House Divided (176 page)

At the hospital Cinda found her old ward almost empty. The soldiers were so sadly undernourished that even a slight wound often proved fatal, and most of those who came to the hospital soon died, and there was not much hard fighting in early March to fill the empty beds. So, finding nothing here for her to do, Cinda turned homeward, following Broad Street. When she crossed the creek, she saw on the slopes of the ravine toward the White House young grass and new green; but it was still too early for the Scotch broom to clothe those slopes in bright golden blossoms. At Fourteenth Street she waited for a brigade of soldiers to pass. The marching men were thin and weary, gaunt shadows shambling through the city to strengthen some threatened point in the long defensive lines.

At home she found Julian just arrived with news that Fitz Lee's men were marching through the city to meet Sheridan; and he and Cinda and Vesta hurried to see them pass and to watch for Burr. At their call, Burr swung his skeleton of a horse to where they scood, and dismounted for a swift embrace and a moment's breathless talk. When he was gone Vesta wept with pity for him.

“Oh, Mama, he's just a shadow,” she cried. “Just skin and bones!”

Cinda nodded. “So is his horse,” she commented. “I wonder what the horses think about this war. I'm sorrier for them, sometimes, than I am for the men. The men at least know what they're doing, and why.”

 

Sheridan's horsemen passed north of Richmond, and after he was gone across the Pamunkey, a new trickle of refugees from Ashland and from as far as Gordonsville brought the familiar stories of Yankee
thievery and waste: of earrings, brooches, rings, snatched from their wearers; of barns and smoke houses and storage bins and houses burned; of cattle killed and left to rot. To hear of these new depredations awoke in many sympathetic listeners a hysterical mania for sacrifice; and Tilda reported that ladies were begging the privilege of giving anything that might help feed the army and thus defeat the brutal enemy. “They even talk of cutting off their hair and selling it to the wig makers in Paris to buy bread,” she said. “As if a suit of hair in Paris, even if you could get it there, would make a soldier in the trenches at Petersburg any less hungry.”

“They're trying to ease their own heartbreak a little by parading it in public,” Cinda commented. “I'm as sad as any of them, I suppose; but there's a line in the Bible, a good rule for anyone who is grieving: ‘Rend your hearts and not your garments.'”

Vesta, who kept her spirits high, laughed. “Well, that's mighty good advice,” she declared. “I've only about two dresses to my name. If I start rending my garments where will I be?”

 

In mid-March the weather turned bright and fair, and occasional frosty mornings accented the beauty of the fine warm days. Brett came for dear and heartening hours at home. “But I shouldn't have come,” he confessed. “We've so few men left that the breastworks in front of us are just held by a skirmish line. The Yankees can march through us any time.” He added: “And I should have walked instead of riding. Our horses are too worn out to carry us to town and back unless it's absolutely necessary.”

“Not enough men, not enough horses, not enough food!” Cinda spoke in dull sorrow.

“Not enough anything,” Brett assented. “Not even enough bullets, Cinda. General Lee sent word to Colonel Mosby the other day to pick up all the lead he can find on the old battlefields in Northern Virginia. We work every day cutting down trees along our lines and burning them and then sifting the melted bullets out of the ashes.”

“The Yankees need lead, too,” she remembered, and she told him of those Atlanta ladies who lived by collecting bullets and trading them for food at Sherman's commissary.

“Well, they've enough to finish us with,” he said.

Next day Mrs. Longstreet came to call. She was just from Lynchburg; and since so many had already fled from Richmond, the General had been able to find her a room at the Spottswood. She told them of Lynchburg's perils now past. “When Sheridan came, General Early's cavalry had mostly deserted,” she said. “And at Waynesboro, General Early was just about the only one in his army who got away. Sheridan wrecked the railroad all the way to Amherst, and the canal locks at Duguidsville; but the river was so high he couldn't cross, and the next thing we knew he'd gone away toward Richmond.” She tossed her head. “So I came to be with Jeems.”

Cinda smiled, knowing the tender bond between these two. “Cousin Jeems can whip Grant's whole army by himself, with you here,” she declared. “Trav says he's miserable away from you.”

Mrs. Longstreet's eyes were warm. “That big husband cf mine is a very dear man.”

 

On the nineteenth, Judge Tudor and Anne and Julian came to Sunday dinner; and afterward, when the young people trooped away to the upper balcony where the children were at play, Cinda and the Judge stayed for a while in the drawing room alone. Congress had adjourned the day before, having refused to pass any of the measures President Davis urged on them. “None so poor to do him reverence,” the Judge commented with a faint relish. “Once they called him a giant; but now they say he was never anything but a straw man puffed up to greatness by his brother's money.”

She wondered absently how old Judge Tudor was. Just now his voice held an almost senile petulance. But of course, he had always resented every move by the administration to suppress those civil rights which in their exercise were such a hindrance to the prosecution of the war; so naturally he would have no sympathy for Mr. Davis.

“I suppose the losing side always turns against its leaders,” she suggested.

He nodded. “Yes. And we're lost. The collapse is complete. The Government's bankrupt. It no longer even respects itself. Since farmers began to refuse to take Confederate money for impressed goods, the agents have seized what they wanted and given paper
promises to pay; and over five hundred millions of those promises are outstanding. That's not only bankruptcy, it's plain fraud. I don't suppose a thousand Confederate dollars would buy a dollar gold today. The end is near.”

The end? Defeat? Yes, but also—peace! “What will peace be, Judge Tudor? What form will it take?”

“President Lincoln said at Hampton Roads his only requirement is restoration of the Union. I believe he may be our best friend, presently.”

“Will we ever want any Northern man for a friend? Sherman and Sheridan have made no friends among us. Their outrages were planned and ordered and deliberately carried out.”

“That's true.” He nodded. “They were policy, not accident. But remember, General Lee said long ago that we were all in the war; the North has taken him at his word, that's all.”

“You men are so ready to excuse your enemies,” she commented. “But what General Lee said was that every man should either fight or work to help the fighting men. He didn't say anything about women and children.”

Judge Tudor said gallantly: “It is you noble women who have kept our fighting spirits alive. To crush the South, it was necessary to crush you; to make you ladies cry for peace.” She was about to protest, but he checked her. “That is not my opinion, of course; but it is what the Yankees would say. Sherman has said publicly that he believes in terrible war and kindly peace.”

“Well, he has lived by at least one of his beliefs!” Cinda spoke in angry scorn. “But, Judge Tudor, as long as any woman now alive in the South keeps her memory, and her tongue to tell the stories to her children, the South will hate Sherman. And it will hate the North. So how can there ever be union again? How can there be peace?” He did not reply, and after a moment she asked: “Did the Confederacy ever have any real hope of victory?”

He said reflectively: “Well, I'm an old man, Mrs. Dewain; and it's natural for old men to criticize the mistakes, or what seem to be the mistakes, of younger men. But I think so, yes.” He went on, in thoughtful summary. “We've lost because we've never done our level best. Lack of money has wrecked us; but a wise use of our surplus
cotton in 1861 would have financed the war. Then our lack of an intelligent working class has wrecked us. Before this war, very few white men in the South worked for hire. Labor was the lot of slaves, so white men considered labor demeaning. Therefore we had almost no men who knew how to do such simple things as run an engine, repair a railroad track or a locomotive, keep our trains operating; and now for lack of cars to bring the plentiful supplies from a region not a hundred miles away, we're starving. Ignorance about finances wrecked us, ignorance of the mechanic arts wrecked us, and the lack of real ability in the higher circles of the Government wrecked us. Before the war began, the Cotton States had seized control of the South; but their leaders were politicians, not statesmen. When great men were needed, we had only politicians. We had a surfeit of them, each one more concerned with the power he could seize and the prestige he could command than with the good work he could do.”

“Yet at first everyone liked Mr. Davis.”

“It is not enough for a politician to be liked to make him a statesman,” he reminded her. “Great men are not ‘liked' any more than great books are ‘liked.' The quality of greatness commands respect, and even fear; but it quite often inspires hatred. General Lee's weakness is that he is too likable, too kindly, too gentle, too forgiving, too modest. To be likable is not an attribute of greatness. To be loved, yes; or to be hated. But to be liked, no!”

She did not speak, and he continued: “Yes, we might have won the war. In 1861, the states of the Confederacy had a respectable supply of small arms, but they would not throw them into the general pool. The Confederate armies, if those weapons had been available, might have been strengthened by a quarter of a million men. Such an army could have marched through Washington and Baltimore to Philadelphia; could have won the war then and there. Again, in 1862, at least a hundred thousand men were kept at home by the several states, when with that added strength our armies could have gone where they chose.

“And the states have continued to think first of themselves. Why, within the fortnight, when Sherman marched north out of South Carolina toward Fayetteville, the South Carolina militia in Beauregard's
command stayed on their own side of the state line, and Beauregard's little army was reduced to uselessness.”

“It was too late then,” Cinda urged.

“It was not too late in 1861, when Maxcy Gregg's regiment insisted on going home even before Manassas was fought. It was not too late in 1862, or even in 1863, if the militia of all the states had been used for the common good. But now—” He smiled grimly. “Well, since we would not hang together, we will all hang separately. To accomplish any great work requires not confederation—a loose and precarious association—but a firm and indissoluble union.”

“Mr. Lincoln wants union,” she reflected.

“I believe he is right,” the Judge admitted. “The United States, if they are really united, will be the greatest force for good in the world that is to come. But without union they can accomplish nothing.” And he said reverently: “I have learned to pray to God to give that man strength and long life to finish the work he has begun.”

Far away, dimly, she heard the murmur of guns; and she shivered and said no more. This was one of those perfect days which come only in spring, warm and fine, the pulse of new birth and waking life in the soft air. But it was not too fine a day for men to die in the entrenchments around Petersburg, where Grant only waited till the roads were firm to begin the westward thrust that would destroy them all.

March, 1865

 

 

W
HEN Sheridan passed north of Richmond, moving toward the Pamunkey to cross it and turn southward and unite with Grant's army, he wasted all the country from Ashland to the Rappahannock, burned the four principal bridges on the Fredericksburg railroad, and incidentally intercepted Lomas and Faunt on their way to Richmond. Three times the two men were chased by Yankee cavalry; the third time Lomas was shot off his horse and Faunt took a bullet through his shoulder which fractured the bone in his upper arm. He was able to stick his horse and to escape, leaving Lomas in enemy hands. If Lomas were still alive, he would probably be recognized and hanged; but Faunt did not wait to investigate. At the moment when he was struck, the Deringer Lomas had given him in Baltimore was in his hand ready for use; but the blow of the bullet left his right arm nerveless, and he dropped the pistol and went on unarmed.

He might have found some friendly household and attendance for his wound; but he was no longer wholly rational. The journey from Washington had been exhausting, bringing on one slight hemorrhage even before they began to encounter Sheridan's scouts; the final chase and the labors of his escape produced another, of which he was not aware. The agony of the splintered bone in his arm served as a stimulant and a spur, keeping him back from the abyss of complete delirium; but when on the third evening he reached the outskirts of Richmond, inflammation had set in, his fever was high, and he had lost any sense of pain. He was no longer a sentient individual but a deadly purpose in the shape of a man, an automaton, a physical engine
in which power has expired and which continues to move only on the dregs of its own momentum.

He came to Nell's house late at night, slid off his almost foundered horse at her gate, and reached her door so nearly insensible that only the expiring flame of his implacable determination gave him strength to tug at the bell. Milly and Rufus bore him upstairs, and Nell undressed him. They tended his wound and cleansed it; and Nell thought of a surgeon, but no surgeon could help Faunt now. True, his arm was mortified and should be amputated; but amputation would not save him. Telltale streaks ran from the wound up to his shoulder and across his chest. She knew their significance.

And even if his hurts could be mended, he was dying. This too she knew.

Yet from the lip of death itself he had held back to come to her; and this knowledge gave her a fierce triumphant happiness. He had returned to her arms to die. He was her love and she was his, and while he lived no surgeon's knife should take any part of him. She was fiercely jealous of these their last hours together. She remembered his sisters and his brothers, and thought of summoning Mrs. Dewain and Mrs. Streean; but it was to her he had turned, not to them. She put the thought away.

She felt not so much sadness, or rending grief, as a triumphant rapture of complete possession. She did not pray Faunt might recover, for she knew he could not. Her only entreaty was that he might once more smile in the way she loved, and speak her name. She fed him warm milk touched with brandy, thin broth, egg whipped in cream; she cooled his brow with damp cloths, and sponged his throat and breast to ease the fever; and she asked only that he might have one moment of recognition, one moment when he knew her, before he died.

If such a moment came, none must share it; so she kept his side, and after the first hour she never again admitted Milly to the room where he lay. Night melted into day, day turned to dark again. If she slept it was for no more than seconds at a time. She felt no weariness, nor any need for sleep. If there was need, it was his need of her. That need had brought him to her door. That need she would not deny. As long as he lived she was his. Beyond that moment when his life should end she did not think at all.

She had at last what she had wished for. Toward dark of the third day she rose to light the candle and draw the heavy curtains; and when having done so she turned again, his eyes were open. She went to him quickly, dropping on her knees.

“Darling, darling,” she whispered. “It's Nell.”

“Nell.” His word was so softly spoken she scarcely heard it. She leaned nearer, pressing her cheek to his.

“Yes, Nell. Oh, Faunt, my darling!”

His left hand, weak and fluttering, came up to touch her arm. Her arms cradled him, and his hand crawled up her arm like a bat creeping awkwardly against the walls of a cave. He spoke her name again. “Nell.” His hand was so feeble. She drew his arm around her neck and held him close, looking down into his eyes. His hand was still moving, unsatisfied; his shoulder stirred as he tried to raise his right arm, too. His hand touched her neck, found her throat which he had used to caress so tenderly.

Then in sudden access of strength his fingers and thumb gripped her throat, bedding in the soft flesh. She thought him still delirious, thought he did not know her. Making no effort to release herself, she said tenderly:

“It's Nell, darling. It's Nell, Faunt. You're in Nell's arms.”

In a last spasm of strength, his fingers dug deep and made her choke and cough. He said clearly: “I know you!” In his eyes close to hers she saw that this was true, and as she saw this, he spoke again in stern damnation. “I know you, Nell. You spy. I came to kill you! So!”

His fingers set hard on her throat, but that was nothing; for his words tightened a vise upon her heart, and it seemed to burst in her breast. She let her head fall, let her throat relax in his clasp, thrust herself down against his hand; and she was hungry for the death he wished to deal her. His body arched; he tried to pull her down, to lift himself.

Then like a man struck through the lungs he collapsed in every muscle, and a gush of blood came out of his mouth. She felt the blood against her cheek pressed hard to his, felt the thin fingers let go her throat. She lay across his breast, and his body under hers seemed to shrink and grow less.

And she knew that he was dead.

He had come back to her not in love but in ferocious judgment; he had come not to die in the cradle of her love, but to kill.

She freed herself and stood looking down at him. He had come to kill her. Well, she had never denied him anything; she would not deny him her life. But first she bathed him and composed his limbs; and she bathed herself. Her thoughts were orderly and calm; she was in this hour completely practical. Rufus slept above the stable, apart from the house; but Milly's room was behind the kitchen, connected with the house by the gallery, and she might not wake in time to escape. After some consideration, Nell folded and sealed a blank sheet of paper and went downstairs and called Milly. The Negro woman asked at once:

“How is he?”

“He's better, Milly,” Nell assured her. “But he needs a doctor. Take this note to Chimborazo Hospital.” Milly would need almost two hours to go and come. “Ask someone to give it to Dr. McCaw. Don't bother to see him; don't say anything; just leave the note for him.”

“Yas'm.”

“Go right along.”

“Yas'm. I'se gone.”

When Nell had heard the door close, she worked swiftly for a while. The house was of heart pine, richly resinous; it would burn like a torch. There was lightwood in a closet near the fireplace in the drawing room, a further supply in the closet under the stairs. She tore pages out of books till she had sufficient paper, and stuffed it into the closets, against the logs. She touched the paper with the candle flame and watched the logs catch; and through their thick and choking smoke, with the fire crackling hungrily under her feet, she went quickly up the stairs.

Her Deringer was in the drawer of the table by her bed. She took it in her hand. She went to the door of the room where Faunt lay, and stood for a moment looking at him there.

Then she returned to her own room and made sure the pistol was charged and capped, and then she lay down upon her bed.