For that one glimpse had been enough to see Jenny in the gas-lit hall, shaking snow off her cape; and seven-year-old Kyle came racing up the stairs, and Janet with him. Even little Clayton, holding fast to the banisters and screaming “Gam-maw, Gam-maw!”, hitched himself up toward her. Cinda’s knees gave way, she sat down weakly on the top step to gather them all into her arms; and Vesta ran down to embrace Jenny, and Brett in dressing gown and slippers came to demand what was going on here, and there was a wonderful laughing-crying confusion for a while, till Jenny remembered to explain that old Banquo and Mr. Peters were at the station guarding many boxes of good things to eat which they had brought all the way from the Plains. Caesar hurried off to fetch these treasures, and somehow at length peace began to come. Little Clayton was hustled away in black arms to be put to bed. “You remember Anarchy, Mama,” Jenny reminded Cinda, and Cinda said of course she remembered. Anarchy was one of Banquo’s many children, a strapping wench as strong as a man.
“I brought Banquo and Mr. Peters to take care of the boxes,” Jenny explained. “I was afraid of trouble on the trains.”
“Well, the things you brought will be just manna from Heaven,” Cinda assured her. “I won’t feel secure till we have them under lock and key. Richmond’s full of half-starved people, poor whites and negroes, who will steal anything they can get. Castle Thunder is so full of robbers there’s no room for any more.”
“I was certainly glad Mr. Peters and Banquo were with us,” Jenny confessed. Vesta had gone to show Kyle where he would sleep; Janet was to sleep with her. “The trains just creep along now, and they’re crowded with men, even in the ladies’ car. We had three breakdowns, and we spent one whole night in a station somewhere, in a room full of soldiers, with a wretched fizzling fire that threw out no heat at all.” She laughed at the memory. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then. Anarchy propped me up on two chairs and put the children to sleep in a ball like so many puppies, wrapped up in blankets on the floor beside me. Banquo and Mr. Peters worked all night patching up the boxes. They’d been smashed in the breakdown. A train ahead of us broke in two, and some of the cars rolled backward down a long grade and bumped into our engine with a frightful thump. The pile of boxes tipped over and some of them cracked open. Mr. Peters says there were turkeys and onions and sweet potatoes rolling all over the car.”
Brett asked: “How long were you on the road?”
“Heavens,” Jenny confessed, “it seems like weeks! We left Kingsville Friday, and it took us all that night and all the next day and half the next night to get to Wilmington. We left there Sunday and only got to Petersburg this morning; three nights on the way counting the night we were broken down. I think today in Petersburg was the longest I ever spent. It just seemed as if the Richmond train never would start.”
Cinda said sympathetically: “Poor darlings!”
“Oh, it was fun, really; watching the soldiers, and a marvelous great giant of a woman who kept joking with them in the broadest Irish way of talking I ever heard, and a lady with a no-count nurse maid and the worst-spoiled young one!”
Vesta rejoined them, and she asked eagerly: “What did you bring us, Jenny?”
“Oh, some fine fat turkeys, and a dozen sides of bacon, and a great enormous piece of beef—a whole side except the foreshoulder—and a bushel of sweet potatoes, and a bag of onions, and—well, everything we could hope to manage.”
Cinda, with this sudden wealth of provisions, invited Tilda and Dolly and Mr. Streean and Enid and the children for Christmas dinner. “There’s no telling when we’ll have such a nice Christmas again, so we’ll make the most of it,” she told Vesta. Brett sent Caesar to the country to cut a cedar that would serve as a Christmas tree; and Julian and Anne and Vesta took the carriage and brought back heaps of holly for greenery. Julian bought firecrackers with which Kyle and Peter could make the celebration a fittingly noisy one. Some rummaging in closets and forgotten hideaways furnished presents that would content the children; and Cinda in all these preparations was so happy that she accepted with good grace the gifts Redford Streean brought to be hung on the tree. There was a length of printed silk, a box of artificial flowers to grace feminine hats, a dozen bottles of fine brandy, a bag of coffee, and a canister of tea. They were blockade goods, to be sure; but for this one day, she would not think critically of anyone.
Christmas morning they all walked to church except Brett, whom Cinda would not permit to move out of doors, and Anne who no longer went abroad. When they came home, Rollin Lyle was at the house, smiling his crooked smile, saying in a shy way: “I hoped maybe you’d take me in for Christmas, ma’am. I’ve got a furlough and I’m going home, but I didn’t get here in time for the morning train.”
Cinda was delighted. “Of course, Rollin! We’re just as pleased as we can be.”
Jenny too was glad to see him, and Vesta; but when they had gone upstairs to lay aside their bonnets and coats, Tilda and Streean and Dolly arrived, and Dolly came running to protest: “Oh, Aunt Cinda, do you have to have Rollin? I declare it just makes me sick to look at him, just turns my stomach. I won’t be able to eat a bite if he’s here.”
Cinda looked at her evenly. “Then why don’t you go home?” she suggested; and in sudden anger: “Dolly Streean, you ought to be smacked! Rollin’s a fine boy! And as for his looks, if you’d behaved yourself, that would never have happened! He’s here and he’s going to stay.”
Dolly tossed her head. “Oh, I suppose I don’t have to look at him.”
Cinda said sharply: “You listen to me! If you make Rollin unhappy today I’ll pack you out of the house so fast you’ll think your back teeth are loose!”
The girl laughed teasingly. “O-o-oh, aren’t you fierce!”
“I’ll show you how fierce I am if you don’t behave,” Cinda promised her, and downstairs she kept a watchful eye on the girl. As a precaution she seated Dolly and Rollin on the same side of the table, and separated them so that they need neither face each other nor talk together. But Dolly was on her best behavior. Once or twice she even leaned forward to say some laughing word directly to Rollin, and Cinda saw his quick happiness. Dolly could be so charming when she chose.
That was a bountiful board at which they gathered, with a fragrant, beautifully brown turkey at either end, and a ham and some roasted ribs of beef, and huge platters of sweet potatoes cooked in molasses, and boiled onions, and sausage to fill any gaps in the fare, and mounds of corn pone, and biscuits steaming hot, and butter to perfect them; and there was mince pie, the mincemeat drawn from a husbanded reserve in the cellar; and there was a treasured bottle or two of old Madeira, and Brett called toasts for the absent ones.
“To Tony.” He began with the eldest of the family. “Good cheer and a fine Christmas to him!” He rose with lifted glass; and Dolly as she came to her feet with the others cried excitedly:
“Oh, I forgot to tell you! I had a letter from Darrell and he says Uncle Tony’s been shot.” Their quick ejaculations checked her swift tongue not at all. “But he’s going to be all right.” She laughed. “It was some little poor white boy twelve or thirteen years old. Isn’t that a joke on Uncle Tony?” And to their questions: “Why, someone had been robbing his smoke house, and he fixed a gun to shoot whoever it was and it turned out to be a woman, someone named Blandy——”
Enid cried: “Ed Blandy? Trav thought more of Ed Blandy than he did of his own family!”
“Well, anyway, the gun went off and it killed her.” Dolly was bound to tell her story. “And when they took her home, her little boy ran into the house and got a gun and shot poor Uncle Tony and almost killed him too. Isn’t that exciting? But I do think it’s a joke on Uncle Tony, don’t you?”
Cinda caught Brett’s eye, knew their shared thought; but he said heartily: “Then all the more—here’s a quick recovery and health to him!” They raised their glasses, and drank, and sat down again, and Tilda said:
“Dolly, I didn’t know you’d had a letter from D
arrell. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve told you now!” Cinda heard a spiteful anger in Dolly’s tone that surprised her, for Dolly and her mother had never been at odds. But there was petulant resentment in Dolly’s manner, a surprising authority in Tilda’s quiet retort.
“You should have told me. You can be very thoughtless, Dolly. You knew I would want to read it.”
“It wasn’t to you, it was to me.” Dolly’s color was high. “And you can’t read it. I burned it up!”
There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence, and Cinda saw Redford Streean hide a smile. Then Brett came to his feet again. “To Trav now!” he cried. “Lift your glasses all. To Trav, good man, good brother, good husband, good father!”
Cinda saw Enid hesitate, then rise with them and lift her glass; she heard Lucy’s young voice, clear and tender:
“To my papa!”
So the roll of all the absent ones was called. “To Faunt! Wherever he is, God bless him!” And while Cinda’s eyes held Brett’s over the rim of her glass: “To Burr!” But it was Tilda who rose at last and said in a quiet tone, without reproach:
“Shall we drink to Darrell too?”
Because they had all forgotten Darrell, and were sorry, the response was the heartiest of all; but Cinda, looking along the board, saw Enid white with some mysterious anger, and it puzzled her. She wished she had not this habit of watching people, trying to read their thoughts and to appraise them.
They were replete at last, torpid with the rich delicious fare; and when they rose Cinda sighed and said: “There, I don’t care if I never eat again! We ought to be ashamed, of course; but—wasn’t it fun?”
After dinner the gentlemen sat over their brandy in the library; Cinda and Tilda and the younger folk stayed in the drawing room, while the children ranged out of doors to burn up their heavy dinner by an hour’s romp in the fresh snow. Cinda had one ear for the talk in the library, one for the chatter here around her. Tilda was discussing hospital problems, asking Cinda’s opinion, offering her own; and in the other room Streean spoke mirthfully of the fears of the government clerks, dreading that they would be deprived of their exemption and forced into the army. “Every member of the cabinet has put all his sons and nephews into a safe berth somewhere,” he declared. Dolly here was talking about Captain Pew’s exploits. His steamer had been damaged on his latest trip; he would not sail again till early January. Gold, said Judge Tudor in the other room, was at a premium; thirty-five Confederate dollars for one of gold. This talk of figures made Cinda think of Travis, and she asked Enid for news of him.
“Oh I never hear a word,” Enid confessed. “Of course Trav doesn’t mean to be thoughtless, but he doesn’t realize how I worry.”
Lucy protested: “Why, Mama, he writes to me! I had a letter only last week, but you wouldn’t even read it.”
“I’m too polite to read other people’s letters, Honey. You and he have your own secrets.”
“I expect he’s having a lonely Christmas,” Cinda commented, hiding her loyal resentment. In the yard there were the occasional reports of firecrackers as Kyle and Peter took their pleasure there. Dolly said it was wonderful that Jenny had been able to come to Richmond and bring all those goodies, and she asked:
“Are you going to stay a while?”
“Not very long,” Jenny told her. “Someone has to be there to keep an eye on things. Mr. Peters starts back tomorrow, and I’ll have to go soon.”
“I don’t blame you for wanting to go back,” Dolly declared. “I certainly wouldn’t stay in Richmond unless I had to. I just simply begged Mama to let me go to Nassau with Captain Pew, but she was scandalized! I think it would be perfectly respectable if Darrell went with me, and he’s going with Captain Pew next voyage. He thinks Nassau is wonderful.”
Tilda said quietly: “I can’t control Darrell, but you certainly aren’t going off to Nassau on a blockade-runner.”
Dolly looked at her with angry eyes. “You’ve told me so, often enough. You don’t have to keep saying it.” She asked abruptly: “When are you leaving, really, Jenny?”
“A week from Monday, I think,” Jenny told her; and Cinda felt a sorry pang because they would go so soon. As though answering her unspoken thought, catching her eyes, smiling apologetically, Jenny added: “I must, I’m afraid. There’s so much sickness in cities. I want to get the children safe home.”
Tilda asked: “Do you dare travel without an escort?”
Jenny smiled. “Oh, Banquo’s dignity is ample protection; and if it weren’t, Anarchy is an Amazon.”
Dolly cried in sudden pretty pleading: “Jenny, why don’t you invite me down? I wouldn’t be much help running the plantation, but I’d be company; and I know Mama’d let me go to the Plains.”
“Why, of course,” Jenny assented, with only the faintest hesitation. “I wish you’d all come, as far as that goes. I’d love to have you, Dolly.” Her glance touched Cinda. “All of you,” she repeated.
Cinda smiled, shook her head. She would never leave Richmond; not as long as Brett was near, and Burr; not while Trav, yes and even Faunt, might at any moment tug the bellpull; not while Julian was here. Jenny of course knew that; she had not meant the suggestion seriously.
And neither, for that matter, did Dolly mean what she said. Dolly would never leave Richmond, where so many gallant youngsters were always ready to pay her attention, for the seclusion of the Plains. Yet she was pretending now an effusive eagerness, appealing to Tilda. “May I, Mama?” And Tilda was saying: “Why, if Jenny wants you. you may go,” and Jenny repeated that Dolly would be welcome, and Dolly declared she would certainly go. But of course she never would. Cinda was sure of that; and Vesta, when she and Cinda and Jenny had an hour together that evening, agreed.
“She’s having too good a time in Richmond,” Vesta declared. “There’s so much going on, and of course the town’s full of officers to beau her around.” She laughed. “I don’t think she enjoys the ‘starvation parties’ very much. She’s a greedy little pig. But she loves the dancing, and of course with all the things Captain Pew brings her, she has the prettiest dresses in town.”
“She wouldn’t have much gaiety at the Plains,” Jenny remarked. “Even in Camden everybody works with the Ladies’ Aid Society at the Soldiers’ Rest, or does something.”
Brett had gone early to bed, but when Cinda went up stairs he was still awake, and while she was preparing for the night he said thoughtfully: “You know, Cinda, that dinner we had today would have been a treat for the men in camp.”
“It was a treat for us!” She felt herself on the defensive.
He nodded, but he said: “I saw two men get killed for a turkey no bigger than those we had. The turkey was in a field between our skirmish lines. One of our skirmishers shot it and ran to pick it up, and a Yankee shot him and tried to get the turkey, and our men killed the Yankee. Two men and the turkey all dead.” He added, half-laughing: “The worst of it was that we fell back and the Yankees got the turkey.”
“Oh, don’t feel so guilty, my dear. After all, it’s Christmas.”
“May I take a box of things back with me?”
“Of course.”
He said after a moment: “By the way, we’ve had a windfall. A letter came today. I still hold a few shares of the Bank of Wilmington, and they’re paying a dividend of over six thousand dollars, the first of the year.”
She was puzzled by his tone. “Is that much?”
“Yes. Yes, they used to pay about fifty dollars, but they paid a thousand dollars for 1861, and almost twelve hundred for 1862, and now this. It’s blockade money, of course.” He said wearily: “But it won’t do any good not to take it.”
“That conscience of yours will be the death of me, Brett Dewain,” she protested; but her tone was tender, and she came to kiss him where he lay.
They had all been certain Dolly had no real intention of going to the Plains; but during the week that followed she came every day to the house to ta
lk with Jenny and to make a thousand plans. “I can’t believe even now that she means it,” Jenny admitted. “But she declares she’s really going.”
“I wish you’d stay here,” Cinda told her. “Not go back at all.”
Jenny smiled. “I think I’m getting to be like a man,” she reflected. “I’ve been managing things there so long that I keep thinking all the time of work that should be under way, details I should be handling. And I’m uneasy here. Richmond’s so different, so many rough men, such wretched-looking women on the streets.” She laughed at herself. “I’m just plain homesick, I guess. I want to go home.”
“I know how you feel,” Cinda admitted. “About Richmond, I mean. There are so many people here now, so many strangers. It used to be that you knew everyone, but not now——”
When the day of Jenny’s departure arrived, Dolly did go with her. Cinda saw in the girl a high excitement, a sharp anticipation, as though Dolly were embarking on an adventure not only attractive but dangerous. Certainly the prospect of a sojourn at the Plains in these times when there would be no gaiety, no young men in attendance, nothing to break the gentle routine of plantation days, was not enough to account for the girl’s high color, her shining eyes. After the train pulled out, walking homeward with Vesta, Cinda confessed her mystification. “Did it seem so to you?” she asked.
“Yes,” Vesta agreed. “Yes, it did.”
“I hope she doesn’t bother Jenny!” Cinda made an exasperated sound. “I’d like to know what that young minx is up to now!”
7
December, 1863
TRAV, even if he had wished to do so, could not have come home for Christmas. General Longstreet’s command was by that time established on the railroad between Morristown and Bull’s Gap, with headquarters at Russellville. The little army had a dangerous distinction. It was the only Confederate force in position to strike a useful blow. A thrust through Kentucky toward the Ohio would be troublesome to the North, and a day or two before Christmas the General told Trav: “ ’Lys Grant knows that as well as I do. He won’t rest till he’s driven us out of East Tennessee.”
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