Angry Wife

by Pearl S. Buck

  “You’re a man,” he declared.

  His laughter penetrated to the drawing room and Lucinda stopped, listened and frowned. Pierce’s laughter! He laughed easily, at jokes to which she always listened without understanding them. Since he had come home he laughed more than ever, but about nothing.

  She shrugged her shoulders and dismissed the laughter for something far more important. A deep discontent ate its way into the pleasure of her days. Malvern had been conceived and born in Virginia, even as she had been. It had never come into her imagination that at any time of her life she would be living outside Virginia. But the war had dealt cruelly with her. Malvern lay on the eastern edge of the western counties that had seceded to make a Union. Now, irrevocably, she lived in a state that was hateful to her. Virginia was old and stable and proud, the home of aristocrats. But West Virginia was an upstart.

  She gazed moodily at the gray mohair of the drawing room furniture. It had come, a generation ago, from France and even its fine close texture had yielded to the war years. It looked well, but she knew that Georgia’s fine stitches were woven in and out of it. She would not allow the children to sit on it, and even now, alone in the room, she sat in a wooden Windsor armchair.

  She turned her head and saw Pierce at the open door in the hall. He was standing, his feet wide apart, his hands in his pockets, staring out over the land.

  “Pierce!” she called. “Come here!”

  Once he would have come instantly but now the imperiousness in her voice stirred distaste in him.

  “What do you want?” he called back.

  She rose in a flutter of ruffles and lace and ran out into the hall and pausing behind him she reached up and slapped one of his cheeks lightly and then the other.

  “You hear me call?” she demanded.

  “I answered, didn’t I?” he replied.

  “But I want you to come when I call!” she complained.

  She clasped her hands through his arm and dragged him half-unwillingly, half-laughing, into the drawing room.

  “I want to know when I can have new satin for the furniture,” she demanded.

  Pierce shook himself free from her. “Jiminy, Luce, do I have to tell you again that we have no money? If you can raise your own stuff you can have it. But you can’t buy anything. Well, we’re going to raise sheep. Malvern hills can grow good wool.”

  Lucinda pouted. “I don’t want wool. Moths will chew it. I want satin.”

  “Then you’ll have to wait until we can trade wool for satin, my girl,” he said firmly.

  “Pierce, I can’t believe you haven’t got anything!” she protested.

  “I have money to burn, and that’s all it’s fit for,” he said. “We lost the war, honey! How come you can’t understand what I tell you over and over? Our money is worthless. But we’re lucky we have the house and the land and a fair number of slaves ready to work for wages. And thank God, we’re not in a Southern state. We can begin to build new railroads and factories and open up the mines;”

  “And I hate it that we’re not in Virginia any more,” she cried.

  “It’s the saving of us that we’re not,” he said gravely. “We’ll escape a lot of woes.”

  It occurred to him that he had not seen Tom since he came home to tell him that he had bought a horse, and in his impetuous fashion he forgot his wife and turned and strode upstairs.

  Lucinda watched him, her hands folded one over the other as years ago her English governess had taught her to hold them.

  “Put the hands into graceful rest when not in use,” she had proclaimed. She had taken the small Lucinda’s hands and laid them one upon the other just beneath the place where later her breasts would bud. There Lucinda now held them unconsciously when she did not embroider or pour tea. Their quiet was deceiving. Both her sons knew that those slender white hands, lying as quiet as the two wings of a resting bird, could fly out and leave a smart upon a small boy’s cheek, and then in the next second lie at rest again. When she spoke, they watched not her face but her hands.

  She listened and heard Pierce’s step enter the bedroom above the drawing room. Then she went and stood in the tall French window that opened upon the terrace. Malvern lands were spread before her eyes. Sheep! Yankees raised sheep. She stood, seeing nothing while within her something grew hard and firm. She would not allow Pierce to change her life. She belonged to the South and in her the South would live forever. She would keep it alive.

  “I had nothing to do with the war,” she told herself. “It’s just the same as if it had never been—for me, anyway.” She sat down again and began to plan the colors of her satin.

  Chapter Two

  “TOM!” PIERCE’S VOICE WAS softened to suit the pale face on the pillow. It was morning, a summer morning, and he was on his way to the farms.

  Tom opened his eyes.

  Pierce tiptoed in, and the boards creaked.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Tom said. “I’m better.”

  “You ought to be,” Pierce said, “after all these weeks.”

  Bettina was sitting by a window darning a nightshirt. Now she rose and stood waiting.

  “I’ll look after him awhile, Bettina,” Pierce said. “You can go and get some fresh air.” He sat down in the armchair near the bed.

  “Yes, Master Pierce,” Bettina replied. She picked up a few threads, straightened the bed covers, and went out. Pierce, watching Tom’s face, saw his eyes follow the girl’s figure until the door closed. He coughed.

  “Does she take good care of you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Tom said.

  “Lucinda says both those sisters are good at nursing,” Pierce went on.

  “Bettina says she took care of their father for a long time,” Tom said.

  Now that he was alone with Pierce, Tom did not know what to say.

  “Their father was old Colonel Halford, who used to live down in Mississippi,” Pierce said. “Luce doesn’t know much about him, though.” He sighed. “It’s queer even for me to remember we don’t live in Virginia any more. Luce is taking it hard. But I can’t move Malvern.”

  “When I look at Bettina,” Tom said strangely, “I know what the war was for. To think she could be bought and sold!”

  Pierce said, “Now look here, Tom, you’re mighty weak. It’ll likely be months before you feel just right.”

  “I’m weak,” Tom agreed. He lay listless for a moment. He felt now that he could not begin talking to Pierce. He felt crushed under his brother’s health and strength. The war had made Pierce coarse and tough. While he had been shut up in a Confederate prison, Pierce had commanded a regiment of men. Authority had hardened him. All the days and weeks and months that he had been idle and starving and struggling to live for his own sake and wondering every hour of the day and night why life was what it was, Pierce had been too busy to think. They had both been changed and in opposite directions. He closed his eyes.

  “Tired?” Pierce asked.

  “I reckon I’ll be tired forever,” Tom said.

  “Now don’t you get to feeling sorry for yourself,” Pierce advised him. “Especially when you have as nice a horse as still lives outside a soldier’s stomach,” he added and laughed.

  Anger burned under Tom’s eyelids and gave him strength. “I’m not in the habit of feeling sorry for myself,” he said sharply. Then he relented. “Thanks for the horse—I reckon I’ll be riding again one of these days.”

  “Of course you will,” Pierce declared. He went on, because he could not think of anything to say to that closed face. “Tom—your mare came today—ready to train to do anything you like. Canters naturally, like a girl waltzing.”

  Tom opened his eyes, and Pierce went on with enthusiasm. “You’d better look, Tom. I’m going to pace her under your windows and you’ll be up and on her back in no time.”

  The room was full of Pierce’s big voice. The noise of it echoed in Tom’s ears and made him faint. He had the feeling that Pierce was using up
all the air in the room and he gasped. Pierce stood up in alarm. “Are you feeling worse, Tom?”

  “Yes,” Tom whispered. He longed suddenly for Bettina. Bettina knew how to make him feel strong. She could lift up his head and put the pillows right.

  “Bettina!” Pierce shouted out of the window. “Bettina, you come here right away!”

  Out in the kitchen summerhouse Bettina was drinking a cup of sassafras tea. She had poured the boiling water from the kettle always hot on the range, and had taken her cup to be out of Annie’s way. She heard Pierce’s voice, and threw what was left of the tea on the roots of the climbing rose and went quickly upstairs.

  Pierce was poised in anxiety and met her at the door. “Looks to me like Tom’s fainted,” he whispered. “Better see what you can do—quick.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bettina said. She moved to the bed. Pierce paused in the doorway. He was no good in a sick room. Tom was sick, he supposed, weak, anyway. He had helped many a man to die, but he did not know what to do with a starving man.

  “Better give him more real food,” he told Bettina. “Get him full of something strong.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bettina said.

  Pierce stood a moment longer and then could not bear to stay. “I’ll be downstairs in the library if you call,” he said. “Or I’ll be out at the stables.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bettina said.

  But she knew the moment that she looked at him that Tom had not fainted. She closed the door softly and then stood beside the bed, smiling. His eyelashes were quivering. He opened his eyes and saw her standing there.

  “Kneel down,” he commanded.

  She knelt, wondering. He turned himself and put out his arms and she drew back.

  “Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no, Master Tom—”

  “Yes, Bettina, yes!”

  A moment ago he would have said he was really fainting. But now he felt a strange tingling energy. He seized her arms and held her fast. “You belong to me,” he said. “I fought for you—I made you free.”

  She pulled back and was amazed that she could not wrench herself from his hands. “Then leave me free!” she cried, and glanced fearfully at the door.

  To her surprise he loosened her as suddenly as he had seized her. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Of course—I fought to make you free of everybody—me, too, God knows!”

  He lay back on the pillows and flung out his hands. “Go on away,” he said. “I don’t own you—”

  One of his hands fell near her breast. She put out her two hands and took it and held it pressed against her. On the pillow his thin face turned to her.

  “You don’t own me—” she whispered. “Nobody owns me any more. I do belong to myself. But seeing I belong to myself—why, I reckon I can do what I like—with myself—”

  She put her lips into the palm of his hand and he felt them soft and hot.

  “I can give myself—” she faltered, “seeing how I am free—”

  He turned to her and she leaned to him. He put his arms about her and kissed her full. She turned her face away at last.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she breathed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you loved me?” he complained.

  “’Tisn’t for me to tell. Oh, Master Tom, it isn’t even what I want—”

  “Hush,” he said, “don’t call me master—never, so long as we live!”

  The first harvests of Malvern were being reaped. Pierce rose at dawn for the joy of seeing his harvests, and rode about his fields. In his barns could be heard again the sound of cows lowing and the whinny of horses. Not all were paid for, but with the harvests he had money in his hand and he was not afraid.

  The year had been an unusually good one. Winter had been mild toward the end, and spring had come with a rush of rhododendrons in the woods. He had forgotten all beauty in the years of war, and now it seemed to him he was seeing everything for the first time, the ruddy blossoms of the red maples, the early green of lilac, the redbud and the dogwood. During the spring he had searched avidly for each sign of life and growth. Sugar was still scarce and there was excuse for the making of maple sugar, as his father and grandfather had done before him, and as he had not done since he was master. He had ordered staple crops sown into the freshly ploughed fields, wheat for bread and corn and oats for man and beast, barley and rye. There was still no coffee to be had, but the rye made a fair drink when it was roasted slowly with black molasses. There were no dye stuffs to be had either, and he had superintended the making of dark brown dye from the black walnuts and saffron yellow from sulphur and red and purple from wild berries. Lucinda put up her nose at his household interests, but he could not sufficiently satiate himself with life after the years of death. He had even busied himself in the dairy, ordering great flagstones to be laid and new shelves to be built. It gave him solid comfort today when he rode over the land to know that in the dairy at Malvern crocks were full of butter and jugs full of buttermilk and that cheeses already stood in the presses.

  He drew up his horse this July morning under an early-bearing apple tree and plucked a green-skinned sweet apple and ate it as though he sipped a glass of the finest wine. Come October he’d be having apple butter again, and this winter there would be hams and bacons. Give him five years and Malvern would be on its own feet once more and marching on! And with all this, scarcely a hundred dollars of real cash had lain in his palm during the year. He had worked without money, paying his help in kind, and feeding the family what Malvern had. It had been bare eating in the winter. He and Lucinda had sat down to a dinner table more than once where linen and silver were fine, but the Spode dinner set, which his grandfather had brought from England, had held nothing except cornmeal mush and black peas, and the soup had been brewed from cabbage.

  Well, that was over. Malvern was in fruit again. They were eating roasting ears and greens and their first new potatoes, grown from a half bushel he had traded with Molly MacBain for a hen and a rooster. He smiled at the thought of Molly, and flushed under the summer sun. Lucinda was to have her child in early autumn. She had announced it to him last night, although it had been obvious to him for months that she was pregnant. But he knew better than to mention it to her before she chose to tell him.

  “Mr. Delaney,” she had said last night in her room.

  “Well?” he had asked. He was lounging in her low chair preparatory to dressing for dinner. She made him dress every night now as she had before the war.

  She herself was already wearing her yellow taffeta, which she complained was in rags and tatters, except that Georgia held it together by delicate darning. She had looked neither ragged nor tattered, however, as she sat in her highbacked chair, her hands folded together like magnolia petals.

  “You may expect an addition to your family, Mr. Delaney,” she said.

  “Indeed!” he cried. He sat up and took his hands out of his pockets. “When, may I ask?”

  “In the first two weeks of September, likely,” she said.

  She sat very straight and full of dignity, and he smiled and went over to her and took her head between his hands and kissed her forehead.

  “Careful of my pompadour, please,” she cautioned him.

  He sat down again. “And what shall her name be, Luce?” he inquired.

  “I had thought of Sapphira,” she replied. “It’s a Bible name,” she added.

  He reflected. “Wasn’t she a liar, Luce?” he asked.

  “She obeyed her husband, I believe,” Lucinda replied. “It is in my memory that her husband bade her tell a lie.”

  He had burst out laughing. “Why, Luce, all women are liars! They don’t need to have men teach them.”

  “Indeed they are not,” she had cried.

  “Indeed they are,” he had cried back at her, “and if you plague me I shall utterly destroy your pompadour.”

  He knew by now that a threat to disarrange her hair was the surest way to subjugate her, and she knew that since he came back from the war he w
as capable of doing it. Twice when she had plagued him he had tumbled and tossed her and left her half crying with rage.

  Riding over the fields solitary in the morning he smiled, thinking of the evening. He was tender toward her always, even when he was rough, accepting her little tempers and tantrums with loud laughter, and holding her hands when she fell into a rage. For she could beat him when she was angry and this amused him mightily. It seemed to him that she was the essence of all that was feminine and he loved her profoundly, more he knew, although he would never acknowledge it, than she could possibly love him. He did not blame her for this. She loved him as well as she could, and she could love no one better, or so he believed. With that he could comfort himself. Yet he wondered if there were somewhere, in some women, something more than she could give him. He blushed now when he thought of this. Luce had given him sons and she would give him daughters. He had no reproach against her. But it was strange how war loosened the withers of a man’s soul. Many imaginings came into his own mind now which before the war he could not have had. He was beset by the continual knowledge of the shortness of time and the richness of life. War had shown him both.

  He lifted his hand and drank in the morning sunshine. Once when he and Tom were children they had kept a pet crow, and on a fine morning like this one, the crow would bathe its body in the sun. It would ruffle its feathers and hold them apart for the sun to penetrate into the skin, and then, still unsatisfied, it would turn its beak to the sun and open it wide and let the sun pour down its throat, as though the light were food. He opened his own mouth now and felt the sun warm on his tongue. He could almost taste it, sparkling and pure.

  At the boundaries of Malvern he found John MacBain, leaning on a fence, his straw hat pulled down over his eyes. He was on his feet again, thin as a withe and leathery, alive, but with a curiously dead look in his eyes.

  “You there, John!” Pierce called and cantered his mare. Then he jumped down and threw the reins over the beast’s neck and sauntered toward his neighbor.