Pierce stared at him in silence.
“The people in this secret world know all the places that let them come in,” Tom went on. “They go where they can be free and they stay away from the places — and the people — who want to push them down again. It’s a world within a world you might call it — but I call it the world of tomorrow — the pilot world. We’re bringing our children up in it — they’ll be ready—”
“Ready for what?” Pierce asked abruptly.
“Ready for tomorrow,” Tom said. Tears came into his eyes but he looked through them steadfastly at his brother.
After Tom had left him Pierce sat on in the study alone for awhile. Noon came and in the hall he heard Sally’s voice, and then Georgia’s. He dreaded to go out and meet them. Could he be natural and himself in this house? And was his child, Sally, at home here? He grew solemn at the thought. Sally mixing with such people! What if one of them wanted to marry her? Lucinda would never forgive him. But could he forgive himself? His gorge rose and he got up and paced the floor. He’d take her home with him, of course — tomorrow, anyway. And he would not allow her to come here again. The horror of his thinking impelled him to the door and he went out into the hall and followed the voices across into the sitting room. There Sally sat, Tom’s baby in her arms, holding him as she had held her dolls. She looked up at her father and met his troubled eyes.
“Papa, did you ever see such an adorable baby?”
Thus she postponed his questions and thus she brought him into the circle of the house. Georgy was at her side and Lettice was staring at her, forefinger in her mouth. The children were brushed and clean for their midday meal. The door opened and a tall lad came in. It was Leslie. He stood still, gazing with wary shyness at Pierce.
“Leslie?” Pierce asked. This was Tom’s son! He looked unsmiling at the grave boy. Intelligent eyes — too sad — clever thin face, delicate lips — only the extravagant curling eyelashes and the waving hair — but the boy was three-fourths white—
“Yes,” Leslie said.
Pierce put out his hand and Leslie smiled, and put his own narrow dark hand into it. A good boy, Pierce told himself, a fine boy — own cousin to his sons! But Martin would never acknowledge that.
Then the door opened and Georgia came in.
“Luncheon is ready, please,” she said, as though at Malvern. She looked at Pierce frankly, smiled slightly, and closed the door again.
But nothing else was at all like Malvern. Tom sat at the head of the long table and Bettina at the foot, and Georgia at Tom’s right and Sally at his left, and Pierce at Bettina’s right. He kept saying to himself, “This is Tom’s house — this is Tom’s family.” He ate his food, finding it difficult to speak. Once he asked Leslie what he did, and listened to his reply that he clerked at the store for the summer but that in the autumn he would go back to school.
“What are you going to make of yourself?” he inquired.
“I don’t know yet,” Leslie replied. His young voice was quiet and courteous and without hint of subservience.
A colored maid served the meal well, and once an elderly woman came in from the kitchen with a hot dish. Pierce ate with appreciation, in spite of the strangeness, for the food was good and delicately flavored. The children were gay. Once Small Tom cried in his high chair and once Georgy fell into an argument with Lettice. Tom corrected them firmly.
Pierce sat in a dream, seeing everything. Again and again his eyes came back to Georgia. She was removed from him by the length of the table and she did not once speak to him. She spoke very little to anyone. His eyes caught hers once and both looked away quickly. Only Sally was herself.
The meal was over and suddenly he knew he could stand no more of Tom’s house. He must get away into his own world again, for here he was confused to the depths of his being.
He motioned to Sally and she came tripping to his side. “Come out in the garden with me,” he ordered. They stepped out of the open French windows upon the narrow brick terrace and from it into the garden path. She clung to his arm.
“Sally, I want you to come away with me,” he said.
“Oh, Papa!” she wailed. “I’m having a lovely time.”
“I need you,” he said sternly. “I’m lonely and all mixed up in my mind. Let’s you and I go back together to Malvern, honey. I want to be alone there for a bit, before your mama and Lucie come back.”
She looked up at him and saw with alarm that his lips were trembling and at once she melted. “Of course, Papa,” she said and squeezed his arm. They walked up and down the length of the garden a few times. “But, Papa — just one thing—”
“Yes?” He did not know what she would ask now after these days.
“Georgia doesn’t want to come back to us.”
“I know,” he said.
“Did she tell you?”
“Tom did.”
“You’ve got to let her stay.”
“Of course—”
“And help Mama not to mind!”
“You and I’ll do that—” He pressed her clasped hands against his side.
When they turned again Georgia was standing in the door and Sally called her.
“Georgia, come here—”
She came down the terrace steps, the sunshine bright upon her white dress. Pierce looked at her with revulsion and admiration. He was afraid of her beauty. The sun revealed her flawless creamy skin, the golden depths of her dark eyes, and he looked down at the path as they paused before her.
“Papa says you may stay, Georgia, and we will make it right with Mama.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Delaney,” Georgia said.
He looked up and met her eyes. “I know you haven’t been very happy at Malvern.”
“Yes — I have been happy,” Georgia answered. “But it is better now for me to leave it — and find my own place.”
He bowed his head, and kept Sally’s hand tight under his arm, and drew her with him into the house, and Georgia stood alone in the garden.
“Poor Papa,” Sally said.
They were back at Malvern again and he and Sally were riding along the familiar woodland paths.. His horse was Beauty’s great-grandchild, and Sally rode her own golden bay that he had bought for her once in Kentucky.
“Explain your pity,” he said gaily. It was good to be safe at home.
“You’re living before the war, Papa,” Sally said smartly.
“You mean I’m old,” he said.
“No — because Martin is just like you. It’s Malvern that does it — all this—”
She waved her riding crop at the rolling green of the hills and blue of mountains beyond. “You made this and Martin inherits it, and neither of you can bear to give it up.”
“Who’s asking us to give it up?” Pierce demanded.
“Nobody, darling — but you’re afraid somebody might!”
“You and Carey and John — you’re more enlightened, I suppose?” he said with heavy pretense at sarcasm.
She shook her head. “I don’t like Carey — he’ll just be a sharp lawyer. Carey has no principle — did you know that, Papa? But John — oh, well, one of these days you’ll quarrel with John and maybe throw him out of the house and he knows it. He’s getting ready for it.”
He was aghast at her intuition. It corroborated his own. He was afraid of his third son. The boy did not reveal himself.
“And you?” he asked, avoiding his fears.
“Oh, Lucie and I — we don’t belong in Malvern anyway — we’ll have to be married off and go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter about women.”
He looked at her lovely face. She held her head high, and he saw only her sweet profile, the red gold hair piled under the little black derby hat. “Sally, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that — you’ll always be my daughter, whomever you marry—”