Christmas Eve at Malvern had never been so magnificent. Pierce gave himself up to the joy of his children. Martin was at the University, and Carey was beginning his first year. Both of them were tall and handsome and he was certain that neither was virgin. But it was none of his business. They were men and must lead men’s lives. He had wondered uneasily if he ought to warn them.
He discussed it with Lucinda after the big dance on Christmas Eve. They lay side by side in her spacious bed, enjoying together every detail of the evening’s scene. The house was subsiding into stillness about them. Guests were gone and they could hear the servants downstairs moving about, sweeping and straightening and putting away dishes. Then the stillness of the country night covered them. But the house was still awake. Beams cracked and the wind echoed in the chimneys. He loved the sound of the great old house settling for the night, with mild groans and wistful sighs and creaks.
“What would you tell the boys, pray?” Lucinda asked crisply out of the darkness.
“I don’t know,” he pondered, “just warn them, maybe—”
“I’ve warned them about nasty diseases,” she said.
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” he replied. “Boys pick up that sort of knowledge from one another easily enough.”
“What then, pray?” Lucinda inquired. “You don’t know a thing about women, Pierce!”
“Oh, I don’t, eh?” he growled.
“No,” she said flatly and yawned.
“I know you,” he maintained.
“Oh, nonsense,” she cried.
“I certainly know you,” he insisted. “I can almost tell what you’re going to say.”
“That’s why I say it,” she replied. “But it’s not what I think.”
He was confounded by this mischief. “Then why don’t you say what you think?” he demanded of her.
“Because it’s not what you want me to say.” Her voice was pert and he was infuriated.
“Oh rubbish!” he said loudly.
“Oh rubbish,” she echoed. “There — didn’t I say you wouldn’t like it?”
He felt pinpricked without knowing where to find the pin. “Don’t think I take you seriously,” he told her with majesty from his pillow.
“No, dear — I know you don’t.” Her voice was dangerous.
“Why should I?” he inquired.
“I can’t imagine.” She yawned again pretentiously and he turned his back for a moment. Then he flounced over again.
“See here, Luce, we can’t go to sleep like this!”
“I can go to sleep anyhow — I’m dead,” she retorted.
“You know I have to feel things are all right between us—”
“Aren’t they? I didn’t know they weren’t.”
He was silent a moment. Then he put his hand through the darkness and touched her soft breast.
She shook his hand off. “Please, Pierce — not tonight, for mercy’s sake!”
“You’re cold as stone these days—” he accused her.
“No, I’m not,” she denied. “But you’ve grown — careless.”
“I want another child, Luce!”
“Diamonds and sapphires couldn’t tempt me,” she replied firmly.
He leaped out of bed at that and went stamping into his own room and banged the door. He was not given to self-pity, but he allowed himself a measure of it now. What was the use of a man’s being faithful to his wife? If Lucinda only knew, he thought savagely, that twice in the fortnight he had refused other women — but he could not tell her. She would laugh aloud and then turn on him with malice and suspicion. He could hear her voice. “And what, pray tell, made her think you were — willing?”
No denials could be valid. Truth itself was not valid to Lucinda where the maleness of a man was concerned. He got into his solitary bed, and in a temper he pulled the covers strongly and left his feet bare. In fury he wrapped them about his feet and lay in a snarl of sheets and blankets and dug his head into the pillows. Lucinda was not a comfortable woman. She did not appreciate him nor the strength of his self-denials. Then he grinned at himself ruefully in the darkness. Self-denial? He was in love with Lucinda still, and she alone could stir his passion. But she was not comfortable, he maintained against this too severe honesty. He loved her more than she loved him. He sighed gustily into the night. It would be pleasant to be loved, for once, more than he loved. He fell asleep, still warming himself with self-pity.
In the midst of the peace of the next summer, after the spring crops had been sown and the winter wheat harvested, at the time of year when Malvern was at the heights of its glory, Pierce one day picked up the county newspaper after his ample noon meal. He lay on a long wicker chair on the terrace, preparing for his usual afternoon nap.
At the sight of the headlines all thought of sleep left him abruptly. He sat up, reading avidly, then groaned and threw the paper on the stone flags. Then he seized it to read again the shocking news. Two days ago, in Martinsburg, a sensible city of his own state, the railroad crews had struck in protest to the third cut in their wages.
All during the spring Pierce had followed with approval the news of the recurring wage cuts for the railroad employees. It was only fair, he told himself and Lucinda and anyone else who was near him, that workingmen should share the growing disaster of the times. He himself was suffering enough by not getting any dividends. Martin and Carey, home for holidays, had listened to him in their separate ways, Martin without interest and Carey with shrewd, smiling attention. The only dissenting voice in his house was his third son John, who out of perversity and contrariness to himself, Pierce felt, took the side of the workingmen. But he shouted John down easily.
“Don’t talk about what you can’t understand!” he had ordered.
The last time John had muttered something. Pierce could not hear it.
“What did you say, sir?” he demanded.
John had lifted his head. “I said that I don’t think you understand things yourself,” Father—”
Pierce had been shocked at such impudence. “Understand what?” he had demanded of this gangling boy.
“What it’s like to be a workingman,” John said sturdily.
Pierce had snorted laughter. “And you think you do?” he had inquired.
“I have more imagination than you have, Father,” John had replied fearlessly.
Pierce’s anger melted. He liked his sons to be fearless even toward himself. “Get along with you and your imagination,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Then out of respect for the boy he had added honestly, “And I like you to stand up to me, John — it’s manly of you.”
He had been comforted by the warm look in the boy’s grey eyes — Tom’s eyes, they were.
But there was no doubt that depression was sweeping over the country like a hurricane. No one understood why these storms recurred in a country where enterprise was free and where every man got what he deserved if he worked hard. Pierce believed that it was a man’s own fault if he did not prosper, and with his feet firm upon his own soil, he took the depression as an act of God, inexplicable and irritating as acts of God were apt to be.
He had been pleased when in May the other railroads had begun to cut wages drastically and had complained loudly to John MacBain and his own directors because their railroad did not do so. A few weeks ago he had been delighted to receive from the president of the company a notice that at last wages had been reduced, in despair over the continuing depression. In a brief note to John MacBain, for Pierce hated letterwriting, he had expressed his pleasure and his confidence that dividends could be restored soon.