“That’s what I’m for,” he answered, “to save you always, my pet.”
They rode off together, and profound peace welled up from his heart. There was nothing in the world that could go wrong with him.
Nothing that Tom could say would rouse his anger, he told himself in the library late that evening. A distant thunderstorm skirted the mountain tops at sunset and the long room, scented with old leather, was cool and quiet. The children had gone to bed. He enjoyed the hour with them after dinner. John had read aloud for a quarter of an hour from Hamlet, and Sally had played the spinet charmingly. She did everything well, he had told himself, watching her proudly. Her little figure in the long white muslin dress tied with blue ribbons had sat slender and straight at the keyboard, and her curls had not hidden her pretty profile. He felt the music drift like fragrant incense through his dreaming mind, as he watched her. And little Lucie had recited a long poem that she had learned while they were away. He and Lucinda had exchanged amused looks after the careful curtsey she made at its end. When Georgia came to take them upstairs he had sat silent for a moment, unwilling to let the day go. There was the evening to face.
Then he remembered the ring he had bought for Sally, and he went upstairs. She was in her room and Georgia was brushing her hair with firm strokes. Lucinda was exacting about the girls’ hair, it must shine as though it were polished or she complained that Georgia was lazy. Sally’s hair was silvery-blonde and it flew out from beneath the brush. He went into his room and found the small box and went back again.
“Hold out your hand, my sweet,” he said with tenderness and she put out her little left hand. He slipped the ring on her third finger and the sapphire glowed on her white skin.
“That’s your ring finger, Sally,” he said playfully. “You must keep my ring on it until a handsome young man comes by, whom you’ll love better than me.”
If he thought to hear her protest that she would always love him best, he was to be disappointed. She held out her hand the better to admire her ring. “When will he come, Papa?” she asked.
He laughed and looked involuntarily at Georgia to share his amusement. She was smiling, too.
“I might not let him come,” he said, teasingly. “I might sit on the porch with my gun — I shot a lot of Yankees with that gun!”
“I wouldn’t marry a Yankee, Papa,” Sally declared.
“Of course not,” Pierce agreed. He looked at Georgia again and his smile faded. He remembered the evening that lay ahead. He did not want to tell her what he had said to Bettina. What if she asked? He decided to go downstairs.
“Goodnight, Sally, honey. Sapphires bring happiness — they brought me you.”
He kissed her and went back to the drawing room where Lucinda sat by a lamp crocheting a cobweb of lace.
“Tom is coming in to talk to me,” he told her abruptly.
“Where has he been all day?” Lucinda asked. “He’s usually here for dinner, at least.”
“We had a little set-to this morning,” Pierce replied. Tonight I’m going to have it out with him in the library.”
“I shall stay here, unless you want me,” Lucinda replied calmly.
“I think Tom and I had better be alone,” he replied.
“But you might ask Marcus to bring in some sherry and a couple of glasses. I’ll make Tom drink in spite of himself.”
He moved away lazily out of profound unwillingness and crossed the hall into the library. A few minutes later Marcus came in with a silver tray and the wine.
“When Tom comes, bring him straight in here,” Pierce ordered.
“Yassuh,” the old butler murmured.
He was about to leave the room when Pierce stopped him. Marcus had been in this house when he and Tom were born. His father had bought him in New Orleans, the year before, a young and slender man, trained in a famous plantation household that had been dispersed on the death of the master. Who knew Tom and himself so well as old Marcus?
“Marcus!” he called.
The man stood waiting, his hands hanging at his sides. “Yassuh?”
“Marcus, what do people say about my brother — and Bettina?”
Marcus let his underlip hang. “I don’t listen to talk, Mas’ Pierce.”
“They do talk?”
“Some folks always talk.”
“And others listen?”
“Some folks always got their y’ears stickin’ out like umbrellas.”
“Tom ought to marry—”
“Yassuh.”
“Do you think Bettina — will — would — go away—?” He could not go on.
“I don’t know these yere young folks nowadays, sir,” Marcus said sadly. “But one thing I does believe in and it’s stickin’ to your own kind. I believe in lettin’ othah folks alone, man and woman, and lookin’ for your own skin coloh. Yassuh, then they’s no trouble, high or low.”
“You’re right, Marcus.”
“Yassuh.” The old man went out and Pierce poured himself wine. Black folk didn’t like mixture any better than white folk. He was not going to be easy with Tom, “so help me God,” he muttered to himself. He lifted his glass and across the golden rim of the wine he saw his brother at the door, and put it down again.
“Come in, Tom,” he said drily.
Tom came in, very tall and inclined to lounge. He sat down in one of the old leather chairs and slid to the small of his back. All afternoon in the school he had worked intensely, but not for one moment had he forgotten that this hour loomed ahead of him. He had passed through various moods, mingled and complex, wherein one emotion and then another rose above the others. Fear and love of his older brother, distaste for Lucinda, anger at himself for having let the years slip by without doing anything definite about Bettina, remorse for the three children — and underneath, a growing determination to be himself and do what he liked. What that was he did not actually know. When he thought of leaving Malvern and his brother he was torn in two. He did not want to live anywhere but here. He groaned aloud that he could not bring his children into this house where he had been born. Leslie was as brilliant as John and more beautiful, but he could never cross the threshold of this door except as a servant. Nothing that he could do for his son would change his inexorable destiny. He had fought to make such children free but they were not free, and for him the war was lost. The victors had been vanquished by the stubbornness of the persisting enemy. There was no victory and no peace because the hearts of men and women had not changed. Futile war and futile suffering and death!
“Sherry?” Pierce asked.
“Thanks,” Tom said. He reached out his narrow white hand and took the glass by its thin stem and sipped the wine. He never drank, because Bettina hated the smell of it. Somewhere in her childhood her father had drunk increasingly of wine until he had stupefied his conscience. But tonight he would drink. He felt his nerves as tight as violin strings inside his body. The wine would relax him and help him to listen to Pierce reasonably and then to answer without passion. Above everything he did not want to quarrel with the brother he loved. He raised his eyes to Pierce’s face and waited for him to begin.
Meeting those troubled grey eyes, Pierce saw in a flicker of memory the brother whom he had protected and fought for through years of their common boyhood. He had been the favorite son of his father and Tom had always been the one wrong in any quarrel. The old instinct rose in him.
“I want to get you out of this trouble, Tom,” he said in his kindliest voice. “Let’s talk about it sensibly. I reckon Bettina told you about this morning.”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” Tom said calmly. “But after you went she cried a bit. That’s unusual for her.”