House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Cinda, quietly efficient, directed what followed. When they brought Clayton into the library, she had a pallet already spread on the long table that had been hurriedly cleared of books and papers. She sent Travis away to bed, and she and Vesta and old June undressed Clayton and bathed him. The wound in his leg was so astonishingly small to have drained his life away! June took his uniform—she would work till dawn to clean and iron it, to clean the stale blood out of his boot and dry it—and Cinda and Vesta stayed with Clayton.

  They talked a little. Once Cinda said in a dull tone: “It’s funny. I don’t feel anything.”

  “Oh, Mama!” The girl’s voice broke.

  “No, really I don’t. But there’s a pounding in my ears, as if my head were trying to explode. It’s like—why, it’s like having a baby. It hurts so much you stop feeling. You hear yourself scream and wonder who is doing it and why they’re making such a noise. I suppose I will —feel pain after a while.”

  Vesta began to cry again, silent tears streaming. Cinda wondered whence came such a flood of tears. Were there as many tears dammed back in her eyes, too? It seemed impossible. Her eyes felt dry as dust. She sat like stone through the weary night.

  In the morning when it was time to wake Jenny, Cinda herself took up the breakfast tray. Jenny roused at her entrance, said smilingly:

  “Good morning, Mama.”

  Cinda, drawing open the curtains, her back toward the other, asked: “Sleep well?”

  “Splendidly. I feel all made over.”

  Then Cinda turned, and Jenny saw her eyes, and knew; and Cinda knew she knew. Jenny’s lips parted as though she would speak, but she did not. Cinda turned and brought the tray.

  “Drink some coffee, Jenny.”

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think I will.” She said, slowly: “But I’ll be fine, Mama. I really will.” She turned her face to the wall. “I may sleep just a little longer, but I’ll be fine, really.”

  Cinda tried to speak, but what was there to say? What were words? Jenny lay without movement, and Cinda felt herself an intruder. Oh, surely, surely Jenny had in this hour the right to be alone. Cinda went out and closed the door and stood looking at the blank panels. I hope she’s crying, she thought. Oh, I hope she cries and cries and cries. I’d like to cry. It would feel so good to cry.

  But she had no tears to shed. Was this grief? Surely not! If she were grieving, surely she could cry. What was grief? What was pain? Vesta had wept. Perhaps Vesta could tell her. But no—no one could tell another person what pain was. To try to do so was as impossible as to try to describe a color. Red was red, but how could you tell anyone what red was if he did not already know?

  What strange thoughts! Why did the mind thus race and turn and seize on little unrelated things? Once at the Plains she had seen a rattlesnake, when Brett shot it through the body, strike and strike again with a blind fury at its own flank, as though to kill its own hurt. Perhaps the mind, under a grievous wounding, thus blindly seized on any thought at all.

  She went slowly down the stairs. An hour later Jenny joined her, composed and strong; and Jenny’s serenity and her steady tones seemed to Cinda more terrible and shaking than helpless tears. I can’t stand it, she thought. If she doesn’t do something, I’ll make a fool of myself. She left Jenny and Vesta together and went out of doors and walked at random along Franklin Street and turned at random down Third toward Main.

  In front of Judge Robertson’s house at the corner of Main and Third something was happening; chairs and tables were being carried out of the house, cots and blankets were going in. A calm little woman with curious slanting eyes almost like a Chinaman’s seemed to be superintending the work; and Cinda paused to watch and wonder, and the young woman saw her, spoke to her.

  “You’re Mrs. Dewain, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Sally Tompkins. Do you want to help?”

  “Help?” Cinda did not understand. Miss Tompkins said sharply:

  “Yes, help! You don’t look stupid! Please don’t pretend to be! There aren’t enough hospitals to take care of our wounded. Judge Robertson says we can use his house. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  “Oh—I don’t know anything about—–”

  “Nonsense! You’ve had children! These boys are just hurt children. You can at least scrub floors, wash bloody bandages.” Miss Tompkins looked at her keenly. “You’re in a daze. Did you lose someone?”

  Cinda nodded. “Yes, my son. My oldest son.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “These boys will be alive! Perhaps we can keep them alive—if you help!”

  The younger woman’s word was a challenge. Cinda met it. Under Miss Tompkins’s driving insistence it seemed natural enough to be sweeping, dusting, scrubbing. She forgot that Vesta did not know where she was, relished the hard exhausting toil, the blistered hands, the sting of harsh soap, the ache of muscles not used to toil. She worked till Miss Tompkins sent her home. “Don’t wear yourself out the first day. This isn’t just one day’s work; it will go on for years. Come back when you can.”

  The homeward way seemed long; Vesta’s cry of anguished relief at sight of her seemed to come from far away. June’s scolding tenderness was like part of a dream. Cinda was too tired to eat, too tired to do anything but sleep. Some time before morning Brett came; but not even in his arms could Cinda weep. In the morning she wished to go back to help Miss Tompkins, but he made her stay in bed. “You behave yourself,” he said harshly. “No talk out of you.”

  He stayed with her all that week, and on Friday, since she insisted on returning to the house on Third Street, he at last permitted her to do so. She found peace there. It required no knowledge of medicine to be able to meet brave smiles with an answering smile. She could serve Clayton no more, could never bring back into her safe arms the sweet soft body of her baby, her first baby, her own; for he was dead. But what she could not do for him she could do for these others.

  Sunday she and Brett went together to the service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s. President Davis and General Lee were in the hushed company; and there were wounded men among the congregation, bandaged heads, arms in slings. Outside afterwards, Mrs. Brownlaw was as voluble as ever. She had gone to Manassas to see for herself the horrors there.

  “Oh, Mrs. Dewain, you’ve no idea!” There was a terrible relish in her tones. “Why, in Sudley church there were so many wounded men you couldn’t walk without stepping on them, and just one doctor, and he did his operating on the communion table, and in the corner there was a pile, simply a pile, my dear, of arms and legs he’d cut off, and just clouds of flies swarming around them, and it was hot, and the odor! Oh, I thought I’d just expire! And, my dear—–”

  Brett drew Cinda away, but she said gently: “Don’t worry about me, Mr. Dewain. I’ve seen worse things in these two days than she could possibly describe.”

  “I wish you’d stop that hospital work.”

  But she only smiled, and she was tireless in devotion till at the month’s end Clayton’s son was born. It was to Cinda as though her own Clayton were a baby in her arms again, and she said so, and Jenny understood.

  “Why, yes, of course,” she promised. “‘Clayton’ he shall be.”

  So in Clayton’s son recapturing Clayton too, Cinda’s heart began to heal.

  25

  Summer, 1861

  TRAV, at their first meeting, had felt in Longstreet something at once endearing and compelling; and through that summer and early fall of 1861, his respect and affection for the General steadily increased. They went together to Manassas, and Trav threw himself into the business of supply. When Longstreet’s brigade, a few days before the battle, had its first skirmish at Blackburn’s Ford, he had gone back to the Junction to fill his wagons; and though he heard the guns, the fight was over before he returned.

  But Captain Goree gave Trav the story of that small affray. Goree and the General had met on the journey from
Texas to Richmond, and Longstreet had won Goree as he later won Trav. The Texan saw in this first skirmish more comedy than tragedy. “There were a lot of funny things,” he told Trav. “You see the opposite bank of the Run is higher than the ground on this side, so the Yanks were shooting down at us without our having any good chance to shoot back. See that tree down there?” He indicated a big sycamore a hundred yards from the Run and upstream from the Ford. “When the Yankee guns opened, one of our men ran to hide behind that tree; and pretty soon there were a dozen or so all trying to hide behind that one tree, stretched out in a line, pressing against each other. When a shell hit on one side, they’d all swing over to the other; and then a shot would hit over on that side and they’d swing back again.” He laughed at the memory. “That tree looked like a big dog wagging its tail!”

  Trav recognized in Captain Goree, in these hours after the fight, some of that strange exhilaration which he had seen in men at Bethel. “Scared, were they?”

  “Scared as mice!” Goree agreed. “Everybody was, far as that goes. Our whole line broke, all except the Eleventh Virginia. The General saw them start to run, and he let out a bellow like a bull and rode right into them and over them, yelling for them to charge. He can make more noise than a battery in action, when he wants to.” Trav already knew Longstreet’s great voice. “They were more afraid of him than they were of the Yankees. He drove them like a flock of sheep, back to their line.” He laughed again. “And then be damned if Early’s men didn’t fire into us from behind, and the General himself had to drop off his horse and lie flat to escape that fire; and he was swearing so hard the grass was charred all around him.”

  “Hard to imagine him really mad. He’s usually so good-humored.”

  “Wait till you see him when something goes wrong!”

  Trav had not long to wait for that occasion. On the day of the actual battle, they were not engaged; but when the enemy broke in panic flight, Longstreet was ordered forward across the Ford toward Centerville. They came up into the woods on the low bluff beyond the Run and found a few dead Yankees who had been killed in that skirmish three days before. The bodies were blackened and bloated and swollen, and when burial details were ordered to dispose of them Trav saw some men helplessly sick, and he was glad his duty did not lie that way.

  Beyond the woods lay the abandoned enemy camps, and Trav paused there to begin to load his wagons with the treasure trove of supplies left behind. He was still thus engaged when Longstreet himself returned from the advance and swung off his horse and threw his hat furiously on the ground and kicked it, in a profane rage.

  “Retreat! Retreat, by God!” the General cried. “We’re ordered to retreat, and there in front of us, right under our guns, is the whole Yankee army broken to pieces. Why, God Almighty, a yellow dog nipping at their heels could chase them all the way to Baltimore! Yes, if you tied a tin can to his tail he’d chase them clear to New York! Why, if we’d let loose just one battery on them they never would have stopped running! But no, by God! Not us! We retreat! That’s one hell of a God-damned way to win a battle!”

  That was only a beginning. He rose to lurid heights. There was a certain majesty in that explosion; but Trav heard the General’s anger echoed by the columns of soldiers wading back across the Ford again. These same men who three days before had themselves been frightened into panic, having seen now the flight of the enemy were bold as lions.

  Trav’s business, in the aftermath of battle, was to salvage the rations abandoned by the Yankees. He was thus engaged all that night, working in a pouring rain; and when next morning Longstreet asked him about supplies on hand, Trav was able to say: “Why, we’ve enough to feed the men for a week, sir.”

  “Hah! Enough for us to march into Washington and capture Lincoln and invite him to dinner?”

  Trav answered seriously: “Yes, sir, but our wagons are loaded so heavily that they’d have hard going in this mud and rain.”

  Longstreet chuckled at his sober answer. “God bless you, man, don’t look so solemn! I was joking. Where’s your sense of humor?”

  Trav hesitated. “Well, General, I can’t laugh at any of this.” He added stubbornly: “You didn’t laugh when they wouldn’t let you strike the Yankees yesterday.”

  “I did not!” The big man’s voice was harsh. “When I want to do a thing that needs doing, I hate being prevented. I hate unintelligent opposition, and above everything else I hate a fool!”

  Trav half smiled. “I expect you think anyone who disagrees with you is a fool.”

  The other laughed a great laugh. “Why, yes, of course! If I thought they weren’t fools, I’d have to admit that they were right and that I was wrong; and I never admit I’m wrong—especially when I know I’m right!”

  Trav, although he was wet through and mud-besmeared and weary from his long night of labor, now that his task was done wished to see Clayton and make sure the young man had taken no harm during the conflict yesterday; and Longstreet assented. Trav’s way led him across a portion of the battlefield; and among the scattered bodies of the dead he saw furtive figures, plucking and pulling at spurs and boots, probing into pockets. At first the sight enraged him, until he realized who they were: wretched men and boys, the poorest of the poor, miserable folk from the tumbledown huts hidden away in sedge and pine where dwelt the whites too indolent or too debilitated by disease to make a crop on the soil long since impoverished by tobacco planters and abandoned now to any squatter. On a level below the world where men like Ed Blandy lived self-respecting lives, there were these thousands and scores of thousands who from one year’s end to the next never saw their children with full stomachs. Let them plunder where they chose.

  There were others at work among the dead, burial parties digging shallow ditches, collecting the scattered bodies which under the pelting rain lay sprawling everywhere, laying them in the ditches, shovelling over them a scant covering of muddy earth. They too ignored or abetted these ghoulish scavengers. Pity and horror made Trav tremble; but at Beauregard’s headquarters he heard of Clayton’s death, and this, since it gave him a task to do, drove what he had seen out of his mind.

  He got leave to take Clayton’s body home to Richmond, and it was some days before he returned to brigade headquarters. Longstreet gave him a sympathetic greeting, and asked for Cinda and for Brett, and Trav said they were steady under their grief; but while they talked a while together he remembered the day he rode to find Clayton, and the battlefield littered with drenched and pulpy bodies from which all blood had drained away to leave them white as so much wax. He spoke of it, and Longstreet nodded.

  “You have to shut your eyes,” he said. “Forget they were men. A surgeon can’t remember it’s a man who is squalling in agony under his knife and saw; nor can a soldier remember that rotting flesh was once the flesh of men like himself. Next time you see a battlefield, think of it in military terms. See how many men died where, and it will teach you something about the strength of the positions they died to capture—or to hold. There’s no better way to learn what a rise of ground or a well-hidden ravine is worth in military terms than to count the dead in front of it. And study the dead—see how many were killed by musketry, how many by cannon fire. You can learn some useful lessons so.”

  Trav looked at him with inflamed and furious eyes. “I’ll be damned if I will!” he said hoarsely. Then, regretting his own violence, he modified his tone. “Excuse me, sir. War’s your business, but it’s not mine. I’ll be damned if I’ll ever go at it that way.”

  Longstreet nodded. “I know how you feel; but, Currain, there are worse things in war than death and wounds. There’s the ignorance and the lies and the stubborn vanity that causes those wounds and death, that causes war itself. Look at the dead, Currain. Remember them. Never as long as you live forget what war is like. Hate it with all your heart. The more you hate it, the harder you’ll fight to end it!”

  During the weeks that followed Trav often remembered that advice. He lived in a c
old rage at the mismanagement and waste on every hand. That summer after the battle there was no lack of rations. Each company had a store tent; and each tent was full, barrels of flour, a fresh-killed beef every day, mess pork, peas, beans. But except where Trav was in control there was no one to husband these supplies, to serve out exactly what was required and no more. As often as not the store tents were left unguarded, and individual soldiers helped themselves as they chose. Trav, trying to impose some discipline in these matters, found he must move gently, managing more by persuasion than by authority. After all, no white man in the South ever admitted anyone’s right to tell him what to do. An order, given as an order, was an affront. White men weren’t niggers, weren’t to be bossed around!

  Trav spoke of this one day to Longstreet, and the General smiled. “Certainly, Currain.” His tone was amiable, but his words were edged. “A Southerner thinks to ignore orders is to prove he’s a brave man.”

  The men took what they wanted and wasted as they chose; and the fruitful summer’s plenty provided supplies so lavishly that there was enough and to spare. But water was scarce. Full tank cars came daily from clear streams in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and when a car arrived and the whistle of the engine spread the news, the men seized whatever utensil was nearest and raced to the station yards to mass about the car in a disorderly mob till the tank was emptied. This distressed Trav, but Longstreet brushed aside his anxieties.

  “Food and water are easily managed, by comparison with ordnance,” he said. “Men can go hungry or thirsty if they have to, but an army can’t fight without guns. We hadn’t two hundred thousand serviceable firearms in the South three months ago, unless you count pistols and revolvers. Except for what we capture from the Yankees, all our cannon have to come from the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. Almost all. We haven’t enough lead for bullets, so every bullet we pick up on the battlefield here is clear gain. Why, man, we’ll have to save the contents of every chamber pot in the South just to keep us supplied with niter. We have to have it for our percussion caps.” He chuckled. “That’s one reason for not wasting water, though; I’ll grant you that!”