“He’s your father, but you can’t act like his children,” she had told them, “even if he does treat you right,” she had added.
So she and Bettina had grown up as solitary as orphans, even when the tall thin old Englishman had held them on his knees and kissed their smooth golden cheeks.
After their mother died, when she was eleven and Bettina nine, they had gone on alone together, growing up, slender, silent, obedient always to the old man. “Sir,” they had always called him, neither master nor father. He used to look at them. She remembered and never could she forget how he used to look at them, pitying and frightened, as though something he had done in a moment had surprised even himself.
“I don’t know what’s to become of you two girls,” he used to mutter. He was very old, then, too old to do anything but let them wait on him.
“Don’t worry about us, sir—” she had always said. That, too, was her mother’s teaching … “Don’t ever let men get to thinking you trouble, father or husband. Men don’t like trouble with women.”
She had kept these teachings in her heart and had taught them to Bettina who could not remember the least image of their mother.
After a while the old man had given up even his worry. He grew older and slept more often, and had taken much waiting upon, until the day when he died in a moment and they had found him dead.
“What’s goin’ to become of us, Georgia?” Bettina had asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” she had answered.
“Maybe he’s left his will for us,” Bettina whispered.
“Hush,” Georgia said. One of the teachings of her mother had been, “Don’t expect anything. Then what you get seems good and enough.”
But there was no will and no mention of them and when a cousin came as the next heir, he sold the house and the land and the slaves, and they were sold, too. If they had not been slaves before they now became slaves.
Thus had they gone into the next great house. It was no question there — they were slaves. And then, because they had worked well and always in that deep silence which they kept about them like a dark velvet curtain, Miss Lucie had brought them here when again the great house fell. Great houses always fell. She lay gazing up into the thick beams above her head. Would this great house fall, too?
Pierce, waking just after dawn, got out of the bed. He moved as stealthily as he knew how, but Lucinda waked.
“Go to sleep, Luce,” he commanded. “It’s the middle of the night for you.”
“Where are you going?” she asked. Her blue eyes opened wide at him.
“I’m going for a ride,” he said. “I’ll be back in time to breakfast with you.”
He stooped and kissed her mouth. Her breath was not quite sweet in the morning. He knew it and yet it always shocked him a little that it could be, so fastidious was she in every detail of her person. Inside the lovely shell of her body surely there should be no corruption. She was asleep again, lying placidly on her pillow, her hands on her breast. Lovely she was, and he had no complaint against her. By the time he got back she would have washed her mouth with one of her fragrant waters. He had no need to notice an offense not greater than the scent of a faded rose — he who was fresh home from the stench of dying men on a battlefield! Yet that stench had so pervaded him for four years that now his nostrils were always to the wind, like a dog’s. He smelled what he would never have noticed in the days before he had smelled death.
He splashed in his wash basin in his dressing room, blowing out gusts of bubbles through the water, he sponged his body, brushed his teeth and put on clean garments under his riding suit. Clean he would be so long as he lived. He had had enough of filth.
Clean to his marrowbones he went out of the door and into the great upper hall, down the winding stairs which were one of the beauties of Malvern, and into the lower hall. The hall ran through the house, and front and back doors were wide open to the morning.
At the table by the door Georgia was putting white and purple asters into a yellow bowl.
“Hello, Georgia,” he said.
She turned her head, and he saw with discomfort that she was really very beautiful. He did not want a beautiful slave in his house. Though she wasn’t a slave any more—“Good morning, sir,” she said.
“A fine morning,” he said abruptly.
“Yes, sir.”
“I suppose nothing’s been heard of Tom yet? I didn’t go in — didn’t want to wake him.”
“No, sir,” she replied. “Bettina hasn’t come out. Likely he’s sleeping.”
She pronounced her words so purely that he was curious to know where she had learned them so. But he refused himself the luxury of curiosity and went on down the steps, into the cool bright morning. At the stables his groom was already brushing his horse.
He looked up with a grin. “Sure is good to have somepin like a horse again, marster.”
“The stables are pretty sorry, Jake,” Pierce agreed. “But give me time — I’ll be looking around for some real horseflesh in a month or so.”
“Sure will be good to git the stables full,” Jake said.
He slipped the saddle on the mare, steadied her with his hand on her neck, murmuring and hissing through his teeth to soothe her.
“She’s raring to go,” Pierce said fondly. “But it won’t be to war any more, Beauty—”
“Sure is good they ain’t any mo’ wa’,” Jake said.
“You’re going to get wages from now on, Jake, like all the rest of the sl — servants,” Pierce said.
“I’d rawther you kep’ the money, please, marster,” Jake laughed, and his open mouth was like the inside of a watermelon.
“You’ll be having to buy your food, though, and clothes for you and Manda and the children,” Pierce said. He tested the stirrups as carefully as though he were going into battle. A horseman was no better than his stirrups. He heard a gasp from Jake.
“You ain’t goin’ to feed us no mo’?” Jake’s face was lined with terror.
“Now, Jake, what do I give you wages for?” Pierce demanded. He leaned against his horse. This sort of thing was going to take a mighty lot of patience!
“I don’t want no wages,” Jake wailed. “I wants our food and does like we allays had had!”
“Great day in the morning!” Pierce shouted, “why, the war was fought so you could be free, man!”
“But my food and cloes!” Jake moaned.
Pierce broke into sudden laughter and leaped on his horse. “Oh well, I reckon you won’t starve at Malvern,” he said. “And if you want, I’ll give you food and clothes instead of wages.”