He reached home in the full pride of possession. Jake met them at the station with the new surrey and the matched bay horses of Malvern breeding, and when they swept up the long drive of oaks which his grandfather had planted, he turned to Lucinda in profound pleasure.
“There isn’t a place even in Virginia to match Malvern,” he declared.
Lucinda, very composed in her dove-grey traveling dress, smiled. “I shan’t be satisfied until we have the new greenhouse and when that is finished I want a formal garden laid out below the slope.”
She lifted her parasol and pointed to the hollow at the foot of the knoll upon which the great house stood.
It was early summer and the green of grass and trees was bright. “It would be pleasant to sit on the terrace and look down on the garden,” she went on.
“You always want something more, my pet,” Pierce said with amiable sarcasm.
“Why not, when I can have it?” she replied.
He did not answer. The children had heard the surrey and were gathering on the top step to meet them. Martin and Carey were at school in Virginia, but Sally, John and little Lucie were standing and waiting. Georgia had dressed them in their best and she had curled Sally’s hair down her shoulders. The morning sunlight fell on them warmly and Pierce felt his throat catch in absurd sentimentality. “You’ve given me wonderful children, Luce,” he said. He tried to make his voice casual but he knew it was not.
Lucinda smiled and then frowned. “I wish John didn’t look so much like Tom. That means he won’t be as handsome as the other boys.”
As soon as she spoke Tom’s name the whole problem of their lives came back upon them. They put it aside again and again, now to go to Wheeling on railroad business, now to White Sulphur on a holiday, but when they came home it was always there waiting. Pierce did not answer her, but he remembered the promise he had given her this time before they went away. He had promised her that he would tell Tom firmly at last that he must marry and settle down. Whether he kept Bettina was no one’s business, but he had to keep her elsewhere than in that house by the road, where whenever there was another child, everyone knew it. Tom had now three children by Bettina, children who were own cousins to his children and Lucinda’s. This was what Lucinda could not endure. She had faced Pierce with it last week.
“If only our children didn’t love Tom so much and hang on his every word!” she complained.
“Tom’s their teacher and I reckon it’s only natural,” Pierce had replied.
“That’s what is so disgusting,” she had said angrily. “You pay Tom to run the Academy, and we send our children there, and everybody knows.”
“I don’t consider it my affair,” he had retorted to end the talk.
“But it is your affair when your own children are involved,” she had retorted in turn. “It isn’t as it used to be before the war, when a man could go to a black wench in the quarters or get her to his room and nobody be the wiser and little mulattos were only niggers with the rest. Things can’t be hidden the way they used to be — everybody knows about. Tom and Bettina. Why, it’s as bad as if they were married! As soon as that boy is ready for school — you mark my words, Pierce — Tom will want him to go to the Academy with our own children.”
He was outraged by Lucinda’s absurdity. “You know Tom wouldn’t mix white and black that way,” he grumbled.
She had laughed her cruelly light laughter. “Do you think Tom calls his children black?” she cried.
“But they are,” he had protested.
She had laughed again and suddenly he had hated her laughter. It occurred to him that Lucinda never laughed except at someone else.
“Tom’s no fool,” he had said loudly.
She had patted the ruffles of her skirt, and made her voice casual again.
“You’re too soft, Pierce. You always want to avoid trouble. But somewhere you have to make a stand, even with your own brother.”
“Well, well,” he had muttered. “Let it be until we get back from John’s shindig, then I’ll see what’s what.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Well, yes — it is.”
Now the children ran down the steps to meet them and in a moment he had his daughter in his arms. His first embrace was always for Sally and she knew it and all the others knew it. John and Lucie submitted to their mother’s kiss and waited until Pierce opened his arms to them. John was a quiet child, undeniably like Tom in his looks, and Lucie was a miniature of Lucinda. Her likeness to her mother disturbed Pierce sometimes, and occasionally it had occurred to him that if he watched Lucie he might understand Lucinda too well. The veneer of manners and behavior which covered Lucinda had not yet accumulated over Lucie, and the child was frankly selfish. Pierce was never willing to face Lucie’s faults because he loved his wife truly. He stopped now and kissed Lucie with gentleness. The little blonde girl returned the kiss demurely and without emotion. Pierce never kissed his sons. He put his arm on John’s shoulder and walked up the steps with him and Lucinda followed with the girl. John rubbed his head against his father’s solid body.
“Father, Uncle Tom is going to put me into Latin.”
“Good,” Pierce said heartily. “That means he thinks you are a clever fellow and so you are.”
He pressed the boy’s thin body to his and felt the wave of emotion that always swept him when he held his children. They were so young and touching, so dependent upon him. Their weakness made him strong, and quieted all that was wild and restless in him.
His eyes fell upon Georgia as he mounted the last step. She stood a little to the right, motionless in her peculiar still fashion. She was as quiet as a shadow in his house, but sometimes suddenly he saw her as now, human and alive. The strong summer sunlight falling upon her delicately golden skin and upon the soft waves of her fine black hair revealed her. She wore white, as Lucinda liked her maids to do in the summer, even though it meant that they washed and ironed late into the night, and the secret living quality of her dark eyes shone above the white fichu about her neck. He saw with surprise that her eyes were not black but a warm brown, clear enough to show the pupils. Her face flushed under his hard stare, and she looked away quickly. But her usual expression did not change. Her mouth was composed and its habitual look of sweetness came from the deepest corners.
“We’re glad to see you back, sir,” she murmured.
Pierce turned his eyes away. “We’re always glad to come home,” he said.
He passed into the cool shadows of the great hall of his house and John slipped from under his arm. “Uncle Tom said I must come back quickly,” he explained.
“Where is Tom?” Pierce asked.
“He’s in his study at the Academy,” John replied. “Goodbye, Father, I’ll see you at noon.”
He darted down the wide hall and out the door that stood open into the garden and across the garden to the Academy. Pierce had taken a piece out of his own land for the school building. He regretted it sometimes, for the academies that had been built so painfully after the war by citizens were now being taken over by the state and made into public schools, and he objected to a public school on his property. He was determined to keep the Academy private.
Lucinda was going up the stairs, and the little girls were following the billowing ruffles of her skirts, to see what she had brought them from the city. He hesitated, wanting to follow them himself. He and Lucinda had chosen gifts, a pink parasol for Lucie and a blue one for Sally. Then he remembered his secret gift for Sally, a little gold ring with a tiny sapphire set into the circle. No, he would give that to her later when he was alone with her. She would keep it and say nothing. She was used to having secrets with him and he loved her so much that he had to give her things sometimes just for herself.