Behold, This Dreamer

by Charlotte Miller

  It was the most elaborate room he had ever been in in all his life, more elaborate than he had ever imagined any room might be. Patterned paper covered the walls, with small yellow and gold flowers on tiny green stems over its surface. Heavy gold curtains hung over the tall windows, held back by braided cords with fancy gold tassels hanging from their ends. Delicate lace doilies covered many of the rich wood surfaces, and a gold and brown rug lay on the floor, on which sat mahogany furniture with polished surfaces and richly brocaded upholstery. A sofa, two chairs, and an upholstered rocker rested against the walls, with an old-fashioned center table and velvet-seated chairs in the center of the room. An elaborately-tooled piano filled one corner, a tall secretary another, and a writing desk fronted by a delicate lady’s chair filled a third. The mantle piece was of marble, topped by a chiming mantle clock, and, within the fireplace below it, stood firedogs shaped like marching men.

  Janson stood just within the doorway of the room, afraid to move or touch anything, for fear that he might break or soil it. He stared up at the crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling, amidst the cherubs and fleur-de-lis surrounding its base, watching the light reflecting off the thousand tiny prisms—how could anyone live in a room, in a house, such as this. How could—

  Then he caught sight of a portrait of Elise Whitley hanging on a wall not far distant from the piano, and he moved into the room so that he could see it better, then stood staring up at it. She had sat for the artist here in this room, wearing a pale blue dress with some bit of lace at the collar—she might not want to see him, he thought. He had been rude and insulting when they had met, and he could now only be a reminder of what had almost happened to her the night before—but he had to see her, to apologize to her for the things he had said.

  It would be the first time in his life that he had ever apologized for anything.

  Elise sat staring into the oval-shaped mirror above her dresser, the quiet room of pink and rose and white reflected behind her—she did not feel safe, did not feel quite as easy or at home as she should have felt in this lovely room that had sheltered her all her life. Her parents had brought her here immediately after the attack the night before, and she had not once left the room since—there had been a drugged sleep throughout the night, a drugged sleep she had vaguely awakened from several times to feel that she was not alone, that she was not safe, only to drift back under that hazy veil of sedative again, carrying that feeling back into sleep with her. There had been nightmares, demons chasing her through the rooms of the house, demons all with Ethan Bennett’s face and his hands and his body. She kept remembering his words: “Phyllis Ann told me . . . that it was you and not my baby that cheated—”

  You and not my baby that—

  Phyllis Ann had lied, had caused all this. In order to save herself from whatever it was her father had intended for her, she had turned him on Elise instead—Phyllis Ann knew her father; she knew what could happen. Phyllis Ann knew. And Elise could not stop thinking that it had been her best friend, the girl she had risked everything for—

  Phyllis Ann had been in her nightmares as well. She had stood to herself, safe, laughing. “It was Elise who cheated. Elise did it—” she said over and over again to the demons. “It was Elise—”

  When Elise had remained silent only to protect—

  There was a tap at the door, and Elise jumped, startled. “Who is it?” she called out, taking up the ivory-handled hairbrush from the dresser top and clenching it in her hands so tightly that the bristles cut into her palms—it was good to feel something real and solid, to leave behind the nightmare demons she had lived with through the night.

  “It’s me, dear,” her mother said, opening the door to look in at her. “You have a visitor.”

  “A visitor?”

  “Yes, Janson Sanders is downstairs. He would like to see—”

  Elise sat forward, suddenly attentive as she laid the hairbrush aside. “He’s here? Now?”

  “Yes. He wanted to know if you might—” But Elise was up and already past her, through the door down the hall to the stairs that descended to the first floor. She stopped on one of the lower steps and took a deep breath, trying to calm the beating of her heart—she knew what a sight she must have made, rushing past her mother as she had done, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She smoothed a hand over her bobbed hair, and then made herself walk more slowly as she descended the remaining steps and crossed the wide hall to the front parlor where she knew he would be waiting for her.

  The door was open and she saw him standing there, staring up at the portrait of her that hung on the wall—suddenly she felt very safe, very protected, just in seeing him. He would let nothing harm her, nothing touch her, not so long as he was here. He had saved her the night before, and—

  “Mr. Sanders?”

  He turned to look at her, his eyes taking her in at one glance, and then settling on hers with an intensity that was almost unsettling. He did not smile as she approached him.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to thank you for—”

  “There ain’t no need for thankin’ me,” he said, not allowing her to finish. “I didn’t do nothin’ last night more’n anybody else’d ’a done. I just wanted t’ come by this mornin’ t’ make sure you were all right.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, thanks to you. And I do need to thank you. You might even have been killed when—”

  “Like I said, there ain’t no need.” He stared at her.

  “But, there is a need. If it hadn’t been for you—” Her words fell silent, and she shivered involuntarily. She hugged her arms to herself, suddenly cold from within, and turned away. After a moment, his voice came again, from very close behind her, his words quiet.

  “You’re okay, Elise. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you now—”

  She turned to meet his eyes, finding them filled with concern. After a moment, he seemed to draw away from her, as if realizing what he had said.

  “I mean, Miss Whitley—”

  She smiled. “Elise, not Miss Whitley. I think you can call me Elise after—after last night.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, but did not return her smile. “Elise,” he said after a moment, and she nodded.

  She looked down at the wildflowers he held in his hand, knowing somehow that he had forgotten them. “These are lovely. Are they for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I thought maybe you’d like ’em.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. They’re beautiful.” She gathered the flowers into her hands and smiled down at them. “Thank you.”

  “They ain’t nothin’ but wildflowers I found out by the woods,” he said, seeming almost to shrug as she looked up at him.

  “Well, they’re beautiful.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she remarked to herself for the first time that he really was rather handsome, with the black hair and high cheekbones, and those green eyes. “I just wanted t’ come by an’ make sure you were all right,” he said.

  “I am, thanks to you.”

  But again he seemed to ignore her thanks. There was a small gesture of his hand, as if he did not know what to say. “I wanted t’ tell you, too, that I know I shouldn’t ’a talked t’ you like I did yesterday. I had no right. I shouldn’t never said any ’a th’ things I said t’ your brother, an’ I shouldn’t ’a said any ’a th’ things I said t’ you. I was outta line an’ I know it, an’—well—I’m sorry.”

  Elise looked at him for a moment, sensing that this was a man who rarely apologized for anything said or done in his life, and realizing that he was not very good at, or very comfortable with, the words. “I shouldn’t have said the things I said to you, either,” she told him, then smiled. “Why don’t we just start over?” She offered her hand to him. “Friends?”

  He stared at her hand for a long moment, and then reached out and to
ok it, lifting his eyes back to hers. “Frien’s,” he said at last, though he sounded almost uncomfortable with the word. Elise looked at him as he held her hand in his, knowing she had never felt so utterly and completely safe in all her life, protected, as if no one and no thing could ever touch her again, not so long as he was near.

  The moment was broken by Stan’s entry into the room. Elise drew her hand back, embarrassed at her brother’s curious stare. Janson quickly excused himself, looking ill-at-ease, and left.

  “You were looking at him awful funny,” Stan said as she turned to look at him.

  “And you ought to mind your own business.” She walked past him and out the door, still holding the wildflowers in her hand.

  One of the front doors at the near end of the hall stood open, and she went to close it, but stopped instead with her hand on the knob, watching as Janson Sanders crossed the wide yard toward the road. He stopped for a moment and looked back, and their eyes met over the distance. Elise raised a hand on impulse to wave, but he simply stared at her for a moment longer, and then turned and walked away.

  She continued to watch him until he left her sight, going down the red dirt road, across the fields, and toward the old barn where he lived, and then she closed the door and leaned against it, looking down at the small bouquet of wildflowers she held in her hand. For a time she fancied she could still almost feel his presence around her, in the wide hallway, throughout the rooms of the house. And she knew she was safe.

  That feeling of security stayed with her through the day and into the early evening. She sat in the front parlor sometime shortly after darkness had fallen, a favorite book of poetry open on her lap—but her mind was not on poetry, on words she knew and loved so well that she could almost quote them by heart. Her eyes kept straying toward the vase of wildflowers she had placed on the center table in the midst of the room, wildflowers Janson Sanders had given her—he was so unlike anyone she had ever known before. He might even have died last night in protecting her; but he had not, and she was safe now.

  She looked toward her brother Alfred where he knelt across the room trying to adjust the tuning of a radio program he had done nothing but talk about all day, hearing him curse rather less than quietly as the hiss and crackle of static filled the air around them—they were perhaps not that far different in age, Janson Sanders and Alfred, and yet Janson seemed so much older somehow, as if he had lived more in his nineteen or twenty years than anyone else could possibly have lived. He seemed so worldly, so mature, as Alfred only thought himself to be with his posturing and his temper and his theatrics—Alfred was radio programs and illegal gin just for the sake of its being illegal; he was fascination with Al Capone and gangsters, and with young flappers who had somewhat less than savory reputations; he was trouble and fights and even having been arrested once more than a year ago in a raid of a speakeasy in Buntain.

  Elise watched him for a moment, noting the studied slouch of his shoulders, the expensively cut trousers and shirt that were worn with such a practiced disdain, the fair skin so like hers that burned all too easily in the sun—somehow she could not picture Janson Sanders here in this room, doing what her brother was doing now, or even sitting here as she was, and she found herself wondering what kind of man he really was, for she truly had never known anyone even remotely like him before in her life. She wondered if he liked the movies and the glamourous but silent stars all her friends so wanted to be like—handsome Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore, Tom Mix and his Westerns, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, and Clara Bow. She wondered if he could talk for hours about Babe Ruth and the “Manassa Mauler” Jack Dempsey, as could most of the young men she knew; she wondered if he was fascinated with flagpole sitting and dance marathons, with crossword puzzles and jazz music, with radio and scandals and Sigmund Freud, with bathtub gin and automobiles—and, even as she wondered, she knew that she should not, for he was a different sort of person than she was, and not at all the sort of young man she should find herself interested in.

  She turned her eyes back to the slender book lying open on her lap, and read again the same words she had read already a number of times tonight:

  Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!

  Unlike our uses and our destinies.

  Our ministering two angels look surprise

  On one another, as they strike athwart

  Their wings in passing. . . .

  Her attention was drawn away as Bill entered the parlor from the hallway, and then crossed to the sofa against the wall just opposite, never once looking at her or at Alfred, as if not acknowledging either of their presence in the room. He sank down on the brocaded pillows and finally brought his eyes to her, and Elise looked away, somehow uneasy under the stare he directed her way. He reached to unbutton his vest, then turned to glare at Alfred.

  “Turn that goddamn thing off if you can’t get the station!” he ordered, and Alfred turned an angry look his way, but, after a moment, the radio fell silent. Alfred moved to sit in a nearby chair, glaring at his older brother from beneath lowered brows, but Bill seemed hardly to notice, stretching against the back of the sofa and relaxing as he waited for supper to be called.

  “It was hell today,” he said, beginning to look as if he were comfortable. “I had to argue with that fool at the bank for almost an hour; I thought I’d never get out of there—and you’ll never guess who I saw when I stopped by the drugstore on the way home. Ethan Bennett was sitting at the fountain having a cup of coffee, just as if he had never spent last night in jail. The sheriff must have had to let him go on bond—you should have seen that son-of-a-bitch’s face; Franklin and I did him up pretty good last night when we—”

  But Elise did not hear the remainder of his words. A cold chill went over her, the feeling of security suddenly gone, and she found herself hugging her arms for warmth even in the stuffiness of the room. She wished suddenly that Janson Sanders was here, for she knew she would feel safe if only—

  Her eyes came to rest on Alfred where he sat across the room, and another feeling came over her, a feeling that frightened her even more than did the first, but a feeling that she could somehow not put a name to. She stared at him, seeing a muscle clench in his jaw, seeing something fire behind his blue eyes that she could not understand. His hands tightened into fists so hard that his knuckles stood out in white relief across their backs, his eyes hardening, making him look as if he were a different person from the brother she had loved all her life, making him look like a man intent on murder, a man she would be frightened of, though she liked to think that few things in life frightened her.

  He stood and crossed the room without a word, going to the writing desk in the corner, standing with his back to her as he opened a drawer and lifted something out—but Elise knew what was in his hand even before he turned, for she knew what was kept in that drawer, and suddenly she realized all it was her brother was capable of.

  “Alfred—no—” She stood, the book of sonnets falling from her lap—but he only stared at her, their father’s pistol in his hand, the pistol that was always kept loaded and ready in the top drawer of the writing desk. Alfred stared at her. When he finally spoke, Elise heard more fury in his voice than she had ever heard from him in all her life.

  “They’re not going to let him get by with it.” His voice was quiet, deadly, and somehow that frightened her all the more.

  “He’s only out on bond. He’ll stand trial. He won’t—”

  “They can’t do to him what he deserves for what he tried to do to—”

  “But, you can’t—” She took a step toward him, but froze as he motioned with the gun.

  “I’m going to send Ethan Bennett straight to hell where he belongs; then they can do what they want!”

  “Alfred!” But he was already out the door and into the hallway. She heard one of the heavy front doors slam, and she knew t
hat, if someone did not stop him, her brother would either commit a murder, or be killed himself tonight. She looked toward Bill, but he only stared at her in response, as if he did not understand, or possibly even care, what it was that might happen.

  She was through the hallway, out onto the veranda, and down into the yard even before she knew how she had gotten there, catching hold of Alfred’s arm before he could get into the big Studebaker parked before the house—but he only jerked free, prying her fingers from his arm and shoving her away, and she was left standing alone in the drive before the house, a cloud of red dust being kicked up around her by the tires of the departing car. She stared after it for a moment, panic filling her, knowing that someone would have to stop her brother before he could reach town, before he could reach Ethan Bennett, before he could—

  She looked up toward the lighted windows of the house, knowing there was no one within those walls who could or would help her—her father was gone, and neither she nor their mother nor Stan could drive. Bill would do nothing—but she had to have help. Someone had to stop her brother before he could kill Ethan Bennett, before he could be killed himself. Someone had to—

  Janson Sanders—

  She was running from the yard even before she thought, running through the edge of the cotton fields and the woods toward the old barn and the room Janson Sanders lived in—he had to be there; he had to help her, if no one else in the world would help her. She caught her foot once and fell, knocking the breath from her body and badly skinning an elbow—but she hardly even noticed. She ran on, kicking the high-heeled shoes from her feet for fear that she might fall again, running now in her bare stocking feet alone, though rocks and twigs quickly tore through the silk to bruise her tender skin—let him be there. Please, God, just let him be—

  A dim light shown through the single window of the room attached to the rear of the barn as it came within sight. She almost fell against the door as she reached it, then pounded on it so hard that it shook within its frame, screaming out Janson Sanders’s name over and over again. She collapsed into his arms as the door opened, seeing a thousand different things cross his face in the moment before he understood her words.