House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Vesta kissed Tommy again, in a proud delight. “But of course you should have been a captain or something long ago,” she declared. She was thinking happily: “Surely he will know he’s a good soldier now!” After supper, after Julian had gone to Anne Tudor, she and Tommy went for a walk and an hour or two alone. This was a warm spring night and the whispering song of the river drew them down to the path above the canal and along past the woody lower slopes of Gamble’s Hill. For a while their talk was nothing; but Vesta felt her heart beat harder, and she planned what she wished to say, till at last a moment’s silence gave her courage.

  “Tommy,” she said, careful to keep her tones steady, “you know, I haven’t seen you since General Longstreet’s babies died. Three of them died in a week, and they’ve only one left. And Tommy, when they died, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer for us to be married. Please!”

  He was puzzled. “That was mighty sad for him, all right; but I don’t see what it has to do with us, Vesta.”

  Her cheeks burned, but her head was high. “I know it’s no way for a lady to talk,” she confessed. “But—they were so sweet, and they’re dead, and I want children of my own, quick, to fill their places.” His embarrassed silence gave her courage. “There, I know I’m awful to talk so, but—I’ve felt married to you for a long time, now.”

  “I sort of feel married to you,” he admitted.

  “Well, married people can talk about having babies! Oh I know probably lots of them don’t; but Mama says people would be happier, specially married people, if they didn’t pretend not to know things. Mama’s pretty wise and wonderful, Tommy.”

  “I guess she is, all right.”

  “Darling, you’re shocked! But Tommy, you and I aren’t going to be just dumb, silly idiots, wearing blindfolds all our lives. You might as well realize right now that I love you just as much as you love me. All ways, Tommy. All ways and always.”

  He said slowly: “I don’t know much about—being married, Vesta. But I know I want to be married to you some day, and be together all our lives.”

  “Well there!” Triumph made her heart pound. “That’s settled! Tommy, let’s get married tomorrow!”

  “Golly, Vesta, I can’t! I have to take the morning train. It leaves about daylight.”

  “Well, you can come back!”

  “Not right away. I oughtn’t to have come this time. I have a lot to learn, to be a good officer.”

  “Tommy Cloyd, you’ve been in the army almost a year! If you haven’t learned how to be a good soldier yet, you never will.”

  “I guess maybe I never will,” he admitted. “I’ve tried, Vesta. I mean, I’ve memorized Hardee’s Tactics from start to finish. I can recite it by the hour, all the commands and everything. But I don’t—well, I don’t feel as if I knew how to—order men around!”

  “Oh, Tommy, all that hasn’t anything to do with you and me.”

  “Not with both of us, I know,” he assented. “But it has a lot to do with me. I thought if I learned everything in Hardee I’d get so I did things just automatically, even in the fighting. But—well, we’ve been in two or three skirmishes, and I’ve had chances to shoot men. I could have—killed them, too. I’m a pretty good shot. But I kept remembering their wives and their sweethearts.” He said unhappily: “I can’t help feeling so; but I know that’s not the way to win battles and war.”

  “I don’t care who wins the battles! I like you the way you are. I love you the way you are!”

  “I thought for a while maybe the other men in the company felt the same way; thought maybe they were just pretending to be so—blood thirsty. But I guess they’re not. They’d have shown it by now, if they were.”

  “You haven’t been in any big fights yet.”

  “Well, we’re going to be, pretty soon. We heard on the train that McClellan’s landing an army at Fortress Monroe.” He said quickly: “It isn’t that I’m afraid, Vesta.”

  “I know you’re not, idiot!”

  “I’m not afraid of being killed, I mean.”

  She turned with a quick movement to hold him fiercely close, and sharp anguish twisted her heart. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!”

  “But I’m afraid of killing someone,” he admitted. Though she was in his arms, she felt that he was still far away from her, his thoughts his own. “I’ve seen a man killed,” he said. “A cavalry picket, scouting, ran into us one day. There were only five of them, and they came out of the woods right in front of us. We had fallen out to rest. They saw us and galloped away, but some of our men shot at them, and one of the Yankees fell out of his saddle. We buried him. He was no older than Julian, Vesta—not old enough to shave. His face wasn’t touched. He had black hair. He was such a nice-looking boy!”

  “Darling, darling!”

  “I’d hate having to think I’d killed him.” He repeated in a sudden passion: “I’d hate it, Vesta!”

  Feeling his loneliness, feeling the trouble in him, full of tenderness she urged: “Tommy, when can we be married?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I want us to be married.”

  “So do I want us to!”

  She became cheerfully matter-of-fact. “Well, then, I’m not going to wait any longer. Papa knows Mr. Randolph, the new Secretary of War. I’ll make Papa see him and arrange a furlough for you. Mama and I will have everything ready beforehand. You just leave it all to me, Tommy. You don’t have to think about anything at all. When you get your furlough, you come right here!” She laughed warmly. “I’ll be all dressed and ready, darling. I’ll give you time to wash your face and hands, and then off we’ll go!” Looking up at him. “Now don’t start gulping and stammering. It’s high time I made up your mind for you!”

  He half surrendered. “Well—but Vesta, I’ll want my mother here.”

  “I’ll have Mama write to her tomorrow, invite her to come and stay with us. Then she’ll be ready whenever you are; and I’ll be ready, Tommy. Oh, my darling, I’ll be so ready!” She caught his hand. “Come on, Tommy! Let’s hurry home and tell Mama right now!”

  Vesta from that day was in a bright fever of haste, but there were still delays; for the army was on the move, and Tommy was needed with his men. Day by day, troops on their way to meet McClellan’s army marched through Richmond; and day and night the very air muttered with the tramp of feet, the roll of drums, the brassy music of the bands. Vesta and Cinda went down to Main Street to watch some of Longstreet’s men march past, and one band played The Girl I Left Behind Me, and hundreds of pretty girls acknowledged that compliment with tender laughter and with much waving of small parasols and lacy handkerchiefs. The day was perfection, every garden bright with spring flowers as though in gala dress for the occasion. Longstreet himself rode by, cantering to overtake the head of his column. When Vesta and Cinda turned up the hill toward home, the cavalry were passing along Franklin Street, General Stuart’s great red beard glowing in the sun; and they saw Burr among the troopers behind him. Day by day the pageantry continued: men afoot, prancing horses, rumbling cannon on their iron-wheeled carriages. Sometimes word was sent ahead that a regiment was hungry; and then pantries were stripped, meals ready to be eaten were snatched off the tables, baskets were filled and borne out to await the brief halt of the men. On one such occasion Vesta had a glimpse of Tommy, and a moment’s word with him; and Julian stopped for a kiss from them all before he hurried on. Uncle Trav stayed overnight, disturbed by the news of Shiloh—that was Longstreet’s friend, ’Lys Grant, again—but Vesta had never heard of the place! What was Shiloh to her? The fears in all those about her she refused to heed.

  Yet there was a whisper of panic in Richmond in these days. The fall of Roanoke Island had shaken that certainty of Southern invincibility which had been born on the field of Manassas. Grant at Fort Henry and at Donelson and then at Shiloh had proved that even Southern armies could be beaten. Now McClellan had another great army at Fortress Monroe, and to meet him all Virginia north of Richmond had been stripped
of troops. Those who professed to be well informed were spreading rumors of coming disaster, and many who could do so slipped away. Barbara’s father and mother had heard that the government archives were being packed for shipment to Columbia, and they departed to Raleigh to stay there till the danger passed, Barbara, her baby not two months away, refused to go so far from Burr, and Cinda welcomed her to the big house on Fifth Street.

  “But I hope I can behave myself while she’s here,” she confessed to Vesta. “That little Miss Somebody is as meek as melted butter, but she always seems to get her own way somehow. Maybe it’s because she knows exactly what she wants.”

  Vesta laughed at her. “You were so ostentatiously glad to have her, I thought you overdid it.”

  “I noticed you weren’t over cordial.”

  “I used to like her lots,” Vesta reflected. “I still do, I think. But there’s something about her sort of—well, I don’t know what. As though she were on guard, afraid of us, afraid Burr’ll go on loving us or something. But I’ll be as nice to her as I know how.”

  “Girls change, sometimes, when their first baby is coming,” Cinda agreed. “But Barbara always—bothered me! I wonder why it is we like some people the minute we see them. Those Cary girls, for instance.”

  Vesta smiled. “Oh everybody likes them.” Constance Cary and her cousins, Hetty and Jenny, had come to Richmond before Christmas, living at first at Mrs. Clifton’s on Fourteenth Street; and their residence there made the dreary old lodging house a magnet for every gallant officer in town, till they moved to Mrs. Clarke’s at Fourth and Franklin, only a few doors away. The three girls and Vesta were already friends, drawn together by a shared activity. The Ladies’ Defense Association had been organized on the ninth of April, with Mrs. Clopton as president, to raise funds and material with which to build another ironclad like the Merrimac, which everyone now tried to remember to call the Virginia; and girls of Vesta’s age were active workers on the committees appointed to solicit subscriptions. The project, as an outlet for feminine patriotism, was instantly popular; and the contributions poured in—money, jewelry, plate, treasured old pieces of furniture and sets of rare china. Old iron was needed, too, and the grillwork of many a portico, and many a fence, and every pot and kettle that could be spared, were collected by pretty volunteers. The machinery in some of the tobacco factories which now lay idle was broken up and carted away to the Tredegar Iron Works to be converted into usable metal. Before Vesta’s wedding day, the new ironclad was well begun.

  In spite of Cinda’s feeling about Barbara, Burr’s wife fitted easily into the Fifth Street household. Mrs. Cloyd came north from Camden, and Vesta drew close to Tommy’s mother, leading her to talk of Tommy’s father, dead long ago, and of Tommy’s babyhood, and of Mrs. Cloyd’s activities since her husband’s death while she played a man’s part in the management of the plantation.

  “It’s eighteen years since I’ve gone this long without climbing on a horse,” Mrs. Cloyd said. “I’m having so much fun eating breakfast in bed I don’t even mind losing Tommy. Specially to you, my dear.”

  Vesta loved her; her heart was big enough in these days to embrace the world.

  They had to wait till Tommy could get leave, so they were not married until the last Saturday in April. Mrs. Currain refused to leave Great Oak, and Enid insisted on staying there to keep her company. Streean was away, professedly on business, and so was Darrell. The Howitzers had gone from Suffolk to North Carolina, so Brett came only for the last two days before the wedding; and he and Tony, and when they arrived Friday afternoon Trav and Faunt, were apt to draw aside in grave discussion. But the younger men—Burr and Julian, Rollin who would be Tommy’s groomsman, and of course Tommy—were merry enough so that Vesta need not heed those serious older faces.

  She and Tommy would go to the McAltee place in Goochland for a few fine days together. When after the ceremony Vesta went to dress for her departure, Cinda sent every other from the room so that they could be briefly alone; and when Vesta was ready Cinda kissed her, and she said huskily:

  “There, darling; be happy. You and Tommy are the finest people I know.” And in a different tone: “Honey, I’m sorry to be down-to-earth, but I want you to know our plans. Travis says General Johnston will probably give up the Yorktown line and fall back to the Chickahominy; so we must bring Mama to Richmond right away. Tilda and I are going down Monday with Tonv and Travis to get her, and to save what things we can.”

  “Oh, Mama!” Vesta felt a shock of sorrow. “Leaving Great Oak will just about kill Grandma!”

  “We can stand anything we must stand, Vesta, and so can she. Don’t let it spoil these days for you, my dear. When Tommy has to return to duty, you stay here and wait for us.” She hugged Vesta hard. “Be happy, darling,” she repeated. “Make Tommy happy. I’m very proud of my new son.”

  Vesta when she and Tommy rode away looked back and saw proudly Cinda’s smile and her eyes not dimmed by tears. “Oh, Tommy,” she whispered, “aren’t mothers wonderful?” She came close beside him, her hand in his; and her heart was big with dreams.

  33

  Spring, 1862

  THESE weeks of winter and early spring while he watched the slow disintegration of the army had been for Trav a troubled time. Clearly the army was weaker every day. Disease was the immediate and deadly foe. In some companies a score of men had died, and as many more were so weakened by dysentery or by kindred ills that they had been sent home to recover. Wet and cold and filth and inadequate or improper food reduced the strength of the men to such a point that sickness ran among them like a forest fire; and boredom was in its way almost as bad as sickness. To escape the monotony of their days they turned to any diversion, from snowballing to cock-fighting to gambling to drinking.

  With warmer weather, flies and mosquitoes tormented sick and well alike; and chiggers and fleas were always with them. But worse than any discomfort for Trav was his growing certainty that they must presently abandon or destroy the mountains of stores accumulated behind the lines at Centerville and at Manassas. His mathematical mind reduced the situation to figures, and in mid-February, when the General, after the death of his children and after taking Mrs. Longstreet and Garland to Lynchburg, returned to headquarters, Trav put the problem before him.

  “Colonel Northrop is setting us an impossible task, sir. He’s sending supplies on here faster than we use them. General Johnston wanted to keep a million and a half pounds of rations on hand; but today the army has over three million pounds—three and a quarter million, actually—and two million pounds of meat curing, and tremendous herds of cattle waiting for slaughter. When we fall back, we can drive the herds. It will strip weight off them, but that can’t be helped. But we can’t move much over a quarter of a million pounds a day by the railroad. It would take us twenty-two days to get all this surplus eaten up or moved away, and once we decide to move we won’t stay here that long.”

  Longstreet, in a tone dull with grief, agreed with this careful calculation. “Figures mean a lot to you,” he commented. “To me too. But war’s a wasteful business, Currain. And it’s better to have too much than too little.”

  This was small comfort; and when in early March the withdrawal began, Trav’s fears were realized. The precious stores were destroyed or left to fall into enemy hands; for the Yankee scouts pressed close on the heels of the retreating troops, deceived only briefly by the empty defenses armed with dummy cannon which were left to frighten them.

  General Longstreet’s command was the first to move, marching by the Warrenton pike to Culpeper. The teamsters over whom Trav had supervision seemed to use an extraordinary ingenuity in getting into trouble. They took wrong roads, and in trying to correct their mistakes they involved the columns in hideous confusion. Before his trains were safely across the North Fork of the Rappahannock, he had worn himself ragged, battling against the stupidity and the casual indifference of men to whom it seemed to be a point of personal honor not to submit to comma
nd. Trav said that night: “They’re stubborn as so many mules, General! They won’t move till they choose, they loaf, they fall out to rest, they stop at any excuse or at none; and they’re so ignorant and at the same time so sure of their own wisdom that sometimes I’d like to take a blacksnake to them!”

  The General nodded, his eyes dark. “The foot soldiers are as bad,” he said. “They can’t bear to leave behind any of their possessions, so they load themselves down. Knapsacks, muskets, frying pans, coffee pots, haversacks, chickens and turkeys and pigs spitted on their bayonets; and half of them tote a bag full of God knows what trash. So after a mile or two, they begin to lag. I’ve ordered the mounted officers to follow our columns instead of leading them, to herd the stragglers along.”

  Trav cut a bit of tobacco; he mopped his brow. “Well, we’ve come this far, somehow. The last of our wagons are safely across the river. Will you have the bridge burned?”

  “Not till we must. It’s easier to defend one bridge than miles of shallow, easily forded stream. We’ll leave the bridge as bait. Perhaps the Yankees will try to force it.”

  While Longstreet’s headquarters were at Culpeper, Trav, on his way to Great Oak to consult with his brothers about removing the Negroes before the Yankees came, stopped in Richmond. Martial law had been proclaimed there, and passports were necessary. At the passport office at Ninth and Broad Street, and in the Commissary General’s office and wherever business led him, Trav found an infuriating disorder and a slovenly confusion. He met Redford Streean, who insisted on taking him home for supper, and Trav spoke of the things he had seen that day.