The Handsome Road Page 7

  Ann stood at the foot of the stairs, looking around. Along both sides of the hall hung the portraits of Denis’ ancestors, splendid souls caught in a moment of their splendor for posterity. Most of their names she did not know, but she knew one of them was related to her. She and Denis shared a common ancestor. Ann scowled at the pictured faces, wondering if those men and women had known the burden they had been creating. Only Denis never seemed to find it a burden. He accepted his family background as he accepted the country he was born in, something that had made him what he was, but always present so that one never needed to refer to it at all. Denis was not by nature very analytical.

  But why, she asked herself, be so concerned about it? Her family was as old as Denis’, and her blood as blue; the only difference was that the Sheramys had a habit of considering themselves as individuals rather than as parts of a race, and were accustomed to doing about as they pleased. She had heard with amusement that her own father had surprised everybody by marrying a perfect featherhead whose independent ways had shocked the river country, but she had no reason to think their marriage had not been happy.

  Denis came down the hall. He looked tall and splendid, and Ann called herself a fool to hesitate before the chance of the most enviable marriage on the river. As he met her at the foot of the staircase he impulsively swept her into his arms.

  After a moment Ann drew back a little. She looked up at him, feeling a sensation of pleasure at the nearness of his physical beauty. Denis did not say anything. He stood with one hand on her shoulder and his other arm around her waist, smiling down at her so urgently that Ann felt herself yielding as though his ardor were a command she had no power to disobey, and as Denis drew her to him again she put her own arms around him and pressed his lips down to hers. He whispered how much he loved her, and with her head against his shoulder and her hand ruffling his coppery hair, she nodded when he asked again if she would marry him. But even then Ann was aware of a puzzling, unsilenced corner of her mind asking if there was anything he could give her besides romantic adoration, and she was unsatisfied because she did not know.

  But Denis had no doubts. His delight in her made him radiant, and when she said, “Marriage is really what they say, isn’t it?—terribly solemn—how can I possibly know what I’m going to want thirty years from now?”—Denis laughed softly, deep in his throat, and picked up one of the curls from her shoulder and kissed it, promising, “Whatever it is, sweetheart, you’ll have it if I can give it to you.”

  “You’re such a dear,” Ann murmured, and she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him. She appeared breathless with happiness, but the thought actually crossing her mind was what a handsome couple she and Denis would make; with his good looks and her own taste in clothes and decorations they could have a wedding so beautiful it would be talked about for years.

  After awhile they went into the parlor, and she sat on the sofa leaning against him, his arm around her, while they sipped the iced lemonade he had ordered against the heat of the day. They did not talk very much. Denis was happy in having at last won her promise, and Ann was feeling a pleasant sense of security. Everything was going to be so simple now that she had finally decided to marry Denis. She could see her life with him as clearly as if she were looking back instead of forward.

  Maybe, she thought, if she had not been brought up all her life to expect just such a marriage she would find it more exciting. It occurred to Ann that perhaps she had received too much good fortune. That thought retreated, abashed at its own silliness, as soon as it entered her head, but she could not help being aware of it: the road she had traveled had been so very smooth that she had no standard by which to recognize either the peaks or valleys of experience.

  3

  The first week in October, Mrs. Larne had the servants begin their semi-annual cleaning of the Ardeith manor. When the work was well under way she made her inspection of the closets and storerooms to make sure everything was going ahead according to her instructions. The keys clinked authoritatively from her belt as she moved.

  Mrs. Larne loved her house. The fragrant linen-closets, the shining floors, the wine-shelves with their rows of dusty bottles, the china and glass and silver gleaming in their places, all gave her a smooth, quiet sense of work well done. This was her kingdom and she ruled it with honor. Her servants, well-disciplined and fairly dealt with, worked without confusion, each having his own appointed tasks and leisure when those were finished. She had never understood how some women could be so careless as to trust their homes to hired housekeepers. Her own keys never left her hands unless she was too ill to quit her bed, when she reluctantly gave them to Napoleon. She had trained Napoleon carefully from his boyhood, and proud of his position as head house-man he supervised the lesser servants more sternly than she did.

  In the linen-closets the girls were replacing the linens on shelves newly dusted and covered with fresh tissue-paper. Between the sheets they placed packets of vetivert root wrapped in mosquito netting, and the warm fragrance of vetivert drifted into the hall. Mrs. Larne reached toward a pile of tablecloths, and her hands went with pleasure over the heavy damask. Here and there her fingers touched a darn, so delicately woven into the fabric that its presence could hardly be detected. She had herself taught the girls to darn like that. Linens like hers were meant to last for decades, and they did if well cared for; she never bought anything but the best, and she used it till it fell apart.

  On the back gallery the house-boys were spreading out the winter curtains and rugs, brushing them to get off the last fragments of the tobacco leaves with which they had been rolled up all summer to keep out moths. With a glance at them Mrs. Larne went back into the hall, unlocked the wine-closet and went through it to the door at the back. This door opened on a staircase leading down into the vault. Calling one of the girls to bring her a lighted candle Mrs. Larne descended into the vault alone. The air down here was musty. The walls were brick and concrete, four feet thick. On the shelves lay rows of ancient bottles hung with cobwebs, rare acquisitions of liquor that were irreplaceable and brought out only in celebration of some great occasion such as a birth or marriage. To the left stood the safe where were kept a few fine heirlooms too precious to be locked away upstairs.

  Everything in the vault was in place. Mrs. Larne went back up the stairs and through the wine-closet, locking the doors behind her. In the hall she gave her candle to the girl and spoke to Napoleon.

  “Let me know when they’ve done putting away the linens. I’ll be in my study upstairs.”

  “Yes ma’am.” With the wellbred deference characteristic of him, Napoleon bowed from the waist. “You dropped your handkerchief, Mrs. Larne.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Napoleon turned to give the boys directions about hanging the winter curtains in the drawing-room. He had been born at Ardeith, as had his parents before him, and he took a deep pride in the house. Mrs. Larne glanced down at him thankfully as she rounded the turn of the staircase.

  She went into her study. Her account-books lay on the table, but she did not immediately go to work. She stood looking around the room, with its light rosewood furniture and a bowl of dahlias on the mantel bright in a ray of autumn sunshine. There would not be much more sunshine; any day now the fogs might be expected to sweep down the river, and she hoped she could get the house in order before the gloom began.

  Mrs. Larne pressed her hands together and listened to the voice of the servants downstairs. “The mistress says do this. The mistress wants that done. The mistress …”

  She said aloud, “The last time.” Her hands twisted in her cap-ribbons. Voicelessly she prayed, “Give me grace not to let them see how much I care!”

  Ever since her husband died she had been schooling herself for the time of her own surrender. Of course Denis would marry. She had no wish to keep him forever under her tutelage. And she had vowed with all her strength not to be one of the inter
fering mothers-in-law who could not resign their authority with their keys. But her resolutions had not taken cognizance of the possibility that Denis would marry that goose from Silverwood with her appealing eyes and her fluttery mind.

  Her thoughts went back over the years and she could see herself, a young girl who was long and slender like a lady in a tapestry, with a face that while not regularly beautiful had the grace of quietness. She had been born Frances Durham, daughter of the great steamboat family who had begun their fortune in colonial days by building keels and flatboats for the river traders. She remembered when she had married Sebastian Larne, thoughtfully and with earnest prayers that she would make him as dutiful a wife as he deserved, and the gracious competence with which she had stepped into her position as mistress of Ardeith. Her life had not been easy; her health was never good, and Denis’ birth seemed to drain all the vitality out of her, so that the four children who followed him had been frail little things who died soon after they were born, and Cynthia, her sixth child, had barely survived a babyhood so precarious it left Frances’ hair whitening. But as Denis grew to manhood it seemed to her that at least her life had one splendid reward. For Denis had the strength that had brought his forebears into the wilderness and the charm that wealth and security had enabled them to acquire. When his father died, though Denis was still young, Frances felt that the destiny of Ardeith had passed into hands strong enough to hold it.

  Then Ann Sheramy came back from a Parisian finishing-school with a mountain of clothes and no noticeable interest in anything else except the number of young men who could be gathered to admire while she wore them. She was like her mother, who had been a pretty flibbertigibbet with a fondness for champagne; Colonel Sheramy had met her while he was on duty at an army post in Savannah, and Frances had never understood how so grave and earnest a gentleman as he could have married her. And now Denis had become infatuated with Ann, though as far as Frances could see Ann was a fool.

  But they were engaged. They were going to be married right after the cotton season. In spite of herself, Frances had let a protest escape her when Denis told her of their betrothal. He had spoken to her more sternly than ever before in his life.

  “I know you don’t like her,” he said. “But I do. And it’s not your business.”

  “No,” she answered. “I’m sorry, Denis.”

  He asked, “Mother, why do you object to her so?”

  “I object to any girl,” she exclaimed, “who thinks of nothing but clothes, men, and spending money!”

  “That’s not fair,” said Denis harshly, “and it’s not true.”

  Frances was silent. It might not be fair to say it, but it seemed to her it was entirely true.

  Today she walked up and down her study, thinking of Ann as mistress of Ardeith with its thirty beautiful rooms and the order she had created there; she thought of Ann making straw out of Denis’ property and heaven knew what out of Denis’ glittering life. From across the hall she could hear Cynthia in the schoolroom engaged in a French conversation with her governess. As though in answer to her thoughts she heard Ann’s name in Cynthia’s chattering. The governess let her talk about anything that interested her, as long as she expressed it correctly in the French language.

  “She’s so beautiful, Mademoiselle Lenoir, and she is ordering such clothes for her trousseau! She’ll make the loveliest bride anybody ever saw. I’d go over to see her every day if mother would let me. Her wedding dress is going to be real Brussels lace over a white satin petticoat, real lace, think of it!—with hoops of rolled steel.”

  Real lace, thought Frances. A thousand dollars or perhaps fifteen hundred for a dress she’ll never wear but once in her life. Colonel Sheramy would try to pull the stars out of heaven if she wanted them to wear in her hair.

  Denis came out of his room across the hall. She heard him and turned toward the door of the study.

  “You’re going out?” she asked him, for he was drawing on his riding-gloves and carried a crop under his arm.

  “Yes ma’am, to Silverwood. I may not be back for supper.”

  “Brother Denis!” Cynthia called in English from the schoolroom. “If you’re going to Silverwood give Miss Ann my love.”

  He turned grinning. “All right.” Coming inside the study he asked, “Are you busy, mother?”

  “No, this can wait. What is it?”

  Denis closed the door. “I wanted to tell you we’ve decided on the sixth of December. Ann wants to go down to the Gulf Coast—it’ll be too cold to go North.”

  Frances sat down by the table and ruffled the pages of an account-book. “Very well. How long do you expect to be away?”

  “About a month.”

  “That’s a long trip for this time of year. You’ll hardly be back for the sugar-grinding.”

  Denis smiled. “They can start it without me this once. A man doesn’t get married very often. Ann likes the Coast.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s entered her head that a shorter honeymoon trip might be more in line with a planter’s responsibilities.”

  As she said it she could have bitten her tongue, for Denis’ face darkened and he leaned nearer her, resting one hand on the edge of the table.

  “Mother, I don’t mean to be rude. But I’ve listened to about as much of that as I’m going to.”

  She sighed. “I’m sorry, Denis.”

  “You’re always sorry after you’ve said it. I should think you could be more courteous, for my sake if not for hers.”

  “I hope,” Frances said quietly, “I’ve never been discourteous, Denis.”

  “You’re so distant she can’t help being aware of it. She’s asked me more than once why you treat her as if she had leprosy.”

  The phrase sounded like Ann. Frances lifted her eyes and laid her hand over his. She made herself smile. “Denis, all my life I’ve tried not to be a meddling mamma, but sometimes things do get the better of me. Loving you as much as I do I’m afraid I want my own idea of happiness for you, and it’s hard sometimes to realize that it isn’t yours.”

  “I understand,” Denis returned, and he smiled tolerantly. Then he grew serious again. “But there’s something else I’ve got to say, and I may as well say it now.”

  “Yes, Denis?”

  He answered without hesitation, but slowly, as though choosing his words with care. “I don’t know why you shouldn’t admire anybody as charming and sweet-tempered as Ann. But since you do dislike her so much, it’s hopeless to expect one house to hold you both in peace.”

  Frances started inwardly, but she said nothing. She had not expected this. But she could not deny that from Denis’ viewpoint she had probably deserved it.

  “If father were alive,” Denis went on, “Ann and I could take a house in town. But as it is I’ve got to be here on the plantation.”

  Frances stood up slowly, sending up a wordless prayer that she would be able to control her voice. She answered him steadily. “I understand, Denis.” She looked straight at his clear gray eyes. “I want to take Cynthia abroad anyway,” she went on. “Her French accent needs improving. We’ll leave right after your wedding, and when we come back to America we won’t come back to Ardeith.”

  He smiled at her again. “Mother, you have a great deal more sense than most people. Thank you very much.”

  “My dearest boy,” said Frances. She took his face between her hands. “God help me to let you live your own life in your own way. Run along to Silverwood, and tell Ann I sent my love.”

  “You’re rather a dear,” said Denis. He bent and kissed her cheek.

  She heard him clatter down the staircase. Frances went to the mantel and began pulling one of the dahlias to pieces. The petals fell on the hearth.

  She had tried very hard to do her duty in the world. Nobody knew how hard it had been. Nobody but herself seemed to remember those four little graves
in the churchyard. Frances felt a flutter in her bosom like a little flame. Her heart sometimes behaved this way in moments when an effort at self-control had been almost too much for her, though she complained of her own ill-health as rarely as of the pains her spirit had undergone. But now she wondered if those two glittering young things would ever have to learn by experience how hard it was, when one was being continually assailed, to keep one’s character intact. In spite of her, a sob caught itself in her throat and she laid her forehead on the marble, grateful for its coolness. A tear trickled down her cheek where Denis had kissed her and splashed on the rich-colored petals at her feet.

  Frances found herself striking the mantel with her hands. She had been so proud of Denis, watching him ride his acres with the imperious authority of one born to rule. But either he or she was wrong about this marriage, and she loved him enough to hope it might be herself. It was quite simple to say to Denis she would leave the house so as not to be one of the mothers-in-law of funny stories. He would love her better for her tolerance. And as for that canary-brained girl he was marrying, she would merely shrug and take it as her right that the older generation should bow itself out to leave her room.