“WHY ARE YOU STARING AT ME LIKE THAT?”
Bedelia sat high against the pillows. She had asked Charlie to bring her the pink bed sacque, and when she had tied the pink bow under her chin, combed her hair and touched up her lips, she was as rosy and pert as a schoolgirl. The room was dry and warm, and the scent of her cosmetics gave it the oversweet atmosphere of a hothouse.
“You’re looking at me so strangely, Charlie. Are you angry, dear?”
Charlie walked toward the bed. Bedelia held out her hand. He took it and she drew his hand to her face and rested her cheek against it. Ben’s facts receded into the distance. Charlie saw innocence in a pink jacket, heard rosy lips asking for his love, smelled her seductive perfume, touched a warm hand. His senses knew reality. The session with Ben became a dream. This woman was his wife, he knew her intimately, was not blind to her faults and weaknesses. He had been madly in love with her, dazzled by her charms, but he had not lost his head so completely that he had mistaken a vulgar adventuress for a sincere woman. And the woman Ben described had been far worse than an adventuress, she had been a hideous monster, a siren, a blood-sucker, Lucrezia Borgia and Lady Macbeth, all at once. Charlie was no fool. He might have been oversanguine, more trustful of strangers than a lot of people, but he had his standards of character and expected his friends to live up to these standards. Barrett’s wife had been mercenary. Mrs. Jacobs was a cold woman. Annabel McKelvey could not offer affection with such pretty impulsiveness.
“I’m hungry,” Bedelia said.
“I’ll fix you some supper. Won’t take ten minutes,” Charlie promised.
He was glad to leave the bedroom. In her presence it was not possible to think clearly. He stamped down the stairs, telling himself in sound sentences that Ben Chaney had made a hideous mistake, that the black pearl was what Bedelia claimed, a five-dollar imitation. Last week Ben had made melodrama out of a case of common indigestion; now he was magnifying a molehill of coincidence into a mountain of evidence. A detective! Had Charlie known this at the start, he would never have become intimate with Ben Chaney. Perhaps he was a snob; the Philbricks had always been snobs, but they had successfully protected themselves against the humiliation suffered as a result of intimacy with inferiors. Would his mother have asked a detective to dinner? He could hear her answer, “One might as well dine with a burglar.” Let Barrett come! At the first glance the man from St. Paul would destroy Ben’s fine theories.
While Charlie was slaying dragons on the staircase, a miracle took place. Light! Light after darkness! Could there have been a clearer symbol of hope? Of course, if he were to quarrel with Providence and seek scientific explanation of the miracle, it could be attributed to the workings of the Connecticut Light and Power Company whose linesmen had restrung the wires which the blizzard had disconnected. The sudden burst of light in the dark hall was due to Charlie’s own negligence in forgetting to turn back the switches which he had thoughtlessly turned on while the power was off.
In his present mood Charlie preferred the miracle. Faith is nourished not by intelligence but by emotion, and emotion is the product of desire. By wishing hard enough you can make yourself believe almost anything. The Kodak had fallen off the cliff by accident. Charlie had a most reassuring vision, could see himself leaving it carelessly at the edge.
He set about making tea. The kitchen reflected his wife’s soundest qualities. In every copper pot its bright miniature was repeated. Charlie sang as he made toast in Bedelia’s new electric machine, cooked a rarebit in her chafing dish. He felt superior to Ben’s nonsense, aloof as a god. His voice seemed to him only slightly inferior to Caruso’s. All at one time he had to keep his mind on the toast in the electric machine, the melting cheese in the chafing dish, the water in the kettle.
The kitchen floor was spread with newspapers. Charlie had laid them there when he finished scrubbing the linoleum. That was Charlie all over, an architect, successful in his field, making good money, but not too proud to scrub the kitchen and spread newspapers on the floor. As he crossed from stove to table, the kettle in his hand, an item attracted him. He bent down to read it, forgot everything else, and there was havoc in the kitchen. The kettle tipped, the cover slid off, hot water spilled, the toast burned, and the rarebit thickened in the chafing dish.
The newspaper item told of the conviction of a bachelor, forty-seven years old, elder in a New Hampshire church, for the murder of his spinster sister. Witnesses said the sister had tried to separate him from the piano teacher with whom he had been having an illicit affair for seventeen years. Charlie seldom read such stories. The sort of people who committed murder, or allowed themselves to become victims of murder, were to him as incomprehensible as savage Igorotes, and such crime as remote from his understandings as hara-kiri or child marriage. A medicine man who painted his skin and danced to exorcise devils seemed no farther off than a New Hampshire elder who could suffocate his sister with a green silk sofa pillow.
Boiling water spread and darkened the newspaper. From the toaster came a charred smell. The cheese sauce bubbled angrily. There were switches to be turned off, plugs to be pulled, the floor to be mopped, fresh bread to be cut, new water boiled, cheese to be grated. Charlie worked defiantly. He sang loudly, rattled dishes, banged away with the pots. The medicine men dance to exorcise civil spirits. Charlie Horst tried to imitate Caruso. In fear of excess he spared the tea, shut off the current before the toast was brown, made a watery rarebit. Yet he continued to sing loudly as though the courage of his voice could thicken sauce, brown toast, strengthen tea, disperse the shadows on the stairs, and revive the faith that had seemed so firm when he started work in the bright kitchen.
Maurine Barrett had been a good housekeeper, she had equipped her kitchen with all the latest conveniences, her egg-beaters and can-openers had been the most recent inventions, and when she went away, she had stored them carefully in her brother-in-law’s attic.
“Charlie, dear, it’s delicious,” Bedelia said of the rarebit. “You’re a much better cook than I am.”
“It’s a bad supper and you’re a gallant liar.”
“No, you mustn’t say it’s bad. It’s delicious.” Bedelia smiled, dimpled; her dark eyes worshiped her husband, and the room was sweet with the scent of her perfume.
THAT EVENING A bell rang. Charlie and Bedelia were startled. They had forgotten about the telephone. “We must be connected,” Charlie said.
Bedelia nodded. She had a crochet hook in her mouth and could not speak.
The operator was calling to see if their line worked. The trunk wire had been disconnected, she said, and the telephone company was glad to inform its subscribers that service had been restored.
Charlie was not as happy about the restoration of the telephone wire as he had been about the electric light. This was not a miracle but an omen. His house was again part of the world from which it had been separated by the storm. Next the snow shovels would come, and then there would never be peace in his home again.
“So the phone’s connected,” Bedelia said.
“Yes.” His voice was brusque. More than four hours had passed since Ben had left the house, and nothing had been said of his visit.
Charlie pulled a chair close to the bedroom fire. Bedelia went on with her crocheting. From time to time she measured the unfinished slipper against the finished one.
“When will the snow be cleared away?”
He scraped his throat, tried to soften the hard tones. “I don’t know. Why are you worrying about it so much?”
“It’s such fun to be alone with you, dear. I don’t want us ever to be rescued.”
“We’d starve to death.”
“We’ll live on biscuit. There’s plenty of flour. I’d rather live on biscuit with you, Charlie, than roast goose and oysters with anyone else.”
He stared into the fire. A sudden wave of anger had risen in him, resentment at her airs and graces, the guilelessness and girlish prattle. His anger was futile, of course. When he turned and saw her, rosy in the lamplight, the pink bow tied under her chin, his resentment turned upon himself for allowing his faith to be shaken.
“Don’t you believe me, Charlie?”
“Believe what?”
“That I love you better than anything in the world?”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“I don’t know what you mean by that. I don’t know whether you mean that I ought to know that you believe I love you and am foolish to be asking about it, or whether you don’t believe I love you more than anything else in the world.”
How was it possible for a small woman to have drowned a man who had been boating and swimming all his life? If Will Barrett had drunk too much beer, he might not have known it was she who pushed him off the pier, but he should have been restored to his senses by the shock of the cold water.
Thinking of it, Charlie experienced all the sensations. He lost his balance, fell, shuddered as the water closed over him, floundered about, held his breath, struggled and tried to reach the surface. His arms flailed about in the effort to swim blindly toward the posts that held up the pier. Drunk or sober, he would not have allowed himself to drown, he thought. But if he had been drugged, if he were not wholly conscious, the water might not have revived him.
“Great God, I’m getting morbid.”
“Did you say something, dear?”
“No.”
“Why are you so cross with me?”
“Am I cross? I’m sorry.”
“Perhaps you’re bored being stuck in the house without any company but me. I know I’m not very intellectual, but I try not to be a bore.”
“My dear, you’re not the slightest bit of a bore.”
The telephone rang. Charlie was glad that he had an excuse to run down the stairs.
Ellen was calling. “Hello, Charlie, are you all right?”
“Hello, how are you? Dug out yet?”
“Good gracious, yes. We were only snowed in a day down here, worse luck. I’ve had to go to work as usual. It’s pretty bad out there, isn’t it?”
“We’re comfortable,” Charlie said.
“It’s been terribly exciting in town, everybody dug and shoveled, not only the poor who were getting paid for it, but the Mayor and City Council and all the storekeepers and bankers. The poor were angry because other people were doing the work that’s rightfully theirs, taking away their chance to make a little money, but there was so much snow that there’ll be work for them for days to come. They’re coming out your way tomorrow.”
“You don’t sound enthusiastic. What’s the matter? Don’t you want to be dug out?’ Charlie did not answer, and after a little pause Ellen added with unconvincing gaiety, “I suppose when you’ve been married just a little while, you don’t mind being cut off from the world. How’s Bedelia taking it?”
“She’s in bed with a cold.”
“Oh, what a nuisance. Do give her my love,” Ellen said dutifully. Her voice revived as she exclaimed, “Charlie, I’ve got the most astonishing news for you! A letter from Abbie. What do you think?”
“Bustles in style again.”
“Now, Charlie, don’t tease. This is important. About someone quite close to you.”
His heart missed a beat.
“Your neighbor, Mr. Chaney.”
“Oh!”
“It’s quite shocking. Shall I read you what she says?” A paper rustled. “Before I read it, let me tell you one thing, Charlie. I never did trust him. You can ask Abbie. I thought he was sneaky right from the start.”
“Go on, read it.”
“I won’t read the whole letter, you know how Abbie goes on, just the part that’s apropos. Quote, ‘The most ironic joke has been played on us by Fate and your dear Charlie’”—a giggle traveled over the wire—“‘is the victim. Last night I went to a New Year’s reception at the Hattons’, who were good friends of ours when I was married to Walter. I joined a group of people I knew. They were listening to an elderly gentleman tell some fascinating stories about crime and graft in Kansas City, etc., and I thought he must be an editor or journalist like Norman Hapgood or Lincoln Steffens. Believe me, he was quite distinguished. I had not caught his name and later I went up the punchbowl and asked my hostess to identify him. Imagine my surprise when she told me he was a detective!!’”
“Oh?”
“Abbie has it underlined and two exclamation points.”
“‘My hostess explained that he was not like a policeman, but is a private investigator with a very interesting history. He had taken a house next to their summer place in Mamaroneck and she had been shocked when she heard he was a detective, but found that he was quite decent and respectable, and his daughter, Beatrice Chaney, had gone to Mount Holyoke. After that I managed to have a heart-to-heart with the old gentleman. When I said that I had met a young man of that name, he interrupted and asked if I’d seen his son’s paintings. Evidently he doesn’t care any more for Benjy’s art than you do, pet. I told him I thought his son’s work clever, but somewhat fauve, and he remarked that most young ladies felt just as I do about the lad.
‘“They are evidently well-bred people, and if he can afford to give his son a machine and let him spend his life painting, they must have money. There is no reason why you should be such . . .’” Ellen stopped reading.
After a silence, marked by the humming of the wires, Charlie said, “Go on. What else does she say?”
“It’s nothing. Abbie said something silly.”
“That you were a snob, or a prig?”
Ellen laughed self-consciously.
There was another silence, and then Ellen said, dryly, “She thinks any single man ought to fascinate an old maid.”
Charlie laughed mechanically. “Why, you’re still a spring chicken, my dear. And Ben’s an attractive fellow. Abbie may not be so silly after all.”
“I’m not interested.”
Charlie was pleased. It was selfish of him, after he’d gone off and married another woman, to cherish Ellen’s affection, but he was human, and his admiration of Ben had been grudging. “I don’t think he’s your type, Nellie. He’s not good enough for you.”
“Oh, Charlie!” Ellen’s laugher was freer and lighter.
The banter had lightened Charlie’s spirits. As he hung the receiver back upon the hook and started up the stairs, it seemed that his life had been restored to its normal pattern. He saw himself as Ellen saw him, a man who had married impulsively but with good sense.
“Ellen certainly talked a long time,” Bedelia said as he returned to the bedroom.
Charlie was paralyzed. Had the door been open all the time? How much had his wife heard of Ellen’s talk about detectives?
“She’ll never fall in love with him,” his wife continued.
Charlie found that he could move again, and speak. He studied Bedelia’s face and observed nothing more than curiosity written upon it. It had been Ellen, he recalled, who had mentioned detectives; he had said nothing about Ben’s work.
“It’s Abbie,” Bedelia said shrewdly. “She’s probably trying to push Ellen off on the first man who comes along so she won’t be an old maid.”
This phrase, used humbly by Ellen and by Bedelia derisively, irritated Charlie. “Ellen’s not an old maid. She’s still young and a handsome girl.”
“You needn’t worry about Ben. She’ll never fall for him. She’s still too much in love with you.”
“That’s nonsense,” snapped Charlie, blushing.
“She’ll never get you, though. I won’t let her. You’re mine.”
Charlie shrugged as if he considered the conversation too trivial to be continued, and walked away from the bed.
Bedelia’s voice pursued him. “Ellen wishes I’d die so she could marry you.” This was stated so calmly that it seemed no absurdity, but honest fact.
Charlie wheeled around. “It’s not worth talking about. I wish you wouldn’t make such crazy statements.”
“Do you wish it, too? Do you want me to die so you can marry Ellen?”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Ellen’s a fine, good-hearted girl. Such a thought would never enter her mind.”
“She’s against me, Charlie. She and Ben are working together.”
He turned away again and found himself face to face with his image in the pier glass. He felt that he had changed and expected to find evidence of it in his appearance. The change was there, but not sufficiently developed to show in his manner, his speech, nor the expression of his face. It was rather in his searching of Bedelia’s manner, speech, and facial expression that the change manifested itself.
She went on quietly. “You aren’t very clever about people, dear. You trust them too easily. The ones you admire the most turn out to be the rottenest.”
He turned around and stared at her, wondering if Bedelia had chosen this oblique way to tell him about herself. “I don’t quite understand you.”
“You can’t tell what most people are thinking,” she went on, almost blithely. “Nor what their plans are nor how they feel about you. Those who look the most innocent are often the most deceitful.”
Jacob’s family had been fond of Arthur’s new wife, Chloe. She had been a sweet, steady girl and the old-fashioned Jewish family had not minded her being a Gentile.
“You’re so good, Charlie, that you don’t see the evil in others. Just because you’re so decent yourself, you think everyone else is decent, too. You have no idea how rotten people are.”
Charlie returned to the fireplace. His body had become heavy and his mind rusty with fatigue. He knew that there was something grave beyond Bedelia’s words and he was afraid she would tell him more than he could bear to hear. He called himself a coward, but wished just the same that they could return to the smug safety of Christmas Day.
Bedelia’s calm had fled. She watched Charlie, aware that he had not been moved by what she had said. She hurried to tell him again that, if he knew the world as she knew it, he would realize how vile people are, and how rare were his own virtues. “You’re unusual, Charlie, you’re sort of pure, you don’t know that people are always plotting things against each other. That’s why I love you so much, because you haven’t a suspicious bone in your body. You trust everyone, you think we’re all as good as you are.”
“My dear,” he said, exercising such control that he managed to speak smoothly, “you’re letting yourself become hysterical.”
“When you were so ill that night, I was almost out of my mind. I was afraid you’d die. If you had, I’d have killed myself. I was afraid you’d die and I’d be alone again. Do you believe me? I wanted to kill myself that night.”
“Please, Biddy . . .” he said gently, “you mustn’t get so excited. We’ll stop talking about it. You’ll be feverish again.”
“What would I have to live for without you?”
“That’s a perfectly natural way to feel when you’re in love. You think your life has no reason except for that. But you do survive and after a while you probably find that there’s a lot of pleasure in living.”
“I wouldn’t. Not without you.”
Charlie drew a deep breath. “How about Cochran? You said you loved him, but afterward you managed to live quite well without him.”
“Charlie, I have something to confess.”
Charlie edged closer to the fire. A shiver ran through him. He rubbed his hands.
“Women are sometimes deceitful. They’re afraid men don’t love them enough and they tell little lies to make a man jealous. When I first knew you, Charlie, and told you about myself, I tried to make you jealous by saying I loved Raoul and had been happy with him. That was a lie. I wasn’t happy. I’ve had a hard life and I was never happy till I married you. Before that, dear, believe me, I didn’t know what love was.” She whispered the last phrase as if the words were too sacred to be spoken aloud.
Raoul Cochran had seemed real, almost alive, when Bedelia told Charlie her stories of life in the New Orleans studio. Charlie’s jealousy of the dead husband had been a lively emotion. Now the jealousy was dead. Ben’s facts had killed, and Charlie mourned his dead jealousy and wished he could feel its flush again.
“The baby, our baby, I needn’t have had it, it’s only because I love you so much,” Bedelia murmured in a husky voice.
It had not been his wife who suggested that he increase his life insurance. That was his own, not Bedelia’s doing. When she had told him that she was pregnant, he had seen fear in her eyes and known that she was remembering insecurity. “I’m going to increase my life insurance,” he had said, and her eyes had filled with grateful tears.
Bedelia took up her crocheting. Her fingers jerked the wool as she talked. “One night, Charlie, in the bathroom . . . your old gray and red robe was hanging on the door . . . so plain and ugly . . . but it made me think of you, how plain and good you are, how little you care for yourself . . . and suddenly it came to me, why shouldn’t I have a baby? With you, Charlie . . .” Her hands were so unsteady that she had to put down her crocheting again, and she laughed out of key. “I had always been afraid and I knew that night . . . when I looked at the ugly bathrobe . . . that I didn’t have to be afraid any more. Do you understand?”
Charlie was not certain of his voice, and he nodded swiftly.
“Are you glad?”
The nod was briefer this time.
“I never thought I’d tell you. But you’re not like those others, Charlie, you’re a good man, a woman could tell you anything and you’d understand.”
Her voice trembled and her eyes shone with sincerity. Barrett had rejoiced when his wife told him that she was pregnant, and McKelvey had probably passed around those excellent Cuban cigars. It was not known whether Chloe Jacobs had whispered any such secret, but Jacobs hadn’t needed the inspiration toward bigger life insurance.
This time Charlie closed the door before he went downstairs. He telephoned Doctor Meyers.
“Hello, Charlie. I’ve been thinking about you. Tried to call you yesterday, but you were disconnected. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“How’s the digestion?”
“Pretty good.”
“No more dizzy spells? Nausea?”
“I’ve called you about my wife, Doctor.”
“I want to ask you a question.” Before he spoke again, Charlie arranged and rearranged the words in his mind. “Look here, she’s got a bad cold, la grippe, I think. I want to know . . . is it dangerous in her condition?”
“Keep her in bed.”
“Yes, I have. But I want to know about . . . well, you know she’s pregnant, of course.”
“Naturally. I examined her the other day.”
“You did!” Charlie’s heart began to race. “Then she really is . . . I mean, Doctor, is she all right?”
“Didn’t she tell you? What’s the matter, Charlie? Why are you so nervous?”
“I just wanted to be sure she was all right,” Charlie said.
“I’ve heard of women getting crazy notions,” the doctor laughed, “but this is the first time I’ve found symptoms in the father. Don’t you worry about it, Charlie. Your wife’s a healthy woman and don’t let anyone tell you it’s dangerous after thirty. You ought to have two or three more . . .”
Then Bedelia was pregnant. The lie she had told her other husbands was no longer a lie. And no wonder she was so sensitive about it. Ghosts of old falsehoods had come back to haunt her. She had lied so often that she was afraid of the truth. The fact that this was a real pregnancy, along with the analysis that proved that Charlie had not been given a dose of poison, showed that Bedelia was not planning her husband’s death. She was carrying their child, planning their future. What had seemed hysteria was the lifeline to which she clung with frail, desperate persistence. She loved him.
“Good God!” Charlie exclaimed as he saw the irony of her situation.
“Darling, why are you staying down there such a long time?” called his wife.
“I’ll be right up,” he promised.
He did not return immediately to the bedroom. He had to examine his thoughts and review the situation. For a moment he had admitted the possibility of his wife’s guilt. Suppose she were proven innocent; could he, like the old doctor, drop the belief as neatly as the knife is dropped after the operation is over? Your wife’s a healthy woman . . . you ought to have two or three more. Could you, during Christmas week, suspect a woman of giving her husband poison, and in the first week of the new year offer your blessing to the virtuous wife and mother? Should Ben Chaney’s story be proven untrue next week, could Charlie shed suspicion with the same ease?
Suppose Ben had made a mistake, followed the wrong clue, suspected an innocent woman? Suppose poor Bedelia was the victim of a monstrous practical joke? Ben might not be a detective at all; he might be a clever lunatic.
For thirty seconds these happy hopes dwelt in Charlie’s heart. He breathed freely and started up the stairs to the room where his dear wife waited. In the shadows at the turn of the stairs, Will Barrett accosted him, a cynical smile curving his wet lips, a warning light in his drowned eyes.
YEARS AGO CHARLIE had taught himself to clean his mind of worry just as he brushed his teeth before going to bed. He was proud of his ability to banish business cares at night and often boasted that he slept most soundly during critical situations. Tonight, as he undressed, cleansed his mouth with an antiseptic solution, and made his round of the house, turning off radiators and switching out the lights, he had resolved to dismiss Barrett, Jacobs, and McKelvey with the same steely firmness.
Sleep was impossible. But Charlie would not admit that horror kept him awake nor allow the three ghosts to enter his bedroom. From somewhere inside the house came a clatter insidious because its rhythm was perfect three-four time. “The cellar door,” Charlie whispered to the darkness. “I forgot to fasten it. I remember that I forgot.” He was not at all certain of this, but his bed was warm, the halls drafty, and at the thought of a journey into the cellar, goose pimples came out on his arms and legs.
He decided to turn on the light, to dispel the illusions that thrive in darkness, to forget the clatter by giving his attention to reality. He was sleeping in his old bedroom, and it seemed, as his eyes became accustomed to the light, that he had never deserted this single brass bed to sleep in the cherrywood four-poster with a wife. On the opposite wall hung an etching he had bought during his junior year at Yale. A flock of wild ducks flew eternally to the left. “It has movement,” Charlie had explained as his mother watched him hang it.
The cellar door kept up its clatter. Charlie’s eyes roved from the flight of ducks to the books on the bed table. As he read the titles the sense of the past was shed, and Charlie knew his mother had been dead these eight months and that his wife, Bedelia, had chosen these books. Bedelia’s taste was hideous. Charlie had tried to wean her away from Laura Jean Libbey by reading aloud to her from Carlyle’s French Revolution. She had listened dutifully at the beginning, but, later, had confessed that good books put her to sleep.
Charlie opened the first book. It was just what he had expected. A beautiful heroine with windswept locks was caught in the jungle. In the distance, tomtoms. The black chieftan was just about to drag Lady Pamela from the compound when Cyril arrived to rescue her from a fate worse than death. Single-handedly, the hero fought and conquered the savage horde, love triumphed, and in Cyril’s manly arms, Lady Pamela laughed away the memory of that quarrel which had separated them at the tennis party given by the false Rosamund.
Charlie was moved, not by their extraordinary virtues and tribulations, but by their Christian names, Pamela, Cyril, Rosamund. Never Mary nor Bill nor Pete nor Jane.
Maurine. Chloe. Annabel.
What about Bedelia?
The name of her father was Courtney Vance.
She had often entertained Charlie with amusing or dramatic accounts of her experiences. Now, as he tried to put her stories in chronological order, he realized that she had never told her life-story consecutively, but always in bits and pieces. His eyes fixed on the flight of wild ducks, he saw the child Bedelia, Bedelia Vance, with the dark curls down her back as sedately she followed her governess down the steps of the mansion in San Francisco. Her father had been an English gentleman, but his father had been a younger son without fortune and had come to California during the gold rush. Her mother’s people were Irish, good blood, but ruined by their love of horses and the ingratitude of the peasantry. But the grandfather had struck gold, dinners for twenty-four had been set on gold plate in a dining-room with stained-glass windows, music had floated up to the nursery where the child, Bedelia, slept in a nightgown of the finest French flannel, hand-stitched by the family seamstress. The earthquake of 1906 cost them their fortune and the girls at the boarding-school, who had slavishly followed Bedelia’s every whim, turned against her and made her so miserable that she had to run away. Orphaned, poverty-stricken, with only her pride to sustain her, Bedelia had found a situation as companion to a wealthy, irascible old lady who had treated her miserably at first, but later learned to love her like a daughter. At a fashionable resort in the East . . . Asbury Park, it was . . . the youthful companion had met and loved a young millionaire who had wanted to marry her and endow her with his fortune, but had been kept from happiness by his people who were against that girl because she was poor and had to work for her living. The young millionaire had died of tuberculosis and shortly afterward the no-longer irascible old lady had passed on, too, leaving Bedelia a legacy which had resulted in a lawsuit by the old lady’s relations, who were greedy people and naturally against a girl who had won the love and affection which they had sought in vain. Rather than demean herself by fighting for money in a public court, she had fled to Chicago, where she had tried to earn an honest living in a shirtwaist factory, a sweatshop it really was, but she would have been content to work there humbly had not she been forced to flee the proprietor’s evil advances. It was during this flight that she had met Raoul Cochran.
This was the first time Charlie had considered his wife’s history as a whole and he saw it as unadulterated Laura Jean Libbey. The separate stories told at different times had seemed quite real to him. There had been no reason to distrust the warm voice nor to seek deceit in those dark eyes. Why should he, who had been captivated by her, doubt the passion of the consumptive millionaire, the gratitude of the irascible old lady, the advances of the shirtwaist manufacturer?
The three-four clatter continued. Charlie turned out the light, resolved that he would fall asleep immediately. The cellar door became the tomtoms that Lady Pamela had heard in the jungle, and Charlie felt himself turn cold all over, moistly cold as if the water were closing over him. He struggled in the dark, trying to extricate himself from the thick weeds and to find the posts of the pier.
McKelvey had died of ptomaine poisoning after a fish dinner. His wife had eaten a warmed-over chop that night because she disliked fish. “Bedelia,” Charlie said as he stumbled through the dark to discover the source of the clatter, “Bedelia is fond of fish. Particularly fresh-water fish like trout and perch. And also of shellfish, clams, oysters, crabs, and lobster.”
The cellar door was not guilty. It had been fastened with a sound new catch. Charlie, usually so keen at locating sounds in the night, was baffled by it. He was not even sure that it was real. His nerves were unsteady, his imagination working overtime. Just as he had made up his mind that there had never been a clatter, it started again.
He shuffled up the attic stairs in his loose slippers and stretched out his hand to find the light bulb hat hung from a twisted cord in the center of the bewildering blackness. His coming disturbed the mice who wintered there. He heard the swift, dainty scraping of their feet and felt something cold scratch across his bare instep.
Jacobs had been a Jew, one of those devoted husbands, probably the sort who brings his wife flowers on Saturday and takes out more life insurance than he can afford. How does one go about drowning a man in the bathtub? Had Jacobs been drugged, too, or was he taken by surprise, tickled and teased until two frail hands were able, gently, to push him under? The water had been warm, sea green against the white tub, the bathroom had smelled of moisture and scented soap, and circles of water had formed about the dark head.
“Christ! I’m going crazy!”
He spoke aloud. His oath echoed in the dark attic. His hand found and lost the light. He groped for it and the dark was water closing over his head. Quite out of breath, he resolved to give up, but grew angry, stamped on the floor, and reached out again for the light. At length he found it, turned the switch, was assaulted by the sudden burst of brightness, saw the lean rafters and dense attic shadows, shuffled over to a window, opened it, shivered in the wind and felt for the hooks of the shutters. This he did four times until he made certain that every shutter was secure. As he started back and raised his hand to switch off the light, he hesitated, fearing the journey of a few feet to the attic stairs. He might have let the light burn, saved his nerves, and come upstairs in the morning to switch it off. But that was not Charlie Horst, who had been taught good sense and thrift when he was young and despised himself for knowing fear. He turned out the light and descended the stairs apprehensively while the three-four clatter pursued him.
Safe in bed again, he asked himself indignantly what sort of man would take a stranger’s word before his wife’s and allow his imagination to be inflamed by a cheap love-story. Tomorrow in honest daylight he would sift all the facts, separate truth from fantasy, weigh evidence, and face honestly whatever he came to believe. In the meantime he would forget the whole thing and refresh himself with a night’s sleep.
Damn Ben Chaney! Charlie had been happy until he came along, had considered himself the luckiest man in the world. If Ben had never come to the gate that October afternoon, asking if they knew of a house that he might rent in the neighborhood! If Charlie had not been rash and profligate with his money, taking out more insurance than was reasonable for a man of his income! If his stomach had not gone back on him last week and brought about the situation that had caused all this trouble! If McKelvey had not sighed when the bedsprings creaked, if Jacobs had not groaned with every tick of the clock, if Barrett had not stood guard over his bed, blowing his cold breath on Charlie’s face!
There was only one way to solve the problem. That was the straight way, the shortest distance between two points of view. Charlie must face his wife with it and say, “Bedelia, my dearest love, Ben has told me an absurd story. Naturally I don’t believe a word, the man must be mad, and I understand why feminine instinct has warned you against him, but since his story concerns you, it’s better that you know it.” He heard his voice repeating Ben’s story, telling her about Maurine Barrett and the man on the boat who had greeted her as Mrs. Jacobs. He saw Bedelia’s face as she listened, courteously but without much concern.
The vision was comforting. Strengthened by good common sense, he resolved to speak of it frankly in the morning. The scene might cause her pain, but it would put an end to all doubts. Firm in the belief that the night’s phantoms would be dissolved by honest daylight, Charlie fell asleep.