House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Brett’s lids closed and she thought he might be asleep and hoped he was and kept her voice at a soothing monotone, letting her eyes have their fill of him, seeing the new lines in his face, the new gray at his temples, how thin he was. Some of the ladies were signing Mr. Memminger’s currency. The notes were printed on big pink sheets, and they had to be cut apart and each note signed by two people. The cutting was done in one room, the signing in another, the numbering in a third. There were fifty women and girls in each room. Ladies signed their own names on the notes. Cinda’s tone was like a lullaby, as though Brett were a baby in her arms; but suddenly he seemed to strangle. His head jerked up and his eyes opened, and she laughed and said:

  “There, Mr. Dewain! I’m going to put you to bed before you choke yourself to death on your own collar!”

  “Eh?” He rubbed his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep!”

  “Oh, you—” In tender amusement. “My dear, you were snoring like a furnace!”

  He dropped his arm around her shoulders. “Just breathing heavily, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t hear a word I said. Why, you didn’t even hear me read Jenny’s letter!”

  “Of course I did!”

  She twisted away from him, twirling a teasing finger in his face. “Yah! Yah! Yah! I didn’t read any letter from Jenny. I didn’t even mention her. Liar, liar, liar! Brett Dewain’s a li-ar!”

  He cried in pretense of wrath: “Why, you infernal, contriving little trickster! Come here to me!” He sought to catch her hand, and she snatched it away and he caught her and with an arm around her waist swept her to him; and she whispered soft warning.

  “H-sh! Don’t, Mr. Dewain. The people will hear you!”

  “Who cares?”

  “Chasing me around the room like a greedy boy! Shame! What a way for a man in his fifties to behave!”

  “I don’t feel like a man in his fifties. Not when I’m with you, my darling!” He hushed her tenderly.

  Next morning, laughingly remembering the night before, Brett asked: “Was there a letter from Jenny?” There had been two since he was last here, and she brought them from her desk and read them to him.

  “She doesn’t write often,” she said, “but she gets an awful lot into a letter.” And she read:

  “ ‘Dear all: We’re fine here. The people seem perfectly happy. They’re mighty proud to be taking care of Little Missy. I suppose I’ll always be Little Missy to them. They worship the children. Kyle and even Janet usually ride with me, and Clayton has a regular train of attendants everywhere he goes.

  “‘I’m very much the planter now, in the saddle all day, watching everything. We’ll have plenty of hogs and corn. The mill needs new mud-sills, and we’re putting them in. We’re raising hundreds of chickens and lots of turkeys, and I’m fattening ten steers in their stalls for beef. I’m having the people build a new church at South End, so they won’t have to come so far to meetings. Old Barry makes very good work shoes for the men. We’re raising enough cotton and wool for our own looms. Salt is our hardest problem. We’ve scraped up the smoke house floor and boiled all the salt out of it and we get some from the sea-water salt works. Our coffee is made out of potatoes, or corn; and we dry goobers and pound them up and mix them with milk and long sweetening and it’s as good to drink as chocolate. The children love it. We can’t get pins, of course; and you can see by these scraps of paper all written crosswise and up and down till you probably can’t read it that we haven’t much of that, and when we want buttons we make them out of gourd seeds, but the river’s full of ducks and fish, so no one goes hungry.’ ”

  There was more, about their friends and neighbors. Jenny said everyone resented the constant demands for soldiers to be sent to Virginia, when the Yankees were ready to gobble up Charleston any minute. Since the enemy forces had seized the islands along the coast, Camden and Columbia were full of refugees from the Low Country.

  ‘“Everybody hates the impressing officers taking our people to work on forts and things, and the Governor says he’ll never sacrifice our rights just to please President Davis. He puts everybody into some office or other to exempt them from the conscription. Nobody has to go into the army unless he wants to, except of course the tackeys and the small farmers. Everybody with a few slaves is trying to buy more so he’ll have twenty and not have to go and fight. A man named Matthewson over near Camden had nineteen and he was just desperate; but one of his women had a baby in the nick of time so he doesn’t have to go. The poor women on the little farms around here have a hard time. They can’t buy enough to keep them alive out of their husbands’ pay in the army. Tell Rollin Lyle if you see him that I saw his father and mother in Camden a week ago, visiting the Warwicks, and they were all well. Tell Vesta Mrs. Cloyd is fine, although she just rages because so many rich young men are still at home, commanding militia companies, or safe on details, or something.’ ”

  Cinda finished and gathered together the odd-sized sheets on which the letters were written, and Brett said cheerfully: “Well, she’s all right.”

  “What if the Yankees take Charleston?”

  “It won’t matter to her. No Yankees will ever get as far as Columbia or Camden. Before that happens, the South will have been beaten.”

  “I think what scares me most is the inevitable way things keep happening. You see them coming dimly, through a cloud, like a herd of stampeding cattle, and you pretend you don’t see them, and all of a sudden they’re trampling you.” Cinda pressed her hands to her eyes as though to shut out terror. “We’re going to be beaten, aren’t we, Brett Dewain?”

  He came to put his arm around her and hold her hard against his side. “Not if your husband can help it,” he said lightly, and she smiled; yet she knew the answer to her question.

  The evening of Brett’s second day at home, Rollin Lyle and Vesta went together to one of those “starvation parties” which began to be the fashion, and where the fact that no supper was served did not mar the fun. When they returned, Brett and Cinda were already abed; but as Vesta passed their door Cinda called: “Come in and say good night to us, darling.” So Vesta came and sat on the foot of the bed in the darkness to talk a moment. “Nice party?” Cinda asked.

  “Well, Dolly was there, so of course Rollin was miserable. He’s such an idiot! But we sang and told conundrums, and talked. It was fun.” Vesta laughed. “These ‘starvation parties’ may be all right, but I really am starved!”

  “Go down and get a piece,” Brett suggested. “There must be things in the pantry.”

  “Oh yes, dried apple pies, and molasses cookies, and cold pork and bread. Times have changed, Papa. But I guess I will go get something.”

  “Maybe Rollin’s hungry too,” Cinda suggested.

  “No, I asked him. He says after living on what little they get in the army he feels stuffed here.” She said good night and went downstairs, but a moment later she came racing up the stairs again and burst into the room and shut the door behind her. Brett called a question through the darkness, and she said breathlessly: “Oh I’m all right! I was silly to be scared!”

  “What happened?” Brett was on his feet, going toward her.

  “Why, I’d stepped out of my slippers so I wouldn’t disturb Rollin, so I guess he didn’t hear me——”

  “Rollin?”

  “No, no, the negro. When I drew a match and lighted the gas, the pantry window was open and there were two black hands holding onto the sill.” The pantry was on the ground floor on the Franklin Street side, and the house on that side was flush with the street; but since the street descended steeply from the corner, the pantry windows were high above the sidewalk. “I slammed the window down on his fingers and locked it and ran!” Brett in his night shirt raced for the stairs, and Cinda came to take Vesta in her arms; but the girl said: “Oh I’m all right now! It startled me for a minute, that’s all!”

  “I should think it might, poor baby!”

  “I’m silly to make a fuss.”

&
nbsp; Brett came back. “Gone,” he said. “I turned out the gas.” He asked gravely: “Cinda, does that sort of thing happen often?”

  She nodded. “Richmond’s full of half-starved negroes, of course. Not even rats and mice get enough to eat here now, you know.”

  “It isn’t only negroes who’re hungry,” Vesta told him. “Of course people like us have plenty—not always what we want, but plenty of what there is; but the poor people are just starving. You’ll see crowds of women standing outside the cartridge factories and the clothing bureau begging for work. They’re there before daylight every day, and the police have to keep them from fighting for what few jobs there are. They have to work if they can, with their husbands in the army.” She said in sudden anger: “Oh, it just makes me sick to see all the young men who’ve been exempted and who do nothing but speculate and gamble and spend a lot of money, when poor women have to see their husbands go off and get killed.” She tried to laugh. “Heavens, I hate to get so worked up this time of night. Good night, dears.”

  When Vesta was gone, Brett asked: “Is it as bad as she says?”

  “Yes,” Cinda assented. “Yes.” And she added grimly: “‘Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.’ There’s more truth than poetry in that, Brett Dewain.”

  “I suppose you’d call us rich, but we’ve lost one son, and a son-in-law, and had another son maimed. We’re fighting, Cinda.”

  “Oh yes. So are most of the people we know, our kind of people. But for every one like us there are twenty like Redford Streean. The poor people didn’t want the war, but they’re being made to fight it, while their wives and children starve.” She came into his arms, sobbing on his shoulder, for a moment surrendering to bitter woe. “Oh, I hate it, Brett Dewain. I hate it, hate it, hate it! Oh, I hate it sol”

  She did not again let her secret anguish mar the happiness of these fine days when she had him at home, but she realized more and more surely that there lay some trouble in his mind. After his breakfast with her, since even with him here she usually went to spend part of each day at the hospital, he was apt to walk down to the Spottswood, or to the Capitol, or to call upon some of his friends who were still in Richmond. But they had hours of quiet content, Cinda knitting, Brett talking with her or perhaps reading to himself or to her a passage from the papers. This might be a more or less covert criticism of Lee for his failure at Gettysburg, or for his strict orders against looting in Pennsylvania, or of the Government’s failure to supply Lee with the ammunition so badly needed on the third day of the battle. Once Brett read aloud to her passages from Lord Campbell’s speech in the House of Lords, advocating England’s recognition of the Confederacy.

  “Listen to this, Cinda,” he said half in amusement, half in anger. “He’s arguing that slavery isn’t really the issue, talking about ‘the lingering idea that freedom is involved in the retention of the Union.’ And he says: ‘It is for a despotism that the people of the North are pouring out their blood and tarnishing their glory. Already it exists. It had its birth in war and it would take its immortality from conquest. Then would the Union be restored for the advantage of the world? What country would be safe? What country would be free? At first indeed the necessity of Southern garrisons might keep them in repose. But in a few years—and they do not labor to conceal it from us—a power more rapacious, more unprincipled, more arrogant, more selfish and encroaching would arise than has ever yet increased the outlay, multiplied the fears, and compromised the general tranquillity of Europe.’ ” Brett chuckled. “You’d think the United States was threatening to invade England, instead of Virginia! Why do politicians always talk like fools?”

  “They fall in love with ideas,” she suggested. “Or else surrender to selfishness.” And she said thoughtfully: “Have you noticed that Mr. Rhett and Mr. Yancey, who talked us into this war, are never heard of now? States’ rights, secession, coercion! Yes, and slavery, too! All of them put together aren’t worth the sorrow and suffering just our family has had to endure, much less all the other families all over the South.”

  He nodded. “The trouble is, people believe what they hear. I suppose that’s because they don’t know any better. That’s why I don’t believe ignorant people ought to be allowed to vote.”

  “Do they have to be ignorant?”

  “Well, we’ve made it a crime to teach a negro to read and write, and we’ve never had many schools, even for white people. I’ve sometimes thought that if we’d spent as much money in educating poor whites, these last fifty years, as we’re spending now to send them off to kill and be killed, the South would be a wonderfully happy land today.”

  “Are poor people any better educated in the North?”

  “I suppose not. I suppose the ruling class and the moneyed class there—people like us and our friends down here—think it isn’t safe to teach them too much. The more they learn, the more they want. We think if negroes learn to read they’ll want to be free, and Northern business men think if working people are educated they’ll want higher pay.” He was silent for a moment, said grimly: “I wonder if sometimes good business isn’t bad business in the end.”

  Knowing him as she did, his tone caught her ear. She guessed that some matter of business filled his thoughts, so she was not surprised when one evening as his furlough neared its end, he told her he expected some gentlemen to call; Judge Tudor, Mr. Daniel of the Fredericksburg railroad, Mr. Harvie of the Danville line, Mr. Haxall and Mr. Crenshaw who were bankers. Cinda thought they would prefer to be left alone together; but Brett asked her to sit with them when they came.

  “I want you to hear,” he said. “I want you to help me decide something, Cinda.”

  She asked no question. When he was ready, he would tell her. When the gentlemen arrived, Judge Tudor first, the two railroad men together, and then the bankers singly, she greeted them; and while they talked, she sat a silent listener, her knitting needles clicking. She would find later many a dropped stitch in that knitting, and much that must be ravelled out and done again.

  They spoke first of the wave of desertions from the army. President Davis had offered free pardon to all but second and third offenders; but none of these gentlemen believed the losses could be checked. Mr. Haxall said there were too many causes behind the desertions: “Poor food, inadequate clothing, defective ammunition, the sufferings of their families at home. And the men see too many exempts getting rich out of the war, too many rich young men hiring substitutes or bribing their way out of the army.”

  Mr. Harvie added a word. “The deserters are organizing. All through the mountain country, from southwest Virginia to the Gulf, they’re gathering in armed bands to resist capture; and they’re turning to robbery, to violence against their neighbors.”

  Brett asked: “Can’t they be rounded up, forced back into the army?”

  Judge Tudor answered him. “The state governments won’t allow force to be made effective. Governor Brown of Georgia, Vance of North Carolina, none of them. When the conscript bureau catches a man, the state courts turn him loose under a writ of habeas corpus. Congress suspended the writ last fall; but the states refused to recognize the suspension, and Judge Pearson in North Carolina ruled that to suspend the writ was unconstitutional. I talked with Judge Halliburton last week—he was a Federal judge under the Union, in the United States District Court—and I’ve discussed it with Judge Meredith. They agree with Judge Pearson; and they say they will never refuse a writ of habeas corpus in their courts.” He added strongly: “And if I were still on the bench, gentlemen, I should feel as they do. This war is being fought to defend rights which we hold to be fundamental in a free nation. Not even to win the war should those rights be impaired.”

  Mr. Crenshaw took issue with him. “Judge, you know as well as I do that if you want a thing, you have to pay for it. If you want a pair of shoes you have to give up some money. If you want to win this war, you have to give up something, even some rights. We’ve destroyed the Union by insisting on our right to s
ecede; but the Confederacy cannot survive, any more than the Union did, unless the states surrender some of their rights.” He added: “The North, the Northern states and the Northern people, are giving up treasured rights, and they’re stronger for doing so.”

  Judge Tudor said stiffly: “It’s a matter of conviction, with me, Mr. Crenshaw.”

  The banker lifted his shoulders. “It’s a matter of expediency, with me.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Brett said: “Let’s take it, then, that desertions will continue. Mr. Daniel, can the railroads carry their burden?”

  “Well, we can try. We’ll try our damnedest.” He looked at Cinda. “Forgive me, Mrs. Dewain. We’ll try our best, I should have said. But we’re short of railroad iron and short of workmen and short of brains. We Southerners have never learned to take orders, and we’re so used to having things done for us that we aren’t ready to do them for ourselves. On our roads, trains are wrecked every day by carelessness and by inefficiency. Of course, if we could pick and choose, we could carry more private freight and make tremendous profits; but we’ve put ourselves at the service of the Government, and that means heavy wear and tear on cars and locomotives. We’ve had to raise wages, and the Government refuses to recognize the tax exemption in our charter, so we pay heavy taxes; but we’re allowed to raise rates when necessary, so income stands up pretty well. But we’re being ruined by loss and destruction of things we can’t replace. If a bridge is burned, it takes us forever to repair it. Last May a year ago, the North rebuilt the bridge over Potomac Creek, four hundred feet long and eighty feet high, in nine days. That same month, some Yankee raiders destroyed our bridge over the South Anna and it was five months before we could put it in shape to use again. Nine days against five months. That gives you some idea of the North’s advantage in labor and material and methods. I don’t know how long we can keep on, but we’ll do our best.”