House Divided (159 page)

“Tony won't tell her.” He added: “You wouldn't know Tony, Cinda.”

“Why not, for Heaven's sake?”

Trav seemed uncertain whether to smile or frown. “Well, he's dyed his hair and his beard, dyed them black; and he shaves his mustache and his lower lip, and lets his beard grow on his cheeks and under his chin.”

She tried to picture Tony thus disguised; and she said in sudden understanding, “Why, Travis, he must look like President Lincoln.”

Trav nodded. “That's the first thing I thought, when I saw him. He was on the veranda as I rode up to the house. But when you're close to him, he just looks like an old man with dyed hair.”

“He always did look a little like Mr. Lincoln, Travis. I've told Brett so. Except his expression, and his eyes; and of course he's not as tall. Did you say anything about it?” He shook his head, and she asked: “Do you suppose he does it on purpose?”

He looked at her in astonishment. “Why should he?”

“Did he say anything about—our being kin?”

“No. I didn't stay long, just long enough to ask him about Darrell. I didn't even go indoors.”

She guessed there was something he had not told her; but clearly, whatever it was, he did not mean to tell. They were at her door. “Come in?” she suggested.

“No, I'll have to help Enid get ready for an early start tomorrow.” He bade her good-by.

 

Trav and Enid and the children departed, and at that week's end Burr came back from Raleigh. His hands were stumps that made Cinda's heart ache; but he was sure he could handle reins and weapons well enough to return to duty. If that was what he wished, she would not oppose him. She asked many questions about Barbara and the
babies, and he answered happily; but when he spoke of affairs in Raleigh, there was hard anger in eyes and voice.

“Everybody down there seems to think we ought to give in to the Yankees. Mr. Holden, the editor of the
Standard,
says North Carolina ought to secede from the Confederacy.”

“Well, we all seceded from the Union. I suppose she thinks she has a right to!”

“She'd better not try it!” Burr retorted. “This Mr. Holden is just a traitor. They've proved that he organized a society called the Heroes of America, to try to help the North. They say President Lincoln's a member, and that there are thousands of members in North Carolina and all through the mountains, even in Virginia. There's a judge in Salisbury who turns deserters loose as fast as the conscript bureau catches them. I suppose he's a member.”

Cinda nodded wearily. “Anne's father said the other day that in Southwest Virginia just about everybody's for giving up.”

“Nobody but the white trash!”

“Well, he spoke of several lawyers, and county officers; Mr. Hoge in Montgomery County, and Mr. Camper in Botetourt, and a sheriff, and some men in Pulaski. He says they're talking of organizing a new state out there, to make peace with the North. So it isn't just North Carolina, Burr. It's Virginia too, and all over the South.”

Burr said stubbornly: “Well, anyway, I think they ought to hang Holden! But he's actually running for Governor!”

“They don't hang politicians, Burr. It's a pity, too—they talk so much. I sometimes think talking too much is the worst of all crimes. It was all the talking and calling names in the North and in the South ever since I was a girl that finally started this war. And of course the ones who talked aren't doing the fighting, except Roger Pryor and a few others like him.” She laughed. “We're talking too much ourselves, right now, and about the wrong things. Tell me more about Barbara and the babies.”

She had a long happy evening with Burr, and even after he was gone some of his youthful optimism remained in her. But Brett when he next came home was uneasy about General Johnston, facing Sherman north of Atlanta. “Sherman keeps edging him back,” he said. “If we lose Atlanta, that's the end of us.”

“Oh, Atlanta isn't so much.” She wished to hearten him. “I heard at the hospital today that General Early has captured Baltimore! Wouldn't you trade Atlanta for Baltimore?”

He shook his head. “Don't believe all you hear, Cinda. Early hasn't more than a few thousand men. He couldn't hold Baltimore if he took it. But if Sherman takes Atlanta, he'll set his teeth and hang on.”

 

She learned next day that the rumor of the taking of Baltimore was false; and at church on Sunday Mrs. Davis told her that Early, after going within sight of Washington, had crossed the Potomac back into Virginia. Monday, General Johnston was removed from command of the army facing Sherman, and General Hood was put in his place. The
Examiner
said Johnston was a victim of spite on the part of President Davis, but Cinda was sure that if he had been doing well Mr. Davis would have kept him in command.

The summer days droned on; the sound of guns toward Petersburg became a commonplace, no longer heeded. General Hood reported successful battle against the Yankees, but Sherman somehow still held his ground outside Atlanta. Vesta and Rollin came back from South Carolina, Vesta serenely happy, Rollin hale and well. They had stopped for a few days at the Plains, and Cinda could never hear enough of Jenny and of her grandchildren there. They were all perfection, Vesta assured her. “But Jenny's worried for fear Atlanta will be captured, and maybe Mobile.” Cinda in a sudden surge of weariness pressed her hands to her temples. Must she now begin to worry about Mobile? Where was Mobile anyway, and why should anyone worry about it? She shut her eyes, as though thus to shut away her own thoughts. “People down there say General Hood was wrong to fight,” Vesta told her. “That he just lost a lot of men for nothing.”

“Tell me more about the children,” Cinda suggested. “I'm sick to death of hearing about generals.” What bliss it would be to escape for a while from these thoughts of death, of coming defeat, of hopeless doom. What would it be like to be free again from the sight and sound and smell of hurt and dying men, and the sound of distant guns, and the talk, talk, talk that filled the air? Would she live long enough to see that day? When it rained, you felt it would never stop raining; when it was cold you thought you would never be warm again. Thus
now, though she tried, she could not picture to herself a peaceful world.

Not even Brett in his occasional hours at home brought her comfort. He said the army was being whittled away by steady losses. “Not only men but guns. Losing men is bad enough, but losing guns is worse; and one way and another we've lost twenty-four guns in our corps alone since May.” And the men, he said, were weary of spending day on day in the entrenchments. “They're safe enough, if they're careful,” he said. “But they get bored. They hold their hands up over the breastworks, hoping they'll be wounded. ‘Feeling for a furlough' they call it. And they desert at every chance. Even some officers are deserting now. The only excitement they get is wondering when the Yankees will spring their mine. They can hear the digging.” Petersburg was having a hard time, he said; the Yankees dropped shells into the town right along.

“We've escaped that, at least so far,” Cinda reminded him. “And we haven't had any raiders actually in Richmond.” She tried to laugh. “So we haven't had to bury our silver. I heard of one lady in Petersburg who put everything in a pit in her garden and covered it with boards and then with dirt, and planted cabbages all over it. But the refugees have horrible stories to tell. General Hunter will be hated in the Valley for a hundred years. You know he burned V.M.I., and Governor Letcher's home too, for no reason at all.”

“I heard so, yes.”

“And the refugees say that even if they don't burn your house, they take everything they can find, from hams out of the smoke house to gold watches out of your pockets. But of course I don't believe all the tales.”

“They're true,” Brett admitted. “Too many of them, anyway. I've seen houses where they'd cut pictures out of their frames, split up pianos and doors and furniture just for the fun of smashing things, dumped books off the shelves and torn them apart and poured vinegar or molasses or any sort of mess over them. They take what they want and ruin what they don't take. They even shoot the cows and pigs and leave them to rot.”

She asked hopelessly: “What do they expect to accomplish, Brett Dewain? Our soldiers didn't do such things in Pennsylvania. Even if
the Yankees beat us, we'll always hate them. After the things the Yankee soldiers have done, the North and the South can't ever be friends again; not for generations, anyway. What will the rest of our lives be like?”

He shook his head. “I don't know. I've stopped trying to guess the future, Cinda. I just know that whatever happens to the South, I want the same thing to happen to us, to you and me.”

“Haven't we a right to think of ourselves at all; of our family, of our homes?”

“A right, yes, I suppose,” he admitted. “But we've thought too much about our rights, all of us. Each state's so busy standing up for its rights that they haven't time to fight for the Confederacy. When sovereign states confederate for a common purpose, they have to give up some of their sovereignty, or they'll fail. But it's a lesson we take a long time to learn.”

 

When that famous Yankee mine at Petersburg, so long preparing, was finally exploded, a few hundred men died; but that was all. The monotonous days went on, and each day a few more men were killed, and a steady trickle of wounded came into the hospitals, and those hopes which in June and July had flickered for a while began to fade and die, subsiding into ashes under the summer heat as flames die in sunlight. Prices began to rise again. Vesta told Cinda one night:

“Mama, I went shopping today. I spent fifteen hundred dollars in an hour.” She laughed. “It was so outrageous it was funny. I paid five dollars for a paper of pins, and five dollars apiece for three spools of thread. Cotton thread, too.”

“You might as well spend what we have,” Cinda reminded her. “Money buys less every day.” A helpless submission weighed her down, physical weariness and vanishing hope left her dull and spiritless. She could not share the indignation everyone felt at General Grant's flat refusal to exchange prisoners. Tilda thought it heartless.

“But Redford says,” she admitted, “that if they send back our prisoners, we put them to fighting again; and Grant knows it, and taking our prisoners and keeping them is as good from his point of view as killing them. Redford thinks that's good business.” She added in a
lower tone: “I should think he'd get tired, sometimes, of always being such a good business man.”

A faint stir of curiosity, inspired by her tone, a desire to see Tilda and Streean together, led Cinda to invite them to dinner and with an eye on Tilda to lead Streean into talk. “I know so little of what is going on,” she told him. “But of course you're so well-informed.”

“I make it my business to be,” he assured her. “Brett feels bound to shut his eyes, but I don't. The time is coming when a man must decide what's the wisest thing for him to do, and the only way he can decide is to watch events from one day to the next. It's just a question of time before Lee will have lost so many men that he can't hold his lines. That will be the end of Richmond. I mean to know beforehand when that's going to happen.” He added thoughtfully: “In fact, I think I shall begin to take proper measures when Atlanta falls.”

“Do you think Atlanta will fall? People say General Sherman's army is doomed if we just cut the railroad behind him.”

Streean smiled. “The optimism of fools is the wise man's opportunity,” he assured her. “Flour went down to two hundred dollars a barrel this summer, just because with Richmond safe for a while people thought the war was won. I bought all I could find at that price and stored it with what I already had in the warehouse on Cary Street. I'll sell that flour for a thousand dollars a barrel, before very many months.” And he said: “Sherman will take Atlanta. Hood's no match for him. The only chance we have left is that Lincoln may be beaten in November.”

“Do you think he will be?”

“If they nominate General McClellan against him, he may be.”

Tilda said quietly: “I don't believe it. I think he's a great man. People love him.”

Streean smiled in amused derision. “It isn't people who win elections, my dear—it's politicians pulling the strings, making the people dance.”

Tilda met his eyes. “You used to be a politician, Redford, but you didn't seem to play the right tunes.”

He chuckled, undisturbed by her open contempt. “I gave up politics a long time ago.”

After that day, Cinda never thought of Tilda without a faint secret
excitement, an unformed expectation. She made opportunities to see her sister, and once she spoke of what Tilda had said about Lincoln. “I know you didn't always feel so.”

“None of us did,” Tilda reminded her. “But Cinda, the war's going to be over some day. I hope he's still President when that happens. He doesn't hate us.”

“Most of us hate him.”

“I think we're wrong.” Tilda's head lifted. “Sometimes I'm sort of proud of being related to him. Aren't you?”

“I don't know,” Cinda admitted. “But I'm not ashamed of it. He's a good man.”

 

August dragged itself away in a succession of sweltering days when the pitilessly blazing sun seemed to sear everything it touched, and the air quivered and trembled so that objects at a little distance might be blurred and distorted. Except for the ambulances forever coming and returning, there were few vehicles upon the streets; for even the cavalry were short of horses, and there was not feed enough to cover the ribs of the animals men rode. Not only men and women and children but the dumb things went on short rations; yet in this starved and hopeless time, the women Cinda met still pursued vain hopes. If Atlanta were mentioned, it was always with a surface confidence that Hood would keep Sherman at bay. Even Cinda sometimes, since no disaster struck, put despairing thoughts away, till one night Brett came home and said Grant had cut the Weldon Railroad beyond Petersburg.