Angry Wife

by Pearl S. Buck

  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 unders
tand 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 a
nd 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.”