But John had told him that the depression had already fallen upon the railroads. Passenger traffic was growing so light that it scarcely paid to run the trains on short journeys, and freight was falling off alarmingly fast. Something had to be done to check the downward spiral of the times.
“I should have thought that the expansion before the war would have taught you railroad fellows something,” Pierce said sourly.
John looked at him and grinned. “You ought to understand. You’ve done a little expanding yourself at Malvern.”
“Only for myself and my family,” Pierce grumbled. I haven’t taken the savings of widows and orphans.”
“You’ve used the savings of widows and orphans,” John retorted. “What would you have been if you hadn’t? Not the Squire of Malvern!”
Pierce avoided the thought. “After all you’ve told me, there’s only one thing to be done. Depression has hit the whole country and we know it. Then wages have got to come down.”
“Easier said than done,” John reminded him. “The men will go on strike.”
“Let them,” Pierce said.
“You don’t keep up with the times down there in the country, Pierce,” John complained. “Don’t you read any newspapers? Have you ever heard of a fellow called Marx?”
“No,” Pierce said, “who is he?”
“Oh, my God,” John groaned. “Did you ever hear of a communist, Pierce?”
“No,” Pierce said.
John leaned on the mantelpiece and shook a long forefinger at him. “You listen to me, Pierce,” he said in the sharp high voice with which he harangued directors at dinner tables and gangs at the works. “A strike isn’t a local nuisance nowadays. It’s something more, by Gawd!”
“What?” asked Pierce.
“That’s what I don’t know,” John’s forefinger dropped. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. When we have a strike here, in West Virginia, I don’t feel the roots are here.”
“Where are they?” Pierce asked, smiling incredulously.
“Over in Europe somewhere,” John said solemnly.
Pierce yawned. “You always were a gloomy fellow, John. Come on to bed. A night’s sleep will bring back your commonsense. What’s Europe got to do with us?”
John shook his head and poured two small glasses of whiskey from the big cut glass decanter on the table. They lifted their glasses and drank to one another, and marched up the broad stairs side by side. Behind them a silent liveried servant put out the lamps and set the screen across the fireplace.
In the wide upstairs hall John opened a heavy mahogany door and Pierce stood on the threshold of his room. Then they heard Molly’s voice. Her maid had opened the door opposite, and over the low footboard of her enormous bed, they saw Molly enthroned among silken pillows.
“Come in here, you two!” she called. “Pierce, you needn’t mind me — you’re just like a brother to me, damn you!”
They laughed, Pierce awkward for a moment. And then they went and stood at the foot of Molly’s bed. She looked very pretty indeed, in her blue satin nightgown and lace cap tied with blue ribbons. Her ruddy hair was braided and hung in plaits over her shoulders. Her white arms were bare and she threw down her book.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said frankly. “I’m worried to death. Pierce, are you afraid?”
“Of what?” he asked cautiously. He did not believe in talking about business with any woman.
“Those awful communists!” she wailed. “They want to take everything away from us!”
“Nonsense,” he said smiling. “We’re a civilized country, thank God.”
“Think of what the rabble did in France!” she cried.
“Think of what they didn’t,” he reminded her. “The palaces are still there and yours will be too, my dear — don’t worry!”
She was looking at him with bold bright eyes, and Pierce involuntarily glanced at John. He was staring at the rose-flowered carpet, the lines of his mouth saturnine.
“Goodnight, Molly—” Pierce said.
“Goodnight, Pierce,” she replied, and made a face at him.
They went back to Pierce’s room and Pierce laughed a little when he entered it. It was enormous, paneled in black walnut and curtained with red velvet.
“Napoleon might have slept in that,” he said cheerfully, staring at the tented, triple-sized bed.
John smiled drily. “I believe he did,” he remarked. “Though how these fellows get around to sleep in so many beds—”
Pierce laughed again. “I wouldn’t have it at Malvern for a pretty penny,” he said frankly.
Out of the darkness a huge brass lamp shone in a circle of yellow light and a coal fire burned and crackled in the black iron grate. John stood before it, warming his coat tails and Pierce stood facing him.
“You remember what I asked you, once?” John inquired. Pierce nodded, unbuttoning his satin waistcoat. “I ask you again,” John said firmly. “There’s a fellow hanging around Molly these days — you know Henry Mallows?”
“Yes,” Pierce said.
“I don’t want him to father any child of mine,” John said with feeling. “A sissy, if I ever saw one!”
Pierce took off his coat and hung it over a chair. “Doesn’t his wife—”
“His wife,” John said with bitterness, “is used to loose ways on her own account, from all I hear. Those lords and ladies! Pierce, I’m fond of you. I could love any child of yours — as I’d love my own.”
“I’ve had all the children I’m going to have, John.” He spoke lightly, but his head swam. A woman’s face sprang before his eyes, and he was shocked to discover that it was Georgia’s as she had knelt before him. He turned away abruptly. Joe had unpacked his bags and his nightshirt lay on the big bed.
“I reckon I’ll turn in, John.” He faced his friend, smiled, and walked toward him and clasped John’s long bony hand.
“Is that final?” John asked.
“Final,” Pierce said.
“Then I won’t ask you again.”
“No, John.”
Long into the night Pierce lay thinking and arranging his life. He was used to himself. Since he had been sixteen years old he had suffered from wild and brief flashes of interest in pretty women. He had never taken these feelings seriously, knowing them the common lot of most men. Nor had he ever spoken of them to Lucinda. They were no more significant than a wayward dream to be forgotten in the morning. Now carefully he relegated Georgia to such dreams. She was a servant in his house and nothing was more despicable than a man’s folly with his wife’s maid. It was a degradation entirely beneath him. He felt a boyish superiority in refusing to engage himself with Molly, the wife of his friend, and a renewal of devotion to John — good old John, who trusted him so much! He determined that if he had a chance, he would, for John’s sake, talk to Molly and tell her not to destroy her husband’s happiness. Upon the calm of moral rectitude he fell asleep in Napoleon’s bed and did not dream.
The next morning, waked by Joe’s footsteps creeping around the room, he lay in lazy comfort. At Malvern there was always the weather to rouse him early. As soon as the dawn broke he had the landsman’s curiosity to know what the sky was and whether the sun would shine. Once out of bed he could not go back to it. But here in the city it did not matter what the weather was. It was simply inconvenient or convenient. Today it was convenient for home-going. A broad bar of bright winter sunshine lay across the floor and paled the flames leaping in the grate. Joe, holding up his master’s trousers critically, met his eyes across them.