The Angry Wife (20 page)

She gazed back at him, her eyes suffering. “I—can’t,” she whispered. Her face, open and quivering before his gaze, was like a magnolia flower. Her eyes were enormous and wet with sudden tears. The moment grew long, too long, then suddenly seeing the look upon his face she yielded to herself. She ran across the room and knelt before him, and bent her head to his feet.

He was horrified and shaken. He looked down into her face and despised himself because he could not keep from seeing how beautiful she was. “I ought to send you away,” he said in a strange hard voice.

“I have no home in the world but here,” she whispered.

“Get up!” he commanded her. He stepped back and turned and strode toward the door. He looked back and she was there, on her knees still, her delicate hands clasped, looking at him with her dark and sorrowful eyes.

“I must leave in half an hour,” he told her, and heard his own voice dry and harsh.

“Yes, sir.” The words were a sigh.

He hastened downstairs to find Lucinda. She had left the landing and was in the library, still surrounded by holly wreaths and servants. She was standing by the mantelpiece, directing the placing of the decorations behind the portrait of his mother. He went and stood beside her silently, and looked at his mother’s face.

“Do you think that wreath is too heavy?” Lucinda inquired.

“Perhaps,” he said absently. He wanted to feel his mother’s presence and Lucinda’s. He put his arm about Lucinda’s waist and took her right hand and pressed it to his lips. She let him caress her and then pulled her hand away, lifting her eyebrows at the servants who were stealing looks at them.

“Come to the door with me, Luce,” he begged. “I shan’t be seeing you maybe for a week.”

“A week!” she echoed. “Pierce—that’s Christmas Eve!”

“I’ll try to get home sooner,” he said.

“Has Georgia got your things ready?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said shortly. The enormous complexity of his life suddenly appalled him. If he did not send Georgia away, how would he hide from Lucinda what he knew? And if he did send her away, what reason would he give? He heartily longed to tell Lucinda exactly what had happened and let her deal with Georgia as she would. But prudence forbade this. Lucinda would never believe that he had not done something to bring Georgia to her knees before him. Lucinda would never believe in his innocence—nor in any man’s where a woman was concerned. He felt sweat stir at the roots of his hair and along his upper lip under his moustache, and he dared not put himself at her mercy. She was his wife and she knew the secret weaknesses of his being and his life was with her and must be with her through the years until old age and death, and he could not be at her mercy.

“Goodbye, honey,” he said. “Don’t bother to come to the door, after all. The house looks lovely. And I’ll be back before Christmas Eve, for sure.”

Lucinda kissed him gratefully. “If you can get some champagne in Wheeling bring home a dozen bottles, Pierce. The boys won’t think it’s a real party without it.”

“I will, my dear,” he promised her.

He dreaded to go into the hall lest Georgia were there. But she was not. Joe was getting the bags into the carriage, and he grinned at Pierce.

“I shore did hustle myself,” he panted. Pierce climbed into the carriage and Joe arranged the fur robe over his knees and jumped on the driving seat and the coachman pricked the twin black carriage horses with his whip and they set off down the long avenue of oaks.

“We’ve been through trouble before,” John said. There had been no pretense at festivity this time when Pierce arrived at the great mansion set on a hill outside Wheeling, nor at any time during the days he had been here. On the fourth day, after an almost silent dinner, the three of them at one end of the huge oval dining table in an enormous dining room, Molly had gone upstairs and John had brought him to the dark paneled library. A fire burned in an English iron grate under a white marble mantlepiece where a wreath of marble was upheld by naked cupids. It was near midnight and they were still talking, and the burden of their talk was what it had been for hours on each of the days he had been here in John’s house. Financial depression threatened the country. Men had seen it coming in vague and inexplicable fashion, a storm on the horizon, a wind on the sea. Pierce had not felt it at Malvern, and soundly rooted in his lands, he had taken the warnings he read in newspapers as the nervousness of business men whose fortunes were in flexible money instead of in farms and cattle.

But John had told him that the depression had already fallen upon the railroads. Passenger traffic was growing so light that it scarcely paid to run the trains on short journeys, and freight was falling off alarmingly fast. Something had to be done to check the downward spiral of the times.

“I should have thought that the expansion before the war would have taught you railroad fellows something,” Pierce said sourly.

John looked at him and grinned. “You ought to understand. You’ve done a little expanding yourself at Malvern.”

“Only for myself and my family,” Pierce grumbled. I haven’t taken the savings of widows and orphans.”

“You’ve used the savings of widows and orphans,” John retorted. “What would you have been if you hadn’t? Not the Squire of Malvern!”

Pierce avoided the thought. “After all you’ve told me, there’s only one thing to be done. Depression has hit the whole country and we know it. Then wages have got to come down.”

“Easier said than done,” John reminded him. “The men will go on strike.”

“Let them,” Pierce said.

“You don’t keep up with the times down there in the country, Pierce,” John complained. “Don’t you read any newspapers? Have you ever heard of a fellow called Marx?”

“No,” Pierce said, “who is he?”

“Oh, my God,” John groaned. “Did you ever hear of a communist, Pierce?”

“No,” Pierce said.

John leaned on the mantelpiece and shook a long forefinger at him. “You listen to me, Pierce,” he said in the sharp high voice with which he harangued directors at dinner tables and gangs at the works. “A strike isn’t a local nuisance nowadays. It’s something more, by Gawd!”

“What?” asked Pierce.

“That’s what I don’t know,” John’s forefinger dropped. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. When we have a strike here, in West Virginia, I don’t feel the roots are here.”

“Where are they?” Pierce asked, smiling incredulously.

“Over in Europe somewhere,” John said solemnly.

Pierce yawned. “You always were a gloomy fellow, John. Come on to bed. A night’s sleep will bring back your commonsense. What’s Europe got to do with us?”

John shook his head and poured two small glasses of whiskey from the big cut glass decanter on the table. They lifted their glasses and drank to one another, and marched up the broad stairs side by side. Behind them a silent liveried servant put out the lamps and set the screen across the fireplace.

In the wide upstairs hall John opened a heavy mahogany door and Pierce stood on the threshold of his room. Then they heard Molly’s voice. Her maid had opened the door opposite, and over the low footboard of her enormous bed, they saw Molly enthroned among silken pillows.

“Come in here, you two!” she called. “Pierce, you needn’t mind me—you’re just like a brother to me, damn you!”

They laughed, Pierce awkward for a moment. And then they went and stood at the foot of Molly’s bed. She looked very pretty indeed, in her blue satin nightgown and lace cap tied with blue ribbons. Her ruddy hair was braided and hung in plaits over her shoulders. Her white arms were bare and she threw down her book.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said frankly. “I’m worried to death. Pierce, are you afraid?”

“Of what?” he asked cautiously. He did not believe in talking about business with any woman.

“Those awful communists!” she wailed. “They want to take everything away from us!”

“Nonsense,” he said smiling. “We’re a civilized country, thank God.”

“Think of what the rabble did in France!” she cried.

“Think of what they didn’t,” he reminded her. “The palaces are still there and yours will be too, my dear—don’t worry!”

She was looking at him with bold bright eyes, and Pierce involuntarily glanced at John. He was staring at the rose-flowered carpet, the lines of his mouth saturnine.

“Goodnight, Molly—” Pierce said.

“Goodnight, Pierce,” she replied, and made a face at him.

They went back to Pierce’s room and Pierce laughed a little when he entered it. It was enormous, paneled in black walnut and curtained with red velvet.

“Napoleon might have slept in that,” he said cheerfully, staring at the tented, triple-sized bed.

John smiled drily. “I believe he did,” he remarked. “Though how these fellows get around to sleep in so many beds—”

Pierce laughed again. “I wouldn’t have it at Malvern for a pretty penny,” he said frankly.

Out of the darkness a huge brass lamp shone in a circle of yellow light and a coal fire burned and crackled in the black iron grate. John stood before it, warming his coat tails and Pierce stood facing him.

“You remember what I asked you, once?” John inquired. Pierce nodded, unbuttoning his satin waistcoat. “I ask you again,” John said firmly. “There’s a fellow hanging around Molly these days—you know Henry Mallows?”

“Yes,” Pierce said.

“I don’t want him to father any child of mine,” John said with feeling. “A sissy, if I ever saw one!”

Pierce took off his coat and hung it over a chair. “Doesn’t his wife—”

“His wife,” John said with bitterness, “is used to loose ways on her own account, from all I hear. Those lords and ladies! Pierce, I’m fond of you. I could love any child of yours—as I’d love my own.”

“I’ve had all the children I’m going to have, John.” He spoke lightly, but his head swam. A woman’s face sprang before his eyes, and he was shocked to discover that it was Georgia’s as she had knelt before him. He turned away abruptly. Joe had unpacked his bags and his nightshirt lay on the big bed.

“I reckon I’ll turn in, John.” He faced his friend, smiled, and walked toward him and clasped John’s long bony hand.

“Is that final?” John asked.

“Final,” Pierce said.

“Then I won’t ask you again.”

“No, John.”

Long into the night Pierce lay thinking and arranging his life. He was used to himself. Since he had been sixteen years old he had suffered from wild and brief flashes of interest in pretty women. He had never taken these feelings seriously, knowing them the common lot of most men. Nor had he ever spoken of them to Lucinda. They were no more significant than a wayward dream to be forgotten in the morning. Now carefully he relegated Georgia to such dreams. She was a servant in his house and nothing was more despicable than a man’s folly with his wife’s maid. It was a degradation entirely beneath him. He felt a boyish superiority in refusing to engage himself with Molly, the wife of his friend, and a renewal of devotion to John—good old John, who trusted him so much! He determined that if he had a chance, he would, for John’s sake, talk to Molly and tell her not to destroy her husband’s happiness. Upon the calm of moral rectitude he fell asleep in Napoleon’s bed and did not dream.

The next morning, waked by Joe’s footsteps creeping around the room, he lay in lazy comfort. At Malvern there was always the weather to rouse him early. As soon as the dawn broke he had the landsman’s curiosity to know what the sky was and whether the sun would shine. Once out of bed he could not go back to it. But here in the city it did not matter what the weather was. It was simply inconvenient or convenient. Today it was convenient for home-going. A broad bar of bright winter sunshine lay across the floor and paled the flames leaping in the grate. Joe, holding up his master’s trousers critically, met his eyes across them.

“You better change to your good grey pants today, Master Pierce,” he said gravely. “Theseyere creases didn’t set with all the pressin’ I did.”

“All right,” Pierce yawned and stretched mightily. “We’re going home so I might as well look pretty.”

He felt gay and relieved of his problems. Today he would talk to Molly and clear his debt of friendship to John. Alone with Joe it suddenly occurred to him that he would speak of Georgia, and tell him he must marry her. He piled his pillows and lay back on them. Joe was lifting the grey trousers from the hanger in the big mahogany wardrobe.

“Joe!” he said suddenly.

Joe jumped and clutched the trousers. “Lordamighty, Marse Pierce, why you yell at me like that?” he asked reproachfully.

Pierce laughed. “I didn’t mean to yell—I just thought of something. Joe, I told Georgia that if you and she would get married I’d let you have the little stone tenant house.”

“It’s a mighty nice house,” Joe said thoughtfully, smoothing the creases of the trousers.

“Well?” Pierce asked.

“Georgia’s a mighty nice girl,” Joe said still more thoughtfully. “But I reckon she won’t marry no colored man.”

“She can’t marry anybody else,” Pierce said positively.

“No, sir—reckon she cain’t,” Joe agreed.

“Have you asked her?” Pierce inquired.

“I mintion it, yes, sir—about a thousand times, I reckon. She always says the same thing. ‘You go ’way fum me, Joe’—that’s all she say—don’t say nothin’ else but just that. So I goes away.”

“You try her again,” Pierce commanded.

“Kin I tell her you said I was to?” Joe looked at him with a gleam of hope in his small dark eyes.

Pierce considered, staring into the canopy of the bed.

“Yes,” he said finally, “tell her I said so. Tell her I want you two to get married and have children—right away.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said doubtfully. “Thank you kindly, Marster Pierce.”

He went away and Pierce got up and made a great splash of cold water in the flowered porcelain basin on the washstand. Then he dried himself before the fire. There was a mirror above the mantel and he saw his tall firm white body reflected in it. He would have been less than a man had he not felt complacently that he did not look his age by ten years.

He went down to breakfast half an hour later dressed in his grey suit and a new satin tie that Lucinda had ordered from New York for him. His dark hair, barely silvered at the temples, was smoothly brushed and he had trimmed the ends of his moustache. Molly was alone in the dining room, when he came in.