Gods Men by Pearl S. Buck

Author:Pearl S. Buck [Buck, Pearl S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780671822781
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2013-04-17T16:19:00+00:00

7

CANDACE FELT THAT WILLIAM was annoyed. He stooped to kiss her as usual but she was sensitive to his mood after these years of marriage and she saw a wintry stillness gathered about his heavy brows and firm mouth. When he spoke his voice was formal.

“I am sorry to be late.”

“Are you late?” She yawned nicely behind her hand. “Then I’m late, too. I was tired when I came home from the matinée.”

“Was the play good?”

“You wouldn’t think so.”

She rose from the chaise longue where she had been drowsing and looked from the window. Far below the vast park lay in shadows, pricked with lights. “I do hope the children are home. Nannie keeps them out too late. She is a fiend for fresh air.”

“There was a strong draft along the hall from the nursery door and so I suppose they are home,” William replied.

“Why do you think her first impulse upon entering a room is to open the windows?”

She asked the useless question while she was pulling on the satin slippers she had kicked off when she threw herself down. William seated himself in a chair and took his characteristic pose, his small dark hands gripped together, his legs, long and thin, crossed. Whatever the fashions for men, he wore his favorite gray, dark with a faint pinstripe, and his tie was dark blue. He did not answer his wife. This, too, was usual. Candace asked many questions she did not expect to have answered.

They were the queries of her idle mind. He had once given them thought until he discovered them meaningless.

She straightened her skirt and sauntering to her dressing table she picked up a brush and began smoothing out her short curls. Something was wrong but if she waited William would tell her. It might be anything, perhaps that he did not like the odor of food floating upstairs from the basement kitchen. The maids left the doors open in spite of her orders. Perhaps it was only while watching her as she brushed her hair he was reminded that she had decided to have her hair cut against his wishes.

“I had a letter from my father today,” William said abruptly.

“I thought something was wrong,” she said, not turning around but seeing him very well in the mirror. His face, always ashen, was no more so than usual. Something in his Chinese childhood, a doctor had said, perhaps the dysentery when he was four, had left his intestines filled with bacteria now harmless but more numerous than they should be.

“They have decided to take their furlough, after all,” he said.

She went on brushing her hair, watching his face. “That’s good news, isn’t it? I have never seen your father, and the boys have never seen even your mother.”

He frowned and the thick dark brows which always gave his face such somberness seemed to shadow and hide his deep-set eyes. “It is a bad time for me, nevertheless. I’d just decided to launch the new paper at once instead of waiting until spring.

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