House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “I thought you’d want to,” he agreed.

  At Great Oak, when he had removed the bullet from Faunt’s body, Dr. Little said there was no immediate danger; but Faunt would need constant attention, and Cinda decided to stay on. Enid protested that this was not necessary. “Mama and I, with April to help us, can do everything,” she declared; but Cinda insisted on remaining.

  Brett rode off to his post on Warwick River, and next morning before leaving for Richmond, Dr. Little assured them Faunt was better, needing only their tender care. Sleep had rested him, his color was good, and Cinda had never seen him so full of many words. A high indignation colored all he said—indignation against General Huger and against Mr. Benjamin for their failure to reinforce the island.

  “The politicians will ruin us before they’re done,” he declared.

  “Everything’s politics in Richmond,” Cinda agreed. “Politics and gambling. There are gaming houses everywhere, running all night long. And the place just smells of politicians. At the President’s receptions I can hardly breathe for the smell of tobacco and rum they carry with them. Of course,” she added, “all the riffraff has gone into politics. The best men are in the army. The rest are just in politics so they won’t have to risk their necks!”

  He said thoughtfully: “You ladies—I don’t mean you, of course—but the ladies are to blame for that. Politics used to be the profession of gentlemen; but now if a man’s not in uniform ladies call him shameful names, so they’ve made politics disreputable, left it to such men as Mr. Benjamin, who don’t mind what names they’re called. He and the Government betrayed Roanoke as truly as if they’d shot us all.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t help you. Or maybe they didn’t know you needed help.”

  “Know? Why General Wise told them, over and over, right up to the last minute! He was sick at Nag’s Head, sick in bed, but he still directed the defense; and five days before the attack he sent Dick Wise to Huger to tell him the situation.” His color rose as he spoke, and Cinda was concerned.

  “Ought you to talk so much, Faunt?”

  Enid answered her. “Oh, he likes to talk. He says it rests him to get it out of his system.” She said to him: “Tell her how you got away, Cousin Faunt.”

  He obeyed so readily that Cinda thought it was true he found easement in many words. “Why, the Yankees made their landing Thursday, in a howling northeast storm. They landed on the west side, at Ashby’s. One of the Yankee steamers towed about a hundred boats full of men in a line along the shore, and the boats cut loose and hit the shore all abreast, forty or fifty men in each boat. We weren’t there when they landed. We crossed from Nag’s Head that morning, and landed on the upper end of the island and marched down the western side. We could see the Yankee ships, but the troops were already ashore. That night Captain Wise took twenty of us to see what they were doing; and they’d gone into camp, thousands of them. They knew there was no hurry!” His tone was harsh, his eyes blazing.

  “Tell her how you got away,” Enid insisted. “It was perfectly amazing, Cousin Cinda. You just can’t believe it.”

  “It’s hard to believe it myself,” Faunt agreed, “now that I’m here and warm and well fed and comfortable.” He explained: “The fighting came next day, Cinda. The causeway crosses a marsh, and we held the causeway and hoped the Yankees couldn’t come through the marsh without getting bogged down; but they did, and flanked us. It was a Massachusetts regiment. Captain Wise had forgotten his overcoat, so he had a red blanket wrapped around him, and we made him take it off. He got a bullet through his sword arm; but he bandaged it and kept on fighting till a ball struck him in the body. By that time, we knew we had to get out of there; so we carried him in a blanket up the east side of the island through the woods, and put him into a boat to take him over to Nag’s Head. I was in the boat with Captain Wise, and some New York troops came along the shore and let off a volley at us. That’s when I was hit. The bullet knocked me out of the boat, and the boat had to surrender.”

  “And he swam clear to the outer beach,” Enid cried. “Bleeding all the time.”

  Faunt said quietly: “Why, the water was cold enough to stop the bleeding, and I didn’t have to swim all the way. It was shallow enough so I could wade some of the time. I don’t know why the Yankees didn’t come after me—unless they were satisfied with having caught Captain Wise. Anyway, I made it. They sent gunboats later to bombard headquarters in the hotel at Nag’s Head; but General Wise’s men carried him away up the beach, and got a carriage——”

  “I wish you’d tell about what you did, Cousin Faunt,” Enid urged. “We don’t care about General Wise.”

  “Well, a few of us just walked to Norfolk,” he said mildly.

  Enid exclaimed in a pretty exasperation: “You’re the most provoking man! Tell her all about it, the way you told me.”

  Cinda could imagine that scene, Enid plying him with many questions. “How far is it from Nag’s Head to Norfolk, Faunt?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. A long way.” He hesitated, his eyes shadowed by the memory of that ordeal. “It was still storming. The hotel at Nag’s Head is on a sand spit between the ocean and the Sound. Sometimes the spit is miles wide, and sometimes it’s so narrow a storm tide blows right across it; and there are sand hills fifty or a hundred feet high all along. They’re all just sand except one they call Kill Devil Hill. That has grass to hold it down, but the other hills keep moving a few feet at a time, this way and that, when the wind blows the sand around. The outer beach is as hard as a floor, and we tried to stay on that; but each high tide drove us up into the soft sand, and that was hard walking, like pulling your feet out of glue at every step. Where the spit was narrow, the wind drove the water right across it, and sometimes we waded knee-deep, trying to follow what road there was. I never saw so many wild fowl in my life, millions of swans and geese and brant and ducks blown in by the storm. They’d rise in front of us and circle and settle down behind us in any lee they could find.”

  “Were you all day on the way?”

  “All day?” He chuckled grimly. “More like four or five days. I don’t know. I lost count of time. We kept walking all night, feeling for the road with our feet. We had to keep going or freeze.” Cinda remembered how, long ago, she and Brett, in haste to come to Great Oak for her mother’s birthday, had landed on those outer beaches; but that day had been warm and clear. The wind must rip and scourge the beaches when a gale blew! “But as we came near Norfolk some people met us, and I told them I wanted to reach here, and they found a fishing boat and brought me home.”

  “He got here in the middle of the night,” Enid supplemented. “Just simply exhausted, wet, and cold, and that horrible bullet in him. I declare, Cousin Faunt, I don’t see how you ever did it!”

  “Well, you can do anything you have to.” His voice faltered, and Cinda saw that he was tired, and he began to cough in a way that distressed her.

  “I’m sure you shouldn’t talk any more, Faunt. Sleep a while. I’ll be near you if you want anything.”

  Enid said quickly: “Oh, I’ll stay with him. April and Mama and I take turns. We never leave him alone.”

  “I’ll take my turn too.”

  “I don’t need anyone, really,” Faunt protested. “I’ll be all right in a day or two. Stay and talk to me.”

  But Cinda insisted that he rest. She was soon glad she had done so; for that evening he was certainly not so well, and during the night, when she took her turn at his bedside, he sometimes muttered in his sleep. Next day he was delirious, and they fought to ease him with cold compresses on chest and brow.

  But that was Cinda’s last day at his side, for at dusk Trav rode up to the door. Cinda was with Faunt when she heard Trav’s voice in the lower hall, heard Enid’s resentful question, “Trav Currain, what are you doing here?” She could not hear Trav’s reply, but that he should have come at all alarmed her and she slipped out into the hall, in time to hear Enid say: “Well, what of it? You could
have sent word. You didn’t have to come rushing down here yourself.”

  Then Enid heard Cinda on the stairs behind her, and turned and Cinda brushed past her. “What is it, Travis?” she asked.

  Trav said: “Why, Kyle’s down with scarlet fever, Cinda.”

  Cinda set her teeth to keep them from chattering, an uncontrollable terror turned her cold. Scarlet fever! The Longstreet children! Faunt or no Faunt, she must go!

  She would not wait for morning, and Enid speeded their departure with a zeal which seemed to Cinda eloquent. Enid was glad to get rid of her, to have Faunt to herself. No matter, she must go. An hour after Trav’s arrival they set out, the carriage lurching and rocking on the rutted, frost bound highway. Trav rode with her, his led horse following.

  “I wish I could be in two places at once,” she confessed. “Faunt’s awfully sick, Travis.”

  “Well, Enid says she and Mama can take care of him.”

  “I know. And I must be with Kyle.” She asked fearfully: “Do you think he’s—as sick as the Longstreet children were?”

  “I don’t think so; but Vesta said you’d want to be there. Jenny didn’t want to send for you, said they could manage.”

  “Jenny’s wonderful. As strong as a rock. As steady—as you are.”

  He did not answer, and they were silent for a long time while the horses climbed the winding road through the woods that would bring them to the Richmond pike at Six-Mile Ordinary. Trav asked at last in a low tone: “Cinda, have you noticed the way Enid is with me?”

  She was for a moment too surprised to speak. “Why—how, Travis? What do you mean?” Perhaps the darkness, the silence, the monotonous hoof beats of the horses, the hissing of the wheels in the soft sand of the road had worked some spell upon him, loosed his tongue.

  “She was mad at me for coming tonight,” he said. “She hasn’t been the same to me since Hetty died.” He hesitated. “Except when we were all here at Christmas, and the night we did the charades at your house. That night she was the way she used to be. I thought she was all right again. But tonight—well, she hasn’t any use for me now!”

  Cinda put a guard on her tongue, and impulsively she clasped his hand and pressed it. For him to speak thus frankly to her was proof enough of the depth of his unhappiness. “We’re all upset nowadays, Travis. You must allow for that.” Rage at Enid mingled with her tenderness for him, yet she must not criticize Enid. “I’m sure you’re imagining things. Enid loves you; but of course she’s young enough to want excitement, pleasure, gay times.”

  “She certainly does,” he agreed. “You can see the difference, just in the way she looks. She’s just—beautiful, when she’s enjoying herself.”

  Cinda said thoughtfully: “And it’s lonely for her, with you away. You might bring her to Richmond, make a home for her there. Mama’d be all right alone. She lives in a world of her own anyway.”

  “Do you think Mama’s mind is failing, Cinda?”

  “Of course not!”

  “I mean, the way she is about the war?”

  “It’s just her way of refusing to worry.” Cinda returned to the point. “Why don’t you do that, Travis? It might make all the difference in the world to Enid.”

  “Well, I’ll see.” He hesitated. “I may be back at Great Oak soon. The General thinks the Federals may land an army on the Peninsula, and we’d have to move down here to meet them.”

  Cinda at his words forgot Enid in this new concern. If there was to be fighting on the Peninsula, it might sweep over Great Oak like a storm tide. What would her mother do? She wished to ask Trav, but he knew the answer no more clearly than she did. He was silent now, and she thought presently that he was asleep, but she did not sleep. Anxiety for her mother and fear for little Kyle were her companions as the carriage lumbered through the night.

  Before they came to Richmond, dawn broke through a stormy sky, and rain presently spattered them. At home Cinda hurried to the room where Kyle lay. He seemed to her not so desperately ill as the Longstreet children had been. “But I mustn’t let myself think so,” she thought. “I must be ready for anything.”

  She had need of all her resolution, for not only was Kyle ill, but Janet had a cold, snuffles, a running nose; and little Clayton was fretful. Before the week ended they were all hot with fever; and Cinda gave herself so completely to their care that outside events scarce touched her. She heard Fort Donelson had surrendered, to that same General Grant whom Longstreet considered so dangerous; but the war was far away, the sick children were here. Her universe was all contained within these walls.

  Brett was at home for the dreary, rain-drenched day when Mr. Davis was inaugurated as permanent President of the Confederacy, and to feel Brett’s arms around her was strength and reassurance; but presidents and politics alike were meaningless and of no account. These sick children were more than all the world.

  Not till March brought the first signs of spring were the babies safely on the mend. When she was sure of this, Cinda thought in a great thankfulness that nothing could shake her now.

  31

  January–arch, 1862

  UNTIL Faunt came home to Great Oak wounded and ill, Enid would have said her affection for him was no more than a natural fondness for the nicest of her kinfolks; and she would have believed herself sincere. If in the past she had pretended more than this, it was rather to plague Cinda and Tony for being so ready to think ill of her than from any deep and genuine emotion. But while she tended Faunt, pretense began to become reality. She was glad when Kyle’s illness drew Cinda back to Richmond, for thereafter Faunt was hers alone. Through the weeks that followed she spent herself in a fierce and jealous devotion, enlisting old April’s help only when she must, resenting even his mother’s visits to his bedside. Faunt was her charge, and she would not willingly share him with anyone; for surely he was not so dear to any of them as to her. None of them realized as she did his charm, his courage, his gentleness, his strength. Had they not let him dwell all these years alone with his grief while they lived their heedless happy lives?

  When he was at his worst she slept, if she slept at all, upon a sofa in his room; when he was better, she went no farther away than the small dressing room next to his, where April had set up a narrow cot bed. Under the long strain she who had always been slender became thin, her eyes were deeply shadowed, her cheeks hollowed, her skin acquired a pale translucency. Mrs. Currain, increasingly withdrawn within herself and increasingly blind to all that went on around her, did not observe this; but April fumed and scolded, and she was forever bringing Enid broth to drink and glasses of fresh milk and cups of steaming tea, till Enid protested:

  “I declare, April, you treat me as if I were a nursing mother! Stop it! Let me alone! I’ll ask for what I want.”

  “Missy, you don’ know what you want!” April protested in a kindly anger. She had long since included Enid in her loyalty to Trav and to all who belonged to him. “But I does! Hit’s high time Marste’ Trav come home tuh tek care o’ you.”

  Trav? If there was one thing Enid was completely sure she did not want, it was for Trav to come home. “Oh, you—” she floundered for words, hating this fat black woman sweating from the kitchen. “Leave me alone! For Heaven’s sake go wash your face!”

  April grunted indignantly. “What I want to th’ow wateh in mah face foh? I ain’t no house afiah!” She stumped away in sullen hurt.

  Brett too, on his frequent visits, saw Enid’s weariness and urged her to let April take a heavier share of the burden, but she told him gently: “I’m not tired. Really and truly I’m not. I love doing things for him.”

  This was profoundly true. Every least act performed in Faunt’s service was richly satisfying. To sit beside him while he was delirious, to hear him speak to his Betty who died so long ago, to lean close and catch his half-uttered sentences and piece out the sense of them; this was to share his inmost heart. Oh, he was fine and gallant and tender. He spoke no bitter word except when, remembering i
n his delirium Belle Vue and all that he had treasured there, trying to sit up in bed, trying to get to his feet, he raged at the war makers, at all men of the North and above all, at Lincoln. In these ravings, furious and blasphemous, Abraham Lincoln was so often the target that Enid came to think of Lincoln as an inhuman and grotesque monster with blood-dripping jaws, mouthing and gobbling and whining over the torn flesh of a still living woman who was the South.

  She had not thought Faunt capable of such outright and uncurbed ferocity. Sometimes he shouted in his insensate fury; and then she rose and went to him, beautiful and tender in the candlelight; and at her touch and her gentle words he quickly quieted. Sometimes in these hours he called her Betty, and so ardently that her eyes swam with tears. Sometimes, thinking she was Betty, he clung feverishly to her hand; sometimes he kissed it. Sometimes, to appease him, she must hold him in her arms, kiss his wasted cheek and his hot burning brow.

  At such moments there was a tenderness in her deeper than any physical passion. He was never in her thoughts her lover or her beloved, but her babe, helpless and dependent. Though April made sullen protest at this indelicacy, Enid bathed him. She dressed the suppurating wound in his side which drained for a long time. She assuaged with cold packs the fever which devoured him; and all these intimacies were profoundly contenting. She loved his clean smooth skin, the wiry muscles of arms and legs, the ridged flesh on his flanks; she found a still rapture in brushing his hair, in trimming his light beard, in washing his long, thin hands, in cutting and cleaning his nails. And in thus serving him she surrendered herself as completely as though she lay in his arms, denying him nothing, wholly at his disposal, her only law his need.

  When Faunt began to mend, his fever broke in a sweat that left him frighteningly weak. This weakness made him seem at first worse instead of better. April said he would recover, but Enid refused to believe, and stormed at her; and when she herself saw that April was right, she realized for the first time that she would be sorry to see him get well. While he lay ill and helpless, he was hers; sound and whole again, he would escape from her.