Portrait of a Marriage

by Pearl S. Buck

  “William knows he is always welcome here in his own home,” her mother said. Louise had felt this was admirable.

  But now, she thought, William looked tired too, and sad. Was everybody simply tired as soon as they stopped being young? Or did William have troubles? She could scarcely call Monty a trouble, and yet living with him was like living in the shadow of storm. One never knew—this war, for instance. Nobody was even thinking about war in Europe except Monty. But from somewhere or other he had heard it was coming and believed it.

  “A war, Monty?” she had gasped. “But we don’t have wars any more!”

  “Not at once, old girl,” he had said. “Say in three years or so.”

  “How do you know?” she had demanded.

  He had not answered. He had got it, she supposed, from those queer friends of his, in Constantinople, in Vienna, in Berlin and Paris.

  She sighed, and her faint curiosity about William died. She had her own troubles, living all over the world with Monty. When her mother asked her who these people were, she had said as glibly as Monty might have done,

  “They’re some sort of cousins of Monty’s, Mamma. Of course if you’d rather not—but they’re visiting us.”

  “If they are your guests, bring them,” her mother said imperiously. She could see her mother’s astonishment at the dark pair, but she had concealed it and summoned her strength as a famous hostess. She came out of her taciturnity and drew talk from them all. The drawing room became quietly gay. Even William roused himself to listen, but the talk was too quick for him. He found himself lost in its changes. His mother marked his silence.

  “Ah, William, you should come out of your too green retirement,” she said with a flash of malice. She turned to the dark young woman. “My son is bucolic,” she said. “He married a farmer’s daughter and paints whatever he sees out of her windows.”

  “Mother!” he cried suddenly. She had never spoken so directly before.

  “Well, you do, William,” she retorted, “and you’ve grown intensely boring to everybody.”

  Her sharpness was tempered with the willful mischief of pampered old age, but he felt her deep impatience with him, that impatience which when he was a child withered him like wind from a desert. It made him self-doubtful instantly, and he was bitterly humble when the young woman spoke to him.

  “You should come to Austria. There is a life to paint there,” she told him. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

  “I assure you, I am entirely second rate,” he said, and smiled.

  He could not stay long after this. The talk went away from him again and flitted about the world. He heard the names of places and of men in the swift narrative of the times that he had chosen not to share without exactly knowing how he had done so.

  He heard Louise say in her high peevish voice, “Monty says we are going to have a world war.”

  They all looked at her when she said that, and the dark young man flushed suddenly crimson as though he were very angry. He and Monty looked at each other and Monty’s long, pale face grew paler.

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Barton said, “we’re not savages any more. Whatever makes you think that, Monty?”

  “One feels it,” he murmured.

  “I’d like to get a Raphael I’ve had my eyes on if anything like that were really about to happen,” Mr. Barton remarked.

  “Where is it, sir?” the dark man asked.

  “It happens to be, of all places, in Spain,” Mr. Barton said. “Almost no one knows of it!”

  “Spain!” the young man repeated. “No, Spain is not safe, I feel sure.”

  From all this William felt himself infinitely remote. In a few minutes he rose and bade them good night and drove himself homeward. Had the life that might have nourished him most deeply escaped him?

  “I wonder if Ruth would mind if I did go away for a while?” he thought. He suddenly felt the need of living very hardly. He wanted to go where crude people were suffering and bathe himself in their pain. His morning’s agitation over a butterfly now seemed ridiculous. He found himself thinking of the sternness of war, of deprivation and danger and sacrifice of a plain physical sort. Through these ways the spirit was forced upward. How else could the spirit rise?

  Moving through the unlit darkness of a countryside already long asleep, he felt for his own soul. It lay in him untouched, like a sword not put to use. How could he put it to use? There must first be a reason, an emotion greater than himself. He felt suddenly, though he was forty-seven years old, that he was young and unused, immature in his work because he was immature in himself. His brain was unwhetted.

  “If I were just to go out of Ruth’s house, not knowing whether I would come back,” he pondered, “then where would I go?”

  That house now rose before him in the soft, warm darkness. The windows in the kitchen were lighted. He put the car away and walked along the garden path which his feet now knew by instinct. He opened the door to the kitchen.

  Ruth was there. She held a whip across her body, its ends in her hands. Hal stood facing her against the table, leaning backward on his hands upon it. She was speaking when William came in but she stopped. She turned her head to him.

  “Go away, William,” she said.

  But he was sickened and cried out, forgetting everything else, “No, I won’t, Ruth. You—this isn’t the way to manage a boy!”

  He saw her face grow sterner than he ever dreamed it could, and for the first time it was ugly to him.

  “I’ll have to do what I think is best, same as I’ve always done,” she replied quietly.

  Then before he could speak again or stop her she stepped forward and with a swift fling of her hand she struck Hal three times across the back, three hard, cracking blows. Hal shivered and bent his head.

  “Ruth!” William shouted. He leaped forward and snatched the whip from her.

  “You leave her alone,” Hal said suddenly. He was not crying, but the tears of smarting pain stood in his eyes. “She said she’d whip me. I knew it was comin’ to me.”

  “I can’t bear it,” William said shortly. He threw the whip to the floor. “And I don’t understand you, Hal—taking it like that.”

  “I wouldn’t if it was anybody else,” the boy retorted. Through his shirt a thin red stain appeared.

  “Take off your shirt, son,” Ruth said. “I’ll see to your back.”

  “No,” Hal said, “it’s nothing.” But he took off his shirt and Ruth fetched a basin of cold water and a soft bit of cloth and sponged the blue welt that had broken into bleeding.

  “I had to do it hard, son,” she said, “else it wouldn’t have signified.”

  “I know it,” Hal said. It was as though they had forgotten William. It was as though what Ruth had done had turned her son to her. He let her lave the wound until the blood stopped and then he put on his shirt.

  “I’ll have to sleep on my belly tonight, Mom,” he said with a wry smile. “You sure have a strong right arm.” He kissed her, and suddenly she hugged him about the waist.

  “I’ve got to make a man out of you,” she said.

  “Sure,” Hal said. “G’dnight, Dad.”

  He nodded toward William and went out, and they heard him going heavily upstairs to his room.

  William picked up the whip and gave it back to her. “I never want to see that again,” he said.

  She took it without answer and put it on top of a cupboard. Then she went through the small round of preparing for the night and together they went upstairs, still without speaking.

  He watched her while she undressed and washed herself and put on her cotton nightgown. He was in bed before her and he lay watching her loosen her long, uncut hair and brush it before she braided it. Her every movement fascinated him even after all these years, and in spite of what had happened tonight. It was not only that he loved her. She could be repulsive to him, too. He had never acknowledged this to himself before, but tonight when she was beating the boy he knew she could b
e repulsive to him. A more delicate woman could not have lifted the whip so steadily for three times, nor let it fall so hard that it brought blood. He could never feel the same to her again.

  And yet he loved her because all she did was right and consistent with her being and therefore was without pretense. He compared her with the slender, black-eyed woman he had seen tonight in his mother’s drawing room, and knew that beside the reality of Ruth that woman was emptiness. Wherever Ruth stood, she made reality. Thus the whole evening he had just spent became nothing, and this room lit by the oil lamp, the big bed, the old-fashioned furniture, the white curtains fluttering at the windows, were the center of reality. She bent over the lamp to blow it out, and he saw the full, smooth contour of her face suddenly clear and once more beautiful. Her face was calm now, and he compared it involuntarily with the way it had looked a little while ago when she had struck Hal. She could be incredibly hard, he thought, even cruel. Was that the base of her? Then the light was gone and she climbed into bed and he felt the smooth firmness of her thigh against his. She slipped her arm under his head.

  “Did you have a good time?” she asked, and her voice was usual in the darkness.

  “There were some people there,” he said evasively. He never told her of those disturbing visits to his home. She never asked and he was glad, for he dreaded the long explanation that he must make if he were to try to make her understand their effect on him.

  “Were your folks well?” she asked. In all these years Ruth had never wanted to see his parents. Once, halfheartedly, he had tried to persuade her to go with him on one of his visits, but she had refused.

  “Your mother and I wouldn’t get along,” she had told him, and then she had added, “We’re both proud of our own ways, and she wouldn’t give in and I wouldn’t. So we’re better apart.”

  He had not contradicted her.

  “Yes, they’re well,” he replied now.

  She yawned and they lay in silence a few minutes. She was healthily tired with her active day and could have fallen instantly asleep. But her only sensitivity was toward him. She knew, after all these years,’ that he was always different when he had been to see his parents. He was different tonight. She could feel it in the way he lay beside her, his body against hers and yet as though he did not know it. It always made her jealous, this difference in him, and yet he always came back to her and always would, she knew that now, though when she was young she used to be afraid he would not, maybe, someday. She used to wonder if he had ever loved somebody else not like her, a woman of his own people. She had been so afraid that she had never dared to ask. Now it didn’t matter what he had done before he knew her. He belonged to her. She did not want to know what had happened before he knew her. It was too bad he had come in before she put Hal right. But it could not be helped. She turned to him, curving her pliant body to his. She loved him more and more as years went on, better than anything. But to her astonishment his body remained cold. He did not move. She was now suddenly intensely jealous of his evening away from her. All of the old jealousy she had forgotten was there in her again.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said. She drew away from him.

  “Ruth,” he said, “my father thinks I ought to go away somewhere.”

  She could not answer for a second while she took this into her mind. Her body, stricken in its tenderness, grew stiff with terror. Now here was what she had always feared. If he left her he would know all he had missed in being married to her. For without knowing what those things were, in her mind she had grown increasingly afraid of them as time went on, lest he find them out one day. She remembered jealously the look of his old home in a photograph he had once showed her, and what she called its “style.” She made fun of it. “I’d hate to have the cleaning of it,” she said. “I’d hate to live there,” she had said, “it’s like a hotel.” She waited to hear him say carelessly, “I like this house better, too.” Most of the time she believed him, because hers seemed the only right way to live since it was the only way she had ever lived. But sometimes she remembered that he had grown up in that other house.

  “What for?” she said at last. “You ain’t sick, William. Besides, where would we go and how could I get away with thrashers due here any day?” she asked, her throat dry.

  “My father thinks I should go alone,” he replied.

  “What for?” she demanded again, angered against his father.

  “He thinks my work has gone stale and that I need something new,” he said.

  He could feel he was hurting her but he was more able to hurt her tonight than he had ever, been, because of Hal. He could not forget how resolutely she had lifted that whip three times while he stood in all the protest of his being, watching what he could not help. He could not yet forgive her, partly because she had gone on to do her own will against his, but mostly because she had shown him that she could be cruel.

  “If you leave me you’ll never come back to me,” she said.

  “Yes, I will,” he said, “of course I will.”

  “No, and I know it, already,” she said. She had almost ceased to use her old Pennsylvania ways of speech, but when she was deeply disturbed she went back to them, and he was a little touched.

  “Don’t be silly, my dearest,” he said gently.

  “Everything I do is for you,” she said. “I don’t hardly care for anything else. If you’ve give up everything for me, so have I for you, William.”

  “Now, Ruth, you’re making something very big out of nothing. Why, most artists travel everywhere and their wives have a terrible time. I’ve been a very faithful fellow, I think.” He tried to be playful.

  He felt her quivering strangely, this steady, strong, middle-aged woman who was his wife.

  “Why, my dear!” he cried and turning he took her in his arms, shocked into a tenderness which was unusual only because it was protective. She had never seemed to need protecting before. “Why, my—little girl!” he muttered. He had not called her that once in his life.

  And then suddenly she began to weep and to pour out all he had never known of her soul. “Oh, I know it’s because of me you want to go! I’m not good enough for you. That’s why your father wants you to go away. I knew when I married you I oughtn’t to have. I’ve always been afraid I oughtn’t to have. I ought to have married somebody my own kind as I could have helped and not hurt. I’ve spent myself trying to make it up to you, trying to have everything the way you wanted and not so much as asking myself what I wanted. If you leave me, it’ll all be no good!”

  “Hush,” he whispered, “hush, Ruth! The children will hear you.”

  “Oh, I don’t care!” she cried. He let her cry then, holding her, but strong enough not to say he would not go. He was deeply shaken, but he would not let her see how much. He did not indeed know how much. For his father had shaken him, too, and which one the more, his father or Ruth, he did not yet know. This morning would tell, when alone he could walk up the hill and think for himself.

  And when she had wept all she could and had waited for him to promise he would not go, and when he did not promise, she grew terrified. And out of her terror her passion clamored for possession of him in the deepest way she knew.

  “Oh, love me,” she whispered, “love me—love me—” But even in love he did not promise. He held doggedly to his determination that he would wait for the morning and only for the morning. Even as he gazed at her, tender and beautiful to him now, he could not forget how she had looked when she had lifted the whip. For that one moment she had made herself alien to him and hateful, and one moment was long enough for him to see himself separate from her.

  Ruth lay awake long after he slept. He was different, and she was frightened. She was always frightened when his mood varied in the slightest from what she knew best. His mind she did not know and she was not able to know it, but his body she knew utterly and by his body she measured the content of his soul. When he ate and drank and slept, when he came to her gu
sty with passion, then she was pleased. His work she secretly could not imagine was work. He sold a few pictures a year, but not enough to pay for more than his own needs. She made their living upon the farm, made it proudly, too, knowing that plenty of people were sorry for her that she had a man who could not provide for her. To them she found ways of saying what she had forbidden the children to mention.

  “William’s father is a very rich man. William’ll be a rich man when the old man dies.”

  Their pity was tempered with this possibility, and with a curious respect, too, for what they could not understand about artists. They stared at his pictures, wondering why he had chosen a particular lane, muddy with spring flood, to put upon a canvas forever.

  “Seems as if there was sightlier things,” they murmured. And Ruth herself had this same respect and contempt for his painting. Still, she knew he must paint if he were to be happy. She herself was easiest when he was beginning a new picture, because then he was so happy. He was always excited and hopeful when he was beginning a new picture. Then he worked hard, and then the more he worked the less hopeful he was, and she had come to dread the finishing of a picture. He was never satisfied at the end, and when he was not satisfied he was restless. And nothing she could say was any use.

  “I don’t see but what it’s just as good as your others,” she had said only this morning. She couldn’t, herself, see much difference in his pictures.

  “Oh, Ruth!” he had groaned, and then she knew she had said the wrong thing again. It was so hard to know what he wanted her to say.

  His restlessness she could cure only by love. Many a day she had endured, hoping for the night. But tonight for the first time love had not been enough. She felt him still far from her. Even in his sleep he had turned away from her now. She lay thinking through her fears in her direct practical fashion.

  “There was too many things coming together against him today—he finished his picture and he went to see his folks and then he come home and he never can understand anything about Hal. I’ll have to make it up to him somehow tomorrow.” She turned carefully and put her arm over him. The late moon had risen and shone into the room and she could see his shape in the pale light. She looked at it fondly. How she loved him! It didn’t matter that he hadn’t been a good provider or even that he hadn’t been good about helping with the children. She could always ask Henry Fasthauser about anything she didn’t know on the farm. He had bought the next farm and was a fine neighbor, though he had married a poor do-less girl who couldn’t keep his house clean, nor bear him a healthy child.