Thus he laid the cameo in her hands. The small stones sparkled in the candlelight, and he waited for her delighted gratitude.
She looked at the jewel for a moment, turned it over in her palm, turned it back again. “Pretty,” she said idly. “April will love it.” And she crossed to drop it in the littered china tray under her mirror.
Trav for a moment did not move. Was this all? He caught her shoulders, drew her toward him. “Enid! Dear! Oh—I wish—Enid——”
“Don’t!” she said. “You hurt my arms!” She twitched away, crossing toward the door again; and her eye fell on the litter of his belongings, clothes hastily laid aside, the open valise half unpacked. Trav was normally as neat as a cat, but he had hurried. She made a sound of distaste. “What a mess! I suppose you must stay. The house is so full there’s no room for you anywhere else. But I’ve grown used to having the bed to myself. I’ll not sleep a wink.”
He tried clumsy tenderness. “I’ll put you to sleep.”
“Please don’t bring your camp vulgarities home to me. Come. Supper must be ready.”
So they went down to the others; and Trav as they came to the foot of the stairs saw her pause and put on beauty like a garment. Her eyes cleared of sullen shadows, her sudden smile was radiant. During the hours that followed, in the gay charades, the merry games, he watched her in wonder and in longing, her arms so slender and so fair, her shoulders warmly gleaming; her bright hair became prettily disordered, her cheeks were hot. How beautiful she was when she was happy, teasing Brett, evading Tony’s grasp, laughing up at Faunt. Not even Dolly could compare with her. When they all at last went upstairs and he closed their door and they were alone she swung to him with welcoming arms. “Oh, Trav, wasn’t it fun? Wasn’t it fun?” Her lips pressed his with an eager hunger, and his pulse leaped in triumphant answer. He had forgotten how bewitching she could be; he took unquestioningly this enchanting hour.
Thus the Christmas at home with her and with his children was a blissful time. Enid, for some reason he did not question, gave him a lavish affection; it was bitter hard the day after Christmas to say good-by, but her kisses went with them, and his memories.
They were all day on the road to Richmond. Trav went next morning to the Arlington to call upon General Longstreet and discuss their return to Centerville. He found the General, his great bulk sprawled on the floor, engaged in a hilarious tussle with little Jimmy. Mary Ann, just a year old, watched and squealed with delight at their mock battle. Jimmy’s outcries of pretended pain sometimes alarmed her, so that her eyes widened and she waited warily; but when she saw them laugh together again, she crowed and gurgled and crawled around them on slapping palms and thumping knees. Garland and Gussie, pretending to be too mature for such infantile sport yet obviously wishing their dignity permitted them to take a hand, sat by as grinning spectators.
When Trav came in, Mrs. Longstreet greeted him; and the General called: “Hello there, Captain! A rescue here! I’m outnumbered!” He rolled on his back, swinging Jimmy up in the air, shaking him till he bubbled and squealed with delight. The baby with a gleeful scream got a hand grip on his beard and pulled hard, and he shouted: “Ha! A flank attack!” He tucked Jimmy in the curl of one arm, drew the little girl into the other. “Envelop the enemy! That’s tactics, Captain!”
Their laughing struggles redoubled, and Gussie could no longer stay out of it. He threw himself across the General’s legs, and immediately found himself encircled by those legs and held fast. They were a rolling, squirming tangle on the floor; and Mrs. Longstreet, through her laughter, protested.
“Do stop it, Jeems! If they play too hard they’ll all be crying in a minute.”
Mary Ann escaped her captor and at a galloping crawl raced for safety at her mother’s feet. The General, Jimmy under one arm and Gus riding him as though he were a horse, galloped after her on hands and knees, and caught her and rolled her over, and buried his beard in her small belly with great growls and buttings till she was in a hysteria of delight, and Mrs. Longstreet cried:
“There now, Jeems, you’ve made her wet herself!” She swept the baby away, delivered her to black arms for attendance. “And it’s time Jimmy had his supper! That’s enough play. Stop it, both of you! Stop it, Jimmy! Gussie, stop!” But as Longstreet came to his feet Gussie clung to the skirts of the General’s coat till a button went flying; and Mrs. Longstreet cried: “There, Gussie, I declare you’ve pulled a button off!”
“Well, I don’t care!” Gussie retorted. “I don’t like that old gray coat. I liked his blue coat better anyway!”
General Longstreet roared in mock wrath: “Aha! A Union man in the family!” He swept Gussie up in his arms, swung him into the air, held him high. “Well, this is what we do to little Yankees!” And he shook the youngster to and fro till Gussie was weak with laughter, then set him down with a clap on the shoulder. “There, Yank, be off with you!”
Mrs. Longstreet shepherded them away; and Longstreet met Trav’s eye. “Gussie’s always said that,” he confessed. “Since I gave up the blue for the gray. It still gives me a twinge.”
Trav nodded, and Mrs. Longstreet came back to demand the General’s coat so that the button could be replaced, and Trav saw her eye meet her husband’s in tender reassurance. “He didn’t mean it, Jeems! He’s just a baby.” Impulsively she kissed him and departed. “Better comb your beard, my dear!”
Trav smiled at the big man’s disordered hair and whiskers, the sweat upon his brow. “They gave you a battle, General.”
“Surprising how youngsters will wear a man down,” the other agreed, still panting. “Men our age can stand up to quiet endurances better than boys; but for a dash, a quick effort, I’ll take the young man every time.”
“My children are a quiet pair,” Trav reflected. “I don’t think Peter and I have ever had a rough-and-tumble.”
“Try it, Captain,” Longstreet advised. “He’ll welcome it. It brings you into his world. You know, we’re so much bigger than children that they’re awed by our size—just as you and I would be awed among a race of giants. But when you get down on the floor with them, they meet you on even terms.”
“Lucy and I are pretty good friends,” Trav said. “She’s old enough so we seem to find lots of things to talk about.”
“There’s nothing like a daughter,” the other agreed. “But as they grow up they turn to their mother. It’s sons who need a father most.” He added reminiscently: “My father died when I was twelve. Uncle Gus brought me up, did a lot for me. He even moved to Alabama in order to get me a West Point appointment.” The big man chuckled. “I was never a student, though; second from the bottom. But I did well enough outside the class room.”
As he spoke, Mrs. Longstreet reappeared; and she commented smilingly: “His successes were chiefly among the ladies, Captain. The other cadets voted him the handsomest man in West Point——”
“And that was before I grew a beard, too,” Longstreet pointed out. “You know, when they nicknamed General Stuart ‘Beauty’ it was because he wasn’t one! He was short on chin. He grew a beard on the theory that any change would be an improvement!” He added in pretended complacency with a teasing glance at Mrs. Longstreet: “I grew mine in order not to break too many hearts.”
“He’s still the most conceited man I know,” she told Trav. “Here, put on your coat, Jeems.”
“But my dear,” Longstreet reminded her as he obeyed, “having won you, I have a right to be.”
“Won me?” she laughed. “It was the other way around!” And to Trav: “Why, Captain, when he went off to the Mexican wars he was desperately in love with my hated rival; but before he came home I managed to marry her off to someone else—and caught him on the rebound!” Trav felt, behind their jesting, the strong love between these two. They talked to him, but actually they talked through him to each other. Their pretended accusations were actually tendernesses, as surely as though in secret night they whispered happy ardors; and Trav recognized this,
and loved them both—and envied them. Between him and Enid there were never such scenes as this, never these affectionate railleries.
Longstreet carried on the play, answering her boast. “It’s true you disposed of the rival you knew about, my dear; but I had another string to my bow!” He spoke to Trav. “The very charming daughter of the Mexican gentleman with whom I stayed to recuperate from the wound I took there.” He said in exaggerated remorse: “I’m afraid I played fast and loose with her. She was devoted to me, and I made a thousand promises to return and marry her.”
Mrs. Longstreet smiled. “You’ve discovered before this what a braggart he is, I’m sure, Captain.”
“To tell the truth is not bragging, ma‘am,” Longstreet assured her. “She loved me, and if you had disappointed me I might be a hidalgo in Mexico today. But of course I had disposed of your most ardent suitors, so that when I came home to ask your hand you had no one else to whom to turn.” He laughed. “Remember ’Lys Grant, Louisa?”
“The lieutenant with the big epaulettes? Of course.”
Longstreet told Trav: “Lieutenant Grant came to me and asked me to give him a chance at Louisa. He said I could have any girl for the asking—that was true, to be sure—so wouldn’t I please leave Louisa for him! But I didn’t trust that young fellow! He never knows when he’s licked! So I took him out to the Dent place and turned him over to Cousin Julia and she married him.” He added, to Mrs. Longstreet: “By the way, Louisa, he has a command now, out west. I hope I don’t have to fight him. You can knock ’Lys over, but he won’t stay down.”
“Cousin Julia’s had a hard life with him,” she declared. “He drinks terribly.”
Longstreet winked at Trav. “When a man drinks too much you’ll usually find he has an extravagant wife.”
“Why, Jeems, do you think I’m extravagant?”
“You mean to suggest I’m a drinking man?” His tone pretended astonishment, and they laughed together, and he said in open tenderness: “My dear, whatever you spend is less than I’d like to give you.” He laughed: “But speaking of intemperance, Captain, a toddy?”
“Now none of that, Jeems,” Mrs. Longstreet protested. “First thing I know you’ll both be singing.”
“But, Louisa, this is purely medicinal! A touch of sore throat coming on. Eh, Captain?” He winked largely, and Trav was about to assent when Mrs. Longstreet said briskly:
“If you’ve a sort throat, I’ll soon fix that. Some of your mother’s salve, well rubbed in!” She rose, determined in her movements; and Longstreet protested in sudden dismay that his throat was not sore, but she made him lie down on the couch and open his coat and shirt to bare his chest, standing over him with a small round tin box. “There, hold your old beard out of the way,” she directed, and scooped up one small finger full of salve and began to rub it into his chest; and he squirmed and said it was too cold, and she told him it was always too hot or too cold to suit him and threatened that unless he lay still he should have a mouthful of it. Trav, sitting across the room, watched in a high amusement; she was so small, the man she mauled so huge. While she rubbed, she talked over her shoulder to Trav.
“This is a famous salve, for colds, or sprains, or burns, or small cuts. The General’s mother invented it. She was a Maryland girl and a wonderful woman. She brought up nine children all alone after her husband died, saw them all married and raising families. Most of them were daughters, to be sure; but she always said she’d never have raised them if it hadn’t been for this salve. The General’s sister ’Liza makes it for the whole family now.” She added: “I think she’s improved the flavor, don’t you, General?” And when he was about to speak she thrust her finger into his mouth so that he sat up with a great sputter and swept her down beside him.
Trav left them laughing together. He had enjoyed this hour without envy, despite his wistful realization that in the deep affection between these two lay something he had missed. He and Enid had hours of anger and they had hours of passion, but never of shared and tender mirthfulness.
He had thought to return at once to Centerville, but General Longstreet wished a few days more with his children; so Trav was still at Cinda’s when two or three days after Christmas she came from Great Oak, and brought Enid with her. “Faunt’s there with Mama,” Cinda explained. “So this is Enid’s chance for a little vacation. We’ll have a party for her, charades and things.”
Trav thought there was some pretense in Cinda’s vivacity; and Enid seemed almost sulky. When they were alone he asked her: “Didn’t you want to come?”
“Of course not! I despise travelling in cold, rainy weather.” The fine autumn days had in December given way to snow and rain. “And even Great Oak’s fun with Faunt there. But Cinda just dragged me away.”
Yet she enjoyed as much as anyone the party Cinda arranged. Tommy and Rollin had gone home to spend Christmas leaves; but they appeared at dusk, an hour or two before the first guests were to arrive, so Vesta’s happiness was complete. Rollin had time to answer Cinda’s questions about the great Charleston fire which had struck the city early in December. “They say it burned over about six hundred acres,” he explained. “From Hazel Street on Cooper River to Tradd Street on Ashley River, and uptown, both sides of Broad Street. It looked for a while as if it would burn out, but then the wind shifted and blew a gale and brought it back so fast people didn’t have time to save much before their houses caught. Even when they got furniture out into the streets, there weren’t carts enough to carry it away.” He spoke of people they knew. This one’s house had been burned, that one’s escaped with slight damage, a third’s was out of the track of the flames: Cinda trembled as she listened.
“There’s nothing that frightens me any worse than a fire,” she confessed. “There’s so little you can do.”
Vesta, with Rollin, asked: “Was it fun being at home?”
“Grand,” he said, smiling. “Like old times. We had the whole neighborhood for an oyster roast on the beach, hot whiskey punch and oysters by the barrel and terrapin and palmetto cabbage and wine.” He laughed. “We ate till we couldn’t breathe and then danced ourselves hungry again when the moon rose.”
Cinda remembered another picnic at Muster Springs; and Vesta’s thoughts must have run with hers, for the girl said quickly: “You and Tommy got here just in time, Rollin. We’re having a party.”
He hesitated. “I wanted to make a call or two,” he said doubtfully; but Vesta laughed at him.
“Dolly’ll be here, you know. You’d better stay.”
So Rollin grinned and grew red and stayed; and presently the General and Mrs. Longstreet arrived, and then Tilda and Redford Streean, and—after an interval during which Cinda saw Rollin watch the door—Dolly, with two young officers in her train. For Julian’s sake, Cinda had asked Anne Tudor. Moxley Sorrel of Longstreet’s staff, and Theodore Hamilton of the First Virginia joined the company. Mr. Hamilton had brought from Centerville funds donated by the officers of Longstreet’s division with which to buy some scenery and costumes for the theatrical entertainment which Trav was to arrange. There were half a dozen others, so that the big house was brimming with gay voices and bright laughter.
Charades were the order of the evening. To present the first, Cinda chose the General, Captain Sorrel, Dolly and Enid for the principals; and Trav was drafted for a silent part.
“The word’s ‘industrial’,” Cinda explained when she gave them their roles. “So this is an Inn, for the the first syllable. You’ll be the Inn Keeper, Travis. You don’t have to do anything; just be a surly old bear behind the table there. Dolly’s the Barmaid, and the General’s the Traveller, and he comes in all dusty and thirsty and demands a drink——”
“That won’t be play-acting, ma’am!”
“Hush! And it’s all pantomime, you know, so don’t bellow! And Dolly serves him, and then he says he has no money to pay; so then Trav and you and Dolly just throw him out, and that will be the scene. Now let’s start——”
Then Cinda hustled them off through the wide doors; and Trav protested: “But I thought I was supposed to——”
“Oh, you were,” Cinda laughingly agreed. “But this little minx had her own ideas!”
“I thought it was nicer that way,” Dolly said demurely. “Did you mind, General?”
“My dear young lady, I’m only sorry we couldn’t repeat the performance! An encore, Cinda?”
“You men!” Cinda protested. “Every last one of you turns flighty at a pretty smile. Go sit with Cousin Louisa, Jeems! She’ll give you a wigging!”
For the second syllable, Dolly and Vesta and Anne Tudor and Enid—Trav thought Enid seemed as young and as beautiful as they—elaborately flicked clouds of imaginary dust off every chair and table and mantel; for the third and fourth syllables combined, the scene was a court room, Longstreet the sober judge, young Hamilton the prisoner on trial. Streean and Trav were opposing counsel, and Dolly was the accusing witness. Pantomime can be more eloquent than words; Dolly with a pretty impudence made the crime of which the defendant was accused so manifest that Trav felt an uneasy embarrassment; but Longstreet, never at a loss, played his part as well as she. He bullied counsel, he sympathized with the witness, and he damned the scoundrelly prisoner—and all in pantomime—till the audience rocked with laughter. Trav, who had seen him in many moods, thought he was a dozen men in one; stout commander, devoted husband, adoring father, gamester, lover of fun—and now even an actor! He saw Mrs. Longstreet’s amused affection in her eyes.
House Divided Page 49
