House Divided (45 page)

Before Nell could speak, Streean answered him. “Mrs. Albion knows everything that happens in Richmond,” he explained. “Her masculine acquaintance is large—and talkative.” His tone became harshly derisive. “But General Longstreet didn't—as she so poetically puts it—‘offer his sword.' He asked for a place in the Paymaster's department. Of course no one can blame him for wanting to handle money rather than men. After all, there's more profit in it.”

Tony, to his own surprise, resented the slur. He felt his cheeks stiff. “Mister Streean, I have the honor of General Longstreet's acquaintance; and my brother is serving on his staff.”

Streean laughed carelessly. “Oh, no offense, Tony.”

But Tony did not smile. “Do I understand you to suggest that General Longstreet seeks personal profit from this conflict?”

“Eh?” Streean looked at him in surprise and then in understanding. “Why, God bless me, no!” He glanced at Nell and said, as though to throw the onus on her: “No, in spite of Mrs. Albion's opinion
I'm sure he is wholly devoted to Mr. Davis and the Confederacy.”

“It is not Mrs. Albion's opinion, but yours, sir,” Tony reminded him, “about which I wish to be perfectly clear.”

Streean was almost abject, his brow glistening. “I have the highest possible opinion of General Longstreet, of course.”

“Then your remarks were subject to an unfortunate misconstruction.”

“I regret that most sincerely.”

Tony nodded, accepting these amends, thinking remotely: Why, I was angry, ready to push the matter to an issue. He looked at Nell and saw an amused twinkle in her eye, and then Streean came to his feet and mopped his wet forehead and said he must be going. Tony made no move to go with him; and Streean's departure was like flight.

So Tony was alone with Nell. Their eyes met, and they smiled together. “You've changed, Tony,” she said approvingly.

“Why, yes,” he assented. “Yes, I think I have.”

“But—don't play the bully too often, my dear. Not all men are such cowards as Mr. Streean.”

There had never been any pretense between them. “I was as surprised to hear myself as you were to hear me,” he admitted. “I met General Longstreet only once, but I liked him.” He asked: “Who told you about his interview with the President?”

She evaded his question. “Oh, I see a great many people.” She asked curiously: “You enjoy being a soldier?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “I enjoy feeling that I'm needed, and that I'm useful.”

“I believe you do.”

“It's a new experience for me,” he reminded her, and smiled, almost embarrassed. “I don't need to tell you that. You've known me a long time.”

“I'm not sure that I ever knew you, Tony,” she said gently; and he was deeply pleased. “What's happened to you?”

“Why—I suppose, come to think of it, you're responsible. You persuaded me to go to Chimneys, and I found myself the big man of the neighborhood. And I liked it.”

So they fell into easy talk, of what since their parting his life had
been, and hers. Tony stayed an hour or two, and when he left her, strolling back toward Fifth Street, he thought they had been as comfortable together as in the past. Yes, even more so; for in the old days there had always been an undercurrent of antagonism between them. He recognized that now, and wondered why. Perhaps in each of them there was even then a sense of guilty shame and a readiness to blame the other for their relationship. Probably Nell justified herself to herself by remembering that but for him she would be penniless. He decided to make sure, as tactfully as possible, that she did not lack for money now.

 

On his way back to duty Tony stopped at Great Oak and heard Enid's familiar complaints. “Trav leaves me and Mama and the children alone here, with such terrible things happening all around us.”

“Nothing very bad,” Tony suggested.

“Bad? I'd like to know what you call what the Yankees did at Hampton! Burned half the town! They say President Tyler's house is just ruined—the carpets all ripped up, and things broken and chopped to pieces till the house itself might just as well have been set on fire.”

“General Butler's men didn't do that,” Tony assured her. “We burned the town ourselves, General Magruder's orders.” He had seen before he left Richmond this admission in the newspapers.

“Why, they did too! The Yankees, I mean! It said in the
Examiner
that they did it!”

“That was last Friday's paper,” he corrected. “But the
Examiner
says now that General Magruder ordered the town destroyed. Union sentiment was strong there, and it was a refuge for runaway negroes and deserters. A school teacher named Raymond—he deserted from Hoffler's Creek—had turned the Female College into a boarding house for Northern officers. So we cleaned out the whole rat's nest!”

She abandoned the argument but not her anger. “Well, I don't care! With that sort of thing going on all around us, Trav had no business leaving his mother helpless here! Of course I don't matter; but he ought to think of her!”

“How is she?”

“She isn't down from her nap yet. But she's perfectly exasperating,
Tony. She's so silly, just refusing to listen to all the terrible goings on. She won't even believe Clayton's dead.”

“I hope she never does believe it. She never saw him more than once or twice a year, anyway.”

“I know, but her being so stubborn means I can't talk to her about anything! I'm so lonesome, Tony!”

He felt some sympathy for her. After all, it must be dull for a pretty young woman to spend day after day with no other company than his mother and the children. “Why don't you ask your mother down for a while?” But he knew even as he spoke that this was an absurd suggestion. As nice as Nell was, she would be out of place under his mother's roof, so he added: “Too bad you can't go to Richmond for a visit with her, but of course Mama can't stay here alone.”

“Oh, I know! I'm just a prisoner here!” Her tone altered slightly. “Tony, when's Faunt coming home? They're all just wasting time out there in Western Virginia, not accomplishing anything!”

His sympathy gave way to a quiet anger at this pretty little idiot. “You'd better forget Faunt!”

“But why? I think he's wonderful! I just love him!” With a malicious amusement in her eyes, she added: “Why shouldn't I, I'd like to know? After all, he's my brother-in-law.” He suspected she was deliberately provoking him, and did not speak, but she said lightly: “You're a fine one to pretend to be so proper!”

So she knew about him and Nell. He eyed her thoughtfully, wondering whether she had ever suggested the truth to his mother. God knows, he himself had in the past often enough given his mother hours of sorrow and shame; but he would never willingly hurt her again, nor make her grieve.

Nor should this common little nobody ever do so! He came to his feet and stood over Enid, so close to her that she had to lean back in her chair to look up at him. “Teach that tongue of yours to mind its manners, Enid,” he said in icy tones. “If you ever discuss me with Mama, I'll make you regret it!”

She pressed her hand to her lips, staring up at him, seeing the anger in his eyes; and she squirmed sidewise out of the chair and backed away from him. Then they heard Mrs. Currain on the stairs, and
Enid slipped through the passage into the library as Mrs. Currain came in from the hall.

 

Tony, once Enid was gone, spent a pleasant hour with his mother. The routine of her days had never changed. Her morning inspections were as rigorous, her careful measuring out of the daily allowance of stores was as meticulous, her supervision of every activity about the place as exacting. She found security against the oppression of great events in her absorption in familiar little things; and Tony let her tell him every detail of her small problems and discussed them with her in perfect gravity, glad that no matter what happened around her, as long as Great Oak stood, his mother and her life would remain unchanged.

Riding back to Yorktown his thoughts returned to Enid. To protect his mother he had warned Enid to silence about himself and Nell, but for Enid as against Trav a good deal might be said. Tony knew well enough that there was a pagan in Nell, and probably in her daughter, too; and he could not imagine a man like Trav meeting that pagan halfway. These dozen years of her marriage to Trav must have been for Enid a long exasperation. Tony was sorry for her, but there was nothing he could do, except perhaps to advise Trav to come home as often as he could.

The letter he wrote Trav said little enough. Mama was fine, Enid and the children were well, Lucy was beginning to grow up, was prettier every day. Enid was devoting herself to keeping Mama happy; but probably she was pretty lonesome. He and Brett and Julian frequently rode over; but of course that was not the same for Enid as seeing her husband. It was too bad Trav was so far away.

He hoped Trav would read between the lines, and when a fortnight later he heard from Julian that Trav had been at Great Oak, it pleased him to think his letter was responsible.

 

The occasional crisp days of early fall reminded Tony that the six months for which his company had enlisted would presently end, and he felt a deep regret. This service, this sense of being useful, this exercise of authority bestowed without his seeking had been sweet to him; he would be sorry to see it end. But early in November the regiment of which his company was a part moved by detachments from
Yorktown to Richmond. Tony arrived there on the eighth of November, the Friday after the first election since the formation of the Confederacy; and when he called at Cinda's he found her indignant over the defeat of Mr. Macfarland, the president of the Farmers' Bank, who had been a candidate for Congress.

“It just shows what we must expect,” she declared, “now that we're letting all that ragtag and bobtail vote. I don't see any sense in letting a man vote unless he has proved he amounts to something!”

Tony smiled. “You mean, unless he has made money?”

“Of course.”

“Well, they're coming to it all over the South,” he reminded her. “Till ten years ago, a man had to have at least a little property before he could vote in Virginia; and in North Carolina till five years ago no one could vote for state senators unless he owned fifty acres of land. But now any man who pays taxes at all can vote, and I supposed pretty soon he won't even have to pay taxes.”

“Well, I think when we started the Confederacy we ought to have stopped all that. Why should white trash vote, I'd like to know.” And she said hotly: “Mr. Dewain says that's the worst thing about Lincoln. He wants to let ordinary men vote and run things. That's why he's so dangerous. It's mountebanks like him who've ruined us.”

“Who beat Mr. Macfarland?”

“Mr. Tyler. Oh, of course he's all right; but the
Examiner
said anybody who voted for Mr. Macfarland was just hoping to borrow money from his bank. As if he'd lend any one money just for voting for him! It makes me boil! You'd think being rich was a crime!”

“I suppose everyone voted for President Davis.”

“Oh, yes—no one ran against him. But I do feel badly for Mr. Macfarland. He's such a fine man.”

Tony lodged with Cinda till Tuesday when the regiment was mustered out of the Confederate service. Julian too was there, but the night before that formality he disappeared immediately after supper, leaving Tony with Cinda and Vesta and Jenny.

“Julian's gone to see Anne Tudor,” Cinda told them. “He's in love with her, as much in love as a boy of sixteen can be—and that's a lot.” And she asked: “Well, Tony, what will you do, now the regiment's broken up?”

“I haven't decided,” he confessed. “This experience has meant a lot to me. I'm sorry it's over.”

“Will the men enlist again?”

“I don't know. We'll be shipped back to North Carolina, and I'll go with them. We'll all go home to Martinston and talk it over there.”

“Will you—stay with them? I mean, if they stay in the army?”

“I will if they want me. Yet I'm really too old for active soldiering. I tire too easily.” He smiled. “I remember something you said to me once, Cinda. It was years ago. You wanted me to do something or other, and I said I wasn't well enough, and you said I talked like a woman in a delicate condition. You said it was a woman's privilege to plead a headache, or anything of that sort, but that when a man usurped that feminine prerogative he raised in the minds of others a doubt of his real sex! Remember?”

“You used to infuriate me,” she admitted. “You were always apt to whine a little when you didn't get your own way, like a dog that limps when you scold it.”

“I know. And there've been plenty of days this summer when I wanted to plead sick in order to escape duty. But I didn't.” He added: “But the time will come when officers must stand up to hard marching, to hard living. I don't believe I could do it; not in a real pinch. And I don't want to fail men who trust me. So—I don't know what I'll do.”

“I don't feel able to advise you.” He guessed that she was not quite convinced of his sincerity.

“No. I'll have to make the decision myself.” He added: “There's Chimneys to consider, too. Last spring our planting all over the South was mostly done before we—before any of the men left home; yet even this summer, food has been scarce. As long as the war lasts, the South will have to raise less cotton and tobacco and more wheat and corn. I might do more good, be more useful, if I stayed at home and helped feed the army.” He hesitated. “I'll do what the men want me to do, in the end.”

 

He did not hurry the decision. At Raleigh, when they were discharged, some Martinston men joined other North Carolina regiments: so the company as a company ceased to exist. Those who went on to
Martinston were of many minds. Chelmsford Lowman said he would stay at home. One of his sons had been in the company. had re-enlisted; another was fourteen.