Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

“Mother asks, how will you have your eggs?” she inquired, in a soft clear voice.

“Scrambled, please,” Pierce said. Tom’s daughter was an exceedingly pretty girl and he smiled at her as he sat down. “Did I hear you singing?” he demanded,

She flushed. “I forgot,” she said. “Mother had told me to be quiet.”

“It was a pleasant way to wake,” Pierce said. He began to eat the sliced oranges in front of him.

“Bring the coffee, my dear,” Tom said gently. He who knew Pierce so well could feel the trembling of foundations within his brother. Pierce was behaving wonderfully, out of the natural goodness of his nature, but change must not come too fast.

“You had your breakfast?” Pierce shot up his dark eyebrows.

“We have our family breakfast early,” Tom replied. “Leslie has to go to work at seven, and the children like to play in the garden in the cool of the morning.”

“I haven’t seen Leslie — this time,” Pierce said.

“He’ll be home for lunch,” Tom replied.

The door opened and his second daughter stood there, a plate of toast in her hand.

“Come in, Lettice, while the toast’s hot,” he said.

She came tiptoeing in, trying to take great care, her fringed eyes wide, and her tongue between her lips.

Pierce could not keep back his smile for children. “That’s wonderful toast,” he said heartily. “I want a piece right now.”

Something in her shy and dewy look made him think of Georgia. She had Georgia’s softness of contour. He watched her while she tiptoed away again, not speaking a word.

“Handsome children, Tom,” he said.

“I think so,” Tom agreed.

Both brothers knew that the dam they were building with their scanty commonplace words must break. They must open their hearts to each other. Pierce must know Tom’s life, and he must tell Tom everything. They were too close, strangely closer than ever after these years of separation.

“Sally here?” Pierce muttered.

Tom shook his head. “Not yet this morning.”

“Hold her off, will you?” Pierce did not look at him. “I have to get things straight myself, Tom.”

“I know,” Tom said gently. His voice, always deep, had taken on a still deeper quality. The harshness of youth had disappeared from it. No, there was something else. Pierce recognized it. Tom had so long heard Bettina’s voice and the soft voices of her people that his own voice had grown slow and deep.

“Georgia knew you and I would have to talk,” Tom went on. “She is taking Sally to shop this morning.”

“She’s staying with Sally at the hotel, isn’t she?” Pierce asked.

“Of course,” Tom replied. He hesitated and then went on resolutely. “Pierce, Georgia wants to leave Malvern. We’ve always told her we had a room for her when she wanted to come. Now she does.”

To save himself Pierce could not answer naturally. “I don’t know what Lucinda will say,” he murmured. He took a fourth slice of toast which he did not want.

“Georgia is afraid of that,” Tom said. “But I told her I knew you would wish her to do as she likes.”

“Did she tell you to talk to me?” Pierce inquired.

“No, as a matter of fact she asked me not to,” Tom replied frankly. “I do it on my own responsibility. Let her stay, Pierce. She’s never been a servant.”

“I know that,” Pierce said. The toast grew dry in his mouth and he swallowed coffee to wash it down. Then he touched his lips with his napkin and got up.

“Let’s get away together, Tom,” he said. “Somehow my heart feels ready to break over you.”

“You must not feel so,” Tom said quickly. “I am happy, Pierce. You’ll see—”

They went out in silence to the study and Tom closed the door and turned the key.

As though the whole house knew the door had been closed and the key turned a new silence surrounded them. The garden was full of sunshine, but there was not a voice in it of child or of bird. It was a hot and windless morning. The shades had been partly drawn and the room was darkened. A jug of water stood on the table, frosted and cool and beside it was a bowl of early grapes.

“Bettina knew we’d want to shut ourselves up,” Tom said with a smile. “She knows everything without being told.” He sat down opposite Pierce on an easy chair. “It is a great experience to live with someone like Bettina,” he said, looking straight at Pierce. “Uncanny sometimes, when I feel the thoughts being plucked out of my brain, almost before I’ve thought them!”

“I suppose so,” Pierce mumbled.

Tom held the lead. He filled his pipe and lit it, and went on, his words slow and clear. “It comes, I think, from an inheritance of having to divine what men and women who hold the power over them are thinking and feeling. When I remember that, I am angry. But as a gift, it’s subtle and profound. Bettina is subtle and profound — and deep and clear and honest as a child.”

Pierce could not answer. Let Tom pour himself out! He sat looking at his brother.

Tom looked back with his fearless blue gaze. “What I want to make clear to you, Pierce, before we begin any talk at all is that never, for one second, not in the day nor in the depths of the night, do I regret what I have done. The life I live is the one life I can live — anything else would have been meaningless for me. … I am happy, I tell you, to the bottom of my being.”

“I will believe that,” Pierce said, “but don’t pretend to me that it has been easy, Tom, for that I won’t believe.”

“It wasn’t easy when I was trying to live in two worlds,” Tom said. “But I have to thank Lucinda for showing me,” he added.

“Lucinda?”

“Yes, Lucinda threw me out of your house that night, more or less — remember?”

“No,” Pierce said.

“Yes, you do, Pierce,” Tom said. “Be honest, man! If I had wanted to live at Malvern I’d have had to give up Bettina.”

“I don’t think Lucinda is unreasonable,” Pierce answered. “She wouldn’t have said anything — if Bettina hadn’t lived there by the side of the road — and the children—”

“She wouldn’t have said anything if I had kept Bettina hidden, and the children illegitimate,” Tom said harshly.

“Well,” Pierce said hesitating—“You know how she — how we all, for that matter — were brought up.”

“The war — those long hours in prison,” Tom said abruptly. “I had the chance to think myself through. If I had done what Lucinda wanted — it would have meant that I had — lost the war — so far as I, was concerned. Don’t you see, Pierce, when I knew I loved Bettina — I had to love her openly? The children are ours, hers and mine, could I be ashamed of that? If so, then what was all the shooting for?”

Pierce felt Lucinda’s hands on his heart. “Still and all, Tom, you have to acknowledge — that if all the white men who have — have — had children by — by—”

“Go on,” Tom said coldly.

Pierce went on doggedly. The sweat sprang under the roots of his hair—“If they insisted on — on making the whole thing legal — where would women, like Lucinda be? Tom — you can’t just think of yourself. You’ve got to think of our race.”

Tom bit the end of his pipe. The two brothers stared at each other. Then Tom spoke. “I do think only of myself and I shall think only of myself. What any race does is not my business. I am one man — Tom Delaney. If I act with what I consider honor, if that honor gives me satisfaction, if I am happy and my children are happy, then I consider that I have done my duty by the race to which I belong.”

“All right, Tom,” Pierce said steadily. “You’ve been wanting to say it this long time to me, I reckon. Now you’ve said it.”