House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Trav told Faunt that Julian might be alive, and Faunt’s eyes softened. “The fine dear lad,” he whispered; and for a moment Trav could recognize the old Faunt whom it was so easy to love.

  “Cinda’s gone to send word to Brett,” Trav explained. “She’ll be back soon. She’ll want to see you, and so will Enid.” He said in diffident affection, “You’ve neglected us lately, you know.” But Faunt, coloring a little, said he could not stay.

  Brett, at Cinda’s summons, came home that night; and he and Cinda next morning went to see again the Northern soldier who remembered Julian; and at Brett’s request Dr. Murfin said he would try to get from Washington some more definite word. But Brett when they were alone told Trav honestly:

  “He thinks it’s hopeless, and I’m afraid it is. If Julian died, they might never have known his name. I’m writing to my old friend Mr. Gilby in Washington. He may be able to find out something.”

  The slow days dragged away; and Trav thought Cinda was more tormented by the waiting now than by her hopelessness before this grain of promise came. General Longstreet, whose headquarters were now in Richmond, came frequently to sit a while with Trav. The big man was lonely; for Mrs. Longstreet stayed on in Lynchburg, and he could not leave his duties to go to her there. He said she was working in the hospitals. It had not occurred to Trav that there were hospitals elsewhere than in Richmond; yet he realized this must be so. Probably everywhere in the South there were sick or wounded men, as though a plague had swept the land.

  Longstreet said half McClellan’s army had already been shipped away to Northern Virginia. “Jackson has gone to keep an eye on Pope,” he said, “and I expect we’ll follow soon.” He said Trav would be missed. “In fact I thought I might need your services a few days since,” he confessed, smiling in his beard. “Are you familiar with the code?”

  Trav grinned. “Afraid not, General. Have you been calling someone out?”

  Longstreet chuckled. “No! On the contrary.” And he explained: “Powell Hill. One of his staff wrote some pieces in the Examiner praising the work of Hill’s division so extravagantly you’d have thought no one else did anything worth doing during those days while we were pushing McClellan down to Harrison’s Landing. I finally wrote a note to the Whig flatly contradicting these articles, had Moxley Sorrel sign it as my Adjutant General. Then Hill refused to receive Sorrel, when I sent him to Hill on an official errand, so I assumed full responsibility, and General Hill’s language became so insubordinate that I sent Major Sorrel, in full panoply of sword and sash, to put him under arrest. After that Hill demanded that I meet him. I was perfectly agreeable to doing so; but General Lee cooled hot tempers on both sides, and sent General Hill off to reinforce Jackson.”

  Trav could imagine the lively excitement this affair had caused throughout the army; and he suspected that General Hill might have had good reason to feel himself affronted. Longstreet had many virtues, but tact was not among them. If he thought it right to reprove General Hill he would make no effort to soften his language in order to spare the other’s feelings.

  “I suppose he felt his honor demanded a meeting,” he suggested.

  Longstreet nodded. “That’s the Southern idea of the way to prove one’s courage, to call someone to mortal combat. We’ve no respect for moral courage, but only for physical bravery. We applaud a physically brave man as a hero, even though he may also be a wretch of the basest sort.” And he added thoughtfully: “Take Light Horse Harry Lee. His name’s a synonym for gallantry and valor and all the manly virtues. He was a fine partisan commander, and his military fame carried him to high place in civil and political life; but when he was not a soldier he was a speculator, greedy for gain, impractical, weak, lacking in principle. He was bankrupted by his follies, spent his last five years outside his own country, caused grief and loss to his friends and to his family; but he’ll always be one of Virginia’s heroes because of his soldierly successes, and everyone forgets his weaknesses.”

  “I’ve always thought of him as a great man,” Trav admitted. “He was General Lee’s father.”

  “Yes. They say ministers’ sons turn out badly. Perhaps the opposite is true. Certainly, whatever his father was, General Lee is as good as he is great. But I was only referring to the South’s blind admiration for physical courage. If General Hill had bravely accepted my rebuke, he would have been called a coward; so he challenged me. If I had had the courage to refuse to exchange shots with him, I would have been laughed at as a craven.”

  “Did you request his transfer to Jackson’s command?”

  Longstreet looked at Trav in frank astonishment. “I? God bless you, no! There’s not a better general officer in our ranks than Powell Hill; none I’d rather have for the work ahead.” He added with a chuckle: “And I was at fault, in some respects, and I’ve told him so. I am not at home in a controversy, Major. By the way, your promotion has come through.” Trav colored with quick pleasure; and the other went on: “Once involved in any wordy contention I’m apt to speak more strongly than I mean. I’ll never learn to follow old Ben Franklin’s advice. Remember his warning? Don’t ever let it appear that you know more than the other fellow. It just makes him angry. But I forget that. If a man seems to me wrong I tell him so. General Lee knows how to persuade men so pleasingly that when they accept his idea they think it their own.” He smiled. “But once I begin to say a thing, I over-say it. There’s a lesson you might teach me, Major; your gift of silence. Teach me to hold my tongue.”

  In these hours together Trav’s affection for the big man grew and ripened. When Longstreet took his division north to Gordonsville, Trav resented his own weakness which would for weary weeks make it impossible for him to return to the field. Enid felt an equal resentment, because he was still too weak to move to the house on Clay Street, now ready for their occupancy. He had not yet gone downtairs, and though he was up and dressed almost every day he had lost so much flesh that his garments hung like loose bags on his wasted frame. Enid day by day urged him to hurry and get well; and she occupied this time of waiting by selecting new curtains, new linens, new rugs, new china and glassware at prices that Trav thought extravagantly high. Dolly helped her, and once Captain Pew brought a shipload of blockade goods to Richmond and gave Enid first choice. Cinda bade her take what she wanted of the things from Great Oak; and Enid wondered covetously whether Mrs. Currain would let her have Uncle Josh as butler. He and Old Thomas and Young Tom were established, with the other house servants from Great Oak, in quarters Brett had rented for them behind the ruins of the Mayborough house on Leigh Street, which had burned down last winter and had not been rebuilt. But though Enid suggested to Trav this possibility he would not let her propose it to his mother. When Mrs. Currain took the air it was in her own fine carriage, with Old Thomas holding the reins; and Uncle Josh reported to her every day. Trav would not deprive her of these friends. April was to go with them to Clay Street, and Trav thought Big Mill might serve as butler; but Enid said he smelled of the stables. Trav suggested bringing some of the people from Chimneys, and when Enid agreed to this, he welcomed the prospect of revisiting that long-familiar, well-beloved spot.

  But he must wait till he was strong again. He managed his first trip down the stairs, and another and another; and then one day came the great word that Julian was alive. Burr was at home that day, and it happened that Anne Tudor too was there when Dr. Murfin called. He said Julian was in Carver Hospital in Washington.

  “He’s alive,” the surgeon said. “But he’s still so weak he has barely strength to talk.” Trav saw Cinda white and trembling as she waited on the doctor’s words. “But unless something more goes wrong, he will recover,” he said, and he added frankly: “It’s a wonder he survived, Mrs. Dewain. I know you want the truth. He lost a great deal of blood before the hemorrhage was controlled.”

  Trav saw that Cinda could not speak, so he asked: “Why did they carry him to Washington?”

  “He was thought to be one of our own
men. I suppose his uniform was stained. At any rate, he was taken aboard our transports.”

  Cinda said in a low tone: “I’m going to him.”

  “He’s far too weak to make a journey.”

  “I’ll take care of him till he can come home.”

  Burr spoke doubtfully. “Mama, you can’t go, can you? None of us can go with you, and you can’t go alone.” Trav wished he himself were not so nearly helpless. “And Papa won’t let you go by yourself, Mama.”

  “I shan’t ask him,” Cinda said inflexibly. “I shan’t wait to ask him.”

  Anne Tudor crossed to touch Cinda’s shoulder. “I’ll go with you, Mrs. Dewain. I won’t be any protection, but I’ll be company. I’d like to, really. I’m awfully fond of Julian.”

  “There’s no need of any of you going,” Dr. Murfin urged. “When he’s well enough to travel, he’ll be exchanged.”

  “Thank you,” Cinda said, ignoring his warning. “You’ve been very kind.” To Anne: “I’m glad you want to go, darling; but will your father let you?”

  “Come home with me while I ask him.”

  Cinda rose. “Yes. Burr, will you escort us?” Trav recognized in her a driving insistence that nothing could curb; and Burr seemed to feel this too. Dr. Murfin tried again to protest.

  “I really must explain to you, Mrs. Dewain——”

  She shook her head. “No, please, it doesn’t matter. You’ve been most kind; but I must do this, really.” She and Anne moved into the hall; but Burr turned to the Northerner for a word and a handclasp.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You can see what this means to her—to all of us.”

  He followed them, and the outer door closed. Dr. Murfin hesitated, and Trav said: “Stay a moment more, Doctor,” and as the other seated himself, he said: “My sister has had a long waiting. She will wait no more.”

  “I think you ought to warn her, to prepare her for a shock,” the doctor said gently; and for a moment his face twisted in hard anger. “I can bear wounds, sickness, death, Mr. Currain. I can face these things steadily enough; but the maimed and mutilated men make me sick with rage at this whole bloody business.”

  “Julian is—maimed?” Trav asked.

  The other nodded grimly. He fumbled in his pocket, drew out a letter, read some paragraphs. “‘The hunt for your man narrowed down to those wounded from Yorktown who were still alive but were also still too sick to talk. I thought I’d covered the field; but the word came to me this morning, and I saw the boy this afternoon. The wound——’ ”

  Trav was confused by the medical terminology which followed, but he could understand that the blood supply in Julian’s leg had somehow been injured or destroyed, so that gangrene set in. There had been a series of amputations, complicated by the fact that Julian developed measles and then pneumonia. The terrible details piled one upon another till Trav could bear no more; he interrupted.

  “Doctor, has he any leg left?”

  “Not even a stump, I’m afraid. Currain, it’s one of God’s miracles he’s alive at all.”

  “I’ll not tell his mother all that,” Trav decided. “It’s just as well she shouldn’t know.” He added appreciatively: “Someone must have worked hard and long to keep him alive.” His eyes for a moment closed in a nausea of horror. “Several amputations?” He had heard men scream, in the hospital tents, when they fought against the hands that held them motionless while saw bit bone.

  Dr. Murfin said gently: “We have chloroform in the North, of course. So he was insensible.”

  Trav nodded, and after a moment the other rose to go. Trav went with him to the door; he turned then and found the stairs, so frighteningly steep and high. He went slowly up to his room and wished to go to bed; but when Cinda returned she might need him, so he waited, sitting with his eyes closed, thinking of the fine boy lying among strangers far away.

  They were kindly strangers, to be sure; for most men in their hearts were kind. Most men caught in this shame and horror that billowed across the world were helpless, doing what they must, borne to and fro by forces beyond their control. It was true that one man had let loose this bloody tide across the land. One man, if he had held his hand, could have prevented all this; yet perhaps that great man was as helpless as the least of them. It was easy to damn Abraham Lincoln; yet it must have seemed to Lincoln that he could do no other than he did.

  Perhaps war was a disease, which just as smallpox sweeps a city sometimes swept a nation. War was a disease of the human heart, changing the heart’s beat and pulse and all its functioning, making gentle men into murderers, entering into the hearts of men to turn them mad. Diseases came from none knew where; men were stricken or not; they lived or they died. It was so with war, the worst disease of all.

  When Cinda and Burr returned, Cinda went to pack, but Burr reported to Trav that Judge Tudor made no objection to Anne’s going. “I think he’s really relieved,” Burr said in a puzzled tone. “I don’t know why, exactly. He says Anne may stay on in Washington with a friend of his. He wants her to take some documents to put in safekeeping; and that reminded me that Mama has some securities Papa’s been worried about. She’ll take them to Mr. Gilby to keep for us.”

  They would leave next morning, and without military passes. To secure passports meant delay. “Judge Tudor says Mr. Randolph doesn’t issue passports any more, that General Winder handles them,” Burr explained. “And he and his plug-uglies are pretty arrogant. Anyway, Mama doesn’t want to wait for all that; and I’m sure General Stuart will let me and Uncle Faunt see them through the lines.”

  “Anne will enjoy seeing Faunt,” Trav remarked.

  Burr hesitated. “Judge Tudor asked how Uncle Faunt was. He says he saw him at a distance a few days ago, says he believes Uncle Faunt is often in Richmond. I think maybe he resents Uncle Faunt’s not calling on them. It wasn’t anything he said, just the way he said it.” He added: “Anyway, we’ll slip Mama and Anne through the lines.”

  When Cinda and Anne were gone, Mrs. Currain and Trav and Enid and the children were left in sole possession of the house on Fifth Street. Trav was touched to see his mother at once assume the direction of the household. She trotted about the house as merrily as a cricket. Caesar under her commands sometimes forgot his lofty dignity; and even June, though at first she sulked because Cinda had left her behind, soon fell under the brisk old woman’s spell. But a few days after Cinda’s departure, Enid insisted Trav was well enough to move to the house on Clay Street. Trav thought they should stay here till Cinda’s return; but Enid reminded him that that might be a long time.

  “And I can’t stand it any longer,” she declared. “I’ve always hated being just a visitor here anyway, and now Mama’s so uppity I just won’t endure it another day.”

  So Trav yielded. The house on Clay Street, which he entered for the first time that day, was larger than he had expected; and he had to go from room to room with Enid while she showed him what she had done and told him what she planned to do. She was radiant with happy pride, and Trav thought she had never been so beautiful.

  “I never realized how much this would mean to you, Honey,” he confessed, “or I’d have done something about it long ago.”

  She kissed him with an ungrudging ardor. “It’s wonderful, darling.” She laughed in a husky way. “You’re an awful old slow poke, but this makes up for everything!” During the next days, watching her happiness, Trav grew swiftly stronger.

  A week after Cinda and Anne departed Brett came to hear from Trav what had happened. “Mama just says Cinda’s gone to visit the Gilbys in Washington. Did she have word of Julian?”

  “Yes. He’s in a hospital in Washington, Brett.” Trav told him of Julian’s long ordeal, and Brett listened with the sweat of shared pain on his brow.

  “But he’s alive,” he said at last. “So nothing else matters. I’ll see Dr. Murfin tomorrow.” His voice was sober with concern. “There should be a letter from Cinda soon, if she reached Washington.”

&
nbsp; Trav, to distract the other man, asked what the Howitzers had been doing. Brett said they had gone with some infantry on a scout into Prince George County. “The Yankee patrols had been making a nuisance of themselves, and we thought we might get a chance at McClellan’s transports in the river; but they were gunboats instead of transports, so we didn’t accomplish anything.” He added: “Our company hasn’t seen much of the war yet. We’ve only lost two men killed in sixteen months.”

  “Captain Stanard?”

  “Yes, and now George Carlton.”

  “I didn’t know him. Is the company still at Petersburg?”

  “We came to Richmond this morning. The talk is we’ll go north, to Gordonsville or somewhere in a day or two.” He said soberly: “I wish I were with Cinda.”

  “She’ll be all right. She rises to emergencies, you know.”

  Brett stayed a while in talk, as though talk eased him; and next day he came again. This time he brought young Peter home with him, and the boy was pale with excitement. “I met him stumbling along in the crowd on Broad Street,” Brett explained. His tone was light, and he rested a reassuring hand on the youngster’s shoulder; but his eyes met Trav’s gravely. “He’d been out to Camp Lee to see them shoot some deserters.”

  Trav felt the words like a shocking blow. The thought of this son of his, this baby, goggling at such a spectacle was hard to accept without dismay. Before he could speak, Peter himself cried: “And I wiggled through the crowd and got right up close, Papa. When the bullets hit them, little puffs of dust came out, like when someone’s beating a carpet. But it’s more interesting when they hang people.”