House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “You can ask her,” Cinda said curtly. Enid would always be a fool

  She hoped Brett would come home again that night, but when after dinner the storm broke she knew he would not. No one would face this gale and this deluge unless he must. The rain would make the roads muddy tomorrow. Would that prevent their fighting? Certainly the guns could not be moved, so perhaps Brett need have no share in the conflict after all. She nursed this hope like a prayer.

  Next morning Captain Pew and Dolly came in the carriage to pick Enid up; but Cinda and Vesta and the others stayed indoors, and Cinda listened for the first dreadful clamor of the guns. As the hours passed she found herself whispering: “Why don’t they begin? Why don’t they begin?” Let them begin, the sooner to be done with their bloody business, so those who lived might come home to her again.

  They were at dinner when a distant mutter and grumble at last set the windows rattling; and for a little they were silent, listening. Then Cinda led them into talk again; led them to talk of anything at all so that their voices might distract the ear and make it possible to ignore those distant sounds that were like the growl of a carnivorous beast slavering over the flesh he rends and tears. When, hours later, Tilda rushed into the house to say that cartloads of wounded were coming into town and that their help was needed, Cinda welcomed the summons. “Mrs. Brownlaw wants just everyone,” Tilda declared. “They say we’re giving the Yankees a wonderful thrashing; but hundreds of poor hurt boys are already here.”

  Cinda said she would go and so would Vesta. Barbara could not, and Jenny would stay with her. Tilda said Mayo’s Warehouse would be used as a hospital; she bade them go there, then hurried away to enlist others in this cause. Cinda waited to collect cloth to serve for bandages while June filled two hampers with such things as the men might relish; she added a bottle of brandy and two bottles of wine. Then they set out.

  During the hours that followed—they stayed till late that night when Brett came to find them and to fetch them home—Cinda lost herself in serving. A year ago after Clayton’s death she had tended wounded men compassionately and prayerfully, as though by comforting them she helped Clayton too; but that experience had been terrible and sickening. This was not. Then she had suffered with the suffering men. Now, without sharing their suffering, she comprehended it the more completely and found ways to ease it. She stayed the seeping blood that welled from open wounds and never knew that her own hands and arms were smeared. She cleansed men whose hurts had made them soil themselves with no more repugnance than she felt in changing little Clayton. She forgot herself in bestowing herself upon these hurt ones. To attend to their needs ceased to be an ordeal and a sacrifice. Their wounds were no longer hideous and revolting; their agonies no longer a lash laid across her own flesh. She could draw together the edges of a wound with no more feeling than if it had been a rent in Brett’s coat which she mended.

  She was unconscious of this difference, unconscious of any strain or any fatigue until she rose from where she had been kneeling beside a boy whose jaw was shot away, whose whole face was a wound, and turned to find Brett here beside her. Seeing him whole and unhurt and as he had always been was an unbearable relief, so that her knees gave way and but for his supporting hands she would have fallen. He held her for a moment, steadying her.

  “Jenny told me where you were,” he said. “You’ve done enough for tonight. I brought the carriage. Where is Vesta?”

  She looked along the shadowed length of the warehouse. The huge place was lighted only by lanterns set on the floor or held in hand. The surgeons were busy, the air a murmur of many blended cries and groans.

  “She’s here somewhere,” she said emptily.

  They found Vesta sitting on the floor beside a man whose hand she held in both her own. She was leaning back against the wall, and her eyes were closed; but there was light enough from a lantern somewhere near so that they saw the glazed eyes of the man whose hand she held. Cinda went to her and knelt and loosed her grip on the dead man’s hand. Vesta’s eyes opened and she saw her mother; but at once, remembering, she caught the man’s hand again.

  “No, no, Mama,” she cried softly. “I promised to stay with him. He wanted me to stay with him.”

  “He’s not here any more, darling,” Cinda whispered. “He doesn’t need you now.”

  Vesta looked at the dead boy and saw that this was true; and Brett said: “We’ll go home, now, dear.”

  “Do I have to, Papa? He wanted me to stay.” Vesta looked along the floor where lay these dozens of hurt men. “There are so many. So many.”

  “You’re tired, tonight. Tomorrow.” Brett spoke firmly. “I’m taking you both home now.”

  At home they found Jenny waiting. “Enid’s just gone upstairs,” she said. “She was full of talk. Barbara’s asleep long ago.” She looked at Vesta and at Cinda in full understanding. “Vesta, I’ll go up with you.”

  So these two went up the stairs together, and Brett and Cinda followed; and he helped Cinda remove the dark stains of her labors, asking no questions, gentle as a woman. When she was in bed, he turned out the gas and came beside her and she asked:

  “Have you seen Burr?”

  “No, but the cavalry was not engaged. Nor were we. And Trav’s work doesn’t take him into the fighting.”

  “Did we beat them?” She was too tired to care, yet the question was like a duty.

  “I think so. Some say General Huger was late; that if he had been on time we’d have won a great victory. I don’t know much about it. We waited at our camp all day, were never ordered to move at all. The loads of wounded came past us.” And he said: “Sleep now, Cinda. You’re tired as tired can be.”

  Cinda meant to go early to the hospital next morning; but she slept till June woke her. She looked for Brett’s head on the pillow beside her own, but he was not there. “He done gone befoah day,” June told her. “He tolt me not tuh wake you up nohow, but I ‘lowed you’d want to git up time foh chu’ch.”

  “Oh, is it Sunday?”

  “Sho is.”

  Cinda lay still. She heard guns. So they were fighting again. “Is Miss Vesta awake?”

  “No, ma’am. Don’t look like she eveh gwine tuh wake up.”

  “Let her sleep while she can.” Cinda took the coffee June had brought. With coffee a dollar and a half a pound, she ought to give it up. To be sure, they could afford it. Thank Heaven they had plenty of money. But to charge so much for coffee was plain robbery.

  She had little appetite for breakfast, was glad when Jenny came to her. They went to St. Paul’s together. When they walked homeward along Grace Street there was no longer any roll of guns to the eastward, so the battle was done; but there remained the wounded, and Cinda would have gone to them had not Vesta, awake at last, insisted she would go if her mother did. So Cinda stayed at home, but next day Tilda came again to summon them. Cinda spent most of that day on her knees with a pail of soapy water and a filthy rag, scrubbing and wringing and scrubbing again, fetching fresh water when that in the pail was more grimy than the floor, finding refreshment in this menial task, glad to be busy, to be at work, to be worn out and sweating with fatigue, to feel her bruised knees ache and her soap-burned hands dry and parched.

  When she and Vesta went home at last, she wanted nothing so much as rest and sleep; but Trav had brought General Longstreet for supper, and she mustered strength to make them welcome.

  “Just give me time to freshen up,” she said. When she came down again, Brett was at the door, and sight of him made her forget weariness awhile.

  The men fell into talk of these events just done, and she saw that Longstreet was pleased with Trav. “This brother of yours, Cousin Cinda, has been hiding his light under a bushel!” he said. “Have you heard of his behavior Saturday?”

  Trav’s face was brick-red with embarrassment, and Enid cried: “Why, General, has Trav disgraced himself? It’s your fault for expecting him to be anything but a farmer!”

  The General sa
id almost roughly: “If he’s a farmer, I wish I had more farmers like him in my command.” Enid was silenced, and Longstreet added with a relenting chuckle: “He’s assured me more than once that he would never make a soldier; but at the hottest of it Saturday I saw him itching to take a hand. Just then our work along the Williamsburg road was out of joint. General Rains seemed behindhand with his move. To give Captain Currain some outlet for his eagerness, I sent him to ask Rains to take up his share of the contention.” He smiled in his beard. “Captain Currain rode a great black war horse that scented the battle afar off; and I suppose the horse must be blamed for the master’s disobedience. Instead of finding General Rains, as I had ordered, Captain Currain rode into the thick of it.”

  Trav said honestly: “I didn’t know where I was going, sir.”

  “You went where help was needed,” Longstreet assured him, and he told the others: “There had been heavy work. Half the officers and many men were down, dead, or wounded and drowning in the flood waters through which they had made their battle. Anderson’s brigade and Garland’s—General Garland is Louisa’s cousin, you know, Cousin Cinda—were in confusion. Captain Currain joined Micah Jenkins and lent his weight to the struggle there.” His tone became serious enough. “Colonel Jenkins reports that he was as good as another regiment. He led a column through the Yankee abatis, that great horse of his thrashing down every obstacle. They overran everything in their way till Captain Currain brought the men who followed him up to the line of the railroad. Between them they swept every Yankee out of the woods south of the embankment.” He smiled at Trav. “Yes, Captain; if I had a few more farmers like you I could march into Washington this summer.”

  Trav grinned, miserable under praise; but Enid protested: “Why, General, I declare I think you’re telling fairy tales! I just can’t imagine Trav being so bloodthirsty!”

  “Bloodthirsty?” the General smiled. “I don’t know as to that. Were you armed, Captain?”

  Trav hesitated. “I don’t think so, sir. Not unless I picked up a weapon somewhere. I’ve never worn side arms.”

  Longstreet threw back his head in a great laugh. “Don’t think so?” he echoed. “Don’t you know, Captain?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not.” Trav said slowly: “I was pretty excited, and I’d seen our wounded, and I hated the whole business, and Nig did really run away with me. I don’t remember much about it. I remember smashing through some down timber, and up to a redoubt. There were two houses exactly alike, not very big, but they stuck up in the air. We went on into the woods, into another abatis.” He grinned faintly. “Poor Nig is full of splinters. Big Mill has been picking them out of his hide, putting salve on his hurts, ever since.” He said slowly: “I don’t think I did anything. I think it was mostly just that Nig broke a path through the brush, and some of the men followed us along.”

  “Put it any way you choose,” Longstreet assented in an amused tone. “But I’d like more officers of your cut, Captain.”

  Trav colored, and Enid drawled teasingly: “Why, Trav, think of you turning out to be a soldier!” Cinda looked toward her in slow anger, and after a moment Brett spoke.

  “General, I’ve heard it said we missed an opportunity yesterday?”

  Longstreet made a harsh sound. “Yes. Of course. Saturday evening General Johnston was hit. A shell fragment knocked him off his horse, so General Smith took over the command. I saw him at one o’clock Sunday morning. My men were up to the railroad, the Yankees behind it, General Smith on their flank. I urged an attack at dawn, with his guns to break their line and my men to catch them off balance and thrust them back into the river. But Sedgwick had punished General Smith severely the day before; so he was full of fears but not of fight. He left me to make the battle alone.” His voice hardened with anger. “Opportunity? Yes, sir, it was tossed away! But now General Smith has reported sick, left the army.” He laughed scornfully. “His departure strengthens us as much as if we’d won a victory.”

  “I hear General Lee has been given the command. What do you think of him?”

  Longstreet hesitated. “Well, he’s a staff man, and line officers always distrust staff in command; but despite his inexperience in field work, I have high hopes of Lee. Certainly he can do no worse than General Smith.” He stirred. “Well, Captain, we must return to headquarters.”

  Trav rose; but he said gravely: “May I report back at daylight, General? It’s some time since I’ve seen my—children.”

  Enid protested in quick dismay: “Oh Trav, you can’t stay here!”

  There was a moment’s silence; but when Trav did not speak, Longstreet said: “Very well, Captain. I’ll expect you in the morning.”

  He turned to Cinda to bid her good night. At the same time Enid came to Trav’s side, and whispered to him; but Trav said, loud enough so that they all heard: “I will stay here.”

  Enid recoiled, and without a word darted away and up the stairs. For an awkward moment no one moved. Then Cinda said quietly:

  “Good night, Cousin Jeems. Come whenever you can.”

  When the General was gone, Trav turned to Cinda. “Which is our room?” he asked. She told him. “I think I’ll go along up,” he said.

  Cinda and Brett were left alone; and Brett, looking after Trav, asked curiously: “What’s all that, do you suppose?”

  She shook her head. “But Brett, there’s a change in Travis.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, but you heard what Cousin Jeems said about the battle, and you saw the way Travis silenced Enid. He never did that before. He’s changed, Brett. He’s not the same.”

  9

  May—June, 1862

  ENID, having decided to leave Trav and having told him so, was at once terrified at her own daring and delighted with her newly asserted freedom. Words were not deeds, to decide was not to act, intention was not performance; but she forgot this. There were times when she wished to share with someone her determined jubilation. Dolly might have understood, and she and Dolly were congenial. When the other had no beaux in train they were much together; and in fact Dolly sometimes invited Enid’s presence even under those circumstances, especially if Captain Pew were to be her escort.

  “He’s such a rascal, really,” she told Enid in a gay pretense of terror. “If I were ever quite alone with him I just don’t know what he’d do!”

  Enid agreed that Captain Pew was a wickedly charming man. He paid her polite compliments in a way which sent cold shivers down her spine; and he was obviously wild about Dolly. “I expect you’ll marry him some day,” she predicted; and Dolly laughed and tossed her head, and said:

  “Oh perhaps, but not for a long time. It’s such fun to make him do his tricks, like a great dangerous lion who may just gobble you up at a bite any minute, and yet never quite does so.”

  But Enid knew Dolly’s wayward tongue too well to confide in her; and also there lay in the back of her mind a doubt, which she refused to admit, of the finality of her action. For one thing, she was no longer sure of her love for Faunt. It had been easy enough, during those weeks when she tended him so devotedly, to imagine that he was all the world to her; but now when she rarely saw him there were hours and even days when she forgot him. For another thing, she was sufficiently levelheaded to know that Faunt would never love her.

  And also, always, something in her yearned for Trav. That night at Great Oak when she cast him out, his submission was an affront; and after he was gone she lay in a drench of sad and desolated tears. Surely, surely if he loved her he would not so tamely let her go. Since then she had prodded him with a barbed tongue, not because she wished to wound him, but because she sought to rouse him to some violence of word and deed, to shatter that invulnerable surface he wore, to make his eyes upon her blaze and burn. He ignored her gibes, so he did not care; and Faunt would never love her, so she wept in loneliness and despair.

  But if these high and mighty Currains had no use for her, she could always go to her m
other. She had never been in Mrs. Albion’s pleasant little house; but one day, in Mr. Ezekiel’s shop on Main Street—his shelves were well laden with blockade goods, with moire, and brocades, and cassimeres, and with shawls and scarves, though all at prices that dismayed her—she had to wait for attention, and she saw a book lying on the counter, a Richmond Directory published six years before and ragged from many handlings. She picked it up in idle curiosity. Its first forty or fifty pages were full of advertisements. She studied them and felt that instant awakening of unsuspected desires, that greedy eagerness to possess objects whose very existence has been unsuspected which they were designed to arouse. At the end of the advertisements began pages of names and addresses; she turned the first page, and on the second, as so often happens, a familiar name seemed to leap out of the mass of type on the page and catch her eye . . . Akins, Albert, Albert, Albion!

  Thus she learned the street on which her mother lived. But she did not wish anyone to know when she went there; so, instead of asking Cinda for the carriage, she walked as far as the Spottswood and took a hackney cab and at her mother’s door bade the driver wait for her.

  The Negress who answered her ring said Mrs. Albion was not at home and Enid was almost relieved; for at the last moment she had felt her courage fail. After all, it was years since she had seen her mother or sought to see her; and there might be no welcome for her now. In the cab again she looked back and glimpsed some movement at an upper window, so probably her mother had been at home after all! To think that this door too was closed against her made her both wistful and angry. Next time she would insist on being admitted!

  But she did not go again till after Julian’s disappearance. Trav asked her to do nothing that might distress Cinda. She promised, but to defy him might at least shake him out of his stolidity, so she repeated her venture. This time, so Trav would be sure to know, she asked Cinda if she could use the carriage. “I want to call on Mama,” she explained. “I haven’t seen her for so long. I really should.”