“Then I will go to it — I am tired.” He had been touched by her joy.
She had brought him into this cool green and white room and had tiptoed away. He had closed the door, frightened and bewildered by the depths of his feeling and yet he was calm. He wanted to sleep — to sleep and rest, and yet he was not sleepy. He sat down in a deeply cushioned chair and leaned back and closed his eyes. Now he was face to face with something that he knew was inevitable, that he had always known was inevitable. Whatever was to come, he had at last met the unavoidable. Whatever it was he had forbidden himself he would forbid no longer.
Tom knocked at the door gently and he said, “Come in,” and his brother came in.
“Are you ill?” Tom exclaimed.
“No,” Pierce said.
“But you’re white as a sheet!”
“Tom, I’m frightened and relieved — but I don’t know what I am going to do—”
Tom sat down and gazed at him with anxiety. “What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” Pierce said. “But I am going to sleep here tonight, Tom. And I have asked Georgia to let me talk with her tomorrow — a long talk — such as I have never allowed myself.”
Tom’s face grew stern. “To what end, Pierce?”
“I don’t know,” Pierce said. “When I know I’ll tell you honestly, Tom — or she will.”
Pierce dismissed the driver and took the carriage himself. He was ashamed of his involuntary and yet surprised relief at the fact that no one would realize that Georgia was — not a white woman. He had driven along the empty side streets into the roads which led most quickly to the country.
“I don’t know why I didn’t want to talk inside the house,” he said frankly. They had scarcely spoken at all as he drove. She had smiled once or twice. He had glanced at her and from her calm had grown calm himself.
“It’s a beautiful day,” she said.
The mild day was almost windless and the afternoon was bright. No one had been at the door to see them go. Tom had made an excuse of not being able to get back from school until late, and the children did not come back at noon. Bettina had gone to visit a friend. The house had been empty when they left it, and he knew it would be empty when they got back.
Outside the city limits he drove up a winding lane which was hidden by trees until it came to the top of a hill. There he stopped. “This looks like our hill,” he said. He waved his whip at the view. “We can enjoy the world spread before us while we talk.”
He fastened the horse to a tree and she put her hand in his and stepped out of the carriage. Even today she had worn her soft white muslin frock. The shawl around her shoulders was white wool, and her bonnet-shaped straw hat was white.
“Here’s a log — and I’ll put the robe down for us to sit on.”
She let him serve her, and when he had made ready she sat down and put back her shawl from her shoulders. She did not look at him. It was impossible to tell from her face what she thought. She was submissive and gentle and full of dignity. He did not dare touch her hand. Indeed, he must not.
“You have been living far away all these years,” he said. “I don’t know how to begin.”
She turned her soft eyes to him now. “We can begin where we are,” she said. “We know everything about each other.”
“Do I know everything about you?” he asked.
She smiled. “There is not much to know. I’ve lived in my sister’s house, and helped her with the children.”
She looked down as she spoke and at her feet she saw a violet and she stooped and plucked it and fastened it at her bosom and went on speaking in her placid sweet voice. “Now I am planning to take Georgy away — to Europe — to train her voice.”
“To Europe!” he echoed and was stunned.
“I always wanted to sing,” she went on, “but of course I hadn’t the opportunity. I know Georgy can be a great singer and I’d like to have my share in that.”
“I thought she wanted to be a teacher,” he objected.
She shook her head. “I don’t want her to get embroiled in all the sorrows of our race,” she said quietly. “Of what use is that? We must wait until the time of wisdom comes to the world.”
She spoke half dreamily and he felt her far away from him indeed.
“You have changed very much, Georgia,” he said sharply.
She shook her head. “No, I have only had time to think — much time. I have had time to ask myself why it was that Bettina and I have had to live solitary. Oh yes — Bettina, too! You see, she is really quite alone — cut off from — everybody except — her husband. And I have been cut off — in quite the same way — except that I have never married — shall never marry.”
“If you go to Europe there might be someone—” He felt jealousy and at the same time he thought of Lucinda.
She shook her head. “No, not for me.”
He wanted to take her hand again as he had yesterday and could not. “I feel somehow a cur,” he murmured.
She shook her head again, smiled and did not speak.
“Or a fool,” he said. “Because I am so confused.”
“We are born out of time,” she said quietly.
He took her words and pondered them and could not reply to them. In silence he gazed out over the rolling hills and the shallow valleys. Among their vivid green the red barns and white farmhouses gleamed like jewels. A dove moaned in the trees near by. She began to speak again musingly. “I’ve missed Malvern, too. I loved to serve you — taking care of your clothes and tidying your room — all that — but I had to give it up, for fear—”
“Fear of me?”
“Fear of myself. It would have been easy to stay there at Malvern — lovely—”
“But you can’t come back,” he said sadly.
“Never!”
“I know that.”
“And I know,” she went on more firmly, “that it isn’t me you heed. You feel at ease with me — not just because of me — but because far back in you somewhere, you’ve mixed me up with Maum Tessie who wetnursed you and took care of you when you were little.”
He flushed, but she raised her hand. “Yes, that’s true. If your — wife — had been softer — you wouldn’t have needed anybody else.”
They fell into silence again. She was complete and untouchable. She had thought through everything as he had never dared to do, had reached the end of herself, had grown to the height of womanhood, and whatever his half-ashamed, unacknowledged yearnings had been he knew now that they would never be fulfilled. … He was amazed and perplexed that in the midst of his disappointment and stifled chagrin, he felt a strange relief.
She rose and drew her shawl about her shoulders and looked at the little gold watch that hung on a short chain from her ribbon belt. “We have been here nearly two hours—”
“Sitting quiet most of the time,” he said, smiling, half sadly.
“But saying all that had to be said,” she replied.
He got up then and they stood for a moment looking over the countryside. Then he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. They were soft under his grip. He looked deep into her dark eyes and she met his gaze faithfully.
“I have a queer contented feeling,” he said.
She smiled back at him.
He went on, choosing his words carefully, one by one, as they distilled in pure essence out of the depths of his being. “For the first time in life, I think I know what the war was about — and I’m glad Tom’s side won — because it made you free and what you are this day.”
“Yes,” she said.
He went away that night and when he was gone Georgia turned to Tom and Bettina.
“I feel it your due that you know what happened between him and me this day,” she said simply.
The children had gone upstairs to bed and they sat in the big sitting room. The soft spring night, drifting in from the open window, was warm with the hint of summer soon to come. Georgia had said almost nothing all evening. Even when Pierce went away she had still said nothing. But she gave him her hand in parting. This was much. Never before had she put out her hand to him as though they were equals. Now they were, and she acknowledged it.