Marriage Bed

by Dixon, H. Vernor

  His hands were grasping the arms of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. His face was dead white, too, and his eyes were burning sockets. For a fraction of a second I thought he was dead, but his eyes were boring into and through me and there was a slight flicker of the lids under the sudden light. When his eyes shifted away for a moment and then back to mine I had the impression that his mind was trying to crawl back the long road to reality — and sanity. It chilled every cell in my body.

  The room we were in was a sitting room, but had been converted into a combination library and office.

  Beyond, on the left, was a large dressing room with bath and, on the right, the bedroom and an exercise room beyond. The other rooms were dark.

  Jeffrey had been sitting in the dark by the side of the big desk. His eyes were still not quite adjusted to the light. I wondered how long he had been sitting there. I had been home about two hours, but he could not have left the party too soon after my departure. He had probably not been there very long. But it had been long enough to bring out every evil thought in his mind and etch it in his burning eyes.

  When I had overcome the initial shock of his presence I mumbled, “I had no idea — I was just — ”

  He made not the slightest movement, or even a sign of recognition. Whatever depths his mind had plunged into, he was having difficulty pulling himself out.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I left a book in here when Miss Laura was showing me around.” I was lying, but I had to say something. Besides, Jeffrey looked so weird that I was frightened.

  I summoned up all my courage and took a step and felt capable of movement without fainting and walked to the bookshelves. I looked about and selected a book at random, with a title I recognized, and whispered, “This is it.” I tucked it under my arm and glanced at the other books. There was not a single book of poetry on any of the shelves, which is what I had gone to find out. There were a few good novels, but most of the books were technical treatises on business management and civil government, with an unusually large collection of biographies and autobiographies of politically prominent persons. Poetry would have been out of place.

  I attempted a smile, but failed at that and walked to the door. I put my hand on the knob and looked back at Jeffrey. He had not moved or changed his expression, though some color was returning to his face. A thousand questions were burning the tip of my tongue and I was incapable of phrasing one of them, not even to find out why he was in John’s rooms.

  It was then that I suddenly thought of my appearance. I had not thrown on a robe, my feet were bare, and the nightgown I was wearing was the black lace number definitely for honeymoons only. I threw open the door and ran pell-mell down the hall.

  In the relative safety of my own bed I had a fit of shaking and then that passed, leaving me limp and weak. My mind was in a dizzy whirl, but I suppose I was exhausted, too, for I was actually beginning to doze off when I saw a shadow cross the room. When the dim light of the dressing room was cut off I opened my eyes wide and looked up.

  Jeffrey was standing at the side of the bed looking down at me. I could not see his face or his expression; he was simply a dark silhouette, but it was Jeffrey.

  He stood there for a long while until, I believe, he saw the light in my open eyes. Then he said hollowly, “You were lying about that book, Carol. What were you looking for?”

  My lips were dry and I was again frightened, but I managed to blurt out, “What right have you to question me?”

  “Every right in the world. That was John’s apartment. You don’t get up in the middle of the night and wander into John’s rooms looking for a book and then go to bed without opening it. What were you looking for?”

  A faint touch of courage was ebbing back into my body. I sat up a little and said, “You frightened me. You looked ghastly, almost as if you had died.”

  “I would be better off,” he said, “if I could die, all the way. Sometimes I think …” His voice trailed off into silence.

  I said, “You gave me a bad scare, Jeff. You looked so-so awful. Did anything else go wrong at the party?”

  He shook his head. “Vivien decided not to play any more games.”

  Then I asked a question that was foremost in my mind: “By the way, Jeff, why were you in John’s rooms?”

  When he replied his voice was still hollow, but some feeling had crept back into it. He said, “I was waiting for him. Brannen says he’ll be back tonight. But I go there quite often, anyway, when John is gone. Is that strange?” He cried, his voice rising, “Is it strange to love your brother and yet hate him so much you could kill him and know you’ll destroy yourself if you do because he and you are the same? Is it strange to think of yourself divided in half, a chromatic accident in conception, with one person in two different bodies and neither of them complete because of that division?”

  I shouted, “Jeff!”

  “Shut up. What do you know about it?” He put his hands under my armpits and lifted me above the bed and shook me, his strength that of a maniac, his fingers biting into my bare flesh. “It’s all strange, isn’t it? And yet,” he said, an odd note of melancholy in his voice, “I can sit in his rooms and feel his close presence — just as I know he wanders around in my rooms, as lost as I. We should have been one person. You see that, don’t you? Don’t you see that? One person. One life.”

  I thought he was going to drop me, but he shifted his hands and held me in his arms and crushed his lips against mine. Then he dropped me back to the bed. He went to the dressing room and switched off the light and undressed and got into bed and there was nothing I could do about it.

  It was not love, even in the physical sense, and in it was none of the tenderness of our single week together. It lasted most of the night and at the end I was bruised and exhausted and ashamed. For the only time in my life, sex had made me feel unclean.

  When he left, just before dawn, I crushed the pillows to my face and fought back the tears. If they should come, I knew that I would be hysterical. I held them back. I had to.

  In the cold light of day I began to doubt my own sanity, trying to convince myself that the night had been a dream, a nightmare, and yet knowing that it had happened. I wanted to pack and run and never see Lynecrest or Jeffrey again. But I was expecting Sam and that stabilized me, and Ann was so matter-of-fact, while helping me to dress, that I began to rationalize and relax a bit. I had breakfast in my rooms, afraid of running into Jeffrey, and spent the morning reading, trying not to think.

  John came in for a few minutes, yawning broadly and just as tired as I. He had reached home at four in the morning and had been in bed only an hour or so when Jeffrey had awakened him to talk. Then he had been unable to go back to sleep. He munched at a piece of cold toast, evidently content just to sit with me and say nothing.

  I was on the verge of doing a little judicious questioning when he got to his feet, stretched his arms, grinned, and said, “Some other time, Carol. I’m going to crawl back in bed and try it again.” He tightened the robe about his pajamas and went out of the room like a sleepwalker.

  When I did see Jeffrey it was not at all as I had imagined it would be, or perhaps I should have known that. I was crossing the lower hall toward the living room when he came hurrying down the stairs in dirty slacks and an old gray sweat shirt. He was grinning and cheerful and looked as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  He stopped at my side and explained, “A friend of mine is eager to be taken to the cleaners and I’m the boy for the job. I’m meeting him at the club, but we may play the Cypress Point course. See you later?”

  “Well, I — ”

  He put an arm about my shoulders and winked. “Hangover, darling? I had a beauty this morning, too. Try a silver fizz. John and I had a couple a little while ago.”

  “Did you get him up again?”

  “Oh, no.” He laughed. “He gave up trying to sleep. He just left for Monterey.”

  “He looked dead when I saw hi
m earlier.”

  “That isn’t lack of sleep. He’s too damned ambitious. He drives himself day and night. But what the hell, that’s the way he likes it.” He squeezed my arm and asked again, “See you later?” but hurried out before I could reply.

  He had not expected to run into me, and so had been putting on an act to pass off the previous night without comment. That was obvious. But I was so perplexed and worn that the night began to assume the blurred outlines of a bad dream. After Brannen had mixed a silver fizz for me, though, I felt a little better and thought of the probability of seeing Sam within a few hours and felt considerably better.

  Then I wandered through Lynecrest and saw that Miss Laura was busy with the upstairs maids and that Brannen was supervising the polishing of the silverware. I went upstairs and entered John’s rooms. The curtains were drawn. I opened one to let in some light, then examined the apartment. Anything even remotely resembling poetry was conspicuous by its absence.

  There was left only the big desk to examine. The drawers were unlocked, so I opened them and looked through some of the papers. Nothing. Most of the papers were business correspondence and personal letters and copies of legal documents. I was about to close the last drawer when the wording of one document caught my attention. It read:

  POWER OF ATTORNEY

  WHEREAS, I, Jeffrey L. Hamlyne, do not have the desire or the knowledge to engage in matters of business relating to matters in what shall be known loosely as the Hamlyne Estate, therefore, know all men by these presents …

  I read it through to the end. It was a typical copy of power of attorney granted by Jeffrey to John Hamlyne. There was nothing interesting about it except the date. It had been executed five years before.

  I put it away and closed the drawer and walked slowly out of the rooms. My assumption had been correct. Jeffrey had given John managerial responsibility in the Hamlyne affairs years ago. It fitted his character. John, then, had been lying about getting his power of attorney only recently. But why lie about such a simple matter, or, in fact, why mention it at all?

  I could not understand that and, at the moment, was not too much interested. Fathoming the authorship of the mysterious poetry was still uppermost in my mind. I had to have that question answered. The simple and logical thing to do was to ask either of the brothers, but each time I thought of that a warning of some sort issued from my subconscious. That, in itself, was quite as baffling as the poetry. It meant that I was afraid of what the answer might be. But that, in turn, meant also that subconsciously I was aware of certain odd facts so frightening that my consciousness refused to accept them.

  I glanced down the stair well, saw that no one was around, then hurried up to the third floor. The hallway arrangement was exactly the same as on the floor below. Jeffrey’s rooms were directly above mine, so I turned down the hall to the right and opened the door. I stepped inside and closed the door softly behind me.

  It was like walking into a world of sport. The rooms had the same structural arrangement as my own, but there all resemblance ended. The walls were paneled with hand-rubbed oak and the furnishings were screamingly masculine. Photographs were everywhere; of polo, golf, tennis, and all sorts of sports matches. Trophies lined the shelves, blue ribbons were pinned on the walls and guns and riding paraphernalia were scattered everywhere.

  I was interested in the large collection of books. Jeffrey’s tastes were catholic. There was some eccentricity in arrangement, but the owner of those books was a man of considerable depth, with a complicated and interesting mentality. As I had expected, there was an unusually large collection of poetry. I opened some of them and had to smile. Virtually every book of poetry was covered with marginal notations, all of them having to do with technique. There was no longer any doubt in my mind. The poet of the ledge was Jeffrey. The marginal notations alone would have told me that without ever having seen his manuscripts.

  At the door, about to leave, I paused for a slow appraisal of the apartment. I felt guilty at having invaded his rooms, but I wanted to carry a picture of them in my mind. Those rooms told me more about Jeffrey’s character than he or John ever could.

  There was nothing unbalanced about him; he was neither an extrovert nor an introvert, but a careful blend of each. He enjoyed muscle and sweat and all extroverted activities, but he also enjoyed, in equal portions, the things of his mind and the children he could bring forth. With other people he was purely and simply a sportsman. Alone, he was a scholar. It was a fascinating character. And he was, again, the man I had married.

  I returned to my own rooms and tried to place the haunted Jeffrey of the night before beside the man I knew. I tried all sorts of mental gymnastics and got nowhere. The only plausible solution (and that was very weak) was that he was badly spoiled. His normal passions could have become surfeited and warped his perspective. If that were true, he could have been going through a delicate period of readjustment, induced by his marriage, when the row with John blew up in his face. Inasmuch as he had the sensitivity of a poet, he would be thrown badly off balance for a short period.

  That was a logical line of reasoning, but it lacked strength. Logic failed me every time. Too many key pieces were missing. Common sense told me that in spite of all logic to the contrary, there was something wrong with Jeffrey’s mind and that he could be going slowly insane — and that John knew it.

  In John’s rooms the night before and later, in my own, Jeffrey had definitely not been acting in a sane manner. But it was one thing to explore the idea that he could be losing his mind; it was quite another to accept it. And yet not to accept it would make me doubt the sanity and wisdom of almost all basic verities we accept as normal.

  The one solid thing I had to work on was Jeffrey’s poetry. I went to the ledge and got out the box to read some of it again. The talent displayed in those lines was nothing short of genius. It was a forceful genius of dynamism, with all the clean power and beauty of an awesome storm. I could feel salt wind sweeping the ocean and the electric tingle of a man’s hands caressing a woman. The scents and perfumes of the boudoir were in my nostrils and the smells of a stable and rippling clean horseflesh. It was contradictory and sometimes exasperating, but it was genius.

  Jeffrey’s mind, as displayed in his writing, impressed me in the same fashion as had his rooms; complex and broad and deep and catholic — and fascinating. But I was searching for something else and, though not entirely satisfied, finally believed that I had found it.

  Between the lines I could read certain repressive suggestions of character that could give rise to a personality conflict. Even while writing his poetry, and considering the ego expended on it, Jeffrey would be facing two opposing worlds, the physically active and gregarious on one hand and, on the other, the lonely solitude of the scholar. It was possible that the emotional conflicts engendered by such opposition in one brain could eventually distort or even destroy sanity.

  The weakness in that, of course, was that Jeffrey would have to be faced with making a choice, and not have sufficient strength to do it. That was where it bogged down. All that I knew of Jeffrey indicated a well-balanced personality so finely in tune with himself and his surroundings that a change of direction would be negative rather than positive. Yet the later Jeffrey did not coincide with the man I had fallen in love with, so it was at least something to consider.

  After a while I realized that what I was really seeking was an explanation that I could present to Sam. The only matter I knew anything about, and that but slightly, was Jeffrey’s affair with Vivien. That alone was sufficient cause to leave Jeffrey, but I had a strange hunch (it had nothing to do with salving my pride) that that affair was a very minor piece in a puzzle that had deep roots reaching down into a dark well of tragedy. And that I could not explain.

  I doubted that Sam would arrive in the afternoon and was too restless to remain in the house. I told Brannen that I would be gone for an hour or so, in case anyone called, and went up to the ranch. Luke Dodd was
not around, but one of the other hands led out Queenie, the horse Jeffrey had recommended, and saddled her for me. She was a beautiful animal. I went for a short canter through the dunes and enjoyed it immensely.

  I was on my way back to the ranch, cutting through a growth of pine, when I saw another horsewoman on a chestnut and recognized that quality of lightness peculiar to Vivien. I intercepted her, as if by accident, and we reined in and dismounted on a little knoll affording a view through the pines toward the ocean.

  We lit cigarettes and chatted casually about unimportant matters, but each of us was tense and wary. It amused me to think of two cats meeting on a fence, their claws in readiness but temporarily sheathed.

  It was apparent that Vivien was going to confine herself to small talk, which was a relief, as I was in no mood to spar with her. But in a situation of that sort it’s impossible for two women to pass the time of day and then go blithely on their way. Men pride themselves on being more civilized in such situations, and perhaps they are, but they remain ignorant, too.

  I’m afraid I was the first to strike an offensive blow by saying sweetly, as if it were of no consequence, “I suppose Jeff returned your scarf to you.”

  Vivien’s blue eyes stared candidly into mine. She smiled and drawled, “Oh, yes, thank you. I — ah — had forgotten where I lost it.”

  “Then I’m glad I found it for you.”

  “Oh,” she gulped. “You found it?”

  “It was caught on a piece of barbed wire — in our gardens, near the ledge. You know, that’s a very dangerous place, that ledge, especially late at night. Had you been there before — often?”

  Vivien dropped her cigarette and lit another, stalling for time. She blew a puff of smoke from round lips and said, “We used to play there sometimes, when we were all in our teens. I’ve known the boys a long time.”

  “Yes, I keep forgetting. You know them so much better than I. I often wonder if I know them at all, particularly my own husband.”