Bettina was sewing on some child’s garment. She put it down. Tom had picked up the newspaper. He let it fall. Both waited.
“You have let me live here as though it were my home,” Georgia went on.
“My home is your home — you know that,” Bettina reminded her. She had aged in these years, and Georgia seemed much the younger in looks and in manner and she deferred to Bettina in everything. Now she looked at her sister and then at Tom. She touched her lips with her tongue. Shy and modest as she was, they could see how difficultly she spoke and they waited, always gentle toward this gentle creature.
“He’s grown older and more thoughtful — as we all do. Whatever it was, he came here this time in need of comfort. And so he thought of me. Bettina,” she turned to her sister. “It’s not like you and Tom. Even if it were — it’s too late. I told him — I want to take Georgy to Europe and get her voice trained.”
“To Europe!” Tom cried.
“I want to go away,” Georgia said. Her lips were trembling. “Very far away, and I would like to help Georgy to sing — the way I always wanted to myself and never could.”
“But the money—” Tom began.
Bettina spoke suddenly. “Tom, I’ve never let you use your inheritance on us. I ask you to use it now.”
He looked at Bettina. She was his wife, though he had been forced to compel her to marriage. When they had moved into this house, when he was headmaster at last of his own small school for boys, he had taken her with him one Sunday to an Amish meeting and by the rites of the Amishmen he had made her his wife and himself her husband. He had put upon her finger the narrow gold ring she had so steadfastly refused to wear. The rite was as much for himself as for her. He wanted to make final, for himself, the thing he had chosen to do. He wanted the sanction of church as well as of conscience. Never would he forget the strange silence of the people in the meeting house. Rigidly accepting his freedom to do what he felt was right, nevertheless he comprehended their conflict, their reluctance at what their own consciences, trained in the creed of non-resistance, insisted upon. But he was content. Bettina became his wife by the law of God. She felt it as he did. Whatever conflict had been between them ceased. They had lived in the peace of isolation from their kind, hers as well as his, dependent upon one another and deeply knit. And yet her fierce independence even of him had never allowed him to spend anything of his inheritance on her or her children until this moment.
“I’ll be proud to use it so,” he said gently.
Two weeks later his house seemed empty. He did not know which to miss more, the singing, fiery, laughing, easily angry girl who was his daughter, or Georgia’s soft presence. Both were gone.
Chapter Nine
PIERCE WAS CONFRONTED WITH news as he stepped into the hall at Malvern. Martin was waiting for him, watching the front door through the open door of the library, and Lucinda had a servant posted to tell her of his arrival. She swept down the wide stairs, holding her skirts with both hands, and Martin leaped out of the chair where he had been reading the county newspaper. They greeted Pierce so affectionately and with such excitement that he smiled at them drily.
“What now?” he inquired.
“Father, Mary Louise has set the day of our wedding,” Martin said solemnly. “The eighteenth of June!”
“And that means the girls and I must get our gowns,” Lucinda interrupted her son, “and the porcelain service you’ve ordered from England — Oh, Pierce, it can’t possibly get here in time!”
“Mary Lou and I won’t need it for three months, Mother — we’ll be in Europe—” Martin broke in.
“We have plenty of dishes, I hope,” Pierce said. “They’ll be coming here to Malvern to live, Luce — good news, Martin.”
“Every bride should have her own porcelain and silver,” Lucinda said firmly.
He was at the stairs, feeling weary and anxious for the quiet of his own room. Joe was ahead of him with the luggage.
“Pierce, do hurry — do!” Lucinda urged him. “There’s so much to plan.”
“I will,” he promised—“but I’d like a bite to eat, my dear.”
“I’ll order a lunch for you on a tray — we finished an hour ago,” Lucinda said.
He inclined his head, smiled at his son, and walked slowly upstairs. The weariness was more than that of not sleeping well on the train. He felt shaken and bewildered, his security threatened, and by himself. He felt that in some secret fashion he had betrayed Malvern and his family, although nothing that had passed between him and Georgia was shameful — actually, how little shameful, when compared to Lucinda’s own father, who had taken mistresses as a matter of course, from among his slaves. But Lucinda had never considered her father’s children by slaves as her kin, by the remotest drop of blood. Had she seen him, Pierce, her husband, talking with Georgia, as he had done, she could never have forgiven him. Therefore he would never tell her, lest peace be destroyed in his house.
His ancestors had built Malvern for the ages, and a war, unforeseen and terrible, had nearly wrecked what they had built. By chance Malvern had escaped and he had carried on the building, strengthening and improving the place until it had become a symbol of safety for himself and his children and their children. But he knew now that neither he nor they were safe. He perceived dimly the essential difference between himself and Tom. Tom had projected himself and his life into the future. He had built a house not made with hands. His love, the love which had grown so strangely under the very roofs of Malvern, had given him a home and security. “I’ve bolstered the past,” Pierce thought. “Tom’s built for the future.” But he would never have understood this had it not been for Georgia.
In his own rooms he dismissed Joe and stood looking out of the long windows that faced the avenue of oaks winding to the gates. What a strange chance it had been that into Malvern had come the two women, gentle and beautiful, to serve and yet never to be servants! If Bettina and Georgia had not been here, if there had only been Jake and Joe and old Annie and Phelan, and all the crew of ignorant black folk, he and Tom would have been different men. Those black folk belonged to the past, but Georgia and Bettina did not.
He sat down and put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He saw Georgia again as she had looked beside him on the hill, the sun on her faultless skin. Her eyes, so exquisitely shaped and colored, were lit with pure intelligence. That was her fascination for him, that within her golden beauty and clear simplicity there should dwell high intelligence and sensitive feeling.
Lucinda opened the door and saw him thus and cried out, “Pierce, are you ill?”
He let his hands fall and tried to smile. “No — only tired, my dear.”
“Something is wrong!”
“Nothing except large vague general things,” he replied.
“I insist that you tell me,” she demanded.
“I’m troubled for the future, my dear—”
“You mean the railroad?”
“The railroad is only part of it — perhaps our whole nation is only part of it—” he said slowly.
She lost interest. “Oh, that — Pierce, really, we haven’t time for such things.” She came in and sat down. “I want to take the girls to New York. It’s the only possible way to get our gowns in time. I have decided on a pale hyacinth blue for myself, with silver lace — very narrow. Sally and Lucie are bridesmaids and they will wear daffodil yellow — I want to show the Wyeths that we are quite as good as they — although Malvern is in West Virginia, it is only just over the border. If it hadn’t been for the war—”