“Good,” he said heartily. He looked down at his two sons. “How’d you like me to find you a pony?” he inquired.
They screamed their joy at him and he promised. Then as he went to the door, Martin called after him, “What’s school, Papa?”
“Who said school?” he asked.
“Mama said I need to go to school.”
“So you do,” Pierce replied.
“Then I could ride the pony to go,” Martin said.
“So you could,” Pierce agreed.
He went to his own room and changed his clothes into the semiformal garments that Lucinda required of menfolk in her house at dinner. The coat was tight. Outdoor life had thickened him. Must he struggle into the coat? To think he had a son old enough to go to school! Only, there were no schools! A tutor, he supposed, must be found, unless Tom wanted to teach the boys. The idea struck him as a happy one. Tom would make a good schoolmaster. Yes, it would give him something to do, take him out of the house.
He had one of his waves of simple happiness. The mellowness of the light in his room, the comfort of his bed and chair, the cleanliness of floors and walls and white curtains at the window, the reality of his home all conspired to make his mood. No, hang it, he would not disturb all this for a fancy that Tom had for Bettina. He tied his stock and ran lightly down the stairs, and at the sound of his step Lucinda and Tom rose and met him in the hall and they went into the oval dining room, she between the two of them.
That night after Lucinda had gone upstairs he turned to Tom. They had come into the drawing room after a pleasantly satisfactory dinner. The windows stood open to the terrace, and Lucinda had played her harp for them. He had watched her white hands on the strings and had admired her head in profile as she leaned it against the gilded frame. All his love for her had surged into his heart and melted his mind. In spite of her pregnancy her figure in its full skirt still looked graceful. She was a beautiful woman and he was proud of her. She plucked the strings and broke into occasional song. Her voice was light and musical, and he loved to hear her sing. He had a vision of himself, a happy man in a happy home, this pretty woman his wife, bearing his children. Such homes as his were the foundation of the re-established union in the nation.
When at last she had risen to leave them he went with her to the door and kissed her hand and watched her go upstairs. She paused on the landing and looked back at him and smiled, and so easily was his sense of romance stirred that even though he knew well enough that she saw herself in every act she did, yet he admired the picture she made.
He went back into the room and sat down and lit his pipe. “This autumn, thank God, we’ll have real tobacco of our own again,” he said to Tom. “But I never plant much, you know — it’s greedy stuff on the land.”
“It’s a wonder what you’ve done to Malvern already,” Tom said. He lay back in his chair lazily, not looking at Pierce. Outside the window the mountains were black against a dark and starlit sky. The light of the new oil lamps in the room was dim, for Lucinda had turned them down when she began to play.
He was thinking about Bettina. Should he tell Pierce what they had decided to do? He made up his mind that he would. He hated the thought of deception and hiding.
“Pierce,” he said.
“Well?” Pierce’s eyes, gleaming over his pipe, were suddenly aware.
Tom sat up. “I want to tell you something—”
“All right, Tom.”
“I suppose you know I’ve fallen in love with Bettina.”
Pierce drew hard on his pipe and blew out the smoke. “You don’t fall in love with a colored wench, Tom!”
“I’ve fallen in love with Bettina,” Tom said firmly. “I want to marry her.”
Pierce put his pipe down and faced his brother. “You can’t marry her, Tom.”
“I can, but she won’t have me,” Tom said.
“You mean you’ve proposed to her — as if she were—”
“I proposed to her, and she refused me,” Tom said stubbornly.
Pierce laughed loudly. “Good God, Tom! Then she’s got better sense than you!”
Tom gazed gravely at his brother’s laughing face. “To me, it’s the same as marriage,” he said in his even quiet voice. “I’ve told her so. I’m going to get a house for us to live in, Pierce.”
Pierce stopped laughing suddenly. “Tom, you can get a house for her, but you can’t live in it.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Not if you’re my brother,” Pierce said sternly. “Tom, for God’s sake, think of our family and the children!”
“I’m thinking of Bettina and myself,” Tom said in the same unchanging voice. “This is what I fought the war for, Pierce — so that I could marry Bettina.”
“You fool, you didn’t even know Bettina till you came home!”
“Nevertheless, it was for her I fought.” Pierce looked at his brother’s face. It was still the face of the little boy who had been his stubborn follower. Nothing would make Tom different, not even growing into manhood. He was stubborn to the bone.
“Well, Tom, there’s not a thing I can do about it,” he said, “except turn you out of the house and disown you as my brother.”
They looked at one another. “All right, Pierce,” Tom said.
They parted and Pierce went upstairs, and Tom went out on the terrace and paced up and down. Far up in the top of the house a dim light burned. It was in Bettina’s room, but he could not go up to it. In this house she was beyond his reach. He could only take her away.
In the attic room Georgia was crying softly.
“I don’t see how I can stay here all alone, sister.” But she was sobbing quietly lest she be heard downstairs.
Bettina sat on a box by the window, her cheeks on her hands, staring out into the tangled branches of the ancient trees that leaned against the house. “I never thought I’d love any man so much that I wouldn’t marry him,” she said. “Mother didn’t know what love was, Georgy. She told us to go quick with the whitest man we could get to ask us. Well, I’ve found the whitest man in the world, and he wants to marry me and I won’t let him—”
Georgia stopped crying and looked at Bettina sadly. “I wouldn’t know what to do with such love as that,” she said.
“I have to give in to it, because I know I can’t live without him,” Bettina went on, “but I don’t have to let it hurt him, and I never will.”
She had paid no heed to Georgia’s weeping. Georgia’s face took on a look of awe. Bettina was far away from her, in some world she did not understand. She was left alone behind. Her lips trembled again but she wiped her eyes and stopped crying. She sighed and rose and let down her long hair and began to comb it.
“Mother always said we were as good as anybody,” she said.
“We are, but it doesn’t make any difference, if other people don’t think so,” Bettina replied. “Anyway, I’m not thinking of us.”
“Will you tell her you’re going?” Georgia asked.
“No, I shall just go,” Bettina said.
“What’ll I say if she asks me?”
“She won’t ask you.”
“You mean she’ll pretend she doesn’t notice?”
“She’ll know, but she won’t say a word.”
“How do you know that, Bettina?”
“I know her.”
Georgia put down the comb and braided the thick waving mass down her back.
“When are you going, sister?”
“Tomorrow, honey, I’m going to move into Millpoint. There’s a little brick house there. I’ve seen it when we go to church. It’s been empty this long while. I’ve saved all my wages.”
“Does—he know?”
“No, he doesn’t. I’m going myself. I don’t want him to know when I go nor where. I want him to say he doesn’t know a thing about me. Maybe she’ll ask him, and that’s what I want him to say. But if he asks you, you can tell him.”