The Handsome Road (4 page)

Corrie May looked at Budge, but Budge seemed at a loss. She tried to explain.

“I got a mother and father both, mister, but my mother, she’s all wore out grieving—don’t you see how that is?—and my father—well, I tell you, he ain’t no ’count. He’d go offn his head with a hundred dollars. I thought as how—” she put out her hands, urgently. “I thought it would be a shame, I mean he’d spend it all in about two weeks—”

Her listener nodded understandingly. “Sure, miss, sure, I see. But it ain’t my money. It’s Mr. Denis Larne’s money and I got to pay it out the way he says.” He thought a moment. “I tell you what you do. You take this paper out to Mr. Larne. You know where Ardeith is?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, you get your young man to drive you out there, and I’ll give you a note to give Mr. Larne. And if he writes on the back of this paper that it’s all right for you to have the money then I can pay you. Understand?”

She nodded and sighed, thinking of that long tiresome way in the sun. But Budge said, “Sho, mister, that’s fine. I’ll ride her out there.”

The man wrote the note. “And good luck,” he said pleasantly.

She and Budge got back into the wagon and Budge clucked at the mule. It was hot, and they had had no dinner. Budge bought a couple of bananas on the wharf and they munched as they rode. Corrie May was thinking resentfully how hard rich people made it for you even to get what belonged to you.

“Say, that man was nice, wa’n’t he?” said Budge.

“Uh-huh,” said Corrie May.

“Right pleasant fellow, I’d say. You know, Corrie May, it’s all wrong what your pa says about rich people. They ain’t so mean.”

“That man in there wasn’t rich. He was just a clerk.”

“Sho, but I mean the real rich ones. Like this Mr. Larne. Ain’t no law making him give insurance to men on his jobs, is there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anyway, it makes me right pleased to think about your ma getting this money. It’ll keep her good, and you and me can get married without wondering how she’ll get along. Not that I wouldn’t be glad to help out your ma if she needed it, but it’s fine of Mr. Larne to be paying this to all the ladies whose men got the fever, and some of them with young uns too.”

Corrie May turned suddenly on the seat. “Mr. Larne hadn’t ought to sent any men at all down there in the depth of summer. He knowed there would be fever.”

“Oh now go on, honey, how’d he know it?”

“Well, there always is. It ain’t right. He shouldn’t have sent them.”

Budge scratched his head. “Oh now, Corrie May, how you do take on. You was the one told the boys about this job, and I reckon Mr. Larne wasn’t no more thinking of the fever then than you was. Course I know it’s hard on you, your brothers gone and all—”

“Yes.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I reckon I’m still all cut up with hearing ma wake up at night to cry about them. It just ain’t right.”

Budge took a hand from the reins and drew her close to him.

“You po’ little girl,” he murmured. “I know it’s hard on you. You talk all you want and cry if you feel like it. I understand how it is.”

“No you don’t,” Corrie May said in a low voice, but she leaned on him. They were silent. Budge kept his arm around her as the wagon went on. He was sweet, he was gentle, he was good. But he didn’t understand. He could understand her sorrow, but not her anger. Budge was used to taking things as he found them without reasoning out their causes. Maybe after she married him she would get placid like him.

They rode past the cottonfields, whitening now, and long fields of cane bright green in the sun. At last they came to the gates of Ardeith, which stood open at the end of the avenue that ran between the oaks to the house. Budge stopped the wagon, and Corrie May looked down the avenue.

Even seen dimly through the drapes of moss that hung from the trees, the home of the Larnes was glorious. A lofty wrought-iron fence divided the estate from the plantation fields, and within the enclosure lay a lawn like green velvet, studded with flower-beds and shaded with oaks that looked a century old. Beyond the oaks was the house, white and shining like a king’s palace, surrounded by columns that rose to the roof. Corrie May had heard tales of its splendor—doorknobs and candlesticks of silver, a spiral staircase of almost legendary magnificence, curtains of brocade and satin, mahogany beds so vast that a whole family could have slept in one of them. She clambered out of the wagon before the manor gates. “Do I go in here?” she asked Budge.

“I don’t expect they’d like it if you came in by the avenue,” Budge answered dubiously. “Look. You see that road around the fenced-in part? It goes through the cotton around to the back gate.”

“Oh,” said Corrie May. “Well, you wait for me. I’ll be back soon’s I can see Mr. Larne.”

“Want me to come in with you?”

“No, never mind. I’ll tend to it.”

She went by the road he had indicated. The truth was she wanted to go in without Budge because he would talk, and she wanted to be quiet and look at the beautiful house. It was hard to believe all she had heard about it, but she wanted to see, and this was probably the only chance she’d ever have.

Even around in the back the house was beautiful with those tall white columns going up to the roof. Corrie May went through the back gateway. On the galleries of the quarters built behind the manor for the house-servants, several Negroes were passing the time of day. How nicely the girls were dressed, in blue calico with fluted aprons and neat shoes. Corrie May glanced down at her own faded dress. It had been clean when she left home, but it was soiled now with the summer dust, and her feet were dusty too, and hard with going barefooted all summer.

The odor of roasting meat came enticingly from the kitchen-house. How grand to have things like that every night for supper. Corrie May began to be afraid one of these Negroes would call and ask her what business she had amid their magnificence. She felt in her pocket for the letter the clerk had written, proving she had a right to be here, and went down the path and climbed the steps to the back gallery of the big house. A Negro man sat on the gallery turning the handle of an ice-cream churn. Ice-cream for supper too. Imagine. And ice twenty-five cents a pound.

Corrie May paused hesitantly. “Is Mr. Larne home?” she asked.

The man at the ice-cream churn glanced up at her. “What you say?”

“Mr. Larne,” said Corrie May. “I’ve got some business with him.”

“He come home awhile back. You knock on de do’.”

She advanced to the back door and knocked. The door was open, but the hall was dim after the sun outside. How enormous it was. You could drive a mule-team right through it and have room on both sides. Far down near the front door was a white structure. That must be the staircase. The front door was open too, and she could see the lovely columns of the front and the oaks beyond.

Her knock was answered by a mulatto girl in a crisp blue dress and a plaid tignon tied into a pert bow over her forehead. Her collar was of stiffened muslin ironed into a frill, and there were gold rings in her ears. Corrie May was scared of anybody in such finery, but she remembered she was white and this girl was just a nigger after all, so she took the note out of her pocket and asked that it be taken to Mr. Larne.

“Very well,” said the girl. “You wait here.”

As she disappeared beyond the staircase Corrie May slipped inside. The knob on the door—Lord have mercy, the thing was silver. She made a fingerprint on it and rubbed it off with her sleeve. And the hinges too, silver, sure as you’re born. She crept a bit further down the hall, leaving dusty tracks on the floor. That staircase. Holy Moses, why didn’t it fall down? It just went up in the air and turned with no supports that she could see. And all that carving on the balustrades. She sure would hate to dust all those scrolls and flowers every morning. But somebody dusted them, for they were perfectly white and clean, every single crack of the carving.

From the front she heard the rustle of a newspaper and Mr. Larne’s voice. “Thank you, Bertha. The girl’s waiting in back?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ll speak to her.” He walked out from beyond the staircase and Corrie May could see him silhouetted against the light from the front door, a newspaper under his arm, reading the note his clerk had written. But at that moment a carriage came down the avenue and Mr. Larne hurried out to the front gallery with a shout of welcome.

“Hello! Come on in.”

Corrie May had seen the carriage before, and recognized by the green silk curtains at the windows that it came from Silverwood. The coachman doffed his tall hat in greeting to Mr. Larne as the young gentleman from Silverwood, Miss Ann’s brother Jerry, got out. Corrie May had passed Jerry Sheramy several times on the street, and she thought again as she looked at him that in spite of his elegance he was the ugliest man she had ever seen. His hair was sandy and his eyes were mottled; he was long and gangling, clumsily put together as though his Creator had left the sorting of his parts to a foolish assistant. His ears stuck widely out from his head, and when he grinned as he was doing now, his wide mouth widened till it connected his ears and they looked as if they were suspended on either side by a slack string that hung across his face. He and Mr. Larne exchanged greetings and Mr. Larne gave a hand to Miss Ann Sheramy.

“Are we the first?” Ann Sheramy asked.

“Yes ma’am. I’m glad you got here early.”

Several Negroes appeared to take their things. How pretty Miss Ann was; she looked cool and crisp like a salad, in a dress of green-sprigged muslin so wide it nearly hid the steps as she mounted them, and a bonnet with green ribbons, and a white lace shawl. “How cool it is here on the gallery,” she was saying. “It was so hot in the carriage.”

“Let’s stay out here,” Denis suggested. “There’s more air than indoors.” He drew chairs for them and told a servant to bring some wine. Corrie May surreptitiously crept nearer. They looked so imposing, Miss Ann in her rustling muslins handing her bonnet and shawl to one of the maids, and her brother, in spite of his ugliness, no less grand in his mirror-bright boots and fine thin broadcloth and lemon-colored gloves. As he sat down Jerry glanced at the paper Denis had been reading.

“What’s going on in the world? I haven’t seen a paper today.”

“Just the usual,” Denis returned. “Mr. Buchanan says he won’t be a candidate for re-election, there’s still no luck with the Atlantic cable and South Carolina’s seceding again.”

“Again?” murmured Jerry, screwing up his monkeyish face. “Seems to me South Carolina has been seceding ever since I can remember. Do you think they mean it this time?”

“If they do,” said Denis, “they’re the only ones that know it. Nobody up North takes that seriously any more.”

Corrie May wondered what seceding meant, but Ann enlightened her by saying as she sat down on the step and leaned back against a column, “I don’t see how South Carolina can be a nation all by itself.”

“They don’t intend to,” Denis explained. “Their idea is that if they started it the rest of the South would go out with them.”

“Louisiana too?” Ann wrinkled her nose. “Then would we have to pay duty on things we ordered from New York? I think that’s silly.”

“It’s not so silly,” Denis told her smiling.

“Don’t you really think so?” Jerry asked.

“No, frankly, I don’t. We’re virtually two nations now.”

Jerry leaned back and stretched. “Father’s violently against secession. Of course he would be, after having been all his life in the army, but he puts up some mighty good arguments. He says the North will fight before they’ll let the Union split.”

“I don’t see why they should want to,” Denis returned. “They don’t like us.”

Jerry laughed. “They don’t like us, but they like being in the same country with us. The colonel’s right about that.”

Denis leaned against the column opposite the one by which Ann was sitting, and switched his eyes from her to give Jerry a glance of amused disagreement. “Oh Jerry, don’t get sentimental. They’re not going to war because of any pretty speeches about an indissoluble Union.”

Jerry spoke coolly. “Certainly they’re not. But they’ll go to war because of their pocketbooks, which is the main reason anybody ever had for going to war. The North can’t afford to have the mouth of the Mississippi in a foreign nation, and the Northern textile mills can’t afford to pay tariff on their imports of raw cotton. Those are facts, and people concerned with those facts can whoop up enough emotion about the flag to start a war.”

Denis shrugged.

“Men are so excitable,” said Ann. A white collie trotted out from the far end of the gallery and came to her. She put her arm around it and stroked its back. “Let’s talk about something amusing. Politics bore me stiff. Whigs, Democrats, hunkers, barnburners, woolly-heads, silver grays, softshells, hardshells, fire-eaters, abolitionists, filibusteros—I don’t know what half of them are and I bet the men who argue about them all the time don’t either.”

The gentlemen laughed at her good-naturedly. Corrie May didn’t know exactly what they were talking about but she was interested in hearing them. They talked so differently from the people she knew. Her father used some of their words, but not as they did; they were so amused about things, as if all you had to do was go on being nice generally and everything was bound to settle itself all right.

There was a swish of skirts over Corrie May’s head and a gray-haired lady came down the spiral staircase. She was a tall, commanding lady in a gown of white with black frills, and a widow’s cap of black lace. With her was a little girl. The young folks on the gallery saw her and rose with a unanimous movement of deference.

“Good evening, Mrs. Larne.”

“Good evening,” she greeted them. The young gentlemen bowed and Ann dropped a curtsey. Mrs. Larne kissed Ann’s cheek. “It’s nice to see you, my dear.”

But she said it a bit stiffly, as if it were only a courteous phrase with no meaning behind it. Ann responded with formal politeness. “Thank you, Mrs. Larne, it was good of you to ask us here.” Then, as if relieved to have got that over, she bent to give Denis’ little sister a hug. “And Cynthia, honey, how are you? You’re getting to be such a big girl!”