House Divided (91 page)

During the fortnight that followed, Brett began to believe Longstreet's optimism was justified. Sharpsburg was surely a defeat; but this did not act or look or sound like a beaten army. Not only were the men better fed every day, and better equipped, but as soldiers who had straggled under the hard march into Maryland returned to duty, each company and regiment filled its thinned ranks. The army that had put a scant forty thousand exhausted and barefoot men into battle at Sharpsburg presently counted sixty-five thousand soldiers, rested and fit to fight again.

Brett saw these things proudly, but he longed for some word from Cinda. In mid-October a chance came to go to Richmond. McClellan one day pushed out from Shepherdstown to feel for Lee's army, and
Lee himself barely escaped an encounter with Yankee cavalry on the road from Kearneysville to Smithfield. Two Parrott guns of the Howitzers were in action near Charlestown. A cannon ball tore Lieutenant Carter's cravat without seriously wounding him, Burley Brown was killed, and Captain Ben Smith lost a foot.

When Brett heard this he asked for and received permission to make the journey home with Captain Smith. They reached Richmond Monday afternoon. When they left the train, one of General Winder's sentries officiously insisted that the wounded man could not be taken to his own home but must go to a hospital. Brett, seeking an overruling authority, went to George Randolph, who had been the first commander of the Howitzers and who was now Secretary of War. Brett was shocked at the other's appearance. Randolph was younger than he, but the Secretary had lost weight so that his pale face was netted with a fine mesh of wrinkles and his small eyes seemed to have receded into their sockets.

He greeted Brett with a warmth which suggested he would have preferred service in the field to this desk assignment; and he asked many questions about the fortunes of his old command.

“It's on account of one of the men, Ben Smith, that I came to you,” Brett said; and he related his experience with the sentry.

Secretary Randolph made a hopeless gesture. “All authority is being taken out of my hands,” he said. “General Winder is the Czar of Richmond. My office can't even issue passports now. But by God I'll see Ben Smith settled in his own house or resign!”

So Brett, satisfied that Captain Smith's fortunes were in good hands, hurried home to Fifth Street. He found Vesta there, but no news from Cinda. Trying not to let Vesta see his disappointment, he asked questions about the Plains, and about Jenny and the children. Vesta said Camden was full of refugees from the islands along the coast, who had fled when the Yankees threatened landings there. “And they say lots of their negroes steal boats and row off to join the Yankees; so the rice planters are moving their people to plantations back from the coast. I expect Rollin's father's rice swamps are all abandoned.” She spoke of what had been happening in Richmond. Mrs. Lee and her daughters had gone to Hickory Hill, the Wickham place, when General Lee went north with the army; now they were at Warren County
Springs in North Carolina. Richmond was as crowded as ever. Everyone just laughed at President Lincoln's proclamation about freeing all the slaves on the first of January. “Why, Papa, the people don't want to be free!” Vesta declared. “They wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they were.”

Brett nodded. “I hear the price of slaves has gone up since the proclamation. Of course that's partly because money's worth less.” Vesta said she didn't understand such things, and he smiled. “It's a question of how you put it. You say two thousand dollars will buy a slave, but I say that a slave will buy two thousand dollars.”

She brushed aside this puzzling quibble. Richmond was a sad city, she said, since Sharpsburg. There were thousands of sick and wounded in the hospitals. Yellow fever had been bad at Wilmington, and Darrell had gone blockade running with Dolly's Captain Pew, and maybe he would catch it! Prices of everything were simply terrible. Sixteen dollars for a barrel of flour! “Oh and did you know Congress has raised your pay, Papa? Privates get four dollars more a month now. Don't you feel rich? Just think, you can almost buy a barrel of flour with your next month's salary.”

They laughed together, and Brett said: “All the same, for a lot of our soldiers that extra four dollars is pretty important. Their families at home have to live on their pay.”

“Well, I wish President Davis would do something about the old speculators' putting prices up. They charge two dollars and a half for a pound of coffee, and you can't get any, even for that. We've been toasting corn meal and making our coffee out of that.”

“Probably better for you,” he said smilingly.

“Oh, I always did hate things that were good for me! Now there, I've told you everything I know and you haven't told me anything. How are Burr and Uncle Faunt and Uncle Trav?”

So he told her about Stuart's bold raid into Maryland. “Burr and Faunt were both along, of course. But now the whole army's resting and skylarking. 'Specially the cavalry. Stuart's headquarters are at old Colonel Dandridge's place, the Bower, near Shepherdstown; and it's one of the most charming houses in the Valley. They have dancing every night, charades, theatricals, plenty of pretty girls. You know
how the girls love the cavalry; and of course the cavalry loves pretty girls. Every day is Ladies' Day there.”

“I guess they didn't take ladies on that ride into Maryland.”

“No, but there was a fine evening of dancing to welcome the heroes home; and now they have parties every evening. There's a German, von Borcke, serving with Stuart. He's a giant, but a great dancer and a great hand for entertainments. He and Colonel Brien put on a silhouette show the other night, von Borcke playing sick and Colonel Brien playing doctor, pretending to reach down von Borcke's throat and pull out things he had eaten, antlers, a whole cabbage, a pair of boots, I don't know what all. Von Borcke had stuffed his stomach with pillows. He was supposed to have indigestion.”

“It sounds perfectly disgusting,” Vesta declared; but her eyes were twinkling.

“They say it was funny to see,” Brett assured her. “Then another time von Borcke dressed up as a girl. He weighs two hundred and fifty, stands about six feet two; and he put on about twenty petticoats over his hoops, and some false braids, and simpered around on Colonel Brien's arm. Von Borcke's a clown; but he's a hard fighter. Stuart likes him.”

They talked late, and Brett slept next morning till the sun was high. After dinner he called upon Captain Smith, whom he had brought home to Richmond; and he stopped to see Enid and the children, to tell them Trav was well. Brett had always liked Enid. She was so young, and so anxious to please them all; and so often the things she did or said which Cinda resented seemed to him a pitiful sort of defiance of Cinda's dislike. No matter how much he loved Cinda he was not blind to her faults; and her long fondness for Trav made it inevitable that she should be critical of Trav's wife.

He spent half an hour with Enid and Lucy and Peter; and when he came home, Cinda was there!

 

In the first moment of reunion, Brett's gladness was so great, and hers, that they could only cling together in a silent rapture; but while he still held Cinda close, he saw beyond her a tall young man whom for a moment he scarce recognized. Here was Julian, now overtopping Brett himself by an inch or so!

Julian was balanced on his crutches, one trouser leg tucked up and pinned; and Brett wished to weep. But—no tears now; no laments, no sympathy! Then what should he say? What word could he find to reassure this fine boy looking at him so happily, yet with a secret terror in his eyes. Brett guessed Julian's dread of vain condolences; and he had a saving inspiration. Someone, somewhere, on some occasion, had devised the pattern for a jest; and the pattern caught the army's fancy. Did a man appear in unusually high boots? “Come out of those cisterns! I see your head a-rarin up!” Or in a top hat? “Come down out of that steeple! I see your legs a-hanging down!” Or to a man who waxed his mustache: “Take them mice out of your mouth! I see their tails a-sticking out!” So Brett's first word now, to his maimed son, was jocose. “Come down off those stepladders! I see you up there! ”

He felt Cinda stiffen in his arm's circle, and look up at him in hurt surprise; but Julian understood, and grinned delightedly. “Don't shoot, Papa! I'll come down!”

There were long fine hours of good talk together, with every word a sweetmeat to be savored to the utmost. Anne Tudor had gone home to her father. “She knew we'd want just ourselves here, the darling,” said Cinda. “She's been so sweet, Brett. Hasn't she, Julian?” Julian nodded happily. Vesta and Brett made Cinda begin at the beginning, but under their questions she forever harked back or skipped ahead. When she spoke of their journey from Warrenton to Centerville, Brett said:

“The battle was fought right along that road, a few days afterward.” He was glad they had passed that way before the battle and not afterward, to see—as he had seen—those fields littered with hideous carrion.

“I know. After we got to Mr. Gilby's, we could hear the guns, and then the wounded came pouring into Washington and the place was crazy with panic, people running away as fast and as far as they could go.”

Julian laughed. “That was the best medicine we had, in the hospitals, Papa; I mean where there were Southerners together. To hear how scared the Yanks were.”

“Anne and I just had to stay indoors,” Cinda told them. “There were frightened people and drunken soldiers everywhere. But Brett
Dewain, McClellan must be a great man! Inside a week he'd made an army again. I saw them march out H Street. Their uniforms weren't pretty any more, but—they looked like soldiers! It scared me to see them! When the news of the fight on the Antietam came, I wasn't surprised.”

“The Yankees will learn to fight, give them time.”

“Oh, and the North has so many, and so much! When we left here, Anne and I saw wagons and guns with our own army; and we thought there were millions of them; but the North has a railroad train full of things for every wagon in our army.”

Vesta urged: “Go on and tell us about finding Julian, Mama.” She laughed fondly. “He's a lot more important than the war.”

So Cinda described that Georgetown warehouse and it's crawling infestations. “But I've seen worse, right here in Richmond, for our own men.” She spoke of Dr. Hammond, the Surgeon General. “I wish we had someone like him. He's a great-hearted man, besides being a great doctor. He let us take Julian out of that horrible place to Mr. Gilby's, even when Mr. Stanton's orders were against it. Then when Julian was well enough to travel, Mr. Gilby and I went to see Mr. Stanton. He's terrible and cruel. He's a little man. I think little men are all natural bullies. They have to make up somehow for being small, so they love to be bossy. There were lots of people waiting to see him. I don't know how many. Twenty or thirty. He came marching in and looked at us and said, ‘Two minutes each.' Five of us were ladies, so we went first. Even the Yankees are courteous. The first poor woman whispered something, and Mr. Stanton fairly shouted at her: ‘Speak up, madam! No secrets here!' By the time my turn came I was too mad to be frightened. He glared at Mr. Gilby and said: ‘Step aside! We have no use for advocates!' So poor Mr. Gilby retreated and I said: ‘Mr. Secretary, I want a passport to take my wounded son to Richmond. A pass for myself, my son, and his betrothed.' ” She smiled at Julian. “We always called Anne that. It saved explanations.”

Julian's color rose; he laughed happily. “I'll try to prove you weren't fibbing, Mama.”

Brett said quickly: “Go on, Cinda.”

She nodded. “So Mr. Stanton said: ‘To Richmond? Then you're a rebel?' I told him I was a Virginian. He said: ‘Your son's a rebel!' I
said Julian had only one leg, and I said: ‘So you needn't be afraid of him.' He said: ‘Afraid? Madam, you're wasting your time and mine. Good day.' I was frightened enough by then to—beg. I said: ‘Mr. Stanton, my oldest son was killed a year ago. This one almost died—' But he interrupted me.” She hesitated. “I think he's a little crazy! He said: ‘Madam, my son, who was not a rebel, died three months ago, an infant. I have no tears to shed when a rebel dies. Good day!' ” She laughed, a little breathlessly. “And the sentry came across from the door and took me by the arm. They threw me out, Brett Dewain!” Brett looked thoughtfully at his clenched fist; but she smiled and touched his hand. “There, my dear; I didn't mind. From a man like him, insolence was really a compliment.”

He nodded. “Yet—you did bring Julian home.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Julian answered quickly. “She went to Mr. Lincoln, Papa. He gave her a pass.”

Brett looked at Cinda in tender understanding. He could guess what it must have meant to her to entreat the man she hated so. He asked in his thoughts a thousand questions; but Vesta put at least one of those questions into words, and Cinda answered her.

“What's he like?” she echoed thoughtfully. “Why, I suppose he's even uglier than his pictures, Vesta; so tall, so awkward, long arms like an ape's arms. His legs don't seem to work right. He—sort of staggers. And—when he said good-by to me he hung to the door frame with one hand, exactly like a tremendous monkey, as though he could have curled up his legs and still hung there.” She laughed. “He's perfectly ridiculous, Vesta, really!”

“But Mama, how did you get to see him at all?”

“Dr. Hammond took me. Dr. Hammond doesn't like Mr. Stanton any better than I do. He was really wonderful. He took me to—the President—and said I had a disabled son who would never fight again——”

Julian laughed. “A lot he knows!”

Brett met the boy's eyes and smiled; and Cinda went on: “So Mr. Lincoln asked who I was, and I told him, and he asked whether Julian and I would take the oath, and I said we were Virginians, and
—Well, Mr. Lincoln said he guessed Julian would do the Union less harm in Richmond than in Washington, and he wrote a pass and told me not to show it to Mr. Stanton, and that night we took the steamer with prisoners coming back to be exchanged.” She met Brett's eyes. “When we came up the river, I saw the black chimneys of Great Oak. The house is all gone. But—here we are. Oh it's good to be home!”