The Handsome Road

by Gwen Bristow

  It was done in April. Everybody said it was lovely, and Ann was ecstatic. She tried to picture herself a little old lady with white curls and a cap, coming down the stairs to tell her grandchildren, “My dears, in sixty-one I looked like that!” The idea amused her, and she begged Denis to have his portrait done too before M. de Launay went back to New Orleans. Denis said he was too busy to stand for any portrait now, but he promised to think it over; maybe when this political confusion subsided he would have more leisure.

  Then, all of a sudden, as amazingly as if a flower had exploded in her fingers, Ann discovered that there was going to be a war.

  She never remembered when she first heard war mentioned. It was as if one day she was going on with her normal life and the next day there were flags on the houses and troops marching and the band playing Dixie. It was terribly thrilling. Shop windows were suddenly full of guns, cartridges, military sashes and camp kits; dressmakers displayed fabrics of Confederate gray for ladies’ gowns; in bookstores fiction and poetry were moved to back shelves to make room for biographies of generals and volumes on military tactics; and even the toy-shops put their dolls and kites on back counters to leave space in front for regiments of tin soldiers. The air rattled with patriotic speeches. It was all so overpowering that it was hard to remember there had ever been a time when there was not a war, when life was bare of this gorgeous adventure of roses, music, parades, gallant rebels and dastardly Yankees.

  Ann was so stirred that everything else that had ever happened to her seemed dull beside this. And only a few months ago, she remembered, she had been thinking nothing exciting would ever happen to her! She gave parties for the officers at the camp near Dalroy and helped organize Soldiers’ Aid Societies to knit garments and learn the new war-songs. It was such fun to practice them—

  “Then Florida and Texas they both got in the ring,

  For they wouldn’t have a government where cotton wasn’t king… .”

  and her hands tingled till she could hardly strike the keys. The young gentlemen from the camp came to Ardeith magnificent in their new gray uniforms with gold buttons, doffing their hats to her with gestures so courtly that the brims swept the ground. They danced in the parlor with herself and her friends, and told them it was an honor to be called to defend such beauty and chastity as theirs. They sat on the steps, each one tying a noose of rope to the barrel-end of his gun; that was to catch a Yankee and bring him home to be yoked up to the sugar-mill in place of the mule. It was a grand war. It wouldn’t last long, of course; the Northern soldiers were enlisting for only three months, and to go them one better the Southerners jauntily signed up for a year, but they agreed they’d be home free and victorious in time for the sugar-grinding in the fall.

  But when Denis came in one afternoon and drew her out of the parlor to tell her he was joining the army, Ann was swept over with such a flood of mingled pride and fright that she burst into tears on his shoulder. She flung her arms around him, standing in the hall at the foot of the staircase, sobbing that she couldn’t live without him. Behind them in the parlor Sarah Purcell was playing the piano and everybody was singing, but under it she could hear Denis’ voice, insisting that he simply had to go in, she wouldn’t want to think he would let other men defend his country while he idled at home. His head overseer was amply capable of supervising the plantation. Ann held him tight, and while Denis got out his handkerchief and dried her eyes she begged him please to forgive her for being such a coward and said how proud of him little Denis was going to be when he was old enough to understand. Denis stroked her hair and kissed her and told her he would be gone only a little while, and women had to be brave in times like these. Raising her head she looked at him, tall and handsome above her, and glowed through her tears. From the parlor they could hear a tramping of feet. The young officers were drilling around the piano, and singing.

  “Oh we’ll be back by grinding time, grinding time, grinding time,

  Oh we’ll be back by grinding time,

  With a Yankee to pull the mill!”

  Ann laughed. She was thinking how exceptionally handsome Denis would look in a uniform, and praising heaven M. de Launay had been detained in Dalroy by another commission, for now he must certainly paint Denis in his Confederate gray, so little Denis could always see his father as a soldier. Her own father was already in the army. Though he had always opposed secession, Colonel Sheramy agreed that he could not make war on his own people and resigned his commission as soon as the war began. He was promptly made a colonel in the new Confederate forces and went to the camp, leaving Jerry to manage the plantation in his absence. Ann thought now it was not every woman who had the distinction of being both a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife and the mother of a potential soldier as well, and she could really say she had given all she had to her country. She kissed Denis again and told him she had never loved him as much as she did this minute, and then she hurried to call Napoleon, for Denis was about to announce the news to the others and they could not properly celebrate his enlistment in anything less than champagne.

  Chapter Six

  1

  Hey, Ma,” said Corrie May, “d’you reckon it’ll be too warm for me to wear a shawl?”

  Her mother was standing by the stove pouring coffee. “I wouldn’t aim to wear no shawl,” she said, wiping the perspiration from her forehead with the corner of her apron. “It’ll be plenty hot before noon.”

  “Yes’m. But this here dress is kind of teased out at the armholes.” Corrie May stood with her back to the mirror on the kitchen wall, trying to twist her head to see just how much damage her wearing the dress had done to it. It was a blue-checked tissue Ann had given her, woven of long-staple delta cotton that had a silky shine to it, and she wore it with a set of Ann’s old hoops. The ribs of the hoops were cracked in some places, but after Corrie May tied the broken places with strings the breaks didn’t show much. Corrie May knew Ann’s dresses would never meet around her own waist, and she wore a sash to cover the diamond-shaped gap at the waistband, but there was no way to disguise the tearing at the shoulder-seams. “I just got wider shoulders than Miss Ann,” she acknowledged sadly.

  “I expect you got more muscles than her,” Mrs. Upjohn suggested. “Ladies that ain’t never had to do no work don’t develop to be broad across the shoulders. Here, you better have some coffee before you go out.”

  Though she accepted the cup Corrie May still examined herself in the mirror. She did want to look well for the parade. When you cheered soldiers marching to defend your country you had to be stylish. Setting the cup on the table she got her shawl, a light brown silk-and-wool mixture Ann had passed on to her when it got torn. Corrie May had mended the tear carefully, and when it was folded inside the darn did not show. She draped it around her shoulders with the point neatly adjusted to drop in the middle of the back. She had put a new ribbon on her last year’s bonnet, and by trying it on at varying angles before the mirror she had managed to give it the new tilt-back look fashionable this season. If she could only wear her gloves, now, she would look very elegant indeed, but though Ann discarded plenty of gloves there was no mortal way for Corrie May to squeeze her own work-broadened hands into them. So she carried the gloves in her hands, pretending it was too warm to put them on. Holding the shawl together in front, with the yellow kid gloves in her hand at an angle that would not disclose the broken seams at the fingertips, she went out to join the girls who were waiting for her.

  With one look at their clothes she decided she was more frocked up than any of them. One of the girls was Budge Foster’s sister Ethel, whom Corrie May had not seen for a good while, not since Ethel married a fellow who worked on the upper wharfs; but apparently Ethel was not self-conscious about being with her brother’s old girl. She was a placid sort of person, who would just take it that Corrie May and Budge didn’t happen to run together any more, and leave it at that.

  �
�You sho looks like one fine lady,” said Ethel as they walked out of Rattletrap Square toward the street above the park, where the parade would pass.

  “Thank you kindly,” said Corrie May.

  “Corrie May’s been working out at Ardeith,” one of the other girls explained. “She sho is getting to be elegant, too.”

  “You mighty right she is,” Ethel observed enviously. “That’s a real handsome dress.”

  “It’s delta cotton,” said Corrie May complacently.

  “Delta cotton? Sho ’nough!” Ethel exclaimed. “Well, my my.” She fingered a frill around the skirt. “Them delta cotton goods costs fifty cents a yard, even. And you got on hoops too, ain’t you?”

  Corrie May nodded, then caught herself in the middle of a nod lest she displace the back-tilt of her bonnet. “It’s seven yards around the bottom.”

  “My my,” said Ethel again. “I sho would like to have some hoops sometimes. But they takes so much cloth. Say, Corrie May, you sho gets up in the world, don’t you?”

  “Oh no, not so much,” Corrie May said airily. “Just some little things they give me for working at Ardeith.”

  “But how come you got to wear a shawl?” Ethel inquired. “Me, if I had a real delta cotton dress I wouldn’t be covering up the top of it with no shawl.”

  “I’m sensitive to drafts,” said Corrie May. That was a weakness she had discovered just lately, since old Mrs. Larne came back from Europe. The girls were always being sent to fetch shawls for Mrs. Larne when she came to dinner. Corrie May was uncertain what drafts did to persons who were sensitive to them, but it was evidently a susceptibility that only highclass people could afford. But Ethel accepted her explanation.

  “Well now, I never knew that before. I sho hopes you keep well, Corrie May.” Then, as if tired of admiring and thinking it was time she got some attention for herself, she remarked, “My man, he’s in the army.”

  “Sho ’nough!” the girls exclaimed with interest. “When’d he join up?”

  “Oh, a little while ago. He’ll be in the parade today.”

  “Honest?” They turned from Corrie May to Ethel. Corrie May might be all dressed up, but she couldn’t boast a soldier for a husband, nor any husband at all for that matter. The other two girls were not married either, and they gave Ethel the deference due one who was making a success of her life. “You don’t mind him going?”

  “Of course not,” Ethel returned proudly. “It ain’t every man gets right out to fight for his country.”

  Corrie May, who disliked losing their notice, put in,

  “My pa, he’s joined up with the army too.”

  “Oh, he has?” they rejoined with evident surprise. Old man Upjohn had a certain respect paid him in Rattletrap Square, on account of knowing all those big words and being a preacher, but you wouldn’t exactly expect him to be a soldier. Corrie May, who had scant illusions, knew her pa had joined up partly because of the promise of regular pay and mostly because marching and receiving the cheers of the populace was like wine to his soul, but she nevertheless returned,

  “Well, he’s stout and healthy, ain’t he? And you wouldn’t expect him to sit home when there’s men needed to fight for their country, would you?”

  The girls whose fathers were still lagging along at ordinary civilian jobs became both apologetic and defensive. Corrie May linked her arm in Ethel’s. With soldiers behind them they could walk proudly together.

  The streets were so crowded their progress was slow, and Corrie May had to keep reminding the girls not to push, as she had to be careful of her hoops. At last they got places on the right street, in the shade of a wrought-iron balcony overhanging the sidewalk from one of the residences. Corrie May had adroitly guided them here, for this was the home of the Durhams, the family who owned the great steamboat line, and in listening to conversations at Ardeith she had discovered that before her marriage old Mrs. Larne was a Miss Durham. Since the parade would not pass the plantations it was reasonable to assume that the Larnes would watch it from the Durham balcony, and if Ann should happen to pass and speak to her it would be a greater distinction than being married to a soldier. Any man who wasn’t sick could be a soldier, but she was probably the only girl in Rattletrap Square who could be recognized by one of the great ladies of the plantations.

  Carriages were driving up, their occupants getting out to enter houses along the route of the parade, and there were policemen ordering the lesser folk aside from the entrances. Corrie May and her friends edged as close to the Durham doorway as the policeman would let them. The Durhams were evidently entertaining quite a party. Guests came and came. Corrie May whispered to the others from her superior knowledge.

  “That’s Miss Jeannette Heriot, the one in pink lawn with the high bonnet. Her father owns the Heriot wood-yards. Say, did you know a big steamboat burns six cords of wood a day? Yes it does too, and they buy it from the Heriot woodyards. That’s Mr. Raoul Valcour with her. He’s been running with Miss Jeannette. Folks say there might be a wedding. And that’s Miss Sarah Purcell, the red-headed one in green.”

  “Dresses kind of flashy, don’t she?” murmured Ethel.

  “They say she does it to show off her hair. That’s her brother Hugh, the big one with the thin face. And that’s Mr. Jerry Sheramy, the ugly one.”

  “Him?” said Ethel incredulously. “Looks like—” she hesitated.

  “Like a gorilla,” said Corrie May, when Ethel paused for lack of a simile. She was unsure what a gorilla was, but she had once heard Ann say that.

  “Funny,” said one of the other girls, “he should come in the Purcell carriage.”

  “I understand,” said Corrie May importantly, “he’s making up to Miss Sarah Purcell.”

  The great folk smilingly thanked the policeman for making them a clear passage across the sidewalk. They did not appear to see the street-crowds; it was as though they were passing between bushes the policemen were holding back. Corrie May wondered if she would ever, even if she became rich, be so exquisitely unconscious of unimportant people. Was it possible they didn’t know they were being examined, their clothes and manners commented upon, any trivial line of their conversation that drifted to the crowd remembered and treasured, that she and her friends might say, “I heard Mr. Sheramy tell Miss Purcell the soldiers were going to be mighty hot marching in those heavy uniforms”?

  She started, concealing her eagerness with difficulty, for she caught sight of the carriage from Ardeith. She knew it by the matched black horses that drew it and the curtains of flowered white satin Ann had prevailed upon Denis to order after arguing down his preference for solid rose-color. Corrie May pressed close to the curb.

  The coachman halted the horses. While he held the reins the footman sprang down from the seat beside him and opened the carriage door with a bow carefully calculated to reach its lowest just as his mistress appeared. The mistress this time was Ann’s mother-in-law, who descended just as an elderly gentleman came out to meet her, exclaiming,

  “Come right in, Frances. Delightful to see you, I’m sure. The young ladies with you?”

  They evidently were, for after her mother came Miss Cynthia Larne, very stylish in a gown of spotted muslin. Cynthia curtseyed, saying “Good morning, Uncle Alan,” with poise that though she was only twelve reminded Corrie May that she had spent all last year in France. Cynthia said she would wait for Ann, and Mrs. Larne went into the house with her brother. Corrie May saw a white-gloved hand approach the white-gloved hand of the footman, as a vast expanse of hoopskirt filled the carriage doorway. It was a skirt of fine white lawn, the ruffles embroidered with little pink and blue flowers with green stems, and Corrie May involuntarily winced at the thought of the hours some seamstress had given to decorating a dress that would hardly survive six launderings.

  “That’s Mrs. Denis Larne,” she announced in a whisper.

  “I’ve s
een her around,” Ethel breathed with awe. “Them Larnes is the richest people hereabouts, ain’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Corrie May.

  “Is it true they got silver doorknobs in their house? And a staircase that turns around with nothing holding it up?”

  “It sho is,” said Corrie May, omitting to mention that she had never used anything but the back stairs herself.

  “Lawsy me. Is it honest them ladies got nigger women to dress them in the mornings?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Do tell,” marveled Ethel.

  Ann emerged from the carriage with some difficulty, as her hoops were so large it required dexterity to get them through the doorway. She had on, not a bonnet, but a hat, think of it, a straw hat bigger than a parasol, with white tulle crimped around the crown and a frill of lace dropping from the brim, and two long pink ribbons dangling from the hat over her shoulders and halfway down her skirt. Smiling at Cynthia she held out her hand, unmindful of how careful she should be of such spotless gloves. Corrie May waited apprehensively lest Ann pass without noticing her. Jerry came out of the house to meet them, but Ann was detaining Cynthia by the carriage-block in what appeared to be a serious conversation. Corrie May listened, and managed to catch it.

  “… I’m glad she’s gone in, for I wanted to ask you if there’s anything your mother would particularly like for supper?”

  Cynthia considered. “She likes lamb, but you said you were going to have that.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Maitland ordered that. Does she like ice-cream? There’ll be time to freeze it after we get home.”

  Cynthia nodded vehemently. “I do too.”

  “We can’t have ice-cream,” Jerry told her.