Pearl Buck - Gods Men

She stepped back, but only a little, and she let him hold her hands. “I suppose it is too soon,” she said frankly. “But I don’t think it is at all impossible — William!”

July in Ohio could be as hot as in India. Henrietta felt the heat. She had spent the last month with Clem in Mexico, where he had gone to confer with the Food Minister who wanted American wheat. Washington had been apathetic and he had called on Clem who, after listening carefully, had insisted on seeing Mexico for himself, so that he would know just how much the people needed wheat. He had not noticed the hot weather. His blood ran cool and he was thinner than ever. Mexican food was poison to him, the tamales hot as Indian food and even the vegetables full of red peppers, the spinach boiled to the color and taste of dead grass. He doggedly ate the native foods here as elsewhere, however, because he wanted to know what the people lived on, and afterward was tortured with the dyspepsia that got worse as he grew older. He had promised to get the wheat somehow, and they had come home.

Their house now as they opened the front door was hot and dusty and the air was stale.

“You get your dress off, hon,” Clem said to Henrietta. “Go upstairs and put on a wrapper and relax. I’ll open the windows.”

Henrietta obeyed without answer. She had begun to gain weight and it was a relief to get out of her corset. She went upstairs into the large bathroom which Clem had fitted up himself and modeled after the ones in India. She stood in the big zinc-lined tray and filled a jar with water from the tap; then with a dipper she poured it over herself Indian fashion. The house was full of things that Clem had admired in other countries. He liked chopsticks, for instance, better than knives and forks. They were cleaner, he said. The water was lukewarm but even so, cooler than she was. She toweled herself and then put on the negligee that Clem always called a wrapper. She did not mind. It was comfortable to live with a man who did not know what she wore.

She went downstairs to unpack the groceries they had bought for supper. Clem had taken off his coat and sat in his white shirtsleeves at the dining table, figuring on a sheet of paper. His shoulder blades were sharp and the back of his neck was hollowed. He had lost weight in the Mexico heat. She did not speak aloud her worry. Nothing annoyed him more than to hear her worry about his being thin.

She sat down in a large wicker chair, tore open the envelope which was postmarked New York City, and began to read to herself. The first paragraph revealed catastrophe. Her mother wrote, “I am glad your poor father has passed on. He could never have endured what is about to happen to our family. I have wept and prayed to no avail. William is adamant. He is beyond my reach. I remember when he was a small infant upon my bosom. I know he is my son, but I cannot recognize him. What have we done to deserve this?”

Thus far Henrietta went without comment to Clem. Then she saw the next sentence and a smothered cry escaped her.

“What is it?” Clem asked.

He turned from his figures. It was not like Henrietta to cry out about anything. Now her large gray eyes were wide, staring at the sheet she held. They were the color of William’s eyes but not like them in their depths.

“William is going to divorce Candace!” She breathed the words with the utmost horror, and he received them with horror as they looked at each other.

“What’s Candace done?” he asked sternly.

Henrietta returned to the letter. “She can’t have done anything,” she murmured. Her eyes swept down the page. “Mamma doesn’t say — yes, she does. She says Candace is just what she always was — there’s no excuse for William — he doesn’t even make an excuse — you know how he is. He always does what he is going to do and never says why. Mamma says it’s just an infatuation. It’s an Englishwoman he met on his trip.”

Henrietta would have cried had she tears, but she had none. Against William her heart hardened, and she crushed the letter in her hand and threw it into the woven wicker wastepaper basket. She had never loved Candace but now she almost loved her. Long ago she had left her father’s profound faith, but she had a sort of religion, fed by Clem’s unselfishness and devotion to his single cause. The Camerons were good people, in their way as good as her father had been, and all the old decencies remained. A man did not divorce his wife without cause and the best of men did not divorce their wives for any cause. William had left the ranks of the good.

“I don’t ever want to see William again,” she declared with passion. Clem rose from his chair and came over and knelt beside her. She put her head down and upon his narrow bony shoulders. His thin arms went around her.

“There, there,” he muttered.

“Oh, Clem,” she sighed, half heartbroken. “I am glad you are good. It’s your goodness that I trust.”

He pondered this, patting her back in a rhythm. “Maybe we need some sort of religion, hon,” he said at last. “We grew up with God, you know. We haven’t deserted Him exactly, we just haven’t known how to fit Him in.”

“You don’t need anything, you’re just naturally good.”

“I might be on the wrong track, always thinking about food. Man does not live by bread alone.”

She pressed his head against her cheek. “Don’t be different, Clem!” Then after a minute, “Poor Candace! I must write her a letter.”

She got up and sat down where Clem had sat, and saw upon the pages of yellow paper he used for his endless figuring the words: “Average yield per acre (Mexico)” followed by lines of calculations of Mexico’s millions of people. She tore off a yellow sheet, too tired to look for better writing paper.

Dear Candace,

We are just home from Mexico. I found Mother’s letter here. I cannot say a word of comfort to you. I am ashamed that William is my brother. None of us have ever understood him. Mother is glad my father is dead and I think I am too, unless Father could have kept William from being so wicked.

There is nothing I can do, I guess. It’s too late. I don’t pray as I used to but if I did, I would go down on my knees. Perhaps I should even yet. I feel closer to you than I ever have. And there are the two boys — how they must despise their father! It is all wicked and you have never deserved anything like this. I cannot imagine what reason he gives. You are so pretty and so good tempered. I hope William suffers for this.

Candace read the letter in her old room at her father’s house. She smiled rather sadly, thinking that she had never known Henrietta until now, when the bond between them was broken. She glanced at the small silver clock on the dressing table. She was no longer William’s wife. The decree was to be granted at noon and it was now six minutes beyond. She had been acutely aware of the time as it had passed and then had forgotten it for a few minutes and in that little space of time it was over. She let the letter drop on the floor and leaned her head back against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

She had protested nothing. That was her pride. Jeremy had flung himself out of William’s offices forever, he said, but when she saw Ruth she had made him go back. Ruth had no defense for William — she was too gentle and good for that. But she did not blame him, for to her alone William had explained himself, and she had tried to explain him also to Jeremy and to Candace. “He’s always been different from everybody,” Ruth said in her earnest, sweet little voice. “He’s been so lonely all his life. I sometimes think if Father hadn’t died … Father understood William, but he had to wait for him to grow up. I remember Father saying that once.”