The Angry Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

the lands of Malvern, his land. Two hundred years ago his great-grandfather had come from England, a landless young son, and had bought this valley set high in the mountains of the Alleghenies. He had cut the forests and ploughed the earth, he had built the foundations and the heart of the big house. The soil was rich, and the encircling fields were still fringed with virgin forest, great oaks and beeches and maples.
    “I will restore my soul,” Pierce said to himself.
    He turned his mare’s head away from the line of cabins to the north of the road. He did not want to see his own black folk, not even to hear their greetings. He was tired of them because he had fought to keep them. Hell, he had lost and they were free. He still believed that it was the wrong way to free them. That was what he would have liked to have told that tall gaunt man in the White House, had he not been killed. All during the war he wanted to go and tell Abe Lincoln, “Man, I don’t want slaves! I’ll be as glad as you could be to have everyone of them free and wage earning. But it’s got to be done slowly, the way our family has been doing it, freeing the men when they get to be thirty-five, freeing the women when they marry. Then they’re fit for freedom. The Delaneys have been freeing their slaves for fifty years.”
    Well, almost freeing them! They had their papers, even if they didn’t get real wages. They were like Jake, still wanting their food and clothes and cabins. It scared them if they had only cold money in their palms. They couldn’t imagine money turning into food and clothes and cabins.
    His horse picked her way delicately about something in the road and he looked down and saw a yellow backed turtle slowly making its way across the dusty stretch. It went on, regardless of the peril it had so narrowly escaped. He laughed at its earnest persistence. It was the comforting and delightful thing about land and forest, and beast and bird—they went on, oblivious of wars.
    “I’m going to be like that,” he thought. He lifted his head, gave his mare rein and she broke into a gallop. He brought her home an hour later in a froth, and leaped up the steps to have breakfast with Lucinda and the little boys. They were already at the table, when he had washed and dropped into his seat. He had not changed his riding things. After breakfast he wanted to go out again, this time on business. But he must see Tom first.
    “Hello, you two,” he said to his boys. He reached out his hands and rumpled both blonde heads. “See how pretty your mama is?” They turned at the question and stared at her.
    “Are you pretty, Mama?” Martin asked, surprised.
    “How pretty, Papa?” Carey asked.
    Lucinda bore the scrutiny of three pairs of male eyes with lovely calm. She smiled at Pierce as the one most important.
    “Awfully, awfully pretty, you little savage,” Pierce said and tweaked his son’s ear. “Heard anything of Tom, Luce?”
    Georgia came in with a plate of hot beaten biscuits, and Lucinda turned to her.
    “Has Bettina said anything about your master Tom?” she asked.
    “She came out to wash herself,” Georgia replied in her soft voice. “I asked her then, Miss Lucie, and she said he was hungry and wanting real food. I was to ask you, please, sir, if you thought a beaten biscuit and soft-boiled egg would harm him.”
    “Give him anything he wants,” Pierce said. “God knows he deserves it.”
    “But, Pierce, a beaten biscuit?” Lucinda asked.
    “Tell him to dunk it in milk,” Pierce said. “Yes, sir,” Georgia replied. She poured two cups of coffee, pure amber, from the silver pot on the buffet, set them on the table and went away.
    He glanced at her back as she went out. She wore a white dress, much washed and soft, and she had her hair on top of her head, and her neck rose straight and golden.
    “How much wage are we going to pay those two girls, Luce?” he inquired.
    Lucinda fluttered her white hands. “Oh, Pierce,