House Divided (187 page)

Four of them took the Lynchburg road; Longstreet and Trav, and Captain Goree who had been at Longstreet's side since the beginning, and Major Otey. The Lynchburg pike led them with many meanderings through pines and scrub oak and past small farms; and they crossed and recrossed the railroad right of way. Silence for the most part kept them company, but once Longstreet spoke.

“I've wondered ever since Grant cut our road at Jetersville how he knew exactly what we meant to do. I learned the answer yesterday. Some weeks ago, the Legislature required General Lee to disclose his plans for our retreat, if retreat became necessary; and when President Davis skedaddled out of Richmond he threw Lee's letter into his wastebasket. The Yankees found it. 'Lys Grant had a copy of it Monday night a week ago; so by the kindness of Mr. Davis the enemy always knew what we intended.”

There was no heat in his voice, and they made no comment. The past was past. But Trav remembered that President Davis had summoned on to Richmond that train loaded with supplies which was waiting for the army at Amelia Court House. There were many crimes to be laid at the President's door; but Mr. Davis was a fugitive, and probably with a noose waiting for him if he were caught. It was a time for pity, not for empty blame.

Longstreet lifted their pace. After a few miles they crossed the railroad again, and rode for a quarter of a mile through swampy ground, and came up past a cemetery on their left to the outskirts of the little town of Concord Depot, twenty or thirty houses scattered along the highways that converged at the railroad station. The first house on the right of the road, set among chestnut trees, with a big black gum opposite the front door between the driveway and the road, had a substantial and hospitable aspect. The house itself was two stories high, with square pillars in front rising to the roof of the second floor veranda. Trav saw a separate kitchen and a smoke house in the yard, thinly shaded by the first pricking green of the unfolding leaves of the chestnut trees. There was a white fence of crisscrossed boards, with a rounded board atop; and as they approached the house three small children, two boys and a girl of about five, scrambled up to stand precariously atop this fence to watch them.

Longstreet spoke to the oldest youngster. “Son, do you think your mother could find dinner for four hungry men?”

The boy scuttled toward the house, and a woman met him in the doorway. The General led the way along the drive; and she said hospitably:

“Light and come in, sirs.”

“We don't wish to burden you, ma'am.”

“There's aplenty,” she assured him. Trav saw her eyes red with weeping. The boys took their horses. The little girl had disappeared. The woman led them through a hall with a room on either side and into a dining room beyond. “My husband's in a Yankee prison somewheres, but I can always rustle up a meal for soldiers.”

“We are no longer soldiers. General Lee's army is surrendered.”

“I heard so. I guess you all did as much as flesh and blood could do.”

“What is your husband's name, ma'am?”

“J. J. Landrum.” Her hands twisted in her apron. “He's b‘en a long time gone, but me and the young'uns git along. They set out to conscript my oldest, but I said they'd have to conscript me first. He's sixteen, and he worked in the station store till the Yankees burned it down. They like to burned him too. He hid in the closet under the stairs in the store, and they yelled for anyone that was inside to come out because they was going to burn the place; but he didn't dast come out till he heard the crackling. Then he scuttered up here to the house. With him to do the heavy work, we git along. You all rest you'selves and dinner'll be ready right soon.”

There were windows in both sides of this large pleasant room, the fireplace at the end farthest from the road. They laid their swords on a small table near the door and turned to the dinner table. Longstreet sat with his back to the hearth, the others flanking him; and they fell into quiet talk. Where will you go? What will you do? And you? And you?

After a time, and some silence, Longstreet said reflectively: “I wonder if any other great nation has ever had so short a history as the Confederacy. Born at Sumter four years ago almost to the day, died at Appomattox Court House today.”

The Confederacy dead? Yes. To each of them Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia was the Confederacy; with Lee's surrender, the Confederacy was gone.

“Four years,” the General repeated. “Four years from founding to dissolution. Old Egypt, Greece, Rome, France, Spain; they have had their centuries. We had four years.”

“Four crowded years, General.” It was Goree who spoke. “They will be remembered.”

Longstreet nodded. “Four years, the entire lifetime of a nation, and every day of it devoted to war. And war captures man's imagination; so yes, these years will be remembered.” After a moment he added gravely: “Remembered perhaps too long.”

He was thinking aloud, and he continued to speak, but Trav's attention suddenly was drawn away. The door of one of the front rooms was open a crack, open wide enough so that through the crack he could see a bed beyond. In this slightly open door a small head appeared. That little girl who had watched them arrive, and who fled when General Longstreet spoke to her brother, peered in through the crack of the door.

Trav, lest he frighten her to flight, was ready to avert his eyes if she looked toward him; but she did not. She slipped into the room and like a fascinated bird sidled to where on the table against the wall they had laid down their swords. Her small hand reached up to touch the weapons, to move caressingly along the length of one scabbard and another, to stroke this hilt and that with little loving gestures. The setting sun struck through the window into her face and Trav saw her tears, and his throat filled.

The warriors' swords were now forever sheathed; but even this child wept for those who had fought and died, for those who had fought and failed. Well, there would be many tears to mingle with hers. She need not weep alone.

April-May, 1865

 

 

T
HE news that General Lee had surrendered his fragment of an army at first brought Cinda not only sadness but comfort too; for this was peace, and Brett would come home! But then the courage which for four years had helped her to composure gave way to a hysteria of unreasoning fears. Suppose Brett did not come! Suppose he never came! There must have been hard, desperate fighting through the week since she last held him in her arms; for nothing less than great defeats and dreadful losses could have brought Lee's hosts to helplessness. So perhaps Brett was dead; or perhaps he lay wounded somewhere along the path the army in retreat had followed; or perhaps he was a captive, already hurried away to one of the dreadful Northern prisons.

Cinda had seen Southern men, just back from those death camps. There was food enough everywhere in the North, but released prisoners came home no longer men but the skeletons of men. Their legs were pipe stems, their arms as frail as those of a sick child, their skin yellow Below their sunken eyes, in the pits above the cheekbones, the skin was black like the mark of a deep bruise, with jaundiced edges; sagging eyelids revealed inner membranes of a greenish blue, and yellow-veined eyeballs. So shrunken were their muscles that their joints seemed enlarged; great knobby knees, elbows like knots in a rope. Their lips, pale and with a bluish tinge, twisted at any kindness in a shamed, frightened grimace meant for a smile. If they were fed very gently and a few crumbs at a time with bread soaked in wine, some of them recovered; but many who were brought to the hospitals lay almost inanimate, with blankly staring eyes that never closed, and
with their knees drawn up in a terrible contortion so that they were like corpses which had been allowed to stiffen in death's rigor, till they mercifully died.

To think that Brett might be on his way to one of those Yankee torture camps was a nightmare. When Cinda confessed her weak despair, Vesta protested: “But, Mama, the war's over, so they won't take any more prisoners.”

“The whole army surrendered! They're all prisoners!”

“Why, no, they'll be paroled.”

But Cinda perversely clung to terror, almost resenting Vesta's reassurances. The girl tried to make her smile, telling her about the Yankee band concerts in Capitol Square, so near the big house on Fifth Street that from the balcony they could hear the strains of music. “All last week, no one went to hear them except the negroes,” she said. “So this week they're not letting any negroes come into the Square at all—but of course no white people go near the place, and the band just sits there and plays and plays all by itself.”

Cinda would not be diverted. “Oh, Vesta, he'll never come home!”

“Hush! I'll begin to be provoked with you! Papa's all right! Wait and see!”

“I'm tired of waiting!”

“Well, then, come take a walk with me, get a little fresh air.”

“Walk the streets? With Yankee soldiers staring?”

“You can't always stay indoors! It's going to be like this for goodness knows how long. You might as well get used to it!” Vesta's tone quickened. “Put on your bonnet and we'll walk down the hill and call on Mrs. Lee.”

Cinda would not go even that short distance, but Vesta did. “And Mrs. Lee hasn't given up!” she reported when she returned. “She says General Lee isn't the whole Confederacy! The brave old thing says the Yankees have never captured any Southern city except Vicksburg, except places we'd already given up!”

“Has she heard from General Lee?”

“No.” Vesta added persuasively: “And if he hasn't come home yet, you couldn't expect Papa to be here this soon!”

Cinda shook her head, refusing comfort. General Lee was nothing now, but Brett was everything. The days dragged wearily. Wednesday,
General Weitzel, the Federal Commandant, issued an order that the prayer for the President of the United States must be included in religious services; so on Good Friday St. Paul's did not open its doors for the usual observances. Brett did not come and did not come; but Saturday they began to see from the windows an occasional haggard man in a gray uniform; and toward dusk they heard voices and some confusion down Franklin Street, and people hurried past the house in that direction. From the upper balcony, through an opening among the branches of the big magnolia, they saw a crowd collected in front of the Lee house, and a little knot of horsemen for whom the throng made way. Despite the dusk and the gloom of a rainy evening they saw enough to guess the truth. General Lee had come home.

 

Tilda suggested that evening that since there would be no Easter service at St. Paul's, they go tomorrow to Dr. Hoge's church, a few steps down Fifth Street from the house. Dr. Hoge had left the city when Richmond was evacuated, but Dr. Reed, whose church had burned, would preach in his place. But Cinda had no desire to hear Dr. Reed. “I don't want to hear any voice but Brett's,” she confessed. “I know I ought to be ashamed of myself. I wasn't ever as bad as this, not even when Clayton was killed; but I can't help it, Tilda! There's just nothing but water in my bones.”

“You're acting like an idiot! I've a mind to box your ears.”

Cinda smiled weakly. “Why, Tilda, you sound the way I used to talk to you! Go on, do it! It might be good for me.”

“If I thought so, I would,” Tilda retorted, and stormed away.

Next morning Cinda lay late, her curtains drawn, wishing for sleep. When her door opened, softly and without any warning knock, she sat up in quick rapture, certain this was Brett; but it was Tilda, and in exasperated disappointment, Cinda cried: “I declare, Tilda, it's too bad of you to wake me! I didn't get to sleep at all till daylight.”

Tilda came in and closed the door. “I had to, Cinda.” Her voice was low. “Cinda, Lincoln's dead!”

Cinda at first did not comprehend. “Well, waking me up won't bring him back to life again!” But then she realized what Tilda had said. “Lincoln! Dead?”

“They say someone shot him.”

“Shot him!” Cinda's throat contracted. “Oh, Tilda, I don't believe it! It's just another Sunday rumor!”

“Julian says it's true. He's just come.” Julian and Anne and Judge Tudor had returned to the Twelfth Street house when order in the city was restored. “Mr. Grant told Judge Tudor. They shot Lincoln, and killed Mr. Seward and his whole family, and tried to kill all the cabinet officers.”

Cinda, with a confused feeling that she must do something, began to dress. “Call June,” she said absently. “I want my breakfast.” She felt in Tilda a need for words; but what was there to say? Their own father was Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, but it was Lincoln who had made this war, and Lincoln's fleets had starved the South, and Lincoln's armies had stolen and burned and destroyed everything they could lay their hands on, and Lincoln's soldiers had killed Clayton and maimed Julian. If Lincoln were dead, she was glad of it! It was high time for him to die!

But Tilda might read her thoughts. “Don't stand there gawking at me! Call June, do!” Tilda went out on the balcony to summon June from the kitchen in the back yard; and when the shutters were opened Cinda saw sun glint on the leaves of the magnolia. Tilda returned. “She's coming, Cinda.” She hesitated. “What are you thinking?”

“About Lincoln! I think it serves him right! After all the things he's done to us!”

“You don't mean that!”

“Oh, I suppose I don't.”

“I wish I'd known him,” Tilda confessed. “Or at least seen him. They say he called on Mrs. Pickett while he was in Richmond. He knew the General, or something.” She wrung her hands. “I suppose the Yankees will do all sorts of terrible things, to get even. Julian said we'd better close the shutters, but Vesta wouldn't let him. She said it would just be acting guilty.”

Cinda was already half dressed. “Tell Julian I'll be right down,” she said. “Don't let him go.”

As Tilda departed, June came with breakfast; and Cinda heard her swallow hard, and she thought the old woman had been crying. She spoke quietly.

“He was a good man, June.”

“Yas'm.” There was a faint, wailing overtone in June's voice. “But he done de wuk de good Lawd set him tuh do. He gone to rest in Jesus' bosom now.” That simple faith released Cinda's own tears, and to weep brought her some easement.

 

They were all together, the children with them, when Brett appeared. They had no warning that he was near. He came in through the basement door and up the stairs; and the sound of his step was enough for Cinda. She flew to meet him, too nearly breathless to speak, and her streaming tears wetted the lips she lifted to his kiss. The others pressed about them, laughing and crying together, and they led him into the drawing room, and Cinda demanded—as though it mattered—why he came in by the back door; and he said in weary amusement:

“Well, I was afraid my mare would play out before I got to the front door, so I took her through the alley right to the stable. I'd have been here yesterday, but she went dead lame and I had to walk and lead her the last twenty or thirty miles.” He turned to a chair. “Let's sit down. I'm tired.”

Julian asked: “Did you know Lincoln's dead?”

“Yes, we heard it as we came up from the bridge.”

Vesta cried: “Who's ‘we,' Papa? Is Rollin with you?”

“No, Honey; Fitz Lee and Rosser didn't surrender. They're trying to get to General Johnston; and of course Burr and Rollin went with them.” He spoke to Cinda. “Trav planned to go to Lynchburg, to Enid.”

She saw how tired he was, drained equally of strength and spirit; and his need of her now made her stronger. “It's all over, darling,” she said gently.

He nodded, slumped in his chair. “Yes, all over.” He fumbled in his pocket, found a slip of paper, held it out. Cinda read the printed lines.

Cinda passed the parole to Vesta, it went from hand to hand. “I got that on the eleventh,” Brett explained in dull tones. “But we couldn't leave till Wednesday. A dozen of us started together, but some of the horses were better than others, so we soon separated. We made Buckingham Court House that night. Confederate money was no good, so we couldn't buy anything, but some people gave us supper.” His voice was empty and spiritless. “There were only three of us, by that time. We decided the farmers on that road would have too many soldiers to feed; so we went to Cartersville and ferried across the river.” Julian was looking at the parole, and Brett said: “Better give that back to me, son, so I can show it to the Yankee sentries and prove I'm an honest man.”

Cinda thought with pitying tenderness and love: Why, he's beaten, he's given up, he's worn to death; but I will make him whole again. Brett droned on. He had lodged in Manikin Town last night, and made an early start this morning, walking, leading his limping horse. His voice trailed into silence. Cinda rose.

“Brett Dewain, I'm going to put you to bed.”

He nodded. “I'd like to go to bed. I'd like to sleep a year.” Vesta came to help him up the stairs, and feeling his weakness Cinda wondered whether he would ever be strong again. She helped him out of his clothes while June in the bathing room filled the tub. The old woman took his worn, stained garments away to wash and clean them, and Cinda helped him bathe, and when he was in bed she sat beside him. He fell instantly asleep, and when she stole from the room he did not wake; nor did he wake that day at all. Lest she disturb him, she slept that night on a pallet by his bed. Let him sleep; let him rest; at least now and forever he was at home.

 

Monday the newspapers, in black-bordered columns, told the story of Lincoln's assassination; and at dinner Cinda asked: “What do the soldiers think? About his being dead.”

Brett said honestly: “Why, they hope he'll roast in hell! We used to laugh at him, when he was alive; but we've had four years of blood and death and starvation and general misery, and blamed him for it.” He added: “But of course we'll keep our tongues between our teeth!”

“He's brought death to plenty of others. I can't really feel sad about it. And yet . . .”

Cinda left the sentence unfinished, and Vesta said: “I've never thought he was as bad as people said, Mama. Not since he let you bring Julian home.”

Brett spoke thoughtfully. “I remember this actor who killed him. He was in Richmond at the time of the John Brown business.” He shook his head in slow amazement. “My, but that was a long time ago. In another world.”

Cinda nodded; yes, a long time ago. The day they heard of John Brown's deed, she and Brett had just returned from England, with the shipload of beautiful things which made this great house still so lovely and contenting. Mama was alive, spry as a cricket, as gay as any of them; and the big old house at Great Oak with its floors of heart pine as enduring as marble and its panelled walls and all its spacious beauty was still standing; and Trav was bringing the fields back to good culture, and the people were happy, and life was leisured and gracious and friendly. Vesta was a child just coming to womanhood, with her first love in her eyes, and Clayton was alive, and Burr's hands were whole and beautiful, and Julian's legs were strong.

Cinda shook her head, putting thoughts away. To remember was to weep, and she must dry her eyes of tears.

 

They heard that day that Roger Pryor had called a meeting of Petersburg ladies to mourn President Lincoln; and Cinda remembered Mr. Pryor speaking from the balcony at the hotel in Charleston, his long hair flying as he urged the attack on Sumter which ushered in these years of grief and suffering and terror and despair. Rhett, Yancey, Pryor, old Mr. Ruffin—these men more than any others had led the South on the dreadful road to war. They promised secession would bring liberty and peace and prosperity. Well, they had lied; and Mr. Yancey was dead, and Mr. Rhett had been repudiated even by his own state, and Roger Pryor who had called Mr. Lincoln every name
in the calendar now hypocritically summoned ladies to pay the dead man homage. Old Mr. Ruffin? Cinda remembered that Mrs. Lee and her daughters had visited him at Marlbourne, out on the Pamunkey three years ago, during those months when after the Yankees seized Arlington Mrs. Lee was a homeless wanderer; but McClellan's army came so near Marlbourne that she removed to Richmond, and probably Mr. Ruffin left his home at the same time. That old man had fired the first shot at Sumter; he had even touched off one cannon at First Manassas. Where was he now? Let him, too, answer for his sins!