The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(27)

“I’d send you to the boathouse to meet her,” Sylvia said solemnly to the man at the door, “only we don’t have a boathouse any longer.”

After Sylvia had been made to apologize—“You don’t really look like you speak German,” he said, “and you may come inside to kidnap my sister, and that’s as much politeness as you’re going to get out of me”—the man was fixed up with a cup of coffee, which he did not drink, at the kitchen table with the family gathered around him. The man explained what was going to happen to Beauty. He had a contract in his briefcase.

“Is your man Mr. Beale going to do something shocking to her?” Sylvia asked hopefully.

“No,” the man said. Sylvia kicked the legs of the table.

“I don’t know that I want to belong to anyone,” Beauty said. “I agreed to go, but this is something else entirely.”

“Look at it this way,” Catherine said. “Everyone belongs to someone. You’re not allowed to belong to yourself. We haven’t the money anymore and you never had the sense, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. You can’t wait out your turn. You’ll have to play, and the longer you put it off, the worse your position gets.”

Beauty didn’t answer.

“Here’s another way to look at it, then,” Catherine said. “Right now you belong to everyone in the family, and you can see what a mess that’s turned out to be. At least this way you’ll only belong to one person. That’s something, you know. It’s not much, but it is something.”

“All right,” Beauty said. “I’ll go. But I won’t have a good time.”

“No one’s asking you to,” Catherine said. “You’re the one who insisted on going in the first place, so you’re free to be as miserable as you wish to be once you get there.”

“Can I bring my books with me?” Beauty asked, and no one objected, which was as good as a yes.

“Call when you can,” her mother said, bursting into tears again, even though it had already been agreed that she would be allowed to accompany Beauty to the house and see that she was safely installed there.

“I’ve packed all your socks, and the shirts that don’t make you look washed-out,” Catherine said. “The rest I’m going to burn. You have terrible taste in shirts, Beauty.” Catherine kissed first Beauty, then their mother, and shoved the suitcase hastily into the car with them.

“Come back anytime you like, Mr. Beale’s man,” Sylvia shouted as they drove away. “You’re welcome to outrage my virtue next, but I can’t promise I’ll have any left, if you dawdle about it.”

The house was very quiet after that.

*

They took the main road to Mr. Beale’s house, and toward evening they saw it lit up like a furnace against the horizon. The house threw off such heat from the enormous fires stoked in each room that it melted all the snow in a great ring around it.

Mr. Beale’s man parked the car in the garage, and Beauty and her mother went back into the great hall, where the table was once again set lavishly, as if for an enormous celebration. Her mother had at first no heart to eat, but Beauty set about serving her as if they were at home, and she ended up doing modest justice to a chop and some clear soup. There was the heavy fall of footsteps just outside and the breath of something in the doorway, and then a Beast was with them. Beauty did not turn. Her mother dropped her soupspoon.

“Has she come willingly to me?” the Beast, who was Mr. Beale, asked. “Have you come of your own accord, girl?”

“I think so,” she said, which was good enough for everyone involved.

Mr. Beale said, “Good.” He turned to her mother. “Woman, go home, and never think of coming here again while I am living. You might have dessert first, before you go.”

Then Mr. Beale turned, and then there was the heavy breath of something in the doorway, and then there was the heavy fall of footsteps on the stairs, and then there was nothing.

“I think,” Beauty’s mother said, shaking a little, “that you had better go home after all, and let me stay here, even if he does want to shoot me.”

Beauty said nothing, and her mother hated herself a little for not meaning a word of what she had offered. “I am sorry,” she said. She meant that sincerely, at least.

“I’ll be fine,” Beauty said.

Her mother could not help but cry again as she left, but who can cry or even feel sorry forever? Who will not eventually clear themselves of guilt, if they live long enough? She was not so sorry that she could not find pleasure in being free of that house, and she still had two other children. So she went home.

After her mother left, Beauty picked up one of her books and pointed her face at it and turned the pages—almost as if she were reading it. She felt sick and hot from the nearness of the fire, but decided it did not matter, as the Beast (for he was more than simply not-quite-a-man, he was quite a Beast) was likely to shoot her, or devour her whole, before much longer. Although not all Beasts eat you up in a single night.

However, she thought she might as well walk around the house until she was eaten, or shot, as she could not help admiring it. It was—unusually for such an obviously expensive home—designed with comfort in mind. She was perhaps less surprised than she ought to have been to see a door with the words “Beauty’s Library” written over it. She opened the door and found a room of grand proportions, with hundreds of shelves built right into the walls and wrapping all the way around, each one filled with books. There was a pianoforte too, with dozens of music books, but what caught Beauty’s attention was that the books she had brought herself were already shelved with the others, although she had not put them there.