“It’s outdo the other fellow or bust,” John MacBain said flatly. “We’ve got to keep the trade, even if we ship cattle and goods free from California and back again. If another road can afford to ship a cow from Chicago to the coast for five dollars, we’ve got to do better.”
The men looked at one another in consternation.
Pierce laughed. “The other roads are worse off than we are,” he said gaily. “They can’t afford to make their own rolling stock — we can and do! Of course these cut-throat ways can’t last. Some day we’ll all be ready to quit. Then we’ll act like gentlemen and keep to our agreements. But we won’t act like gentlemen until we have to. Human nature! I see it in my own older sons. Those boys of mine will fight about something until they’re like beaten cocks. Then when they can’t fight any more, they come to terms.”
Pierce’s children were his weakness, and his friends knew it. “I saw your eldest son the other day at the University,” a man said. “I went down to enter my own boy — fine looking fellow, yours! What’s he going to make of himself?”
Pierce inclined his head. “Martin will follow me at Malvern,” he said modestly. But the modesty deceived no one. Pierce met their smiling eyes and in the silence looked at John. He was sorry the talk had come around to sons. The look of suffering stillness that fell upon John when other men talked of their children was dark upon his face now. Pierce rose. “Let us join the ladies,” he said. “Mrs. MacBain extracted some sort of promise from John, I believe — she told me so.”
They went out, well-fed men, rich men, determined to hold their riches in a state still poor. They were confident that from their prosperity would flow the prosperity of all.
In the ballroom Pierce went to Molly as a matter of course. The hostess must have the first dance. She slipped easily into his arms, accustomed to the pose. She was growing a little solid, but she was still light and graceful enough when she danced. He was used to her step and he suited his rhythm to hers. They were old friends now, frank enough. He was accustomed to her frontal attacks and he was no longer afraid of her as once he had been in the days when he did not know if he wanted her. He knew now that he did not.
“You men left the table earlier than I dared hope,” she said. Her frankest talk was always behind the screen of music when they were dancing. The band she had hired was playing a Strauss waltz, bows sweeping long across violin strings and the piano throbbing.
“The talk got around to sons, and I saw John flinch as he always does,” Pierce said.
“I wish John would let me adopt a boy, but he won’t,” Molly said. “He says if he can’t have his flesh and blood he don’t want somebody else’s.”
“I can understand that,” Pierce replied. “I wouldn’t want Malvern inherited by any except my own.”
“If John would take a boy, I’d have one for him,” Molly said laughing. “I’d be glad to — especially if you’d father him for me, Pierce. Wouldn’t it be kind of nice? He’d inherit our place — next to yours.”
He was accustomed to these bold proposals and he smiled. “We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we?” he remarked. But he had never told her that John had once asked him the same thing.
“Only in words,” she said wickedly.
He laughed in spite of himself. “Molly, for God’s sake,” he protested. “You know what a fuss it would make in our families! Lucinda would leave me.”
“My Gawd, Lucinda needn’t know,” she declared.
“Lucinda always knows everything,” he said, in pretended rue.
“I can fix it,” she persisted.
“Please, lady, leave my life alone,” he begged in mock alarm.
Molly dropped into utter seriousness. “Of course I know — you don’t want me—”
“I don’t want you enough to roil up my life,” he countered.
“I’m not young enough — that’s the truth!” she declared.
She lifted her lashes and dared him, with eyes too bright, to deny it.
“You’ll always be young,” he said gaily. “Please, Molly, when your hair is white — and mine too — keep on asking me! Something would go out of my life if you stopped making proposals to me which I can’t accept.”
The waltz ended at exactly the right moment for him upon this casual gayety, which, affectionate though it was, he kept devoid of passion. She sighed, and he dropped his arms from about her and sighed in mimicry. Then he smiled and went to Lucinda and sat down beside her. She had been dancing with John and he had torn the ruffle of her skirt. She frowned at it. “I shall have to go and get it mended,” she said.
“Lend me your fan while you’re gone,” he begged. “The rooms are too close.”
“Sure it wasn’t Molly?” she inquired with malice.
“Not after all these years,” he returned.
“But you are so handsome, Pierce,” she murmured.
“Thank you, my dear,” he replied. He took the fan from her hand and sat fanning himself without embarrassment. “I shan’t dance until you come back,” he said calmly.
She was back in the middle of the next waltz, and took her fan away from him. “You mind looking silly less than any man I know,” she remarked. “Dance with me, please, Pierce!”
“Did I look silly?” he asked. They began waltzing slowly. Lucinda did not like flourishes, and neither did he. “But everybody knew it was my wife’s fan. Besides, I still love the perfume you use and the fan kept blowing it to me.”
She was mollified and smiled. “When shall we go home?” she murmured. Their steps matched perfectly. She saw Lacey Mallows watching them, and yielded herself a little more to Pierce’s embrace.
“I always want to go home,” he said.
“Molly wants us to stay until tomorrow,” she teased.
“Then let’s stay,” he said promptly. He knew that it was the surest way to get her to go.
She fell at once into his trap. “I sleep better in my own bed,” she said.
“So do I,” he said;—“with you,” he added.
She laughed. “Pierce, you aren’t a little drunk?”
“I think not,” he said, “but maybe—”
“If we are going home tonight, we’ll have to catch the twelve forty—” she reminded him.
“John has the car at the siding. It will be easy,” he replied.
At one o’clock they were going to bed in John MacBain’s private railroad car. Pierce in his fine linen nightshirt looked out of the window at the swiftly passing moonlit landscape. The whirling mountains were black against the dark blue sky. “God, what grades the men had to climb!” he murmured.
Lucinda came to his side and he put his arm around her to steady her. “The road is astonishingly smooth, considering the solid rock they hewed,” he went on. He had blown out the kerosene lamps the better to see into the moonlight. “Tons of dynamite,” he murmured. They could see the engine turning a curve and spitting sparks. It turned and curved again and a cliff hid it.
“Oh, stop thinking about railroads!” Lucinda cried.
He looked down at her. The filmy stuff of her nightgown flowed to her feet, and there were ruffles at her bosom and her wrists. Her long fair hair was loose on her shoulders. He lifted her into his arms. “The way you keep hold of me,” he murmured into her fragrant neck. “The shameful way you never let me go! How can you go on getting prettier every year? What chance has anybody else, you little selfish thing? Look here — don’t you blame me for anything that happens tonight—”
“I won’t,” she said sweetly. “Really, I won’t, Pierce.”
But he knew the reason for her willingness. She was afraid, a little afraid, of Molly MacBain. He smiled at his cynicism and accepted his Lucinda for what she was — a pretty woman, and his own.