House Divided Read Online Free Page B

else!”
    â€œIf you’d give ’em half a chance, some decent man’d marry you.”
    â€œWould you, Henry?” She was mocking him.
    â€œI would, if you’d behave yourself!”
    She laughed long. “Oh, Henry, Henry, I don’t know but you would!” Then with her quizzing smile: “You don’t have to marry me, Henry. No man does, if I like him! And I like you.”
    Henry Sparrow was hard to turn aside. “You don’t fool anyone. I see through you! Nancy’s father, whoever he was, and the way your Pa treated you; you’re just trying to get even with them, cutting off your nose to spite your face! You’re a real nice woman, Lucy, if you’d let yourself be, ’stead of acting such a fool.”
    â€œDamn you to Hell!”
    â€œIt’s true. You’re half crying now.”
    â€œI ain’t neither! And if I am it’s just because you make me so mad.”
    â€œYou’re mad because you know it’s true.”
    â€œNo such of a thing!”
    â€œWhat you need is something to bring you up so short your heels dig dirt!”
    â€œWhat I need is folks to let me alone! And I’d thank you to do it, too.”
    But Henry would not let her alone. Some way to change her, to make her settle down? He found—or thought he found—the answer. When the grand jury met he went before them, to speak to them of Lucy. He was an urgent, honest man.
    â€œYou know her, some of you. Lem Holmes. John Berry. Dave Prescott. Jim Harrod. John Haggin. You all know her. Or the ones
that don’t know her know all about her. She’s a mocking and a byword all around.
    â€œBut there’s good in her, plenty of it; and them that know her know that, too. I want to marry her, if she’ll settle down. I’d marry her and settle her down, but she won’t have me. She needs someone to give her a cuffing, shake some sense into her. I want you to do it.”
    He was so earnest that they listened to him, astonished yet respectful too. What he proposed was a bitter, hard thing to do to any woman, and especially to a woman you wanted to marry. They told him so, but he stood his ground.
    â€œIt’ll do her good. It might, anyway. One sure thing, it can’t do her any harm. She’s hell-bent now. She’s a gone goose if someone don’t stop her. It’s worth a try.”
    He had his way with them. When Lucy heard that the grand jury had indicted her for fornication, she went to this one and to that one till she had the truth, and so to Henry Sparrow in a rage of tears.
    â€œThis is your doing! I’m a mind to kill you dead!”
    â€œIt’s your own doing, Lucy. You’ll have to go to court, when court sits in the spring.”
    â€œI don’t have to do anything unless I’ve got a mind to!”
    Henry Sparrow shook his head. “Yes, you do. Everybody does, one way or another, and so do you.” He added mercilessly, “Only if you marry me.”
    â€œYou! I’d as soon marry a hawg, after this you done to me.”
    â€œYou keep on the way you been and a hawg’s too good for you. But I’d marry you.”
    She drove him away, but all that winter he besieged her, sometimes with threats of what the court would do to her and sometimes with tenderness, ignoring alike her anger and her jeers. “I want you to marry me. I always have, since the day I saw you.”
    â€œI’d ruther go to jail any day than marry you!”
    â€œGo to jail then, if nothing else’ll do you. I’ll marry you when you git out. I’ll marry you whenever you say the word.”
    â€œThere’s plenty other women’d marry you and glad to, if it’s marrying you want. Go talk to them!”
    â€œYou’re the one for me. All the rest put together ain’t good enough if I can’t have you.”

    â€œI ain’t a-going to marry anybody just to keep out of