Bedelia Page 8

  WHILE BEDELIA PREPARED their light supper, Charlie sat in the kitchen. He enjoyed watching her work. She went about it with zest and competence. The kitchen, more than any room in the house, was her own. The room positively glistened. The floor was laid in black-and-white linoleum, shelves and cabinets were painted a clean gray, and all the pulls and handles were of white china imported from Holland. Mary had starched the ruffled curtains like Sunday petticoats.

  Bedelia had tied over her blue dress an apron as crisp and clean as the curtains. She looked less like a housewife than a character in a drawing-room comedy, the maid who flirts with the butler as she whisks her feather duster over the furniture. The kitchen, with its neat shelves, starched curtains, and copper pots, made Charlie think of a stage-setting. And when Bedelia brought out her red-handled egg-beater and started whipping up a froth in a yellow bowl, he was enchanted. He had to hug her.

  She did not use her work as a protest against his love-making. She set the bowl upon the table and lay back in his arms. It was then that he saw that she was trembling. This surprised him. She had gone about her tasks with composure.

  “Dearest, what’s wrong?”

  She did not answer. Charlie tilted her chin backward and looked into her face. He caught there the shadow of the terror he had noticed when she dropped the Dresden lovers. Her lips were parted but she did not cry out. Immediately her mood was communicated to Charlie. He felt a tension within him, a pulling and straining of his nerves.

  Presently Bedelia disengaged herself and went back to work. She folded the beaten whites into the seasoned yolks of the eggs and poured the mixture into one of her copper pots. She had a child’s ability to shut out everything except the task at hand. If Charlie had not been so much in love and so sentimental in his attitude toward the delicacy of women, her indifference might have offended him. But his mother had made him sensitive to women’s sufferings. No man, thought Charlie, would ever comprehend the tortures suffered by the more exquisitely wrought female.

  Her mood persisted. At supper Charlie was almost ashamed of his good appetite. Behind her untouched plate Bedelia sat with idle hands and impassive face.

  “You’re not eating,” he said.

  For all she heard, he might have been talking to the coffee-pot.

  “Bedelia!”

  She roused herself, sought his eyes, apologized wordlessly for inattention. Then she made a great effort and her lips curved into a smile.

  How gallant she was! thought Charlie. How courageously she tried to overcome her sensitivity! And for his sake. He said tenderly: “What’s worrying you, Biddy? Not that ugly little ornament you broke today. Why, I’m glad it’s gone. I’ve always disliked it. Those gingerbread things are in bad taste, I think, and besides, it was given to Ma by her old friend, Adelaide Hawkins, whom I loathed.”

  “Charlie, let’s go away.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I want to go away from here. Now, at once, please.”

  “My dear girl—”

  “I want to go away.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like this place.”

  “You said this afternoon that you loved it.”

  The wind had become stronger. It tore across the fields and over the small hills, whipped around the house, churned up the river, sent drafts whistling down the chimney. Walls, doors, and storm windows could not shut out its fury.

  “Don’t let the storm worry you, dear. It’s always like this. The house seems to shake on its foundations, but it’s firmly built, it’s stood for a hundred and nine years, and will probably be standing when our grandchildren come of age.” This failed to move Bedelia, and Charlie added, “If you’re afraid of the river, I guarantee you it won’t flood us. This isn’t the season, and since we put in the stone terrace . . .”

  “We could leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Whatever has got into you?”

  “I want us to go,” she said, leaning across the table and turning her eyes upon him with full awareness of their appeal. All of her will was concentrated in the need to dislodge his objections and get her own way.

  “My dear,” he said, in the patient monotone of a parent pleading with a stubborn child, “I can’t just pack up and leave because you get a sudden idea that you want to go away. I haven’t the slightest understanding of this whim, for I told you the winter here would be severe and you said you’d enjoy the new experience. We may be snowbound for a few days, but otherwise we’ll suffer no discomfort. The house is warm and secure and there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “What a question! This has nothing to do with love. I’ve got my business; it’s important for me to get the Bridgeport job done well. My future depends on it.”

  “We could go to Europe.”

  “You sound insane.”

  She nodded.

  “This is the maddest thing I’ve ever heard. In the middle of winter.”

  “The Viktoria Luise sails next Thursday. We could stay in New York until then.”

  Charlie was too intent upon his own arguments to wonder why or how she possessed this information. He talked about his home, his work, and his bank account. He had spent a lot of money that year, traveled, married, bought the automobile, Bedelia’s wardrobe, and done over the house. Of his mother’s legacy little remained. Their income depended mainly upon his work. He had explained this to Bedelia before they were married so that she should not think she was getting a rich husband, and she had laughed, telling him how poor she had been, and how rich he seemed to her, and how little it mattered.

  “Please, Charlie.”

  “Have you gone mad?” Although he tried not to show it, Charlie had become angry. His voice betrayed him.

  Bedelia was crying. The tears overflowed her eyes and sobs shook her shoulders. Charlie’s anger melted. He ran around the table to her, embraced her, touched his lips to her wet cheeks. To this physical assurance of his love she yielded at once, resting in his arms and enjoying his strength. But her sobs did not cease. She was torn by her sorrow, inconsolate, like a child who knows no cause for its racking grief. Charlie led her to the stairs, half-carried her to the bedroom, seated her in the pink chair while he uncovered the bed. She remained in the chair while he ran about collecting her night things and rubbing her forehead with cologne.

  While he tended her, Charlie asked and found a satisfying answer to the question of her conduct. Other women woke at midnight and asked for dill pickles; some craved strawberries in January. Charlie thought about the week just ended, the excitement of the holidays, the work of preparing the Christmas party, the shock of his attack, the doctor’s uncertainty and the tragic memories which all of this must have awakened in her. The day, too, had been filled with small annoyances. Most terrifying of all to a person accustomed to milder climates must be the thundering of the winter storm, the wildness of the wind and river.

  He cursed the storm and begged God for its cessation.

  Bedelia lay in bed and watched as Charlie hung up her dress, set her shoes on the shelf, rolled her corset in its string and put it into the proper drawer. The room smelled of sachet, cologne, and the dry heat of the steam radiator.

  “Don’t ever believe a word Ben tells you,” Bedelia whispered.

  Charlie whirled around. “Ben? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “He’s against us.”

  Charlie sat on the edge of the bed, took Bedelia’s cold hand, and scowled down into her face. “Don’t be ridiculous. Ben’s a fine chap. You’ve always liked him.”

  “He’s against you, Charlie.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “He’ll hurt us. That’s all he cares about, to hurt us and ruin our lives.”

  Charlie looked at the window, tried to measure the storm’s intensity, wondering whether it would be possible for the doctor to reach the house that night. The curtains had not been drawn and the darkness outside made the wi
ndow a mirror so that Charlie saw reflected the lamplight, the pink chair, and himself at the edge of the bed, holding his wife’s hand. It was a reassuring picture. Solid walls shut out the blizzard.

  “Please, Charlie, let’s go away. I don’t want to stay here any longer,” she said pathetically. She made it sound as simple as if it were an afternoon’s excursion that she had suggested.

  “What’s the matter? Has Ben done anything to you? Has he insulted you?” The blood ran hot in Charlie’s veins, his fists clenched, his head throbbed. He recalled Ben Chaney’s way of watching Bedelia, remembered the night at Jaffney’s Tavern when she had worn the black pearl and her white hand had rested in Ben’s swarthy hand above the platter of lobster and lemon wedges. “By God, I’ll strangle him.”

  She had buried her face in the pillow and was shaking and sobbing again. The wind split the world, shattering rocks, dividing the rivers. The sky was about to fall, the earth to explode, the waters to rise up and devour them.

  Against his wife’s hysteria Charlie was impotent. And impotence aggravated his fury. He was wildly angry, his eyes bulged out of his head, his face was stained a purplish red, and when he spoke his voice shook with anger. “Tell me,” he implored. “Tell me!” he commanded, but all in vain. She burrowed deeper in the pillows, hid her face, stiffened if his hand brushed against her.

  The storm’s fury died. The wind retreated, the waters were lulled. The earth became solid again. And Bedelia fell asleep, her head on her bare arm. Emotion had exhausted her. She slept like a child, breathing aloud. Charlie covered her, lit her night lamp, and went downstairs.

  He vowed that he would think calmly, he swore that he would banish all suspicion from his mind, he struggled to find reasons for his wife’s sudden hysteria. And this was as vain as his commands and his pleadings to Bedelia. Why had she begged him to run off with her? Why was she afraid of Ben Chaney? He’ll hurt us. Why, for God’s sake? That’s all he cares about, to hurt us and ruin our lives. If this were true, if Ben were, as Bedelia had argued, against them, why had he shown no signs of enmity until today? Had he tried to be . . . or, God deny such treachery, been . . . Bedelia’s lover? Was he urging her to desert her husband and run off with him? Had he, when Bedelia refused his entreaties, threatened to expose her infidelity?

  Charlie could not believe it. The idea of such betrayal was the fruit of a sick imagination, rotten fruit fertilized by suspicion, fear and lack of self-esteem. In Charlie’s house there was no room for such treachery. Infidelity had never dwelt in the old Philbrick house, could never dwell there. The ceilings would rot, the walls cave in, the floors lose their solidity.

  Charlie was ill with anguish. The day’s emotions had been too violent for a man just risen from a sickbed. He was almost too weak to climb the stairs, clung to the rail and pulled himself up like a cripple. So that he should not disturb Bedelia, he undressed in the bathroom, and when he got into bed, lowered himself cautiously onto the mattress. She did not twitch a muscle. In a few minutes Charlie was sleeping soundly, too.

  The room had been lighted by Bedelia’s night lamp. Charlie awoke in unbroken darkness. At first the strangeness of this did not occur to him, for he had been sleeping alone in a dark room all the time he was ill. As he became aware of the storm crashing about the house, the river’s rage, the passion of the wind, he was struck suddenly by the sense of darkness and was convinced immediately that he had gone blind. He groped for the night lamp, turned the switch. The room was still black.

  For a nightmare moment he could neither speak nor move. He tried to call, but he had no voice. When he stretched out his trembling hand, he could not find his wife in bed.

  On icy, uncertain legs he traveled through infinite darkness to the electric switch on the wall. He felt it, heard the click and waited for the light. Darkness remained. He was sick, faint, bilious, recalled in minutest detail the sensations he had suffered before his attack and thought he was about to fall unconscious again. All the while he groped for the china matchbox on the mantel. He struck a match. Out of the darkness jagged a small yellow flame. Relief surged through him. His skin grew damp with grateful sweat. Unsteady hands found the candle, touched flame to wick. In the first rays of flickering light he saw the old gilt-framed portrait of his mother above the mantel. At once intelligence returned, he became his rational self, knew the storm had disconnected electric wires, and assured himself that other of his sick fancies could be as sensibly explained, cursed himself for allowing his mind to become infected by the virus of fear, and knew that he would find Bedelia sleeping gently on her side of the bed.

  She was not there. Nor had she gone off to sleep alone in the room she had used during Charlie’s illness. She was nowhere on the second floor, and when he, candle in hand, went down the stairs, calling her name, there was no answer. Through the house he went, searching every room, but all that remained of Bedelia were the clothes that hung in her closet, the copper pots and contrivances she had bought for her kitchen, the smell of her perfumes and unguents, the fabrics she had chosen for pillows and furniture, and her hyacinths growing in the blue pot.

  “Bedelia! Biddy! Where are you?”

  Only the wind answered.

  4

  OF THE WORLD OUTSIDE THERE WAS NOTHING BUT white motion. Snowflakes tumbled out of clouds like feathers from a torn pillow. Snow rose, too, and whirled off in gigantic spirals like ghosts leaving the churchyard. No sane person could have gone out in this storm, Charlie told himself, as he took the oil lamp from its hook in the shed. He had put on trousers, a flannel shirt, his mackinaw and a cap.

  The lamp hung from his wrist as he cupped his hands before his mouth calling, “Bedelia! Bedelia!” He squinted through the snowfall, but could see nothing but the white restless circles rising from the ground and the white flakes falling from the burdened sky.

  He pushed his way through the drifts and worked up the slight slope that led to the gate. The snow was high and although it was dry and light, the ground below was uneven and he could not be sure of his footing.

  On the road he stumbled over something, saw a dark patch in the snow. As he leaned over, the wind seized his cap and whirled it away. He clapped his hands over his ears, which had begun to sting as if a swarm of bees had been at them. A wraith of snow rose, filling his eyes with its bitter powder. Tears prevented his seeing properly and it was through a cloud that he recognized the dark patch as the traveling bag of ox-blood morocco which he had bought as a birthday present for Bedelia.

  A few feet farther on, half in the ditch and almost covered by the snow, lay his wife. “Thank God!” cried Charlie. The wind seized his voice and whirled it away along with the cold and the snowflakes.

  He picked her up and struggled with her to the house. It took all of his strength to get her across the yard to the door of the shed. There he almost collapsed, and he leaned against the wall to rest and recover his breath. When he had finally got her into the house and laid her on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, he knelt beside her and listened for her heartbeat. In his excitement he missed it. He lifted the still figure, clasped it to his breast, forgetting suspicion and anger, forgetting that she had tried to run away, remembering only that he loved her and had been happy with this woman.

  She did not open her eyes until he had carried her to the couch in his den and covered her with a fur rug. A shadow crossed her face as she looked around the room, recognizing the house from which she had not been able to escape. She closed her eyes again, shutting out the sight of her failure. Her suffering was acute.

  Charlie hurried to the basement, heaped coal on the fire, rushed back to the den, turned on the radiator. When the room was warm, he uncovered her and removed her wet clothes. She opened her eyes and looked at him squarely. A wan smile curved her lips. Charlie rubbed her with rough towels until her flesh was red, but she did not cease shivering. The pathos of her dark eyes, the tremors and muteness, reminded him of a spaniel he had owned when he was a boy, and he fel
t sorry for her as he used to feel sorry for the dog because it depended on him for food and affection. He wrapped her in blankets and carried her up the stairs to bed. Not once while he was working over her did he show resentment nor ask the reason for her strange conduct.

  “Now, my dear,” he said tenderly, “you’re to have brandy and hot milk, and then you’re going straight to sleep.” He covered her with wool blankets, the down quilt and the comforter his mother had stitched in the Snake and Apple design.

  She drank the milk and brandy like a good child, her dimpled hands clasped around the old silver mug. And with the same docility she obeyed Charlie’s command to sleep.

  He left the room on tiptoe. There was nothing more that he could do for her, but he decided that he had better consult the doctor anyway. While he was on way to the telephone, he wondered what to say if the doctor should ask how his wife had got such a severe chill. Then he discovered that the line was dead. The storm had disconnected the telephone wires. Charlie was glad of that. A sense of duty had prompted him to call Doctor Meyers, but he was relieved when he found that he would not have to answer any questions.

  All this effort, the strength he had expended and the anxiety, should have wearied him. But he was wide-awake and restless. In vain he tried to quiet his curiosity. When Bedelia had recovered from the chill, he would ask her a few important questions. He would approach the subject calmly, show neither anger nor distrust, but prove by his love and firmness that she might fearlessly confide in him. As he planned it, Charlie saw himself and Bedelia beside the fire, heard his voice gently urging her to full confession. The vision did not quiet him. He could not help recalling his talks with Doctor Meyers and wondering whether she had overheard the doctor’s warning. But if this were so, why had she waited four days before wounded pride forced her to flee? And what had it to do with her sudden rage against Ben Chaney?

  His thoughts traveled in dark circles and left him bewildered. At the end of a tortured hour he was no wiser than he had been at the beginning. Then he remembered the traveling bag and went outside for it. Ordinarily Charlie would not have opened his wife’s bag nor examined its contents. This would have been cheap and unworthy, the action of a man who would consider it right to read his wife’s mail. He had an excuse, however. The bag was wet and its contents would become moldy unless they were taken out and dried.