Chapter Seven

PIERCE KNEW FBOM TOM’S letters that what he would see was a decent house on a quiet street in Philadelphia. He hired a hansom cab at the disordered railroad station and arrived at Tom’s house in the middle of the afternoon. The heat of the day had been ended by a sharp swift thunderstorm, which had beaten against the windows of the train. Now the sycamore trees that lined both sides of the street were wet and the air was clean. The cab drew up in front of a whitewashed stone house. He compared the number on the door with that of the figures set at the top of Tom’s last letter, got out and paid the driver. For a moment he had a strange feeling of isolation as the cab drove away. Then he crossed the street and knocked on the oak door. White marble steps shone beneath his feet and the knocker was polished brass. Bettina had always been a good worker.

Bettina herself opened the door. At the sight of him she stood rigid for a moment. Then a deep flush spread over her face. She controlled her surprise.

“Come in,” she said quietly. “We are glad to see you.”

He stepped into the hall. “Tom home?” he asked.

She made no move to take his hat and stick and he put them on a settee. “I expect him in a very few minutes,” she replied.

She avoided the use of his name. He noticed it and did not care. Had Lucinda been with him, he would have been uncomfortable at such namelessness, but Lucinda could not possibly have been with him.

“Come into the parlor, please,” Bettina said. She opened the door into a cool dim room.

He hesitated. “Now, Bettina, you know I don’t care much for parlors.” He gave her his frank smile. “Why don’t you take me into Tom’s study? I’d relish a good cold drink, too.”

Bettina dimpled suddenly. The dimples which became Georgia’s soft oval cheeks were odd in her handsome and angular face. “How good you are!” she exclaimed under her breath.

“Nonsense,” he said, but he was set at ease by his own goodness. He followed her into a large room whose three windows, placed side by side, faced upon a garden. It looked comfortable to him. He sank down in Tom’s big leather chair and gave a great sigh. “Bettina, I’m so tired — so damned tired and confused — I’ve got to rest.”

“Then rest here,” she replied. She stood before him and they looked at each other.

He smiled suddenly. “I know why you look different — you haven’t got an apron on.”

“Tom won’t let me wear aprons any more,” she told him.

“Sally staying at the hotel?” he asked abruptly.

“Yes,” Bettina said. Then after a second, she added, “This is a colored street.”

“It is? Looks mighty nice!”

“Nice people live here.”

“Where’s Georgia?”

“She’s with Miss Sally. They and Tom went to the museum with the school children. But she has a room here.”

“Tom doesn’t have school in summer, surely,” he said.

“No — but he does have some work going on in the building for the neighborhood children. The summer’s long and they get into mischief.”

“Where are yours?”

“Leslie has a summer job in the store down the street. Georgy went with Georgia, The other two are out there—” She lifted her eyes to the garden and he saw a girl playing with a little boy. The girl’s hair was softly curled down her back and it was a copper color. The sun shone on it. The little boy was very dark.

“That’s Lettice, she was the baby when we left — and we have small Tom — that’s all.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Pierce asked.

“Because I am going to fetch you a cool drink,” Bettina replied. She went away and he sat on, motionless. Their talk had been nothing but commonplace and yet that was extraordinary. He had talked to her as casually as though she were his real sister-in-law — as casually but not as intimately. He felt dazed and shaken. The world was completely upset. Here was where his own brother lived! But the house was a home. The garden was pretty and well kept and the walls were lined with flower beds. This room was clean and pleasant — a man’s room, full of books. Through the open windows a scent drifted in which he could not recognize. He lay back in Tom’s chair and closed his eyes and smelled the scent, a clean spiced odor. No one knew where he was. He could rest here. Tom’s world — not his world — but so quiet and clean—

He must have dropped asleep. When he came back to himself Bettina was standing there again, looking at him with pitying soft eyes. She held a silver tray and on it a slender glass, frosted cold. She set the tray upon the table beside him.

“Indeed you are tired,” she said in her rich voice. “When you have drunk this let me take you upstairs to Tom’s room. You can stretch yourself on his bed and sleep.”

“Don’t tell Sally I’m here,” he begged. “I’m too tired.”

“I won’t tell her,” she promised.

“What’s that sweet smell?” he asked.

“White clematis,” she replied.

He drank the cool sharp drink thirstily in a few gulps and rose to his feet and followed her upstairs. Tom’s room — then he did not share a room with Bettina. Yes, he could recognize Tom’s room. It was a big room, with little furniture but that little solid and good. The windows were open, but the shutters were drawn, and the late afternoon breeze fluttered the white curtains. Bettina drew back the covers of the bed and he saw smooth white linen sheets. He wanted to sleep and sleep.

“Tom has a bathroom right there,” she pointed to a door. “He has rigged himself up a shower bath, he calls it. It’s really wonderful. It will refresh you. Sleep and don’t wake until you wake yourself. No one will call you.”

She went away, and he stood looking about the dim, cool room. It had every small comfort that could be devised. Cold water stood in a pitcher by Tom’s bed, books on the table, a bed lamp, a fire place for winter, a soft woven rag rug under his feet, a handwoven coverlet on the bed of delft blue and white. Bettina’s work everywhere! He opened the door of the bathroom, and saw Tom’s shower bath. He had heard of such things but had never seen one. He undressed, stood under something that looked like a flower sprinkler, pulled a chain and felt a rain of cool water descend upon him from a hidden tank above his head. He wiped himself dry with a handwoven towel, and opened drawers in Tom’s bureaus until he found a nightshirt. Everything was in order, the clothes smelled clean and fresh with green lavender. He dropped upon the bed and was instantly asleep.

Some time in the night he awoke. The chime of a clock in the house was still ringing in his ears. He could not tell the hour because he did not know how many times it had struck before he woke. But the moonlight was lying across the floor in stripes of gold. He sat up and listened. The house was still. Everyone was asleep. No, he heard voices, muted, floating upward from under his window, Tom’s voice, then Bettina’s. He got up and put on his shirt and trousers and opened his door. A hanging oil lamp lit the stairs and he went down, guided by the voices, to the end of the downstairs hall. He opened a door and there on a narrow brick terrace facing the garden, he saw Tom.

He was shocked to see the moonlight silver upon Tom’s head. Tom greyhaired already, ahead of him!

“Tom!” he called softly, and Tom turned his head. His face was the same, thinner, but kind and severe together.

“Pierce!”

The two men ran into each other’s arms without shame.

“How good of you to come!” Tom murmured.

“Nonsense!” Pierce said. He looked at. Tom with wet eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t come before.”

“Sit down, Pierce. He’s hungry, Bettina,” Tom declared.

“Maybe I am,” Pierce admitted.

“I have your supper waiting,” Bettina said.

They went into the house, into the dining room, and at the table two places were laid.

“You two sit down, please,” Bettina said. “Tom, you have a bite, too?”

“Only a little of your cold chicken broth, my dear,” Tom said.

Bettina went away, and the two brothers looked at each other by the light of the candles Bettina had placed on the table.

“I want to ask you a thousand things,” Pierce said abruptly.

“I want to answer them all,” Tom said steadily.

“I don’t know how long I can stay,” Pierce went on. “The railroad is in a mess.”

“But now you will come back again and again,” Tom replied.

Pierce smiled and Bettina came in with food. It was delicious food and he was ravenous. While they ate Bettina came and went silently. He did not know where to begin with Tom. He wanted to tell him everything at once and he wanted to hear everything at once, and yet he did not know where to begin. And Tom sat in his easy quiet, without haste, in a relaxed peace. When Bettina had brought the iced lemon custard he looked up at her.

“Sit down now, Bettina,” he said.

She sat down naturally at the end of the table, and Pierce could not but see her beauty. She had kept her slender figure. Tonight she wore a gown of soft green stuff — muslin, perhaps, or silk — he did not know stuffs. But it was not rustling or stiff. White lace lay on her shoulders and in a knot on her bosom. Her dark hair sparkled with a few threads of silver, and she had put a white jasmine in the big coil at her nape. The old fire and anger of her youth had gone from her dark eyes. They were full of peace, tinged with sadness. Bettina, Tom’s wife — if ever he saw a woman who looked a wife it was she. He was surprised at his acceptance of her.

“We had a very interesting afternoon,” Tom was saying, half lightly. “Sally’s mind is keen. She wants to see everything — know everything. That’s remarkable, Pierce.”

“Has she been here?” Pierce asked.

“Every day,” Tom said.,

They hesitated. Then Pierce asked bluntly, “How does she take it, Tom?”

“Without a sign,” Tom answered. He drank his tumbler of water and Bettina filled it again. “I’ve wanted to ask you something,” Tom went on.

Pierce had finished his custard. “Why not?” he replied. He was beginning to feel wonderfully comfortable, rested and fed.

“Your son John writes to me, Pierce,” Tom went on. “He wants to come and visit us. I said he had to ask you. He says that you wouldn’t understand.”

Pierce grinned. “I don’t know why children always think their parents are nitwits.”

“He’s afraid of his mother,” Tom said.

“Then he is the nitwit,” Pierce said robustly. “Of course, Lucinda would object. But what of it?”

“Then shall I tell him—”

“You tell him to give me a chance,” Pierce said, pushing back his chair.

They went back to the moonlit terrace. Bettina poured their coffee and then rose. “I think I shall retire, Tom, if you don’t mind.” She put out her hand and he took it and kissed it. He looked at her searchingly. “Only if you’re tired,” he said. “I’d rather you stayed with us.”

“There’s tomorrow,” she said gently and went away.

In the silent garden, the moonlight outlining, the shrubs in shadows and silvering the flowers, the two men sat on, smoking. The silence continued. But it was not heavy upon them now nor uneasy. It was peace, deep peace.

“This seems another world,” Pierce said abruptly.

“It’s our world,” Tom said. “Mine, Bettina’s, our children’s.”

“Are you lonely, Tom?”

“No, Pierce. I have everything.”

“If Bettina should die—”

“I would live on here.”

Pierce stirred in his chair. “But, Tom,” he protested. “It’s damned selfish, isn’t it? You ought to be helping to clear up the mess we’ve got ourselves into — these strikes — the communism — the whole country’s threatened.”

“No,” Tom said gently. “I don’t have to help in those things. They’re all parts of the struggle. I’ve made my struggle — so has Bettina. We’ve won through.”

“To what?” Pierce asked.

“To our own peace,” Tom answered in tranquillity.

The dreamlike calm of his spirit persisted. He woke the next morning and Tom’s room was familiar to him and yet strange, as though he had waked in his own room but in a strange house. He lay on the pillows, not caring what the hour. The house was full of small pleasant sounds. Children’s voices came up from the garden and he heard quiet footsteps pass his door. Then a clear but muted voice rose through the silence. He listened and heard not a hymn nor a spiritual but an old English lullaby which his own mother used to sing to him and to Tom. It must be one of Tom’s children and it must be Georgy. He knew Georgia’s voice and it was not hers. Hers was deep and tender but this voice was high and clear, a bright rich soprano. It broke off suddenly as though someone had hushed it and he knew it had been stopped for him. He got up, lazily conscience-smitten, and curious, too, to see Tom’s children.

When he went downstairs Tom heard his footsteps and came to the door of the study. By the light of the morning Tom looked calm and poised, his fair skin ruddy and his blue eyes clear. He was as slender as ever, his shoulders as straight. The youngest child whom Pierce had seen only in the garden came toddling through a door and Tom picked him up and held him. He saw the love in Tom’s eyes and felt his own heart shaken.

“This fellow I haven’t seen,” he said, trying to speak lightly. He took the child’s fat brown hand.

“Small Tom, this is your uncle,” Tom said. The boy did not speak, but he gazed at Pierce with large eyes full of serene interest.

“Can’t you say good morning?” Tom inquired of his son.

Small Tom shook his head and the men laughed to ease their emotion.

“Come and have your breakfast,” Tom said. He put the child down and they walked together to the dining room. Georgy was there, arranging a silver bowl of roses. She looked up gravely. Pierce realized that yesterday the children had been kept from him, but today he would see them as they were in this house.

“My daughter,” Tom said formally. “Georgy, this is your uncle.”

Georgy put out a narrow smooth hand, and Pierce, somewhat to his own astonishment, took it.

“How do you do,” he said.

“Mother asks, how will you have your eggs?” she inquired, in a soft clear voice.

“Scrambled, please,” Pierce said. Tom’s daughter was an exceedingly pretty girl and he smiled at her as he sat down. “Did I hear you singing?” he demanded,

She flushed. “I forgot,” she said. “Mother had told me to be quiet.”

“It was a pleasant way to wake,” Pierce said. He began to eat the sliced oranges in front of him.

“Bring the coffee, my dear,” Tom said gently. He who knew Pierce so well could feel the trembling of foundations within his brother. Pierce was behaving wonderfully, out of the natural goodness of his nature, but change must not come too fast.

“You had your breakfast?” Pierce shot up his dark eyebrows.

“We have our family breakfast early,” Tom replied. “Leslie has to go to work at seven, and the children like to play in the garden in the cool of the morning.”

“I haven’t seen Leslie — this time,” Pierce said.

“He’ll be home for lunch,” Tom replied.

The door opened and his second daughter stood there, a plate of toast in her hand.

“Come in, Lettice, while the toast’s hot,” he said.

She came tiptoeing in, trying to take great care, her fringed eyes wide, and her tongue between her lips.

Pierce could not keep back his smile for children. “That’s wonderful toast,” he said heartily. “I want a piece right now.”

Something in her shy and dewy look made him think of Georgia. She had Georgia’s softness of contour. He watched her while she tiptoed away again, not speaking a word.

“Handsome children, Tom,” he said.

“I think so,” Tom agreed.

Both brothers knew that the dam they were building with their scanty commonplace words must break. They must open their hearts to each other. Pierce must know Tom’s life, and he must tell Tom everything. They were too close, strangely closer than ever after these years of separation.

“Sally here?” Pierce muttered.

Tom shook his head. “Not yet this morning.”

“Hold her off, will you?” Pierce did not look at him. “I have to get things straight myself, Tom.”

“I know,” Tom said gently. His voice, always deep, had taken on a still deeper quality. The harshness of youth had disappeared from it. No, there was something else. Pierce recognized it. Tom had so long heard Bettina’s voice and the soft voices of her people that his own voice had grown slow and deep.

“Georgia knew you and I would have to talk,” Tom went on. “She is taking Sally to shop this morning.”

“She’s staying with Sally at the hotel, isn’t she?” Pierce asked.

“Of course,” Tom replied. He hesitated and then went on resolutely. “Pierce, Georgia wants to leave Malvern. We’ve always told her we had a room for her when she wanted to come. Now she does.”

To save himself Pierce could not answer naturally. “I don’t know what Lucinda will say,” he murmured. He took a fourth slice of toast which he did not want.

“Georgia is afraid of that,” Tom said. “But I told her I knew you would wish her to do as she likes.”

“Did she tell you to talk to me?” Pierce inquired.

“No, as a matter of fact she asked me not to,” Tom replied frankly. “I do it on my own responsibility. Let her stay, Pierce. She’s never been a servant.”

“I know that,” Pierce said. The toast grew dry in his mouth and he swallowed coffee to wash it down. Then he touched his lips with his napkin and got up.

“Let’s get away together, Tom,” he said. “Somehow my heart feels ready to break over you.”

“You must not feel so,” Tom said quickly. “I am happy, Pierce. You’ll see—”

They went out in silence to the study and Tom closed the door and turned the key.

As though the whole house knew the door had been closed and the key turned a new silence surrounded them. The garden was full of sunshine, but there was not a voice in it of child or of bird. It was a hot and windless morning. The shades had been partly drawn and the room was darkened. A jug of water stood on the table, frosted and cool and beside it was a bowl of early grapes.

“Bettina knew we’d want to shut ourselves up,” Tom said with a smile. “She knows everything without being told.” He sat down opposite Pierce on an easy chair. “It is a great experience to live with someone like Bettina,” he said, looking straight at Pierce. “Uncanny sometimes, when I feel the thoughts being plucked out of my brain, almost before I’ve thought them!”

“I suppose so,” Pierce mumbled.

Tom held the lead. He filled his pipe and lit it, and went on, his words slow and clear. “It comes, I think, from an inheritance of having to divine what men and women who hold the power over them are thinking and feeling. When I remember that, I am angry. But as a gift, it’s subtle and profound. Bettina is subtle and profound — and deep and clear and honest as a child.”

Pierce could not answer. Let Tom pour himself out! He sat looking at his brother.

Tom looked back with his fearless blue gaze. “What I want to make clear to you, Pierce, before we begin any talk at all is that never, for one second, not in the day nor in the depths of the night, do I regret what I have done. The life I live is the one life I can live — anything else would have been meaningless for me. … I am happy, I tell you, to the bottom of my being.”

“I will believe that,” Pierce said, “but don’t pretend to me that it has been easy, Tom, for that I won’t believe.”

“It wasn’t easy when I was trying to live in two worlds,” Tom said. “But I have to thank Lucinda for showing me,” he added.

“Lucinda?”

“Yes, Lucinda threw me out of your house that night, more or less — remember?”

“No,” Pierce said.

“Yes, you do, Pierce,” Tom said. “Be honest, man! If I had wanted to live at Malvern I’d have had to give up Bettina.”

“I don’t think Lucinda is unreasonable,” Pierce answered. “She wouldn’t have said anything — if Bettina hadn’t lived there by the side of the road — and the children—”

“She wouldn’t have said anything if I had kept Bettina hidden, and the children illegitimate,” Tom said harshly.

“Well,” Pierce said hesitating—“You know how she — how we all, for that matter — were brought up.”

“The war — those long hours in prison,” Tom said abruptly. “I had the chance to think myself through. If I had done what Lucinda wanted — it would have meant that I had — lost the war — so far as I, was concerned. Don’t you see, Pierce, when I knew I loved Bettina — I had to love her openly? The children are ours, hers and mine, could I be ashamed of that? If so, then what was all the shooting for?”

Pierce felt Lucinda’s hands on his heart. “Still and all, Tom, you have to acknowledge — that if all the white men who have — have — had children by — by—”

“Go on,” Tom said coldly.

Pierce went on doggedly. The sweat sprang under the roots of his hair—“If they insisted on — on making the whole thing legal — where would women, like Lucinda be? Tom — you can’t just think of yourself. You’ve got to think of our race.”

Tom bit the end of his pipe. The two brothers stared at each other. Then Tom spoke. “I do think only of myself and I shall think only of myself. What any race does is not my business. I am one man — Tom Delaney. If I act with what I consider honor, if that honor gives me satisfaction, if I am happy and my children are happy, then I consider that I have done my duty by the race to which I belong.”

“All right, Tom,” Pierce said steadily. “You’ve been wanting to say it this long time to me, I reckon. Now you’ve said it.”

Tom drew a deep breath. “Yes!” he cried. “I’ve said it.”

“All right, Tom,” Pierce repeated. “What next?”

Tom laughed. “It’s your turn,” he retorted.

“There’s nothing much I have to tell,” Pierce said mildly. “Malvern is about what I’d planned, you know. Martin is finishing this year at the University and then he thinks he’ll take up farming with me. He wants to go into cattle in a big way. Carey wants to be a lawyer, I reckon. John will enter in the fall. I don’t understand him very well. He doesn’t like horses. Sally — you’ve seen Sally! Lucie is Lucinda in small type. That’s all my children.”

He spoke half sadly and Tom leaned on the arms of his chair, “Where’s your heart, Pierce?” he inquired softly.

“Well, Tom, I don’t know,” Pierce answered. He wanted to open his heart and he did not know how. He had not for so long opened it even to himself. He smiled wryly at his brother. “Sometimes I wonder if being so busy about farming and horses and building and all the hundred and one things that go on around a place like Malvern haven’t pretty well dried up my heart.”

He considered telling Tom about John MacBain and Molly and decided he would not. It was not important enough to him. He remembered with sour sweet discomfort the day that Georgia had knelt before him — and this he could not tell. He did not know what it meant and he preferred not to know.

“I’m glad Georgia is going to live here,” he said with such seeming irrelevance that Tom looked surprised. “I mean,” Pierce said, “I feel she’s very lonely now at Malvern, and while I can’t help it and it’s none of my business, I know it’s not the place for her. Joe wants to marry her — but I know that’s impossible.”

“I should think so,” Tom said with indignation.

Pierce hastened away from the smouldering coals. He had no wish to see them blaze into the atmosphere of this room. The air of freedom in which Tom lived made him at once envious and afraid. He veered away from himself. “I suppose if I were to say what concerns me most, it is the state of the nation. Tom, sometimes I wonder why we fought the war. Things are in a worse mess than ever.”

Tom looked at him with calm, waiting eyes. So would he view any turmoil from now until eternity, Pierce thought ruefully. Only out of complete personal satisfaction could a man so look at the struggles of others.

“These strikes,” he went on gloomily. “They’ve broken out all over the country. Tom, what does it mean? I’ve been so busy at Malvern I haven’t kept up. My dividends came in as steady as sunrise until a year or two ago. The depression has hit everybody — wouldn’t you think the railroad workers would see it reasonable that their wages have to be cut?”

“They don’t see why business is bad,” Tom returned. “Who does?” Pierce retorted irritably. He felt on his own ground again. “Who on earth knows why business goes up and down like this? We have to take the bad with the good.”

“Their good is so small — their bad so nearly — nothing,” Tom observed.

Pierce looked at his brother with deep suspicion. “Tom, you aren’t a communist!”

“What makes you think I am?” Tom countered.

“It would explain a lot of things,” Pierce said.

“You mean it would explain my marriage,” Tom said.

“Well—” Pierce muttered.

Tom broke in. “No, I’m not a communist. I’m a schoolmaster, and outside my home and my children that’s all I’m interested in. I’ve made my revolution, Pierce. Let other men make theirs.”

“People talk about revolution,” Pierce said. “What does it get anybody?”

“Mine brought me everything I wanted,” Tom said, smiling.

“I wish you’d speak sensibly,” Pierce cried. “What I want to know is — do you think these strikes are being fomented by foreigners over in Europe?”

Tom replied mildly, “I don’t know, Pierce. But I do know that when men are frightened and discontented they gather around any man who is not afraid.”

He was pressing fresh tobacco into his pipe and he did not look up. “I know that because in a small way people gather around me here in this street. Nobody even in this town knows or cares about — people like Bettina and Georgia — men and women of intelligence — children of slaves wanting to be free—”

“Niggras?” Pierce interposed cruelly.

“Yes,” Tom said.

Pierce looked at him curiously. “Tom, you mix around with niggras all the time?”

“Inside this town,” Tom said in his deep steady voice, “there is a little secret world. Men and women and children inhabit it. They have their homes. They are friends, they make music, they listen to music. Some of the theaters here let them come in, some don’t. We all went to hear Eric Tyne.” He looked at Pierce and smiled. “He sat in that very chair where you’re sitting. He came into our world — world-sized people do. Edwin Booth—” Tom broke off, and smiled again.

Pierce stared at him in silence.

“The people in this secret world know all the places that let them come in,” Tom went on. “They go where they can be free and they stay away from the places — and the people — who want to push them down again. It’s a world within a world you might call it — but I call it the world of tomorrow — the pilot world. We’re bringing our children up in it — they’ll be ready—”

“Ready for what?” Pierce asked abruptly.

“Ready for tomorrow,” Tom said. Tears came into his eyes but he looked through them steadfastly at his brother.

After Tom had left him Pierce sat on in the study alone for awhile. Noon came and in the hall he heard Sally’s voice, and then Georgia’s. He dreaded to go out and meet them. Could he be natural and himself in this house? And was his child, Sally, at home here? He grew solemn at the thought. Sally mixing with such people! What if one of them wanted to marry her? Lucinda would never forgive him. But could he forgive himself? His gorge rose and he got up and paced the floor. He’d take her home with him, of course — tomorrow, anyway. And he would not allow her to come here again. The horror of his thinking impelled him to the door and he went out into the hall and followed the voices across into the sitting room. There Sally sat, Tom’s baby in her arms, holding him as she had held her dolls. She looked up at her father and met his troubled eyes.

“Papa, did you ever see such an adorable baby?”

Thus she postponed his questions and thus she brought him into the circle of the house. Georgy was at her side and Lettice was staring at her, forefinger in her mouth. The children were brushed and clean for their midday meal. The door opened and a tall lad came in. It was Leslie. He stood still, gazing with wary shyness at Pierce.

“Leslie?” Pierce asked. This was Tom’s son! He looked unsmiling at the grave boy. Intelligent eyes — too sad — clever thin face, delicate lips — only the extravagant curling eyelashes and the waving hair — but the boy was three-fourths white—

“Yes,” Leslie said.

Pierce put out his hand and Leslie smiled, and put his own narrow dark hand into it. A good boy, Pierce told himself, a fine boy — own cousin to his sons! But Martin would never acknowledge that.

Then the door opened and Georgia came in.

“Luncheon is ready, please,” she said, as though at Malvern. She looked at Pierce frankly, smiled slightly, and closed the door again.

But nothing else was at all like Malvern. Tom sat at the head of the long table and Bettina at the foot, and Georgia at Tom’s right and Sally at his left, and Pierce at Bettina’s right. He kept saying to himself, “This is Tom’s house — this is Tom’s family.” He ate his food, finding it difficult to speak. Once he asked Leslie what he did, and listened to his reply that he clerked at the store for the summer but that in the autumn he would go back to school.

“What are you going to make of yourself?” he inquired.

“I don’t know yet,” Leslie replied. His young voice was quiet and courteous and without hint of subservience.

A colored maid served the meal well, and once an elderly woman came in from the kitchen with a hot dish. Pierce ate with appreciation, in spite of the strangeness, for the food was good and delicately flavored. The children were gay. Once Small Tom cried in his high chair and once Georgy fell into an argument with Lettice. Tom corrected them firmly.

Pierce sat in a dream, seeing everything. Again and again his eyes came back to Georgia. She was removed from him by the length of the table and she did not once speak to him. She spoke very little to anyone. His eyes caught hers once and both looked away quickly. Only Sally was herself.

The meal was over and suddenly he knew he could stand no more of Tom’s house. He must get away into his own world again, for here he was confused to the depths of his being.

He motioned to Sally and she came tripping to his side. “Come out in the garden with me,” he ordered. They stepped out of the open French windows upon the narrow brick terrace and from it into the garden path. She clung to his arm.

“Sally, I want you to come away with me,” he said.

“Oh, Papa!” she wailed. “I’m having a lovely time.”

“I need you,” he said sternly. “I’m lonely and all mixed up in my mind. Let’s you and I go back together to Malvern, honey. I want to be alone there for a bit, before your mama and Lucie come back.”

She looked up at him and saw with alarm that his lips were trembling and at once she melted. “Of course, Papa,” she said and squeezed his arm. They walked up and down the length of the garden a few times. “But, Papa — just one thing—”

“Yes?” He did not know what she would ask now after these days.

“Georgia doesn’t want to come back to us.”

“I know,” he said.

“Did she tell you?”

“Tom did.”

“You’ve got to let her stay.”

“Of course—”

“And help Mama not to mind!”

“You and I’ll do that—” He pressed her clasped hands against his side.

When they turned again Georgia was standing in the door and Sally called her.

“Georgia, come here—”

She came down the terrace steps, the sunshine bright upon her white dress. Pierce looked at her with revulsion and admiration. He was afraid of her beauty. The sun revealed her flawless creamy skin, the golden depths of her dark eyes, and he looked down at the path as they paused before her.

“Papa says you may stay, Georgia, and we will make it right with Mama.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Delaney,” Georgia said.

He looked up and met her eyes. “I know you haven’t been very happy at Malvern.”

“Yes — I have been happy,” Georgia answered. “But it is better now for me to leave it — and find my own place.”

He bowed his head, and kept Sally’s hand tight under his arm, and drew her with him into the house, and Georgia stood alone in the garden.

“Poor Papa,” Sally said.

They were back at Malvern again and he and Sally were riding along the familiar woodland paths.. His horse was Beauty’s great-grandchild, and Sally rode her own golden bay that he had bought for her once in Kentucky.

“Explain your pity,” he said gaily. It was good to be safe at home.

“You’re living before the war, Papa,” Sally said smartly.

“You mean I’m old,” he said.

“No — because Martin is just like you. It’s Malvern that does it — all this—”

She waved her riding crop at the rolling green of the hills and blue of mountains beyond. “You made this and Martin inherits it, and neither of you can bear to give it up.”

“Who’s asking us to give it up?” Pierce demanded.

“Nobody, darling — but you’re afraid somebody might!”

“You and Carey and John — you’re more enlightened, I suppose?” he said with heavy pretense at sarcasm.

She shook her head. “I don’t like Carey — he’ll just be a sharp lawyer. Carey has no principle — did you know that, Papa? But John — oh, well, one of these days you’ll quarrel with John and maybe throw him out of the house and he knows it. He’s getting ready for it.”

He was aghast at her intuition. It corroborated his own. He was afraid of his third son. The boy did not reveal himself.

“And you?” he asked, avoiding his fears.

“Oh, Lucie and I — we don’t belong in Malvern anyway — we’ll have to be married off and go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter about women.”

He looked at her lovely face. She held her head high, and he saw only her sweet profile, the red gold hair piled under the little black derby hat. “Sally, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that — you’ll always be my daughter, whomever you marry—”

“Unless I marry someone you don’t like,” she amended and flashed him a smile lit by intense blue eyes.

“I can’t imagine that,” he said gravely.

“You mustn’t imagine what I can or can’t do,” she said willfully.

He felt he must strike now upon this hot iron. “Sally, I sincerely hope the visit to Tom’s house has not upset you.”

She did not answer and he went on. “I confess it upset me very much. Tom has done something, which if many men did it, could destroy our whole nation — our civilization, indeed—”

Sally interrupted him. “I haven’t seen anybody I want to marry yet, if that’s what you mean, Papa.”

He was so relieved that he was impelled to hide it. “I am not thinking only of your marriage, Sally. I am thinking of — of — of the foundations of our country.” He went on reluctantly. “We are a white nation — and we must stay white—”

His eyes met hers, and he was shocked by the brilliant, mocking mischief hers revealed. She burst into laughter.

“Oh, Papa, how funny men are!”

He stared at her, and she took out a tiny lace handkerchief from the breast pocket of her coat and wiped her eyes. “As if Uncle Tom had really done anything unusual! He’s only owned up to it, that’s all.” She was laughing again — high laughter, with an edge of heartbreak in it. “But that is very unusual — I grant you, Papa — and maybe such honesty does threaten the — the nation!”

“Sally!” he cried.

But she shook her head and smiling too brightly she struck her horse hard and galloped ahead of him and disappeared down the long green lane. He let her go. He was frightened at the glimpse she had shown him into herself, and he wanted to see no more.

When he got home there was a telegram from John MacBain asking him to come at once to Chicago. He left, thankfully, without seeing Sally. Lucinda would be home by the time he came back, and the house would be itself again.

He met John in the red plush parlor of the bridal suite of the railroad hotel, and was shocked by his haggard looks. John sat at a small round table drinking whiskey from a cloudy glass tumbler. He had not shaved or washed, and he did not get up when Pierce came in.

“Thank God you’ve come,” he groaned. “I haven’t slept in I don’t know how many nights. Pierce — I got here yesterday from Pittsburgh — there’s only four hundred police here — they can’t handle the mob.”

“That means more war,” Pierce exclaimed.

John nodded. “Want some whiskey?”

“No,” Pierce said.

John poured half a tumbler and drank it down. He got up and wiped his hand across his beard. “You come with me and see what we’re up against — but you better leave that silk hat here — it’ll only be a target for pot shots—”

Pierce took off his hat and followed John into the street. They hailed a horse cab lurking in an alley.

“Market Street,” John ordered the driver.

“You don’t want to go there,” the driver remonstrated. “Why, there must be ten thousand people now in that mob.”

“That’s why I want to go,” John said grimly. “Put us down a block away and we’ll walk—”

They took the ride in silence, unwilling to reveal to the driver who they were. A block away he set them down and John paid the fare. They could hear the roar of the mob and the loud, shrieking harangue of voices. They turned the corner of Market Street and saw a sea of heads. “Good God, John,” Pierce muttered, “where have they come from?”

“By Gawd, the communists have forced everybody to stop work,” John said sternly. “We’ll wedge our way in — then you listen for yourself — and tell me what we ought to do, Pierce — if you can.”

They edged their way through the crowd. No one noticed them. The eyes of men and women alike were glazed and unseeing. There were six platforms along the street, a man haranguing on each, and to his astonishment Pierce heard German as well as English. He stood almost directly beneath a young man with blond uncombed hair and frenzied face.

“Better for a thousand of us to be shot in the streets than ten thousand of us to starve!” the young man screamed, and a deep roar rose from the mob.

He felt the mob respond to the wild words that were being thrown to them. They began to surge about him, to move in a terrible rhythm. He felt himself caught upon the waves, twisted and pressed upon. Yet no one knew him or cared who he was. The movement was bestial and mad, and he grew frightened.

“Let’s get out of this,” he muttered to John.

John nodded, and hooking arms they began to work their way out doggedly, breaking across the rhythm, silent in the midst of the roar, until they were free at last, staggering out of the mob as though a sea had thrown them upon a beach.

They went back to the hotel and Pierce stripped himself of his clothes. They stank of the mob. He bathed himself and dressed clean from head to foot.

“Go and wash and shave yourself, John,” he commanded. “You and I have got to get hold of things.”

An hour later they had eaten and Pierce was planning resolutely what must be done.

“This isn’t going to be finished within a day,” he told John. “You come with me and we’ll go and see the mayor.”

“You going to wear that hat?” John asked. Pierce had put on his silk top hat again.

“I am,” Pierce said with determination. “I don’t belong to the mob and I want everybody to know it.”

It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the mob had taken possession of the railroad yards. They had the news from a terrified clerk as they stepped from the hotel door.

“Half of them are drunk!” the fellow wailed to John.

“Get out of my way,” Pierce said contemptuously, and pushed him aside.

They drove to the mayor’s offices and found that he was at home. They were ushered into a great parlor where the mayor was staring out of the long windows, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head. About the room were his aides and secretaries.

“I have come to demand that the property of the railroad be protected by the Grand Army of the Republic,” Pierce said formally, when a doorman had announced them.

“Great guns!” the mayor replied, “I am thinking of the whole city! Why, sir, that mob will reach twenty thousand by night!”

“Why don’t you get the whole police force armed?” Pierce demanded.

“We haven’t guns enough,” the mayor groaned.

“There must be guns—” Pierce retorted. “Guns hidden in attics or hung on walls — relics from the war, if nothing else.”

His tall upright frame, his harsh voice, his bold blue eyes took command of the wavering and frightened men. The mayor yelled at his henchmen and they began to scurry from the room.

Pierce sat down by a rosewood table and banged it with his fist. “And now,” he said loudly, “send for the Army!”

The mayor hesitated and bit his nails.

“It isn’t of Chicago alone I’m thinking,” Pierce said, “nor of the railroad — it’s the nation we have to save. If this mob is unchecked, mobs will rise in a dozen other big cities.”

“I’ll do what I can,” the mayor promised. In an hour the order had gone and they waited for reply. It came before midnight. The Grand Army of the Republic was on its way. Meantime messengers brought more news of the mob. There had been a battle on Market Street, but the mob was dispersed. Four policemen were wounded, one dead. The railroad roundhouse had been taken back and the fires in the engines put out. An hour later there were five more dead. Again no one knew the number of the dead among the mob. Whenever a man fell, he was hidden.

Pierce and John slept in the mayor’s house that night. No meals were served in the great dining room but servants brought platters of sandwiches and cold meats into the parlor which had become the center of the city’s control, and the men ate little and drank much. Pierce went to bed in a stupor of weariness and was awakened again by gun shots in the morning. When he had dressed and hastened downstairs he found that the first contingents of the Army had arrived, had met the overflow of the mob in an open space near a hall, and had dispersed them. Meantime the meeting in the hall had gone on behind locked doors.

By noon six more policemen were wounded. Still no one knew or counted the number of wounded in the unarmed mob. The rioters continued to take their dead away as soon as they fell.

In the disordered parlor Pierce sat all day listening, suggesting, conferring, but underneath activity he was aware of a deep empty silence. What did this war mean, here in the heart of his country? Who were the enemies — and for whom did he fight? He left his own questions unanswered.

The strange war ended the next day in a foolish way which only confused him the more, A crowd of Bohemian women, angered because two of their lads had been killed the night before, gathered together from the small Bohemian villages on the outskirts of the city. They fought fiercely, out of outraged motherhood, until in the middle of the evening the hardbitten Regulars appeared and dispersed them. By the middle of the next day the rioters had been overcome and the city took stock of its wounds. Shops had been looted and men robbed. A farmer coming into the city with his vegetables had been waylaid and beaten and his little store of money taken away. To the unrest of the working people had been added the selfishness of petty thieves and the lawlessness of gangsters.

“We’ve licked them,” the mayor sighed, and wiped his bald head with a handkerchief so dirty that it left a smear of black across his face.

“Wait,” Pierce said and opened a telegram that a boy held at his elbow.

It announced the attack of a mob in San Francisco upon Chinatown.

“I’m going,” John said. “I’ll drive these communists into the Pacific Ocean and hold ’em under!”

“I am going home,” Pierce said heavily.

The strikes subsided and the war ended slowly as the weeks passed. Everywhere the mob was put down by Regulars from the Federal Army. In his library Pierce studied the newspapers and approved, but with deep disquiet. Of course the mob must be put down. Order must be upheld. He could not hide from himself that he was profoundly relieved when Malvern stood safe once more upon a subdued working class. But, out of his disquiet, he now recommended and worked for substantial wage increases. He wrote long, detailed letters to every member of the Board of Directors. To Henry Mallows he wrote with peculiar insistence: “I tell you, I have seen the faces of these men and women — yes, women, too. They are savage with despair. In the interest of our own security we must grant them enough for life, even if our own dividends shrink for a while.”

To Jim McCagney he wrote: “We overbuilt. Let’s face our own mistake. We went too fast for the country. But the country will catch up with us if we can be willing to make less profit for the next few years. It’s a great country, and we haven’t begun to produce what we can. I’m a farmer and I know.”

At Malvern he steadily set himself to bigger crops and finer animals, as his duty to the nation.

But underneath all his efforts he still knew secret terror. He woke at night in a sweat, seeing the faces of the mob. In his dreams they were mixed up strangely with Tom and Tom’s house and the faces of Tom’s children — yes, and of Georgia’s. He woke frightened even on the clear bright mornings of autumn and harvest and the peace which followed the summer’s storms.

“We’ve got to do something about the poor,” he told Lucinda again and again and at the next Board meeting in a restored Baltimore he argued his fellow members into setting up a relief department in the company for the benefit of the sick and aged and those who had suffered from accident in their work.

He met the solid opposition of everyone, even of John MacBain.

“We licked them with the help of the Army, and that’s how we’ll have to lick them always,” John declared.

But Pierce argued his case stubbornly. “For our own safety it is better to have contented workingmen than discontented ones.”

“You can’t satisfy workingmen,” Jonathan Yates said with his thin tired smile. He was more relentless than any of them, now that he had risen above his fellows.

“We’ve got to be realistic,” Henry Mallows said. His narrow face hardened. He tore the gold band from a slender cigar and lit it. Perfume spread in the air with the smoke. “Anything that doesn’t bring in returns to the stockholders—” he went on.

John MacBain looked at him with the repulsion he would have showed a snake. “Oh hell,” he said suddenly. “I’m with Pierce Delaney, after all.”

“And I,” Pierce said quietly, “consider it the height of realism and self-interest for the rich to be generous to the poor. There is a point, Mallows, where it is good business to keep workingmen alive.”

But it was not until the next year, when the new decade began and the depression was over, that Pierce succeeded in establishing his relief department. Six thousand dollars were laid aside, and within the first five months almost six hundred people were aided in one way or another.

In his library at Malvern, Pierce read the reports and approved them and felt that with his own hands he was building a dam against the disaster of the future.

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