House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Then the two generals came out together, and Trav heard a word or two. “Give my compliments to Mrs. Longstreet, General,” Lee said courteously.

  “May I tell her, sir, that if her baby is a boy he is to bear your name?”

  “By all means,” Lee assured him. “Now go, and finish quickly, and return to me.”

  Longstreet said frankly: “If I didn’t think this move necessary, I would be disturbed at leaving you. All that this army has to be proud of has been accomplished under your eye and under your orders. And our affection for you is as strong as our admiration.”

  Trav saw that Lee was deeply moved. “You cannot return too soon to please me,” he said. “Go beat those people out there.”

  “I will, if I live,” Longstreet promised. “But any success must be driven home. I wouldn’t give one man’s life for an empty victory.”

  “Your success will be driven home,” Lee replied. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell. Longstreet saluted, and mounted, and he and Trav turned their horses to the waiting train.

  At the cars, Trav went to see their mounts put aboard. Nig was restless, so he stayed to reassure the big horse. When the train was about to move, half a dozen soldiers, breathless from running, clambered aboard the car where Trav was, and one of them was Ed Blandy. Trav had meant as soon as Nig was quiet to join the General; but he saw Ed’s cheeks streaked with tears, so he and Ed sat in the car door, their legs hanging down, as the heavy train jerked to a hiccoughing start.

  “Furlough?” he asked, when the other’s hard panting eased.

  “Yes sir. They’re letting some of us go home for a spell, let us borry a ride a ways.”

  “The cars are going through Raleigh, some of them. That will be handy for you.”

  Ed said grimly: “I aim to stop off there. I’d like to get my hands on that Mr. Holden.” Trav felt the hard rage and grief in the man beside him; and Ed added: “He just now killed some good men, friends of mine.”

  Trav knew Ed meant the deserters executed that morning, whom Holden’s editorials might have influenced. “That was a bad business.” He spoke gently.

  “They made us march out to watch it,” Ed said, between tight teeth. “There was three of them I knew myself. They was men had volunteered, same as me; not conscripts. Ike Towner was one of ’em. Ike was always one to make a joke; and when they was marching along to where they was going to be shot, a wagonload of their coffins come along; and Ike yells: ‘Hey, boys, there go our winter homes!’ ” Ed brushed his eyes with his knuckles, unashamed. “I don’t blame General Lee, Major. He has to hold on to his army somehow. But that man Holden has started poison talk. He’s got the home folks feeling sorry for theirselves, and they write letters to the boys to come on home. I’d like to handle him.”

  “I heard the volleys,” Trav admitted.

  “There’ll be more shootings,” Ed predicted. “You know the way men are, Major. Try to stop ’em doing something and they’ll be dead set to do it. You can’t scare a North Carolina man, Major; not by killing. We’ve got used to seeing men killed. Why, back there at Gettysburg, Company C in our regiment started out that last afternoon with three officers and thirty-four men; and only one officer and four men come back without a bullet or something had hit them somewhere. Men like that don’t scare, I tell you!”

  “I was there that day.”

  “I seen you there.” Memory of that shared experience drew them together. Trav took out his tobacco, offered it to Ed, put a little in his own cheek. Ed spat at the ground that slid slowly past beneath their dangling feet. “Can’t they get some of the skulkers and shoot a few of them?” he asked bitterly. “That might do some good. Men like us don’t have any money to buy ourselves out of the army, so they shoot us.”

  “A lot of fine men who could buy their way out haven’t done so.”

  Ed nodded in ungrudging assent. “There’s good rich folks and good poor folks. I don’t size a man by the money he’s got in his pocket. But we-uns ain’t fighting to hang onto our slaves, Major. We ain’t fighting to do ourselves any good. We’re fighting just because it looks like with things the way they are, fighting’s what a man ought to do. You uns, you can come off to fight and leave your women folks with plenty of servants to take care of them; but when we uns fight, our women folks have to take care of theirselves any way they can.” He added: “And there’s a hundred of us, or a thousand maybe, for every one there is of you all.” A moment later he said in a wretched tone: “Being in the army’s bad for a man, Major; for a poor man, anyway. He gets to helping himself to other folks’ chickens and hogs and things, and it’s a joke and he brags about it. The boys tell me that all around home, some that have deserted or have hid out from the conscript officers have gone to thieving from their own neighbors. Yes, and shooting and burning too.”

  “I know that’s true,” Trav assented. “It’s the same in Virginia, Ed; in all the mountain country. Deserters have burned some houses, whipped some men; yes, and killed some.”

  “Being in the army does hard things to a man,” Ed repeated. “Worse than killing him, some ways.”

  Trav for a little did not speak. Most men, he suspected, were like Ed, and like himself, and Brett, and Burr, and Julian with only one leg, and Clayton now two years dead and in his grave. They fought not from devotion to those vague abstractions the politicians talked about, but simply because, under the circumstances of these terrible years, to fight was what a man should do. Even General Lee had been opposed to secession, opposed to this war; he fought because Virginia chose to fight and he was a Virginian. Longstreet fought not from any free choice or decision of his own but because Alabama was fighting. Oh, some men—Faunt for instance—were driven by a deadly and murderous hatred of the Yankees; but there were not many like Faunt. Of course, in battle, men fought by infection, their hearts forged by comradeship into a single sword; but battle was so small a part of war. “Why, if I were brave enough,” he thought, “brave enough to face my own thoughts and the people I love, I too would desert. Perhaps deserters are in some ways the bravest of the brave.” And he thought of Ike Towner this morning, flinging a laugh into the grinning face of shameful death; and he thought: “There was a braver man than I will ever be.”

  He sat with Ed as far as Ashland, the train jolting along no faster than a man could trot. At Ashland many kindly women came with pails of water for the thirsty men, and apologized because they had no greater gifts to bring; and there Trav said good-by to Ed, and their hands struck, and Trav went to find the General. Walking back along the cars, he surveyed them in a sorry wonder. They were a mixed lot. Some were designed to carry passengers, and one was a mail car; but most were built for freight—box cars, coal cars, platforms. Men were crowded aboard them everywhere, sprawling on the platform cars, perching on the roofs, breaking out the sides of the box cars for air and a chance to see. They would be a week or more in these cars and others like them, trundling south to Georgia and then north again into Tennessee, going hungry or thirsty when they must, sooted and cindered and begrimed, yet always ready to shout a greeting at every girl who waved to them along the way. And when they came to journey’s end they would be ready to fight, and to die if they must. Had there ever been such soldiers in the world before? Not one in a hundred of these private soldiers had any personal stake in the war or could hope for any personal gain from victory. For a moment Trav had something like a vision of what the South might become, of what the United States might become, if some way could be found to use rather than to destroy such valiant men, Northerners and Southerners, as these. Of what splendid generations still unborn might not these men who were dying now on bloody battlefields have been the seed? Could any nation thus spend its best and get value for the price it paid?

  He found Longstreet with Moxley Sorrel and some others in a passenger car at the rear of the train, and Sorrel said laughingly: “Currain, I’ve just been telling the General; our old scout, Harrison, has turned actor. He’s
wagered he’ll play Shakespeare in Richmond this week. We’ll have to go and give him our applause.”

  The scout had stayed with them till a week or so ago. Trav knew Longstreet valued his services, but he himself had never trusted the man. Paid spies could be bought by anyone who met their price. “I expect I’ll spend my time with my family,” he said.

  When the laboring engine dragged the long line of cars to a stop on Broad Street, Trav was surprised and disturbed to see a welcoming crowd waiting. If this move to help Bragg were to succeed, speed and secrecy were alike desirable; but the cutting of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad had made speed impossible, and now it was clear that their plan was no secret. When Longstreet’s burly figure appeared on the car steps, it was to meet a roar of affectionate welcome, clear voices of women mingling with the hoarser tones of men. General Hood, his arm still in a sling from the wound he had taken at Gettysburg, was here to greet his commander. Despite his wound he would go with them to Tennessee.

  Longstreet for their brief days planned to make his headquarters at the Spottswood; but when he had seen to Nig, Trav would be free to go directly home. At the horse cars he found Big Mill, and he greeted the gigantic black man with a quick gladness. Then Lucy and Peter came pressing toward him. Mill would look out for Nig, so Trav went to meet the children; and his eyes filled with happy pride. Lucy in the four months since he saw her had blossomed into ripe young beauty. It was hard to believe that she was not yet fifteen. She had her mother’s fair loveliness, her mother’s slender grace. Fifteen? Why, Enid was only a year older than that when he and she were married.

  Lucy was first to reach him, Peter lagging a little. Peter was a lank youngster. “He’s more like me,” Trav thought. “He’ll never be handsome.” Lucy would have thrown herself into his arms, but he held her off in laughing fondness.

  “Wait a minute, young one! You’ll get yourself all dirty.”

  “Oh, you always say that, Papa. I don’t care!”

  “Wait till I can get out of these clothes.” Enid used to say that Trav was as finicky as a woman about keeping clean; but in camp this was not easy, and the train journey had been a sooty one. “Don’t touch me, honey! And don’t brush against anyone. Soldiers can’t keep the fleas off themselves any more than a dog can, you know. How’s Mama?”

  “Oh, she’s all right. She had a headache.”

  “You’re fine, that’s plain to see.” And to his son: “Isn’t she, Peter? Have you been taking good care of her and Mama?” They had left the crowd behind.

  “I guess so,” Peter said. “But Mama keeps nagging at me.”

  Trav laughed, and looked at Lucy to share his amusement; but Lucy was not laughing. She was staring straight ahead, with something in her young eyes mature and stern. Trav felt in each of them some constraint. “I hope you don’t let her get lonesome,” he suggested.

  “Oh she’s not lonesome!” Peter said sullenly. “I guess she is now, though.”

  Lucy spoke a warning word. “Peter!”

  “Oh all right,” the boy grumbled; but he was silenced, and Trav would not question them. When they came home, old April opened the door, beaming a welcome; but then she cried in tender scolding: “Now, Marse Trav, don’ you come tromping in heah in dem ole boots and mess up de whole place! Go on ’roun’ to de shed. I’ll fill a tub and bring you some clean clo’es.”

  Trav laughed. “You make me feel about ten years old, April. Where’s Mrs. Currain?”

  “She done shet her doah!”

  Lucy explained: “Mama said she’d lie down till supper time, Papa, to cure her headache.”

  Trav heard April’s eloquent sniff; he felt in her as in these children something unspoken. “Why, that’s fine,” he agreed. “All right, get the tub ready.”

  While he bathed, he wondered what it was that the children knew and that April knew, yet which none of them would say; but he was too happy in being again at home to disturb himself with doubts. When he was ready he shouted for April, and she handed in through the half-opened door fresh garments.

  “I’ll leave everything here,” he told her.

  “Yassuh. I’ll clean ’em nice.”

  “Take a look at the seams, April. Might be some crawlers there.”

  “Doan try tuh tell me, Marse Trav! I be’n cleaning up yo’ nastiness sence you was so high!”

  When he went indoors, Lucy was waiting. “Now I’ll take that hug, Honey,” he said, and she clung to him, and he felt her near tears, and held her close and said: “There, there!” He tried to tease her into laughter. “What’s there to cry about? Sorry I came home?”

  “Oh, no, no! Oh, I wish you’d stay home, Papa. Can’t you, please? I wish you’d stay.”

  “What’s the matter, Honey?”

  “It’s so lonesome with you gone!”

  “You and Mama——”

  “Mama don‘t—” Lucy caught herself. “I’ll be awful glad when you come home to stay.”

  There was again that shadow in her tones, but Enid could explain it. “I think I’ll go wake Mama,” he decided. “It’s almost supper time. Where’s Peter?”

  “Oh I guess he’s out with those boys he plays with.” She said earnestly: “Papa, Peter needs you to make him behave. He’s always around with horrid little boys.”

  He laughed reassuringly. “Young ladies your age think all little boys are horrid, Lucy.”

  But he was troubled. He went up to the bed room and knocked; and when there was no answer he went in. As he opened the door Enid whirled to face him. The shades were drawn, the room darkened; but he saw plainly enough the twist of terror in her, and heard fear in the forced anger of her word.

  “Trav Currain, I’ve told you a thousand times not to come bursting in on me.”

  “Why—I’m sorry, Enid.” This then was his welcome! “It’s almost supper time.” He tried to jest. “I had breakfast early, nothing since. I’m hungry!”

  “Well, you didn’t expect to eat me, did you!”

  He chuckled teasingly. “Did you expect me to?” Her eyes widened, and he said soberly: “I believe you’re scared!”

  “Scared?” She laughed in a shrill scorn. “Why should I be scared of you?”

  “Yes, why should you?” he echoed. She was half dressed, her hair in stringy disorder, her eyes red, her cheeks blotched. “You don’t look well, Enid.”

  “I’ve a horrible headache. This is the third day of it. It’s driving me crazy.”

  Tenderness for her softened his tones. “Then why don’t you stay in bed? I’ll have April bring your supper up to you.”

  “Oh I don’t want any supper.”

  “April will fix you something nice.”

  “I don’t want her coming near me!” Her tone was shrill again. “I want you to get rid of her, Trav! She’s a suspicious, spying, lying, deceitful nigger! I want you to get rid of her.”

  Trav smiled, shook his head. “April brought me up, Enid. I’ll never send her away.”

  “Oh, I suppose not. But for Heaven’s sake get out and let me dress.”

  “Don’t you want to stay in bed?”

  “No. No. Go on downstairs. I’ll be down.”

  He hesitated. The children ought not to see her so. “When you’ve freshened up a little, perhaps you’ll feel better.”

  “If you don’t like the way I look, you don’t have to come home.”

  His shoulders sagged unhappily. He had hoped she would be glad to see him; but there could be no good in quarrelling. “We’ll wait for you,” he promised and went out and closed the door. In the drawing room Lucy looked at him with a searching question in her eyes; and he tried to make his tone normal,

  “Well, did Peter turn up?”

  “Yes, he’s washing his hands. How’s Mama?”

  “Coming right down. She’ll be fine when she’s had supper.”

  But supper proved to be a dreadful hour. Enid had masked herself with too much powder; and through this mask peered furtive, angry, fr
ightened eyes. He saw lines about her mouth, and her lips were never still, and she licked them constantly with a restless tongue. Her hair needed brushing, and it had lost that alive quality which had been its beauty. It was a dull mat now upon her head. She talked constantly, as though afraid of what they might say if she gave them time to speak. Trav saw in Lucy and Peter no suggestion of surprise at her manner and her appearance. Was it possible that they were used to see her so, that this in so short a time had become her normal mien? What upheaval like an earthquake had produced this dreadful change?

  When supper was done, Peter vanished; but Lucy stayed till Enid cried: “Oh, Lucy, don’t sit there like a statue! Go on to bed.”

  Trav protested: “Now, now, Enid, it’s early; and I haven’t been home for a long time. Let her stay a while.”

  “I hate to have her always staring at me!”

  Lucy with a quick movement rose and fled, and Trav did not call her back; but when he and Enid were alone he asked quietly:

  “What is it, Enid? What has happened?”

  “Nothing! What are you talking about!”

  “I’m afraid you’re sick!”

  “I told you my head’s ready to split!”

  Perhaps that was all. Perhaps a night’s rest would restore her. “A good night’s sleep’s what you need,” he decided. “I’ll take the other room tonight so you can have the bed to yourself. You’re so used to sleeping alone now that I’d bother you.”

  Her eyes touched his, then turned away again. “All right, I’ll go to bed now,” she said, and rose.

  He took her for a moment in his arms, wishing somehow to comfort and soothe her; but holding her thus close he felt in her passivity the tenseness of terror barely under control. Once when he was a boy he had found a rabbit in a Negro’s box trap, and took it out, and mastered its frantic struggles till it lay for a moment motionless under his hands. Yet he had felt in that moment the rabbit’s terror, so that he said to the little creature: “Don’t be scared! I won’t hurt you!” As he spoke, he relaxed his grip a little, and in a sudden violent convulsion the rabbit kicked free, one of its toenails gouging his hand so deeply that he still wore the scar.