House Divided (130 page)

Cinda had picked up her knitting. He asked her smilingly: “Have you turned cobbler too? Or milliner?”

“No, I just knit.” She met his eyes. “It's something I can do without thinking.”

After Caesar brought their suppers, Vesta had questions. Cinda thought Brett spoke evasively and only of nonessentials, relating small incidents that would amuse these young people. The prettiest girls, he declared, were at Winchester. “Along toward time to make camp I always kept my eye out for a pleasant smile; and then when we were settled I'd go back and invite myself to supper.” They laughed at the picture of him playing the gallant, but he said with pretended complacency: “Well, I had mighty few failures. A neat compliment was always good for a meal.” He chuckled. “And sometimes I sang for my supper.” He looked at Vesta. “You get that lovely voice of yours from me, you know.”

“How did you manage in Pennsylvania?” Vesta asked. “Play beau to the little Dutch girls?”

“Oh, we lived high,” he assured them. “Cherries were ripe everywhere, and we could buy anything we wanted.”

“Why didn't you just take things?”

Brett shook his head. “General Lee didn't allow any of that. No, the army paid for everything.” He added, in a different tone: “Confederate money, of course.”

“What's wrong with Confederate money?” Vesta protested.

Brett looked at Cinda and she felt again a thought in him which he did not utter. “Well, it takes fifteen of our dollars to buy one dollar gold, for one thing.”

He had spoken only of trivial things, but now Julian asked:

“With all those pretty girls at Winchester, did you do any fighting there?”

“Not the Howitzers; no, we didn't fire a gun.” He added: “We did some good work at Gettysburg, though. Not the first day. We were too late for that. But the second day and the third.” He told Cinda: “My horse got away from me the second day, with everything I owned on his back.”

“Did you catch him?”

“No.” He smiled. “My big excitement came when one of their shells knocked over a tree right in front of my gun. I had to climb up on the tree and cut the top off, so we could fire. It wasn't any more dangerous up there than on the ground, but it seemed so. I felt almighty vulnerable, like one of those dreams when you think you're in a crowd with not enough clothes on. I chopped that tree in two with my eyes shut!”

Julian laughed with the others, but he asked: “Why didn't we beat them, Papa?”

Brett hesitated, his eyes sombre. “They were on a low ridge,” he said. “Behind stone walls and with batteries set on high ground at either end of their line. We had no more chance to break them than the Yankees had to break us at Fredericksburg. We made a grand try, though. That charge on the last day—well, no one can imagine it unless they saw it.” But as though reluctant to speak of the battle, he went on quickly, in a mirthful tone: “You should have seen us floundering through the mud afterward. I wished I was an alligator. Those miles back to Hagerstown were the longest, meanest, muddiest doggoned miles I ever saw. But we had a chance to rest while we were waiting for the river to fall. It was ten days before we got back into Virginia.” He added cheerfully: “We've a pleasant camp now near Blue Run Church, with plenty of grazing, and clean drinking water, and a prayer meeting every night in the church. It's always crowded, too. The army's getting religion.” His eyes met Cinda's. “They're so thankful to be home.”

After supper, Rollin Lyle appeared. He too was on furlough, but only for a few days, with not time to go to South Carolina and return. Cinda had always been fond of Rollin, though the fact that despite a hundred open slights he humbly worshipped Dolly sometimes made her furious. She invited him to lodge with them, and he readily accepted.

When she and Brett at last went upstairs and were alone, they did not at once go to bed. He was in a mood for talk. “Well, I've told you all my news,” he said. “What's been happening in Richmond?”

So she told him this and that, seeing him content to sit and smoke his cigar and listen, relaxed and at peace in this quiet place that was home. “I'm busy at the hospital, spending almost all day there; but I shall spend more time here, with you at home. They need me, but you need me too, Brett Dewain. There are wounds that don't show, but that need healing just the same.”

He smiled, not speaking, and she talked on. The speculators, since Gettysburg, were worse than ever. Redford Streean, of course, was prosperous. “I don't see how any man in the commissary or the Quartermaster's department can look the rest of us in the face after this war is over.” Some people thought that when that day came, everyone who was richer after the war than he had been before ought to be made to give up the difference. Brett said quietly that it would then be too late; and she nodded. “I suppose so, but we ought to do something.”

Flour was fifty dollars a barrel, she said. “But the Warwick mills at least try to be decent. They sell one barrel to a customer for thirty-five dollars.” There was talk that the Government might fix prices for everything.

“If they do, people won't sell,” Brett predicted. “The farmers will stop bringing things to market. No one is going to sell anything unless what he gets is worth more to him than what he sells.”

She nodded. This was probably true; but something in his tone frightened her a little and she spoke more quickly. General Hood was in Richmond, recovering from his wounds. His arm had been saved, but it was shrunken and of no use. Vesta had met him, thought him the gentlest, shyest man she had ever seen. Vesta was managing the house now, forever talking about making dyes out of herbs and alum and copperas and soda and such outlandish things, and planning to learn to use a spinning wheel and even a loom if they could find space to set one up. She was doing all the household shopping. Someone had said prices were so high that you took your money to market in a basket and brought home your purchases in your pocketbook; and everyone thought that so clever that now everyone was saying it. “If
I'm expected to laugh at that remark once more I shall throw a fit and kick and scream,” Cinda declared. Richmond was full of refugees whose homes were in Yankee hands. Some of the finest people in Virginia were among them, ladies working as clerks in the government offices to earn a living, selling their jewelry and their books and even their clothes, sending their Negroes sometimes from door to door to peddle their pitiful treasures.

Brett's lids closed and she thought he might be asleep and hoped he was and kept her voice at a soothing monotone, letting her eyes have their fill of him, seeing the new lines in his face, the new gray at his temples, how thin he was. Some of the ladies were signing Mr. Memminger's currency. The notes were printed on big pink sheets, and they had to be cut apart and each note signed by two people. The cutting was done in one room, the signing in another, the numbering in a third. There were fifty women and girls in each room. Ladies signed their own names on the notes. Cinda's tone was like a lullaby, as though Brett were a baby in her arms; but suddenly he seemed to strangle. His head jerked up and his eyes opened, and she laughed and said:

“There, Mr. Dewain! I'm going to put you to bed before you choke yourself to death on your own collar!”

“Eh?” He rubbed his eyes. “I wasn't asleep!”

“Oh, you—” In tender amusement. “My dear, you were snoring like a furnace!”

He dropped his arm around her shoulders. “Just breathing heavily, that's all.”

“You didn't hear a word I said. Why, you didn't even hear me read Jenny's letter!”

“Of course I did!”

She twisted away from him, twirling a teasing finger in his face. “Yah! Yah! Yah! I didn't read any letter from Jenny. I didn't even mention her. Liar, liar, liar! Brett Dewain's a li-ar!”

He cried in pretense of wrath: “Why, you infernal, contriving little trickster! Come here to me!” He sought to catch her hand, and she snatched it away and he caught her and with an arm around her waist swept her to him; and she whispered soft warning.

“H-sh! Don't, Mr. Dewain. The people will hear you!”

“Who cares?”

“Chasing me around the room like a greedy boy! Shame! What a way for a man in his fifties to behave!”

“I don't feel like a man in his fifties. Not when I'm with you, my darling!” He hushed her tenderly.

 

Next morning, laughingly remembering the night before, Brett asked: “Was there a letter from Jenny?” There had been two since he was last here, and she brought them from her desk and read them to him.

“She doesn't write often,” she said, “but she gets an awful lot into a letter.” And she read:

There was more, about their friends and neighbors. Jenny said everyone resented the constant demands for soldiers to be sent to Virginia, when the Yankees were ready to gobble up Charleston any minute. Since the enemy forces had seized the islands along the coast, Camden and Columbia were full of refugees from the Low Country.

Cinda finished and gathered together the odd-sized sheets on which the letters were written, and Brett said cheerfully: “Well, she's all right.”

“What if the Yankees take Charleston?”

“It won't matter to her. No Yankees will ever get as far as Columbia or Camden. Before that happens, the South will have been beaten.”

“I think what scares me most is the inevitable way things keep happening. You see them coming dimly, through a cloud, like a herd of stampeding cattle, and you pretend you don't see them, and all of a sudden they're trampling you.” Cinda pressed her hands to her eyes as though to shut out terror. “We're going to be beaten, aren't we, Brett Dewain?”

He came to put his arm around her and hold her hard against his side. “Not if your husband can help it,” he said lightly, and she smiled; yet she knew the answer to her question.

 

The evening of Brett's second day at home, Rollin Lyle and Vesta went together to one of those “starvation parties” which began to be the fashion, and where the fact that no supper was served did not mar the fun. When they returned, Brett and Cinda were already abed; but as Vesta passed their door Cinda called: “Come in and say good night to us, darling.” So Vesta came and sat on the foot of the bed in the darkness to talk a moment. “Nice party?” Cinda asked.

“Well, Dolly was there, so of course Rollin was miserable. He's such an idiot! But we sang and told conundrums, and talked. It was fun.” Vesta laughed. “These ‘starvation parties' may be all right, but I really am starved!”

“Go down and get a piece,” Brett suggested. “There must be things in the pantry.”

“Oh yes, dried apple pies, and molasses cookies, and cold pork and bread. Times have changed, Papa. But I guess I will go get something.”

“Maybe Rollin's hungry too,” Cinda suggested.

“No, I asked him. He says after living on what little they get in the army he feels stuffed here.” She said good night and went downstairs, but a moment later she came racing up the stairs again and burst into the room and shut the door behind her. Brett called a question through the darkness, and she said breathlessly: “Oh I'm all right! I was silly to be scared!”

“What happened?” Brett was on his feet, going toward her.

“Why, I'd stepped out of my slippers so I wouldn't disturb Rollin, so I guess he didn't hear me——”