House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  It proved to be not so bad as she had feared. A week beforehand Burr arrived, with his hair cut so short it might have been shaved and his uniform in tatters; and he spent two days with them while June cleaned and mended his coat and trousers, and Caesar found a shoemaker to patch the soles of his boots, worn completely through. He was on his way to Raleigh, and Vesta warned him Barbara would laugh at that shorn head.

  “Can’t help it,” he said cheerfully. “This is what they call a ‘horse thief cut’; keeps you from having too many extra boarders.” He laughed. “You ought to see Tommy Waring. Joe Murr had the only pair of scissors in the regiment, so we kept him busy; and last Saturday he was cutting Tommy’s hair and had one side of it pretty well off when a Yankee squadron came along, so we were busy for a while, and in the excitement Joe lost his scissors. Tommy’s hair was still half on and half off when I left camp!”

  They laughed at that and at many a tale he told, while Cinda watched this son of hers and saw small changes in him; the faint lines around his mouth and eyes, the sudden twist of his lips as though at some sharp pain, the wrinkling frown that sometimes came and went as quickly as a dimple appears and disappears when a pretty girl smiles. They all laughed when he described that September day when Stuart, attacked from two sides, had his cannon firing breech to breech in opposite directions; and Colonel Grenfell, the Englishman who had attached himself to Stuart’s staff, was so confused by this unconventional warfare that he bolted through a thicket, swam the river, galloped to Orange Court House and reported that Stuart and all his men were lost.

  “When we rode back safe and sound,” Burr said, “he was so embarrassed that we haven’t seen him since.”

  He described a night when Stuart and his whole command, surrounded by heavy Yankee forces, spent the hushed hours till dawn within hearing distance of marching columns of the enemy. “We could even hear the officers telling the men to close up,” Burr declared. “We had a man at every mule’s head to keep them from braying. That was the longest night I ever spent; but we pushed through them and came clear at dawn.” He spoke of their work on the march that led to the costly repulse at Bristoe Station. “General Lee hoped to flank the Yankees and hurt them, but Meade slipped away so cleverly we didn’t even get any booty. I found one oilcloth, and that was all. I tell you, we were a disappointed lot. The cavalry likes to make a haul now and then, you know, even if it’s from our own folks. The farmers up that way say they’d as soon see the Yankees come along as us; that the Yankees don’t steal any more than we do.” He told them of that hilarious hour when Stuart and Fitz Lee’s command trapped the Yankee cavalry and broke them and chased them for miles. “Near a little place called Bucklands,” he said. “We call that day the Bucklands Races.”

  Vesta asked what General Stuart would do for Christmas; and Burr said: “Oh, Mrs. Stuart and General Jimmy Junior—he’s only four—live near headquarters, so the General will be with them. He’ll have a feast, too. Ladies have sent him everything from turkeys to oysters.” He laughed. “He has a party or a ball or something every chance he gets, you know. He loves to sing as well as he loves dancing.”

  “General Lee’s been here,” Vesta told him. “Mrs. Lee and the girls came back from the Warm Springs in October and rented a little house on Leigh Street. It’s just big enough for her and Agnes and Mildred, so they can’t have Charlotte with them.” Charlotte was Rooney Lee’s wife, her husband a Yankee prisoner. “Mrs. Lee’s been sick, you know, and Charlotte is ill, and General Lee looks terribly. His hair’s just perfectly white, and his beard too.”

  “I know. I see him occasionally.”

  “He was in church last Sunday,” Cinda said. “When the service was over we all stood in our pews while he walked out, to show him our—love.”

  “The girls thought surely he’d stay for Christmas,” Vesta added. “But he’s gone back to headquarters. Agnes told me yesterday they don’t believe Charlotte will live till Rooney’s exchanged; and she says her father has a terrible pain in his side all the time, and Rooney is in prison, and Mrs. Lee hardly ever gets out of her wheel chair. It just doesn’t seem fair they should have so much trouble.”

  Cinda picked up her knitting. “We all do,” she said quietly. “When I think of the promises Mr. Rhett and Mr. Yancey and Roger Pryor made us, how secession was going to bring us liberty and peace and prosperity and all sorts of good things, I’d like to kill them.”

  “Mr. Yancey’s already dead, Mama,” Vesta reminded her. “And nobody in South Carolina listens to Mr. Rhett now.”

  “I wish someone would shoot him!”

  They laughed, as they were likely to laugh at Cinda’s explosions; but she did not smile. While she knitted, her eyes searched every line of Burr’s young countenance. She saw weariness in him, and a deep hurt; and she remembered the charming, gentle boy he had been, and thought that Burr would never take easily to the ruthless, rushing business of killing. In one of the pauses in this conversation, she said affectionately: “You know, Burr, I’m glad you’re not an officer.” He looked at her as though suspecting she sought to cover her disappointment at his failure to win promotion, but she said: “No, I mean it, Honey. You wouldn’t like making other men do the things you have to do.”

  “That’s right,” he admitted. “No, I’d never make a good officer, Mama. I can ride and holler and pop off my pistol as well as anyone; but that’s all.”

  She knew proudly that this was true. He was too gentle and too kindly for the duties of command, too eager to please others. Why, even Barbara could twist him around her finger whenever she chose. If Barbara wasn’t good to this darling boy, Cinda told herself she would —well, of course there was nothing she could do!

  The night before Burr was to leave for Raleigh, Brett came home. Cinda, taking his first kiss, felt the weakness in him; and to her anxious question he said with a chuckle: “Why, I’m on sick leave, Honey, but don’t look so scared! I’m about the healthiest sick man you ever saw. Ellis Bird says all I need is some home cooking. He told me to come home and get it, stay till I’d had enough.”

  “You look so thin and ill!”

  “You should have seen me two or three days ago. I really felt sick then.” He would not, as she urged, let her put him at once to bed. “Not yet. Can’t spoil my first evening.”

  He and Burr came to quick talk, matching their experiences. Brett said the Howitzers had been kept on the move so much that they felt like cavalry. “Colonel Long’s our commander now; and he’s a West Pointer and never forgets it. In camp we’re up at daylight for roll call, and it’s hurry, hurry, hurry all day long. Curry horses for an hour, feed them, eat our own breakfast, if we have anything to eat; then put the horses out to grass, police camp, drill. Another roll call at noon. Another drill at three o’clock. Catch up the horses and water them and wish we had some grain for them. They’re just walking skeletons. Another roll call at six, and another at eight.” He laughed. “I tell you it’s a relief to have a forced march now and then, to stop that program for a while.”

  Cinda asked: “Are you really short of food?”

  He grinned. “Short? If one old cottontail hops through camp, every man in sight helps run him down and we stew him and have a feast. If it weren’t for persimmons I don’t know what we’d do.”

  “I’d hate to live on persimmons,” Vesta protested, and he said smilingly:

  “That’s our favorite joke, Honey; we say they pucker us up so we’re not hungry any more.” And he added more seriously: “Yes, the men are half-starved. The ration’s a pint of meal a day, and a quarter of a pound of pork—when you get it. And the meal’s just ground-up corn cobs and dust, and so sour you can hardly eat it. Being hungry all the time makes the men look like animals after a while; hard greedy eyes, and cheeks so hollow their faces seem to come to a point, like a fox or a dog. Sometimes we don’t get the pork. Once in a while we get a few dried peas, or a spoonful or two of sugar, and once we got coffee! I counted mine. Seventeen
beans!” He laughed. “One of our games is to sit around and order imaginary dinners, but of course that just makes us hungrier! The queer thing is that we stay healthy. I’m the only man in our company who’s been sick at all, this winter. And a lot of men are getting religion. Every camp has built at least one church, and when there’s no chaplain, somebody reads the Bible and prays as well as he can. That’s happening all through the army. Regular revivals whenever there’s a real preacher, lots of men professing.” He said gravely: “I think they’re sincere; but some of the skeptics say they’re just feeding their souls because they can’t feed their stomachs.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Vesta said: “People are hungry in Richmond too, Papa. Can you imagine, a hundred and ten dollars a barrel for flour?”

  He laughed. “I don’t call that much! I’ve seen times when I’d give a thousand dollars for one good biscuit! A whole barrel of flour? Why, Vesta, that’s worth ten thousand.”

  She came to her feet. “Are you hungry? I’ll get you a piece right now!”

  But Brett declined. “No, give me a good night’s sleep first; then I’ll be able to stand the shock of eating again!”

  Alone with him at last Cinda asked: “Can you really stay a while?”

  “I’m to stay till I’m well again,” he assured her, and she felt the high happiness in him. “And I’m certainly going to make a mighty slow recovery, my dear.” So, even though Burr must leave tomorrow morning, Christmas would be merry after all.

  When they went upstairs, she had said Brett must go right to bed; but he protested: “No, no; not yet. Go on and tell me things.”

  “What things?”

  “Anything but the war. We hear all that in camp.” Yet he added gravely: “Do you realize, Cinda, that the fight on Missionary Ridge was the first big battle we’ve lost because our soldiers broke and ran?”

  “They needed Cousin Jeems that day. He really won the battle at Chickamauga. But our western victories never seem to do us any good.” He had said she must not talk about the war. “Cousin Louisa’s baby’s fine. They’re naming it after General Lee. Cousin Jeems must have been simply wild, not being here with her.”

  “I suppose so. And probably he was furious at having to serve under Bragg. Longstreet’s a fighting man, but Bragg’s a fool. President Davis should have removed him long ago.” Brett spoke with a slow sadness. “Cinda, our great weakness is at the top! We’ve mismanaged everything—finances, commissary, conscription, impressment. We’ve nursed treacherous delusions; that the North wouldn’t fight, that we could whip them if they did, that England would let us lead her by the nose with a cotton string! It’s a wonder we’ve held out so long!”

  “Don’t get excited! Please. Let’s go to bed.” He began to undress, and she saw a red patch on the seat of his trousers, neatly square; and tears stung her eyes. “Poor man,” she laughed. “Has to mend his own britches!”

  “Oh, that!” He chuckled. “You ought to see some of us. We cut up our drawers to patch our pants, and some men are pretty fancy about it. They cut the red flannel in patterns; a heart with an arrow through it, or a spread eagle, or a cow, or a horse. Colonel Long says we’ll never dare turn our backs to the enemy. They couldn’t miss such shining marks.”

  Even when they were abed he was wakeful; and he spoke again of the mismanagement on the part of Mr. Davis and his appointees, from which the army suffered so. “Why, half the men are barefoot, Cinda,” he declared. “That’s why General Lee had to stop trying to bring Meade to battle this fall. The men’s feet gave out. They couldn’t march.” And he said: “I suppose part of the trouble is that everyone’s money-mad. Even the bankers are speculating with the currency, selling Northern money at a thousand-percent premium, pushing the value of our own money down and down.”

  She saw he must talk himself to exhaustion. “I never did understand about money. I never had to, of course, when we had plenty.”

  “Probably I was a fool to put all ours into Confederate bonds,” he reflected. “But I’m glad I did. I don’t want to be one of those who make money out of this war! I don’t even want to keep what we have. If the South is ruined—well, I want us to be ruined too.”

  “I’m not as brave as you; but I’ll always want what you want, Brett Dewain. And we can get along, one way or another, even if we have to sell things. There are auctions all the time now, with everything imaginable being sold; rolls of ribbon and groceries and books and furniture and cavalry boots and rum and brandy and old wine and silver and jewels. Some of our friends have had to do that, sell things they’ve always treasured; but no one complains, and neither will we.”

  For a moment he did not speak. “We see newspapers in camp,” he said then. “But they always make things either better or worse than they are. Do you get enough to eat? Is food as scarce as the papers say?”

  She hesitated. “I suppose it is, for poor people. If you pay enough, you can buy most things.” She added: “We have a windfall now and then. You remember Major Tarrington? He used to live in Columbia, and he’s in the commissary now; and sometimes he lets Vesta buy things at the government price, and he sends us presents. He sent us a great cut of beef one day and wouldn’t let us pay for it. He said his butcher had given him a whole quarter, more than he could use.”

  Brett said quickly: “Vesta mustn’t deal with him. No man in the commissary department should take presents from butchers. That sounds too much like a bribe.”

  “Major Tarrington? Why, I always rather liked him.”

  “You wouldn’t take a present from Redford Streean,” he reminded her.

  “Of course not! I know he’s a rascal.”

  “Well, greed makes rascals out of good men sometimes, Cinda. Let’s keep clear of taking favors.”

  She sighed. “Well, all right. But I declare, Brett Dewain, sometimes I hate your scruples as much as I admire them. That was such good beef!”

  He laughed at her doleful tone. “Do you have trouble getting sugar?”

  “We do without it,” Cinda confessed. “We use molasses. Sugar costs two or three dollars a pound, if you can buy it.” She smiled in the darkness. “They say General Green put a fortune into sugar at a dollar a pound, and Colonel Northrop impressed it all and won’t even pay him what it cost. The poor old man is telling his woes to anyone who will listen.”

  “The papers say the Government can’t impress things on their way to market; but I suppose that rule just protects the speculators.”

  “I don’t know.” She was silent for a moment, but he said drowsily:

  “Keep on talking, Honey.”

  So she talked, about the government clerks who were afraid they might have to go into the army, and about Cousin Jeems’s report to the Government that half the men on his muster rolls in Tennessee were absent or had deserted and that half his soldiers had no shoes and none of them proper rations. She said there were always wild, ridiculous rumors in the air, and people would believe anything; and he said that was because Congress had so many secret sessions. “When no one knows the truth, anyone who pretends to have inside information is easily listened to. It makes him feel important, so he keeps making up more and more stories.” She said lawyers and even some Congressmen were getting rich by finding ways to get men out of the army, hiring substitutes or arranging details; that some of the wealthiest men in Richmond were paying for jobs as mechanics or laborers because such jobs would exempt them from the conscription. She told him that Mrs. Allen, arrested last summer as a traitor, had been allowed to live in comfort in the infirmary of St. Francis de Sales till her recent trial and then released on bail when the jury disagreed, though everyone thought she should have been shot or sent North or something. She described the contrivances by which Anne and Vesta made new dresses out of old ones, or out of window curtains or anything else that was available; and she reminded him that General Lee said that but for the valor of the women, the South would have been vanquished long ago.

  Brett’s deep
breathing seemed to mean he was asleep, but she dared not stop talking for fear silence would awaken him. General Hood was in Richmond with one leg gone. Dr. Darby had promised to buy him a new leg in Europe, with money the Texas Brigade had raised; and General Hood thought he could then ride well enough to return to duty. Julian, with no artificial leg, was trying to contrive some way to stay on a horse so he could join the cavalry; but a general riding at his own pace and a cavalryman in a charge were two very different things. Julian had talked to General Hood, and the General told him this, and bade him stay home with Anne. Anne was a sweet darling girl. Her baby was coming in April. Every girl in Richmond had set her cap for General Hood. It was said that little Fanny May actually proposed to him, and he told her he couldn’t accept because he was already engaged to four other girls.

  Brett turned on his side and she let her hand rest on his shoulder in the way he liked and felt him completely limp and relaxed and knew he would not wake; and sleep flowed over her and wrapped her in content. Christmas would be fine, now that he was here.

  Burr took the five o’clock train for Petersburg on his way to Raleigh; and Cinda, leaving Brett asleep, went early to the hospital and made sure she could be spared a while. When she came home Brett was still abed, playing with little Tommy while Vesta watched them both with lively eyes. Cinda kept Brett in bed and they had their dinners together in his room, and from the gray sky as dusk came down snow began to fall. They were all together when belowstairs the door bell rang. Cinda heard Caesar go to open it, and happy young voices erupted into the house, and Cinda and Vesta ran to the stairhead; and Cinda after one instant’s glimpse was blinded by laughing, drenching tears.