Bedelia by Vera Caspary Page B

the walls cave in, the floors lose their solidity.
    Charlie was ill with anguish. The day’s emotions had been too violent for a man just risen from a sickbed. He was almost too weak to climb the stairs, clung to the rail and pulled himself up like a cripple. So that he should not disturb Bedelia, he undressed in the bathroom, and when he got into bed, lowered himself cautiously onto the mattress. She did not twitch a muscle. In a few minutes Charlie was sleeping soundly, too.
    The room had been lighted by Bedelia’s night lamp. Charlie awoke in unbroken darkness. At first the strangeness of this did not occur to him, for he had been sleeping alone in a dark room all the time he was ill. As he became aware of the storm crashing about the house, the river’s rage, the passion of the wind, he was struck suddenly by the sense of darkness and was convinced immediately that he had gone blind. He groped for the night lamp, turned the switch. The room was still black.
    For a nightmare moment he could neither speak nor move. He tried to call, but he had no voice. When he stretched out his trembling hand, he could not find his wife in bed.
    On icy, uncertain legs he traveled through infinite darkness to the electric switch on the wall. He felt it, heard the click and waited for the light. Darkness remained. He was sick, faint, bilious, recalled in minutest detail the sensations he had suffered before his attack and thought he was about to fall unconscious again. All the while he groped for the china matchbox on the mantel. He struck a match. Out of the darkness jagged a small yellow flame. Relief surged through him. His skin grew damp with grateful sweat. Unsteady hands found the candle, touched flame to wick. In the first rays of flickering light he saw the old gilt-framed portrait of his mother above the mantel. At once intelligence returned, he became his rational self, knew the storm had disconnected electric wires, and assured himself that other of his sick fancies could be as sensibly explained, cursed himself for allowing his mind to become infected by the virus of fear, and knew that he would find Bedelia sleeping gently on her side of the bed.
    She was not there. Nor had she gone off to sleep alone in the room she had used during Charlie’s illness. She was nowhereon the second floor, and when he, candle in hand, went down the stairs, calling her name, there was no answer. Through the house he went, searching every room, but all that remained of Bedelia were the clothes that hung in her closet, the copper pots and contrivances she had bought for her kitchen, the smell of her perfumes and unguents, the fabrics she had chosen for pillows and furniture, and her hyacinths growing in the blue pot.
    â€œBedelia! Biddy! Where are you?”
    Only the wind answered.

4

    OF THE WORLD OUTSIDE THERE WAS NOTHING BUT white motion. Snowflakes tumbled out of clouds like feathers from a torn pillow. Snow rose, too, and whirled off in gigantic spirals like ghosts leaving the churchyard. No sane person could have gone out in this storm, Charlie told himself, as he took the oil lamp from its hook in the shed. He had put on trousers, a flannel shirt, his mackinaw and a cap.
    The lamp hung from his wrist as he cupped his hands before his mouth calling, “Bedelia! Bedelia!” He squinted through the snowfall, but could see nothing but the white restless circles rising from the ground and the white flakes falling from the burdened sky.
    He pushed his way through the drifts and worked up the slight slope that led to the gate. The snow was high and although it was dry and light, the ground below was uneven and he could not be sure of his footing.
    On the road he stumbled over something, saw a dark patch in the snow. As he leaned over, the wind seized his cap and whirled it away. He clapped his hands over his ears, which had begun to sting as if a swarm of bees had been at them. A wraith of snow rose, filling his eyes with its