House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Cinda smiled and pressed her hand; and asked Tilda: “Then our army is still in Williamsburg?” Perhaps to abandon Great Oak had not been necessary after all.

  “Oh no! Everyone says we could stay there as long as we like, but General Johnston is so stubborn. He’s decided to retreat, and so he’s bound to do it, no matter how often the army proves we don’t have to. No, we beat them, but the army’s coming on toward Richmond.” Tilda asked for Faunt and Tony.

  “Tony has Chimneys to attend to,” Cinda reminded her. Let them assume that he had gone. “And Faunt was well enough to return to duty.” She did not know where they were, but she would not tell Tilda so.

  “Tony ought to have taken Mama to Chimneys,” Tilda suggested. “No telling what’s going to happen here. Redford says we’ll give up Richmond, let the Yankees have it. Besides, you know how Mama hates hot weather, and summer here can be awful.”

  Cinda reflected that there was wisdom in this. “But of course Mama wouldn’t go,” she reminded them. “It’s a wonder we ever got her to come this far.”

  Vesta said: “But Mama, it really would be wonderful for her. I wish we’d thought of it before Uncle Tony left. Uncle Trav says it’s nearly always cool there.”

  Cinda nodded, entangled in her own white lie. She had as good as said that Tony was gone to Chimneys, could not now confess he was presumably still in Richmond. She wondered where he was. Probably he had turned to old haunts, the gaming table, the bottle. Perhaps Faunt was with him; but there was no profit in conjecture.

  Before Tilda left she drew Cinda aside. “Has Mama said anything about those awful letters?”

  “No. None of us need talk about them.”

  “Well, I certainly won’t tell a soul; but oh Cinda, isn’t it terrible? Aren’t you dying of shame?”

  “I’m not going to worry about something Papa did thirty years before I was born!”

  “But don’t you realize—” Tilda spoke in a horrified whisper. “Lincoln’s actually our nephew, Cinda. That wretched brat of papa’s was our half-sister.”

  “What of it? If you go back far enough, everyone in the world is cousins or something!”

  Tilda cried flatteringly: “I think you’re wonderful, the way you always make the best of things. But Faunt was terribly upset, and Heaven knows what Tony will do!”

  Cinda saw that Tilda really enjoyed the situation, and of course Redford Streean would exult if he knew. She hoped Tilda had wit enough never to tell him.

  Cinda slept ill that night, with haunted dreams. Two of her sons were with the army at Williamsburg, and Tommy too; and Tommy since he married Vesta was become her son. Vesta and Barbara betrayed none of the anxiety they must feel, and she hoped she had been able to hide her fears as well as they. How long must they all have terror for a bedfellow? There would be other battles, through the months and years. This time—please God—Burr and Julian and Vesta’s Tommy had come safely through the deadly storm; but this was only a beginning. Yes, hardly even a beginning. The army was in retreat toward Richmond; the Yankees would press after them. Lincoln’s blackguards would fight to capture Richmond, and her sons must fight to prevent them, fight while they lived.

  How long? How long?

  She found herself wondering about this Lincoln, whom every Southerner abhorred. What sort of man was it who would bring wounds and death to sow sorrow across his native land, and to scatter seeds of hatred which would never die? Did Lincoln in his secret heart exult in the horrors which he thrust upon them all? Did he, like a miser, count his crimes and revel in the tally? Was he wholly inhuman? a

  Or was he, conceivably, a man like other men, caught up in forces he could not control, hating all this yet driven by some mistaken conviction of the rightness of his course?

  No, that was not possible! No man, if he were honest, could believe it right to force the South like an unwilling bride to return to a union she loathed. There must be some intermediate truth that was believable, but Cinda’s weary thoughts found no answer to the dark enigma. They blurred and lost themselves in restless sleep.

  She was awake, Wednesday morning, at first dawn; and she lay with half-open eyes, staring at nothing, waiting for June to come to her. She could hear, presently, small sounds in the house, light hasting footsteps as the children in their play ran to and fro, the whisper of one of the black nurses hushing her charge so grownups could sleep. Cinda always relished this quiet morning hour alone. To be thus wakeful gave her time to set her thoughts in order and to store up energy against the confused and pressing problems of each day. June would come soon. The old woman always brought hot coffee, then helped Cinda halfway through the process of dressing for the day, then fetched her breakfast. Breakfast was always on the same waiter, of black enamel gay with a pattern of green leaves and yellow flowers, which June extravagantly admired. It occurred to Cinda by and by that June today was later than usual; but when the old woman appeared, the delay was forgotten in Cinda’s surprise at the fact that instead of the usual cup of coffee June this morning brought a complete breakfast, hot bread, bacon, jam, coffee, a heaping plenty.

  And there was another surprise. Cinda smiled. “Why, June, you’ve gone and given my special waiter to someone else this morning! Did you give it to Mama?”

  “Ma’am?” June was drawing the curtains, keeping her back turned to her mistress; and Cinda watched her in a closer attention, struck by something in her tone.

  “And you didn’t bring my early coffee.” June still did not turn, and Cinda forced herself to speak lightly. “What’s upset you, June? Have you and Caesar been having one of your battles?”

  “Eat yo’ breakfast, Honey,” June urged. “How come you ask so many questions?” Her tone was almost normal; almost, but not quite.

  Cinda felt her heart pound; she spoke evenly. “June.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t treat me like a baby. What’s happened?”

  After a moment, the old woman came to her; and Cinda saw tears on June’s black cheeks, and she thought abstractedly that tears on dark skin looked like drops of ink. Then June drew her close, cradling Cinda’s head against her bosom, rocking to and fro, crooning over and over: “Don’ you cry, Honey Chile! My baby, my little ol’ Miss Cindy, please ma‘am, don’ you go carryin’ on!”

  It was sweet and richly assuaging to be held so; and for a moment Cinda let herself go, and her own eyes filled. With others, she must wear a brave front; but with June she need never pretend. Ever since she was a baby, she had always been able to weep out her woes on this black bosom.

  Then she freed herself, gently, trying to laugh. “Why June, here we are both of us crying like silly women!” There was no gulf between them now; no question of mistress and slave. They were two who had loved each other long. “What’s happened, June? Tell me.”

  She had at first to draw out the truth with many questions; but once well started, June told all she knew. One of Mr. Frisbie’s Negroes had come to Richmond in the night from Williamsburg. His name was Sam—June as a narrator had one failing: she never omitted any least detail—and he rode Mr. Frisbie’s roan hunter and led three of Mr. Frisbie’s horses; because Mr. Frisbie was in the cavalry and wanted them safe away from the Yankees. Mr. Frisbie had told Sam to start early Monday morning, but the armies were fighting so near the Frisbie place that Sam and the other people crowded into the smoke house, and into the cellar of the big house to be out of the way of the bullets. The fighting stopped along toward dark, and Sam got his courage up and went to the stables. It was by that time late at night. While he was saddling the roan, he heard someone crying, right outside the stable door, in the dark shadows; and he took the lantern to see who it was, and it was Elegant, Mister Julian’s body servant.

  June said it had been hard for Sam to get much out of Elegant for a while. Cinda by this time was listening without questions, feeling no longer any emotion at all, allowing the old woman’s words to flow over her, herself withdrawn in passive submi
ssion. Elegant was hurt half to death, June said. “And serve dat wuthless niggah right if he uz kilt daid!” she commented, her grief for a moment giving way to indignation.

  Because Elegant had lost Mister Julian. He told Sam that the regiment marched up to a rail fence, miles and miles; and Yankees behind the fence were shooting at them with a hundred cannons. Elegant said he was so scared he tried to hide behind Mister Julian; and he tried to get his young master to run away into the woods and hide, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but follow along, trying to keep Mister Julian between him and the Yankee bullets. “ ‘Stead of gittin’ in front where he belonged to be,” June angrily declared. “So’s he cud stop de bullets and do some good!”

  He said—according to Sam and now to June—that just about everybody in the regiment was killed before some of them reached the fence. He said—Cinda felt the hard clutch at her heart, yet knew no pain—that bullets hit Lieutenant Cloyd and just ripped him open the way you rip a catfish up the belly; and Elegant saw him fall and ran across to him, and some bullets hit Elegant while he was kneeling by the shattered body. But he ran back to Mister Julian, and they got to the fence and lay down there till someone said they had to go back across the field. Elegant didn’t know much about what happened after that. He said he tried to stand up, and fell down, and Mister Julian got him on his shoulders piggyback to carry him. The next thing he knew it was dark, and he was in some woods somewhere, and Mister Julian wasn’t anywhere around. Elegant crawled as far as he could, looking for Mister Julian all over the place, and never did find him.

  “Sam went and fotch Mistuh Frisbie’s old Sarah,” June explained, “And dey laid Elegant in de hay mow tuh tek keer ob him de best dey could, and Sam tuk de hosses an’ put out fo’ Richmond de way Mistuh Frisbie tolt him to. An’ soon as he git shet ob de hosses heah, he come along at daylight dis mawnin’ an’ tolt us.”

  And though Cinda harried her with many questions, that was all the old woman knew.

  So Vesta’s Tommy was dead. Julian? Not to know whether he lived or died was almost worse than knowing he was dead. Cinda was in some obscure way grateful that she could turn her thoughts on Vesta; on Vesta, so young and brave and sure. There was nothing she could do about Julian; but she could cherish Vesta, muster strength and offer it to Vesta as a staff and stay. To think of Vesta, to think only of Vesta; this would help her put thought of Julian into the deep background of her mind.

  But oh, why could not Brett be here? Why could not he and she be together now, if only for an hour? Clayton was dead, and Vesta’s Tommy—as dear to Cinda, since Vesta loved him, as her own son—and now Julian! Yes, and perhaps Burr too! Burr had been in that battling. Till he came home, till some word of his safety reached them, Cinda must live in a helpless dread. So must Barbara.

  Cinda roused herself. Vesta and Barbara were her charge. While she dressed, while she fortified herself to go to them, she thought of Travis. He might do something; she did not know what.

  He might at least bring her news of Julian.

  Her little baby.

  She found herself wondering absently what that kinsman in Washington, that Abraham Lincoln, would feel if he knew the grief and the pain he had brought to them all today. But probably if he knew the truth about his mother’s birth, he had long since learned to curse the name of Currain. Lucy Hanks in one of her angry letters had called down a long damnation on Anthony Currain who had wronged her so shamefully. Had she perhaps, while this Abraham Lincoln was still a baby, taught him to repeat those curses parrotlike, taught him long hatred at her knee?

  But what did it matter? Clayton was dead, and Tommy. And Julian? Cinda had seen poor shattered wounded in Miss Sally Tompkins’ hospital; men so witless from suffering that they forgot their own names; men whose faces were lacerated beyond recognition. Julian might be dead; or he might be alive, groaning his life away in some secret thicket, dying alone; or he might be like one of those senseless ones, his mind forever shattered, his sweet face so marred that only loving eyes could recognize him.

  She pressed her hands hard to her temple. She must put such thoughts away.

  She opened her door, and from the open door of Vesta’s room along the hall, the room which for the present Vesta shared with Barbara, she heard their sudden laughter at something that amused them there. June, at Cinda’s shoulder, heard that bright laughter too, and broke into wrenching sobs. Cinda thrust the old woman gently back into the room and closed the door upon her. She went on to face Vesta and her task alone.

  5

  May, 1862

  THAT Sunday evening when Tony brought his brother to her house, Mrs. Albion was within a week of being fifty years old; but never in her life had she felt a passionate and self-forgetting attachment for any man. She married while she was still emotionally a child, and she had with her young husband a few jolly years. When he died and left her still a careless young woman, the pinch of encroaching poverty taught her the importance of having enough money so that money did not matter. Her attempt to marry Travis Currain because he was wealthy failed as much because of her own overeagerness as because of Enid’s spiteful interference; she turned to Tony in a greedy desperation.

  Ten years as Tony’s mistress taught her that men are lonely, simple, eager for friendliness, grateful for an audience, hungry for a sympathetic and approving and interested listener. She cultivated the art of listening; and thus she acquired a constantly widening circle of masculine friends. She liked men; not any one man in particular but men in general. She understood that by her relationship with Tony she was from the world of sheltered and respectable womankind forever excluded; and this, after a while, ceased to provoke in her any bitterness. There was another feminine world the doors of which were open to her, but for this other world she had no inclination. The result was that though she knew many men, she had few women acquaintances—and no women friends.

  Her relationship with Tony came to be, at least in her own mind, regularized by its very persistence. She thought of herself as secure in a pseudo wifehood which provided all the rewards of marriage except respectability, while it imposed none of the obligations. During this period, there was a change in her. The men who learned to enjoy her company were apt to be persons of some intellectual capacity. Attracted at first by the provocative irregularity which was tacitly associated with her establishment, they found her a pleasant and gracious woman, and a good listener, and came again and again. She had the gift of silence. Their conversations among themselves in her company —for since men are instinctively conventional, no one but Tony and Darrell ever called upon her except with a companion—dealt with business, with politics, with subjects essentially masculine, and of which few women had any real understanding. She bolstered what her listening taught her by wide and thoughtful reading. She began to have opinions, and sometimes, if she were asked to do so, to express them. The men who knew her found her opinions worth hearing.

  These years of settled and orderly living had another result. She was naturally as healthy as an animal, and freedom from anxieties preserved in her a sleek and contenting beauty. This was not, of course, the fresh loveliness of youth, but the richness of maturity. Her hair lost none of its lustre, her countenance showed no betraying lines, her throat was a smooth column. No one would have mistaken her for a girl; she was a woman. But no man, meeting her for the first time, ever stopped to ask himself: “I wonder how old she is.”

  When Tony cast her aside, she knew only a momentary panic which took the form of contriving that the profitable North Carolina plantation. should pass into his hands. She was quite sure that she could when she chose go back to him; and always there lay in the background of her thoughts the fear of poverty. Against poverty she must insure herself. It was to do so that with the approach of hostilities between North and South she decided to capitalize upon her wide acquaintance among men of importance in the Confederacy. By returning to Richmond she would be in a position to learn many things of value to
the Northern generals.

  She sought to make sure beforehand that for her services she should be adequately paid; but when she tried to make a bargain she was met by a complacent Northern confidence in early victory. She returned to Richmond as it were on speculation; but a week after Manassas an emissary, a Baltimore man posing as one of General Winder’s detectives charged with policing Richmond, came secretly to enlist her services for the North. Since then she had contributed more than once to the flood of information which funnelled into the Richmond clearing house of the Union Secret Service.

  She recognized the risk she ran. Early in April, not a month before she first saw Faunt, two men named Lewis and Scully had been convicted as spies and sentenced to be hanged; and on the day set for their execution a great throng of curious and morbid people trooped out Broad and Grace and Franklin Streets to the Fair Grounds to watch their execution. It was true that at the last moment the men were reprieved to give evidence against Timothy Webster; and the crowd, which had been once disappointed, expecting another reprieve, did not trouble to go to the Fair Grounds on the day set for his death. But Webster was well and duly hanged, so Nell knew that it was a deadly and dangerous game she played. It was because she might some day need a friendly witness to her loyalty that she had gone to Cinda with the information which led to the famous Confederate victory at Leesburg; and once or twice afterward, for a like reason, she played a double game, till she thought herself secure.

  To open new sources of information and to increase her value to the North—and hence her earnings—she widened her pleasant hospitality. Her reputation as a charming and brilliant woman spread, and her pleasant little suppers acquired a limited fame. There were many men, officers in the army or members of the Government, whose homes were far away and who were glad to spend an evening thus amiably. She was such a receptive listener that their tongues forgot discretion, and her task was made absurdly easy. If a regiment moved through Richmond to the Peninsula, in this spring of 1862, the movement was recorded on a bulletin board outside the Provost Marshal’s office where anyone who chose could read. Espionage was in fact so simple that its rewards were few; but Mrs. Albion discovered other profitable activities. Such men as Redford Streean were already shipping cotton and tobacco through the lines, trading ostensibly for supplies badly needed in the Confederacy, but plucking out a fat plum for themselves from every pie. She shared their plans and their profits. She had no troubling scruples, felt herself under no obligation to the South. She went her calm and careful way without bitterness, but equally without any sense of guilt at all. She was at once cool and bold, completely mistress of herself, doing nothing without a reason, and nothing recklessly. It was her habit to appraise the men she met, to try to foresee how they might be useful to her; she saw them only as they affected her and her activities.