What happened to the actress during all the time I was undertaken by the
church to be made into the sort of woman serviceable to Taylorville, was
inconsiderable; what grew out of it for Olivia was no small matter, and
much of it I lay without bitterness to Cousin Judd, who, from having got
himself named adviser in my father's will, was in a position to affect
my life to the worse.
And yet, in so far as I am not an unprecedented sport on the family
tree, I had more in common with this shrewd-dealing, loud-praying,
twice-removed soldier cousin than with any of my kin, though I should
hardly say as much to him, for he has never been in a theatre, and if he
still considers me a hopeful subject for prayer it is because his
Christian duty rises superior to his conviction.
He is pricked out in my earlier recollections by the difficulty he seems
to have had in effecting a compromise between the traditional
distrustfulness of the Ohianna farmer toward the Powers in general, and
particularly of the weather, and his obligation of Christian Joy, and
for a curious effect of not belonging to his wife, a large,
uninteresting woman with a sense of her own merit which she never
succeeded in imposing on anybody but Cousin Judd. She had a keen
appreciation of worldly values which led her always to select the best
material for her clothes, and another feeling of their expensiveness
which resulted in her being always a little belated in the styles. She
approved of religion, though not active in it, and in twenty years she
and Cousin Judd had arrived at a series of compromises and excuses which
enabled her to appear at church one Sunday in five and still keep up the
interest of the clergyman and congregation as to why she didn't come the
other four.
Whenever the days were short or the roads too heavy, Cousin Judd would
put up over night at our house, and I remember how my mother would
always be able to say, looking about the empty democrat wagon as though
she expected her in ambush somewhere:
"And you didn't bring Lydia?" and Cousin Judd being able to reply to it
as if it were something he had expected up till the last moment, and
been keenly disappointed:
"Well, no, Liddy ain't feeling quite up to it," which my mother received
without skepticism. After this they were free to talk of other things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account