“WHY DO YOU LIVE WAY UP HERE IN THE WOODS? Are you hiding?”
That was Abbie and typical of her insolence. Ellen, disapproving, moved to the farthest corner of the cold leather seat. Ben had driven into town to fetch the girls and was driving them back to his house in his automobile. Their coast collars were turned up, their hands tucked in their muffs, their legs wrapped in blankets, but it was still torture to be speeding at twenty miles an hour through the country.
Abbie’s question echoed the curiosity of the town. Why had a man who could afford to live comfortably close to his neighbors chosen a house in the woods for the winter months?
“A whim,” Ben said. “I wanted to try painting the country at its bleakest.”
“But why do you have to live in the wilderness? Couldn’t you paint just as well if you were comfortable?”
“I couldn’t be more comfortable in a New York apartment,” Ben said. And this was true. While his house was remote, it was a modern building equipped with a hot-air furnace and a water-heater. He rented it from Judge Bennett, whose family lived there from the first of June until the Tuesday after Labor Day when they moved back to their stone mansion opposite the Walkers’ house in the center of town.
“I’m off the main road,” Ben continued, “but with a machine it doesn’t make much difference. Asa Keeley and his boys cut my wood and do my errands.”
“Besides,” put in Ellen, “he’s got Charlie and Bedelia as his closest neighbors.”
“And Hannah,” Ben said, smiling. “Hannah gives me more news of the town than I get from your paper, Miss Walker.”
“I believe that,” Ellen said. “And I hope you’ve no skeletons in your closet, because Hannah and her sisters and cousins work in half the houses in town, and no secret’s safe. She’s cousin of the Horsts’ Mary, you know?”
“Don’t I, though? I’m sure that whenever a button pops off my shirt, Hannah phones Mary about it. Mary tells Bedelia and the next time I see her, I catch her counting buttons.” Ben paused while the girls laughed. “The latest is the cigar situation,” he confided. “It seems that Bedelia threw away the cigars I gave Charlie for Christmas. She’d heard somewhere that cigars are bad for the digestion and didn’t want him to smoke them. Hannah said he made Bedelia promise not to let me know about it, so that my feelings won’t be hurt.”
“I think Bedelia’s splendid,” Ellen said. “She takes such good care of Charlie.”
The Horst house was just off the highway at the junction with the side road that led to the Bennett place. As they turned, they all looked at the Horst house and saw that lights were burning in the front bedroom.
“They’ll be over a bit later,” Ben told the girls. “I told them to come at half-past six. I want to show you my paintings before dinner.”
“Won’t they want to see them, too?” Abbie asked.
“No doubt Bedelia’s seen them already,” Ellen remarked tartly.
If her legs had not been secured by blankets, Abbie would have kicked Ellen’s shin.
“She’s seen them often,” Ben remarked, apparently unmoved by Ellen’s insinuations. “She’s an excellent critic.”
Ben seemed anxious to show off his work. He hardly gave the girls time to take off their coats and hats before he rushed them into the north bedroom which he used as a studio. Except for an easel, a stool, and a paint-stained table, the room was bare. No canvas had been hung, but a number were stacked along the walls. “I’m sorry you have to see my work by artificial light, but I’m not offering any excuses,” Ben said as he tilted the lampshade so that full light should fall upon the easel. He showed his paintings, one by one, standing by patiently until his guests had enough of each picture.
His work was crude, but not without a certain forcefulness. The paintings revealed characteristics that his amiable manners concealed. He was shrewd and ruthless and saw deeply below the surface.
“You’re fauve, aren’t you?” inquired Abbie.
“Not by intention. It’s probably my nature.”
“After seeing your work, I’m rather afraid of you.”
He turned to Ellen. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”
Ellen lowered her eyes so that she need not look any longer at the painting on the easel. It was of a red barn on the Silvermine River, a favorite subject with the artists who came to Southern Connecticut. Ellen had seen many versions of it. The work of a famous magazine illustrator had been used on the calendar distribution at Christmas by the insurance company for which Wells Johnson worked. Ellen had always thought this a tranquil scene, but in Ben’s picture the red barn seemed to be crumbling, the water choked with weeds, and in the flame of autumn foliage there was sense of winter’s bitterness.
“It’s daring.” Abbie spoke, although she knew it was Ellen’s opinion he sought.
“At first it shocks you, but after you’re used to it, you find that you rather like it. Like Stravinsky.”
“I’m sure I’d never grow to like it.”
Ellen spoke her mind freely. If she had deliberately set about antagonizing Ben Chaney, she could not have found a more effective method. Abbie tried to signal with her eyebrows.
“At first,” Ellen went on, ignoring Abbie’s frantic signals, “I thought I disliked your work because you deliberately chose ugly things to paint, like slum scenes and garbage cans. But now I see you can also make a beautiful scene hideous.”
“I try to paint what I see. And to see things as they are.”
“Then you find truth ugly when others see beauty in it.”
He shrugged. “You may be right. I’m not sentimental.”
They heard Charlie’s Oakland car puff up the hill. Ben said, “You’ve probably seen enough,” and led them out of the studio.
Ellen was glad to return to the glow of the gas logs. She pulled her chair close to the hearth and shivered as if she had just come in out of the cold.
Ben and Charlie drank cider brandy while the ladies sipped sherry. Bedelia was wearing a dress of black crepe de chine, draped at the hips and narrow at the hem. The bodice was cut low, but filled with ruffles of white lace. The dress was both decorous and daring. No woman could criticize, no man fail to notice.
“I’m sorry we’re one man short tonight,’ Ben explained. “My friend, whom I’d wanted you to meet, didn’t get here after all.”
“So Mary told us,” said Bedelia.
“There are blizzards in the Middle West,” Ben went on. “No trains moving. I thought he’d arrived in New York this morning, and then I got a wire saying he hadn’t left St. Paul.”
Bedelia set down her sherry with an abrupt movement. Some of the wine spilled. She smiled ruefully.
“Is anything wrong?”
Her eyes narrowed and she hung her head.
“Aren’t you feeling well?” Ben persisted.
“I got a bit of a chill. Perhaps someone was walking over my grave.” She straightened and gave Ben a reassuring smile to show that the spilled sherry and her sudden alarm meant nothing.
The room was still for a few seconds and then Abbie broke the silence, shrilly. “Who was this guest?”
“Does it matter, since he’s not coming?” asked Ellen.
“We might at least have the pleasure of knowing what we’ve missed,” Abbie answered with unnecessary venom.
“A friend of mine,” Ben said.
“An artist, too?”
“No, he’s in business. Owns a store, two stores, in fact.” Ben’s restless glance had circled the room. His eyes were fixed on Bedelia’s face again.
“How do you like my new dress?” she cried. The subterfuge was not wholly successful. Everyone could see that she had wanted, desperately, to change the subject.
“Stunning,’ said Abbie, “looks like Paris.”
“I made it myself.”
“No!”
“Yes, she did,” said Charlie, who had been informed of the fact this evening while they dressed.
Abbie shook her head. “You’re a marvel, Bedelia. I’d swear it was an import.”
“Thank you.” Bedelia took another sip of sherry.
“That’s how you must sit for your portrait, Bedelia. I want you to wear that dress,” Ben said.
“A portrait of Bedelia!” exclaimed Charlie.
“You don’t mind if she sits for me, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, Ben,” Bedelia shook her head at him. “Why did you mention it? You’ve spoiled the surprise.”
“A surprise for me?” asked Charlie.
“For your birthday, dear.”
“Nothing would please me more.” To the others he said, “You know I have no picture of her, not even a snapshot.”
“Mr. Chaney oughtn’t to paint Bedelia!” Ellen said.
“Why not?” Charlie demanded. “Why shouldn’t he paint Bedelia’s picture?”
“Have you seen his paintings?”
“Often. Why are you so disapproving?”
Ellen kept them waiting while she thought about it. Finally she said, “Bedelia’s pretty and he seems interested only in making things ugly.”
“That’s unjust. I told you I try to paint as I see, honestly.”
“He could never see anything ugly in Bedelia,” Charlie stated flatly.
“Have you seen what he did with the red barn? He’s even succeeded in finding evil in that picturesque spot.”
Hannah said dinner was ready.
“You can’t find evil where it doesn’t exist,” Charlie argued. “I’ve no fear of letting him paint Bedelia’s portrait.”
“I shall be interested in seeing the finished work,” Ellen said.
“You’ll be the first to have a chance to criticize it,” Ben said, as he rose and led the way to the dining-room.
The meal began, as Mary had informed Bedelia, with clams. Bedelia had already warned Charlie against the first course. He nibbled a dry cracker.
Ellen, who was sitting next to him, asked why he wasn’t eating. “Not dyspepsia again, Charlie?”
“I’m not hungry.” Hoping to avoid any more discussion of the loathed subject, he said, “You’re looking unusually well tonight. What have you done to yourself, Nellie?”
Ellen’s fair skin turned scarlet. Long ago, when Charlie had taught her tennis and sat next to her on hayrack rides, his name for her had been Nellie. Seeing Nellie Home, he used to sing out of tune but cheerfully. She felt the heat of the blush and feared that her burning cheeks must reveal her shame. But the flush was becoming. Abbie had lent her a dress of gray wool bound in cerise silk.
“What’s the secret, Nellie? Is it love that’s causing you to bloom?”
Hannah thrust a plate of hot biscuits between them. Ellen buttered hers with an air of severity. Chilled by her extraordinary tension, Charlie gave ear to the conversation between Ben and Abbie.
Bedelia was listening but taking no part in it.
“At first,” Ben told Abbie, “I’d thought of painting her as she looked to Charlie that day on the hotel veranda. All in black, the widow. As background the stony peaks of the Rockies to show the cruelty and indifference of Nature, and the harshness of the world against which a frail woman must battle.”
“It sounds stunning. Why have you changed your mind?”
“The obvious lack of mountain scenery.”
“Couldn’t you do it from photographs?”
“That’s not the way I work. Moreover, my model would no longer be the slender and ardent widow pursued by our friend Charlie from the hotel salon to the veranda. I found the story romantic when I first heard it and was tempted to work from imagination rather than reality.”
“But the story is true.”
“The subject had changed. Instead of that pensive widow we see a buxom wife. The lines are no longer angular but . . .” he carried out the idea with his hands. “This is to be the portrait of a woman who’s satisfied with her life because she’s succeeded at a woman’s most fundamental job, which is to make a man comfortable.”
“Very flattering,” said Charlie.
“You smug thing!” cried Abbie, playing with the East Indian bangle which she wore over her tight black satin sleeve.
Ben saw that his guests were through with the clams, and he rang the bell for Hannah. Then he turned to Bedelia and said, “When you sit for your portrait, you must wear the black pearl.”
“Black pearl!” exclaimed Abbie, looking at Bedelia with new respect. “Don’t tell me you own a black pearl.”
Bedelia glanced at Charlie. It was fortunate, her eyes seemed to be saying, that she had had her own way about Abbie’s gift. Ben might have embarrassed them by remarking that he had seen Bedelia wear the ring. “Oh, it’s not real,” she explained. “I picked it up in a novelty shop in New York. It cost five dollars. Charlie thought it looked cheap, but I’m so ignorant that it looked like a real one to me.”
“A remarkable imitation,” Ben said. “I’m no judge of jewelry, but when I first saw it I thought the platinum and diamonds genuine, and that the pearl might be worth a thousand dollars.”
Abbie played with the bangle. “It sounds stunning. Why don’t you wear it, Bedelia?”
“My husband doesn’t approve of artificial stones.” Bedelia spoke without resentment, simply stating fact.
“I’m sorry I noticed the ring that night,” Ben said. “If I hadn’t admired it quite so much, Charlie would probably never have noticed it.”
“Not notice a black pearl!” cried Abbie as if she were speaking of mortal sin.
Charlie wished they would quit talking about it.
“I’m sure he noticed,” Bedelia said. “It was much too conspicuous for him not to. But he didn’t want to hurt my feelings by criticizing my taste, so he controlled his own, although he detested the ring.”
Charlie sighed.
“My sensitive ear perceives the overtones of a domestic quarrel,” Abbie said brightly.
“Charlie and I never quarrel, do we, dear?”
Again Ellen felt, as she always felt when people were oversweet or used too many pet names, that underneath the sugar frosting the cake was sour.
Hannah passed roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. Charlie barely touched the food and only wet his tongue with Burgundy. His head had begun to pound. “Nerves,” he told himself disapprovingly, “nothing but nerves.” Instead of the round table set with Mrs. Bennett’s second-best dishes, he saw a square corner table at Jaffney’s Tavern, and Ben as host again. The picture in Charlie’s mind was like one of those Impressionist things, all angles and disharmony; a gleaming tablecloth, a long-necked bottle of Rhine wine, Bedelia’s hand stretched across the table over a platter of lobster and wedges of lemon, resting in Ben’s swarthy hand, and Ben bending over to examine the black pearl. Charlie, usually observant, could have sworn he had never noticed the ring until that night, but Bedelia had assured him that she had been wearing it all that week. Charlie had reflected upon the scene, analyzed his emotions and blamed his bad temper upon the flash of jealousy which burned when he saw his wife’s hand in Ben’s.
“What a prig you are,” Abbie said, not knowing she salted a wound. “And how like my dear Aunt Harriet. I can just hear your mother, Charlie. ‘I do not like to see a member of my family decked out in artificial jewelry.’” The mockery was precise. Abbie had caught the quality which had made the late Mrs. Horst such an annoying woman.
“All right, I’m a prig. I acknowledge it and I’m sorry.”
“You were right,” Ellen said. “I detest artificiality in anything.”
“Of course he was right,” Bedelia added. “Everyone has a right to his own taste, and Charlie’s is so much better than mine that I could never be comfortable wearing anything he dislikes.”
“Bravo!” Abbie shouted. “A truly feminine speech, and how much more successful”—she addressed this to Ellen—“than any of your feminist attitudes.”
“My wife is an unusual woman,” Charlie boasted. “Instead of reproaching me, as most wives would, she gave the ring away.”
“Gave it away! Not really!” shrilled Abbie.
Ben’s face tightened.
“Gave it away because I didn’t like it,” Charlie said.
Bedelia lowered her eyes modestly.
Abbie said, “I’d never have given it away. But that’s the difference, I suppose, between a successful wife and a failure like me. If I ever marry again, I’ll come to you for advice, Bedelia.”
“Thank you, Abbie.” Bedelia straightened her ruffles. On her right hand gleamed Charlie’s Christmas gift, the gold ring set with garnets.
For dessert they had mince pie. Charlie was not given any; Hannah brought him a custard. That, of course, was Bedelia’s doing. She had heard the menu from Mary and told her to let Hannah know that Mr. Horst must have a simple dessert.
He ate only a small portion of the custard and felt worse than before. The pain in his head had become a dull beat. When Hannah brought around the cheese, he put a little on his plate. Bedelia shook her head at him.
“Not Gorgonzola, Charlie.”
It was a half-whisper, but everyone heard and laughed. Later, after Charlie was stricken, they remembered Bedelia’s solicitude.
The party broke up early. It had not been a very successful evening. The dinner had been too heavy and the guests were dull. Charlie and Bedelia left at half past ten. It was fortunate that they did not stay longer. Otherwise Charlie would have suffered his attack at Ben’s house and there would have been no end to the confusion.
He had not been home for more than ten minutes when it happened. Bedelia had gone upstairs ahead of him because Charlie never went to bed without trying all the locks and taking a final look at the furnace. When he came into the bedroom, she was standing before the pier glass in her black silk corset. Charlie thought this the most seductive garment he had ever seen and, whenever Bedelia wore it, he wanted to make love to her.
She saw his face in the mirror. Whirling around she cried, “Oh, Charlie, darling, you’re not going to be ill, are you?”
“I’m all right,” he said.
“You felt sick at Ben’s house, I know you did. That’s why I suggested coming home early. You look awful.”
The creature who stared back at Charlie from the pier glass had sunken eyes, colorless lips, and a pistachio green complexion. But Charlie was determined not to be ill and he squared his shoulders and began briskly to undress.
Bedelia mixed him a sedative. Her hand trembled as she poured the powder from one of the blue packets into the tepid water. “Drink it fast, you won’t notice the taste,” she said. As he drank the foaming stuff, she watched him anxiously. “Feel better now, honey?”
At that moment he did feel better. He watched Bedelia loosen the laces of her corset. “If you weren’t my wife, I’d say that corset looked fast.”
She was hurt. “If that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll never wear it again.”
“Don’t be so sensitive, Biddy. I meant it as a compliment. A woman who has had two husbands should know that a touch of suggestiveness is appealing to the masculine eye. As Herrick put it, ‘A sweet disorder in the dress kindles in . . .’”
That was as far as he ever got with Herrick. Bedelia, who had gone to the closet for her nightgown, heard him gasp the last word. She turned quickly and saw that he had begun to vomit. He was bent over, steadying himself against the footboard of the bed. She saw him stagger backwards, let go of the footboard, and fall.
For a moment she did not stir. She stood at the closet door, her hand tight on the china knob. Charlie lay on the rose-colored carpet, as white as death and as silent. Painfully his wife opened her fingers, released the doorknob, and crossed the room. Her knees were shaking so that she walked like a drunken woman, and when she knelt beside him and lifted his wrist, she could not take his pulse because her own hand was so unsteady.
MARY ROSE EARLY the next morning. She could hardly wait until it was late enough to call Hannah without disturbing the Horsts or Mr. Chaney.
“Guess what?” she said when finally she had gathered enough courage to use the telephone.
“Hen Blackman’s popped the question,” Hannah guessed. Hen Blackman was Mary’s steady fellow.
Mary was so eager to spill out her news that she did not bother to tease Hannah. “Mr. Horst’s awful sick. Almost kicked the bucket last night. The doctor was here when I got in from the dance.”
“Mr. Horst! Why, he was here for supper. Must have been awful sudden. What’s wrong with him?”
“Poisoned.”
“You don’t say. Poisoned? By what?”
“Something he ate,” said Mary.
Hannah served Ben Chaney the news with his breakfast. “Couldn’t be nothing he ate in this house. No one else got sick, did they? Mary acted like it was my cooking done it, but I’m telling you . . .”
Before she had a chance to tell him anything, Ben Chaney was at the telephone. He slammed the studio door in a way that showed Hannah he did not want her to hear what he was saying. He tried to get hold of Doctor Meyers, who was out on a call and could not be reached. Then Ben asked the long-distance operator to put in two calls, one to New York and one to St. Paul. Afterward he changed from his painting smock to his tweed jacket, pulled on his overcoat, grabbed his hat, and was out of the house before Hannah could ask whether he’d be back for lunch.
He did not ring the Horst doorbell, but went around the back way and tapped at Mary’s kitchen window. She hurried to open the door, smoothing her hair and wiping her hands on her apron.
“I didn’t want to ring in case Mr. Horst was sleeping. How is he?”
“He’s still asleep.”
“And Mrs. Horst?”
“I brought her her coffee up to bed. The doctor says she should stay in bed this morning. She was all wore out, he says.”
Ben took off his overcoat and seated himself in one of the kitchen chairs. “Mind if I smoke?”
Mary gave her permission with a flourish. “Like something to eat, Mr. Chaney? Or a cup of coffee? I just made a big pot in case somebody’d want it in a hurry. In an emergency it’s always good to have hot coffee.”
“If it’s not too much bother, Mary.”
She fetched a Limoges cup from the pantry. When Ben suggested that she sit down and have coffee with him, the girl giggled happily. She poured her coffee into one of the heavy kitchen cups, but tried to be elegant and serve him cream and sugar like Mrs. Horst at the dining-room table.
He asked her a great many questions, but Mary did not think this odd. Small-town people do not hide their natural interest in the affairs of their neighbors. Mary told him precisely what she had told Hannah, which was all she knew.
“Are they getting a trained nurse? Has the doctor suggested it?”
Mary nodded. Doctor Meyers had told her last night that Mrs. Horst wanted to take care of Mr. Horst herself, and the doctor said that Mary was to be responsible for the house. “Mrs. Horst, she’d rather take care of him herself with me looking after the house for her than have a stranger in to nurse him. With me responsible for the house, she can nurse Mr. Horst all right. She’d rather do it herself.”
Ben looked out of the window. Mist was rising from moist ground. Mary cried, “Oh!” and clasped both hands over her heart. Ben turned and saw Bedelia at the kitchen door. He was no less startled than Mary had been. Bedelia had appeared silently, and she stood so quiet that she seemed an apparition that had materialized out of the dark air of the corridor.
He rose and went to her. Taking her hand, Ben said, “Bedelia! Good morning. How are you?”
She did not greet him and stood there, looking past him or through him as if she were not aware of his presence. She was highly agitated, her mouth working and her eyes narrowed to dark slits.
“Mrs. Horst, what’s the matter? Can I do something for you?’ asked Mary.
Bedelia raised her shoulders and shuddered delicately as if she were shaking off an evil mood. Smiling, she bade Mary good morning. Then she looked down at her hand which lay in Ben’s. She continued to smile but in a different way. Her upper lip curled back over her teeth and her eyes were guarded.
“How’s Charlie? If there’s anything I can do for you, Bedelia, you must tell me. Anything at all.”
“It’s good to have friends. At a time like this, it’s all you have to . . .” she paused, seeking the right words, “. . . to give you courage. Oh, Ben, if anything should happen to Charlie!”
“He’ll be all right,” Ben said.
She let Ben lead her to the den, pull a chair close to the hearth, and light the coal fire. She was still agitated. Her pointed pink fingernails clawed the leather of the armchair.
“You’re sure you’re all right, Bedelia?”
“That’s what Charlie asked me as soon as he became conscious last night. Was I all right? You’d think I was the sick one.” Bedelia had become herself again, composed, gentle, all curves and sweetness.
Ben chose a chair opposite Bedelia’s. They sat there without talking. The rain had started. Wind sighed through bare branches. The river charged angrily over the rocks. Ben looked from the dripping window back toward the blue flames of the coal fire, and then at Bedelia again.
Her hands lay limp in her lap. She seemed sunk in complete lethargy as if the preceding mood of nervousness and agitation had exhausted her.
Mary stamped into the room. Bedelia looked straight at the girl without seeing her. Shuddering, Mary said, “Mrs. Horst.” Her voice was unsteady.
Bedelia slid forward in the chair. Her eyes widened and her hands tensed again.
“It’s not Mr. Horst? There’s nothing wrong upstairs, is there?”
Mary shook her head. She had interrupted only to tell Mrs. Horst that Miss Ellen Walker had called to say she had heard about Mr. Horst and to ask if she could do anything. “Thank you,” Bedelia whispered, dismissing the girl. She hugged her knees and looked into the fire as if she were alone in the room.
A few minutes later Doctor Meyers rang the doorbell. Ben hurried to open the door.
“Well, how’s the patient?” the doctor asked as he pulled off his rubbers. Then he noticed Ben and said, “My wife tells me you called this morning, want to see me about something?”
“After you’ve seen Charlie.”
Bedelia went upstairs with the doctor. Ben picked up the National Geographic and looked at maps of the Caucasus. Mary came into the room with a dustcloth and asked if her work would disturb him. He did not answer, and Mary scurried away to dust the living-room gently as if the furniture were ill, too. After a while Bedelia came downstairs. Her eyes were moist and bright. She sniffed at her handkerchief, which was scented with a flowery perfume.
“The doctor’s a long time,” Ben said.
“Yes. He wanted to know everything Charlie’s eaten for a month. And you know Charlie. He never remembers from one day to the next what he’s had for dinner.”
She had changed into a house gown of maroon wool banded in black velvet and bound her hair with a maroon ribbon. The doll’s mouth was as red as a cherry.
“You’ll be ill yourself if you worry,” Ben said. “If it’s food poisoning, as the doctor suggests, Charlie’ll be all right in a few days.”
She retreated again to the leather armchair. Apparently the flames could not warm her, for she rubbed her hands and shivered. “I’ve been unlucky all my life.”
The wind echoed her sigh.
When the doctor came downstairs, she fairly leaped from her chair. “How is he?”
“Much better. His pulse is slow but not dangerously so. You’ll have to keep him in bed a few days and feed him carefully. It’s been a shock to his system.”
Bedelia nodded.
“Charlie tells me you gave him a powder last night. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was only a bromide,” she said. “It couldn’t possibly have hurt him.”
Ben was frozen. Nothing seemed alive in him except his eyes. They searched the doctor’s face and then fastened on Bedelia’s and remained there, steadily.
“What kind of bromide?” Doctor Meyers asked.
“It was a prescription a famous specialist in San Francisco gave an old lady I used to work for.”
“And you gave it to Charlie?”
She nodded.
“Don’t you know it’s dangerous to give people medicine that’s been prescribed for others?”
“There was nothing dangerous in this. I’ve often taken it myself. For gas. It was very soothing.”
“I’d like to see it,” the doctor said.
She left the room. Both men watched until she was out of sight.
Ben said, “Food poisoning, are you sure that’s the cause of Mr. Horst’s illness, Doctor?”
Doctor Meyers, affronted by this tone of authority from a man who was no member of the household and hardly more than a stranger in town, bent over to fasten his shoelace. “I hear he had dinner at your house last night, Mr. Chaney.”
“Several people dined at my house. They all ate the same food. None of the others were stricken.”
“Mrs. Horst says that he had a special dessert served him, a custard. The rest of you ate pie. What was in the custard?”
Ben shrugged. “Hannah Frost, my hired girl, can tell you. But I hardly think a simple dish like that could have caused it. And the rest of the custard is probably still in the pantry if you’d like to have it analyzed.”
The doctor took his coat off the hook. With his back to Ben he asked, “Is that what you wanted to see me about, Mr. Chaney? Because one of your guests was poisoned by something he ate? When I discover what caused it, I’ll let you know.” He wrapped a knitted muffler, irrelevantly gay, about his neck.
“Don’t you think he ought to have a trained nurse?”
The doctor wheeled around. Since he had suggested a nurse and then allowed Bedelia to change his mind for him, the question made him angry. “Why are you so interested, Mr. Chaney?”
“As a friend I want to see everything done that can possibly be done for Charlie. Besides”—Ben moved closer to the old man—“we have to think of Mrs. Horst’s health. Do you think she’s strong enough to nurse him . . . in her condition?”
Bedelia leaped out of the shadows of the stairs, hurried to the doctor, clung to his arm. “I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh! I wondered about you. You’re putting on weight. Better let me look you over one of these days.”
“I feel fine. I’ve never felt better in my life,” Bedelia said. Then she handed him the box that was filled with packets of the sedative powder. “Here it is, Doctor. I had it made up at Loveman’s Drug Store. Mr. Loveman knows all about it.”
The doctor put the box in his overcoat pocket. “Charlie looks pretty good to me, Mrs. Horst. Just let him rest and eat lightly. I’ll stop in tomorrow.” He opened the door and a blast of cold air blew in upon them. “Good-bye, Mr. Chaney,” the doctor said and slammed the door.
Bedelia stood with her hand on the post of the staircase, looking after him. Rain beat a sad rhythm on the roof. Currents of warm air moved through the house from the steam radiators, but they could not defeat the chill of the hall. Bedelia shivered. When she saw how steadily Ben was watching her, she raised her shoulders in a delicate shrug and turned and walked into the den.
Ellen typed the story on an Oliver machine with a broken D. Her hand was unsteady and she made more than her usual typographical errors. She had been assured by Doctor Meyers’s wife that Charlie was not in danger, and Mary had said that he was resting comfortably. “Mr. Horst was married last August to Mrs. Bedelia Cochran, widow of the late Raoul Cochran, a distinguished artist of New Orleans, La.” Ellen’s desk stood in a row of broken-down, dusty, splinter-rough desks in a noisy loft with a cement floor, plaster walls, and a deafening echo. “They met in Colorado Springs, Colo., where Mr. Horst had gone for a holiday after the death of his mother, Mrs. Harriet Philbrook Horst, one of our most beloved citizens.”
At five minutes after twelve she covered the typewriter and left the office. There was a rumor going through the town that Madame Schumann-Heink was arriving from New York to visit a musical family who had recently bought a house in the neighborhood. Although the newspaper office was but three blocks from the railroad station, the rain was so heavy that Ellen had to take the streetcar. The wind blew furiously. An umbrella gave no protection. Women’s skirts were blown high above their shoe-tops, but the tough boys who usually hung around the street corners, hoping to catch a glimpse of ribbed black stockings, had sought shelter in saloons and poolrooms.
The railroad station smelled of rubber, moist wool, and steam. Ellen waited behind a dripping window, watching the passengers alight from the New York train. There was no one who could be mistaken for Schumann-Heink. She saw Ben Chaney hurry along the rainswept platform and wondered whether she dare ask him to drive her home. But when she saw that he was meeting a woman, her courage failed, and she pressed into the shadows so that he should not see her as he and his companion left the station.
Ellen hurried through the rain to the streetcar. The ten-minute ride seemed interminable. Lunch was even worse. Ellen’s parents were the high-thinking sort, retired school-teachers, and gossip was not permitted at the table. As soon as she could politely do it, she urged Abbie to come upstairs with her. She closed the bedroom door and plunged into a description of the scene at the railroad station.
Abbie was not impressed. “If you’d spoken to him, you’d probably have been introduced to his dear godmother or maiden aunt.”
“She didn’t look auntish. They seemed terribly absorbed in whatever they were talking about, as if they shared some passionate interest.”
“But you said she was homely and oldish.”
“I didn’t mean it was romantic. They seemed to be excited about something.”
Abbie puffed on her cigarette and reflected upon the ugliness of Ellen’s bedroom. When they had been chums at grammar school and Abbie had brought her secrets to Ellen’s room, the white iron bed had stood in the same corner, the Morris-style dresser and desk had been adorned with the same scarves and pictures. On the wall hung faded photographs of the Parthenon frieze, the Forum, and of Michelangelo’s David.
“Do you think he knew Bedelia before he came here?” Ellen asked.
“What a suspicious nature you’ve got,” Abbie said. “I’ve never in my life heard anything so vicious. Whatever makes you think that?”
“He’s not really interested in anyone else. It’s a sort of preoccupation with him. Haven’t you noticed the way he always watches her?”
Abbie crushed the stub of her cigarette into a saucer which had been sneaked upstairs for that purpose. To cleanse the air of the tobacco smoke, she opened the window. “What about his dates with other women? Those tea parties with Lucy Johnson? And you and Mary among the others?”
“To disguise his real interests.”
“What a wild imagination. You ought to write penny-dreadfuls.”
“I’m not suspicious by nature,” Ellen said. “At first I thought I was getting these ideas because I was jealous of Bedelia.” It cost Ellen some effort to say this, but she had made up her mind to speak frankly, and she gritted her teeth and went on. “You know that I tried to like Bedelia and trust her, and I’d have succeeded if it weren’t for this Chaney affair.”
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.