House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “Where will you go, Rollin?”

  He laughed, with an upflung hand. “To the mountains!” It was like a battle cry. “You’ll know where we are by hearing of the things we do!” He blew her a last kiss and spurred his horse away.

  Instinctively Vesta followed him, running a few paces to the corner, pausing there; and Cinda came to her side. The smoke-shadowed dawn made all this familiar scene seem strange, unreal; yet it was the same. Down Franklin Street, with its graceful sycamores and elms, there was a confusion of shuttling figures and a din of hoarse shouts; and down Fifth Street, spurts of flame flashed through the smoke-fog toward the river. But here close by there was no smoke, and the trees were as graceful, the houses as substantial and secure, as in the past. Mr. Bransford’s house diagonally opposite, where Dr. Hoge had lived till he moved down beyond the church; Mr. Ender’s home, and Mr. Palmer’s with its curious bay windows; down across Main Street Mr. Hobson’s mansion almost concealed by trees, with its twin chimneys rising from the middle of the almost flat roof in dim silhouette against the smoke: all these Cinda had seen a thousand times, yet she saw them now as something never seen before.

  Perhaps, if the fire swept this way, never to be seen again ...

  Rollin was gone; and suddenly a great throng of Negroes, drunk with liquor or with the first savor of freedom, came surging up Fifth Street from Main. Cinda drew Vesta indoors. “There, Honey. Now we’ll think about breakfast.” She closed the door, shut out the tumult in the street. “Then we’ll see what comes next.”

  “Why, the Yankees come next.” Vesta spoke serenely. “Rollin said they were right behind him. After breakfast I shall go to the commanding officer and ask for a guard for the house.”

  Cinda wondered at resilient youth. All their world, it seemed to her, was gone; but already Vesta began to think of salvaging what remained, already she began to build anew. Yet to be sure, this was as it should be, as it must be. Youth must build the future, build a new world upon the ruins of the old. She and her generation had destroyed that fine world that now was gone. By what faults and errors? By what deeds done or neglected? No one could surely answer. Most men did, in a given hour, that which seemed to them their honorable best to do. Yet, if the result of their deeds were now to be taken as the test, how unutterably wrong they had been! Youth might be wiser. Age was apt to chide youth for its follies, but surely there could be no more fatal folly than this of which mature men—yes, and women—had in these years been guilty. It was time for age to give youth full rein; time to give into youth’s clean and valorous and eager hands the building of the years that were to come.

  They breakfasted all together except Anne. June took a waiter up to her. The smoke made day so dark that they lighted candles. More explosions, some distant and some close at hand, woke cries and shouts in the street outside. Judge Tudor went out, but presently returned to say there were Yankee soldiers in Capitol Square, Negro cavalry.

  “I went to ask for a guard for the house,” he told them. “But they say one of you will have to go. The Provost Marshal is Colonel Manning, and his office is at City Hall; but he will not receive any petitions for guards except from ladies.” Vesta was already on her feet as he added: “I think they mean to be courteous and helpful. They’ve put their own soldiers to try to stop the fire; and there are orders against disorder or pillage or insult. The sentries would not admit me, but there are already many ladies there.”

  Cinda went with Vesta on that errand, unwilling to stay longer hidden away indoors like a blindfolded criminal awaiting the deadly volley. They started down Franklin Street, where in the yards the flowers bloomed as brightly as ever, and they saw a guard of soldiers in blue in the yard of General Lee’s house; but beyond, toward the Square, the street was littered with smouldering, half-burned papers; and other blue-clad men rummaged curiously in the rubbish, picking up fragments still legible, reading them aloud with shouts of laughter.

  So these were the Yankee conquerors! Cinda shut her eyes tight, pressing back the tears. Looking down Seventh Street, she saw that toward the river the flames were not yet checked, and even at this distance heat touched her cheeks. The fire had reached up the hill to cross Franklin Street between General Lee’s home and the Square, and the United Presbyterian Church seemed to have been burned. They turned up Seventh Street, Cinda blindly following Vesta’s guidance, and came along Grace and up Ninth and along the head of the Square.

  A throng filled the street and clustered in the shade of the tall trees that marked the front of the City Hall. Cinda had always thought this graceful building with its tall Doric columns and its wide steps the most beautiful in Richmond; but today there were blue uniforms on the steps and on the portico, the mounts of Yankee officers fast to the hitch rail under the trees. Yet though her eyes were blurred, she saw familiar faces in the throng, ladies here on errands like their own. Vesta spoke to a sentry; and Cinda saw with some faint stir of hope that the answers, though brief, were readily and courteously given.

  Following the man’s instructions, they made themselves part of a stream of petitioners, moving up the broad steps of the south portico and along a wide corridor with offices on either hand till they came into the circular central hall. Sometimes Cinda’s eyes met those of ladies who were her friends; but their eyes like hers were blank with grief, and they exchanged not even a nod. When they faced a dozen uniformed Yankees seated at a long table, her ears were ringing so that she heard nothing that passed; and she stood in a trembling paralysis till Vesta touched her arm.

  “It’s all right, Mama. The Lieutenant is going home with us, to place our guard.”

  Cinda had to make an effort before she could clearly see the young man here at Vesta’s side. She tried to speak to him but could not; yet she heard Vesta’s voice, and his. They went along Broad Street, and he said something about avoiding danger from shells still bursting in the Armory. Negro soldiers in blue uniforms marched past them, and Cinda shivered; and then they were at their own door, and the young officer disappeared, and she and Vesta came into the hall together, and her senses began to clear.

  “The guards will stay in the basement,” Vesta explained. “The Lieutenant says we won’t be disturbed. He says there’ll be only white troops in the city tonight.”

  “Are we prisoners?”

  “We can go anywhere we choose until nine o’clock, but after that we must be indoors.”

  To lose even this much liberty made Cinda treasure what was left; and after dinner she and Tilda walked along Grace Street toward Capitol Square till they could see the Stars and Stripes flying on the staff. The lower end of the Square was surrounded by burned and still smouldering buildings; and the Square itself was full of homeless people and heaps of salvaged furniture. They turned toward Broad Street and saw a troop of Negro cavalry. The men were singing as they rode, the rich voices blending in a jubilant harmony:

  “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.”

  John Brown? Cinda remembered that day at Great Oak so long ago, when they heard the first news of the mad murderer’s butcheries at Harper’s Ferry. After that day, when loose-lipped orators in many a Northern pulpit canonized the maniac, men like Brett and Trav and Faunt first began to comprehend the storm of passion which the abolitionists had raised against the South. John Brown, the lunatic who dragged helpless men out of their beds and without even an accusation hacked them to death with sabres; John Brown more than any one man had let loose the forces which since then had slain how many thousands! General Lee and young Jeb Stuart captured John Brown, and judge and jury hanged him till he was dead, dead, dead; yet these Negroes sang the truth! His body for long years now had lain mouldering in the grave, but his blood-stained soul went marching on.

  How long? How much longer? Clayton was dead, and Tommy, and Faunt; and Julian was maimed, and Burr’s hands were things like claws. Brett was still whole and sound, yet how long would he go untouched? How long would he escape the blood bath with wh
ich John Brown’s soul had sprinkled all her world?

  The Negro soldiers sang, and the Negro mobs in the streets were singing. Well, let them sing, since they were free. She would never begrudge them their songs. It was not to keep them bound that Brett had fought. How few in the South had fought to keep their slaves! General Lee had freed his before the war. General Jackson had never owned but one, and he bought that one at the boy’s own pleading. General Longstreet had inherited half a dozen, but he gave them away. For that matter, not one in ten of the men who fought these four years for the Southern land they loved had ever owned a slave or hoped to own one.

  Why then had they fought so long and hard and wearily? She shook her head. What did it matter now?

  In her abstraction, she and Tilda had become separated, and she came to her own door alone; but she heard behind her the cheering and the shouts, and the hard hoof beats of the horses and the singing of the Negro soldiers as they rode on toward Camp Lee.

  The children were wide-eyed when they greeted her, and she mustered smiles to answer their many questions, and asked where Jenny was. Their mother was on the roof, they said, helping Big Mill put out the sparks that still landed there. Jenny presently came down, sooty but cheerful, to say the wind had changed and now swept the smoke the other way. “And the fire’s burning out, I’m sure,” she said.

  They had early supper, and Vesta went out with Judge Tudor for the brief time permitted before nine o’clock; but sleeplessness and fatigue drove Cinda to her bed. Yet she did not sleep. From the direction of the Capitol she heard a band playing, heard the strains of Annie Laurie and then of the Star Spangled Banner. Vesta came to kiss her goodnight. “And everything is quieting down, Mama,” she said reassuringly. “The Yankees stopped the fire from spreading. All the banks and newspaper offices and stores and hotels in that part of town are gone; but we’ll soon build it up again.” The young were so confident and sure.

  Cinda fell asleep to the light touch of Vesta’s caressing hand upon her hair. She woke early and surprisingly refreshed, and was dressed before June brought her breakfast. Judge Tudor wished to go to his own home to see that all was in order there, and Anne asked that some of her things be brought; so Julian and Judge Tudor and Cinda went to do that errand together. Before they started, they heard cannon firing at regular intervals somewhere toward Rockett’s, and they hesitated, wondering what that meant; but when the guns fell silent they set out.

  Fifth Street was almost deserted, but they had to pick their way through a throng on Broad. They turned along Marshall to Twelfth, and saw shuttered houses and drawn curtains. When they reached Twelfth, there was some tumult toward Capitol Square; and the street by the Governor’s mansion, down the hill below their line of vision, seemed to be thronged, Negroes running that way. Before they reached Judge Tudor’s house, halfway along the block toward the White House where President Davis had lived for these four years, a solid mass of Negroes came swirling past the Governor’s mansion a short two blocks away, filling the street from side to side, flowing slowly toward them.

  They went quickly indoors, but they waited to watch from the windows. The Negroes drew nearer, and Cinda heard their shouts and cries and snatches of song. Trees that lined the street made it impossible to see anything till the front of the throng was close at hand. Then with a swifter-beating heart Cinda saw among them a figure easily recognized, an immensely tall, bearded man in a high hat, leading by the hand a boy.

  Julian, in an incredulous astonishment, as though he knew the truth, asked: “Who’s that?”

  Cinda answered: “It’s President Lincoln, Julian.”

  “Lincoln? But Mama, he hasn’t any escort!”

  Judge Tudor said quietly: “He has a thousand negroes; maybe five thousand. No one will harm him, not in their company.”

  Cinda wetted dry lips. Mr. Lincoln and the youngster whom he led by the hand walked in a little circle of emptiness; but all around him, in front and on either side and behind, the Negroes sang and prayed and shouted. They backed away before him; some, like toys actuated by a hidden spring, revolved in a slow, whirling dance; they came beside him, walking crab-fashion, their eyes never leaving him; they trooped like devoted dogs hard on his heels.

  Directly in front of the window where Cinda stood, a woman ran to fall on her knees in his path; and Cinda recognized June! Old June bowed low before him, her palms on the ground, her forehead in the dust; yet she did not stay to impede his passing, but still on her knees shuffled to one side out of his path. Cinda saw her kiss, after he had gone, the ground where he had trod.

  Mr. Lincoln went on to the corner of Clay Street and turned toward the entrance to the White House and disappeared; but the Negroes stayed in an increasing throng. Cinda’s thoughts ran slowly. Those Negroes had worshipped Abraham Lincoln as thought he were God. Was that just hysteria? Through these four years, while their masters fought for a victory that would keep them slaves, the Negroes had shown no least desire to break their bonds. To be sure, a few rascally individuals had run away, a few had turned to thievery; but Cinda had heard never a rumor of any violence of slave against master, of Negro against white.

  A thousand times and ten thousand she had heard Southerners assert that the slaves were the happiest people on the face of the earth. She herself had said it more than once, and had believed it true. But if they had been happy in servitude, why should they worship Lincoln now? Through the street outside the house, scores and hundreds of them, drawn by the rumor of his presence, were hurrying to do him homage, and lingering in the hope of catching a glimpse of that tall, ugly man.

  Was it possible that the Negroes had always wanted to be free? Had June? June here had bowed down with the rest. Cinda had sometimes wondered about Negro men, trying to guess their thoughts, trying to read their dark and secret minds; but it had never occurred to her that June wanted to be free!

  Would there be a change in June when they met again? Or would she ever see June again? After a time, a carriage and a military escort threaded the packed mob in the street, and she had another glimpse of Mr. Lincoln as he was driven away; and when he was gone the Negroes departed. Abstractedly she helped Julian select and pack what Anne would need; but she was still thinking of June. Why, she had loved that old woman! What right or reason had June to go bowing and scraping to Abraham Lincoln? Well, if June wished to be free, let her go. “I can do without her if she can do without me,” Cinda thought, and found herself near tears. “She ought to be ashamed!”

  At home she went at once to her room. To do so had in it something of a challenge; for June always came to help her get ready for dinner. Would she come today?

  June did come, exactly as usual. Cinda was lying on the couch by the window. The old woman said, as she had said a thousand times in the past: “Set up heah, Missy, an’ let me bresh out yo’ hair.”

  Cinda obeyed, taking the stool in front of her mirror, watching June in the glass. June drew the pins and loosed Cinda’s hair and took the brush; and Cinda said in a flat tone:

  “You don’t have to do that, you know! Mr. Lincoln’s come.”

  “Bress Gawd! He sho is!”

  “So now you’re free,” Cinda insisted. “So now I suppose you’ll go along about your business!”

  “Huh-uh!” June chuckled comfortably. “You ain’ gwine git shet o’ me, long as I got mah stren‘th.” She nodded, vigorously wielding the brush. “I tuk keer o’ you befoah you uz dry behind de ears, Missy. Old Missy say I had tuh, and my mammy say I had tuh, so I had tuh! So I done it!” She looked at Cinda in the mirror. “But I don’ have tuh tek keer o’ you no moah, Missy. I does it kaze I wants tuh, now.”

  Cinda held June’s eyes till her heart and her eyes filled and overflowed; and she laughed in rich content. “Well, you don’t have to pull my hair out by the roots, you clumsy old cow!”

  June cackled with delight. “Yes, ma‘am,” she cried. “Clumsy cow I sho is. You b’en saying so twell it mus’ be true. Neveh breshed
you’ hair sence you uz a baby dat you didn’t fuss an’ ca’y on! Ol’ Miss Fussbudget, da’s you!” She brushed harder, and they laughed together, two women, lifelong friends.

  When Cinda came down to dinner the others knew that Mr. Lincoln was here. Tilda had brought home a copy of the Whig. “The Yankees are publishing it now. I thought you might like to see it.”

  Cinda shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t think I ever want to see a newspaper again as long as I live.”

  But Vesta took the diminutive paper, two pages of four columns each, and read a fragment here and there aloud. “‘The publication of the Whig is resumed with the consent of the military authorities. The editor and all who heretofore controlled its columns have taken their departure. The proprietor and one attaché of the editorial corps remain.’” And a moment later she said eagerly: “Listen! ‘Several days will elapse, we suppose, before business is actively resumed. Still, there are stocks of goods in the city, and others will be introduced by loyal persons who may be authorized to carry on trade in Richmond.’ So, Mama, we’ll be able to buy things presently.”

  “Does it say anything about General Lee?” Cinda asked, but Vesta could discover nothing.

  Cinda was to find the keenest agony of the days that followed lay in the fact that from Lee’s army they had no news. Whispered rumors spoke of battle at Amelia Court House, and said Grant’s hosts had been scattered in flight; but that was nonsense, not to be believed. A rumor equally incredible said President Davis had been captured and would be marched in chains through Capitol Square. They heard that when the shells in the magazine behind the Almshouse exploded, some of them hit the Almshouse and killed twelve of the poor people in it and injured many others. That might be true, but of the world outside, they heard nothing that could be believed at all.