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

exclaimed. “I can play the piano and I dance beautifully as you’d know if you’d ever danced with me, and Madame Bertrand said my French accent was mighty near perfect and that was a big compliment because she thought all Americans were savages riding buffaloes, and I can embroider, and I do know how to be a hostess.”
    “All of that,” said Jerry, nodding gravely, “sounds to me as if the good Lord has destined you to be Mrs. Denis Larne.”
    Ann spread her arms along the mantel and rested her forehead on it. She wished her mother were alive to be consulted. Her mother had died when she was ten, and all she remembered was a lovable black-haired woman who scampered about with a merriment very unlike the quiet hauteur of Mrs. Larne.
    At that instant the door opened and mammy panted in, carrying two big jugs of water. “Massa Jerry!” she exclaimed. “Ain’t you ’shame’, comin’ in here and yo’ young lady sister got no clothes on?”
    Ann and Jerry turned laughing. Ann was relieved that mammy had come in; such deep thought as she had been trying to indulge in was difficult if continued too long. “She’s got on plenty of clothes,” Jerry was defending himself.
    “She ain’t neither. And I got to give her a bath. Go on, Massa Jerry. Ain’t you got no business to tend to?”
    “No business at all. You’d better leave me alone, mammy. I’ve been a good boy, riding the cotton all morning.
    “Did you see the new overseer?” Ann asked.
    “Sure, I saw him. Name’s Gilday. Big red face and got a Northern accent that twangs like a tuning-fork.”
    “What’s he doing overseeing cotton if he comes from up North?”
    “That wouldn’t matter. He says he’s been South quite awhile, and he does know about cotton. But I don’t think we’re going to keep him. He’s got a mean way of doing. Mean with the Negroes, and that always goes with a fellow who’s mean with the land.”
    “Go on out, Massa Jerry,” mammy ordered again.
    “All right, I’m going.” Jerry started to retire obediently. “What’ll you be doing, Ann?”
    “I think I’ll ride down the road toward town.”
    “You’ll bake your so-called brain in this heat.”
    “I don’t care. I’ve got to do something, haven’t I?”
    Without answering, Jerry pulled the door shut and went off down the stairs whistling. Mumbling about the ways of the young, mammy helped Ann out of her dressing-gown and nightgown and poured the cold water into the tub she produced from its hiding-place behind the armoire. Ann sat down in the water, shivered at the first shock of it and then stretched happily, sending teasing looks to mammy’s righteous countenance. Mammy grumbled incessantly, but she loved Ann very much; Ann had nursed at mammy’s bosom when she was a baby, and had been washed and dressed and scolded by her ever since, and mammy would have cut the heart out of anybody who made such remarks about her white child as she herself made every day.
    After she was finally dressed Ann looked herself over in the mirror again, hoping she might meet Denis on the road, for she looked unusually well. Her green riding-habit, spreading around her on the floor, gave her an elongated appearance like an image in the bowl of a spoon, but above the waistline it fitted her figure trimly. One reason Ann liked to ride was that she knew there was no severer test of one’s figure than a riding-dress, and her own stood the test so well. Mammy had done her hair in curls on her shoulders, and she wore a pert little green hat with a plume that curved down to kiss her cheek just below where the dimple would be if she chanced to smile at somebody. Ann pulled on her gauntlets, accepted her riding-crop from mammy’s hands and tossed her skirt over her arm to make it short enough for walking.
    The house was very quiet as she went downstairs. Evidently the colonel was still riding the cotton, and Jerry must have gone out too. Ann went across the back gallery to the