House Divided (4 page)

He colored, slowly angry. “Damn it, Lucy, you just carry on the way you do to spite your Pa!”

“I carry on the way I choose to carry on. Who's going to stop me?”

“What you need's someone to take a stick to you!”

“You ever try it, Henry, you'll never take a stick to anybody else!”

“If you'd give 'em half a chance, some decent man'd marry you.”

“Would you, Henry?” She was mocking him.

“I would, if you'd behave yourself!”

She laughed long. “Oh, Henry, Henry, I don't know but you would!” Then with her quizzing smile: “You don't have to marry me, Henry. No man does, if I like him! And I like you.”

Henry Sparrow was hard to turn aside. “You don't fool anyone. I see through you! Nancy's father, whoever he was, and the way your Pa treated you; you're just trying to get even with them, cutting off your nose to spite your face! You're a real nice woman, Lucy, if you'd let yourself be, 'stead of acting such a fool.”

“Damn you to Hell!”

“It's true. You're half crying now.”

“I ain't neither! And if I am it's just because you make me so mad.”

“You're mad because you know it's true.”

“No such of a thing!”

“What you need is something to bring you up so short your heels dig dirt!”

“What I need is folks to let me alone! And I'd thank you to do it, too.”

But Henry would not let her alone. Some way to change her, to make her settle down? He found—or thought he found—the answer. When the grand jury met he went before them, to speak to them of Lucy. He was an urgent, honest man.

“You know her, some of you. Lem Holmes. John Berry. Dave Prescott. Jim Harrod. John Haggin. You all know her. Or the ones
that don't know her know all about her. She's a mocking and a byword all around.

“But there's good in her, plenty of it; and them that know her know that, too. I want to marry her, if she'll settle down. I'd marry her and settle her down, but she won't have me. She needs someone to give her a cuffing, shake some sense into her. I want you to do it.”

He was so earnest that they listened to him, astonished yet respectful too. What he proposed was a bitter, hard thing to do to any woman, and especially to a woman you wanted to marry. They told him so, but he stood his ground.

“It'll do her good. It might, anyway. One sure thing, it can't do her any harm. She's hell-bent now. She's a gone goose if someone don't stop her. It's worth a try.”

He had his way with them. When Lucy heard that the grand jury had indicted her for fornication, she went to this one and to that one till she had the truth, and so to Henry Sparrow in a rage of tears.

“This is your doing! I'm a mind to kill you dead!”

“It's your own doing, Lucy. You'll have to go to court, when court sits in the spring.”

“I don't have to do anything unless I've got a mind to!”

Henry Sparrow shook his head. “Yes, you do. Everybody does, one way or another, and so do you.” He added mercilessly, “Only if you marry me.”

“You! I'd as soon marry a hawg, after this you done to me.”

“You keep on the way you been and a hawg's too good for you. But I'd marry you.”

She drove him away, but all that winter he besieged her, sometimes with threats of what the court would do to her and sometimes with tenderness, ignoring alike her anger and her jeers. “I want you to marry me. I always have, since the day I saw you.”

“I'd ruther go to jail any day than marry you!”

“Go to jail then, if nothing else'll do you. I'll marry you when you git out. I'll marry you whenever you say the word.”

“There's plenty other women'd marry you and glad to, if it's marrying you want. Go talk to them!”

“You're the one for me. All the rest put together ain't good enough if I can't have you.”

“I ain't a-going to marry anybody just to keep out of jail”

“I don't care why you do it, so you do.”

“Well I ain't a-going to do it. I keep a-telling you!”

“Telling won't stop me. I'm keeping at you, Lucy, till you do.”

Scorn that was half terror swept her. “You're a fine one, letting on to be sweet on me and then getting the jury to do this!”

“If I had a young one that was cutting up, I'd take a switch to it, but I'd go on loving it all the time.”

“What do you want of me anyway? I'm every man's woman! Ain't you man enough to find a woman of your own?”

“I aim to see to it you're my own, soon or late.”

His steady persistence made her wish to wound him, and she knew the way. “You don't have to marry me, Henry. I've told you so. And anybody'll tell you how nice I can be.”

But she said this once too often. His blow spun her around and knocked her off her feet; above her he stood black with sober wrath.

“Mind your tongue. You go too far with me.”

She sprang up, his death in her eyes. “If I had a gun, or anything—” Then at last she was sobbing in his arms. “Oh, Henry, I can't best you. I've tried to make you mad, and I've tried everything, but you just keep on being good and kind.”

“I'll always be good to you.”

“You're a good man. I wouldn't let you marry a woman like me!”

“I'll resk it.” Her tears choked her. “Go on and cry, Lucy. Cry all you want. It'll do you good. You've had hard years to cry away.”

“I'll be in jail!”

“You won't have to go to jail if you'll say you'll marry me. I'll give bond for a license and show the court and that's the end of it.”

“I won't do it to you, Henry. Folks would always remember the way I been, always keep saying it to you.”

“You can show ‘em different, Lucy. We'll give bond for the license, and tell the court, and then we'll wait. I'm not a hand to hurry. We'll wait till you come and say to me, ‘Henry, I can be a good wife to you.' We'll wait till you've showed them the true kind of woman you are.”

So at last she surrendered. “What do we have to do?”

“You write a paper that you'll marry me, so I can show it to the court. I'll do everything after that.”

“Do I write it right now?”

“There has to be someone see you do it. I'll bring someone tonight. You can write it then, for them to sign.”

He brought Bob Mitchell and John Berry; and while they stood by he gave her a quill and paper. “Here's what you want to put, Lucy. I'll read it off to you.” He read slowly, while she wrote: “‘I do certify that I am of age, and give my approbation freely for——'”

Lucy interrupted: “How do you spell ‘approbation'?” He told her, and she said: “Oh, I went and put an ‘s' instead of a ‘t'.” She scratched out the word, wrote it afresh. He went on:

“‘—give my approbation freely for Henry Sparrow to git out a license.' ”

He paused and when she had written this much she asked: “Is that all?”

“All the main part, only ‘given under my hand this day' and sign your name.”

She began to write, and stopped, and looked up at him, suddenly radiant with smiling eyes; and then she finished with a stumbling, hasting pen. “Bother, I ran out of ink! There 'tis, Henry.”

He took the slip of paper and read aloud, for Bob Mitchell and John Berry to hear. “‘I do certify that I am of age and give my approbation freely for Henry Sparrow to git out a license this or any other day.' ”

She laughed, her cheeks bright. “I put that in because it's true, Henry. You're a real good man, and I'll do anything you say, now or any time.”

“Well,” he said, soberly content, “I don't know as it's reg‘lar, but I guess it'll do. But Lucy, you've just wrote, ‘This day' and then ‘Monday' and your name under. You want to put ‘April 26, 1790.'”

She took the pen again. “The ‘Monday' don't hardly show, anyway, except the ‘day' part, after I'd dipped in the ink again.” She wrote the date above, and he was satisfied; and called the others to sign, and while they did so he moved to stand beside her. Lucy caught his hand in hers. She pressed his hand to her cheek, and peace flowed into her.

When she was alone Lucy wrote a letter, to be sent somehow, some day, to Tony Currain, far away. She began defiantly, telling him she would wed; but when she had written: “I have to wait a year to marry Mr. Sparrow,” she paused in thought a while. Suppose before the year was gone Tony's wife died? Suppose he came at last to marry her away? Her eyes shadowed, deep and wistful.

But then she shook her head. Let him come if he chose; it was too late. She was Henry Sparrow's now. She finished the letter; and when a chance offered she dispatched it by the hand of Jim Bohannon, who was returning to Virginia.

That was the end of Tony Currain. She would never think of him again.

But she did. She thought of him after her father's death. Joseph Hanks died still unrelenting; her name was not so much as mentioned in his will. She thought of him again when her little Nancy, who was Tony's daughter, married Tom Lincoln, and again when Nancy's first was born. Sarah was the first. The second was a son. Tom Lincoln and Nancy named it after Tom's father.

Lucy wrote to tell Tony Currain about that. She had long since forgiven the past, forgiven him; and now that Tony had, way out here in Kentucky, a grandson named Abraham Lincoln, it was a thing he might be glad to know.

June, 1859

 

M
RS. ALBION was still awake when the door bell rang; but Tessie always slept soundly, so Mrs. Albion rose and went into the upper hall and called: “Tessie! Tessie!”

“Yes, ma'am, I'se a-comin'!”

Mrs. Albion, herself in darkness, saw presently below her the candle's gleam. The door bell clanged again, with an angry impatience. That must be Tony. No one else would come at this hour. Tessie, in a bright-flowered wrapper that was snug to the splitting point, appeared in the lower hall. Her tight black pigtails stiff with indignation at this midnight rousing, her candle sputtering angrily, she trudged slap-footed to the door and with her hand on the bolt challenged this midnight caller.

“Who dere?”

“Mr. Currain, you black slut! Open up!”

The servant's tone changed to appeasement. “Yassuh! Yassuh!” Looking up over her shoulder while she turned the key, she muttered a low warning. “Hit's Mistuh Currain, ma'am.”

Her mistress at the stair head nodded resentful assent. “Light the gas.” Then as Tessie opened the door: “Tony, what in the world?”

Tessie hooded the flickering candle against the night air, closed the door behind him, held the candle flame to the gas jet.

“Too late, Nell?” His tone was a challenge.

“Oh no,” she said wearily, “I'll make myself presentable. Tell Tessie—anything you want.”

She turned toward her room, wondering why he had come, puzzled and uneasy. In the hall below she heard him give his orders. “Tessie,
bring a bottle of the old Madeira. And carry it as if it were a sick baby! If you cloud it, I'll cut you into strips and fry the strips.”

“Yassuh! Yassuh! Must be a big evenin', you going to open one o' dem last two bottles.”

“Only two left? Why, damn your hide, I brought six dozen from Great Oak eight years ago. You've been at them, you black ‘scallion'!”

“Nawsuh, not me!” Mrs. Albion, ready to receive him, returning to the stair head, saw him cut at Tessie sharply with his light cane; and Tessie chuckled with fright, her fat flesh shaking. “Nawsuh, I ain't never tetch 'em!”

“Lying wench! Well, if there are only two, I'll have both.”

“Yassuh!”

Tessie departed, and Mrs. Albion waited while he came up the stairs. A small woman, slenderly rounded, looking less than her forty-odd years, she was beautiful not so much because of any single attribute—unless it were her loosed hair in a rich cascade across her shoulder—as from a harmony of features, voice, and manner. Anthony Currain, gaunt and bony, with a dark mustache and a spike of beard to frame his wide loose mouth, now in his fifties and a little stooped as tall men may be, bowed over her hand, then kissed her cheek. She spoke in sharp repulsion.

“Tony, I won't have you using tobacco before you come to me!”

“I didn't expect to come.” In the small pleasant room where a stick of lightwood freshly laid on coals still smouldering waked into crackling flame, he walked toward the hearth to rid himself of the source of his offense. “Hot for a fire,” he said.

“I find it chilly.” There was a hard anger in her. He never came at such an hour as this unless he had had too much to drink, and the fumes of liquor mingled with the reek of tobacco on his breath.

“Well, I'm hot,” he insisted. “I walked from Merrihay's.”

“Luck with you?” She knew what his answer would be. He was always a losing gambler.

“No.”

“So you're in a bad humor?” She seated herself, the bright fire between them. “They had the luck, but I see you had the brandy?”

“Did I? I hardly know. I told Tessie to bring the old Madeira.”

“So late?”

“Rather I'd go?” His tone was derisive.

“Don't sulk!” She smiled lightly. “But really, Tony, coming at such an hour! Suppose you'd surprised me! If this is to become a habit, I shall have to practice discretion.”

He considered her with a thoughtful eye, and the firelight touched her hair. “You know, you've grown more beautiful every year. I wonder how life would have gone for us if we had married.”

“Not so well, I think,” she suggested. “This way, with sometimes weeks when we do not meet, it has been easier to endure each other.” Then, at Tessie's discreet knock. “Come.” The servant bore the dusty bottles, each in its basket, reverently; on the laden tray were glasses, and a dish of pecans already shelled. “I'll call you if we want anything, Tessie,” said Mrs. Albion.

“Yes, ma'am.” Tessie departed, and he nibbled nuts to rid himself of the taste of tobacco, took one of the bottles, ceremoniously opened it.

“My father put this down in 1825,” he reflected, “the year before he died; thirty, thirty-four years ago. He used to import it in the cask, let it ripen in the hot attic before old Mose bottled it.” Gently, he filled the glasses, gave one to her, raised his own. “To the good years behind us, Nell.”

That was a phrase faintly ominous. She watched him warily. “And to those to come,” she said, and sipped the wine.

He made a grunting sound, staring at the fire. “You don't know my family, Nell,” he muttered; and an icy finger touched her throat. What was in his mind?

“Of course I do,” she protested. “After all, Trav's my son-in-law. And I've seen Mrs. Dewain and Mrs. Streean times enough. I don't know your other brother.”

“Faunt? Faunt's the best of us, he and Cinda.”

“And I know Mr. Streean,” she reminded him, and smiled at the memory. “He brought you and that handsome son of his to call on me once; remember? You were horribly embarrassed.”

“Damned awkward business. He asked if I knew you, and I'd have denied it; but I couldn't well say I didn't know my own brother's mother-in-law. So I said I hadn't known you were in Richmond.”

“Thus damning me, once and for all.”

“Why?” He looked at her in dull interest.

“But obviously, if your family and your brother's wife's mother weren't on terms! Don't be an innocent, my dear!” She added: “Darrell Streean has been a devoted caller ever since. Of course he saw the truth about you and me at once, and I suppose that made him think me fair game.”

“Insulting young blackguard!”

“Oh, no woman in her forties is ever insulted by the flattery of a dashing youngster in his teens—no matter how frankly dishonorable his intentions.”

“Darrell was at Merrihay's tonight,” he commented. “Tried to borrow from me. He takes after his father. Worthless rascal.”

“You dislike Mr. Streean?” He made a scornful sound and she said provokingly: “He calls quite often. He was here only a week ago, with three other gentlemen, discussing their eternal politics, growing noisy over their own opinions—and my brandy.”

“Streean's a scoundrel—but he lacks courage to follow his bent.” Tony laughed shortly. “You know, it was I who introduced him to Tilda, but it never occurred to me she'd marry him! She's had time to be sorry.”

She said in a light amusement: “He and the gentlemen he brings here—well, I always air the curtains after they've gone.”

He stared at the flames. Outside the quiet room a belated horseman passed at a foot pace along the dusty road. The thudding hoof beats were louder as he drew near, softer as he departed. The fire crackled, and Tony rose to step upon a spark. He filled his glass, ate a pecan meat, sat down again.

“Funny that you and I've got along all these years, Nell,” he reflected. “Most people soon get their fill of me. Dislike me. Specially men.” She wondered what had produced this mood in him. “Always been that way,” he insisted, as though she had denied it; and he went on: “I was a spoiled young one, the first baby. After me there were two who died; and that made Papa and Mama the more tender with me. Then when I was eight Trav was born. He took some of their attention away from me, so I hated him. I remember once Mama hushed me for fear I'd wake him from his nap, and I went out and cut a hickory switch and whipped one of the nigger boys till his yells woke Trav. Old Mammy May thought it was pretty cute of me to be
so jealous of my baby brother. I'm afraid Mama agreed with her.” He said in heavy wonder at the flight of time: “That was over forty years ago.”

She thought, listening to his maundering: Why, he's an old man! And I've had ten, yes eleven years of him! And Heavens, I'm forty-seven myself!

“Yes, I was a despisable young one.” She saw that he took a perverted pleasure in the fact. “After Trav, there was Cinda, and Tilda, and Faunt. I was crowded more and more into the background, so I raised Cain. I used to carry a riding crop and slash at every nigger who crossed my path. They laughed and dodged my blows and kept out of my way. Except the wenches. They didn't avoid me. I suppose my attentions flattered them.”

If talk was all he wanted, let him talk! He went on with a sour relish.

“Oh, I was a hellion! I took up with the son of the overseer on the next place. We used to steal whiskey from the sideboard. Papa and old Mose kept it locked, the decanters put away, but we could pick the lock.” He filled his glass, gulped the contents, filled the glass again. “I never told you about Tommy Williber, did I?” She shook her head, and he said: “Papa had been married before, to a girl named Sally Williber. When their first baby was coming there was to be a ball—it was soon after Christmas—at a neighbor's twenty miles away; and she and Papa set out to ride over. They were caught in a storm of wind and cold and snow, and got lost, and finally came to a negro's cabin and took shelter there, half-frozen. Before morning she fell sick and lost her baby; and after that they never had another. She was an invalid till she died. He married Mama three years afterward.” He looked at her uncertainly. “What was I saying? Oh, yes, I set out to tell you about Tommy Williber.”

“You're sleepy, Tony. Tell me in the morning.” But of course he would ignore the suggestion, would drink himself into a stupor here where he sat. How well she knew him; the little meannesses that were a part of him, the reasonless cruelties, the childish delight in praise and flattery, the readiness for self-pity. Their lives touched only at a tangent. He had his orbit, she had hers; and yet she knew him through and through.

But this whining talk, this laying his secret shames open for her to see; this was something new. He seemed not to have heard her words.

“Yes, Tommy Williber,” he repeated, “Papa's first wife's nephew. My cousin. He came to visit me at Great Oak, and he seemed to Sam and me—Sam was the overseer's son—a damned self-righteous little prig. Wouldn't drink, wouldn't go prowling around the quarter after dark. We hated him, he was so damned good.

“One day we went sailing. Sam had stolen a bottle of brandy, and he and I drank most of it. There was a squall coming up. Tommy wanted to turn back, but of course we refused. The squall hit us, and the next thing I remember is the field hands waking Sam and me, before day next morning. The boat had gone ashore above the landing, with us drunk and asleep.”

He was silent till she prompted him. “Where was Tommy?”

“I don't know. No one ever saw him again.” He nodded. “Never again.” Self-pity swept him. “The worst of it was that his mother—his father was dead—his mother didn't blame me. If she had, Papa and Mama might have taken my part, but she didn't.”

“Didn't Sam know what had happened?”

“He ran away. No one ever saw him again.” His head drooped. “Papa died the next year. He had some trouble with his heart, took to his bed. They thought he couldn't move without help; but one day when they left him alone he got up and climbed the attic stairs. They found him dead, in his night shirt, at the head of the stairs. Mama said his shame for me had killed him.”

“Why did he climb the stairs?”

“I don't know. Out of his head, probably. He must have been, because he had lighted the fire in his room before he went up to the attic, but it was a hot summer day.”

“His name was Anthony, too, wasn't it?”

“Yes. I'm the third Anthony Currain. He was the first. He lived up north of the Rappahannock when there was no head right on the Northern Neck, so he bought land, thousands of acres. That's Belle Vue, where Faunt lives now. Grandpa was a friend of Washington and Lafayette. After Cornwallis surrendered, he bought Great Oak, and later Chimneys. He was always buying land. Quite a man. But Papa was not much.” He laughed in ugly mirth. “Except as a stud
horse. He was forty odd when he married Mama, but they had two that died and five of us that lived. He was sixty when Faunt was born. Sam and I thought that was funny.”

“I suppose you would.”

“So I'm the third Tony Currain.” He shook his head. “There've been too many of us.” Another glass of wine. “Faunt's the best of us now,” he repeated, “Faunt and Cinda. Tilda's a fool, and I always hated Trav, till I persuaded Mama to send him off to Chimneys and got rid of him.”

“That's where I met him,” she remarked. “I set my cap for him, you know.”

“You? For old Trav?” He chuckled.

“M-hm! We hadn't a penny, Enid and I. What money Mr. Albion left I spent, and after that we visited and visited till we wore our welcome thin everywhere. Enid was fifteen, but I'd practically kept her in pinafores, so I could pass for thirty easily enough; but I knew I had to hurry. We were visiting at Emmy Shandon's, and Trav was so shy and awkward that he seemed an easy catch. I led him to talk about his farming at Chimneys, and he loved it.”

“Can't imagine what you'd see in Trav.”

“Why, money, and position!” His mood for reminiscent confidences infected her. “I'd have got him, too, if it hadn't been for Enid. She played the adoring child, and I suppose it didn't occur to him to be afraid of her till too late. I'd persuaded him to give a party at Chimneys, and I was to play hostess for him. Enid wasn't supposed to go, but she did over a dress of mine and put up her hair and made an appearance. She was lovely, of course; and she went to his head. Even then I could have beaten her game, I suppose; but you appeared, so I let her have him.”