The Handsome Road (6 page)

Budge was too astounded to form an answer. Corrie May rushed on.

“Suppose I got married to you. Suppose I worked my hands off, cooking and picking cotton and raising young uns. Then suppose a mule kicked you and you died. What would I do? I couldn’t pay rent so I’d get turned offn that piece of ground. And could I work for somebody? Could I sew or scrub or take in washing? Who do you know that’s gonta pay a white woman for doing them things when there’s niggers doing ’em for nothing? I ain’t gonta marry you. I’ll be double-damned if I am. I’d rather be a nigger than po’ white trash.”

Chapter Three

1

D
enis privately suggested to Jerry that he would like to see Ann home after supper, so Jerry, who had more wisdom in these matters than one would have guessed from his gargoylesque face, good-naturedly invented an errand in town. As they drove toward Silverwood Denis asked Ann for the fourth time if she would marry him. For the fourth time Ann lowered her eyes enough to let him appreciate the length of her eyelashes, and answered, “Honestly, Denis, I don’t know. Please give me time to think. I can’t dispose of my whole life in five minutes!”

Denis was both amused and exasperated. He was wise enough in the ways of women to be fairly sure Ann was going to tell him yes, but he was inordinately in love with her and wanted to be sure. He turned and looked at her. In the dusk of the carriage she was like a warm shadow, provokingly scented with vetivert.

“Ann,” he said, “why do you keep teasing me so?”

“But I’m not teasing you!” Ann protested. “I really don’t know.”

It was too dark for him to distinguish the full expression of her face. He could not tell whether she was in earnest or not.

The carriage stopped before the steps of the Silverwood house. “May I come in?” Denis asked as the coachman opened the door.

“Don’t be a goose,” Ann retorted. “Of course you may.” They laughed at each other and went up the steps.

The house had a white sheen in the darkness. It looked like a Greek temple; ten Corinthian columns supported the pediment, and beyond them a great double door led between two pilasters into the main hall. As they went in Ann gave her bonnet and shawl to a servant and led Denis into the parlor. Like all the rooms to the left of the entrance, the parlor had a black marble fireplace, while the rooms on the right had fireplaces of white marble, a conceit characteristic of the romantically-minded Sheramys, who liked variety in all things. The doorknobs and hinges downstairs were silver, but the doorknobs on the second floor were made of Dresden china decorated with little pink and blue flowers. It was a lordly house and a beautiful one, though Denis had always preferred his own—a preference doubtless caused by the fact that he had been born at Ardeith and expected to die there.

Colonel Sheramy came into the parlor to greet Denis. He was a tall, reticent man in his fifties, with white hair and a grave face. Most of his acquaintances stood somewhat in awe of him. After a few moments he left them alone again, and Denis turned back to Ann. She had spread her great skirts about her on the sofa and was chattering about nothing in particular—how hot the weather was, and how dull it was at home this time of year. “I was so mad,” she went on, “when father made us come back from Saratoga.”

“Had you meant to stay there all summer?”

“I’d hoped we were going to. But father hired a new cotton overseer by mail, and said he wasn’t going to trust an unknown to supervise the crop. And he wouldn’t let me stay there by myself.” She looked down, lacing her fingers in her lap. “Denis,” she said.

“What, honey?”

The corner of Ann’s mouth flickered, but she spoke demurely. “Maybe I ought to tell you—I behaved very badly at Saratoga.”

Denis laughed softly. “I doubt it.”

“Oh yes I did. I got talked about. The ladies called me that fast young person from the South.”

“My dear,” said Denis, “I’ve observed that when old ladies say a young lady is fast it generally means only that she gets more attention from gentlemen than their daughters do.”

Ann chuckled. “You’re very understanding. But I did think I should tell you. What have you got?” she asked, for Denis was picking up something from the carpet.

“This fell out of your pocket.” He held out her smelling-salts, a little bottle in a filigree holder. His gray eyes were on her teasingly. “What’s it for?”

His candor was disarming. “A stage-prop, Denis,” Ann returned truthfully, and he laughed aloud.

“I thought so. Ann, you’re immense.”

“You’re terrifying. I never dare tell you fibs.”

“You shouldn’t. You’re not very good at fibs.” He bent nearer as though about to kiss her, but she drew back.

“No. If you’re going to behave like that you’d better go home.”

“Can’t I stay long enough to say you look enchanting?”

“Anybody can look enchanting by candlelight. Go on home.”

Denis regarded her thoughtfully. With her great skirts billowing around her Ann looked like a big flower upside down. She had a luscious figure, small waist, sloping shoulders, high round breasts. The breasts were obviously real; Denis wondered if any men were really deceived when flat-chested girls sewed ruffles inside their chemises. He was not sure if the waves in her hair were natural, but the hair itself was genuinely golden-brown and abundant, and made a silky frame for her cheeks. His eyes went to her face. Doubtless intended by nature to be classic, it was a face as far from Greek serenity as the bayou-hyacinths from asphodel: a straight, disdainful nose, a mouth stubborn and voluptuous, and large eyes several shades darker than her hair. The chin was too abruptly square for beauty, but it was dimpled, and there was the other dimple that appeared under her right eye when she smiled. She was smiling now at his scrutiny, and the dimple was so delightful that he unconsciously smiled back at her.

“Now do you know exactly what I look like?” she challenged him.

He nodded. Then, in the casual way in which he often told startling truths, he answered, “You look, my darling, like a girl who’s always fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life and who’ll be damned if she’ll consider doing anything else. And I promise,” he added, “if I can help it you’ll never have to.”

“Good heavens,” said Ann. “No young gentleman should analyze me like that. Roses and lilies—is that why your mother doesn’t approve of me?”

Denis laughed. “She doesn’t approve of anybody of our generation. She always says modern young people have no modesty and no manners.”

“She likes you,” said Ann. “Still, though, you’re her firstborn, and besides—you know, Denis, I think she has a lot of respect for you because you’ve never had a pain. She’s always been delicate, hasn’t she?—and she seems to think there’s something awfully clever about you, never to have been sick.”

“You’ve never been sick either, have you?”

“No, not particularly, but—but really, she does dislike me and I wanted to ask you if I’d ever done anything to offend her. She’s so dreadfully polite, as if I’d forged a check and had repented and people had agreed not to refer to it any more.”

Denis took both her hands in his. “Ann, she has mighty serious views of life and she prefers girls who are very thoughtful and dignified. But there’s no reason why that should come between you and me. I prefer you.”

“Thank you very much,” Ann said. She smiled up at him frankly. “I do like you, Denis. You’re so honest—and so sure of yourself. I wish I were as certain of everything as you.”

Denis stayed half an hour after that, until Colonel Sheramy sent a servant down to remind him of the time. Ann would not kiss him good night.

2

To tell the truth, Ann found his kisses so thrilling that she was afraid lest they befuddle what she intended to be a long conference with herself after she went to her room. But mammy took so long brushing her hair that she got drowsy, and dropped off to sleep before she had squeezed out more than a thought or two.

She woke up to a day so hot and still that it produced a feeling of annoyance while she was yet half-conscious. She wished she were back at Saratoga, and she hoped the new overseer would turn out to be a model of efficiency, for if he did the colonel might be prevailed upon to take her to a watering-place for September. Ann pushed up the mosquito bar and pulled the bellcord. “Good morning,” she said as mammy appeared with the coffee-tray.

“Good evenin’,” said mammy accusingly.

Ann chuckled. “What time is it?”

“It’s mighty nigh bedtime. Not much use gettin’ up now.” Mammy set the tray on the bedside table and as Ann sat up to pour her coffee mammy plumped up the pillows behind her. “Miss Ann, you got business to be up befo’ de day is half wo’ out.”

“If you scold me,” said Ann, “I’m going to set you to picking cotton and let Lucile dress me.”

Having heard this awful threat before, mammy paid no attention and kept on scolding. No matter how hot the day mammy always looked crisp, in her starched blue calico and her tignon wrapped smartly around her head. “Is you gonta get up, Miss Ann?” she demanded finally.

“Right this minute. Get me a cold bath.”

“Humph,” said mammy, and waddled out.

Setting down her coffee-cup, Ann thrust her feet into the slippers that stood waiting on the bedstep and crossed over to the washstand, where she tossed up a handful of water to clear the cobwebs out of her eyes. She stood a moment looking at herself in the glass. Jerry said she spent half her life before a mirror, an accusation that Ann laughed at without troubling to deny it. Undoubtedly she was a nice-looking person; even in a rumpled nightgown and with her front hair in curl-papers she looked well enough to believe Denis’ admiring eyes. Ann drew back from the minor. She really ought to be making up her mind. Next week she would have her twentieth birthday. Twenty was a horrid age, so final; it put a period to one’s girlhood and dragged one across the line of being entirely grown up. She ought to get married. In her lifetime Ann had had very few decisions to make, and these she had made in whatever fashion seemed at the moment likely to cause the least trouble for herself. So far life had dealt with her very pleasantly, and certainly a marriage to Denis would be the best possible insurance against having to trouble her mind about anything whatever. As she stood before her mirror considering, it seemed an inviting prospect.

There was a knock at the door. “Yes?” called Ann, thinking it was mammy with the bath.

“Howdy,” said Jerry’s voice. He pushed the door inward. As he came in Ann took up a dressing-gown from a chair and pulled it around her. Jerry was carrying a box. “You finally out of bed?” he greeted.

“I sure am,” said Ann. She adored Jerry. He had been named Cyril for his father, but his mother had started calling him Jerry for convenience and nobody had changed it. Jerry was so delightful and so ugly, and he had so much good sense—she quarreled with him frequently, but she always respected his opinions.

“Present for you,” he was saying.

“What is it?”

“How should I know?” Jerry dispersed himself over a chair, looking more ungainly than ever against its slender legs and upholstery of skim-milk blue damask. “Came by hand. Something Denis sent over.”

“Oh,” said Ann. She took the box and sat on the floor, struggling with the strings. The lid came off and showed her a pile of white roses.

“Mighty pretty,” Jerry remarked. He asked abruptly, “Say listen, Ann, are you going to marry Denis or aren’t you?”

She sat up straight, cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t know. None of your business anyway.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Jerry grinned and stretched his long arms. “Only I understand he’s wandering about full of woe, hinting darkly of blowing his brains out.”

“Oh, shut up. I wish people would stop laughing at me.”

Jerry started to whistle, puckering his big mouth grotesquely.

“You look like a monkey’s uncle,” said Ann. She got up and laid the roses on the mantelpiece. Their whiteness shone against the marble, making its veins like black shadows. “Sure enough, Jerry,” she exclaimed, “tell me what you think. Should I marry Denis?”

Jerry ceased whistling. He put his feet back on the floor and sat forward in the flimsy little chair, his hands laced between his knees. “Of course you should. He’s a grand fellow. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.”

“Maybe—” She looked down, untying the girdle of her dressing-gown and tying it again. “Maybe he’s too grand. We’ve always been, well, rather informal over here—but at Ardeith—I mean, Mrs. Denis Larne will be as much a symbol as a person. It might be rather—difficult.”

“I don’t think so. Not for you.”

She came a step nearer. “Do you think he’ll expect me to keep that house the way his mother does, poking in the linen-closets and counting the silver every week and standing around when they cut the fieldhands’ clothes to make sure they don’t waste any material—”

Jerry began to laugh. “Hell and high water, Ann, Denis isn’t utterly idiotic.”

“I reckon you mean to imply that I am.” Ann poked out her lower lip. “I know I’m not terribly clever but I’m not as empty in the head as everybody keeps saying,” she exclaimed. “I can play the piano and I dance beautifully as you’d know if you’d ever danced with me, and Madame Bertrand said my French accent was mighty near perfect and that was a big compliment because she thought all Americans were savages riding buffaloes, and I can embroider, and I do know how to be a hostess.”

“All of that,” said Jerry, nodding gravely, “sounds to me as if the good Lord has destined you to be Mrs. Denis Larne.”

Ann spread her arms along the mantel and rested her forehead on it. She wished her mother were alive to be consulted. Her mother had died when she was ten, and all she remembered was a lovable black-haired woman who scampered about with a merriment very unlike the quiet hauteur of Mrs. Larne.

At that instant the door opened and mammy panted in, carrying two big jugs of water. “Massa Jerry!” she exclaimed. “Ain’t you ’shame’, comin’ in here and yo’ young lady sister got no clothes on?”

Ann and Jerry turned laughing. Ann was relieved that mammy had come in; such deep thought as she had been trying to indulge in was difficult if continued too long. “She’s got on plenty of clothes,” Jerry was defending himself.

“She ain’t neither. And I got to give her a bath. Go on, Massa Jerry. Ain’t you got no business to tend to?”

“No business at all. You’d better leave me alone, mammy. I’ve been a good boy, riding the cotton all morning.

“Did you see the new overseer?” Ann asked.

“Sure, I saw him. Name’s Gilday. Big red face and got a Northern accent that twangs like a tuning-fork.”

“What’s he doing overseeing cotton if he comes from up North?”