House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  The long evening never lagged, and when her roles offered the opportunity Enid was as audacious and as charming as Dolly. Trav, watching her happiness, was happy too; and alone with him at last she was still rapturous. “Oh, Trav, I don’t think I ever did have such a good time in all my life!” She kissed him, laughing richly. “You were so cute, acting all over the place! You’re really sweet, you know.” That night even in her sleep she clung to him, uttering in her dreams little happy sounds.

  The President’s New Year’s reception in the White House on Clay Street seemed to Trav a dreary occasion, but Enid enjoyed it; and when next day Mr. Hamilton took her and Trav behind the scenes at the Richmond Theatre—which most people still called the Marshall—she was delighted. Trav too found this glimpse of a new world curious and interesting. In one of the plays, The Log Fort, muskets were fired on the stage; and a wad struck Trav’s knee as he stood with Enid in the wings, and smouldered till he set his foot on it. He would remember this, for in the small hours that night he was awakened by a tumult in the town, and saw a glare against the sky, and dressed and followed the beacon of the flames to the corner of Seventh and Broad to find the theatre all afire and already beyond saving. But a saddler’s shop next door had caught; and the little establishment of Mrs. Jackson, who made mantuas, was burning; and so was Davidson’s Hotel; and embers flying in the updraft from the flames set roofs ablaze in the nearer neighborhood. Thus though the main battle was already lost there were many small skirmishes to be fought. Trav lent a hand in this, till all that could be done had been done. In the gray dawn he heard Mr. Dalton, the stage manager, furiously assert that the fire had been set; that Mr. Crone, the night watchman, had seen a Negro climb out of an alley window a while before the first flames appeared, had tried unsuccessfully to halt him. Trav suggested that a musket wad might have been responsible; and Mr. Dalton dissented so violently that Trav suspected him of guilty fears that this might be true.

  Not only the building but the scenery, costumes, properties, musical instruments, all were gone. This made it impossible for Trav and Mr. Hamilton to buy the theatrical supplies they had hoped to secure; so next day they returned to headquarters in Centerville. Trav left Enid in Richmond. She would go down to Great Oak when next Brett, or some other to escort her, went that way.

  Through the first weeks of the new year, Trav’s duties were light. Supplies, in spite of Colonel Northrop’s many inadequacies as Commissary General, accumulated faster than they were consumed; for so many soldiers were in hospitals, either in camp or in Richmond, that the army was no more than half an army. Sickness was not the only toll. Most of the men had enlisted for twelve months, and in April and May those enlistments would expire. Congress offered a bounty and a sixty-day furlough to every man who would promise to reenlist, and as early as January there were many furloughs granted; but from their furloughs an alarming number of soldiers failed to return. General Longstreet told Trav that to put an adequate force in the field for the spring campaign, conscription would be necessary.

  “The army’s melting away like snow under a spring sun,” he de clared. “The men take the furlough, but they don’t come back.”

  “They all want to go home,” Trav agreed. “They hate winter quarters, and eating their own cooking, and having nothing to do but huddle around their fires and scratch themselves. But no one’s going to like conscription, General.”

  “No one likes war!” Longstreet retorted. “But once you’re in one, it’s lick or get licked. Next spring McClellan will throw a hundred thousand men at us; and if things keep on the way we’re going, we won’t have ten thousand soldiers to meet him. Why, Currain, by the middle of May the enlistments of a hundred and fifty of our regiments will have expired. That means that just about the time fighting starts, we’ll be trying to recruit new regiments and reorganize the army.” And, remembering Trav’s word, he exploded. “Want to go home? Of course they do! We all want that! But the way to win a war is to want to win it, to want victory more than you want anything else!”

  “Do you want conscription, General?”

  “You’re damned right I do! I want to win this war, and I want anything that will help win it!”

  But to supply men was not Trav’s province, nor Longstreet’s; so at division headquarters January was a lighthearted time. General Johnston’s headquarters were at the hotel near-by, and Colonel Lamar came in late November and spent much of the winter there as an unofficial liaison between General Johnston and President Davis. Colonel Lamar had been a student at Emory College when Judge Longstreet, the General’s uncle, was its president; and he married Judge Longstreet’s daughter, so he and General Longstreet were not only long friends, but in this fashion kin. The Colonel, after a distinguished career which included more than one term in Congress, had with the outbreak of the war received a regimental command. Persistent illness disqualified him for active duty; but his eagerness to be of use led him to undertake to work for a better understanding between President Davis and the commanding generals.

  Trav quickly learned to feel for the amiable and valiant invalid a strong affection, and Colonel Lamar sometimes confided to Trav his perplexities. “General Johnston and Cousin James are a stiff-necked and rebellious generation,” he admitted, smiling at his own words. “Cousin James will never forgive President Davis for asking him, when he offered his services, whether he had settled his accounts as a Union paymaster before resigning. Mr. Davis is sometimes lacking in tact, but he meant no offense; and for the sake of victory, personal grievances should be forgotten.” And he added: “I hope to be able to persuade Cousin James and General Johnston to like President Davis a little better.”

  But he did not succeed. No one could fail to respond to his charm, and General Johnston proposed to recommend him for promotion to brigadier, and General Longstreet never concealed his own pleasure in Mr. Lamar’s company. “But he will never lead me to any fondness for Jeff Davis,” he told Trav, with an amiable vehemence.

  “I remember you said one day you’d do anything that would help win the war. Doesn’t that include——”

  Longstreet laughed cheerfully. “I can obey a man without liking him.” And he asked in an amused tone: “By the way, how well do you agree with Colonel Northrop nowadays, Currain?” Colonel Northrop’s unfitness for the responsibilities that President Davis had put in his hands was so manifest that Trav never thought of him without reddening anger.

  There was in these weeks of idleness time for pleasure and Longstreet organized a club to jump horses, with a forfeit for each fall to be paid into a fund for jolly dinners. The General himself, though he weighed well over two hundred, was a fine horseman; and his big bay, a thoroughbred, was the best jumper in the army. So he paid no forfeits; but only Peyton Manning, who was so small that two Mannings would hardly have made one Longstreet, had an equally clean slate. Beverly Johnston, an older brother of General Johnston, a choleric and excessively bibulous individual six inches under six feet but as fat as he was short, one day tried a jump and took a bad fall, bloodying his own nose and breaking his mount’s knees; and the jumping club came thereafter under General Johnston’s displeasure.

  But General Longstreet liked dinners and easily found occasions. Toward the end of January a heavy snow fell; and Moxley Sorrel and Peyton Manning designed a sleigh, fixing a box on saplings bent to serve as runners, contriving a harness so that their two horses could be hitched tandem with a Negro boy mounted on each as a postilion. When the first ride in this rude vehicle was attempted, everyone at headquarters turned out to watch; and during the preliminary banter Trav saw Longstreet draw one of the postilions aside and speak to him. So Trav was not surprised, when the sleigh started off, to see the horses leap from a trot into a headlong run. The sleigh raced away, and everyone mounted to follow and see the sequel.

  The sequel was that the sleigh overturned, Sorrel and Manning were spilled into the drifts, and the General ordered an evening of wine and song at the expense
of the discomfited adventurers. Longstreet’s part as the instigator of the runaway was not suspected. Trav thought he would presently, to point the jest, avow it. The dinner was hilarious, and Trav, as usual the soberest among them, watched the others and thought how surely strong drink led men to show their true selves. Peyton Manning, no matter how much he drank, was always courteous and considerate, as was Osman Latrobe. Moxley Sorrel easily became overbearing; he lost his temper readily. Fairfax played the clown, and though others found him amusing, Trav did not. Walton in his cups became sarcastic and supercilious. Longstreet forgot his heavy dignity, and he might romp like a boy.

  That evening there came a tragic interruption to their merriment. The fun had reached its height. The General and half a dozen others, on their feet, with their arms across one another’s shoulders, their heads together while they produced a labored harmony, were singing Lorena when an orderly appeared at the door.

  Trav went to meet him. The orderly had a telegram for General Longstreet; and when the song was done, Trav delivered it. As the General read the scrawled message, Trav saw his smile fade, saw his lips set, saw his cheek harden. Longstreet handed him the telegram.

  “Please arrange for a special engine, a special train,” the General directed in a low tone, completely sober now. “I hope you will go with me.”

  Trav read the dispatch.

  Mary Ann dangerously sick. Can you come home

  Louisa

  30

  January–March, 1862

  CINDA was at the Arlington with Mrs. Longstreet when the General and Trav arrived. The baby was desperately ill, and after the telegram was sent little Jimmy too had sickened. Despite all they could do, Mary Ann died late at night on the twenty-fifth of January, and Jimmy died early the next day.

  Cinda came home to Vesta and to Jenny and to Jenny’s babies with terror cold in her breast; for there was scarlet fever everywhere in Richmond and the Longstreet children were not the first it took, and would not be the last. To Vesta she confessed her fears.

  “I wouldn’t let Jenny know, but I’m frightened! Suppose Kyle got sick, or Janet, or little Clayton!”

  “They won’t, Mama!”

  “I don’t see how I could stand it! And yet of course I could. So many sorrows in the world, so many frightened, grieving people!” She added thoughtfully: “Yet I wonder if we’re not brought closer together by our sorrows, Vesta. There’s comfort in knowing you’re one of many, all hurt and bewildered and weeping.”

  “It gives me—” Vesta hesitated. “Well, having those babies die makes me want Tommy awfully; makes me want to have babies for him.”

  “I know, darling.” Then, remembering when her own babies died, Cinda added: “Whenever we’re frightened we always turn, if we can, to love.”

  Upon Trav fell the sombre business of arranging that double funeral. He asked Cinda’s advice and she sent him to Mr. Davies, the stone cutter on Main Street between Eighth and Ninth. Mr. Davies pointed out that continued cold and snow had forged a frosty armor on the ground, so that no graves could be dug; but he had a vault in Hollywood where the little bodies could rest until a later day. Trav reported to Cinda and she agreed to this.

  The vault was in the hillside on the right of the main drive, not far from the entrance, faced with stone and flanked by stone walls and fronting on a stone-flagged areaway. The day was wet with cold rain that made the occasion more dreadful; the stones were dripping bleakly, touched with ice; the low portal of the vault through which even by stooping a man could only with difficulty pass was like the entrance to the den of some loathsome, carrion-eating animal. Cinda shuddered and shivered as she watched one small coffin and then the other disappear into this black hole, and she looked toward the General and Mrs. Longstreet. Their two sons stood beside them; and Cinda saw Gussie suddenly sneeze, and a hard hand clutched her heart.

  That night both Gus and Garland were feverish, and the fight to save them, this new and desperate struggle, left Mrs. Longstreet and the General no time for empty grief. Gussie died a short week after the other two, and went to lie in the same dark vault; but Garland was still dangerously ill, and to Cinda this seemed almost a blessing. Before he was safe, time might begin to heal these wounds.

  “But I cannot stay in Richmond,” Mrs. Longstreet told Cinda, when Garland was surely on the mend. “Oh, I know I’m unreasonable—but I can’t! Jeems says he’ll take me to Lynchburg. I can’t stay alone here in these empty rooms with just Garland. I’d be hearing their voices all the time.”

  Cinda made no effort to dissuade her. Probably Cousin Louisa’s decision was a wise one. But till Garland was well enough to travel, Mrs. Longstreet could not go to Lynchburg; and till he could see her settled there the General stayed here by her side.

  Yet Cinda saw that he was greatly changed. His eyes that once had been so ready to twinkle were shadowed now; his tongue once so quick to jest was slow and heavy. He seemed remote and far away, sometimes failing to hear what was said to him as though he were become a little deaf. He seldom spoke directly of this triple tragedy; but once when Cinda had been with Mrs. Longstreet and came to say good night to him, the General asked:

  “How is she?”

  “As steady as can be.”

  He nodded heavily. “We’ve had other babies die,” he said in a low tone. “But they went one at a time. This—” His lips twisted in half-mirth. “I remember once in Mexico a Mexican fired at me around the corner of a house and missed. Next time, I was ready for him, but we both missed. Then I remembered Uncle Gus telling me once that at close quarters you should always use buckshot; so I took my knife and split a bullet into three slugs, and the next time we exchanged shots he fell.” He said quietly: “God used buckshot on Louisa and me this time—and every slug struck home.” His broad shoulders moved as though to settle themselves under a heavy burden. “I wish I could be at home with Louisa for a while.”

  “Can’t you, till winter ends?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ve already stayed too long. There’s much to do, and there’ll be no time to do it in the spring. The Yankees will be at us, then.” His jaw set. “And half the army’s sick or home on furlough, and half those on furlough have overstayed their leave. And as if that weren’t enough, soon now each company will be electing new officers; and that means the good men, the good disciplinarians will be thrown out, the army will become a mob. No, I must go back.” She saw his face harden in grim lines.

  She spoke to Trav of the change in him, and Trav agreed. “I can’t realize he’s the same man who played that prank on Sorrel and Manning.” She asked what he meant, and he told her about the sleigh ride and the runaway, and added: “Why, Cinda, the night the telegram came saying Mary Ann was sick, at the very moment when the telegram came he was singing with some of the other officers, singing Lorena. I don’t suppose he’ll ever sing again.”

  “I think he’ll really be glad to get back to the army, glad to have work to do.”

  “The men will be glad to see him,” Trav agreed. He had gone twice to camp during this interval. “A lot of them asked for him—Old Pete, they call him—when I was in Centerville Monday.”

  “Why do they call him that?”

  “It’s a West Point nickname, I think. They’ve picked it up. Yes, he’ll be better off with work to do.”

  The day before the General and Mrs. Longstreet would depart for Lynchburg came news of the loss of Fort Henry in the West; and Longstreet told Trav and Cinda: “It was Grant who took Fort Henry. That man is the stubbornest fighter in the North, the most to be feared.” He added in grave tones: “Perhaps this defeat will wake the South to its danger. We’re still celebrating Manassas; but McClellan’s army is stronger every day, and the Yankee fleets are ready to pick their spot to hit our coasts.”

  Faunt was in General Wise’s garrison on Roanoke Island, and Cinda spoke of this. “Will they attack there, do you suppose?”

  “Probably, yes,” he assented. “Roanoke’s th
e key to the whole North Carolina coast, and Wise’s force is inadequate. Burnside will gobble him up—unless Wise is reinforced.”

  From that day, Cinda was concerned for Faunt’s sake. There were presently rumors of fighting at Roanoke; and then the news of the island’s fall, of the surrender of the little force there and the death of Jennings Wise sent a sobering shock and a wave of grief through every home in Richmond.

  She had at first no news of Faunt. Presumably—if he were alive—he had been included in the surrender and was a prisoner. But late one night the door bell roused them all. Cinda was the first downstairs. It was Brett. Faunt was at Great Oak, he said; and Cinda cried: “Oh, thank God!”

  “But he’s hurt, and he’s sick,” Brett warned her. “A bullet through the fleshy part of his shoulder, another in his side; and both wounds are inflamed. He came afoot along the outer beach from Nag’s Head to Norfolk; days without shelter, and without food. He’s coughing badly, and feverish.” Cinda’s quick imagination pictured Enid hovering over Faunt, sitting with him all day long. “I’m going to take a surgeon down to probe for the bullet in his side.”

  “We’ll get Dr. Little. I’m going back with you!”