The Angry Wife (5 page)

“At least I’m alive,” John said. He gazed at Pierce from under the bushy red brows that gave ferocity to his deep-set grey eyes. “I aim to live,” he said doggedly.

“Of course,” Pierce replied. His determination never again to think of the wounded failed him. Here was John, wounded for life! He knew the look of the desperately wounded, the secret hopelessness behind the eyes, the hidden knowledge of death. He looked away and over the meadow to Malvern.

“Well, I just thought I’d stop by and see how you were, John,” he said at last.

“Thank you kindly, Pierce. I hear Tom’s home.”

“Starved nearly to death, John, but we’ll mend that as fast as we can.”

“You can’t hardly blame our side for starving Yankees in jail when our own folks lived on dried beans and cornmeal,” John said. He stared up at the cobwebby ceiling of the portico. “You ’member my twin boys?”

Pierce nodded. “Lucinda told me—”

“They’re both dead,” John said. His hollow voice tolled the words. “No milk, no eggs—nothing they could eat, poor little fellers! Well, that leaves me alone with Molly.”

“You’ll have more boys,” Pierce said.

“Nope—I reckon not.”

Pierce turned his head at the agony in John MacBain’s voice.

“No more boys,” John said. “The Yankees got me there, Pierce.”

“You mean—”

“Yes.”

Pierce felt the old insufferable weight in his breast. His chest grew tight when he was forced to face suffering. So often, when at the end of a day and the battle was over, he had scarcely been able to breathe when he had seen the rows of his men, the dead and the wounded, lying on the ground, waiting to be carried away. It had been his duty to see them, and he had done his duty.

“John, if I knew what to say—”

“There’s nothing to say, I reckon, Pierce. It’s my wife Molly I worry about. She’s still young.”

They heard Molly’s clear voice at this moment. She was talking to someone, directing and scolding at the same time. Her skirts rustled and she was at the door, “John—” she began and saw the visitor. “Why, Pierce Delaney!” she cried. Her round pretty face lit and she put out both hands to him. “John and I were just wondering—how is that poor Tom?”

“Nothing wrong except what some feeding will put right,” Pierce said. He felt her warm strong little hands in his and felt sorry for John MacBain and let them go.

“Well, it’s good to see you,” she said. Her eyes traveled frankly over his tall figure. “And you’re out riding? My Gawd, it’s good to see a man riding as though there hadn’t been a war.”

“My Gawd,” the ribald called Molly MacBain. By Gawd and My Gawd.

John MacBain, watching them, shouted suddenly. “Molly, go and fetch some of the blackberry wine! Pierce has rid half a day—”

She bustled away, and John closed his eyes. “What I told you, Pierce,” he muttered. “You dassent to tell. She don’t want a soul to know it. I don’t know why I told you. But I felt I had to have a man know it.”

“Surely I won’t tell,” Pierce promised.

“Not even your wife,” John said.

“Nobody,” Pierce promised.

But he could not forget it. Molly came back with wine and small cakes. “They’re only cornmeal and sweetened with molasses and riz with yeast,” she said in her busy gay voice. “My Gawd, what it will be to have baking powder and sugar! How long will it be, Pierce?”

“Who knows?” he said. He tasted the wine and bit into a cake. “These are good,” he said politely.

“Oh, I make do with what I have,” Molly said. She went to John’s cot and pulled a cover straight and Pierce watched them. Should he speak of the twins or should he not? What would be right for Molly—no, for John, for whom he cared far more? He looked across the sunny meadows where the two little boys used to play. They were just toddling around when last he saw them.

“I am mighty grieved to hear about the boys, Miss Molly,” he said abruptly. The cornmeal cake clogged his throat.

She turned and stood rigid for an instant. “Thank you—” she said at last. “Thank you kindly, Pierce. But I just—I just can’t think of them.”

Her small full mouth quivered, and her eyelids glistened. She gave him a look and ran into the house. John closed his eyes and lay rigidly still.

“If there is anything I could do,” Pierce began.

“There isn’t, thank you, Pierce,” John did not open his eyes. “We’ve just got to live along—”

“Yes, I reckon,” Pierce murmured sadly. “Well, John, maybe I could help you with the place, anyway. We’ll be ploughing again this spring, and I could make shift to do some of your fields if you’re short of help.”

John opened his eyes. “Short—I’m without help!” he cried. “Two old niggers—that’s what’s stayed with us. They can scratch a kitchen garden—that’s all.”

“Then I’ll rent your land from you, if you like, until you can get up and around once more.”

“How come you got help?” he demanded.

“I’m payin’ wages,” Pierce said simply.

“I ain’t goin’ to take your paid help,” John declared.

“There’s no other kind to be had, John,” Pierce told him.

John lifted his head from his pillow. “By Gawd, Pierce—what did we fight the war for, if you’re goin’ to pay niggers?”

“We lost the war, John—”

“Not me—I didn’t—so far as I’m concerned, the war is goin’ on forever.”

The voice was brave, but its hollowness made the words a boast. Pierce did not say what he thought. He had his two sons alive and Malvern must go on in the new times as it had in the old. He picked up his whip and got to his feet.

“Of course I know how you feel, John,” he said amiably. “And I’m not going to argue with you. I’ve had enough of fighting. I’m going to live in peace—with all men. And if I never set foot on any land except Malvern, I’ll be content. But I’ll farm yours if you want me to—”

There was a second’s silence. John’s head fell back.

“Your family all right?” he asked.

“Yes, they are—I don’t know why I’m lucky,” Pierce said. He tapped his riding boot softly with the crop of his whip. “I thank God,” he added simply.

“Not many of us got anything left to thank anybody for,” John said bitterly. “But I won’t put my burden on you, Pierce. I reckon I can carry it.”

“You are a strong man, John,” Pierce said kindly.

They were both silent again and then they had a common impulse to part.

“Well, goodbye,” Pierce said. “I’m going over to Jackson’s to look for a horse for Tom. If you change your mind about your land you have only to let me know.”

“Thanks—I can’t answer for myself—I might stay,” John replied. “Or I might go away.”

Pierce mounted his horse behind the rose bush to spare John the misery of seeing him ride off well and whole. He cantered south to Jackson’s, very grave and sorrowful. Of all men John was the least suited to such a wound, John who never willingly read a book, who lived to hunt and ride and eat and drink. And Molly was not like Lucinda. Luce could make shift without a man, he thought cruelly. Sapphires he had promised if it was a girl. Diamonds he had given her for the boys. She would never give herself entirely for her own passion. That was because she had none. Well, he was glad he had never liked Molly MacBain, since they were neighbors and likely to be neighbors all their lives. She was not quite pretty enough—a little on the common side, he thought, and cursed himself.

“I’m a damned difficult combination,” he thought ruefully. “I like them to look like queens and act like gypsies. The two don’t come together.”

The brief frankness with himself made him ashamed. He thought of Lucinda with tenderness, and suddenly feeling the sun beat down on him he touched the mare with his whip and she broke into a gallop. He had the decent man’s dislike of allowing himself to think secretly about women. It was a thing to struggle against after adolescence, a childishness to be outgrown.

He forgot women thoroughly when he reached Jackson’s horse farm. By some miracle, Jackson had a two-year-old bay.

“She ain’t quite gentled yet,” Jackson said. He stroked the bay’s shining bronze flanks and she tossed her head.

“Tom will want to do his own gentling,” Pierce said.

He examined her, from eye to tooth to fetlock, and settled on a price.

“Too high,” he thought as he rode homeward. He would be afraid to tell Lucinda.

“I don’t have to tell her,” he thought and rode on. He was astonished at his new freedom. Once he would have felt he had to tell her everything. But the war had separated him from her. He had learned to live to himself—or almost!

“Georgia, hurry—here comes your master!” Lucinda cried. She sat by the long window of her room on the rose satin hassock and Georgia knelt beside her, mending a torn ruffle. It was part of Lucinda’s pattern for herself that she always met her husband when he came home. She liked to think of herself throwing open the big door and standing there, a picture against the great hall.

“Hurry—hurry—” she said impatiently.

Georgia bent her dark head and her fingers flew at her task. The needle broke suddenly and she held it up, terror in her eyes.

“My thimble’s got holes in it, ma’am,” she said—“The needle caught.”

“Oh, Georgia,” Lucinda cried. “The very idea—”

“Yes, ma’am,” Georgia agreed. “Let me just pin it, ma’am.”

“You know we haven’t any pins—” Lucinda retorted.

“Yes, ma’am, but I’ll just use this broken needle, ’tis good for naught, now.”

“But do we have another needle? Really, Georgia, to break a
needle—”

“I have two more, ma’am, I saved—”

“Well, then—”

Lucinda stood, shook her ruffles, and ran downstairs lightly. Behind her Georgia picked up bits of thread from the rose flowered carpet. She stood up and saw herself in the long oval mirror above the dressing table. It was an accident, and she hesitated. Then she tiptoed nearer and gazed at herself. She was pretty! She and Bettina were both pretty, but maybe she was a little prettier even than Bettina. But what use was it? Whom could they hope to marry?

“Unless we should go up north—” she thought.

Plenty of brown people were going north. Brown was what she called herself and Bettina. Their father had taught them. “Don’t you call yourselves niggers,” he had told them. “You’re my daughters, damn you! Brown—brown—that’s what you are. Brown’s a good color, isn’t it?” But when he got old and drowsy he had not cared what color they were.

“Wonder how would I look with my hair up high?” she thought.

She glanced at the door. They’d be downstairs now together—no danger of their coming up. The mirror in the attic was a cracked old thing and she could never see herself in it. Besides, she was ashamed to fuss with herself before Bettina. Bettina was younger, but she acted older.

She loosened her curly black hair and let it fall on her shoulders. “I daren’t use her combs and brushes, though,” she murmured. She was sorely tempted. She washed them out every day anyway, and she would wash them out right away. Upstairs she and Bettina shared a bit of broken comb. She didn’t know what a brush felt like in her hair though she brushed ma’am’s hair an hour every single night before bedtime until it shone like the copper kettle. She lifted the silver-backed brush on the toilet table and then jumped. There in the mirror she saw her master standing. She put the brush down softly and without turning around she bundled her hair back into her net.

“Are you beautifying yourself, Georgia?” Pierce asked, and laughed.

She did not answer nor did she turn. She was too honest to excuse herself.

“You better not let your—you better not let her see you,” he said.

“No, sir—I know I am doing wrong,” Georgia said in a faint voice.

He was watching her face in the mirror. It was downcast, and the heavy fringes of her black eyelashes lay on her pale gold cheeks. “Why, the girl is a beauty, poor thing,” he thought.

“Where’s your—” he stopped, and Georgia lifted her eyelashes.

“Hang it,” he swore, “I keep trying not to say ‘your mistress.’”

She turned and smiled at him with pity. “I wish you wouldn’t bother. I don’t mind,” she said.

“It was only yesterday I decided I wouldn’t let you say master and mistress any more,” he reminded her.

“Yes, sir, but I know how you want to do, and so I don’t mind,” she said.

The girl’s lips were red and her teeth very white. He did not remember ever having seen a brown girl’s lips so red.

“Then where’s your mistress?” he asked. He heard the harshness in his voice and could do nothing to quell it. For the first time the future loomed as something monstrous. The end of this war meant that Georgia and all like her were free and they were his and Lucinda’s equals. The distance that had once been between had been taken away. Anything could happen, and there were no laws to check it. If there were to be new barriers, they must be made by people like himself, or there were no barriers—he refused to think further. There must be barriers, of course, between white and black.

“Pierce!” Lucinda’s voice floated up the stairs.

“She’s downstairs to meet you, Master Pierce,” Georgia said. As though she felt new distance shaping between them she returned to her old shape of his name.

He turned and left her standing there. From the head of the stairs he looked down at his wife at the foot. She had left the big front door open and she stood against a silver screen of light. Her golden hair caught it and the whiteness of her skin caught it and her eyes were like the sapphires she loved. She saw
him
and ran up and he met her halfway and took her in his arms.

“Pierce—in broad daylight—” she protested.

“Day and night,” he muttered, “night and day—”

He held her and for once she stood pliant in his embrace. But it could not last. The boys were running in from outdoors and behind them Joe was making efforts to catch them.

“Mama, Mama!” Martin screamed, and then saw them on the stairs. Lucinda turned in Pierce’s arms and smiled down at her two sons proudly. They stood gaping up at her and Joe turned and pretended to look out the door. Let her sons remember their mother, young and beautiful, standing in their father’s arms!

“What you doin’, Mama?” Martin asked.