The Angry Wife (4 page)

“Awfully, awfully pretty, you little savage,” Pierce said and tweaked his son’s ear. “Heard anything of Tom, Luce?”

Georgia came in with a plate of hot beaten biscuits, and Lucinda turned to her.

“Has Bettina said anything about your master Tom?” she asked.

“She came out to wash herself,” Georgia replied in her soft voice. “I asked her then, Miss Lucie, and she said he was hungry and wanting real food. I was to ask you, please, sir, if you thought a beaten biscuit and soft-boiled egg would harm him.”

“Give him anything he wants,” Pierce said. “God knows he deserves it.”

“But, Pierce, a beaten biscuit?” Lucinda asked.

“Tell him to dunk it in milk,” Pierce said. “Yes, sir,” Georgia replied. She poured two cups of coffee, pure amber, from the silver pot on the buffet, set them on the table and went away.

He glanced at her back as she went out. She wore a white dress, much washed and soft, and she had her hair on top of her head, and her neck rose straight and golden.

“How much wage are we going to pay those two girls, Luce?” he inquired.

Lucinda fluttered her white hands. “Oh, Pierce, it’s so silly! Besides, how are we going to know? I always give Georgia my old dresses, and she eats the leftovers in the pantry—she and Bettina—they don’t eat in the kitchen. How are we going to count all that? I’d rather just give her pin money.”

“Have you asked her what she’d rather have?” he asked.

Lucinda frowned and shrugged her shoulders under her lace sack. “I don’t think Georgia would know.”

Georgia came in again, this time with a plate of ham, sliced thin, to go with the scrambled eggs and kidneys.

“Well, ask her,” Pierce said with sudden firmness. But Lucinda pressed her small red lips together firmly and ignored him and he was angry. The army had spoiled him for being ignored. Men had obeyed him to the tune of hundreds and he was not to be disobeyed at home.

“Georgia!” he said abruptly. She looked at him, half alarmed, and he saw into her black eyes, eyes so great and deep that he felt uncomfortable again. “Do you want to be paid wages?”

She answered, faltering. “Yes, sir, I do if you say so—”

“Georgia, you may leave the room,” Lucinda said sharply.

The girl disappeared from where she stood as though she had not been.

“You shouldn’t frighten her, Luce,” Pierce said.

“You shouldn’t interfere between me and my maid, Pierce,” Lucinda replied.

Then they thought of the children and fell into silence. Pierce ate heavily and in great bites, champing his jaws, his eyes on his plate. Lucinda was full of graceful movement She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, buttered a bit of the beaten biscuit split on her plate and she tucked in the end of Carey’s napkin into his neck. Between these feather soft motions of hands and arms, between the turns of her head and the lifting and lowering of her lids, she watched Pierce.

He threw down his napkin. “I’m going to see for myself how Tom is this morning,” he said abruptly.

“Do,” Lucinda said pleasantly. “And tell him I’ll be in as soon as I have the children settled.”

He opened the door into his brother’s room and the weight moved from his bosom. He had been away from women too long. It was going to take time to get used to them again, even to Lucinda. There was something secret about women living in a house when a man had been living in the open with men. He looked at Tom warmly.

“Why, you’re looking wonderful, Tom,” he said. “Great goodness, man, I didn’t know what you were yesterday—a scarecrow!”

Tom was lying against fresh pillows, his hair brushed, his nightshirt immaculately white. Bettina was folding a tartan shawl over his shoulders.

“I feel—good,” Tom said. His voice was faint enough but stronger than it had been yesterday.

“And you slept?”

“Without waking—”

Pierce sat down in the armchair by the bed. “Tom, you talk differently—more like the Yankees.”

“I’ve heard nothing but Yankees—except the prison guards.”

Pierce looked grave. His handsome face, always quick to show his feelings, fell into lines of concern. “Tom, did you know the names of any of those sons of bitches? I’ll challenge any man of them we know.”

Tom shook his head. “They had it in for me—because I’m from the South. They treated me worse than a Yankee.”

“Probably did,” Pierce said. “I feared for you. First I heard you were dead, Tom. Then I got word you were a prisoner. I moved heaven and earth, of course, but I couldn’t break through.”

“They had it in for me,” Tom said again slowly. “From the top down—not the slightest favor.”

“Tom, did they—hurt you?”

“Yes,” Tom said. He paused as though he would not go on and then the words burst out of him in a retch. “They whipped us, starved us—more of us died than were lost at the front. Pierce, you know how many men Grant lost? I mean from the Wilderness to the James River—I tell you it wasn’t anything to what we lost last July and August—in Andersonville—the awful heat—the miserable holes we lived in—and all around us woods to make cabins if they’d let us—but they wouldn’t let us.”

Tom was crying, the tears running down his cheeks at last. He had tears today to weep out his heart and Pierce felt his throat grow tight.

He threw his arms around his brother. “Tom, don’t you remember it! It’s all past. You’re home, boy. Why, you and me, we’re going to make Malvern like a heaven—”

“What’s the use of a spot of heaven—in the middle of a hell world—” Tom was shaking in a chill. “Here, Bettina,” Pierce cried in terror. Bettina came quietly to the bedside. “Leave him to me, sir. You’d best go away for a space, if you please.”

“I reckon you’re right. Give him something to calm him, Bettina—”

He hastened out of the room and paused at the door, remorseful at his own inability to endure the sight of his brother. It was a shameful sight. A man had to mend himself. Tom would thank him for going away when he was all in pieces. He closed the door softly, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Got to get myself to work,” he muttered. He tiptoed through the halls and out of a side door to the stables again. He did not want to see Lucinda or the children. He’d get along down the lanes and across the country, be by himself awhile, maybe stop in at the town and get him some tobacco. Full of misery, he strode into the stable. It was a great empty place, inhabited once by a string of race horses and farm beasts, nearly all of which had been destroyed in the war. Cattle had been eaten except for two old cows, and horses had gone to the army. There was no sign of Jake and he must saddle his mare himself.

Then once more the good work of his hands comforted him. He brushed his horse’s coat and put on the saddle blanket and tightened the girth. Beauty looked at him gaily and tossed her tail. He was comforted by her simple presence, by her rolling dark eyes and her willingness to bear the burden of his body.

“You’re my sweetheart,” he told her and leading her into the yards he swung himself astride her back and touched her into a gallop. He had to get to work on Malvern, root himself here again, make it his being as once it had been before the war tore him out and threw him into the alien world. He had longed for Malvern every moment he was away. Even when he was at Charlottesville, at the University, he was always homesick. Now Lucinda, the children, all of them, and even himself, were only part of the place.

“I’ve got to get Tom on his feet,” he thought solemnly. “Get him on his feet and then on a horse! That’ll cure him. Then we’ll get Malvern going again—”

He was inspired by the thought of a horse for Tom. He would ride over to Jackson’s stable and see what they had in the way of horses. Twenty miles, a little over—he could do it easily by dinnertime. Then he would go in and tell Tom and cheer him up. Nothing was so cheering to a man as to know he had a good horse waiting for him. Given a few weeks and he and Tom would be riding over the land together. Then women and house would be left behind and in their right place.

“You have to tell somebody, sir, that I see, and you can tell me,” Bettina said to Tom when Pierce was gone. He looked into her grave dark eyes.

“I’m simply—dissolved,” he gasped. Yesterday it had been impossible to talk. Today with his first shred of strength he wanted to talk.

“That is right,” she said. Her voice was kind and warm but without pity. “That is natural.”

“I’ve—been through so much—” he whispered.

He looked up, searching for her contempt—“A man pitying himself,” he went on.

There was no contempt in her beautiful face. “Sometimes a man must pity himself. He alone knows what he’s been through.”

“You see that?”

His tears dried and he felt stronger. He cleared his throat. “It was unnecessary—what we went through—”

She drew the armchair to the side of the bed and sat down, her elbows leaning on the bed, her chin on her clenched hands. “Tell me,” she said.

“You can’t imagine—” he began.

“I know I can’t, so tell me—” she repeated.

“A poor dreary village—in the forests—in the morning—the sun would never come up. I used to wait for it—and then when it came it poured down so hot that you longed for night again, and when it went down it went down as though it had dropped into a well and all the mosquitoes and flies sprang at you like tigers out of the dark—”

“I know,” she whispered, “I was born in Georgia.”

“You know, all those forests—we could have built ourselves houses. The Confederate government owned all the sawmills—you know that? They could have put up houses for us—but we lived in holes and tents and there was a big pen—”

He pushed up his sleeve and showed her his bone-thin arms. They were covered with scars. “Burned,” he said, “they burned us with pine sticks lit into coals at the end. What did they do that for?”

“Men do such things,” she said. “I’ve seen men hang another man and burn him before he died.”

“But we were all white men,” Tom said.

“It doesn’t matter, white or black, when the feel for it gets in them. Happens to black more often because the black men are in the white men’s power. But I reckon when white men get under the power, the same things are done to them.”

“I couldn’t save myself,” Tom went on as though he had not heard her. “I used to curse and swear and rave and hit at them. After a while you learn better. You just look down at the ground and don’t even mumble. You just take it, whatever it is—think about something else if you can—but you take it.”

“I know,” Bettina said, “how I know!”

The room was full of peace and stillness. Years ago some ancestor had paneled it in white wood, and had set into the space above the mantel piece the portrait of a young girl, young as spring in her white and green gown. Her hair was the color of daffodils, but she held a gold cross in her hand. Why did a white girl hold a cross? What did she know about the meaning of a cross?

“You’ve never been a prisoner,” Tom said restlessly. “You can’t know.”

“I know how it feels to have to take things,” she answered. “I know how it feels to be helpless.”

He came out of his absorption in his own misery enough to look at her with faint curiosity. “Nobody is mean to you here—in our house.”

“I lived, a long time enough before I came here,” she said, sighing.

But his curiosity could not reach beyond himself today. His own body was still his chief concern. “How my back hurts me!” he muttered.

“Turn yourself over, sir. Turn over and I’ll rub you well.”

He turned himself painfully, groaning, and she helped him, half lifting him. Her slender arms were unexpectedly strong and he felt them so.

“You’ve got strength,” he murmured into his pillow.

“I’ve got to have strength,” she replied. She began to rub his back as she spoke, and the strokes of her hands were long and strong. He yielded himself to their comfort.

The lands of Malvern lay across a wide shallow valley and over two ranges of hills. Riding until noon Pierce had cut diagonally across from the northeast corner to southwest. Not too many of the fields were fallow, but the war had forced idleness on the land. With Tom and himself both away he could not expect to see the land looking as it should. But it was there and it still belonged to him. He was stripped and penniless, as every man on the Southern side was, but he could borrow for seed, and he knew his land. Give him a year, and it would be pouring out its gold again. Labor he would get somehow, for whatever pay. He wanted only to look ahead.

At the southwest corner Malvern joined its fields to that of his nearest neighbor, John MacBain. Pierce held his horse just short of the border and looked across a meadow. Part of the MacBain house had been burned down. He had heard of it, but he had not seen it. Now it was plain. The east wing was grey and gaunt, a skeleton attached to the main house. Strange how crippled the house looked—like a man with his right arm withered! No, he was not going to let himself think about crippled men.

He loosened the reins and went cantering over the meadow. He’d stop and see John MacBain. They had been good neighbors always, and their boyhood friendship had held.

He tied his horse to the hitching post by the stile near the front door and then mounted the wide stone steps. The front door was open and he was about to shout when he heard his own name called.

“Pierce Delaney—by Gawd!”

It was John himself—By-Gawd MacBain, people called him.

Pierce swung on his heel and saw him lying on a cot in the shadow of an ancient climbing rose that hung in festoons from the second story of the portico.

“Why, John,” he exclaimed. “What’s damaged you?”

“Sit down,” John said. His voice was still deep but the substance had gone out of it. It sounded hollow, as though it came from a cavern.

“I hadn’t heard you were sick,” Pierce said. He sat down and laid his whip on the floor.

“I’m not sick, I’m wounded,” John said. “Got a Yankee bullet in me.”

“Can’t a doctor get it out?” Pierce asked.

“Not to guarantee my life while he’s doin’ it,” John said.

“But you can’t just lie there!” Pierce protested.