House Divided (44 page)

Trav closed his eyes before the volley rang; he said to General Longstreet afterward: “That was a hard thing to do.”

Longstreet agreed. “A pity, yes. These are good men; but they've been loafing too long.”

“Winter will be worse, won't it, sir?”

“Worse for the men, yes. Furloughs will help, of course.” The General added: “And you and I will be able to see something of our families. Mrs. Longstreet plans to come on as far as Lynchburg this month; and Lynchburg's not far away.”

Trav knew how much an occasional day or two with Mrs. Longstreet and the children would mean to the General, and he wished he could look forward as eagerly to seeing Enid again; but he had in fact no desire to see her, seldom thought of her at all. Except for that one occasion in August he had stayed at headquarters, absorbed in his routine tasks. Cinda, in an October letter, said he should come to Richmond more often. “And to Great Oak, to see Enid and the children.” She added with an obscure irrelevance: “Mr. Streean thinks Faunt and the Blues will soon be coming home.” That seemed a curious thing for Cinda to say, as though Faunt's prospective return was a reason for his seeing Enid; but Cinda often puzzled him. She was as perplexing as Enid, in a different way.

Summer and Fall, 1861

 

 

I
F TRAV found contentment, during that quiet summer after Manassas, in the routine of military life, so did Tony. He was happier than he had ever been, revelling in an exhilarating sense of capacity and power. He had always thought of himself as a coward. To discover, as he did at Bethel, that he was in a modest way a hero, and to find that he was a leader whom men respected, was an inspiring stimulus.

The inspiration persisted. Through the weeks after Bethel, when action was replaced by what seemed aimless marching to and fro, and drill was the order of the day, men sickened from inadequate or improper food. Bob Grimm, who during those days of playing war at Martinston had been laid low by a boil that was funny to everyone but Bob, was their only battle casualty. At Bethel a musket ball smashed his elbow and he lost the arm and was discharged. But Jim Tunstill and Albert Hunt died of the measles and Rab Anderson of dysentery. Chub Welfare was the glutton of the company, and one day when no rations were available he led a hunt for bull frogs in a creek near camp. They caught a dozen or two, and proceeded to boil them whole. Tony came upon them grouped around their cooking fire, about to begin the feast.

“Those frogs might make you sick, boys,” he suggested. It was no more than a suggestion, for he recognized the limitations of his authority; yet his advice, and after the first taste their own repugnance, made some of the men abstain. Chub, however, ate not only his own share but the leftovers of these others. The resulting dysentery stripped
his well-padded frame of forty or fifty pounds of weight; and though he survived, he was weak as an ailing woman afterward.

Such incidents strengthened Tony's influence over his men. He set Ed Blandy and Tom Shadd to teach them how to sleep on the ground in mud or rain without needless discomfort. He sought advice from experienced campaigners and passed it on to them. They learned that to eat lightly and to drink cold water slowly and to wear a wetted handkerchief in their hats made a hot day endurable, and that clean feet in clean and well-darned socks did not blister so easily on a long march. In one of the training maneuvers which were the order of the summer, during a halt beside good running water, a fair third of Tony's company knelt along the stream to wash socks and underclothes; and while they were thus engaged Colonel Hill rode by and stopped to speak to Tony.

“Is this by your orders, Captain?”

“Well, it's not orders, sir; but the men are learning how to keep themselves clean.”

“Good! Excellent! I wish all the companies were as well led.” Colonel Hill added thoughtfully: “An army spends most of its time not in fighting the enemy but in fighting its own laziness and carelessness. More men will be put out of action in this war by blistered heels than by bullets.” He nodded again. “Good,” he repeated, and rode on.

So Tony met the test of the summer of idleness after Manassas as adequately as he had met the test of action at Bethel. When in August he had two days in Richmond, he told Cinda laughingly: “I don't know whether I'm a captain or a nurse. I inspect heels quite as carefully as I inspect muskets.”

Even thus soon after Clayton's death, Cinda could smile. “I can't imagine you, somehow, peering at a soldier's feet!”

“Not only their feet,” he assured her. “Their socks too, and their underwear. Why, I'm as critical of their laundry as Mama ever was of the way things were done at Great Oak. And I keep them up to the mark, too! Nat Emerson had to walk post twelve hours barefoot because he marched with a hole in his sock and got a blister. Joe Merritt cooked his dinner in a dirty frying pan, so I made him wash all the company's dishes that day.” Thinking of Clayton he wished to lead her to laughter, and he spoke of the day when Chelmsford Lowman's
horse was lame and he rode a little spike-tailed mule which balked at a ford. “So we put a rope on the mule's neck and the men tailed onto it to drag the mule across with Lowman still on its back. He's a tall, thin man with a big Adam's apple. The mule swerved into a pot hole below the ford and went clean under, and Lowman too; but when the men hauled them out he was still on the mule's back, with his Adam's apple working like a pump handle, spitting muddy water like a fountain. He said that dratted mule waded all the way across!”

Cinda was amused, and he told her about Chub Welfare and the bull frogs, and made her laugh again. “But I'm surprised your men get sick,” she remarked. “They ought to be healthy enough—country folk.”

“The country people seem to get measles and mumps and things like that more easily than men from the cities,” he told her. “I don't know why, but it works out that way.” He said thoughtfully: “Lots of things in this war have worked out in ways I didn't expect. For instance, there's mighty little fighting. We've had only three hours of it in four months.”

“There was fighting enough at Manassas.”

“I'm sorry, Cinda. Didn't mean to—–”

She said gently: “It's all right, Tony. I'm all right. I can even forget, sometimes.” She added, her eyes thoughtful: “I wonder if it wouldn't be wise for the whole South to forget Manassas, Tony. That victory may be the ruin of us.”

“Oh, I don't think a good victory ever did anyone any harm.”

“I'm not so sure! Everybody thought after the battle that the war was won. So now no one's doing anything!” She spoke scornfully: “Except parade down to Mr. Libby's tobacco factory to peep at Congressman Ely in prison there. He's one of the sights of Richmond. People would almost pay to see him, like a lion in a cage.”

“Not much of a lion!” Tony reminded her. “Didn't we catch him hiding in the woods, after the battle?”

“Oh yes, he'd come out from Washington to see us beaten!”

“I hear everyone in Washington who could hire a carriage drove out to watch, brought their ladies, promised them a victory ball in Richmond.” He asked: “Is it true the Yankees had thirty thousand pairs of handcuffs, to use on the Southerners they were going to capture?”

“I don't know,” Cinda said wearily. “Oh, I've heard all the stories, but I wonder if they're true. Some of the Northern papers say we tied prisoners to trees and stabbed them, and stuck bayonets into them. Of course that's a lie; but probably our papers tell us just as many lies about the Yankees.” She shook her head. “Have you seen Tilda? You must drop in on her, Tony. She'll be hurt if you don't.”

“Oh, I will,” he agreed; but her suggestion surprised him. None of them had ever cared whether Tilda were hurt or not.

It seemed to him, when he called at the house a few blocks out Franklin Street, that Tilda, who had always been as thin as a slat, began to be a little plump; and there was something sleek and complacent about her. “You're looking well, Tilda,” he remarked. “I guess the war agrees with you.”

“Why, you know, I think it does,” she admitted. “I love having Richmond so full of our boys home to be admired and praised. I declare it seems as if half the army was trying to beau Dolly around! She's having just a wonderful time!” She asked: “Do you see much of Enid?”

“We ride over now and then, yes.”

“How is she?”

There was a sharp curiosity in her tone which surprised him. “Why, the same as ever, I suppose.” He smiled. “She thinks the war is just a scheme of Trav's so he could get away from home, takes it as a personal affront. But Enid's always discontented, fussing about something.”

“Did—does she say anything about Faunt?”

He lighted a long cigar, careful of his tone. Obviously Tilda too had eyes to see. “Oh, she always asks the latest news about everybody,” he said casually, and asked in his turn: “So Dolly's having a high time, is she? I expect you like watching her goings on.”

“Of course I do,” Tilda assented, and she added quickly: “Oh, I s'pose I ought not to be enjoying it all so much, and of course I'm sorry about Clayton; but really, Tony, he shouldn't have been in the army at all. Neither should you, for that matter! Nor Trav! You ought all of you to be farming. Redford says food is going to be ever so scarce this winter, and someone has to feed the soldiers, even if there isn't much glory in it.”

He spoke in drawling amusement. “I suppose Mister Streean and Darrell feel they're making a sacrifice.”

“Why, they are! Redford's just worked to death. Darrell's desperately in love with that sweet little Anne Tudor, but it doesn't prevent his being a wonderful business man! He's in Mississippi now seeing about sending some cotton through the lines.” They heard the front door open, heard Streean in the hall, and she said quickly: “Oh dear, I shouldn't have said that! It's a secret! But of course we can't eat our old cotton, and Redford says if we can get food in exchange for it—–”

Then as her husband appeared she checked in midsentence, but Streean had heard, for he said at once: “Hello, Tony. Glad to see you. Yes, we can make our cotton feed us and fight for us.” He went to his desk as though to look for something there, and Tony said in surprise:

“I thought we meant to hold our cotton so the Northern mills would have to shut down.”

“That's the official policy, but we have to be practical, too. Oh, that reminds me.” Streean closed the desk, stuffing some papers in his pocket. “I'm about to pay my respects to an old friend of yours, Mrs. Albion. Care to come along?”

Tony waited a moment so his tone would not betray him. “Yes, I'd like to join you, yes, if I won't be intruding.”

“Not at all,” Streean declared. “She'll be delighted, I know.”

 

Walking out Franklin Street to Monroe, Tony found himself at the prospect of this encounter pleasantly excited. A maid servant, not Tessie whom he remembered, admitted them. As he followed Streean into the house Tony heard a door close somewhere; and he recognized the sound. That was the side door, opening into the small garden through which a path led to the wicket gate. He himself, when he was with Nell and unexpected callers came, had sometimes slipped away through the garden. Who was Nell's—patron now? He felt an almost jealous pang.

Before she appeared, Tony heard the latch click on the wicket, and he strolled to the window that looked that way and saw not one man but two departing. Then Nell appeared. That serenity and poise
which had always seemed to him so contenting was still hers; she was as beautiful as she had always been.

She greeted Tony without embarrassment, like an old friend; and he suspected she had seen his glance toward the garden, for she said at once: “I was sorry to keep you waiting, but two gentlemen were just leaving.”

Streean obviously had not guessed this. “Eh? Who were they?”

“From Baltimore,” she explained. “They're working with General Winder on secret service, so they preferred not to be recognized. I knew them in Washington, so they came to pay their respects.”

“Winder's police, eh? Well, they'll find plenty to do here. Richmond's full of Northern agents. The New York Herald has just published a complete schedule of all our forces under arms, their location, their commanders. I suspect that information came out of the Adjutant General's office. General Cooper is Northern-born.”

Nell smiled. “You might as reasonably suspect Ordnance, or the Commissariat,—or even your own department. There are many loose tongues in Richmond.” She added, indicating a newspaper on the table. “The gentlemen who just left were discussing the destruction of Hampton.”

Streean nodded. “Butler's taking revenge on helpless women and children for the licking we gave him at Bethel.” Hampton was down at the tip of the Peninsula, not far from Tony's duty at Yorktown, but he had not heard this news; and he crossed to pick up the paper, the day's
Examiner.
The Federals—said the
Examiner
—had burned the town, “destroyed it not by sections but wholly, completely, fully,” before they evacuated the place.

When Tony laid the paper aside and sat down, he only half listened to their conversation. In old days Nell would have taken him upstairs where the chairs were comfortable and a man could be at ease. That she did not do so now might be deliberate, to remind him of what he had cast aside; but probably it was only because Streean was here. They were speaking of the victory at Manassas, and Nell said it was a pity the Confederates had not pursued the shattered Yankee army. Streean laughed. “You sound like Mr. Benjamin, Mrs. Albion. He wants to be Secretary of War, so he's trying to curry favor with President Davis by criticizing Beauregard.”

“I wasn't criticizing General Beauregard! President Davis himself was at Manassas. He could have ordered the pursuit. Since he didn't, he must take the blame.”

“Not at all,” Streean insisted. “Beauregard, or rather Johnston, stopped the pursuit. General Longstreet had his guns ready to open on the Yankees as they poured into Centerville; but Johnston ordered him not to do so, and after that it was too late.”

“If you count on General Longstreet as a Davis partisan, you'll be disappointed,” Nell assured him. “He'll never forgive President Davis for that question at their first meeting here in Richmond.

Tony asked curiously: “What question, Nell?”

The use of her first name was an inadvertence; but he saw her faint color and thought she was pleased. “Why, the General reported for duty, and President Davis asked him whether he had settled his accounts with the Federal Government. Longstreet was paymaster in Albuquerque, you know; and naturally he resented the question as impugning his personal honor. He turned red and said very stiffly: ‘Sir, I come as an honorable gentleman to offer my sword to the South.' ”

Tony nodded. “As if Longstreet were an embezzler. Were you there, ma'am?” This time he addressed her more formally.