“It isn’t just that, sir,” she had said simply and plainly. “I know she feels upset about Bettina, and she can’t say so, and she doesn’t know it, but she takes it out on me. But I don’t mind, sir. People can’t help themselves, I reckon. Anyway, if it’s for Bettina, I can bear it.”
“It’s very clever of you to understand,” he had said quickly and had turned away. He must not discuss Lucinda, his own wife.
Over the hills the trees were beginning to change, ready for autumn. Malvern was green, but as he had come north he could feel the stopping of summer growth. A touch of frost and the mountains would flame. He gloried in the beauty. Everything here was fortunate. They had been spared the misery of carpetbaggers. Lucinda’s brother, Randolph, had written how at night he had gone out under the white sheets of the Kluxers. “It’s life and death, these days,” he had written, “and I don’t choose death, not at the hands of slaves I have fed and clothed all their lives.”
Well, thank God, West Virginia was on the side of victory. It was his state now. He lifted his head and breathed in the dusty air of the swaying car, bumping over the faulty roadbed. It was a state carved out of the old, born for the new. He and Lucinda were happy—they must be. He put her out of his mind impatiently. Too much of his life was spent in thinking of her. Lucinda had a way of making herself felt. Without being aggressive or even talkative, she impinged. His smile grew grim as he thought of her. The years which the war had wasted must be repaired. His ambition, leashed to Malvern, broke its bounds. If John MacBain could grow rich, why not he?
Late at night a week later he sat talking in John’s library before the fire. He had looked about the big dark room with some amusement.
“I never knew you to read a book, John,” he had remarked.
John laughed his silent grey laughter. “They’re only wallpaper as far as I am concerned.” He yawned as he glanced about the shelves. “They came with the house—Molly’s notion, this house.”
“Expensive notion,” Pierce said drily. He had eaten an excellent dinner with grateful surprise. Molly’s somewhat slipshod housekeeping had changed with the city. Two light colored men in white linen jackets had served them deftly and Molly had sat at the foot of the table in a yellow taffeta gown, her green eyes brilliant and her red hair piled on her head. After dinner she had gone to a concert on the arm of a young man who had called for her with a horse and carriage and he and John had come to the library and had talked about getting rich while they smoked and drank whiskey and water.
“Molly has to amuse herself these days,” John said. He glanced at the big marble clock on the mantelpiece. It was after midnight. “She’ll be home soon. I don’t care for music myself. But I want to be fair to her—”
He sat hunched forward in his leather armchair, his long hands hanging slackly between his knees. Intimate words hesitated in the air and Pierce avoided them hastily.
“I’m mighty appreciative of this evening, John,” he said in his rich amiable voice. “When I came here last week, I thought no more than that we’d talk things over. Tonight—well, I feel as if I’d found the end of the rainbow.”
“You came at the right minute,” John replied. “The new stock was put on sale that night at midnight.”
“Still, if you hadn’t helped me by taking a mortgage on my land—though I never thought I’d mortgage a foot of Malvern—I shan’t dare to tell Lucinda,” Pierce said.
“You needn’t tell her,” John assured him. “A year and it will be paid off. Don’t forget I didn’t want the mortgage. I wanted to make it a loan—so far as I’m concerned, it’s no more.”
He spoke absently, listening for the hall door to open. “Molly isn’t satisfied with this house,” he said irrelevantly. “She’s seen a big place on a hill—Morgan property. It’s too big for us—why, it’s even got a ballroom!” He looked at Pierce sorrowfully.
“Women are insatiable, I reckon,” Pierce said lightly. He filled his pipe, and then, seeing John’s listening look, he put it down again. Molly would be home at any moment.
“Go on and smoke,” John ordered him.
“No—I’ll wait—she might come in. I don’t like to smoke before a lady,” Pierce replied.
The moment hung between them again, hovering on the edge of the intimacy he dreaded. Then it closed down upon him and he could not avoid it.
“Insatiable—you’ve hit the word,” John said slowly.
“But it’s not her fault Pierce, I’ve done you a friendly turn.”
“You have, John,” Pierce met his eyes fully and with deep dread. Was his friend about to ask a price of him?
“I like you better than any man I know—or am likely to know in this damned city, by Gawd,” John went on.
“We’ve grown up as neighbors,” Pierce murmured.
John looked up sharply. “Understand—what I’m asking isn’t a price, though, Pierce. I want you to have the loan—whatever you say.”
“I’m sure of that,” Pierce replied. He sat gazing steadily into the fire.
John looked away and wet his lips. “I want to ask you a queer thing—queer enough so I reckon no man asked it ever before of another man.”
Pierce tried to look at him and could not. He picked up his pipe and lit it.
“Molly’s still—young. Too young to live—without more children, Pierce … Pierce, I want you to father me a child.”
It was out. Pierce heard it and knew that John had pondered over it long, in the secret darkness of many nights. He could not look at him for pity. His blood drummed in his ears.
John went on. “If Molly had a child—or two, maybe—she’d be more content—with me.” He got up and kicked the fire and the lumps of smouldering soft coal fell apart and blazed. He leaned on the mantelpiece and stared into the flames. “I’ve thought it all out. Why should she suffer—because of what the war did to me? It’ll happen—sooner or later—with some man. Pierce, let it be you!”
He turned abruptly and their eyes met. Pierce saw agony in John’s eyes and felt tears come into his own. But he shook his head.
“John, I—can’t. I’ve got to love a woman before I can—can—besides, Lucinda’s the only one for me.”
The door opened in the hall. They heard Molly’s voice calling a gay goodnight. Then she was at the library door, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining. “Oh, it was heavenly!” she cried. Then she stopped and looked from one to the other of them. “Why, you two,” she exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you? My Gawd, you look like a couple of thieves!”
“God forbid,” Pierce said heartily. He turned to John and they broke into common laughter, and in its gust they were restored.
When Pierce reached home his daughter was already born, a week earlier than she was expected. Jake brought the news to him proudly at the station, and Pierce hastened the horses home.
He tiptoed into Lucinda’s room before he had changed his clothes. She was asleep, her cheeks pearly pale. He stood looking down at her with unutterable tenderness, grateful for his own good fortune. The strange thing John had asked of him he would never tell her. She would never believe that he could have refused. He smiled half ruefully at her invincible female distrust and she opened her eyes and, seeing him, she held out her hand and gave him a smile ravishing and mischievous.
“Pay me!” she demanded.
He laughed, put his hand into his pocket and brought out a velvet box. “It came last month from Paris,” he said.
“You monster,” she murmured, “to keep it so long—”
“You had to fulfill your part of the bargain,” he said.
She pouted, her hand still waiting, he still withholding. “If it had been a boy you wouldn’t have—” she began.
“Certainly not,” he said firmly.
“Give it to me, Pierce!” she cried.
He withdrew his hand and the box. “Show me your girl, madame!” he said with mock severity.
“Silly,” she said, but she pulled the ribbon bel
l rope that hung beside her bed and Georgia appeared at the door.
“Bring the baby,” Lucinda said to her arrogantly.
“Only if it is a girl,” Pierce amended.
Georgia smiled her soft warm smile, “It is a girl, sir—”
She went away to fetch the child and Pierce sat down on the bed and smiled down at his wife and teased her in the extravagance of his love. “Hardhearted as ever, I see, even to your daughter—keeping her out in the cold, in another room!”
Lucinda had always refused to have the babies in her own room. Now she pouted again, prettily. “She cries more than the boys did.”
“Ah, maybe you’ve met your match, Luce,” Pierce retorted.
Georgia came in, the pink bundle in her arms, and Pierce rose as she drew back a corner of the silk afghan. He looked down into the face of his daughter. She was asleep. He studied every detail of her round pretty face. Her tiny features had a firmness which disconcerted him. Neither of his sons had looked so complete at birth. He held his gift toward Lucinda. “Here,” he said hastily, “take it! I can see she’s a female.”
Then he waited for the first look in Lucinda’s eyes when she saw the bauble. She opened the box. “Oh, Pierce,” she breathed, “how beautiful!” She lifted sapphire earrings and brooch from the grey velvet. “Oh, perfect!” she sighed.
“You’re a damned expensive woman,” he growled proudly, and at his voice the baby opened her eyes and gave a soft cry.
He turned at the sound of this new voice, and gazed down into large, deeply violet eyes.
“Sapphira,” he said to his daughter, and smiled in pride that somehow held a heartbreak in it which he could not understand. “I have a notion that you’re going to be expensive, too,” he said wryly.
Chapter Four
PIERCE DELANEY LOOKED DOWN the long table loaded with silver and fruits and flowers. He sat at one end and John MacBain at the other in the immense dining room of the mansion in Wheeling which had belonged to the Morgans and now belonged to the MacBains. At John’s right Lucinda lifted her blonde head. The fairness of her hair had not dulled in the ten years since Sapphira had been born—Sally, Pierce called her. There had been two others after her, his third son, and then last year, the baby. The light shone down from the great crystal chandeliers and Lucinda’s piled curls gleamed softly. She had rouged her cheeks a very little. He did not approve of it, and yet he had not the heart to reproach her when the touch of color added so much to her calm beauty. She was still slender. At his own right Molly MacBain leaned her elbows on the table. Her arms were bare and white and her elbows dimpled. He knew just how those dimples were placed in the outer curve of the smooth flesh but still the knowledge did not disturb him. His eyes rested with secure pleasure on her rosy face and bright black eyes.
“You’re prettier, than you were ten years ago, Molly,” he said genially.
She laughed at him. “I’ve never been quite pretty enough for you, Pierce,” she said frankly. “But it don’t matter to me as much as it did. Look at John—he’s like a hen ready to lay an egg! That means it’s time for the speech-making.”
Up and down the long table the faces of men and women turned reluctantly toward John MacBain. He had grown heavy and somber in the last ten years and his head was bald. Now he rose under the waiting eyes and stood an instant, gathering them into his power. They submitted, half amused, but a sigh, like the breath of a slow summer breeze, rose and died down. Here and there a pretty woman turned unwillingly from the man with whom she was talking and silence fell.
Pierce looked with affection and amusement at his old friend. Ten years ago he had taken the train to Wheeling in search of John. He had done it for Malvern’s sake. The hungry acres had eaten and drunk his money and were draining him. He knew that if he were to complete his dream and leave the inheritance as a great estate to his sons he would have to find money elsewhere. Malvern was repaying him richly now, thanks to his railroad shares. In less than a year he had repaid John’s loan, and he had insisted on high interest.
This was John’s dinner, John’s house, John MacBain, the vice-president of the greatest railroad in the East. When the president died, John might become president. Pierce was only half listening to the earnest heavy voice. He had heard scores of John’s after dinner speeches, and he always made the same halts between sentences.
“I am grieved to state that our president is not able to be with us this evening,” John was saying. “You may be sure only the most important affairs could have prevented him from taking the chairmanship here at this dinner of the Board of Directors and their ladies, at which I make a report on the new eight-wheel passenger engine of the 2-6-0 type. This engine, number 600, is the largest of the passenger locomotives in this country, and—”
“Oh dear—he’s off on engines,” Molly whispered to Pierce. Their eyes met, laughing. He was occasionally secretly astonished that in the years he had been John’s partner in the railroad business, he had not yielded to Molly. There had been times when he might have yielded to her in a mingled pity for her life and the fullness of his own vitality, and remembering always that John would have said nothing. It had been a temptation again and again. Had Lucinda ever denied herself to him, he might have taken revenge with Molly. But Lucinda, always silent, never denied him anything any more, even when the two younger children were born within three years. His dear little Sally was worth the sapphires hundreds of times over.
“You’re mine,” Pierce declared often to this his favorite child. “I bought you from your mama the first time I saw you.”
“Tell me how it was,” Sally always demanded with relish at the thought of her immense cost.
“Your mama sent me word that she had just finished you, down to the last little fingernail, and would I please come and see how I liked you. So I went into Mama’s room and Georgia brought you in, and you wore a long white dress. I looked at you and I thought you would do. So I said, ‘Well, here’s a pair of sapphire earrings for her two blue eyes, and a sapphire brooch for the rest of her.’”
Lucinda, wearing the sapphires at this moment, caught his eyes and smiled at him. He was aware of her cool and watchful smile whenever he and Molly sat together, and he smiled back at her.
It was one of Lucinda’s qualities never to utter her suspicions of him. But he could feel them, nevertheless. He retaliated by an amused silence equally unbroken. He did not tell her that he never intended to sleep with Molly MacBain. Let her continue to think that he might! He turned his eyes from Lucinda and looked calmly at John, who stood with his thumbs in his white waistcoat, and gazing at his partner’s bearded face, Pierce’s thoughts continued about himself.
When his third son was born he had named him John after John MacBain, but the youngest girl was Lucie, after Lucinda herself. He and Lucinda had decided together that they would not plan on more children, but if they came by accident, they would be welcome. Privately to himself he thought he would like to have seven children, another son and daughter. He was proud of Malvern and proud of the half-grown boys and girls of his family and proud, too, of his wife. Lucinda was a credit to him and she had helped to make Malvern what it was, a gentleman’s home, set in the midst of a thousand acres of rolling rich land. He had added two wings to the house, one on either side, and had thrown out a great porch to the west, where he could watch the sun set over the tops of the mountains beyond his fields. At evening the wide valley lay full of mellow light, and when the sun dropped, the twilight was purple. The deep softness of darkness over his land and the stars over the mountains made the night as living for him as the day. In quiet sleep was renewal. He was a fortunate man. Tom, his brother Tom, was the only thorn. He turned away involuntarily from the thought of Tom.
John MacBain’s voice took on an added importance. “We are now building our own sleeping cars and parlor cars. We are adding five hotels to the palatial hostels already operating at Deer Park, Relay and Cumberland. We are preparing to establish our own t
elegraph lines and our own express company. By the end of the decade there will be no railroad in the country so well equipped as our own to handle the transportation of passengers and goods. For this we have to thank not only the genius of our president, but the confidence of the stockholders and of the Board of Directors, during the long years of building, when faith had to be the evidence of things unseen. And now I call upon one of you—Pierce Delaney, old neighbor of mine, friend, partner.”
John MacBain sat down and glowed with relief in the midst of handclapping. He looked at Pierce and his thin lips lengthened into a smile. He nodded. The soft rush of women’s voices that had begun as soon as the clapping was over ceased as Pierce rose to his feet. Eyes that had turned to John MacBain with affectionate amusement turned now to Pierce with respect and envy.
He rose and stood for a second or two, looking at one face after another. All had become familiar to him in the ten years in which he had been part of the great railroad company from which he had drawn the money he needed for Malvern. He had none of John’s devotion to the iron framework which tied the Eastern states to the West. What had been John’s life had been for him only a means to an end. He had chosen to build for himself his own habitation. To live on his land as a gentleman, to breed fine children and fine horses and fine cattle, and when he had no guests, to spend his evenings in his library—all this had been good. His energies had flowed into such creation. But John, lacking children, had spent his energies in making the railroad.
Pierce smiled his famous smile and took his usual pleasure in seeing the faces around the table warm to him. He liked it that the men responded to him as instinctively as the women. He liked men better than women and men knew it and they admired him and liked him the more. He began in his amiable, informal fashion, “John is never satisfied unless I make some sort of speech at these shindigs of his, and yet he knows that I can’t make speeches. I’m a farmer—a West Virginia farmer.”
Low laughter murmured around the table. Pierce was quite aware of his own appearance, gentleman among gentlemen, and he laughed a little at himself. His white hand, holding his wineglass, was certainly not the hand of a farmer. “I’ve never been a railroad man,” he went on. “Ten years ago I came to find John MacBain in Wheeling, because I needed some money to fix up my place after the war and I wanted him to help me get it. Well, he did. Those were the years when our stock was begging to be bought. I borrowed enough money from John to get me a little stock and following his advice, I bought more with what it earned and let my wife and children starve awhile. It did them no harm. Well, the railroad has treated me—adequately—as it has the rest of you. The company deserves our loyalty. Furthermore—”
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