House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  But thereafter, in bitter humiliation he stayed more and more indoors. He sometimes sat for hours at a time with his grandmother. Mrs. Currain, though she appeared happy enough, wearing always a quiet little smile, seemed to be smaller every day, shrinking to nothing in her black bombazine with the white lace collar. In her quiet room Julian found a sort of sanctuary; and Anne came daily, taking her welcome for granted, saying a few polite words to Vesta, or to Cinda if she were at home, and then serenely joining Julian and Mrs. Currain. She began to lead him back to confidence again. When Yankee gunboats came up the river to bombard the fortifications at Drewry’s Bluff, they went the long way out to the heights above Rockett’s by Chimborazo Hospital and joined the throng watching that spectacle. It was late afternoon of a brilliant day, and the sun set grandly, dipping among scattered purple clouds and sending long light lances to pierce the smoke of battle. As dusk fell, the flash of shell bursts pricked the night with points of light; and the crowd of watchers stayed till full darkness ended the affray.

  Soon afterward the tacit truce which winter’s mud imposed came to an end. General Hooker led his army across the Rappahannock, and Lee moved to throw himself in the enemy’s path. Saturday Anne brought a rumor that Yankee cavalry had cut the railroad between Richmond and Lee’s army; Sunday they were at Ashland, not twenty miles away.

  Anne came after dinner that day to the house on Fifth Street. Since Lee would soon fight the Yankees, a new flood of wounded must be expected; and Cinda and Vesta had gone to help with the necessary preparations. Julian and Mrs. Currain were together when Anne arrived, and Julian stood up to greet her, and Anne kissed Mrs. Currain’s wrinkled cheek, and the old woman’s smile was for a moment no mere emptiness but warm with a gentle affection.

  “I always feel better when you come to see me, child,” she said.

  “I always feel better when I see you,” Anne assured her. Mrs. Currain nodded, and Anne told Julian about the Yankee cavalry so near the city. “And the telegraph line to General Lee has been cut, so no one knows what’s happening. Everybody’s pretty worried, Julian.”

  Mrs. Currain began to sing softly to herself, so softly they scarce heard her.

  ... and Mary Seaton

  And Mary Carmichael and me.

  “If General Longstreet was with him he’d be all right,” Julian said. “And Hood and those Texas men. Remember the snowball fight?”

  “Wasn’t that fun?” They laughed together. “And they sang to you.” Then she hushed, realizing that Mrs. Currain was singing.

  But for a’ that she could say or do

  The babe it wad not dee.

  Anne whispered: “Sit down, Julian.” She sat beside him, and the quavering old voice sang whisperingly:

  “ ‘She rolled it in her apron

  ‘And set it on the sea.

  ‘ “Gae sink ye, swim ye, bonny babe.

  ‘Ye’se get nae mair o’ me.” ’

  “‘The Prince’s bed it was sae soft

  ‘The sheets they were sae fine,

  ‘That out of it she could not be—’ ”

  Julian protested: “Grandma!” But Anne caught his hand to hush him. “I never heard her sing that verse,” he said, his cheek red.

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  I wish I could lie in my ain kirkyard

  Aneath the auld rowan tree,

  Where we pu’d the gowans and strung the rowans,

  My brithers and sisters and me.

  “What are gowans?” he whispered; Anne shook her head. Her hand was fast on his, and the old voice was a thin sweet sound in the hushed room.

  Eh, little did ma mither think

  The night she cradled me,

  That I wad die so far fra’ hame

  And hang on a gallows tree.

  They’ll tie a napkin round ma e‘en,

  An’ they’ll no let me see to dee

  And they’ll not let on to ma faither and mither

  That I’m awa’ with the sea.

  She finished, and in the hush her eyes that had rested on nothing turned and found them. After a moment Anne said softly: “Such a sad little song.”

  “Ma father tell’t me when I was a lass,” said Mrs. Currain, and her eyes were far away. “Some said it was a song sung by Mary the Queen, the night before they struck off her head; but ma mither wad tell me ’twas a court lady in some far land that drowned her ill-got babe, and by the law her head had to fall; and when it tumbled down, the King wha loved her picked the puir head up by the ears and kissed the lips still trembling.”

  Julian laughed uneasily. “Granny, that’s no fairy tale for children.”

  Mrs. Currain made a little chirping, mirthful sound. “Ma father tell’t to me, and I was a wee one,” she said. “All the harm came, he said—and he said it was a lesson best learned young—all the harm came from not marrying when you should, and that I was to remember it, and tell my bairns.” She nodded. “I did so,” she assured them. Her head moved slowly. “But there was one that forgot, and trouble came of it, and the sorry change in a fine lad, to be sure.”

  She drifted away into her own thoughts for a little; but then her eyes cleared again, and rested quietly upon them. “So ‘tis best,” she said. “So ’tis best to marry when you should.” She nodded firmly. “For a lass without a husband is a flower without a stem. For it ever takes two to make a whole one, to be sure; and there is no complete one by himself alone.” Her faint words blurred, her head nodded. “Aye, to keep away from trouble and loneliness and incompletion, ever marry when you should.”

  She smiled at them, and nodded again, and drowsily closed her eyes and seemed to drop into the light sleep of age.

  After a moment Anne came to stand in front of Julian, her eyes on his, grave and still. He grasped the arms of his chair to rise, but she put her hands on his shoulders.

  “No, don’t,” she said. She took his face in her hands and bent down to him and kissed him and looked into his eyes and said: “Julian, we’ve waited long enough. Too long. Please.”

  She kissed him again, and his arms reached up to her; and they heard a chuckle of approval from the doorway. Old June stood there beaming upon them, a waiter in her hand.

  “Fotched Ole Miss a cup o’ hot milk,” she said.

  Anne laughed richly and looked at Mrs. Currain. “She’s asleep.”

  June came in to set the waiter on the small table by Mrs. Currain’s knee. She was watching the young people as she came, and only when she had set down the tray did she look at Mrs. Currain. Then she was for an instant completely still, her gaze fixed on the little old woman sleeping so soundly; and then she turned in calm compulsion.

  “Now you all go on along out o’ heah,” she said. With a rough tenderness she helped Julian to his feet. “You go on ’tending to dat biz’ness you wuz up to. I’m gwine tek care ob Ole Miss.”

  She thrust them into the hall, closed the door, shut them out. Julian said, puzzled and curious: “What did she do that for?”

  Anne looked at the closed door for a long thoughtful moment. When she turned to him her eyes were streaming, but she did not speak. With no word, reaching up to kiss him, she came into his arms.

  24

  May, 1863

  ENID enjoyed the excitement of those early days of May, when Yankee cavalry came so near Richmond that sometimes the spatter of gunfire could be heard. Sunday, though she and the children went to church, it was more to hear the latest news than to heed the remarks of Dr. Minnigerode. The minister’s heavy German accent always awoke in her more mirth than reverence. Dolly and Tilda were at church; and Dolly, who always seemed to know things more quickly than most people, said the enemy horsemen had cut the railroad at Trevilian Station. Enid and Lucy and Peter dined that day at Tilda’s; and though after dinner Tilda went for a round of the hospitals to oversee preparations for the expected battle, and the children went home, Enid stayed on. Dolly as usual had callers, each of whom brought a new rumor. A man n
amed Davis had killed his horse by riding eighteen miles from Ashland to say the Yankees were there, so the City guard had been turned out to prepare to defend Richmond. Then a boy from Hanover rode in to report that six thousand Yankee horsemen were not far away, and Enid decided she had better go home; but she stopped at Cinda’s to make sure they had heard the news.

  She found old June and Caesar there in charge of an empty house, and both were weeping. Mrs. Currain had died as gently as a baby goes to sleep, and when she heard this, Enid, infected by their grief, wept with them. Julian had walked home with Anne, and Cinda and Vesta were still at the hospital; so Enid stayed to do what she could.

  Not that there was anything for her to do. June, with the steady hands which had served her white folks all their lives and in so many ways, had already bathed the old woman and dressed her. “She done tole me many’s de time de dress and de stockings and de little slippers wid de silver heels.” So when Enid saw her, Mrs. Currain seemed peacefully asleep, a small sheeted figure in the smoothed bed. Enid went into the garden and cut spring flowers to set on the table by the bed in the room with its drawn blinds; and she sat with the dead woman, her thoughts drifting in a dreary wretchedness, feeling dreadfully alone. Trav’s little mother had been uniformly affectionate and kind to her, kinder than any of the others. Enid remembered those long days of companionship at Great Oak with a tender sorrow; days when Mrs. Currain talked endlessly of household matters, and of her husband, and of her children and grandchildren. How fond she had been of Lucy, how amused at Peter! At the time, Enid had sometimes been bored to the point of intolerance, but memories now were wistful. Mrs. Currain had never made her feel an outsider, had never been critical. Enid was sure the old woman had never shared Cinda’s insulting thoughts about her and Faunt.

  But now this dear, kind, friend was dead; and there was no one left upon whose love Enid could rely. Faunt she never saw, Cinda hated her, her own mother had shut the door in her face, Trav no longer loved her. There had been a time when she thought she despised Trav, and after that hour of brutal violence when he mastered her and then ignored her, she persuaded herself she hated him; yet when he was hurt and near death she knew she loved him, and in the new house her rapture would have been complete if he had seemed to share it. But he was cold and stern, and he went away to the army again, and at Christmas he had kept himself remote from her. She tried to wake in him again that anger which even when she was herself the target made her pulses leap. Surely a blow would have been preferable to his stony calm, his heavy stare. She thought miserably:

  “Why, I’d rather he’d just kill me and be done with it than ignore me the way he does.”

  But, though she wished to do so, reciting at length the delights of her hours with Captain Pew and Darrell, she could not even rouse him to a show of jealousy. Trav no longer loved her; that was sure. Mrs. Currain was the only person who had shown her any fondness. And now Mrs. Currain was dead, and she was left friendless and alone.

  Enid tried to guess what the next few days would bring. This was Sunday, and if another big battle, and another flood of wounded, were imminent, Mrs. Currain had better be buried quickly. After the fighting around Richmond last summer, there were so many soldiers dying in the hospitals that graves could not be dug fast enough to receive the dead. Julian would probably be the only man of the family here for the funeral; Julian and Redford Streean. Trav was in Petersburg with Longstreet, and Tony could not be summoned from Chimneys in time, and Brett and Faunt and Burr were with Lee’s army in the north. And certainly Mrs. Currain’s funeral could not be delayed.

  When Cinda and Vesta returned, when there had been a little time for them to comprehend what had happened, Enid suggested this. Vesta made some wretched sound, and Cinda after a moment asked where Julian was. Enid told her he had gone home with Anne. “And June says they didn’t know Mama was dead,” she explained.

  “Then he’ll probably stay to supper,” Cinda reflected. “But I think I’d like him here. On your way home, Enid, won’t you stop by Judge Tudor’s and tell him?”

  Enid colored, feeling herself dismissed and denied even the right to weep for Mrs. Currain, who had been so kind to her; but she submitted to Cinda’s will.

  Mrs. Currain was buried on Tuesday, and Trav as it happened was in Richmond for his mother’s funeral. By that time everyone knew that Lee and Jackson had met Hooker at a place called Chancellorsville, and driven him headlong back across the Rappahannock; that Jackson was wounded. Enemy cavalry still hovered around Richmond, but for those who loved her all these things were forgotten while in a driving rain Mrs. Currain was borne out to Hollywood Cemetery and laid there at last to rest.

  Because of the rain, Enid stayed in the carriage. “It won’t help for all of us to catch our deaths,” she declared. But Trav and the children and the others stood by the grave; and afterward, driving home, Enid rated Trav roundly for that folly. He ignored her, did not speak till at home he had changed to dry clothes. Then he said:

  “General Longstreet will be here tonight, Enid. I told him to come straight to the house. He’ll be late. He’s not leaving Petersburg till seven o’clock. Have his room ready and I’ll wait up for him.”

  She had wanted tonight to have Trav to herself; for she knew his grief, and wished to cherish and comfort him. “Oh Trav, anyone would think this was a hotel!”

  “We’ve room enough.”

  “Is Mrs. Longstreet coming with him?”

  “No, she’ll stay in Petersburg. She hasn’t been well. He’s worried about her.”

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “Well, she’s going to have a baby, and she’s had to keep to her bed most of the time, can’t eat much of anything.”

  “Really?” She forgot her resentment at the prospective intrusion, asking many questions; but Trav could tell her provokingly little. When General Longstreet arrived she appealed to him, amused at his reluctance to discuss this which was to her, or to any woman, at once so absorbing and so commonplace. “I expect she has a hard time,” she suggested. “She’s so little and you’re so big.” It was fun to torment the big man with these embarrassing indelicacies.

  “She keeps remembering our three who died,” he said. “Keeps reminding me. And she’s sure she and the baby will both die this time. She hasn’t been able to sleep. I’ve sat up all night with her, a good many times.”

  Enid envied little Mrs. Longstreet, who could make this giant of a man so miserable. He would unflinchingly face a storm of bullets, or send a thousand men to death, but he was sick with terror now. She had often wished Trav would worry about her, but he never did. Perhaps that was because she had never been sick enough to frighten him. Even when she lost her unborn babies, she was soon as healthy as ever.

  But for that matter, Mrs. Longstreet was healthy enough! After all, she had had six children and had come to no harm. Enid wondered whether if she were to have another baby and pretend to suffer terribly, she might wake in Trav an equal solicitude; but during the few days he was at home he ignored the cajolements she so sweetly proffered.

  During those days she understood, from overheard talk between Trav and the General, that Longstreet and President Davis were at odds. The President wanted Longstreet and his men to go at once to join Lee; but Longstreet thought it wiser to stay in Richmond till the city was safe from marauding Yankee cavalry. Lee in the end supported him, writing that he need not hurry to rejoin, that his troops might better be used to protect the railroads, and to punish the enemy cavalry for the damage they had done. Military matters had little interest for Enid; but when the two men sat late in long talk she sat with them, listening idly.

  “Hooker’s beaten,” the General said, on one occasion. “There’s no fight left in him. Our real danger now is in the West. Unless we do something there, ’Lys Grant will have Vicksburg; and if he gets it, the Yankees will control the whole line of the Mississippi, slice off the western end of the Confederacy. If that happens, our defe
at only waits on time. We’ll bleed to death as surely as a man with only one leg, left untended on the battlefield.”

  Trav whittled a bit of tobacco and put it in his cheek. “I’ve never been in the western country, west of Chimneys,” he said. “Would it hurt us so much to lose the West?”

  Longstreet laughed grimly. “You Virginians think only of Virginia. Hood’s Texans are the best soldiers in the army. General Lee would like to have a dozen Texas regiments; but he’ll get none if Texas men have to stay at home to fight their own war.”

  “What can we do about it?”

  The General said strongly: “If I were in authority, I’d send Hood and Pickett to help Bragg crush Rosecrans and march on Cincinnati. That would draw Grant off.” He shook his head. “I talked myself hoarse to Secretary Seddon today, urging just that; but it was no use. The Government thinks Virginia is the Confederacy.” He made an angry sound. “I hear a lot more talk about the money to be made by sending cotton to the Federals along the Mississippi than about sending men to drive them away.”

  Trav nodded. “I judge a good many men are making money out of the war.”

  When the railroad to the north was safe, the first trickle of wounded came, and then a flood of them. Hood’s and Pickett’s divisions went to rejoin Lee; and Federal captives by the thousands arrived to be packed into any buildings that could be made to serve as a prison. A week after Mrs. Currain died, Longstreet and Trav departed; and toward dusk that Sunday, like a hammer blow, the news of Jackson’s death struck Richmond.