Portrait of a Marriage

by Pearl S. Buck

  “William, your arm, please,” she said. They moved toward the door. “Where were you, William?”

  “I was working, Mother.” Instantly he regretted the words. Why had he told his mother he was working? Now she would ask where he had been and what he had been painting, all that he did not wish to tell.

  “Working? Where?”

  “Oh—out in the country.”

  “You won’t find anything there.”

  He was nettled. “I did, though.”

  “What?”

  “An old farmhouse.”

  “Pah—a chromo!”

  “No, Mother, it was good stuff.”

  She did not answer, for she had reached her chair and stood directing the seating. “You, Louise, at your father’s right, now that you’re a married woman! William, sit beside your sister, and Monty, you are alone on the other side of the table. Harold, mind you don’t touch the red wine. I see Martin has put a glass at your place—though I told you distinctly not, Martin!”

  “Yes, Madam.” The butler removed the glass and Mr. Barton sighed and sat down.

  She had forgotten him, William thought with relief, through soup and fish. She threw her questions at Louise and Monty like darts, prodding with delicate persistence until she had the answers she wanted.

  “Louise, did you go to St. Mark’s in Venice? On Sunday, I mean—of course any other day it’s simply a center for tourists. But for worship—I always say one cannot get the real flavor of a church unless one worships in it. Well, I’m a religious woman and you’re not, Louise. You miss a great deal. I hope your influence won’t make her worse, Monty. What’s that? No, I disagree with all that. Sermons and stones have nothing to do with each other, I’m afraid, and woods are apt to be damp. You must find a spiritual home in New York, Louise.”

  They listened to her as they had always listened to her, he and Louise, two rather pale little children, very well bred in the handsome, quiet home. He had never been able to find out whether Louise was bored as he had often been. There had been days when he had stood looking out of this tall window into the square full of spring sunshine and had felt the heart in his bosom a creature separate from himself. It would spring straight out of him some day, he used to think, and go off without him, leaving him behind like a shell. What color was a boy’s heart and what would be its shape?

  Then his mother remembered him. “By the bye, William, what did you say you painted this afternoon?”

  “I didn’t say, Mother.” He helped himself to roast duck and apple.

  “Well?”

  “I think I’d rather wait until I’ve finished, Mother, and then show it to you.”

  “Nonsense, William!”

  “I really mean it, Mother.” That he surprised her into faint anger he saw, and was ashamed that he felt a quiver of his old childhood fear of her.

  “Very well, William—though it’s odd of you.”

  Before he could answer, Louise began to speak—quickly, he knew, to smooth the moment between her mother and anyone else.

  “Oh, Mother, Monty and I were wondering—what would you really think if we should get one of the new horseless carriages?”

  Mrs. Barton forgot everything else. “I should consider you both extremely foolish,” she said severely. Her grey eyes lifted their heavy lids at her son-in-law. “Surely, Monty, you weren’t considering anything so foolhardy for Louise.”

  Monty sipped his wine before he answered. “You hear a lot about them nowadays,” he said evasively.

  “That’s no reason for joining the company of fools,” Mrs. Barton retorted. Her ringed left hand, clasping the stem of her wineglass, was thin as a sinew and as strong, though with it she had never touched anything coarser than the washing of her Spode tea set.

  Monty smiled and did not answer. Since he had come to see his father-in-law about investing some of his millions, he knew better than to antagonize the old lady. From Louise he had learned a good deal about her mother.

  In the silence Mrs. Barton returned to her son. William, feeling the cold grey light of her eyes upon him, braced himself. “I will not tell her about Ruth,” he thought. But before she could speak, she caught sight of her husband lifting a filled wineglass to his lips.

  “Harold! What are you doing?”

  Mr. Barton’s hand scarcely faltered. He gulped heavily twice and set the glass down. “Merely tasting Louise’s wine, my dear.”

  Mr. Barton’s voice was gentle and his eyes were as bland as a child’s.

  “You shouldn’t,” Mrs. Barton said severely. “Harold, I speak for your own good.”

  “I know you do, my dear, and I won’t touch it again.” He glanced at his two children, and all three of them bent their heads to the blanc-mange now served. As well as though he had seen it did William know that Louise had, when she lifted it, set her glass on her left, where if luck pursued, her father could sip the wine. But luck had not pursued, and they let it pass as they had done so many times.

  But William, thinking it over as he idled about his room before he slept, was uncomfortable. His mother had forgotten him after the wine. If she had not, could her or could he not say that he would not have told her about Ruth? He would never know.

  … Ruth lay awake, and for the first time in her life. She lay quietly, wondering at herself. She felt no pain and no distress, nor was what she felt excitement, but she could not stop thinking about him—the young man. She did not even know his name. They had not asked it, and he had not spoken it. She had not thought of this in her daze at the whole afternoon until at the supper table her father had asked, “Did he tell you his name, a’ready, Ruth?”

  She had said, surprised, “I didn’t think to ask him, yet.”

  “I thought of it,” her father said, “but I said to myself, I said, I won’t ask a man’s name if he don’t give it. I told him Harnsbarger’s my name and he didn’t say nothin’. Does seem as if a body would answer back his own name, but he didn’t.”

  She had not replied to this, in secret dismay. Suppose he never came back and she never even knew his name? But of course the picture was still in the parlor.

  “He finish the picture?” her father asked abruptly after supper.

  “No, he’s coming back tomorrow,” she said. She began lifting the dishes from the table to the sink.

  “Take it with him?”

  “No, it’s in the parlor.”

  “Then I’ll have a look at it.” Her father lifted the oil lamp from the narrow mantel shelf and went toward the parlor, his stockinged feet noiseless upon the boards. She followed and her mother behind her, and in the parlor the three of them stood staring at the painting.

  “The tablecloth come out nice,” her mother said.

  “It don’t hardly look like you, Ruth,” her father said.

  “’Tis too pretty, ain’t?” she said despondingly.

  “’Tis,” he agreed. “But then, maybe that’s how he seed you.”

  They had gone back to the kitchen, and after yawning a while her father had gone to bed. In their usual silence she and her mother had washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and set the table again for breakfast. Only when her mother was ready to climb the steep stairs did she pause.

  “Reckon we’d ought to make soap tomorrow, Ruth. The fat jar’s full a’ready.”

  “Oh, Mom, not tomorrow!”

  Her mother gazed at her heavily and was about to speak. Then she did not. She turned her head and began to mount the stairs slowly. And alone in the kitchen Ruth had finished quickly. She was not tired. She was never tired, but tonight her body felt full of strength and power.

  “I wisht I could make the soap now,” she thought, and had longed for the task. She opened the door and stood there for a moment, looking out into the night. Had there been a moon, she would have been tempted to go over to the wash shed where the lye and fat were kept. The stars were large and soft but the night was dark. She hesitated, and closed the door, and went up the stairs t
o her own room. By candlelight she had washed herself and put on her sleeved cotton gown, brushed her hair and braided it, and then, blowing out the candle, she lay down upon the low old maple bed that had once been her grandmother’s. She had closed her eyes, expecting the instant sleep that was always hers. But it did not come. She waited, neither restless nor impatient, only wondering. And against the dark curtain of her eyelids while she waited she saw his face, at which for hours this day she had gazed so steadily. “I never saw a face so clear before as his’n,” she thought.

  … When she saw him come down the lane, the next day, it was already late afternoon. She had waited for him all day and then had given him up, and in anger at her own waiting, in midafternoon she had begun to stir up the fat for soap.

  “It’s late, her mother objected. “Supper’ll be soon.”

  “I’ll work quick,” she said, and then because it burst out of her she said, “Truth is, Mom, that painter feller—he said he was comin’ back for sure today. So I thought ’twan’t any use to begin the soap. Now he ain’t comin’, and I won’t have the day gone and nothin’ done.”

  Her mother did not look up from her mending. “Well, I’ll be along, too, as soon as I get this heel in.”

  “No, don’t. I can do with myself,” Ruth said.

  But at the door her mother’s voice stayed her. “He’s not our kind, I reckon, Ruth.”

  She flung back her denial of anything hidden in her mother’s words.

  “’Tisn’t him I care about—it’s only that I hate folks that don’t do what they say they goin’ to do.”

  “That’s what I mean.” Her mother’s eyes did not lift from the long needle, weaving in and out of the crossed threads.

  And then nearly at twilight she saw him coming, hatless, his hands in his pockets, down the lane toward the door.

  “I’m here,” she called.

  At the sound of her voice his head turned and he saw her and came over to her.

  “I’d given you up,” she said. The fat was hot above the fire over which the great iron pot was hung. She had measured in the lye and was stirring the mixture with a spoon-shaped stick. He stood watching her.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Makin’ soap.” She stirred slowly, feeling the mixture begin to thicken. “I thought you’d come earlier,” she said, glancing up at him. He did not have his paints! “And where’s your paintin’ things?”

  “I didn’t bring them.”

  “Why—ain’t you—you’re not goin’ to finish?”

  “I didn’t feel like work today.”

  She was angry with him, an anger she did not try to understand. “You call it work, maybe, to paint pictures?”

  “On the whole, yes,” he answered. “At least, it’s my work.”

  She could not stop stirring for an instant now, for the stuff was nearly ready to pour. “I’m used to real work,” she said shortly.

  “Like what?” he inquired, half sullenly.

  “Ploughin’ and milkin’—paintin’ the barn.”

  “Call my work on a level with painting the barn,” he said bitterly.

  “Help me to lift this off,” she said. “It’s ready to pour.”

  He came to her side and helped her to lift the three-legged pot from its crane and set it on the ground. Jars stood ready in rows and she began to ladle the clean-smelling stuff into them. He watched her, thinking, she could see, of something else.

  “Will it harden?” he asked.

  “When it’s cold,” she replied.

  “It smells good,” he said.

  “Only like soap,” she retorted. She was half through before he spoke again.

  “Of course I’m going to finish the picture, Ruth.”

  She lifted her eyes at that. “I’ll thank you not to call me by my given name afore I even know yours.”

  He smiled slightly. “William.”

  “William what?”

  “William Barton.”

  She was dipping again. “I never heard the name.”

  He felt a secret joy. If his mother could hear that! “Why should you have heard it?” he asked.

  “No reason, I reckon,” she admitted.

  They did not speak again until the jars were full. The sun was balancing on the horizon in a ruddy mist of thin, low clouds.

  “What’d you come for if you wa’n’t goin’ to paint?”

  “I don’t know,’ he said. “Perhaps to see if you were as pretty as I thought you were yesterday.”

  Her eyelashes quivered and she blushed. “I wish you wouldn’t—” she murmured.

  “Wouldn’t what?”

  “Just—talk.”

  He groaned a little in his heart. Why had he come when he knew it was not for work? This was not what he wanted to begin!

  “Let’s have a look at the picture,” he said abruptly.

  He led the way. It was milking time and he could see the girl’s parents under the overshoot of the barn, milking. The house was empty and he strode into the parlor, angry that he was conscious of her firm light footstep behind him. He lifted a drawn shade and the setting sunlight fell across the picture. Pure pleasure rushed into him and filled him full. He forgot the whole tiresome day he had spent before he had made up his mind to come back to this place. Yes, the day had been ruined by Louise, stealing into his room before he was up. He was waked by her cool, narrow hand on his cheek and he opened his eyes to see her standing there in her dressing gown of frosty blue satin, her fair hair wrapped in curlers under her lace cap.

  “William, do you mind?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “William, I wanted to talk to you last night, but Mother was so—William, will you help Monty and me?”

  “How—what—wait a minute!” He had rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Now, what’s up?”

  “Darling, Monty’s fearfully poor!”

  “Poor!” He sat up yawning. “Why, I thought Father had him investigated and all that.”

  “Darling, it’s happened since! Some mines or something turned out to be empty or something. They were supposed to be full of diamonds and they weren’t. Do you suppose you could speak to Father—alone, I mean?”

  “What can he do about diamonds, Louise?”

  “No, dear, not diamonds, but invest something with poor Monty just to encourage him. He’s so low.”

  “I didn’t notice he was low.”

  “Oh, but he is! He hides his feelings so wonderfully, but I know.”

  He had struggled out of bed and she had stood talking at the half-closed dressing-room door while he shaved and bathed and dressed. Almost the whole day had gone into the absurd scheming with Louise and the talk with his father. He had been troubled between his loyalty to Louise and to his father, and his unacknowledged doubts that Monty was perhaps not to be trusted. He had been relieved when his father had with his usual shrewdness directed that he must have Monty talk with his lawyers. But so the morning had gone, and Louise had wept a good deal privately to him, and because he was fond of her he had stayed with her until even his impatience to work had died as the day drew on.

  “You’ll understand when you’re married, William. Marriage is so strange—it just mixes you up with another person. When Monty suffers, I suffer!”

  He had transferred his impatience entirely to Louise.

  “Stop fretting,” he had commanded her. She was the sort of woman it was almost impossible not to command. “After all, we’re not going to let you suffer, Louise.”

  “It’s not me—it’s Monty I think of,” she had sobbed. “It’s so hard on him to have this disappointment at the very beginning of our married life.”

  “Oh, Monty,” he had said. “He’ll manage.”

  And then she had cried at him that he did not understand marriage.

  “I’ll agree with you that I don’t understand that,” he had said with conscious irony.

  “You’ll understand some day,” she had said, wiping her ey
es and trying to smile at him. “Tell me, dear, don’t you care about anybody, yet? What about that pretty Elise Vanderwort?”

  He had not thought of Elise in months and said so. And then he had decided suddenly that he must have air and sunshine.

  “You’d better go and wash your face or Mother will see through you,” he said. The worst part of the day had been to show nothing to his mother.

  And then he had walked to the station and he swung on the first train and rode to the village, and an hour’s walk had brought him here before his picture.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow for sure,” he cried. “Ruth—why shouldn’t I call you Ruth? I’m William, you know—just William.”

  “All right—” she said. “All right—William.”

  June, July, and August. Ruth had stood still like this hour after hour, she who was strong and full of energy, and summer had passed her by in these hours and in the dragging days between. She had never known time could be slow in all the endless work of house and land. But now she knew. When William did not come, though her body moved with its usual calm haste the hours stayed at twice their length, and by night she was exhausted with inner waiting.

  Her agony was that she could never be sure when he was coming. For several days at a time he did not come, and then suddenly he was there, all impatience as though it were her fault that she was not ready and waiting for him by the window. Ready and waiting she was, too, because there was no pretending she did not love him. She knew that she had loved him from the first day—no, from the very first hour. She loved him now until her heart felt sore. The picture was nearly done, and then what would she do? He would go away and she would never see him again. The long afternoons in the kitchen when he sat painting and she stood looking at him would be over. She could not any more watch him as he worked, his dark eyes seeing her and not seeing her. Sometimes she felt that all he saw was the girl in the picture, and then she grew jealous.

  “She’s prettier’n me,” she would say to hear him deny it.

  “No, she’s not,” he would reply. “It’s a very good likeness, as it happens.”