Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

PIERCE WAS CONFRONTED WITH news as he stepped into the hall at Malvern. Martin was waiting for him, watching the front door through the open door of the library, and Lucinda had a servant posted to tell her of his arrival. She swept down the wide stairs, holding her skirts with both hands, and Martin leaped out of the chair where he had been reading the county newspaper. They greeted Pierce so affectionately and with such excitement that he smiled at them drily.

“What now?” he inquired.

“Father, Mary Louise has set the day of our wedding,” Martin said solemnly. “The eighteenth of June!”

“And that means the girls and I must get our gowns,” Lucinda interrupted her son, “and the porcelain service you’ve ordered from England — Oh, Pierce, it can’t possibly get here in time!”

“Mary Lou and I won’t need it for three months, Mother — we’ll be in Europe—” Martin broke in.

“We have plenty of dishes, I hope,” Pierce said. “They’ll be coming here to Malvern to live, Luce — good news, Martin.”

“Every bride should have her own porcelain and silver,” Lucinda said firmly.

He was at the stairs, feeling weary and anxious for the quiet of his own room. Joe was ahead of him with the luggage.

“Pierce, do hurry — do!” Lucinda urged him. “There’s so much to plan.”

“I will,” he promised—“but I’d like a bite to eat, my dear.”

“I’ll order a lunch for you on a tray — we finished an hour ago,” Lucinda said.

He inclined his head, smiled at his son, and walked slowly upstairs. The weariness was more than that of not sleeping well on the train. He felt shaken and bewildered, his security threatened, and by himself. He felt that in some secret fashion he had betrayed Malvern and his family, although nothing that had passed between him and Georgia was shameful — actually, how little shameful, when compared to Lucinda’s own father, who had taken mistresses as a matter of course, from among his slaves. But Lucinda had never considered her father’s children by slaves as her kin, by the remotest drop of blood. Had she seen him, Pierce, her husband, talking with Georgia, as he had done, she could never have forgiven him. Therefore he would never tell her, lest peace be destroyed in his house.

His ancestors had built Malvern for the ages, and a war, unforeseen and terrible, had nearly wrecked what they had built. By chance Malvern had escaped and he had carried on the building, strengthening and improving the place until it had become a symbol of safety for himself and his children and their children. But he knew now that neither he nor they were safe. He perceived dimly the essential difference between himself and Tom. Tom had projected himself and his life into the future. He had built a house not made with hands. His love, the love which had grown so strangely under the very roofs of Malvern, had given him a home and security. “I’ve bolstered the past,” Pierce thought. “Tom’s built for the future.” But he would never have understood this had it not been for Georgia.

In his own rooms he dismissed Joe and stood looking out of the long windows that faced the avenue of oaks winding to the gates. What a strange chance it had been that into Malvern had come the two women, gentle and beautiful, to serve and yet never to be servants! If Bettina and Georgia had not been here, if there had only been Jake and Joe and old Annie and Phelan, and all the crew of ignorant black folk, he and Tom would have been different men. Those black folk belonged to the past, but Georgia and Bettina did not.

He sat down and put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He saw Georgia again as she had looked beside him on the hill, the sun on her faultless skin. Her eyes, so exquisitely shaped and colored, were lit with pure intelligence. That was her fascination for him, that within her golden beauty and clear simplicity there should dwell high intelligence and sensitive feeling.

Lucinda opened the door and saw him thus and cried out, “Pierce, are you ill?”

He let his hands fall and tried to smile. “No — only tired, my dear.”

“Something is wrong!”

“Nothing except large vague general things,” he replied.

“I insist that you tell me,” she demanded.

“I’m troubled for the future, my dear—”

“You mean the railroad?”

“The railroad is only part of it — perhaps our whole nation is only part of it—” he said slowly.

She lost interest. “Oh, that — Pierce, really, we haven’t time for such things.” She came in and sat down. “I want to take the girls to New York. It’s the only possible way to get our gowns in time. I have decided on a pale hyacinth blue for myself, with silver lace — very narrow. Sally and Lucie are bridesmaids and they will wear daffodil yellow — I want to show the Wyeths that we are quite as good as they — although Malvern is in West Virginia, it is only just over the border. If it hadn’t been for the war—”

“Do as you like,” he said absently.

She was suddenly angry. “Pierce, I don’t believe you care at all that Martin is going to be married — our eldest son!”

He roused himself at this. “I do care, Luce. Maybe that’s why I feel so troubled. I don’t believe the world is going to get easier for the children. I don’t know what’s ahead—”

“Really, Pierce!” Lucinda cried. “Of all times to talk so! Why, you said yourself only a few days ago that things were better — the strikes put down, and the depression over—” Her prettiness suddenly disappeared in a sharp look. “You’ve been to visit Tom again,” she said.

Her shrewdness confounded him. Then he recovered. “Yes, I have been to see Tom,” he said.

She flushed swiftly from neck to hair, a deep and furious pink. “I suppose Georgia is there,” she said.

He looked at her, not knowing how to answer her. She would never understand, however he tried to tell her, that she was not threatened by Georgia. He could never make her understand how he felt about Georgia, that it was not love — not love of a woman. He could never make her comprehend that Georgia was a revelation to him of a truth which he did not yet fully comprehend in himself. In his hesitation he was speechless. She stared at him, he saw the flush drain from her face until it was dead white and her eyes were the color of frost.

“Luce!” he cried in alarm.

But she did not answer. She went away and closed the door behind her.

He leaped to his feet to stride after her, to seize and compel her to listen to him. But what would he say? He did not know. He sat down again and so sat for a while, the house very silent about him. Would she tell Martin — whatever it was she feared? He pressed his lips together firmly, got up, washed, and changed his clothes. When he went downstairs he looked at himself — he made sure of himself before his mirror. At the bottom of the stairs he went into the dining room. A tray was on the table. Lucinda was there and with her Martin. He knew the moment he met his son’s eyes that she had said nothing. He glanced at her but she looked away from him and took her seat at the table and poured his coffee.

“Well, Martin,” he said gently. There was something tender and touching in the young man’s joy. Nothing must spoil it.

“Father—” Martin began. “I reckon I’m too excited to talk,” he said. He broke off, and their eyes met.

Pierce smiled. “I know, my son.”

So had he felt on the day when Lucinda had set the day for their marriage. He remembered her loveliness, slender and delicate. He turned to her. “We remember, don’t we?” he murmured.

She looked back at him with eyes so cold and hard that he all but gasped. Did she hate him? But for what? He hastened to hide himself and her from their son.