Pearl Buck - Angry Wife

“I don’t want no wages,” Jake wailed. “I wants our food and does like we allays had had!”

“Great day in the morning!” Pierce shouted, “why, the war was fought so you could be free, man!”

“But my food and cloes!” Jake moaned.

Pierce broke into sudden laughter and leaped on his horse. “Oh well, I reckon you won’t starve at Malvern,” he said. “And if you want, I’ll give you food and clothes instead of wages.”

“Thank you — thank you, marster!” Jake bellowed after him.

That was the trouble, Pierce thought. You fought a war for people, you all but died, or you rotted in a prison, the way Tom had rotted nearly to death, and you come home and the people don’t know what it’s all about, or why you fought and rotted. They want everything just the way it was before.

In the brilliant morning sunshine, cantering across his own lands, his face grew grim. “I’m going to live for myself from now on,” he muttered.

He looked across the lands of Malvern, his land. Two hundred years ago his great-grandfather had come from England, a landless young son, and had bought this valley set high in the mountains of the Alleghenies. He had cut the forests and ploughed the earth, he had built the foundations and the heart of the big house. The soil was rich, and the encircling fields were still fringed with virgin forest, great oaks and beeches and maples.

“I will restore my soul,” Pierce said to himself.

He turned his mare’s head away from the line of cabins to the north of the road. He did not want to see his own black folk, not even to hear their greetings. He was tired of them because he had fought to keep them. Hell, he had lost and they were free. He still believed that it was the wrong way to free them. That was what he would have liked to have told that tall gaunt man in the White House, had he not been killed. All during the war he wanted to go and tell Abe Lincoln, “Man, I don’t want slaves! I’ll be as glad as you could be to have everyone of them free and wage earning. But it’s got to be done slowly, the way our family has been doing it, freeing the men when they get to be thirty-five, freeing the women when they marry. Then they’re fit for freedom. The Delaneys have been freeing their slaves for fifty years.”

Well, almost freeing them! They had their papers, even if they didn’t get real wages. They were like Jake, still wanting their food and clothes and cabins. It scared them if they had only cold money in their palms. They couldn’t imagine money turning into food and clothes and cabins.

His horse picked her way delicately about something in the road and he looked down and saw a yellow backed turtle slowly making its way across the dusty stretch. It went on, regardless of the peril it had so narrowly escaped. He laughed at its earnest persistence. It was the comforting and delightful thing about land and forest, and beast and bird — they went on, oblivious of wars.

“I’m going to be like that,” he thought. He lifted his head, gave his mare rein and she broke into a gallop. He brought her home an hour later in a froth, and leaped up the steps to have breakfast with Lucinda and the little boys. They were already at the table, when he had washed and dropped into his seat. He had not changed his riding things. After breakfast he wanted to go out again, this time on business. But he must see Tom first.

“Hello, you two,” he said to his boys. He reached out his hands and rumpled both blonde heads. “See how pretty your mama is?” They turned at the question and stared at her.

“Are you pretty, Mama?” Martin asked, surprised.

“How pretty, Papa?” Carey asked.

Lucinda bore the scrutiny of three pairs of male eyes with lovely calm. She smiled at Pierce as the one most important.

“Awfully, awfully pretty, you little savage,” Pierce said and tweaked his son’s ear. “Heard anything of Tom, Luce?”

Georgia came in with a plate of hot beaten biscuits, and Lucinda turned to her.

“Has Bettina said anything about your master Tom?” she asked.

“She came out to wash herself,” Georgia replied in her soft voice. “I asked her then, Miss Lucie, and she said he was hungry and wanting real food. I was to ask you, please, sir, if you thought a beaten biscuit and soft-boiled egg would harm him.”

“Give him anything he wants,” Pierce said. “God knows he deserves it.”

“But, Pierce, a beaten biscuit?” Lucinda asked.

“Tell him to dunk it in milk,” Pierce said. “Yes, sir,” Georgia replied. She poured two cups of coffee, pure amber, from the silver pot on the buffet, set them on the table and went away.

He glanced at her back as she went out. She wore a white dress, much washed and soft, and she had her hair on top of her head, and her neck rose straight and golden.

“How much wage are we going to pay those two girls, Luce?” he inquired.

Lucinda fluttered her white hands. “Oh, Pierce, it’s so silly! Besides, how are we going to know? I always give Georgia my old dresses, and she eats the leftovers in the pantry — she and Bettina — they don’t eat in the kitchen. How are we going to count all that? I’d rather just give her pin money.”

“Have you asked her what she’d rather have?” he asked.

Lucinda frowned and shrugged her shoulders under her lace sack. “I don’t think Georgia would know.”

Georgia came in again, this time with a plate of ham, sliced thin, to go with the scrambled eggs and kidneys.

“Well, ask her,” Pierce said with sudden firmness. But Lucinda pressed her small red lips together firmly and ignored him and he was angry. The army had spoiled him for being ignored. Men had obeyed him to the tune of hundreds and he was not to be disobeyed at home.

“Georgia!” he said abruptly. She looked at him, half alarmed, and he saw into her black eyes, eyes so great and deep that he felt uncomfortable again. “Do you want to be paid wages?”

She answered, faltering. “Yes, sir, I do if you say so—”

“Georgia, you may leave the room,” Lucinda said sharply.

The girl disappeared from where she stood as though she had not been.

“You shouldn’t frighten her, Luce,” Pierce said.

“You shouldn’t interfere between me and my maid, Pierce,” Lucinda replied.

Then they thought of the children and fell into silence. Pierce ate heavily and in great bites, champing his jaws, his eyes on his plate. Lucinda was full of graceful movement She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, buttered a bit of the beaten biscuit split on her plate and she tucked in the end of Carey’s napkin into his neck. Between these feather soft motions of hands and arms, between the turns of her head and the lifting and lowering of her lids, she watched Pierce.

He threw down his napkin. “I’m going to see for myself how Tom is this morning,” he said abruptly.

“Do,” Lucinda said pleasantly. “And tell him I’ll be in as soon as I have the children settled.”

He opened the door into his brother’s room and the weight moved from his bosom. He had been away from women too long. It was going to take time to get used to them again, even to Lucinda. There was something secret about women living in a house when a man had been living in the open with men. He looked at Tom warmly.

“Why, you’re looking wonderful, Tom,” he said. “Great goodness, man, I didn’t know what you were yesterday — a scarecrow!”

Tom was lying against fresh pillows, his hair brushed, his nightshirt immaculately white. Bettina was folding a tartan shawl over his shoulders.

“I feel — good,” Tom said. His voice was faint enough but stronger than it had been yesterday.

“And you slept?”

“Without waking—”