House Divided by Ben Ames Williams Page A

he was free.] I’ll go from here to Lynchburg to visit Molly Rand, and on to Staunton. Sue Nicholson lives there and I haven’t seen her for ten years. Then to Washington. I put my house in Mr. Freedom’s hands, to sell or rent. I hope he does well with it. I’ll need the little it may bring. [To keep Tony mindful of old obligations.]
    Chimneys is beautiful, every field under cultivation, orchards and vineyards along the hills. Trav’s done wonders here. Mr. Fiddler, the overseer, is a thoroughly competent man. Trav says he could manage everything. I suppose you won’t want to take it over till the crops are made and ready for market, so that you will handle the money; but once Trav has gone back to Great Oak you could leave Mr. Fiddler in charge, wouldn’t need to stay here unless you chose. Trav hates to think Great Oak has run down. He’s itching to get his hands on it, I’m sure. And I suspect he’s homesick, too; would like to see more of his mother. It’s really lovely here, but Enid would be glad of a change. There aren’t many young folks, and she’s only twenty-six, and pretty as a picture. Darrell would flirt with her outrageously, the rascal! Remember me to him most kindly. [Jealousy was a useful weapon, if it were lightly used.]
    Affectionately,
    Nell
    She did not sleep at once, wishing she had seen Chimneys before she allowed Tony even temporarily to escape her. They were used to each other; and if he had Chimneys’ income at his disposal, they could be happy together. But that could be managed later; she must not hurry, must move carefully. A woman alone had to be wary and wise.

4
    July, 1859
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    E D BLANDY was proud of his small farm, fifty or sixty acres of forest and bottom land in a cove cradled between wooded ridges. Along the road to Martinston there were a dozen farmers better off in land and buildings than he; but he had made his place with his own hands, seasoned every acre with his sweat. When he bought it, with money painfully earned and laboriously saved, the fields were far gone in briers and buck brush, the old log house crumbling in decay. He and his bride came there like pioneers. They made the hut briefly habitable and it served till the babies began to come; then he built a better house, two big rooms with a chimney between. The corn crib, the stable, the spring house, every fence and building on the place was a product of his axe and his splitting maul and wedges, and his hammer and his saw. He had come here, newly married, soon after Trav took over Chimneys; and Trav, riding to and from Martinston, saw the quick fruits of Ed’s industry. So they came to be friends.
    Ed was not unique in the locality; for this was a region of yeoman farmers, most of them in straight descent from the first pioneers who settled the mountainous northwestern corner of the state when it was still dark wilderness. Ed worked no harder than other men, but a little more wisely. He had some education; and it was all the more surely his because it had been dug out of the few books upon which he had been able to lay his hands, rather than absorbed from some dull unskillful teacher as passively as a mule absorbs blows. One of the things which after they became acquainted drew him and Trav closer was their equal liking for figures. Before his marriage and his coming from Virginia to the Martinston region, Ed had worked for a man named
Harvey Hill, a West Point graduate with a mathematical bent who after serving in Mexico resigned from the army to become a professor at Washington College in Virginia, and later at Davidson College. Professor Hill took an interest in Ed, advised him to study and make something of himself, set problems for him to do; and one summer on a vacation excursion to the mountains he rode this way to see how Ed progressed. Ed was proud to introduce him to Trav; and the three men, for each of whom a neat calculation had an almost musical