House Divided (142 page)

Brett said quickly: “Vesta mustn't deal with him. No man in the commissary department should take presents from butchers. That sounds too much like a bribe.”

“Major Tarrington? Why, I always rather liked him.”

“You wouldn't take a present from Redford Streean,” he reminded her.

“Of course not! I know he's a rascal.”

“Well, greed makes rascals out of good men sometimes, Cinda. Let's keep clear of taking favors.”

She sighed. “Well, all right. But I declare, Brett Dewain, sometimes I hate your scruples as much as I admire them. That was such good beef!”

He laughed at her doleful tone. “Do you have trouble getting sugar?”

“We do without it,” Cinda confessed. “We use molasses. Sugar
costs two or three dollars a pound, if you can buy it.” She smiled in the darkness. “They say General Green put a fortune into sugar at a dollar a pound, and Colonel Northrop impressed it all and won't even pay him what it cost. The poor old man is telling his woes to anyone who will listen.”

“The papers say the Government can't impress things on their way to market; but I suppose that rule just protects the speculators.”

“I don't know.” She was silent for a moment, but he said drowsily:

“Keep on talking, Honey.”

So she talked, about the government clerks who were afraid they might have to go into the army, and about Cousin Jeems's report to the Government that half the men on his muster rolls in Tennessee were absent or had deserted and that half his soldiers had no shoes and none of them proper rations. She said there were always wild, ridiculous rumors in the air, and people would believe anything; and he said that was because Congress had so many secret sessions. “When no one knows the truth, anyone who pretends to have inside information is easily listened to. It makes him feel important, so he keeps making up more and more stories.” She said lawyers and even some Congressmen were getting rich by finding ways to get men out of the army, hiring substitutes or arranging details; that some of the wealthiest men in Richmond were paying for jobs as mechanics or laborers because such jobs would exempt them from the conscription. She told him that Mrs. Allen, arrested last summer as a traitor, had been allowed to live in comfort in the infirmary of St. Francis de Sales till her recent trial and then released on bail when the jury disagreed, though everyone thought she should have been shot or sent North or something. She described the contrivances by which Anne and Vesta made new dresses out of old ones, or out of window curtains or anything else that was available; and she reminded him that General Lee said that but for the valor of the women, the South would have been vanquished long ago.

Brett's deep breathing seemed to mean he was asleep, but she dared not stop talking for fear silence would awaken him. General Hood was in Richmond with one leg gone. Dr. Darby had promised to buy him a new leg in Europe, with money the Texas Brigade had raised; and General Hood thought he could then ride well enough to return
to duty. Julian, with no artificial leg, was trying to contrive some way to stay on a horse so he could join the cavalry; but a general riding at his own pace and a cavalryman in a charge were two very different things. Julian had talked to General Hood, and the General told him this, and bade him stay home with Anne. Anne was a sweet darling girl. Her baby was coming in April. Every girl in Richmond had set her cap for General Hood. It was said that little Fanny May actually proposed to him, and he told her he couldn't accept because he was already engaged to four other girls.

Brett turned on his side and she let her hand rest on his shoulder in the way he liked and felt him completely limp and relaxed and knew he would not wake; and sleep flowed over her and wrapped her in content. Christmas would be fine, now that he was here.

 

Burr took the five o'clock train for Petersburg on his way to Raleigh; and Cinda, leaving Brett asleep, went early to the hospital and made sure she could be spared a while. When she came home Brett was still abed, playing with little Tommy while Vesta watched them both with lively eyes. Cinda kept Brett in bed and they had their dinners together in his room, and from the gray sky as dusk came down snow began to fall. They were all together when belowstairs the door bell rang. Cinda heard Caesar go to open it, and happy young voices erupted into the house, and Cinda and Vesta ran to the stairhead; and Cinda after one instant's glimpse was blinded by laughing, drenching tears.

For that one glimpse had been enough to see Jenny in the gas-lit hall, shaking snow off her cape; and seven-year-old Kyle came racing up the stairs, and Janet with him. Even little Clayton, holding fast to the banisters and screaming “Gam-maw, Gam-maw!”, hitched himself up toward her. Cinda's knees gave way, she sat down weakly on the top step to gather them all into her arms; and Vesta ran down to embrace Jenny, and Brett in dressing gown and slippers came to demand what was going on here, and there was a wonderful laughing-crying confusion for a while, till Jenny remembered to explain that old Banquo and Mr. Peters were at the station guarding many boxes of good things to eat which they had brought all the way from the Plains. Caesar hurried off to fetch these treasures, and somehow at
length peace began to come. Little Clayton was hustled away in black arms to be put to bed. “You remember Anarchy, Mama,” Jenny reminded Cinda, and Cinda said of course she remembered. Anarchy was one of Banquo's many children, a strapping wench as strong as a man.

“I brought Banquo and Mr. Peters to take care of the boxes,” Jenny explained. “I was afraid of trouble on the trains.”

“Well, the things you brought will be just manna from Heaven,” Cinda assured her. “I won't feel secure till we have them under lock and key. Richmond's full of half-starved people, poor whites and negroes, who will steal anything they can get. Castle Thunder is so full of robbers there's no room for any more.”

“I was certainly glad Mr. Peters and Banquo were with us,” Jenny confessed. Vesta had gone to show Kyle where he would sleep; Janet was to sleep with her. “The trains just creep along now, and they're crowded with men, even in the ladies' car. We had three breakdowns, and we spent one whole night in a station somewhere, in a room full of soldiers, with a wretched fizzling fire that threw out no heat at all.” She laughed at the memory. “It's funny now, but it wasn't then. Anarchy propped me up on two chairs and put the children to sleep in a ball like so many puppies, wrapped up in blankets on the floor beside me. Banquo and Mr. Peters worked all night patching up the boxes. They'd been smashed in the breakdown. A train ahead of us broke in two, and some of the cars rolled backward down a long grade and bumped into our engine with a frightful thump. The pile of boxes tipped over and some of them cracked open. Mr. Peters says there were turkeys and onions and sweet potatoes rolling all over the car.”

Brett asked: “How long were you on the road?”

“Heavens,” Jenny confessed, “it seems like weeks! We left Kingsville Friday, and it took us all that night and all the next day and half the next night to get to Wilmington. We left there Sunday and only got to Petersburg this morning; three nights on the way counting the night we were broken down. I think today in Petersburg was the longest I ever spent. It just seemed as if the Richmond train never would start.”

Cinda said sympathetically: “Poor darlings!”

“Oh, it was fun, really; watching the soldiers, and a marvelous great giant of a woman who kept joking with them in the broadest Irish way of talking I ever heard, and a lady with a no-count nurse maid and the worst-spoiled young one!”

Vesta rejoined them, and she asked eagerly: “What did you bring us, Jenny?”

“Oh, some fine fat turkeys, and a dozen sides of bacon, and a great enormous piece of beef—a whole side except the foreshoulder—and a bushel of sweet potatoes, and a bag of onions, and—well, everything we could hope to manage.”

Cinda, with this sudden wealth of provisions, invited Tilda and Dolly and Mr. Streean and Enid and the children for Christmas dinner. “There's no telling when we'll have such a nice Christmas again, so we'll make the most of it,” she told Vesta. Brett sent Caesar to the country to cut a cedar that would serve as a Christmas tree; and Julian and Anne and Vesta took the carriage and brought back heaps of holly for greenery. Julian bought firecrackers with which Kyle and Peter could make the celebration a fittingly noisy one. Some rummaging in closets and forgotten hideaways furnished presents that would content the children; and Cinda in all these preparations was so happy that she accepted with good grace the gifts Redford Streean brought to be hung on the tree. There was a length of printed silk, a box of artificial flowers to grace feminine hats, a dozen bottles of fine brandy, a bag of coffee, and a canister of tea. They were blockade goods, to be sure; but for this one day, she would not think critically of anyone.

Christmas morning they all walked to church except Brett, whom Cinda would not permit to move out of doors, and Anne who no longer went abroad. When they came home, Rollin Lyle was at the house, smiling his crooked smile, saying in a shy way: “I hoped maybe you'd take me in for Christmas, ma'am. I've got a furlough and I'm going home, but I didn't get here in time for the morning train.”

Cinda was delighted. “Of course, Rollin! We're just as pleased as we can be.”

Jenny too was glad to see him, and Vesta; but when they had gone upstairs to lay aside their bonnets and coats, Tilda and Streean and Dolly arrived, and Dolly came running to protest: “Oh, Aunt Cinda, do you have to have Rollin? I declare it just makes me sick to look at
him, just turns my stomach. I won't be able to eat a bite if he's here.”

Cinda looked at her evenly. “Then why don't you go home?” she suggested; and in sudden anger: “Dolly Streean, you ought to be smacked! Rollin's a fine boy! And as for his looks, if you'd behaved yourself, that would never have happened! He's here and he's going to stay.”

Dolly tossed her head. “Oh, I suppose I don't have to look at him.”

Cinda said sharply: “You listen to me! If you make Rollin unhappy today I'll pack you out of the house so fast you'll think your back teeth are loose!”

The girl laughed teasingly. “O-o-oh, aren't you fierce!”

“I'll show you how fierce I am if you don't behave,” Cinda promised her, and downstairs she kept a watchful eye on the girl. As a precaution she seated Dolly and Rollin on the same side of the table, and separated them so that they need neither face each other nor talk together. But Dolly was on her best behavior. Once or twice she even leaned forward to say some laughing word directly to Rollin, and Cinda saw his quick happiness. Dolly could be so charming when she chose.

 

That was a bountiful board at which they gathered, with a fragrant, beautifully brown turkey at either end, and a ham and some roasted ribs of beef, and huge platters of sweet potatoes cooked in molasses, and boiled onions, and sausage to fill any gaps in the fare, and mounds of corn pone, and biscuits steaming hot, and butter to perfect them; and there was mince pie, the mincemeat drawn from a husbanded reserve in the cellar; and there was a treasured bottle or two of old Madeira, and Brett called toasts for the absent ones.

“To Tony.” He began with the eldest of the family. “Good cheer and a fine Christmas to him!” He rose with lifted glass; and Dolly as she came to her feet with the others cried excitedly:

“Oh, I forgot to tell you! I had a letter from Darrell and he says Uncle Tony's been shot.” Their quick ejaculations checked her swift tongue not at all. “But he's going to be all right.” She laughed. “It was some little poor white boy twelve or thirteen years old. Isn't that
a joke on Uncle Tony?” And to their questions: “Why, someone had been robbing his smoke house, and he fixed a gun to shoot whoever it was and it turned out to be a woman, someone named Blandy——”

Enid cried: “Ed Blandy? Trav thought more of Ed Blandy than he did of his own family!”

“Well, anyway, the gun went off and it killed her.” Dolly was bound to tell her story. “And when they took her home, her little boy ran into the house and got a gun and shot poor Uncle Tony and almost killed him too. Isn't that exciting? But I do think it's a joke on Uncle Tony, don't you?”

Cinda caught Brett's eye, knew their shared thought; but he said heartily: “Then all the more—here's a quick recovery and health to him!” They raised their glasses, and drank, and sat down again, and Tilda said:

“Dolly, I didn't know you'd had a letter from Darrell. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I've told you now!” Cinda heard a spiteful anger in Dolly's tone that surprised her, for Dolly and her mother had never been at odds. But there was petulant resentment in Dolly's manner, a surprising authority in Tilda's quiet retort.

“You should have told me. You can be very thoughtless, Dolly. You knew I would want to read it.”

“It wasn't to you, it was to me.” Dolly's color was high. “And you can't read it. I burned it up!”

There was a moment's uncomfortable silence, and Cinda saw Redford Streean hide a smile. Then Brett came to his feet again. “To Trav now!” he cried. “Lift your glasses all. To Trav, good man, good brother, good husband, good father!”

Cinda saw Enid hesitate, then rise with them and lift her glass; she heard Lucy's young voice, clear and tender:

“To my papa!”

So the roll of all the absent ones was called. “To Faunt! Wherever he is, God bless him!” And while Cinda's eyes held Brett's over the rim of her glass: “To Burr!” But it was Tilda who rose at last and said in a quiet tone, without reproach:

“Shall we drink to Darrell too?”

Because they had all forgotten Darrell, and were sorry, the response
was the heartiest of all; but Cinda, looking along the board, saw Enid white with some mysterious anger, and it puzzled her. She wished she had not this habit of watching people, trying to read their thoughts and to appraise them.