He held out his arms unexpectedly, and with a rush of wonder she came into them. He felt her thin young arms hug him. Then he stepped back. “You’ve grown, my child,” he said.
She smiled, her teeth very white. “I do grow,” she said. Her voice had a lovely musical lilt, and he noticed it for the first time.
“Is my brother Tom at home?” he asked.
“We expect Father in about an hour,” she replied. “He and Mother went to see some pictures at the art gallery.”
“Nobody home but you?” he asked.
“Aunt Georgia is upstairs,” she replied.
There was the briefest pause. He put down his hat and stick on a table.
“I wonder if you two could give me some tea?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. She skipped upstairs ahead of him, and he heard her calling, “Aunt Georgia—someone’s here—I’m going to make tea!”
So she avoided the use of his name, as they all did. Even Bettina in all these years had managed without speaking his name. There was a delicacy in them that was too proud to presume upon relationship. He appreciated the quality but was somehow conscience-smitten because of it. Then he went into the upstairs parlor which had become Georgia’s own.
There was no use in pretending that the sight of her did not move him. But what it was that he felt he did not know and would not discover. Something was released in him, a tension broke. He wanted only to sit in her presence and draw his breath in great sighs of relief.
She sat by the open window, dressed as usual in a full soft white dress. She turned her face toward him and her dark eyes were liquid and calm. She did not smile nor speak a word. “Georgia,” he said. He sat down in the chair opposite her and gazed at her and she gazed back at him in silence.
He brought himself back with effort. “Well, how are you?”
“Quite well,” she replied. “You look well,” she added.
“I’m getting old,” he said gently.
“It’s good,” she murmured.
“You don’t change,” he said.
She clasped her soft beautiful hands on her lap and he looked at them. He had never touched even her hand. Now he put out his own hand.
“After all these years I suppose I may?” he said abruptly.
Her creamy face flushed delicately. Then she put out her right hand and he took it between both his. The blood beat in his ears.
“I want to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t know what it is that I feel when I am with you—but something very comforting. I wish you could live in my house again, Georgia. My house has not been the same without you. Even now I—we—miss you.”
“I can’t live there,” she murmured.
“I know that,” he said. “I don’t ask it.”
He pressed her hand and laid it softly on her knee and sat back in his chair. “You and I—we’ve never talked out to each other. Now—I want to, Georgia.”
“Yes,” she said, “it’s time. I’ve always thought that when we began to get old—we could.”
They heard the brisk footsteps of Georgy coming up the stair. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Will you drive with me into the country? I’ll tell Tom.”
“Yes,” she said, and bent her head. He saw the softly parted hair, and the downcast lashes, the turn of her lips.
“Here’s the tea,” Georgy cried at the door, “and I made cinnamon toast—”
He moved through the rest of the day in a strange lassitude of mind and body. In all these years he had not spoken to Georgia of himself nor of her. And yet he had known always that she waited unchanged. Tom and Bettina came home. He heard their voices and footsteps and the children’s voices. Then he heard Tom’s steps along the hall to the guestroom where he was sitting.
He had never slept under Tom’s roof since his first visit. But he had said to Georgy as she cleared away the tea things, “I shall stay here, my child, if you have a room for me.”
Her face lit with joy. “Oh—will you?” she breathed. “Of course—the guestroom—it’s always ready—”
“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.”
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“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.
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.
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