Portrait of a Marriage

by Pearl S. Buck

  He lay and slept, his head in her lap, and she sat motionless, awake as she had not been awake since she was born. This was her husband. She bent over him in such tenderness that in her breasts she felt physical pain. How far above her he was! But this which had been frightening to think about now no longer made her afraid. She knew now how to comfort him and stay him. She could not use words for love, but she had other ways.

  “I’ll be good for him—better than anyone else could be. I won’t ever let him want,” she thought.

  He went that evening to his own home, meeting his parents’ surprise with careful casualness.

  “You should have telegraphed your train, William,” his mother said. “We could have met you.”

  “I wasn’t sure when I could get away,” he said.

  He felt dazed with the afternoon’s supreme act of love. Everything was still misted by it. He and Ruth had gone back to the farmhouse at twilight and then he had found Ruth’s father, already knowing but waiting to be asked.

  “I hope you don’t object to our marriage,” William said.

  “No use if Ruth don’t,” he had replied, “though I’d looked for help on the farm after my son turned against it. I’ve spoiled her, William,” he went on. “She’s stubborn. Don’t hold it against her.”

  Then they made a few plans for the wedding. He could see that her parents, yes, and Ruth herself, were halting in these plans. He was no ordinary bridegroom. How would they fit a man like him into a country wedding? But when he put forth a tentative hope for no ceremony, he quickly withdrew it. There must be a ceremony, he saw, or they would not think it decent. So it was arranged, that day week. There was no use in delay. Ruth had her hope chest long ready, as every girl had in the countryside. She would make a new dress, one serviceable for the wedding and yet to wear afterward.

  “Blue, though,” William interposed.

  “Blue,” she had agreed.

  But when she had followed him outside the kitchen door to say good night, he whispered, “We’re already married, you know, Ruth.”

  She had nodded, her eyes full of secret joy.

  … “How is New York?” his mother asked. The drawing room was fragrant with early roses. A wood fire burned, though the windows were open.

  “Well enough,” he replied, wondering how he would begin.

  “What are you painting?” his father asked.

  William put down the cigarette he had lighted. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve—the truth is, I haven’t worked well in New York.”

  “That’s odd,” his father said, and lifted his grey eyebrows. “I should have thought the intellectual stimulus—”

  “I find I can’t paint out of intellectual stimulus,” William said bluntly. “I paint out of earth and bread and water—and light—” He repeated the words with all the reverence of love. “I’m going to paint again now, though,” he said.

  “I am glad to hear that,” his father said cautiously. He felt a little afraid of his son tonight. Had he perhaps been drinking?

  William, sitting in a great black oak chair, glanced from one to the other of the two elderly, handsome faces. He would plunge into the truth, now and forever.

  “I am in love,” he said. “I am going to be married to Ruth Harnsbarger.”

  They had forgotten her very name, and they looked at him bewildered.

  “She is the girl I painted last summer,” he said.

  “Not that peasant girl!” his mother cried.

  “She is not a peasant,” he said. “She is a farmer’s daughter—a very different thing, Mother, in our country.”

  “Nonsense,” she said sharply. “Harold, why don’t you speak? Why do you sit there merely looking stupid? Why, it’s absurd!”

  “I don’t know what to say,” his father stammered. “Your mother is right, of course, William. I don’t know that it’s absurd so much as dangerous. Yes, that’s it—dangerous.”

  “It’s absurd,” his mother interrupted. “A girl I would not have in my kitchen, ignorant—”

  “Be quiet,” William said sharply. “It is for me to say what she is. She is the sort of woman who is a man’s daily bread. I want no more.” He rose as he spoke and went out of the room and up to his own bedroom. He refused the possibility of their prudence. “The snobbery of the old,” he thought bitterly. “Their cruelty! Their falseness!”

  He took off his dinner clothes and put on again his worn brown walking suit. He wanted to be plain and poor-looking and blunt and harsh. He wanted to get away from the softness of carpets and velvet curtains and old paintings and the two rich elderly people who were his parents. Strong work could never come out of this house!

  “I’ll go back to Ruth,” he thought. “They’ll give me a bed.” He let himself out of the house and turned westward out of the city.

  … The nearer he drew to the farmhouse, the more he wanted to tell them, too, the truth. When he reached the house he went around it to the kitchen. They sat in the kitchen and the door was open. Though at his home it was scarcely past the dinner hour, here they were preparing for bed. Mr. Harnsbarger was winding the clock and Ruth was putting the bread to rise. Mrs. Harnsbarger was sitting by the stove nodding.

  “Can you give me a bed?” he asked brusquely. “I’ve quarreled with my parents.”

  “About me!” Ruth whispered.

  He nodded. “They don’t know you,” he said.

  The old man looked angry. “Who do they think they are?” he demanded. “My folks are good stock. We’ve owned this farm for four generations and never asked nothing of nobody. You needn’t marry Ruth. There’s plenty wants her.”

  “I certainly will marry Ruth,” William replied. “Where can I sleep?”

  Mrs. Harnsbarger had waked up. She looked frightened. “Will your folks send the police after you?” she asked.

  William laughed loudly. “Scarcely,” he said.

  Mr. Harnsbarger finished winding the clock and closed the face carefully. He was pleased at the young man’s guts and somewhat surprised, not having expected so much from a painter. Besides it put him in a good humor to think of the son of two rich proud city folks having left them to ask shelter in his house.

  “You can have Tom’s room,” he said. “Ruth, you show him.”

  Ruth had not spoken since she had cried out. She led the way now without speaking. When in the dimness of the stair he put his arms about her, she held herself away from him.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded of her.

  “I don’t like it that your parents don’t want me,” she said.

  “The only thing that matters is that I want you,” he said, and forced her lips to his.

  She gave up to him after a little struggle, and then he would not let her go until she kissed him. But at the door of the room she stopped.

  “I won’t come in,” she said.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I don’t feel to,” she said indistinctly.

  “Look here,” he said, “you’re not blaming me for my parents?”

  She shook her head. “I think you’re—good,” she said, “to love me, I mean,” she said, hanging her head.

  He flew at her and shook her and lifted her from the floor against his breast.

  “Never say that again!” he commanded. “Never, never! There’s no goodness in me toward you—only love—” He held her a long moment and then let her go.

  And she, stealing along the hall to her own room, undressed herself and put on her plain white cotton nightgown and crept into her bed and lay awake hour after hour. Her mind went plodding on, feeling its way, always to the same blind end.

  “I ought to have said I wouldn’t marry him if they didn’t want me to. Then I’d ha’ known what he’d say. I don’t want him to think he has to marry me. But he does have to marry me. Not because maybe now I’ll have a baby. Anyway, they say you don’t often have a baby the first time. He has to marry me because I love him so. I’ll make everything up to him.
I’ll promise that to God.” She climbed out of her bed and knelt beside it.

  “God, I promise I’ll make up everything to him.”

  They were married a week from that day. He did not go near his home or write or let his parents know where he was. There was no way for them to find him because they had never asked him where the farm was. So he was lost to them. When he was ready he would write them, but not until he was married to Ruth and back in New York. For that was their plan, that they would live together in his apartment. She had agreed to all he wished. He had only to speak a wish and she agreed to it.

  And he out of bottomless content spent the week painting. He was compelled to work, famished to work, after long idleness. He painted a great sycamore that leaned against the west end of the house, a spotted, grotesque old tree that had heaved itself out of the ground until its roots were like clutching arms. He worked so hard that the week was gone before he had time to see it go. And then he had to hurry to finish his picture before his wedding. He wanted it done because he knew himself well enough to know that if it were not done he would be hankering after it, even in the midst of love.

  It was done, and the day came and he stood up in the parlor beside Ruth. The Lutheran minister read the service, and the roomful of farm folk listened, awed by this marriage. They were friendly enough, but they were sorry to see Ruth marry a stranger who would take her away. After the ceremony they shook hands with him formally and stood about awkward and in silence to eat cake and drink wine, with none of the jokes there would have been if Ruth had been marrying one of them. Their few polite remarks to him were doubtfully made, as though they were not sure what he would say to them, or what he would expect them to say.

  And William, chafing, tried to break through their shyness by his own laughter and joking. It was not easy, and he gave it up at last. After all, it would soon be over. He and Ruth would go away together. As soon as they reached New York he would begin to work. He would do a picture of her in the nude. He had never been satisfied with his nudes. Commercial models had no bodies—nothing but figures. But her body would be instinct with love and young passion and all her silver white flesh full of light. He fell silent thinking of this and forgot all else. And one by one the wedding guests went away.

  “A queer fellow,” they said, “not typical, anyways,” they added doubtfully, and spoke kindly to Ruth because they were so sorry for her.

  PART II

  RUTH PAUSED IN HER sweeping to look out of the window of the kitchen. Her blue eyes, bright with watchfulness, were upon her fourteen-year-old son, who was mowing the grass with crawling slowness.

  “Hal!” she called through the open window.

  “What, Mom?” he called back. His round face, turned toward her, was full of aggrievement.

  “If you don’t go faster’n that, you’ll never get off this afternoon.”

  He did not answer. His face took on a stubborn pain, and he increased his pace by a little. Ruth, pressing her full lips together, began to sweep with energy. Mary and Jill had never been the trouble that Hal had always been, though she had tried to take the brunt of them all so that nothing would trouble William. But she did not know what to do with Hal. He had been restless even in his babyhood, and now it was almost impossible to make him finish his work. When he was small she had thought this restlessness must be the sign of some unusual intelligence in her only son. She still hoped it was, but could not be sure. He was lazy in school and his teachers had no good report to make of him.

  “Harold does not seem interested in any of his work.” This in one form or another was their summary, year after year, of what Hal did. Sometimes she herself undertook to try to discover what was behind that round-cheeked, boyish face. Sometimes when she had him fast by sewing on a button he had dropped or bandaging a cut finger, she would say, “Hal, it’s time you was thinking more about what you do and how you behave, son. Do you ever think about what you’re goin’ to be when you grow up?”

  “No, Mom.” The voice, the words were careless.

  “Now, Hal, why not? Your father’s not a rich man.”

  To this he usually made no answer. But once he had said, “Grandpop’s rich, though.”

  “That’s got nothin’ to do with you nor me, Hal,” she said severely.

  But Harold was stubborn. “Anyways, stands to reason, since we’re his only grandchildren—”

  “Where’d you hear talk of such things, anyways, yet?” she broke in. “Never at home, that I know.”

  “Over to the store,” he said. “They was talking. They was sayin’ now when Pop’s ole man died they reckoned we’d all be rich.”

  “They would talk,” she said bitterly. “They’d talk till their teeth rot.”

  “Ain’t it true?” Hal asked.

  “If it is, I never hear tell of it,” she said shortly, and pushed him away. Long ago she had made up her mind she would never, as long as she lived, ask William anything about his parents or his home or his life before he knew her. Letters came in his mail sometimes, though not now so often as they used, but she gave them to him unopened, and he put them in his pocket. She never saw him read them. But then he spent most of his day alone, painting. No one saw much of him, not even the children. William was so queer about the children. Sometimes she grew so upset with them that she begged him to help her with their discipline. But he never would.

  “Why should I press my will upon another?” he always said.

  “But we have to bring ’em up to be good,” she insisted one day.

  “You will do that,” he replied, his smile upon her.

  The girls were good enough, especially Mary, the elder one, but Hal she could never be sure about. She watched him now, her broom in her hand. He had stopped altogether, and suddenly at the end of the lawn he disappeared behind the crabapple tree. She set her broom against the door and walked quickly down the path. But he was gone.

  “I can’t run after him in this August heat,” she muttered with anger. She was about to turn back to the kitchen when she saw William on the hill in the shade of the big old ash tree, painting. He was standing before his easel, a tall, cool figure, his blue shirt vivid against the green trees. How easy his life was! He never asked how she did anything. She bore the children, she took care of them, tended the house, looked after everything, even the land she rented on shares, while William painted his pictures. The sight of him in the green shadows sharpened the thought of her own Saturday cleaning still only half finished, the dinner waiting to be made ready. He would come in expecting everything to be just as he liked it, too.

  “This time he’ll have to help me with Hal,” she thought.

  Her anger gave her more vigor even than usual and she walked quickly up the low hill to the orchard. William did not see her. He saw nothing when he worked. Maybe he never saw anything. He lived in a dream, she often thought.

  But he, putting down upon his canvas the strong white silver of the river, did see her, as he saw every change and accent in the landscape before him. He watched her with full appreciation of her value in the picture, as full as on that day when he had seen her for the first time in the landscape. She was heavier than she had been as a girl, but only pleasantly so. She would never grow into the repulsive lump of flesh her mother had become before she died. Ruth had too much of her father’s wire in her, and an energy besides that kept her still graceful. She was very beautiful, he thought with quick passion as he watched her approach. Now he could see her face, firm-cheeked, rosy, untouched by powder or paint or indeed pretense of any kind. Her hair was still brown and her lips red, and her eyes bluer than ever in her browned face. She came near him, holding up her skirt as she climbed.

  “Hello, dear,” he said amiably. He had not ceased painting and he went on brushing in the soft green cliffs above the river.

  “William!” she cried. “What shall we do with that boy? He’s disobeyed me flat and gone off!”

  William laughed. Secretly he could never be
lieve that the three sturdy young creatures who were in this house had anything to do with him. Practically, of course, he was their father. That is, something he bestowed upon Ruth had enabled her to produce, entirely, he felt, out of her own ancestry, her three robust, stupid children. She grew very angry when he called them stupid, but of course they were, on the whole, in spite of being well-meaning and always pleasant to him. Jill, the youngest, might perhaps be only a little less stupid than the others.

  “You shouldn’t make a boy work on Saturday morning, my dearest,” he said gently. She was so beautiful he wanted to kiss her lips. There was never a woman in the world, he thought fondly, who could make a man forget as Ruth did that he had been married to her for these years, so that when she appeared beside him suddenly in the sunshine of a summer’s morning, he longed as eagerly to kiss her lips as he had the first time. He knew intimately every curve and line of her body, and yet she seemed always new to him. He pondered this often. What was the gift she had of eternal freshness? It was not in her mind. He knew every thought she had ever had or ever would have. She could not surprise him in any word she might say. But in the freshness of her presence she astonished him continually. Perhaps it was no more than that he habitually forgot her when he was not with her and when he saw her again it was always a return. Perhaps it was that she herself was continually changing, at the mercy of every small happening in her day. Thus now her fury edged her beauty with electricity. Her hair sprang back from her forehead, her eyes were wide and matched the sky she stood against, her angry lips were scarlet and parted to show her sound white teeth.

  He laughed. “Come here and let me kiss you,” he summoned her. But at that same instant a butterfly darting at the fresh green on his canvas was caught in the paint. He forgot everything.

  “Oh, this poor fool!” he cried in quick distress. “Ruth, see it! What’s to be done? Its wings are broken!”

  She came at once and taking a hairpin from her long hair she lifted the butterfly carefully out of the paint.