House Divided (175 page)

Vesta laughed at her. “Idiot! It wouldn't have made things anv easier for us, having them miserable here.”

“Well, at least Burr could have seen her oftener! But anyway, we went to Lincolnton and thought ourselves clever; but we found that others had had the same idea. The town was crowded; but I got two rooms, bare floors, feather beds but no bedsteads, a few chairs.” She hesitated, and after a moment went on. “We were there when Sherman burned Columbia. People kept coming to Lincolnton, each with a new story worse than the last. Some of them sounded like the truth, and some sounded like hysteria.” She smiled weakly. “But I was beginning to be a little hysterical myself. I had what seemed like a brilliant idea, to get a wagon and go north to Chimneys. Chimneys
would surely be out of the way, and Tony wasn't there, so we could make ourselves at home.” She filled her lungs with a deep breath. “Well, Banquo got a wagon with two mules. I don't know how, and I didn't ask questions. That old man could always work miracles. I gave him a hundred dollars in gold and told him what I wanted, and that night he walked us all out of town into the blackest woods I ever saw, and there was the wagon and a man. I didn't even see the man, it was so dark; but his voice was white. He put us on what he said was the right road, and said we were to turn north after we crossed the Catawba River and that would bring us to Statesville. So we went on all night, up hill and down, mud and cold and woods. Anarchy and June and Jenny mostly walked. I couldn't. The mud was full of sharp rocks that hurt my feet. Walking was easier than riding, though. The wagon had no spring, so it almost shook our teeth out; and not even Banquo and his miracles could make the mules hurry. June somehow had filled a hamper, of course; so we didn't starve, but it seemed to me it was either pouring rain or freezing cold all the time. I don't know why we didn't all die. I know I wanted to.”

Vesta laughed affectionately. “Poor Mama. I'll bet you were mad!”

“Oh, I was! And no way to blow off steam! You can't quarrel with Jenny, or the children; and when I scolded June or Banquo they just said ‘Yas'm' in that miserable way a half-frozen negro talks. Then at daylight we came to the river; and the mud in the bottoms was knee-deep, so we all tried to ride; but the wagon bogged down and we had to get out and push. Luckily the ford had a hard bottom; but I thought we were lost! I'd have given my eyeteeth for a man to take charge, even a Yankee! Yes, even Redford Streean!”

“That reminds me.” Vesta told her mother about Streean's letter, and Dolly's shameful widowhood, and her departure from Wilmington with Captain Pew.

Cinda listened almost absently. “That poor, lost young one!” For a moment she forgot all else in memories of Dolly, so lovely and so gay. “She's on my conscience, Vesta! I've always been ashamed of despising her as I did. Do you suppose if we'd been nicer to her she'd have turned out better, somehow?”

“I always liked her.”

“Oh, you like everyone!”

The girl laughed. “Heavens, Mama, you make me sound awfully wishy-washy. Go on. You were all in the wagon.”

“Oh bother! I hoped you'd let me forget that. Well, let me see. I think we were three days in that accursed wagon, plodding on and on. The roads are all red clay, and the houses all that graceless sort, two stories high, no veranda, one room deep from front to back, and a kitchen wing behind. And every one was full of refugees, or else deserted and empty. There were roads leading in all directions, and Banquo got lost. He finally brought us into Salisbury, instead of Statesville.

“But that was really lucky, because when we drove into town, there was a train for Greensboro puffing away to get up its courage to start. Jenny and I each grabbed one of the children and made for the cars, and June and Banquo and Anarchy and Kyle came racing after us, and by the grace of pushing and fighting we got on!”

Vesta drew a deep breath. “And here you are!”

Cinda laughed. “It wasn't as simple as that, my dear! The Piedmont Railroad must be a thousand miles long. Actually, we were three full days on their miserable train, while it wandered across fields and through woods and up and down hills and everywhere but on the tracks. It did every conceivable thing trains shouldn't do!”

“Papa says all the food the army gets has to come by that road.”

“I know! We gave a man forty dollars in gold to let us ride in a car full of barrels of flour; and once a snakehead came up—–”

“What's a snakehead?”

“A broken rail, I think. Anyway, that's what the men called it. It came up through the bottom of our car and burst a barrel open and stopped us so short the barrels were all toppling over and rolling around and bursting open. I was afraid for our lives. Banquo managed to keep the barrels from crushing us; but I've breathed in so much flour—the air was full of it—I never want to taste bread again as long as I live!”

Vesta laughed in a swift amusement. “I'm glad to hear it. You've come to a flourless household. There are some prices I simply refuse to pay!”

“I don't care if I starve, now that I'm home.” Memories suddenly flooded Cinda's eyes with tears. “Oh, Vesta, Vesta, the things Sherman
and his men have done to us! I think he's just decided to destroy everything we own, houses, food, everything.”

“Sheridan's done the same thing in the Valley, and in Northern Virginia.”

Cinda nodded. “I suppose they've decided that's the only way to beat us. Ladies told me of nights when they could see houses burning in all directions around them while they hid in the woods with their children. Mr. Hayne said the night they burned Columbia he was at Meek's Mill and he could see the fire from there, the whole city burning. Mrs. Poppenheim at Liberty Hill says they poured into her house and took all her silver and smashed everything, even the furniture, looking for money. If ladies pleaded with them, they were sworn at. The Yankees all said the same thing, as if they'd been taught. They said it was the ladies who egged the men on to keep fighting. You know they burned the Ursuline Convent school at Columbia; and before they did it, the soldiers played the piano and danced, and they broke into the nuns' rooms and smashed open their trunks and searched everything. Twenty women must have told me about soldiers stripping rings off their fingers. One girl had some money in a belt around her waist, and when they burned her father's ears with spills she told them, and they cut off her stays to get at it.” She said honestly: “Some of our own men in Wheeler's cavalry were almost as bad, stealing everything. I suppose they learned it from Sherman's men. Sherman's soldiers hung old men to make them tell where their money was. They'd pull them up off the floor till they were choking, and keep doing it till they told, or till they died. On his line of march from Atlanta to Savannah there are just the chimneys standing, no houses at all, for a path fifty miles wide. Sometimes they'd send spies ahead, men pretending to be hungry Confederate soldiers, and people would feed them and get their help in hiding things and then when the soldiers came, the spies would know where everything was. They drank all the liquor they found. At the Clifford place near Walhalla they drank up dozens of bottles of Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, and all got sick.” Vesta smiled faintly, and Cinda said: “Oh, yes, there've been some funny things. Remember poor dear old Miss Cartin in Columbia? She put on all her dresses, one on top of the other, and packed her silver in her bustle, and it made her so heavy she couldn't climb on
the cars, and when she was lifted on, she couldn't sit down because the forks and knives hurt her.” Vesta laughed aloud, and Cinda went on in an even tone: “But it wasn't funny very often. At Mrs. Parremore's, the Yankees saw some fresh-dug earth and thought they'd find silver buried there. Actually it was a grave, a little negro baby, the grandson of Mrs. Parremore's cook. They dug him up, and threw him to one side,—I suppose they thought there might be some silver buried under him—and hogs ate him. But of course even human beings will eat anything if they're hungry enough.” She saw Vesta's lips white with pain and came back from hideous memories. “Forgive me, Honey. I shouldn't tell you all these things. You're going to have to live in the same nation with these people till you die.”

“Oh, Mama, why do they do it?”

Cinda shrugged. “Why, to make us love them, Vesta!” She spoke in a weary sarcasm. “To make us want to come back into the Union. Yet I suppose they'll wonder, by and by, why we're slow to make friends with them again.”

 

That long spate of talk eased her, yet Cinda for a few days was content to stay quietly at home, to spend long mornings abed. She held a sort of court there, and after the first day Tilda came every morning before leaving the house; and Julian came, and Anne, and Enid and her children. The first Sunday after her return, Trav stopped in. She thought he had grown older in the weeks since she saw him. His shoulders were as broad, but they stooped more than she remembered; and his cheeks were hollowed, and deep lines framed his mouth, and hair and beard showed a sprinkling of gray. She told him he looked fine, and he said he was well. “Most people are,” he remarked. “Maybe short rations are good for us.”

“How's Cousin Jeems?”

“He still carries his arm in a sling, but he can write a little now.” He added: “He's sent for Cousin Louisa. She'd have been here before this if Sheridan weren't so near Lynchburg.” Sheridan at Waynesboro had scattered General Early's little army that not so long ago had been strong enough to march to the outer defenses of Washington itself. “She's going to have another baby this summer.”

“Really? Is that why he sent for her?”

“Partly, I think. But there was a plan for her to go see Mrs. Grant, to see if that wouldn't lead to a meeting between General Grant and General Lee. The whole thing fell through. General Lee asked Grant for an interview to discuss peace; but Grant said he couldn't discuss anything but a military surrender.”

“Are we as near as that to giving up?”

Trav said honestly: “Yes. Some of us have given up already. Major Walton—he's on the staff—has taken a transfer to Mississippi, so when the end comes he'll be that much nearer his home.”

“Why is it so hopeless, Trav? Oh I know it is, but why?”

“Well, for one thing, General Lee hasn't forty-five thousand men in his army, and Grant has a hundred thousand. Then our men get at most one square meal a week and Grant's get three every day. We haven't enough horses to move our guns, nor to mount our cavalry, but Grant has more horses than he can use. And Grant can collect an army of two hundred and fifty thousand men this summer, and General Lee will do well to get together fifty thousand, even including General Johnston's army.”

She almost smiled. “You and your figures.”

“I've got so I hate figures. I wish I didn't know two plus two. But I can't get away from them.”

“You say Cousin Jeems has sent for Cousin Louisa?”

“Yes. As soon as it's safe to travel. He wants her here if she can come. The river's high, so Sheridan probably can't cross; but north of the river there's nothing to stop him between Lynchburg and our defenses here.”

 

From Trav, from Vesta and Tilda and Julian, from the testimony of her own eyes, Cinda had evidence enough that the end was near. Richmond was beleaguered, the city and her defenders were half-starved. There was provision enough in North Carolina, but the broken-down railroad could not move it fast enough to feed the army, much less the hundred thousand people in the city. Civilians who could do so were leaving Richmond as eagerly as deserters left the army. There were daily rumors that Mr. Davis's family and General Lee's had gone or were preparing to go. Cinda, a little ashamed of wishing to make sure this was not so, walked down Franklin Street to
call on Mrs. Lee, living now with her daughters in the narrow brick house only two or three blocks away. General Lee had had his Richmond office there since the first year of the war, and Custis Lee and some of his friends had used the house when they were on duty in Richmond; till Mrs. Lee came last fall to live there with the girls. Cinda found the General's wife in her wheel chair on the second floor veranda, enjoying the warm spring day. As usual, she was knitting. May and Agnes were with her and as busy as she; and she was so serenely cheerful that Cinda as they chatted began to be ashamed of her own fears.

“This has been good for me, Mrs. Lee,” she said when she rose to go “May I make a confession? I'd heard that you were leaving Richmond, and I came to see for myself.”

“It has been decided to defend Richmond, Mrs. Dewain. Why should I leave?”

“Do you think it can be defended?”

Mrs. Lee's eyes were stern. “I have never been so presumptuous as to doubt the mercy of God!”

But though Mrs. Lee would stay, there were many who departed; and the talk was that every government official kept a horse saddled ready for instant flight. Rumors of a treaty with France or with England that might yet bring salvation gave the witless a breath of hope; and some thought enough Negroes might still be recruited to make an army strong enough to crush Grant. Why, three hundred thousand Negro soldiers could destroy the Yankee armies, march on Washington, bring the North to its knees!

But Cinda was sickened by these childish follies. “We might save at least our dignity,” she told Julian. “To lose everything, even our lives, is better than this whining chatter.” She was weary of inaction and thought there might be work for her in the hospital, so she walked out to Chimborazo. Some impulse made her follow Main Street. The iron fence and low arches of the Farmers' Bank always seemed to her to have a hint of the Oriental. Main Street was the financial center, the heart of the city. She wondered how long that heart would continue to beat. There were already visible symptoms of inanition and of decay. At the landings where Main Street crossed Shockoe Creek, a few barges lay idle and deserted; and a fisherman's small sailboat was
awash, hanging sluggish in her slack moorings. The creek was roofed over from Main Street upstream as far as Broad, and since it served as a sewer, its waters were noisome and repulsive. She turned up to Grace Street, wishing Richmond had not so many hills. She had never realized how numerous they were until she gave up the carriage and began to go afoot. She passed Miss Van Lew's, fronting on Grace Street and with gardens and servants' quarters extending down to Main. That extraordinary woman through these terrible years had openly avowed her loyalty to the Union. Probably she was happy now in the certainty that the end for which she had prayed was near.