“I know who was the handsomest man,” she murmured. “I wish I could have seen my pa.”
The warmth which he missed in Lucinda he found in Sally, he told himself, and why should he complain? But some day soon the warmth would be for another man and then he would feel very lonely indeed. He sighed and looked ahead. He and Lucinda must come together closely and more close as time went on. Old age was over the horizon and they must go through it knit together. He must find a way to win her trust.
Then there was no more time for thinking. Colonel Wyeth had flung open the door and stood, a tall dramatic figure, with welcoming arms. They got out of the carriages and black men sprang to fetch their bags and black women in spotless white aprons appeared with smiles and murmurs of pleasure to take them to hospitable rooms. The wide hall, the breezeway, open from front to back of the house, was fragrant with lilies. Colonel Wyeth clapped Pierce on the shoulder.
“Come and quench your thirst,” he shouted. “We’re one family now, Pierce. God what a handsome son you’re givin’ me and Ma’y Lou — well, I say in all modesty that she is his match — pretty, though, the way a woman should be. But that’s her mother. Man, I don’t mind tellin’ you now but I had a time makin’ up my mind between my Dolly and your Lucinda in the old days — I don’t know that I ever chose — I saw your eyes stealin’ around to Lucinda and so I said, ‘Dolly’s my girl—’”
It was the old, comfortable, cheerful, ignorant, happy world. He felt it close about him. Gleaming polished silver, paneled walls, old portraits, velvet curtains and flowered carpets, good food, wonderful thirst-satisfying, thirst-stimulating drink, and everywhere obsequious smiling dark faces. He sank back into his childhood. Here it lived on unchanged. Had he said to Charles Wyeth that anything was changed or could be changed, the tall lean silvery haired Virginian would have laughed. Nobody could change Virginia, he would have declared.
He sat drinking a softly sharp, frosted, fragrant julep, in a great room whose windows were open upon a curving river, to which a meadow sloped. Wyeth was talking incessantly—
“It gives a man queer mixed feelin’s, Pierce. A little gyurl, the little thing that’s been runnin’ round the house a few years, the joy of the home, and now I’m givin’ my little joy away! Oh, don’t misunderstand me — Martin’s a credit to you — a sound young man without any of these hyeah radical notions that are comin’ in from the no’th. I feel puffectly safe about my little Ma’y Lou. All the same—” He shook his head.
Pierce smiled. “I know — I was thinking the very same thing about my Sally. It won’t be long—”
“Has she got herself a beau?”
“Six or eight or so,” Pierce said, “but I notice she’s beginning to concentrate.”
“A mighty pretty gyurl,” Wyeth said mournfully, and continuing in the same mournful tone. “How’s cattle over your way? I hyeah you’ve come to be a mighty cattle man.”
“I’m a fool,” Pierce said ruefully. “I reckon I’m trying to buy all the cattle in the States.”
“It’s all right if the market holds,” Wyeth said judicially. He spoke with authority on all subjects. “Though it’s a mighty gamble, if you’ve got nothin but cattle. But you were smart to go on for railroads, too. Thataway a man has two strings to his bow.”
“If both strings don’t break the same year,” Pierce agreed.
“Well, I reckon they got the communists or socialists or whatever they are scotched for good,” Wyeth said gaily. “We can’t allow that sort of internationalism to get in here from foreign countries.”
“No,” Pierce agreed. He wondered what Wyeth would say if he knew about Tom. But nobody knew. It was as if Tom were dead and had been dead for years.
“Not that it ever could happen here,” Wyeth went on heartily. His ruddy cheeks, his long moustache, his fine white hands holding the tall frosty glass were absurdly like the portrait of his own father hanging on the paneled wall behind him. “I’d rather see my daughter dead then married to one of those radicals who believe that black is as good as white.” He held his glass to be refilled. “I like niggahs, don’t I, Henry?” The elderly man servant standing at his side smiled faintly as he bent with the tray. “But I like ’em where they belong — and where they’re happiest.”
“Martin is no radical — so far as I know,” Pierce said mildly.
He wondered if it were weakness that kept him from telling the truth as he saw it to this comfortable man, the truth about Tom, about the strikes, about his own vague fears. Wyeth was perhaps stupid. No, he was not stupid, he was surrounded and isolated by comfort. He had inherited wealth and home and friends as he had inherited his family and its blood. He could be destroyed but not changed.
Pierce allowed a waiting servant to replace his glass while he took in the meaning of these words. The quick and the dead — the wise old phrase came into his mind. The dead were those who would not comprehend and share in change. He thought of Lucinda with a strange foreboding. And she, his wife!
He drank long and deep of the smooth liquid in the silvery cold glass in his hand and quelled the monstrous fears in his mind.
The day passed in a dream of pleasure. The great and ancient house lent itself to the young marriage. Guests came and settled into its shelter, gentle handsome old people, young and beautiful men and women, children excited and gay. Friends whom he had forgotten and relatives he scarcely remembered. A web of kinship seemed to bind them together. Wyeths were related to Carters who were seventh cousins to Delaneys and Pages and Randolphs, and Lees were knit into the blood streams of all. The world grew secure and steady in kinship and common ancestry. In the evening he went with his sons to the stag dinner for Martin, and he sat in silent admiration of the young groom and in pride that the life from his own loins had borne this fruit that would bear again. He was fulfilled before other men. He had everything that a man could want. Had he not?
When at the end of the dinner they rose, glasses in hand to toast his son, he lifted his own glass high and his eyes met Martin’s. The image of his son was dimmed in sudden smarting tears. More than he wanted happiness for himself he wanted Martin to be happy. He wanted Malvern to be the home of the next generation in peace and security. He must devote himself for the rest of his years to building that security.
He was very tender to Lucinda that night and he humbled himself before her.
“This day takes me back, my darling,” he said.
They were alone at last, long after midnight. In the cool high-ceilinged bedroom a great double bed was set between long windows opening to a balcony. He led her out in the moonlight, his arm around her, and for a moment they had gazed over the gleaming landscape. Then they came in together and made ready for sleep. He was ready first and he climbed on the double step and got into the bed. She in her white nightgown was still brushing her hair. So she had done on their wedding night and he had imagined shyness in the long brushing. He knew now that Lucinda was never shy. Nevertheless, he would be gentle with her and win her back to him.
“Your lovely hair,” he said. “I remember the first time I saw it down, like that. You kept brushing it—”
She smiled, not looking at him, and put the brush down. Then she turned down the lamp and stepped up and into the bed beside him. The moonlight from the open doors lay across the floor like a bright carpet.
“I hope Mary Lou will be as beautiful as you are, after their son is grown and ready to be married,” he murmured. He saw the endless vista of the generations ahead and he drew her into his arms. “We’ve made a great family, you and I,” he said.