House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Brett ventured to chuckle. “A remarkable man, Cinda, if he silenced you.”

  “Well, he did,” she said. “I just stood there and waited. After a while he said he expected Mr. Stanton wanted me to take the oath. I didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question. He asked if Julian was my only son, and I said: ‘No, I’ve a boy who rides with Stuart.’ He said: ‘Then your boy makes us a lot of trouble.’ I said: ‘He tries to.’ I told him about Clayton. He wiped his forehead with his hand, and nodded as though he were very tired. Then he said: ‘So you wouldn’t take the oath for Mr. Stanton?’ I told him we were Virginians. He nodded at that, too. Then he said something I’ll never forget.”

  Brett waited, and she went on: “He spoke very softly. He said: ‘Some men fight for themselves; but some fight for a cause, and some fight for a scruple, with nothing to gain and all to lose. I regret they decided as they did; but I honor them for their decision.’ ” And she added: “I think he meant all of us in the South.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “He said another thing.” Cinda seemed not to have heard. “He said: ‘My grandfathers were Virginians.’ I wanted to tell him I was a Currain, to see if he knew the name, but I dared not. He turned and leaned over his desk and wrote on a card: ‘Pass the bearer and her party, unmolested, by Government transport, to Fortress Monroe and Richmond.’ He signed it—of course we had to get the military passes afterward—and gave it to me and said, ‘Don’t show this to Mr. Stanton,’ and smiled, and it was like sunshine coming into the room. Then he let me out by the side door, holding to the lintel with one hand, watching me go away. He was still standing there watching me when I met Dr. Hammond where the passage turned.”

  Brett, in the hushed darkness, said quietly: “You’ll remember him, won’t you, my dear?”

  “Yes. But I’ll always wish I’d told him that my name was Currain before I was married.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if he knows.”

  “He wouldn’t have told you.”

  “I could have guessed, by the way he took it.”

  After a moment Brett asked: “Do you still—blame him as bitterly?”

  “Oh Brett Dewain, Brett Dewain,” she whispered. “Is he right? Are we all wrong?”

  20

  October-December, 1862

  CINDA’S journey to Washington won Julian back from the shadows, and to that extent it brought her happiness; but also it awakened in her a doubt the seeds of which had been sowed long ago. Before Brett left at month’s end to return to duty she confessed this to him. “I suppose I’ve known, with the sensible part of me, that the South wasn’t perfect; that there always is some right on both sides of any question. But it was so simple and easy to just blame the North, and Mr. Lincoln, and never doubt ourselves at all.” She shook her head. “But now I can never do that again. I’ll never be able to forget that sad, sad man in Washington. He’s my kin, Brett Dewain; and you know, though I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, I’m proud of it.” And she cried wearily: “But oh, it was so much easier never to question, just to be sure we were right and that they were wrong!”

  Brett said proudly: “If you were any other woman but yourself, you’d still do that, shut your eyes, plunge straight ahead like a blindered horse. Thinking hurts, Cinda. It’s a lot easier never to think at all, if you can manage not to.”

  “Other women seem to manage it. Yes, and men too. Why can’t I?”

  He smiled and kissed her. “Because—it’s just possible that I’ve suggested this to you before—because you’re unique among women, Mrs. Dewain.”

  She laughed and clung to him and cried: “Oh, I hate to have you go again. I need you so! I need you so!”

  Yet he must go; and she sometimes thought, after he was gone, that she was stronger without him. Because she had to be strong, because she could not surrender to the weakness of her own doubts and fears, she did not. Yet occasionally she envied her mother, who could shut away the world. It must be bliss not to know the world was all gone wrong; but it was a bliss Cinda could not grant herself. The simple business of managing the house and of supplying the table gave her more than one perplexed and frightening hour. Caesar might do her marketing in normal times, but not now. When she told him to buy a barrel of flour and gave him sixteen dollars to pay for it, he came home to report that the price was twenty dollars; when she herself went next day incredulously to question this absurdity, she had to pay twenty-four dollars—and thank the merchant for the privilege of purchase. For such an indispensable as salt the price fluctuated maddeningly. One day the stores were asking seventy-five cents a pound, but the City Council would sell a pound per month per person for five cents. In a sudden panic lest this source of supply disappear, Cinda bought twenty pounds more at seventy-five cents in a store on Main Street. A fortnight later Tilda told her that buyers had paid a dollar and thirty cents a pound at auction, and Cinda vowed she would never pay so much. When suddenly the price dropped to thirty-five cents a pound, she hurried to buy fifty pounds. They would have salt enough at least!

  “I know I’m silly,” she wrote Brett, describing these erratic purchases. “But the thought of not being able to buy things when you want them just terrifies me, and I go perfectly insane. I suppose everyone else does the same. Probably most people, people like us, have enough salt in their store rooms right now to last them for years; but we keep buying more! Why are we all such fools, Brett Dewain? Probably there’d be plenty for everyone if some of us—me, for instance—didn’t behave like pigs! They’re asking forty dollars for a barrel of flour now, and I hesitated to pay half that a month ago. What’s going to happen to us? Are we all mad? You can’t buy shoes at any price, really! Fifty dollars a pair for boots—and none to be had. Shirts are twelve dollars! People on the streets are actually ragged—except the negroes! They have their Sunday clothes, clothes we gave them. I wish I had back some of the things I’ve given June! And of course the speculators and the quartermasters and the commissaries are as slick as hogs! Redford Streean—but I mustn’t get started on him!”

  Streean and Tilda and Dolly were in fact a steady irritation. She never saw them without a surge of anger. About the time Captain Pew and Darrell returned from their adventure through the blockade, Tony came to Richmond; and he seemed to Cinda as offensively complacent as Streean.

  “We live on the fat of the land at Chimneys,” he assured her. “You know, once they build the Danville railroad through to Greensboro, Chimneys will be a valuable property.”

  “Are they going to build the railroad?”

  “Streean thinks so. He says General Lee believes the Yankees will cut the Weldon Railroad, sooner or later; and when that happens, every bite Richmond eats will have to come through from Danville. When that road’s built, I’ll be able to get a price for whatever I raise.”

  He had come to Richmond on business, he said. “Streean and I are in partnership.” He put on an elaborately mysterious manner, then could not resist boasting. “We’ve bought a steamer to run the blockade.”

  “Oh Tony,” she pleaded, “don’t try to make money out of all this!”

  “Why not?” He chuckled. “If that nephew of ours in Washington is bent on ruining the South, I’ll show him there’s at least one of his uncles as smart as he.”

  She hesitated. “I saw him in Washington, Tony. He let me bring Julian home.”

  “Ha! Tell him who you were, did you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Good! I wouldn’t give that baboon the satisfaction of knowing we’re kin!”

  Cinda expected Tony would lodge with them, but he declined. “No, Tilda’s putting me up. Streean and I have a lot of things to discuss, another venture.” She let him go; but next day Mrs. Currain suggested that it would be nice if Tony and Tilda came to Sunday dinner, and Cinda went to suggest this.

  She found Streean at home, but no one else. “They’ve gone to Enid’s, Captain Pew and Darrell, Dolly and Tilda, Tony, the l
ot of them.” He bade her sit down and wait and said they would soon return. She spoke of Tony’s big talk of business, and Streean chuckled.

  “His real business here is buying dresses,” he told her. “Dolly and Tilda are advising him.” And to her astonished question he said Tony was apparently in love. “Playing King Cophetua to some beggar maid, I suspect,” he said. “Certainly he’s buying a regular trousseau.”

  Something in his tone frightened Cinda. He spoke with a malicious enjoyment, as though he could tell more if he chose. Because she was afraid of what he might tell if she questioned him, she refrained from doing so; instead she referred to that new enterprise about which Tony had been so mysterious.

  Streean was not at all reticent. There was a plan to trade cotton with the North for salt, a bale of cotton for ten sacks of salt. Governor Pettus of Mississippi had persuaded President Davis to agree. They were both Mississippi men. “President Davis hopes to get twenty sacks of salt for a bale of cotton,” he said. “Of course he won’t get that much. He’ll get ten sacks, and the men who handle the business will get the difference. Tony and I mean to take a hand in that trade.”

  “Isn’t that—it sounds wrong.”

  “It’s good for the Confederacy,” he assured her. “We’ll get not only salt but meat and shoes and blankets, and we need them! The Yankees will give us anything except arms and ammunition, if we’ll give them cotton. They’ll allow fifty cents a pound for cotton.” He smiled. “And of course there’ll be a fifty percent profit for the handlers.”

  “I’m glad we don’t raise cotton at the Plains now.” Distaste was in her tone.

  “Oh it’s perfectly respectable,” Streean retorted. She saw that he wished to provoke her, and held herself in hand. “Why, even Governor Vance of North Carolina is buying cotton, and the state plans to go into the trade,” he declared.

  “I suppose the Jews are all in it.” She spoke contemptuously.

  “If they are, that just proves it’s good business!” he assured her. “Most of us hate the Jews because they’re cleverer than we are. You’re too sentimental, Cinda. So is Brett. He’s missing a real opportunity.”

  She could no longer conceal her angry scorn. “I don’t believe Brett considers the death agony of the South his ‘opportunity’.”

  “You think the Confederacy is dead? Or dying?” His tone was one of mock concern.

  She flushed. “Of course not! But—the vultures are watching their chance.”

  Streean looked at her for a moment with eyes unmasked, and she saw in them his long hatred. “Calling names won’t keep you all from ending up as paupers, Cinda. Then you’ll learn to sing a different tune.”

  “I suppose there are many who feel as you do.” She tried to be fair to him. After all, he was Tilda’s husband.

  He nodded, good-humored again. “I didn’t make this war,” he reminded her. “It was made by men full of lofty notions, living with their heads in the air, ready to fight for a high-sounding word. Well, that’s their privilege! Practical men, even politicians, would like to end this war now. Governor Vance, for instance, says North Carolina is ready to reconstruct the Union. But people like you and Brett take a high ground, and talk of death as preferable to surrender. Well, that’s your privilege, too. As for me, I don’t take sides. Settle it between you. But I’ll look out for myself while you’re deciding.” And he said calmly: “It’s women like you who keep the war going, Cinda.”

  “I won’t quarrel with you,” she said wearily, but she was thinking: Is he right? Is it true? Are we women, already mourning for our lost ones, urging those we love to go on and on? “Perhaps the women are the only patriots left,” she suggested: “The women and the army.”

  “The army?” He smiled. “The officers, perhaps, yes; and the sons and husbands of you women. They don’t dare face you if they refuse to fight! But they’re not the army! There’s not one of you aristocrats—” Cinda thought he almost snarled the word. “Not one of you out of every ten men left in the army. You’ve bought substitutes, or retired to your plantations with your twenty slaves per man, or got yourself details——”

  “Like you and Darrell?” she suggested.

  “Exactly,” he agreed. “Oh, a year ago last spring you all volunteered for three months or for six; but last spring the whole army was dissolving, so you passed the conscription law to make poor men fight, and to make it easy for rich men to avoid fighting. Poor men can’t get out of the army legally; but do you know how many of them have deserted? And how many more would desert if they dared? And how many have been shot for trying it? Go out to Camp Lee some day and see a few of them shot! Ask Tony about his neighbors at Chimneys—poor fellows skulking in the woods, afraid to show their faces, cultivating their fields by moonlight so their families won’t starve, hiding from the conscription officers.” And he cried: “Why, not ten percent of the men in or out of the army would vote to go on fighting if they had their say! Why should they? Why should eighty or ninety percent of the men in the South fight so the rest of you can keep your slaves?”

  Cinda rose. “I’ll not wait for the others.”

  “Forgive my plain speaking, Cinda; but you might as well face facts.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” she admitted; yet she knew there was truth in what he said, a sufficient weight of truth to silence her. She gave him the invitation to dinner. “Mama wants you all,” she explained, and hurried to escape before Tilda and the others returned.

  For that dinner on Sunday Tilda asked whether Captain Pew might be included. “He and Darrell and Dolly and Enid have such good times together.” Cinda consented, a little curious to meet the Captain; and since not to do so would be a slight, she asked Enid too. At dinner, Captain Pew proved to be an interesting and an easy conversationalist. Cinda thought there was certainly danger in the man, but Dolly was not unique in enjoying playing with fire. The Captain delighted Mrs. Currain, making her smile again and again, and he paid Cinda a courteous deference which could not fail to please her.

  Tilda as usual had news for them, news that brought tears to Vesta’s eyes. General Lee’s daughter Anne had died in late October, at Warren County Springs. Vesta said sorrowfully: “I think she was closer to General Lee than any of the other girls. Agnes is sort of stiff and offish, and Mildred is too clever for her own good, always saying bright things that hurt people’s feelings. But everyone just loved Anne.”

  “Mrs. Lee and Agnes are coming to stay with the Caskies,” Tilda said. “You know Norvell Caskie and Agnes are devoted.”

  “Is Mary coming?” Vesta asked.

  “She’s visiting now at Cedar Grove, Dr. Stuart’s place. They’ve put Mildred in boarding school in Raleigh.”

  Vesta nodded and the talk drifted casually. Enid said something about what fun she and Captain Pew and Darrell and Dolly had had together last Thursday, and Cinda gathered that they had all been at the house on Clay Street not only then but on other occasions. After they were gone she spoke of this to Vesta.

  “I wish Enid would behave herself. She shouldn’t be cutting up with Dolly when Trav’s away.”

  “I expect she’s pretty lonesome,” Vesta said forgivingly. “After all, she doesn’t know many people, even in the quiet set. And of course Dolly’s sort of an outsider too.”

  “That’s her father’s fault. Everyone despises him.”

  Vesta said reluctantly: “Well, it’s not all Mr. Streean’s fault. Dolly does sort of make a little fool of herself sometimes.”

  Through the weeks that followed, Cinda came to realize that her uneasiness about Enid was not without some foundation. Before Captain Pew and Darrell left Richmond she heard from some of her friends who were among Enid’s neighbors an occasional remark about what gay little groups seemed to gather in the house on Clay Street. Mrs. Brownlaw one day spoke more forthrightly.

  “That sister-in-law of yours, Mrs. Travis Currain, had better mind her p’s and q’s,” she declared.

  Cinda was accustome
d to Mrs. Brownlaw’s sometimes slanderous tongue. That energetic woman, as the work in which she had been an officious pioneer became better organized, found herself more and more excluded from the position of dominance which she had sought to seize. Mrs. Minge, Miss Sally Tompkins, Miss Pettigrew, Miss Mason, and others not so vociferous as she, had by their abilities acquired a leadership they did not seek. Mrs. Brownlaw, no longer able to dominate the volunteer work in the hospitals, had come to Cinda today to enlist her help in caring for the refugees fleeing to Richmond from Fredericksburg, where General Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan as the Union commander, seemed about to precipitate a battle. She explained that she had gone first to Enid, and had been rebuffed. “She says, if you please, she’s much too busy to think of taking strangers into her home,” Mrs. Brownlaw declared. “As far as I can discover she hasn’t a thing to do except act like a belle of twenty, when she must be forty if she’s a day!” And she added, watching Cinda: “She says her husband wouldn’t approve; says Mr. Currain thinks we’ve brought our troubles on ourselves——”

  Cinda protested: “Oh, now, Mrs. Brownlaw, I’m sure Enid didn’t say quite that!”

  “Well, perhaps not exactly; but she says he stands up for that dreadful nigger-lover in Washington!”

  To argue with Mrs. Brownlaw was useless. She had the irritating habit of not hearing what you said; and even when she seemed to listen it was with poorly concealed impatience, while she waited for her turn to speak. “Just what do you want me to do?” Cinda asked.

  “Why, the Yankees have threatened to bombard Fredericksburg, you know; so everyone who has anywhere to go is leaving. Last night’s train was just crowded with poor women and children—yes and negroes too—all of them weeping and wailing; and we must take care of them somehow; as long as we can, at least! Heaven knows we may be driven out of our own homes any day, with the Yankees, just hundreds of thousands of them, coming at us from all directions.”