Bedelia (8 page)

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.'