Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

He got out of the cab before the whitewashed stone house, paid the cabman and opened the white-painted gate. He walked down the path to the front door and rang the bell. A maid in a white frilled apron opened the door. She greeted him quietly and asked him to come in. At the same moment he heard light footsteps on the stair and Georgy ran down. She stood still upon seeing him, uncertain, as all Tom’s children were still uncertain of him. He saw the doubt in her dark eyes and felt compunction. After all, these children were not to blame for being born.

He held out his arms unexpectedly, and with a rush of wonder she came into them. He felt her thin young arms hug him. Then he stepped back. “You’ve grown, my child,” he said.

She smiled, her teeth very white. “I do grow,” she said. Her voice had a lovely musical lilt, and he noticed it for the first time.

“Is my brother Tom at home?” he asked.

“We expect Father in about an hour,” she replied. “He and Mother went to see some pictures at the art gallery.”

“Nobody home but you?” he asked.

“Aunt Georgia is upstairs,” she replied.

There was the briefest pause. He put down his hat and stick on a table.

“I wonder if you two could give me some tea?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. She skipped upstairs ahead of him, and he heard her calling, “Aunt Georgia — someone’s here — I’m going to make tea!”

So she avoided the use of his name, as they all did. Even Bettina in all these years had managed without speaking his name. There was a delicacy in them that was too proud to presume upon relationship. He appreciated the quality but was somehow conscience-smitten because of it. Then he went into the upstairs parlor which had become Georgia’s own.

There was no use in pretending that the sight of her did not move him. But what it was that he felt he did not know and would not discover. Something was released in him, a tension broke. He wanted only to sit in her presence and draw his breath in great sighs of relief.

She sat by the open window, dressed as usual in a full soft white dress. She turned her face toward him and her dark eyes were liquid and calm. She did not smile nor speak a word. “Georgia,” he said. He sat down in the chair opposite her and gazed at her and she gazed back at him in silence.

He brought himself back with effort. “Well, how are you?”

“Quite well,” she replied. “You look well,” she added.

“I’m getting old,” he said gently.

“It’s good,” she murmured.

“You don’t change,” he said.

She clasped her soft beautiful hands on her lap and he looked at them. He had never touched even her hand. Now he put out his own hand.

“After all these years I suppose I may?” he said abruptly.

Her creamy face flushed delicately. Then she put out her right hand and he took it between both his. The blood beat in his ears.

“I want to be honest with you,” he said. “I don’t know what it is that I feel when I am with you — but something very comforting. I wish you could live in my house again, Georgia. My house has not been the same without you. Even now I — we — miss you.”

“I can’t live there,” she murmured.

“I know that,” he said. “I don’t ask it.”

He pressed her hand and laid it softly on her knee and sat back in his chair. “You and I — we’ve never talked out to each other. Now — I want to, Georgia.”

“Yes,” she said, “it’s time. I’ve always thought that when we began to get old — we could.”

They heard the brisk footsteps of Georgy coming up the stair. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Will you drive with me into the country? I’ll tell Tom.”

“Yes,” she said, and bent her head. He saw the softly parted hair, and the downcast lashes, the turn of her lips.

“Here’s the tea,” Georgy cried at the door, “and I made cinnamon toast—”

He moved through the rest of the day in a strange lassitude of mind and body. In all these years he had not spoken to Georgia of himself nor of her. And yet he had known always that she waited unchanged. Tom and Bettina came home. He heard their voices and footsteps and the children’s voices. Then he heard Tom’s steps along the hall to the guestroom where he was sitting.

He had never slept under Tom’s roof since his first visit. But he had said to Georgy as she cleared away the tea things, “I shall stay here, my child, if you have a room for me.”

Her face lit with joy. “Oh — will you?” she breathed. “Of course — the guestroom — it’s always ready—”

“Then I will go to it — I am tired.” He had been touched by her joy.

She had brought him into this cool green and white room and had tiptoed away. He had closed the door, frightened and bewildered by the depths of his feeling and yet he was calm. He wanted to sleep — to sleep and rest, and yet he was not sleepy. He sat down in a deeply cushioned chair and leaned back and closed his eyes. Now he was face to face with something that he knew was inevitable, that he had always known was inevitable. Whatever was to come, he had at last met the unavoidable. Whatever it was he had forbidden himself he would forbid no longer.

Tom knocked at the door gently and he said, “Come in,” and his brother came in.

“Are you ill?” Tom exclaimed.

“No,” Pierce said.

“But you’re white as a sheet!”

“Tom, I’m frightened and relieved — but I don’t know what I am going to do—”

Tom sat down and gazed at him with anxiety. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know,” Pierce said. “But I am going to sleep here tonight, Tom. And I have asked Georgia to let me talk with her tomorrow — a long talk — such as I have never allowed myself.”

Tom’s face grew stern. “To what end, Pierce?”

“I don’t know,” Pierce said. “When I know I’ll tell you honestly, Tom — or she will.”

Pierce dismissed the driver and took the carriage himself. He was ashamed of his involuntary and yet surprised relief at the fact that no one would realize that Georgia was — not a white woman. He had driven along the empty side streets into the roads which led most quickly to the country.

“I don’t know why I didn’t want to talk inside the house,” he said frankly. They had scarcely spoken at all as he drove. She had smiled once or twice. He had glanced at her and from her calm had grown calm himself.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said.

The mild day was almost windless and the afternoon was bright. No one had been at the door to see them go. Tom had made an excuse of not being able to get back from school until late, and the children did not come back at noon. Bettina had gone to visit a friend. The house had been empty when they left it, and he knew it would be empty when they got back.

Outside the city limits he drove up a winding lane which was hidden by trees until it came to the top of a hill. There he stopped. “This looks like our hill,” he said. He waved his whip at the view. “We can enjoy the world spread before us while we talk.”

He fastened the horse to a tree and she put her hand in his and stepped out of the carriage. Even today she had worn her soft white muslin frock. The shawl around her shoulders was white wool, and her bonnet-shaped straw hat was white.

“Here’s a log — and I’ll put the robe down for us to sit on.”

She let him serve her, and when he had made ready she sat down and put back her shawl from her shoulders. She did not look at him. It was impossible to tell from her face what she thought. She was submissive and gentle and full of dignity. He did not dare touch her hand. Indeed, he must not.

“You have been living far away all these years,” he said. “I don’t know how to begin.”