Free The Angry Wife by Pearl S. Buck Page B

own mother’s house, her own father—
    She began to cry softly. It was sadly hard to be a woman, so hard to hold her own when she had no real power at all and had to ask for everything she wanted, even new satin to cover the parlor furniture! She had to get what she wanted anyway she could. She thought of all the things she wanted. Every room in the house needed something new. Pierce didn’t understand that the house was her world, her place where she had to live. Men went out but women stayed at home and in the home they had to have new things sometimes or go crazy fretting and mending. She wiped her eyes and sighed and then got up suddenly and put on her grey riding habit and went downstairs, feeling sad and a little weak.
    Out on the lawn Joe was waving a branch over the sleeping children and no one else was to be seen. She did not want to meet Pierce and she had a conviction that Bettina and Tom were together this very minute, probably up in his room. Bettina still came and went there. It made her physically sick to think of it, here where she lived, in her own home! She clenched her hands against her breast and thought of marching upstairs. But she did not. A woman had to think how to do a thing like that. Just to make a fuss wasn’t enough.
    She went outside the open door and down the steps and Joe got to his feet. She motioned to him and he came softly across the grass.
    “Tell Jake to bring a horse around quickly, and don’t wake the children.”
    “Yassum,” Joe whispered. He went noiselessly away and she sat down on the bottom step and pulled her hat over her eyes to shade her skin from the sun. If she walked around the boys would wake out of sheer contrariness and she wanted to ride off by herself. Maybe she would go to see Molly. Maybe she wouldn’t. She just wanted the feeling of running away. If Pierce worried about her, let him be worried.
    She saw Jake leading the horse and got up and went to meet him, so that the horse’s hooves would not clatter on the gravel. Joe stooped and she stepped into his hand and sprang into the side saddle and lifted her whip.
    “If your master wants to know where I am, tell him I’ve gone for a ride and that’s all.”
    “Yassum,” Joe said. He stood looking after her thoughtfully and scratching himself, his head, his armpits, the palms of his hands. “Reckon there’s some kinda ructions,” he mumbled to himself. He tiptoed back to the tree and looked down on the little sleeping boys. A small breeze had sprung up and he sniffed it. “Reckon it’ll keep off the flies,” he mumbled. He settled himself under the tree, his head on a root, folded his arms and dropped into instant sleep.
    Upstairs in her room Georgia sat crying softly and waiting for Bettina. She was afraid of her younger sister, and yet the time had come when Bettina must tell her everything. If the two of them didn’t stand together, then what would happen? They had always told each other everything and had made their little world secure here in this room. But she knew Bettina had something hidden. Bettina didn’t talk any more. At night when they lay in bed where they used to talk, whispering so that nobody could hear, now only she talked, and Bettina lay listening and answering a word or two, and then lying awake. She knew Bettina lay awake, because in the night she heard her sigh.
    “Honey, can’t you sleep?” Every night nearly she waked to ask the question.
    “I can sleep after awhile, maybe,” Bettina answered.
    In the morning she made excuses that the night air was hot or the moonlight too bright. But the real reason was that there was something always awake in Bettina nowadays. She couldn’t get to sleep any more, not the old deep sleep when they never even dreamed, because they were so tired when night came and morning came so quickly. And now she knew what it was in Bettina.
    Still she did not come, and at last Georgia dared wait no longer, lest her mistress call and hear no