House Divided by Ben Ames Williams Page A

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.
    â€œHullo, hullo!” he said happily. “But be careful, Honey, you’ll get yourself dirty. I’m all horse and sweat.”
    â€œI 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:
    â€œVigil, 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.
    â€œOh, 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?”
    â€œWe stopped by Ed Blandy’s.”
    â€œCan’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,