House Divided by Ben Ames Williams Page B

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.
    â€œLittle 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!”
    â€œOh, my dear, that’s a grandmother’s privilege, to spoil her grandchildren.” But Mrs.