House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  Tony saw the red string in the other’s lapel, and he wondered whether, if Mr. Cosby began that series of questions and answers that Mr. Dean had recited, he could remember the rejoinders; but since his visitor did not speak he said graciously: “Ah, Mr. Cosby. You’re welcome. I see your wants have been attended to.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then if you will excuse me briefly, it will soon be the dinner hour.”

  At dinner, the commissary agent explained his errand. “I’ve come to impress supplies for General Lee’s army,” he told Tony. “My wagons will reach Martinston tomorrow.” He looked a little smug. “A painful duty, Mr. Currain! If I were not allowed a military escort, my life would be in danger. These extortionate farmers yield only to compulsion, flatly refuse to sell at the government price unless they must. Why, sir, they would let the army starve!”

  “I suppose government prices are below the market.”

  “To be sure, to be sure. Speculators have run market prices to the skies, five or six times the government price. But our orders are to take at the fixed price horses, wagons, hogs, cattle, everything; to leave only what is necessary to subsistence.”

  “Do I understand that you propose to empty my corn cribs, my smoke houses, my cattle pens?”

  “My dear sir!” Mr. Cosby protested. “Don’t imagine such a thing for a moment! Why, our depots are already full of provisions spoiling for lack of cars to move them to Richmond. It requires constant work to collect enough to take the place of what spoils. Sweet potatoes are particularly perishable. You’ll hardly believe me, but there are thousands of bushels of sweet potatoes rotting in depots between Wilmington and Richmond right now for lack of transportation. Of course we must replace them, keep the depots supplied; but that does not compel us to harass gentlemen!” He laughed. “It’s the little farmers who make the trouble.”

  “I know they resent the tax-in-kind,” Tony agreed. “I suppose they resent impressment equally.”

  “Yes, yes! We could hardly accomplish anything if it weren’t that so many men are away in the army. Women may scold and complain, but they’re not so ready to resort to violence, though I could tell you some incredible stories.” He added casually: “By the way, Mr. Currain, I’m commissioned by some gentlemen in Richmond to buy any surplus produce you may have for their personal account. At a fair price, of course. If you care to sell.”

  “A fair price? You mean the government prices?”

  “Oh not at all, not at all. The price I can pay depends on the article.” Mr. Cosby crossed his pudgy knees. “Take bacon, for instance. I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Currain. If you wished to buy a pound of bacon in Richmond, it might cost you two dollars and a half. A bushel of meal? Say twenty dollars. I can offer you no such prices. Captain Warner, whose agent I am, has many expenses.” He smiled. “My commission, for one; and then, he must lay out a little here and a little there to secure space on the cars to transport his purchases; and of course he must be generous to his friends. But I can pay you a dollar a pound for prime bacon, and for other things in proportion. That’s only a fraction of the market price in Richmond, to be sure; yet it’s three or four times the government maximum for what I impress.” Tony did not speak. The price seemed to him, considering the difficulty of transporting anything over the long and roundabout way to Richmond, an astonishingly good one. As though reading his thought, Mr. Cosby added: “Frankly, Mr. Currain, I’m not always so openhanded; but—” He hesitated, looked at Tony’s lapel, said in a questioning tone: “Three?”

  Tony for a moment did not understand. “Eh?”

  Mr. Cosby repeated, more sharply: “Three?”

  So Tony remembered. “Oh, to be sure! Dogs,” he replied.

  The other man smiled with relief. “Exactly! As I was saying, I’m not always so openhanded; but I always pay liberally for anything that comes in a parcel tied up with red string!” He lifted his glass. “Your very good health, Mr. Currain.”

  Tony lifted his. “And yours, sir,” he agreed.

  The commissary agent was Tony’s guest for several days, while the soldiers who served as escort for the wagons he brought and for those he seized camped by the branch below the mill. Mr. Cosby complained of the difficulties of his task. “This region’s full of organized deserters, dangerous men,” he declared. “The Government should send a regiment or two to teach them manners. I’m careful not to provoke them too far, though of course I must take what I need.”

  Tony felt no sympathy for these neighbors who suffered under Mr. Cosby’s demands. If they were his friends, he might save them now; since they had elected to be his enemies, he would not lift his hand.

  Two or three weeks after Mr. Cosby’s departure, Tony was sitting on the veranda after dinner, Sapphira beside him in fresh-starched white, when they saw Mrs. Blandy trudging up the road. Sapphira went at once into the house. Tony called to her:

  “No, no. Stay! You’re mistress here!” But Sapphira only smiled and disappeared, and Tony admitted to himself that she was right. If she dared stay with him to receive a white woman as an equal, her own life might hang in the balance.

  He himself, when Mrs. Blandy came near, rose and descended the wide steps to meet her with the utmost courtesy. He invited her to join him on the veranda; but she declined. “Thank you kindly, sir.” In sunbonnet and worn and faded calico, dusty from the road, barefooted, she faced him doubtfully. “Mr. Currain, please, sir, could you sell me a bag of corn meal and maybe a piece of hog meat?”

  Tony thought with a malicious satisfaction that she must be reduced to desperate straits. Before coming to appeal to him, she would have tried every other resource. Obviously she had tried and failed. Oh, these people who had treated him so scornfully would regret it! “But Mrs. Blandy,” he said gravely, “Mr. Blandy told me you had made a good crop.”

  She nodded, and her lips were white. “Yes sir, we did, with the young ones and me all working at it. But now the impressment men done took our mule, and emptied our corn crib and our smoke house.”

  “Now surely not! Their orders were to leave you enough for your subsistence.”

  “I reckon they thought we didn’t eat more than birds.”

  “But at least, they paid you,” he insisted.

  “They called it pay, but the gov’ment money ain’t wuth anything. But that and what Mr. Blandy give me, all his pay he’d saved, has to git us through some way.”

  Tony made a sympathetic sound. “Dear, dear! I’m very sorry to hear of your distress.” He said regretfully: “But they levied on me too, you know. They left me only enough for our needs. I can’t starve my people.”

  In her eyes meeting his a slow flame burned. “White folks git as hungry as colored people.”

  “Yes. Yes, indeed. This war is hard on all of us. If we were sensible we’d end it.”

  Her head was high. She said proudly: “Mr. Blandy’s doing his best to end it the way it’d ought to be ended.”

  “I know. I know. I honor him for it. Yet I sometimes think a man’s first duty is to his family.”

  She held him with her eyes. “Mr. Blandy knows what’s right to do. I didn’t come to talk about it. I come to see if I could buy from you.”

  “Why, I’ve really nothing at all to spare,” he assured her. “So many mouths to feed, you know. I might give you a——”

  “I ain’t asking anything to be give.” Her tones were level. “I’m wanting to buy.”

  So she was not yet humbled! “Well, let me see. Meal, you say? And pork? The latest Richmond papers put fat shoulder at two dollars and a half a pound, and meal at twenty dollars a bushel. I might spare a little at those prices.”

  Her lips twitched and then were still again. “The commissary man paid me twenty cents for prime bacon. He give me six dollars for the meal in the chest, and there was all of four bushels.”

  “My dear Mrs. Blandy, I’m afraid he imposed on you. You should keep informed on Richmond prices.”

  “He said
it was the gov‘ment price. He said I could take it or not, but he was going to ’press what he wanted anyway.”

  “Ah yes. Well, too bad. But you say you don’t want me to give you anything. It seems only fair, if you wish to buy, that you should pay the market price; don’t you think so?” Her hard eyes on his were like a bruising blow; he smiled. “After all, this is a matter of business.”

  “We had enough put away to feed us all winter,” she said evenly. “But all he give for it and all Mr. Blandy’s back pay put together wouldn’t buy enough to keep us a month from starving. Not paying your prices.”

  He said nothing, waiting. If she wanted charity, let her beg! But after a moment, with no other word, she turned away. He watched her, resisting the impulse to call her back. Let her go! When her children were hungry enough she would come again. She passed out of sight, and he returned to his comfortable chair, and Sapphira rejoined him. Wanting reassurance, he told her Mrs. Blandy’s errand, using words to fan the flame of his own anger and thus burn away his guilty shame. “A fine piece of impudence! She’s so hoity-toity she’d look down her nose at you, but she’s not too high and mighty to want favors.”

  Sapphira gave him no comfort. “You could be generous, Mr. Currain.”

  “Generous, be damned! You’re as good as she is.”

  She spoke without bitterness. “No, I’m not. She’s white. I’m a colored person.”

  “Abe Lincoln says that makes no difference. And by God I believe he’s right!”

  “Mr. Lincoln is a great, good man,” she said simply. “But he’s wrong. He doesn’t know. Colored people know.” He felt the firm compulsion of her level intelligence, half understood the tragedy of life for such a woman. An almost impersonal tenderness awoke in him; her thoughts must often be such sad and hopeless ones.

  November was well sped and winter near when into his existence here without forewarning Darrell suddenly intruded. The day was stormy with a cold drizzle falling; and Tony’s first hint of Darrell’s coming was his hail, calling for a boy to take his horse. At the moment, Sapphira was safely in the kitchen with ’Phemy, so no immediate harm was done. Tony opened the door and saw Darrell and another man dismounting at the steps, while a Negro on a mule, with four long-eared, sad-eyed dogs on leash, sat dejected at a little distance, drooping in the rain. As they came up the steps, Tony recognized the other man as Mr. Pudrick, the slave dealer whom Darrell had brought here a year ago last summer.

  He gave them a grudging welcome; but Darrell made himself cheerfully at home, stripping off his cloak, warming himself before the roaring fire. Mr. Pudrick bowed and said politely: “Servant, sir!” ’Phemy brought them warming drinks, and a scuttling wench fed the fire, and Darrell gave ’Phemy orders. Bring in the saddlebags. Lay out some dry clothes. These they wore were to be cleaned and dried. Tony’s anger, as he listened, left a bitter taste in his mouth. You might have thought Darrell, not he, was master here. But at least Sapphira would keep out of Darrell’s sight. On such occasions as this she stayed invisible in ’Phemy’s quarters.

  ’Phemy showed these unwelcome visitors to rooms upstairs, and Tony wondered why Darrell had come, and why was Pudrick here, and why had he brought those hounds. When they had changed to dry clothes, the explanation came.

  “I suppose we surprised you, Uncle Tony,” Darrell remarked. “Matter of fact, I meant to come in June and help you run the place. You seem to have managed without me.”

  His tone was a question. Tony said: “Yes, I get along very comfortably. Mr. Fiddler went into the army, but Peg-leg is my driver and I’m my own overseer.”

  “Well, I meant to come,” Darrell repeated. “But an amusing matter detained me—till it ceased to be amusing. To escape called for drastic measures, so I went to Nassau on one of our blockaders, stayed there till a fortnight since. On my return I met Mr. Pudrick in Wilmington. One of the niggers you sold him ran away from the man to whom Mr. Pudrick sold him, a month or so ago. That’s bad for Mr. Pudrick’s business; when he sells a nigger, that nigger’s expected to stay sold. He thinks the nigger might be here, and I suggested that we bring some dogs and run him down. Mr. Pudrick got a pair of the nigger’s old shoes, so if the rascal’s here we can have some sport.”

  “What makes you think he might be here?” Tony asked. The slaves he had sold were all from Great Oak or Belle Vue. Chimneys had only briefly been their home. Also, if there were a runaway on the place, Peg-leg or ’Phemy would surely have told him.

  Mr. Pudrick said confidently: “Oh, I know niggers, Mr. Currain. They’re my business. This scamp wouldn’t eat, from the first; so I knew that either he was homesick, or else he had a wench back here. I always put a couple of my own niggers in with a new batch to listen to their talk. It turned out this one had his eye on a wench, a bright. So when I heard he’d run away—I guarantee every nigger I sell—I I paid back his purchase price and headed this way.”

  A bright mulatto wench? Sapphira was the only bright at Chimneys. Tony felt new anger flood his throat. “What’s his name?”

  “Sam.”

  The name was meaningless, but what did a name matter? Why had not ’Phemy or Peg-leg reported the runaway’s presence? Had the nigger seen Sapphira? By God, he himself would have some questions to ask ’Phemy; yes, and to ask Sapphira too.

  “There’s no bright here,” he said harshly. “There are browns and yellows, but no true bright.” He felt Darrell’s eye upon him, carefully held his own on Mr. Pudrick. “And if your nigger was here, I’d have heard of it.”

  “Well, he may be hiding somewhere,” the slave dealer suggested. “If he is, the sight of the dogs will flush him. We’ll take the hounds for a stroll through the quarter tomorrow.”

  “You can’t trail him in this rain.”

  Pudrick chuckled. “Mr. Currain, those hounds of mine could trail a fish downstream to the Yadkin!”

  Tony fell into a stormy silence, and his thoughts were raging. Was it possible that Sapphira would take up with a black? Of course it was! To that nigger strain in her anything was possible. Then in sudden hopefulness he remembered that when Darrell and Mr. Pudrick came to buy those slaves, Sapphira had only that day been brought over from the Pettigrew place. Surely this Sam had had no chance to see her before he was herded away in the coffle with the others.

  But during his stay here he might have discovered her, even over at the Pettigrew place. There were no patrollers hereabouts. Negroes could wander at night if they chose; and if Sapphira had ever let her hot black blood have its way, every buck nigger in twenty miles would have known it! They were as sharp as dogs in such matters.

  When ’Phemy brought supper he glared at her with bloodshot eyes. She seemed not to see, but that was pretense. She saw, no doubt of that. Well, by and by, when these men were gone, he would deal with her; but first he must be rid of Darrell and Mr. Pudrick, and as quickly as possible.

  After supper, stretching his feet before the fire, yawning comfortably, Darrell said: “By the way, Uncle Tony, our blockading venture is a great success. Captain Pew gets the lion’s share, but there’s plenty for all of us. Why don’t you run over to Nassau and spend some of the money? You’d find a variety of pleasures there.”

  Tony floundered for words. “Have you had no trouble? I saw by the papers that some of the Government’s steamers have been lost.”

  “Yes, yes, very sad. The Hebe and the Venus, and the R. E. Lee, and the Lady Davis. She used to be the Cornubia. Yes, the government pilots seem to lose vessels faster than Jeff Davis can buy them; but of course, the fewer steamers they operate, the more profits for the rest of us.” He yawned again. “Uncle Tony, you’re mighty comfortable here. I think I’ll stay and be your overseer.”

  Darrell under the same roof with Sapphira? No sir! Tony meant to be rid of this whelp even if he had to shoot him. “Peg-leg does the work all right.”

  “All the same, I think I’ll stay,” Darrell repeated. “There’s talk of a new conscription law, you know, to
make up for desertions.” He laughed. “They give a soldier a thirty-day furlough now for shooting a deserter; so half the army will shoot the other half and then go home. And the Government’s going to stop substitutes. Wilmington’s full of gentlemen who hired substitutes while they made their fortunes; but now they’ve bought passports and they’re taking their gold out of the country before the conscript bureau knocks on their door. But I’ll stay here and turn planter.”

  Tony bit his lip. “The conscript officers are busy here; and Salisbury prison is a mighty uncomfortable place. Ten thousand prisoners of war, there, and not room enough to lodge a thousand. You might not enjoy it.”

  Darrell looked at him with lifted brows. “I declare, Uncle Tony, your fears for me are touching. But you’ve slaves enough to count off twenty to exempt me; and even if the conscript men get me, Judge Preston will turn me loose.” He called for ’Phemy. “Brandy,” he said, when she appeared.

  Tony thought brandy might make Darrell sleepy. His own room was on this floor, but Darrell and Mr. Pudrick would presently go upstairs. When they did, he could summon Sapphira, twist the truth out of her. He was by this time sure that Mr. Pudrick’s nigger was here; yes, perhaps hidden away in that room behind the kitchen where Sapphira took refuge when Tony had visitors. He might even be there with Sapphira now. Tony twitched and twisted with the jealous rage in him, and longed for the hour when these others would retire.

  But the liquor ’Phemy brought loosed Darrell’s tongue. He talked of the easy pleasures of Nassau, and of men grown suddenly rich, and of the stupidity of any man who neglected those golden opportunities. “Why, there’s money lying around loose for the trouble of picking it up,” he declared. “I heard of a Baltimore man the other day, a clerk. He put three hundred dollars into merchandise and marked the box to be delivered to Yankee prisoners in Richmond and put it on the flag-of-truce boat. Then he slipped through the lines and met the boat in Richmond and carted off his box and made fifteen thousand dollars’ profit on the deal.”