Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

The door opened and Bettina came back and closed it behind her. She crossed the room and closed the outer door, too. They were alone and for a moment after she sat down, he kept silent. Outside in the yard the boy was beginning to cut the grass again, and he could hear the soft swish of the blade.

“You have — three children?” he asked abruptly.

“The baby is asleep upstairs,” Bettina replied.

“What’s her name?” Pierce asked abruptly.

“Lettice, after my own mother,” Bettina replied.

Pierce cleared his throat. He was tired and it occurred to him that he ought to have postponed his affair because of his night on the train. He never slept well except at Malvern in his own bed. But here he was.

“Bettina, you’re a sensible woman,” he began.

“I hope so,” Bettina said quietly. Her black eyes were fixed on his face and the light from the window by which he sat showed them deep and dark. They held none of the golden lights of Georgia’s eyes.

“Now, Bettina,” he began and his voice took on the tone of argument. “I know you will understand why I felt I had to talk with you. You’ve been with us at Malvern and you know how things are. Mrs. Delaney is getting very worried about the children and how to explain to them — well, this house and you and — and these children and — and all that. We’ve always been unhappy about it, of course. As things go, I haven’t said anything. Young men usually have a fling, especially when they’re just out of the army. I didn’t want to say anything at first. I said to myself and I told Lucinda—‘it’s Tom’s own business.’ But now — well, it’s going on and it is time that things come to an end somehow. Tom ought to get married and settle down, you know.”

He stopped, looked at her and looked away. Her face was set in frozen quiet. She did not speak. He felt very unhappy. He resisted his awareness of her as a human being, but it made him uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what to suggest,” he said. “I still don’t feel I can presume to give orders to Tom — exactly. But I think I ought to tell you that when he marries and starts his own family, I’m willing to share Malvern with him or even build him a separate house on any of the land he chooses. When a man is well over thirty he has to get started.” He felt that he was right in his point and he gained confidence. “I want to see that you are treated well, Bettina, and I am going to suggest that you move away somewhere with these children of yours, and I’ll treat you very handsomely if you do so. You can go north if you like — I’ll buy you a house in some town there — and see that you get money every month as long as you live. I’ll even put that in my will.”

He felt that he could not be more generous and he leaned back in his chair, as he had often seen his father do. She sat in the same pose, her hands on the arms of the Windsor chair. She looked like Georgia, but her mouth was not so sweet. Something about the firmness of that well-cut mouth disturbed him. This was not an obedient woman and doubtless Tom had spoiled her. It always made a colored woman proud to belong to a white man. He pursed his lips and decided to be firm himself.

“That’s my proposition,” he declared.

She leaned forward a little, clasping her hands on her elbows. “I don’t feel it is for me to decide, Mr. Delaney.” Her voice was so pure, so cold, that it seemed empty of all feeling. “If — your brother — tells me to go, I will go.”

“Now, Bettina, let’s be sensible,” he complained loudly. “Tom isn’t going to tell you to go. We won’t pretend. I want you to help me persuade him that it’s the best thing.”

“Maybe it isn’t.”

They were beginning now really to talk. He had penetrated that cold shell of hers.

“Bettina, you know it is,” he insisted. He tried to keep anger out of his voice. “Surely you want what’s best for Tom — as I do.”

“You said Mrs. Delaney—” her voice trembled and sudden tears swam into her eyes. Something hurt and quivering looked at him out of those shimmering depths.

“Let’s put her aside — damn it all, I love my brother, too. I’m only going to talk about him. Tom deserves legitimate heirs, Bettina. He’s going to be a rich man some day, if he stays by the family.”

“I don’t just think of property,” she said in a low voice.

“No, nor I,” Pierce said swiftly. “But think of Tom when he’s old! He ought to be surrounded by children of his own—”

“These are his,”—she broke in.

“Of his own kind,” Pierce went on, “children who can be in his house and who can stand for him. Bettina, don’t think I don’t feel for you. I feel very sorry indeed, but you know how things are in this world. You can’t change them and I can’t change them, however much we might wish things were different. And I don’t mind saying that if they were different — if you hadn’t been — well, what you are — I wouldn’t have felt it was my business. But you know how things are — I can’t help it any more than you can — it’s just how things are—”

Just how things are — just how things are — with this phrase he beat her down. He saw her head droop, and the tears flowed over her lids and down her cheeks and she wrung her slender hands together. He saw her hands — it had often amazed him to notice that her people always had beautiful hands.

“I reckon I can go away,” Bettina sobbed.

He rose. “Of course you can,” he said cheerfully. “And I’m going to make it easy for you—”

What he had not counted on was Tom’s coming. He had thought it was the middle of the morning but the clock had run onto noon. He heard the gate click and saw his brother come into the yard and pick up the little girl and come to the door.

“Wipe your eyes,” he ordered Bettina and she obeyed.

But Tom was at the door and in the room. He had to face his brother. “Why are you here, Pierce?” Tom demanded. He put the child down and she ran to her mother and Bettina laid her cheek on her hair, her face turned away.

Pierce looked at his brother. He had seen Tom every day of these years, but he saw him now exactly as he was, a grown man, mature and dignified. He could not endure the steady, cold light of his blue eyes.

“I came to talk with Bettina,” he said. “Bettina, I take back what I asked you. You can tell Tom everything I said. Tom, I’d like to see you tonight in my own study. We’ll thrash this thing out for fair and have an end to it.”

He snatched his hat and his stick and strode out of the house, looking neither to the right nor the left as he went.

In the room he left so silent Tom went to Bettina and knelt and put his arms about her and the child. But Bettina let the child down and leaned her head upon his shoulder and began to weep.

“My dear love,” Tom muttered.

“I know what he said was right,” she sobbed. “Oh, my mind tells me he is right! God give me the strength—”

“What do you want strength for?” Tom asked.

“Nothing — I don’t know — I love you too much, I reckon,” she whispered.

“You can’t love me too much,” Tom said. The child was sobbing and he took her in his arms and held her, rocking her a little while he talked.

“I know Pierce was here to badger you, but you mustn’t heed him. It’s Lucinda — I’m sure she’s behind it. Pierce is so easygoing — he wouldn’t care much.”

He sat down in the big chair. The love he had for this woman had changed from the wild first passion of his youth. But she was necessary to him, a part of his life. He never allowed himself to wonder whether he had done well in taking her. Having taken her he had kept her and would keep her. He respected her deeply. In her unchanging goodness he had refuge. She was selfless to the last drop of her blood. He had never found the same quality in any one else except in his own mother. His mother would have understood the quality of Bettina’s goodness. He knew, of course, that she would never have understood what he had done. He wanted to believe that she would have understood Bettina — that would have been enough. But he was glad she was dead. Living, she would never have entered this house. He did not pretend that what he had done was easy, nor that his life was not beset with complexity. Both he and Bettina were isolated from their communities and he was deeply troubled for the children. Bettina kept them away from other colored children, but he could not lead them to the children of his kind. Leslie, his son, was named for Bettina’s father. Both of them had avoided the names’ of his own family. He had toyed with the idea of naming the baby Laura, after his mother and then had not done so. They had named her Lettice instead.