House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  “You look mighty happy, Vesta!”

  “Oh I’ve never been so happy in my life, Uncle Trav! Tommy’s so wonderful! And now seeing you!” She took his arm, leading him toward the house, and Mrs. Taylor and Jenny appeared to greet him. Not till he had made his bows to them was there a chance for questions.

  Vesta said she and Tommy had stopped at the house in Richmond and learned that Cinda and the others were still at Great Oak. “And I wanted to be with Tommy as long as I could,” Vesta confessed, her cheeks bright. “So I thought I’d come down with him and then go home with Mama.”

  On the way, they heard retreat was ordered; but it was too late for Tommy to take Vesta back to Richmond. His duty was here. So they pressed on against the stream of traffic, and they were long upon the road and it had been past dark last night before they came to Williamsburg. Julian had promised, the day of the wedding, to meet Tommy at the tavern on his return; and he was there waiting Tommy’s coming.

  “And when he saw me he was furious,” Vesta confessed. “He just gave me the dickens! I was an awful nuisance, I know. Julian had orders, so he and Tommy couldn’t take time to ride out to Great Oak with me; but I made Julian wait till Tommy could eat some supper, and that let me be with Tommy a little longer. He’s so wonderful!” Jenny Taylor laughed teasingly, and Vesta blushed to the eyes, but she insisted: “You wait till you’re married, Jenny. You won’t think it’s so funny!”

  “Me oh my!” Jenny tossed her head. “A body’d think no one had ever been newly married before. Brand-new husbands are like brand-new babies, darling! They’re all wonderful.”

  “Well, I don’t care, they’re not as grand as Tommy,” Vesta declared. Trav saw she relished this teasing. It was a part of her brimming happiness. But then her eyes shadowed. “Then Julian and Tommy had to go, but Julian left Elegant to take me out to Great Oak; and when we got there the house was all afire!”

  Trav nodded. “I know, yes.”

  “And I couldn’t find anybody except a frightened old negro, and he said you were all gone. So I came back here, and Jenny and Mrs. Taylor took me in. How did the house catch fire, Uncle Trav?”

  He did not tell her; some things she need never know. “Some raiding Yankees after we left, perhaps. Or poor whites. Or rascal negroes.” He was trying to decide what she was now to do; but he could think of nothing better than for her to stay here. It was impossible to send her away to Richmond along that road that was like a river of men and wagons plodding through hopeless mud. If she stayed here she would be safe enough. The Yankees would not harm women.

  And he must find General Longstreet, report, do whatever he could do. “I wish you were in Richmond with your mother,” he confessed.

  Mrs. Taylor said quietly, “She can stay with us. We shall stay, Yankees or no Yankees!”

  “There’ll be a chance to come to Richmond somehow, after the army’s gone.” Trav added a smiling warning. “Stay indoors out of sight.”

  Vesta laughed. “No old Yankee would stop for a second look at me.”

  “More fools they,” Trav declared, hiding his concern. Mrs. Taylor urged that he eat dinner here, but he shook his head. “I’ll tell Cinda where you are, Vesta,” he promised. “You stay till we can send for you.”

  “Mama mustn’t worry about me!”

  “Well, she will, till she has you home again,” he reminded her, and saw her penitent regret. “But no one’s going to blame you for wanting to be with Tommy. Shall I tell Elegant to stay with you?”

  “Oh no, Julian will need him.” She hesitated. “Uncle Trav, is the army really retreating?”

  He nodded. “Yes, we’ll all be gone by tonight, or tomorrow anyway. Unless the mud gets too bad. But the mud will hold back the Yankees too.”

  “There won’t be any fighting here, will there?”

  “No. General McClellan’s a slow man, likes to take his time. We’ll be away before he knows we’re gone.”

  Trav left them, told Elegant to find his way back to Julian, and himself came presently to where—just beyond the town—General Longstreet and Moxley Sorrel and Captain Goree and some others of the staff had drawn aside to watch the men plod by, and to listen to a distant rattle of musketry in the army’s rear.

  Longstreet, intent on those distant sounds, gave Trav a brief nod; Trav heard from Captain Goree the state of affairs. Longstreet’s division had begun their withdrawal before midnight last night. Hill’s men, in Yorktown, were to spike what guns must be abandoned, to start as soon as the roads were clear, to bring up the rear. Stuart’s cavalry would follow as a screen. From the first, the movement had been dreadfully slow. The roads were soft from many rains, and so narrow that when a gun stuck in the mud, or a wagon bogged down, or even when a trace broke and had to be repaired, the whole column stalled.

  “We’ve been an hour sometimes in making a mile,” Captain Goree declared. “With good going, we’d have been well beyond Williamsburg by now. But those shots, that firing—well, it sounds as though the Yanks had come up with Stuart’s men.”

  General Longstreet turned his horse, and they followed him back toward the distant musketry as far as the earthwork called Fort Magruder, the pivot of the defensive line which General Magruder had built across the Peninsula here at its narrowest point. Longstreet halted there again, and Trav, watching him, trying to read his mind, saw him study the works. Captain Goree at Trav’s side said in a low tone: “Till an hour ago it looked as though there’d be no pursuit. Of course they may be just the Yank cavalry feeling us.”

  Longstreet, as though seeing Trav for the first time, beckoned; and Trav went to his side. The General said quietly: “My men will be through Williamsburg by dark, Captain. Find places where they can bivouac. Do what you can for them.”

  “Very well, sir.” Trav swung Nig back toward the town, his thoughts engaged with the task of making the men as comfortable as possible. They had been served out three days’ rations yesterday, pork and corn meal to be cooked before the start in preparation for this march. Probably most of them had already devoured this provision, but that could not be helped. The depot wagons and the baggage, everything except the ammunition carts, were already on the road to Richmond. If it rained tonight, if this thin spit became a downpour, they would suffer. He found beyond the town a field bordered by trees that would offer them some shelter, set details to bring drinking water and to gather firewood. He did not see the General again till dark when Longstreet’s last brigade was making camp in the field he had chosen; but there had been more firing to the rear, and the rumble of cannon as well as musketry.

  The General was as calm as he always was when action pressed. “I’m taking Anderson’s brigade, and Pryor’s, back to hold Fort Magruder,” he told Trav. “McLaw’s men and Kershaw’s stopped the Yankee infantry there; but they’re to continue the withdrawal tonight. Magruder’s men and then Smith’s division and then General Hill’s. We will follow at daylight—or hold the enemy till the army gets away. Let your trains start as soon as Hill’s men clear the road.” He waited for no questions, turned at once to move the two brigades.

  In the early dark the men, cursing their luck, countermarched back into the town. Trav, when they were gone, remembered Vesta. Longstreet would hold the enemy tomorrow for as long as seemed necessary; but to do that meant fighting just beyond the town, and the fight might flow into Williamsburg itself. If he could get Vesta away, he had best do so. Since she had ridden down from Richmond with Tommy, her horse was presumably in the Taylor stable. An escort for her? He wished Big Mill were here; but since he was not, some other way must be found.

  Toward eight o’clock, heavy rain began to fall; and this steady pelting increased his uneasiness. Tomorrow and for days to come both armies would be floundering in a sea of mud. He was more and more sure that Vesta should be sent on her way in time to escape the welter and confusion he foresaw. He himself might go with her; yes, all the way to Richmond if necessary. After all, he need not suppose that he ca
rried the whole army on his shoulders. No man was indispensable; if a man fell, his place was always filled.

  But there was no one except him to escort Vesta. Tommy and Julian were fighters; their duty held them here. He would have no part in any fighting; and he thought of his own passive part with a sudden brief contempt. He could not fight—but he could see Vesta on the road to Richmond. He remembered Big Mill, who would be returning to find him, whom they would surely meet on the way, who could take Vesta on.

  So, his decision made, he gave orders to his men to resume their withdrawal in the morning when Hill’s trains had cleared the road, then returned to find Vesta at the Taylor house. When he proposed that she start at once for Richmond, she hesitated, and Mrs. Taylor and Jenny protested that she must not go. But Vesta, her eyes on Trav, nodded grave assent.

  “I’ll be all right! I’ve made enough trouble, without staying behind in the Yankee lines.” She asked Trav: “Do you know where Tommy is, Uncle Trav?”

  “He’s in the Fifth North Carolina, isn’t he? General Hill’s command?” She nodded. “They were the last to leave the works at Yorktown,” he said. “But they bivouacked in a field beyond town. They’re to march at daylight.”

  “Do you think I could see him?”

  “Why, yes. We can find him and Julian on our way.”

  She laughed in rich happiness. “Then I’ll surely come with you. I won’t mind a wetting if I can see Tommy. Give me time to change.”

  So presently, wearing one of Mr. Taylor’s heavy capes over her riding habit, she was ready. Side by side she and Trav rode through the town, through driving rain, past huddled soldiers and hissing fires, to the fields beyond, where Hill’s division was encamped.

  Trav hailed a soldier and asked the man to find Tommy; and Tommy and Julian presently came splashing across the sodden turf to join them. Where an oak gave some shelter from the rain, Vesta in Tommy’s arms drew Mr. Taylor’s great cape to cover them both; and Julian, like any brother, scolded Vesta for this whole imprudence till Trav drew him away.

  “Let those two have a little while together, Julian. We can’t stop long, Vesta and I.”

  “The army can’t bother with ladies, Uncle Trav.”

  Trav smiled in the darkness at this boy so much the soldier. “I’ll look out for her.”

  “What happened to Great Oak?” Julian asked. “Elegant told me the house burned last night.”

  “Yes, soon after we left.” The phrases now came naturally to his lips. “Rascally negroes, perhaps; or poor whites; or maybe a Yankee patrol.”

  “The Yankees are all behind us!”

  “They might have come by boat. It doesn’t matter. The place is gone, anyway. We’ll not stop the Yankees short of the Chickahominy.”

  Would they stop the enemy short of Richmond itself? He did not know.

  “We’ll never stop them if we don’t fight them.” Julian’s tone was hot and angry. “I don’t like retreats! If we weren’t going to fight, why did we come down here anyway?”

  Trav looked toward where Tommy and Vesta were one shadow by the great tree’s bole. Before morning she must be far away. “The generals do the best they can,” he said mildly. He had Nig and Vesta’s horse on lead. “It’s time for us to go.”

  At that parting Tommy said gratefully: “I’m mighty sorry I made you so much trouble, sir. We didn’t know there’d be this retreat, or I’d have made Vesta stay in Richmond.”

  “It’s all right, Tommy. I’ll take care of her.”

  Vesta hugged Tommy hard; she kissed him hard and fiercely. “And you take care of yourself, Tommy,” she cried, turned to her brother. “You take care of him, Julian! You hear me?” A kiss for him too.

  “I’m not as mad at you as I let on to be, Sis,” Julian assured her, relenting. “But stay home where you belong, after this.”

  Tommy gave her a hand up; she leaned far down for his kiss. “And here’s another for your Mama,” he said and drew her down again; and Julian laughed and sang:

  “‘A pretty girl who gets a kiss

  ‘And runs and tells her mother

  ‘Does what she shouldn’t do

  ‘And don’t deserve another.’”

  Tommy retorted: “She gets it, all the same!” and almost pulled Vesta out of the saddle, and they were all for a moment very merry, and then they were no longer laughing. Trav mounted; and Nig, head tossing, tried the reins, eager to be gone. Tommy and Julian walked beside them to the road; Tommy had her lips yet once again, this time in grave tenderness.

  Then she and Trav moved on through the night, past drenched campfires where they smelled wet embers and wood smoke, past laboring wagons making use of these night hours when the roads were clear of marching men. Trav stopped now and then to direct the work of some group of teamsters struggling with a wagon that had lurched into a pit, or patching broken harnesses; but unless he was needed he pressed steadily on, Vesta’s horse plodding on Nig’s heels. Now and then he spoke to her; her answer was always brisk and cheery and undaunted. A fine girl—and a happy one. Once he asked: “Are you wet through?”

  “No, the cape keeps me dry. I’m all right.”

  “Chilled? I might have bought you a drop of brandy at Burnt Ordinary, or at White Hall tavern, but I didn’t think of doing so.”

  She laughed bravely in the night and the rain. “Nonsense, Uncle Trav! I’m fine.”

  They rode all night, groping through the rain and darkness, along a road upon which even in the darkness there was movement; the sluggish crawling wagons, the teamsters half asleep, the plodding weary horses, all dimly seen with eyes accustomed to the dark. Trav had slept three or four hours in the morning, but that was long ago; sleep and fatigue lay heavy on him now. He thought of stopping at the tavern at New Kent Court House; but when they came there the recess under the veranda was full of men sheltering from the rain, with a bonfire burning beside the road, and he heard loud voices and singing in the common room, so he did not pause.

  But dawn caught them while they were still far short of Bottom’s Bridge, and he saw that Vesta’s shoulders drooped with weariness They must rest a while; and at the next house, a mean small cabin built of logs, with an open shed behind, they stopped. A bent old man and his wife welcomed them to a roaring fire, to hot bread and bitter coffee, salt pork and molasses.

  Vesta ate greedily. “Oh Uncle Trav, did anything ever taste so good!” Trav was as hungry as she. While they ate, the dim-eyed old man asked Trav many questions; and when he heard the Yankees were coming he took down a flintlock from pegs against the wall and drew the load and loaded the piece again.

  “Reckon if they come this way I might as well take a hand,” he said.

  When they could eat no more, the woman mothered Vesta, hung her cape and riding skirt before the fire, took shoes and stockings to dry, put the girl to bed under many coverlets. “You sleep a spell, ma’am, and you’ll feel a sight better,” she urged.

  “May I, Uncle Trav?”

  Trav nodded. His own eyes were closing. “I’ll lie down a minute myself.” He appealed to the woman. “If I may?”

  “Why, Lord love you, sartain! And Jim’ll give your horses a bite till yo’re fit to go on.”

  Trav suddenly remembered Big Mill, who would surely be on the road this morning, returning toward Williamsburg, and who might pass unknowing; but Mill would recognize Nig. “Yes, give the horses a nose bag if you can,” he agreed. “But keep mine in plain sight from the road. My boy will be coming from Richmond looking for me, and he’ll know the horse.”

  “I sh’d think he would,” the oldster agreed. “If he’d ever see him. I’ll keep an eye on ’em, see to’t no one don’t take a notion to go off with them. Don’t worry yourself. You lay down and rest a spell.”

  So to the sound of wagons monotonously passing Trav fell asleep. He woke at the sound of a familiar voice. Big Mill was here. Trav swung his feet to the floor.

  “They been a-fighting,” the woman told him; and Trav fe
lt the rumble of the distant guns. Vesta was still asleep. He stepped outside to speak to Mill. The carriage was safe in Richmond, the Negro reported. Mrs. Currain, all of them had stood the journey well. “So I cotch me some sleep, and I come along looking to find you.”

  “I’m glad you came. I need you. When Miss Vesta wakes up, you take her home. Wake her in time so you can reach Richmond before dusk. I’m going back to Williamsburg.”

  “Yas suh!” But Trav heard the reluctance in the word, felt the other’s loyal wish to stay with him.

  “When she’s safe, you come and find me again,” he directed. “I’ll be somewhere with the trains.”

  He left his grateful thanks with the old man and woman who had given them hospitality. It was near noon when he started to retrace his way, Nig splashing through shallows in the low ground among the swamps. Ahead of him, still far away but louder every time he topped a rise, he heard the growl of battle. Where a fork turned aside toward Diascund Bridge he saw men and wagons taking that way; and he asked a question. This was the vanguard of Magruder’s men; they would bivouac at the bridge. Troops and wagons filled the road toward Barhamsville, and there he met General Smith’s advance. The army was a serpent, its tail—Longstreet’s division—still looking back at the enemy. It moved like a serpent with a broken back, thrashing awkwardly, crawling with a terrible slowness toward a doubtful safety—where?

  Was this defeat? How far would they retreat? Where would they stand? Extended thus, the army was helplessly vulnerable. Suppose the Yankees landed a force from transports in the York River to strike this half-paralyzed serpent from the side, to crush its head, to cut off its tail; what could prevent catastrophe? How could this long line of men and wagons be organized again, thrown into battle order, set to face the enemy?