House Divided by Ben Ames Williams Read Free Book Online

the glass to his lips, spilled a little, took his handkerchief, touched his chin and beard. She watched him coldly. What had he expected? She was no snivelling, love-sick child.
    â€œWhat will you do?” His words were faintly blurred.
    â€œWhy, I’ve thought of going to Washington.” She spoke as though she had long considered the question, wishing to hurt him if she could. “I hear so much politics talked by the gentlemen who call upon me. It interests me. And Washington is the place for politics.”

    He mumbled drowsily, his eyelids drooped with sleep; and for a long time, while Mrs. Albion watched him with level glance, he sat with bent head, his inhalations becoming audible. The fumes of brandy and of wine suddenly had overwhelmed him. Occasionally in the past she had seen him thus succumb, with little or no warning, going in an instant from a surface sobriety to sodden slumber; and sometimes she had been amused. But not tonight. She watched him with narrowed eyes, a little desperate; he had been her reliance for so long. Fear made her angry now. She spoke at last in sharp tones to rouse him.
    â€œYes, Tony, I’ll go to Washington.”
    His lids opened and hurriedly closed again, as though light hurt his eyes. “Washington, eh? Well then go.” He grunted and chuckled. “Joke on me! I thought you’d make a great fuss.”
    â€œReally? Why, Tony, you should know me better.” She wished to provoke him to discussion, but his muttering voice trailed into silence, and his head sagged forward. The flicker of the dying fire laid shadows on his bony countenance; he looked like a bearded skull. For a while she sat where she was, her eyes on him, her thoughts casting backward. Had she sold ten years of her life to this old man?
    With a quick motion at last she rose. It was high time she was rid of him. She went into the hall.
    â€œTessie! Tessie!”
    From below came Tessie’s drowsy answer. “Yes, ma’am?”
    Nell had meant to bid Tessie hustle him into the street; but she hesitated, her fingernail tapping her teeth, looking back through the open door at him asleep in his chair. He was old, yes; yet if he had Chimneys he would be rich again, and lean years had taught her to value riches, and in the long run she could always manage him. She might speak to him again of Chimneys, and more urgently, in the morning. Her anger faded; she called to Tessie:
    â€œCome help me put Mr. Currain to bed.”

2
    July, 1859
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    T HE CURRAINS, through their Courdain forebears, had been Virginians for a hundred and fifty years, since in 1703 Jules Courdain immigrated from French vineyards and set himself up as a victualler, distilling the spirits which he sold, and prospered thriftily. His son Jules married Annette Harrison, and their second son they named Antoine. When he became a man that son Antoine, at behest of pretty Molly O’Hara whom he wished to wed, changed his name to Anthony, and to Currain.
    In that first Anthony Currain, the wholesome blends of good peasant stock came to strong fruition. He turned to the soil, to the planting of tobacco; and he sought always more land to replace that which his ruthless cropping impoverished. Ten years after the Revolution, anticipating the decline in Virginia agriculture which would at last leave Mount Vernon a waste and reduce Thomas Jefferson in his old age to destitution, he set out to investigate the wilderness beyond the mountains. He proposed to follow the new trail through Danville and Salisbury and on southwesterly; but he turned aside to see and to admire the solid brick houses built by the Moravians who had come down from Pennsylvania to establish a religious colony at Betharaba and Salem and Bethania. When he resumed his journey, riding westward through forest broken by an occasional farm, he caught now and then glimpses from some mild eminence of a bold peak off to the north, twenty or thirty or forty