House Divided Read Online Free PDF

it’s true, Henry. You’re a real good man, and I’ll do anything you say, now or any time.”
    â€œWell,” he said, soberly content, “I don’t know as it’s reg‘lar, but I guess it’ll do. But Lucy, you’ve just wrote, ‘This day’ and then ‘Monday’ and your name under. You want to put ‘April 26, 1790.’”
    She took the pen again. “The ‘Monday’ don’t hardly show, anyway, except the ‘day’ part, after I’d dipped in the ink again.” She wrote the date above, and he was satisfied; and called the others to sign, and while they did so he moved to stand beside her. Lucy caught his hand in hers. She pressed his hand to her cheek, and peace flowed into her.

    When she was alone Lucy wrote a letter, to be sent somehow, some day, to Tony Currain, far away. She began defiantly, telling him she would wed; but when she had written: “I have to wait a year to marry Mr. Sparrow,” she paused in thought a while. Suppose before the year was gone Tony’s wife died? Suppose he came at last to marry her away? Her eyes shadowed, deep and wistful.
    But then she shook her head. Let him come if he chose; it was too late. She was Henry Sparrow’s now. She finished the letter; and when a chance offered she dispatched it by the hand of Jim Bohannon, who was returning to Virginia.
    That was the end of Tony Currain. She would never think of him again.
    But she did. She thought of him after her father’s death. Joseph Hanks died still unrelenting; her name was not so much as mentioned in his will. She thought of him again when her little Nancy, who was Tony’s daughter, married Tom Lincoln, and again when Nancy’s first was born. Sarah was the first. The second was a son. Tom Lincoln and Nancy named it after Tom’s father.
    Lucy wrote to tell Tony Currain about that. She had long since forgiven the past, forgiven him; and now that Tony had, way out here in Kentucky, a grandson named Abraham Lincoln, it was a thing he might be glad to know.

I
Overture 1859 -1862

1
    June, 1859
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    M RS. ALBION was still awake when the door bell rang; but Tessie always slept soundly, so Mrs. Albion rose and went into the upper hall and called: “Tessie! Tessie!”
    â€œYes, ma’am, I’se a-comin’!”
    Mrs. Albion, herself in darkness, saw presently below her the candle’s gleam. The door bell clanged again, with an angry impatience. That must be Tony. No one else would come at this hour. Tessie, in a bright-flowered wrapper that was snug to the splitting point, appeared in the lower hall. Her tight black pigtails stiff with indignation at this midnight rousing, her candle sputtering angrily, she trudged slap-footed to the door and with her hand on the bolt challenged this midnight caller.
    â€œWho dere?”
    â€œMr. Currain, you black slut! Open up!”
    The servant’s tone changed to appeasement. “Yassuh! Yassuh!” Looking up over her shoulder while she turned the key, she muttered a low warning. “Hit’s Mistuh Currain, ma’am.”
    Her mistress at the stair head nodded resentful assent. “Light the gas.” Then as Tessie opened the door: “Tony, what in the world?”
    Tessie hooded the flickering candle against the night air, closed the door behind him, held the candle flame to the gas jet.
    â€œToo late, Nell?” His tone was a challenge.
    â€œOh no,” she said wearily, “I’ll make myself presentable. Tell Tessie—anything you want.”
    She turned toward her room, wondering why he had come, puzzled and uneasy. In the hall below she heard him give his orders. “Tessie,
bring a bottle of the old Madeira. And carry it as if it were a sick baby! If you cloud it, I’ll cut you into strips and fry the strips.”
    â€œYassuh! Yassuh! Must be a big evenin’, you going to open one o’ dem last two