House Divided by Ben Ames Williams Page B

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.
    â€œEnid, I wish Lucy and Peter could eat with us.”
    â€œThey 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?”
    â€œWhy? Why not, for goodness’ sake? Why shouldn’t she?”
    â€œWell—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?”
    â€œYou act as if she weren’t welcome here!”
    â€œWhy—she’s never come before, that’s all; not since we were married. But I’m glad she’s coming.”
    â€œWell, 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.”
    â€œI should think she’d be comfortable . . .”
    â€œWhat 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!”
    â€œPut the people at it.”
    â€œThey 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.”
    â€œWell, if you’d rather she didn’t come . . .”
    â€œOh, I suppose you’d like to see me turn my own mother away!”
    â€œWhy, I just thought getting ready for her might be too much for you. But if you want her . . .”
    â€œIt’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