Author of "The Story of Myra," "Brother Sesostris," "A special
Providence," and other stories.
When Selucius Huxter had arrived at his last illness, he proved
himself more than ever in his life troublesome and wearing. Having
a suspicion that his condition was worse than his doctor or children
allowed, he gave them no peace until he had extracted an admission
that such was the case. Left alone with the doctor at his request, he
reproached him.
"Ye might as well told me before as let me lay here thinkin' and
stewin' about it. I've lost a sight of strength tryin' to git the
truth from ye, and there wa'n't no need. Wall--I suppose I ain't reely
dyin' naow, while I'm a-talkin', be I?"
Assured as to that point, he added: "The reason I wanted to know is
because I've got to fix my concerns so as to leave 'em as well as I
can; and all I want of you is that when you think I'm--wall--if you
see there's goin' to be a change, I want you should tell me, so's't I
can straighten things right out and git their consent to it." Having
promised, the doctor apprised him as the last moments drew near.
"Sho! I want to know! Why, I feel full as well as I did yes'dy and a
leetle grain easier, if anythin'."
"I hope this notice does not find you unprepared," observed the
doctor.
"Wall, no; I'm prepared as much as I can be, as you may say. I've
been a member in good and regular standin' this fifty-five year--and
I hain't arrived at my age without seeing there's somethin' in life
beside livin'." He paused, then added with an accent of pride, "I
don't owe any man a cent, nor never cheated a man of one. Wall, I've
had quite a spell to think of things in, durin' my sickness, and I
don't know but what I've enjoyed it considerable. Thought of things
all along back to when I was a boy. Events come up that I'd clean
forgot."
The doctor gone, he called his children in.
"Wall, Armidy, wall, Lucas, the doctor don't seem to think I shall
tucker it out much longer. Wall, naow," he exclaimed, quite vexed, "I
vow for't if I didn't forgit to ask him how long! Wall, too late naow.
He's got out of sight, I s'pose."
Armida stepped to the window, and assured him of the fact.
"Wall, no gret matter. I jist thought if I could git him to fix the
time I'd like to see how nigh he'd hit it.
"Naow, I want to fix the property so's't you won't have no trouble
with it. No use wastin' money gittin' lawyers here. There ain't no
cheatin' nor double-dealin' anywhere to be found amongst the Huxters
nor the Lucases; and when you give me your promises to abide by my
last will and testament I shall expect you to hold to it jist the same
as if it was writ out.
"Naow, about the farm and house. The house, as you know, stands in
the middle line of the farm; that is, the north side has a leetle the
advantage in hevin' the Jabez Norcross paster tacked unto it, over and
above the south half, but it's near enough. That paster don't count
for much. Pooty thick with sheep laurel. Wall, seein' the land lies
jist as it does, and the house is jist as it is, I propose to divide
it even. Lucas, you can have the north half, and Armidy the south,
beginnin' right to the front door, and runnin' right through the house
and right along down to the river, straight as you can fetch it. Do
you agree to my plan?"
Armida and Lucas exchanged glances. "You speak," said Lucas in a low
tone.
"No, you," said Armida.
"What you whisperin' about? P'raps you think I can't hear because I'm
dyin', but I'd have you to know my hearin' ain't affected a grain.
Speak up naow! What is it, Lucas?"
"We were thinkin' of Theodore," said Lucas. "You're leavin' him out,
seems so."
"'Tain't 'cause I forgot him; but I give him all I cal'lated to
when he quit home five year ago--money; and so I sha'n't leave him
anythin'. Wouldn't do him no good, if I did," he said to himself.
"Well, we should feel better if you did," said Armida. "I don't want
he should be left out. Neither would mother if she was livin'; she'd
feel bad."
[Illustration: "'WALL, ARMIDY, WALL, LUCAS, THE DOCTOR DON'T SEEM TO
THINK I SHALL TUCKER IT OUT MUCH LONGER.'"]
"I'll settle it with your ma when I see her. Come, now, what do you
say?"
There was a long silence, which Armida broke by saying, "S'posin' him
or me was to want to leave the place, I mean for good--get tired of
stayin' here to home?"
"Wall," said her father with a chuckle, "if either of you feels like
_givin_ your share to the other, you may. I ain't goin' to leave my
old place for either of you to sell to each other nor nobody else. I
expect you to live on't."
"Well," now objected Lucas; "s'posin' one of us should git married,
then how would it be?"
"Why, live along. Put in and work a leetle harder, maybe. This farm
carried a pooty fair number when I was younger. If you should git too
numerous you could build on either side. I guess there ain't no gret
danger," he added.
As neither offered further objections, Mr. Huxter said: "There's been
talk enough, I s'pose. Do you agree to 't?" He waited while each
gave an audible "yes." "Naow," said he, "I hain't an earthly thing to
hamper me."
The father dead, for the brother and sister no new life began. Armida
still skimmed all the milk and made the butter, looked after Lucas
as she had before, and Lucas attended impartially to the whole of the
farm, and Armida sometimes wondered what difference it made. To be
sure the profits were divided with the most rigid exactness; but
everything went tranquilly on until more than a year after their
father's death, when Armida had a suspicion, confirmed by appearances,
that Lucas was becoming interested in a young girl in a neighborhood
a few miles away. The spirit of jealousy surely animated poor Armida,
for nothing else could have prompted her action. Having ascertained
the girl's name, she caused to be conveyed to her the facts, colored
for the occasion, relating to the partition of the house and land; and
the young woman, having a shrewd eye to the main chance, bluntly told
Lucas when next she saw him that she didn't wish the half of a house
nor the half of a farm.
[Illustration: THE DIVIDED HOUSE.--"ARMIDA'S SIDE OF THE HOUSE FELL
MORE AND MORE INTO RUIN; WHILE LUCAS ... KEPT HIS IN EXCELLENT REPAIR,
AND OCCASIONALLY RENEWED THE PAINT."]
Lucas had thought all might go on smoothly with a wife, and had
counted on her accepting the situation. Inquiring as to who had
meddled in his affairs, he traced the matter back to Armida, and
coming home mortified and angry, reproached her in unsparing terms,
ending his recital of wrongs with: "I don't know what you did it for,
unless you was afraid your half was going to be invaded; and if you
feel that way you'd better keep to your side and take care of your own
property. I ain't going to interfere."
Armida was powerless to protect herself except with tears, which did
not avail with Lucas. She made overtures of peace, such as offering to
cook her brother's meals and look after his share of the milk; but was
warned to attend to her own business.
Lucas had a new pipe-hole made in the kitchen chimney, and bought
a new stove, and hunted up a kitchen table, telling Armida she was
welcome to the stove and table they had previously used in common,
but he'd thank her to stay on her own side of the room. The situation
would have been ludicrous if it had not been grim earnest to the
brother and sister. Lucas had a hard side to his character, and he
could not forgive his sister's interference. He would not even give
Armida advice, but allowed her cows to break into her cornfield and
her sheep to stray away, without warning her, though all the while his
heart pricked him at sight of her distress. Still all he would do was
to suggest that she get a hired man.
Accordingly Armida, in despair, hired an easy-going, good-natured
creature that offered his services. He did very well, and Armida got
on better, and took courage.
But there was a dreadful blow in store for her. Lucas brought a gang
of carpenters to the farm, who instituted repairs on his half of the
house. He even went so far as to commit the extravagance of having
blinds hung for his sitting-room and front chamber windows, and his
half of the front porch was trimmed with brackets, and then the whole
of his half of the house painted white, so that his neighbors rallied
him on being proud. "Only," as one said, "why don't you extend your
improvements right along acrost the house, Lucas? It looks sorter
queer to see one-half so fine and the other so slack."
"Armida's free to do she's a mind to," said Lucas. "If she wants to
fix up her side, she can. I don't hinder her--"
"Nor you don't help her neither, as I see," said the other.
"I believe in 'tendin' to your own affairs and not interferin' with
other folks," Lucas rejoined.
Armida was made very unhappy by these changes and the comments of the
neighbors, and would gladly have beautified her half also, but had no
money to spend. The farm had fallen behind, and she was pinched for
means. She did what she could, taking more care than usual of vines
and flowers, and even had an extra bed dug under her front windows,
where she had many bright-hued flowers; but as she rose from digging
around her plants and surveyed the house--Lucas's side with the new
green blinds and the clapboards shining with paint, hers with its
stained, weather-beaten appearance and its staring windows--she felt
ashamed and discouraged.
[Illustration: "AS ARMIDA SAT ON THE BENCH UNDER THE OLD RUSSET
APPLE-TREE, ... SHE ... LOOKED UP TO SEE A SHABBY, SHAMBLING, OLDISH
MAN COMING AROUND THE SIDE OF THE HOUSE."]
She feared her hired man was slack and neglected his work; yet when he
threatened to go, and afterward compromised the matter by offering to
stay if she'd marry him, at a loss what to do, and partly because
she was lonely, she married him. He was a respectable man, whose only
fault was laziness, and she hoped that now he would take an interest.
When Armida and her husband came back from the minister's and
announced to Lucas that they were married, his only comment was,
"Well, a slack help will make a shif'less husband."
Years went by, and Armida's side of the house fell more and more into
ruin; while Lucas, with what Armida considered cruel carefulness,
kept his in excellent repair and occasionally renewed the paint. The
contrast was so great that passers-by stopped their horses that they
might look and wonder at their leisure. Every glance was like a blow
to Armida, so that she avoided her sitting-room and kept herself
in the uncomfortable kitchen that was divided by an imaginary line
directly through the middle, a line never crossed by her brother, her
husband, or herself.
It would have looked absurd enough to a stranger to see this divided
room, with the brother clumsily carrying on his household affairs on
the one side and the sister doing her work on the other, with often
not a word exchanged between them for days together. Absurd it might
be, but it was certainly wretched. Armida grew old rapidly. Her
husband was a poor stick, and when, as years passed, a touch of
rheumatism gave him a real excuse for laziness, he did little more
than sit by the fire and smoke.
As Armida sat on the bench under the old russet apple-tree by the
back door one day, regretting her evil fate, she heard footsteps
approaching, and, pushing back her old sun-bonnet, looked up to see a
shabby, shambling, oldish man coming around the side of the house and
gazing in at the windows, "What ye doin' there?" said Armida sharply.
The man turned, surveyed her with a smile, then said with a drawl she
remembered: "I hain't been gone so long but that I know ye, Armidy.
Don't you remember me?"
"Theodore Huxter! Is that you? Well!" and she hurried up to him, and
shook hands violently.
"I heard only last week that father was dead," he explained. "I seen a
man from this way, and he said he was gone. How long since?"
"More than ten years ago."
"Well, I thought I'd come and see ye."
"I'm glad you did," she said. "But come right in;" and she led the way
into the kitchen.
He leaned up against the door and surveyed the room. "I should 'a'
s'posed I'd have remembered this room, but what ye done to it? What
hev you got two stoves and two tables and all that for, Armidy?"
Armida told him all, winding up her story with a few tears.
"That accounts for the looks of the outside, I s'pose," was his
only comment. "I thought it was about the queerest I ever see. It's
ridiculous! Why haven't you and Lucas straightened out affairs before
this?"
"I can't, and he can't, I s'pose," she said hopelessly; "and
everything makes it worse. I wouldn't care so much if he hadn't fixed
up the outside the way he did."
"Oh, well now, don't you fret. If I had money--but then I haven't."
"How have you lived sence you left home?" Armida inquired.
"Why, I've had a still, and made essence and peddled it out; but I
sold the still to git money to come here, and it took all I had."
"Well now, Theodore, I wish you'd stay here now you've got round
again," said Armida with great earnestness. "I've worried about you a
sight. I'd be glad to have you, and Lucas would, I know."
To spare a possible rebuff for Theodore, she ran out as she saw
Lucas coming to the house to get his supper, and apprised him of his
brother's arrival, glad to find he shared her pleasure in it. As Lucas
entered the room he shook hands with Theodore, saying, "How are ye?"
to which Theodore responded with "How are you, Lucas?"
Theodore was a relief and pleasure to all the family. He observed a
strict impartiality. If he split some kindling-wood for Armida, he
churned for Lucas. If he took Armida's old horse to be shod, he helped
Lucas wash his sheep. He accepted everything, asking no questions
after the first evening, but kept an observant eye on all.
Both Lucas and Armida had loved him since their earliest remembrance,
and retained their old fondness for him now. He was a welcome guest on
either side of the kitchen, and though when he announced of an evening
that he was going visiting, and stepped across the line to the other
side of the half from where he had been sitting, the owner of the
side he honored felt pleased by the distinction, yet the one on the
opposite side, though no longer (according to an understood law)
joining in the conversation, still had the benefit of Theodore's
narratives.
[Illustration: EVENING IN THE DIVIDED KITCHEN.]
He was busy, too, in his way. He was indefatigable in berry-picking
and herb-gathering, selling what Armida and Lucas did not wish, and
showing not a little shrewdness. When he had laid a little money
together he bought a still, and distilled essences of peppermint,
wintergreen, and other sweet-smelling herbs and roots, and when a
store was accumulated he filled a basket and departed on a peddling
expedition, returning with money in his purse and a handkerchief or
ribbon for Armida. Once he bought her a stuff gown, which she came
near ruining by weeping over it, it was such a delight.
Lucas remonstrated. "I think you're foolish, Theodore. Why don't
you spend your money on yourself? You'd a sight better get you a new
coat."
"I'd rather see Armida crying over that stuff," said Theodore, "than
have a dozen coats. Nobody knows Armida's good looking, because she's
no good clothes. But she is, and when she gets that dress made up and
puts it on with that pink ribbon I bought her last time, she'll look
as pretty as a pink."
Not so great a success were the Venetian blinds that he bought
second-hand and gave to Armida to hang in the sitting-room. They
proved to be in sorry condition, and Theodore was much mortified.
Being a handy creature, he managed to patch them up so that, though
they could not be rolled up, they looked very well from the outside;
and, as he philosophically remarked:
"What more do you want, Armidy? A room you never set in, you don't
want any light in."
There was one thing that Theodore would not do. He would not, as he
said, fellowship with Jerry, Armida's husband. "Tell you, Armidy," he
would say, "I can't put up with a man like him."
"Some folks call you shif'less, Theodore," Armida retorted with
bitterness.
"Well, I am," he allowed; "but the difference is--I'm lazy, but work,
my fashion; but he's lazy, and don't work at all."
Though he disdained Jerry, he would rather do his tasks than see
Armida's interests suffer; and when he was not occupied with his still
or peddling, he busied himself on her side of the farm. Lucas would
at any time give him a helping hand rather than see Theodore hurt
himself, and so Armida's fences were mended and sundry repairs on her
barns and out-houses made. Lucas was still as stiff as ever, and the
help given was always to oblige Theodore, who laughed to himself but
said nothing.
He once attempted to wheedle Lucas into painting at least all of the
front of the house, but Lucas was not to be moved. Disappointed in
that, Theodore brought home a pot of yellow paint when returning from
his next expedition, and painted his sister's half of the kitchen
floor, in spite of her remonstrating that Lucas wouldn't like it,
though she acknowledged it looked pretty, and in spite of Lucas's
vexation at finding the room ridiculous.
"No more ridiculous than it was before," Theodore assured him; "it
couldn't be. Besides," he added, as an afterthought, "I'll bring it
plumb up to the middle, and neither of you will be trespassin' on the
other's side. I noticed one of your chairs was a leetle grain onto
Armidy's side the other night, and that ain't right."
In the middle of an afternoon, as Lucas was ploughing out his corn,
he heard a "Hello!" to which, when it had been two or three times
repeated, he replied, though without looking around. Presently he
heard some one coming, in a sort of scuffling run, and breathing
heavily, and looked over his shoulder to see Theodore, who dropped
into a walk as he spied him, and gasped: "Lucas! Say! Stop! Look
here!"
"Well?" said Lucas, and pulled up his horse.
"I'm too old to run like this, that's a fact," said Theodore, mopping
his face and leaning up against the plough. "There's a queer piece of
work for us to do, Lucas. Armidy's all smashed up on the road, right
down here on that second dip, and I guess Jerry is stone dead, and we
must fetch 'em up just as soon as we can."
Lucas made no comment, but mechanically unfastened the horse and
turned toward the house, his brother stumbling behind, quite exhausted
by the hurry and fatigue of the hour.