“This seems another world,” Pierce said abruptly.
“It’s our world,” Tom said. “Mine, Bettina’s, our children’s.”
“Are you lonely, Tom?”
“No, Pierce. I have everything.”
“If Bettina should die—”
“I would live on here.”
Pierce stirred in his chair. “But, Tom,” he protested. “It’s damned selfish, isn’t it? You ought to be helping to clear up the mess we’ve got ourselves into — these strikes — the communism — the whole country’s threatened.”
“No,” Tom said gently. “I don’t have to help in those things. They’re all parts of the struggle. I’ve made my struggle — so has Bettina. We’ve won through.”
“To what?” Pierce asked.
“To our own peace,” Tom answered in tranquillity.
The dreamlike calm of his spirit persisted. He woke the next morning and Tom’s room was familiar to him and yet strange, as though he had waked in his own room but in a strange house. He lay on the pillows, not caring what the hour. The house was full of small pleasant sounds. Children’s voices came up from the garden and he heard quiet footsteps pass his door. Then a clear but muted voice rose through the silence. He listened and heard not a hymn nor a spiritual but an old English lullaby which his own mother used to sing to him and to Tom. It must be one of Tom’s children and it must be Georgy. He knew Georgia’s voice and it was not hers. Hers was deep and tender but this voice was high and clear, a bright rich soprano. It broke off suddenly as though someone had hushed it and he knew it had been stopped for him. He got up, lazily conscience-smitten, and curious, too, to see Tom’s children.
When he went downstairs Tom heard his footsteps and came to the door of the study. By the light of the morning Tom looked calm and poised, his fair skin ruddy and his blue eyes clear. He was as slender as ever, his shoulders as straight. The youngest child whom Pierce had seen only in the garden came toddling through a door and Tom picked him up and held him. He saw the love in Tom’s eyes and felt his own heart shaken.
“This fellow I haven’t seen,” he said, trying to speak lightly. He took the child’s fat brown hand.
“Small Tom, this is your uncle,” Tom said. The boy did not speak, but he gazed at Pierce with large eyes full of serene interest.
“Can’t you say good morning?” Tom inquired of his son.
Small Tom shook his head and the men laughed to ease their emotion.
“Come and have your breakfast,” Tom said. He put the child down and they walked together to the dining room. Georgy was there, arranging a silver bowl of roses. She looked up gravely. Pierce realized that yesterday the children had been kept from him, but today he would see them as they were in this house.
“My daughter,” Tom said formally. “Georgy, this is your uncle.”
Georgy put out a narrow smooth hand, and Pierce, somewhat to his own astonishment, took it.
“How do you do,” he said.
“Mother asks, how will you have your eggs?” she inquired, in a soft clear voice.
“Scrambled, please,” Pierce said. Tom’s daughter was an exceedingly pretty girl and he smiled at her as he sat down. “Did I hear you singing?” he demanded,
She flushed. “I forgot,” she said. “Mother had told me to be quiet.”
“It was a pleasant way to wake,” Pierce said. He began to eat the sliced oranges in front of him.
“Bring the coffee, my dear,” Tom said gently. He who knew Pierce so well could feel the trembling of foundations within his brother. Pierce was behaving wonderfully, out of the natural goodness of his nature, but change must not come too fast.
“You had your breakfast?” Pierce shot up his dark eyebrows.
“We have our family breakfast early,” Tom replied. “Leslie has to go to work at seven, and the children like to play in the garden in the cool of the morning.”
“I haven’t seen Leslie — this time,” Pierce said.
“He’ll be home for lunch,” Tom replied.
The door opened and his second daughter stood there, a plate of toast in her hand.
“Come in, Lettice, while the toast’s hot,” he said.
She came tiptoeing in, trying to take great care, her fringed eyes wide, and her tongue between her lips.
Pierce could not keep back his smile for children. “That’s wonderful toast,” he said heartily. “I want a piece right now.”
Something in her shy and dewy look made him think of Georgia. She had Georgia’s softness of contour. He watched her while she tiptoed away again, not speaking a word.
“Handsome children, Tom,” he said.
“I think so,” Tom agreed.
Both brothers knew that the dam they were building with their scanty commonplace words must break. They must open their hearts to each other. Pierce must know Tom’s life, and he must tell Tom everything. They were too close, strangely closer than ever after these years of separation.
“Sally here?” Pierce muttered.
Tom shook his head. “Not yet this morning.”
“Hold her off, will you?” Pierce did not look at him. “I have to get things straight myself, Tom.”
“I know,” Tom said gently. His voice, always deep, had taken on a still deeper quality. The harshness of youth had disappeared from it. No, there was something else. Pierce recognized it. Tom had so long heard Bettina’s voice and the soft voices of her people that his own voice had grown slow and deep.
“Georgia knew you and I would have to talk,” Tom went on. “She is taking Sally to shop this morning.”
“She’s staying with Sally at the hotel, isn’t she?” Pierce asked.
“Of course,” Tom replied. He hesitated and then went on resolutely. “Pierce, Georgia wants to leave Malvern. We’ve always told her we had a room for her when she wanted to come. Now she does.”
To save himself Pierce could not answer naturally. “I don’t know what Lucinda will say,” he murmured. He took a fourth slice of toast which he did not want.
“Georgia is afraid of that,” Tom said. “But I told her I knew you would wish her to do as she likes.”
“Did she tell you to talk to me?” Pierce inquired.
“No, as a matter of fact she asked me not to,” Tom replied frankly. “I do it on my own responsibility. Let her stay, Pierce. She’s never been a servant.”
“I know that,” Pierce said. The toast grew dry in his mouth and he swallowed coffee to wash it down. Then he touched his lips with his napkin and got up.
“Let’s get away together, Tom,” he said. “Somehow my heart feels ready to break over you.”
“You must not feel so,” Tom said quickly. “I am happy, Pierce. You’ll see—”
They went out in silence to the study and Tom closed the door and turned the key.
As though the whole house knew the door had been closed and the key turned a new silence surrounded them. The garden was full of sunshine, but there was not a voice in it of child or of bird. It was a hot and windless morning. The shades had been partly drawn and the room was darkened. A jug of water stood on the table, frosted and cool and beside it was a bowl of early grapes.
“Bettina knew we’d want to shut ourselves up,” Tom said with a smile. “She knows everything without being told.” He sat down opposite Pierce on an easy chair. “It is a great experience to live with someone like Bettina,” he said, looking straight at Pierce. “Uncanny sometimes, when I feel the thoughts being plucked out of my brain, almost before I’ve thought them!”
“I suppose so,” Pierce mumbled.
Tom held the lead. He filled his pipe and lit it, and went on, his words slow and clear. “It comes, I think, from an inheritance of having to divine what men and women who hold the power over them are thinking and feeling. When I remember that, I am angry. But as a gift, it’s subtle and profound. Bettina is subtle and profound — and deep and clear and honest as a child.”