Angry Wife

by Pearl S. Buck

  When at last she had risen to leave them he went with her to the door and kissed her hand and watched her go upstairs. She paused on the landing and looked back at him and smiled, and so easily was his sense of romance stirred that even though he knew well enough that she saw herself in every act she did, yet he admired the picture she made.

  He went back into the room and sat down and lit his pipe. “This autumn, thank God, we’ll have real tobacco of our own again,” he said to Tom. “But I never plant much, you know—it’s greedy stuff on the land.”

  “It’s a wonder what you’ve done to Malvern already,” Tom said. He lay back in his chair lazily, not looking at Pierce. Outside the window the mountains were black against a dark and starlit sky. The light of the new oil lamps in the room was dim, for Lucinda had turned them down when she began to play.

  He was thinking about Bettina. Should he tell Pierce what they had decided to do? He made up his mind that he would. He hated the thought of deception and hiding.

  “Pierce,” he said.

  “Well?” Pierce’s eyes, gleaming over his pipe, were suddenly aware.

  Tom sat up. “I want to tell you something—”

  “All right, Tom.”

  “I suppose you know I’ve fallen in love with Bettina.”

  Pierce drew hard on his pipe and blew out the smoke. “You don’t fall in love with a colored wench, Tom!”

  “I’ve fallen in love with Bettina,” Tom said firmly. “I want to marry her.”

  Pierce put his pipe down and faced his brother. “You can’t marry her, Tom.”

  “I can, but she won’t have me,” Tom said.

  “You mean you’ve proposed to her—as if she were—”

  “I proposed to her, and she refused me,” Tom said stubbornly.

  Pierce laughed loudly. “Good God, Tom! Then she’s got better sense than you!”

  Tom gazed gravely at his brother’s laughing face. “To me, it’s the same as marriage,” he said in his even quiet voice. “I’ve told her so. I’m going to get a house for us to live in, Pierce.”

  Pierce stopped laughing suddenly. “Tom, you can get a house for her, but you can’t live in it.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Not if you’re my brother,” Pierce said sternly. “Tom, for God’s sake, think of our family and the children!”

  “I’m thinking of Bettina and myself,” Tom said in the same unchanging voice. “This is what I fought the war for, Pierce—so that I could marry Bettina.”

  “You fool, you didn’t even know Bettina till you came home!”

  “Nevertheless, it was for her I fought.” Pierce looked at his brother’s face. It was still the face of the little boy who had been his stubborn follower. Nothing would make Tom different, not even growing into manhood. He was stubborn to the bone.

  “Well, Tom, there’s not a thing I can do about it,” he said, “except turn you out of the house and disown you as my brother.”

  They looked at one another. “All right, Pierce,” Tom said.

  They parted and Pierce went upstairs, and Tom went out on the terrace and paced up and down. Far up in the top of the house a dim light burned. It was in Bettina’s room, but he could not go up to it. In this house she was beyond his reach. He could only take her away.

  In the attic room Georgia was crying softly.

  “I don’t see how I can stay here all alone, sister.” But she was sobbing quietly lest she be heard downstairs.

  Bettina sat on a box by the window, her cheeks on her hands, staring out into the tangled branches of the ancient trees that leaned against the house. “I never thought I’d love any man so much that I wouldn’t marry him,” she said. “Mother didn’t know what love was, Georgy. She told us to go quick with the whitest man we could get to ask us. Well, I’ve found the whitest man in the world, and he wants to marry me and I won’t let him—”

  Georgia stopped crying and looked at Bettina sadly. “I wouldn’t know what to do with such love as that,” she said.

  “I have to give in to it, because I know I can’t live without him,” Bettina went on, “but I don’t have to let it hurt him, and I never will.”

  She had paid no heed to Georgia’s weeping. Georgia’s face took on a look of awe. Bettina was far away from her, in some world she did not understand. She was left alone behind. Her lips trembled again but she wiped her eyes and stopped crying. She sighed and rose and let down her long hair and began to comb it.

  “Mother always said we were as good as anybody,” she said.

  “We are, but it doesn’t make any difference, if other people don’t think so,” Bettina replied. “Anyway, I’m not thinking of us.”

  “Will you tell her you’re going?” Georgia asked.

  “No, I shall just go,” Bettina said.

  “What’ll I say if she asks me?”

  “She won’t ask you.”

  “You mean she’ll pretend she doesn’t notice?”

  “She’ll know, but she won’t say a word.”

  “How do you know that, Bettina?”

  “I know her.”

  Georgia put down the comb and braided the thick waving mass down her back.

  “When are you going, sister?”

  “Tomorrow, honey, I’m going to move into Millpoint. There’s a little brick house there. I’ve seen it when we go to church. It’s been empty this long while. I’ve saved all my wages.”

  “Does—he know?”

  “No, he doesn’t. I’m going myself. I don’t want him to know when I go nor where. I want him to say he doesn’t know a thing about me. Maybe she’ll ask him, and that’s what I want him to say. But if he asks you, you can tell him.”

  They undressed in silence and climbed into bed together and suddenly Bettina clung to Georgia. “I know I’m right,” she whispered. “I’m right—but tell me I am!”

  Searching for words to comfort her Georgia laid hold on truth. “You’re free anyway, Bettina. If you don’t like it you can always move on.”

  Bettina’s hold relaxed. “I hadn’t thought of that, Georgy—it’s true. If I don’t like it, nobody can hold me.”

  They fell asleep, their arms wrapped about one another as they had slept always since childhood.

  Lucinda knew before the day had begun that Bettina had left the house. She knew by the look on Georgia’s face. Georgia came into the big bedroom in the morning, tiptoeing, drawing a blind against the sun, glancing at the bed, opening the drawers softly to fetch clean garments.

  “Why do you keep looking at me?” Lucinda asked sharply from behind closed eyelids.

  “I’m not sure if you’re awake, ma’am,” Georgia answered, in the softest of voices.

  Lucinda did not speak again. But she heard Georgia go into the boys’ room and call them and help them wash and dress. That was Bettina’s work. Bettina was gone!

  She sat up in bed, smiling, listening. It was much the best way, of course. If Bettina had run away, it would save trouble. But she would not ask a word. It gave her tremendous power to know and to say nothing. If she said nothing, no one would know how much she knew. Let them wonder why she did not speak.

  She called across the hall through the half-open door, “Don’t bother with those great boys, Georgia—they’re big enough to take care of themselves. They don’t need anybody.”

  There was a pause and then Georgia’s voice answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

  A moment later she was back again. “Shall I bring up your breakfast, ma’am?” Her cream colored face was flushed and her eyes were miserable, but she held herself very straight.

  “No, I’m coming down,” Lucinda said briskly. She tossed back the covers, and slipped from the high bed to the floor. “Go on away,” she commanded, “I don’t want anybody either—it’s too nice a day. I’m going to dress in a hurry.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Georgia seemed to drift from the room and Lucinda shut the door, smiling.

  The day was shining
bright, the air so clear that the Alleghenies rose like alps against the brilliant sky. Tom was restless with new life. He felt completely and finally well at last. He had waked and felt himself strong enough for anything, strong enough to beat down Bettina’s fears and leave Malvern forever. He wanted to be free of Malvern and free of his family. They’d go away somewhere, he and Bettina, and start for themselves—change their names, maybe! Let Pierce keep the name of Delaney, if he wanted it. He’d take Bettina’s name. No, they’d take a name for themselves that no one had ever borne.

  By mid-morning he knew that Bettina was not in the house. Never before had so many hours passed without their meeting somewhere, in a passageway or a corner of the garden, or in his own room which she came to make neat. He waited there until long past the hour for the making of his bed. Then he went out and lingered about the halls until he saw Georgia steal in swiftly and he came back and caught her spreading his sheets. He closed the door and leaned against it.

  “Where is Bettina?” he demanded.

  Georgia looked at him with sadness in her dark eyes. “She’s gone to Millpoint,” she said simply. “You’ll find her in that little brick house we pass on the way to church—that is, if so be she was able to rent it.”

  “We can’t live in Millpoint,” he said sharply.

  “No, sir, but she can,” Georgia replied. She went on spreading the sheets, tucking in the corners hard and square, making his bed. He watched her an instant then turned and went out to the stables, saddled his mare and cantered down the road to Millpoint.

  He knew the road as he knew the palm of his own hand. Every Sunday of his childhood he and Pierce and their parents had driven over it in the carriage, on the way to church and home again. He knew the brick house. It had belonged to a widow, a seamstress who had come to Malvern every spring to mend and sew the dresses the house women wore. His mother had never trusted her own gowns to Minnie Walley. Old Walley was a poor white farmer up in the hills from Malvern, but his daughter had bettered herself and they had all called her Miss Minnie instead of just Minnie. When she died the house had belonged to nobody, he supposed. He did not know when she had died—during the war, maybe. It seemed to him she had been there always.

  He found Bettina behind shut doors, scrubbing the floors of a small sitting room. There was still furniture in the house, Miss Minnie’s furniture, plain deal stuff except for a fine rosewood sewing table by the fireplace.

  Bettina was on her hands and knees, and she sat back on her heels when he came in. He closed the door and stared down at her.

  “We can’t live here,” he said abruptly.

  “I can live here,” she said sweetly.

  “Where you live, I’ll live,” he said.

  “No, Tom,” she replied. Her red lips were firm and stubborn.

  “Do we have to go over all this again?” he demanded.

  “No, Tom.”

  “But you’ve run away from me!” he cried.

  “Only run away from the big house,” she corrected him.

  “Who says you can live here?” he asked.

  “I can rent it for five dollars a month. I went up to Walley’s place and her son is there—home from the war without his leg. He’s glad to have the cash.”

  “You haven’t five dollars a month,” he said cruelly.

  She clasped him about the waist as he stood before her.

  “You’re going to give me the money, dear love,” she said. “You’re going to house me and feed me and clothe me, because I’m your own. But I won’t marry you, for it would be wrong. I’ll live with you forever but I’ll not marry you and bring you down in the world to where I was born. I’ll kill myself before I do that, Tom.”

  He groaned because she was so beautiful and so wise and because she was stronger than he.

  “You’re going to stay at the big house and claim your birthright, my darling,” she said.

  He stared down at her, his heart cold in his breast. “You deny me a home of my own. I shall have to live in my brother’s house all my life.”

  She let her hands slide down his thighs and his legs and she bent until she was crumpled at his feet. “It was such bad luck for you to love me,” she mourned. “Bad, bad luck, my darling—I ought never to have let you love me.” She lifted her face, “Tom, promise me something?”

  “Why should I, when you will promise me nothing?”

  “Promise me, my dear—”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “If ever you see the white lady you could marry, dear heart—promise me you’ll marry her.”

  “I’ll never marry, Bettina—”

  Then for the first time she broke into weeping. “Oh me, oh me—” she wept.

  But she did not weep for long. She wiped her eyes on the skirt of her blue homespun dress and tried to smile. “It’s noon, and I haven’t any food for you fit to eat—”

  “What have you for yourself?” he asked.

  “Some bread and milk. But some day soon I’ll have chickens, Tom, and fresh eggs for you—maybe a cow—and a little garden. You’ll see—but not today, my dear.”

  “I’m not hungry—”

  He stared about the disordered house, and wondered bleakly if he really were in love. And she caught the bewilderment in his eyes and begged him to go away.

  “Go home, Tom darling. Come back when I’m all settled. Give me a couple of days, darling, and then see if there isn’t a fire blazing in the stove and something cooking, and a clean soft bed and a chair for your own. Tom, lucky the house is back from the road and the lilacs are so high. You don’t even need to come down the main road, my love—look, there’s a winding path along the little stream at the back—Deep Run, they call it.”

  She coaxed and pushed him to the back door on the pretext of showing him the stream and suddenly he found himself outside and he heard the bar drawn, and then she opened the door quickly again lest he feel shut out.

  “Come back to me day after tomorrow, in the evening, after the sun has set,” she said softly. She smiled her sad and brilliant smile and closed the door again. And he went soberly back to Malvern.

  Pierce was on the terrace sipping brandy and water. He had had a long talk with Lucinda. That is, he had sat listening to her for well over an hour, emitting cries of astonishment from time to time at what she told him and declaring that it was asking too much of him when she forbade him to say one word to Tom about Bettina’s running away.

  “Damn you, Luce, the fellow’s my brother, after all! I talk about everything with Tom.”

  “You’ll talk us all into a peck of trouble if you talk with him about this,” she counseled him. She looked so dainty as she sat in the shade of a pear tree that overhung the terrace, that he could have picked her up in his arms and squeezed her, except that nothing, he knew, would make her more furious. She became violently angry if, when she was dressed for the day, he disturbed the fastidious perfection of her gown and hair.

  “There’s a time for all things, as the Bible says, Pierce!” she would cry at him.

  Once he had exclaimed with violence, “Hang the Bible, Luce—you’re always bringing it up against me!” She was then genuinely and deeply shocked.

  “Pierce! You aren’t a fit father for our children if you speak so about the Holy Bible!”

  “The Bible’s all right in church, Luce—or on Sundays, but to lug it into our daily affairs—”

  “Pierce, hush—and I mean it!” she had cried, stamping her foot.

  He was continually bewildered by her genuine reverence for all the conventions of religion and her extraordinary ability to act swiftly with complete disregard for common morals when she felt inclined. She lied easily, laughing at herself and at him when he was shocked.

  “But, Luce,” he had complained, after hearing her tell a neighbor’s wife that he was going to run for governor. “You know I haven’t any idea of going into politics. I wouldn’t demean myself.”

  “Well, she was boasting so,” Luci
nda said calmly.

  “But it’s a lie, Luce,” he went on, “and I shall have to deny it—it’ll he talked about everywhere.”

  Lucinda had laughed loudly. “Nobody’ll know whether you will or you won’t,” she said triumphantly. “They’ll watch you and wonder and be afraid maybe you will and they’ll be polite because they won’t know.”

  “But to lie—” he had repeated feebly.

  “Oh, hush up, Pierce,” she had said rudely. “Men do much worse things than lie, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know what,” but he had sputtered and turned red and subsided when she became hysterical with scornful laughter.

  This morning after protesting he had subsided again, half-convinced that maybe she was right about Tom and that to talk about the affair with Bettina was to make it too important. He sat ruminating and idle on the terrace, putting off his riding about the farm, listening to her. Like most women she kept on talking after she had really finished everything she had to say. He let his mind wander. Then suddenly he was drawn back to attention by her changing the subject completely.

  “And, Pierce, anyway, you aren’t going to just sit here at Malvern all our lives and play at farming.”

  He came out of his vague reflections made up of pleasure in the warm sunshine, the safety of home and the beauty of the hills rolling away from the house, and a vague secret envy of Tom in his new romance with a beautiful female creature. In the heart of his own life he wanted romance—with Lucinda, of course. “Playing!” he shouted.

  “Well, you’re not a farmer, Pierce Delaney,” Lucinda said.

  “Well, I just am, Luce,” he said. “I don’t see myself living anywhere but at Malvern. Besides, what would I do?”

  “Of course well live at Malvern, dummy,” Lucinda said with impatience. “But we can’t get rich on Malvern.”

  “Who wants to get rich?” he inquired.

  “I do,” Lucinda declared.

  “On what, pray?”

  She looked so pretty that he was charmed and amused by her audacity. Had she been tall and vigorous he would have been angered by it. But she was tiny, a toy of a woman, and he could never take her with full seriousness.