Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

“I’m going to try out that new engine in May,” John went on. “I expect it to make a mile in two minutes, maybe in one.”

Pierce got up restlessly. He paced the room, around the table, passed the window, and came back again to stand before the leaping flames that were roaring up the wide chimney. He said absently, “Strange that the last time we went to Baltimore the country looked as though it were going to pieces! Now we’re all riding high again — I’ll never understand the one or the other.” No, he would not see Georgia again when he went to Tom’s. It was too dangerous. Last time Lucinda—

“We are selling more abroad than we’re buying. That’s why,” John said confidently, “money is coming into the country.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Pierce mused.

He stood gazing into the fire. At one end of a pine log a narrow blue flame darted out like a sword and licked its way through the mass of coals, twice as hot and twice as fierce as ordinary flame.

What had become of the surging mobs of people who had risen to burn the roundhouses and the stations and the houses of the rich in the decade through which they had passed? They were silent now, but for how long? For his lifetime, perhaps — but would Martin be strong enough for the next generation? Nothing had been really solved. Nobody knew, nobody understood, why there had been a crisis or why now the crisis had passed, and until people understood causes—

“There has to be a topdog,” John was saying confidently. “If men like you and me don’t stay on top, Pierce, these radicals and socialists will ride us. And with that lot go the professional reformers and the internationalists — all enemies of the republic, I say.”

“I suppose so,” Pierce said absently. Had he been as single-minded as John MacBain he would have been able to enjoy even Malvern more than he had. His love for Malvern was terrifying, and he knew it was because he felt it always possible that he might lose it. The life he had built up so carefully in beauty and richness and success might collapse. It was more than the danger in the nation. The possibility of weakness was within himself. Lucinda never let him forget that he was Tom’s brother.

Lucinda came in at this moment, black velvet trailing to her feet. She was still so beautiful that he could not fail to see it and to admire her for preserving her gift.

“Are you two men going to spend the evening here?” she demanded. “The guests will come at any moment, Pierce — and Molly is back from her ride, John.”

As soon as Lucinda entered the room, doubt left it. She was sure of herself and of her right to enter and to stay. And then behind her the hall rose to life. The great front door opened with a swirl of snow, voices mingled with laughter, and at the same moment Molly came downstairs and into the library. Molly by heroism had kept her figure slim enough to ride her horse. Her full face was handsome and rosy and her red hair held no grey. She and John were still together but he had ceased to ask her what she did and she went away from him for weeks at a time. Pierce knew because he had found John alone at his Wheeling mansion, wintry and silent, one November day. They had talked business all evening and not once had he mentioned Molly until at midnight they had stood up to part.

“She’s left me for a while, Pierce,” John said with dry lips.

“On a visit,” Pierce said gently.

“Yes — just a visit—” John said. He looked at Pierce with such shame and agony in his eyes that Pierce had looked away.

“The war changed all of us,” he said. “I often wonder what I’d have been — without it. … And Tom, of course—”

“Yes, it wrecked Tom,” John said. He considered Tom as one dead. Then he cleared his throat. “I feel such awful pity for — for Molly, Pierce. I want you to know I don’t blame her. I’m only grateful — she’ll never leave me for good. She’s told me that — I didn’t ask it — but she promised me.”

“Molly’s a good woman,” Pierce had said gravely.

“Yes,” John had replied. Then after a second, “The war wasn’t her fault — nor mine.”

“No,” Pierce had said.

John had looked at him and a strange bewilderment came into his eyes. “Whose fault was it though, Pierce?”

“God knows, I don’t, any more,” Pierce had said. “All that we fought for seemed so clear when we were fighting — those fellows dying! But now — it’s all a murk. Even the ones who were slaves aren’t better off.” He had spoken savagely at that moment. Had there never been a war Tom would have been at Malvern.

Molly came up to him now and slipped her arm through his. Lucinda met his eyes with smiling tolerance. Long ago she had ceased to have any jealousy toward Molly. He knew that. But now sudden perception came into his mind. Had her tolerance begun after that first time he had gone to see Georgia? Had she said to herself, “Let him have anyone except Georgia?” He felt Molly’s plump shoulder pressing his arm and could barely keep himself from moving from her in repulsion at Lucinda’s duplicity.

“Come!” he said, forcing himself to heartiness. “The guests are waiting.”

“John was asking if you’d want to go to Baltimore in October,” he said to Lucinda that night. He sat watching her while she performed the last rites upon her skin. Her maid had brushed and braided her hair and gone away. It was past midnight. The guests were in their rooms.

Lucinda did not look at him. At the mention of Baltimore she stiffened. It had been on a visit to Baltimore that she had discovered that he sometimes saw Georgia. Not that he had to this day acknowledged it — he maintained that he went only to see Tom, and upon that they had quarreled.

“I hope I have the right to see my own brother!” he had insisted coldly.

She had turned to him with dreadful acumen. “As if you could lie to me!” she had cried. “Pierce Delaney, I can see through you as though you were made of glass! You want to see Georgia!”

He had been staggered. She had discovered what he himself had refused to know. Then she had spat out the words at him. “You and your brother Tom!”

He had stared at her, his blood frozen in his veins with terror. “How foul women are,” he had muttered, and he had left the room instantly. They had never spoken of Georgia again.

She did not speak of her now. “Everything depends upon when Martin and Mary Louise decide to be married,” she said lightly.

“I have no desire to go to Baltimore,” he said. “I’m getting too old for such shindigs.”

She laughed at this. “As if you didn’t know you are handsomer than ever!” She came and sat on a footstool at his knee. The glow from the coals in the small brass decorated grate, which she had brought over from England shone upon her face. He felt an amazing tenderness for her and put his hand on her neck. But she slipped from under his touch. “Not tonight,” she said firmly.

He withdrew his hand quickly and with anger. “You don’t allow me even to show you affection, without thinking I—” he broke off.

Lucinda laughed. “I know you too well, my dear,” she said — Then she yawned. “But I have nothing on my conscience. I am a very good wife to you, I’m sure — you are treated well, Pierce, and you know it.”

“I don’t want to be — treated well — as you call it—” he said.

“Now let’s not begin on what you want — at this hour of the night,” she said. She got up quickly and moved about, straightening one small object after another, a luster bowl on the table, a small French clock beside her bed, a Dresden china pair of figures on the mantel, the crystal-hung candlesticks on the mantel.