Angry Wife

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“WE ARE FORTUNATE,” PIERCE Delaney said to his wife.

She did not answer. Outside the window open by her couch, the deep stillness of late October afternoon lay across the landscape of Malvern. The air was warm and fragrant. The servants had been picking the purple grapes. She could not learn to call them servants instead of slaves. Pierce was going to pay them wages. Georgia, her own maid, would get wages!

“Aren’t we fortunate, Luce?” Pierce’s big voice demanded.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me Luce,” she answered. “I like my own name.”

“Lucinda,” he said, smiling. “It’s such a prim name.”

“Nevertheless, it’s my name,” she replied.

But he could not quarrel even in fun. He wanted peace, now; as long as he lived he wanted only peace. He stood before the high window and gazed at the landscape for which he had been as homesick, all during the war, as he had been even for his family. There were not many in the world to match it for beauty. Beyond the rich level lands of his farms the foothills rose, softly wooded, into the blue heights of the Alleghenies. It was country fit for all his dreams of peace and he would spend his life in fulfilling them. Only to live, after these years, would be enough, but to live here was heaven.

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