“Didn’t you get a chance at them at all, yourself, Uncle Trav?”
“No. No, I stayed there on Telegraph Hill, out of range of all but their biggest guns. One shell hit the parapet near General Lee, but it didn’t explode. The only real danger was when two of our own guns burst, right beside us; but no one was hurt.”
Enid rose impatiently. “I’m sick of hearing about it,” she declared. “Mama must be awake. I’ll go have a little visit with her.” Julian thought he might take a walk; and Peter and Lucy departed with him. Cinda saw Trav’s eyes follow her tall son, and she said:
“He’s all right, Travis.” She smiled. “He’s very much in love with Anne Tudor. He’ll probably leave the children at your house and go on to see her now. You know she went to Washington with me. He’s in love with her—and she with him, I’m sure.”
“You haven’t told me about that,” he reminded her. “Washington.”
Her eyes for a moment rested on her knitting, and she heard Vesta and Enid laughing with her mother in her room upstairs. She said in a low tone:
“Travis, I saw President Lincoln.” Her eyes rose to meet his and she said gravely: “He’s kind, Travis, and gentle. And he’s the saddest man I’ve ever seen.”
Trav’s jaw set. “He let loose this thing on us.”
“I know.” She hesitated. “Yet, I think he’s doing what he thinks he should.”
After a moment he nodded. “We’re all just—chips floating on a strong river,” he said slowly. “I suppose all men are, Cinda. Yet we keep thinking we decide things.” He shook his head. “All any of us can do is—go where we’re swept. Go where we have to go.”
“And try to survive, to live.” Her voice was no more than a whisper.
“Why?” he challenged angrily. Then: “Oh you’re right, of course! We hang on to life as though it were precious; but the thought of dying doesn’t frighten me. I think sometimes I’m so tired it would be like a rest to die.”
After a moment she smiled deeply. “Men may feel like that, but Women treasure life,” she said. “We hate death and fight it. In the hospitals, at the sick bed, everywhere we meet death, we fight it. We give life, Travis. Perhaps that’s why we value it so highly.”
He urged: “Men give life too, Cinda. We share that giving.”
She shook her head. “Not quite. You—toss a penny to a beggar, and perhaps you have a moment’s pride in your moment of generosity. But it takes a woman a long time to give something that a casual bullet, fired at random by a stranger, in a moment takes away.”
“Cinda, is there any answer?”
“Just to go on being men and women. Not trying to understand.”
He said grimly: “I wish I didn’t know how to think. I envy—fools.”
She laughed at him in tender affection. “When you talk like that, you’ve no need to envy them, Travis. You are one.”
In the end none of the others were able to come for Christmas. “So you and Julian are our only menfolks for this time, Travis,” Cinda said smilingly. “And Julian thinks of no one but Anne. You’ll have to let us all share you.” She said he and Enid must come for dinner on Christmas day, and he agreed. Vesta reminded her that she should ask Aunt Tilda’s family too; and Cinda reluctantly did so.
But as though to make up for the absence of loved ones, they made that dinner a merry time, laughing easily. Redford Streean remarked that in another week, by President Lincoln’s proclamation, old Caesar and June and all the people would be no longer slave but free; and Vesta cried: “Heavens, I hope someone’s warned them. They won’t know what to do!”
Julian laughed. “I suppose old Lincoln expects they’ll all come running out of their cabins throwing their chains in all directions and yelling, ‘Bless de Lawd and Marse Lincoln! We’s free!’ and start for Washington to give him a hug and a kiss for thanks!”
Streean drawled: “After a few thousand have embraced their deliverer, he’ll wish he’d left them where they were.”
“We’re living in a fools’ Paradise,” Julian declared with a lively chuckle. “Next Wednesday you’ll have to start doing the cooking, Mama; but you don’t act worried! Lucy, how’ll you like picking cotton? Aunt Enid, I can just see you dipping candles, and making soap, and doing your own washing. Peter, you’ll be on the trash gang!”
Since they were hungry for laughter, they rang many absurd changes on this theme, and at their own jesting laughed themselves to tears. To laugh helped them forget how much they missed the absent ones.
Then Christmas was gone, and the papers said Stuart was off on another raid into the enemy territory behind Burnside’s army; so they knew Burr and Faunt rode with death again. Death went from door to door in Richmond too, for smallpox was worse all the time. Trav must return to duty, and he took the northbound train. Upon them all the loneliness and the terror and the waiting settled down again. Cinda turned back to the hospital with a deep sense of peace. It was a blessing to have some task to do.
21
October, 1862-February, 1863
FAUNT suffered from the rigors of that fall and winter. The cavalry from the rigors of that fall and winter. The cavalry had hard service. An epidemic of sore tongue and greasy heel among the horses put many men afoot. These dismounted horsemen were called “Company Q”; and the derision of their mates was so galling that horse stealing became a commonplace and no man left his mount unguarded.
Because the ranks were thinned every man had double duty. When in late October the Northern army began the slow sidling movement that would take them down the valley of the Rappahannock to Fredericksburg, Lee moved with them and Stuart was his flank guard and his rear guard. For a month there were horsemen on every road from the Blue Ridge to Warrenton. The easy hills, the scattered woodlands, the cultivated fields all felt the beat of hoofs and heard the thin rattle of scattered musketry or pistol shots, and the ring of steel on steel as sabres crossed, and the occasional deeper challenge of the guns. Around every turn of the road lay the chance of a skirmish, an affair of patrols, a charge or a flight.
Long days in the saddle stripped away what little flesh Faunt had accumulated since the illness following the wound he took at Roanoke. He might have shirked, but no man could be spared, nor spare himself. Stuart, though his baby daughter sickened and died in Lynchburg, held to his duty. His men saw him every day, bold and valiant, singing them to their work. Faunt loved this man who, no matter what his grief, remembered the Biblical injunction to rend his heart but not his garments. Private griefs had no place in war. When after the little girl died Mrs. Stuart and their small son came to Culpeper for brief days with the General, Faunt made three-year-old Jemmie his particular charge.
When Burnside threw his men into the scythe of fire on the slope above Fredericksburg, Faunt watched those blue-clad men go down like grain before the reaper till he was sated with the sight of dead enemies and torpid as a gorged snake. After the battle, the victorious army prepared for a cheerful Christmas. Mrs. Stuart came again with Jemmie, to be near her husband for this holiday. Hampton’s horsemen went foraging in Loudoun County and brought home a trove of hams, chickens, turkeys; and von Borcke planned for minstrels at the feast.
But Faunt had no heart for this prospective merriment. To see Mrs. Stuart and the General so close and tender woke old hurting memories in him. Belle Vue, though behind the enemy lines, was not far away. His thoughts dwelt on a lonely chapel hidden in the forest there; and two or three days before Christmas he went to Stuart to request a leave.
“My home was down on the Northern Neck. May I go scouting that way, see what the Yankees are about?”
There would be Yankee patrols foraging down the Neck, and Yankee gunboats in the lower river, so this was such an adventure as Stuart himself would have relished. “Take half a dozen men, if you like,” he agreed.
Half a dozen was too many, and Faunt said so. “I might take Mosby, if he cares to go.”
But Stuart could not spare them both at onc
e, so Faunt went alone, riding far down river before he sought to make the crossing. On a dark and rainy night he found a ferryman willing to risk setting him and his horse over to the enemy side; and he landed undetected and before dawn was across the height of land and near Belle Vue. The woodlands gave him secure hiding for the daylight hours. Six men together would have been in danger of discovery; but the Yankees, secure in their numbers, thought it unnecessary to take precautions against a man alone.
He drew near Belle Vue without any dangerous encounter, and left his horse in a thicket, and went to the chapel to be for a while with the two he loved. What he found there turned him sick with a poison of rage; for a party of Yankees had at some time camped near the spot. Much of the fence had been taken for firewood, so that hogs since then had rooted where they chose among the flowers and shrubs. The chapel door had been burst open, it hung now by one shattered hinge; and horses, haltered to the altar rail, had defiled the sacred place.
Faunt, in his first desperate anguish, tried to clean away the traces men and beasts had left; but the task was almost hopeless. When dusk fell, he abandoned the attempt and slipped through the trees to spy on the house. Horses were secured to the palings there, and he saw lighted windows, and heard loud drunken voices and then the crash of breaking wood as someone shattered a chair and threw the pieces on the fire. He watched for a while, tallying as accurately as possible the numbers of this patrol. If by and by they slept soundly enough, he might creep near and make sure some of them never woke again.
But till they slept, any attack was vanity and folly; and Faunt, despite the storm of anger in him, was neither vain nor a fool. He slipped away to where his horse was tethered, and took his blanket and chose a spot among the oaks near the chapel and lay down to sleep awhile.
He had had no deep sleep for days, and sleep now betrayed him. It bound him fast till the night was almost gone. At dawn someone nudged his back, and he looked up over his shoulder at a blue-clad soldier, and saw two others, with ready muskets, standing by.
Said the first, whose toe had roused him: “Wake up, Johnny! You’ve got company.”
Faunt was already wide awake, but he grunted drowsily. “Oh, let me alone,” he grumbled, and rolled over from his right to his left side, as though to go back to sleep again. By this movement his right hand was freed. Of his two pistols, one was rolled in his hat that served as a pillow; but the other lay ready by his knee, and under the blanket his hand closed on it there and softly cocked it. He had rolled to face the man who waked him. Another Yankee stood beyond that man. The third Yankee was behind Faunt, but he could be risked.
The three men laughed at his sleepiness; and the one who had spoken leaned down to twitch Faunt’s blanket away. As the blanket came clear of his right arm, Faunt shot, past this man’s thigh, the Yankee just beyond. Instantly he jammed his revolver into the belly of the man leaning down over him and fired again. As the dead man fell, Faunt rolled over far enough so that, somewhat shielded by the Yankee’s body, he faced the third soldier, who till now had been behind him. At him Faunt threw a shot. The man in panic turned to run, and Faunt scrambled to his knees for careful aim and with a second shot rolled that man over like a rabbit hit by a throw-stick.
Then Faunt was on his feet, and he caught up his other pistol. Two of these enemies, though they had mortal hurts, still lived. He took a moment to remedy that, then ran to his horse, tightened the girths, adjusted the bridle. The shots would bring others from the house. He mounted, and waited, still in cover, till he saw a dozen blue coats, afoot, running toward him. He spurred his horse, shouting as though to comrades on his heels: “Follow me! Follow me!” The Yankees scattered, and as he rode through them he fired three calm shots, saw one man fall. Too bad not to do more, but it was a mistake to empty both your guns. Wild bullets nicked the trees beside him as he raced away.
Half a mile from the house he pulled aside through scrub oak and in a dense copse drew up to reload his weapons. One was empty now, the other had one chamber discharged. They were Colt revolvers which he had taken from a dead Yankee, and a stock that could be fitted to either one for long-range work hung at his saddle. He had found them to his taste, throwing a heavy ball, with a notch in the hammer to serve as a rear sight for careful aim, contentingly accurate up to forty or fifty yards, deadly at close range, and sufficiently heavy to be used as a club if a foe were met hand to hand. Faunt, since he was in no haste, drew the wedge which released the barrel of the empty weapon and removed barrel and cylinder. With a straight twig and a bit of oily cloth he wiped out burned powder grains and blew through the chambers of the cylinder and picked the nipples clean. Then he reassembled the weapon and reloaded, ramming the conical balls firmly home. As he capped the nipples he heard the furious pursuit go by, and judged by the sound that the whole patrol had passed; so when he had reloaded the discharged chamber in the other weapon he rode back toward Belle Vue.
From cover he made sure that unless someone was ambushed in the house itself the place was deserted. He zigzagged into the open to draw fire, but no shot challenged him. These men he hated would desecrate his home no more. He dismounted; and he left the little house burning when he rode away.
His horse went lame, so he stayed all day hidden in the forests along the high ground toward the Rappahannock; and that night one of Judge Tudor’s Negroes in a leaky skiff set him across the wide river. He took saddle and gear with him in the skiff, left the lame horse behind. There were friends enough across the river who would give him a fresh mount. The Negro who ferried him over said Mrs. Murtrees was at her place, and he carried Faunt’s saddle and bridle and blanket that far. Mrs. Murtrees, in the dead of night, aroused at Faunt’s summons, and made him welcome.
“A horse?” she echoed. “Why, of course. I’ve my two carriage horses, but I never use the carriage now. Take both, or either one.”
Faunt thanked her and said one would serve. She insisted that he stay to eat something hurriedly prepared; and he was glad to face a warm fire, shivering.
“Are you sick?” she asked in friendly solicitude. “You’ve a chill.”
“Oh no. I was cold, but I’m warm now.”
“Stay till morning. Rest. You’re certainly tired.”
He shook his head. “I must go back,” he said.
When he left that house he rode, or meant to ride, toward Fredericksburg; but the darkness was confusing, and weariness made him nod in the saddle, and the horse he rode could not know from its own experience where he wished to go. So at dawn Faunt could see no familiar landmarks. His teeth were chattering, his head ached, he was enormously thirsty, his back gnawed with pain, and the world swam before his eyes. There was somewhere a steady pounding in him, and he was burning hot, and all the world was strange.
He could never remember where he went that day, or where he slept that night, if he did sleep. It was only by reckoning backward that he could afterward calculate how many days and nights were thus lost to him forever, lost in a fog of delirium. He remembered men who tried to speak to him and whom he brushed aside; and he remembered Negroes staring at him with loose jaws, the whites of their eyes showing their fright. Then one fine sunny day his senses briefly cleared, and he saw on the ground about his horse’s feet white bones and scattered skulls and rags of faded uniforms. From low rain-washed mounds a skeleton hand here and there protruded, or a foot from which the shoe had been stripped and the flesh eaten or rotted away. He nodded in heavy understanding. Men here had been buried wholesale, in shallow trenches no deeper than a plow would dig, so this had been a battlefield; but he did not recognize his surroundings till he turned his horse up a near-by hill for a wider view.
Then he knew, for yonder was the Capitol, yonder was Richmond. So yonder was Nell, and rest and peace. Gratefully he turned his horse that way.
Dark had fallen when he rode into Richmond through a wet pelt of snow. At Nell’s gate he slid from his horse and fell and rose and stumbled to her door. When it opened to h
im, his eyes were closed; he mumbled drowsily: “ ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying—’ ” Then surrendering to oblivion, he toppled forward, prone across the sill.
Thereafter, on the thread of passing days were strung like beads stray moments of half-consciousness, and in each one there was Nell. Faunt saw her face close above him, hovering over him in tender caring; he saw her by candlelight sitting the night through at his bedside; he saw her at first sun and at dusk. Each glimpse of her was like a lullaby, bidding him close his eyes and rest again; and he obeyed, and slept and slept, till at one dawning the clouds were gone. He had been awake a while, in that halfway state between sleep and waking, between sensibility and delirium. Then the clouds thinned and vanished and she was there, asleep in the chair so near him, absurdly small in the warm quilted robe, the heavy braids of her hair burnished by the dawn sun through the window. He watched her till under the caress of his eyes she murmured in her sleep, and then her eyes opened and met his; and she rose and came quickly to him and touched his brow, tenderly yet remotely too, so that he understood she thought him still as he had been for—how long? So he spoke.
“I’m all right, Nell. I’m myself again.”
In flooding gratefulness she fell on her knees beside his bed, head buried in her arms, sobbing and sobbing; and he gentled her and soothed her with his hand upon her hand, and saw that hand of his and wondered at it. For it was like a bag of creaking bones, like one of those skeleton hands he had seen on the battle ground in the brief interval of his delirium when he knew where he was and found his way to her. That must have been somewhere toward Gaines’s Mill. He remembered a bridge across which his horse had brought him toward the city, guessed he had followed the New Bridge road. But how had he come there from the Murtrees plantation on the Rappahannock? General Stuart must think him lost; must think the Yankees had him.
House Divided Page 91
