House Divided Read Online Free Page A

pleadings, strode away.
    When he returned, Lucy’s baby was three weeks old. She had named it Nancy, for her mother. Pa said grimly: “All right. Now we’ll move on.”
    â€œDid you sell the place?”
    He shook his head in stubborn shame. “I’ll let Peter Putnam have it for the mortgage money.” When Ma wept protests he jerked his head toward Lucy, sheltering the new baby in her arm’s protecting circle. “Blame her, not me! We’re moving on.”
    â€œWhere to, Joe?”
    â€œWe’ll know when we git thar! Don’t ask so many questions. We’ll be on our way.”

    Before they set out upon the weary journey, Lucy slipped away to Mrs. Dodsworth, had her write a letter to Tony to be sent to him by the first traveller. When they were settled on Rolling Fork in the Kentucky country, Lucy herself, remembering as much as she could of what Mrs. Dodsworth had taught her, wrote Tony where she was; and after that letter was sent, she waited bravely, singing to her baby, for Tony to come and marry her away.
    During the three years of that empty waiting, more than one troop
of migrating Virginians passed through Rolling Fork; and Lucy asked many questions of many men before John Maynard, come direct from Williamsburg, had any answer for her. He said Tony was married, to a girl named Sally Williber, with a big wedding and a great throng there.
    Tony married? The anguish of that word brought at first its own anodyne. Before pain came, she remembered what Tony had said. So probably Sally Williber was someone important, and Tony’s father had had his way.
    But oh, Tony, why did you let him? Till this day Lucy had waited loyally, tending their baby, teaching herself to read and to write and to speak as Tony would wish her to, making herself worthy of him against his coming. But now he would never, never come! Through blinding tears she wrote him another letter, as much in anger as in woe, this time to curse his name, to tell him he was forever forgotten: and she found one to take that letter to him in faraway Williamsburg.
    Thereafter, for help in the forgetting she had vowed, she turned to any man; and sharp-tongued neighbors spoke of her in reprobating whispers, and Ma wept for her. But Lucy laughed defiance alike at whispers and at tears.
    â€œPa says I’m a trollop! Well, I ain’t a-going to make a liar out of Pa! He’d ought to know!”
    Ma wept, and Lucy’s sisters tossed angry heads, but Lucy took her chosen road; and the day came when Pa told Ma: “Nannie, there’s a stink of sin and shame in this house. Get rid of it or you’ll see the last of me!”
    So Lucy must go. Her brother Bill and his wife offered a home for her, and for little Nancy too. Lucy warned them. “Don’t look for me to change!”
    Bill said steadily: “Suit yourself. But long as you want it, there’s a place for you.”

    The way Lucy had with men was wanton and wild, but Henry Sparrow would not have her so. He was a dull, slow man, but he was a brave one, and he loved and chided her. “You’re acting foolish, Lucy. You hadn’t ought to do the way you do.”

    â€œHow’d you want me to do, Henry?” Her tone held a light derision.
    â€œWhy, do decent, same as other folks.”
    â€œBut Henry, I’m different from other folks!” There was more malice than pain in her words. “Ask Pa. He’ll tell you so himself. He’s told me often enough! And Henry—long as there’s men that like their wenching, there has to be a wench for them. Don’t there?”
    He colored, slowly angry. “Damn it, Lucy, you just carry on the way you do to spite your Pa!”
    â€œI carry on the way I choose to carry on. Who’s going to stop me?”
    â€œWhat you need’s someone to take a stick to you!”
    â€œYou ever try it, Henry, you’ll never take a stick to anybody