House Divided (36 page)

He told of Trav's arrival and why he came, and Cinda smilingly commented: “Trust Travis to be practical.”

“Well, we were mighty grateful to him,” Brett assured her. “Then pretty soon after he got there, the fight began. I was as excited as a girl at her first party.” He confessed that mistake of his which put a gun out of action. “So we had to pull back behind the creek,” he explained.
“But when the Yankees sent men to seize our old position we chased them away.”

“Uncle Tony did that!” Julian reminded him, and Brett said:

“Yes, Tony did a fine piece of work. But the whole North Carolina regiment was wonderful! Julian and the other cadets helped stop the final Yankee attack. The Yankee who led that, a Major Winthrop, was the bravest man on their side. He came right up to our works before he was shot.”

Julian said: “He was right in front of me!”

“Were you scared, darling?” Vesta asked in teasing fondness.

“Shucks, no! It wasn't so much! Colonel Magruder said it was just child's play.” The boy added in a hushed tone: “I helped bury Major Winthrop afterward. He was a fine-looking man.”

“That charge ended the fight,” Brett said. He smiled, remembering Trav's collapse; then decided not to speak of this. But Vesta asked:

“How did Uncle Trav like the battle?”

Brett hesitated. “Well, I hadn't meant to tell you, but Trav saw a mule killed by a cannon ball—a pretty unpleasant sight—and it made him sick!”

“I should think it would!” Cinda declared. “But you can't tell me Travis was scared!”

“Oh, we were all scared,” Brett assured her, and Vesta nodded wisely.

“Tommy says everybody's scared, really.” Her father, at some inflection in her voice, looked at her with a quizzical eye, and she felt her cheeks burn. “Well, he does!” she cried.

Cinda came to her rescue. “Were there really hundreds of Yankees killed, Brett?”

He smiled. “Not hundreds probably; but we buried eighteen, and the local people say the Yankees carted some dead men away with them.”

“Well, we'll kill hundreds of them next time,” Cinda predicted, and he looked at her in faint amusement, and she understood his glance. “Oh, yes,” she confessed, “I'm beginning to talk as big as anyone!”

Julian returned to Yorktown to rejoin his company, but Brett stayed a few days. “I want to see Mr. Harvie,” he told them.

Vesta asked: “Why, Papa?” She was puzzled by his tone. “You sound as if you thought—things might go badly.”

“They may go badly for the railroads,” he admitted. “And there's a lot of Currain money in securities of the Fredericksburg road. I'm going to take some of it out, put it where it's safer.”

“In gold, like Mr. Pierce?” Cinda asked.

“No, not yet at least. But the Yankees have seized the Potomac Steamboat Company's steamers, and Virginia has taken over the Fredericksburg road's property, at Acquia Creek. Mr. Daniel's annual report is pretty gloomy. I suppose the road will be working for the Government.”

“Won't the Government pay them?” Cinda protested.

Brett hesitated. “I'll know more after I see Mr. Harvie.” But that interview gave him no reassurance. He said when he returned that the directors would meet in a few weeks to decide what should be done. “And they can only decide one way, of course; they must do whatever the Government wants. They've made surveys to see if they can lay tracks here in the city to connect with the Petersburg railroad, so that trains can run right through Richmond; but the surveyors say the grade is too severe. But Mr. Daniel says they'll cut fares, carry troops at two cents a mile and freight at half the regular rate. They'll have to accept payment in Confederate funds and notes at par; but unless the Confederacy imposes some taxes, the bonds will decline in value. And the road will wear out. They'll need fifty thousand tons of rails a year just to keep their tracks in condition; but our rail foundries in Richmond and in Atlanta can't make half that. The Yankees captured a lot of rails when they occupied Alexandria. President Marshall of the Manassas Gap Railroad tried to save them, but the Government wouldn't do anything to help him.” He said soberly: “I'm afraid, even if we win the war, the roads will be bankrupted; and we don't want to lose our investment.”

Vesta saw that he was not, as everyone else seemed to be, completely confident. If Papa was worried, then all the others so sure of victory were wrong!

 

Brett was still in Richmond the day Henry Wyatt, dead of the wound he received at Bethel, was buried from Mr. Duveau's church;
and they all went to the service. Next day Clayton came from Manassas for overnight, and Vesta had not known how much she loved this tall brother of hers till it was time for him to leave again. Faunt's company was ordered to White Sulphur Springs. “Governor Wise is to raise a force in the Kanawha Valley,” he wrote, “and we will join him at Charleston Kanawha. So I'll be in Western Virginia, and it's not likely I can come for Burr's wedding. Give him and his charming bride my most affectionate greetings, if you please.” He added that he meant to go to Belle Vue before his company moved west. “I shall manumit as many of my people as wish to be free. I will not fight for slavery. A man has to decide why he fights; and I want it clear in my own mind that I'm fighting to drive the Yankees out of Virginia, and not for any selfish reason at all.”

As June advanced, Burr came home from Ashland more frequently. On one of these occasions he heard, and told them, that Darrell Streean had fought a duel. “A man named Judge Meynell,” he explained. “He was Lieutenant of Uncle Tony's company. He called Darrell a coward because he wasn't in uniform, and they met yesterday morning, and Darrell shot him through the heart.”

They did not know Judge Meynell, and Darrell was their kin; yet for a—well, perhaps not a coward, but at least a civilian—to kill a soldier was a shocking thing. Cinda, whose tongue knew no curb, exclaimed: “That's just—despisable!”

Burr said honestly: “Well, the insult was public, and seemed deliberate, or so I'm told. I don't know what else Darrell could have done.”

“He could have volunteered, for one thing!”

“He may do that now, of course.”

“Will he be arrested?”

Burr shook his head. “You can't call another man a coward without accepting the responsibility for your word.” He added: “Uncle Tony's taking the body back to Martinston. He knows Mrs. Meynell and Miss Meynell, their daughter.”

“How does Uncle Tony feel about it?” Vesta asked. “Did he like Judge Meynell?”

“Yes, he said he was a fine man.”

She felt some mystery here. “How old was he? Judge Meynell?”

“Why—I think he was forty or forty-five.”

If Judge Meynell was as old as that, Miss Meynell must be a young lady; and the thought stayed in Vesta's mind till Tony, on his way from Martinston back to Yorktown, stopped for an hour at the house. Cinda was out, Jenny resting; only Vesta saw him. Alone with him, she risked the question.

“Uncle Tony—why did Judge Meynell go out of his way to quarrel with Darrell?” Tony cleared his throat uncertainly and she insisted: “Did they know each other before?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “When Darrell was at Chimneys.”

“I see.” She hesitated, then drove ahead. “Uncle Tony—how old is Miss Meynell?”

She saw the effort with which he kept his tone casual. “Oh—seven—teen, eighteen, I suppose.”

“Is she—nice?”

He looked at her for an instant, and his glance became so stern that she felt like a guilty child expecting a merited rebuke. He said quietly: “Vesta, as you grow older you will learn to refrain from empty conjecture. Judge Meynell branded Darrell publicly as a coward. Darrell called him out and killed him. That's all that need be said.”

Thus certainty and hot anger filled her. “I wish someone would kill Darrell!”

She saw his color rise. “I had thought of doing so myself,” he admitted. “But killing him would only make talk. The best thing is to forget.”

Vesta was silenced, but she did not forget. Her thoughts for a long time turned often to Miss Meynell, to this girl she had never seen, to this girl she would never know.

June, 1861

 

 

F
OR Burr's wedding day, Cinda's house would be full; and Tilda offered to take any overflow. “Of course I know your place is just simply tremendous, compared to ours, but we have Darrell's room free. He's gone to North Carolina to buy supplies for the Department. And we have two rooms besides, even in our little house.”

Cinda thanked her; she said politely that it was too bad Darrell couldn't be here. “But as far as rooms go, I'm sure we can manage. Nobody will want to sleep much anyway; we'll have so much visiting to do!”

When the time came, there proved to be, since the children could be tucked away anywhere, a place for everyone. Vesta had Peter and Kyle crosswise at the foot of her bed, with their heads projecting from under the covers on either side, and Lucy slept beside her. The youngsters were a long and hilarious time getting to sleep, because Lucy could not resist reaching down with her toes to tickle the little boys; and since the night proved chilly, Vesta in the morning found herself the center of a warm huddle of little bodies.

“I felt like a mother dog with her puppies,” she told Cinda. “It was so sweet. I kept wishing they were all mine!”

Brett arrived from Yorktown on Thursday of that week, and at supper they made him tell his adventures since he went back to duty. He had been one of a detachment that went off to scout and to forage toward New Market Bridge.

“We're always short of food,” he explained. “The Howitzers and the North Carolina men had raised a purse of two hundred dollars for Mrs. Tunnell, the woman who gave us warning the Feds were coming,
the morning of the fight at Bethel; so we took her the money, and then we hunted for food. We got two cartloads of corn.” He chuckled. “But our vedettes reported a big force of Yankees trying to cut us off, and we came back to Yorktown a lot faster than we went out!”

Vesta asked teasingly: “Scared, Papa?”

“Well, for men who weren't scared we certainly travelled fast,” he assured her. “We threw away our baggage and hustled like good ones.” But the alarm proved false, and they went back to recover the abandoned wagons, and Brett and two others begged a cold ham and some scant rashers of bacon from a house by the road.

“We're all half-starved,” he said laughingly. “Not much to eat except fish and oysters; and what meat we get is so bad that there've been a lot of men sick this week from eating it. Even the water down there isn't fit to drink. And hot! My, but it's hot!”

Cinda said it was outrageous that soldiers should go hungry. “So near home, so near Richmond!”

“Well, we've seven thousand men in Yorktown,” Brett reminded her. “And no one knows much yet about feeding an army.”

“Nonsense,” Cinda protested. “Women have been feeding men for thousands of years. They could do it.”

He smiled. “It's a little more complicated than that,” he suggested. “Calls for more arithmetic than cooking. It needs someone like Trav. By the way,” he added, “Trav and Enid are coming tomorrow. Mama too, of course.”

“Yes, Trav wrote me,” she agreed.

Burr was at Barbara's for supper, but he came home soon afterward; and he and his father fell into talk of business concerns. Cinda stayed with them, smiling inwardly as her eyes rested on Burr's serious young face, thinking him so like his father. And soon now, day after tomorrow, he would marry Barbara; and after that, Cinda well knew, he would no longer be hers. To see a son marry was in some ways to lose him. Clayton had never been hers since he married Jenny. Cinda loved Jenny, as she loved Clayton; but she had never let this love deceive her. When Clayton married, she had gained a daughter, yes; but just as surely she had lost a son.

And day after tomorrow she would lose Burr. He too would go out through the door of her heart. She could never cherish him there
again. When henceforward he was hurt, it was not to her bosom but to Barbara's he would turn.

Let him go, since go he must. Thus ran the world. For him to leave her was a part of life! Nothing of life would she deny to him.

 

Trav and the others from Great Oak arrived in time for late dinner Friday. Mrs. Currain declared she was not at all tired from the journey, but Cinda saw that her cheeks were bright with a frail excitement, and as always when she was tired her speech had a faint Scotch burr. Her father had been a Scot; and when she was tired Mrs. Currain's tongue fell into the old tricks of her girlhood. After dinner, over many protests, Cinda hustled her off to bed.

“Now you needn't fuss, Mama!” she said fondly. “There you are and there you stay, till time to get dressed for the wedding tomorrow.”

Enid had come upstairs with them, and when they left Mrs. Currain she said: “Mama's so excited she doesn't realize how tired she is. She's awful cute! Coming into Richmond there were camps and soldiers and things everywhere but she just pretended not to see anything.”

“I wish I could make it all vanish as easily as that,” Cinda confessed. “I hope she can have a little nap. I'll look in on her after a while.”

“Maybe I'd better,” Enid suggested. “She's used to me, you know.” Cinda felt an amused resentment. As if Mama wasn't used to her, her own daughter, too! When a little later Tilda and Dolly came in, and Dolly began to discuss the lovely gown she meant to wear to the wedding, Cinda drew Tilda away, and they went to Mrs. Currain's room and found her awake and happy to be with them. Yet Enid's word still stayed in Cinda's mind, and she could not resist angling for reassurance.

“Enid's a sweet little thing, isn't she, Mama? I'm so glad she's at Great Oak with you.”

“She couldn't be nicer to me if I were her own mother.”

Tilda said: “Her own mother's living in Richmond now. Mr. Streean says she was in Washington all winter, but she came back here in May.”

“Really? I've never met her,” Mrs. Currain remarked. “Enid so often speaks of her. It will be pleasant to make her acquaintance.”

Cinda felt something like consternation; she saw amusement in
Tilda's eye and knew Tilda realized her predicament. For it was a predicament; there could be no doubt of that! Her mother would never understand why Trav's mother-in-law, living right here in Richmond, was not invited to the wedding. At least she would not understand without explanations that could not be given. For that matter, unless Enid knew the truth about her mother, she too would resent such an affront.

And the wedding was tomorrow, so whatever was to be done must be done quickly! There was only one thing to do. Cinda rose hurriedly, stooped to kiss her mother's cheek. “Mama, I hate to leave you, but I simply must go out for a little while.”

Mrs. Currain said agreeably: “Why of course, Honey. I know you've a thousand things to do. I'll have a good visit with Tilda while you're gone.”

Cinda left them, and told Caesar to bid Diamond bring the carriage around, and hurriedly made herself ready to go and do her duty by Mrs. Albion. Once decided on this step she began to feel a lively interest in the approaching encounter. At Trav's wedding she had thought Mrs. Albion silly and affected, but since then the woman had been for ten years, though in a fashion so discreet that almost no one guessed it, Tony's—well! Cinda knew Tony well enough to realize that only a gifted woman could have held his interest so long. Of course, it had been worth Mrs. Albion's while! Brett had sometimes amused himself and Cinda by trying to calculate how much money Tony spent on his fancy.

“Much more than you've ever spent on me, Mr. Dewain,” Cinda used to say. “Perhaps I should never have married you at all; it might have been more profitable.”

There could be no doubt that Mrs. Albion was an unusual woman. Would she be offended by a call at this unconventional hour? Possibly, or possibly she would be maliciously amused. Nevertheless she must be faced.

 

Cinda had always felt a lively curiosity about this scandal in the family, and she had long ago made Brett drive her past the house Tony had bought for his light-of-love. It was out in the country a mile or so, on Monroe Street toward the river and discreetly remote from any
near neighbors; an attractive little brick house with two chimneys in the gable end and a small front porch, set back from the street with a fenced yard. Today she told Diamond where to go. “I'll point out the house when we come to it.” When at her direction he pulled up at the gate, she saw his shiny black countenance clouded with disapproval. Was there anything the people did not know about white folks' doings? She felt her heart pound as she went up the walk and tugged the bell.

A neat young colored woman admitted her, said Mrs. Albion was at home, ushered her into the small drawing room. Cinda, during the few minutes she waited, approved all she saw. The little house was as attractive inside as out, with high-ceiled rooms and a delicately carved mantel, and a graceful stair with a light rail; and there was a charming raised pattern on the plaster. The furnishings were not so attractive as her own, of course; severely old-fashioned mahogany except for one straight-legged tiptop table with an inlay of white mahogany to relieve its plainness. There were no little ornaments to brighten the room, unless you counted the fresh-cut flowers in a tall vase; no pretty wax fruit with red apples and purple grapes and yellow pears making a charming spot of color; no pattern in the severe carpet; no pictures on the walls except for two steel engravings, the sort of thing Mama had at Great Oak. But at least everything was dusted, and the room was as neat as wax. Cinda had somehow expected to find in this den of iniquity a garish splendor, and when in a surprisingly short time she heard a step descending the stairs, she looked toward the door in the liveliest curiosity.

Why, Mrs. Albion was lovely, even more beautiful than Enid, yet in a gentle fashion that seemed to arise out of some inner grace. Her smile was not too cordial, her greeting was composed, her voice made you like her at once. She was so exquisitely neat that Cinda felt large and fat and clumsy; and she had an uneasy fear that at any moment she might flounder into something, knock something over. She regained her chair with as much relief as though it were a safe harbor after a stormy voyage.

Mrs. Albion seemed to find nothing surprising in this call; but Cinda, while they exchanged polite commonplaces, began to feel increasingly flurried and confused.

“I suppose you're wondering why I'm here?” she said anxiously at last.

Mrs. Albion smiled. “I think I know,” she replied. Cinda was too surprised at this answer to speak. “You've suddenly realized that not to invite me to your son's wedding might hurt Enid, but you're too kindly to be willing to do that. So—you came to me.”

Cinda sighed with relief. “Well, there!” she exclaimed, and she confessed: “You're right, of course.”

The other said frankly: “I don't want to embarrass you, Mrs. Dewain. Of course I can't come to the wedding without some awkwardness for both of us; but I will tell Enid you invited me, and that a temporary indisposition—a headache, something of that useful sort—will make it impossible for me to come. I'm sure that will serve.”

Cinda hesitated, astonished at herself. “I always knew you must be a remarkable woman,” she said, and added smilingly: “I'll tell you just what happened. My mother's very fond of Enid, and when she heard you were in Richmond she said she was looking forward to meeting you. I hadn't thought of you at all. I suppose I came to throw myself on your mercy. But now—” There was a sudden honest liking in her tones. “Now I hope you will come.”

Mrs. Albion's eyes softened. “I believe you do,” she said gratefully. “I believe you mean that, and I don't believe you'd even allow yourself later to regret the impulse. But I will not come.” She explained: “You and I are worlds apart—and we always will be. I accepted that, years ago. You owe me nothing, and I claim nothing from you. Between us we must be careful not to hurt Enid. That is all.”

She rose in what was obviously polite dismissal, so Cinda too stood up. “But I'm coming to see you again,” she declared. Mrs. Albion smiled. “Have you seen—Tony recently?” Cinda asked. The other did not reply. “He's changed—for the better,” Cinda told her. “We're all rather proud of him. I've often thought he should have married years ago.”

Mrs. Albion said quietly: “You're generous, and you mean to be kind, Mrs. Dewain. I'm glad you came. But—we both know that you will never come again.”

Driving homeward, Cinda found herself for some reason close to tears. “Why, I wish to Heaven she was Tony's wife,” she thought. “I
really do!” And with some spiteful vehemence: “I wish to Heaven Enid was more like her!”

 

Clayton appeared just in time for supper, and Tony and Julian came well before noon next day. At the last possible moment, when the carriages were already at the door, here was Faunt too! There was not even time for questions; time only for quick happiness of greeting, kisses in the hall—Cinda saw that Enid clung to Faunt till he freed himself—before they must depart for St. Paul's, for the brief hush of the ceremony there.

That was perfect, to be sure. Julian and Anne Tudor—Judge Tudor was Mrs. Pierce's brother—led the half dozen couples who marched arm in arm ahead of Barbara and Burr to the chancel; and when they appeared Cinda thought Julian with Anne on his arm looked happy enough to be a bridegroom himself. Barbara wore a wide-hooped gown cut square across the shoulders and finished off with a bertha of delicate old lace, her hands almost hidden by the deep lace fall on her short gloves. Her dark hair was stiffened with bandoline and laid sleekly back and divided into many strands woven smoothly into wide braids which passed from ear to ear across her nape. Her veil was of point lace seeded with pearls, and her wreath and bouquet were of wild hyacinths. Burr stood tall and handsome in his fine new uniform, and both of them seemed to shine.