House Divided (9 page)

Enid liked best of all the drawing room, so full of warm lights and rich shadows. She and Mrs. Currain received callers there, Mrs. Currain presiding at the tea table where silver and glass and eggshell china gleamed and shone; and after the stately ladies had gone she told Enid all about them, and her own words forever led her into memories. “My husband brought me home here fifty-two years ago, you know,” she might say, with perhaps a smiling apology for her garrulity. “I was nineteen—he was much older, of course—so I've lived almost a lifetime here. But even when I first came the people loved to talk about the days before the Revolution, when Williamsburg was a great town.” And she would drift into interminable tales, of old Mrs. Wills and other famous gossips, and of Mrs. Davis whose passion was collecting bonnets through long bedridden years, and how Decimus Ultimus Barziza came by that strange name, and of the Reverend Scervant Jones who would rather write a poem than a sermon, and of a dozen more.

Enid, though she might protest to Trav that his mother would talk her to death, yet enjoyed these hours with the older woman; and she took a sensuous delight in the big house and its noble setting. The service buildings were on the side away from the river, receding among concealing oaks. To right and left of the lawns toward the
river, the gardens were enclosed in a hedge of tree box, and enriched by lush masses of bush box and with each bed framed in its own dwarf border. Now in midsummer there was not much bloom; but Mrs. Currain, to whom each plant was an old loved friend, saw with the eyes of memory and spoke of wistaria and jasmine, sweet shrub and calycanthus, mock orange and dogwood, smoke trees and lilacs, crape myrtle and Cape jessamine, roses by a hundred names, lesser blossoms by the score. Enid never tired of this talk of what had been and would be again.

On the river side, wide lawns were protected by ha-has against the incursion of the horses which grazed freely across the further levels. Solitary in the middle of the lawn which its spreading shade over a considerable space discouraged stood the huge oak tree that gave the plantation its name. The great trunk was more than twenty feet around, the lofty crown almost a hundred feet above the ground, the widest spread of the heavy branches a hundred and thirty feet from side to side. Within the trunk there was a hollow where a man could stand erect, extending upward into darkness. Lucy, although she was ten, was not too grown up to begin to make a play house in this ample cavity; and old April, who since Vigil was busy with little Henrietta made Trav's other children her special charge, helped her find furnishings for her retreat, and set one of the Negroes to make two small split bottom chairs just big enough for Lucy and Peter and to construct a tiny cradle; and she herself fabricated—out of a corn cob and some bright calico—a doll baby for Little Missy.

Enid did not interfere with Lucy's make-believe. She had her own delights, savoring every hour, never forgetting that if she were careful to keep Mrs. Currain's good will, she would some day be mistress here. Mrs. Currain was a scrupulous housekeeper. At Great Oak the bed rooms were aired daily, the mattresses put out in the sun twice each month. Every implement in the kitchen, whether it had been used or not, once a week was scrubbed and scoured. Daily, her keys at her waist, Mrs. Currain inspected her domain; she visited the dairy and the laundry, she went to the smoke house and the cupboard to measure out the day's supply of butter, sugar, lard, meal, and flour, and doled out whatever ingredients the coming meals required. Every cupboard
and every outbuilding had lock and key. “The people don't think it's stealing,” she told Enid. “So we keep temptation away from them.” She supervised the making of starch and of soap; she oversaw the dipping of candles, and she kept the trash gang—men and women too old to labor in the fields, children too young—at work all day raking drives and paths or grooming the wide lawns and terraces. Each leaf that fell must be removed.

Enid, who except in the flurry of preparation for her mother's visit had let Trav oversee everything at Chimneys, was half astonished, half amused by Mrs. Currain's insistences. She herself did not escape the old lady's discipline, for she was expected to keep Trav's clothes in order, his buttons secure, his socks free from holes and smoothly darned. She and Mrs. Currain spent long hours together, their needles busy; and often the children were near-by, for the older woman enjoyed them, laughed at their play, relished the memories they aroused in her.

“Little Peter's so like Tony when he was a baby,” she said once. “Always wanting to be the center of everything, forever shouting: ‘Mama, look at me! Look at me, Mama! Look at me!' Tony would do all sorts of absurd things, jumping around like a jack-in-the-box—anything to attract attention.”

Enid had seen Tony only once, years ago when he came to her wedding and devoted himself to her mother; but she had at once disliked him and she resented this comparison. “Peter's not like that usually! It's just that you laugh at him!”

“Oh, my dear, that's a grandmother's privilege, to spoil her grandchildren.” But Mrs. Currain had guessed Enid's resentment. “I spoiled Tony, too,” she confessed. “I shouldn't have done it; but you see my next baby died.” Her eyes were on her needle. “Mr. Currain was in Richmond the night the theatre burned, and he was in the audience. The Placide stock company presented a pantomime called
The Bleeding Nun,
and fire started during the performance, and scores of people were burned to death; Governor Smith, and Sally Conyers, and the young man she was to marry, and so many of our friends. Mr. Currain was not hurt, but he came home and told me about it, and I was so horrified that my baby was born too soon and died, and the
next one died too. So till Travis was born, Tony was all we had, and we spoiled him sadly.” She added, smiling quickly: “But I don't mean Peter's spoiled! He just likes to be the center of things.”

One day she took down from above the mantel in the library a sword in its scabbard, a long, straight, double-edged weapon, and belted it around the youngster, and laughed at Peter's delighted strutting. “It was Mr. Currain's father's,” she explained. “He brought it from France when he went over with Mr. Oswald to help make the peace with England. Mr. Currain would have gone with him to be his secretary, but his horse refused a fence and threw him and broke his leg. There, look at Peter swagger!” But when Peter without permission one day helped himself to the long blade and went into the garden and slashed at a young rose bush with it, she restored it to its place of honor above the mantel and said he must not touch it again. “But you may have it when you grow up and go to war,” she promised him, and she told Enid: “Travis used to love to wear the sword when he was little; yes, and after he grew up, too. I came to the door one day and caught him brandishing it, lunging and stabbing.” Her voice suddenly was thoughtful. “He was surprisingly graceful, Enid, like a fencer.” Then she smiled. “He saw me presently in the long mirror, and he was so embarrassed. I suppose he imagined himself fighting a duel or something.”

Enid remembered Trav's confession the day they came down the river from Richmond. “He used to like to read old love stories and pretend to himself he was the hero. Peter's always imagining things, too.”

“He's such a sturdy little boy.” Mrs. Currain loved Peter, but she was fond of Lucy too. “I'm glad you named Lucy after me, Enid.” She smiled over her needlework. “You know, it was because my name is Lucy that Mr. Currain fell in love with me.” And to Enid's quick, amused question. “Well, he used to tell me—teasing me, to be sure—that his first sweetheart, years before he met me, even before I was born, was a girl named Lucy.”

“Why, I declare, Mama, that's real romantic. Did he marry her?”

“No, she wasn't of a good family, so his father wouldn't let him.”

“Of course not! I reckon she was a hussy.”

“I'm not so sure. Mr. Currain said she was really very sweet. But her father took her away to Kentucky and they never saw each other again.”

“So then he married you?”

“Not till long afterward. First he married Sally Williber. They never had any children. She was an invalid for a long time, and I never knew him till after she died. He always said he fell in love with my name before he ever saw me; always declared I reminded him of that first sweetheart.”

“Weren't you jealous?”

Mrs. Currain tossed her head. “Oh, to be sure; but he never told me till long after we were married!”

 

Trav and Enid and the children arrived at Great Oak in early August; and late that month Tilda, Trav's sister, wrote that she and Dolly would come down from Richmond for a visit. Enid said when she heard: “I've never met Cousin Tilda. Is she as nice as Cousin Cinda?”

Mrs. Currain hesitated, smiling in a wistful way. “I ought to be ashamed of myself for saying so, but—well, no, she isn't. It's not her fault, probably. You see, Cinda was always the popular one, and Tilda couldn't help knowing it. When she was little, even old May used to hold Cinda up to her as an example.”

“Who is May?”

“She nursed Tilda when she was a baby. She's dead now. June took care of Cinda, and of course old April was Trav's, and May was Tilda's.”

Enid laughed. “April and May and June! Were they sisters?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Currain chuckled in the way which always reminded Enid of a chipmunk's chirp. “Yes, their mother was named Calendar; and she had a January and an August too. But May was bad for Tilda. I tried to put a stop to it, but you can't do anything with nurses.”

“I know,” Enid agreed. “Vigil doesn't pay the least bit of attention to anything I say.” She asked curiously: “Didn't Tilda hate having Cinda thrown up to her all the time?”

“If she did, she didn't let on. She's devoted to Cinda even now. I'm afraid I couldn't be as Christian as she is. Cinda's always had the best
of everything. They both fell in love with Brett Dewain, you know. Tilda was only sixteen at the time, but girls that age take things hard——”

“I was only sixteen when I married Trav!”

Mrs. Currain nodded. “Then when Brett married Cinda, Tilda was sure her heart was broken, till one day Tony brought Mr. Streean home from Richmond.” The old woman wandered so easily among her memories. “I wouldn't have chosen him for Tilda. His people were nobodies; but she was so grateful for his attentions that I hadn't the heart to put my foot down. Sometimes I wish I had. He was very businesslike. I never told Tilda this, and you musn't, but before he spoke to her, he came to me about a settlement. I gave them a house in Richmond and an income, and they live on Tilda's money—though of course it's his now—and he went into politics. He takes himself ever so seriously—” She broke off. “There, I shouldn't talk so about my son-in-law, but he really is tiresome!”

“Gracious, Mama, I hope you don't feel about all your in-laws the way you do about Mr. Streean!”

Mrs. Currain patted her shoulder affectionately. “Nonsense! I like you very much, my dear.”

Enid looked forward to Tilda's coming, but she quickly found the other tiresome. Tilda was so absurdly ready with flattering praise. “Oh, Cousin Enid, isn't little Peter the cleverest thing?” “Mama, just look at Lucy! Isn't she sweet?” Henrietta, she insisted, was such a baby as the world had never seen before; Enid herself was the loveliest young mother in Virginia. Tilda's admiration fell without discrimination on everything and everyone, and Enid began at last to feel a choked, clogged sensation, as though she had stuffed too long on sticky sweets.

But if Tilda were wearying, her daughter was completely charming. Dolly Streean at sixteen was already a beauty, and within twenty-four hours of her arrival at Great Oak, beaux flocked around her. She introduced Enid to these youngsters as “Aunt Enid” so persistently that Enid told Trav in amused resentment:

“The little witch makes me feel a hundred years old, and she knows it, too! I believe she does it on purpose!”

Trav chuckled. “She's a lovely child!”

Enid tossed her head. “She ought to be! She practices all her pretty airs and graces in front of a mirror by the hour.” Yet she liked Dolly and sought her company, at once envious and admiring.

Toward the end of August, Redford Streean and Darrell came for a few days. Enid disliked Mr. Streean at once. She thought him fat and pompous. But Darrell was a handsome youngster with a disturbing twinkle in his eye, and during his stay Enid enjoyed his teasing compliments and the audacious impropriety so often hidden in his words. The things he said were the sort you pretended not to understand, at once exciting and—since he was, after all, only a boy!—perfectly harmless; yet Trav one night remarked:

“You and Darrell have a lot of jokes between you, don't you?”

“He's loads of fun.” Then in mischievous amusement: “Do you object, Honey?”

“I? Why, no.” He added soberly, “Darrell's been in a good many scrapes, Enid. He's a wild youngster.”

“I think he's nice.” She laughed teasingly. “I declare, I believe you're jealous!”

“Oh, no. But I can see Mama is a little puzzled sometimes at the way you two go on.”

She might have ignored Trav's opinion, but Enid would not risk awakening any critical thoughts in Mrs. Currain. Thereafter in the older woman's presence, her manner toward Darrell gave no slightest cause for reproach.

The Streeans were no sooner gone back to Richmond than Faunt arrived. He had ridden down from Belle Vue, stayed two or three days. Enid had not met him before, and she told Trav the night he came: “Oh, I like Faunt! I like him so much.”

“He's a fine man.”

“He makes me feel—I don't know; not just beautiful, but—well, good. Noble and brave and everything. He's just charming. Why isn't he married?”