House Divided Read Online Free PDF Page B

bottles.”
    â€œOnly two left? Why, damn your hide, I brought six dozen from Great Oak eight years ago. You’ve been at them, you black ‘scallion’!”
    â€œNawsuh, not me!” Mrs. Albion, ready to receive him, returning to the stair head, saw him cut at Tessie sharply with his light cane; and Tessie chuckled with fright, her fat flesh shaking. “Nawsuh, I ain’t never tetch ’em!”
    â€œLying wench! Well, if there are only two, I’ll have both.”
    â€œYassuh!”
    Tessie departed, and Mrs. Albion waited while he came up the stairs. A small woman, slenderly rounded, looking less than her forty-odd years, she was beautiful not so much because of any single attribute—unless it were her loosed hair in a rich cascade across her shoulder—as from a harmony of features, voice, and manner. Anthony Currain, gaunt and bony, with a dark mustache and a spike of beard to frame his wide loose mouth, now in his fifties and a little stooped as tall men may be, bowed over her hand, then kissed her cheek. She spoke in sharp repulsion.
    â€œTony, I won’t have you using tobacco before you come to me!”
    â€œI didn’t expect to come.” In the small pleasant room where a stick of lightwood freshly laid on coals still smouldering waked into crackling flame, he walked toward the hearth to rid himself of the source of his offense. “Hot for a fire,” he said.
    â€œI find it chilly.” There was a hard anger in her. He never came at such an hour as this unless he had had too much to drink, and the fumes of liquor mingled with the reek of tobacco on his breath.
    â€œWell, I’m hot,” he insisted. “I walked from Merrihay’s.”
    â€œLuck with you?” She knew what his answer would be. He was always a losing gambler.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSo you’re in a bad humor?” She seated herself, the bright fire between them. “They had the luck, but I see you had the brandy?”
    â€œDid I? I hardly know. I told Tessie to bring the old Madeira.”
    â€œSo late?”

    â€œRather I’d go?” His tone was derisive.
    â€œDon’t sulk!” She smiled lightly. “But really, Tony, coming at such an hour! Suppose you’d surprised me! If this is to become a habit, I shall have to practice discretion.”
    He considered her with a thoughtful eye, and the firelight touched her hair. “You know, you’ve grown more beautiful every year. I wonder how life would have gone for us if we had married.”
    â€œNot so well, I think,” she suggested. “This way, with sometimes weeks when we do not meet, it has been easier to endure each other.” Then, at Tessie’s discreet knock. “Come.” The servant bore the dusty bottles, each in its basket, reverently; on the laden tray were glasses, and a dish of pecans already shelled. “I’ll call you if we want anything, Tessie,” said Mrs. Albion.
    â€œYes, ma’am.” Tessie departed, and he nibbled nuts to rid himself of the taste of tobacco, took one of the bottles, ceremoniously opened it.
    â€œMy father put this down in 1825,” he reflected, “the year before he died; thirty, thirty-four years ago. He used to import it in the cask, let it ripen in the hot attic before old Mose bottled it.” Gently, he filled the glasses, gave one to her, raised his own. “To the good years behind us, Nell.”
    That was a phrase faintly ominous. She watched him warily. “And to those to come,” she said, and sipped the wine.
    He made a grunting sound, staring at the fire. “You don’t know my family, Nell,” he muttered; and an icy finger touched her throat. What was in his mind?
    â€œOf course I do,” she protested. “After all, Trav’s my son-in-law. And I’ve seen Mrs. Dewain and Mrs. Streean times enough. I don’t know your other brother.”
    â€œFaunt?