House Divided

by Ben Ames Williams

  His eyes swept this his domain, and James Fiddler’s too. The over seer’s father had been one of the tenant farmers here, greedy and improvident; James himself had stayed on, at first to rob Trav, then to love him. Their horses cropped the dry grass, willing to pause a while; and Trav spoke without turning, contentedly. “We’ve made a change here, James, in these years.”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember well how it was when I came; all the old fields gone to sedge and pine. But we’ve put them back to work, one way or another; wheat and corn, tobacco, the orchards, and the vineyard now. All the land that’s workable is working, or resting to be put to work another year.” James Fiddler looked at him in a way that suggested the comradeship between these two, and Trav spoke half to himself. “And always something new to do. It’s a full, rich way of life.”

  The other spoke of what they both knew. “I used to plan to get what I could and go away. Now I want nothing but to go on here with you.”

  “The place is more than me or you.”

  “Hard to think of Chimneys without you!”

  Trav smiled contentedly. “Yes. I’ve set my roots here now.”

  He turned his horse to go on. The trail, following a meandering branch, dipped into the grateful shade of oaks undergrown with dogwood and haw and scattering redbud. The horses jogged serenely till Trav, leading, turned up hill along another trail. Then his beast sheered in protest at this departure from the homeward way, and Trav spoke chidingly and urged the horse to an easy canter, while James Fiddler dropped far enough behind to be clear of the pebbles thrown up by flying hoofs. They came over a rise and down into a cove among the hills, to a triangular clearing in the bottoms where a man with a mule on a jerk rein was plowing between freshly sprouted rows of corn while at his heels a boy of eight or nine dropped black-eyed peas in the fresh furrows. Ed Blandy had here a few well-tilled acres, a saddlebag log house which his hands had built, and a wife and four youngsters.

  He came toward them; and he and Trav spoke together like old friends of the need of rain, and why there were always more pests to eat the crops in a dry season, and how corn depleted a piece of land if you planted it year after year. Their voices were hushed by the quiet peace of the ending day. Trav saw Ed’s boy waiting yonder by the flap-eared mule and said his own Peter would soon be old enough to ride the rounds with him. “Lucy—” She was his daughter, ten years old, named for his mother. “Lucy comes along sometimes, now, when I’m not going too far.”

  Blandy had killed a young buck deer down by the branch that morning, and he went to fetch a haunch from the spring house. With the venison hung to his saddle, Trav led James Fiddler homeward, the horses fretting because they must walk the last mile to cool off quietly. They came up past the saw mill toward the house, and when they emerged from the woods Trav saw scores of swallows and martins circling above the corn cribs, and bull bats on whickering wing high in the sky.

  “A flight of weevils coming out of the old corn,” he said. “Let’s empty the cribs for a good brushing and scrubbing before we put the new crop in.”

  Fiddler assented. At the stables, Negro boys raced to take the reins, and Trav moved on alone toward the big house. He approached it from the rear, past the smithy where black Sam was still at work, a fountain of sparks rising from his ringing hammer blows; past the poultry yards where roosters scratched and geese hissed and strutting gobblers made their stiff wings scrape the ground and guineas pot-racked nervously and ’Phemy, the mulatto woman whose charges they were, was stuffing the young turkeys with pepper corns; past the idle windlass of the horse-powered thresher, and the shoemaker’s shop; past the log house wherein wool from his own sheep was spun and woven.

  This was his world, complete in itself; and he loved it. He entered the big house by a side door on the ground level, coming directly into what—before he added a separate wing—had been the kitchen. This was a low-ceiled room, its walls and ceiling half-timbered, the spaces between the timbers filled with straw and clay nogging. Always cool in summer, a deep hearth gave ample heat when heat was needed. Here were his ledgers and his letter press and all the meticulously kept farm records; here were James Fiddler’s desk and his own; to this sanctuary he could always retreat when he wished to escape Enid’s fretful complaints which might whine like a nagging wind through the house above. Here, except himself and James Fiddler and a servant to bring lightwood for the fireplace and to brush up the floor, no one ever came.

  When Trav took off his hat, his forehead, always shaded against the sun, showed white; his cheek and chin were dark saddle brown from much exposure. He slapped dust from his trousers and his boots and disposed of the crumb of tobacco in his cheek and ascended narrow stairs into the cross hall of the floor above. A Negro with one foot gone, his knee bent back and strapped into the home-made peg he wore, came to meet him; and Trav said in a friendly tone: “Joseph, I left a haunch of venison on my saddle. Don’t let it go to waste.” He had accepted the gift to please Ed Blandy; but Enid did not like wild meat, and Trav avoided argument with her. The Negro’s teeth shone. “Yassuh! Nawsuh!” Joseph had worked in the saw mill down by the branch till a rolling log tripped him into the saw, and after his leg healed Trav brought him into the big house to easier service. Enid objected to the tap of his peg, to his general awkwardness; she said he ought to be kept in the fields; but Trav, without answering her fretful protests, nevertheless ignored them.

  Hearing their father’s voice as he spoke to Joseph, Lucy and small Peter came racing through the wide transverse hall to greet him, Lucy as he stooped throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Hullo, hullo!” he said happily. “But be careful, Honey, you’ll get yourself dirty. I’m all horse and sweat.”

  “I don’t care!” She kissed him, and he hugged the children close, kneeling, embracing them both. The black girl who was their nurse, with four-months-old Henrietta cradled against her shoulder, watched in dull disinterest, till Enid called angrily to her from the hall above:

  “Vigil, for Heaven’s sake, take that snuff stick out of your mouth! How many times do I have to tell you?” Then, without any change of tone, scolding Trav as she had scolded the nurse. “You always come home a mess! Why can’t you wait till you’ve cleaned up, to maul the children?”

  Vigil led them away, and Trav went up the stairs toward his wife, walking slowly as though suddenly tired. Enid was much younger than he. Her eyes, startlingly blue, contrasted with bright hair, and she was slim, scarce more rounded than a child. She recoiled from his proffered kiss.

  “Oh, Trav, you’re a sight! Boo! Smelling of horse and dust and saddle leather. Don’t touch me! Now hurry and clean up, do. What made you so late?”

  “We stopped by Ed Blandy’s.”

  “Can’t you keep away from that white trash?” This was an old quarrel, and it followed him as he moved away. “You won’t ever go anywhere with me! I declare you’d rather go to a hog killing or a corn shucking than to a ball! but you’ll talk for hours to that no-count——”

  In his own room he closed the door, shutting out her words yet still hearing her voice as he began to rid himself of dusty clothes. He and the overseer had tramped through woodlands today to locate a few oaks that would make beams for a larger mill house Trav thought of building, so he was not surprised to find a tick on his right leg already well embedded; and he called Joseph to bring him a handful of pennyroyal and rubbed. the tick till it let go. He went down to use the outdoor shower and was bathed and dressed and downstairs again before Enid descended. Joseph brought him a frosted julep in a silver goblet and he sat at ease on the veranda, watching blue shadows flood the valley lands below, till Enid in sharp impatience summoned him. She never ceased to resent his insistence on delaying the day’s heavy meal till dusk, for despite her small proportions she was always hungry. But Trav liked long days afield, and he was unwilling to come home while hours of daylight still remained. Now when he followed her into the dining room it was already
so nearly dark that candles were needed; and Enid scolded Joseph because he had not lighted them. The Negro thumped away to the kitchen to fetch a spill, and Trav wished he need not be alone with Enid when she was in this humor. His thought found words.

  “Enid, I wish Lucy and Peter could eat with us.”

  “They have their dinner at a sensible hour. Just because you choose to starve from sunrise to dusk is no reason they should! It’s bad enough for me to have to go hungry. Besides, I hear enough of their chatter all day.” And she added: “Mr. Lowman sent a boy with a letter from Mama today. She’s coming to visit us.”

  He looked his slow surprise. “Why?”

  “Why? Why not, for goodness’ sake? Why shouldn’t she?”

  “Well—she hasn’t been here since we were married.” He tried to amend his error. “Well, that will be mighty nice for you, won’t it?”

  “You act as if she weren’t welcome here!”

  “Why—she’s never come before, that’s all; not since we were married. But I’m glad she’s coming.”

  “Well, I’m not!” Even after ten years she still confused him. Let him take one side of any question and she was sure to take the other; but if he yielded she instantly seized the ground he had abandoned. It was as though she preferred argument to agreement, discord to the peace he would have chosen. “I’m not!” she repeated. “It means turning everything upside down, getting ready for her.”

  “I should think she’d be comfortable . . .”

  “What do you know about it? As long as you’re fed, and can go to sleep at dark and get up at daylight, and go off all day visiting your no-count friends, you never notice things! But every bit of silver needs cleaning, and the floors have to be waxed, and the furniture needs polishing, and I don’t know what all. I’m just desperate!”

  “Put the people at it.”

  “They don’t do anything right unless I’m after them every minute. I declare, sometimes I think it would be easier to do things myself.”

  “Well, if you’d rather she didn’t come . . .”

  “Oh, I suppose you’d like to see me turn my own mother away!”

  “Why, I just thought getting ready for her might be too much for you. But if you want her . . .”

  “It’s not what I want! Don’t imagine that for a minute.” Yet she began to plan, thinking aloud. They must do this and that, thus and so, to entertain her mother. “Emmy Shandon’s one of her oldest friends, of course, if they’d ever be at home instead of off at the Springs or somewhere; and Clarice Pettigrew; and we’ll have the Lenoirs.” Forgetting him, excited by her own anticipations, she rattled names of neighbors for fifty miles around, from Happy Valley beyond the hills northwesterly to Panther Creek away to the eastward. Trav made no protest, but he dreaded the festivities she planned. With men like Ed Blandy and the small farmers who lived between here and Martinston, he was easily comfortable. Their common devotion to the land bound them all in a close-knit fraternity. But men like Pettigrew and Shandon, leaving their places to the overseers and willing to follow a pack of hounds and a frightened fox full gallop across their own fields or across his, and to smile in amused tolerance when he protested at their trespasses; with such men he had nothing in common.

  Yet he liked them, these people who all knew each other so well and laughed so easily; and sometimes he thought how pleasant it would be to be one of them, able to meet them amiably. They reminded him of 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.

  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.”

  “We 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 she’s just as pretty and charming as she ever was.” Then in quick delight: “Honey, you’re red as a brick! I declare, I wish you could see yourself! You look so funny, all blushing and embarrassed!”

  He remembered Mrs. Albion as a pretty woman with a possessiveness in her manner which had in the past at once flattered and alarmed him; and he dreaded the six- or seven-mile ride home from Martinston alone with her. On his way to town to meet her he stopped to talk with Ed Blandy and with Lonn Tyler and Jeremy Blackstone and other farmers along the way, postponing as long as possible his arrival at the tavern where the stage would halt. A baking summer sun lay across the land, and Trav drove slowly, appraising with an expert eye the condition of the crops in each man’s clearing, smiling at the children playing around each cabin. He overtook an occasional wagon, or a man and woman on horseback with bulging saddlebags, the woman’s cotton wrap-around riding skirt whipping in the light breeze, her face hidden und
er her sunbonnet. Once he alighted to drink where a spout-spring came down from the mountainside, then watered his horses in the hollowed gum log which the spring fed. While they drank with cool sucking sounds he heard in the wood the log-cock’s pounding tattoo, heard the drum of a grouse; and twice before he drove into the village he saw turkeys, and once a deer crossed the road a quarter-mile in front of the carriage.

  At the tavern, on the long veranda shaded by an overhanging second story supported by slender brick pillars, a dozen men were awaiting the arrival of the stage. He joined them, for they were his friends. They sat along the benches or in tipped-back chairs, their voices easy in the midday heat. Judge Meynell and Miss Mary were here to take the stage when it should arrive. The Judge, high-dressed for the coming journey, was hot and sweating; but Miss Mary sat demurely, her bonnet box upon her knee, her cheeks pink with the excitement of the occasion. Trav sat down beside the Judge and they fell into talk together, and other men drew near to listen to the discussion; for Trav, as the only big planter for many a mile, and Judge Meynell, on his way now to Quarter Sessions, were men whose words were heeded. Judge Meynell was a justice of the peace and a person of authority. He and his fellow justices, sitting as the County Court, not only heard petty legal causes but they appointed the sheriff and the road overseers, and decided where bridges should replace fords, and where schools were needed, and who should stand for the Assembly. But Judge Meynell never acted against Trav’s advice and counsel.

  The abolitionists up North were bound to make trouble, the Judge suggested; but Trav said the politicians down in the Cotton States were quite as bad in their way. “Little boys calling names on both sides,” he and Judge Meynell agreed. Except for Trav and for the Judge, who owned an old house servant, none of the men in the group on the veranda owned slaves; and when Trav said slavery was not worth getting mad about, most of them nodded. But Matt Resor, sprawling on the stoop, added a word.