House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  But though when he was away from her he despised Mrs. Albion, that feeling vanished when they were together. If she was what respectable folk called a fallen woman, she was no lower than he, whose father’s vices had let Abraham Lincoln loose upon the world. But also, she was gentle and wise and full of understanding. She gave him much more than tenderness, much more than physical content, much more than empty caresses. Tonight when Milly answered his ring Nell was at the stair head in the darkness; and when she heard his voice she came swooping like an angel to embrace him.

  “Oh, Faunt, Faunt, when I heard the bell I knew! Faunt, my darling, how did I know it was you?”

  He laughed teasingly, already released from loneliness. “Who else would ring your bell at such an hour?”

  “Who else, to be sure,” she agreed. “So I wasn’t so clever, was I? Yet I was asleep; and even in my sleep I knew!” Milly would rouse Rufus to put his horse away. Let him rid himself of travel stains, while she found a wrapper. In the pleasant upper room he knew so well, they talked till dawn. He had to tell her of that great stroke at Berryville.

  “It was a near thing to a failure,” he confessed, able to laugh now as he had not laughed at the time. “We’d divided our force, planned to hit all at once; and three shots from our howitzer were to be the signal. But they unlimbered the gun right on top of a nest of yellow jackets, and the yellow jackets fairly captured the gun, drove the men away. There we were, three squadrons waiting for the signal and no gun to signal with, and the Yankee train in plain sight on the pike. The men would have faced a swarm of Yankees readily enough, but there wasn’t a man willing to face those yellow jackets, till Sergeant Babcock risked the stings and dragged the gun far enough down hill so the gunners could get at it.”

  “And then you hit them?”

  “Three hundred of us, against a whole brigade of them; and we got safely away with all we could drive or lead or carry.”

  She asked wonderingly: “Is Colonel Mosby really as successful as the stories we hear?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, perhaps more so. In these last few months, he’s taken three or four hundred beef cattle and about sixteen hundred horses and mules, and hundreds of prisoners—not counting those we’ve killed and wounded—and Heaven knows how much miscellaneous plunder; and he’s lost only twenty men.” He added, a laughing pride in his voice: “Last month at Point of Rocks he scattered a Federal battalion with only a hundred and fifty men; and a day or two later with ninety men he smashed a hundred and fifty Yankees.”

  “How does he do it?”

  Faunt chuckled. “Why, that day they blazed away at us with their new Spencer repeating rifles, and that frightened their horses; so they tried to dismount and fight on foot, and while they were shifting their formation we charged them. We broke them and chased them five miles and killed and wounded and captured seventy of them; and we lost one man killed and six wounded.”

  “I know it’s true,” she said wonderingly, “but I still don’t understand it.”

  “Well, it’s partly that we’re better horsemen,” he said. “When we charge, their horses wheel and run; and when you’re chasing a man whose horse is running away with him, he’s helpless. Then another thing, they use their sabres, but we use pistols. One man with pistols can beat half a dozen men with sabres, if he’s a steady shot.” He added: “And of course we usually catch them off guard, surprise them.”

  “How can Colonel Mosby keep so many men together, up there with Yankees all around him?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t. After a raid we scatter. Then when he decides where to hit next, he sends out word. There are always men at headquarters to act as messengers.”

  “Does he actually have headquarters?”

  Faunt smiled. “Oh, certainly. Chief Blackwell’s farm near Piedmont.”

  She said happily how well he was. “I’ve worried so, but you do seem well, darling. Are you?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I cough a little, but I haven’t had a bit of trouble since I was last here.” She in her turn must answer questions. “How do Richmond people feel about the war?”

  She hesitated. “A dispatch came tonight,” she said soberly. “General Hood’s given up Atlanta.”

  The news was shocking, but he was a Virginian, Atlanta far away. “They can’t beat us till they beat Lee.”

  “Virginia’s the head,” she admitted. “But a head can’t fight on without a body.” She spoke in grave tones. “And the army is falling apart, Faunt. There are more deserters outside the army than there are soldiers in it.”

  “I met two deserters recently in Baltimore,” he told her. “A man named Sam Arnold and an Irishman named O’Laughlin. Marylanders. They served with us for a while and then went back North and took the oath.”

  “Faunt! Baltimore? Again?” Her tone accused him. He said in light reassurance:

  “Oh, I take a ride that way now and then; yes, even into Washington. Washington’s full of our friends, and Baltimore, too. They send drugs south to our hospitals. I’ve brought some useful parcels home.” He said: “You know, Nell, I expect some of those deserters you talk about are riding with Mosby now. The hope of loot attracts them.”

  “A few perhaps,” she assented. “But thousands have deserted, Faunt. Some say a hundred thousand, some say more. It keeps whole regiments busy trying to catch them. The states won’t help. North Carolina and Georgia and even Virginia protect them.” She added: “And in Mississippi and Alabama, people are too busy making money by selling their cotton to the Yankees to care about fighting to beat the North.”

  Faunt nodded. “Mosby’s men would kill a lot more Yankees if they didn’t stop to search the dead ones for watches and money.” He added contemptuously: “Yankee money, at that!”

  “No one would bother to steal our money,” she reminded him. “It’s almost worthless.”

  “I believe you think we’re beaten.”

  “I think we’re beating ourselves,” she admitted. “General Johnston might have held Atlanta. He fought Sherman as skilfully as Lee fought Grant. But President Davis put Sam Hood in his place, and Hood divided his forces and let them be beaten in sections, and he’s lost Atlanta. People here in Richmond won’t know that till tomorrow; but when they do they’ll lose all faith in President Davis. And sooner or later our lines from here to Petersburg will stretch too thin. When General Lee loses a man, killed or wounded or deserting, that man can’t be replaced.”

  He asked curiously: “How do you happen to know about Atlanta before the rest of Richmond knows?”

  “Men tell me things,” she reminded him.

  “I suppose you still see a great many men.” His tone was dry.

  She smiled at him, her head on one side; and she tapped her teeth with her fingernail, making a little ticking sound. “Why yes, to be sure,” she said. “I always have, you know. They like to come here, because when they want to talk I listen to them. Most men enjoy being listened to. But that doesn’t mean they want a mistress!” She smiled. “Probably no one, much less you, would believe how rarely anyone tries to—make love to me. They come to talk, to pay little compliments, to spend an hour with a handsome and intelligent woman who enjoys their company and lets them see it.” She nodded, teasing him fondly. “Yes, my dear, I’d never be lonely—if I didn’t miss you so sorely.”

  He smiled, relaxed and at ease. “Do these talkative callers of yours feel as you do about the war?”

  She nodded, grave again. “Yes, Faunt. Oh, if you were here, you would see for yourself. President Davis is bombarded with angry letters: people who demanded that he remove General Johnston and now blame him for doing so, speculators wanting licenses to export cotton and tobacco, Governor Vance threatening to call home his soldiers, Governor Brown threatening to arrest the impressment officers, South Carolina planters furious because their slaves are impressed to work on fortifications, people damning Colonel Northrop or General Bragg. Everyone’s thinking of himself; his profits, or his rights, or h
ow he can avoid going into the army. Even Vice President Stephens wants to take Georgia out of the Confederacy. The South is falling apart.” She broke out in a sudden pleading urgency: “Oh, Faunt, how long will you go on fighting in this hopeless struggle?”

  “Till I die,” he said in a low tone. She bit her lip, and her eyes filled; and he felt her love like a warm cloak enfolding him, and asked more gently: “What would you have me do?”

  She shook her head, smiling again. “You know, ordinarily I’m a sensible woman, Faunt; but not when I’m with you. With you, having you here with me, I think how wonderful it would be if you and I could be always together, could put everything behind us but each other.” She shook her head. “Of course I know it’s impossible. I’m as silly as any other woman in love, you see.”

  So for a while they spoke no more of great affairs, but of themselves.

  He stayed with her till Monday morning. Sunday afternoon, when they had been a while silent together, she asked: “Faunt, why don’t you go to see your kinfolks?” And since he did not speak, she said: “You could be proud of them. Your sister, Mrs. Streean, does more than anyone outside the hospitals to help not only the wounded men but the poor people. Richmond’s full of hungry women and children, ladies from Loudoun and Fauquier and all the northern counties who have had to leave their homes and have lost everything. They live in attics and in damp cellars and in broken-down railroad cars along the tracks.

  “But I don’t mean them. Their friends help them. It’s the ones who were always poor, and whose friends have nothing, who suffer most. The Council has voted thousands of dollars to keep them from starving. Mrs. Streean was one of the ladies who organized the Soup Association. She’s a fine woman, Faunt. You should be proud of her.”

  “I was always a little sorry for Tilda,” he admitted in slow surprise. “But it never occurred to me to be proud of her.”

  “She’s highly respected,” Nell assured him. “She knows how to plan things, how to tell other ladies what to do. And she’d like to see you, Faunt.”

  His eyes hardened. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Tilda and I were never close.”

  “Then Mrs. Dewain?” she urged. “Burr lost some fingers in the fight at Yellow Tavern, the day General Stuart was killed; but he’s returned to duty. Oh, and Miss Vesta is married again.” He did not know this, and looked at her in quick gladness. “To a boy named Lyle,” she said. “He’s a Lieutenant in the Seventh South Carolina Cavalry.”

  “I remember him.”

  She nodded. “And Julian married Anne Tudor, and they have a fine baby. Go see them, Faunt. They’d be so happy!” And she said gently: “I sometimes think you’d be happier yourself if you went to your own people instead of coming here to me.”

  He asked, deliberately cruel: “Are you giving me my congé?”

  If his word left a wound she did not betray her hurt. “I think you might be happier if we had never met.” She added honestly: “You must always feel a secret shame in loving me.”

  He hesitated, then answered her without evasion. “That is true, Nell. I can’t help it. I suppose it comes from—what my life used to be.” And he explained: “The night I met you, there were reasons outside myself to make me feel shamed and debased. I turned to you as a man in disgrace turns to the bottle, defiantly, flouting the world. But that was only at first. Very quickly—I—loved you. Yes and held you high. If you yourself would consent, I would marry you.”

  “Yet always, in your heart, you’d be ashamed of me.” There was nothing but affectionate understanding in her tone or in her eyes.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, that is true.”

  “Then I’ve done you great harm, my dear.”

  “You’ve done me great good, in a thousand ways.”

  “Go back to your kinfolks, Faunt. Forget me.”

  He came near her, standing in front of her, taking her hands. “No,” he said. “No, I’ll never leave you.” He kissed her gravely. “We will keep what we have, Nell. I’ll not risk losing it by reaching out for more.”

  He went next day to deliver Colonel Mosby’s dispatch. Nell was able to direct him to General Lee’s headquarters, at Violet Bank, the Shippen home, just east of the Petersburg pike and a little north of the town. “He’s been there since the middle of July,” she said. The commanding general wished to communicate with Richmond before drafting his reply, so Faunt had days to wait. He took the opportunity to see the miles of breastworks and entrenchments where Lee’s army stubbornly fought off Grant’s wary thrusts. He saw men living like rats in ditches and caves and tunnels, starving on rations so short that they were always hungry, yet ready at a moment’s warning to spring to battle; and he met men he knew and talked with them.

  “A week of this would drive me mad,” he said, and the men to whom he spoke agreed that the combination of monotony and physical discomfort was hard. Soldiers grew careless, indifferent even to death itself, exposing themselves to the fire of enemy sharpshooters simply because they would not trouble to stoop in passing a spot where the parapet was low. So losses were steady, and even minor wounds sometimes meant death; for men were so badly nourished that their resistance was low.

  And the men made friends with the enemy, crawling out at night to trade tobacco for sugar or coffee. Some of the Petersburg hospitals sent secretly through the lines to exchange tobacco and cotton for needed drugs. This was still war, and many were killed; but there were intervals when the soldiers arranged an informal suspension of firing. After a few days of rain you might see men on both sides taking advantage of the first sun to spread blankets and clothes to dry in full sight of the enemy. Sometimes ladies came sight-seeing from Richmond and climbed on the parapets and strolled to and fro in perfect security.

  When Lee’s dispatch was ready, Faunt was glad to turn his back on this war that was not war, upon this rabbit warren where men lived in a fashion that animals could not have endured. He had another Sunday with Nell in Richmond, but when he took his careful way northward, an encounter with a Yankee patrol cost him his horse and set him afoot, till he found loyal men who even in that stricken land were able to provide him with a new mount. At Centerville he heard that Colonel Mosby had been gravely wounded the day before and was lying helpless at the home of Major Foster; but he found Mosby cheerfully amused at his own mishap.

  “Tom Love and Guy Broadwaters and I were too ambitious,” he confessed. “We met a regiment of bluebellies with an advance guard of seven men; and since the seven had a regiment to back them, we thought it not unfair for three of us to charge them. But one of them could shoot. He got a bullet into me and I won’t be able to ride again for a week.”

  Faunt helped move him by easy stages to his father’s home near Lynchburg. There they had news that Chief Blackwell’s farm had been raided by the Yankees, the house searched, hidden letters and papers found, the house burned. Colonel Mosby was disturbed by this mischance. “No great harm was done, of course; but how did they know our headquarters? Someone has talked when he should have been silent.” He stirred restlessly. “Treacherv makes me uneasy. I’ll be glad to get into the saddle again!”

  But he was still on crutches; and since he must be inactive he decided to go to Petersburg to confer with General Lee, and took Faunt with him. They travelled by the South Side Railroad, and at Petersburg Faunt found an ambulance to carry them to Violet Bank. When they turned off the pike, Faunt saw Trav; and beyond him in the shade of a great tree, General Longstreet was talking with General Lee. Faunt helped Colonel Mosby out of the ambulance, and as the Colonel adjusted his crutches General Lee came toward them.

  “Ah, Colonel,” he said in smiling sympathy. “The only fault I ever find with you is that you are always getting wounded.”

  “This is nothing,” Mosbv assured him. “I could ride even now if it were necessary.”

  As they fell into talk, Faunt went to join Trav and General Longstreet. He spoke first, in due respect, to Longstreet. “You may not rememb
er me, sir. Major Currain’s brother.”

  Longstreet said cordially: “I remember you perfectly, Mr. Currain. You took my scout, Harrison, across the Potomac for me, June a year ago.”

  “I’m glad to see you recovered.”

  “Not completely,” the big man admitted. “I’m not yet able to ride comfortably, but a little more practice will remedy that.” His arm was carried in a sling, so no doubt it still troubled him.

  Faunt turned to Trav, extending his hand. “You look well, Trav.”

  “Why, I’m well,” Trav agreed. “How are you?”

  “All right.” There was some restraint in Trav’s tones; and Faunt felt a deep sadness in himself, and old memories. “I’m all right,” he repeated. “I’m very well.” He was not well, would never be, and he knew this; but question and answer were only words.

  “We’re just going to take the train back to Danville.” Trav spoke like an embarrassed hostess making conversation.

  “Have you been to Richmond?” Faunt asked, for the sake of saying something.

  “No, Enid’s in Augusta. The General and I are on our way to Lynchburg with Mrs. Longstreet and her children.”

  “Enid’s well, I hope?” This empty talk hurt like an aching tooth. He wanted Trav’s old affection, wanted some kindly word.

  “Why, yes,” said Trav.

  “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, you and I.”

  “No.” Trav hesitated. “I’ve missed you, Faunt,” he confessed, his tone softer. “I always—” He shook his head. “Everything’s changed,” he said heavily. “All of us are changed.”

  Men found it hard to put their hearts in words. Faunt thought if he and Trav were women they would be by this time weeping happily in each other’s arms. “If I were Nell, now,” he told himself, “or if Trav were Nell, I could tell him I love him. Perhaps he knows about me and Nell. Enid’s her daughter; perhaps she knew, has told him.” Defiant anger woke in him. “Colonel Mosby may want me,” he said stiffly. “And General Longstreet is waiting for you.”