House Divided (137 page)

When he went upstairs he listened at her door and heard no sound; yet he thought she must have heard him. The silence had a listening quality. He went into the room beyond hers. There was a connecting door between. The children slept across the hall. He undressed and lay down, but he did not sleep. Through the long night he sometimes wondered whether, a few feet away in the other room, Enid lay wakeful too.

At dawn old April tapped on the door to rouse him; not on the door of the room he and Enid shared but on this door behind which he lay. How did the servants always know so well what their white folks did? He heard her rouse Lucy, too; and before he himself was ready Lucy went downstairs.

Then the door between his room and Enid's opened. His back was turned that way when he heard the sound; he swung and saw her. The red morning sky threw a crimson radiance that touched her; and she had made herself beautiful, her hair smoothly brushed lay loose about her shoulders, her soft garment was fresh and delicate, her color was bright; even the swollen cheek was made inconspicuous with powder. He stared at her and felt his anger ebb, and then she was clinging to him, kissing him, sobbing with flowing tears, beseeching him.

“Don't go, Trav! Don't go! Don't leave me all alone, Honey. Please!”

He dared not speak. With a violence barely held in bounds, he thrust her away and hurriedly caught up his coat and opened the door into the hall. Her wailing cry made him look back; he saw her in a small woeful heap upon the floor. He turned and went quickly toward the stair.

After their quiet breakfast Lucy walked with Trav through the empty streets of early morning to the depot where he would board the cars. He did not speak to her of Enid, for what could he say? “See a lot of Anne, and Vesta, and Aunt Cinda, Lucy,” he told her. “You and Peter both. I hope Peter and Julian get to be friends. If you ever wish you could talk to me, talk to Aunt Cinda. She and I are a lot alike, you know.”

“I just love you both, Papa.” He wondered how much a child could comprehend; but Lucy was no longer quite a child. “Take awful good care of yourself, Papa. I'd die if anything happened to you.”

“No, you wouldn't, Honey.” For something might happen to him, and she must be able to go on alone. “Everybody has to live his own life, her own life. Nothing that anyone else does, even if they do it to you, really matters; not as long as you go on being yourself.” The train was about to start. “There, Honey!” Her warm arms were tight around his neck, her lips under his. “Good-by.”

Thus he left all that bitter and all that sweet behind him. At the station in Pocahontas, Big Mill met him with news that General Longstreet's departure would be delayed till next day. Mill had put Nig in Ragland's Livery Stables, by Powell's Hotel on Sycamore Street. Trav nodded. “You stay with Nig and bring him to the Union Street depot tomorrow to put him on the train,” he directed, and went to report to Longstreet. The General explained the delay.

“Pickett's division is not to go with us after all. It's still below strength, and short of officers.” He smiled. “But when he expected to go, General Pickett persuaded Miss Sally to marry him before he left, and we'll wait to see the knot tied.”

Trav tried to find something to say. “How's Mrs. Longstreet?”

“Why, real peart, Major.” Trav saw a fine happiness in the big man. “Yes, she's comfortable, feeling fine. I'd like to stav a week or two, see the new recruit when he arrives; but we've got our work to do. We'll leave tomorrow.”

The hours till they boarded the cars were a torment of churning thoughts, despair and shame and rage. There were moments when he wished to return to Richmond and set his hands on Enid's soft throat and rip the flesh away; and above all he wanted to lay his hands on Darrell. Some day he would.

But suppose Darrell came back to Richmond while he himself was away, for weeks or perhaps for months in Tennessee? Suppose Darrell came again to the house on Clay Street, and Enid welcomed him, and Lucy and Peter had again to hear them laughing together in the drawing room. He imagined Lucy in her bed, across the hall from her mother's room, lying awake in the listening night, hearing low laughing voices belowstairs, hearing stealthy footsteps on the stair and the soft click of a latch and then muffled whispers and half-smothered, breathless cries. To realize what Enid had already done to these children made him halfway mad. This that had happened in the past must not happen again.

But if he were far away, how prevent it? Brett, Burr, Faunt, they would not be here. Julian was a helpless cripple. Yet somehow, for Lucy's sake, a way must be found.

He found it, and finding no other, desperately bent on protecting the children from new shame, he accepted it. Next day when he came to the depot Big Mill was already there, gentling Nig in the car with Longstreet's Hero and the other horses belonging to the staff. He called the Negro aside and laid a charge upon the man.

“Mill,” he said, “I want you to do something for me. You may get hurt in doing it, or afterward. After you've done it, come and find me. I'll protect you if I can.” The Negro's eyes were calm and unafraid. No gray tint of terror touched his lips; and Trav said: “I want you to take care of—everything of mine. And Mill, if Mr. Darrell Streean comes to the house while I am gone, kill him.”

He saw Mill's throat muscles work, saw the man's eyes set and burn, and he saw in them a sort of joy. Mill said gently: “I ain't nevah kilt a white man, Marse Trav; but I kin if you say so.”

“I do say so.” They were in this moment no longer master and man, but friends.

Big Mill nodded. “Yassuh, I will. I will, Marse Trav. You go on an' whup dem Yankees an' rest yo mind.”

August-November, 1863

 

 

T
HROUGH that summer's heat, Faunt had been ridden hard by a persistent cough; by weakness and a treacherous lassitude and an alarming failure of his energies. Sometimes he knew that he was parched by fever; and more than once Major Mosby, as though hiding secret solicitude behind a jesting tone, told him his cheeks were pink as a girl's. Faunt was wise enough to suspect the truth, but he thrust it into the background of his mind.

Late in August he rode with Mosby and his men toward Annandale for a raid on some unguarded bridges. They saw an opportunity to cut off a herd of a hundred horses being taken forward on lead to Meade's army, and divided for the attack. At the last moment the guard on the horses was reinforced by the chance arrival of twenty or thirty Union cavalry, and the sharp fight that followed took an ill turn; for Major Mosby himself received a disabling bullet through the side.

The led horses were captured, the Yankees driven off, Mosby borne away to precarious hiding; but the sharp work of the day had been exhausting, and when Faunt began to cough uncontrollably there was suddenly a sweet taste in his mouth and bright arterial blood stained his handkerchief.

He turned off the road into a sheltering pine forest, and lay hidden for a day and a night, waiting for strength to come back to him. Clearly he must rest a while if he hoped to resume the violent exertions which his work as a scout involved; and he accepted this necessity. Moving slowly, conserving what strength he had, he came from
behind Meade's lines and passed through Lee's army and rode slowly toward Richmond.

It was well past midnight when he reached Nell's door, tugging at the bell, holding to the door frame with both hands till Milly came to call: “Who dere?” A moment later she and Nell were helping him into the hall.

When they had bathed him and put him to bed, Milly brought warm milk fortified with wine and a beaten egg. He drank it slowly, and Nell said he must sleep and sleep; but he made her sit a while. “Just seeing you, hearing your voice, letting your hand touch mine is the medicine I need most. Stay, let me talk myself to sleep.” So she stayed, stroking his hand between hers; and he told her of things done and seen in the weeks since they were last together. Lee's army was recruiting its strength after the invasion of Pennsylvania. “He had seventy thousand men of all arms on the first of June,” he said. “By the time he got back into the Valley after Gettysburg, he was below forty thousand, not counting cavalry. Now he has close to sixty thousand again, feels strong enough to send Longstreet's best divisions to Tennessee and face Meade with Ewell and Hill.”

“We've heard General Lee will go to Tennessee himself?” she suggested.

“No, Lee won't leave Virginia. Longstreet will go, with McLaws and Hood and probably Pickett. They'll join Bragg, hit Rosecrans hard.” He smothered a cough, for he tried always not to cough. To do so might tear apart the fragile web in which his life was precariously hung.

“You'd better not talk,” she said, and her lips touched his brow. Her lips seemed cool, so he knew fever was on him. Doubtless she too knew. She talked in low easy tones, monotonous and soothing. Everyone was depressed by the reverses of the summer. From the deep South—Alabama, Mississippi—letters to Mr. Davis were full of lament and the forewarning of disaster. The Yankees, having failed at Charleston, now meant to try Wilmington; for it was to and from these ports that the blockade-runners came and went. Governor Vance was threatening to call home all North Carolina troops to defend their own state. While she talked, sleep rose like a tide to drown his senses; her low voice faded from his consciousness.

When he woke it was full sun, and she was still sitting by his bed. He said she must be tired, but she would not let him talk. There was food, and milk to drink, and he slept again. For days, while she and Milly tended him, he seldom fully woke, sleeping as easily as a dog. It was a week or more before his wakeful intervals began to extend themselves into hours when he and Nell had the rich communion of long talk together.

When she feared this would tire him again he said: “No, I need it. Away from you, I'm a solitary person, Nell; seldom talk with anyone. I'm starved for it.” He said slowly: “I'm surfeited with scouts and raids and dodging bullets and killing Yankees; but I'm starved for quietness and tenderness and—talk. I'm starved for you.” He smiled. “I'm like a baby, wanting nothing but to be fed and loved and fondled.”

Yet he was soon hungry too for news; so though most of all they talked of themselves, he made her tell him what was happening outside this secret, happy room. Longstreet was gone to Tennessee; but a general named Frazier had shamelessly surrendered Cumberland Gap to the Yankees, so Longstreet and his men had to go roundabout. “I never heard of General Frazier,” Faunt commented; and she said no one had heard of him till this craven surrender. When word came of victory at Chickamauga, they exulted together; and she shared his dry rage because that victory, like so many others, was left, for lack of bold pursuit, a fruitless and an empty one. But she said that to be angry was bad for him; and she told him about the little kitchen garden which Rufus had made and strictly guarded, and from which came the fresh vegetables she gave him to eat from day to day. They had tomatoes in plenty, and lima beans. The cabbages were slow to head up, but Rufus picked the leaves to boil with bacon. Red peppers and okra gave a fine flavor to the rich soups Milly concocted, and Faunt gained strength every day.

“You don't know how lucky you are to have me taking care of you,” she told him proudly. “Not many people in Richmond get such nice things nowadays. Prices are so high no one can buy what little the stores have to sell. A barrel of flour costs sixty dollars!”

Yet she gave him not only vegetables and bread but bacon and beef
and everything he desired; and he told her she was a maker of miracles.

“They're very simple miracles,” she assured him. “It's just the miracle of having money. I bought this beef today from Mr. Moffitt. He's one of Colonel Northrop's agents. He buys for the Government at twenty cents or less, and sells to the stores—and to people who keep on his good side, as I do—for fifty cents. Of course, the stores charge two or three times that.”

Faunt frowned. “You're as conscienceless as any woman! I suppose he's making his fortune out of starving the army.”

“I suppose so. Most of the commissary agents are getting rich.”

“And you help him!”

She said quietly: “My dear, I'd become a partner in any crime to get the things you need. And after all, the one little roast of beef I bought for you wouldn't go far to feed the army.”

“But a thousand roasts would go far, and ten thousand women like you would starve an army.”

Nell smiled. “You needn't scold me. I shall still buy whatever you need.” She said seriously: “It's the Government that should be blamed, darling, not the women. Women will always feed their men and their babies if they can. But the Government manages badly. Food collected under the tax-in-kind is stored here in Richmond and allowed to spoil. The army doesn't get it—it just spoils, with people begging a chance to buy some of it. I heard of a woman who tried to buy a barrel of flour, and the merchant wanted seventy dollars for it, and she said she couldn't pay such a price and that she had seven starving children. He told her if she was hungry she could eat her children.”

He laughed. “That's made up. I don't believe it!”

“Neither do I,” she admitted, smiling with him; yet she added: “But it might be true. Faunt, if the hungry women in Richmond ever get mad enough, they'll sweep the whole Government away.” Then, sorrowfully: “There, I shouldn't tell you these things. They only anger you, and that's bad for you.”

“No,” he said. “No, it's good for me. When I was on duty I didn't think about how things were going here. I didn't think much about anything except the men I was trying to kill; but maybe it's not only Yankees that need killing.” His own words, for some obscure reason,
woke a sudden memory, and he added: “By the way, Nell, I've been in Washington since I saw you.”

“Washington?” Her tone was startled.

“Yes.” And he added: “I may go again, some day. It's very simple. There's a regular highway back and forth, you know.” And to her sharp and anxious question, he explained: “Why, General Longstreet wanted to send a spy through the lines, and he asked Stuart's help, and General Stuart spoke to Major Mosby, and he turned the task over to me. The spy was a man named Harrison. I proposed to take him toward Leesburg, but he said the simplest way was across the Northern Neck to Port Tobacco.” She was staring at him, her eyes wide with something like fear; and he asked: “What's the matter?”

“Nothing! Just—frightened for you! Oh Faunt, they'd have called you a spy!”

“Hard names break no bones.”

“I know you're never afraid, my darling; though I die a thousand deaths with fear for you. But they hang spies, even here in Richmond.”

“Someone said they'd caught a woman spy here.”

“Yes, Mrs. Patterson Allan. When they went to arrest her, she was visiting Mrs. Hoge. Mrs. Hoge's son was dying, and Mrs. Allan was staying with her, and General Winder put a guard on the house till Lacy Hoge died, and then he arrested Mrs. Allan.”

“But they didn't hang her.”

“No, but they put her in the Asylum of St. Francis de Sales, out on Brooke Road; and the poor woman has come down with brain fever, and they've shaved her head! That's almost as bad.”

He chuckled, touched her bright hair. “Don't ever turn spy, my dear. But if you do, and they shave this lovely head of yours, I'll scalp them all.”

“I'm frightened for you,” she repeated.

“Well, they didn't catch me,” he reminded her. “We only saw two Yankees the whole way.” No need to tell her how he had dealt with those two.

“But if Harrison knew the way, why did he need you?”

“He knew where to go, and who to ask for; but he'd never been that way himself,” Faunt explained. “But of course Belle Vue was on
the Northern Neck, and I knew every cow path in those woods. We rode down below Port Royal and found a negro to ferry us across to the Neck. We stayed that night in the pines near Belle Vue, and then went on to Mathias Point, to the farm of a man named Ben Grimes.” He smiled at his own tone. “I enjoyed it, Nell; the secrecy and the mystery. It was like a romance.”

“It might have been a tragedy, Faunt.”

“I don't think so. They've never had any trouble. There's a regular signal station in the swamp back of the Grimes house. Lieutenant Caywood and Sergeant Brogden are in charge. Over on the Maryland shore there are two houses on a high bluff, and if it isn't safe for a boat to cross, a black signal is hung in the dormer window of one of the houses. A young lady, Miss Mary Watson, attends to that warning.”

Nell smiled. “This begins to sound like a real romance, Faunt.”

“I never encountered her,” he admitted; “but she is highly spoken of.” And he explained: “There was no warning signal that day. The boat put out just before sunset, because the shadows on the water help hide it then, and the pickets on the Maryland side don't come on duty till about dark. We landed at the foot of a high bluff, and a man met us there and led us up a steep, deep ravine all tangled with honeysuckle to his house on top of the bluff. His name was Jones, Thomas Jones. He handles all the mail. If he's not on the beach, they hide it in the fork of a dead tree and he comes to get it when he can; but Lieutenant Caywood had signalled him we were on the way, so he came down to meet us. His farm's just below a place called Pope's Creek; and there was a detachment of Yankee troops there, and another at Major Watson's, within two or three hundred yards of his farm in the other direction.”

She said smilingly: “You enjoyed it, didn't you? You're like a boy, telling about it.”

Faunt chuckled. “As a matter of fact, there was a boy helping Mr. Jones. Warren Dent, the son of a doctor. He wasn't more than ten years old. Doctor Dent used to call at Mr. Jones's house on his rounds, to carry the mail to Port Tobacco or to Bryantown; but if he couldn't come he sometimes sent his boy. It was the youngster who led us on, before daylight, toward a place called Allen's Fresh; and a man there let us have horses. Harrison had no more need of me, of course; but
I was interested and curious, so I rode on with him. We made a wide circuit through Bryantown to a place called Surrattsville, and put up at Mrs. Surratt's tavern there, and rode into Washington that night.” He chuckled at the memory. “Harrison and I drank with more than one Yankee in the Washington barrooms before he and I parted.”

“You reckless idiot!”

He laughed reassuringly. “It wasn't as bad as it sounds! Washington's full of Southern sympathizers; and of course Mosby's men don't wear any distinguishing uniform, so no one challenged me. But I didn't push my luck too far. I was out of Washington and back at Mrs. Surratt's before daylight, and back at Mr. Jones's home that night.” He said in a different tone: “You can see for miles up and down river from his place, and that ravine with the trees all blanketed with honeysuckle is a natural covered way down to the beach. I could have disposed of every Yankee picket for a quarter-mile in each direction, but it would have made trouble for Mr. Jones.”

“Bloodthirsty man!” Her tone was tenderly affectionate. “I can't imagine you killing Yankees. But Faunt, promise you'll never go again?”

“Oh I've no notion of trying it again. I didn't care for Washington, didn't like the company. It was interesting, though. Harrison said that route is used all the time, not only by the mail, but by spies and smugglers. That part of Maryland is all for the South, of course.”