Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

“What are you going to make of yourself?” he inquired.

“I don’t know yet,” Leslie replied. His young voice was quiet and courteous and without hint of subservience.

A colored maid served the meal well, and once an elderly woman came in from the kitchen with a hot dish. Pierce ate with appreciation, in spite of the strangeness, for the food was good and delicately flavored. The children were gay. Once Small Tom cried in his high chair and once Georgy fell into an argument with Lettice. Tom corrected them firmly.

Pierce sat in a dream, seeing everything. Again and again his eyes came back to Georgia. She was removed from him by the length of the table and she did not once speak to him. She spoke very little to anyone. His eyes caught hers once and both looked away quickly. Only Sally was herself.

The meal was over and suddenly he knew he could stand no more of Tom’s house. He must get away into his own world again, for here he was confused to the depths of his being.

He motioned to Sally and she came tripping to his side. “Come out in the garden with me,” he ordered. They stepped out of the open French windows upon the narrow brick terrace and from it into the garden path. She clung to his arm.

“Sally, I want you to come away with me,” he said.

“Oh, Papa!” she wailed. “I’m having a lovely time.”

“I need you,” he said sternly. “I’m lonely and all mixed up in my mind. Let’s you and I go back together to Malvern, honey. I want to be alone there for a bit, before your mama and Lucie come back.”

She looked up at him and saw with alarm that his lips were trembling and at once she melted. “Of course, Papa,” she said and squeezed his arm. They walked up and down the length of the garden a few times. “But, Papa — just one thing—”

“Yes?” He did not know what she would ask now after these days.

“Georgia doesn’t want to come back to us.”

“I know,” he said.

“Did she tell you?”

“Tom did.”

“You’ve got to let her stay.”

“Of course—”

“And help Mama not to mind!”

“You and I’ll do that—” He pressed her clasped hands against his side.

When they turned again Georgia was standing in the door and Sally called her.

“Georgia, come here—”

She came down the terrace steps, the sunshine bright upon her white dress. Pierce looked at her with revulsion and admiration. He was afraid of her beauty. The sun revealed her flawless creamy skin, the golden depths of her dark eyes, and he looked down at the path as they paused before her.

“Papa says you may stay, Georgia, and we will make it right with Mama.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Delaney,” Georgia said.

He looked up and met her eyes. “I know you haven’t been very happy at Malvern.”

“Yes — I have been happy,” Georgia answered. “But it is better now for me to leave it — and find my own place.”

He bowed his head, and kept Sally’s hand tight under his arm, and drew her with him into the house, and Georgia stood alone in the garden.

“Poor Papa,” Sally said.

They were back at Malvern again and he and Sally were riding along the familiar woodland paths.. His horse was Beauty’s great-grandchild, and Sally rode her own golden bay that he had bought for her once in Kentucky.

“Explain your pity,” he said gaily. It was good to be safe at home.

“You’re living before the war, Papa,” Sally said smartly.

“You mean I’m old,” he said.

“No — because Martin is just like you. It’s Malvern that does it — all this—”

She waved her riding crop at the rolling green of the hills and blue of mountains beyond. “You made this and Martin inherits it, and neither of you can bear to give it up.”

“Who’s asking us to give it up?” Pierce demanded.

“Nobody, darling — but you’re afraid somebody might!”

“You and Carey and John — you’re more enlightened, I suppose?” he said with heavy pretense at sarcasm.

She shook her head. “I don’t like Carey — he’ll just be a sharp lawyer. Carey has no principle — did you know that, Papa? But John — oh, well, one of these days you’ll quarrel with John and maybe throw him out of the house and he knows it. He’s getting ready for it.”

He was aghast at her intuition. It corroborated his own. He was afraid of his third son. The boy did not reveal himself.

“And you?” he asked, avoiding his fears.

“Oh, Lucie and I — we don’t belong in Malvern anyway — we’ll have to be married off and go somewhere else. It doesn’t matter about women.”

He looked at her lovely face. She held her head high, and he saw only her sweet profile, the red gold hair piled under the little black derby hat. “Sally, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that — you’ll always be my daughter, whomever you marry—”

“Unless I marry someone you don’t like,” she amended and flashed him a smile lit by intense blue eyes.

“I can’t imagine that,” he said gravely.

“You mustn’t imagine what I can or can’t do,” she said willfully.

He felt he must strike now upon this hot iron. “Sally, I sincerely hope the visit to Tom’s house has not upset you.”

She did not answer and he went on. “I confess it upset me very much. Tom has done something, which if many men did it, could destroy our whole nation — our civilization, indeed—”

Sally interrupted him. “I haven’t seen anybody I want to marry yet, if that’s what you mean, Papa.”

He was so relieved that he was impelled to hide it. “I am not thinking only of your marriage, Sally. I am thinking of — of — of the foundations of our country.” He went on reluctantly. “We are a white nation — and we must stay white—”

His eyes met hers, and he was shocked by the brilliant, mocking mischief hers revealed. She burst into laughter.

“Oh, Papa, how funny men are!”

He stared at her, and she took out a tiny lace handkerchief from the breast pocket of her coat and wiped her eyes. “As if Uncle Tom had really done anything unusual! He’s only owned up to it, that’s all.” She was laughing again — high laughter, with an edge of heartbreak in it. “But that is very unusual — I grant you, Papa — and maybe such honesty does threaten the — the nation!”

“Sally!” he cried.

But she shook her head and smiling too brightly she struck her horse hard and galloped ahead of him and disappeared down the long green lane. He let her go. He was frightened at the glimpse she had shown him into herself, and he wanted to see no more.

When he got home there was a telegram from John MacBain asking him to come at once to Chicago. He left, thankfully, without seeing Sally. Lucinda would be home by the time he came back, and the house would be itself again.

He met John in the red plush parlor of the bridal suite of the railroad hotel, and was shocked by his haggard looks. John sat at a small round table drinking whiskey from a cloudy glass tumbler. He had not shaved or washed, and he did not get up when Pierce came in.

“Thank God you’ve come,” he groaned. “I haven’t slept in I don’t know how many nights. Pierce — I got here yesterday from Pittsburgh — there’s only four hundred police here — they can’t handle the mob.”

“That means more war,” Pierce exclaimed.

John nodded. “Want some whiskey?”

“No,” Pierce said.

John poured half a tumbler and drank it down. He got up and wiped his hand across his beard. “You come with me and see what we’re up against — but you better leave that silk hat here — it’ll only be a target for pot shots—”

Pierce took off his hat and followed John into the street. They hailed a horse cab lurking in an alley.