The Handsome Road (20 page)

“He’s in prison somewhere?” Ann asked at length.

“Why no,” said Sarah. She spoke with her mouth tight, not looking directly at any of the other three. “I thought I had told you. He’s in a hospital in Natchez.”

“Oh,” Ann said thinly. “Starvation.”

Sarah nodded. She looked out of the window. “They got—you know—scurvy, and things like that.”

There was a silence. Ann could not look at Mrs. Larne. “Jerry,” she thought, “Denis, starvation, scurvy. I hope whoever started this war roasts in hell forever.” She looked out of the window at the lawn where a gardenia bush was blooming above the silver coffee-service that had been one of Frances’ wedding presents.

“I’m glad,” Cynthia said slowly, “we didn’t know how hideous Vicksburg was till it was over.”

“Sometimes I think,” said Sarah, “the men who got killed, like Denis, were more fortunate than the ones who lived through it.”

“They ate rats,” said Cynthia.

“They ate all the dogs and horses,” said Sarah. “They dug up a mule that was dead and buried and ate that.”

“They starved for months,” said Cynthia. “They got down to a biscuit and a piece of bacon a day before they started eating the horses.”

“When the garrison surrendered,” said Sarah, “some of the men couldn’t keep in line. They fainted when they tried to march out.”

“Will you two girls leave the room?” said Mrs. Larne.

Sarah and Cynthia gasped. She had been so silent they had forgotten she was with them.

But Ann had left already. As Frances sprang up Ann had rushed into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Frances stood looking at the shocked faces of the other two.

“My darlings,” she cried, “haven’t you any pity?”

“Oh Lord,” said Cynthia, “I reckon I never will get any sense.”

“But I thought she knew,” cried Sarah. “I thought everybody knew now.”

“I suppose we all knew,” said Frances. “But do you have to tell it all over again?”

“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said contritely. “I’m so sorry. But I just can’t think about anything but Vicksburg. All the time, no matter what I’m doing, I’m thinking about it. Hoping Denis got killed before they had to eat the rats.”

“Will you be quiet?” her mother screamed.

Cynthia ran to her. “Oh darling, I’m really a fool!” she cried. It was the first time she had ever seen her mother exhibit anything but self-control; even her tears at Denis’ death had been quietly shed. Cynthia flung her arms around her. “I’m so terribly sorry! I’m sure he got killed early. You know how Denis was—up in front of everything—I’m sure he got killed early!”

For a moment none of them spoke. Frances had buried her face on Cynthia’s shoulder. Sarah stood at the window with her back to the room.

At length Frances raised her head. “I’m going to see how Ann is.”

“Can’t we come?” Cynthia asked penitently.

“No. I’ll take care of her. But please, both of you, remember her delicate state of health.” Frances put her hand on the knob of the door. “And don’t ever, ever mention Vicksburg again where she can hear you.”

She went into the bedroom. Ann was lying across the unmade bed, both arms around the pillow, and she had caught a corner of the pillow between her teeth and was biting on it in an effort to gag the long choking sobs that were shaking her body. The bedstep had fallen down on its side. Frances righted it and mounted to sit on the bed by Ann.

“You poor girl,” she said gently. She slipped her arms around Ann’s rigid shoulders. Ann clenched her fist around the pillow-case, so tight that there was a ripping noise as the cloth tore away from her teeth.

“Let me alone,” she jerked out. “You—made out of ice and vinegar—”

Something fiery moved in Frances’ chest at the place where her heart was. She was used to her heart’s fluttering, but it had never given her such a thrust of pain. “Oh my dear,” she said weakly, “don’t you know I loved him too?”

Ann’s face was nearly buried in the torn pillow. Her words were muffled till Frances found it hard to distinguish them, and they came in a rush as though dammed too long. “I loved him more than anything else on earth. And he never knew it. I did so want us to be married the way some people are—one flesh and one spirit the way it says in the book—but all he ever wanted was for me to be a sweet little thing that amused him. Now I’ve told you and you know and you can go away and gloat over it because I think it was you that did that to me. You thought I was such a fool he couldn’t help believing you even when he didn’t know he was believing you. So you needn’t be jealous any more, because now he’s dead and you can remember you had him as you wanted him, and all I’ve lost is the chance for something I never had.”

Though the fire was stirring again in her bosom Frances paid it no attention. She gathered Ann up into her arms like a child and kissed her. Her heart felt as though there were a fist closing on it, but it seemed unimportant by the blaze of remorse that was forcing its way through the ice of her long denial. She held Ann’s head against her breast, stroking back the hair that had tumbled over her face. “Ann,” she whispered, “are you ever going to forgive me?”

Ann was silent. After a long time she looked up, unbelieving. As their eyes met Ann began to cry softly, and she buried her face and dried her tears on Frances’ collar. “You did think I was a fool, didn’t you?” she asked at length.

“Yes,” said Frances simply.

“But why? Am I, really?”

“No, darling. I think—” Frances spoke slowly, for even now she found confession difficult—“I think you never had a chance to be anything else.”

Ann drew a long breath. “I think nearly everybody is a fool. We don’t tell each other anything. We go around so terribly alone.”

“How did you know that?” Frances asked in wonder.

“I’ve been so lonely. And now that I’ve noticed I think other people are too. We talk and talk and we don’t say what we think, and we never get to know anybody. I’m glad I’ll have my children. All I’ve thought of these past days is that they’ll have everything they ought to have no matter what it does to me to give it to them. That’s why I’ve been hiding the silver.”

“You’ve been doing that? When?”

“In the middle of the night. I’m terribly scared. If anything happens to me Cynthia knows where the places are. All those heirlooms mean something—I mean, don’t you see, they stand for what Denis would have given his children.”

Ann was speaking with the undecorated simplicity of a little girl. Frances said,

“You are a very brave woman, Ann.”

“Brave?” Ann raised her eyes, uncomprehending. “No I’m not. I’m just scared—and so disappointed.”

Again they were silent. Ann was relaxing wearily in Frances’ arms. After awhile Ann said, “Thank you for being so good to me.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been good to you before.”

“That doesn’t matter. It didn’t bother me. I never needed you before.”

Frances smiled a little. It seemed to her it had been a long time since anybody had needed her. Denis had not for years, and Cynthia was so independent it was hard to imagine her being aware of a need for anybody.

Ann was thinking that for the first time since the war impinged on her life she was feeling a sense of security. She looked up at Frances again. It was the most regal face she had ever seen, with its straight mouth and hard chin, as though its calm were an achievement after storms. But you could trust anybody with a face like that. Now she would be all right. Denis was not here, but his mother would take care of her.

There was a knock on the door. Frances said, “I’ll answer it,” and Ann lay back on the bed wishing their peace had not been disturbed. She heard Cynthia’s voice at the door.

“Mother, how is Ann?”

“She’s all right. Why?”

“Well, I’ve got to tell her something. Maybe you’d better tell her.”

Cynthia evidently meant to speak in an undertone, but she had one of those incisive voices that are hard to lower. Ann sat up and her foot felt for the bedstep. “What’s happened, Cynthia?”

A crumpled newspaper in her hand, Cynthia stood with Frances in the doorway. “Oh dear, I reckon I should have waited. I don’t know how to do these things. It’s—”

“Port Hudson!” cried Ann. She stood up and put her arm around the bedpost.

“Yes,” said Cynthia. “It had to surrender.”

Frances took a step forward. “And—Colonel Sheramy?” she asked in a low voice.

“He’s dead,” said Cynthia shortly. She looked from Frances to Ann, and then at the paper she was twisting into a rope in her hands. “Oh Lord, Ann, I knew I’d make a mess of telling you. I guess I’d better go.”

The door closed behind her. Frances sat down slowly on the sofa near the door. Ann stood still, her arm holding the bedpost. There was a silence. Ann walked across the room. A daguerreotype of the colonel was in her bureau drawer. She took it out and looked at it, and thought how quiet and gentle he had always been, and how indulgent of her extravagances. He must have loved her very much.

Strange, she thought, that this should knock her right in the middle of herself this way, when she had known all the time that with Vicksburg gone Port Hudson would almost certainly follow, and when she knew anyway that in the natural course of events she would outlive her father. Her voice overflowed.

“The colonel,” she said incredulously, her eyes on the picture. “It’s not right. It’s not even heroic. It’s just fantastic and stupid. Because—oh, I don’t suppose it matters if I tell you—he didn’t even die for something he believed in. The colonel never did believe in secession. But he was in the army, and he had to take one side or the other, and I reckon he couldn’t turn guns on his own people.” She looked out at the flowers, blooming so lavishly in the sun of this dreadful summer.

“Yet, you know, after the war started he never said anything to suggest he didn’t believe in it. We were all so amazed and excited then, I don’t suppose there would have been any point in his trying to talk to us anyway. But it must have been pretty dreadful for him. After Mexico, and being so proud of the army, as he was. Yet I never thought of it. I don’t suppose I was ever much use to him as a daughter.”

There was a rustle of skirts as Frances stood up. Ann turned around. Frances was standing with her hands clenched in front of her, looking ahead as though she were not seeing anything.

“No, Ann, it’s not heroic,” she said in a strange voice. “We try to pretend we believe it is. But we know all the time it’s nothing but stupid butchery.”

She spoke with such vast weariness that it seemed as if it took all her strength to bring out the words. Ann had a curious sense of being afraid of her; it was as though this last message of death had startled Frances out of the still agony she had been enduring since she heard Denis was gone, and now the horror of the whole war had rushed upon her at once, so that in her own mind she was aware of it all.

Then suddenly Frances put both hands over her heart. There was a sound in her throat halfway between a scream and a sob. Ann rushed to her.

“Please let me help you!”

But Frances, still holding her hands tight on her bosom, managed to answer, “It’s no use, dear. I can’t go on.”

As Ann reached her she crumpled up on the rug. Ann cried out, and it was more by instinct than with any hope of finding a heartbeat that she pulled loose the fastenings of Frances’ collar.

Later, all she could say to Cynthia was, “I’m going to miss her so. We had just begun to be friends. I feel so forsaken!”

She remembered her moment of security in Frances’ arms and wondered if she would ever again experience such a sense of peace. But she could not help realizing that even then she had been mistaken, for though Frances had offered her help, she had had no strength left with which to give it. It seemed to Ann that everything had gone away from her, leaving her nothing but loneliness and fear, and now she began to wonder if she would ever have anything else. She felt that she was living in a world where she would never understand anything any more.

3

Ann’s second child was a girl, born at noon on one of those heavy blue October days when the summer heat, after receding before a cool wind from up the river, suddenly came back and lay over the countryside merciless and stifling, until the plants drooped as though they had bloomed themselves to death and were resigned to wither. Ordinarily Ann had enjoyed the summers and wondered why Northern visitors should find them so trying, but this year she had drooped like the plants, so listless that the very thought of any physical or mental effort tired her. Though she tried to tell herself her lassitude was due to her condition, she could not help knowing that much of it came simply from the fact that she felt herself facing more than she had any power to cope with, and she was afraid. She did not want to read papers or hear news. She simply wanted to be let alone, with a dull feeling that she did not care what happened as long as nothing else happened to her.

Dr. Purcell and every other doctor in the neighborhood had long since gone to attend wounded soldiers, so when her child was born there was nobody to care for her but mammy and Bertha. When mammy at last brought her daughter to her, Ann was lying in such spent exhaustion that it required all the strength she could muster to open her eyes and look at the wee creature wrapped in the blanket. But when mammy would have laid the baby in the old carved cradle that stood ready by the bed Ann murmured, “No, no, give her to me.” She folded her tired arms around the baby, and as she laid the baby’s tiny hand against her own cheek she felt a sweep of love such as she had never felt for any living creature before. She had loved her first baby very much when they brought him to her, but that had all been so simple, like the working of a long-planned destiny. But about this child there was something wonderful and miraculous—Denis’ last legacy, a legacy he did not even know he had left her, born into the wreckage of Denis’ world. As she felt the baby warm against her and thought of her other child it came back through her weariness like an inspiration that no matter what happened she somehow had to give that world back to her children. Her mind felt a release like the cessation of pain in her body. She smiled as she heard mammy drawing the window-curtains to darken the room, and dropped off to sleep.