The President's Lady by Irving Stone

Author:Irving Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Published: 2017-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

Andrew reached Hunter’s Hill on June 19. They both knew that they would have to sell everything they owned for whatever price they could get. Andrew gazed lovingly at the pianoforte and the walnut desk.

“We’ll keep those for our new home,” she said.

“What new home?”

“Wherever we are going. Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. There are one or two tracts we might save, that Hermitage land, for instance, across the river.”

“What’s it like?”

“Well, it’s a fine piece of land, gently rolling, with abundant springs. There are beautiful trees, one cleared field. I bought it from Robert Hays’s brother. The deed hasn’t even been recorded yet.”

“And a house? Is there a house on it, Andrew?”

“No, just an old blockhouse that was turned into a trading post. Hasn’t been used for years. And a couple of smaller cabins close by.”

“Could we go see it?”

He ran his hand through his hair, traced the boniness of his face and laid his palms across his troubled eyes.

“I can’t move you there. It hurts . . . my pride. A crude, half-decayed cabin on a wild piece of land, just as though we were . . . poor settlers. How low I’ve brought you.”

She stood before him, her feet anchored firmly, determination in her soft brown eyes and in her low musical voice as she said:

“Andrew, ask George to saddle our horses.”

After crossing the Stone River they rode for two miles, then took a trail that curved around a burnt summer meadow. Andrew told her she was now on the Hermitage land. They walked their horses through a cool stand of hickory, soon coming upon a bubbling spring and a branch which ran into the adjoining woods. Close by were a group of four log cabins, shaded by catalpa trees. They dismounted.

She stood for a moment before the former trading post. It was already a number of years old but the men who had constructed it had done an expert job: the logs were well matched, the notches evenly cut. There was a look of sturdiness about the two-storied, almost square building, an appearance of pride and independence.

“Could we go in, darling?”

He lifted the heavy leather latch and stood aside for her to enter. She walked in, the sun streaming over her shoulder. It was a single room, twenty-four feet wide and twenty-six feet long; the puncheon floor was as clean as though someone had broomed it the night before. The logs had been fitted with a master mechanic’s skill, and the passage of the years had polished them to a high sheen, a luminous silver-gray which threw light upward, illuminating the massive beams. The mortar between the logs had mellowed to the same shade of warm silver. She walked to the fieldstone fireplace which could consume a cord of wood on a cold day; the stones had been selected with care and shared in the silver-gray luminosity of the rest of the room. She stood before the fire-place, deeply moved.

“Andrew, its beautiful.”

“It’s just a log cabin, like all the others .

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