House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  They landed at the wharf at the foot of Sixth Street to find a whisper of foreboding excitement in the throng there, and to meet more than one suspicious challenge. Anne pressed close to Cinda, and when they were presently in a hackney cab she said admiringly:

  “Aunt Cinda, I just don’t see how you do it! You don’t get excited or anything, and you seem to manage so wonderfully.”

  But Cinda was silent, watching the scenes through which they passed, the crowded streets, the uniforms everywhere, the laden wagons crawling toward the wharves; and Anne thought it was as though an overwhelming flood moved sluggishly and ponderously on and on to destroy the South and all the fine gentle folk she loved.

  The cab deposited them at Mr. Gilby’s door. Cinda thought the fare exorbitant and said so; but the driver said reasonably: “Some’d charge you more, ma’am.” She had brought gold currency to meet their expenses on the journey; and she paid him and climbed the steps and rang the bell, and a Negro butler admitted them to what seemed to Anne a richly beautiful house, with Nottingham lace curtains at every window, marble-topped tables, walnut chairs and sofas upholstered in glistening hair cloth, ingrain carpets, bric-a-brac wherever there was room for it. Daniel Gilby had for years been Brett’s good friend, and when Mrs. Gilby came swooping down to welcome them, she embraced them both.

  “We’ve been expecting you, Cinda,” she declared. “Dan wrote Brett as soon as he found Julian, and I knew you’d come. Dan has seen the poor boy. He’s been terribly sick of course; but he’s getting better, and he’s going to be all right.”

  Cinda confessed that Mr. Gilby’s letter had not reached them. “A Northern doctor, Dr. Murfin, brought me word he was alive. Anne and I started next day. I want to go to him at once.”

  Mrs. Gilby nodded easily. “Dan will be home for dinner, and I’m sure he can arrange it, though Mr. Stanton is horribly unreasonable about things sometimes. But we’ll see when Dan comes.” She had a lively tongue; and as she chattered on, Anne wondered that Aunt Cinda could listen so patiently. Mrs. Gilby said Washington had been very quiet since Congress adjourned, and Anne, remembering the crowded streets thronged with men, civilians in stovepipe hats and high boots, ladies in vast swaying hoops, soldiers in every fantastic variety of uniform, marching regiments, trundling wagons plowing through the mud, wondered what it had been like before. “Of course it’s different now, with so many new regiments coming in all the time and marching off to Virginia,” Mrs. Gilby confessed, and then in quick apology: “I shouldn’t talk of such things, Cinda; but we can’t pretend to ignore them, can we?”

  “No, we can’t ignore them,” Cinda agreed. She seemed undisturbed by Mrs. Gilby’s volubility; but it was a relief to Anne when Mr. Gilby presently appeared. She liked him at once; a chubby, bald little man, clean shaven, beaming with good will. Cinda wished to go to Julian on the instant; but Mr. Gilby seemed doubtful.

  “There’s some excitement in town today,” he explained. “Pope’s telegraph has been cut, and there’s a report that your cavalry has raided the railroad and destroyed our supply depot at Manassas Junction. All sorts of rumors are flying around. So officials won’t have much time for us.”

  “I promised to report to the Provost Marshal,” Cinda remembered.

  “Well, we’ll do that first. His office is in the Gwin house. Then we’ll have to get a permission from the Surgeon General.” He hesitated. “I don’t know your—hopes.”

  “To see Julian, first; after that, when he can travel, to take him home.”

  “Well, we’ll see, we’ll see.” Yet Anne felt the doubts in him. “I wrote you his condition.”

  “I didn’t get your letter. I know he’s been very ill, ever since May.” Cinda said almost humbly: “I haven’t thought of anything but coming to him.”

  “H-m!” Anne saw his deep distress, saw his sidelong glance at Mrs. Gilby. “H-m! I see. I see.” He touched his chin with his finger. “Ah, yes, I see,” he repeated in a deep uncertainty.

  Cinda spoke evenly. “Tell me about him,” she said. “Since he’s alive, I can bear anything, I think.”

  “Oh, he’s all right,” he assured her hurriedly. “That is, he will be. There may be a little deafness. He had measles, and his ears were abscessed, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know anything.”

  “And pneumonia. And—er—well, I’m no doctor. The terminology escapes me.”

  “He was wounded, I know,” Cinda prompted.

  “Oh yes, yes, wounded to be sure. They tell me it’s miraculous that he’s alive at all. They think early amputation best, but in his case there was no broken bone, just a heavy hemorrhage; so they delayed.”

  Anne saw Cinda’s color drain away; and Mrs. Gilby, more understanding than Anne had expected, suddenly rose and came to take Cinda in her arms, and she said impatiently to her husband: “Oh for Heaven’s sake stop being tactful! Tell her!” Then, not waiting for him to speak, “They cut his leg off, Cinda; cut it off right at the hip.” Cinda seemed to grow smaller in her arms. “But he’s alive, dear,” Mrs. Gilby added. “After all, nothing else matters. He’s alive.”

  Cinda lifted her head again. “I must see him,” she whispered.

  “To be sure,” Mr. Gilby agreed. “To be sure. We’ll arrange that, of course; just as soon as we can.”

  It was to be a long and torturing time before Cinda saw Julian. At the Provost Marshal’s that afternoon they had to wait for hours, jostled and hustled by the crowd, till too late to see the Surgeon General; and next day the flood of rumors from Pope’s army occupied every official mind and so excited the city that Mr. Gilby insisted they stay indoors. “Washington’s full of rascals, blacklegs, bummers, gamblers, sutlers, camp followers, adventurers of every scoundrelly sort; and most of them will be drunk today, waiting for news from Pope.” Thursday was worse, with reports of a Union disaster; and distant cannon could be faintly heard. Mr. Gilby said people were scurrying into Maryland, frightened by the report that Pope was beaten, that General Lee was already approaching the Chain Bridge with two hundred thousand men. Friday the guns were louder and the panic grew; Saturday was a sullen angry day when the air shook with distant cannonading.

  For those days they could not hope to meet the Surgeon General. Late Saturday afternoon Mr. Gilby came home, and Anne thought he was divided between sympathy and triumph. It was hard to remember that he was a Yankee; he was so friendly and kind. “There’s a War Department bulletin,” he told them. “It says we’ve won a great and dreadful battle; but there are thousands of our men wounded and the call is out for every surgeon and every nurse who can be spared. They’re leaving the Maryland Avenue depot by trainloads, and hundreds are waiting all the way from Willard’s to the Surgeon General’s office for carriages and ambulances and anything else that will take them off to the battlefield. Long Bridge is jammed—hacks, wagons, everything.” He added regretfully: “I don’t know when you will be able to see Julian, Mrs. Dewain. Every hospital’s in confusion now.”

  Cinda had in these days learned patience, and she nodded in submission; but Anne, when they were alone that night, asked pitifully: “Aunt Cinda, do you think they really beat us?”

  Cinda looked at her almost in surprise. “Why—I hadn’t thought about it, Anne. I hadn’t even wondered. I suppose it’s true, if the War Department says so.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “All those cannons, all those men we saw—how could General Lee hope to beat them all?”

  So Anne had her night of tears; but next day the truth reached Washington, at first in a trickling whisper, and then in a widening flood. At nightfall on Sunday Mr. Gilby came home haggard and worn.

  “Pope’s army is destroyed,” he said. “Stragglers are pouring into the city. It’s as bad as it was last year after Bull Run. Some people think Washington is lost.” His jaw set; he looked at his wife. “But I’ll be damned if I’ll run away.”

  Mrs. Gilby came to his side; she kissed him. “We’re not the kind that run away, my dear.”
Anne wondered how she could have been so blind to the goodness in this woman; and to see Mr. Gilby’s despair made her forget for a while her gladness at the South’s great victory.

  Cinda and Anne, not venturing out of doors, saw through Mr. Gilby’s eyes the frantic days that followed. Politeness kept Anne from open rejoicing, but she was full of secret triumph. Mr. Gilby said the Union army, what was left of it, was a mob; Pope was relieved of command; McClellan would try to defend Washington. Stanton was preparing to send away the government archives, and there was a steamer ready to take the President to safety.

  Monday afternoon when a terrific thunder shower joined its uproar to the blast of gunfire which seemed to come from just across the river, the streets were full of people scrambling like frightened sheep away from the coming danger. Everything that had wheels had joined the procession, and drivers swore and fought for room to move, and wheels locked, and crippled carriages were toppled on their sides in the mud to make way for those still fit to travel. From the windows they could watch the rout, and Mr. Gilby cursed the cowardly soldiers. There were drunken men everywhere in the mob. “Most of them are nurses,” he said furiously. “They’ve guzzled all the liquor meant for the wounded.” He was so angry that Cinda said tactfully:

  “It was like this in Richmond last May. Not so bad, perhaps; but even Mrs. Davis went away.”

  “Well!” Mrs. Gilby spitefully commented. “If Mrs. Lincoln went away no one would think anything about it. Hardly a month that she doesn’t go gallivanting off to New York to let herself go in some extravagance. That woman!” Her tone was so eloquent that Anne smiled.

  “I never thought of him as married,” she admitted. “He’s so homely.”

  “My dear child, compared with that wife of his, he’s an Apollo! But the airs she puts on! You’d think it was her who was President, instead of him. She spends every cent she can lay hands on, and tells the newspapers every stitch she buys! And vain! All any man who wants public office has to do is pay her a compliment and she’ll ding away at Mr. Lincoln till he gives in, poor thing!”

  Cinda, at the window watching the rabble in the street outside, asked without turning: “Is he as despisable as she is?”

  “Well, lots of people think he’s a fool to let her make such an idiot of herself. But she’s so sickening that people are sorry for him.”

  Mr. Gilby said, with some mirth in his tone: “You mustn’t take everything Mrs. Gilby says too literally, Mrs. Dewain. Washington ladies can’t speak of Mrs. Lincoln without getting mad; but I expect she has some good qualities.”

  “Well!” Mrs. Gilby exclaimed. “If she has, I’d certainly like to know what they are!”

  Cinda nodded toward the passing throng. “Will Mr. Lincoln run away from Washington?”

  Mr. Gilby after a momentary reflection shook his head. “No. No, I’m sure he won’t. No, that man is no coward.”

  “We think he is, in the South.” Cinda came away from the window, “In fact we believe everything bad about him.”

  “I know. There are men here too who think of him contemptuously. He does make many blunders, but he seems to me to learn from them. The men around him learn nothing, but he learns.”

  “Do you know him?” Cinda asked. Anne wondered at her tone, at something almost hopeful in it.

  “Why, everybody knows him, at least by sight. I’ve had a little business with him, yes; but of course he doesn’t know me.”

  “I believe you think well of him.”

  “Compared with what the rest of Washington thinks of him, yes I do. He’s probably the only man in Washington tonight who doesn’t believe the Union is lost.”

  “Do you believe it’s lost?”

  He looked at her in brief hesitation, but then he clapped fist into palm. “No!” he said. “No! The Union’s too great and good a thing to be destroyed! No, and as long as Abraham Lincoln lives it never will be!”

  Each day he came home with rising confidence. McClellan had the army again in hand. General Lee invaded Maryland; but on Friday this new army of McClellan’s marched away to meet the Southern hosts. Cinda and Anne saw some regiments pass the house; and Mrs. Gilby, watching with them, said sorrowfully: “Oh dear, they don’t look the way they did before, with their uniforms all spick-and-span, and their guns all clean and everything. Just see them! Lots of them even in their shirt sleeves! Even the officers look shabby!”

  Cinda said thoughtfully. “They look more like our men now. Perhaps they’ll fight now as our men do.”

  The army marched away, but that other army of the wounded stayed behind. Cinda pleaded to see Julian; but Mr. Gilby advised waiting. “Washington is scared,” he reminded her. “There are plenty of Southern sympathizers in town, but they’re keeping out of sight. I suppose the Provost Marshal has forgotten you’re here. If you went to him for any favor now, he might lock you up.” Later, to Anne, he said urgently: “Persuade Mrs. Dewain to wait, can you? I don’t want to tell her, but they’ve moved Julian to make room for our wounded; and I can’t find out where he is. So don’t let her insist, till I find him.”

  Anne did as he asked, and Cinda waited with reluctant patience; and then one day when a fresh flood of wounded poured into the city, the news from Antietam set Washington into a riot of joy to match the despair that had swept the city two weeks before. Lee was whipped, the rebel army was driven back into Virginia, Washington and the Union and the North were saved.

  Just as Cinda and Anne had refrained from exulting, so now Mr. and Mrs. Gilby tried to conceal their happiness; but Cinda said how relieved and how proud they must be. “And I’m almost glad myself,” she admitted. “Because now perhaps I can see Julian.”

  “Of course, of course,” Mr. Gilby agreed; but Anne heard evasion in his tones and knew Julian was not yet found. She saw doubt in Cinda’s eyes too; and she was not surprised next morning—Mrs. Gilby had gone to market and Mr. Gilby was away from the house—when Cinda appeared in shawl and bonnet.

  “Anne,” she said, “I’m going out. I’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll go with you, Aunt Cinda.”

  “No, dear, you stay here.”

  But Anne caught her arm. “Aunt Cinda, what are you going to do?”

  Cinda hesitated; but then she said frankly: “I’m going to find Dr. Hammond. He’s the Surgeon General, and Mrs. Gilby says he’s a fine man. He will help us if he can.”

  “Mr. Gilby has tried his best.”

  Cinda said grimly, “Men are too polite to accomplish anything. I’m tired of—politely waiting. I want my boy!”

  “Well, if you’re going, I’m going with you,” Anne insisted. “I may not be of any help, but I won’t hinder. Please?”

  So Cinda consented, and Anne hurried to make ready. When they set out, Cinda walked so fast that Anne panted to keep pace with her; and she felt the driving insistence in the other which now at last, weary of delays, broke all bonds.

  Anne had misgivings; and at the Surgeon General’s office, hearing Aunt Cinda’s sharp tongue let loose upon those who tried to put her off, she expected arrest or any other catastrophe. Cinda, determined to see the Surgeon General, refused to be put off, till at last she learned what she wished to know and returned to Anne triumphant.

  “He’s at the hospital in Armory Square,” she said.

  “Julian?”

  “No, no. Dr. Hammond. He’s operating there. Come.”

  So they set off again, and on the way Cinda, suddenly guileful, stopped to buy a basket and stuff it with good things; fruit, a bottle of sherry, a cold roast fowl.

  “This will get us into the hospital,” she promised Anne.

  There was a sentry at the door who tried to bar their way, demanding passes. “I’m taking these to my son,” Cinda explained.

  “Gotta have a pass all the same.”

  “The leg my boy left at the Antietam is my pass,” Cinda retorted. “Where were you that day?”

  “It’s no use, ma’am,” the man said sullenl
y; and when Cinda would have entered he laid his bayoneted gun across the door. She faced him with high head.

  “If you touch me, I’ll have you shot!” she cried.

  “I can’t let you pass, or I’d be shot anyway, ma’am.”

  “Oh—go wash your face,” Cinda said curtly. “You’re in no fit condition to talk to ladies!” She thrust his musket aside so briskly that in his surprise, caught off balance, he stumbled down the steps and their way was clear. Anne, scurrying after Cinda into the hospital, saw him start after them and then stop and come to attention as an officer approached. Then Cinda whipped aside from the main hall into the first corridor, and they were not pursued.

  The corridor they entered was short. Around the first corner an open door revealed benches where capes and bonnets were laid, and there were mops and brooms leaning in a corner. Cinda uttered an exclamation of satisfaction. “Ladies working in the hospital leave their things here,” she told Anne. “Quick. Take off your bonnet. Take a broom or something.” She set the example, and Anne in helpless mirth that was near hysteria obeyed. “Stop laughing,” Cinda told her crisply. “Now we look as though we belonged here. Come on.”

  Anne followed her; and thereafter, asking directions in an authoritative tone—“I’ve a message for Dr. Hammond. Where is he, please?” —Cinda presently reached her goal. A nurse, a hoarse man with whiskey on his breath, pointed to the door from which he had just emerged.

  “He’s in there. I’ve been helping him. But don’t bother him now,” he advised, and grinned in a terrifying way at Anne. “Or he’ll cut your gizzard out!” His arms to the elbow were spotted and streaked with half-dried blood.

  The door he indicated was screened with semi-transparent gauze; but since the hall where they stood was dark, while a skylight illuminated the operating room, they could see clearly enough the group inside. There were three men in black frock coats and two others in shirt sleeves with stained hands; and on an oilcloth table lay another man whose face was hidden by a white cloth. Anne caught a sick-sweet smell in the air.