The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  She had the amiable condescension of a lady reaching for her purse. Corrie May came nearer and gripped the table on which stood the silver coffee-pot. “I ain’t asking you for charity!” she cried.

  Ann was evidently puzzled. “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to work!” Corrie May exclaimed. “Please ma’am let me work for you! I know you’s got plenty niggers. But I want to work and take care of my ma and—and be somebody my own self—I mean, there’s lots of things I can do. I can mend your clothes.”

  “But I don’t need—” Ann began, then paused as Corrie May rushed on.

  “I bet there ain’t one of your niggers can mend your clothes as pretty as me. And if I do it that’ll leave them time for something else. I can sew with little bits of stitches, Miss Ann. And I got to work.”

  “I understand,” Ann said kindly. “I’m sorry I made a mistake at first. Of course I’ll give you work if you need it. Can you clear-starch muslins too?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I’m sure I can find something for you. You’re a good girl to want to take care of your mother. Come in here.” She went across the room to a side door, her dressing-gown rippling over the rug behind her.

  The door opened into a bedroom on the front corner. It was the biggest room Corrie May had ever entered in her life. Every one of the four posts of the bed was bigger around than Ann’s waist, and the bed-curtains hung in heavy crimson folds from the tester. There was a fire burning here too, though it was sheer extravagance to have a bedroom fire in the daytime. The bureau and washstand had big mirrors, and there were embroidered monograms on the towels, and on the bureau were hairbrushes and flasks of scent and downy powder-puffs with silken backs. A mulatto girl was picking up clothes and things from the floor. Corrie May walked marveling through the cloud of fragrance to where Ann stood opening one of the high mahogany armoires.

  “Here,” said Ann, taking out a petticoat that clattered as its starched folds fell apart. “I tore the frills on this. Lucile,” she said to the maid, “get a needle and thread. Sit here, Corrie May, and when you’ve mended this I’ll look at it. If you do it well I’m sure I can find some others for you.”

  Corrie May took the petticoat, diffident with pleasure. Working in a place like this! Heretofore, she had merely thought of it as a job that would enable her to live, but that was before she had actually walked through the grandeur and thought what it would do to her spirit to be surrounded by it—no dirt, no screaming children, nobody drunk next door, no cats prowling against her legs, no cockroaches, no bad smells. She looked up.

  “Miss Ann, this here’s just outen the washtub. I expect I better scrub my hands right clean.”

  “All right. There’s the washstand.” Ann went back to the door of her sitting-room. “Lucile, you may go down when you’ve finished. Some time today press the ribbons on my blue satin bonnet.”

  Lucile brought Corrie May a workbox with thread and scissors and a thimble, and then went out. Corrie May washed her hands, feeling almost sacrilegious as she dried them on one end of the towel and refolded it so from the front it would look as if it had not been used; and she replaced the cover on the soap-dish, emptied the water and rinsed out the basin. Then she sat down and began catching up the ripped frills of the petticoat, working so hard she felt little beads of sweat on her forehead.

  When she had mended the torn places Corrie May leaned back luxuriously. What a lovely room, and how clean. For the moment she was almost glad she was not used to houses like this, for if she had been she would have missed this rich sensation of pleasure. Everything was so beautiful. At one side, between the windows, was a little table. The sun had slanted to shine on it, and Corrie May’s eyes were suddenly dazzled with green and ruby lights.

  She got up softly, folding the petticoat on the chair. They lay in a heap, bracelets and necklaces and earrings, the stones glinting under the sun. She wondered what they were. Her mind ran over the names of all the jewels she had ever heard of—diamonds, amethysts, pearls, topazes, emeralds—what a pile of glory!

  Timorously she reached out and touched the heap. In the glass over the washstand she saw her reflection, and she wondered daringly how she would look wearing jewels like these. It wouldn’t be any sin, not if she put them back. Pushing up her sleeve she clasped a bracelet around her arm, and held a necklace against her throat, almost shivering with delight as she watched the sun flicker across the stones and reflect highlights on her face.

  The door opened. “Have you finished?” Ann’s voice asked.

  Corrie May wheeled around. The necklace fell out of her hand and rattled on the floor. Her dreams of security and quiet in this house went down with it. She felt her skin get hot under her clothes.

  “Miss Ann—I swear to God I wasn’t taking them!” Her voice was quivering with fear. She began tearing the bracelet off her arm. “Please, Miss Ann! I wouldn’t steal nothing for the whole world—I never stole nothing in my life—I know they belongs to you and I just wanted to see how they looked!” She burst into tears. Her legs were shaking under her. She could see visions of herself in jail for attempted thievery. Sobbing, she flung the bracelet on the table and rushed to catch Ann’s elbows in her hands. “Miss Ann, before the Lord God Almighty—”

  “Why, you poor girl.” Through her own sobs Corrie May heard Ann’s voice. She felt Ann’s arm around her shoulders and Ann’s handkerchief drying her tears.

  The satin of Ann’s gown was cool under her cheek. “My Lord, Miss Ann, but you’s a sweet young lady.” Her voice choked. “I know they’s worth a thousand dollars or something and I shouldn’t ought to’ve bothered them. But I never had diamonds or nothing like that.”

  “Don’t cry,” said Ann. Suddenly Corrie May realized that Ann was laughing. She raised her head incredulously and looked up. Ann was really laughing. “Why Corrie May,” she was saying, “that’s not jewelry. The whole lot isn’t worth ten dollars.” Crossing quickly to the table she gathered the ornaments into her hands. “Here. Do you want them?”

  Corrie May gasped. “You mean—” She was so amazed she could hardly say it. “You mean you’s gonta give them to me?”

  “Why yes, you can have them. They’re nothing but glass. I wore this stuff to the ball last night—I was masquerading as a gypsy.”

  Corrie May accepted the handful. Even if they weren’t real they would look right elegant in Rattletrap Square. “Why thank you ma’am. I never had nothing so pretty. I sho thought they was jewels.”

  “Real jewels like that,” Ann explained gently, “would be worth more than this whole plantation.”

  Corrie May smiled, bringing her head and her arm together so she could scrub the last tears out of her eyes with her sleeve. “Anyway, Miss Ann, even if these ain’t sho ’nough, I hope you don’t think I’d steal from you.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Ann consoled her. “Don’t bother about it, Corrie May. I don’t think you’d steal from me any more than I’d steal from you.”

  Corrie May blinked.

  “Now will you show me the petticoat?” Ann added.

  Corrie May laid the ornaments back on the table and went to bring her work. She moved slowly, her mind fumbling with the fine impartiality of an ethical principle that forbade her and Ann to steal from each other.

  But Ann, who evidently had never had any reason to be troubled about such matters, was examining the petticoat and saying,

  “You did this beautifully.”

  “Thank you ma’am,” said Corrie May.

  Ann sat down, the petticoat trailing across her knees. “If you really need work, you can work here for me two or three days a week. You can ride out on one of the plantation wagons. They’re always going to the wharfs and back.”

  Corrie May glowed. “You mean honest, Miss Ann? I sho do appreciate it, ma’am.”

  “Why yes, I’ll s
ave the mending for you, and perhaps some laundry.”

  “All right ma’am, that sho is nice. You want me back tomorrow?”

  “Yes, you may come tomorrow.”

  “I reckon I better be going now.”

  Ann smiled. “You’re very trustful. What about wages?”

  Corrie May bit her lip. “Why, I don’t know, Miss Ann.”

  “Neither do I.” Ann shrugged a little. “I’m not used to paying wages, and I’ve no idea what to offer. What do you get for a day’s work?”

  “Well ma’am, for picking oranges they gimme thirty cents.”

  “Thirty cents?” Ann repeated. “For how long?”

  “From can’t-see to can’t-see, Miss Ann.”

  “Good heavens,” said Ann half under her breath. Aloud she said, “Still, if that’s what you’re used to—I’ll tell you. This is finer work than picking oranges. Suppose we say fifty cents a day.”

  “Oh lawsy, Miss Ann, that’s big pay. Thank you ma’am.”

  “You’re entirely welcome.” But as Corrie May started out she added, “Wait a minute.” She went to the bureau and opening a drawer she took out a purse made of gilt beads knitted on silk. “Here,” she said, offering a quarter, “this is for the petticoat.”

  Corrie May shrank before such generosity, for she had not expected to be paid for the petticoat at all. “Oh Miss Ann, that wa’n’t hardly worth two bits, you reckon?”

  “Never mind, take it. I think if you’ll go back to the field-road you can find another wagon going downtown.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Don’t forget the pretties,” said Ann over her shoulder as she went back into her sitting-room. Corrie May put the quarter into her pocket and gathered up the ornaments Ann had given her. As she turned to go she caught sight of Ann through the open doorway leading into the sitting-room. Ann lay on the sofa, her chin resting on her cupped hands. She was looking toward the windows, but her eyes were blank, as if she got no pleasure from the gardens—as if, in fact, she were not even seeing them. She looked so bored that Corrie May was startled and made an involuntary movement. Ann turned her head.

  “Did you want something?”

  “Why no ma’am.” Corrie May paused awkwardly. Now she had to speak and she didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to be butting in on your private room. Only you don’t look right well. You ain’t sick, I hope?”

  “No, I’m quite all right.” Ann turned over on her back and stretched her arms. “Nothing but the doldrums.”

  “Doldrums?” Corrie May repeated uncertainly. “What’s them?”

  “It means you’re not very happy.”

  “Oh,” said Corrie May. She looked around her at the encircling splendor. “My God. You got to be happy, too?”

  Ann regarded her with such incomprehension that Corrie May was abashed, and she hurried out and down the back stairs as fast as she could.

  2

  While the answer was not entirely money, money was part of it. Corrie May found a square box that had been thrown away after having served to hold some silk flowers Ann bought for her girdle, and she mixed flour and water and glued down the cover and cut a slit on top. Every time Ann paid her she dropped a penny or nickel through the slit. The box she hid on the shelf where she kept her clothes, so when pa came home from his religious meanderings he would not discover it: if he did, he would be sure to think up something he could not live without and she would have to spend her money.

  It took a long time to get even so much as a dollar, but the rattle of the coins in the box gave her a feeling of safety. Money was so wonderful, it built a wall around you, shutting out fear and hunger and ugliness so completely that you even forgot they existed. Money let you be clean and dainty, it gave you grace of manner and charm of speech. It made people bow to you as if you favored them by being alive, instead of shoving past as if you cluttered up the street. It made you sweet-tempered. Until she came to work at Ardeith Corrie May had never dreamed how many pleasant traits of personality could be fostered with money.

  She had thought she knew all about how married people acted. Nobody in Rattletrap Square had any privacy. Corrie May had heard women yelling at their husbands in the night demanding to be let alone because they had too many children already and yelling more when the men went out and picked up trollops on the wharfs. She had helped at childbirths and then helped lay out the babies when they died because their mothers wasted bodies could not provide milk enough to keep them alive. In Rattletrap Square folks screamed at each other when they got mad, women threw sticks of stovewood at their husbands and men hit their wives on the jaw.

  She had not expected Ann and Denis to be quite so crude as that, but she was unprepared for their courtesy, their pleasant compliments, the way they knocked on doors and asked, “Are you busy, dear? Or may I come in?” Working at Ardeith, she saw a good deal of Ann and Denis—though they seemed to see very little of her—and she watched them, fascinated by their difference from any other people she had ever known. They were neither of them blessed with angelic dispositions, but even when they quarreled they did it prettily.

  There was the day Colonel Sheramy came to dinner, and he and Denis got into an argument in the library afterwards. Corrie May had been sent down to ask the housekeeper, Mrs. Maitland, for some summer curtains that needed to have the lace repaired where it had been torn in the laundering. She could hear Denis and Colonel Sheramy arguing as she passed the library door.

  Colonel Sheramy was saying vehemently, “You’re entirely wrong, Denis. The fomenters of rebellion in South Carolina are menaces to our welfare as well as their own. Dividing the Union would be—”

  “But how,” Denis interrupted, “can you overlook the injustices the South had been enduring these twenty years? Encroachments by Congress—”

  “What encroachments, you young hothead? It was Southern sentiment that nullified the 1850 Compromises! It was Southerners on the Supreme Court—”

  Their voices got fainter as Corrie May went down the hall to the sewing-room. But as she sat working on the lace she could still hear them talking, and though she could not make out the words she could tell they were getting mad with each other. Finally Colonel Sheramy went angrily out to his horse. As Denis came out of the library Ann met him in the hall. She had evidently been waiting.

  “So that’s how you talk to my father!” she exclaimed. The two of them stood in the hall just outside the sewing-room.

  “That’s how I’ll talk to anybody who calls me a misinformed young fool,” Denis retorted. “Your father sounds like an abolitionist Congressman.”

  “He’s not an abolitionist and that’s got nothing to do with it anyway. If you can’t remember the respect you owe him—”

  “Since you don’t know anything about politics you’d better not try to give opinions.” Denis was evidently getting mad with her too.

  “I’m not talking about politics,” Ann flashed back. “I’m talking about manners. You’re as uncouth as an overseer. I want you to go right after him and apologize for what you said.”

  “I’m not sorry for a word I said and I’ll do nothing of the sort. It’s time somebody told him a few facts.”

  “Yes you will apologize!”

  “I most certainly will not. Be quiet.”

  “You insult my father and you tell me to be quiet! You won’t apologize to him?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “You insufferable boor!”

  Corrie May heard footsteps and the rattle of starched petticoats as Ann ran upstairs. Oh Lord, she thought, now they’re going to fight all afternoon. When she went to take the curtains upstairs she heard voices from their bedroom. The words were indistinct, but she could tell they were still quarreling. Miss Ann’s really got a temper, thought Corrie May. But I hope he don’t slap her. Please, Lord, don’t let h
im slap her. He didn’t have any business being rude to the old gentleman. Corrie May was frightened. They sounded ready to rip each other apart. Denis hurled himself out of the bedroom, banging the door, and ran downstairs. Corrie May slipped to the front window of the hall and saw him on a horse galloping furiously down the avenue. Oh my soul, she thought, now he’s going off and get drunk and he might not be home till morning. It’s going to be mighty unpleasant around here. She thought she heard more sounds faintly from the bedroom. Though she could not be sure, she guessed Ann was crying with rage.

  It was nearly dark when Denis returned. Hanging the curtains in the spare bedroom across the hall, Corrie May saw him in the avenue. He was riding more slowly than when he left, and his seat on his horse was steady. He did not seem to be drunk.

  She heard him come up the stairs and knock on the door of the master bedroom. From inside Ann’s voice called, “Yes? Who is it?”

  “It’s Denis.”

  “Go away.”

  Denis rattled the doorknob. “Darling, stop being a dunce. Unlock the door.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ann, come on. Open the door.”

  “I told you to go away.”

  “If you don’t unlock the door I’m going to break it in.”

  Corrie May doubted his ability to do it. The door was too heavy for any man’s strength. But she trembled.

  There was a silence. At last the key turned. “All right, what is it now?” Ann demanded.

  Denis laughed deep in his throat. “Honey child, don’t you think we’ve been quarreling long enough?”

  “Will you tell the colonel you’re sorry you yelled at him?”

  “I’ll make peace with him, that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say I’m sorry I yelled at you. I do love you so, Ann—how do you manage to make me so mad?”

  There was a pause. There were more words, blurred because they were half whispered. At length Corrie May heard the door close. Creeping to the doorway of the room where she was she saw that it had closed with both of them inside. She heard the key turn in the lock again.