HIS WIFE CAME INTO THE ROOM AND CHARLIE turned to watch her. She wore a dark-blue velvet dress whose sheath skirt was slit to show her pretty ankles and high-heeled bronze pumps.
The Yule log caught fire. Flames licked the crusty bark. This was a great moment for Charlie. He had cut the log himself and had had it drying in the shed for a whole year. Bedelia, perceiving his pleasure, flashed him a smile and skipped across the Orientals to the love-seat, perched beside him, and rested her head against his shoulder. He took her hand. The Yule log cast its ruddy glow upon them. At this moment, ten minutes after five on December twenty-fifth, 1913, Charlie Horst believed himself the luckiest man in the world.
This was to be his wife’s first Christmas in Charlie’s house. They had been married in August. She was a tiny creature, lovable as a kitten. Her eyes were lively, dark, and always slightly moist. In contrast with her brunette radiance, Charlie seemed all the more pallid, angular, and restrained.
In the bow window from which the love-seat had been removed stood a tree whose boughs were festooned with tinsel, hung with colored globes and spirals, flannel angels, paper-maché reindeer, gingerbread Santa Clauses, cardboard houses, and peppermint canes. Underneath it, instead of the usual glaring white cotton sheet, was an arrangement of fir boughs upon green paper, simulating the floor of the forest. On the dining-room table was another of Bedelia’s clever arrangements. The centerpiece of white narcissus seemed actually to be growing out of a bank of holly and laurel leaves.
She had been working for days on the preparations for the party. Platters and trays were heaped with a variety of cakes, and Charlie’s grandmother’s silver shell dishes were simply loaded with home-made fondant, marzipan, and salted nuts. On the buffet a dozen eggnog cups waited in line, and for those who liked stronger drinks there were the pewter mugs to be filled with Charlie’s special hot rum toddy. And besides there was a profusion of salted and spiced delicacies, canapés of fois gras, smoked oysters, sardellen butter, anchovies, and thin crackers spread with a delicious paste that Bedelia had made of a combination of cheeses.
Charlie’s Christmas present to his wife had been an antique gold ring twisted into a bow knot and set with garnets. She wore it on the fourth finger of her right hand and at intervals held it at arm’s length and cocked her head to study the effect. Her hands were plump and dimpled, the fingers tapered to the tips of pointed nails which were polished until they shone like pink gems.
“How my little jackdaw loves finery!” Charlie said. The metaphor was literary. Charlie had never seen a jackdaw. Brought up on English literature, he preferred such allusions to the commoner symbols of his own experience. When he was a small boy his mother had sung:
“Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream,
Jackdaws strut in peacock feathers,
Highlows pass as patent leathers.”
His wife accepted the criticism with her usual grace, curving her red lips and showing her dimples.
“You do really like it?” he asked anxiously.
“Better than platinum and diamonds.”
“Or pearls?”
“That was your reason for giving me this, wasn’t it?” Bedelia spoke shyly.
“Looks like snow,” Charlie said.
To the west of the house, below the terrace, the river tumbled over great rocks, chattering ceaselessly. Their house was only a little way out of a big manufacturing town, but the country around was too rocky to be worth cultivating, and the woods and stone-strewn fields were as wild as when the first white settlers had come to Connecticut.
The doorbell rang. Straightening her new apron, Mary ran through the hall. At the door she stiffened, arranged her ruffles and, as she let the guests in, cried, “Hello, Mr. Johnson. Merry Christmas, Mrs. Johnson.”
Bedelia hurried to greet them. As usual Wells Johnson became awkward in her presence, mumbled a greeting and shifted the gold-sealed, tissue-paper package from one mittened hand to the other. Lucy Johnson took the box from him and handed it to Bedelia.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t have.”
“Wait till you see it before you say anything. You may think I’m crazy.”
“I love presents,” Bedelia said.
“How are you, Charlie-Horse?” said Wells Johnson.
“Never felt better in my life. Let me take your coat.”
Gravely Bedelia studied the size and shape of the package, the neat wrappings and elaborate seals. “We’re not opening anything until all the guests are here.” She placed the Johnsons’ gift in a bare space under the tree.
The bell kept on ringing, guests pouring in: greetings and laughter growing louder, the air thickening with the smells of rice powder, toilet water, rum, and spices. The heat of the house and the exertion of making and passing drinks made Charlie sweat. Bedelia’s ivory-tinted skin continued to look as fresh and cool as the white rose she had pinned in her sash.
The rose had been one of a dozen brought by their new friend and neighbor, Ben Chaney.
“You’re too kind,” Bedelia had said, offering Ben both hands and smiling to show her dimples. “You’ll spoil me with all your attentions.”
“Spoil you? Impossible!” Ben said.
Charlie and Ben shook hands.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Eggnog?”
“Oh, Charlie,” Bedelia said, “you know about Ben and cider brandy.”
Both men laughed. Bedelia had made it sound as if Ben and cider brandy were immortal lovers. As Charlie poured Ben’s drink, Bedelia offered a tray of canapés. He selected one spread with the cheese paste.
“You’ve got Gorgonzola in it,” he said with an air of smugness. “Now I know you were thinking of me.”
“She thinks of everyone,” Charlie boasted.
At six o’clock the guests had had enough of everything, of food and drink, of greetings, gossip, and examination by the women of holiday garments. Bedelia proposed that they open the gifts. For her this was the party’s climax, the moment she had been awaiting like a gay and nervous child.
“Everyone’s here but Ellen, and if she can’t manage to get here on time, I don’t see why everyone else should wait.”
“She’s probably been kept at the office.”
“On Christmas?”
“Newspapers are printed on Christmas, you know.”
Bedelia looked around the room anxiously, measuring the temper of her guests. “All right, dear, we’ll wait a little longer.”
Doctor Meyers had overheard. “If there’s a gift for me under the tree, I’d better collect it now. I’m due at the hospital in a little while and I’ll have to take Mama home first.”
“Now, Papa,” his wife said, “what makes you think anybody’s giving Christmas presents to an old man like you?”
Bedelia sought Charlie’s approval. He saw how much she wanted to open the packages, and gave in like an indulgent father.
“Open yours first, Bedelia.”
“It wouldn’t be fair. I’m the hostess, mine should come last.”
Judge Bennett suggested that they alternate. First a guest would open a package, then Bedelia, then another guest. They voted that Charlie play Santa Claus, read the labels, hand out the packages. This made him self-conscious. There was nothing of the actor about Charlie. But as he saw that his friends were more interested in the gifts than in his playing of the role, he became comfortable and even jocose.
Bedelia’s prodigality astonished them all. These people were not accustomed to lavish giving. Even the richest, those whose safe-deposit boxes were crammed with New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Stock, had been taught to be grateful on Christmas morning for an orange, a pair of mittens, a sock filled with hard candy, a copy of the Bible or Emerson’s Essays. They had all, of course, brought something to the hostess whose Christmas hospitality demanded some return. But nothing to compare with the gifts she had for them. She had packages for the men as well as for their wives. And such luxurious trifles! All from New York stores! Silk tobacco pouches, monogrammed cigar cases, copper ashtrays, inkstands and blotters mounted in hammered brass, and drinking cups in leather cases.
Mrs. Bennett, who had brought her hostess three gingham potholders bought in August at a church fair and put away for just such an occasion, computed the cost of Bedelia’s generosity. “We’ve none of us measured up to your wife’s extravagance, Charlie. It’s not our habit to be so ostentatious as Westerners.”
“Ostentatious” was not the right word for describing Bedelia’s pleasure. She found it as blessed to receive as to give. Ordinarily the tidiest of women, she tore off wrappings recklessly and threw papers and ribbons on the floor. Every present seemed splendid to her, every giver prodigal. Charlie saw pathos in her extraordinary pleasure: the orphan made welcome in the warm-hearted family, the little match girl finally admitted to the toy store.
Lucy Johnson’s eyes glittered as Charlie handed Bedelia the parcel with gold seals. Under the tissue paper there was a box painted with Japanese characters.
“Vantine’s,” whispered Mrs. Bennett loudly.
Several women nodded. They also recognized the box and were wondering why Lucy had gone to New York for the Horsts’ Christmas present.
Bedelia held up the gift for everyone to see. On an ebony board sat three monkeys. One held his paws before his eyes, one sealed his ears, the third his lips. The Judge glanced over his spectacles at Wells Johnson.
“Oh, thank you. They’re just what I wanted.” Bedelia kissed Lucy Johnson.
Mrs. Bennett whispered to her husband. The Judge glanced over his spectacles at Wells Johnson. The Danbury Express whistled as it rounded the curve. Several men took out their watches to check the time.
Lucy chattered on. She had bought the three ivory monkeys because they reminded her of Charlie.
“Of me?”
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Isn’t that Charlie all over? His character. I tell Wells that Charlie has the strongest character of any man I know.”
Wells Johnson moved close to Judge Bennett. From behind his cupped hand he whispered, “Wanted to show my appreciation. Charlie’s given me a lot of business this year.”
“Naturally, with the improvements on his property,” said the Judge, who held the mortgage on the Johnsons’ house and felt that he deserved an explanation of their extravagance.
“More than that,” Wells hinted.
Curiosity shone through the Judge’s gold-mounted spectacles. But Wells cherished his secret like money in the bank. When the Judge had begun to fidget, Wells said, “Can’t talk about it now. Charlie doesn’t like it mentioned with his wife around. She’s sensitive.”
The Judge sniffed. “If he didn’t carry insurance, she’d have reason to be sensitive.”
Bedelia turned her smile upon them and both men grinned self-consciously. She was different from the other women in the room, like an actress or a foreigner. Not that she was common. For all of her vivacity, she was more gentle and refined than any of her guests. She talked less, smiled more, sought friendliness, but fled intimacy.
Charlie was restless. When the doorbell rang, he could not wait for Mary, but rushed off to answer it himself.
TWO WOMEN STOOD on the porch. One held out her hand and said, “Merry Christmas, Charlie.” The other shrieked and threw her arms around him.
Charlie had swung his hand toward Ellen Walker, but the greeting was interrupted by the exuberance of Ellen’s companion. Ellen’s hand fell limply. She followed Charlie and Abbie Hoffman into the hall.
“This is a surprise,” Charlie told Abbie.
“You old hypocrite, you knew I was coming.”
“Of course he knew,” said Ellen. “I told him weeks ago that you were spending the holidays with me.”
“I remember,” Charlie said.
“You forgot all about me, you fibber,” and Abbie pecked at Charlie’s cheek.
He led them to the first-floor bedroom. Ellen Walker took off her hat without bothering to look in the mirror. She had bought herself a new coat that fall and no one liked it. Too mannish, they said. Ellen was a tall girl, but small of bone, delicately proportioned. Thirty years before she would have been called a beauty, but fashions in women change as drastically as in clothes. The Burne-Jones virgin had given way to the Gibson girl, and nowadays Ellen’s face was considered too long, her head too narrow, the pale brown coronet of braids absurdly out of style. There was nothing memorable nor distinctive about her looks. A stranger would have remarked that she seemed calm and honest.
Abbie, on the other hand, wore a costume so striking that her face seemed merely an accessory. Charlie thought she looked like a drawing in a fashion magazine, dashing but one dimensional. Her lynx muff was as large as a suitcase and her hat burdened with such a wealth of feathers that just to look at it made his neck ache. On a black net guimpe she wore a brooch so extravagant that it was obviously set with rhinestones.
“Come along when you’ve made yourself beautiful,” Charlie said and went off in search of his wife.
Bedelia was waiting in the hall. “We forgot about Abbie,” she whispered.
“It’s my fault. I should have reminded you that she was coming.”
“No, dear, you mustn’t blame yourself. You’ve got more important things on your mind. But we can’t neglect Abbie. After our wedding present and the way she entertained us in New York.”
Charlie and Abbie Hoffman were first cousins. She had been a Miss Philbrick, his mother’s niece. As representative of his people, she had welcomed his bride when Charlie brought Bedelia from Colorado, waiting on the platform for their train and treating them to an expensive lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“You might explain that you ordered a gift and it hasn’t been delivered,” Charlie suggested.
“That wouldn’t do at all. There ought to be a package under the tree. Abbie mustn’t feel neglected.”
The two girls came out of the guest room. Abbie kissed Bedelia and Ellen offered Charlie’s wife her hand. As if this were a reception in a New York mansion, Abbie kept on her hat.
“Affected puss,” muttered Charlie, remembering his mother’s phrase for Abbie. He stamped off to the kitchen to make some fresh drinks while Bedelia led the newcomers into the living-room. Most of the guests knew Abbie, who had been born a mile down the road and had lived in town until she married. That was the reason why Charlie could not forgive her for carrying her plumes into the living-room.
From the kitchen he heard laughter and shrieks of greeting. Charlie listened and shuddered. As he shook nutmeg into the eggnog, he rejoiced because his wife was without affectation.
The door swung open. “You’d better fill the bowl, Charlie. Most of the men are ready for more. And two hot grogs,” Ben Chaney said. “Need any help?”
Mary turned from her dishpan to stare at Ben. He was not tall, but he was muscular and compactly built. Against the gray paint of the kitchen walls, his skin seemed almost swarthy, and his abundant hair, curling like a poet’s, was shot with red lights. His eyes were pinpoints of curiosity. All at once, irrelevantly it seemed at the moment, Charlie had a solution to the problem of Abbie’s Christmas gift.
“Take this in, will you?” He handed Ben the tray. “And tell my wife I want to see her. I’ll be upstairs.”
Mary sighed as Ben left, carrying the tray as if the punchbowl were the head of a vanquished enemy. Charlie rushed upstairs to wait in the front bedroom for Bedelia.
She did not come at once and he passed the time by looking at himself in the pier glass. It was tilted in a way that distorted his image, making his head seem too large, his torso too long, his legs stunted. This was absurd. Charlie was one of those lank, stork-legged men who could never put enough weight on his bones. His features were neat but thin, and he was too blandly tinted to be handsome. He compared his amiable pallor with Ben Chaney’s rugged darkness and ran his hand regretfully through his thinning hair.
Bedelia had come into the room softly. She stood beside Charlie, the top of her head just reaching his nostrils. They had not grown bored with marriage and still enjoyed seeing themselves as a couple. Bedelia’s expression changed suddenly, a look of pain crossed her face and she hurried to straighten the pier glass.
“You looked horrid, Charlie. Your lovely long legs, I couldn’t bear to see them so short and queer.”
Charlie caught hold of her and held her close, breathing heavily. His eyes clouded. Bedelia slapped his cheek with light fingers. “We’ve got guests downstairs, we’ll have to get back to them.”
The twilight had thickened. Bedelia went to the window. Her eyes were fixed on some distant point in the dusk. “Last Christmas,” she murmured. On the flowered drapes her hands tightened. “Last Christmas,” she repeated in a blurry voice.
“We picked dark red roses and put them on the table. We had breakfast on the balcony.”
“Are you sorry to be here, Biddy?”
Her mouth, when it was not smiling, was small and perfect, a doll’s mouth. There were times when Charlie felt that he knew nothing about her. All that she had told him of her girlhood and first marriage seemed as unreal as a story in a book. When she related conversations she had had with people she used to know, Charlie could see printed lines, correctly paragraphed and punctuated with quotation marks. At such times he would feel that she was remote, like the heroine of a story, a woman he might dream about but never touch.
“I’ve had an inspiration,” he said. “A Christmas gift for Abbie.”
“What is it?” Bedelia asked eagerly.
“The pearl ring.”
Bedelia did not say anything.
“Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“We can’t, Charlie.”
“Why not?”
“You said it was cheap and vulgar.”
“On you, dear. But Abbie wears artificial stones.”
Bedelia shook her head.
“Why not?” asked Charlie.
“Your sort of people never wear imitation stones.”
Charlie wondered if she was making fun of him. “Abbie does, my cousin Abbie. Did you notice that brooch?”
Bedelia shrugged and walked away from her post at the window. She seated herself in a low chair which Charlie’s mother had used when she sewed. For this chair, Bedelia had chosen a covering of old rose moiré. The drapes and bedspread were of the same fabric, but otherwise the room was just as it had been when Charlie’s mother and father slept in it.
“Let’s give Abbie the East Indian bangle,” Bedelia proposed.
Charlie was shocked. “You can’t mean that.”
Charlie had bought Bedelia the bangle while they were on their honeymoon. It was of finely wrought silver, as wide as a cuff and hung with small bells. Charlie, who liked to explore odd neighborhoods and queer shops, had wondered how the bangle had come as far west as Colorado, and because it seemed romantic to him had paid twenty dollars for it. This was too much to spend on a Christmas present for Abbie whom he saw not more than twice a year. Bedelia had paid five dollars for the black pearl ring. It was set in imitation platinum and surrounded by false diamonds.
“The bangle’s too big for my arm. Too much bracelet.”
“You didn’t say that when I bought it. You thought it very handsome when you tried it on.”
The doll’s mouth could be petulant. “You liked it, Charlie, and wanted me to have it.”
“What I don’t see is why you’re so obstinate about that cheap ring. Since you say you won’t wear it yourself.”
Bedelia sighed.
“Of course, dear, if you want to keep it, I shan’t insist on your giving it away. But since you said you’d never wear it again . . .” Charlie waited.
She sat like a penitent child with bowed head and folded hands.
“Unless you want to keep it as a souvenir,” he said bitterly. “To remind yourself that you’ve married a prig.”
Bedelia smoothed the sheath of her velvet skirt over her legs, looked at the toe of a bronze slipper. “We can’t give Abbie that ring because I don’t have it any more.”
“What!”
“I’ve given it away. You didn’t like to see me wear it. You thought it was vulgar.”
“Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? Before I’d lost my temper?”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
She looked at him so innocently that Charlie had to laugh.
“What an inconsistent little creature you are, Biddy. To let me argue and make a fool of myself. I’ve been a bad-tempered boor. I apologize.”
“Charlie, dear, I was horrid to you, wasn’t I? Will you forgive me?”
“Forget it,” he said magnanimously.
“Shall we give Abbie the bangle?”
“Just as you wish.”
“You see,” Bedelia said, trying on the bangle and showing him how it slid up and down on her arm. “It’s much too big. You go down to our guests, dear. It’ll look queer if we both stay up here too long. I’ll wrap Abbie’s gift and, when no one is looking, slip it under the tree.”
Charlie could tell by her smile that Bedelia was pleased with her little scheme. He kissed her and left. She packed the bangle carefully and tied it with a red ribbon so that it should look like her other packages.
Then she went to her dressing-table, opened the jewel-box and took out the ring set with the black pearl. She put it into the velvet box in which she had found her new garnet ring, and hid it in the hall cupboard, making sure that it was well back in the shadows.
She returned to the bedroom on tiptoe, fetched Abbie’s gift, straightened the red bow, and hurried down the stairs, her high heels clicking on the treads.
The party was over. Of the guests only Abbie, Ellen, and Ben Chaney remained. Abbie had gone back to the guest room to make a ceremony of removing her plumes, and had dragged Ellen with her. Ben was kneeling before the fire. Bedelia stood beside him, holding a basket filled with crumpled tissue paper and ragged ribbons. They watched silently as all the fine wrappings, the silver and gilt, were sucked into the flames.
When all the papers had been burned and the room was neat again, Bedelia excused herself and hurried to the kitchen. Ben took the chair opposite Charlie’s and picked up the latest Literary Digest. Just as if he belonged here, Charlie thought for a stabbing moment, but dismissed the notion as ungenerous and picked up the new Atlantic Monthly.
In the guest room Ellen was washing her hands at the marble stand behind the screen. When she had finished, she started out of the room.
“Stay and talk to me,” Abbie commanded. She had taken off her hat at last and, as she expressed it, her hair was a perfect bat’s nest. “I have a question to ask you. Who’s this Chaney?”
“An artist. He’s taken Judge Bennett’s house for the winter.”
“The summer house? Up there in the woods? Why?”
“How should I know?”
Abbie’s head was bent forward and her hair fell over her face like a dark curtain. From behind the curtain floated her curious voice. “What kind of artist?”
“He paints.”
“Naturally. But what?”
“Pictures.”
Abbie swung back the curtain of her hair and rolled it over her rat. “You are annoying. What sort of pictures?”
The contrast with Abbie’s rich inflection made Ellen’s voice a stingy monotone. “I don’t know.”
“You could use a touch of rouge,” Abbie said. “Everyone does nowadays. Is he single?”
“I’ve never heard that he was married.”
“Try some of mine, Nellie.” Abbie nodded toward her gold meshbag. “It’s the newest thing, a dry powder, not nearly so vulgar as paint. Is he a gentleman?”
“You sound like a character by Mrs. Humphry Ward,” Ellen said coldly.
“Oh, do stop trying to be a highbrow. You know very well what I mean. Not a teamster or policeman.” Abbie was at last pleased with her hair. After a long scrutiny of her face in the mirror, she said: “He puzzles me. Not that I mind a bit of mystery in a man. Bedelia seems to like him, doesn’t she?”
“Does she?” Ellen tried to sound indifferent.
Abbie gave her a long look. “You wouldn’t be so dull if you’d dress with some dash. There’s nothing so abhorrent to the masculine eye as a plaid silk shirtwaist. It simply shrieks old maid.”
Ellen’s fair skin flushed. She liked to think of herself as The Tailored Girl and enjoyed wearing suits and shirtwaists.
Abbie took a round pasteboard box out of her meshbag. “Use this,” she commanded.
“I’d feel horrible.”
Abbie rubbed the puff over a disk of carmine powder and thrust it toward Ellen. “With a single man around, I do think you’d try to make yourself more interesting.”
“I’m not one of your predatory females.”
“You’d be better off if you were.” Abbie was merciless. There was no other way of moving Ellen. “At least you must let me do your hair over. Nobody wears it that way anymore.”
“I do. And, moreover,” Ellen challenged, her back rising, “nothing in the world could induce me to wear a rat. I think they’re filthy and disgusting.”
“Then every fashionable woman is filthy and disgusting.
“Bedelia is stunning and she doesn’t wear rats.”
“Bedelia has a style of her own. She can afford to be different. Besides, her hair is dyed and quite conspicuous enough.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Touched-up. I’m very sharp about that sort of thing.”
“But Bedelia wouldn’t. She’s so natural. Why are you so catty about her, Abbie?”
“Why are you defending her, Nellie?”
“Please don’t call me Nellie.”
“Why not? We always used to.”
“I don’t like nicknames any more.”
Abbie raised her eyebrows. She knew Ellen too well to go on badgering her. Besides, she had other questions to ask. “Has he money?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play innocent. When a single man comes to a town like this, it’s every woman’s duty to know the facts.”
Ellen relaxed a little. “I haven’t thought much about it, but he’s evidently got some kind of income or he couldn’t afford to stay in the country all winter and paint. Besides, he has a machine.”
“Let me warn you, my dear, a machine means nothing. Do you remember when my dear Walter bought the electric? We drove around like millionaires and he’d only paid a small deposit on it. You can buy cars on credit, you know.”
Ellen did not approve of Abbie’s lightness in speaking of her ex-husband. New York might take divorce for granted, but Connecticut still spoke of it in whispers.
“He gave Bedelia a dozen white roses,” Abbie remarked.
“He gave Charlie a box of cigars. It’s only decent of him to repay their hospitality.”
“You needn’t snap at me. I merely observed that he buys extravagant gifts. Not a poor man’s habit.” Abbie had finished her hair and restored her complexion. She went behind the screen to wash her hands.
Ellen’s voice rose above the running water. “There’s something about him. Would you trust him, Abbie?”
Abbie whirled around, holding her dripping hands before her. “Why must you be so intense? You behave like the third act of a melodrama. What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you think of him? Honestly, I mean, not as a bachelor who seems to have money, but as a human being. Would you trust him?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Ellen came close and looked squarely into her friend’s face. In spite of her simplicity and Abbie’s affectations, they were the same sort—big, bony, honest New England girls. “It’s as if he wanted something of us here. He’s made friends too fast. I know that artists are supposed to be unconventional, but that’s not it. His manners are good enough on the surface, but there’s something about him that I don’t understand. He came here in November knowing no one and now he’s everybody’s chum. And he’s always asking women to have tea with him.”
“You are provincial. In New York no one thinks twice when a man asks a woman for tea. Particularly an artist.”
“He asks so many questions,” Ellen complained.
“You sound as if you’d been out to tea with him yourself.”
“I work. I haven’t time to go out for tea, but I’ve had dinner with him at Jaffney’s and he’s called a couple of times.”
“Then you’re not so indifferent, are you? Dinner, evening calls, and he hasn’t talked to you about his painting?”
“He doesn’t talk about himself.”
“How strange for a man.”
“He’s always asking about other people’s lives, the most personal questions. About their incomes, whether they’re well off or not.”
“Sounds like normal curiosity.”
“Evidently New York’s made you forget that we were taught never to mention things like that.”
“You’re still a child, Ellen. If I didn’t know you so well I’d think your naïveté was a pose. Have you asked Bedelia what she thinks of him?”
Ellen seemed not to have heard.
“You’d never catch her dining with a man and not knowing what sort of pictures he paints. And don’t tell me he hasn’t asked her to have tea with him.”
“He’s often here in the afternoon. Sometimes they walk,” Ellen said quietly. “Of course Charlie and Bedelia are his closest neighbors except for farmers like the Keeleys or those Polish people up the hill.”
The wind had risen. It screeched through the woods, whined around the corners of the house, set shutters to shivering and rattled window-panes.
“Supper’s ready. Bedelia wants to know if you are,” Ben Chaney said. He lounged against the frame of the door as nonchalantly as if the house were his own.
“Where did you get your manners?” Abbie asked. “Weren’t you taught to knock when you come into a room?”
“Not when the door’s open.”
Abbie looked at Ellen, who looked away.
THE HOUSE HAD been more formal in old Mrs. Horst’s day. Charlie had been a considerate son who would not distress his dear mother by criticizing her father’s and grandfather’s tastes in architecture, but before the flowers were withered on her grave he had unlocked the drawer that contained his plans for remodeling the house. In spite of his modern education, Charlie favored the old New England style of building and was one of the foremost architects in the movement to bring back to fashion the best features of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Before he left for his holiday in Colorado, he had had all the balconies, tower, and scrollwork decorations removed and the house restored to its original lines. The bow window had been left because it was a pleasant place to sit on sunny afternoons.
He and Bedelia had worked together on the interior decoration. All the wallpapers and upholstery fabrics were her taste. They had had only one quarrel and that because she had refused to discard his mother’s good Orientals and use rag rugs in their place.
She had a natural talent for housekeeping. With less fuss than his mother had made with her two servants, Bedelia and the young girl, Mary, kept the house like a pin.
Tonight she had left the centerpiece on the table and used her new Madeira doilies under the plates. Red candles shed light upon the meal. She had cooked the main dish herself. It was a casserole of rice cooked with tomatoes, okra, clams, chicken, pimentos and olives, and flavored with saffron. Charlie was not given any. Mary brought him a bowl of plain boiled rice.
“Dyspepsia,” he confessed.
“You!” cried Abbie.
“It must be his nerves,” Bedelia said. “He works too hard. You’d think his foreman was a complete ignoramus the way poor Charlie has to run to Bridgeport every day.”
Ellen asked if he had seen the doctor.
“I do wish you’d use your influence, Ellen. I beg and beg and he doesn’t pay the slightest attention.”
“Let’s talk of pleasanter things,” Charlie said.
But Abbie had a theory. “He probably got it out West. I hear the food is simply . . .” she could not find the right word and wrung her hands.
“You’re wrong,” Charlie said. “There are some excellent restaurants in Denver, and at the hotel at Colorado Springs they had a French chef.”
“I shouldn’t like that,” Abbie sniffed. “If I went to Colorado, I’d expect bear meat or buffalo.”
“Is this a Western dish?” asked Ellen, helping herself to the rice.
“No, it’s a recipe I learned in New Orleans. Jambalaya, they call it. They make it differently, with river shrimps and crabs . . .”
“New Orleans,” Abbie interrupted. “I thought you came from California. Didn’t you tell me Bedelia came from California, Charlie?”
“I was born in California, but I’ve lived in a lot of places. I lived in New Orleans with my first husband.”
“I’ve always wanted to go there,” Abbie said. “They say it’s quite civilized. Have you ever seen a Mardi Gras?”
“She’s as good as Cable when she describes it,” Charlie boasted. “Tell them about the French Quarter, dear, and the artists.”
“Everything?”
“Why not? Are you ashamed?”
“No, you know I’m not.” Bedelia gave Charlie a warm smile and a small confidential wink. “But these people are different, dear. They’ve always been conventional and protected . . .”
“Oh, do tell us,” squealed Abbie.
“It’s not that sort of thing,” Bedelia said, laughing. “You see, we were very poor. Most people would rather confess to sin than poverty, wouldn’t they? My husband and I were desperately poor. We lived in a garret.” She was gleeful, as if there was something romantic about it. “He was an artist, you see, of good family, but his people wanted him to go into business and wouldn’t give him an allowance. We didn’t mind being poor because we were young and healthy and in love, and most of our friends were poor artists, too. We had lots of fun, and if we could afford a chicken and a bottle of Italian claret, we’d give a party.” Her voice, fading off at the end, hinted at richer memories.
Ellen found the jambalaya too filling. She wished she had not helped herself so greedily.
“If he’d lived, he’d have been an important artist, perhaps a great one. When he died, one of the dealers bought up all his paintings as an investment, knowing they’d be valuable some day.”
“Why, Biddy!”
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“You told me his friends had sold them at auction.”
“Oh, oh!” said Bedelia, watching Charlie through her eyelashes, “yes, of course, dear, they sold them at auction because the dealer wanted to give me only a hundred dollars. So they made him auction them off instead of just buying them from me, and I got over two hundred. You remember, Charlie, I told you.” Without waiting for Charlie’s reply, she went on, “We’re going there someday to see if we can buy back some of the paintings. I’m no critic, but lots of people thought he had great promise.”
Ben had been watching Bedelia. When he caught Ellen staring at him, he picked up his fork and began to eat again.
“You sold them all!” Abbie cried. “You didn’t keep any for yourself?”
“I didn’t have a dollar to my name,” Bedelia confessed, quite without shame or embarrassment.
“What did your husband die of?”
“Appendicitis. It was too late when they took him to the hospital.”
She stated the fact simply, and smiled at each of her guests in turn as if to tell them she was not asking for sympathy. Then Abbie asked Ben Chaney if he knew the work of a painter named Cochran.
“The first name was Raoul,” Charlie said.
“Raoul Cochran, that’s a queer one.”
“His mother was French,” Bedelia explained. “Raoul wasn’t known in artistic circles in the North. He’d sold a few pictures, but only to people down South.”
Although Ellen disapproved of personal questions, she found herself asking, “If you were so terribly poor, how did you happen to be spending the summer at Colorado Springs?”
“It does sound extravagant, doesn’t it? But I was ill, the shock, you know, it had affected my nervous system, and I lost my baby.” She offered this with appropriate modesty, avoiding their faces. “The doctor said I must have a change of scene. The mountains had always appealed to me and since the Springs is a health resort, I decided to go there. Of course, I couldn’t consider stopping at the hotel. I lived in a cheap boarding-house, but it wasn’t uncomfortable and I had a magnificent view.”
“When I met her,” Charlie said, “she had given herself two more weeks at the Springs. She was hoping to find work in a Denver department store. She had come to the hotel that day to see the fashions.”
“I hadn’t had anything new for years and I thought that if I applied for work in a good shop, I’d better show that I knew something about style. So, before I started altering my clothes, I decided to go and see what the Easterners were wearing.”
“She came to look at the millinery, but she found me more interesting.”
“Now, dearest”—Bedelia flirted with her husband enchantingly—“you know that you pursued me relentlessly.”
“From the lounge where you’d been drinking tea to the porch where you’d gone to look at the view. Is that relentless?”
Bedelia included the guests in the next chapter of her story. “How indifferent he tried to look when he chose the chair next to mine. He put on such a show of not noticing me that I knew precisely why he was interested in the view from that particular angle. It took him almost ten minutes to work up the courage to ask if I wasn’t awed by the grandeur of the Rockies.”
“We might never have met except for an accident. I’d planned to pack-trip with some fellows at the hotel and one of them sprained his ankle and we postponed it, fortunately for me.”
“And I,” Bedelia added, “had almost decided not to go to the hotel because the cheapest tea was fifty cents.”
“The gods were good to us.”
Charlie’s pious pleasure and Bedelia’s nervous assurance annoyed Ellen. The conversation seemed natural, like a scene rehearsed over and over again by zealous actors. Ellen complained, because there was nothing else to fuss about, that the room was too hot. “It’s unbearable in here. Can’t you do something about it, Charlie?”
Ellen’s shrillness punctured Charlie’s mood. He had dwelt for those few seconds among the peaks of the Rockies. He went grumpily to turn off the heat. Then he fetched his mother’s white Angora shawl for Bedelia.
“How thoughtful, darling. But you needn’t have bothered. I’m not cold.”
“We must be careful now,” Charlie said.
Bedelia shook her head at him.
“What’s the matter? Is Bedelia pregnant?” asked Abbie, who had begun to affect frankness.
“Excuse me,” Bedelia said, pushed back her chair and hurried through the swinging door to the kitchen.
“Did I say something wrong?” Abbie was puzzled. “What’s so shocking about babies when people are married?”
“Do hush up,” Ellen said.
“She’s sensitive since she lost the last one,” Charlie explained. “She thinks talking about it might bring bad luck.”
“Superstition,” snapped Ellen, and immediately regretted it.
“We can’t all be as rational as you, my dear.”
Bedelia returned with the coffee urn. Mary followed with cups, cream and sugar.
Every time Bedelia served coffee, she enjoyed turning the little faucet on the urn, and Charlie enjoyed the sight of her childlike pleasure. She was composed again, gracious, the charming hostess. “How do you take your coffee, cream, and sugar, one lump or two?”
“How nice you look today, Mary. Is that a new cap?” Ben asked as the young hired girl brought his coffee.
Mary blushed and giggled as she hurried through the swinging door.
“You mustn’t tease her, please, Ben,” whispered Bedelia.
“I wasn’t teasing. She’s a pretty girl.”
“He was driving into town one Thursday when she was off,” Bedelia said, “so he drove her in and treated her to an ice cream soda. She’s got a crush on him.”
“Mary, too,” thought Ellen, and glanced toward Abbie to see if she recognized this as another of his predatory habits.
But Abbie was flirting with Ben. “That doesn’t leave us older girls much chance, does it? With Mary’s simple ways and unspoiled charms, she must be very pleasing to a city man.”
“I haven’t shown her my paintings.”
“Why should you?” asked Bedelia.
“I’ve asked you to look at them, haven’t I? You’re the sort of woman who couldn’t possibly have had tea with a man and not know how he paints.”
Ellen tried to look unconcerned, but Abbie accepted the challenge boldly. “What sort of painting do you do? Don’t tell me you’re a Cubist.”
“Won’t you come and see? A friend of mine is coming from the West on Friday and Charlie and Bedelia are having dinner at my house. Perhaps you girls would come, too.”
“We’d adore it,” Abbie said before Ellen had time to offer an excuse.
Afterward they sat in the small room, which had been known for generations as “your father’s father’s study,” but which Bedelia had renamed “Charlie’s den.” Bedelia brought ashtrays for the men.
“Probably you’d like one, too,” she said, and fetched another for Abbie.
“How did you know my guilty secret?”
“You smoked at the Waldorf-Astoria that day.”
“Were you shocked?” sighed Abbie hopefully.
Bedelia shook her head. “When you’ve lived among artists, you’re not shocked at anything. But at the Waldorf the people look so respectable that I was afraid you were making yourself conspicuous.”
Charlie had filled his pipe and was about to light it when he remembered Ben’s gift. He ought to smoke a cigar, he reflected bitterly, to show appreciation. As he went off to fetch the box, he wondered at Ben’s thoughtlessness. They had often smoked together and Ben ought to have noticed that Charlie cared only for his pipes.
He offered the box to Ben, who took a cigar. “That’s funny,” Charlie said to himself, “he doesn’t usually smoke them either.” Both men clipped off the ends and lit their cigars as if it were a regular habit. The room became fragrant with the smoke.
“I do admire your taste, Mr. Chaney,” Abbie said. “Those are grand cigars.”
“How do you know?” Ellen asked tartly.
“If you’d been with men as much as I have, dear, you’d recognize the smell of a good cigar. Isn’t that so, Bedelia?”
“I don’t know.”
Bedelia sat stiffly at the edge of the leather chair, her hands gripping the arms. All the color had been drained out of her face and her eyes had become wary. They were all looking at her and she seemed to be defending herself against their scrutiny. Her voice, giving answer to Abbie’s simple question, had been sharp with terror.
BEDELIA CAME INTO the bedroom. Her hair hung loose. She had on a dressing-gown of royal blue challis printed with roses and bound in rose-colored ribbon. Charlie caught her in his arms and embraced her.
“You smell so sweet. Your skin smells like honey.”
Every night Charlie said this and every night Bedelia told him it was her skin cream. The repetition did not irritate them, for they were still in love. Every trifling incident had either the charm or novelty or the comfort of repetition.
“Well, Christmas is over,” she said.
“A happy Christmas?”
The blank look had come into her eyes again, and Charlie wondered if she was thinking of Raoul Cochran. There were times when he suffered keen jealousy, when he resented all of her past life, every experience which had not been shared with him, even the poverty and mourning.
“Better than last Christmas?”
Bedelia’s eyes met Charlie’s and she said reproachfully, “Oh, darling.”
“Last Christmas you were picking roses.” She was silent and he went on. “My mother was ill,” as though he were angry with Bedelia for having enjoyed the sunshine and flowers and breakfast on a balcony while his mother suffered in this very room.
His wife untied the rose-colored ribbons and took off her challis robe. Her corset cover and knickers were of fine muslin, lightly starched, embroidered and run through with pink ribbons. Charlie watched with pleasure as she untied the bows and whisked the tiny pearl buttons through minute buttonholes.
As she loosened her corset laces, she walked toward the pier glass. “I am getting stouter.”
“It’s becoming.”
“In a few weeks I’ll begin to show.”
Charlie went off to the bathroom to wash and brush his teeth. When he came back, Bedelia was in bed, her hair loose on the pillow. His mother had always braided her hair at night, straining it back from a bulging forehead. For Charlie, his wife’s careless tresses had sluttish charm. Her bedroom slippers were of rose-colored satin with French heels. Her pretty lingerie, ribbons, embroideries, and scents delighted him. Before his marriage he had, like every other respectable man, known a number of wantons. Looking back upon their seductions and comparing them with his wife, he saw the poor girls as drab unfortunates. Bedelia’s easy pleasure gave to the marriage bed a fillip of naughtiness without which no man of Puritan conscience could have been satisfied.
He was glad he had married a widow.
“Charlie!” She sat upright and let the covers fall off her shoulders. Her voice was dramatic. “Your powder! Did you bring the water, dear?”
“I’ve forgotten. It doesn’t matter, though, I feel all right.”
She insisted that he take the powder. For his own good, of course. He had eaten a lot of rich food that day and drunk a number of eggnogs.
“All right,” he agreed, sighing and stamping off to the bathroom. The show of martyrdom was purely a show. Bedelia’s concerning herself about his health and keeping powders for him in the drawer of her bed table pleased Charlie. This was another proof of her love for him. The powders, folded into blue packets, were highly effective. She had learned the remedy when she worked as a companion to a dyspeptic old lady.
“Drink it fast and you won’t notice the taste,” she always said when she had spilled the powder into the water for him.
As he took off his bathrobe, Bedelia regarded him with shining eyes. “You’re so tall,” she said, and height became the final standard of perfection. “And your shoulders are so broad. You’ve got a wonderful physique. That’s what your mother always said. ‘My boy’s not handsome, but he has a fine physique.’”
Charlie could not enjoy the full flavor of flattery without disturbing the ghosts of Puritan ancestors. To appease certain stones in the churchyard and the bronze figure of Colonel Nathaniel Philbrick, mounted on a bronze horse in the small park downtown, he pretended to reject her admiration. “Too skinny,” he remarked. Having made this gesture, he laughed and asked, “Who told you that? Abbie?”
“Ellen.”
“Oh!” Charlie said.
“Poor Ellen.”
“Why do you pity her?” Charlie asked as he got into bed. “It’s no disgrace for a woman to earn her own living.”
“It’s not that. I’ve worked myself. That’s not what I mean.”
“I must say I admire Ellen’s spunk. She’s doing well on the paper. I met Clarence Green the other day and he told me she had real aptitude.”
“I’m sorry for Ellen because she’s still head over heels about you.”
Charlie tried to deny it. Bedelia insisted. Ellen’s every look betrayed a broken heart. “But she’s a wonderful girl, Charlie. She tries her best to like me.”
Charlie lay on his side, studying the tilt of his wife’s nose and the jolly curve of her cheek. He felt unworthy because he was loved by this enchanting woman and by Ellen, who had a strong character. What had he ever done to deserve all this devotion? He was no Casanova. If he had been hard, compact, and wiry, with abundant dark hair and a knowing smile, he might have accepted feminine admiration more complacently. But he was thirty-three, bland, undistinguished, going bald. The virtues he admitted were commonplace, the virtues of an unromantic man, the sort of fellow to whom a nickname like Charlie-Horse could stick for life.
“What about the light?” he asked. “Shall we try again?”
Without hesitation she replied, “Yes, dear. We’ll really do it tonight.”
He stretched out his hand and the room was dark. Immediately a great variety of noises took possession of the night. The river seemed to rush along faster and to chatter in a wilder voice, the wind wailed, the black walnut tapped its skinny fingers against the windows, the shutters trembled, the panes rattled, and there were scratchings as if an army of rats had invaded the attic.
“Oh, Charlie!”
He took his wife in his arms, held her tightly, whispering. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Biddy. You’ve got me here, my sweetheart, my wife, my little love, you’re not alone now. I’m here, nothing can hurt you.”
Her tears wet his cheek.
“Just what is it you’re afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed.
They clung together. Bedelia made herself small against him so that he should feel larger and more necessary to the frail woman. Since their wedding night he had been trying to help her overcome her fear of the dark. Her efforts had been so sincere that Charlie had never scolded nor laughed at her for the childishness of her terror.
Gradually her fears had infected him. In the daytime he resolved to harden himself against contagion, but when she clung to him in the dark, weeping, his mind filled with strange fancies and his flesh, under the blankets, chilled. By day his wife was earthy, a woman who loved her home and had a genuine talent for housekeeping. In the dark she seemed entirely another sort of creature, female but sinister, a woman whose face Charlie had never seen. It was absurd for a man of his intelligence to let himself be affected by these vague and formless fantasies, and he tried to account for his wife’s fear of the dark by remembering that she had lived a hard life. Her girlhood, according to stories she had told them in bits and pieces, a stray anecdote here, a fragment there, had been shadowed by so much misfortune and disillusionment that it would have been abnormal for her to not have been affected.
None of this reasoning did Charlie the slightest bit of good. The phantoms dwelt there as if they had taken a lease on the bedroom. On every other night he had weakened and relit the lamp. Tonight he was determined to prove by disapproval that the darkness was uninhabited and that he had no sympathy for her irrational, childish terror.
A quivering scream rent the blackness. Cold winds swept through the room. Under the blankets Charlie shivered.
“What is it, my dear?”
Bedelia did not scream again. After a silence so deep that she seemed to have stopped breathing, she whispered faintly, “Did you see it, too?”
“See what?” His voice was crisp with disapproval.
“It moved.”
“Now, Biddy,” he began firmly and coolly.
“I saw it.”
“There’s nothing in the room, nothing. It’s absurd for you . . .”
She pulled away from him and moved to the edge of the bed. The pillow did not muffle her sobs nor the mattress conceal her tremors. The house was filled, quite suddenly, with small terrible sounds that were closer and more distinct than the rushing fury of the river.
In the ten seconds that passed while he stretched his hand toward the lamp, Charlie recognized the weakness that had taken possession of his spirit. It was a newly acquired quality. Charlie Philbrick Horst had been trained in the school that rejects idle whims and scorns self-indulgence. Morally slothful, his mother would have called his present state of mind.
“Oh, Charlie-Horse, darling, how good and sweet you are,” his wife murmured. Her tremors ceased. She relaxed, wiped away tears with the back of her hand, offered a dimpled smile.
A small, rose-shaded lamp shed light in a cone on the carpet. The furniture of the bedroom was real and assuring. Above the mantel hung a portrait of Charlie’s mother at seventeen, a righteous girl, her lips tight with disapproval. And Charlie would assure himself that it was for his wife’s sake that he had turned on the light. In this way he was arming himself against the scorn of weakness which had been planted in him by his mother.
“You’re so good, so thoughtful, such an unusual man,” Bedelia whispered. “I’m sure it’s hard for you to sleep with the light on.”
“Oh, I’m getting used to it,” Charlie answered, feeling the chill thaw out of his cramped limbs as he studied his wife’s fair flesh, rosy lips, and the curves of her cheeks.