Angry Wife

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Thank you, Molly,” he said. He did not touch her hand but he smiled at her as the butler pulled out his chair for him. Kidneys and bacon and eggs were set before him and his coffee was poured. Then the servants went away and he was left alone with her.

  “I’ll breakfast with you, my dear,” he said, “and then I’ll go and see if John has any more news for me before I take the train south.”

  “I’ll miss you, Pierce—I always miss you—” she said. She leaned her arms on the table and the white lace of her elbow sleeves fell away from them. She wore a blue satin thing—a peignoir of some sort, he supposed. He did not look at her beyond a glance.

  “You know what a fuss we make over Christmas,” he said, buttering a muffin. “Lucinda scolded me for leaving at all.”

  “Has Lucinda changed?”

  “Not a bit—a dash of silver over her right temple that makes her more beautiful than ever.”

  Molly took her coffee cup in both hands and sipped from it, her eyes contemplating him over the edge. He looked up, caught their gaze and looked at his plate again.

  “I suppose she’s very much the mistress of the manor?” She put an edge of malice to the words, but he refused to hear it.

  “Lucinda has always been that,” he said cheerfully, “even when I came back from the war and found half the servants gone and the house threadbare and nothing but cornbread in the pantry. Of course, now, Malvern’s all that we’ve dreamed—almost!”

  “You’ve stayed in love with her, Pierce?”

  “How could I help it?” he retorted.

  “My Gawd, she’s had a very good thing in you, Pierce,” Molly said flatly. “Jewels and children—and a great fine house—and acres of prosperous land—and racing horses—”

  He lifted his head. “Molly, you should have seen Beauty’s foal win the Darby! Lord, it made me think of music! Phelan’s turned into a great little jockey. Of course Beauty is living on the best of the pasture, retired, honorably discharged.”

  “How many foals have you had from her that were first-rate?”

  “Four good racing horses—”

  They both loved horses, and they forgot themselves, as he meant they should.

  “I wish John cared about horses,” Molly said with discontentment.

  “His horses are all iron,” Pierce said lightly.

  “John and I don’t have anything in common,” she said in a low voice.

  He cut through a rasher of bacon firmly. “Yes, you do, Molly. You have this fine house together and you have big parties and you have your trips to Europe and you have damn near everything a woman needs—”

  “Except the one thing—”

  “Lots of women don’t want children,” he countered.

  “Don’t be silly,” she retorted. “You know what I want … Pierce, are we going to grow old like this?”

  He met her squarely. “Yes, Molly—just like this, my dear. I love you but I love John better.” He put half a well-buttered muffin into his mouth.

  “You don’t care what I do?” she demanded.

  “I don’t want John hurt,” he replied.

  “You don’t care if I’m hurt?”

  “Molly, I’ve made it a rule never to care about any woman except Lucinda. But if you hurt, John, then—”

  “Then what, Pierce?”

  “I reckon I don’t want to see you again as long as we live.”

  “If you don’t care what I do, what does that matter to me?”

  “Henry Mallows,” he began.

  “You know I don’t care about Henry!” she broke in.

  “Then why—”

  She interrupted him passionately. “Because you won’t look at me—and every morning I look at myself in the mirror and see myself growing older, and I think—”

  He burst into loud laughter. “You see yourself looking like the rose of Sharon,” he said briskly, “and you think what mischief you can do this day. Ah, Molly, I know you! Even if I—gave in to you—which I never will, my red-haired darling—you will still look in your mirror in the morning and think of what mischief you can do.”

  “Pierce, I wouldn’t—I promise you—Oh, Pierce, dearest—”

  She was half out of her chair and he threw down his napkin. He was sick with disgust at himself. For the fraction of a second when he looked at her smooth pink skin he had thought of Georgia’s cream-pale face again—not Lucinda—

  “I swear I think there’s something wrong with my insides,” he groaned. “I keep seeing things.” He got up and pushed in his chair. “I’ve been eating and drinking too well here, Molly. It’s time I left.”

  Let her do what she would, he thought. John would have to bear his own burden. He smiled at her as she stood staring at him and then he turned quickly and left the room. Upstairs in his own room he sent for Joe. They took an early train and went away without telling Molly or John goodbye. He wanted to get home.

  Christmas Eve at Malvern had never been so magnificent. Pierce gave himself up to the joy of his children. Martin was at the University, and Carey was beginning his first year. Both of them were tall and handsome and he was certain that neither was virgin. But it was none of his business. They were men and must lead men’s lives. He had wondered uneasily if he ought to warn them.

  He discussed it with Lucinda after the big dance on Christmas Eve. They lay side by side in her spacious bed, enjoying together every detail of the evening’s scene. The house was subsiding into stillness about them. Guests were gone and they could hear the servants downstairs moving about, sweeping and straightening and putting away dishes. Then the stillness of the country night covered them. But the house was still awake. Beams cracked and the wind echoed in the chimneys. He loved the sound of the great old house settling for the night, with mild groans and wistful sighs and creaks.

  “What would you tell the boys, pray?” Lucinda asked crisply out of the darkness.

  “I don’t know,” he pondered, “just warn them, maybe—”

  “I’ve warned them about nasty diseases,” she said.

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” he replied. “Boys pick up that sort of knowledge from one another easily enough.”

  “What then, pray?” Lucinda inquired. “You don’t know a thing about women, Pierce!”

  “Oh, I don’t, eh?” he growled.

  “No,” she said flatly and yawned.

  “I know you,” he maintained.

  “Oh, nonsense,” she cried.

  “I certainly know you,” he insisted. “I can almost tell what you’re going to say.”

  “That’s why I say it,” she replied. “But it’s not what I think.”

  He was confounded by this mischief. “Then why don’t you say what you think?” he demanded of her.

  “Because it’s not what you want me to say.” Her voice was pert and he was infuriated.

  “Oh rubbish!” he said loudly.

  “Oh rubbish,” she echoed. “There—didn’t I say you wouldn’t like it?”

  He felt pinpricked without knowing where to find the pin. “Don’t think I take you seriously,” he told her with majesty from his pillow.

  “No, dear—I know you don’t.” Her voice was dangerous.

  “Why should I?” he inquired.

  “I can’t imagine.” She yawned again pretentiously and he turned his back for a moment. Then he flounced over again.

  “See here, Luce, we can’t go to sleep like this!”

  “I can go to sleep anyhow—I’m dead,” she retorted.

  “You know I have to feel things are all right between us—”

  “Aren’t they? I didn’t know they weren’t.”

  He was silent a moment. Then he put his hand through the darkness and touched her soft breast.

  She shook his hand off. “Please, Pierce—not tonight, for mercy’s sake!”

  “You’re cold as stone these days—” he accused her.

  “No, I’m not,” she denied. “But you’ve grown—care
less.”

  “I want another child, Luce!”

  “Diamonds and sapphires couldn’t tempt me,” she replied firmly.

  He leaped out of bed at that and went stamping into his own room and banged the door. He was not given to self-pity, but he allowed himself a measure of it now. What was the use of a man’s being faithful to his wife? If Lucinda only knew, he thought savagely, that twice in the fortnight he had refused other women—but he could not tell her. She would laugh aloud and then turn on him with malice and suspicion. He could hear her voice. “And what, pray tell, made her think you were—willing?”

  No denials could be valid. Truth itself was not valid to Lucinda where the maleness of a man was concerned. He got into his solitary bed, and in a temper he pulled the covers strongly and left his feet bare. In fury he wrapped them about his feet and lay in a snarl of sheets and blankets and dug his head into the pillows. Lucinda was not a comfortable woman. She did not appreciate him nor the strength of his self-denials. Then he grinned at himself ruefully in the darkness. Self-denial? He was in love with Lucinda still, and she alone could stir his passion. But she was not comfortable, he maintained against this too severe honesty. He loved her more than she loved him. He sighed gustily into the night. It would be pleasant to be loved, for once, more than he loved. He fell asleep, still warming himself with self-pity.

  In the midst of the peace of the next summer, after the spring crops had been sown and the winter wheat harvested, at the time of year when Malvern was at the heights of its glory, Pierce one day picked up the county newspaper after his ample noon meal. He lay on a long wicker chair on the terrace, preparing for his usual afternoon nap.

  At the sight of the headlines all thought of sleep left him abruptly. He sat up, reading avidly, then groaned and threw the paper on the stone flags. Then he seized it to read again the shocking news. Two days ago, in Martinsburg, a sensible city of his own state, the railroad crews had struck in protest to the third cut in their wages.

  All during the spring Pierce had followed with approval the news of the recurring wage cuts for the railroad employees. It was only fair, he told himself and Lucinda and anyone else who was near him, that workingmen should share the growing disaster of the times. He himself was suffering enough by not getting any dividends. Martin and Carey, home for holidays, had listened to him in their separate ways, Martin without interest and Carey with shrewd, smiling attention. The only dissenting voice in his house was his third son John, who out of perversity and contrariness to himself, Pierce felt, took the side of the workingmen. But he shouted John down easily.

  “Don’t talk about what you can’t understand!” he had ordered.

  The last time John had muttered something. Pierce could not hear it.

  “What did you say, sir?” he demanded.

  John had lifted his head. “I said that I don’t think you understand things yourself,” Father—”

  Pierce had been shocked at such impudence. “Understand what?” he had demanded of this gangling boy.

  “What it’s like to be a workingman,” John said sturdily.

  Pierce had snorted laughter. “And you think you do?” he had inquired.

  “I have more imagination than you have, Father,” John had replied fearlessly.

  Pierce’s anger melted. He liked his sons to be fearless even toward himself. “Get along with you and your imagination,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Then out of respect for the boy he had added honestly, “And I like you to stand up to me, John—it’s manly of you.”

  He had been comforted by the warm look in the boy’s grey eyes—Tom’s eyes, they were.

  But there was no doubt that depression was sweeping over the country like a hurricane. No one understood why these storms recurred in a country where enterprise was free and where every man got what he deserved if he worked hard. Pierce believed that it was a man’s own fault if he did not prosper, and with his feet firm upon his own soil, he took the depression as an act of God, inexplicable and irritating as acts of God were apt to be.

  He had been pleased when in May the other railroads had begun to cut wages drastically and had complained loudly to John MacBain and his own directors because their railroad did not do so. A few weeks ago he had been delighted to receive from the president of the company a notice that at last wages had been reduced, in despair over the continuing depression. In a brief note to John MacBain, for Pierce hated letterwriting, he had expressed his pleasure and his confidence that dividends could be restored soon.

  “We are on the right track at last,” he had written John. “Labor has got out of hand and must be controlled. People who have put their money into the railroads must get it back.” This letter John had not answered, but John also hated to write letters and never did so unless there was a crisis.

  Only yesterday, in church, Pierce had given thanks to God sincerely for all good things, including health and peace in his time. The glorious summer sunshine had slanted down through the stained glass windows of the Presbyterian church of his fathers. Here he and Tom had sat as small boys, sighing and wriggling. Here his children had been christened. He had thanked God frankly for wealth—well, why not for wealth?

  And even while he was giving thanks to God this thing had already happened! He felt cheated and he got up impulsively to find Lucinda and complain to her. Then he sat down again and stared across his fields to the mountains. Lucinda would not be interested. She had always divided life firmly into what was men’s business and what was hers. Whatever the difficulties he had, she did not consider them her affair. Money might be hard to get, but what else had men to do but to get it? He missed Tom, as he often did, in swift short spasms of needing to talk to a man. Malvern had good neighbors. Nobody could be more fun than the Raleighs and the Bentons and the Carters and the Hulmes and a dozen other families, when it came to fox-hunting and horse-racing. Pierce took pride in the fact that on any weekend he could gather twenty families at Malvern and on any day in hunting season. But his sons were still young and he had no man in the house to quarrel with and argue with and be knit to, as he had been knit to Tom.

  What would Tom think of such news? He got up again and began to pace the sunlit flags of the long terrace. Philadelphia was near Baltimore. He could go to the company offices at Baltimore and find out for himself exactly what was happening and what might be expected to happen. He could reinforce company policies with his own advice. Then he’d run over to Philadelphia and see Tom.

  “I might as well own up that I want to see the fellow again,” he thought sentimentally. He had not seen Tom once in all these years, although they had written regularly if not often. He wouldn’t tell Lucinda—they had not mentioned Tom for a long while. He had stopped telling her even when he had a letter, because she closed her lips firmly at the very sound of Tom’s name.

  But he went to find her to tell her of his plan to go to Baltimore. He found her surrounded by their daughters, to whom she was teaching sewing. That is, she was sitting in her rose-satin chair, in her own sitting room upstairs, taking dainty stitches in a bit of linen, and Sally and Lucie were sitting beside her. Lucie was absorbed but Sally was frowning and pausing every moment to look out the open window. Between the two girls Georgia came and went, examining stitches and correcting mistakes. She looked at him when he came in and away again. Since that strange day when she had knelt at his feet, she had spoken no word to him beyond what was absolutely necessary in the communication of servant to master. His own behavior had been as careful, and between them, like scar tissue over a wound, they had constructed a surface.

  “Luce,” he began abruptly. “There’s a railroad strike. I’ve got to go to the head offices at Baltimore. I’m going to telegraph John MacBain to meet me there.”

  Lucinda looked up from her sewing and raised her delicate eyebrows. “What can you accomplish, Pierce? You’re not an executive.”

  “I’m one of the Board of Directors, nevertheless,” he said firmly. “I’m go
ing to see for myself what the men are thinking of and what’s to be done. If necessary, I’ll ask for a special meeting of the directors on behalf of the stockholders. We can’t let the railroad get into the hands of labor. It’ll be the end of the country. Socialism—communism—whatever you want to call it—”

  He was halted by a swift look from Georgia’s suddenly upraised eyes. Then she looked down again. She was at Sally’s side now, and she began to rip out a line of stitches.

  “Oh dear—” Sally cried, “don’t tell me I’ve got them wrong again! Georgia, you are mean—”

  “You pay no mind to what you’re doing, Miss Sally,” Georgia said quietly.

  Sally turned to him. “Papa, if you’re going to Baltimore—let me go with you!”

  “Pray tell—” Lucinda cried at her daughter. “Why should you go to Baltimore? I’ve a mind to go myself though, Pierce. While you’re busy at meetings I could get myself and the girls some new frocks.”

  He was horrified at this onslaught of women and struggled against it but in vain. By the time he left the room a few minutes later not only Lucinda and Sally were going with him but Lucie as well and Georgia to look after the girls and serve Lucinda. He groaned in mock anguish. “I thought I was going to do business instead of squiring a lot of women!”

  “Well look after ourselves,” Lucinda said sweetly. “You don’t need to pay us any mind. I shall take the girls to Washington maybe—or even New York.”

  He could think of no good reason to forbid it. The boys were safe enough at home. If Lucinda had made up her mind to come with him the girls might as well come too. He telegraphed John MacBain and Lucinda included an invitation to Molly and what he had planned as a severe business trip now became a holiday. In the secret part of his mind he said that he would nevertheless escape his women and go and see Tom. The next day in the midst of much packing Georgia stopped him in the upper hall, her arms full of frocks.

  “Master Pierce, if you think of a way, I’d like to go and see Bettina.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll speak to your mistress.” He had long ago forgotten that once he had not wanted to be called master in his house nor to have Lucinda called mistress.