Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War

by Donald McCaig

  The hall stairway was unheated, and he clattered downstairs to the dining room, where a grand fire roared behind the grate and the oatmeal pot stood on a trivet on the dark Honduran mahogany table, which, with its leaves inserted, could seat sixteen.

  “A good morning to you, Cousin Molly.” Duncan lifted the pot lid. “Oatmeal and maple syrup: couldn’t be finer!”

  Cousin Molly said, “Burnt-bread coffee isn’t so awful once a person gets used to it.”

  “There’s many a morning lately I would have been grateful for it.”

  In the unkind winter light pouring into the room, Cousin Molly’s face looked as if the portrait of a tired and wrinkled woman had been painted over the portrait of the charmer she used to be. Cousin Molly was knitting socks of yarn unraveled from a woolen vest her father had worn to the Continental Congress.

  “The attics and trunks of Richmond are emptying,” Duncan observed.

  “Yes, all our finery is refurbished for the army. It is no great loss. Those clothes of an earlier generation were used only for children’s play and charades. Heaven knows why we kept them. Duncan, I do believe we had grown too rich, too complacent; this war is pruning us.”

  Duncan bent to his breakfast.

  “Will you visit the War Office this morning?” Molly asked.

  “Yes, but it’ll be a waste of time.”

  “Oh, dear.” Cousin Molly dipped her spoon in the syrup and tasted it. “We are invited to Senator Semmes’s home for charades and a light supper tonight. If her duties permit, Sallie might accompany us.”

  “Sallie’s too conscientious. Cousin, you will have noticed my deep feelings for her. I hate to see her so miserable.”

  “We have no finer matron. I had hoped Sallie would do good service, and she has exceeded my expectations, but her methods are worrisome. Somehow, Sallie persuades the wounded man that he does not suffer alone, that he and she have combined strengths and when his would fail, hers will suffice. She hurls herself into the struggle as if she could save her patients by main force. She has successes, but whenever her patient dies, Sallie is shaken to the roots.”

  Duncan, who was one of those Sallie had saved, made no reply.

  An hour later, Molly’s houseman drove Duncan to the War Office, where events unfolded much as he had predicted. For three hours, he waited in the musty anteroom with other supplicants. At first they waited in respectable silence, but before long they began making their cases—judiciously—to one other. Well-dressed gentlemen, seeking preferment, were pleased to allude to family connections and previous services performed for state and national governments. They were indeed worthy, their fellows agreed. The planters who’d come to beg the government to leave off tearing up railroad track in their county (because how could their goods get to market without a railroad?) found a sympathetic ear—wasn’t the alleged military shortage of rails the grossest exaggeration? A Savannah merchant required merely a quiet office where his son could serve out the war. A delicate boy, intelligent but high-strung; completely unsuited for rough service in the field. This salon concurred: the boy deserved special consideration.

  “And you, Captain? What do you seek?”

  “Horse fodder,” Duncan said.

  Late in the day, Duncan was summoned. Secretary of War Seddon was pale-skinned, puckered, and Presbyterian. The secretary examined papers on his desk as Duncan briskly explained that the army had enough fodder for three days and enough corn for two, and that the snow could not improve matters. “Without sound horses we can’t move the guns when the Federals make their next attempt upon us. Aware of this, the Federals take satisfaction in targeting horses, ignoring even infantry to do so. General Stuart’s division is removed to Danville because forage is still obtainable there, and General Lee may detach Wade Hampton’s cavalry for the same reason, which will leave the army without its eyes and ears.”

  The written reports, from Generals Hampton and Mahone, which Duncan laid on the secretary’s desk confirmed his verbal report. The secretary gave them a cursory glance, signed papers he handed to his assistant, and said, “There is to be a train from Georgia tomorrow. The army’s necessities will be forwarded promptly. Thank you, Captain. Next.”

  Duncan walked back along Main Street, past Richmond’s finer homes. In the street, a single lane had been cleared of snow and traffic jingled by. It began to snow again, blowing softly off the river, fat flakes that melted on Duncan’s forehead, and he was happy as a child, all duties completed, anticipating Cousin Molly’s agreeable hearthside.

  Duncan felt mild pleasurable guilt. Lee’s army was in winter quarters near Culpepper, where they’d be warm, odorous, hungry, and lousy. There’d be no drill, few patrols, plenty of prayer meetings outdoors or in rude pole chapels the men had built.

  General Mahone, Duncan’s new superior, had instructed him to try the War Office first, before traveling to North Carolina. Duncan carried letters from Hampton and Mahone, whose planter friends might respond to a personal appeal sooner than an official one.

  Duncan walked on, daydreaming about foals dancing in the snow.

  When Duncan looked about him, the houses were unfamiliar and smaller than those in Cousin Molly’s neighborhood. When he inquired of a colored man shoveling snow, the man pointed back the way he’d come.

  Cousin Molly’s houseman greeted him at the door. “Miss Semple say you got to hurry, sir. We got to collect Miss Sallie.”

  Hurriedly, Duncan washed his face, combed his hair, and brushed his uniform jacket. His boots were hopeless, blacking absent, leather too soaked to apply more. Duncan wore his dress sword. He drew on his glove with his teeth. He set his slouch hat at a rakish angle.

  He waited in the parlor thirty minutes before Cousin Molly swept downstairs in a dark velvet gown fastened by a belt of gold rope.

  “Ravishing.” Duncan bowed and kissed her hand.

  Cousin Molly said, “After our drapes are exhausted, God help Confederate society.”

  Cousin Molly’s houseman proceeded them to the barouche. It was a moment’s work to get Cousin Molly’s hoops arranged satisfactorily.

  Richmond’s beleaguered gasworks had extinguished streetlamps six months ago. Most homes were lit by candles or oil lamps; only a few could afford illuminating gas.

  House lights grew few and farther apart, and the carriage trotted through swirling white silence.

  “The Davises will attend this evening,” Cousin Molly said. “And General Stuart is said to be in the city. Mrs. Stannard, of course. Senator Chestnut and his wife, Mary. The Semmeses have promised chickens from their plantation and somehow obtained several barrels of oysters. I don’t remember the last time I ate an oyster! The Omohundrus: he owns a blockade runner. Apparently he is contributing champagne.”

  “Omohundru?”

  “Yes. His wife is a Bahamian—quite beautiful, I am told. Mr. Omohundru was not known here before the war but presently advises the government on matters affecting the blockade.”

  “The Omohundru I knew was a slave speculator.”

  “Omohundru is a Piedmont name, but I don’t know the family,”

  They passed through Camp Winder’s gate and soon reached their customary destination. The air was redolent with woodsmoke.

  Duncan jumped down. “I’ll fetch her, cousin.”

  In the quiet ward, three patients lay in beds nearest the stove while a convalescent maneuvered a broom. “Evenin’, Captain. Miss Sallie’s in her room.”

  Hands folded in her lap, Sallie sat on the end of her cot. “I am not going with you, Duncan. I’m sure you will have a splendid time. The gay gossip and fine manners, dancing, charades . . .”

  “It is well to find laughter where one can, Sallie.”

  “No doubt. Oh, I have no doubt.” She had tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, dear child?”

  “I cannot get the bloodstains out of my dress.” A red-brown splotch darkened the cloth she flattened across her knee.

  �
�Sallie, there will be officers tonight at the gala whose uniforms are stained with the same material. It is an honorable blemish.”

  “It is Malcolm Cutler’s—he vomited blood. He tried so hard not to vomit his face contorted, but he sat bolt upright and spewed and his blood splattered until he was emptied. I had sat with him for three nights. His mother and sister still live. Do the trains still run to Alabama?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then I must telegraph his family. Malcolm wished to be sent home. Many families cannot afford to bring their sons home, so we bury them. Imagine, Duncan, what a sight it will be when the angels sound the last trumpet and the graves open at Hollywood Cemetery: an entire Confederate army, complete in every rank, will rise up ready, once again to confront our oppressor.

  “Malcolm Cutler survived Chancellorsville and Gettysburg without a scratch. But a Federal shell exploded and a piece of brass no larger than a thumbnail penetrated his chest. I have seen it! Surgeon Lane extracted the fragment! What ingenious manufactures we devise! It took seventeen years to produce Malcolm Cutler and he is removed by one ingenious manufacture.”

  “Sallie, you’ve done everything you could.”

  For the first time she looked directly into his eyes. “Do you believe so? Perhaps if I’d propped him with bolsters or rolled him onto his side, the blood would not have pooled inside. Had I washed him with witch hazel perhaps I would have soothed him and quelled the dreadful urge to vomit his life away.

  “Only Malcolm Cutler has done everything he could. Do go on without me, Duncan. I am too morose. I could not look upon our generals without revulsion, without berating them for prolonging this conflict. I could not speak to the senators’ wives without inquiring why they do not beg their husbands to quit this grisly business. I am not fit for society tonight.”

  Duncan lifted her unresisting hand to his lips and kissed it. “Please promise me you will rest. Your boys are resting peacefully, and you must too.” He backed out the door wearing the smile men wear when leaving somewhere they perhaps should have stayed.

  Cousin Molly’s houseman was feeding their horse a nosebag of ambulance oats. Though Cousin Molly never dipped into the hospital provender for herself, she invariably fed her horse, explaining, as she explained now, “He is an old and faithful beast. I cannot see him starve to death.”

  Duncan said, “One of Sallie’s boys died.”

  “It would be that Cutler lad. Oh, dear. He was such a fine young man, and we were hopeful. It was his lung, you know. After a battle when we are ensanguined for days we rarely mourn those we cannot save; but how we love the solitary boys who die between battles. Poor, dear Sallie.” She paused to clear her throat. “Duncan, I know you well enough for an impertinent question: What are your intentions?”

  “I suppose we’re courting.”

  “Sallie is a fortunate woman. Gossip has provided her with a respectable past: widow of a gallant soldier killed at Fredericksburg. Only Governor Letcher and I know the truth, and I doubt the governor remembers the girl he pardoned so many months ago. Cousin, this war has not aged you so much as you may think. I worry you have an inconstant heart—one that flits from flower to flower.”

  “I’ve known Sallie all my life. I knew Sallie when she was a schoolgirl, and it does not astonish me that the grown woman commits herself to our wounded . . .”

  She touched his arm. “Don’t huff and puff, Duncan. I ask you only to remember that a lady, if she is exquisitely lucky, may survive one scandal. She can scarcely hope to survive two.”

  After a silence, Duncan asked, “Is that the Semmeses’ mansion? They must have corralled the gasworks’ entire production tonight: they are positively ablaze. I’ve not seen so many carriages since those Sundays before the war when families drove to the Institute to admire us cadet sons. Come, Cousin Molly, let us forget war and grimness. Let us hope. Let us hope all officers are gallant and all ladies beautiful. Let us hope the charades are amusing. Let’s hope for President Davis—that he isn’t smitten by one of his headaches. And, cousin, let’s hope the oysters are fresh!”

  The entry hall, where Mrs. Semmes greeted them, was floored with the black and white tile that so marvelously imitated marble, and Mrs. Semmes was so delighted to see them, so delighted, and her man Morgan would take their wraps, and “Molly, a new gown?”

  “Next time you pass my home, do not fail to observe my second-story windows. They have rather a naked look.”

  Mrs. Semmes trilled laughter. Her own gown had come from Paris before the war. “Molly, we have more generals here tonight than Lee has in his army. General Preston and our Prussian, Von Borke, though it’s no good trying to make conversation with him—his throat wound is not healed. Varina Davis and her daughter are present. Her daughter is to be in the final tableau tonight, and President Davis is due to arrive any moment. J.E.B. Stuart, our most gallant cavalier, is in the house, but I can’t tell you more about him until later. His performance is to be our pièce de résistance.”

  The formal parlor was a rectangular room made larger by blue-gray wallpaper and the embossed plaster oval in the ceiling. Gaslights glittered from the sconces and reflected in the pier mirrors and chandeliers, whose crystal teardrops sparkled like wit. The triple-sash street windows were outlined in drapery of blue damask drawn back and tied. In the fireplace notable oak logs burned merrily. A wide arch introduced guests into the family parlor, where the table was arrayed with champagne flutes. The unfashionable long coats the servants wore might have belonged to the Semmeses’ Revolutionary War forebears.

  Men, mostly bearded, mostly in uniform, gossiped. Lighting cigars, they stepped outdoors onto the swept terrace, which overlooked a snowy garden.

  “Good to see you, Gatewood. Good to see you.” The colonel was with Hampton’s cavalry. “Grand affair this, yes? Mrs. Semmes, she asks Omohundru if he couldn’t bring in a few cases of champagne for her, and that gentleman says he’d see what he could do.” The colonel elbowed Duncan. “Twelve cases of Monopole, and he didn’t charge her a cent. This bubbly is a hundred a bottle when you can find it. Damned if I don’t admire a man who knows how to make a gesture!”

  “Oh, Duncan,” Cousin Molly called, “come over here and greet Mrs. Davis.”

  “Good to see you again, Captain. Miss Semple says you come from our western highlands.”

  “Yes, ma’am. May I fetch you some champagne?”

  “No thank you, Captain. I have promised myself only a single glass before the charades. Do you think those yankees love theatricals as we do? I cannot believe so. They are such a practical people.” She waved at someone past Duncan’s shoulder: “General Preston! How did you leave things in Kentucky . . .”

  Duncan made his bow and withdrew. He was standing in the arch between the parlors when Midge—his Midge—arrived on a slender gentleman’s arm. His Midge had never owned fine clothes. His Midge was only beautiful out of her clothes. This Midge’s gown was panels of russet and tan silk, the bodice cut à la mode. His Midge knotted her hair. This Midge’s hair was coiled in dark braids, and she moved with the easy confidence of a lady welcome wherever she might go.

  Duncan felt sick. The room wobbled at the edges. When he backed away he bumped an older officer, excused himself, jostled the buffet table, poured himself a glass of water, a second.

  “You all right, Master? There’s chairs against the wall, if you got to sit down.”

  Pure cowardice assailed Duncan; his ears burned and he panted like a dog in July. Couldn’t he slip out into the garden, sneak around the side of the house? Couldn’t he board his cousin’s carriage and be swiftly taken away from here? Oh, God, how he had loved her! Midge! Here! How? The water Duncan swallowed was painful as swallowing bones.

  “Master, you sit in this chair right here. You gonna fall.”

  Duncan told himself he was not losing his senses. The runaway racing of his heart would slow. This urge to vanish in the cloak of night was a temptation all men felt, surely.
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  Midge was passing for white—here, in the battered heart of the Confederacy. Was she mad?

  When Duncan opened his eyes, the room had stopped spinning. He thanked the servant, accepted champagne, and returned to the grand parlor, its thick noise and gaiety.

  Midge was talking with two ladies dressed as fashionably as herself.

  Duncan bowed. “Ladies, Captain Duncan Gatewood at your service. May I fetch you some champagne?”

  “Monsieur, you are too kind. But my husband is presently performing that pleasant duty. I am Madame de Jarnette, and this is Lady Parker of the British consulate.” Madame stood on tiptoes to wave at a friend. “How gay it is here! I so prefer Richmond to the dismal cities of the North. I am a friend of your Confederacy, and my husband urges recognition on our government at every chance. And this dear lady is Mrs. Omohundru. We were remarking how Nassau has changed since war began.”

  Midge’s smile was calm.

  “Mrs. Omohundru, you strongly resemble a woman I used to know near my home, Stratford Plantation.”

  “Named to honor our playwright?” Lady Parker inquired.

  “No, ma’am. I believe my great-grandfather came from near that town.”

  Midge wore the amiable, slightly remote expression of a lady meeting an ordinary and completely forgettable stranger, and Duncan began to think he had been terribly, stupidly mistaken.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain. You have been wounded in the struggle for independence?” She spoke with a faint unfamiliar lilt but with no trace of slave dialect.

  “May I serve you, madam?”

  “My lady, madame, I’ve enjoyed our talk. Perhaps we will meet in Nassau one day.”

  Smiling like strangers, the pair murmured through the crowd and out the terrace doors. En route, Midge directed a servant to fetch her wrap. “It is russet wool with a silver brocade border. Do not dally.”

  Excepting them, the terrace was empty. “You have learned to direct servants,” Duncan said, stupidly.

  “It is no wonderful skill.”

  “There are those who think it an art,” Duncan began, stopped himself, said, “You . . . Midge . . .” She wore the tender tentative smile he knew so well, and he almost embraced her.