Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

Pierce smiled. “I know — I was thinking the very same thing about my Sally. It won’t be long—”

“Has she got herself a beau?”

“Six or eight or so,” Pierce said, “but I notice she’s beginning to concentrate.”

“A mighty pretty gyurl,” Wyeth said mournfully, and continuing in the same mournful tone. “How’s cattle over your way? I hyeah you’ve come to be a mighty cattle man.”

“I’m a fool,” Pierce said ruefully. “I reckon I’m trying to buy all the cattle in the States.”

“It’s all right if the market holds,” Wyeth said judicially. He spoke with authority on all subjects. “Though it’s a mighty gamble, if you’ve got nothin but cattle. But you were smart to go on for railroads, too. Thataway a man has two strings to his bow.”

“If both strings don’t break the same year,” Pierce agreed.

“Well, I reckon they got the communists or socialists or whatever they are scotched for good,” Wyeth said gaily. “We can’t allow that sort of internationalism to get in here from foreign countries.”

“No,” Pierce agreed. He wondered what Wyeth would say if he knew about Tom. But nobody knew. It was as if Tom were dead and had been dead for years.

“Not that it ever could happen here,” Wyeth went on heartily. His ruddy cheeks, his long moustache, his fine white hands holding the tall frosty glass were absurdly like the portrait of his own father hanging on the paneled wall behind him. “I’d rather see my daughter dead then married to one of those radicals who believe that black is as good as white.” He held his glass to be refilled. “I like niggahs, don’t I, Henry?” The elderly man servant standing at his side smiled faintly as he bent with the tray. “But I like ’em where they belong — and where they’re happiest.”

“Martin is no radical — so far as I know,” Pierce said mildly.

He wondered if it were weakness that kept him from telling the truth as he saw it to this comfortable man, the truth about Tom, about the strikes, about his own vague fears. Wyeth was perhaps stupid. No, he was not stupid, he was surrounded and isolated by comfort. He had inherited wealth and home and friends as he had inherited his family and its blood. He could be destroyed but not changed.

Pierce allowed a waiting servant to replace his glass while he took in the meaning of these words. The quick and the dead — the wise old phrase came into his mind. The dead were those who would not comprehend and share in change. He thought of Lucinda with a strange foreboding. And she, his wife!

He drank long and deep of the smooth liquid in the silvery cold glass in his hand and quelled the monstrous fears in his mind.

The day passed in a dream of pleasure. The great and ancient house lent itself to the young marriage. Guests came and settled into its shelter, gentle handsome old people, young and beautiful men and women, children excited and gay. Friends whom he had forgotten and relatives he scarcely remembered. A web of kinship seemed to bind them together. Wyeths were related to Carters who were seventh cousins to Delaneys and Pages and Randolphs, and Lees were knit into the blood streams of all. The world grew secure and steady in kinship and common ancestry. In the evening he went with his sons to the stag dinner for Martin, and he sat in silent admiration of the young groom and in pride that the life from his own loins had borne this fruit that would bear again. He was fulfilled before other men. He had everything that a man could want. Had he not?

When at the end of the dinner they rose, glasses in hand to toast his son, he lifted his own glass high and his eyes met Martin’s. The image of his son was dimmed in sudden smarting tears. More than he wanted happiness for himself he wanted Martin to be happy. He wanted Malvern to be the home of the next generation in peace and security. He must devote himself for the rest of his years to building that security.

He was very tender to Lucinda that night and he humbled himself before her.

“This day takes me back, my darling,” he said.

They were alone at last, long after midnight. In the cool high-ceilinged bedroom a great double bed was set between long windows opening to a balcony. He led her out in the moonlight, his arm around her, and for a moment they had gazed over the gleaming landscape. Then they came in together and made ready for sleep. He was ready first and he climbed on the double step and got into the bed. She in her white nightgown was still brushing her hair. So she had done on their wedding night and he had imagined shyness in the long brushing. He knew now that Lucinda was never shy. Nevertheless, he would be gentle with her and win her back to him.

“Your lovely hair,” he said. “I remember the first time I saw it down, like that. You kept brushing it—”

She smiled, not looking at him, and put the brush down. Then she turned down the lamp and stepped up and into the bed beside him. The moonlight from the open doors lay across the floor like a bright carpet.

“I hope Mary Lou will be as beautiful as you are, after their son is grown and ready to be married,” he murmured. He saw the endless vista of the generations ahead and he drew her into his arms. “We’ve made a great family, you and I,” he said.

Still she was silent. He wondered for a moment if she could continue in anger. But her slender body was pliant in his arms. He stifled the impulse to cry out, “Forgive me,” for he had done nothing to forgive. She had been very angry, but for no cause of his. In her own self there was something — what, he could not know, that kept her angry with him for what he was, a man and her husband. He sighed and loosened his arms. She lay for a moment as if surprised, and then of her own accord, firmly she put his hands upon her breasts.

Standing beside Lucinda next day in the little Episcopalian church which had been built by a Wyeth two hundred years before, Pierce listened to Martin declare his vows to the little lace-veiled figure at his side. He was beset by doubts. Why had he not taken more pains to discover what sort of a woman Mary Lou was? Why had he merely accepted her as another pretty girl, sweet-tempered, yielding, feminine, charming — when actually she had the power to make his son happy or wretched?

It was too late—“I, Martin, take thee, Mary Louise, to be my wedded wife—”

It suddenly became more solemn, more portentous than his own marriage had been. For now he knew that marriage was heart and hearth in a man’s life. When it went wrong nothing was right. But his marriage had been good. He loved Lucinda and would love her until he died. What folly to ask more than he had! She had been true to him, faithful to the letter and to the spirit. Poor John MacBain! Lucinda had fitted Malvern as the queen fits the castle. She had given him sons and daughters, superbly she had given him these. Then why was he ungrateful and why was he fearful for his sons? Last night in bed, Lucinda had given herself — no, she had given her body. And he had taken her body. He had strained her in his arms, searching for what he did not have — her complete trust, her whole love.

And then he understood. These he would never have because he was man and she was woman. His maleness she would distrust until she died. His maleness was his weakness against which she would protect herself. Secretly, while she loved him, she hated him because he was a man. And yet as a man she needed him and depended upon him and must please him and sometimes serve him that she might be served, and for this she hated him. Above all men she preferred him — ah, there was no doubt of that — but she hated him.

The organ burst into triumphant music and he looked up, bewildered. While he had been mulling his bitter thoughts his son had been married. The young husband and wife turned and marched down the aisle, Martin’s head high, Mary Lou’s face downcast and tenderly smiling. She pressed her cheek for one brief second against Martin’s arm and he turned his head quickly and looked down at her. Pierce could not bear the sight. His yearning rose to agony.