Bedelia Page 6

  Abbie was warming herself over the register. Her skirt filled with hot air and spread out as if hoops supported it. “You’ve chosen a strong word. Do you believe that of Bedelia?”

  “I’m not so low.” Ellen’s eyes were upon a snapshot of Charlie framed in raffia. He wore tennis flannels and carried a racket, and his hair was abundant.

  “My guess is that Chaney’s in love with her. But you can’t blame Bedelia for that. She’s the sort that men die for.” Abbie stepped off the register. Her skirt fell limp about her legs.

  “Die for? That’s pretty romantic, isn’t it?”

  “A slight exaggeration. What I mean is that Bedelia’s a man’s woman. Men fall in love with her because she’s crazy about men, and they sense it. She exists only for her man, her whole life is wrapped around him. Without a man she couldn’t live.”

  “And we can, I suppose?”

  “Unfortunately,” sighed Abbie. “You and I, pet, have got too far from the harem. You earn your living and enjoy it. I have an income and live quite adequately alone. Men aren’t our lords and masters. And they resent us.”

  “Let them. The harem doesn’t hold any charms for me,” Ellen said angrily. She took one of Abbie’s cigarettes, placed it between her lips and drew in her breath as she touched a match to it.

  Abbie watched with a gleam in her eye. The stairs creaked, but Ellen did not put down the cigarette.

  “Bravo,” whispered Abbie.

  “I’d like them better without the perfume.”

  “We must be feminine.”

  “That’s a compromise. Either you smoke or you don’t.”

  Abbie laughed. Ellen’s mother creaked past the door. If she had come in, Ellen would have continued to stand there with the cigarette in her hand as if smoking were her daily habit. The cigarette was not so much a symbol of defiance as proof that she had rejected the harem.

  As she dressed to return to the office, she decided to quit thinking about Charlie, and to get rid of the souvenirs which cluttered her room. There was not only the picture of Charlie in tennis flannels, there were old cotillion favors and faded dance programs, and all of the presents he had ever given her, starting with the copy of Elsie Dinsmore he had brought to the party celebrating her ninth birthday.

  NOW THAT HE was comfortable and free of pain, Charlie was less concerned with his own condition than with its effect upon Bedelia. The trick which Fate had played upon her was in bad taste, Charlie thought. How ironic, after the sudden death of her first husband, for her to see her second in the throes of an almost fatal attack.

  “You’re sure you feel all right, dear?” he asked for the twentieth time. “You’re a bit pale. What a brute I was to give you such a shock.”

  “Don’t be silly, Charlie. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Whose fault was it? Do you by any chance blame yourself?”

  Bedelia’s eyes wore the blank look. She stood at the foot of the bed, her hands tight on the rail.

  “I’ve been careless,” Charlie went on. “I’ve worked too hard, enjoyed the holidays too much, not rested enough, and have been careless about eating. I was most inconsiderate. For your sake, sweetheart, I should have been more careful.”

  Bedelia’s eyes filled. She rubbed them with her knuckles. Charlie saw in her movements the pathos and helplessness of childhood. He was deeply moved.

  “Come here, Biddy.”

  She waited, then took an irresolute step toward him.

  “My goodness, are you afraid of me?” teased Charlie.

  She went to him and he took her hand. He felt closer than he had ever been to her guarded and delicate spirit, as if he saw through walls of tissue and bone and concealment, as if there had never been any Cochran nor any past he could not share, nor any blank, remote looks to protect her from curiosity. She pressed his hand and looked into his eyes, searching, too, Charlie thought, for the part of him that she knew not.

  The sound of the doorbell caused her to start and shrink, and when she heard Doctor Meyers’s voice, her nostrils quivered and her cheeks seemed to become hollow. Terror possessed her. She seated herself on the edge of the bed, clutched the post as if for support.

  “Mary, I’m making you responsible for Mrs. Horst’s health,” they heard the doctor say. “She’s not feeling too well, and I don’t want her to do any work in the kitchen. You must do all the cooking without any help from her.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mary’s voice rang with pride.

  “Has he had lunch?”

  “Yes, sir. Mrs. Horst fixed him the gruel like you told her.”

  The doctor bounded up the stairs. “How are you, Charlie?” he called from the hall.

  “Feeling fine.”

  As he entered the bedroom, the doctor looked at the tray and the empty bowl. “How’d the lunch agree with you? Any pains? Nausea?”

  “Why did you come back?” Bedelia asked, her voice unsteady. “You said you wouldn’t come until tomorrow. Have you found out something . . . about Charlie?”

  The doctor answered her with his eyes on Charlie. He seemed withdrawn, as if he were determined to have no contact with her. “I stopped to say I’d changed my mind about a trained nurse. I’ve called the registry and they’re sending a woman this afternoon.”

  Bedelia stood up. Her skirt caught in the bed and she jerked it free with a graceless movement which made her for the moment a stranger to Charlie.

  “But you said I could take care of him. Why have you changed your mind?” She waited impatiently for the doctor’s answer. His silence increased her alarm. Charlie saw that her chest was rising and falling and that she had frequently to moisten her lips.

  “Please tell me the truth,” she said curtly.

  “I’m more worried about you than about Charlie, Mrs. Horst. When I said that you wouldn’t need a nurse, I didn’t know of your condition. You’ve had a shock and I don’t want any after effects.”

  “It’s worse than you told me, and you don’t think I’m capable of nursing him.”

  “I fear you’d nurse him too well for your own good.”

  “So you know our secret,” Charlie said to the doctor. “When did my wife tell you?”

  “This morning,” Bedelia answered quickly.

  The doctor insisted that she go downstairs and eat a good lunch. “I don’t hold with these female habits of picking food here and there at irregular hours. You need nourishment, Mrs. Horst. Eating for two, aren’t you? Run along and I’ll keep Charlie company until you return.”

  The doctor seated himself in the rocker and folded one leg over the other. Bedelia lingered in the room. It was clear that she did not want him to tell Charlie anything that she was not to hear. After Charlie joined forces with the doctor and urged her to eat a sensible lunch, she left. The smell of her perfume remained in the air.

  “Mind?” asked Doctor Meyers, and pulled out a thin cigar. A gold cutter, the gift of some grateful patient, hung with his Masonic medal on a gold chain. As he exhaled a cloud of smoke, the scent of Bedelia’s perfume was lost.

  The doctor studied his cigar, the hand that held it, the weave of the carpet, the tips of his pointed shoes. His tranquility alarmed Charlie. When Doctor Meyers had good news he danced about and talked in such a rush that all the words ran together. Why, then, this long scrutiny of cigar and carpet? Immediately Charlie suspected the worst, a fatal disease, long months of suffering, a losing fight against pain. Cancer, was it? Or heart disease?

  Doctor Meyers spoke at last. His voice was dry and he brought out the words with effort. “The nurse will be here this afternoon. I don’t want you to eat or drink anything, not even a sip of water, unless she gives it to you.”

  “Why not?”

  The doctor waited until the full meaning of his warning had touched Charlie.

  “Why not!”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Just an idea of mine.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Perhaps.” The doctor tugged at his
Van Dyke. “I’m a cantankerous old fool. Maybe I ought to turn my practice over to a younger man. But give me a couple of days, Charlie, to have an analysis made. Unfortunately, the excrement had all been removed before I came last night, but after I’d pumped out your stomach, what remained . . .”

  “What are you inferring?” Charlie shouted.

  “Nothing, Charlie. Keep calm. We’ll have to wait a couple of days. I’m having the work done in New York. I don’t like the laboratory here, there’s too much gossip, everybody who works in the hospital is intimate with somebody in town, and you can’t keep anything quiet. Do what I say, Charlie, promise you’ll eat nothing except what the nurse gives you.”

  Charlie was livid. He almost leaped out of bed.

  “Get back under the covers and keep calm. It’s probably nothing but a fool idea of mine, but I don’t want you to take any chances. That’s why I mentioned it. Now don’t go getting any ideas in your head.”

  “How can I help it when you make these absurd insinuations? I’ll eat anything I damn please. And if you don’t take back what you just said, I’ll sue you for malpractice. Or libel. God damn it, I will!”

  “Sure, but don’t eat anything except what the nurse gives you. Is that clear?”

  “You’re a senile fool.”

  The ash had grown long on Doctor Meyers’s cigar. It spilled on his vest. He whisked it off carefully, and holding his hand like a cup, sought the wastebasket. “Why don’t you keep an ashtray up here?”

  “You have just made a filthy rotten insinuation against my wife,” Charlie said solemnly. He had grown calm all of a sudden, his high color had faded and he was as pale as a tallow candle. “I can’t allow you to say things like that. I won’t stand for it.”

  “Don’t,” said the doctor. “I wouldn’t stand for it either. But I’d keep my head and follow the doctor’s instructions.”

  “God damn you!”

  The doctor did not mind being sworn at. He quite approved Charlie’s resentment. It showed that Charlie was well on the road to recovery. But he begged him, for the sake of his blood pressure, to remain calm.

  “Listen,” Charlie pleaded, trying to be cool about it and hoping that his own good sense would bring the old man around to a saner point of view. “I’ve had a lot of indigestion lately. I told you that this morning.’

  “You didn’t tell me how long you’d been having it. When did you first notice it, Charlie?”

  “After we finished doing the house over. I’ve been working too hard; first, the house, and then the supervision on the Maple Avenue stores and the Bridgeport job.”

  “October, did you say?” The doctor pulled at his beard.

  “What of it?”

  “Don’t lose your temper again, Charlie. Keep calm. It’s probably nothing but acute indigestion. As soon as you’re on your feet, I’ll give you a thorough going-over. And just humor me in this one thing, don’t take anything from anyone but the nurse.”

  “I’ll see you in hell first.”

  “Very well. It’s on your own head.”

  The silence that followed was an armistice, not a declaration of peace. Charlie was sorry he had lost his temper. Had he, in that first explosion, acted as if he had taken the doctor’s theory seriously?

  There was the flowery fragrance again. He looked up and saw Bedelia beside the bed, blithe and fresh. The hot lunch had restored her color. And she was smiling, showing her dimples, changing the very atmosphere with her perfume and the rustle of her petticoats.

  “I was upset when you sent me downstairs,” she confessed in light, rapid tones. “I thought you were sending me away because you had something to tell Charlie that you didn’t want me to hear on account of my condition. But when you began shouting, I knew it was all right. Charlie would never have raised his voice if you’d brought him bad news. What were you arguing about? Politics again?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said quickly. And to the doctor, “Where my wife comes from it’s no sin to be a Democrat. She’s used to your party brothers, Doctor.”

  Bedelia laughed. “You know I don’t understand anything about it, dear. As long as you’re well enough for an argument, I don’t care who you vote for.”

  “Come here, my love.” Charlie wanted her close beside him, he needed the assurance of her physical sweetness, and he hoped to make a show of defiance before that old fool of a doctor.

  The shrewd eyes looked on and the pointed face became more wrinkled and simian. What Doctor Meyers saw before him was a demonstration of faith. No spoken declaration could have made the point more clearly. Charlie was investing his faith in Bedelia. A charming picture it made, husband and wife holding hands, looking fondly into each other’s eyes, flaunting their love.

  The doctor walked to the wastebasket and flicked the ash off his cigar. Then he returned to his chair and sat, rocking and smoking, until the doorbell rang and Mary came upstairs to say the trained nurse had arrived.

  3

  DURING THE NIGHT THE STORM CEASED. CHARLIE lay alone in the wide bed and wished that he had his wife beside him. Bedelia had moved into Charlie’s old bedroom. The nurse had ordered the change.p

  Since she had arrived that afternoon, held a conference with Doctor Meyers in the den, marched up the stairs and changed her drab dress for a blue-and-white striped uniform, this woman had ruled the household. Charlie and Bedelia had hated her on sight. Nevertheless, they let her intimidate them. She used her ugliness as other women use beauty to give her authority. If a country fair had offered prizes for the most unattractive female on exhibit, Miss Gordon would have captured first honors. Below dusty hair, tightly netted, bulged a forehead like a parenthesis. Between this bulge and the crag of her chin, her face curved inward like a soup plate. Her nose was broad but so flat that it gave slight relief to the concavity. Her body was squat, her wrists red, and her disposition sour.

  By her order Charlie slept alone. The night was still. He heard only the chatter of the river, a sound so familiar that he could shut it out altogether, and give attention to whatever moanings and creakings there were within the house. By habit and profession he was able to locate every sound. He recognized a steely whine as the complaint of bedsprings in the room where Bedelia was spending the night.

  The floor creaked lightly under cautious footsteps. Charlie turned hopefully toward the door. The footsteps came closer. His heart began to pound in anticipation. The darkness was so solid that he could not see the door open when he heard its hinges creak. But he smelled the flowery perfume.

  Then a fresh sound smote his ears, and a hoarse voice croaked, “Is that you, Mrs. Horst?”

  “I was just going to get a drink of water,” he heard Bedelia say. “I thought I’d see if Mr. Horst wanted anything.”

  “I’m here to take care of that, Mrs. Horst.”

  “Yes, but I was worried. On account of last night, you know.”

  “He’s asleep. I wouldn’t disturb him if I were you. Go back to bed, Mrs. Horst. I’ll bring you a drink of water.”

  The hinges creaked, the door closed, the voices ceased. The down quilt and wool blankets could not warm Charlie’s cold flesh. Why had he allowed the nurse to send his wife away? Had he, in spite of all his logical excuses, been swayed by the doctor’s warning? “No! No!” he snarled at the blackness that surrounded him. It was a long time before he could fall asleep.

  In the morning as the nurse gave him a sponge bath, he said, “It’s kind of you to take such good care of my wife, Miss Gordon. I heard you last night.”

  “She oughtn’t to wander around at night, not in her condition. She might catch cold or stumble over something in the dark.”

  As she bathed her patient, exertion and the heat of water caused her coarse skin to redden. Revolted, Charlie decided that he would get rid of this witch as soon as he was strong enough to argue with the doctor.

  He did not wish to be discourteous and tried to make conversation.

  “You’re not a native here, ar
e you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I knew that at once. You see, I’ve lived here all my life and know nearly everyone in town.” This information had failed to interest her, but Charlie went on bravely. “Where do you come from?”

  “N’Yawk.” The accent made it authentic.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Couple of months.”

  “What made you come here?”

  “It’s no worse than any other place.”

  He heard Bedelia moving about in the other room and shouted to her impatiently. She hurried in to him, holding her challis robe about her shoulders like a shawl. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and her mouth round and pouting like a child’s.

  Miss Gordon looked on coldly while they kissed. “You’d better put your robe on, Mrs. Horst. You’ll catch your death.”

  “Thank you,” Bedelia said humbly and obeyed.

  Miss Gordon’s vigilance made husband and wife feel like secret lovers. Caresses and confidences had to be stolen while the nurse was absent from the bedroom, attending to her most personal needs (in which she showed unusual self-control) or when she was downstairs in the kitchen preparing her patient’s meals. She would accept help from no member of the household. Mary was insulted three times a day, and if Bedelia tried to perform the slightest service for Charlie, she was officiously brushed aside.

  “You must be careful, Mrs. Horst, in your condition.”

  “Millions of pregnant women scrub floors and do the family washing,” Bedelia protested. “I’m perfectly healthy and there’s no reason why I can’t fill the Thermos.”

  Miss Gordon took the vacuum bottle in her capable hands, washed it thoroughly and filled it herself. There was no way of escaping her devotion. Bedelia was slightly awed and greatly puzzled by it. Miss Gordon considered herself on twenty-four-hour duty.

  To Charlie, it was clear that the nurse was following Doctor Meyers’s explicit instructions. She was the only one who ever gave the patient a drop of medicine or a drink of water. Charlie did not demur. He did not believe there was the slightest reason to exercise such caution, but he was afraid that any protest would result in Bedelia’s discovering the doctor’s suspicions. Loving his wife so dearly, Charlie could not bear to hurt her by letting her know that she was the victim of the old fool’s hysteria.