Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

Pierce yawned. “You always were a gloomy fellow, John. Come on to bed. A night’s sleep will bring back your commonsense. What’s Europe got to do with us?”

John shook his head and poured two small glasses of whiskey from the big cut glass decanter on the table. They lifted their glasses and drank to one another, and marched up the broad stairs side by side. Behind them a silent liveried servant put out the lamps and set the screen across the fireplace.

In the wide upstairs hall John opened a heavy mahogany door and Pierce stood on the threshold of his room. Then they heard Molly’s voice. Her maid had opened the door opposite, and over the low footboard of her enormous bed, they saw Molly enthroned among silken pillows.

“Come in here, you two!” she called. “Pierce, you needn’t mind me — you’re just like a brother to me, damn you!”

They laughed, Pierce awkward for a moment. And then they went and stood at the foot of Molly’s bed. She looked very pretty indeed, in her blue satin nightgown and lace cap tied with blue ribbons. Her ruddy hair was braided and hung in plaits over her shoulders. Her white arms were bare and she threw down her book.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said frankly. “I’m worried to death. Pierce, are you afraid?”

“Of what?” he asked cautiously. He did not believe in talking about business with any woman.

“Those awful communists!” she wailed. “They want to take everything away from us!”

“Nonsense,” he said smiling. “We’re a civilized country, thank God.”

“Think of what the rabble did in France!” she cried.

“Think of what they didn’t,” he reminded her. “The palaces are still there and yours will be too, my dear — don’t worry!”

She was looking at him with bold bright eyes, and Pierce involuntarily glanced at John. He was staring at the rose-flowered carpet, the lines of his mouth saturnine.

“Goodnight, Molly—” Pierce said.

“Goodnight, Pierce,” she replied, and made a face at him.

They went back to Pierce’s room and Pierce laughed a little when he entered it. It was enormous, paneled in black walnut and curtained with red velvet.

“Napoleon might have slept in that,” he said cheerfully, staring at the tented, triple-sized bed.

John smiled drily. “I believe he did,” he remarked. “Though how these fellows get around to sleep in so many beds—”

Pierce laughed again. “I wouldn’t have it at Malvern for a pretty penny,” he said frankly.

Out of the darkness a huge brass lamp shone in a circle of yellow light and a coal fire burned and crackled in the black iron grate. John stood before it, warming his coat tails and Pierce stood facing him.

“You remember what I asked you, once?” John inquired. Pierce nodded, unbuttoning his satin waistcoat. “I ask you again,” John said firmly. “There’s a fellow hanging around Molly these days — you know Henry Mallows?”

“Yes,” Pierce said.

“I don’t want him to father any child of mine,” John said with feeling. “A sissy, if I ever saw one!”

Pierce took off his coat and hung it over a chair. “Doesn’t his wife—”

“His wife,” John said with bitterness, “is used to loose ways on her own account, from all I hear. Those lords and ladies! Pierce, I’m fond of you. I could love any child of yours — as I’d love my own.”

“I’ve had all the children I’m going to have, John.” He spoke lightly, but his head swam. A woman’s face sprang before his eyes, and he was shocked to discover that it was Georgia’s as she had knelt before him. He turned away abruptly. Joe had unpacked his bags and his nightshirt lay on the big bed.

“I reckon I’ll turn in, John.” He faced his friend, smiled, and walked toward him and clasped John’s long bony hand.

“Is that final?” John asked.

“Final,” Pierce said.

“Then I won’t ask you again.”

“No, John.”

Long into the night Pierce lay thinking and arranging his life. He was used to himself. Since he had been sixteen years old he had suffered from wild and brief flashes of interest in pretty women. He had never taken these feelings seriously, knowing them the common lot of most men. Nor had he ever spoken of them to Lucinda. They were no more significant than a wayward dream to be forgotten in the morning. Now carefully he relegated Georgia to such dreams. She was a servant in his house and nothing was more despicable than a man’s folly with his wife’s maid. It was a degradation entirely beneath him. He felt a boyish superiority in refusing to engage himself with Molly, the wife of his friend, and a renewal of devotion to John — good old John, who trusted him so much! He determined that if he had a chance, he would, for John’s sake, talk to Molly and tell her not to destroy her husband’s happiness. Upon the calm of moral rectitude he fell asleep in Napoleon’s bed and did not dream.

The next morning, waked by Joe’s footsteps creeping around the room, he lay in lazy comfort. At Malvern there was always the weather to rouse him early. As soon as the dawn broke he had the landsman’s curiosity to know what the sky was and whether the sun would shine. Once out of bed he could not go back to it. But here in the city it did not matter what the weather was. It was simply inconvenient or convenient. Today it was convenient for home-going. A broad bar of bright winter sunshine lay across the floor and paled the flames leaping in the grate. Joe, holding up his master’s trousers critically, met his eyes across them.

“You better change to your good grey pants today, Master Pierce,” he said gravely. “Theseyere creases didn’t set with all the pressin’ I did.”

“All right,” Pierce yawned and stretched mightily. “We’re going home so I might as well look pretty.”

He felt gay and relieved of his problems. Today he would talk to Molly and clear his debt of friendship to John. Alone with Joe it suddenly occurred to him that he would speak of Georgia, and tell him he must marry her. He piled his pillows and lay back on them. Joe was lifting the grey trousers from the hanger in the big mahogany wardrobe.

“Joe!” he said suddenly.

Joe jumped and clutched the trousers. “Lordamighty, Marse Pierce, why you yell at me like that?” he asked reproachfully.

Pierce laughed. “I didn’t mean to yell — I just thought of something. Joe, I told Georgia that if you and she would get married I’d let you have the little stone tenant house.”

“It’s a mighty nice house,” Joe said thoughtfully, smoothing the creases of the trousers.

“Well?” Pierce asked.

“Georgia’s a mighty nice girl,” Joe said still more thoughtfully. “But I reckon she won’t marry no colored man.”

“She can’t marry anybody else,” Pierce said positively.

“No, sir — reckon she cain’t,” Joe agreed.

“Have you asked her?” Pierce inquired.

“I mintion it, yes, sir — about a thousand times, I reckon. She always says the same thing. ‘You go ’way fum me, Joe’—that’s all she say — don’t say nothin’ else but just that. So I goes away.”

“You try her again,” Pierce commanded.

“Kin I tell her you said I was to?” Joe looked at him with a gleam of hope in his small dark eyes.

Pierce considered, staring into the canopy of the bed.

“Yes,” he said finally, “tell her I said so. Tell her I want you two to get married and have children — right away.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said doubtfully. “Thank you kindly, Marster Pierce.”

He went away and Pierce got up and made a great splash of cold water in the flowered porcelain basin on the washstand. Then he dried himself before the fire. There was a mirror above the mantel and he saw his tall firm white body reflected in it. He would have been less than a man had he not felt complacently that he did not look his age by ten years.