Angry Wife

Chapter Three

RAILROADS! PIERCE LOOKED OUT of the window of the train sweeping over the rough landscape. He was aware of a region of irony somewhere in his being. Without intending it, certainly without planning it long ahead, he now found himself on this train, north bound for Wheeling. He reviewed the incidents, none of them important, which had led from his own comfortable house to the hard red plush seat upon which he now sat.

It had begun out of a letter he had written after Lucinda had first blown the word “railroads” at him like a rainbow bubble. He had written to John MacBain, in Wheeling, asking again for the rental of his idle lands. John had been willing enough now to rent and Pierce was busy for three months finding hired men enough to farm the five hundred acres. He had collected a conglomerate score of laborers, some black, some white, and had put them in the old slave quarters of the MacBain house. He had ridden over there often enough in the last months to oversee them, and always before his eyes MacBain House had stood gaunt and empty, its burned wing still shattered. Molly had gone to Wheeling and he had not seen her again. She had spent a day with Lucinda before she went, but it was a day when he had been riding over the country, hunting for seed corn. Seed was his treasure, hard to find, almost impossible to buy. He had gathered it by the handfuls, wherever he could find it, paying almost its weight in silver. The mountaineers had hoarded seed but they would take nothing for it except hard coin. He had ridden the mountains until he was stiff-legged, stooping through the doorways of the miserable cabins and tempting ragged men to divide the hidden stores of seed. But he had succeeded. Malvern today was planted to corn, and he had seed for the wheat of next year.

The sight of MacBain House, gaunt against the southern sky, had always made him think of John. Then John had inquired in a letter, “Why don’t you get into railroads? They’re the backbone of our trade. In the next fifty years all the great fortunes will be built upon railroads. You have your sons to think of, man.”

With John’s words clear upon his brain he thought of his sons very often. The two boys had grown that summer in one of the sudden spurts of childhood growth. Martin shed baby fat and showed the frame of his manhood, tall and strong, and Carey, because he could not keep up with his older brother, developed a canny hardness that was often shrewd beyond his years. There would be other children and it was true that Malvern would not be big enough to provide for them all, especially in the luxury which was a necessity to Lucinda. The old plantation days were gone. Perhaps John was right, that the fortunes of the next half century were in trade, not farming. Railroads from the East, building up the new West! There was profit in it, and why should he not have his share?

One clear cool September day, he set out for the nearest railway depot. Lucinda was nearing her time, and as always she disliked him as her pregnancy progressed. When this had happened before Martin’s birth, it had broken his heart and driven him half mad with grief. He had been desperately in love with her and ignorant of women. When she repulsed him he had been first hurt and then filled with fury. She was ignorant, too, and she could not explain herself. His anger and her disgust had risen to such crisis that one day she had demanded, screaming with tears, to go home to her mother. He had turned cold with fear, but he had taken her there himself, and she had stayed until Martin was nearly due. He insisted that his children be born at Malvern, as he and Tom had been. Lucinda’s mother and father had both come back with them. He would never forget Lucinda’s father. He had died during the war, but Pierce remembered the cynical, lordly old man when he had tried to tell his son-in-law that he must not think that Lucinda really hated him.

“Give her time, my boy,” the tall, angular Virginian had cried. “Dash it, Pierce, no man can understand a pregnant woman!”

“I suppose not,” Pierce had said drily. They had looked at one another and laughed.

He had given her time, and Lucinda had returned to him sweetly and when Carey was born he had been ready for her hatred. That was during the war, and he was taking saltpeter like the rest of the men and they were all too busy to think about women.

But this time it had been hard. Lucinda was different. There could be no doubt that the war had made her self-sufficient and independent. She had got used to managing without him. She knew she could live without him — dangerous knowledge for any woman to know that she could live without a man! She had been more than usually absorbed in her pregnancy.

He frowned, remembering how often she was cruel to Georgia. Not that he cared what she did to her own servant, except that Georgia was a human being, after all, and unfortunately delicate and fine. Lucinda had lain abed on the long hot days, fretful and complaining, and commanding Georgia to fetch and carry, until the girl had looked faint with weariness. But Georgia never complained. Pierce wondered sometimes at her unvarying sweetness. She was too patient. He would not have blamed her had she flung out at them all He had been silent. He had not reproached Lucinda for a long time. He had not indeed meant to reproach her at all, but one day, before his eyes, her white hand had darted upward so quickly that it made him think of a snake’s tongue, and she had slapped Georgia’s cheeks.

Georgia stepped back, her palm on her cheek, her eyes wide. Pierce had been reading aloud to Lucinda. It was evening — night, in fact, and he had paused to light the lamp. His eyes had been turned from the bed, then the sound of the slap had made him start.

“For God’s sake, Luce!” he had shouted.

“I’ve told you not to shake my bed!” Lucinda said fiercely to Georgia.

The girl had looked from her mistress to him, and for one full second he had found himself gazing into her great brown eyes. Then she had turned and fled from the room, her soft white skirts flying behind her.

“She’s so clumsy,” Lucinda complained. She closed her eyes.

He had not answered for an instant. Why were women so cruel? Then, pondering, he suddenly understood Lucinda’s cruelty. She was revenging herself upon Georgia for Bettina. She never mentioned Bettina, she never reproached Tom, but she was taking her sharp revenge on Georgia. He went and stood beside the bed, and he looked down at her. He loved her, but into his love welled a deep sadness. She was so pretty, his Lucinda, his wife, often so good, a good mother, and to him, when she was herself, a good and dutiful wife. She had a dear and lovely body. But what was it that twisted her soul? He did not know. He only knew that something made her smaller than his love deserved. The war, perhaps, had shown him too much nobility among men, and he measured her by it.

She had opened her eyes and now looked up at him with her clear blue gaze. “Well?” she asked.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so hard on Georgia, Luce,” he said gently. He had not wanted to reproach her. He only wanted her to be big enough for him to love utterly. He longed for wholeness of her soul and for largeness in her spirit, because he wanted her perfect for his love. He was loath to judge her or see her smaller than the image his love made of her.

He had been horrified by the flash of rage that lit her eyes and changed her face. “Don’t you dare stand up for a nigger, Pierce Delaney!” she had screamed at him. She sat up in bed, her hands clenched. It had seemed to him that even her golden hair stiffened and sprang alive with her fury.

And then in her rage she had flung at him the unspeakable insult, which even yet he could not forget or forgive. She had cried at him, “Don’t tell me you’re going to take up with Georgia — like Tom has with Bettina! Men are all the same — you are all beasts — every one of you!”

She had covered her face with her hands and sobbed. But he had turned and walked out of the room.

Outside he had met Tom. He was choosing a walking stick from the stand in the hall, debonair in a new grey suit and a white felt hat. Pierce saw every detail of Tom’s well-being.

“Where are you going, Tom?” he had asked. He was pricking with rage and hurt and yet he could not tell Tom what Lucinda had said.

Tom had answered in his usual calm way. “Bettina expects me, and I won’t be back until Monday morning.”

He had not answered. Instead he had walked to the front door that stood wide open to the evening air. Mosquitoes were beginning to whine about the terraces. Damn Tom for his calmness! Damn him, too, for his happiness.

“By the way,” Tom said behind him. “I must tell you, Pierce, that Carey is making the most extraordinary progress with his reading. I think he will be ready for his second year’s work soon — a clever boy. Martin could do as well if he weren’t all for play and horseback riding.”

“Martin’s smart enough,” Pierce replied.

“Of course he’s your favorite,” Tom retorted. He ran lightly down the marble steps, smiled at Pierce and waved his stick. Pierce stared after the graceful figure walking briskly down the road between the oaks. Down by the stile Jake was waiting with a horse. What did Jake think of Tom and Bettina? He wondered morosely, and his mind ran ahead of Tom into the little brick house at Millpoint, where Bettina waited. Angrily he saw her soft dark beauty, her readiness, her warmth. For weeks Lucinda had not let him come near her. Yet she had flung at him the insult. It was then, at that very moment, that he had decided to go to Wheeling and see John MacBain.

The train pounded around a curve in the mountain road. Pierce loved mountains. As a boy he had spent days of hunting in the mountains that circled Malvern. But always after a few days he grew oppressed with loneliness, and was compelled to go home again and feel the walls about him safely, and see his parents and Tom.

He became aware now of something very like that loneliness. He was thinking about Lucinda. He had never spoken to her of the taunt she had flung at him nor had she. When they met they had both said nothing. Perhaps he had forgiven her, after all. At any rate, he wanted to forgive her. He sighed loudly as he thought of her.

“I’m weak,” he thought mournfully. “At least, where she is concerned.”

In the army he had been hard enough — no, even there he had been secretly tender to those who depended on him. He stared at the flying landscape and was troubled afresh at his own confusion.

When he got to Wheeling he would use that newfangled telegraph and send word to Lucinda. She was safe not to have the child until he got back, but he wanted her to know where he was in Wheeling, in case something went wrong. He had told Georgia to be watchful.

“Georgia, you keep a sharp eye on your mistress,” he had told her. It had been hard for him to be natural with her. Lucinda’s foolish words stuck in his mind like a flung dagger he could not pull out. They’d be in him always, maybe. He had looked away from Georgia’s beautiful, waiting face. “If you think anything doesn’t look right, you’re to tell my brother, and then he’ll get a telegram to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Georgia had said.

And then the girl’s gentleness had moved him in pity to go on, “You don’t blame her, I hope, Georgia, for all her fancies and tempers these days? She doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh, no, sir,” Georgia had replied, flushing under her pale golden skin.

“She’s always like that before the children come,” Pierce had gone on. He wanted to stop talking and yet he wanted to go on. He wanted to say that she must understand that Lucinda might go on being cruel because of Bettina. But Georgia had said it for him.

“It isn’t just that, sir,” she had said simply and plainly. “I know she feels upset about Bettina, and she can’t say so, and she doesn’t know it, but she takes it out on me. But I don’t mind, sir. People can’t help themselves, I reckon. Anyway, if it’s for Bettina, I can bear it.”

“It’s very clever of you to understand,” he had said quickly and had turned away. He must not discuss Lucinda, his own wife.

Over the hills the trees were beginning to change, ready for autumn. Malvern was green, but as he had come north he could feel the stopping of summer growth. A touch of frost and the mountains would flame. He gloried in the beauty. Everything here was fortunate. They had been spared the misery of carpetbaggers. Lucinda’s brother, Randolph, had written how at night he had gone out under the white sheets of the Kluxers. “It’s life and death, these days,” he had written, “and I don’t choose death, not at the hands of slaves I have fed and clothed all their lives.”

Well, thank God, West Virginia was on the side of victory. It was his state now. He lifted his head and breathed in the dusty air of the swaying car, bumping over the faulty roadbed. It was a state carved out of the old, born for the new. He and Lucinda were happy — they must be. He put her out of his mind impatiently. Too much of his life was spent in thinking of her. Lucinda had a way of making herself felt. Without being aggressive or even talkative, she impinged. His smile grew grim as he thought of her. The years which the war had wasted must be repaired. His ambition, leashed to Malvern, broke its bounds. If John MacBain could grow rich, why not he?

Late at night a week later he sat talking in John’s library before the fire. He had looked about the big dark room with some amusement.

“I never knew you to read a book, John,” he had remarked.

John laughed his silent grey laughter. “They’re only wallpaper as far as I am concerned.” He yawned as he glanced about the shelves. “They came with the house — Molly’s notion, this house.”

“Expensive notion,” Pierce said drily. He had eaten an excellent dinner with grateful surprise. Molly’s somewhat slipshod housekeeping had changed with the city. Two light colored men in white linen jackets had served them deftly and Molly had sat at the foot of the table in a yellow taffeta gown, her green eyes brilliant and her red hair piled on her head. After dinner she had gone to a concert on the arm of a young man who had called for her with a horse and carriage and he and John had come to the library and had talked about getting rich while they smoked and drank whiskey and water.

“Molly has to amuse herself these days,” John said. He glanced at the big marble clock on the mantelpiece. It was after midnight. “She’ll be home soon. I don’t care for music myself. But I want to be fair to her—”

He sat hunched forward in his leather armchair, his long hands hanging slackly between his knees. Intimate words hesitated in the air and Pierce avoided them hastily.

“I’m mighty appreciative of this evening, John,” he said in his rich amiable voice. “When I came here last week, I thought no more than that we’d talk things over. Tonight — well, I feel as if I’d found the end of the rainbow.”

“You came at the right minute,” John replied. “The new stock was put on sale that night at midnight.”

“Still, if you hadn’t helped me by taking a mortgage on my land — though I never thought I’d mortgage a foot of Malvern — I shan’t dare to tell Lucinda,” Pierce said.

“You needn’t tell her,” John assured him. “A year and it will be paid off. Don’t forget I didn’t want the mortgage. I wanted to make it a loan — so far as I’m concerned, it’s no more.”

He spoke absently, listening for the hall door to open. “Molly isn’t satisfied with this house,” he said irrelevantly. “She’s seen a big place on a hill — Morgan property. It’s too big for us — why, it’s even got a ballroom!” He looked at Pierce sorrowfully.

“Women are insatiable, I reckon,” Pierce said lightly. He filled his pipe, and then, seeing John’s listening look, he put it down again. Molly would be home at any moment.

“Go on and smoke,” John ordered him.

“No — I’ll wait — she might come in. I don’t like to smoke before a lady,” Pierce replied.

The moment hung between them again, hovering on the edge of the intimacy he dreaded. Then it closed down upon him and he could not avoid it.

“Insatiable — you’ve hit the word,” John said slowly.

“But it’s not her fault Pierce, I’ve done you a friendly turn.”

“You have, John,” Pierce met his eyes fully and with deep dread. Was his friend about to ask a price of him?

“I like you better than any man I know — or am likely to know in this damned city, by Gawd,” John went on.

“We’ve grown up as neighbors,” Pierce murmured.

John looked up sharply. “Understand — what I’m asking isn’t a price, though, Pierce. I want you to have the loan — whatever you say.”

“I’m sure of that,” Pierce replied. He sat gazing steadily into the fire.

John looked away and wet his lips. “I want to ask you a queer thing — queer enough so I reckon no man asked it ever before of another man.”

Pierce tried to look at him and could not. He picked up his pipe and lit it.

“Molly’s still — young. Too young to live — without more children, Pierce … Pierce, I want you to father me a child.”

It was out. Pierce heard it and knew that John had pondered over it long, in the secret darkness of many nights. He could not look at him for pity. His blood drummed in his ears.

John went on. “If Molly had a child — or two, maybe — she’d be more content — with me.” He got up and kicked the fire and the lumps of smouldering soft coal fell apart and blazed. He leaned on the mantelpiece and stared into the flames. “I’ve thought it all out. Why should she suffer — because of what the war did to me? It’ll happen — sooner or later — with some man. Pierce, let it be you!”

He turned abruptly and their eyes met. Pierce saw agony in John’s eyes and felt tears come into his own. But he shook his head.

“John, I — can’t. I’ve got to love a woman before I can — can — besides, Lucinda’s the only one for me.”

The door opened in the hall. They heard Molly’s voice calling a gay goodnight. Then she was at the library door, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining. “Oh, it was heavenly!” she cried. Then she stopped and looked from one to the other of them. “Why, you two,” she exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you? My Gawd, you look like a couple of thieves!”

“God forbid,” Pierce said heartily. He turned to John and they broke into common laughter, and in its gust they were restored.

When Pierce reached home his daughter was already born, a week earlier than she was expected. Jake brought the news to him proudly at the station, and Pierce hastened the horses home.

He tiptoed into Lucinda’s room before he had changed his clothes. She was asleep, her cheeks pearly pale. He stood looking down at her with unutterable tenderness, grateful for his own good fortune. The strange thing John had asked of him he would never tell her. She would never believe that he could have refused. He smiled half ruefully at her invincible female distrust and she opened her eyes and, seeing him, she held out her hand and gave him a smile ravishing and mischievous.

“Pay me!” she demanded.

He laughed, put his hand into his pocket and brought out a velvet box. “It came last month from Paris,” he said.

“You monster,” she murmured, “to keep it so long—”

“You had to fulfill your part of the bargain,” he said.

She pouted, her hand still waiting, he still withholding. “If it had been a boy you wouldn’t have—” she began.

“Certainly not,” he said firmly.

“Give it to me, Pierce!” she cried.

He withdrew his hand and the box. “Show me your girl, madame!” he said with mock severity.

“Silly,” she said, but she pulled the ribbon bell rope that hung beside her bed and Georgia appeared at the door.

“Bring the baby,” Lucinda said to her arrogantly.

“Only if it is a girl,” Pierce amended.

Georgia smiled her soft warm smile, “It is a girl, sir—”

She went away to fetch the child and Pierce sat down on the bed and smiled down at his wife and teased her in the extravagance of his love. “Hardhearted as ever, I see, even to your daughter — keeping her out in the cold, in another room!”

Lucinda had always refused to have the babies in her own room. Now she pouted again, prettily. “She cries more than the boys did.”

“Ah, maybe you’ve met your match, Luce,” Pierce retorted.

Georgia came in, the pink bundle in her arms, and Pierce rose as she drew back a corner of the silk afghan. He looked down into the face of his daughter. She was asleep. He studied every detail of her round pretty face. Her tiny features had a firmness which disconcerted him. Neither of his sons had looked so complete at birth. He held his gift toward Lucinda. “Here,” he said hastily, “take it! I can see she’s a female.”

Then he waited for the first look in Lucinda’s eyes when she saw the bauble. She opened the box. “Oh, Pierce,” she breathed, “how beautiful!” She lifted sapphire earrings and brooch from the grey velvet. “Oh, perfect!” she sighed.

“You’re a damned expensive woman,” he growled proudly, and at his voice the baby opened her eyes and gave a soft cry.

He turned at the sound of this new voice, and gazed down into large, deeply violet eyes.

“Sapphira,” he said to his daughter, and smiled in pride that somehow held a heartbreak in it which he could not understand. “I have a notion that you’re going to be expensive, too,” he said wryly.