The Angry Wife by Pearl S. Buck Page A

you enough for any more,” she replied.
    He groaned. “But what are we going to do? We can’t stay here—”
    “You can stay here,” she said steadily. “And you can find me a little house somewhere near enough and there I’ll live, and you can come whenever you can. It’ll be my life.”
    He was not strong enough for her. He bent his head on her knees and she laid her cheek against the back of his head.
    “It’ll be a happy life for me,” she whispered. “Happy enough—”
    Lucinda’s horse was tied to the fence and she and Molly were talking upstairs in the bedroom. She had decided suddenly that she would go and see Molly MacBain because she was disturbed by a thought which had come to her as she was cantering through the woods along the Malvern stream. Pierce had made a path for horses along the stream before the war and had ordered it cleared as soon as he came home, but she had not ridden along it until today.
    “Maybe the war has really changed things,” this was the dreadful thought. “Maybe colored women aren’t any more just—property. Maybe Tom can really marry Bettina—legally!”
    She had touched the horse with her whip and had decided to go and talk everything over with Molly.
    “Honey, how glad I am to see you!” Molly had cried. “John’s gone to Wheeling and I’m all alone and lonesome.”
    They had begun by blackberry wine and cookies on the porch and then Molly had taken her through the house and here in the bedroom, where no one was near, Lucinda had told her.
    “Molly, I surely do need your help, honey,” she had said abruptly, sinking down on the window seat.
    Molly had listened avidly.
    “Tom has taken up with my girl Bettina,” Lucinda said.
    “You don’t tell!” Molly breathed. “Why, when did it happen?”
    “I shouldn’t have let her have the nursing of him, I reckon,” Lucinda said.
    “You mean—there’s a baby?” Molly asked.
    “I don’t know how far it’s gone,” Lucinda replied. “Of course if it’s begun, a baby will be the end of it and maybe half a dozen. It’s so sickening—not that I care about either of them, Molly. But what bothers me is whether Tom could make it legal.”
    Molly looked puzzled. “Make what legal, honey?”
    “I mean really—marry Bettina,” Lucinda said. She flushed with embarrassment. It sounded silly even to imagine such things.
    Molly began to laugh. “Honey, whoever heard of a white man marryin’ a nigger?”
    “Things are so queer now,” Lucinda said defensively. “It would be just—dangerous—for ladies like us—if colored wenches could be married—why, we wouldn’t have anything left—none of us would be safe in our own houses—”
    “Now, honey, stop your foolishness,” Molly cried. “Men don’t marry women they can get without marryin.
    The two women looked at one another. Each remembered the teaching of their mothers. “If Bettina’s given herself,” Molly went on; “what is there she can make him marry her for now?”
    Lucinda smiled. The worry rolled from her mind.
    “Maybe it’s a mercy that things have gone so far,” she said cheerfully. “Thank God, it’s not Pierce! But it’s still sickening. Molly, what do you suppose is the matter with men?”
    She was a little shocked by the greedy interest in Molly’s blue eyes. Molly’s red lips were parted and she wet them.
    “So long as it isn’t your Pierce, it isn’t so bad,” Molly agreed. She felt hotness creeping up her back, and her eyelids fluttered before Lucinda’s surprised look. “Men are—well, just that way,” she said. She patted both sides of her fluffy red hair. “We have to put up with them, Lucinda.” Then she laughed. “Maybe God felt sorry for women and gave us a little whip of our own to do the drivin’ with!”
    She felt relieved to laugh because Lucinda was staring at her so hard. She considered telling Lucinda in return about John and how he was wounded and then decided she would not. She had a whip