“I wish it were before the war!” Lucinda sobbed.
“God dammit, so do I!” Pierce cried.
Tom heard his brother’s voice and hastened away. The house could shelter him no more.
Chapter Five
BETTINA LAY ASLEEP IN the moonlight. Summer and winter she had her bed by the window where she could look out into the shrub-enclosed back yard. The lawn and the narrow flowerbeds which she tended so carefully by day were enchanting to her by night. When there was no moon she could smell the sweetness of the dark and the fragrance of dew. In winter the frost was fragrant. Like all women whose lives must be lived within boundaries, she had grown deeply and she had learned to make every small part of her life as large as the universe. Thus at night to single out a star and to lie in her bed gazing at it, to imagine its existence, enlarged her as a journey might enlarge a traveler. To dream of the one man she knew who possessed her, to ponder upon his qualities, his strength and his weakness, was enough for her whole life. Early in her life with Tom she had made up her mind to demand nothing of him. If he came it was her joy, but if he did not come, her life must go on. Sometimes he reproached her for this in one way or another. “I don’t believe you miss me, Bettina. You are just as happy when I am not here — you and the children.”
To which she answered out of her profound simplicity. “When you come it’s like the sun breaking through and taking hold of a day I thought was going to be dark. But if the sun don’t break through you have to go on living, Tom. Besides, I know you will come — sometime. So do the children.”
He had come to understand that reproach was folly. She was as fathomless as the sea and the sky, and as essential.
Now he hastened to her through the gathering night. Pierce’s words were a spur to his feet and with every step he took he swore that the path on which he walked would know him no more. Never again would he go to Malvern. He renounced his birthright.
He could see the low outlines of Bettina’s roof and the gate was still whiter than the darkness. He opened it and shut it loudly and then guided by the light of the candle that Bettina always kept in the window, he went into the house. If he came, he blew the candle out. If he did not come, it burned down into its pewter holder. Now, however, he lit the lamp in the living room and taking the candle with him he went upstairs into the room where she slept.
She lay on the wide bed by the window. He held the candle high and she opened her eyes and he was struck again by her extravagant beauty. Her pale face was set in the dark hair outspread on the pillow and her slender right arm was thrown above it. She made her nightgowns dainty and fine, and lace lay upon her bosom. She was fastidious even after all these years and she had her small reserves from him. Thus when the candlelight fell upon her she drew the sheet instinctively over her breasts. Then she smiled her slow and lovely smile. “Tom — I’d given you up tonight.”
He set the candle down on the table and sat down on the bed and began to speak urgently. “Listen, Bettina — understand quickly what I say. I want us to get up and go away — now.”
She sat up, instantly aware, and twisted her loose hair into a knot at her neck. She waited without speaking, her dark eyes wide.
Tom went on, “Pierce and I have quarreled. Lucinda came in. I don’t want to stay here another day. You and I and the children are going away together. We’re going now, because if I stay I might not be able to get away. And I want to go — I must go.”
“Darling, could you tell me?” She had dreamed often of going away with him, and there was nothing but joy in the thought. But she would not let him go in haste. She had to be sure that there was no other way and that it was what he wanted most.
“I don’t want to tell you,” Tom said abruptly. “But I know as I know my own soul that if I stay they will not rest until I am parted from you. I can’t part from you, Bettina.”
His hand searched for hers but she did not yield it to him.
“Did they want you to send me away?” she asked.
“They want me to marry another woman—” he said harshly.
“You aren’t married to me, Tom—”
“That’s not my fault — I’ve wanted you to marry me.”
“I can’t marry you, darling. The ministers wouldn’t marry us.”
“We’re going somewhere that I can marry you. Get up, Bettina, and get the children up. We’re going to catch the four o’clock train north.”
“Darling, I’ll go if you promise me one thing.”
“I can’t make promises now, Bettina—”
“Only this one, that if you want to come back, you will come back. I can’t take you away from Malvern forever, honey — you’ll hate me.”
“Malvern can burn down for all I care, and good riddance to all its old rubbish.”
“But you were born there!”
She bent her head on her knees and he stroked the soft nape of her neck upward with the sweep of her hair. “If it makes you feel better about going, I’ll promise,” he said: “But I know I’ll never want to come back. I’ve outgrown it. It’s dead — in the past.”
She lifted her head at his words. “You mean—”
“I mean you and I and our children are going to make our own world. It will be a good world, where everybody will be treated justly for what he is — even if it is only inside our own four walls.”
A good world! With these words he took her by the soul and only thus could he have won her to follow him. She had to know that what she did was for good, and now she believed him. She got out of bed and silently they packed his roundbacked trunk and two carpetbags with clothes for the children and themselves.
“I shall want my books from Malvern,” Tom said. “I don’t care about anything else. I’ll write Pierce that he can send them by railroad freight.”
“I’ll have to tell Georgia where we are, Tom.”
“Of course.”
He lit the lantern an hour later and walked down the road to the livery stable and roused Pete Calloway and asked for a vehicle. “I’ll leave it at the railway station and you can fetch it tomorrow,” he said.
Pete, in his long cotton nightshirt, leaned out of the window. “How come you ain’t using your brother’s vehicle?” he asked.
“I’m going away on my own business,” Tom said, “and here’s your money.”
Pete came out scratching his head. “You ain’t quarreled with him, have you?”
“Him” within fifty miles of Malvern meant only Pierce, and Tom smiled. “In a way,” he said. “But never mind.”
Pete was hitching up his second-best surrey. “Tell George I’ll come around early to the station,” he drawled. “Want me to meet you tomorrow night?”
“No, thanks—” Tom replied. Tomorrow Pete would tell over and over again how he had been roused in the night and how Tom had told him he had quarreled with his brother. But by tomorrow nothing that happened here would matter. He dropped two dollars into Pete’s outstretched palm, saw how dirty that palm was, and climbed into the surrey and drove down the road again.
At the house Bettina and the children were dressed and waiting. Leslie was silent with astonishment and Georgy was ready to cry.
“Don’t cry,” Tom said. He picked her up and put her in the front seat beside him. “We are going to live where Papa can be at home with you always, like other people. Bettina, have you the money?”
He had long ago brought to her what he earned and, she kept it for him, using it when she needed it. At Malvern he had needed nothing except an occasional book.
“I have it all,” she said. She turned her head to look at the little house that had sheltered her for so long. Within it she had been safe enough, but she knew that it could not shelter her children. She turned her head away again and climbed into the surrey, holding her baby in her arms. Leslie climbed in after her, and thus they drove away into the night, their faces set toward the north.