The Innocent Read Free Page B

cold.”
    â€œJust for a cold? ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost.’ For want of a man brave enough to go out with a cold, Margie is lost?”
    â€œOh, shut up,” Beckwith said. “I’m going to sleep. Sleep a cold and starve a fever.”
    Eve waited for Beck to sock his pillow into shape. He did. Sock, Sock. Sock. He looked as if he were pounding somebody into a pulp. He looked angry and apprehensive.

When the Winants left, Marjorie had to do the formula for the next day. She was washing the four cake plates, the four coffee cups and saucers and highball glasses, when Charles came into the kitchen. He broke off a piece from what was left of the chocolate cake and put it into his mouth, disregarding Marjorie’s frown. “Who was it telephoned earlier?”
    Should she say, a girl who worked for you and Claire who is in a bad way, who left her uniforms here—which sounds as if she left in a hurry—and who was quite upset when I told her Claire was dead? Margie pretended she hadn’t heard Charles because of the running water. She turned off the tap. “What did you say, dear?”
    â€œI said, who called?” There was some icing stuck to the cake plate. Charles worked it off.
    Why hadn’t the girl wanted any part of Claire? Because Claire had been nasty to her? Claire could be nasty if she wanted to. Why had she been so upset she ran out of the drugstore? Because it was upsetting to hear that anyone was dead? The girl had probably left this house in a tizzy because she and Claire had had a scrap about not dusting under the chairs, about scorching one of Claire’s pretty nightgowns. It was easy for Marjorie to give herself sensible answers while she was busy, while she was awake. She said to Charles, “It was a wrong number, dear, that’s all.”

Marjorie moaned and her head twisted on her pillow. Her dream was so terrible that she fought awake as if she was drowning in sleep, as if it was choking her. Her eyes opened in the dark bedroom, and she knew that something was terribly wrong, that there was danger, that the night was sinister. She sat upright, her breath uneven, and then saw Charles’ head on the next pillow. Marjorie moved so that her thigh touched Charles’ long, straight back, and then she smiled tremulously. There was no danger. The dark was for Charles and herself to make love in. “Tender is the night,” she thought. Charles was her husband. She pressed her thigh harder against his back to feel his firm cool skin under his pajamas. Upstairs (she listened, but he wasn’t crying), her baby slept peacefully. It was only the baby who worried her, troubling even her dreams. Any mother would be apprehensive about an infant like little Pete, and it must have been he she had dreamed about. She must have dreamed about Dr. Larker examining little Pete in the hospital that time, and shaking his head over him, folding his stethoscope, pushing it into his hip pocket, and looking very solemn. Of course it was about little Pete.
    She would be a wicked mother if she let herself be worried over anything else. It was her duty to keep her mind free for little Pete. Dr. Larker had told her so. “Only the most constant care, the most loving attention, and even at that—You two are a fine, healthy pair,” he had said. “It isn’t as if you couldn’t have six or eight babies.” Marjorie was always furious when she remembered this. No. She would take care of little Pete. She would save him. Moving smoothly, she pulled the clock toward her and saw by its illuminated dial that it was twenty of six. She might just as well get up now, warm the formula, and coax enough of it down little Pete to keep him going.
    And now it was the nurse she saw, shaking her head, holding up the untouched bottle, indicating that little Pete hadn’t