House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Faunt asked curiously: “Sir, what guarantees can protect us?”

  The other turned to him. “Why, they are simple, Mr. Currain; and yet they are the minimum which we must have. This vulgarian from the barbaric West seeks to destroy us by guile and treachery; he gives us smiles and promises, and so he lulls us to sleep while he orders home the Pacific and the Mediterranean fleets to close our ports, and brings the nation’s soldiers from their western duties to form hostile ranks along our borders, to encircle us, shut us off from the world, stifle us. He denies us any expansion of slave territory, hems us in our narrow land, proposes to destroy us. He will garrison Fort Washington and Fortress Monroe; and once that is done, a single armed vessel can close the James and the York and your own Rappahannock, Mr. Currain; can overnight shut us off from all commerce with the world.

  “So we must demand, must insist—while negotiations are continued —upon the status quo; no more soldiers to Fortress Monroe, to Fort Washington, to Washington City, to Harper’s Ferry. Our firm stand will hold Maryland, will win New Jersey; and I have high hopes of Pennsylvania, of New York. They are our natural allies against this slave-lover from the West. They like him no better than we. A bold, united South can win three or four of the free states; can recapture control of the Government.” The old gentleman rose, afire with his own words. “We can recapture the control which the Cotton States by their impetuosity threw away. Publicly I can never criticize the course taken by South Carolina and the others; but to you gentlemen I can say that had they retained their representation in Congress, they could have prevented the appropriation of a single dollar to support Mr. Lincoln’s warlike plans. They acted honorably—but not wisely.

  “But we can still rule. The exchanges of the world, the clothing and commerce of the world, the wealth of the North, all these are based on cotton. Self-interest will be our ally. We need only stand firm, demand security, command respect. In their secret closets they will count the cost, foresee the bankruptcy which without the South and its cotton they inevitably face, and come humbly to seek again our friendship.”

  He finished, his voice ringing, and Faunt nodded, not in assent yet respectfully. But Governor Wise shook his head. “Sir, I cannot agree with you. This has gone beyond the point where Northern cupidity can restrain Northern aggression. Cotton is a weapon, yes; but here is a better one.” He crossed the room to the corner where a musket with fixed bayonet leaned, and took it in his hands. “This, in the hands of the brave; this musket, this bayonet, these are worth all your cotton!”

  Faunt asked: “Have we arms?”

  “Enough,” the Governor assured him. “John Floyd, before he resigned, sent a hundred thousand muskets from Northern armories to those in the South. But it is not the weapons which will bring victory to our cause; it is the men! Let our brave men march into the North and the rabble there will scatter like chickens before the hawk. Northerners have no taste for battle.” A sudden passion rang in his shrill tones. “But what brave man waits for some magic to put a weapon in his hand? The man who will not fight unless he has a Minié or a percussion musket is a coward and a renegade. Let him get a spear, or a lance; let him take a lesson from John Brown, make his own sword or his knife from old iron or from a piece of carriage spring. If the enemy’s gun outreaches his, why, let him reduce the distance between them. Meet him foot to foot with cold steel and strike home!”

  There was a blaze of deadly energy in the Governor’s eyes, and Faunt thought of Jennings Wise and of the many like him in the South, young men habitually ready to fight at a word or a sidelong look. Yes, Southern men would fight. It was their habit, almost their pastime. Not only men like the Governor’s son but even the humblest farmer or the most miserable poor white was ready at a real or imagined affront to turn to the pistol, the knife, the gouging ring for satisfaction.

  From what sprang this universal Southern readiness for deadly combat? Walking back to the Spottswood through the crowded streets he tried to understand. What was this South of which he was a part? What was its mind, its heart? Long after he was abed he lay wakeful, seeking an answer to that question. His thoughts returned to the paths they had followed earlier in the day. The aristocracy of wealth of which he was a part, an aristocracy based not so much upon birth as upon two or three or four generations of successful exploitation of land and slaves, founded by progenitors who had distinguished themselves primarily by an ability to face frontier conditions and master them; this aristocracy, acquiring leisure, had also acquired power and having acquired power and leisure and wealth it had created the gentle way of life which was his world.

  But he and such as he were not the South; they were only a few individuals among millions. What was the distinctive characteristic of Southern men as a result of which the meanest one of them was ready to protect what he considered his honor with his life?

  He arrived slowly at an understanding that contented him. Here was the significant fact. In the South, only slaves had masters. A man—a white man—no matter how abject his condition, rarely worked for hire. There were a few hired overseers, yes; but even they were masters of the slaves they directed. There were a few clerks, keepers of books, vendors of merchandise; yes, but they were in numbers insignificant. The South was not, like the North, a land of factories, where thousands of white men spent long days in monotonous toil and found sometimes even their homes and their scant leisure and the smallest details of their lives controlled and commanded by their employers. When such labor was needed in the tobacco factories here in Virginia, slaves were hired from their owners; yes, and treated with as much or with more consideration than the white serfs in Northern industry. The South was not a region of towns and crowded cities. There might be thirty-five thousand people in Richmond, but more than half of them were Negroes; and probably only New Orleans and Charleston in the whole South were more populous than Richmond. Faunt doubted whether any other city than these three had as many as five thousand white inhabitants. Southern men, whether wealthy or desperately poor, lived on the soil; and on their few starved acres and in their rude hovels or cabins, even the meanest of them were still their own masters. They admired and cultivated not wealth in any form but individual qualities: strength, no matter how that strength was used; courage, no matter how it was demonstrated; capacity, even though it were only the capacity to drink more fiery liquor than other men; valor, even though it were demonstrated only by follies committed without a count of consequences; dignity, even in rags. If you knew in your heart that no man could challenge you and make his challenge good, why then you were master of yourself and of the world.

  And always you knew, too, that no matter how low your estate, that of the slave was lower. No man could call himself your master. You yourself were of the master race, free to claim your share of the general authority to which your white skin entitled you.

  To such men servility was impossible, surrender inconceivable, defeat a ridiculous absurdity. From such men would the soldiers of the South be recruited; from men who were deeply sure that no man could overcome them. How could such men be beaten? True, you could kill them; but in no other way could you compel them to submission.

  And hundreds of thousands of such Southern men were ready now to meet the North’s challenge. Faunt felt in himself a high pride because of such men, whether great or humble, he was one. Before he slept he knew that he would go next day to Jennings Wise, to accept his part in that which was to come.

  Faunt’s decision would not at once be put into effect. When he came down to breakfast he saw, back toward him, a heavy-shouldered, slightly stooping, instantly familiar figure; and he moved to Trav’s side, touched his brother’s arm. Trav turned and their hands struck, and Faunt asked:

  “What brought you to Richmond? Is Mama well?”

  “Yes, yes.” Around them excited voices sounded, and they drew a little aside to talk apart. “But Enid and I brought Hetty up. Her eye, the one Vigil hurt, is worse.” Faunt heard the concern in T
rav’s slow tones. “We wanted Dr. Little to try if he can heal it.”

  “I’m grieved to hear that.” Seeing the baby at Great Oak since the accident, the hurt eye always terribly inflamed and often swollen and so painful that Hetty was forever whimpering with misery, Faunt had felt a deep sorrow for her. He forgot now any thought of going today to Captain Wise. “Command me, Trav. Where is Enid?”

  “In our rooms, with Baby. And we brought April.” Trav smiled sadly. “We had to. The old woman seldom lets Hetty out of her arms.” He added: “Enid’s pretty upset. Baby seems to get worse all the time.”

  Faunt went with Trav to their rooms. Enid, seeing at first only Trav at the door, cried querulously: “Oh, so you’re back, are you? Well, it’s high time! Leaving me—” But then as she discovered Faunt, with an instant change of tone: “Oh, Cousin Faunt, it’s so good to see you! We’re all just desperate! I don’t know what to do!” From the next room came the baby’s fretful wails. “She’s been like that for days and days now. I hear her all night, can’t sleep; and if I doze off I hear her in my sleep.” Her tears were brimming and she came into his arms, her arms tightening around him. “Oh, do tell us what to do?”

  Faunt in her embrace felt a profound sadness. Once, long ago, he had heard his own baby’s weak and pitiful cries and found no way to serve; once long ago Betty, her clasp almost strengthless, had thus embraced him, bidding him goodby. Enid’s terror and Trav’s sober grief made demands upon him which he sought to meet. He devoted himself to them, summoning the doctor, listening with Trav to the physician’s protest that this baby should have been brought to him long ago. Dr. Little said some hopeful words, but Faunt thought them hollow and meaningless; yet when the doctor was gone and Enid appealed to him for comforting he echoed what the other had said. Let her find hope if she could.

  His concern for the baby and for Trav and Enid thrust from his mind what went on outside this grieving room. All that day he kept watch with them, ignoring the sounds that rose from the thronged streets; the muffled voices of men coming sometimes as a deep undertone, sometimes as a harsh exultant shout; the scrape of passing feet or the beat of hoofs; the whistles and the cries.

  But in late afternoon, a sudden louder tumult raced toward them like the sound of rain from a nearing shower, swelling as it neared to rise at last in jubilant uproar. Faunt guessed the truth even before he heard the beginning of the long reverberations of a hundred guns announcing Sumter’s fall. With dusk there was a glare of bonfires against the sky, and the hiss and silent flash of exploding rockets, and for long hours every bell in Richmond rang in a steady clamor, so that the sick baby whimpered and wailed, and Enid wept with her. There was a swell of many voices from the street below their window like the rumble of surf, and during the evening thousands of marching feet came near the hotel and paused and raised a great shout, and for a while the watchers in the upper room heard single voices as speakers harangued the crowd, their words drowned again and again by a clamor of exultant cheers, till at last the speakers were done and the parade moved on to seek other orators at the Exchange or in Capitol Square.

  Not till slow silence settled at last across the night-bound city could Faunt persuade Enid to try to sleep, making her lie down on the couch, covering her over.

  “You’re so sweet to me, Cousin Faunt,” she whispered, yielding at last, smiling weakly up at him.

  “Close your eyes,” he urged. “Trav and I will be here, and we’ll wake you if there’s anything to do.”

  She did sleep at last, and so did Trav, sitting heavily in his chair, his head tipped forward. Faunt watched them both; and sure in his own mind of what the doctor expected, he sorrowed for them. In the world outside, hushed now since the first frenzy of delight had passed, there were many tragedies preparing; but for these two no tragedy would ever be as keen as this. When thousands died, the mind became blunted, no longer able to comprehend; but the death of a loved child was a little thing, inflicting pain not keen enough to bring its own anodyne and therefore fully felt, completely suffered.

  Trav at last woke; and Faunt, so that Enid need not be disturbed, signed him to silence. Trav rose and beckoned him to the door, bade Faunt sleep a while. “I’m all right now. I’ll stay awake,” he said.

  So Faunt left him; but before day Trav came to his door. Hetty seemed worse. Could Faunt summon the doctor from his bed? “She’s stopped crying,” Trav explained. “But—I guess she’s unconscious, Faunt. Enid thinks she’s asleep, but I don’t think so. See if he can come.”

  Dr. Little’s home was on Sixth Street, beyond Clay, seven or eight blocks away; but there were no hackney cabs abroad, so Faunt walked. The sleepy old Negro who answered his knock grumbled at this summons. “De doctah nigh sick abed his own self,” he declared. “No bizness tuh go sky-hooting around dis time o’ night!” But Dr. Little called from abovestairs and bade Faunt wait and quickly appeared. He was a frail little man; but there dwelt abounding energy in him, and Faunt had to hurry to keep pace with the other’s brisk steps. He thought this headlong pace must weary the physician unnecessarily, so rather to slow him than because he expected an answer, he asked:

  “Doctor, will the baby get better?”

  The other laughed harshly. “You might as well ask who hit Billy Patterson! Better, in fact, because I could tell you the answer to that one. I was there—in the old Washington Tavern it was; they call it the Monument now—when Patterson made his disturbance. In fact I was one of those he overturned. I’d have done a little blood-letting on him, myself, but Alban Payne saved me the trouble, knocked him as senseless as a poled bullock.” His sharp voice crackled and sputtered. “Will she get better? Why, God knows, Mr. Currain.” He spoke more gently. “Yet I fear not. There appears to be an inflammation communicated from the injured eye socket to the brain. Frankly, sir, her death would be a mercy; since even if there is a recovery, the brain will doubtless suffer permanent injury.” He coughed, in a wearying paroxysm. “However, we will do what we can.”

  There was, it proved, nothing he could do. Because next day was Sunday, the noisy celebration of Sumter’s fall was not resumed; but since Hetty never regained consciousness, nothing could have disturbed her. It seemed to Faunt that the city hushed to let her pass in peace. She lived into that night, and Faunt stayed with Trav and Enid. Tomorrow the world he had known would begin to disintegrate under the stress and strain of war; but tomorrow was blotted out by the nearer fact that here in the silent room a little baby gently died.

  17

  April, 1861

  FOR TILDA these racing days when out of a precarious peace came war brought a secret satisfaction. All her life she had been forced to look upon the happiness of others, seeing them possess so many things that had never been and never would be hers; but now their world was collapsing. Now these others whom she so long had envied faced anxiety and loss and grievous pain.

  It was Streean who opened her eyes to this. His marriage to Tilda had brought him a modest affluence, and though he never pretended to himself that she had any other attraction than her fortune, he had thought the bargain a good one. But in the first years of their life together, before Tilda trained herself to dissemble, he often saw in her eyes or heard in her voice surprise and shame. He was in those years vulnerable to even an unspoken criticism. Streean’s father had been an honest, hard-working man who if he could neither read nor write was in that respect no different from the great majority of Virginia’s yeoman farmers; and Streean’s mother uncomplainingly accepted the tasks that life imposed. He might have been justly proud of them both; but he thought his father a dullard and his mother a draggled drudge; and when Tilda, who as a young woman had been warmhearted and kind, suggested that they go to see his family, he raged at her. He had expected alliance with the Currain fortune and the Currain name to wipe out the memory of his humble origin; and when he realized that to Faunt and Trav and Brett and even to Tony he would always be an outsider, he blamed not himself but his birth. Convinc
ed in his heart of their superiority, he still courted them; but their remote courtesy made him hate them too, and hate the people of their gentle world.

  Thus now through March and early April Streean damned and doubly damned the Convention which for so long held out against secession, till Tilda said timidly:

  “I didn’t realize you hated the Union, Redford.”

  “Hell, I don’t give a damn about the Union,” he retorted. “I just want war! I want to see all your damned arrogant aristocrats brought low; shot, stabbed, their great houses burned, their women in rags!” There was a loosed venom in his tones, but he added with a greedy complacency: “And in war, my dear, a shrewd man can make his fortune.” He spoke in vast condescension. “You see, Tilda, in normal times even high-minded men like your idol, Brett Dewain”—he had long since learned how to hurt her most keenly—“keep their heads where money is concerned. They’re business men first and gentlemen afterward. But in war they forget business and think only of victory. Well, their infatuation is my opportunity. Two or three years of war will make you and me rich, my dear. Of course it will bankrupt your high-strutting family; but it will make us rich!”

  She knew he meant to frighten and torment her; but actually his predictions filled her with a secret anticipation. If he were right—and no matter how thoroughly she despised him, she knew his shrewdness—war would ruin her brothers and Cinda, and people like them, from whose affectionate friendship she had always been debarred. She had, she told herself, tried to be friendly, never saying a critical or an unkind word; but no matter how she tried they set her apart, walled her in loneliness. It was because Redford was what he was that they gave her no meat save a pitying tolerance. How sweet then would be the hour when they were all brought low; how sweet to see Redford greater than them all!