The Angry Wife by Pearl S. Buck Page B

perfection of her gown and hair.
    “There’s a time for all things, as the Bible says, Pierce!” she would cry at him.
    Once he had exclaimed with violence, “Hang the Bible, Luce—you’re always bringing it up against me!” She was then genuinely and deeply shocked.
    “Pierce! You aren’t a fit father for our children if you speak so about the Holy Bible!”
    “The Bible’s all right in church, Luce—or on Sundays, but to lug it into our daily affairs—”
    “Pierce, hush—and I mean it!” she had cried, stamping her foot.
    He was continually bewildered by her genuine reverence for all the conventions of religion and her extraordinary ability to act swiftly with complete disregard for common morals when she felt inclined. She lied easily, laughing at herself and at him when he was shocked.
    “But, Luce,” he had complained, after hearing her tell a neighbor’s wife that he was going to run for governor. “You know I haven’t any idea of going into politics. I wouldn’t demean myself.”
    “Well, she was boasting so,” Lucinda said calmly.
    “But it’s a lie, Luce,” he went on, “and I shall have to deny it—it’ll he talked about everywhere.”
    Lucinda had laughed loudly. “Nobody’ll know whether you will or you won’t,” she said triumphantly. “They’ll watch you and wonder and be afraid maybe you will and they’ll be polite because they won’t know.”
    “But to lie—” he had repeated feebly.
    “Oh, hush up, Pierce,” she had said rudely. “Men do much worse things than lie, I’m sure.”
    “I don’t know what,” but he had sputtered and turned red and subsided when she became hysterical with scornful laughter.
    This morning after protesting he had subsided again, half-convinced that maybe she was right about Tom and that to talk about the affair with Bettina was to make it too important. He sat ruminating and idle on the terrace, putting off his riding about the farm, listening to her. Like most women she kept on talking after she had really finished everything she had to say. He let his mind wander. Then suddenly he was drawn back to attention by her changing the subject completely.
    “And, Pierce, anyway, you aren’t going to just sit here at Malvern all our lives and play at farming.”
    He came out of his vague reflections made up of pleasure in the warm sunshine, the safety of home and the beauty of the hills rolling away from the house, and a vague secret envy of Tom in his new romance with a beautiful female creature. In the heart of his own life he wanted romance—with Lucinda, of course. “Playing!” he shouted.
    “Well, you’re not a farmer, Pierce Delaney,” Lucinda said.
    “Well, I just am, Luce,” he said. “I don’t see myself living anywhere but at Malvern. Besides, what would I do?”
    “Of course well live at Malvern, dummy,” Lucinda said with impatience. “But we can’t get rich on Malvern.”
    “Who wants to get rich?” he inquired.
    “I do,” Lucinda declared.
    “On what, pray?”
    She looked so pretty that he was charmed and amused by her audacity. Had she been tall and vigorous he would have been angered by it. But she was tiny, a toy of a woman, and he could never take her with full seriousness.
    She leaned forward, held her breath an instant and then blew it out.
    “Railroads!” The word came from her lips like a rainbow bubble.
    He had been walking about lazily but now he sat down.
    “Tell me, pray, just what you know about railroads,” he said.
    “You can get rich on them,” she said confidently.
    “How do you know?” he asked.
    “Because John MacBain is going to get rich that way—Molly told me so.”
    “Molly been here?” he asked abruptly.
    She looked at him, and decided to tell. “I rode over there, and we talked and she told me.”
    “You rode! When?”
    “When you made me so mad—”
    “Mad! I’m mad at you now—” he was suddenly swept with fury at her. “Lucinda, what right have you to risk the