House Divided (94 page)

Cinda was accustomed to Mrs. Brownlaw's sometimes slanderous tongue. That energetic woman, as the work in which she had been an officious pioneer became better organized, found herself more and more excluded from the position of dominance which she had sought to seize. Mrs. Minge, Miss Sally Tompkins, Miss Pettigrew, Miss Mason, and others not so vociferous as she, had by their abilities acquired a leadership they did not seek. Mrs. Brownlaw, no longer able to dominate the volunteer work in the hospitals, had come to Cinda today to enlist her help in caring for the refugees fleeing to Richmond from Fredericksburg, where General Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan as the Union commander, seemed about to precipitate a battle. She explained that she had gone first to Enid, and had been rebuffed. “She says, if you please, she's much too busy to think of taking strangers into her home,” Mrs. Brownlaw declared. “As far as I can discover she hasn't a thing to do except act like a belle of twenty, when she must be forty if she's a day!” And she added, watching Cinda: “She says her husband wouldn't approve; says Mr. Currain thinks we've brought our troubles on ourselves——”

Cinda protested: “Oh, now, Mrs. Brownlaw, I'm sure Enid didn't say quite that!”

“Well, perhaps not exactly; but she says he stands up for that dreadful nigger-lover in Washington!”

To argue with Mrs. Brownlaw was useless. She had the irritating habit of not hearing what you said; and even when she seemed to listen it was with poorly concealed impatience, while she waited for her turn to speak. “Just what do you want me to do?” Cinda asked.

“Why, the Yankees have threatened to bombard Fredericksburg, you know; so everyone who has anywhere to go is leaving. Last night's train was just crowded with poor women and children—yes and negroes too—all of them weeping and wailing; and we must take care of them somehow; as long as we can, at least! Heaven knows we may be driven out of our own homes any day, with the Yankees, just hundreds of thousands of them, coming at us from all directions.”

Cinda felt a resentful irritation at this babbling woman; yet there were many in Richmond as fearful as she. Last spring the enemy had been almost at the gates. General Lee and his men had driven them out of Virginia, and on the rising tide of success had marched into Maryland, and everyone thought victory was near and certain. But Sharpsburg, no matter how loyally you pretended it had been a victory, had forced Lee to retreat; and now Burnside had marched deep into Virginia again, and General Lee seemed unwilling to fight him. When early in November a deep snow blanketed the northern part of the state, everyone had hoped winter would lock the armies in mud and give them all a respite until spring; but since then the weather had been fine enough and now there was again a secret sense of danger in every Richmond home.

“I don't see how I can do anything, take anyone in,” Cinda confessed. With Julian at home and still needing watchful care, she had not even returned to her service in the hospital. “My son and Mr. Dewain may come home at any time, and we're crowded as it is. But I'll do anything I can—except take strangers here.”

 

She held to that decision, though in the days that followed more and more of these refugees came to Richmond. Once the train that brought them away from their homes was fired upon by the Yankees
Yet Fredericksburg had not been bombarded; probably it would not be. They fled from their own fears; but Cinda thought they might quite as well have stayed at home. Certainly there was danger here in Richmond too. A plague of smallpox began to sweep the city, and the disease this year seemed to be particularly fatal. Dr. Brock proposed to vaccinate healthy children and save the scabs with which to immunize adults; and Mrs. Brownlaw was busy persuading parents to allow their children to be used for this purpose. Cinda was glad Jenny's children and Barbara's baby were far away, so that she need not refuse Mrs. Brownlaw's insistences.

The problem of housing the increasing throng of refugees was a daily burden. Some could find temporary lodging in the hospitals which were almost empty now. But it became daily more certain that unless winter came to make any movement by the armies impossible, there would be a battle presently on the Rappahannock yonder. The first Sunday in December was a day of bitter cold, and Cinda found ice in the pitcher in her bed room when she rose that morning; but at once the cold moderated, and Thursday's train from the North brought word that the shelling of Fredericksburg had at last begun. That night was soft and warm. Next day Richmond heard that the Yankees had crossed the river. There followed rumors, each more frightening than the last, of battle, of victory, of defeat. Saturday afternoon Tilda came in a flutter of excitement, half fear and half anticipation, with a report that President Davis had gone to Mississippi! She thought it was shameful for him to run away when the Yankees might come bursting into Richmond any minute! Cinda said flatly:

“I don't believe he's gone, Tilda. You mustn't credit everything you hear. Or if he has gone, be sure he went for a good reason. Anyway, babbling all sorts of wild tales can't help.”

Sunday morning, the fourteenth of December, was like a day in spring, warm and fair and beautiful; and Cinda's spirits rose. Surely on such a day there could be no great wrong anywhere in the world She and Julian went to church. Mrs. Currain no longer stirred out of the house, and Vesta, whose baby was a short two months away, now stayed secluded; so they went alone. At the church gate Cinda saw Mrs. Davis the center of a group of ladies; and she joined them and heard the news of battle the day before.

This had been a bloody repulse for the Yankees, but a day of tragedy too. General Cobb was dead, General Hood desperately wounded, none knew how many others hurt or slain. Cinda at her prayers that day whispered: “Dear God, must we always wait and wait, never knowing when the word we fear will come? It wouldn't be so hard if it weren't for the waiting and the waiting. Please, God, don't make us wait longer than we must. I can stand anything, anything, once I know it. But to wait and wait and not to know——”

Yet from that waiting for news of her dear ones there was no quick escape. That day and the next the wounded began to arrive; and to drown her own terrors Cinda returned to her work at Chimborazo Hospital. Tuesday afternoon Julian came on his crutches the long way to find her there with word that Brett and the others were safe.

“Mr. Barksdale, on General Longstreet's staff, came with a trainload of wounded and brought you a letter from Trav,” he said. “I opened it, Mama. Do you mind?”

“Of course not, darling.” She snatched the letter.

“They're all right,” he told her. “Papa, and Burr, and Uncle Faunt.”

Cinda's eyes raced along the lines. “He's seen them all,” she whispered. “He's seen them all.”

So for that time the shadow and the terror passed. There would be other battles, other waitings; but of them Cinda refused to think, not now, not till she must. General Lee reported that Burnside's army had withdrawn again to the hills beyond the Rappahannock, and winter came to bring what passed for peace. They could taste security awhile.

 

Saturday night Trav came home, and he stopped at Cinda's before going to Clay Street. He said that Brett and the others hoped to be here for Christmas. He was sure there would be no more fighting for a time. “They put General Burnside in command in McClellan's place,” he reminded Cinda. “But we beat them terribly. The soldiers say Burnside is burned not only on the sides, but all over now.” They laughed together, the quick nervous laughter that marks release from strain; and he added: “He won't try anything till his scars heal. General Longstreet has gone to Lynchburg for Christmas.” He stood hat in hand, and he turned now toward the door. Julian asked some eager
question; but Trav said he must go home. “I'm anxious to see the children.” Cinda noticed that he did not speak of Enid. “Maybe we can come to dinner tomorrow.”

“Do!” she agreed, shivering at the cold blast when the door was opened. “We'll try to keep you warm.”

Next day at dinner and afterward, no one mentioned the battle till Mrs. Currain had gone for her nap. Vesta went with her; but Lucy and Peter stayed hanging on Trav's words, and Julian pressed him to long talk. Trav spoke at first with obvious reluctance. “Why, Julian, it wasn't a battle; it was just slaughter. Our men were in a sunken road behind a wall, and the Yankees kept marching up to us across an open field and we shot them down. It was horrible!”

Enid protested: “I declare, Trav, I think you just hate to have us kill Yankees!”

Cinda looked at her, and Trav said: “Well, this was so easy, like butchering hogs. General Longstreet said that as long as our ammunition held out, a bird couldn't have flown across that slope the poor fellows tried to climb. I had to just stand and watch and not do anything, and that made it worse. All those lines of men in blue marching toward us, and then our muskets and our cannon playing on them, and when the smoke cleared, most of them would be lying there, or crawling, or squirming, or screaming. And they weren't blue any longer. They were so near us you could see through your glasses the red blots on their uniforms, and red pools of blood on the ground.” His face twisted with a sort of pain. “And during the night, our men went out and stripped the shoes and uniforms off the dead men, so next day they were white instead of blue or red. It made me sick.”

Enid said provokingly: “I suppose you'd have felt all right if they'd been ours.” He turned his eyes toward her in a heavy way, and Cinda thought Enid watched him with a puzzling eagerness, but when he spoke it was to them all.

“The hard part of it was the waiting,” he said. The waiting? She knew that torment. To busy her fingers would steady her, so she crossed to get her knitting. Trav's eyes followed her movement, and she thought he understood, for he said: “I ought not to tell you about these things. They sound worse, put in words. At the time, you're so excited you don't really feel it till afterward; but sitting here listening
to me talk about it, you all can't understand that. So it seems to you really worse than it seemed to us in the middle of it. But I said the hardest part was waiting, waiting for each new attack to get near enough so we'd start to kill them. You here at home have to wait too; so you can understand how hard that is.”

Cinda, her eyes on her knitting, said yes, they knew. Even Julian said: “I know it's bad just before the shooting starts.”

“We'd had weeks of it, really,” Trav reminded them. “Waiting for the shooting to start. I think everybody hated that, except General Longstreet. He never seems to be bothered. Even General Lee gets upset, gets angry at little things. When his head begins to twitch in a jerky little way, they say that's a sign he's mad inside, apt to let off at anyone who comes near him.

“And I suppose it was harder on him than on anyone. He must have blamed himself for going into Maryland in such a hurry. You know our men were worn out before the fight at Sharpsburg. I don't think he expected the Yankees could put an army together again so quickly after he smashed them at Manassas. He probably thought he could march right to Baltimore or Philadelphia before they were ready to meet him. It turned out he was wrong, and he must realize that. The strain shows on him. His hair is almost white now, and his beard too.”

“I was in Washington when Sharpsburg was fought,” Cinda reminded him. “After Manassas they were in a panic there; and of course lots of people here thought the war would be all over by this time.”

“Well, it's a long way from over,” Trav admitted. “The Northern army will be stronger than ever in the spring.” He added quickly: “But so will we. We got stronger every day after the army fell back into Virginia. Stragglers and deserters came back, or were brought back.” Cinda, remembering Streean's assertion that most men in the army fought only because they were made to, closed her eyes. “There was time to rest, and we had plenty to eat, plenty of everything except shoes.”

“Are you still handling the commissary?” she asked.

“No, Major Moses does that now. He's better at it than I was. No, I'm just an aide. General Longstreet seems to like to keep me with
him.” He grinned. “He wouldn't even let me ride Nig during the battle last week. He said Nig would get me into trouble. He said I'd better stay afoot so he could keep an eye on me.”

“Good for him! I shall thank him for that.”

“We'd been at Fredericksburg quite a while,” he went on. “We'd stayed in the Valley till the Yankees showed signs of moving, but early last month we fell back to Culpeper, keeping between them and Richmond, waiting to see what McClellan would try to do. Then they put Burnside in his place. General Longstreet thought it was as good as a victory for us when they took McClellan out. He thinks McClellan is the best general the North has—unless it's General Grant.”

“How do Cousin Jeems and General Lee get along?” Cinda asked.

“Oh, fine,” Trav assured her. “General Longstreet is wonderful, and General Lee knows it. Longstreet was perfect, in this fight last week; never excited, always doing the right thing. The men like him. He doesn't baby them, but he's always taking care of them; little things like teaching them to boil their meat instead of frying it, for instance. They're a lot healthier since he set them to doing that. And teaching them to rake away the ashes from their cooking fires so they can sleep on the warm ground where the fire was. He's stern when he should be, and severe when he should be; but they know he's fair. Lee and he are as close as brothers. You can see it whenever they're together. Longstreet never says ‘Yes' to Lee when he should say ‘No,' and Lee nearly always takes his advice.” He added thoughtfully: “Longstreet likes to let the Yankees do the attacking. Jackson and Lee always want to attack. Maybe it's because I like him, but I think Longstreet's right. We don't have to whip the Yankees. They have to whip us.”