The Angry Wife (29 page)

“Here’s a log—and I’ll put the robe down for us to sit on.”

She let him serve her, and when he had made ready she sat down and put back her shawl from her shoulders. She did not look at him. It was impossible to tell from her face what she thought. She was submissive and gentle and full of dignity. He did not dare touch her hand. Indeed, he must not.

“You have been living far away all these years,” he said. “I don’t know how to begin.”

She turned her soft eyes to him now. “We can begin where we are,” she said. “We know everything about each other.”

“Do I know everything about you?” he asked.

She smiled. “There is not much to know. I’ve lived in my sister’s house, and helped her with the children.”

She looked down as she spoke and at her feet she saw a violet and she stooped and plucked it and fastened it at her bosom and went on speaking in her placid sweet voice. “Now I am planning to take Georgy away—to Europe—to train her voice.”

“To Europe!” he echoed and was stunned.

“I always wanted to sing,” she went on, “but of course I hadn’t the opportunity. I know Georgy can be a great singer and I’d like to have my share in that.”

“I thought she wanted to be a teacher,” he objected.

She shook her head. “I don’t want her to get embroiled in all the sorrows of our race,” she said quietly. “Of what use is that? We must wait until the time of wisdom comes to the world.”

She spoke half dreamily and he felt her far away from him indeed.

“You have changed very much, Georgia,” he said sharply.

She shook her head. “No, I have only had time to think—much time. I have had time to ask myself why it was that Bettina and I have had to live solitary. Oh yes—Bettina, too! You see, she is really quite alone—cut off from—everybody except—her husband. And I have been cut off—in quite the same way—except that I have never married—shall never marry.”

“If you go to Europe there might be someone—” He felt jealousy and at the same time he thought of Lucinda.

She shook her head. “No, not for me.”

He wanted to take her hand again as he had yesterday and could not. “I feel somehow a cur,” he murmured.

She shook her head again, smiled and did not speak.

“Or a fool,” he said. “Because I am so confused.”

“We are born out of time,” she said quietly.

He took her words and pondered them and could not reply to them. In silence he gazed out over the rolling hills and the shallow valleys. Among their vivid green the red barns and white farmhouses gleamed like jewels. A dove moaned in the trees near by. She began to speak again musingly. “I’ve missed Malvern, too. I loved to serve you—taking care of your clothes and tidying your room—all that—but I had to give it up, for fear—”

“Fear of me?”

“Fear of myself. It would have been easy to stay there at Malvern—lovely—”

“But you can’t come back,” he said sadly.

“Never!”

“I know that.”

“And I know,” she went on more firmly, “that it isn’t me you heed. You feel at ease with me—not just because of me—but because far back in you somewhere, you’ve mixed me up with Maum Tessie who wetnursed you and took care of you when you were little.”

He flushed, but she raised her hand. “Yes, that’s true. If your—wife—had been softer—you wouldn’t have needed anybody else.”

They fell into silence again. She was complete and untouchable. She had thought through everything as he had never dared to do, had reached the end of herself, had grown to the height of womanhood, and whatever his half-ashamed, unacknowledged yearnings had been he knew now that they would never be fulfilled. … He was amazed and perplexed that in the midst of his disappointment and stifled chagrin, he felt a strange relief.

She rose and drew her shawl about her shoulders and looked at the little gold watch that hung on a short chain from her ribbon belt. “We have been here nearly two hours—”

“Sitting quiet most of the time,” he said, smiling, half sadly.

“But saying all that had to be said,” she replied.

He got up then and they stood for a moment looking over the countryside. Then he turned and put his hands on her shoulders. They were soft under his grip. He looked deep into her dark eyes and she met his gaze faithfully.

“I have a queer contented feeling,” he said.

She smiled back at him.

He went on, choosing his words carefully, one by one, as they distilled in pure essence out of the depths of his being. “For the first time in life, I think I know what the war was about—and I’m glad Tom’s side won—because it made you free and what you are this day.”

“Yes,” she said.

He went away that night and when he was gone Georgia turned to Tom and Bettina.

“I feel it your due that you know what happened between him and me this day,” she said simply.

The children had gone upstairs to bed and they sat in the big sitting room. The soft spring night, drifting in from the open window, was warm with the hint of summer soon to come. Georgia had said almost nothing all evening. Even when Pierce went away she had still said nothing. But she gave him her hand in parting. This was much. Never before had she put out her hand to him as though they were equals. Now they were, and she acknowledged it.

Bettina was sewing on some child’s garment. She put it down. Tom had picked up the newspaper. He let it fall. Both waited.

“You have let me live here as though it were my home,” Georgia went on.

“My home is your home—you know that,” Bettina reminded her. She had aged in these years, and Georgia seemed much the younger in looks and in manner and she deferred to Bettina in everything. Now she looked at her sister and then at Tom. She touched her lips with her tongue. Shy and modest as she was, they could see how difficultly she spoke and they waited, always gentle toward this gentle creature.

“He’s grown older and more thoughtful—as we all do. Whatever it was, he came here this time in need of comfort. And so he thought of me. Bettina,” she turned to her sister. “It’s not like you and Tom. Even if it were—it’s too late. I told him—I want to take Georgy to Europe and get her voice trained.”

“To Europe!” Tom cried.

“I want to go away,” Georgia said. Her lips were trembling. “Very far away, and I would like to help Georgy to sing—the way I always wanted to myself and never could.”

“But the money—” Tom began.

Bettina spoke suddenly. “Tom, I’ve never let you use your inheritance on us. I ask you to use it now.”

He looked at Bettina. She was his wife, though he had been forced to compel her to marriage. When they had moved into this house, when he was headmaster at last of his own small school for boys, he had taken her with him one Sunday to an Amish meeting and by the rites of the Amishmen he had made her his wife and himself her husband. He had put upon her finger the narrow gold ring she had so steadfastly refused to wear. The rite was as much for himself as for her. He wanted to make final, for himself, the thing he had chosen to do. He wanted the sanction of church as well as of conscience. Never would he forget the strange silence of the people in the meeting house. Rigidly accepting his freedom to do what he felt was right, nevertheless he comprehended their conflict, their reluctance at what their own consciences, trained in the creed of non-resistance, insisted upon. But he was content. Bettina became his wife by the law of God. She felt it as he did. Whatever conflict had been between them ceased. They had lived in the peace of isolation from their kind, hers as well as his, dependent upon one another and deeply knit. And yet her fierce independence even of him had never allowed him to spend anything of his inheritance on her or her children until this moment.

“I’ll be proud to use it so,” he said gently.

Two weeks later his house seemed empty. He did not know which to miss more, the singing, fiery, laughing, easily angry girl who was his daughter, or Georgia’s soft presence. Both were gone.

Chapter Nine

P
IERCE WAS CONFRONTED WITH
news as he stepped into the hall at Malvern. Martin was waiting for him, watching the front door through the open door of the library, and Lucinda had a servant posted to tell her of his arrival. She swept down the wide stairs, holding her skirts with both hands, and Martin leaped out of the chair where he had been reading the county newspaper. They greeted Pierce so affectionately and with such excitement that he smiled at them drily.

“What now?” he inquired.

“Father, Mary Louise has set the day of our wedding,” Martin said solemnly. “The eighteenth of June!”

“And that means the girls and I must get our gowns,” Lucinda interrupted her son, “and the porcelain service you’ve ordered from England—Oh, Pierce, it can’t possibly get here in time!”

“Mary Lou and I won’t need it for three months, Mother—we’ll be in Europe—” Martin broke in.

“We have plenty of dishes, I hope,” Pierce said. “They’ll be coming here to Malvern to live, Luce—good news, Martin.”

“Every bride should have her own porcelain and silver,” Lucinda said firmly.

He was at the stairs, feeling weary and anxious for the quiet of his own room. Joe was ahead of him with the luggage.

“Pierce, do hurry—do!” Lucinda urged him. “There’s so much to plan.”

“I will,” he promised—“but I’d like a bite to eat, my dear.”

“I’ll order a lunch for you on a tray—we finished an hour ago,” Lucinda said.

He inclined his head, smiled at his son, and walked slowly upstairs. The weariness was more than that of not sleeping well on the train. He felt shaken and bewildered, his security threatened, and by himself. He felt that in some secret fashion he had betrayed Malvern and his family, although nothing that had passed between him and Georgia was shameful—actually, how little shameful, when compared to Lucinda’s own father, who had taken mistresses as a matter of course, from among his slaves. But Lucinda had never considered her father’s children by slaves as her kin, by the remotest drop of blood. Had she seen him, Pierce, her husband, talking with Georgia, as he had done, she could never have forgiven him. Therefore he would never tell her, lest peace be destroyed in his house.

His ancestors had built Malvern for the ages, and a war, unforeseen and terrible, had nearly wrecked what they had built. By chance Malvern had escaped and he had carried on the building, strengthening and improving the place until it had become a symbol of safety for himself and his children and their children. But he knew now that neither he nor they were safe. He perceived dimly the essential difference between himself and Tom. Tom had projected himself and his life into the future. He had built a house not made with hands. His love, the love which had grown so strangely under the very roofs of Malvern, had given him a home and security. “I’ve bolstered the past,” Pierce thought. “Tom’s built for the future.” But he would never have understood this had it not been for Georgia.

In his own rooms he dismissed Joe and stood looking out of the long windows that faced the avenue of oaks winding to the gates. What a strange chance it had been that into Malvern had come the two women, gentle and beautiful, to serve and yet never to be servants! If Bettina and Georgia had not been here, if there had only been Jake and Joe and old Annie and Phelan, and all the crew of ignorant black folk, he and Tom would have been different men. Those black folk belonged to the past, but Georgia and Bettina did not.

He sat down and put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. He saw Georgia again as she had looked beside him on the hill, the sun on her faultless skin. Her eyes, so exquisitely shaped and colored, were lit with pure intelligence. That was her fascination for him, that within her golden beauty and clear simplicity there should dwell high intelligence and sensitive feeling.

Lucinda opened the door and saw him thus and cried out, “Pierce, are you ill?”

He let his hands fall and tried to smile. “No—only tired, my dear.”

“Something is wrong!”

“Nothing except large vague general things,” he replied.

“I insist that you tell me,” she demanded.

“I’m troubled for the future, my dear—”

“You mean the railroad?”

“The railroad is only part of it—perhaps our whole nation is only part of it—” he said slowly.

She lost interest. “Oh, that—Pierce, really, we haven’t time for such things.” She came in and sat down. “I want to take the girls to New York. It’s the only possible way to get our gowns in time. I have decided on a pale hyacinth blue for myself, with silver lace—very narrow. Sally and Lucie are bridesmaids and they will wear daffodil yellow—I want to show the Wyeths that we are quite as good as they—although Malvern is in West Virginia, it is only just over the border. If it hadn’t been for the war—”

“Do as you like,” he said absently.

She was suddenly angry. “Pierce, I don’t believe you care at all that Martin is going to be married—our eldest son!”

He roused himself at this. “I do care, Luce. Maybe that’s why I feel so troubled. I don’t believe the world is going to get easier for the children. I don’t know what’s ahead—”

“Really, Pierce!” Lucinda cried. “Of all times to talk so! Why, you said yourself only a few days ago that things were better—the strikes put down, and the depression over—” Her prettiness suddenly disappeared in a sharp look. “You’ve been to visit Tom again,” she said.

Her shrewdness confounded him. Then he recovered. “Yes, I have been to see Tom,” he said.

She flushed swiftly from neck to hair, a deep and furious pink. “I suppose Georgia is there,” she said.

He looked at her, not knowing how to answer her. She would never understand, however he tried to tell her, that she was not threatened by Georgia. He could never make her understand how he felt about Georgia, that it was not love—not love of a woman. He could never make her comprehend that Georgia was a revelation to him of a truth which he did not yet fully comprehend in himself. In his hesitation he was speechless. She stared at him, he saw the flush drain from her face until it was dead white and her eyes were the color of frost.

“Luce!” he cried in alarm.