognition of South Carolina as an independent nation.”
Tony watched Clayton. The young man said: “You’ve never believed in secession, Papa.”
“No, son. No, I believe in the Union.” Brett seemed to pick his words. “I suppose no one, even in the North, denies the legal right to secede; but if a state can secede, then the Union is just a bubble.” He added quietly: “The North will fight, you know.”
“Governor Pickens doesn’t think so. He says he’ll drink every drop of blood that’s shed.”
“That was a foolish thing for any man to say. Folly and politics are bedfellows, Clay.”
“All the men down home think the same.”
“I’m afraid most men have stopped thinking. That’s what happens when you reach a conviction. You stop questioning it.” And he added: “That’s what comes of our Southern love of oratory, I suppose. When a man like Yancey is at his best, his audiences forget what he’s saying in their delight in the wonderful way he says it. So we let ourselves be persuaded—and stop thinking.”
Clayton’s head was high. “Yes, Papa. But—well maybe I’ve caught it from them, but I think as they do.”
Brett nodded. “I know. And I’ll stand with you—and with them—if it comes to the pinch.” He said gently: “But don’t talk about it with Mama unless you must, Clay. She’s worrying about you boys, of course.”
“I know. Jenny’s the same. She doesn’t say so, but I can tell.”
Brett touched his son’s arm in a shy caress; and Tony thought it must be fine to have a son like Clayton, to share with someone close and dear your thoughts and hopes and fears. Nell was the only one who had ever, for any considerable time, released him from loneliness.
Faunt arrived last of them all, two days before Christmas. Tony, with a wistful envy, saw how warmly they welcomed him, with hand clasps and happy cries and cousinly kisses. Enid gave him the most generous kiss of all, and a hug to go with it, her cheeks pink, her eyes shining. She was a right pretty woman; but of course she would be. Nell was certainly handsome enough to have a pretty daughter. It would be pleasant to see Nell again. Tony was sure she would be glad to see him too.
At dinner that day of Faunt’s coming, though Cinda and Brett tried to keep the talk in other channels, they came inevitably to speak of great events in process. Redford Streean was sure the whole South would follow South Carolina; but Faunt thought to do so would be a mistake.
“By seceding, South Carolina has lost any voice in national affairs,” he pointed out. “And when Congress meets, the South will need voices —and votes—In Washington. Disunion has already ruined the Democratic party! The three Democratic candidates had among them almost a million votes more than Mr. Lincoln, so if the Southern Democrats hadn’t seceded from the party they’d have beaten him! They seceded from the party and defeated themselves; and if now they secede from the Union they’ll ruin themselves!”
After a moment Trav said: “I don’t think you’re right about the election, Faunt. I’ve gone over all the figures I could find, and Lincoln had a clear majority in all the states he carried, and he carried enough states to elect him. So it wasn’t just the split-up of the Democrats that let him win. Even if you——”
Enid interrupted him in frank scorn. “Oh, Trav, don’t be silly! Cousin Faunt’s right, of course!” Her tone was so eloquent that everyone looked at her, and Tony almost chuckled. Why, the little hussy was infatuated with Faunt! In quick recollection of Cinda’s tone when she spoke of Enid and Faunt in Richmond a few days before, he looked at her, and he saw that she was watching Enid. Cinda was no fool. Cinda too had seen.
14
December, 1860–April, 1861
CINDA in these days felt the tension tighten every hour like a thin, persistent ringing in her ears, scarcely audible yet never ceasing. To Brett this was first of all a business crisis which must be appraised and met, but to her the treasure at stake was not money but the sweet living flesh of her sons. Sometimes she had dreadful dreams in which all those she loved—Clayton, Burr, Julian, Brett who was dearer than her own life to her, all the fine brave men she knew, scores and scores of them—lay in a bloody heap of torn dismembered flesh. At such times she cried out in her sleep and woke and wept rackingly in Brett’s assuring arms till drugged with tears she slept again.
To escape her own fears, she flung herself wholeheartedly into the Christmas gaiety at Great Oak. They had planned a surprise for Mrs. Currain, a grand new carriage built to order in Philadelphia at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars, lined with amber satin, the cushions covered with rich brocade, the lamps of silver. It had been sent on to Williamsburg and washed and furbished there, and when the carriage came grandly up the drive with old Thomas and young Tom his son in new livery on the box, they all ushered Mrs. Currain out to see it, and laughed with delight at her delight.
For this fine Christmas they were all at home, the big house full to overflowing. On Christmas Eve guests came from Williamsburg and from the plantations all around to watch the fireworks on the bluff toward the river. Then they trooped indoors for dancing; and laughter like a melody filled the air. Mrs. Currain in the g
reat chair by the hearth, beautiful in black net with a white lace collar, watched them all with happy eyes till for a schottische Clayton bowed before her, laughed down her protests, and swept her to her feet. As they revolved around the floor, her wide skirts whirling with a hushed rustling of many petticoats, her color heightened delicately, and she smiled at this tall grandson so fondly that the others stopped to watch, their eyes stinging and their hearts filled with tender laughter. So these two danced at last alone, each intent upon the other, thrice and four times around the great hall; till Cinda, seeing a quick pulse pound in her mother’s frail throat, made a sign to old Joshua and he hushed the musicians, and Clayton swept his grandmother to her chair and bowed before her and she fluttered her fan and smiled up at him and said in her clear sweet voice:
“Why, Mr. Dewain, I haven’t enjoyed a turn so much in fifty years!”
The others came to cluster around her and Cinda drew Clayton aside to press his arm.
“You’re a darling boy.”
“She’s wonderful, isn’t she?”
“And so are you!” She saw Darrell Streean watching her in dry amusement from across the room, so the moment was half spoiled, but she turned her back on Darrell and clung to Clayton’s arm; and when the music began again she kept him for her own.
But the memory of Darrell’s derisive grin stayed festering in her thoughts, and that night she spoke of him to Brett. “Everything was perfect if it hadn’t been for him. I wish he hadn’t come. He watches the rest of us just to be critical, and he never says a word that isn’t either sarcastic or vulgar. He’s as bad as Tony.”
“Tony’s changed,” Brett suggested. “I think Chimneys has been good for him.”
She admitted that this might be true. “And he’s nice to Mama,” Cinda remembered. “For that I can forgive him almost anything. Brett, do you know she refuses to admit anything’s wrong in the world? When I say that with South Carolina acting the way she is something terrible is bound to happen, she just says: ‘Fiddlesticks! It’s all a lot of talk. Great Oak will always be the same.’ To her nothing else matters.” She laughed in a breathless way. “She’s a real comfort if you can believe her. I wish I could.”
For once he gave her no word of reassurance, and his silence frightened her. In her trouble she spoke to him for the first time of Enid’s infatuation. “I don’t suppose she realizes it herself,” she admitted, “but she’s simply wild about Faunt. It sticks out all over her!”
He was astonished, and amused too. “You women! Always imagining things!”
“You men!” she retorted. “Always so blind! Brett Dewain, if Mama ever suspected, she’d throw Enid out of the house, bag and baggage.”
But he told her she was making much out of nothing. “As far as that goes, every woman he meets falls in love with Faunt!” She held fast to this small crumb.
Next morning the little Negroes, children of the house servants, came to wake them with eager greedy cries of “Chris’mas gif” and to claim their rewards; and then there was family breakfast, and then the field hands and all the people, in best Sunday finery, flocked to the big house for a bounty of knives and kerchiefs and tobacco and sweets from Mrs. Currain’s hands.
Afterward Mrs. Currain must display the new carriage in a round of calls, and Cinda and Tilda and Enid kept her company; but they were back in good season. The long table, when they came in to dinner, bore enough victuals for ten times their number, with a huge turkey at either end, a platter of blood-dripping breasts of wild ducks halfway down each side, a haunch of venison steaming brown, and a gigantic ham on which the flaked crust had cracked to expose the tender whiteness beneath; and there were sweet potatoes swimming in syrup and browned to a crisp on top, and mountains of white potatoes, and huge bowls of rice, and lesser bowls at strategic points filled with oyster dressing left over after the turkeys were stuffed full. Tony carved at one end, Trav at the other. Brett and Faunt were seated facing each other halfway down the big board, and the venison and the ham were their responsibilities. To the duck breasts those helped themselves who chose. There were few faltering appetites at that board, since any early refusal of an offering was sure to draw an anxious question from Mrs. Currain. “Don’t you like it, Tilda?” “Enid darling, aren’t you feeling well?” The gentle solicitudes were a spur to them all, and some great deeds were done that day.
The men, as husbands away from home are apt to do, made invidious comparisons. Thus Brett: “Cinda, why don’t our turkeys ever have this flavor?”
Mrs. Currain beamed. “Perhaps it’s because we pen them, Brett, and feed them bushels of scaly barks. I used to feed walnuts, but that does make the dark meat just a dight too hearty, it seems to me.”
Or Faunt: “Even your ducks are better than any I can get on the Potomac, Mama.” And Mrs. Currain said probably his ducks had been too long in salt water, or perhaps the feed for them was not of the proper sort. When Streean declared venison at home was always cooked too dry, Mrs. Currain said this haunch had been encased in dough that baked on, to be cracked off only in time to let the great haunch brown.
“And it must be brushed over with a mixture of pyroligneous acid and water, and kept just the right length of time before you cook it.” The right length of time depended on the weather; four days, ten days —you had to learn by experience. A cool dry larder was essential. Moisture was bad. In wet weather meat should always be wiped once a day with a dry cloth. “And of course it must always be hung, and never laid on anything.”
Enid said in a gorged tone that she could not imagine going to all that trouble; and Mrs. Currain said that the whole art of cooking lay in attention to such details. “Cleanliness, naturally,” she admitted. “But constant attention before things are ready to cook and while they are cooking.”
When at last the board was cleared, huge plum puddings wreathed in pale blue flame were set before Mrs. Currain and Cinda, and bountifully served. Trav smothered his with sauce, and Mrs. Currain said fondly: “I declare, Travis, you’re as greedy as ever. I think you’d swim in caudle sauce if you could.”
“We never had it at Chimneys,” he explained. “I’m making up for what I missed.”
“Oh, Enid, I must teach you to make it,” Mrs. Currain exclaimed. “It’s so simple really. You cut up butter in small pieces and put them in a sauce pan with a little cold water and a little flour and let it boil. Then stir in a glass of sherry. That will stop the boiling, and you must be careful it doesn’t boil again. Then half a glass of brandy, and some sugar and grated lemon peel and nutmeg. That’s all there is to it.”
Cinda saw Enid’s barely concealed impatience; and she said maliciously: “You must tell Enid how to make this plum pudding, too, Mama! Tilda and I had to learn the recipe by heart when we were children.”
Mrs. Currain did not wait for any urgency from Enid. “Well, some people don’t care for this recipe,” she admitted. “But I like a good rich pudding. It’s a little more work than caudle sauce, Enid. You have to stone the raisins, and wash and pick over the currants, and of course mincing the suet takes time, because the pieces must be as small as you can get them.” She looked at what was left of the puddings they had been served. “These are five-pound puddings,” she said. “To make one I use a pound each of raisins and currants and suet and bread crumbs, and half a pound of flour. I mix the crumbs and flour and suet, and beat up six eggs in half a pint of milk and beat that into the mixture till—–” She laughed. “Well, just keep beating till you’re worn out. The longer the better. Then I stir in the raisins and the currants and a quarter of a pound of candied orange and lemon peel, cut very fine, and an ounce of cinnamon and half an ounce of powdered ginger, and a grated nutmeg and a very little salt. Then a glass of rum or brandy. I use brandy, and sometimes I use a big glass. Some people bake their puddings, but I boil mine for six hours, tied up in cloth. Don’t tie them too tight, because they swell a little.”
Brett laughed. “I know just how they feel, Mama. I’m
beginning to swell a little myself.”
So they rose, with appropriate groans, and the children at the side tables were too sleepy or too gorged to do more than slide out of their chairs and allow themselves to be led or carried away, and a torpor fell upon their elders; but somehow all the grownups were hungry enough for a late supper, and for some liveliness afterward. Cinda when at last she and Brett were alone thought there had been no blemish on that day, except that little Hetty was feverish and fretful. Even Darrell joined in the fun, and Mr. Streean was less unpleasant than usual.
She held fast to all this happiness; for—would they ever again have Christmas thus together? She put aside the question. Let it not be asked till it must be; let this gentle, kindly, friendly world of which she was a part endure while it could. Long after Brett was asleep beside her she heard at a distance in the quarter the people softly singing. They were too far away for her to hear the words; but she knew tune and words of old.
I wep’ many tears
My heart bowed down,
Way-y-y in de King-DOM!
The last syllable came like the beat of a great drum, heavy with men’s strong voices.
Wid er heavy head
An’ er achin’ heart
Way-y-y in de King-DOM!
That heavy beat of the great drum again, and then, softer and more softly, as though the voices were receding:
I prayed ter God
An’ he tuck my part
Way-y-y in de King-DOM
Way-y-y in de King-DOM
Way-y-y in de King-g-g-g-dom!
“Pray to God and he’ll take our part.” She whispered the words in her heart, and so at last she fell asleep.
House Divided Page 21
