The Handsome Road (26 page)

“Yes ma’am.” He spoke with reverence. “Only—I mean, for a special order it should ought to be paid for in advance.”

“Sure,” said Corrie May. She laid a bunch of greenbacks on the table. Her counting was sometimes vague, so she added, “You count it out. Them bills soil my gloves.”

“Yes ma’am, certainly, ma’am. Anything to oblige. Er—if I ain’t making too bold to comment, ma’am, it’s mighty fine to have a good cash customer these days, and I sure do appreciate it, ma’am, yes ma’am.”

Corrie May observed him with disdain. She recognized the hungry way his fingers closed over the bills. It reminded her of herself when she used to get her wages at Ardeith. “Was you in the army?” she inquired.

“Yes ma’am. Only—” he caught his breath. “Only I mean I ain’t a Confederate no more,” he assured her hastily, “I’m real reconstructed I am, I mean you could look a long way and not find as loyal a Union man as me, yes ma’am, truth was, I got conscripted—”

“Ah, go on,” she said laughing. “All you men now want to make out like you got conscripted. The way you talk when anybody comes around spending Northern money, a person’d think there wasn’t a volunteer in the whole Confederate army.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said meekly, and turned red. When he had counted the money and given her back the remainder he ventured, “I expect you come from up North, ma’am, don’t you?”

Corrie May smiled. She took the bills from him and put them back into her portemonnaie. As she fastened the clasp she glanced down at herself. She had on a white muslin dress over a pink silk petticoat; the skirt had nine flounces and a train a yard long. Her gloves were pink kid embroidered with peacock feathers in purple and gold, and her sash was blue velvet. Her bonnet was made of pink roses, small so as not to interfere with her looped braids, and tied under her chin with blue velvet streamers.

“No,” she said slowly, “I ain’t from up North. I ain’t never been up North in my life. Folks up there get chillblains when it snows. Me, I like the South all right.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am, I really do. But I mean—” he floundered. “You being dressed so elegant, begging your pardon for being so free, ma’am, and there ain’t many Southern people got any money left these times, I expect you know how it is, even the pawnshops ain’t taking no more spoons—”

Corrie May stood up. “Yes, I know, but if I was you mister, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s plenty of good times to be had right here where we are. Now you’ll hold all that ice for me?”

“Yes ma’am.” He grinned broadly. “I ain’t forgetting it’s paid for. I’ll be holding every pound.”

Corrie May went out and got back into her buggy. She drove to the courthouse. There were things still to be attended to and she needed some more money. The dressmaker had promised to have her gown ready this evening, and she wanted to go by and see that it was satisfactory before it was delivered, but she would have to pay for it. Gilday wouldn’t let her run any bills. It was going to be a splendid dress with a long feather-edged train. At the courthouse she got out of the buggy.

Gilday was in his office with five or six other men. They greeted her amiably.

“Well, well, if it ain’t Corrie May,” said Mr. Dawson. “Dressed up like a Christmas tree. Where you going diked out so fine?”

“Why, I was coming right here,” she returned pleasantly. “Wouldn’t come call on my friends in a calico apron, I hope.”

Gilday sat behind the desk. He reached out and pulled her to sit on the arm of his chair. “What you after, baby?” he asked her.

“What you reckon?” she countered. “I’m out of money again.

“Heaven help us,” said Gilday with a certain pride. “This woman, she costs more’n a carriage and pair.”

Everybody laughed. “Well, I hear they’re offering a bounty for Ku Kluxers,” said Dawson. “Only you got to bring in the scalp with the hair on.”

They chuckled again at that, and Corrie May shrugged. “I always say if the niggers is fools enough to have the breath scared out of ’em by men in white sheets, leave ’em alone. It amuses the population and a good time is had by all. Look here, Sam Gilday. If you ain’t got sixty dollars, say so, only if you ain’t I can’t get my gown and I won’t be able to give no party Tuesday because I won’t have nothing to wear.”

One of the men named Cockrell, who was literary, began to murmur,

“
Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square …”

The whole crew took it up. Corrie May listened impatiently. Seemed to her somebody was always quoting that doggerel. Gilday, who to her private annoyance often read books, came out with the lines,

“Well, having thus wooed Miss McFlimsey and gained her,

With the silks, crinolines, and hoops that contained her—”

Corrie May interrupted, “Are you devoting your time to poetry these days, Samuel, or are you gonta give me that air sixty dollars?”

“Well, I’m a fool,” Gilday announced to the company. “Every time I lay eyes on Corrie May she’s got on a different dress. But now I got to give her money because she ain’t got nothing to wear. Lord have mercy on my sinful soul.”

The others laughed again. Corrie May sensed proudly that their laughter was less to express amusement than to cover envy. The carpetbagger gentlemen were combing the South for women to satisfy their suddenly expensive taste. But the beautiful women were likely to be the sort who stood shabbily disdainful behind their magnolias, and not many of these men had Gilday’s talent for discovering beauty under gingham aprons.

“Say listen,” said Corrie May. “It’s after four o’clock and I ain’t got all day.”

Gilday indulgently pulled open a drawer of the desk. It was full of money, the collections of land-taxes. Gilday had a way of altering the books to make it appear that the land had been appraised for less than its worth and consequently that the taxes paid were less than the sum he actually collected, and he spent the difference. He gathered some bills in his hand.

“Let’s see,” he said. “This here seems to be a hundred and ten dollars. Need it?”

“Sure,” said Corrie May.

With a smile he handed it to her. As Corrie May stuffed the notes into her portemonnaie she heard the door open, and there was a faint rustle of petticoats. She glanced up, and saw Ann Sheramy Larne standing just inside the room.

For a fraction of a minute Ann stood where she was, hesitating before approaching the desk. In that flash of time Corrie May saw her more clearly than she had ever seen anything before in her life. It was the first time she had laid eyes on Ann since her last day at Ardeith, nearly five years ago, and her first thought was one of astonishment that anybody could have changed so much and so curiously.

Ann’s face had grown so thin and hard that it looked like something cut out of a rock. Her whole person had a rigidity that reminded Corrie May of a carved figure on a monument. She wore a dress of the plainest gray poplin with narrow white bands at the throat and wrists, the skirt made scant as though there had not been cloth enough for fashionable puffery. Between her gray-gloved hands she held a purse. As Ann advanced toward the desk Corrie May observed that she wore only her own hair, rolled into a bun below her bonnet—a sure sign either of poverty or disdain of the fashions, and she knew Ann well enough to be sure it was not the latter.

Ann was so intent on her errand that she did not notice anybody in the room. She went directly to the desk and stood before Gilday, but evidently she hardly saw him, as if he were not a person but a symbol. In an expressionless voice she said,

“I have come to pay the last installment of this year’s land-taxes on Ardeith Plantation.”

“Well now,” said Gilday. He leaned forward, and removing his arm from around Corrie May he rested both elbows on the desk. He smiled slowly, his odd mirthless smile that was merely a stretching of his lips. “Don’t tell me I’m meeting up with an old acquaintance. Miss Ann Sheramy, as I live and breathe.”

With a flicker of astonished recognition Ann’s eyes went to his face. She said coldly,

“My name is Larne.”

“Sure, now, my mistake,” said Gilday. He spoke with deep satisfaction. “Just like me to forget a lady changed her name when she got married. Don’t say you’ve gone and forgot me, now.”

“I believe your name is Gilday,” said Ann. She spoke with so slight a movement of her lips that her face looked more than ever like something cut out of a rock. Corrie May observed that her hands had tightened on her purse till the knuckles stood out under the cotton gloves.

“Right, right the first time,” said Gilday expansively. “Now ain’t this a pleasure, us meeting again after all this time. Must be seven or eight years, think of that. Pleased to see you, I’m sure.” He held out his hand.

Ann’s chest rose with a quick intake of breath. Corrie May nearly laughed out loud at the thought of one of these furious aristocrats shaking hands with a carpetbagger. With a helpless rage that was no less evident from its boiling behind its white mask of self-control, Ann took one of her hands from her purse. As it moved from the purse to meet Gilday’s Corrie May triumphantly observed that two of the glove-fingers were darned, not the sort of little darns she used to be paid to put at the fingertips, but heavy woven darns that implied decency maintained at the point of desperation. Gilday clasped Ann’s hand lingeringly.

“It sure is a pleasure to renew old friendships, ain’t it?” he was saying. “Let me make you acquainted with these here gentlemen. Mrs. Larne, folks, old friend of mine before the war. Mr. Dawson, now he’s a bridegroom, think of that, and Mr. Cockrell and Mr. Reed and Mr. Farnsworth and Mr. Higgins, and this young lady I’m sure you remember, old friend of yours.”

“How do you do?” said Ann coldly. She had regained her hand. The glove was stained with perspiration from Gilday’s palm. Gilday was beaming with sneering pleasure. Ann’s eyes fell on Corrie May.

“Hello,” said Corrie May.

Gilday’s arm had fallen around her shoulders again, possessively. Corrie May smiled. A flicker of expression moved across Ann’s frozen face. Her eyes took in Corrie May as quickly and as completely as Corrie May had seen her. Corrie May knew Ann was aware of her train and her flounces and her blue velvet sash and her false braids. It happened in an instant: Ann’s eyes narrowed and the corner of her mouth curled in understanding contempt. Then it was gone, and Ann’s face was again like a rock, and her eyes were back on Gilday as if he were the remotest stranger.

“I have brought you the tax in full,” she said. “Will you take it, please?”

“Sure, sure,” Gilday responded easily. He reached for his record book. “Only ain’t no use to be in such a hurry. Mighty hot day. Would you sit down and be sociable?”

“No, thank you,” said Ann.

She stood motionless while Gilday ruffled the pages of his ledger. Corrie May’s eyes went over her searchingly. She observed the smoothness of Ann’s plain coiffure and the immaculacy of her dress. Such instinctive gestures toward the past struck her for an instant as pitiful. But she smothered the feeling at once. She wouldn’t be sorry for her, not after that curl of her lip. How she would like to do something to pay her back for that! Not merely watch Ann pay taxes. But something that should take place between the two of them to demonstrate that at last it was herself and not Ann Sheramy who fitted the scheme of things.

Gilday found the page.

“Right here,” he said easily, speaking slowly as though to prolong the pleasure he derived from this performance. “Ardeith Plantation. Property of Denis Larne, Junior, a minor. In custody of Mrs. Denis Larne, Senior, mother of the owner and guardian during his minority. I expect that’s as it ought to be, now?”

“Yes,” said Ann. She unclasped her purse. “I have the statement sent me by this office,” she continued. “The statement says the plantation still owes one hundred and ninety-eight dollars, payable today.”

“Right,” nodded Gilday. There was a greasy look about him. “Right as rain. A hundred and ninety-eight dollars. This sure is the last day, too. If you hadn’t turned up here before six o’clock we’d have had to put some of that fine sugar land up for a tax sale, and we sure would have hated to do that, now you know we would.”

“I have the money,” Ann said quietly.

“Well, if you’ve got it,” said Gilday, “let’s see it.”

Ann took a roll of bills from her purse and handed them to Gilday. Corrie May observed that she moved the bills toward him endwise, so that he took them without touching her.

Gilday’s hairy fingers went slowly through the bills. He moved his lips inaudibly as he counted. At last he looked up.

Ann took a folded paper from her purse. “Will you sign the statement, please?”

“Well now,” said Gilday. His finger fluttered the edges of the greenbacks.

She pushed the paper toward him.

“Hm,” said Gilday. “Hm.” His little eyes went up to meet hers. “Dear lady, I sure would like to sign that statement. I’d be glad to sign it if you had paid the full tax. But this ain’t the full tax. Now lady, dear lady, you know I can’t sign a United States government receipt till I get all that’s owing.”

Ann’s throat moved as she swallowed. Her shoulders gave a little involuntary shiver. But her voice was even as she said,

“I believe you are mistaken, Mr. Gilday. I am sure I gave you one hundred and ninety-eight dollars.”

Gilday smiled. “Now Mrs. Larne, really now you’re a friend of mine and I’d like to make things easy for you, but I’m an officer of the government. I got responsibility. You know there ain’t but a hundred and eighty-eight dollars here. I ain’t one of these fool niggers that can’t count, and you wouldn’t expect me to cheat the United States out of ten dollars, now would you really?”

Ann drew a deep inaudible breath. She said with terrible steadiness,

“Would you oblige me by counting it again?”

Gilday chuckled. At the warm pleased sound of it Corrie May began to feel a little soothing of her own resentment. He pushed the bills back across the desk.

“Suppose you count it, lady.”

Ann caught up the notes and went through them. She made a little gasp in her throat. She started again, counting slowly this time, her lips moving as his had. She laid down the roll and looked in her purse. It contained nothing but her handkerchief and a bunch of keys.