Free The Handsome Road by Gwen Bristow Page B

stairs flared the balustrades turned and swept around white pillars. At night when the chandelier between the door and the staircase was lit, the candle-flames threw long shadows across the scrolls. In most houses a staircase is merely an arrangement for reaching an upper floor, but at Ardeith the staircase was a monument, a creator of legend and romance, and when the Larne women swept their great ruffled skirts down the stairs and the Larne men descended with their characteristic slim-waisted elegance, it was evident that here was an edifice built not simply for the convenience of fragile humanity but as the epitome of a tradition more lasting than any small human life could be.
    Ann stood at the foot of the stairs, looking around. Along both sides of the hall hung the portraits of Denis’ ancestors, splendid souls caught in a moment of their splendor for posterity. Most of their names she did not know, but she knew one of them was related to her. She and Denis shared a common ancestor. Ann scowled at the pictured faces, wondering if those men and women had known the burden they had been creating. Only Denis never seemed to find it a burden. He accepted his family background as he accepted the country he was born in, something that had made him what he was, but always present so that one never needed to refer to it at all. Denis was not by nature very analytical.
    But why, she asked herself, be so concerned about it? Her family was as old as Denis’, and her blood as blue; the only difference was that the Sheramys had a habit of considering themselves as individuals rather than as parts of a race, and were accustomed to doing about as they pleased. She had heard with amusement that her own father had surprised everybody by marrying a perfect featherhead whose independent ways had shocked the river country, but she had no reason to think their marriage had not been happy.
    Denis came down the hall. He looked tall and splendid, and Ann called herself a fool to hesitate before the chance of the most enviable marriage on the river. As he met her at the foot of the staircase he impulsively swept her into his arms.
    After a moment Ann drew back a little. She looked up at him, feeling a sensation of pleasure at the nearness of his physical beauty. Denis did not say anything. He stood with one hand on her shoulder and his other arm around her waist, smiling down at her so urgently that Ann felt herself yielding as though his ardor were a command she had no power to disobey, and as Denis drew her to him again she put her own arms around him and pressed his lips down to hers. He whispered how much he loved her, and with her head against his shoulder and her hand ruffling his coppery hair, she nodded when he asked again if she would marry him. But even then Ann was aware of a puzzling, unsilenced corner of her mind asking if there was anything he could give her besides romantic adoration, and she was unsatisfied because she did not know.
    But Denis had no doubts. His delight in her made him radiant, and when she said, “Marriage is really what they say, isn’t it?—terribly solemn—how can I possibly know what I’m going to want thirty years from now?”—Denis laughed softly, deep in his throat, and picked up one of the curls from her shoulder and kissed it, promising, “Whatever it is, sweetheart, you’ll have it if I can give it to you.”
    “You’re such a dear,” Ann murmured, and she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him. She appeared breathless with happiness, but the thought actually crossing her mind was what a handsome couple she and Denis would make; with his good looks and her own taste in clothes and decorations they could have a wedding so beautiful it would be talked about for years.
    After awhile they went into the parlor, and she sat on the sofa leaning against him, his arm around her, while they sipped the iced lemonade he had ordered against the heat of the day. They did not talk very much.