House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “No. And I didn’t do anything anyway. Was the battle really as important as the papers say?”

  “It was a bloody business,” he assured her. “General Evans, commanding our men there, was directed to fall back if the Yankees landed in force, and when they pushed seven or eight thousand men across the river, he gave the orders to withdraw. But his men took things into their own hands, drove the Yankees head over heels down Ball’s Bluff, smashed their boats, shot the swimmers in the water. I hear we took more prisoners than we had men in action. There were about fifteen hundred of us to eight thousand of them.” He smiled in proud amusement: “General Evans was reprimanded for not withdrawing as ordered; but he said his orders were to withdraw before a landing in force, and that his men didn’t consider five to one odds against them big enough to fit the definition.”

  She was more concerned with her own problem. “Brett Dewain, what do you suppose Mrs. Albion is up to?”

  “I don’t suppose she ever does anything without a reason.”

  “She puzzles me; and yet—I like her.”

  He said with a twinkle in his eyes: “You must take me to call on her some day.”

  “Not as long as I keep my wits! The lady’s much too clever to be trusted with anyone’s husband. Do you suppose she just wanted her name to be coupled with mine?”

  “Mr. Benjamin didn’t mention her. But she’s done you no harm, at least. Perhaps we’ll know the answer some day.” He added thoughtfully: “I’m rather sorry we won that fight so easily. We’ve been dangerously overconfident ever since Manassas, and this will make us more so. But sooner or later the Yankees will learn how to fight, and our army is weaker every day—lots of men sick, lots of desertions, lots of enlistments running out.”

  “Is their army getting stronger?”

  “Yes. Oh, we can still beat them, any time they risk a battle. But by next spring they’ll have an army big enough to march into Richmond.” He added thoughtfully: “I’ve been wishing our family securities were safe in Northern vaults. How’d you like to go North and deliver them to some of my friends there?”

  She thought he must be joking, laughed easily. “Thank you, no! I hear terrible stories of the way ladies going through the lines are searched by the roughest sort of women, their clothes picked to pieces, bayonets run through their stays—with the ladies in them, for all I know. I wouldn’t submit to that for all the gold of Ophir—wherever that is.” But he did not smile, and she said: “You’re really worried, aren’t you? I’ll go if you ask me to, but I don’t want to.” She hesitated. “But wouldn’t it be—well, like rats leaving a sinking ship, for us to do that, Brett Dewain?”

  “I don’t feel so. We have to protect ourselves if we can. I’m afraid next spring may see things in bad shape here.”

  “They’re bad already,” she assured him. “Prices are scandalously high, and Tilda says they’ll go higher.” She added: “Tilda’s enjoying herself, these days. She has a sort of ‘How are the mighty fallen’ look in her eye!”

  “Prices are certainly high,” he assented. “Mr. Fleming writes from the Plains that Osnaburg is thirty-five or forty cents a yard, wants to know what he’s to do about clothes for the people. Prices are up, and scarcities are developing. That was one reason for the campaign in Western Virginia, to save the salt works at Charleston Kanawha. They produce enough salt to supply the whole South. And as time goes on, we’ll be short of many things. Ice, for instance. You can’t make a julep without ice—and most of our ice comes from New England.”

  She touched her brow in a weary way. “Brett Dewain, this war will ruin us and our children; and men like Redford Streean will be riding around in carriages!”

  He shook his head. “No, I’ll manage somehow, and after the war we can pick up where we left off.”

  “We can never be the same.”

  She was thinking of Clayton, and she knew he understood, for he said at once, in an unnecessarily cheerful tone: “I’ve seen Mama two or three times. Oh, and you should have been there for Enid’s birthday party.” He described that occasion, Lucy’s pride and joy, and Enid’s pleasure. “She was so happy it was almost pathetic,” he declared. “I’m afraid she has a lonely time there with Mama. I never saw her look prettier.”

  “She’s an exasperating hussy,” Cinda retorted. “When I’m with her I get so mad I could shake her. In fact I did, last time I was there. I enjoyed it, too.” He asked in some amusement what Enid had done to provoke her to such lengths. “Oh the same old thing. Mooning about Faunt. It didn’t cure her, though. She took care not to be alone with me after that, but when we were with Mama it was Faunt, Faunt, Faunt till I wanted to scream!”

  Brett threw back his head with a great shout of mirth. “She probably does it just to make you boil over.”

  “Nonsense. She’s not smart enough for that!”

  “Don’t be too sure! Mrs. Albion’s got a level head, and I suspect her daughter has too. And you’re rather transparent, you know; never trouble to hide your feelings.” He came toward her, siniling; and she tried to push him away.

  “Stop it! I won’t have you making fun of me and trying to——”

  But he laughed and crushed her close and whispered: “You’ll have whatever I choose!”

  She was in his arms when the door bell rang; and a moment later Burr and Barbara—Burr tall and bronzed and bearded now—swept into the room; and Cinda went from Brett’s arms to Burr’s in a tearful happiness, kissing him, pressing close to him, eager to feel the solid flesh and bone of him. When he was away from her, she could never be sure he would return. She had learned that bitter lesson. From Clayton while he lived she had often been long separated; but because she always knew he would come back to her, he was even during their separations a real and living presence in her heart. That last time he went away, his going had seemed no different from many another .time; nothing marked it, set it apart, warned her to take heed. He went as he had gone in the past; and presently he would return.

  But he did not return.

  So this was the lesson Cinda learned; that now, when her menfolk left her, they might not return. Thus she lost that sustaining sense that even apart from her, they were still reality. They disappeared, upon each new departure, into a smothering blur of fog and movement that clouded every outline; they became shadow figures seen dimly through a gossamer curtain. Only when they came back to her did they come back to reality as did Burr now. Here he was, flesh and blood and bone.

  She looked up from his arms, looked into his face, searching for new things there; for she had learned too that none of these men came back to her unchanged. She saw change in Burr as in the others. Before he and Barbara were married, while he was still training at Ashland, he used to come home in a boy’s high excitement, intensely alive, intensely vocal, hilariously amused by his belated discovery that soldiers were paid actual wages—not only for yourself, but forty cents a day for your horse! When she hoped he would soon be an officer he explained that he preferred to be a private. “I don’t want to have to give orders to gentlemen, Mama.”

  “How about taking orders?” she asked, and he laughed and assured her no one minded taking orders as long as he knew he didn’t have to.

  Oh, those days had been fine and merry. Then he and Barbara were married and went away to the Valley; and after Manassas, Barbara came back to Richmond, starry-eyed with happiness and pride. Cinda, as now she welcomed Burr so fondly, realized with an abrupt sense of guilt that though Barbara had been in Richmond since late July she herself had hardly seen the girl. That was too bad ! Of course Mr. Pierce was ponderous and Mrs. Pierce was even more tiresome than he, and Cinda had never been able to understand what Burr saw in Barbara; but she might at least have been nice to Barbara, if only out of politeness.

  No matter. She would be more thoughtful in the future. This was no time for regrets, with Burr again at home. Watching him now as they all fell into talk together, she saw that he spoke more slowly, in a way
that seemed abrupt without being so; his eyes had more depth but not so much light in them; there was a difference around his mouth. She saw too that he no longer talked freely about his personal experiences. He said: “We did this,” and “We did that,” but it was always in general terms, in plural terms. It was never “I did-thus,” “I did so.”

  When he and Brett became absorbed in conversation, Cinda asked Barbara a guarded question. “How is he, Barbara?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s just fine.” Barbara added: “Sometimes he has bad dreams, but he’s fine.”

  Cinda wondered about those dreams. Were they dreams of battle, dreams of danger and of death? Burr had in him no taint of the coward. She was sure of that. But perhaps they were dreams of death dealt out to others. Had Burr, this child of hers, had he killed a man, many men? Was it of such things he dreamed? She hoped he might be here long enough to forget ugly dreams.

  Burr and Barbara stayed for supper, and afterward while the others listened Burr and his father talked together. They spoke of business. “The Government is letting Northerners take their property out of the Confederacy,” Brett told his son. “I see no justification for that. General Butler down at Fortress Monroe makes no bones about seizing slaves as contraband; but Northern goods in the South are just as truly contraband of war as our slaves.” He said he was considering sending their securities North, and Burr asked:

  “Would they be safe there?”

  “Yes, my friends in New York and Washington would keep them for me.”

  “Do you still correspond with them?”

  “Yes, there’s a regular mail service to the North. The letter carriers have special passports, charge a dollar or two a letter. They make a couple of trips every month, clear a thousand dollars or so on a trip. War’s a profitable business for those who choose to make it so. But I’ll be satisfied to keep what we have.”

  The talk turned at last to Burr’s service. Brett remarked that the Confederacy should have more cavalry, but Burr said this was not necessarily true.

  “Of course everybody wants to be in the cavalry,” he admitted. “Southerners like to ride as well as they like to fight. But the farmers hate to see us come along, because we live off the country, dip into their corn cribs and all that. I’ve seen farmers right here in Virginia shake their fists after us and curse us for thieves. We make a lot of enemies that way.” He smiled teasingly at Barbara. “But of course the ladies can’t do enough for us. They pet us and praise us. No wonder we’re a conceited lot!”

  “What do you think of General Stuart?” Brett asked, a curious eye upon his son.

  “Oh, he’s wonderful; but he knows our faults.” Burr smiled. “He says all we need is to be reduced to the ranks, that we all think we’re cavaliers, lords of the manor! But he’s as bad as we are, likes to do spectacular things. I think he’d rather astonish the Yankees than lick them. And he’s always in a hurry. At Lewinsville, General Longstreet planned to send some infantry to work with us; but General Stuart couldn’t wait. Of course we beat them; but if the infantry had been there, we’d have smashed them.”

  “Did Longstreet blame him?”

  “No, you don’t reprimand officers who win victories. General Longstreet recommended him for promotion. But General Stuart needs some levelheaded man—” He looked at Cinda. “Like Uncle Trav, Mama. If he had someone like Uncle Trav to hold him down, he’d be even better than he is.”

  “It’s hard to draw the line,” Brett commented. “I suppose élan is the soldier’s great virtue.”

  “Yes, sir,” Burr assented. “But sometimes it can be just foolishness. Dull duty is tedious; but someone has to do the drudgery.” He grinned. “That will never be the cavalry, though. We’re the show-offs of the army.”

  Brett said sympathetically: “It must be hard for Mrs. Stuart, having her husband and her brother fighting on our side and her father commanding Union cavalry. Hard for General Stuart too, of course.”

  “Is war easy for anyone?” Cinda asked quietly. “Even for those whose families aren’t divided?” After a moment Brett came to kiss her, but they gave her no other answer.

  Burr and Brett returned to duty and the sunny autumn days slipped by. There was never a finer fall; but the weather in Western Virginia, the papers said, had been wretched. Tilda called one day and reported that General Lee was back in Richmond, the Western campaign abandoned.

  “He just didn’t accomplish a thing,” she said almost triumphantly. “After all the talk about what wonders he was going to perform! Except that Redford says he’s grown a beard!”

  “Even Burr has done that,” Cinda commented. “I suppose it’s a nuisance in the field, trying to shave every day.”

  “Maybe General Lee wanted to prove he wasn’t an old woman!” Tilda spoke in malicious amusement. “They call him Granny Lee now, you know. Redford says he’s lost Western Virginia for us, lost it for good. They’re going to make a new state out of it and call it West Virginia and join the North and fight against us.”

  “Speaking of fighting, how’s Darrell?”

  Tilda laughed, quite undisturbed. “Oh, he’s just fine! He was home two weeks ago. He bought a lot of things, and Redford says we’ll keep them till the prices go up and sell them and make a fortune.”

  “Will the Government let you?”

  “Why, Redford’s in the Government! Besides, everyone is doing the same thing!”

  “I suppose Dolly’s having the time of her life?”

  “Oh, she’s in a seventh heaven with all her beaux! There are always three or four of them at the house, glaring at each other. She says they’re terrible! Just because she’s nice to them they think she’s in love with them! She made Darrell be her escort to the fancy-dress party at Mrs. Brownlaw’s. She had so many beaux she couldn’t decide between them, so she chose Darrell! She was lovely, too. She went as a lady of the French court, borrowing feathers and spangles from everywhere. She borrowed Vesta’s pearls, you know. Vesta darling, why didn’t you go?”

  “I don’t want any beau but Tommy.”

  “Nonsense! You ought to have a good time while you can. You know perfectly well a married woman in Richmond might as well be a nun!”

  She talked endlessly of Dolly’s triumphs, and that night before going to sleep, Cinda, needing some outlet, wrote a long letter to Brett, telling him what Tilda had said about General Lee.

  I sat there like a dumb woman, listening. It seems to me everyone is being criticized right and left. Beauregard’s friends criticize President Davis, the oily Mr. Benjamin criticizes Beauregard, I criticize Mr. Benjamin, everybody criticizes poor Colonel Northrop, and you criticize Mr. Memminger. I hear, by the way, that Cousin Jeems is taking sides against Mr. Davis. And Tilda criticizes General Lee, and I criticize Tilda!

  But there, why shouldn’t I? I never liked her, but I kept it to myself; she seemed harmless so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. But now she’s beginning to be really malicious. She comes here and talks till I’m black in the face trying not to spit at her. Brags about Dolly’s conquests, and sneers at decent things, in her back-handed way. Says women who are so glad their husbands are soldiers really hope they’ll be killed! I almost threw her out of the house; but you can’t do that to your loving relatives, now can you! She’s perfectly insane about Dolly. Young Lieutenant Hammond had been making love to Dolly last spring, vowing eternal devotion and all that, and now he’s gone and married Betty Pryor, and to hear Tilda talk, Mr. Streean ought to shoot Lieutenant Hammond. If it weren’t for being cattish, I’d wonder whether that might not be true; Dolly promises so much, she must sometimes add performance to promise! There, I’m ashamed of myself, but Tilda would try the patience of a saint! And if I venture a word of protest, she says reproachfully that I shouldn’t think hardly of her, that after all, if she can’t count on her own dear sister, she can’t count on anyone, can she. So then. I’m ashamed of myself. She’s always seemed so meek and mild it’s hard to realize she’s venomous a
s a rattlesnake!

  There now I feel better! I won’t even send you this, Brett Dewain. You’d just laugh me out of it, and I’m out of it already. The Catholics are right. Honest confession is good for the soul. Mine’s all healed!

  She tore the letter into little bits and sprinkled them on the fire, and as she did so, Vesta came in and saw her and asked curiously: “What ever are you doing, Mama?”

  “Tearing up a letter I just wrote to your father. Now don’t call me an idiot! I was just blowing off steam, never meant to send it anyway.”

  Vesta laughed and kissed her. “There, darling, I do that all the time—write long letters to Tommy and then burn them.”

  “Why?”

  Vesta colored happily. “Because they’re such letters as no modest maiden would write even to her husband! Tommy would be embarrassed to tears if he read them. But they’re ever such fun to write!”

  “Tommy’s not much of a correspondent, is he?”

  “He’s working hard. He’s terribly conscientious about being a soldier, you know.”

  “He’s a nice boy,” Cinda pinched the girl’s cheek fondly. “Even if he is a fool!”

  “He’s not a fool!”

  “Any man who could marry you and won’t is a fool.”

  Vesta’s eyes clouded, but then she smiled. “I’m not so sure. Maybe he’s wise, because you know waiting makes me love him more every day. The way I feel about him just keeps growing like a—like a baby inside me!”

  “Vesta Dewain! What a thing to say!”

  “Oh, don’t pretend to be shocked! I’m quite grown up, you know!” Vesta added teasingly: “Quite old enough to hear all about Uncle Tony and Mrs. Albion, for instance!” Then, seeing Cinda’s quick distress: “I’m sorry. But I asked you about her the day she called on you. Remember? You wouldn’t tell me, so I had to find out for myself.”