House Divided (72 page)

 

Cinda meant to go early to the hospital next morning; but she slept till June woke her. She looked for Brett's head on the pillow beside her own, but he was not there. “He done gone befoah day,” June told her. “He tolt me not tuh wake you up nohow, but I ‘lowed you'd want to git up time foh chu'ch.”

“Oh, is it Sunday?”

“Sho is.”

Cinda lay still. She heard guns. So they were fighting again. “Is Miss Vesta awake?”

“No, ma'am. Don't look like she eveh gwine tuh wake up.”

“Let her sleep while she can.” Cinda took the coffee June had brought. With coffee a dollar and a half a pound, she ought to give
it up. To be sure, they could afford it. Thank Heaven they had plenty of money. But to charge so much for coffee was plain robbery.

She had little appetite for breakfast, was glad when Jenny came to her. They went to St. Paul's together. When they walked homeward along Grace Street there was no longer any roll of guns to the eastward, so the battle was done; but there remained the wounded, and Cinda would have gone to them had not Vesta, awake at last, insisted she would go if her mother did. So Cinda stayed at home, but next day Tilda came again to summon them. Cinda spent most of that day on her knees with a pail of soapy water and a filthy rag, scrubbing and wringing and scrubbing again, fetching fresh water when that in the pail was more grimy than the floor, finding refreshment in this menial task, glad to be busy, to be at work, to be worn out and sweating with fatigue, to feel her bruised knees ache and her soap-burned hands dry and parched.

When she and Vesta went home at last, she wanted nothing so much as rest and sleep; but Trav had brought General Longstreet for supper, and she mustered strength to make them welcome.

“Just give me time to freshen up,” she said. When she came down again, Brett was at the door, and sight of him made her forget weariness awhile.

The men fell into talk of these events just done, and she saw that Longstreet was pleased with Trav. “This brother of yours, Cousin Cinda, has been hiding his light under a bushel!” he said. “Have you heard of his behavior Saturday?”

Trav's face was brick-red with embarrassment, and Enid cried: “Why, General, has Trav disgraced himself? It's your fault for expecting him to be anything but a farmer!”

The General said almost roughly: “If he's a farmer, I wish I had more farmers like him in my command.” Enid was silenced, and Longstreet added with a relenting chuckle: “He's assured me more than once that he would never make a soldier; but at the hottest of it Saturday I saw him itching to take a hand. Just then our work along the Williamsburg road was out of joint. General Rains seemed behindhand with his move. To give Captain Currain some outlet for his eagerness, I sent him to ask Rains to take up his share of the contention.” He smiled in his beard. “Captain Currain rode a great black
war horse that scented the battle afar off; and I suppose the horse must be blamed for the master's disobedience. Instead of finding General Rains, as I had ordered, Captain Currain rode into the thick of it.”

Trav said honestly: “I didn't know where I was going, sir.”

“You went where help was needed,” Longstreet assured him, and he told the others: “There had been heavy work. Half the officers and many men were down, dead, or wounded and drowning in the flood waters through which they had made their battle. Anderson's brigade and Garland's—General Garland is Louisa's cousin, you know, Cousin Cinda—were in confusion. Captain Currain joined Micah Jenkins and lent his weight to the struggle there.” His tone became serious enough. “Colonel Jenkins reports that he was as good as another regiment. He led a column through the Yankee abatis, that great horse of his thrashing down every obstacle. They overran everything in their way till Captain Currain brought the men who followed him up to the line of the railroad. Between them they swept every Yankee out of the woods south of the embankment.” He smiled at Trav. “Yes, Captain; if I had a few more farmers like you I could march into Washington this summer.”

Trav grinned, miserable under praise; but Enid protested: “Why, General, I declare I think you're telling fairy tales! I just can't imagine Trav being so bloodthirsty!”

“Bloodthirsty?” the General smiled. “I don't know as to that. Were you armed, Captain?”

Trav hesitated. “I don't think so, sir. Not unless I picked up a weapon somewhere. I've never worn side arms.”

Longstreet threw back his head in a great laugh. “Don't think so?” he echoed. “Don't you know, Captain?”

“No, sir, I'm afraid not.” Trav said slowly: “I was pretty excited, and I'd seen our wounded, and I hated the whole business, and Nig did really run away with me. I don't remember much about it. I remember smashing through some down timber, and up to a redoubt. There were two houses exactly alike, not very big, but they stuck up in the air. We went on into the woods, into another abatis.” He grinned faintly. “Poor Nig is full of splinters. Big Mill has been picking them out of his hide, putting salve on his hurts, ever since.” He said slowly: “I don't think I did anything. I think it was mostly just
that Nig broke a path through the brush, and some of the men followed us along.”

“Put it any way you choose,” Longstreet assented in an amused tone. “But I'd like more officers of your cut, Captain.”

Trav colored, and Enid drawled teasingly: “Why, Trav, think of you turning out to be a soldier!” Cinda looked toward her in slow anger, and after a moment Brett spoke.

“General, I've heard it said we missed an opportunity yesterday?”

Longstreet made a harsh sound. “Yes. Of course. Saturday evening General Johnston was hit. A shell fragment knocked him off his horse, so General Smith took over the command. I saw him at one o'clock Sunday morning. My men were up to the railroad, the Yankees behind it, General Smith on their flank. I urged an attack at dawn, with his guns to break their line and my men to catch them off balance and thrust them back into the river. But Sedgwick had punished General Smith severely the day before; so he was full of fears but not of fight. He left me to make the battle alone.” His voice hardened with anger. “Opportunity? Yes, sir, it was tossed away! But now General Smith has reported sick, left the army.” He laughed scornfully. “His departure strengthens us as much as if we'd won a victory.”

“I hear General Lee has been given the command. What do you think of him?”

Longstreet hesitated. “Well, he's a staff man, and line officers always distrust staff in command; but despite his inexperience in field work, I have high hopes of Lee. Certainly he can do no worse than General Smith.” He stirred. “Well, Captain, we must return to headquarters.”

Trav rose; but he said gravely: “May I report back at daylight, General? It's some time since I've seen my—children.”

Enid protested in quick dismay: “Oh Trav, you can't stay here!”

There was a moment's silence; but when Trav did not speak, Longstreet said: “Very well, Captain. I'll expect you in the morning.”

He turned to Cinda to bid her good night. At the same time Enid came to Trav's side, and whispered to him; but Trav said, loud enough so that they all heard: “I will stay here.”

Enid recoiled, and without a word darted away and up the stairs. For an awkward moment no one moved. Then Cinda said quietly:

“Good night, Cousin Jeems. Come whenever you can.”

When the General was gone, Trav turned to Cinda. “Which is our room?” he asked. She told him. “I think I'll go along up,” he said.

Cinda and Brett were left alone; and Brett, looking after Trav, asked curiously: “What's all that, do you suppose?”

She shook her head. “But Brett, there's a change in Travis.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don't know, but you heard what Cousin Jeems said about the battle, and you saw the way Travis silenced Enid. He never did that before. He's changed, Brett. He's not the same.”

May—June, 1862

 

 

E
NID, having decided to leave Trav and having told him so, was at once terrified at her own daring and delighted with her newly asserted freedom. Words were not deeds, to decide was not to act, intention was not performance; but she forgot this. There were times when she wished to share with someone her determined jubilation. Dolly might have understood, and she and Dolly were congenial. When the other had no beaux in train they were much together; and in fact Dolly sometimes invited Enid's presence even under those circumstances, especially if Captain Pew were to be her escort.

“He's such a rascal, really,” she told Enid in a gay pretense of terror. “If I were ever quite alone with him I just don't know what he'd do!”

Enid agreed that Captain Pew was a wickedly charming man. He paid her polite compliments in a way which sent cold shivers down her spine; and he was obviously wild about Dolly. “I expect you'll marry him some day,” she predicted; and Dolly laughed and tossed her head, and said:

“Oh perhaps, but not for a long time. It's such fun to make him do his tricks, like a great dangerous lion who may just gobble you up at a bite any minute, and yet never quite does so.”

But Enid knew Dolly's wayward tongue too well to confide in her; and also there lay in the back of her mind a doubt, which she refused to admit, of the finality of her action. For one thing, she was no longer sure of her love for Faunt. It had been easy enough, during those weeks when she tended him so devotedly, to imagine that he was all the world to her; but now when she rarely saw him there were hours and even days when she forgot him. For another thing, she
was sufficiently levelheaded to know that Faunt would never love her.

And also, always, something in her yearned for Trav. That night at Great Oak when she cast him out, his submission was an affront; and after he was gone she lay in a drench of sad and desolated tears. Surely, surely if he loved her he would not so tamely let her go. Since then she had prodded him with a barbed tongue, not because she wished to wound him, but because she sought to rouse him to some violence of word and deed, to shatter that invulnerable surface he wore, to make his eyes upon her blaze and burn. He ignored her gibes, so he did not care; and Faunt would never love her, so she wept in loneliness and despair.

But if these high and mighty Currains had no use for her, she could always go to her mother. She had never been in Mrs. Albion's pleasant little house; but one day, in Mr. Ezekiel's shop on Main Street—his shelves were well laden with blockade goods, with moire, and brocades, and cassimeres, and with shawls and scarves, though all at prices that dismayed her—she had to wait for attention, and she saw a book lying on the counter, a Richmond Directory published six years before and ragged from many handlings. She picked it up in idle curiosity. Its first forty or fifty pages were full of advertisements. She studied them and felt that instant awakening of unsuspected desires, that greedy eagerness to possess objects whose very existence has been unsuspected which they were designed to arouse. At the end of the advertisements began pages of names and addresses; she turned the first page, and on the second, as so often happens, a familiar name seemed to leap out of the mass of type on the page and catch her eye . . . Akins, Albert, Albert, Albion!

Thus she learned the street on which her mother lived. But she did not wish anyone to know when she went there; so, instead of asking Cinda for the carriage, she walked as far as the Spottswood and took a hackney cab and at her mother's door bade the driver wait for her.

The Negress who answered her ring said Mrs. Albion was not at home and Enid was almost relieved; for at the last moment she had felt her courage fail. After all, it was years since she had seen her mother or sought to see her; and there might be no welcome for her now. In the cab again she looked back and glimpsed some movement at an upper window, so probably her mother had been at home after
all! To think that this door too was closed against her made her both wistful and angry. Next time she would insist on being admitted!

But she did not go again till after Julian's disappearance. Trav asked her to do nothing that might distress Cinda. She promised, but to defy him might at least shake him out of his stolidity, so she repeated her venture. This time, so Trav would be sure to know, she asked Cinda if she could use the carriage. “I want to call on Mama,” she explained. “I haven't seen her for so long. I really should.”

“Take the carriage, certainly,” Cinda agreed. “Use it whenever you wish. It will be nice for you to see something of her, now you're so near.”

But this time, too, Enid was told that her mother was not at home. Remembering her former suspicions, she gave her name and asked when Mrs. Albion would return; and when the Negress seemed to her evasive, she said she would come in and wait. To her intense indignation, the girl shut the door in her face. With Cinda's coachman watching, Enid could do nothing but depart.

Not till a third attempt, late in May, did she succeed. This time the maid ushered her into the drawing room, and Enid while she waited had time to decide that her mother's things were sombre and ugly after the cheerful brightness of Cinda's home. When Nell appeared, Enid thought with a resentful surprise that she was as beautiful as ever, with fresh cheeks and clear eyes and a smooth round throat as firm as a girl's. Sometimes her own mirror testified that her fair hair was losing its sheen; sometimes turning her head this way and that, she detected a treacherous fulness under her chin. Certainly no one, seeing them together, would guess this woman was old enough to be her mother; and because Enid was furious at this realization she embraced Mrs. Albion with extravagant affection, and Nell said:

“I'm so glad to see you, darling. Milly said you came a week ago, and I hated missing you.”

“She slammed the door in my face,” Enid declared. “She needs a good whipping, Mama!”

Nell said in friendly apology: “It's my fault, dear. With so many strangers in town, a woman alone has to be careful. I've told her under no circumstances to admit anyone unless I am at home; and she knows I mean what I say.” She added affectionately: “Of course I
didn't mean you, darling; but I didn't expect you. After all, this is the first time, isn't it?”

“The third,” Enid assured her, still indignant. “Last week, and once before that.”

“I mean when you've been in Richmond before,” Nell explained; and Enid, feeling herself put on the defensive, said:

“Oh I've always meant to; but we've come to Richmond so seldom, and there's always so much to do.” She cried flatteringly: “You look so well, Mama. You look so happy!”

Nell smiled. “I am, darling.” She nodded, with a little chuckle of a laugh, as though at some secret of her own. “I don't suppose there's a happier woman in Richmond than I.”

“Living here all by yourself? Really?”

“I have Milly, and Rufus. They take care of me.”

“They certainly do! No one would ever guess you were in your fifties!”

The older woman smiled as though she felt the dart. “You've not taken care of yourself, have you, darling? It's too bad very blonde people fade quickly. They're so lovely when they're young.”

Enid's angry color rose; then she laughed disarmingly. “There, we're acting like two cats, Mama! I'm sorry.” She needed her mother, would not risk a quarrel. “Your house is lovely, isn't it?”

“I've always liked it.”

“Can we go all over it? I want to see just everything.”

“Of course.”

Enid heard faint curiosity in the other's tone, as though her mother were beginning to wonder why she had come; and when they rose she linked arms. “Oh Mama, I've missed you. I've wanted you so many times. Now that I'm living in Richmond, I want us to see each other often, to be—good friends.”

“You plan to live in Richmond?” Nell had led the way into the dining room; and while they moved from room to room, between Enid's cries of admiration at all she saw, question and answer went back and forth between them.

“Yes. We had to leave Great Oak. The Yankees came and burned it down.” She knew Faunt had set fire to the big house. Nothing he did could ever be anything but right in her eyes; yet others might
blame him, and after all it was easy to accuse the Yankees. “So the children and I are living at Cinda's. Of course Travis is never there, at least not for very long.” And as they came upstairs: “Oh Mama, what a charming room!”

“I use it for a sitting room. The drawing room is too formal, when I'm alone.”

Enid's nose wrinkled daintily. “Do you smoke cigars when you're alone?” Her tone was teasing. “Or is it Cousin Tony?”

Mrs. Albion smiled. “I haven't seen Tony for some time; but I have many friends, you know.” She led the way out into the upper hall again. “And here's my room.” Enid went to and fro, handling everything, admiring everything. Her mother showed her another bedroom, immaculate, obviously unused. “And that's all,” she said.

“It's really just a tiny house, isn't it?” Enid commented. It was certainly so small that she could never bring the children here; but then she had no intention of doing so. They could be left at Cinda's. “Where does Milly sleep?”

“Off the kitchen; and Rufus has his place in the yard.”

Enid turned back into that pleasant room, not too feminine, where she had smelled the faint persisting odor of cigars. “I like this best of all, Mama,” she declared, and sat down. “The fireplace, and the lovely pictures. Everything's just perfect. No wonder you spend most of your time up here.” Her eyes twinkled. “With your cigar-smoking callers.”

“You're a malicious little somebody, aren't you?” Nell said smilingly.

“I'm not really,” Enid assured her. “Of course—” She hesitated, a little startled at her own temerity; but she meant to confide in her mother, to draw close to her. “Of course I've known about you and Uncle Tony. Almost from the first. But I never blamed you.”

“You're ever so kind.” Nell's tone was droll.

“I really admired you, your courage, doing what you wanted to do.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“I've always loved you just awfully, and thought you were simply wonderful, and envied you.”

“Envy? You've had everything anyone could want!”

Enid laughed. “With Trav? Really, Mama!” Then, leaning suddenly
forward: “Mama, do you know what I'd like? I want to come and visit you, so we can get really to know each other. We've been separated so long. Really, Mama, I think that's a wonderful idea. Let's just the two of us be together for a while!”

Nell smiled. “That's hardly practical, is it, darling?”

“I don't see why not. You've a room for me, a beautiful room. I'd like to just not see anybody else but you for a while. I've missed you, all these years. Couldn't we, please?”

“You've your children, you know.”

“They can stay with Cinda. She loves having them there. And I don't mean forever.” She did, yet dared not yet say so. “I just mean—to visit for a while. Like two girls. You don't seem any older than I do, really.”

“Nonsense, darling. As you reminded me, I'm in my fifties.”

Enid recognized the bite in her mother's tone; and she pleaded: “Please don't be—don't hold that against me. I was just teasing. Don't you think it would be sort of nice to get to really know each other again?”

“I'm used to having my house to myself, Enid.”

“Oh, I wouldn't do anything to change it.”

“You're very persistent, aren't you!”

“I want it so much, Mama.”

The older woman smiled. “It would never do, Enid. You were always an exasperating child. Oh, perhaps it was my fault. I kept you dressed like a child long after you thought of yourself as grown up. I was—we were desperately poor, you know. I hoped to seem young and attractive, to make a good marriage.” Enid started to speak, but her mother said quickly: “No, don't deny it. If we're to be—friends, let's start with honesty. Yes, I was trying to find a husband. I had hopes of Trav till you decided to take him away from me. You were young and lovely, and you took him.”

“I wish I hadn't!”

“You're a little late in repentance, my dear. So I took second-bests —without benefit of clergy. This is not a confession of a life of shame, darling. I've been, in my way, a highly moral woman. But I've learned to consider others, to try to please them.”

She looked at her daughter through level eyes. “You've never
learned those lessons,” she said remotely. “I doubt you've ever con, sidered others, or ever tried to please anyone but yourself. I know you pretty well, Enid—even from afar off. You're a querulous, dissatisfied, self-centered person. You think of yourself as owing nobody anything. You think others ought to spend their time taking care of you.” She laughed briefly. “I don't think we'd be congenial, darling.”

Enid bit her lip. “No one has ever talked to me like that.”

“Probably not. You see, Enid, if there were fewer wives in the world and more mistresses, more women would take the trouble to learn to play fair. When wife and husband are at odds, the wife need only weep to bring the poor man to heel; but when a man's mistress becomes an annoyance or a bore, he simply leaves her. There's a great deal more to the relationship between man and woman than—the unmentionables, darling!”

Enid after a moment spoke in an appeasing tone. “I can see I used to be the way you say; but I've grown up, this last year, Mama.”

“Have you? I'm glad.” Nell's eyes shadowed; her own thoughts filled them, and Enid saw a new beauty in her mother's face. “I've changed too, this last year, Enid. I used to consider every action, test everything I proposed to do by its probable effect on my life. Till—very recently. But I've learned something this last year—” She smiled. “This last month, in fact. Something I never knew. Something wonderful.”