House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  With the first break in the wind, though the rain still fell, Longstreet returned and gathered his brigade commanders and gave orders for a move at dawn. “General Hill has felt out the Yankee positions on this side of the Chickahominy,” he said. “We’ll break them before reinforcements can reach them, roll up the reinforcements as they come in.” His tone was calm and sure. “Hill will open the attack, and we’ll cross to the Williamsburg road and go in to support him.” There were detailed instructions to be given, preparations to be made. Since the wagons would not be needed at the scene of the prospective action, Trav had nothing immediate to do; but when the others had gone he asked doubtfully:

  “General, how long a march must the men make? The whole country will be flooded tomorrow.”

  “Not long; an hour or two.” Longstreet added in a high confidence: “And this storm and the flood will be worth two divisions to us. It will raise the river, wreck McClellan’s bridges, cut his army in half. We’ll crush the half that lies south of the river, then turn on the other half whenever we choose.”

  “You think we’ll beat them?”

  Longstreet’s eyes blazed. “Currain, we’ll pitchfork the Yankees into the swamp with our bayonets as easily as tossing hay!” He added contemptuously: “General Smith is better at discovering obstacles than expedients.” General Smith would command the Confederate left, Longstreet the right. “But our task is so simple it’s hard to see how even he can go wrong.”

  At first light the men fell in, and Trav heard the company officers checking each man’s supply of ammunition. Most of the regiments now had cartridges and had been taught how to bite them open and ram them home. He heard too the repeated admonitions. “Take your time, aim low, pick your target. It’s better to wound a Yankee than to kill him, because then it will take two men to carry him off the field and you’ll put three men out of action instead of only one. Pick off the officers, don’t stop to plunder, don’t stop to help your own wounded. If you straggle you’ll be shot as cowards. Do your duty.” The men answered with a derisive jocularity, and Trav thought this was their way of concealing from themselves as well as from their fellows the teeth-chattering apprehension which even the bravest might justly feel.

  When the division extended itself along the road to the east, the men plodded and floundered through heavy mud; and their march presently was halted by flood waters in Gillies Creek. A wagon was manhandled into the deepest water and planks were laid across it from bank to bank to form a foot bridge. Trav thought time might have been saved by bidding the men wade, holding their muskets and their cartridge boxes over their heads. While they went slowly, single file, across the rude bridge, a messenger said General Huger’s division was behind them with a longer march to make and wished to pass. So when they were across, they drew off the road to let this force go by and take the lead. General Huger came to speak to General Longstreet, and Trav heard Huger ask the date of Longstreet’s commission; and in a rising impatience at so much delay he resented this discussion of rank at such a time.

  The long morning of sluggish advance and endless waiting was his first experience of that terrible suspense which precedes the hour of battle. Here were thousands of mud-spattered men trudging through mire like so many flies caught in a sticky pool of molasses, pushing on to come at other men and kill them. He hated this vast futility, this squandering of strength and effort; and his hatred took the form of wrathful haste. Since the thing must be done, let it be done, and quickly!

  When the road was clear of Huger’s men they pushed on, and took a crossroad that turned south to intersect the Williamsburg pike which would lead them toward the enemy position. They passed the disused tracks of the York River railroad; and just beyond, Longstreet paused at a house set on a low eminence. The road below them was for a while filled with marching men who moved and paused and moved again while the morning slipped away. When at last a signal gun sounded to the eastward, a stir of relief ran through the group, and Trav felt his own pulse beat and pound. Now at last action would put a period to the intolerable strain of these tedious hours.

  That first gun, like a pitch pipe that sets the key, touched off the hoarse chorus of cannon fire and then of musketry which opened the battle. When Longstreet swung his mount to go nearer, they followed him. Trav rode Nig, and the big horse, exulting in his strength, bounded ahead so violently that for half a mile Trav could not check him. When he had gentled the beast to a more moderate gait the others came up, and the General called jocosely:

  “Your horse knows the first law of the soldier, Captain: to march to the sound of the guns. Hold him hard, or he’ll carry you up to the cannon’s mouth.”

  They halted again on a swell of ground that was high enough to let them overlook the wooded lowlands of the swamp ahead. Clouds of smoke rose from among the trees to drift away to the southward on the cool northwest wind. Not far away a battery was firing, and volleys of musketry flung at them a spatter of half-muffled sound, and Trav heard the shrill shouts of men like hounds on a hot track. Nig stood with pricked ears, staring off in that direction. His head was high, he mouthed the bit; and Trav felt the beast’s excitement. He himself was trembling, and when Nig sidled to and fro, it was as much under Trav’s restless hand as from the horse’s own impulse.

  Beside the pike below them, troops in reserve stood in ordered ranks; and every man’s eyes turned to the sounds of battle not a quarter-mile away. Trav watched Longstreet and wondered how he could sit so impassively. Perhaps by some sixth sense the General had learned to feel even at this distance the pulse of the conflict, to comprehend it as a whole. Messengers came to report, to receive orders, to gallop away again. Under Trav’s hand Nig sidled toward the General; and Longstreet looked at Nig and smiled faintly.

  “Your horse wants to take a hand in that business, Captain.”

  Trav said: “I believe you can tell, even from here, how it goes.”

  The other nodded. “It goes well. We’re driving them. Some of our troops are catching a little flanking fire, and green regiments are as sensitive as a virgin about their flanks; but they’ll steady down.”

  His attention returned to the battle sounds, and Trav watched the road and saw a trickle of litter-bearers there; and ambulances were coming from the rear to receive the wounded and carry them away. Among the ambulances a handsome carriage appeared, and Trav wondered what madman chose such a day and such a road to drive for pleasure, and went down to halt the carriage and turn it back; but before he reached the road the vehicle pulled up to receive a freight of hurt men. Their blood stained the silk upholstery, and Nig snorted at the smell of it; and Trav saw that the carriage was driven by a white-haired old gentleman with the fine blue eyes of a child. Trav stayed there, watching the bloody fruits of battle drift back along the road. He saw a man with a hole torn through his cheeks so that his teeth were redly visible, and he saw a man with an arm gone above the elbow who gripped the stump with his other hand while blood leaked through his fingers, and he saw a man who bent double as he walked and cradled his body in his arms, and his arms were crimson with a bright cascade. This man for some strange reason stopped and loosed his trousers and squatted down and then fell sidewise and could not rise again, scrabbling at the grass with weak fingers. Trav felt the rising pound and throb of his own pulse like the beat of a nearing drum. His heart drove his blood so hard that a red blur dulled his vision; the grass, the trees, the very sky were fogged with this red haze. He narrowed his eyes the better to see; he looked toward the woods yonder with a surge of hate; hate of battle, hate of the enemy, hate of war. His hand was hard on the reins; and Nig resented it, tugging, tossing his head. Trav with a furious wrench flung the horse back up the rise of ground, checked Nig at Longstreet’s side.

  “General, can’t I do anything?” he demanded.

  Longstreet looked at him calmly; his voice was gentle. “I’ve heard you say you were not a soldier, Captain.”

  “I know. But——”

 
; Trav’s head swung again; there was something new in those sounds yonder. For a moment neither man spoke.

  Then Longstreet said quietly: “Seems to be some confusion off there. By this time Rains should be advancing, past the enemy’s left.” He nodded in decision. “Very well, Currain, go tell General Rains to make his move.”

  Trav wheeled Nig, stopping to ask no questions, not knowing where he was to go and not caring. He loosed Nig, gave the horse its head. Nig took a fence like a bird soaring, and Trav felt his hat whisk away and did not care. Nig bore him without guidance across the road and across the sodden field toward the dark border of the wood. Scattering wounded men were limping painfully toward the rear; and Trav saw one of them go down under a bullet stroke. Every joint and muscle in the man seemed to let go in an instant. He fell as though he had been slammed violently to earth; his body seemed to bounce up from the solid ground before it lay still. Nig leaped over the limp form, racing on. Ahead, the battle sounds were a shouting welcome, a clangorous summons, a high inspiring challenge. Trav rode to the fight as a lover hastes to his mistress, grudging each moment till he comes to her ardent arms.

  8

  May–une, 1862

  THROUGH that tormented month after she knew of Tommy’s that tormented month after she knew of Tommy’s death and Julian’s vanishing, Cinda was grateful because her house and her hands were so full. The house, even with Mrs. Currain gone, was crammed to overflowing. To accommodate everyone required not only management but a willingness on all their parts to accept some inconvenience. Jenny and little Janet slept in one great bed, the baby in his small crib beside them; and Cinda gave Enid too a room to herself. “Trav may sometimes be here,” she pointed out, and wondered at Enid’s faint smile. Lucy, almost a young lady, slept with Vesta; and when Cinda asked Vesta whether the child was a trouble Vesta said gently:

  “Oh no, Mama. She’s a sweet little thing, ever so thoughtful and considerate.” She added honestly: “And—she’s nice to cuddle up to when I lie awake at night.”

  Cinda made no comment, not trusting her own voice, grateful because Vesta, since she knew she would one day bear Tommy’s child, was no longer bitter with grief. They told no one else, though Cinda thought Barbara guessed the truth, and of course old June knew without being told.

  Barbara, like Enid, had a room of her own; and Burr, whenever he could, rode into Richmond if only for an hour. He went with Stuart toward Fredericksburg to keep an eye upon McDowell, till McDowell’s army drew back toward Washington. Then the cavalry returned to be at hand if they were needed here and he came almost every day.

  Once Faunt came with him. Cinda had heard from Brett what Burr reported about their search for Julian, and about Faunt’s needless killing of those drunken Yankees, so she was not surprised to see a troubling difference in her brother. She tried to lead him to talk of those letters Tilda had found, thinking that to speak of them might ease him; but he laughed and said they were of no importance.

  “Tilda always was a Paul Pry,” he reminded Cinda. “Dragging into the light things better left hidden.”

  “It was all so long ago,” she urged. It was not like Faunt to speak unkindly of Tilda—or of anyone. “None of us need be distressed about it.”

  “Certainly not,” he agreed. “We’ve all thought too much about pride of family, pride of blood; but I’ve learned that one man’s blood is as red as another’s—and flows as easily.” He grinned in a crooked fashion. “And vermin infest the garments of a Currain as readily as though he were the lowest white trash.”

  She recognized the rancor in him; but that too, like Vesta’s grief, like the agony of her own thoughts of Julian, must be left to healing time. Men and women had an astonishing resilience, an astonishing capacity for endurance. Last summer when Clayton was killed she had thought life could inflict upon her no keener pain; but this uncertainty about Julian was infinitely more tormenting. There were hours when she felt she would rather know he was dead than spend every waking hour in wretched conjecture. She resented the empty hopes Brett held out for her to grasp, resented sympathy from any quarter. While Faunt was still here Anne Tudor came to ask whether there was any news of Julian. “He was so sweet, Mrs. Currain,” she said. “I was ever so fond of him.”

  Cinda bit her lip to hold back an angry word. If Anne had been fond of Julian why had she not let him see her fondness? But then Faunt drawled: “Being sweet is no armor against bullets, Anne.”

  So Cinda was instantly Anne’s partisan, furious at Faunt for that wounding word; and she saw Anne look at him with wide, bewildered eyes. When the girl was gone, she said reproachfully:

  “You shouldn’t hurt that child, Faunt. She’s devoted to you.”

  “To me?” He laughed harshly. “The sooner she forgets all about me, the better.”

  “It’s not like you to—hurt anyone.”

  “Not like me?” His face set in hard lines. “What am I like, Cinda? Who am I? Does anyone know? Do I myself know—of what I may be capable?”

  She laid aside her knitting, unable to sit still, and rose and went to the mantel to touch the prisms dangling from the girandole and set them tinkling; she turned to look at the gay hues of the artificial flowers under their glass bell on the card table. In spite of the glass which protected them, they were a little dusty. Vesta or Jenny must attend to that; the flowers were too delicate for awkward black hands.

  She had been silent too long; she must say something. “Men make themselves what they choose, Faunt.”

  “Without benefit of ancestors?” Derisive mirth rang in his tones. “Why, then, so will I, Cinda. So will I!” His laugh was frightening, and she left him, and went up to her room to be alone. When a little later, ashamed of her own flight, sure she could somehow help him, she came down again, he was gone.

  During that month of May, more and more troops passed through Richmond, keeping as much as possible on the cross streets to avoid being seen from the Yankee balloons which every day hung in the distant sky. On the last Thursday in the month, Brett’s company of Howitzers marched up from Petersburg; and Mr. Hutcheson had a welcoming feast prepared for them at Mayo’s Warehouse, and Vesta and Dolly went to help serve them. Afterward they moved out to the Williams farm east of the city and went into camp there; but Brett returned to spend the night at home. He said Johnston would attack McClellan tomorrow or the next day. “That’s why we’re here,” he explained.

  Cinda closed her eyes, pressed the lids tight shut, opened them again and as though to clear her vision shook her head. “I can’t—Don’t talk about it, please. Oh I know there will be many battles. When they come, I can stand them. But—I don’t want to fight them beforehand.”

  He came to hold her close and hard. “We’ll get along, Cinda.”

  “Oh yes.” She hesitated, spoke at random. “I keep busy. That helps. It’s a problem just to keep our table supplied. Prices go up every day. Any meat at all is fifty cents the pound, and butter is more than that, and tea costs two dollars a pound—if you can get it. General Winder has ordered that prices shan’t go up, but that just means there’s nothing sold in the regular stores. I hunt out hideous little hole-and-corner places and pay whatever they ask and feel like a spy.” She added: “I hate letting them impose on me, but we have to eat.”

  He nodded grimly. “Richmond is full of greedy people getting rich on our necessities. Every fancy man in the South is here to make his fortune, selling blockade goods, running gambling hells to milk the soldiers, turning any dishonest penny he can.”

  “They’re just scum,” she assented. “But at least the Richmond we know, the people we know are fine.” She added: “Except perhaps Redford Streean, and people like Captain Pew!”

  “Who is he?”

  “Dolly’s latest beau. He’s a blockade-runner. Tilda loves to come and boast about how he keeps them supplied with tea and coffee and all the things that are so high. Gloating over me. I’d like to slap her.”

  He chuckled appr
ovingly. “That sounds more like you.”

  “If it weren’t for the babies I just wouldn’t pay the high prices,” she declared. “I don’t feel respectable doing it. I’d rather go hungry!”

  “Oh it hasn’t come to that yet,” he assured her.

  Next morning Brett rose early to return to his guns. Before dinner Enid came home in a high excitement to say there would be a battle tomorrow.

  “I stopped at Dolly’s,” she explained. “And Captain Pew came while I was there, and he says Secretary Randolph says we’ll attack at daylight. General Johnston’s going to surprise the Yankees and just smash them.” Cinda asked in a dry tone how he could surprise them if all Richmond knew his plans; and Enid confessed she didn’t know. “Captain Pew says some Yankee cavalry actually rode into Richmond last night, so I suppose they do know, really.”

  “There are plenty of Union sympathizers to tell them,” Cinda agreed. “And none of us have learned to keep our tongues still. We’re all just a lot of prattling children.”

  “Captain Pew says he’ll get a carriage and take Dolly and me out to see them fight,” Enid told her, and she asked: “Do you s’pose Vesta’d like to go? You know, to sort of take her mind off herself?”