Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

Leslie came in now, flushed with the sun. “I’m hungry, Mother,” he said, hesitating at the door. He knew so well these long conversations between his parents and that in some fashion they concerned him. He had a strange feeling always of waiting for something to happen. He knew that whatever it was must be decided always by his father. Everything in this house waited upon his father.

“We must all eat,” Tom said, sighing. “I have to get back to the school.”

He did not often come here in the middle of the day, but he had been haunted with some sort of uneasiness when John came back and said his parents were home again. Bettina went out and the little girl slipped from his lap to follow her and he leaned back and closed his eyes. Through the open door he could hear Bettina moving about, setting the table, and pouring milk. Perhaps he had been at fault, too. He had taken his situation for granted — he had let this house become too much his home. Had he come only and occasionally at night, had he returned always for the day to the house at Malvern, had he not behaved as though Bettina were his wife, would it have been better?

She opened the door. “I have everything on the table,” she said softly. “I didn’t expect you, so there’s only what we’d have — cornbread and milk and salad greens.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said, and went in and sat down. He helped the children to food and helped her, and then himself. But every time he lifted his eyes he found the children watching him timidly. They were too sensitive. They had been born in doubt and they knew their fate was uncertainty. He did not speak and Bettina, too, was silent. He looked at her and saw the shadows under her eyes.

“You look tired,” he said. “You’d better rest yourself.”

“Will you come back tonight — after you’ve seen — him?”

“I’ll come back and tell you everything,” he promised.

He rose early from the meal, refusing the fruit she had taken from a hastily opened jar for dessert. He kissed her smooth forehead, and touched the children’s cheeks and went away.

In the long dining room at Malvern, Pierce sat at the head of his table and ate silently. He was aware of the children’s voices chattering about him and now and again he forced himself to listen and to answer a question, while Lucinda’s smooth voice rippled in and out of the children’s talk. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with what he had done. As usual, he told himself, he had been too hasty after too long delay. He put off a distasteful task endlessly and then when it could be put off no longer he did it badly. Now he had to talk with Tom tonight, when he would be tired and less patient than he ought to be.

He put down his fork and knife, aware that he was eating too much. When he was upset about something he ate without knowing what he was doing. He had consumed two helpings of the braised breast of guinea hen and too much sweet corn and mashed potatoes. Green stuff he could not abide. Lucinda’s salads he called rabbit food.

“What’s dessert?” he asked Marcus, the old butler, superintending the two young black boys who were waiting.

“Frozen raspberry custard, suh,” Marcus said in his politely gentle voice.

Pierce sighed. It was his favorite sweet. He wondered irritably if he were greedy. Sometimes, surveying his naked body in the mirror in the new bathroom, he saw unwillingly that he was growing heavy. Good food was an attribute of Malvern and its rich life. Not to have set a good table was unthinkable, not to have eaten would have been folly. If he were greedy it was not for food alone, but for all that meant life. He ate the frozen custard slowly, savoring it. He must remember not to eat hastily without tasting to the full what was in his mouth. There was no use in merely filling his belly.

Lucinda rose. “Come, my dears,” she said to the girls. “We will leave Papa and John. Pierce, I feel tired and shall make my siesta longer than usual.”

“I’ll be out in the stables,” he replied.

He reached out his arm and Sally stepped into its curve and he gave her a squeeze and brushed her cheek with his moustaches. “I have something for you,” he whispered. “Tonight when you’re in bed I’ll come up and give it to you.”

Her eyes shone and she nodded and skipped away, her skirts swinging above her ankles. He was left alone with John, and the boy, to his annoyance, began to talk about Tom.

“Uncle Tom says doubtless I shall make a better scholar than either Martin or Carey.”

Pierce poured himself a glass of French wine. Some day he planned to make better wine than this from his own grapes. He had fine grapes and he made wines, but he declared often that he had not yet learned the secret of the transubstantiation of their water into wine. Each year he tasted his product and threatened to import a French wine maker. Lucinda did not care for wine and protested at this further complication of their household. He poured half a glass of wine for John.

“But I don’t like wine, Papa,” the boy protested.

“Learn to drink like a man,” Pierce commanded him, “and don’t set yourself above your brothers. Books are a very little part in a man’s life. Your brother Martin has the best seat I ever saw on a horse and Carey is very clever.”

He had pricked John’s pride, for the boy had an instinctive and uncontrollable fear of horses. He said nothing but his face flushed as he touched the glass to his lips and set it down again.

“Even Sally rides much better than you do,” Pierce went on. He was always stern to his sons and now he realized unwillingly, for he wanted to be a just man, that he was sterner toward John than any of them.

“Sally likes to ride and I don’t,” John murmured.

“A man ought to ride well whether he likes it or not,” Pierce retorted.

“Uncle Tom doesn’t,” John murmured again.

“I hope you do not intend to model yourself entirely on your Uncle Tom,” Pierce said. He was aware again of his injustice, for he recognized, that the boy hurt him by admiring his uncle too much.

“Drink your wine,” he said abruptly. John’s face hardened but he lifted the glass and drank the wine down like medicine and took up his goblet and gulped down water after it. Pierce flung out his hand and knocked the goblet aside and it fell to the floor in a silvery crash of broken crystal.

“Don’t let me see you do such a thing again!” he shouted. “When I say learn to drink wine I mean learn to like wine!”

“That I cannot do!” John cried at him.

Pierce glared at his son an instant and was suddenly pleased to see that the boy was glaring back at him. He burst into laughter. “Well, never mind,” he said amiably. “Just get out of my sight for a bit.”

“Yes, Papa.” John rose, pushed in his chair and went out of the room slowly, his narrow shoulders held very straight. Pierce watched him, his eyes twinkling under his heavy brows. He might have expected rebellion from the two elder lads, but it was the first he had ever had from John. His own blood told, after all. He felt better.

Then he remembered Tom’s mulatto boy he had seen this morning in Bettina’s yard and he sobered again and got up, sighing noisily, and threw his napkin on the floor. He stalked up to his room and put on his riding clothes and went out into the hot afternoon sun which he loved.

As always when he did not know how to solve a problem, he went to his stables. There at least life was simple and uncomplicated, for horses were better than people. One could control their propagation, at least, he thought, and grinned at himself. Inside the cool and aromatic stable the stalls were empty, except for the one where his mare had foaled a week before. She had her foal with her, and he could hear Jake mumbling over it.