House Divided (29 page)

“To be sure! Many a time I've been shocked and horrified.”

“And delighted? Just a little?” And when he had answered: “Brett Dewain, do other married people act the way we do? I don't believe they do. You know what I think?”

“Heavens, no!”

“I think you're responsible! Oh I'm not joking; and I know what I'm talking about, too. Women talk about these things. Some of your dignified husbands would be horrified if they knew how much their feminine acquaintances know about them! Brett Dewain, why don't men—make love to their wives?”

He said thoughtfully: “Probably many men honestly believe that no —well, no respectable woman would want them to do so.”

“They're the sort of men who have a lot of half-white babies on their plantations.” Her tone was scornful.

He laughed. “You know, Mrs. Dewain, in spite of that blunt tongue of yours, you're in many ways a very charming woman.”

“You'd better think so! Oh, you'd just better think so, Brett Dewain.” She clung to him in a long embrace. “There, my darling!” Burrowing her head into his shoulder, sighing with content. “Don't ever leave me, Brett Dewain.”

He held her close, not speaking, till at last she felt his arm relax and knew he slept; but she did not. Over and over in her thoughts she prayed: “Don't ever leave me! Don't ever leave me, Brett Dewain! Dear God, don't ever let this dear man go away from me!” Lying in his loosened clasp she was careful not to move lest she wake him. Let him rest, let him sleep, let him hold her always in his arms and in his heart.

 

They stayed at the Plains till the supplies Brett had purchased began to arrive. Day by day the wagons went off empty to Camden or to Columbia, and returned laden with barrels of dried or salted fish, hogsheads of molasses and sugar, coffee and soap, tea, whiskey. There were bolts of calicoes and of household linen, cotton cloth, clothing and shoes for the Negroes, handkerchiefs, gloves, blankets, knives. When Cinda exclaimed at quantity and variety, Brett reminded her that the Negroes were dependent on them.

“We have to take care of them, you know. They rely on us. And you and Vesta and Jenny and the babies, you may all want to come back here some day. This war may last for years, you know.”

They heard that Colonel Lee had resigned from the United States Army and had been commissioned Major General in command of Virginia's troops; and the news made Brett eager to go home. Cinda proposed that Jenny and the children come to Richmond with them, and Clayton heartily approved; but Jenny insisted she would stay as long as Clayton was here.

“That won't be long,” Brett warned her. “Virginia will be the battle ground. It's through Virginia that our armies must march to attack Washington—and it's through Virginia that the Northerners will come to attack us. Clayton will be in Richmond before the first of June.”

But Jenny would not leave till he did, so Brett and Cinda set the day for their departure. To go by way of Charlotte would prolong their journey; nevertheless Cinda was bent upon seeing Julian. Before they left the Plains they had a telegram from him.

When Brett, having read the message, handed it to her, Cinda saw the drawn tightness of his lips, and her eyes raced along the lines.

“Oh, no, no, Brett,” she cried passionately. “He mustn't. Please! No, no, no! Not Julian, Brett!” She was frantic. “Please, Brett! Please!” Entreating him. “He's just a baby!”

He hesitated, his arm around her shoulders. “I suppose all his friends are volunteering, all the boys he knows.”

“Oh, Brett, please!”

“He's the only one of us who—adopted the profession of arms, Cinda. Trained officers will be needed, to command ignoramuses like me and Clayton and Burr; and he's had some training.”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

He smiled. “I'd be mighty proud to take orders from Julian.”

“Brett Dewain, you're a fool!”

“If I were in his place, I'd want to do this. I'd be a little ashamed if he didn't want to. And so would you, Cinda.”

“Oh, I suppose so! But we're not going to let him!”

“I'd be ashamed not to let him.”

“Well, I wouldn't!”

He kissed her tenderly. “You answer him, then. You write the answer. I'll send it off to town.”

She looked at him in startled understanding, her lips after a moment twisting in a smile. “You clever, merciless, clever man!” she whispered. “I suppose I love you. I suppose I do. But, oh, how I hate you, too!”

He did not speak, and she crossed to the writing table; the pen scratched harshly. She came back, gave him the sheet of paper. He kissed her, then read what she had written.

“That's fine,” he said, carefully casual. “That's settled, then. I'll get it off right away.”

“But we'll surely stop and see him, won't we?”

“We surely will.”

 

The journey north proved a long and wearying and sometimes terrifying ordeal. Cinda had never been at ease on the cars. Trains rushed across the countryside, balancing atop shaky timber trestles like a cat on a fence, threading miles of swamp where water moccasins and alligators and occasionally a panther or a bear might be seen, and ducks and herons rose in clouds, but no sign of human life appeared. They thundered through forests or across cultivated fields at a relentless, headlong pace that covered sometimes fifteen or twenty miles in an hour. At their best the cars were bad; but now they were packed full of troops on their way to Richmond. Brett and Cinda found themselves travelling with Wheat's Tigers and the Zouaves from New Orleans, bound north from Pensacola. The Zouaves were a tanned and muscular lot, in baggy scarlet trousers, blue sash, white gaiters, blue shirts cut low at the throat, gay embroidered jackets, their fezzes worn at every angle.

“But they're so incredibly dirty!” Cinda protested, almost shuddering. “I can't decide whether to be disgusted or terrified.”

“They're hard men,” Brett assented. “The officers tell me they were recruited from the slums and the prisons.”

Nevertheless these were their travelling companions as far as Charlotte. The men crowded the cars, forever tramping up and down, shouting, drinking, spitting generously; and at Charlotte, like water breaking through a dam, they cascaded off the train to rush into the nearest stores and taverns seeking either loot or liquor, while their officers fought to control them. Cinda saw one giant emerge from a store with an armful of stolen shoes. A young lieutenant ordered him into ranks; and when the soldier laughed, the officer smashed him in the temple with a pistol butt, dropped him senseless. Then Brett swept Cinda to one side and away; and when they were clear of the mob she said, gasping for breath:

“Heavens! Will we make armies out of such animals?”

“Well,” he reminded her, “if all the fashionable companies decide to stay at home, like our South Carolina dandies, we'll have to.”

They discovered that Julian had left Charlotte with the other cadets for the camp of instruction at Raleigh. It was a day or two before they could find room on a train that would take them to Salisbury. There they waited again, in company with a regiment of Georgians of whom Cinda thought every man was drunk; and when their train pulled in, the men stampeded aboard so that every passenger car was instantly filled.

Cinda and Brett rode in the express car as far as Raleigh. They put up at Guion's Hotel, and in the happiness of seeing Julian she forgot all else a while. Julian told them Uncle Tony was in camp, Captain of the Martinston Company. “He asked for me to help drill them,” he said proudly. “You can watch. I start tomorrow morning.”

They went to the drill ground as he suggested; and when they arrived Julian and Tony came to meet them, Tony a little embarrassed and yet with something new in his bearing and his eyes. “We're just ready to begin,” Julian explained. “Uncle Tony, will you put the men in company formation?” Tony turned away to obey and Cinda felt her heart swell to the bursting point. Julian stayed with them, talking abstractedly, his eyes upon Tony's company as the ragged and uncertain ranks took form; and he was so straight and proud. When the company was formed he went briskly toward them and began to speak, and at the sound of his clear young voice Cinda felt tears fill her eyes and overflow, and her smile was half a sob.

“You gentlemen will learn a great many things in the next few weeks,” Julian told the men. “Sometimes you will think the things you are asked to learn unnecessary and absurd, and you'll find them confusing too; but if you learn one thing at a time, each succeeding step will follow naturally from the one before it. A soldier who knows his work is twice as valuable as one who does not. You must learn first the School of the Soldier. After that will come the School of the Company; but until you are soldiers, you will never be a company.

“Now the first thing you will learn is the Position of the Soldier. Put your heels on the same line, not one behind the other but side by side, and as near together as you comfortably can. That squares your shoulders. If you are knock-kneed, or if the calves of your legs are
muscular, you won't be able to touch your heels together. That is not necessary; just put them as near together as possible. You are to stand as I am standing. First, place your heels.”

They obeyed, stumbling and shuffling, watching their own heels and those of their neighbors, and someone said something, and a mutter of laughter ran along the ranks, and Julian said sharply: “Silence.” His eye swept them and he went on:

“Your feet should be turned out equally, at less than a right angle, toes not too far apart to be comfortable.” After each direction he waited while they sought to do what he required. “Your knees should be straight but not stiff. If they're stiff, you'll get tired quickly, can't hold the position. Your body should be erect on your hips, the upper part leaning just a little forward. That gives you good balance. No, no, don't throw your belly forward. Square your shoulders but keep your belly in.” And as some of the men stretched their arms, he said: “If your coats are too tight, have someone let them out around the armpits till they're comfortable.”

He looked along the uneasy line. “Now let your arms hang naturally, elbows near the body, palms a little forward, your little finger just behind the seam in your pantaloons. Face front and eyes front but not stiffly. Keep your heads up high enough so that your chin doesn't cover your stock. Look at a spot on the ground about fifteen feet in front of you.” And when he was for the moment satisfied: “There, that's what we call the Position of the Soldier. Everything you learn will start from that.”

Cinda whispered to Brett. “Look at Tony!” Some of the men, trying to do what Julian told them, grinned with their own embarrassment; but Tony with a completely serious countenance was wholly absorbed in these instructions, intent on exact obedience. “The poor dear, so solemn, trying so hard to do what Julian says!”

They watched with a lively interest as the drill went on, and Cinda's eyes shone with pride in this boy of hers; till at last Julian said: “Very well. Your company officers will instruct each of you individually. I know all this seems to you unnecessary. You're used to taking care of yourselves, but a man taking care of himself is very different from a soldier taking care of himself. You're no longer men; you're soldiers.
The way to be a good soldier is to learn these things. Your officers will see that you do.”

 

When the lesson was over, Cinda thought Julian and Tony might have dinner with them; but Julian had duties and Tony too declined. “I want to go off by myself and practice the Position of a Soldier,” he told them, laughing at himself yet earnest too.

So Cinda and Brett drove back to the hotel together. “This has made Julian seem older and Tony younger,” she said thoughtfully. “Probably war changes everyone.”

“I suppose all that detail is planned to produce an average,” Brett reflected. “Something that is no longer an individual but just one of many men who think alike and move alike and act alike.” He smiled. “It will need a stricter task master than Julian to do that to Southerners.” And then, soberly: “Experience, perhaps.”

Julian and Tony were both so busy every day that Cinda felt she and Brett were almost an annoyance; so they decided to go on to Richmond. For the next stage of their journey Brett found a place for them in the mail car. The car was smaller than any bed room Cinda had ever seen, and they must share it with the agent—who offered them the courtesies of his bottle of whiskey—but at least it was a sanctuary from the drunken soldiery, and the bags of mail made a comfortable couch.

“And I don't mind anything, now I've seen Julian,” Cinda declared. “He's grown, Brett Dewain.”

“Yes. Yes, he's a big fellow now.”

“Some of the cadets seemed even younger than he.” She knew he understood her thoughts; they could always commune without spoken word. Nevertheless she wished the shape of words as a foundation on which to build the future. “Children grow up,” she said. “We'd like to keep them sheltered and protected; but to do so would be to rob them of half of life itself. To hide, to hug safety, to spend nothing of yourself—a man who did that might continue to exist for a thousand years. But—he'd never live! To live is to strive and to venture and to win—or to lose. To live is to assume responsibilities when you should, to accept duty, to love. To earn your own respect and the love of those you love is to make yourself terribly vulnerable to loss and grief; but—it's worth it, Brett Dewain.”