House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Trav felt that same fright in Enid now, and he loosed the circle of his arms; she twisted away from him and with no backward glance went darting up the stairs. He was left to read the puzzle as he chose. At headquarters next day he heard that a Georgia regiment of Longstreet’s men, halted for a few hours at Raleigh, had tried to capture Mr. Holden. Presumably they intended violence to the editor who had begun to shout so loudly for peace, and whose editorials contributed so largely to the wholesale desertions. When Mr. Holden fled to the sanctuary of the Governor’s mansion, they broke into the office of the Standard and wrecked it before Governor Vance could persuade them to disperse. Trav remembered Ed Blandy’s anger at Mr. Holden yesterday; but Ed could not yet have reached Raleigh. This had been done by other men.

  He found Longstreet concerned for fear the Georgia and South Carolina regiments in his command, which on this roundabout journey to Tennessee would pass near their homes, would have many desertions. “They’ll want to drop off the trains for a day or two with their families,” he predicted. “And God knows I don’t blame them; but if they get away from us, a lot of them won’t come back. I’ve telegraphed orders to take precautions.”

  Trav thought most of the men were loyal, and said so. “You heard what they did to Holden. Or tried to.”

  Longstreet shook his head. “We can’t risk it. Any man leaving the trains without permission will be instantly shot.” He asked: “How did you find Mrs. Currain?”

  “Why, very well,” Trav said. He need not inflict his own concern on General Longstreet; but he suddenly began to dread seeing Enid alone, and he invited Longstreet to dine with them. Longstreet agreed, .but business engaged them so continuously that this plan had to be abandoned. A note from Cinda suggested that they both come to supper and said Enid and the children were coming. Longstreet was to meet President Davis and could not accept, so Trav went to the house on Fifth Street alone.

  When he arrived, Enid and Lucy were already there, with Anne and Julian, Cinda and Vesta. He saw gratefully that Enid was now completely herself. It was fine to be with Cinda again, fine to see Julian so happy with Anne, fine to see the friendship between Lucy and Anne and Vesta. They all had questions. What had he done? What would he do? Julian spoke of Gettysburg. “Papa says you were in the attack the last day, Uncle Trav. Was it wonderful?”

  “I think General Longstreet has the right idea about battles, Julian,” Trav suggested. “To forget them, once they’re over, except to remember the lessons they taught.”

  “What lessons did Gettysburg teach?”

  “Well, I haven’t heard anyone else say so,” Trav confessed, “but the lesson it taught me was that the Yankees can fight just as hard as we can.”

  “But their generals aren’t as good as General Lee!”

  Trav smiled. “General Longstreet says President Lincoln is our best general, because he keeps interfering with his commanding officers.” His eyes met Cinda’s, sharing the same thought; and then somewhere abovestairs a baby’s cry sounded, and Vesta laughed in a rich happy way.

  “That’s my Tommy!” she said proudly. “Anybody want to see my wonderful son?” Lucy and Anne and Enid went with her; and Trav asked Cinda:

  “How’s Tilda?”

  “She’s taken over Mrs. Brownlaw’s place, organizing the ladies to help take care of wounded and refugees.” She added fairly: “She does it well, Travis.”

  “I suppose Mr. Streean’s prospering.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Dolly?”

  “Just the same. Twenty beaux—and, whenever he’s in town, Captain Pew.”

  “Is Darrell here much?”

  “He was here for a while in May and June; but we saw little or nothing of him. Dolly says he’s in Nassau now, went with Captain Pew on one of his voyages and stayed.” Enid and Lucy came back downstairs, and Cinda added: “Jenny’s managing the Plains, you know. Brett thinks she’s rather wonderful.”

  He spoke of Burr and Brett and Faunt, and Enid said: “None of us ever see Faunt when he comes to Richmond.”

  “We saw him last spring,” Julian reminded her.

  “Heavens!” Enid laughed. “He’s been here since then!”

  Trav was struck by her tone, and Julian asked: “Has he? How do you know.”

  “Oh, I—” Enid brushed the question aside. “He’s been here. Take my word for that.”

  Yet she did not say she had seen him, and when they were at home and Lucy had gone to bed, Trav asked curiously: “Enid, what makes you think Faunt’s been here?”

  “Think? I don’t think! I know he has!” She spoke with a spiteful emphasis.

  “How do you know? If no one has seen him?”

  Enid after a moment’s hesitation said maliciously: “He comes to see Mama.” Trav stared at her in complete astonishment, and she laughed. “Oh, you needn’t look so surprised! You were crazy about her yourself once, you know.”

  He spoke at random. “I always thought she was very nice, but I’d forgotten she was in Richmond. Do you ever see her?”

  “Why, Trav!” She spoke in a teasing drawl. “And me a respectable woman! How can you suggest such a thing?”

  “Eh?” He was completely confused. “What? What do you mean?”

  “Darling, don’t you know?” Enid threw back her head, laughing in a fashion that was like a lash across his cheek. “You poor innocent man!” She explained, as one explains a mystery to a child: “You see, Honey, when I took you away from Mama, she had to get her hands on Currain money somehow, so she landed Tony; and when he was through with her she nabbed Faunt! She’s a family pensioner!”

  Anger swept him. “Enid, that just isn’t true!”

  “So I’m a liar!”

  “Well, at least you’re mistaken! Who told you?”

  She laughed again. “Why, darling—if I needed to be told—Darrell did.”

  “Darrell’s always been a liar.”

  “Tell him so to his face some day! I dare you!”

  “Darrell’s needed a lesson for a long time.” Trav’s throat was dry with rage. “I’ll stop his slanderous tongue.”

  “Really? Do you think you can? Besides, it’s the truth! Mama told me the same thing.”

  She spoke so positively that he began to believe her. “You really mean that, Enid?”

  She rose, moving toward the stairs, smiling at him over her shoulder. “You Currains with your heads in the clouds! Yes, darling, these brothers of yours have feet of clay. If you want it in plain words, Mama was Tony’s mistress for ten years, and she’s Faunt’s now!” She started up the stairs. “But don’t let it make you lose any sleep, Honey! I know you don’t want any scandal in the family; but they’re all ever so discreet. I don’t suppose half of Richmond knows! Good night, my simple dear.”

  Trav when she was gone tried to tell himself that she was lying; but he was not sure. Like most men he had lived incuriously. Mrs. Albion when he last saw her four years ago at Chimneys had said she would go to live in Washington. If he had ever heard of her return to Richmond it had made no impression on him. But if she were here, then the fact that neither Cinda nor Tilda had welcomed her into the large circle of the family was proof enough that she was somehow outside the pale.

  He took sick thoughts to bed with him, and they oppressed his mind next day. Sorrel and the others, when he joined them at the Spottswood, were laughing at their experience at the theatre the night before. Harrison the scout had won his wager, playing Cassio in a performance of Othello.

  “He’s an actor, all right,” Sorrel declared. “You could tell he’d been on the stage before. But the whole thing was the damnedest shenanigan you ever saw, Currain. Harrison was drunk, and so was Othello, and I’d wager Desdemona had had more than a lady should!” He laughed at the memory, then added more seriously: “But I didn’t like it. I asked some questions afterward. Harrison’s not only been drunk for a week, but he’s been gambling at every faro bank in town. The General agrees with me that he’s not to b
e trusted, so we’re not taking him to Tennessee.”

  “The New York papers knew almost as soon as we did about this move we’re making,” Trav remembered. “Harrison mav have sold us out, may be working for both sides.”

  “Someone sold us out,” Sorrel agreed. “The only thing they don’t know is whether Pickett is going with us.” He laughed. “And I don’t know that myself. But we can’t prove anything on Harrison. I just paid him off and let him go.”

  Longstreet finished on Saturday what military business kept him in Richmond and went to Petersburg to spend Sunday with Louisa. Sorrel would stay here till Alexander’s artillery entrained; Trav would join Longstreet in Petersburg on Monday and go on with him from there. Tag ends of business, the procuring and loading of munitions and supplies and the endless problems involved in moving thirteen thousand fighting men over eight or nine hundred miles of inadequate railroad, kept him late Saturday night at the Spottswood. At home, except for a gas jet burning low in the hall, the house was dark; but Mill was waiting to let him in. Trav remembered that if Nig were loaded on the cars here in Richmond, he would have to be unloaded and led across Petersburg to be put aboard the Weldon train; so he told the Negro to ride the big horse to Petersburg tomorrow, taking an easy gait.

  “He doesn’t like the cars,” he said. “You can help in putting him aboard.”

  “Y‘all better tek me along, Marse Trav. You need me tuh tek keer o’ you.”

  Trav shook his head. “I need you here, taking care of my son, my family. With you here, I don’t have to worry about them.” Mill hesitated, so that Trav thought there was some urgency he wished to try, but in the end he assented and said good night.

  Trav slept late next morning. When he came downstairs Enid had gone to church, leaving word that Tilda had invited them all to dinner and that she and the children would meet him there; and he had a momentary sense of guilt because he had not called on Tilda before now.

  Enid and the children were at Tilda’s before him. Dolly was as lovely as ever. Streean had gained weight till he was as softly plump as a force-fed goose. But in Tilda, Trav saw something new, and he led her to talk about the work she did and the problems she had to meet and solve.

  Any great battle filled the hospitals, she explained. There was always a shortage of blankets, linen, lint, bandages, food. “And when a man dies there’s always someone waiting for his cot. They carry him off to the death house and change the sheets and put some other poor man in his place; and sometimes the bed’s still warm.”

  Dolly shivered. “Oh, Mama, how disgusting!” And Streean grinned and said:

  “Besides, Tilda, a dead man’s cold!”

  But Tilda ignored them. “What we do,” she told Trav, “is to work with the hospitals, try to provide cots and bedding, and help them get food. We send trading scows and canal boats up as far as Lynchburg to buy things from the farmers, and we’ve put in soup houses. We used to just carry food from our own kitchens; but so many people now don’t have anything to spare. And we run the hospital bakeries, and keep cows, and raise chickens.”

  Trav, who knew from his own experience the difficulties of finding rations for hungry men, was interested in what she said; but he was more interested in Tilda herself. She was like a stranger, someone he had never known before. She spoke of her work as General Longstreet spoke of his, with calm certainty and in accents of authority. He realized with a sudden surprise that he liked her! Till now she had been just someone to be tolerated because she was his sister and to be pitied because she was married to Redford Streean; but he liked her now.

  He asked many questions, till the others, Enid and Dolly and Streean, protested that they were sick and tired of hearing about hospitals. Dolly brought for Enid to admire a bolt of silk which Captain Pew had given her after his recent return from Nassau, and Enid asked:

  “Oh, did Dal come back with him this time?” There was a sharp insistence in the question which caught Trav’s ear and puzzled him.

  “No, Captain Pew was only here one day.”

  Streean said in a jocular tone: “I don’t believe Darrell’s coming back, Enid. I think he’s afraid of the conscript officers; but Dolly says he’s probably tired of some conquest he made here in Richmond and wants to keep out of the lady’s way.”

  Enid tossed her head. “Conceit! Does he expect her to run after him?” She began to laugh and fell into a hard spasm of coughing, till Dolly clapped her on the back.

  “Well!” Streean exclaimed. “I didn’t know what I said was as funny as all that!” Trav felt the other’s eye upon him and wondered why; and he wondered why Enid’s face, after that fit of choking, had sagged in haggard lines. There was some mystery here. He remembered Lucy’s tone when she spoke of her mother, and the way she hushed Peter at the station, and April’s sulky sniffing, and the shadow in Mill’s loyal eyes, and Enid’s own fright and her meaningless angers and malicious taunts. He sat in troubled silence, searching for some explanation, till dinner called them all.

  After dinner he and Streean were left alone. He had never felt any positive dislike for Streean, and had sometimes been made uncomfortable by Cinda’s open contempt and Faunt’s cold courtesy. Streean so obviously wanted to please them that Trav was sympathetic, and a little sorry for the man. But of course no one could be sorry for Streean now.

  When they were alone Streean seemed not to notice Trav’s silence, delivering a complacent monologue reciting some of his profitable ventures. “You and I are both levelheaded men,” he said, and Trav felt a faint irritation at this suggestion of a bond between them. “It’s fortunate that there are men like us to keep our heads, or the Confederacy would have collapsed before now.” He added, in a judicial tone: “Of course local government in most places has already collapsed. Everywhere away from the cities armed bands of deserters are the only law, and the army is the only police force. We men of business have bolstered up the Confederacy so far; but I don’t know how long we can keep it going.” Trav held his tongue and Streean said: “Your North Carolinians run your affairs with some intelligence. They buy cotton, ship it, bring in supplies, keep the state’s regiments clothed and equipped. Jeff Davis could take a lesson from Governor Vance.”

  Trav thought this was true. “I know. The North Carolina uniforms are good enough so that after a battle our men strip the North Carolina dead just as they do the Yankees. But maybe if North Carolina put all her surplus uniforms into the general depots, ther400e’d be enough to go around.”

  “She won’t,” Streean assured him. “Why should she? Every state has a right to take care of her own men.” Trav thought there had been too much talk about a state’s rights, but he did not say so; and Streean, eyeing his cigar, said: “I suppose you agree that our defeat is only a matter of time.”

  Trav felt his cheeks stiffen. “I haven’t thought much about it.” This was not true, but his thoughts were his own.

  “High time you did,” Streean assured him. “Yes, sir, we’re licked. Of course, we never did have a chance unless we got European recognition.” He laughed. “It’s like a wife leaving her husband. Unless she can turn to some other man, she’s lost.”

  There was something in the other’s tone which made Trav uncomfortable. He said Longstreet thought something might be done in Tennessee, that victory there and a march to the Ohio might lead the northwestern states to demand peace. “There’s a strong peace party in Ohio and Illinois—all through that region.”

  Streean said like an oracle: “There might be some hope if those states needed the Mississippi as an outlet for their produce. If we’d seceded ten or fifteen years ago, and held the river, we’d have had them by· the throat; and self-interest would have brought them to our side. But Henry Clay and his compromises postponed this war and gave the North time to build railroads; and the railroads bind that northwestern country to the eastern seaboard, bind the North together. No, Trav, we’re lost. It’s just a question of time.” He lighted a fresh cigar. “A wise ma
n will face the fact and plan accordingly.”

  Trav, without knowing why, was uneasy and therefore angry. “You seem pleased with the idea.”

  Streean laughed. “God bless you, no! I make no bones about it, Trav; I’d be glad to see the war last forever. Every week is money in my pockets. No, I was thinking of you.”

  “I’m not looking for a profit!”

  Streean smiled. “You’re wiser than you admit, Trav. Enid tells me you’re making money in tobacco.”

  Trav flushed, as much with surprise as with embarrassment. He had told Enid of his transactions, but his own habit of silence was so strong that it had not occurred to him she would speak of them. But also Streean had put him on the defensive. “I’m no damned speculator,” he said angrily. “People don’t have to have tobacco! That’s not like dealing in—food!”

  Streean’s color rose, his eyes narrowed. “A nice point,” he drawled. “If you’re ashamed of being intelligent, you’d better bridle Enid’s tongue.” And he went on in an amused tone: “You Currains are a virtuous lot! Brett Dewain came to me a while ago with a proposal to donate everything in the family vaults to the cause. I told him I’d take Tilda’s share in gold and the rest of you could do what you liked. I didn’t know at the time that you were turning a penny where you could.” He nodded admiringly. “Yes, sir, a high-minded lot of patriots, you Currains!”

  Trav was confused and silenced. It was a relief to hear voices in the hall, and when Enid called that it was time to go he rose at once, eager to escape. But before he reached the door, Streean checked him. “Oh, Trav, just a minute.” Trav turned and Streean said in a reassuring tone: “I just wanted to urge you not to let Enid’s friendship with Darrell bother you. Darrell will always pay a compliment if he thinks it will be welcome; and of course Enid’s a natural flirt. But I’m sure there’s no harm in either of them.”