Bedelia Read Online Free PDF Page B

pretty lingerie, ribbons, embroideries, and scents delighted him. Before his marriage he had, like every other respectable man, known a number of wantons. Looking back upon their seductions and comparing them with his wife, he saw the poor girls as drab unfortunates. Bedelia’s easy pleasure gave to the marriage bed a fillip of naughtiness without which no man of Puritan conscience could have been satisfied.
    He was glad he had married a widow.
    â€œCharlie!” She sat upright and let the covers fall off hershoulders. Her voice was dramatic. “Your powder! Did you bring the water, dear?”
    â€œI’ve forgotten. It doesn’t matter, though, I feel all right.”
    She insisted that he take the powder. For his own good, of course. He had eaten a lot of rich food that day and drunk a number of eggnogs.
    â€œAll right,” he agreed, sighing and stamping off to the bathroom. The show of martyrdom was purely a show. Bedelia’s concerning herself about his health and keeping powders for him in the drawer of her bed table pleased Charlie. This was another proof of her love for him. The powders, folded into blue packets, were highly effective. She had learned the remedy when she worked as a companion to a dyspeptic old lady.
    â€œDrink it fast and you won’t notice the taste,” she always said when she had spilled the powder into the water for him.
    As he took off his bathrobe, Bedelia regarded him with shining eyes. “You’re so tall,” she said, and height became the final standard of perfection. “And your shoulders are so broad. You’ve got a wonderful physique. That’s what your mother always said. ‘My boy’s not handsome, but he has a fine physique.’”
    Charlie could not enjoy the full flavor of flattery without disturbing the ghosts of Puritan ancestors. To appease certain stones in the churchyard and the bronze figure of Colonel Nathaniel Philbrick, mounted on a bronze horse in the small park downtown, he pretended to reject her admiration. “Too skinny,” he remarked. Having made this gesture, he laughed and asked, “Who told you that? Abbie?”
    â€œEllen.”
    â€œOh!” Charlie said.
    â€œPoor Ellen.”
    â€œWhy do you pity her?” Charlie asked as he got into bed. “It’s no disgrace for a woman to earn her own living.”
    â€œIt’s not that. I’ve worked myself. That’s not what I mean.”
    â€œI must say I admire Ellen’s spunk. She’s doing well on the paper. I met Clarence Green the other day and he told me she had real aptitude.”
    â€œI’m sorry for Ellen because she’s still head over heels about you.”
    Charlie tried to deny it. Bedelia insisted. Ellen’s every look betrayed a broken heart. “But she’s a wonderful girl, Charlie. She tries her best to like me.”
    Charlie lay on his side, studying the tilt of his wife’s nose and the jolly curve of her cheek. He felt unworthy because he was loved by this enchanting woman and by Ellen, who had a strong character. What had he ever done to deserve all this devotion? He was no Casanova. If he had been hard, compact, and wiry, with abundant dark hair and a knowing smile, he might have accepted feminine admiration more complacently. But he was thirty-three, bland, undistinguished, going bald. The virtues he admitted were commonplace, the virtues of an unromantic man, the sort of fellow to whom a nickname like Charlie-Horse could stick for life.
    â€œWhat about the light?” he asked. “Shall we try again?”
    Without hesitation she replied, “Yes, dear. We’ll really do it tonight.”
    He stretched out his hand and the room was dark. Immediately a great variety of noises took possession of the night. The river seemed to rush along faster and to chatter in a wilder voice, the wind wailed, the black walnut tapped its skinny fingers against the windows, the