House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  This was an affable and cheerful Tony, readier to laugh than Trav had ever known him to be. During the drive back to Chimneys, Tony’s monotonous good humor began to be disturbing. To Trav’s relief, for he dreaded questioning his brother, Tony volunteered the statement that James Fiddler was gone. “More fool he,” he said with a chuckle. “But he was bound to don the dreadful panoply of war.” Trav suspected that Tony had had no small amount to drink this morning. “I tried to make him see his folly; yes, and his disloyalty, too. He’s as much of a deserter as any of these white trash fellows hiding out around here.”

  “You’ll miss him.”

  “Oh I think not.” Tony’s persistent laughter was increasingly irritating. “I’m a pretty good farmer myself, Trav. Enjoy it, you know. Mighty interesting. And profitable, too. By the way, I’ve done the sensible thing, sold off all the surplus people.” Trav felt the other’s sidelong glance, kept his own eyes upon the road. Ed Blandy’s cabin was just around the next bend, still hidden by the pine wood. “They were eating us up like a swarm of locusts,” Tony declared. “Bound to make trouble. Not enough work to keep them busy, and the ones that were working were quarreling with the ones who weren’t. Niggers have to be busy, Trav. Keep them busy. Then they’re happy.” This clipped way of speech, these ejaculatory sentences were something new. So was this loquacity, and the empty laughter. “Should have consulted you all, no doubt, but you were off to the wars. Seemed best to act in your interests.”

  “It’s all in the family,” Trav assented. “You’re in charge here.” Each of them—Faunt at Belle Vue, Brett at the Plains, he himself here at Chimneys and later at Great Oak—had always acted on his own decisions. It was true they never sold slaves, but Tony’s deed was done past mending, and recriminations were folly.

  “Might have discussed it with Mama while she was here,” Tony admitted. “I did talk with Redford Streean. He agreed it was wise to get a price for them while we can. Didn’t want to bother Mama. She’s aged fast.”

  They came to Ed Blandy’s house. “I’ll stop a minute,” Trav decided, “if you don’t mind waiting. Come in with me?”

  But Tony declined to do so. “I haven’t the pleasure of the lady’s acquaintance.” A faint derision in his tone made Trav’s ears burn.

  He had from Mrs. Blandy and from the children a shy welcome. They were none of them, except the new baby who crowed and gurgled on the wide bed in absorbed contemplation of his own toes, at ease; but this did not surprise Trav. Mrs. Blandy said Ed was fine, the last she heard. He and Tom Shadd were together in the Eleventh North Carolina, stationed at Camp Rains, near Wilmington. Trav did not know this regiment; and she said the Colonel was an Englishman and that Ed thought he worked them awful hard. Ed said Colonel Leventhorpe had the loudest voice he’d ever heard; and Trav chuckled.

  “I’ll match General Longstreet against him, Mrs. Blandy. The General can wake a mule up half a mile away without raising his voice above a whisper.”

  They laughed together at that, and the children too, all of them for the moment forgetting to be afraid of Trav. He said the corn looked good, and she said she and the children had worked as hard as they knew how, and Trav told her to remember him to Ed when she could, and she promised to do so. He returned to the waiting carriage, refreshed by this brief interlude. People like Mrs. Blandy made you feel as good as a deep draft of buttermilk cold from the spring house. She was somehow like Cinda; and Trav, back in the carriage, thinking of Cinda, said:

  “By the way, Tony, did you know Cinda had word of Julian?”

  “No. Streean told me he was missing after Williamsburg.”

  “Well, he’s alive,” Trav said. “Or at least he was, the latest news she had. He’s in a hospital in Washington. She went to bring him home.”

  Tony chuckled. “Washington? Maybe she’ll call on that nephew of ours, Trav.”

  Trav looked at his brother in regretful comprehension. The revelation of his kinship to Lincoln had not awakened in him any sense of personal humiliation. If his father’s seed were somehow the source from which this war sprang, why then he would do his best to exterminate the dreadful weed; but he felt, beyond this obligation, no burden of shame upon himself. Tony, from his tone, did. Trav asked gently: “You’re worrying about that, are you?”

  Tony laughed. Why must he always laugh? “Worry? No! Damned clever fellow, that son of a bastard! He’s fooled the Yankees, got to be President! Trouble is, he’s out to get even with his grandpa’s family. We’ll all be no better than beggars before he’s through with us; but I’m going to show the laddie boy I’m as clever as he is. He won’t beggar me!”

  Trav, not knowing what to say, said nothing, and Tony flicked the horses idly with the whip, but presently Trav’s silence seemed to oppress him. “New Governor coming in, in a few days now.”

  Trav accepted the lead. “Colonel Vance. Yes, I know. He had a big majority.”

  “Of course. We’re against this damned war, down here, you know. And so’s Zeb Vance. He was against secession.”

  “Not after Lincoln called on North Carolina to furnish troops.”

  Tony chuckled. “Oh, no one dared say what he thought after that. Vance volunteered, Colonel of the Twenty-sixth. Sure. But everyone knows where he really stands. Even the Philadelphia papers said his election was a Union victory. They sent soldiers into the country to keep deserters from going to the polls and voting for him; but he won anyway. We don’t like Jeff Davis down here, sending Virginia men to impress our guns and the cloth from our mills. Governor Vance will show them that North Carolina is still a sovereign state, boss in her own borders.”

  “We’ll never beat the North if every Confederate state takes that attitude.”

  “We’ll take care of ourselves.”

  Trav said soberly: “I think maybe you’re wrong about North Carolina, Tony. She’s sent over sixty thousand volunteers already.”

  Tony laughed. “Yes, but half of them have deserted and come home.”

  Trav hesitated, but before he could speak the big house came into view, and a moment later they turned up the drive. The familiar sweep of cultivated lowlands, the rolling wooded hills, the distant mountains made his pulse quicken with content, and he felt strength flow into him. Next day he rode for an hour, the day after he rode with Tony till dinner time; and all he saw was good. The plantation was in order, every field well tended. It was true that for this season’s crops James Fiddler was largely responsible; but Tony would be able to go on. He could manage—if he would. Perhaps Big Mill might come on here to act as driver, to keep the hands at their work. Certainly the gigantic Negro had accepted responsibility at Great Oak and met it well.

  Trav waited for an opportunity to suggest this to Tony; but Tony always breakfasted alone in his room, and by the time he appeared he was a little fuddled. Trav, like any other man, took his thimbleful of brandy before his morning coffee, his juleps and his Madeira when he chose, his quiet glass at bed time; but Tony obviously drank from morning till night. He even carried a flask in his saddlebags; and either he drank a great deal or what he drank affected him more than it should. It was no injustice to say that he was drunk much of the time. At night, more than once, Trav, rather than let ’Phemy see Tony limber-legged, helped him to bed.

  ’Phemy was a newcomer in the house, but Trav admitted to himself that she was an improvement on Joseph. The peg-legged Negro had been willing, but he was inept; the house was now spotless, and always in perfect order, and this had not been true in Joseph’s time. On his first day at Chimneys, Trav asked for Joseph, and found him now in charge of the saw mill where with power from a singing little mountain stream logs were converted into posts and rails and boards for the plantation’s many needs. Joseph was happy in his new work; he had always had an accurate eye to decide just how each log should be sawed, slabbed here, slabbed there, planked or quartered, cut into posts, riven into rails. In his two-legged days Joseph could tell at a glance how to get the largest amoun
t of usable material out of a log. He had on his return to the mill calmly assumed command.

  So Joseph was all right, and ’Phemy kept the house immaculate. Trav in the past had seldom seen her; but it seemed to him now that behind her dignity and the efficient way in which she foresaw all his needs and Tony’s, there was something rancorous and angry, something almost malevolent! He remembered that daughter of hers who was even lighter in color than ’Phemy, and who had nursed the children till Enid insisted he get rid of her. Perhaps ’Phemy had blamed him for selling the girl. He tried to take toward her a kindly tone, suggested there was more work here than she could manage alone.

  ’Phemy said firmly: “No, thank’ee. I gits along.” Curiously, when he spoke to old Maria who still ruled the kitchen, suggesting ’Phemy needed help, she used almost exactly the same words.

  “Dat high yaller! Huh, she gwine git along!”

  ’Phemy’s almost arrogant composure puzzled Trav. She was as easy in her manner as though she were the lady of the house; but once, returning with Tony from one of their rides, coming up the path past the quarter and toward the loom house, Trav heard what was unmistakably ’Phemy’s voice, shrill with anger.

  “Don’ you go let dat old goat line you, you heah me! You do an’ I’ll——”

  Then there was a sudden silence, as though the riders had been seen; and Tony beside Trav laughed in that reasonless way of his and lifted his horse to a canter till they came to the house and dismounted there.

  So ’Phemy was not always so composed. Trav wondered what had prompted the outburst he overheard; and after she had served their supper that evening, Trav asked Tony some questions about her. Tony chuckled into his glass.

  “ ’Phemy? Her mother was one of the Coyby niggers, came to Great Oak when Mama and Papa were married. She’s one of Papa’s other bastards, I suppose.”

  Trav felt his cheeks stiff with anger. “You take all that too hard, Tony.”

  Tony grinned at him, wagging his head. “Too hard? I’m surprised at you, Trav. Papa and Mama brought me up to think that blood, family was everything. If I took a cut at some nigger wench with a riding switch, Mama used to say that that was no way for a Currain to behave!”

  “A man’s name doesn’t matter. It’s what he does.”

  Tony nodded sagely. “A Currain by any other name would smell as sweet. To be sure.”

  “Any man makes mistakes. They don’t count. It’s the fine things he does, the good things.”

  Tony drained his glass. “So you’d remember only the good. But what did someone say, Trav?—the evil that men do lives after them! Hence, obviously, all the little bastards in the world!”

  Trav yielded to sudden anger. “Tony, you drink too much! For God’s sake, man, have some self-respect!”

  Tony’s eyebrows rose in owlish derision. “Self-respect? To be sure. Am I not one of the noble Currains?”

  Trav bit his lip. There was no profit in this. Perhaps by talk of other things he could bring Tony back to a saner mood. He began to speak of the need for an overseer or a driver here. It was true that all the good white men were fighting; but Big Mill—He spoke at length, as persuasively as possible; he thought Tony was listening, even though his eyes were closed, till the other presently began to snore.

  Trav left him asleep at the table. He went out to the veranda and sat a while, trying to solve this problem. When he came wearily indoors at last, Tony was no longer in his chair. ’Phemy, presumably, had put him to bed.

  Next morning, Sunday, the hands were idle; but since Tony did not appear, Trav took a horse and rode far. His strength was almost completely restored; he relished the fine rhythm of the saddle, exulting in his own returning vigor. He came home hot and dusty, and used the shower and came down to the veranda. ’Phemy brought him a julep; before it was done Tony joined him.

  Trav saw at once that there was an unnatural excitement in the other; but Tony’s laugh was as persistent as ever. “Afraid I dozed off in the middle of your discourse last night, Trav. You were as long-winded as the Reverend What’s-his-name, used to hold forth at Bruton Church when I was a boy. Sorry, but I never could stand being preached to.” He lifted his glass, let the spicy drink trickle through the ice into his mouth, finished the julep at one long draught, tossed the glass heedlessly over the veranda rail. “Come along, old Slow-and-steady! Dinner time. I saw you off for an early ride this morning. You must be starved.”

  Trav set his half-empty glass aside and followed Tony through the hall to the dining room; but in the doorway he stopped dead still. A woman stood in the further corner of the room, fear in her eyes. Trav recognized her; ’Phemy’s bright mulatto daughter whom he had sold to the Pettigrews long ago.

  Tony went to her, took her hand, said amiably: “Come, come, child! Nothing to be afraid of. It’s just your Uncle Trav!”

  The Negress looked at Trav, her eyes blank with terror. Trav saw with a cold precision and with complete understanding that her dress was fine, and there were jewels in her ears. Her obvious fright reminded him that for this moment she was not to blame. Then he saw ’Phemy in the door that led to the gallery and the kitchen, watching them.

  But ’Phemy was not to blame, nor the girl. This was Tony’s doing. Trav, still in the doorway, looked at his brother; and Tony, teetering a little, laughed and said:

  “This pretty niece of yours presides at my table, Trav, when I wish particularly to grace the board.”

  Trav turned quietly away. In his room, cold with anger and yet with pity too, he packed his bag and descended the stairs. As he went toward the front door to call for a horse, to ride to Martinston, to put this place forever behind him, he heard Tony laughing in the dining room.

  18

  August—October, 1862

  ANNE TUDOR, in this summer of 1862, was just past seventeen years old. Judge Tudor had married late in life, and he was forty-three when Anne was born. Anne’s mother died soon after the baby’s coming, so Anne was an only child; and Judge Tudor in his first grief retired from public life and preferred to stay thereafter at the plantation on the Northern Neck. The fact that when Anne was a year old Fauntleroy Currain, who was the Judge’s next-door neighbor, suffered an even worse bereavement, losing both wife and child, drew the Judge and Faunt together.

  As a child Anne found Uncle Faunt a jolly and companionable playmate and an understanding friend; and when she came into her ’teens her heart went out to him in the lavish and demonstrative affection of which only girls at that age, not yet schooled in conventional inhibitions, are capable.

  Since neither Faunt nor her father ever treated her as a child, it was not till with the outbreak of the war her father decided to move to Richmond that she realized her own youth, and began to suspect that her devotion to Faunt might seem to older people amusing. She clung to it, as though to prove to them and to herself that she was old enough to know her own heart; yet she came to know in Richmond many boys and girls of her own age. Julian was one of them; she liked him, even while this liking seemed to her disloyalty to Faunt. That she seldom saw Faunt and that when she did he seemed almost unconscious of her presence only strengthened her determination to prove her constancy.

  When she volunteered to go with Cinda to Washington, she took her father’s consent for granted; but after Cinda and Burr had left them he asked her: “Are you surprised that I’m letting you go, Anne?”

  “Why, Papa, you always have let me make up my own mind.”

  “I know.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen, idiot!” Her tone was tenderly affectionate. “You know that as well as I do!”

  He smiled, and for a moment he did not speak, and when he did it was carefully. “Anne, I don’t want to distress you. But may I just tell you what is in my mind?”

  “Why, of course, Papa.” She could not guess what was to come.

  “I’m sorry your mother isn’t alive.” She waited, her eyes wide and still. “But you and I
have always talked man to man.” He hesitated, then went on: “Anne, war changes people. Sometimes men whom you never respected before become valiant warriors and splendid gentlemen; but sometimes the reverse is true. War is—well, it’s like strong drink. Some men it magnifies, some it debases.”

  She knew no way to help him to what he wished to say.

  “Sometimes fine men, the finest men, change for the worse,” he said regretfully. “Anne, you’ve always liked and admired Uncle Faunt. But he is changed, Anne. Perhaps by the war, or by his wound and his long illness. I know no other explanation. But believe me, he is changed; changed in ways you can’t know. And if you did know, you wouldn’t fully understand. And he’s often in Richmond. If you stayed here, you would see him.” His eyes met hers fairly. “Anne, I’m glad you’re not to see Uncle Faunt for a while. That’s why I’m glad you’re going with Mrs. Dewain.”

  Anne almost smiled; he was so humble, awkwardly floundering, loving her. She had no faintest idea what he meant. She knew men did disgraceful things, but she did not know what those things were, nor did she wish to know. Uncle Faunt’s sins, whatever they were, did not matter now. Nothing mattered except to make her father happy. She came to him, kissing him.

  “Why, Papa, I’m surprised at you, making up romances for your daughter just like a gossipy old lady. Of course I’ve always liked Uncle Faunt; but good gracious, Papa, I’d never go falling in love with him!” In her heart some voice protested at this betrayal, but she hushed it. “Don’t you worry, silly old darling! The minute I’m falling in love with anyone you’ll be the first one I’ll tell. I’ll tell you before the young man even begins to suspect it himself. You wait and see!”

  She found pretty ways to make him forget his fears; but when she was abed that night, her departure all prepared, she tried to understand what he had said. His words still had for her no clear meaning; she only knew that for some reason her father was critical of Uncle Faunt. Yet surely Uncle Faunt had never done anything he shouldn’t; he was too gentle and sweet and wise and brave and fine!