The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(26)

“You are holding several roses,” he said.

“You are looking at an indulgent mother,” she said, “my good man.”

“I am neither of those things,” the man-who-was-not-a-man replied, “but you might call me Mr. Beale, and don’t bother with any more cute speeches. But you say you have a daughter who is fond of roses, and you look like a woman who is amenable to conducting a bit of business. I will overlook the trespass and I will not shoot you”—her knees relaxed considerably at that, much to her embarrassment—“on the condition that she should come here willingly in your place and stay here with me.”

“How awful,” she said without thinking.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s not speak any further about it, but go about your business. You’ll find a bedroom down the hall to your right that will suit you, and in the morning you’ll find a car at the front of the driveway ready to take you home.”

She began to wish she had not dropped the bottle.

“The Packard,” he added before he disappeared. “I didn’t have time to locate a Citro?n. You have a red wine stain around your mouth.”

She was reluctant to offer any of her children, even Beauty, to something so monstrous and polite but she was even more reluctant to be shot, and mothers have given their children to monsters before. The thought caused her great grief, but it was not great enough for her to do anything else; in the morning, feeling not a little guilty from her long and untroubled sleep, she drove the Packard home without looking behind her. It handled like a dream.

Once home, the children crowded around her, and she immediately burst into tears.

“Stop crying, Mother. I don’t mind that it’s only the ’twenty-seven model,” Catherine said. “A Packard’s a Packard.”

“Here are your roses,” she told Beauty as she wiped her nose. “I’m afraid they cost a bit more than I thought they would.” Then she told them about what happened after her car broke down, about the great house flooded with light, and the dinner table with no guests, and what the owner of the house had said to her when he found her in his garden.

“But that’s ridiculous,” Sylvia said. “For starters, Beauty isn’t worth a single flower, let alone a whole branch’s worth. I’ll go live with the Beast, and send Beauty a postcard, if I ever get out of bed.”

“He might outrage your virtue,” Catherine said.

“I should hope so,” Sylvia said.

“Better not risk the youngest, and the fairest hope of our family purity besides; I’ll go, and I won’t send anyone a postcard.”

“I don’t mind,” Beauty said. “If I’ve been sent for, then I’ll go.”

“You idiot,” Sylvia said, but there was no real rancor in his voice. “Can’t you tell when you’re being protected?”

“Not especially,” Beauty said, which was true.

Their mother, who really loved Beauty very much despite herself, burst into tears again.

*

“What could he want with her?” Catherine whispered from her bed after she had turned out the lights.

“You don’t have to whisper,” Sylvia said. “It’s not a secret, and Beauty has her own room. She’s probably asleep already. I’ll bet she sleeps the whole night through, even.”

“It just feels like something one ought to whisper about,” Catherine whispered.

“Do I have to whisper, too?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Well, he’s demanding, and solitary, and wealthy as the Devil, if he can afford to set a table for an imaginary dinner party every night just in case a disoriented motorist stumbles in off the street. And Beauty is ugly and doesn’t know how to talk to anyone. So I can only assume it’s some sort of elaborate sexual parlor game.”

“Be serious, Sylvia.”

“Uglier women than Beauty have married, you know.”

“Sylvia.”

“Not that he’s strictly asked her to marry him. But as good as.”

“Sylvia.”

“Well, they have. And she is. So it’s true.”

“If it’s true, then it doesn’t need to be said, does it?”

*

Some time passed, and nothing happened, and Beauty’s mother, who did not enjoy feeling afraid, began to think that perhaps nothing would come of it after all.

Then: “A man in a mustache is at the door to see Beauty,” Sylvia said one afternoon. “He looks as though he were going to speak German at me.”

“I don’t speak any German,” the man said, bristling.

“Well, you look as if you do,” Sylvia said, “and that’s hardly my fault, is it? Not that it’s yours either,” he added kindly.

“What man—mustachioed or clean-shaven—would come all the way to our front door just to see one of my children, who are barely fit for public consumption?” their mother shouted from her study. “Send him back, wherever he came from.”

“I am here on behalf of Mr. Beale,” the man said, although no one had addressed him.

“He’s here for Beauty’s assignation,” Sylvia said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Where shall I put him, Mother?” But his mother did not answer.