The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror(29)
Beauty’s expression did not change. “I’m so unused to compliments. I’m afraid that I take them quite seriously.”
“If you do not marry me,” Mr. Beale went on, “it might kill me quite dead, and then this house would have no master at all, and you would belong to no one, and no one would belong to you. For, Beauty, I belong to you quite already. Does this mean nothing to you?”
When Beauty did not answer, he rose and pressed a thumb against her forehead. “Good night, Beauty.”
That night, Beauty dragged the blankets off her bed and slept on the floor underneath it. Mr. Beale paced the halls all night, and he called after her, but he could not find her.
“Your poor Beast shall die of grief,” he said. “I would not like to make a murderer out of you, dear Beauty.”
Beauty did not come out from under the bed.
“Yet I would happily die,” he said, “rather than cause you a moment’s unease. Is it your wish that I should die, Beauty? Tell me if you wish it. Tell me if you would like me to die and I will do it, Beauty, Beauty, Beauty.
“Or I can beg for my life,” he said. “I can beg, Beauty.” She pressed her hands against her ears and waited. Then his footsteps fell away and were swallowed up by the house’s great silence.
After three days had passed, Beauty came out of her room. Somewhere in the house lay Mr. Beale, and he was either quite dead or keeping himself extremely still. She went first into the kitchen and drank directly from the tap for two and one-half minutes. Then she went looking for Mr. Beale. She found him lying facedown by the front door. She prodded him with her foot, but he did not move.
Beauty went into the back parlor and telephoned her mother. “Something’s wrong with Mr. Beale, Mamma,” she said. Then, a bit louder: “I think something’s wrong with Mr. Beale. You had better come right away.” Then Beauty went into the library and sat down. She did not touch the books, for they still did not belong to her, no matter how dead Mr. Beale may have been; she had never been his wife. She began to write Sylvia a postcard.
SEVEN
The Wedding Party
They had left the window open the night before, and the late morning sunlight insinuated itself vaguely throughout the room, encouraging the growth of the fine and robust hangover that had established itself underneath David’s eyelids sometime between three and four, when he and Alison had finally gone to bed.
“Witching hour,” he had giggled into his pillow. “I’ll take my wife to bed in the witching hour; do you think that’s much of an omen for married life?”
“Not your wife yet,” she had said, “and not the witching hour either. It’s the devil’s hour, this hour, and I’ve got thirty—make that thirty-one—hours before you get to turn me into a wife.”
“Thought it was witches,” he said, trying to frown thoughtfully and failing, “for the witching hour. When they”—he waved his hand in a vague circle—“witch about. As they do. Render babies for broom grease, and break clocks, and dance in the nude for the purpose of blighting crops.” He propped himself up on an elbow. “And you are my wife, or as good as, anyhow, so don’t go trying to duck out now on a technicality. What am I supposed to do with all these place settings and linens if I haven’t got a wife that goes with them?”
Alison said nothing but dropped a palm on his face and groped around until she found his nose with her fingers and gave it an affectionate tweak. He made to grab her hand, but his limbs had turned to water at some point between the evening’s several toasts, and they merely chased themselves around, loose and pliant, before falling back at his sides.
“I expect it’s hard for witches,” he went on, “now that most people work in shops and factories, and haven’t any crops to ruin. They must be terribly sad, those witches, to have to go from blighting wheat fields to blighting houseplants.”
“The devil’s hour,” Alison repeated, “has nothing to do with witches whatever. Witches don’t enter into the thing at all. Hour of the crucifixion darkness, on account of how Christ died in the afternoon. The inverse, I mean. Christ died at three in the day, so the devil’s hour comes at three in the night.”
There was a brief silence, and the room wobbled dementedly until David squeezed his eyes shut and forced everything back into its proper corner. “Terribly sad,” David said solemnly. “Terribly sad, all those poor benighted witches dancing about in the nude without even the slightest crop to ruin.
“If you should like to dance in the nude and blight crops after we are married,” he added, “I would be willing to sacrifice a Ficus or an orchid for your happiness.”
“Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night,” Alison mumbled into the arm thrown across her face. “Nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday; a thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” Then: “You’re going to have a terrible head in the morning.”
“I thought Harold looked awfully unwell tonight,” he said. “Didn’t you think he looked bad? Everyone said he was looking worse than a month ago.” He rolled his head in Alison’s direction and saw her eyes were already shut tight.