The Angry Wife (15 page)

“Georgia!” he said.

She halted at the foot of the stair, soft and obedient, and again he was uncomfortably aware of her as a beautiful woman. Indeed, Lucinda should long ago have married her to some good man.

“Yes, sir!”

Now how the devil would he go on? He plunged in brusquely. “I need some help from you again, Georgia—about Bettina. It upsets your mistress to have things as they are—all the children—”

He paused and felt heat under his collar. Georgia helped him at once.

“I can understand that, sir,” she said. “I’ve often told Bettina it would be better if she moved away somewhere.”

“That’s it exactly,” he said eagerly. “You know how it looks. I’m not talking about Bettina—she’s a good girl. I blame my brother entirely.”

“You mustn’t blame either of them, Master Pierce,” Georgia’s soft voice was tranquil and sad. “What they’re doing is natural, sir.” She paused and then went on, half-hesitatingly. “I’m afraid it was the way that our father treated us when we were little—that makes Bettina so—so independent.”

Pierce began to hate the moment he had brought on himself. He no longer told the servants to stop saying master and mistress. Lucinda had not approved his democratic ideas, and after the troubles in the South with the free slaves he had let the old ways slip back. It was better, perhaps, not to break down the barriers. He had come to see that the war had changed nothing that was fundamental in the relationship between whites and blacks.

Now in a sudden perception he did not often have he saw that some deep, insoluble, unreachable wrong had been done to Georgia by her white father. It was wrong to have given her this beautiful face, with nothing more than a faint tinge of the skin and duskiness in the hair and eyes to set her apart from white women. It was wrong to have given her the delicacy and the keenness of understanding which belonged to the best blood of the South. The dissipation of valuable blood suddenly made him angry—his blood, too, through Tom!

“I’m not blaming you or Bettina,” he said, “I’m just saying that we aren’t willing to go on like this any more. Now I can tell Tom to get out or Bettina can get out—one or the other. It’s a shame and disgrace to us as a family to have things as they are. The girls are getting big—I don’t want to have to answer Sally’s questions. Now you know it’ll be easier for you to tell Bettina how I feel than it will be for me to tell my brother—”

He made his voice harsh with anger and expected to see her yield as she had always yielded to command. To his astonishment she spoke with gentle firmness.

“I had rather not speak to my sister about how you feel, if you please,” she said. “Whether you speak to your brother is according to your own wish.” Then while he stared at her she added the syllable, as though she had forgotten it—“sir.”

He was so surprised that he was furious and the palms of his hands itched to slap her cheeks. But he had never struck either servant or child and he would not do so now.

“I’ll tell Bettina myself, damn the whole business,” he muttered.

She bowed her head and went up the stairs with a steady grace which matched Lucinda’s own.

He regretted at once that he had spoken to her. There was nothing he hated more than a quarrel with a woman. But having said he would talk to Bettina himself, he would do it now while his anger sustained him. He knew himself well enough to know that if he allowed his anger to cool he would postpone everything as he had so often. But Lucinda would give him no peace!

He picked up his hat and his stick and went out of the house and down the path. He stalked down the tree-covered road, conscious of looking sulky and finding release in it. He frowned hard at a small black boy scuffling along in the dust and the child stopped and stood, his face fixed in terror, but Pierce did not speak. He went on, his cane stirring up small whirlpools of yellow dust, until he reached Bettina’s gate.

He had seen the house almost daily in all these years but never once had he opened the gate nor had he seen Bettina except in glimpses of her tall woman’s figure, hanging up clothes, raking the leaves, sweeping away snow from her doorstep. A boy was cutting grass now with a shorthandled scythe, and when the latch lifted the child stopped and turned his head. He saw Tom’s son, a boy of seven, dark, but with Tom’s grey eyes and the Delaney mouth as clean-cut as his own. He would not have believed that he could be so confounded. The child stared, dropped his scythe and ran around the house.

“Luce is right,” Pierce told himself. “It’s a disgrace.”

He went to the closed door and thumped on it and a few seconds later it opened. Bettina stood there in a freshly starched dress of thin green stuff. He knew something was strange about her and then realized that it was the first time he had seen her without an apron.

She did not invite him to come in. “Can I do something for you, Mr. Delaney?” she asked.

He stood staring at her. She had gained a little weight and the thinness of her girlhood was gone. Her body was rounded and matured. She was extremely beautiful—there was no denying it. She was paler than Georgia, and her features were sharper. He took heed of such details because he was as used to scanning the physical details of such people as he was used to marking the looks of cattle and horses.

“Yes, you can do something for me, Bettina, and I’d like to come in,” he said abruptly.

She stood aside and he went in and stepped at once into the main room. He saw that the small house was not only clean, but it was kept as a home. There were curtains at the windows, rugs on the floor, a spinet against the inner wall. He saw a big chair which had once belonged to his father and which he had given Tom. It stood beside the south window, and by it were a table and a globe and on the table were books and writing paper. He looked away and saw through the open door opposite him the glimpse of a small cool-looking dining room, and a table set for six. A pot of flowers stood on the table.

He sat down in Tom’s chair and laid his hat and stick on the floor. She had not taken them when he came in. She followed him and sat down quietly and it was the first time that anyone like her had sat in his presence. He was disconcerted and sensible enough to be amused at his own disconcertment. A little girl of perhaps three came in, a pretty child, round and plump and fortunately reminding him of no one. She climbed on Bettina’s lap and gazed at him with placid eyes. He tried to ignore her but his uncontrollable love of children stirred in his heart. This little thing was a bonbon of a child, something to put on a valentine. He had to acknowledge that for sheer prettiness she outdid his own.

“That’s a pretty little trick,” he said suddenly.

Bettina ruffled the child’s short curls with her fingers. “She’s not a good little girl, I’m afraid,” she said gravely. “She gets into such mischief I don’t know what to do, sometimes.”

“What’s her name?” Pierce asked.

“Georgy, after my sister,” Bettina said.

“I am good,” Georgy said in a high little voice.

“Not when you run away down the road,” Bettina said.

“I went to find Papa!” Georgy told Pierce confidentially.

In his embarrassment Pierce did not speak. But Bettina said in the same grave voice, “We mustn’t go to find Papa. We just wait until he comes.”

Pierce could bear no more. “Send her away—I want to talk to you.”

Bettina rose silently and slipped the child to the floor and led her away into the dining room. The door closed and behind it he heard her quiet voice and the child’s high one, answering. He looked about the room and was deeply troubled. There was no doubt that Tom considered this his home. Above the simple wooden mantelpiece he had hung a small portrait of their mother. Their father had had one painted for each of his children. Pierce’s hung in his own room and he had supposed that Tom’s was in his. But Tom had brought it here, because this was his true home and not Malvern. Pierce looked at his mother’s face, a delicate irregular face, not beautiful—his father had had all the physical beauty—and too sensitive. What would she have thought had she known that she would preside over this house? Perhaps Tom had even taught these children to call her Grandmother. Lucinda was right—it could not go on.

The door opened and Bettina came back and closed it behind her. She crossed the room and closed the outer door, too. They were alone and for a moment after she sat down, he kept silent. Outside in the yard the boy was beginning to cut the grass again, and he could hear the soft swish of the blade.

“You have—three children?” he asked abruptly.

“The baby is asleep upstairs,” Bettina replied.

“What’s her name?” Pierce asked abruptly.

“Lettice, after my own mother,” Bettina replied.

Pierce cleared his throat. He was tired and it occurred to him that he ought to have postponed his affair because of his night on the train. He never slept well except at Malvern in his own bed. But here he was.

“Bettina, you’re a sensible woman,” he began.

“I hope so,” Bettina said quietly. Her black eyes were fixed on his face and the light from the window by which he sat showed them deep and dark. They held none of the golden lights of Georgia’s eyes.

“Now, Bettina,” he began and his voice took on the tone of argument. “I know you will understand why I felt I had to talk with you. You’ve been with us at Malvern and you know how things are. Mrs. Delaney is getting very worried about the children and how to explain to them—well, this house and you and—and these children and—and all that. We’ve always been unhappy about it, of course. As things go, I haven’t said anything. Young men usually have a fling, especially when they’re just out of the army. I didn’t want to say anything at first. I said to myself and I told Lucinda—‘it’s Tom’s own business.’ But now—well, it’s going on and it is time that things come to an end somehow. Tom ought to get married and settle down, you know.”

He stopped, looked at her and looked away. Her face was set in frozen quiet. She did not speak. He felt very unhappy. He resisted his awareness of her as a human being, but it made him uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what to suggest,” he said. “I still don’t feel I can presume to give orders to Tom—exactly. But I think I ought to tell you that when he marries and starts his own family, I’m willing to share Malvern with him or even build him a separate house on any of the land he chooses. When a man is well over thirty he has to get started.” He felt that he was right in his point and he gained confidence. “I want to see that you are treated well, Bettina, and I am going to suggest that you move away somewhere with these children of yours, and I’ll treat you very handsomely if you do so. You can go north if you like—I’ll buy you a house in some town there—and see that you get money every month as long as you live. I’ll even put that in my will.”

He felt that he could not be more generous and he leaned back in his chair, as he had often seen his father do. She sat in the same pose, her hands on the arms of the Windsor chair. She looked like Georgia, but her mouth was not so sweet. Something about the firmness of that well-cut mouth disturbed him. This was not an obedient woman and doubtless Tom had spoiled her. It always made a colored woman proud to belong to a white man. He pursed his lips and decided to be firm himself.

“That’s my proposition,” he declared.

She leaned forward a little, clasping her hands on her elbows. “I don’t feel it is for me to decide, Mr. Delaney.” Her voice was so pure, so cold, that it seemed empty of all feeling. “If—your brother—tells me to go, I will go.”

“Now, Bettina, let’s be sensible,” he complained loudly. “Tom isn’t going to tell you to go. We won’t pretend. I want you to help me persuade him that it’s the best thing.”

“Maybe it isn’t.”

They were beginning now really to talk. He had penetrated that cold shell of hers.

“Bettina, you know it is,” he insisted. He tried to keep anger out of his voice. “Surely you want what’s best for Tom—as I do.”

“You said Mrs. Delaney—” her voice trembled and sudden tears swam into her eyes. Something hurt and quivering looked at him out of those shimmering depths.

“Let’s put her aside—damn it all, I love my brother, too. I’m only going to talk about him. Tom deserves legitimate heirs, Bettina. He’s going to be a rich man some day, if he stays by the family.”

“I don’t just think of property,” she said in a low voice.

“No, nor I,” Pierce said swiftly. “But think of Tom when he’s old! He ought to be surrounded by children of his own—”

“These are his,”—she broke in.

“Of his own kind,” Pierce went on, “children who can be in his house and who can stand for him. Bettina, don’t think I don’t feel for you. I feel very sorry indeed, but you know how things are in this world. You can’t change them and I can’t change them, however much we might wish things were different. And I don’t mind saying that if they were different—if you hadn’t been—well, what you are—I wouldn’t have felt it was my business. But you know how things are—I can’t help it any more than you can—it’s just how things are—”

Just how things are—just how things are—with this phrase he beat her down. He saw her head droop, and the tears flowed over her lids and down her cheeks and she wrung her slender hands together. He saw her hands—it had often amazed him to notice that her people always had beautiful hands.

“I reckon I can go away,” Bettina sobbed.

He rose. “Of course you can,” he said cheerfully. “And I’m going to make it easy for you—”

What he had not counted on was Tom’s coming. He had thought it was the middle of the morning but the clock had run onto noon. He heard the gate click and saw his brother come into the yard and pick up the little girl and come to the door.

“Wipe your eyes,” he ordered Bettina and she obeyed.

But Tom was at the door and in the room. He had to face his brother. “Why are you here, Pierce?” Tom demanded. He put the child down and she ran to her mother and Bettina laid her cheek on her hair, her face turned away.

Pierce looked at his brother. He had seen Tom every day of these years, but he saw him now exactly as he was, a grown man, mature and dignified. He could not endure the steady, cold light of his blue eyes.