Bedelia (20 page)

At last her coffee cup was empty. Charlie moved his chair closer so that there was only the small table, set with empty dishes, between him and his wife. Bedelia had fallen into a reverie. The bones of her face were neatly modeled and her skin shone with a fine luster. Appreciating these qualities but looking beyond them for something deeper, Charlie willed her to return his glance.

“Why were you so upset when Ben mentioned Keene Barrett?”

Suddenly the whole thing seemed absurd to Charlie. McKelvey, Jacobs, and Barrett were merely specters and could not endure in the clear daylight. The blue fishermen on the willow-ware plates were more real.

“Ben is a liar. There's not a word of truth in anything he says.” Bedelia said this calmly as if Charlie's sudden and irrelevant question had not disturbed her. In the same level voice she asked, “Do you love me?”

He did not answer. The specters, happily, were fading. So long as they remained ghosts, creatures of Ben Chaney's cruelty and Charlie's tormented imagination, they could never touch nor hurt the Horsts. But once Charlie heard his wife speak
their names, McKelvey, Jacobs, and Barrett would no longer be phantoms but corpses of men who had once been happy husbands.

“You loved me yesterday. You loved me until he came and told you those lies.”

“How did you know he'd been here?”

“The doorbell woke me up. I heard him say the Keeley boys had taught him to use snowshoes.”

“Why didn't you mention it?”

“Why didn't you?”

“If you know what he told me, Bedelia, you know why.”

“You believed him. That's why you were afraid to tell me.”

“I didn't want to hurt you,” Charlie said.

“It hurts me more for you to believe lies about me. I don't see how you could. His lies! He's the most deceitful man I've ever met. He's never told a word of truth since we've known him.”

“Then you know what he said?” Charlie asked hesitantly.

“Do you remember what I told you last night? If I didn't love you so much I wouldn't be having the baby. I needn't have, you know.”

“Were you pregnant when you first told me about it? Or was it a trick to get me to increase my insurance?”

She went scarlet. The doll's mouth became a thin line.

“About this man from St. Paul, Bedelia? Barrett. What about him?”

“It's four months. Pretty soon I'll be feeling life.”

It was an obvious appeal for sympathy and Charlie had no right to let himself be touched by it. But this was such a natural thing for a woman to say that it made everything seem right again, and he felt as a husband ought to feel when his wife talks to him of the growth of the child in her womb. The rocker groaned. Charlie caught himself thinking that he ought to speak to Bedelia about oiling the furniture.

She raised her head defiantly. “It's just like Ben to believe the Barretts.”

Charlie gasped.

“They were always against me. You must believe me, Charlie. Do you?”

There it was, her confession, not in the words Charlie had expected but no less real. One phantom became a husband.

Although he had been steeling himself against this moment, Charlie cringed. His face was twisted and his body twitching. He closed his eyes, thinking that if he shut her out of his sight he would stand it better.

Bedelia watched intently. When at last she saw Charlie's eyes open, she threw him an appealing glance. He would not look at her, but she hurried on with her excuses, wooing him, hoping to win his sympathy. “They were furious when Will married me. Keene's wife wanted him to marry an heiress, some girl whose father had a seat on the Stock Exchange. When they found out he'd married a penniless girl, they were horrid. Wait till you see Keene. He's got a mouth like a pocketbook.” Her mouth became shrewd and greedy in imitation of Keene's. “He doesn't talk much. You'd think words cost money. When Keene and Hazel found out about Will's leaving me all of his insurance, they were horrid to me, just horrid.” Bedelia's eyes narrowed. She shuddered slightly. “They're trying to make trouble for me now because they think they can scare me into giving them some of the money back.”

The irascible old lady's relations had been against her, too, and the family of the consumptive millionaire who had wanted her to inherit his fortune.

There was a long silence, and then Charlie said, “Ben told me the Keene Barretts were fond of you. After your husband died they tried their best to comfort you.”

“Fond of me!” Her nostrils quivered. “I wish you'd heard the insults. Hazel couldn't stand it when Will bought me my fur coat. The best Keene would give her was plush with a tiny little Persian lamb collar. Well, she's got my moleskin now and everything else that was mine.”

“That's right, you left it with her, didn't you? Why?”

“She'd have to add fifty skins to get it around her bust. This
is all a plot to get my money away from me. It's like Keene to spend on detectives.”

“If there's no more to it than that,” Charlie said, “why did you run away?”

“I told you. The Barretts made my life miserable.”

“Why did you change your name?”

“I was frightened.” She lowered her eyelids as if her enemies were confronting her, and she wished to avoid their faces. “I knew they'd stop at nothing to find me and get my money away from me.”

“It wouldn't have been necessary to change your name. The insurance money was legally yours and they couldn't have got it away from you.”

“Is that so?” she asked gravely.

“Bedelia, please tell me the truth,” Charlie begged. “I'm not against you, I'm . . .” he was reluctant to pledge love, and he said instead, “and I want to help you.”

“Don't you believe me?”

“I'm afraid not.”

She looked hurt.

“You gave me a false name when we met. And when we married, you let them put that false name on our marriage certificate. I don't even know whether we're legally husband and wife.”

“Oh!” she cried. “That's terrible.”

“Not so terrible as the other things,” Charlie said.

“But I
want
to be married to you.”

“Didn't you want to be married to the others?”

She rested against the back of the chair and looked down at her folded hands. Charlie had never before seen her sulky or ill-mannered.

“Didn't you
want
to be married to the others?”

“There were no others,” she said to her hands. “No others except you and Will.”

“What about Raoul Cochran?”

She waited a minute and then she gave him such a heart-breaking
glance that he forgot how wicked she was and regretted his harshness. Thirty seconds later he was sorry that he had offered the flash of sympathy and despised himself because he was not a strong man who could tussle with evil and conquer in fifteen minutes.

A cloud slid over the sun. The day's purity and sparkle died. The snow was a dirty grayness. Down the road moved a dozen men bundled to the ears, shoveling snow off the road, piling it in soiled heaps. Charlie saw the question in Bedelia's eyes and nodded. Their isolation would soon be over. The poor of the town were opening the road to their door.

AT NOON THE men stopped work, climbed into wagons and were carried off.

“They've gone,” Bedelia said.

Apparently Charlie had not heard. He had lost all sense of time, of the things around him, and of his peculiar situation. The clock struck, but he did not count its notes. Bedelia watched nervously as he walked up and down, his eyes on the carpet.

“Charlie, I said they'd gone away.”

“Who?”

“The men who were clearing the road. They didn't get to the house.”

“They've gone to dinner. Probably down at Mitch's saloon. The town is paying for it.”

“Will they be back?”

“At one o'clock.”

“Oh, dear,” Bedelia said unhappily.

“Perhaps we'd better have a bite, too.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Charlie was glad. He was in no mood for small tasks.

“I do wish you wouldn't do that,” Bedelia complained.

“Do what?”

“Keep charging across the room like a caged lion. It makes me nervous.”

The conversation suggested a small domestic quarrel. There was neither drama in it nor the hint of tragedy. Charlie found his
pipe on the mantel, but did not light it. He clenched his teeth on the stem, and held an unlighted match in his hand.

“I love you dearly, Charlie. If you'd only believe that.”

He took a long time to light his pipe, pull at it, and throw away the match. “If you love me so much, why have you lied to me?”

“I've had an unhappy life.”

There was something ingenuous about Bedelia, and something sly. She waited for Charlie to show pity. He failed her, and she went to the mirror, smoothed her hair, and then found her lip salve and rubbed it on her mouth. Then she hurried to Charlie, confronted him, not in anger but in humility. “You don't know how miserable I've been. You don't know.”

He looked down at the parting in her hair. “I want to know the truth about your life, right from the beginning.”

Bedelia sighed.

At the parting her hair was paler in hue. Charlie did not like this and he moved away. He did not conclude as another woman would that she dyed her hair, but was faintly revolted without knowing why. Like Ellen, he detested artificiality of any sort.

“Who were your people?” he asked sharply. “Where were you born? What was you childhood like?”

“I've told you, dear.” Her manner had become casual. In a brisk, business-like way, she continued, “I came from one of the best families in San Francisco. Before the earthquake we were very rich. We lived . . .”

Charlie seized her shoulders. He was on the point of shaking her. “I know that story. I don't believe it. Tell me the truth.”

“Oh, darling,” she moaned.

His hands fell away. He walked off and then turned around and looked at her from a safe distance. “Look here, Biddy, you can be honest with me. I'm not against you, I'm your husband, I'm trying to help you.” He kept his voice low, for he was trying to make her understand that he would not punish her for telling him the truth.

Tears welled up, flooding out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. She did not try to stem them nor to dry her face, but
stood there helplessly, pressing her hands against her neck. Her wide stare was directed at nothing. For the moment her eyes had no function except to make tears. She did not sob. There was nothing Charlie could do but wait until she had finished crying.

At last she was finished. She rubbed her eyes with her fists and smiled ruefully. She took the handkerchief from Charlie and wiped her cheeks and eyes. “I'm sorry I was such a baby.”

“Would you like a drink of water?”

“No thank you.”

“Brandy?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

She looked around the room. Her glance was inquisitive and stared as if Charlie were someone she had never seen before. Her grief had been like a trance, and now as she returned to consciousness she sought reassurance in familiar things. Soon she was smiling, calm, home again. She sat down in the chair beside the window.

Charlie took the seat opposite it and stretched his hand across the table. She took it shyly.

“I'm going to ask you a few questions. You must answer them honestly, Bedelia. Nothing will make me angry nor hurt my feelings. You can be as honest with me as you'd be with yourself. Promise?”

“Yes, Charlie, I promise.”

Thus she gave herself to Charlie and trusted him to protect her. Her hand quivered as it lay in his. The sense of responsibility increased his tension. He did not know what he would do after he had learned the truth.

“What's your name?” he said.

“Bedelia Horst.”

Charlie shook his head. “No, that's not what I want. The truth. Were you christened?”

She nodded.

“What name did they give you?”

“Bedelia.”

“I thought you promised to tell me the truth.”

“My mother used to call me Annie.”

Charlie felt that he had made progress. “Annie what?”

“Annie Torrey.” “Annie Torrey, that was the name you were called by when you were a child, is it?”

“Torrey with a Y. T-o-double r-e-y.”

“What sort of name was it?”

“It was my mother's name.”

“Not your father's?”

She became pale and her cheeks seemed to sink in. Her hands clasped her throat again.