House Divided (148 page)

Thinking that Captain Pew might know more than he had told Redford, she tried next morning to see him, asking for him at the Spottswood and the Ballard; but she did not find him. She wrote Jenny to inquire whether Dolly had arrived at the Plains, and as an afterthought she wrote Tony at Chimneys for news of Darrell. Redford Streean told her that evening that Captain Pew had returned to Wilmington. She wished, too late, that she had gone with him to try to find Dolly.

She had long waiting for any answer to either of her letters. February brought a new pressure of hunger everywhere. Tilda heard spiteful talk about Mrs. Davis's luncheon for ladies when she served roast ducks, jellied chicken, oysters, a lavish meal; while at the same time the army was on such short rations that General Lee had to appeal to his soldiers for patience and endurance. On every street corner in Richmond there were muttering groups of poor women, each with a train of hungry children. Some thought that Lee might have to send a few regiments to keep down the unrest in the city.

Redford Streean told her that General Lee had asked President Davis to prevent commissary agents buying government supplies for their families and their friends. “He claims that it takes food out of the mouths of the army,” he said resentfully. “If they want rations, why not capture them from the enemy? General Lee complains like an old woman. We have as much right to be fed as the soldiers, I suppose.”

Tilda nodded indifferent agreement. He was right, of course. Everyone who could buy government beef and flour did so; and certainly there seemed to be plenty. Richmond had never been more gay than it was just now. Tilda had hoped she and Redford would be invited to Mrs. Ives's for the performance of
The Rivals
, an event for which rehearsals had been weeks in progress. They were not invited, but when the time came she no longer cared. Nothing else mattered till she knew where Dolly was.

 

The first answer to her letters came from Tony. “Darrell left here two or three days before Christmas,” he wrote. “He expected to go to
Wilmington and on to Nassau.” His letter was short, but Tony never wrote at length. Tilda found in what he said some reassurance. If Darrell had set out for Wilmington before Christmas, he must surely have reached there before Dolly did; so perhaps Dolly had not lied after all. She must have met Darrell and planned to go with him on the
Dragonfly
, and then they changed their plans and Dolly did not trouble to write Jenny again. Probably, Tilda told herself, snatching at any straw of hope, they had met friends and gone to visit on some plantation near Wilmington; and surely Dolly had joined Jenny at the Plains by now.

But the day after Tilda heard from Tony, Jenny wrote that Dolly was not at the Plains; so Tilda was distracted, nursing her terror in silence, confiding in no one, till on the eleventh of February Dolly's breathless letter came.

Tilda read the letter once and then twice, at first with surprise and with a great relief; but then questions came to trouble her. Dolly and her new husband, according to the letter, must have been married about the first of February. But Dolly had reached Wilmington on the sixth of January! Where had she been for those three weeks of which she now gave no accounting? If she had been with Darrell, why did she not speak of him? If she had gone to Nassau? Tilda shook her head. If Dolly had gone to Nassau, Captain Pew would have said so.

She showed Redford the letter and he read it with an amused chuckle. “Well, it's high time,” he commented. “But young Kenyon has my sympathy. She'll lead him a dance.”

Tilda tried to protest. “Why, Redford, Dolly'll make a real sweet wife! You know she will.”

Streean laughed. “I wouldn't want to risk anything on it. She's a spoiled hussy, Tilda. No one man will ever be enough for her. She'll want a regiment.” He looked at the letter again. “See here, where did she meet him, if she was at the Plains? Fort Fisher's in Wilmington.”

“Maybe she met Darrell in Wilmington and stayed there a few days with him.”

“I don't think so. Captain Pew didn't see Darrell, and he went to Wilmington on the same train with Dolly.” Tilda had no answer, and he said: “I'll ask Pew about it, next time he comes to Richmond.” He grinned. “Tilda, I'll bet that little lady never went to the Plains at all. She just made the trip an excuse to get out from under your wing. Well, at least she's married. Let her husband worry about her from now on.”

 

Tilda wrote to Dolly, but that letter was hard to phrase. Your children had you always at a disadvantage. You loved them so much more than they loved you. If you sought to guide or to control them, they thought you a tiresome nuisance, or a tyrant; and in the long run they would always go their own way. If you tried too stubbornly to hold them fast, you lost them. No mother could ever win a battle with her daughter; for victory was itself defeat. Children were so much a part of you that to hurt them was to hurt yourself—and to lose them.

And Dolly was a grown woman. Scolding was emptiness. Whatever
had been done was done, irrevocably. She must keep as much of Dolly's trust and of Dolly's love as the girl would grant her.

So she wrote carefully, trying not to sound querulous. “I was mighty glad to have your letter, darling, with your happy news. I'd been a little worried, of course, because Jenny wrote me that you'd met Darrell and gone off to Nassau on the Dragonfly. That sounded so dangerous. I know the Yankee cruisers shoot at the blockade-runners, and I couldn't bear to think of cannon balls rattling around your head. Captain Pew was here two weeks ago and he didn't mention your having gone, but I knew you were with Darrell, and so of course you were all right. I hadn't told your father what Jenny wrote me.” That silence on her part might be a bond between her and Dolly. “Lieutenant Kenyon must be charming, if you love him so. Is he one of Darrell's friends? I haven't heard from Darrell for months. Tell him he ought to write me a nice letter some day. You and your Lieutenant must come for a visit when you can. I'll send your things as soon as you tell me where to direct them.”

She made more than one draft of this letter, writing and rewriting it, careful to exclude from it everything but tenderness and affection. One wrong word now might create a rift between her and Dolly that could never be mended. Having written the letter she wondered where to send it, and added a postscript. “You don't give me your address so I'll send this to your nice husband to give to you.” And she enclosed it in a note to Lieutenant Kenyon and addressed it to Fort Fisher

At once, to protect Dolly, she went to tell Cinda of Dolly's marriage. She tried to pretend a delight she did not feel, and Cinda joined in that pretense; but when Tilda said good-by, Cinda caught her and kissed her, and Tilda to her own dismay burst into tears.

“Oh, Cinda,” she sobbed, “I'm so desperately unhappy. I hate this getting married in such a hurry. People's tongues!”

Cinda held her close, patted her shoulder. “There, dear; there!” And she said reassuringly: “Things happen more quickly in these times, darling. Dolly's all right.” She laughed a little. “She ought to be smacked, of course, but she'll be all right. And she's a grown woman, you know.”

“I hate it,” Tilda insisted. “But if I scold her, she'll just hate me!”

“Why not go visit her? Go see this young man. I expect he's just as nice as he can be.”

“You always make things seem all right, somehow.” Tilda's tears came in a flood. “Oh, Cinda, I love you so! I wish we could be together more. I need someone to talk to. I'm so lonesome, sometimes.”

“You can always talk to me.”

“Do you think I ought to tell people about Dolly?”

“Of course! Don't go out of your way, but tell all your friends.”

“I haven't any friends.”

“Nonsense!”

“I haven't!” Tilda insisted. “People don't like Mr. Streean.” In a burst of helpless confession she cried: “Oh, I wish I'd never married him, Cinda. Sometimes I wish I'd never been born.”

“There—now you've got that off your mind you'll feel better.”

“You all just despise him. And so do I.”

“People don't despise you, though,” Cinda assured her. “You've made a place for yourself. I'm real proud of you.”

Tilda's tears no longer flowed. “I know I've tried awful hard,” she admitted. “Sometimes I do feel as if I amounted to something.” And she said in a low tone: “Cinda, when I first knew that about Papa and President Lincoln, I thought it was pretty awful; but now I'm sort of proud he's related to us. It's just simply crazy, I suppose; but after all, he's President. I sort of feel as though I wanted to live up to him.”

Cinda said quietly: “I've been proud ever since I saw him in Washington.”

Tilda kissed her again. “And I want to live up to you, Cinda,” she said softly. “I'm awful proud that you're my sister.”

 

When Captain Pew next came to Richmond, Streean brought him to the house. “He knows Dolly's husband,” he told Tilda. “So you'll want to ask him a lot of questions.”

He left them together while he went to his room, but Tilda's question was not about Lieutenant Kenyon. “Captain Pew,” she asked in a low tone, “did Dolly go with you and Darrell to Nassau?”

She saw in his eyes what might have been uneasiness, but he evaded her question. “Oh, I haven't seen Darrell for several months.”

She brushed that aside. “Then did Dolly go with you?” And when
he hesitated, she said: “I'm not blaming you if she did. She's headstrong and impetuous, and she'll do anything to get her own way. I know she wanted to. Did she?”

He said, after a moment: “Well, yes ma'am, she did.” She saw in him a deep embarrassment, and some sullen anger; and an apologetic desire to justify himself was plain in his next words. “On the train, on the way down there, she teased me to take her along. You know she can drive a man crazy with her teasing. But I told her no. Then she managed to come aboard, the night of our farewell supper. We always invite everyone in town, and she just mixed in with the crowd. She wore Darrell's clothes, ma'am.” There was no question of the anger in him now. “She told me afterward she'd brought them along on purpose. She pretended to be going to the Plains just to get away from Richmond, but all the time she meant to make me take her to Nassau.”

“Couldn't you have put her ashore?”

“She hid in my locker, ma'am. I was on deck till after we slipped through the blockading steamers, about daylight next morning. Then I went below and there she was, rolled up in one of my coats, asleep on my bunk! It was too late to put back.”

Tilda, thinking of Dolly's shameful masquerade, remembered a night long ago when the child had dressed in Darrell's things and slipped out of the house to mingle with a celebrating throng on Richmond's streets. It was a long time now since Richmond had had anything to celebrate. “But you did bring her back to Wilmington?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. “I kept her on shipboard in Nassau. We anchored in the harbor and lightered off our cotton, and she didn't leave the ship. And I brought her back. She wanted to go ashore at Nassau, but I wouldn't let her; so we didn't part on very good terms.”

Tilda heard Redford Streean descending the stairs. She whispered: “Don't tell Mr. Streean, please.” And then, aloud, as Streean appeared in the door: “Lieutenant Kenyon sounds perfectly charming.”

“He's a fine young fellow,” Captain Pew agreed.

Tilda wanted to be alone, but she was afraid that if she tried to walk her trembling knees would not support her; so she sat quietly while the two men fell at once into talk of business. Streean said: “Our venture into the passenger trade fell through.”

Captain Pew nodded. He said that Mr. Hyman, when he came aboard the
Dragonfly
at Wilmington, balked at the sum demanded for transporting him and his family to Nassau.

“I was moderate enough,” the Captain explained. “Ten thousand dollars per passenger, and there were only six of them. But our friend burst into a harangue, and I tossed him off the ship.” He added frankly: “I thought he'd pay, once he saw I meant it; but he called down a thousand curses on my head and led his party away.”