Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

Tom drew a deep breath. “Yes!” he cried. “I’ve said it.”

“All right, Tom,” Pierce repeated. “What next?”

Tom laughed. “It’s your turn,” he retorted.

“There’s nothing much I have to tell,” Pierce said mildly. “Malvern is about what I’d planned, you know. Martin is finishing this year at the University and then he thinks he’ll take up farming with me. He wants to go into cattle in a big way. Carey wants to be a lawyer, I reckon. John will enter in the fall. I don’t understand him very well. He doesn’t like horses. Sally — you’ve seen Sally! Lucie is Lucinda in small type. That’s all my children.”

He spoke half sadly and Tom leaned on the arms of his chair, “Where’s your heart, Pierce?” he inquired softly.

“Well, Tom, I don’t know,” Pierce answered. He wanted to open his heart and he did not know how. He had not for so long opened it even to himself. He smiled wryly at his brother. “Sometimes I wonder if being so busy about farming and horses and building and all the hundred and one things that go on around a place like Malvern haven’t pretty well dried up my heart.”

He considered telling Tom about John MacBain and Molly and decided he would not. It was not important enough to him. He remembered with sour sweet discomfort the day that Georgia had knelt before him — and this he could not tell. He did not know what it meant and he preferred not to know.

“I’m glad Georgia is going to live here,” he said with such seeming irrelevance that Tom looked surprised. “I mean,” Pierce said, “I feel she’s very lonely now at Malvern, and while I can’t help it and it’s none of my business, I know it’s not the place for her. Joe wants to marry her — but I know that’s impossible.”

“I should think so,” Tom said with indignation.

Pierce hastened away from the smouldering coals. He had no wish to see them blaze into the atmosphere of this room. The air of freedom in which Tom lived made him at once envious and afraid. He veered away from himself. “I suppose if I were to say what concerns me most, it is the state of the nation. Tom, sometimes I wonder why we fought the war. Things are in a worse mess than ever.”

Tom looked at him with calm, waiting eyes. So would he view any turmoil from now until eternity, Pierce thought ruefully. Only out of complete personal satisfaction could a man so look at the struggles of others.

“These strikes,” he went on gloomily. “They’ve broken out all over the country. Tom, what does it mean? I’ve been so busy at Malvern I haven’t kept up. My dividends came in as steady as sunrise until a year or two ago. The depression has hit everybody — wouldn’t you think the railroad workers would see it reasonable that their wages have to be cut?”

“They don’t see why business is bad,” Tom returned. “Who does?” Pierce retorted irritably. He felt on his own ground again. “Who on earth knows why business goes up and down like this? We have to take the bad with the good.”

“Their good is so small — their bad so nearly — nothing,” Tom observed.

Pierce looked at his brother with deep suspicion. “Tom, you aren’t a communist!”

“What makes you think I am?” Tom countered.

“It would explain a lot of things,” Pierce said.

“You mean it would explain my marriage,” Tom said.

“Well—” Pierce muttered.

Tom broke in. “No, I’m not a communist. I’m a schoolmaster, and outside my home and my children that’s all I’m interested in. I’ve made my revolution, Pierce. Let other men make theirs.”

“People talk about revolution,” Pierce said. “What does it get anybody?”

“Mine brought me everything I wanted,” Tom said, smiling.

“I wish you’d speak sensibly,” Pierce cried. “What I want to know is — do you think these strikes are being fomented by foreigners over in Europe?”

Tom replied mildly, “I don’t know, Pierce. But I do know that when men are frightened and discontented they gather around any man who is not afraid.”

He was pressing fresh tobacco into his pipe and he did not look up. “I know that because in a small way people gather around me here in this street. Nobody even in this town knows or cares about — people like Bettina and Georgia — men and women of intelligence — children of slaves wanting to be free—”

“Niggras?” Pierce interposed cruelly.

“Yes,” Tom said.

Pierce looked at him curiously. “Tom, you mix around with niggras all the time?”

“Inside this town,” Tom said in his deep steady voice, “there is a little secret world. Men and women and children inhabit it. They have their homes. They are friends, they make music, they listen to music. Some of the theaters here let them come in, some don’t. We all went to hear Eric Tyne.” He looked at Pierce and smiled. “He sat in that very chair where you’re sitting. He came into our world — world-sized people do. Edwin Booth—” Tom broke off, and smiled again.

Pierce stared at him in silence.

“The people in this secret world know all the places that let them come in,” Tom went on. “They go where they can be free and they stay away from the places — and the people — who want to push them down again. It’s a world within a world you might call it — but I call it the world of tomorrow — the pilot world. We’re bringing our children up in it — they’ll be ready—”

“Ready for what?” Pierce asked abruptly.

“Ready for tomorrow,” Tom said. Tears came into his eyes but he looked through them steadfastly at his brother.

After Tom had left him Pierce sat on in the study alone for awhile. Noon came and in the hall he heard Sally’s voice, and then Georgia’s. He dreaded to go out and meet them. Could he be natural and himself in this house? And was his child, Sally, at home here? He grew solemn at the thought. Sally mixing with such people! What if one of them wanted to marry her? Lucinda would never forgive him. But could he forgive himself? His gorge rose and he got up and paced the floor. He’d take her home with him, of course — tomorrow, anyway. And he would not allow her to come here again. The horror of his thinking impelled him to the door and he went out into the hall and followed the voices across into the sitting room. There Sally sat, Tom’s baby in her arms, holding him as she had held her dolls. She looked up at her father and met his troubled eyes.

“Papa, did you ever see such an adorable baby?”

Thus she postponed his questions and thus she brought him into the circle of the house. Georgy was at her side and Lettice was staring at her, forefinger in her mouth. The children were brushed and clean for their midday meal. The door opened and a tall lad came in. It was Leslie. He stood still, gazing with wary shyness at Pierce.

“Leslie?” Pierce asked. This was Tom’s son! He looked unsmiling at the grave boy. Intelligent eyes — too sad — clever thin face, delicate lips — only the extravagant curling eyelashes and the waving hair — but the boy was three-fourths white—

“Yes,” Leslie said.

Pierce put out his hand and Leslie smiled, and put his own narrow dark hand into it. A good boy, Pierce told himself, a fine boy — own cousin to his sons! But Martin would never acknowledge that.

Then the door opened and Georgia came in.

“Luncheon is ready, please,” she said, as though at Malvern. She looked at Pierce frankly, smiled slightly, and closed the door again.

But nothing else was at all like Malvern. Tom sat at the head of the long table and Bettina at the foot, and Georgia at Tom’s right and Sally at his left, and Pierce at Bettina’s right. He kept saying to himself, “This is Tom’s house — this is Tom’s family.” He ate his food, finding it difficult to speak. Once he asked Leslie what he did, and listened to his reply that he clerked at the store for the summer but that in the autumn he would go back to school.