House Divided (46 page)

“And Mrs. Lowman says the boy wants to go into the army,” he told Tony. “Well, I won't stop him, but I'll stay home with her. Soldiering ain't what it's cracked up to be. I'll let the young fellows do the fighting.”

Jeremy Blackstone put this same decision more vehemently. He had a small farm between Martinston and Chimneys; a wife, two little girls. “I've had my belly full,” he declared. “I went to war looking for a fight. I like a good gouging as well as the next one. But all I get is my damned laigs marched off me! I've marched till I've wore my feet off pretty near up to the knees. Get up in the middle of the God-damned night to march. March to Hampton! March to Yorktown! March in parades! March in reviews! March off to Bethel! March to New Market Bridge! March back to Bethel! March to Yorktown! March off to Bethel again. Come down with chills and fever and get up and march some more. Why, if I'd marched in a straight line I'd be to the moon by now. March to Ship's Point, march to Young's Hill, march to Cockletown, march to Camp Rains, march to Bethel a couple of times for a change! Bethel! I never got so sick of a place in my born days! Jesus to Nancy, Captain, if I'd wanted to march I could have stayed home and walked the floor with a colicky young one! When I wasn't down with the chills and fever I was marching, and when I wasn't marching I was digging earthworks. I went into this shebang looking for a fight, but the nearest I came to it was laying behind some dirt while the Yankees shot bullets into it. No, sir, there ain't enough fighting in a war to suit me. I'm staying home from now on. The old woman'll give me all the war I want, right here at home!”

But not all the company were of this mind. Tom Shadd and Ed Blandy took a middle ground, and many followed them.

“I'm going to stay home the winter, anyway,” Ed admitted. “I sh'd judge I'd learned what there is to soldiering, only maybe the fighting part. We didn't get much of a lesson at that. But right now. there's soldiers enough. Won't be any fighting in the mud this winter. It'll hold off long enough for me to get my compost made and spread and
my planting done, so Mrs. Blandy and the young 'uns can make a crop next summer. Then if it looks to me I'm needed, I c'n sign up again.”

Tom Shadd—he was a silent man, rarely speaking—nodded agreement; and so did others standing by. But Lonn Tyler dissented and with some violence.

“They'll never git me into it again,” he declared, “and I know a plenty that feel the same way. This here's a planters' war! Nothing against you personally, Captain Currain; but there it is. You all want us-uns to go out and git ourselves killed so you all kin keep your slaves. Well, it's your having slaves that's the trouble with us-uns, if you ask me. A poor man working by hisself can't make a money crop. About the best he can do is raise enough to keep his family from starving to death. You rich men with your slaves that you don't have to pay no wages to, you can raise a crop and sell it for less than it costs a poor man to raise it.”

He warmed to his theme. “Why, there ain't two men in a hundred in the South that owns a slave—no, nor wants to. I talked to a Virginia man and he says the planters worked the land up there to death and the poor man has to take their leavings.” His voice rose. “Why, take it right in our company! You've got a flock of slaves at Chimneys, Captain Currain, and Judge Meynell he had one; but with the Judge dead there ain't another man in the company has ary a one, or is likely to! Get rid of the slaves, say I, and then a white man'd have a chance to better hisself! As it is, the big planter gits the fresh meat and the gravy, and the poor man gits sowbelly and grits and thankful to git it! Me go to war to keep things so? Not if I know myself!”

There were nods of agreement all around, and Ed Blandy—he was in many ways the best man among them—put the matter calmly. “There's sense in that, Captain Currain. The way it's been around Martinston, the heft of us had our own little places and worked them ourselves. We didn't look to get ahead much, nor we didn't; but we was satisfied to be let alone. Long as we knew that there wasn't any man around good enough to push us out of his way and make us take it, we was satisfied. Some of us'd maybe ride with the paterollers if one of your people lit out for the woods, or to help keep the free niggers in their place; but we was still our own men and didn't have to
take nothing from nobody. We knowed you all was some smarter than us-uns, but we could stand up to you in a hoss race, or over a jug of corn whiskey, or in a shooting match, or in a fight if it came to that. So when you talked reasonable we'd listen, but your say-so didn't make it so.”

Tony said sincerely: “I've tried to find the right thing to say to you, but I don't know what's best for you to do now. If I did, if I was sure, I'd tell you.”

“I sh'd judge you would,” Ed assented. “But there's no way you can be sure. You and them like you, you've always had plenty to wait on you, plenty of anything you wanted. There ain't so awful many of you all, but there's a pile of us. And it looks to me like the pile of us is doing the fighting for you all.”

“We're fighting too,” Tony reminded him.

“The heft of you are, certain. But, Captain, you're fighting for something that's yours and that you want to hang on to. What are we fighting for? Well, mostly to give you a hand, it looks to me. I be damned if I c'n see what we get out of it, win, lose, or draw.”

Tony said thoughtfully that he supposed each man must answer the question for himself. With an unaccustomed insight he went on: “You all know my brother Travis. He's commissary on Longstreet's staff—if you call that fighting. He and my brother-in-law, Mr. Dewain, went to war because Virginia did, and for the same reason she did, because they wouldn't fight against South Carolina. My other brother is fighting because he wants to keep the Yankees out of Virginia. Two of my nephews are fighting because they're young, and all their friends are fighting. I went into it because you asked me to. My nephew Clayton, who was killed at Manassas, fought because he believed South Carolina had a right to leave the Union. But none of us really fight to defend slavery, to keep our slaves.”

“All the same,” Ed insisted, “if it hadn't been for you all and your slaves, there wouldn't be any fighting.”

 

Tony knew no way to answer him. What Lonn Tyler and now Ed had said was true. Only a small minority of Southerners owned slaves; but those without slaves could not compete with those who had them. Slaves were wealth, and they bred wealth. Maybe North Carolina
wasn't fighting to defend slavery, but to defend the right to secede, and to prevent coercion of seceding states; but from Ed's point of view, it all rooted in slavery. You could obscure the truth with parroted phrases, but Ed and these others found for the riddle a simple answer. Without slavery there would have been no secession, without secession there would have been no coercion, without coercion neither North Carolina nor Virginia would have gone to war.

And it was the slave states, the rich planting states where fortunes were made in a year, that had seceded; and it was to protect them against coercion that this war was being fought. But why should a North Carolina farmer with a few acres of land fight to defend the right of a Mississippi planter to make a two-hundred-thousand-dollar cotton crop with slave labor? Tony felt pretty sure there was an answer; but he did not know what that answer was.

All the homeward way from Raleigh, on the cars and then afoot, marching in straggling files the last few miles, there was much debate and no decision. Tony, however, observed that in each group the loudest talkers were all for staying at home. It was they who seized and held the floor; but when he himself questioned these same men alone they were not so positive. Thus Chelmsford Lowman, in an almost shamefaced fashion, said: “Matter of fact, Captain, I wouldn't be much good chasing Yankees. My knees are too stiff. But if they needed someone to lay in one place and rest his musket on a log and do some shooting, why, I can still bark a squirrel any time I hanker after a stew for supper, and like as not I could put a bullet into a Yankee.” Jeremy Blackstone was another who wavered. “It's the God-damned marching I'm sick of! If a fight was to come my way and I didn't have to march from here to Tidewater to get into it, I might cut myself off enough for a chaw!” Even Lonn Tyler admitted that he might change his mind. “I guess I got some politician blood in me. I like to hear myself talk. But like as not I'll go making a fool of myself again before I'm through.” And Ed Blandy said: “There ain't no sense to it; but if you set out to go back into it, Captain Currain, I wouldn't want to see you go alone.”

Tony reflected that most men in a crowd, while ready enough to boast about their vices, were slow to admit their virtues; and, thinking back through his fifty years, he remembered how often he had heard a
man confess a drunken bout, or a staggering loss at a gaming table, or an excursion to the quarter where some yellow wench was the attraction; how seldom he had heard one boast of a good and gracious action. A man advertised his vices; his virtues he concealed like crimes.

Safely back at Chimneys among familiar sights and sounds, he found himself suddenly profoundly tired of camp routine, marches and fleeting rumors and alarms. The blue cloud shadows drifting across the mountains, the rolling contours of the hills now in winter's bleak garb, the icy streams, the rich fragrance from the kitchen, the smell of wood smoke in the evening air, the far sound of Negroes singing in the quarter, the steady strong tones of James Fiddler as he made report of his stewardship; these were peace, this was home, the war was far away.

Fiddler gave him the news of the community. Little Miss Mary Meynell was dead. Somehow, when White's Creek was in flood, she had fallen off the foot bridge. No one saw her fall; her body, battered by the rocks in the steep gorge below the bridge, was found half a mile downstream.

“Happened just last week,” James Fiddler said. “About the time we began to look for you all to come home.”

Tony, when he heard this, felt his mouth fill with the bitter juice of wrath. One of these days Darrell would have a long score to pay. “Had she been well?” he asked guardedly, wondering how much was known.

“Why, she hadn't been herself, no; not since the Judge—died.”

Tony understood that hesitation, knew the overseer was too kindly to remind him that Judge Meynell's death had been at Darrell's hand. If Darrell weren't my sister's son, Tony thought, I'd shoot him on sight.

But if he did so, people would—might—guess the truth; and that ought not to happen. Let pretty little Miss Mary rest; let her sleep. Let no tongue touch her name.

September, 1861

 

 

E
NID would be thirty years old on the twenty-sixth of this September; and for weeks beforehand and afterward this fact lay always in the background of her unhappy thoughts. Life was behind her, and how miserly of the treasures it might have bestowed her life had been. Her father's death had made her childhood a desperate time when she and her mother lived on the generous hospitality of friends and must always try to please. Marriage to Trav, though in prospect it promised happiness, had robbed her of her girlhood; the only change in her estate was that instead of trying to please a succession of hostesses she had then to please a husband. By the removal to Great Oak she only exchanged one jailer for another; for instead of Trav, or in addition to Trav, she must now please Mrs. Currain and all the in-laws. Thus had run her life, years of trying to please others, never a time when she could please herself. And now she was thirty, an old woman!

She blamed Trav for all her woes. In the beginning of their marriage she had tried to be all he desired, gay and affectionate and tender, and she delighted in those moments when under her spell he forgot dignity and cast aside his years and became as merrily irresponsible as she. But then Lucy was coming, and Enid was physically wretched; and after Lucy was born Trav settled down to being a stodgy old man, caring for nothing but the land he loved, tolerant of Enid's demonstrative affection but no longer so easily won to a recaptured youthfulness. When under pretense of prudence he rebuffed her, she was hurt as a child is hurt, and she took refuge in a pretended aloofness. That he did not seek to break down the barriers she thus raised was a new grievance against him; her own fear of pregnancy helped to convince
her at last that she hated him. When she rebuffed him, her self-pity was sharpened by his submissive acceptance of these rebuffs. Surely if he loved her, he would laugh away her coldness, sweep her into his arms, make her adore him! When he went back to duty she wept because he no longer loved her, and hated him the more.

Because she could find no crevice in the armor of his silence, she revenged herself upon those who loved him. She had long since discovered that they were easy victims. Cinda obviously and at last openly resented her affection for Faunt; and she told herself that Cinda's attitude was an insult not only to her but also to Faunt, and in a sort of defiance she thereafter let her liking for Faunt become more and more obvious. At the time of Hetty's death, when she clung to Faunt, she saw Tilda's avid interest, and one day at Great Oak she prodded Tony too into a self-betraying anger. So all of them—these kin-by-marriage whom she had wished to please and whose liking she coveted—thought her no better than a hussy!

Well, they deserved to be punished for their thoughts; and if they were so ready to suspect shameful things about her, she would give them reason. What she felt for Faunt no longer mattered; it was what they thought she felt. From the day of Cinda's outburst, Enid took every opportunity to provoke her. A week before that birthday which began to be in Enid's eyes so important, Cinda came for a few days at Great Oak; and one evening when Mrs. Currain had gone for her after-dinner nap Cinda turned to her knitting and Enid asked her what she was making.

“Socks,” Cinda told her. “I keep my menfolks supplied. You ought to make some for Travis.”

“Don't talk to me about Trav!” To criticize Trav always provoked Cinda, and that was fun.

“I like to talk about him. I think Travis is mighty fine.”

“Oh, is that so? Well, I guess you wouldn't think he was so wonderful if he'd kept you shut up at Chimneys for years and years, and then here. He doesn't care a snap of his fingers about me. Why should I knit socks for him!”

She saw Cinda's rising anger under hard control. “Travis loves you dearly, Enid!”

Enid laughed. “Loves me my foot! If he loved me would he have
kept Vigil nursing Hetty till she as good as killed her! Oh, I know why he did it, all right!” Her voice broke, and this was not pretense; she had always the faculty of believing her own words. “But what could I do?”

Cinda said sharply. “Hush! I won't listen to such idiotic talk! You're no longer a child, Enid! Stop acting like one!”

Enid's eyes filled. “Oh, you're all so mean to me!”

“Well, try behaving yourself sensibly for a while!”

“I've tried and tried, but I can't please you no matter what I do! I want you all to love me, but you're so cruel sometimes I just hate you! I hate Trav and you and all of you! None of you care a thing in the world about me!” She shook with sobs. “None of you except Faunt!”

Cinda made an exasperated sound and Enid buried her face in her arms and Cinda caught her and shook her so violently that her hair fell around her shoulders, and Enid screamed and then Mrs. Currain spoke from the doorway.

“Cinda! Enid! Whatever's the matter?”

Enid wept helplessly, and Cinda after a moment's hesitation said: “Nothing. Enid's working up a fit of hysterics, Mama! She's just lonesome for Trav, but I had to bring her out of it somehow!”

Mrs. Currain was not to be trifled with, so Enid took Cinda's lead. “Oh, I miss him so!” she sobbed. “I miss him so!”

“Nonsense!” Mrs. Currain exclaimed. “So do I, for the matter of that; but I don't start caterwauling like a swamp panther just because Trav had to go away on a business trip!”

“It isn't just a business trip,” Enid wailed. “It's the stupid old——”

“Of course it's business!' Mrs. Currain always silenced any reference to the war. “Do you think he'd leave the place with no one here but Big Mill to run it if it weren't business? Now there!” She became swiftly tender and brusquely comforting. “Don't let me hear any more of this!”

Enid went gratefully into Mrs. Currain's arms. “Oh, you're always so sweet to me, Mama!” She clung to the little old woman, but she met Cinda's eyes in malicious triumph. “I don't know what I'd do without you!”

Cinda caught up her knitting and walked out of the room, and Mrs. Currain made a small mirthful sound. “Well, I'll tell you one
thing you can do, child. Go fix your hair. You're a sight. And bathe your eyes. There, run along with you.”

Enid smiled bravely. “I do love you so!” She kissed Mrs. Currain's cheek. “Be down in a minute, Honey,” she promised, and fled to her room.

During the rest of Cinda's stay, Enid took care not to be alone with her again; but in the immunity of Mrs. Currain's company she spoke more than once of Faunt, poor Faunt, way off in Western Virginia goodness knew where. “I'll be so glad when he comes home, won't you, Mama?”

“Of course, my dear.” Mrs. Currain ignored that reference to Western Virginia. “But Faunt's happiest at Belle Vue. He doesn't often come here, except for great occasions.”

“I wish he would!” Enid declared. Cinda's needles were flying, her cheek was red; and Enid thought Cinda ought to be ashamed of her own thoughts! “I should think he'd be so lonely there,” Enid urged. “Why doesn't he find some nice girl and marry again?”

Mrs. Currain made a smiling sound. “Faunt's like a boy who's been scolded,” she said wisely. “He enjoys being sorry for himself!”

“Why, Mama, I think you're horrid to talk so about your own children.”

“Just because they're my children doesn't make me blind, my dear.” Cinda rose hurriedly and Mrs. Currain asked: “Where are you going, Honey?”

“To get some more yarn!”

Enid in secret glee thought Cinda's abrupt departure was like flight. “Well, I don't care, I think Faunt's sweet,” she insisted, raising her voice so that Cinda would surely hear.

 

After Cinda's return to Richmond Enid missed her; for Mrs. Currain, absorbed in the daily routine of household management, was poor company. Enid's birthday was only a long week away, but of course Trav would forget it as he always did, and so would everyone else. She hoped they would. Certainly she did not want to be reminded that she was thirty years old, her life behind her, nothing remaining except to sit in a chimney corner and watch others have a good time. She studied her countenance in the mirror and was almost sure she found
a gray hair, and tweaked it out to see; but her hair was so light that she could not be sure. Loneliness beset her more and more, but she put aside what companionship she might have had, avoiding Mrs. Currain, avoiding Lucy and Peter, staying much in her room. She told Mrs. Currain her head ached, but when the little old lady accepted the statement and advised a piece of brown paper soaked in vinegar and left her to herself, Enid was hurt. If Mrs. Currain really wanted her company she would have said headaches were nonsense, bidden her wash her face and come on downstairs and forget all about it. Clearly Mrs. Currain wanted her to just stay in her room, keep out of the way. If I had any place to go, Enid thought miserably, I'd go away and not stay here and bother people; but I've no place to go, no home, no nothing that's really my own!

Her birthday dawned, and Cilly brought her breakfast and Enid asked how Mrs. Currain was and Cilly said she was fine. Enid ate breakfast alone, her eyes wet with tears. Probably no one would come near her all day. She planned to stay in her room till someone at least sent to find out if she were dead! But the day was so fine that she decided to dress and go out of doors. She could walk down to the river without annoying anyone! Perhaps if she just walked into the river and waded out till the water was deep and let herself drown they would be sorry they had treated her so. Her birthday—and no one paid the slightest attention! Well, let them forget if they chose. She certainly would not remind them, not till it was too late for them to do anything about it. She decided how she would remind them. In six days, Lucy would have a birthday. Tomorrow she would suggest to Mrs. Currain that they have a little party for Lucy; and she could say casually that she had always been sorry that she and Lucy did not have the same birthdays, since they were so close together, and then Mrs. Currain would be ashamed of her own forgetfulness. The old woman liked everyone to make a fuss over her own birthdays, liked to have all the family together; but she was ready enough to forget that other people had birthdays, too.

Enid walked down across the lawns to the bluff above the river and felt utterly lonely and wretched; and when she came in to dinner she was blind to Lucy's exaggerated politeness, to Peter's feverish excitement, to the lively amusement in Mrs. Currain's eyes as she watched
the children, to Uncle Josh's beaming countenance when he brought in and set before Mrs. Currain the enormous covered tureen of English plate which was only used for family gatherings and state occasions.

“Mercy, Mama; is that full, for just the four of us?” Enid protested.

“Our first oysters of the season,” Mrs. Currain assented. “I always make a pig of myself the first time in the fall.” Peter, stifling some mysterious mirth, almost fell out of his chair, and Lucy told him for Heaven's sake to behave, and Uncle Josh handed Mrs. Currain the ladle and lifted the silver cover, and Mrs. Currain threw up her hands in apparent dismay and exclaimed: “Law me, whatever is all this?”

For the tureen was full of parcels wrapped and ribboned; and Peter screamed with delight, and Lucy jumped up to kiss her mother, and so did Peter, and Mrs. Currain smiled at them, and Enid began to cry and to laugh at the same time, and went to kiss Mrs. Currain. “Oh, Mama, you're all so sweet to me!” And then suddenly there were steps in the hall and Brett and Tony and Julian came trooping in, broadly smiling, and Enid ran to throw herself into Brett's arms, to kiss them all; and when they came back to the table it was miraculously larger, with new places set, and the tureen had to be emptied of its treasures and Enid to exclaim over each one, and the tureen disappeared and came back converted to its proper purpose, and Peter babbled with excitement, and Lucy watched her mother proudly, and Mrs. Currain said it was all Lucy's doing.

“She and I've been conspiring for days,” she confessed, and Lucy asked:

“Are you happy, Mama?”

“Oh, darling, I never was so happy in my life,” Enid laughed like a sob. “I've been dreading this birthday. I'm thirty today, you know; but now I don't mind it a bit.”

“I wish Papa was here,” Lucy confessed. “Then it would be just perfect, wouldn't it?”

“It couldn't be nicer than it is, Honey. Not even with Papa here.” Yet Enid knew this was not true. Her heart hungered for him. Oh, they were so sweet, so sweet; and they did love her, after all!

This was her hour, and there were toasts to be drunk, and speeches to be made, and a warm affection in the air; but the fine hour ended. Tony and Julian could only stay for dinner; Mrs. Currain never missed
her afternoon nap; Peter had youthful business of his own. Brett would spend the night before departing at dawn for Richmond; but he went to consult with Big Mill. Only Lucy stayed by her mother's side.

“I wrote Papa to come if he could,” the girl said. “But I guess he didn't get my letter or something.”

“Probably he couldn't leave, Honey.” Yet Enid thought guiltily that the way she had treated Trav when he was here a month ago would not make him want to come soon again. Poor Trav, it was so easy to make him miserable; but it was so easy to make him happy too! She would be a good and tender wife to him hereafter. This bright day had left her warm with drowsy content; the world was as languorously fragrant as a sun-baked meadow. She was full of good resolves.