House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “Macon?”

  “In Mississippi,” he explained. “My sister Ann married Dr. Dent there, and my mother took all the family to Macon. Louisa will stay with them till we see a little more clearly what is to happen. But she laid an injunction on me to make my duties to you at once.” He added smilingly: “I believe you were engaged with more important matters today, so I should perhaps have waited till tomorrow?”

  “Nonsense,” Cinda retorted. “You should have come to the wedding! And now you’re here we mean to keep you. I’ve so many questions to ask I don’t know where to begin. Tell me all about everything! How are the children?”

  “Why, fine, ma’am.” Fond pride dwelt in his voice. “Garland’s almost a man now; thirteen, you know; a high spirit.” He chuckled comfortably. “I used to think I could discipline my children as I would a regiment; but experience has taught me I was wrong. Garland and I were forever battling, so for the sake of peace I named Louisa to be the commanding officer in our family. Garland and I still operate under an armistice.” There was, behind the amusement in his tones, a hint of regret, and Cinda guessed that his differences with his eldest son distressed him. He added, more cheerfully: “But Gussie and I get along fine.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Going on eleven, but I can never best him in any argument. He had a fight one day and came home crying, and I asked why he didn’t fight back, and he said through his sobs: ‘How can a fellow fight when he’s crying!’”

  Cinda smiled. “How are the babies?”

  “Don’t ever call Jimmy a baby to his face,” he warned her. “He’s almost four, and he never lets us forget it. Mary Ann’s the baby.”

  “She’s—three or four months?”

  “Six months.”

  “Heavens, where does the time go?” And she said: “When you write Cousin Louisa, tell her not to stay too long in Mississippi. I’m eager to see her again.”

  “I must write her tomorrow,” he assented. “Since my arrival here I learn that her father died in New York early this month.”

  “Colonel Garland?” Brett asked.

  “Yes. So she may wish to come on to Lynchburg, if only to be nearer me. She has many relatives there.”

  “Is her mother there?” Cinda asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, Mrs. Garland died at Saratoga last summer. She was a Detroit woman, and she and the Colonel usually lived in the North. Of course Lynchburg is full of Garlands; but Colonel Garland was a strong Union man. Most officers of the old army had an ancient loyalty that died hard, till the threat of coercion killed it.”

  “You didn’t hesitate, Major. Louisa wrote us last spring that you’d offered your services.”

  He smiled. “Well, Uncle Gus brought me up, you know, and he’s been talking secession for years, and I couldn’t fight against my relatives and my state.”

  “Uncle Gus? Oh, you mean Judge Longstreet.”

  “Yes, I lived with him after my father died, till I went to West Point.”

  Brett said: “I saw him in Charleston, Major. He was dreading this war, wished he could recant all the things he had said in favor of secession.”

  Longstreet’s eyes were grave. “I owe him a great deal, but he’s like most orators. They talk on till they begin to believe their own words. I’m sorry for the old gentleman.”

  Cinda was in no mind for serious talk today. “Well, I despise him, if you ask me!” Her tone made them smile as she hoped it would. “He expelled Burr from the college for something or other.”

  The big man nodded. “He wrote me the boys were a wild lot of unbroken colts, needed a curb.” He added: “Yes, ma’am, I offered my services early. I’d been watching events, corresponding with my old friend Mr. Curry and at last I authorized him to tell Governor Moore I was his to command. I wrote the Governor myself, too. It was a relief to burn my bridges.”

  His tone suggested the pain that decision had cost him; and Cinda, to make him forget, said quickly: “What a shame Cousin Louisa and the children couldn’t come on with you! Is she just as tiny and dainty and exquisite as ever?”

  “Just the same.” His voice was gentle. “I don’t suppose she has ever in her life weighed a hundred pounds. Our journey would have worn her out.” He smiled. “Yet it was lively and inspiring. It was like a long serenade. You should hear the Texas young ladies sing The Bonny Blue Flag. Yes, and see them, too! Their feet won’t be still, they sway and dance in time with the tune, and their eyes shine and their cheeks are bright! They were at every stop to clap their pretty hands and wave their little handkerchiefs and cheer us on.”

  Cinda laughed. “Louisa says you’ve never lost your eye for a pretty face! I believe she’s right!”

  “I trust I never shall.”

  “When did you arrive in Richmond?” Brett inquired.

  “Today. I called at the Government offices, then paid my respects to Mr. Lamar. Mrs. Lamar is my cousin, you know; and Mr. Lamar is Lieutenant Colonel of the Nineteenth Mississippi, but he’s had an attack of vertigo, fears he cannot go to the front with his men.” He added: “And from his bedside I came here.”

  Mrs. Currain left them to take her rest, and Vesta and Enid went upstairs with her. Clayton came down and Cinda said: “Remember Clayton, Major? He was at your wedding too; but of course he was only eleven or twelve years old, and you were much too excited to notice him.”

  His eyes twinkled. “I must confess that my attention that day was a little distracted.” Cinda had asked her questions; now he had questions of his own. He led Julian and Tony and Brett to tell him of the affair at Bethel. “That was a fine beginning,” he remarked when they were done, and turned to Faunt. “Your duty was elsewhere?”

  “Yes, for a while at Fredericksburg, then Western Virginia, in General Wise’s command.”

  “I hear there are ten thousand Yankee troops there.”

  “General Floyd so reported.” Faunt added quietly: “We’ve not seen them, but Union sentiment is pretty strong. General McClellan is the Union commander.”

  “An able man. I know him of old.”

  “There’s been some talk that we’ll march against Parkersburg,” Faunt told him. “But so far, I doubt we’re strong enough. We get no volunteers, or almost none.”

  Longstreet nodded. “We’ll have a problem in Western Virginia. In fact, we’ll have many problems, in many places.” His eyes were grave again.

  “Few people in the South understand that,” Brett suggested. “We think of war as a simple matter of fighting, and we Southerners like to fight. But war is much more than that.” Cinda wished they would talk of more cheerful things. “It’s food and horses and wagons and railroads and money. Even in victory, we’ll be bankrupt when this is over.”

  Cinda, with a laughing glance at Brett, explained: “Mr. Dewain eats and sleeps and dreams money, Major.” But Longstreet waited in thoughtful attention and Brett went on:

  “Our finances are unsound. The Montgomery Constitution limits the taxing power, and there isn’t twenty-five million in hard money in the whole Confederacy. We’re borrowing, and printing money; but there’ll be a limit to that.”

  “Money matters are beyond me,” Longstreet admitted; and Cinda, fighting to make them smile, exclaimed:

  “Me too! As long as there’s plenty of money to spend, I don’t see what difference it makes!”

  Brett would not be turned aside. “The point is, we’re unready for this war. We were led into it by the politicians in the newly rich Gulf States, and tricked into it by Lincoln. He’s a clever politician, Major. He knew the North wouldn’t fight unless we provoked them—so he teased us with lies and false promises till we took Sumter, and that raised the North against us.”

  “Clever people are always too clever for their own good in the end,” Cinda declared. “He’ll live to be sorry!”

  Longstreet, watching Brett, said in a tentative tone: “We had the right to secede.”

  Brett colored almost angrily. “Th
e right, yes; but sometimes it’s folly to be right. I’d like to hear less talk of our rights and more of our interests; yes, and of our duties.”

  “Yet I see you are in uniform?” the other said in a quizzing tone.

  “Oh, yes, I’m a Virginian. I believed in the Union, but when Virginia seceded—so did I.”

  Major Longstreet assented. “Most of us, in the end, stand with our own people.” He hesitated, seemed for a moment lost in thought. “There’s much to be done, much to be done,” he said, more to himself than to them. “We’ll need a good leader and good soldiers; and it takes time to find the leaders and to make the soldiers.”

  Cinda said: “Clayton’s on General Beauregard’s staff.”

  “Ah?” Longstreet spoke directly to Clayton. “I expect his army stands in need of many things.”

  Clayton hesitated. “Why, yes, but we’re better off than we were two weeks ago. We were so short of weapons then that the General insisted no more troops be sent to him unless they could be armed. We’re still short of weapons, and of powder and ball, and of food. The day the army gets a square meal is the exception.”

  Trav had been so silent that Cinda had forgotten he was here, but now he said strongly: “It’s not food that’s scarce. We may lack uniforms and tents and blankets and guns and powder and shot, but there’s plenty of food. The difficulty is to put it where it’s needed. I’ve done some figuring, and I don’t believe there are carts and wagons and horses and mules enough in Virginia to feed a real army, once it gets away from the railroads. A man can’t live and fight on less than five pounds of food a day, and that means five thousand pounds a day for a regiment.”

  Longstreet looked at him in quiet appraisal, and Cinda explained: “Trav loves adding and subtracting, Major. Figures are as sweet to him as a song.”

  “But he calculates to some purpose,” Brett amended. “He arrived at Bethel with wagonloads of food for the men just after the fight was over.”

  “So?” Longstreet smiled. “That was well done.” He added, speaking to Trav: “I like figures myself, Mr. Currain. As paymaster, figures were my province. We need men in the army who can add two and two. Have you thought you might be useful in some such capacity?”

  “Yes, sir.” Trav colored faintly. “I’m going to call on the Quartermaster Monday.”

  Longstreet hesitated; he seemed to think as he spoke. “I saw the Secretary today.” His lips twisted in a faint smile. “Mr. Walker has zeal enough; but I fear he thinks more of form than of substance. I thought I might be useful in the Paymaster’s department; but he seemed to think they had no place for me. So I went to Mr. Davis.” Cinda thought his tone was sharpened by an angry memory; she wondered whether President Davis had offended him. “After a brief conversation, he decided to commission me brigadier. I’m to report to General Beauregard Monday. Mr. Currain,”—his eye was on Trav—“I’ll need helpers, a staff. If you will come to Manassas with me, I’ll find work for you.”

  There was an instant’s surprised silence, everyone looking at Trav; but he said at once, as though he had expected the suggestion: “Why—thank you, sir. I will.”

  Cinda, listening, felt a deep astonishment. It was not like Trav to make quick decisions. Something, some intangible force, must have passed between these two men, drawing them together. Then her surprise gave way to sadness; for now Trav too would go to war.

  So it was done! They were all gone, all these men who were dearest to her; gone beyond her farthest reach, gone beyond anything except her prayers. It was true they might return; but suppose only their lifeless bodies came back to her! Sumter, Bethel, these had been almost bloodless victories; but there would be blood, the blood of her husband, of her sons, of her brothers, trickling in dark rivulets through the grass roots, spreading in the dust, diluted by the rains, dried to dark flakes by the summer sun.

  Because of one man! Abraham Lincoln! At the thought, hatred filled her like a choking flood, hatred of that man like an ape, that son of the meanest squatter, that sly, crafty, lying man in Washington. If they died, these men of hers, then as surely as though he pulled the trigger that sped the bullet to their hearts, he would have killed each one!

  23

  July, 1861

  ENID, through the bright excitement of the wedding and the through the bright excitement of the wedding and the merrymaking that followed, knowing herself beautiful and admired, thought she had never been so happy. This was her first deep draught of the pleasant gaieties of which she had so often dreamed. In her early girlhood her mother, in order to appear to be as youthful as possible, kept her a child. Enid by captivating Trav took her revenge for that, but as Trav’s wife she found herself condemned to an existence even narrower than as her mother’s daughter. Trav was older than she by seventeen years; but also he was older than his years, slow and silent, with no gift for laughter and no keen zest for anything except the patient routine of the farmer. You could no more hurry him than you could hurry a grain of corn from germination to bearing. You could no more swerve him than you could retard the sluggish pendulum of the years. The pursuits that meant so much to him; to ride the place, to watch the people at their tasks, to pore over his records and by a study of the past anticipate the future—these meant nothing to her. In their first weeks she often kept him company on his daily rounds; but when he became engrossed in some problem of the land he was as likely as not to ride for an hour in absorbed silence, without seeming to hear her attempts at conversation. To persuade him to accept an invitation from th Pettigrews or the Shandons involved so much persistence that eventually she abandoned the effort. Those who might have been her friends, he preferred to avoid; those who were his, she scorned. Thus at Chimneys there were weeks on end when she saw no one but Trav and Mr. Fiddler and the children and the servants; and the removal to Great Oak, from which she expected so much, proved proportionately disappointing. Mrs. Currain’s friends were of Mrs. Currain’s generation. Enid was welcomed into their circle; but in Williamsburg as in Richmond, a wife, no matter how young and how attractive, was expected to remember that she was no longer a youthful belle.

  So it was wonderful now to share these hours when under the spell of Burr’s happiness and Barbara’s, everyone liked everyone. Enid even took care not to distress Cinda by a too open devotion to Faunt. This was not altogether for Cinda’s sake. At Great Oak after Hetty’s death, when he came at her request to bid her good night, she had asked him like a weary child to kiss her; and when he did so, she clung to him, no longer like a child, till hastily he freed himself. He left Great Oak without seeing her again, and she read in that a warning. When just before the wedding he appeared at Cinda’s, her kiss was more than sisterly; but after that she paid an ostentatious devotion to Trav, as though to assure herself, and Faunt, how much she loved her husband. Actually it was her delight in Faunt’s presence which moved her; she was like a girl for the first time in love who becomes suddenly demonstrative toward her brothers or her father. But Trav’s awkward pleasure in her tenderness touched and amused her and gave her a reassuring sense of power. Her mother was right; it was easy to manage a man by being nice to him.

  But she sometimes forgot this wisdom. The evening after the wedding when Major Longstreet’s arrival set the men to boring talk of the war and of the future, she went upstairs with Mrs. Currain and Vesta; and she was abed and drowsily near sleep when Trav came to her.

  “Where’ve you been, Honey?” she murmured.

  “We were—talking!”

  “What about?”

  Trav hesitated. “Why—Major Longstreet’s going to be a brigadier general, and he wants me to serve on his staff.”

  “On his staff?” At first she did not understand. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, to help him with his work.”

  “What sort of work?”

  “Why, the war.”

  She laughed in light amusement, rolling comfortably on her side. “Doesn’t he realize you have a family to take care o
f?”

  He said slowly: “Well, a lot of men with families have gone into the army.”

  “Oh, men like Brett, and Clayton, yes! But you’re no soldier! What did he imagine you could do?”

  “Keep his men supplied with food.”

  She laughed again. “What does he think you are, a store keeper?”

  Trav began to remove his clothes. “I told him I’d do it; that is, as well as I can.”

  For a moment she lay still; then in abrupt comprehension, swept by a cold wave of terror, she sat up straight in bed. “Trav Currain, you didn’t!”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “But what about me?” Her voice rose. “What do you expect me to do? And your children? And your mother?”

  “Well, you can help Mama take care of things at Great Oak.”

  “At Great Oak? You mean to leave us alone there with nothing but niggers? Why, I’d be just frightened to death!”

  “Brett and Tony and Julian will be at Yorktown, right handy. You’ll be all right.”

  “I’ll not stay there alone! I can’t! I won’t!” Panic shook her tones.

  “Why—I guess you’ll have to, Enid,” he said. “We’ll all have to do a lot of things we don’t want to do, for a while.”

  “I’m not going to do it! You must be crazy!” But she knew he could never be turned from any decision. “You’ll just have to get a house for us here in Richmond. We’ll move up here!”

  “Mama wouldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t, wouldn’t she?” Fear sharpened anger. “But I suppose I have no choice! You expect me to stay way off down there, just because she’s a cranky, unreasonable, half-witted old woman.”

  “You’ll have to,” he repeated. “There’s no other way to do!”

  “I won’t do it! I just won’t; that’s all!”

  He did not speak, opposing to her that solid wall of silence which she knew so well, which she could never break. She flung at him insistences which he ignored, entreaties to which he did not reply. When he turned out the lamp and came to bed she persisted till despair at her own helplessness brought her to tears, and he touched her shoulder in a fashion meant for comforting. But she cried: “Oh take your hands off me!” She let her sobs diminish to pathetic hiccoughings of grief, waiting hopefully for his word of yielding or of surrender.