House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Tony said carelessly: “Whatever you say!” Mrs. Currain felt a sharp pain stab her heart, for his voice held a tone she recognized. Faunt went to his horse and from the saddlebags ripped a small flask. She saw him tip it, drain it, hurl it splinteringly against the wall beside the door; and she thought again that he was like a small boy in a tantrum! The thought was almost comforting. Childish tempers quickly ran their course; Faunt would presently be himself again.

  But Tony? When he spoke just now she had been reminded of the old, evil Tony who had brought her so much sorrow in the past. “Help me, Travis,” she said, and Trav handed her into the carriage; Tilda and Cinda took their places with her.

  Trav told old Thomas: “Follow along after me.” The Negro assented, and Trav mounted, and Tony and Faunt too. Big Mill swung his great-bulk atop his mule. Through the open front door of the great house Mrs. Currain saw the candles still burning in the hall, and she called out of the carriage window that someone must make sure they were extinguished. Faunt answered her.

  “I’ll tend to it,” he said curtly. His horse reared under his hard hand upon the reins; he dismounted, strode into the lighted hall.

  The carriage lumbered down the drive; the Negroes, mounted or afoot, swung in behind. The horses and mules moved slowly through the darkness; and Mrs. Currain heard the doleful murmur of the people, heard a thin high wail of grief like a dirge rise from their mournful hearts at this departure that might be forever.

  As they came from the drive to the road, Trav spoke through the carriage window. “All right, Mama?”

  She saw some long object held crosswise in his hand, and she guessed it was his father’s sword which she had bidden Cinda give him. Till that moment she had not accepted the departure as finality; but when she spoke her voice was steady. “Certainly, Travis.”

  They began to ascend the winding road which Trav hoped would bring them to the Richmond pike ahead of the crawling trains. The horses moved at a foot pace, for the ruts were deep, the road muddy. The heavy carriage lurched and tipped and swayed.

  As they climbed, Mrs. Currain became conscious of a ruddy brightness among the upper branches of the trees ahead; and she heard excited, wondering voices from behind them where the people followed, and heard pounding hoof beats as a horseman galloped up the hill to overtake them. Then Faunt was here, leaning down from the saddle to speak to her in accents thick and drunken.

  “Look back, Mama!” he said hoarsely. “There’s a beginning at wiping out this shame!”

  She had already guessed the truth, but she obeyed him. Down behind them toward the river, hidden by the trees which mercifully shut off her vision, some great conflagration was growing like a weed. She saw the waxing glare of it, and the sparks soaring upward, and the tongue-tips of high-leaping flames. She had looked back not because Faunt bade her, but only to say farewell, and she felt no surprise at what he had done, nor any sadness. The resinous old heart-pine of floors and walls would burn swiftly and fiercely till they were consumed; and she nodded almost in approval. It was as well, perhaps, that the old house was gone; so many memories, some bright, some dark, all alike gone in the purging flame.

  II

  Advance to Gettysburg 1862-1863

  1

  May, 1862

  TRAV that evening had ridden over from headquarters on a nervous, highly bred hunter named Whitefoot; but when he mounted to guide his mother’s carriage toward the Richmond pike, he found that Mill had saddled Nig. The stallion was a tremendous animal, five-gaited, tireless, combining enormous vitality with the disposition of a gallant dog. In the old quiet days at Great Oak and before that at Chimneys, Trav had used Nig often; but through these months since he joined Longstreet’s staff, the stallion had stayed at Great Oak where the Negroes gave him proper exercise. But of course, now that Great Oak was being abandoned, Nig could not be left behind; and Trav was glad to feel the great horse under him and grateful to Big Mill for thinking of this change without direction. The black man, given responsibility, had risen to meet it in so many ways.

  Trav settled in his saddle for the long hours ahead; and Nig’s barrel was strong and proud between his knees. The road was soft, for there had been spring rains aplenty; and a light mist wetted his face. His father’s sword, wrapped in oilcloth, lay across his saddle, but it had better be kept dry against the rain, so he handed it into the carriage to Cinda. She and Tilda and his mother were silent figures there, as still as images carved from a block of wood. It was as though some sudden spell had been laid upon them. What was the old Bible story of Lot’s wife doomed by a backward glance at Sodom? Or was it Gomorrah? Doomed because she looked back at the city that had been her home.

  Well, he would not look back. He rode with head bowed, so that his hat brim was some protection against the pelt of thin mist like fine rain; but by and by he heard a horse at a gallop behind him, and Faunt’s hoarse voice roused him to the knowledge that some brightness had paled the blackness of the night. So he turned in his saddle; he did look back. Through the wet curtain of the night the far glare tinted half the sky. The house at Greak Oak, except for the chimneys, was all of wood. Unless rain came to damp the fire, dawn would leave only the chimneys standing; around their solid bases the hot embers would cool into a gray muck of ash and mud.

  He felt no emotion, not sadness, not blame for Faunt, nothing. He rode on, alone in the van. Faunt must have dropped back with Tony, somewhere behind the carriage. Near Trav, other hoof beats echoed those of Nig. That was Big Mill, close at his heels, ready for command. Perhaps he should send this loyal man back to Great Oak to see what might be saved from the burning house; but he dismissed the thought. There was nothing of the past that could be saved, not now The past was gone.

  And Enid was gone. Enid had torn herself loose from him, leaving such a wound as a great branch leaves when sudden wind whips it from the parent trunk. Enid was gone, and Great Oak was gone. Something else was gone, too. Trav had never consciously taken thought upon his heritage From childhood he had felt himself to be, as a matter of course, one of the elect; yet it had not occurred to him to be proud of his inheritance of courage, honor, wisdom, strength. In fact it had never occurred to him to be proud at all—nor to be humble. He was part of a stable and settled order. A phrase touched his thoughts: divine right, the divine right of kings. He smiled in sudden gruff amusement at himself; for he too had accepted his position in the world as a right. If not divinely bestowed, it was at least bestowed by something outside himself; he was a beneficiary of the deeds of others, and he had accepted those benefits—of which Great Oak, now vanishing in flames, had been the outward symbol. Pride in the fact that he was a Currain, that Currain blood ran in his veins; this pride had been a part of him.

  He had not realized how large a part till now, now that he knew that there was Currain blood in Abraham Lincoln too. Trav’s lips twisted at the thought. His father, like a young tom turkey on the prowl, lightly dandling a hedge wench named Lucy Hanks in some hidden thicket or some moonlit meadow, had fathered Abraham Lincoln’s mother. Trav had never shared in the traffic with Negro women, in the casual and wayward sportings to which some men lent themselves. This was not because of any virtuous abstemiousness. It arose in part from the fastidious personal cleanliness which had always been his habit, in part from a shy reluctance which had sometimes provoked the smiles of other men. There had been times when he wished he might boldly do as they did; but despite these furtive desires he had lived like an anchorite. Even in marriage he had been half-embarrassed by Enid’s ardor, by her eager yieldings. Passion was a mystery in which he participated almost apologetically. He could not imagine himself dallying with some white trash girl—as his father had dallied long ago with Lucy Hanks.

  But his father had had no such scruple, so there was Currain blood in Abraham Lincoln. If there had never been an Anthony Curram, there would never have been an Abraham Lincoln. But it was Lincoln who had let loose this flood of war upon the South. Hence it was
Anthony Currain, by that old heedless passion, who had let loose these terrors across the land. Trav was accustomed to accept blame—when blame was his due—without evasion. So, for all the Currains, for Tony and Faunt, for Cinda and Tilda, for the second generation too, he accepted in his thoughts now the guilt of this catastrophe. Lincoln personified the forces which sought to destroy the South; and for Lincoln, a Currain was responsible. Thus every Currain owed the South a heavy reparation; every Currain must strive his utmost to pay at least a part of the debt.

  Well, he would try. As much of the debt as lay in his power to repay, he would repay. Between his knees he felt the muscles of his mount slide and tense and relax; felt Nig’s strength held in careful bonds yet ready at a touch to be let loose. Was there something like that in him, too? Had he capacities till now restrained? Energy unused?

  He did not know; but certainly the way to great deeds began with the nearest tasks. His thoughts returned to the present. Till now he had let Nig set the pace. The big stallion went at a striding walk; but his tossing head, his almost mincing gait as he chose firm footing on the muddy road, testified his readiness to answer any challenge. Now Trav loosed the reins a little; Nig’s walk was still a walk, but it became a fast walk, fast enough so that Big Mill’s mule had to go to a slow trot to keep his place, and a gap opened between them and the carriage, till old Thomas on the box set his horses briefly to a trot that closed the gap again.

  When they came to the turnpike, they found it filled with wagons, the noses of horses and mules touching the tailboards of the vehicles in front. Trav bade old Thomas wait while he himself halted one of the wagons and questioned the driver. The man spoke profanely. He had been since an hour before dark coming this short way from Williamsburg. The road was soft, every set of wheels that passed cut deeper ruts, teams were forever getting mired.

  Trav nodded. These teams and wagons that made up the army’s trains were his responsibility, so Faunt and Tony must see his mother and the others safe in Richmond. He returned to speak to them.

  “I’ll leave you to take care of Mama,” he said. “The wagons will churn the road to pieces, but you’re ahead of most of them. I’ll make a place in the line for you.” Faunt sat his horse in silence, but Tony laughed at nothing. “I’ll send Big Mill with you, in case the carriage gets stuck in the mud.”Trav waited for questions but none came, so he went to speak to Cinda. “Faunt and Tony will go on with you,” he explained. “I’ll have to help keep the trains moving.”

  “We’ll be all right.”She added softly: “I think Mama’s asleep.”

  “No, I’m awake,” said Mrs. Currain.

  “Warm enough?” Trav asked. “Keeping dry?”

  “Don’t be concerned for me, Sonny.”

  Trav’s heart warmed at that endearing diminutive. He had not heard it from her lips for many years. But Tilda protested: “Trav, you ought to take care of us. Faunt’s crazy, and Tony’s useless!”

  Mrs. Currain hushed her. “No, Tilda. Do your work, Travis. We’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll come to Richmond when I can,” he said; and he swung Nig and stopped a wagon on the road and kept it waiting till a gap opened between it and the wagon ahead. Into this gap the carriage turned and slowly moved away. The people from Great Oak followed as they could, in the roadside ditches and in the fields. Trav spoke to Big Mill.

  “Take care of them, Mill,” he directed. “Stay with them all the way.”

  “Ain’ you gwine need me, suh?”

  “They may need you worse than I do.” Tilda was right. Faunt and Tony tonight were not responsible; but Big Mill would do what he was told. “You can come back and find me.”

  When Big Mill had splashed away to overtake them, Trav rode back toward Williamsburg. There were many crossroads, and he passed houses with lighted windows; and around occasional bonfires hissing in the rain that was as thin as dew, men were gathered to warm themselves and to set their garments steaming. Trav found a mired wagon and stopped to see it freed and then set men to cut brush and poles and throw them into the muddy pit where it had bogged, so that following wagons could pass without being trapped. When he rode on his thoughts wandered, weariness upon him like a drug. To keep awake he took refuge in absurd calculations. How many wagons made an army? There were say sixty thousand men in this army that was now upon the move. If there were a hundred men to a company that meant six hundred companies. A wagon to every company was six hundred wagons. But that was not all; there might be, altogether, twelve or fourteen four- and six-horse wagons to each regiment, for ammunition and hospital equipment and to serve as ambulances. Then you had to count on say twenty-five wagons per division for depot purposes. Say at a guess fifteen wagons per regiment, say seventy for each brigade, say four hundred for each division. His thoughts swam in a bewildering maze of figures. Suppose the army had fifteen hundred wagons. Average four horses to a wagon and each wagon was not less than thirty-five feet over all. Three wagons per hundred feet of road would be a hundred and fifty to a mile; a hundred and fifty-eight, to be exact, assuming there was no space between them. Then fifteen hundred wagons would stretch ten miles.

  And that took no account of guns and gun teams, nor of marching men. Why, if this army were stretched out along the stage road, its head—allowing for the inevitable gaps in the line—would be at New Kent Court House before the last man left Williamsburg.

  His figures were mere estimates. Some day he must make measurements, make a more accurate count of the army’s wagons. Trav liked definiteness, precision. Uncertainty always annoyed him.

  At the first gray of dawn he came to the Frog Pond tavern, on the edge of Williamsburg; and he was heavy with weariness, drunk with sleep, soaked and mud-splattered, nodding on his horse. He must rest. He stabled Nig to be fed and groomed and went indoors. The fat old tavern keeper greeted him in a high excitement.

  “By Jucks, Mr. Currain, a sad day, a sad day indeed, sir. What are we coming to? I hear the Yankee scoundrels have burned Great Oak to the ground.” His brow was beaded with a sweat of fear.

  Trav was too tired to clear the Yankees of that crime. “Yes, the house burned.”

  “A woeful thing, by Jucks! Yes, and worse will happen. What has come upon us, sir?”

  “Sleep has come upon me,” Trav said dryly. “I’m hungry and sleepy.”

  “Hot biscuits? Coffee? A warm bed? Instantly, Mr. Currain.”

  “Have you a room? Then send the coffee there. Let someone take my clothes to dry. Wake me when they’re ready. If they’re not dry by ten o’clock, wake me anyway.”

  It was to the splashing shuffle of marching feet, the cries of teamsters that he fell asleep. He slept, he thought, for no more than an instant; then someone was shaking him, a black face met his opening eyes.

  “Yas suh, ten o‘clock, suh! Heah’s you’ clo‘es! Dey’s dry as I could git ’em, suh!”

  There was a pot of steaming coffee on the table. Trav dressed, still full of sleep; he sipped the scalding liquid. Now he must find the General, see where lay the greatest need for him. Last night seemed long ago; he put all thought of it aside, descended, sent for his horse.

  With the stable boy who brought Nig came another Negro, a slim man, something dapper about him, something familiar about the garments he wore. The whites of his eyes gleamed with terror and his lips were gray.

  “Please suh, Mr. Currain?”

  Trav recognized the man as young Julian’s body servant. His name was Elegant. He was a Currain Negro from the Plains, who had gone with Julian to the Military Institute at Charlotte, who had served the youngster since. The boy—or the man, for he was twice Julian’s age—had always worn Clayton’s discarded clothes, and worn them with an air, as though to live up to his name. Cinda used to laugh at his struttings, to say: “Elegant his name and elegant his nature.”

  “Where’s your master?” Trav demanded. “Why aren’t you with him?”

  “Please suh, Miss Vesta’s heah.”

  “Here
? Where?” Trav was startled. Williamsburg was no place for Vesta, with Yankees coming.

  “At Mistuh Taylor’s house.”

  Trav asked no questions. There was no time for questions now. He swung into the saddle, bade Elegant follow him. The Taylor house was on Francis Street opposite Capitol Square, at the other end of town. He turned his horse and threaded his way through a swearing pack of soldiers who were trying to free a great gun that had bogged in the deep mud. At any other time, Elegant’s frantic efforts to avoid soiling his garments in this quagmire they crossed would have made Trav smile, but not now. Vesta ought to be safe and secure in Richmond, not here in the path of war. He tried to guess why she was here, but guesses were a waste of time. At least the Taylors would give her shelter. She and Jenny Taylor were old friends; Mrs. Taylor and Cinda and Tilda had been girls together.

  Elegant, despite the mud, held his place at Trav’s stirrup; and Trav asked: “How’d you find me?”

  Elegant grinned up at him. “I heerd tell Nig was heah, and I knowed you wouldn’t go to let nobody ride him only you.” He added querulously, “I aimed to wake you up befoah now, but dey’uns ’lowed you needed sleep moah dan you needed me!”

  At the Taylor house Trav dismounted, gave Elegant the reins. “Keep him quiet,” he directed. Nig seemed to have caught the excitement that filled the air today. He moved on tiptoe, with short, springy steps; his head was high, a fleck of foam showed at his nostrils, his ears pricked alertly. Trav left Elegant to gentle him and went toward the door.

  His coming had been seen, for before he reached it the door swung wide and Vesta ran to meet him, throwing herself into his arms, kissing him, with tears of smiling welcome in her eyes. “Oh Uncle Trav, Uncle Trav!” She clung to him in a warm tenderness that touched and pleased him. He had always been fond of Vesta, liking her friendliness and her lack of all affectation; but till today he had never thought her beautiful. It seemed to him now that her cheeks were filled out, her lips bright, her eyes astonishingly clear; he thought of a ripe apple, rosily tinted, full to bursting of sweet white meat.