House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  But from the first moment, Faunt, whether because she was at a vulnerable age when any chance acquaintance might have awakened her, or because his haggard eyes and his weariness aroused in her a maternal tenderness, or because between them some mysterious emotional current passed, made her forget herself. To watch him sitting here in her drawing room with tortured misery in his eyes roused in her emotions she had never known. She felt all her senses sharpened and demanding. She heard him speak and hungered for his next word; she filled her eyes with him, her glance touching his every feature, his image engraving itself upon her heart beyond forgetting. She felt or seemed to feel an electric emanation from him which set off in her veins an answering vibration. To bring him brandy, to fill his glass with wine, to see him eat the food she provided was rich content. But content was not assuagement. She longed to touch his hand, his cheek, his brow; and when this longing became unbearable she yielded to it. That under her touch he relaxed, surrendering to long fatigue, drowning in sudden sleep, filled her with a fierce proud passion. When Mosby and the little editor departed, she resented Tony’s staying. Tony’s desire to be alone with her woke in her an icy anger; when Tony was gone and she was alone with Faunt she found herself trembling, breathless as a girl.

  Faunt still slept, leaning back in his chair. She came to stand beside him, touching his shoulder with one finger as though to assure herself of his actual presence here. Here was where he belonged; here he should stay. He must stay and stay and stay; stay till he was rested and well and strong again. The Negro maid came to the door and saw her mistress and saw Faunt, and her eyes widened in stammering surprise.

  “Who dat, ma’am? I herd de gemmun go.”

  Mrs. Albion brushed the question aside. “See if his horse is at the gate, Milly.”

  The woman drew the curtain aside to peep out of the window. “Yes, ma’am, hit shore is.”

  “The gentleman is ill. We must keep him here, take care of him. Wake Rufus.” The Negro slept in the shed at the foot of the garden. “Tell him to take care of the horse.” Her voice tightened warningly. “Tell him if anyone ever finds out the gentleman is here, I’ll sell both of you South.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Milly’s promise had the emphasis of terror.

  “Tell Rufus, then come back to me.”

  Between them they put Faunt, still stupid with drink and with fatigue, to bed. Milly grumbled at this indelicacy. “You go on ’bout your bizness, ma’am. I’ll ’tend to him.” But Nell said curtly: “He’s hurt and sick, Milly; and I’m no child.” When they removed his shirt and she discovered Faunt’s deep scars she whispered pitying tenderness, and Milly muttered:

  “Hm! De gemmun sho’ ain’ got no fat on him, is he? Dem ribs stick out lak a skellykin. Poah as a picked chicken. Hm-m!” Her black hands were as gentle as Mrs. Albion’s. Faunt lay limp under their ministrations.

  They put him in the room next Nell’s own; and when their task was done Nell sent the other away. “I’ll leave my door open, in case he calls,” she said.

  “He ain’ gwine call nobody, woah out de way he is.” Milly chuckled in sly amusement. “No, ma’am, he ain’ gwine to be no botheh tuh you at all!” Then, seeing how still and tense her mistress was: “Ma’am, you come let Milly bresh down youh hair. You all upset you own se‘f, ma’am.”

  Nell submitted to the other’s attendance, and when she was ready for the night, Milly tucked her in, soothed her with comforting endearments. But when Milly was gone, Nell rose and drew a match and lighted a candle and went to the other room; and she stood for a long time by the bed where Faunt lay, looking down at him till her eyes were swimming and she felt her heart’s thudding pound. The bed was wide. She set the candle on the stand and lay down with him, her head pillowed beside his, watching his still face with tireless eyes. Once sudden terror seized her; for he slept so soundly that he seemed not to breathe at all. She rose on one elbow to lean above him, and held her cheek near his lips till she felt the soft warmth of his breath. She stayed there in a brooding wonder at him, and at herself; yet more and more completely she forgot herself in thoughts of this dear, weary man.

  Back in her own bed she lay awake, feeling a slow amazement at this thing which had come to her; at this incredible and overwhelming flood in which it was bliss to drown. Why, she had never seen this man until tonight; she had not heard him speak a dozen times. How was he different from other men? By what magic did he reveal to her these things she had never known before?

  “These things I’ve never known before.” She was to use these words more than once during the days that followed, telling Faunt over and over that which words could never tell, feeling always that he was far away from her, feeling always in him remoteness, ironic amusement, an indifferent tolerance. Too wise to demand of him more than he could give her, she shut her mind to this understanding, refused to acknowledge it to herself, took care never to challenge him. “You’ve taught me things I’ve never known before.” They laughed at the phrase together, but she took care not to oppress him even with her gratefulness, giving much and demanding nothing,

  During these days she denied herself to everyone, so they were completely undisturbed. It was good to see strength come back to him, to see his cheeks fill out again, to see his eyes clear, to see his rare smile. When he decided at last upon departure she did not urge him to stay; nor did she exact from him any pledge or promise. Yet at the last she said:

  “I think we’ve found something we will never lose, Faunt; you and I.”

  He smiled a little. “There are so many things in our lives which we think we’ll never lose.”

  “There’s a shadow in your eyes, my dear; but sometimes I’ve seen your eyes without that shadow.”

  “I’ll come back,” he told her. “When I need to banish it again.”

  When he was gone, she counted up the days. There had been nine of them, since that night he came. She would have given all the years of her life for those nine days.

  6

  May, 1862

  FAUNT had lived too long in a world of which he was the only resident, thinking of himself as a lonely figure upon whom life had laid a cloak of sadness which he could never cast aside. The onset of the war was an addition in kind to that old wrong inflicted upon him by the fates when his loved ones died. Just as death then had robbed him of his wife and of his child, so now war robbed him of Belle Vue, and shattered forever his ordered way of life. It was in the temper of the flagellant, who lays a scourge of thorns across his own shoulders and relishes pain, that he suffered the long misery of service in the Wise brigade in Western Virginia; the wounds he took at Roanoke and the ordeal of that terrible plodding journey up the beaches to Norfolk produced in him a sort of holy rapture. He found a mournful pleasure in thinking of himself as the chosen target of all the cruel gods, upon whom they delighted to heap most grievous wrongs.

  To be told that from his father’s loins had sprung, in a second generation, that monster in the White House was the culminating blow. Wrongs he could have continued with a meek patience to endure; but this was worse than an injury, it was an insult. His first exploding spleen gave way to reckless anger. His world was gone, the very foundation of his life withdrawn. So be it. Then Great Oak, the old house which was a part of the flesh and blood, the bone and sinew of each one of them, that too should go. In that first hour of knowledge he set it all aflame, room by room, smashing every movable thing into kindling to feed the waxing fires. He made a thorough business of it, starting in the east wing, then in the lower floors; he retreated before the flames as they advanced; and when the task was done, sated with destruction as a vulture may be sated with carrion, he rode to overtake his mother’s carriage.

  It was as much his own passions as the long tedium of the journey to Richmond which brought him near exhaustion. In Richmond he wished to escape from his mother, from Cinda, from them all; when Tony suggested they go to Mrs. Albion’s, he agreed. In this hour of his own shame, to call upon the bas
e and degraded woman who had been Tony’s mistress suited his mood. After all, who was he that he should hesitate to consort with feminine depravity; who was he to feel a righteous scorn of any man or woman?

  Who was he? Why, he was a kinsman of that murderous and apelike creature in Washington; that gluttonous beast hungry for tender flesh, thirsty for blood. His thoughts dramatized this hour in resounding phrases. Mrs. Albion would doubtless prove to be a tawdry, tinsel creature; a shiny serpent of a woman as abhorrent to any honest man as her life had been, fit company for such a man as he now felt himself to be.

  But after a first mild surprise to find she was not the sorry drab he had expected, he forgot her in listening to the words of that sandy-haired young cavalryman named Mosby. To be a soldier in battle, one among many; that in itself could never again content Faunt. He wished to deal out many deaths, and to know his victims. In his thoughts that were blurred by wine and by weariness, he imagined himself in the role Mosby described, pursuing a host of fleeing Yankees, pistolling them one by one till he came up at last to the leader of them, headlong in flight like the rest; and this leader was Lincoln, gaunt and long-armed and grotesquely tall, more like an animal than a man. Faunt in his thoughts that turned insensibly to dreams sent heavy bullets smashing into the enemy’s back; and each thudding impact was as delicious as a kiss. From sleep which brought such dreams, he did not wish to wake.

  When at last he did return to sensibility, the room in which he lay was dark; but he could see the oblong of a door obliquely illumined by the flickering light of an unseen candle. As his wits cleared, he became conscious that someone sat near him, near his bedside. He turned his head on the pillow to look that way and saw the figure of a woman, dim in the half-dark. At his movement she stirred, bowing toward him; he heard her voice.

  “Are you awake at last?”

  He recognized her voice. This was Mrs. Albion; so he and Tony must have stayed on here in her house. Why not? Why should he not do what he chose? “Yes, yes, I am awake,” he said. A sense of time returned to him. “Where is Tony?” Her head moved in denial, as though she said she did not know. “It must be late, near morning,” he reflected. Then, realizing that someone had removed his clothes, realizing more completely his condition, he lay trying to remember what had happened. “I must have slept,” he said.

  “Yes, slept the clock around.” Her voice was husky and low.

  “You serve a heady wine.” The fumes still confused him.

  “You were very tired.”

  “Where is Tony?” He repeated the question.

  After a moment she said: “I sent him away. I do not know.”

  She did not know. Well, there were things he did not know. “Who put me to bed? Tony?”

  “Milly and I.”

  He considered himself in dispassionate contempt. He had come here with Tony, to the home of this woman; he had drunk himself into a stupor; he had lain here in sodden sleep for—how long? The clock around, she said. Through the night, then, and the day, and into another night. He, Faunt Currain, who had lived all his life so proudly, had slept the clock around in this woman’s bed. He grinned in sudden realization. He, Faunt Currain, kinsman of Lincoln. Since that other was true, these depths had no terrors for him now. He could descend no lower.

  “You have been too kind to me, more than I deserved.” He spoke in gracious irony. She and her servant had put him to bed; but this woman was no doubt beyond embarrassment, inured to shameless intimacies.

  She rose. “Rest a little longer. I will bring you something. You must be hungry.” She moved toward the door, her figure for a moment silhouetted against the candlelight in the hall outside the room where he lay. He saw with approval that she moved gracefully, and her head was proud and high. Something in her quiet dignity pleased him.

  When she returned—alone, bringing a waiter laden with all he could desire—he had not moved. It was pleasant to lie relaxed and submissive, pleasant to be waited upon; pleasant to know without knowing how he knew that there dwelt in this handsome woman a readiness for rich surrender. Why should there not? Surely such a woman was past all scruples long ago. And—why should he not seize that which was so surely in his grasp? What right had he to scruples now? Below the pit in which he dwelt there was no deeper degradation. Like a man who having done one murder more easily kills again, Faunt felt himself released from long bondage to the standards he had so recently held high. While he ate sparingly, while she watched him and foresaw his wants, while they talked together—surprisingly at ease—he let his thoughts and his eyes appraise her. She must of course be older than she seemed; yes, years older than he. What was that whimsical advice old Ben Franklin had given someone or other; to take as your first mistress a woman older than yourself? Faunt’s own thoughts amused him; there was a sardonic mirth in the simplest word he said.

  Yet their words for a while were commonplace enough. Was he feeling more rested?

  “Yes. Yes, I slept away fatigue.”

  “You were very tired.”

  “We had been on the road from Great Oak all the night before and all that day. We moved my mother to Richmond, could not leave her to fall into Yankee hands.”

  “No.”

  He added: “And in the last confusion, the house caught fire and burned. We could see the fire behind us as we came away.”

  “I felt that there was more than physical exhaustion to tire you so. The old house burning would have been an added grief to you.”

  “Oh no. Better see it burn than leave it for the Yankees to debauch.”

  She looked at him with wise eyes. “If you felt so, perhaps you put the torch to it yourself.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps indeed I did.”

  “Coffee?” She filled his cup again. “Tony has told me the beauty of Great Oak.”

  That she should speak of Tony thus simply and straightforwardly impressed him. She must know he knew the truth. This woman had strength in her. To cover his own thoughts he spoke of the man he had met here when he first came to her house.

  “Mr. Mosby is a striking person.”

  “Mr. Berry brought him. I had not met him before.”

  “His idea of pistolling Yankees, that is a sport which would appeal to me.”

  Her eyes for a moment clouded, as though she gave this possibility more consideration than his casual remark on its surface deserved. “I know nothing of such matters,” she said.

  He smiled. “I think you know more than you admit.” He was comfortable and at ease with her, sure of some strong bond between them. “I think you have a gift for listening. Perhaps that’s why the little editor—what was his name?”

  “Mr. Berry.”

  “Perhaps that’s why he admires you. A woman, to be considered brilliant by men, need only hold up a mirror in which they can see themselves reflected.”

  She said in a low tone: “No woman is complete except as the mirror of some man.”

  He smiled. “I have also heard it said that no man is complete unless he is nourished by some woman’s love.”

  Her eyes met his. “Tony has told me that you are incomplete. Alone.”

  He felt a momentary anger at this intrusion into his heart, and with an instinct to give wound for wound, he said: “You’ve known Tony a long time?”

  She answered simply: “I think there is nothing you do not know about Tony and me.” He felt himself reproved. She rose to take away the waiter with the soiled dishes; and when she reached the door he was afraid she would not return.

  “But all that is past,” he said, wishing to placate her.

  “Past, yes,” she assented. She set the waiter on a table outside the door, returned to stand beside him. “Milly has cleaned your garments. They are in the wardrobe there. The bathing room is across the hall. If you wish to sleep, do. If you wish to find me, I will be near.”

  He looked up at her, relishing this moment; he smiled in a quizzical way. “Why should I wish to—find you?”

  After
a moment she said: “I hope you will.”

  “I must go back to—my mother, the others.”

  “Must you? You need not.” She held his eyes a moment longer, then moved away.

  Faunt did not at once arise from where he lay. Her eyes and her tone, more than her words—and her words were open enough—left no doubt in him. Then—why scruple? Who was he to hold himself so high? For a moment, despair swept through him like hot desert winds; but—to remember her, the rich sheen of her heavy hair, her deep warm tones, the poise of her head, was comfort and assuagement. Half in self-scorn, half in hunger, he dressed and went to her.