House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Vesta remembered what Tommy had told her. “Some of the South Carolina boys just refused to come, in Colonel Gregg’s regiment.” She added: “But I’m not sure there aren’t too many soldiers in Richmond as it is. Those terrible Zouaves you and Mama saw on the train, for instance. Dolly and I went into Pizzini’s for strawberries yesterday, and two of them had a fight right outside the door, slashing at each other with knives and spattering blood halfway across Broad Street. We were terrified!”

  “They wouldn’t annoy young ladies, you know.”

  “Well, I think they fought over one. I saw them talking to her just before they started. She was a horrible-looking creature, too!” She saw his troubled eyes and added quickly: “Oh, we had escorts, Papa; two friends of Dolly’s. We weren’t afraid, really.”

  He smiled. “Richmond’s always been a quiet little city. Captain Wilkinson told me once he hadn’t had to arrest a white man in four or five years on night police. The watchmen had to lock up a noisy negro in the cage now and then; but the old building was so near collapsing that anyone could break out who wanted to. But of course, Vesta, there are twice as many people here as we used to have, and all of them are excited and full of fight. I don’t think I’d go anywhere alone if I were you.”

  “Heavens, Papa, of course not!” She laughed. “But with all the soldiers and all the excitement, I wish somebody’d hurry up and do something!”

  It seemed to her in fact that anything would be better than this living at fever pitch, the streets forever full of marching soldiers and pretty girls, even the churches given over to groups of ladies sewing and chattering like so many magpies while their needles flew, everyone so sure that at any moment something wonderful would surely happen, everyone expecting each new dawn would bring confusion and disaster to the cowardly, villainous, ridiculous Yankees!

  “It scares me, just to listen to them, Mama,” Vesta confessed. “Every girl I see is just as silly as Dolly, just perfectly idiotic about how brave and handsome and graceful our men are, and how wonderful war is! Dolly’s not the only one who’s having the time of her life, you know.”

  “Oh, I know,” Cinda assented. “I’ve seen women my age, old enough to know better, just talk themselves black in the face.” She smiled a little. “I sometimes think that except you and me and Jenny, all the other women in the world are perfect fools.”

  Each day was packed full of high moments when the pulse beat hard. Drills and parades were tremendously exhilarating for a while, but even Dolly said one day: “After all, when you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all!” Then, when June was a third gone, Richmond had the fine news from Bethel Church, and exulted in that victory. Since only one Southern soldier was reported killed, Vesta had no concern for her father or Julian, or for Tony; so there were no fears to mar her delight and Cinda’s in the first report—five thousand Yankees put to flight by a thousand Southern soldiers, hundreds of Yankees slain. Cinda said in a great relief:

  “Well there, it was time we did something! I was sick and tired of hearing about Yankees in Alexandria, and the James River blockaded, and Colonel Porterfield getting chased all over Northwestern Virginia. The Yankee newspapers have been blowing their big bazoo about capturing Richmond in thirty days! Maybe now they won’t talk so big!”

  Dispatches from Colonel Magruder and Colonel Hill emphasized the magnitude of this first success. The Richmond papers called Bethel Church the most remarkable victory in the history of warfare, and since it had been won by her father’s Howitzers and by the North Carolina regiment in which Julian and Tony served, it was—as Vesta laughingly declared—strictly a Currain triumph!

  But for them all, the tale was incomplete till after a few days Brett and Julian appeared. From them, with Brett the narrator and Julian forever interrupting, they heard the story.

  “We’d been at Bethel since Friday,” Brett explained. “We slept in the church. The New York Zouaves had written a lot of abuse on the walls. ‘Death to Rebels’ and—well, some things not to be repeated. And—–”

  Julian broke in. “They’d drawn a picture of a gallows and a man hanging on it, right behind the pulpit, and it said ‘The Doom of Traitors’ under it.”

  Vesta exclaimed in angry protest at this sacrilege, and Brett went on: “Parson Adams preached to us on Sunday. He was the Baptist minister in Hampton till the Federals occupied the town. A lot of Hampton people are Unionists, but he isn’t, and the Yankees wouldn’t let him stay there to take care of his congregation, threatened to put him in prison. So he came to us. We couldn’t all get into the church, so he stood up in his buggy and preached out of doors.” Brett hesitated. “I never saw a religious service anywhere that was so impressive.” Vesta nodded understandingly, and he went on: “We’d been building earthworks all the time. We only had a few shovels and pickaxes, but we kept them busy. Lucky we did, too; because plenty of cannon balls and bullets hit those earthworks during the fight without doing any harm.”

  He told of Trav’s arrival and why he came, and Cinda smilingly commented: “Trust Travis to be practical.”

  “Well, we were mighty grateful to him,” Brett assured her. “Then pretty soon after he got there, the fight began. I was as excited as a girl at her first party.” He confessed that mistake of his which put a gun out of action. “So we had to pull back behind the creek,” he explained. “But when the Yankees sent men to seize our old position we chased them away.”

  “Uncle Tony did that!” Julian reminded him, and Brett said:

  “Yes, Tony did a fine piece of work. But the whole North Carolina regiment was wonderful! Julian and the other cadets helped stop the final Yankee attack. The Yankee who led that, a Major Winthrop, was the bravest man on their side. He came right up to our works before he was shot.”

  Julian said: “He was right in front of me!”

  “Were you scared, darling?” Vesta asked in teasing fondness.

  “Shucks, no! It wasn’t so much! Colonel Magruder said it was just child’s play.” The boy added in a hushed tone: “I helped bury Major Winthrop afterward. He was a fine-looking man.”

  “That charge ended the fight,” Brett said. He smiled, remembering Trav’s collapse; then decided not to speak of this. But Vesta asked:

  “How did Uncle Trav like the battle?”

  Brett hesitated. “Well, I hadn’t meant to tell you, but Trav saw a mule killed by a cannon ball—a pretty unpleasant sight—and it made him sick!”

  “I should think it would!” Cinda declared. “But you can’t tell me Travis was scared!”

  “Oh, we were all scared,” Brett assured her, and Vesta nodded wisely.

  “Tommy says everybody’s scared, really.” Her father, at some inflection in her voice, looked at her with a quizzical eye, and she felt her cheeks burn. “Well, he does!” she cried.

  Cinda came to her rescue. “Were there really hundreds of Yankees killed, Brett?”

  He smiled. “Not hundreds probably; but we buried eighteen, and the local people say the Yankees carted some dead men away with them.”

  “Well, we’ll kill hundreds of them next time,” Cinda predicted, and he looked at her in faint amusement, and she understood his glance. “Oh, yes,” she confessed, “I’m beginning to talk as big as anyone!”

  Julian returned to Yorktown to rejoin his company, but Brett stayed a few days. “I want to see Mr. Harvie,” he told them.

  Vesta asked: “Why, Papa?” She was puzzled by his tone. “You sound as if you thought—things might go badly.”

  “They may go badly for the railroads,” he admitted. “And there’s a lot of Currain money in securities of the Fredericksburg road. I’m going to take some of it out, put it where it’s safer.”

  “In gold, like Mr. Pierce?” Cinda asked.

  “No, not yet at least. But the Yankees have seized the Potomac Steamboat Company’s steamers, and Virginia has taken over the Fredericksburg road’s property, at Acquia Creek. Mr. Daniel’s annual report is pretty gl
oomy. I suppose the road will be working for the Government.”

  “Won’t the Government pay them?” Cinda protested.

  Brett hesitated. “I’ll know more after I see Mr. Harvie.” But that interview gave him no reassurance. He said when he returned that the directors would meet in a few weeks to decide what should be done. “And they can only decide one way, of course; they must do whatever the Government wants. They’ve made surveys to see if they can lay tracks here in the city to connect with the Petersburg railroad, so that trains can run right through Richmond; but the surveyors say the grade is too severe. But Mr. Daniel says they’ll cut fares, carry troops at two cents a mile and freight at half the regular rate. They’ll have to accept payment in Confederate funds and notes at par; but unless the Confederacy imposes some taxes, the bonds will decline in value. And the road will wear out. They’ll need fifty thousand tons of rails a year just to keep their tracks in condition; but our rail foundries in Richmond and in Atlanta can’t make half that. The Yankees captured a lot of rails when they occupied Alexandria. President Marshall of the Manassas Gap Railroad tried to save them, but the Government wouldn’t do anything to help him.” He said soberly: “I’m afraid, even if we win the war, the roads will be bankrupted; and we don’t want to lose our investment.”

  Vesta saw that he was not, as everyone else seemed to be, completely confident. If Papa was worried, then all the others so sure of victory were wrong!

  Brett was still in Richmond the day Henry Wyatt, dead of the wound he received at Bethel, was buried from Mr. Duveau’s church; and they all went to the service. Next day Clayton came from Manassas for overnight, and Vesta had not known how much she loved this tall brother of hers till it was time for him to leave again. Faunt’s company was ordered to White Sulphur Springs. “Governor Wise is to raise a force in the Kanawha Valley,” he wrote, “and we will join him at Charleston Kanawha. So I’ll be in Western Virginia, and it’s not likely I can come for Burr’s wedding. Give him and his charming bride my most affectionate greetings, if you please.” He added that he meant to go to Belle Vue before his company moved west. “I shall manumit as many of my people as wish to be free. I will not fight for slavery. A man has to decide why he fights; and I want it clear in my own mind that I’m fighting to drive the Yankees out of Virginia, and not for any selfish reason at all.”

  As June advanced, Burr came home from Ashland more frequently. On one of these occasions he heard, and told them, that Darrell Streean had fought a duel. “A man named Judge Meynell,” he explained. “He was Lieutenant of Uncle Tony’s company. He called Darrell a coward because he wasn’t in uniform, and they met yesterday morning, and Darrell shot him through the heart.”

  They did not know Judge Meynell, and Darrell was their kin; yet for a—well, perhaps not a coward, but at least a civilian—to kill a soldier was a shocking thing. Cinda, whose tongue knew no curb, exclaimed: “That’s just—despisable!”

  Burr said honestly: “Well, the insult was public, and seemed deliberate, or so I’m told. I don’t know what else Darrell could have done.”

  “He could have volunteered, for one thing!”

  “He may do that now, of course.”

  “Will he be arrested?”

  Burr shook his head. “You can’t call another man a coward without accepting the responsibility for your word.” He added: “Uncle Tony’s taking the body back to Martinston. He knows Mrs. Meynell and Miss Meynell, their daughter.”

  “How does Uncle Tony feel about it?” Vesta asked. “Did he like Judge Meynell?”

  “Yes, he said he was a fine man.”

  She felt some mystery here. “How old was he? Judge Meynell?”

  “Why—I think he was forty or forty-five.”

  If Judge Meynell was as old as that, Miss Meynell must be a young lady; and the thought stayed in Vesta’s mind till Tony, on his way from Martinston back to Yorktown, stopped for an hour at the house. Cinda was out, Jenny resting; only Vesta saw him. Alone with him, she risked the question.

  “Uncle Tony—why did Judge Meynell go out of his way to quarrel with Darrell?” Tony cleared his throat uncertainly and she insisted: “Did they know each other before?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “When Darrell was at Chimneys.”

  “I see.” She hesitated, then drove ahead. “Uncle Tony—how old is Miss Meynell?”

  She saw the effort with which he kept his tone casual. “Oh—seven—teen, eighteen, I suppose.”

  “Is she—nice?”

  He looked at her for an instant, and his glance became so stern that she felt like a guilty child expecting a merited rebuke. He said quietly: “Vesta, as you grow older you will learn to refrain from empty conjecture. Judge Meynell branded Darrell publicly as a coward. Darrell called him out and killed him. That’s all that need be said.”

  Thus certainty and hot anger filled her. “I wish someone would kill Darrell!”

  She saw his color rise. “I had thought of doing so myself,” he admitted. “But killing him would only make talk. The best thing is to forget.”

  Vesta was silenced, but she did not forget. Her thoughts for a long time turned often to Miss Meynell, to this girl she had never seen, to this girl she would never know.

  22

  June, 1861

  FOR Burr’s wedding day, Cinda’s house would be full; and Tilda offered to take any overflow. “Of course I know your place is just simply tremendous, compared to ours, but we have Darrell’s room free. He’s gone to North Carolina to buy supplies for the Department. And we have two rooms besides, even in our little house.”

  Cinda thanked her; she said politely that it was too bad Darrell couldn’t be here. “But as far as rooms go, I’m sure we can manage. Nobody will want to sleep much anyway; we’ll have so much visiting to do!”

  When the time came, there proved to be, since the children could be tucked away anywhere, a place for everyone. Vesta had Peter and Kyle crosswise at the foot of her bed, with their heads projecting from under the covers on either side, and Lucy slept beside her. The youngsters were a long and hilarious time getting to sleep, because Lucy could not resist reaching down with her toes to tickle the little boys; and since the night proved chilly, Vesta in the morning found herself the center of a warm huddle of little bodies.

  “I felt like a mother dog with her puppies,” she told Cinda. “It was so sweet. I kept wishing they were all mine!”

  Brett arrived from Yorktown on Thursday of that week, and at supper they made him tell his adventures since he went back to duty. He had been one of a detachment that went off to scout and to forage toward New Market Bridge.

  “We’re always short of food,” he explained. “The Howitzers and the North Carolina men had raised a purse of two hundred dollars for Mrs. Tunnell, the woman who gave us warning the Feds were coming, the morning of the fight at Bethel; so we took her the money, and then we hunted for food. We got two cartloads of corn.” He chuckled. “But our vedettes reported a big force of Yankees trying to cut us off, and we came back to Yorktown a lot faster than we went out!”

  Vesta asked teasingly: “Scared, Papa?”

  “Well, for men who weren’t scared we certainly travelled fast,” he assured her. “We threw away our baggage and hustled like good ones.” But the alarm proved false, and they went back to recover the abandoned wagons, and Brett and two others begged a cold ham and some scant rashers of bacon from a house by the road.

  “We’re all half-starved,” he said laughingly. “Not much to eat except fish and oysters; and what meat we get is so bad that there’ve been a lot of men sick this week from eating it. Even the water down there isn’t fit to drink. And hot! My, but it’s hot!”

  Cinda said it was outrageous that soldiers should go hungry. “So near home, so near Richmond!”

  “Well, we’ve seven thousand men in Yorktown,” Brett reminded her. “And no one knows much yet about feeding an army.”

  “Nonsense,” Cinda protested. “Women have
been feeding men for thousands of years. They could do it.”

  He smiled. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he suggested. “Calls for more arithmetic than cooking. It needs someone like Trav. By the way,” he added, “Trav and Enid are coming tomorrow. Mama too, of course.”

  “Yes, Trav wrote me,” she agreed.

  Burr was at Barbara’s for supper, but he came home soon afterward; and he and his father fell into talk of business concerns. Cinda stayed with them, smiling inwardly as her eyes rested on Burr’s serious young face, thinking him so like his father. And soon now, day after tomorrow, he would marry Barbara; and after that, Cinda well knew, he would no longer be hers. To see a son marry was in some ways to lose him. Clayton had never been hers since he married Jenny. Cinda loved Jenny, as she loved Clayton; but she had never let this love deceive her. When Clayton married, she had gained a daughter, yes; but just as surely she had lost a son.

  And day after tomorrow she would lose Burr. He too would go out through the door of her heart. She could never cherish him there again. When henceforward he was hurt, it was not to her bosom but to Barbara’s he would turn.

  Let him go, since go he must. Thus ran the world. For him to leave her was a part of life! Nothing of life would she deny to him.

  Trav and the others from Great Oak arrived in time for late dinner Friday. Mrs. Currain declared she was not at all tired from the journey, but Cinda saw that her cheeks were bright with a frail excitement, and as always when she was tired her speech had a faint Scotch burr. Her father had been a Scot; and when she was tired Mrs. Currain’s tongue fell into the old tricks of her girlhood. After dinner, over many protests, Cinda hustled her off to bed.