Read Online House Divided by Ben Ames Williams - Free Book Online

his brother Faunt, who was always so completely himself, gentle and courteous and merry yet without loss of dignity. Trav in company felt awkward and conspicuous, seemed to be forever stumbling over his own feet, was as likely as not if he moved across a crowded room to trip over a rug, or to knock something off a table. If he sat down on a chair, it creaked complainingly; there had been wretched moments in his youth when chairs broke under him. Long since, in self-defense, he had put on a ponderous dignity to hide his own fears; it never occurred to him that strangers and casual acquaintances were more afraid of him than he of them.
    So now, with Enid’s mother coming, with Enid planning parties for her entertainment, he was afraid. He tried to believe that he dreaded merely the tax upon his time at this season when there were not hours enough in the day for him to do all he wished to do and should be doing. Every hand fit to work was busy from daylight to dark, except for the two-hour rest at midday and the weekly holiday from noon on Saturday till Monday morning. There was the corn to plow, peas to plant for feed; there was always, if you looked ahead to another season, compost to be making. That meant hauling ditch sides and swamp mud into the pens where sheep and hogs and cattle were every night collected, for even with the guano he had begun to buy and the peas he plowed under, every acre of cultivated land needed a hundred loads or so of compost each year.
    And the tobacco! The plants were thriving, but they wanted the hoe at least once a week, and to be hand-weeded besides. To grow tobacco hereabouts meant constant vigilance, and needed luck in the weather too. Even Ed Blandy, when Trav began to experiment with the new
yellow tobacco that men were raising on sandy soil in Caswell County, had predicted certain failure. Trav accepted the challenge; and three years ago, with tobacco at thirty-five dollars a hundred, the crops he made had brought over five thousand dollars. He hoped this year, if the price held, to do as well again.
    While his thoughts ran their course, Enid talked herself into better humor; and as his attention came back to her he saw with deep and affectionate appreciation how lovely she was—and how young. He was forty-four, she only twenty-seven; sixteen when he married her. Watching the play of beauty in her eyes he remembered the moment when he first realized she was not the child he had thought her, and the heady happiness of the days that followed, and the incredulous rapture of the hour when she half prompted his blundering declaration, answering him almost before he spoke. He tasted again the bliss he had known when she came into his awkward arms, fragrant and indescribably sweet and ardent in surrender. Absorbed in his long labors here, he had bound her to what must be for her a dull and empty way of life, and tonight, watching her in the candlelight, he blamed himself for thoughtlessness, vowed that when her mother came he would do whatever she chose, would help her to a happy interlude.
    Afterward, to be sure, they could settle back again into the routine that contented him.
    Â 
    During the sharp frenzy of Enid’s many preparations for her mother’s advent Trav spent long hours afield, driving himself and driving the people to do as much as possible before she came; but all too soon a letter from Mrs. Albion announced her imminent arrival Enid said he must go to meet the stage that would bring her from the railroad. “I’ve thousands of last-minute things to do, Trav; and besides, I hate that long, dusty ride.”
    â€œWe could start early, drive slowly. Or we could go the day before and stay over night in Martinston.”
    She laughed at him. “Trav Currain, I believe you’re scared of being alone with Mama! Why, you used to like her! Oh, I know how she flirted with you! She’d have married you if I hadn’t snatched you just in time! I expect