House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “You’re not,” he assured her. “You’ll never grow old, Cinda.” Then he added chuckling: “Age cannot wither nor custom stale your infinite variety.”

  “Heavens, I don’t feel withered and stale! I hope I never do. I never will, either. Children snatch us back from growing old, don’t they; children, and grandchildren.” She stirred, trying to find a more comfortable position on the pile of mail bags. The agent, having emptied his bottle, was sprawled in snoring slumber here beside her. “But I’m feeling older every minute, right now.”

  “We can rest when we change at Weldon. We might stay over a night there.”

  But Cinda thought she would rather go on if she could; and when they reached Weldon and tried to eat a greasy supper in the dingy tavern she was sure of it. There would be a train some time in the night. “We’ll stay out of doors in the fresh air and wait for it,” she insisted.

  Luck got them a place on that train; but at Petersburg, Henry, the driver of the omnibus that took passengers to Pocahontas, said the Richmond train was two hours gone. Brett proposed to hire a carriage to carry them on to Richmond, but Ragland’s livery stable had none to rent.

  “I might buy one,” Brett suggested.

  Cinda laughed. “No. No, this is beginning to be funny. Besides, the children will be meeting every train, expecting us.” She had written Burr from Raleigh. “No, we’ll wait for the evening train.”

  So they went to Powell’s, where Brett had sometimes lodged when business brought him to Petersburg; and Cinda had a chance to remove some traces of her journey. “But not all,” she told Brett when she rejoined him. “I didn’t even try. I’m going to wait for the luxury of my own bathing room.”

  The Richmond train was crowded with men of a Georgia battery, and a North Carolina regiment; but room was made for Cinda. When the cars emerged at last from the deep cut above the bridge and she saw across the river the familiar roofs and needle spires, her eyes filled with weary, happy tears. “Oh, Brett Dewain,” she whispered, “I’ll never go away from here again.”

  In the station at the foot of Eighth Street Cinda from the car steps looked over the heads of the waiting crowd and discovered Burr and Vesta; and Burr was in uniform, and when she saw this, Cinda’s hand tightened on Brett’s arm, but her smile was steady. Vesta kissed her, and then she was in Burr’s arms, and over his shoulder she saw Barbara Pierce watching them with a shy smile, and Burr swung his mother to face the girl.

  “Mama, Barbara and I are going to be married right away,” he said.

  Cinda hugged Barbara tight to hide her jealous dismay. “Well, it’s high time!” she cried. “I declare, child, I began to wonder whether you were as nice as you seemed, tormenting Burr so long!”

  Barbara laughed. “Oh, it was fun!” she declared. “As long as there wasn’t any hurry! But now we want to be married just as quick as we can, Mrs. Dewain.”

  “You young ones! Dillydally for years, and then all of a sudden you can’t wait! Well, perhaps in a year or two——”

  “A year?” Barbara’s tone was full of consternation; but then she laughed. “There, you’re mean to tease us, Mrs. Dewain! Why, we almost didn’t even wait for you to come home!” She slipped her arm through Cinda’s, Vesta came to Cinda’s other side, and they all moved toward the waiting carriage. “Mama and Papa and I are coming to your house to supper,” Barbara explained. “Mama says she can’t possibly be ready for weeks and weeks; but you’ll talk her into being sensible, won’t you? Please?”

  “Come home with us now,” Cinda urged; but Barbara would not.

  “No, you drop me at our house. You’ll want Burr and Vesta to yourself awhile. I’ll come later with Papa and Mama.”

  “Nonsense, Honey,” Cinda protested. “I’d only have half of Burr unless you were there.” But Barbara insisted, and when they had left her at her door Cinda told Burr: “She’s as thoughtful as she is sweet, darling. Now, tell me all about yourself—and all about her.”

  But despite Barbara’s thoughtfulness they had no time together before supper; for when they reached the house, it was to see a formidable figure just ringing the bell. Vesta whispered: “Heavens, Mama! It’s Mrs. Brownlaw. Don’t look! Let’s drive on.”

  But Mrs. Brownlaw had seen them and uttered a glad cry and now waited on the doorstep to greet them. There was no escape; so Cinda made the best of it, but even without Vesta’s warning she would have dreaded the worst. Mrs. Brownlaw was one of those assured women who thinks herself divinely appointed to manage the lives of her neighbors. As a consequence, whenever it was possible to do so, people avoided her as though she were the carrier of some offensive and infectious disease. When Cinda and the others alighted from the carriage, she protested that she mustn’t bother them now, but she treated Cinda’s politeness as an insistent invitation and came pushing into the hall on Cinda’s very heels. She forgot her errand for a while in admiring Cinda’s drawing room: the gleaming cornices over the windows, the decorated ceiling, the intricately carved mantel, the painted chairs and tables. “Oh, it’s so bright and cheerful,” she declared. “Such a relief from the ugly browns and whites you see in most houses.” Cinda, herself happy in returning to these loved things, could not but be pleased.

  Mrs. Brownlaw came at last to the reason for her call. She was organizing the ladies of Richmond to sew for the soldiers. There were secession flags to make, and regimental banners, and jackets and trousers and scarves and visors and Havelocks; there were bandages to roll and lint to scrape.

  “Oh, so much to do, so much to do!” she cried, settling herself in one of the occasional chairs with all the elaborate motions of a hen about to lay an egg, talking on and on. Cinda, who had not even taken off her bonnet, waited in silence; Burr and Brett had escaped, had gone upstairs, but Vesta stayed loyally with her mother. The ordeal was a long one. Not till the bell rang again and Caesar admitted Mr. and Mrs. Pierce and Barbara did Mrs. Brownlaw rise at last.

  “There, I must run,” she said regretfully. “I just dropped in for a minute, my dear!” Even in the hall she would have waited to tell her story to Mrs. Pierce, but Cinda almost pushed her out of the door.

  “Whew!” she exclaimed, in a sharp exasperation. “Dropped in for a minute: she’s been here two hours!” She was in a high rage. “If there’s one sort of person I despise more than another, it’s women like her. She thinks we’re going to war just so she can make a nuisance of herself. The great big—moo cow!” Vesta collapsed in helpless laughter and Cinda cried: “Stop it! I won’t be laughed at!”

  “Oh, Mama, if you could have seen yourself! You kept tossing little hints for her to go, and she just rolled right over them the way the tide rolls over pebbles on the beach. And you got redder and——”

  “Hush, you imp! You could have distracted her, screamed, or fainted, or something!” She spoke to Mrs. Pierce apologetically. “I simply must run upstairs. That creature was here when we got home, so I’m still covered with cinders and dust from the train.”

  But Mrs. Pierce was so full of admiring comment on the furnishings that Cinda was delayed a further while. “Such bright lovely things make our home seem ever so dark,” Mrs. Pierce declared. They lived on Leigh street, and though she and Cinda were not intimates, Cinda knew the house. Mr. Pierce had built it ten years before. It was of the Greek Revival period, with a step roof and dormers, crowded into a narrow lot, and Cinda, who relished the ample gardens that surrounded their own mansion, thought people living in such cramped houses must feel smothered and shut in. “I must do something like this to brighten up our drawing room,” Mrs. Pierce decided. She had a nervously apologetic little laugh which Cinda found trying. “I do hope you won’t mind my imitating you, Mrs. Dewain. They say imitation’s the sincerest flattery, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Cinda said dryly, and wished she had not spoken. She must be nice to Barbara’s mother. Probably Barbara would be like Mrs. Pierce as she grew older. Poor Burr! Mrs. Pierce nodded eagerly.


  “Yes, and I think it’s so true,” she declared.

  Burr appeared, and Cinda left him to play host and went up to her room to fume to Brett. “As if I hadn’t enough on my mind without coming home to this!” But he laughed her into good humor again.

  That was a fine evening. Burr and Barbara were so happy that a high merriment filled them all; they laughed easily, at little or nothing. But Cinda, even while she was outwardly as gay as the others, thought their gaiety artificial. They were like people sheltered together against an approaching storm who lift their voices to an unnaturally high pitch to drown out the rolling thunder, and try to ignore the blinding lightning flashes and the murmur of the nearing downpour.

  She supported Burr and Barbara in their pleas for an early wedding, till Mrs. Pierce at last with a doubtful sigh admitted that it was just possible she might get Barbara ready some time in June. This was victory enough, so Burr and Barbara disappeared together, and the older people spoke of less personal matters. Mr. Pierce asked a question about Sumter’s fall, and Brett gave him an account of that event, and Cinda added lightly:

  “You’d have thought by the celebration that it was the greatest victory ever won in war. Actually, with all their shooting, not a soul was killed—except when the Yankees insisted on firing a salute to their old flag after they’d surrendered and the cannon exploded and killed some of them.”

  Barbara’s father was one of those—most of the leading men in Richmond agreed with him—who had stood for the Union and against secession, till Lincoln’s call for volunteers made all men of a single mind. He admitted this now. “Yet I wonder whether Robert Barnwell Rhett sleeps well of nights. He more than any man in the South has brought this on us.”

  “He and Yancey were the spokesmen,” Brett assented. “But Roger Pryor and Edmund Ruffin did their share.”

  “Mr. Rhett won’t have any qualms,” Cinda predicted. “He likes to think he’s somebody! He wasn’t satisfied to be plain Mister Smith the way he was born. Just because he had a Rhett for a grandfather or something, down with the Smiths and up with the Rhetts! As if names meant anything!”

  Brett smiled. “Seems to me I’ve detected in you a certain pride in the fact that you’re a Currain!”

  “You notice I was ready enough to change my name to Dewain, all the same!”

  Mr. Pierce was an elderly man, now retired from active life; but he had been a director of the Bank of Virginia, and he remarked that the Confederacy would have trouble financing the war. “There’s talk of putting an embargo on our cotton, but I’d like to see every bale shipped to England. Even half a million bales would give us ample credit there.”

  “They won’t do it,” Brett predicted. “They think King Cotton will be our best weapon, to bankrupt the North, and to force England and France to fight for us.” He added: “Of course they may come to their senses, ship the cotton later.”

  “Later will be too late,” Mr. Pierce retorted. “Lincoln hasn’t a dozen ships for blockade duty today; but given a few months and the North will build ships by scores, shut our ports tight. If we’re to export any quantity of cotton, it must be done before that happens.”

  Their talk ran on, and Cinda, across the room, trying to keep up a conversation with Mrs. Pierce, thought Brett was as bored as she. Mr. Pierce had a ponderous pomposity. His least utterance was preceded by a faint sound like a clearing of the throat, and his words held a dogmatic ring. You doubted them at your peril. Barbara’s mother was in a different way equally wearisome. Just now she kept reciting the countless obstacles to Barbara’s early wedding; and Cinda smothered a yawn, thinking that if she weren’t so tired she would probably not be so irritated by Mrs. Pierce’s deprecatory little laugh and her monotonous reiterations. Mr. Pierce was giving Brett some advice about investment, saying that gold was the only safe thing to buy in such times as these; and Cinda thought he was presumptuous to try to tell Brett anything about business. She was relieved when they said good night.

  “Well!” she exclaimed. “I thought they’d never go! Come on upstairs, Brett Dewain. If I don’t get out of my stays I’ll scream!”

  But Brett had matters of business which would keep him a while at his desk; so Cinda called Vesta into her room and they talked of Burr and Barbara, and of how well his uniform became Burr; and Cinda said:

  “But if you think Burr’s handsome you should see Julian!”

  “Julian! Mama, you don’t mean to say——”

  “Oh, yes, he’s volunteered with the other cadets.”

  “But, Mama, that infant! You shouldn’t have let him!”

  “Nonsense! It’s what he wanted to do, and it’s what we want him to do.” These words must serve through the months ahead as her passport to a peaceful mind.

  “But he’s so young!” Vesta’s eyes were full of tears. “Mama, couldn’t you stop him?”

  “Of course, if we had wanted to. He had to have our permission, telegraphed us.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Why, gave it, with our blessing!”

  “Mama!” Then, in sure understanding: “Didn’t it almost kill you?”

  Cinda nodded grimly. “Yes, it did! If your father had tried to persuade me to consent, I’d have fought him to the last gasp. But he left the decision to me. So what could I do?” Vesta came quickly to her, hugged her hard; for a moment they stayed in close embrace. Then Cinda said briskly: “And I’m all right now! Vesta, Jenny’s going to have a baby this summer. August, she thinks. Isn’t that fine?”

  “Oh, wonderful! How is she?”

  “Perfect! She’ll bring the children here, as soon as Clayton goes. It will be nice having them in Richmond, won’t it? It will keep us all busy. Kyle’s a terror, and Janet’s so active she’d wear out a monkey!”

  She answered Vesta’s questions till Vesta had no more to ask. “Now it’s your turn, Honey,” she said then. “What’s been happening here while we were gone?” Vesta must have seen Tommy Cloyd; it was of him Cinda expected her to speak. But Vesta did not do so.

  “Oh Heavens, everything,” she declared. “Just crazy excitement all the time. When the secession vote was passed, the streets around the Mechanics’ Institute were simply jammed, waiting to hear the news; and when people heard, there was a rush to haul down the Union flag on top of the Capitol. A boy climbed up the lightning rod, and it pulled loose and there he was swinging around in the air and everyone was just simply screaming! A man went to help him and slid down to the gutter; and when the rod bent clear over the boy let go, and the man caught him at the very edge of the roof, and they climbed back up to the skylight, and everybody cheered as if we’d beaten the Yankees already.

  “It’s been like that right along, Mama. People are just simply crazy.” She laughed in sudden recollection. “And doing the silliest things! One Sunday the bells rang, and warnings were put up everywhere that a Northern warship was coming up the river with ten thousand soldiers to capture Richmond, and all our soldiers marched down to Rockett’s—–”

  Cinda exploded. “Soldiers! I’m sick to death of them! I’ve seen nothing but soldiers since we started north; and a tobacco-chewing, whiskey-drinking lot they were!”

  “Well, anyway,” Vesta insisted, “everybody who had even a piston loaded it; and you never heard so much brag and blow in your life. Of course it all turned out to be just talk. Burr said the Yankees didn’t have ten thousand soldiers anyway, and they couldn’t put more than two or three hundred of them on one little boat if they had them.”

  Cinda turned casually toward her dressing table, and began to loose her hair. “Speaking of soldiers, have you seen Tommy? He’s in the De Kalb Rifles, came north a week or two ago with Maxcy Gregg’s regiment. He came to say good-by to us.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve seen him,” Vesta assented, but at first she said no more; so Cinda let her take her own time, asked in a lower tone:

  “What regiment is Burr in?”

  “The cavalry, the First Virginia.” For a fe
w moments neither of them spoke, till Vesta said sharply, as though rousing from deep thought: “Mama!”

  Cinda, who had been facing her mirror, whirled around. “Eh? God bless us, child, you scared me! You don’t need to shout! I’m right here in the same room. Go on, what are you trying to say?”

  Vesta hesitated. “Mama, how do you tell a man to please hurry up and marry you?”

  Cinda gave no sign of surprise. She answered calmly: “Oh, in any way you choose. With looks, with tears, with sighs, any way at all.” She smiled. “Only, don’t ever put it into words. If you do, the man will forever tease you about it. Why?” Her tone was matter-of-fact, robbing the question of all embarrassment. “Want to marry Tommy, do you?”

  The girl nodded. “Yes. If he’s going to be a soldier.” Vesta hesitated. “He wrote me ahead of time that he was coming. I’ve just—pestered him to death ever since he got here. Oh, Mama, he’s so sweet, and so sort of dumb and helpless. He needs someone to tell him he’s wonderful, and to—well, love him! I wish he’d marry me and let me do it!”

  Cinda tried to speak as casually as though this conversation were in no way remarkable. “Well, you’ll have to be careful, I’m sure of that.”

  “I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. But—I want to do something.” And she said, half to herself: “I keep feeling I must hurry, hurry, hurry while there’s time.”

  “Is he here in Richmond?”

  “He’s at Camp Pickens, yes.”

  “Well, if you see a lot of him, perhaps something will happen. I’ll try to think what’s best to do. If you can wait a little while.”

  “Oh, Mama—you’re awfully wonderful. Of course I can wait—if it isn’t too long. Please don’t think I’m just silly, will you?”

  “Silly? Heavens and earth, darling, I think you’re the most sensible person I know! Next to myself, of course! And if you and I between us can’t bring Tommy to time, I’ll be much surprised.”