Read Online The Handsome Road by Gwen Bristow - Free Book Online

cobwebs out of her eyes. She stood a moment looking at herself in the glass. Jerry said she spent half her life before a mirror, an accusation that Ann laughed at without troubling to deny it. Undoubtedly she was a nice-looking person; even in a rumpled nightgown and with her front hair in curl-papers she looked well enough to believe Denis’ admiring eyes. Ann drew back from the minor. She really ought to be making up her mind. Next week she would have her twentieth birthday. Twenty was a horrid age, so final; it put a period to one’s girlhood and dragged one across the line of being entirely grown up. She ought to get married. In her lifetime Ann had had very few decisions to make, and these she had made in whatever fashion seemed at the moment likely to cause the least trouble for herself. So far life had dealt with her very pleasantly, and certainly a marriage to Denis would be the best possible insurance against having to trouble her mind about anything whatever. As she stood before her mirror considering, it seemed an inviting prospect.
    There was a knock at the door. “Yes?” called Ann, thinking it was mammy with the bath.
    “Howdy,” said Jerry’s voice. He pushed the door inward. As he came in Ann took up a dressing-gown from a chair and pulled it around her. Jerry was carrying a box. “You finally out of bed?” he greeted.
    “I sure am,” said Ann. She adored Jerry. He had been named Cyril for his father, but his mother had started calling him Jerry for convenience and nobody had changed it. Jerry was so delightful and so ugly, and he had so much good sense—she quarreled with him frequently, but she always respected his opinions.
    “Present for you,” he was saying.
    “What is it?”
    “How should I know?” Jerry dispersed himself over a chair, looking more ungainly than ever against its slender legs and upholstery of skim-milk blue damask. “Came by hand. Something Denis sent over.”
    “Oh,” said Ann. She took the box and sat on the floor, struggling with the strings. The lid came off and showed her a pile of white roses.
    “Mighty pretty,” Jerry remarked. He asked abruptly, “Say listen, Ann, are you going to marry Denis or aren’t you?”
    She sat up straight, cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t know. None of your business anyway.”
    “Sorry, ma’am.” Jerry grinned and stretched his long arms. “Only I understand he’s wandering about full of woe, hinting darkly of blowing his brains out.”
    “Oh, shut up. I wish people would stop laughing at me.”
    Jerry started to whistle, puckering his big mouth grotesquely.
    “You look like a monkey’s uncle,” said Ann. She got up and laid the roses on the mantelpiece. Their whiteness shone against the marble, making its veins like black shadows. “Sure enough, Jerry,” she exclaimed, “tell me what you think. Should I marry Denis?”
    Jerry ceased whistling. He put his feet back on the floor and sat forward in the flimsy little chair, his hands laced between his knees. “Of course you should. He’s a grand fellow. I don’t know what you’re worrying about.”
    “Maybe—” She looked down, untying the girdle of her dressing-gown and tying it again. “Maybe he’s too grand. We’ve always been, well, rather informal over here—but at Ardeith—I mean, Mrs. Denis Larne will be as much a symbol as a person. It might be rather—difficult.”
    “I don’t think so. Not for you.”
    She came a step nearer. “Do you think he’ll expect me to keep that house the way his mother does, poking in the linen-closets and counting the silver every week and standing around when they cut the fieldhands’ clothes to make sure they don’t waste any material—”
    Jerry began to laugh. “Hell and high water, Ann, Denis isn’t utterly idiotic.”
    “I reckon you mean to imply that I am.” Ann poked out her lower lip. “I know I’m not terribly clever but I’m not as empty in the head as everybody keeps saying,” she