Well, that was over. Malvern was in fruit again. They were eating roasting ears and greens and their first new potatoes, grown from a half bushel he had traded with Molly MacBain for a hen and a rooster. He smiled at the thought of Molly, and flushed under the summer sun. Lucinda was to have her child in early autumn. She had announced it to him last night, although it had been obvious to him for months that she was pregnant. But he knew better than to mention it to her before she chose to tell him.
“Mr. Delaney,” she had said last night in her room.
“Well?” he had asked. He was lounging in her low chair preparatory to dressing for dinner. She made him dress every night now as she had before the war.
She herself was already wearing her yellow taffeta, which she complained was in rags and tatters, except that Georgia held it together by delicate darning. She had looked neither ragged nor tattered, however, as she sat in her highbacked chair, her hands folded together like magnolia petals.
“You may expect an addition to your family, Mr. Delaney,” she said.
“Indeed!” he cried. He sat up and took his hands out of his pockets. “When, may I ask?”
“In the first two weeks of September, likely,” she said.
She sat very straight and full of dignity, and he smiled and went over to her and took her head between his hands and kissed her forehead.
“Careful of my pompadour, please,” she cautioned him.
He sat down again. “And what shall her name be, Luce?” he inquired.
“I had thought of Sapphira,” she replied. “It’s a Bible name,” she added.
He reflected. “Wasn’t she a liar, Luce?” he asked.
“She obeyed her husband, I believe,” Lucinda replied. “It is in my memory that her husband bade her tell a lie.”
He had burst out laughing. “Why, Luce, all women are liars! They don’t need to have men teach them.”
“Indeed they are not,” she had cried.
“Indeed they are,” he had cried back at her, “and if you plague me I shall utterly destroy your pompadour.”
He knew by now that a threat to disarrange her hair was the surest way to subjugate her, and she knew that since he came back from the war he was capable of doing it. Twice when she had plagued him he had tumbled and tossed her and left her half crying with rage.
Riding over the fields solitary in the morning he smiled, thinking of the evening. He was tender toward her always, even when he was rough, accepting her little tempers and tantrums with loud laughter, and holding her hands when she fell into a rage. For she could beat him when she was angry and this amused him mightily. It seemed to him that she was the essence of all that was feminine and he loved her profoundly, more he knew, although he would never acknowledge it, than she could possibly love him. He did not blame her for this. She loved him as well as she could, and she could love no one better, or so he believed. With that he could comfort himself. Yet he wondered if there were somewhere, in some women, something more than she could give him. He blushed now when he thought of this. Luce had given him sons and she would give him daughters. He had no reproach against her. But it was strange how war loosened the withers of a man’s soul. Many imaginings came into his own mind now which before the war he could not have had. He was beset by the continual knowledge of the shortness of time and the richness of life. War had shown him both.
He lifted his hand and drank in the morning sunshine. Once when he and Tom were children they had kept a pet crow, and on a fine morning like this one, the crow would bathe its body in the sun. It would ruffle its feathers and hold them apart for the sun to penetrate into the skin, and then, still unsatisfied, it would turn its beak to the sun and open it wide and let the sun pour down its throat, as though the light were food. He opened his own mouth now and felt the sun warm on his tongue. He could almost taste it, sparkling and pure.
At the boundaries of Malvern he found John MacBain, leaning on a fence, his straw hat pulled down over his eyes. He was on his feet again, thin as a withe and leathery, alive, but with a curiously dead look in his eyes.
“You there, John!” Pierce called and cantered his mare. Then he jumped down and threw the reins over the beast’s neck and sauntered toward his neighbor.
“Feeling well again?” he asked.
“Well as I’ll ever be,” John MacBain replied. He was chewing a twig of spice bush.
“You look pretty good,” Pierce said gaily. He was warmly aware of the blood coursing through his own potent body, and of his child in Lucinda’s womb. He was too kind to dwell upon his own good fortune. “Going to farm again, John?” he asked.
“No,” John MacBain said. “I’m thinking of moving away — take Molly to Wheeling, likely, and get me a job in the railroads. Railroads are the coming thing in the state, I hear. The city’ll give Molly life, I figure. It’s hard on her just fussing around an empty house.”
“I hear about the railroads, too—” Pierce said. He did not want to talk about Molly.
“Or mining,” John MacBain said moodily. “There’s coal mines opening toward the north of the state. I want to do something I never did before — start out fresh.”
“We’ll miss you for neighbors,” Pierce said.
“I’ll rent you the land but I shan’t sell the house,” John said. “I was born in it and so was my father. We’ll be back and forth, likely — summers, anyway.”
“That’s good,” Pierce said.
The bleakness in John’s eyes was a grey wall between them. He felt the constant knowledge of impatience that haunted them, and unable to think of further talk, he mounted his horse again.
“Well, see you again, John. Let me know before you go. Lucinda will want you both over for dinner.”
“It’ll be a while yet,” John said.
Pierce rode away, feeling the envy in John MacBain’s eyes burn into his back. War was cruel and unjust — as cruel and unjust as God, who gave down rain on the good and evil. He resolved that as little as possible would he consider anything except the joy of life itself, of food and sleep and riding and hunting, of wine and children and sunshine and earth and the seasons. He would live for himself and his own, “so help me God,” he thought, “from now until I die.” He hardened his heart toward John MacBain and toward every maimed and wounded creature, and was arrogantly proud that he was whole.
It was nearly one o’clock when he rounded the turn of the road and cantered up the avenue of oaks that led to the house. He dismounted and tossed the reins to Jake who came running out to meet him.
“She’s lathered, you see,” he reminded him.
“I’ll rub her down good,” Jake said.
Pierce mounted the steps of his house and took satisfaction in the mended terrace and the newly painted porches. He owed money everywhere, even for the fresh white paint on the house, but men trusted him and Malvern. Their confidence was in tomorrow, and tomorrow would come. He leaped up the last steps and met his brother coming down the stairs into the hall, and was struck again, as he continually was, with Tom’s good looks. The youthful sallowness and slimness were gone. He had actually grown taller this last year.
“Tom, you should have ridden out with me this morning!” he shouted. “God, how the land is producing!”