The Handsome Road (7 page)

“That wouldn’t matter. He says he’s been South quite awhile, and he does know about cotton. But I don’t think we’re going to keep him. He’s got a mean way of doing. Mean with the Negroes, and that always goes with a fellow who’s mean with the land.”

“Go on out, Massa Jerry,” mammy ordered again.

“All right, I’m going.” Jerry started to retire obediently. “What’ll you be doing, Ann?”

“I think I’ll ride down the road toward town.”

“You’ll bake your so-called brain in this heat.”

“I don’t care. I’ve got to do something, haven’t I?”

Without answering, Jerry pulled the door shut and went off down the stairs whistling. Mumbling about the ways of the young, mammy helped Ann out of her dressing-gown and nightgown and poured the cold water into the tub she produced from its hiding-place behind the armoire. Ann sat down in the water, shivered at the first shock of it and then stretched happily, sending teasing looks to mammy’s righteous countenance. Mammy grumbled incessantly, but she loved Ann very much; Ann had nursed at mammy’s bosom when she was a baby, and had been washed and dressed and scolded by her ever since, and mammy would have cut the heart out of anybody who made such remarks about her white child as she herself made every day.

After she was finally dressed Ann looked herself over in the mirror again, hoping she might meet Denis on the road, for she looked unusually well. Her green riding-habit, spreading around her on the floor, gave her an elongated appearance like an image in the bowl of a spoon, but above the waistline it fitted her figure trimly. One reason Ann liked to ride was that she knew there was no severer test of one’s figure than a riding-dress, and her own stood the test so well. Mammy had done her hair in curls on her shoulders, and she wore a pert little green hat with a plume that curved down to kiss her cheek just below where the dimple would be if she chanced to smile at somebody. Ann pulled on her gauntlets, accepted her riding-crop from mammy’s hands and tossed her skirt over her arm to make it short enough for walking.

The house was very quiet as she went downstairs. Evidently the colonel was still riding the cotton, and Jerry must have gone out too. Ann went across the back gallery to the kitchen-house. Half a dozen pickaninnies, clustering around the kitchen door in hope of handouts, shouted “Howdy, Miss Ann,” as she approached. “Hello,” said Ann, grinning upon them and reflecting that she’d at least make a nice mother, for she adored children. Going in to see the cook, she received an elaborate scolding for being unwilling to wait for dinner, but eventually was given some hot biscuits spread with peach preserves. Munching, Ann went back through the house to where black Plato waited by the carriage-block.

Plato helped her mount and got on his own horse to follow her. They rode to the end of the avenue, where the wide iron gates stood open. A plantation wagon was about to pass. As Ann approached, a white man astride a mule alongside the wagon yelled at the Negro driver.

“Hey, you dirty black nigger! Let the lady go by, damn your hide!”

Ann winced. She hated to hear people howl at Negroes. As she slowed her horse she spoke distantly.

“I can pass quite easily, thank you.”

The white man gave her a searching impertinent look, his eyes going up and down her as if she were standing up at the market for sale. He had a flat red face and little nasty black eyes, like a side of beef with two raisins stuck in it. As he took off his hat she observed that his fingers were thick, and there were drops of sweat among the hairs on the back of his hand. Bowing with what was meant to be an ingratiating smile, he said,

“My respects, ma’am. Could I make so bold as to ask if I’m having the honor to speak to Miss Sheramy?”

His manner was oily, and he talked through his nose in the fashion of uncultured people from New England and upstate New York.

“Yes, I am Miss Sheramy,” she returned, and tried to get by him, but he had moved his mule inconveniently in her way.

“Howdy do, ma’am,” he said, bowing again. “I’m Gilday, come to oversee your pa’s cotton. Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.” He wet his lips, his eyes going over her again. Ann started and felt her nostrils quivering with disgust.

“Will you please let me get by?” she exclaimed.

“Why sure, ma’am. Always your servant, ma’am.” He moved the mule a trifle, and without answering she struck her horse and rushed past. Though she was going away from him as fast as she could she still had a feeling that his eyes were on her, stroking her up and down. Ann shivered and felt nauseated. So that was the new overseer. Well, he wouldn’t be here long. A suggestion to Jerry or her father of how he had examined her and Gilday would be off the plantation before they got in the crop.

As she went around a turn in the road she slowed her horse. The road lay between the cottonfields, with big trees edging it and hanging long streamers of gray moss above her head. Far away across the fields she could see the green slope of the levee curving with the river. How fast the cotton was growing! How fast everything grew here on these thick velvet acres under the levee. The cotton with its bursting bolls and dangling pink and white blossoms seemed so rich and still, so serenely untroubled by the low-down ways of overseers. She felt her angry spirit relaxing before the quiet peace of the land.

As Plato caught up with her he spoke.

“Miss Ann?”

“Yes?”

“Dat new overseer. He ain’t no ’count.”

“Oh, don’t talk about him,” said Ann. “He won’t last long.”

“No’m.” Plato dropped behind her again and she rode on. The highway wound like a sun-dappled gray ribbon under the trees. She felt pleasantly peaceful again, and she pushed Gilday into the back of her head to wait there until she could tell Jerry what a disgusting creature he was. In spite of meeting him, she was glad she had come outdoors. The abundant life of the midsummer fields always delighted her. The pomegranate trees that marked the division between Silverwood and Ardeith were flaming with crimson blooms. As she passed the line she heard a voice calling her name, and there was a flutter in her throat as she looked around and saw Denis riding through his cotton toward her.

Ann drew back on the bridle and waited for him to reach the highway. How splendid he looked as he rode among the high blossoming cotton plants. Denis was tall, with a body all compact bone and muscle, broad shoulders, narrow waist, long hard legs. He wore neither coat nor hat, and his reddish sun-bleached hair blew merrily in the wind above his strong aquiline face, the modeling of which was accented by the line of beard trimmed to razor-thinness down each side of his face and only widening a trifle where it met the jawline.

“This is luck!” Denis exclaimed as he joined her. “How are you, and where are you going?”

“Fine, and I’m not going anywhere,” she returned. Denis regarded her with frank pleasure, and thinking how different this was from the lecherous look of Gilday she thought she had never realized before what a thoroughly decent person Denis was. He was saying,

“You look perfectly lovely, and cool as ice-cream.”

“Thank you.” She smiled with more admiration of him than she would have liked for him to guess. “And thank you,” she added, “for the roses you sent this morning. They’re lovely.”

They were riding together at a leisurely pace along the road. “I looked out of the window and saw them as the sun was coming up,” said Denis, “and they looked like you.”

“What have you been doing?” she asked.

“Seeing to the cotton. It’s opening faster than usual. How’s your father’s new overseer?”

“He’s perfectly abominable,” Ann said with an inward shudder. “I’m going to tell Jerry and father I don’t like him. Are you—” she fumbled for a subject removed from Gilday—“are you getting your cypress cut in spite of the fever scare?”

“Oh yes. There wasn’t very much fever, and it’s over now. I was very sorry about it.”

“So was I,” said Ann. “I felt a little bit responsible in a way. I met that Upjohn girl in the park the day you stopped to order the signs put up, and I told her about the work, and yesterday when I saw her at Ardeith she told me her brothers had died in the camp.”

“But that wasn’t your fault, Ann!”

“No, but I felt dreadful all the same. I wanted to ask you if you knew where she lived. Maybe she’s in want, or something.”

“Don’t bother about it,” Denis said soothingly. “I know she’s not in want. I paid indemnity to the families of all the men who died.”

“You did?” she exclaimed with admiring astonishment. “Oh dear, you make me feel so much better! That’s really marvelous of you, Denis. Not many men are so charitable.”

But praise always embarrassed Denis and with a deprecating little laugh he switched the conversation. “Anyway, the fever’s passed and I’ll get the cypress cut before the fogs set in. I’m glad to have sold that timber. Now I can put the land into rice.”

“You’re very astute,” she observed, thinking how few men of Denis’ youth could be trusted with the responsibility of a plantation like Ardeith. Most of them would have been glad to let the banks take care of it while they put on airs at watering-places.

“Not astute,” he returned smiling, “just ambitious. Here we are,” he added, as they reached the gates of Ardeith. “Come on in for awhile.”

She agreed, and their horses entered the avenue. Ann felt unreasonably happy. Denis’ cool self-assurance was so refreshing compared to the formal insincerity of most young gentlemen. She looked with increasing approval at his lean young figure and patrician face. They reached the house, and he held her horse while she dismounted. The air was thick with the fragrance of gardenias blooming around the steps. Denis picked one for her and she thrust it into the buttonhole of her lapel.

“You’re very lovely,” he said, half under his breath lest Plato hear him.

She smiled. Denis called to Plato that he could get something to eat from the kitchen while he waited, and he and Ann went up on the gallery. “Shall I order us some lemonade?” he asked her.

“Why yes. And tell them to put in lots of ice.”

“All right.”

When he had left her Ann stood a moment on the gallery, thoughtfully striking one of the columns with her crop. Though she had visited Ardeith a hundred times in her life, it seemed to her that she had never seen its legended magnificence as clearly as she was seeing it this morning, now that she was seriously considering the probability that she would spend the rest of her life here. Dalroy, the town below the plantations, was often referred to as a city of palaces, and the road leading from Dalroy into the countryside was one of the noblest residential streets in America, but there was no other house along its length that could equal this one.

A wrought-iron fence with wide gates at front and back divided the estate from the plantation fields. Many years ago the Larnes had brought a landscape artist from France to plan the gardens—mimosa, magnolias, myrtles, banana trees, a dozen kinds of palm, roses and azaleas and calla lilies and gardenias, fire-colored cannas and crimson hibiscus with long golden-feathered tongues, camellias, jasmine, oleanders, and lavender water-hyacinths with bulby stems. The house had been built of cypress beams cut from the Ardeith lands, for cypress is a wood that will outlast many lifetimes. Around its four verandas stood vast Doric columns. Over the double door in front was a cut glass fanlight, and the house stood with its back to the river so the fanlight would catch the morning sun like a rainbow. The great hall ran through to another double door opening on the back veranda.

There were thirty rooms besides the quarters for the house-slaves, built sideways at the back, and the brick kitchen-house, which joined the main house by an arcade. The Sheramys had brought from Italy nine white and nine black marble mantels; the Larnes had chosen theirs all white, and they declined the further variation of Dresden china doorknobs. Every hinge and doorknob at Ardeith was silver, and so were the candle-sconces on either side of the marble fireplaces. The curtains were crimson brocade lined with white silk. The furniture of the master bedroom was so massive it had had to be brought up the river in pieces, and its cabinetmaker came with it to put it together.

But the glory of Ardeith was its staircase.

Ann went into the hall and looked up at the staircase. She had heard the story of its building over and over again. When this house was being erected by Denis’ grandfather, David Larne, he had wanted something that should distinguish Ardeith from every other house in Louisiana. Not merely marbles and silver and brocade—for the rawest dock-laborer given money to spend could have had those—but something that should demonstrate the great tradition Ardeith embodied for its people. Their ancestors had come into Louisiana when it was a jungle, and they had cut Ardeith out of the wilderness. The Larnes would come and go, they would grow up and marry and have children and die, they would know early illusions and later disappointments, but they must always have courage to go on. “For of course,” David Larne had said to his wife, “life moves always in a circle.”

She had suggested, “I like to think it moves rather in a—spiral, shall we say?”

So they had built the staircase. The architect had spent months on the calculations that would make it possible, and when the staircase was finished he had destroyed the plans. It was a miracle of architecture, a self-supporting spiral staircase with steps six feet across, making a complete turn in the air before it reached the second floor. The balustrades were hand-carved with a succession of floriated scrolls so deep it took two slaves an hour every morning to dust them, and at the bottom where the stairs flared the balustrades turned and swept around white pillars. At night when the chandelier between the door and the staircase was lit, the candle-flames threw long shadows across the scrolls. In most houses a staircase is merely an arrangement for reaching an upper floor, but at Ardeith the staircase was a monument, a creator of legend and romance, and when the Larne women swept their great ruffled skirts down the stairs and the Larne men descended with their characteristic slim-waisted elegance, it was evident that here was an edifice built not simply for the convenience of fragile humanity but as the epitome of a tradition more lasting than any small human life could be.