Chapter 14
BRIDGE PILGRIM had suffered in silence for two years while Melody ripened into a beautiful woman. He had suffered with especial keenness because she seemed to accept without resistance the exclusive company of Barry Norton, a condition that rang every alarm bell in Bridge's being.
He was elated when, from his sister, he learned that Melody had rejected Barry Norton completely, refused even to see Barry. But Bridge was honest enough with himself to realize that this did not advance his own cause except in a negative sense. Actually, he had no cause to advance; not one that he had put before her, at any rate. Not one word had he ever said to her that she might construe as suggesting romantic intent.
Thinking of these things, Bridge was sitting in the cozy living room of the cottage. It was approaching eight o'clock. He had eaten and was playing with a small glass of brandy.
"Why," asked Nola as she dried the last supper dish, "don't you go see how Melody is doing?"
"I guess she's doing all right, or you'd tell me. You're over there a couple of times every day."
"Just the same, it's considered polite to call on a convalescing person. And you'd better hurry up about it. She won't be convalescing much longer. When Dr. Barrett brought me home, he dropped in on her and gave her permission to leave her room as soon as she felt up to it."
"Yeah-well, I do have a few things I should talk over with Mrs. Flemming. I reckon I might as well kill two birds... "
"Oh, for goodness sake, Bridge. You don't have to find excuses. I'm sure Melody will be delighted if you drop in on her."
He grinned, his face hot. "Oh, all right. You don't have to shove so hard."
"Then get along with you."
"You know," he said, looking at her curiously, "I don't believe I've ever seen you so radiant. Did anything special happen today?"
It was her turn to blush. "I like my new boss, that's all. Now get out of here or I'll throw something," she yelled. Bridge laughed and skipped out by way of the back door.
Full night had fallen. The path was in darkness. Bridge walked along quietly, surely; his feet knew every step of the way. After a time the lights of the Flemming house came into view. Approaching from the rear, he circled the kitchen garden and then was startled to see a man silhouetted against what Bridge knew to be Melody's window. It was the very window Melody had plunged through, but it had since been repaired.
Bridge stopped, then catfooted closer. He was near enough to see over the man's shoulder. Melody lay on the bed in a translucent pink nightgown, making a sumptuous sight for prying eyes.
Rage was boiling in Bridge. He was bunching his muscles to charge when the intruder turned, left the window. He moved crabwise along the house, hugging the wall, till he reached the front entrance. It was early yet. The house was not yet locked up for the night. He opened the door and went inside.
She heard a faint noise and swung her head toward the doorway. For a terrible moment her mind ceased functioning. Stupefied, she could only stare.
"Hello," he said. "Your mother phoned. She asked me to come over and see you."
She could not stand his expressionless stare.
"Get out!" she screamed.
Barry started walking toward her.
"Get out! Get out!"
He kept on going. Standing over the bed, he extended his arms. His hands reached for her.
At that moment, Bridge Pilgrim came through the doorway like a battering ram. He hurtled into Barry, smashed him to the floor.
Barry bleated like a calf caught in barbed wire. Bridge let him squirm away and he leaped to his feet. Bridge came up also, lashed out with a whistling left that popped suddenly on Barry's scraggly chin-beard and sent him back to the rug.
Barry struggled to his knees, crawled on all fours to the door. There he jumped erect, pounded down the hall as fast as he could go. Then they heard his footfalls receding on the gravel outside.
Bridge turned to the girl. "He didn't have time to touch you, did he?"
"No, no! You got here soon enough." She covered her eyes with her hands. "Oh, Bridge, I'm so afraid of him. The very sight of him makes me freeze. It didn't used to be that way."
"He didn't used to do the things he does now. Or if he did, he kept it secret. I'll kill the bastard if I ever catch him here again-" Joyce blundered into the room, all fat and fluffy peignoir. "What's all this? What's all the screaming and noise? You, Bridge-what are you doing in here?"
"He's here because I screamed," Melody told her with hostile distinctness. "I screamed because Barry sneaked into my room without even knocking. He said you told him to come."
Joyce braced herself against the walnut dressing-table. "Certainly I did. He's your fiance. Why shouldn't he come?"
Melody looked at Bridge helplessly. "What do you do with someone like that? How do you reach her? She's ten days behind yesterday!"
"I threw him out," Bridge volunteered grimly. "If he comes back, I'm going to kill him."
Joyce reared back so violently she almost fell, her great fleshy breasts bobbing heavily. "And who gave you leave to do any such thing?"
"Any time I come on a man peeping in your daughter's window, who then slips into her bedroom and makes your daughter scream for help, I'm going to do my best to break his goddamned neck."
"Barry Norton is a friend of the family," Joyce scolded densely. "He and Melody are promised."
"Mrs. Flemming, your daughter was recently raped. Am I supposed to stand by and let her get raped again?"
Joyce gave him a severe look, drew herself up haughtily. "Mr. Pilgrim, you're a hired hand. You will take orders from me. And I order you never to raise your hand against Barry Norton."
"That's an order I will not take," he retorted. "If I ever see him on the place again, I'll break him into small pieces."
"In that case, you're fired. Get your things and leave my plantation."
His smile was bitter. "That I would do with pleasure. Except for two small considerations. First, I think Miss Melody will need me around here for a while. Second, we have a contract, or had you forgotten? If I do leave, you'll have to pay me just about two years' salary."
Although she affected helplessness with respect to money matters, Joyce harbored a vast cupidity. She sucked in her breath and her face paled a little. "This," she said slowly, "is insufferable."
"Insufferable! Why it's wonderfully kind of Bridge to think of me. Besides, I couldn't do without his sister. Nola has become my best friend." Melody had calmed enough to realize that she must be making quite a picture for Bridge to develop in his mind's eye later if he were too distracted to appreciate it now. As the thought struck, the tips of her breasts hardened and spiked upward, making delicate erections in the thin fabric of the nightgown. Deliberately, Melody rolled into a position that would give Bridge a better view, and not only of her bosom.
Joyce's eyes narrowed. "Ah, so that's it. I suspected as much. I've watched him look at you."
"Why shouldn't he like to look at me?" Melody demanded. "I think I'm quite nice to look at."
"You can say that again," Bridge muttered, his full attention caught by the immodest display.
"I'm going to tell you something," Joyce snorted. "My daughter is not for the hired help. I have my sights set higher than that, thank God."
"Sure," growled Bridge. "You prefer a fuzz-chinned nitwit I wouldn't trust as far as I could knock him."
"You will not refer to him again. I've said all I'm going to say!" She turned and walked out of the room.
Melody was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, the nightgown curling around her thighs. She was taking pleasure in deliberately giving Bridge the eyeful of his career. As every girl knows, it takes a bit of sugar to catch a fly-and besides, it can be fun to display one's charms.
"Bridge!" her voice was throaty, caressing-"you're a darling. Thanks for saving me from Barry. And thanks for standing up to my mother."
Bridge was staring at her in abject fascination. He smiled, but the effort hurt. His chest was bursting.
"I'm glad I could help," he mumbled. Then, without exactly intending to, he said a peculiar thing. "Let's call it a labor of love." He gasped, turned scarlet. Why had he let that escape him? What would she do now, laugh at him?
But her eyes were petal-soft as she gazed at him. Her face was grave. A solemn silence hung between them. Then her lips trembled, and she spoke.
"Bridge, why didn't you tell me?"
He looked away. "As your mother says, I'm the hired help. You never seemed to take notice of me."
Her gaze had turned misty. "I apologize. I was brought up wrong." She slipped off the bed, stood barefoot on the rug. "Bridge, I'm too restless to sleep. Will you come back in fifteen minutes and take me for a walk?"
He looked dubious. "Are you up to it?"
"Of course I am. Dr. Barrett told me I'd be off the invalid list, starting tomorrow-so I might as well jump the gun a little."
"But-but your wounds-"
"Oh, all those cuts have healed, as you can see. There's just this one bandage-" She touched herself above the breast. "But it's mostly to keep out dirt. Underneath, everything is just dandy."
Bridge nodded crisply. "Sure. Fifteen minutes."
After he had gone, Melody went into the bathroom. She was not allowed to shower, but she sponged herself thoroughly. Then she threw on a gay shift she favored because of its burnt orange hue and softly caressing material. Dispensing with undergarments, she stepped into a pair of sandals.
Barry Norton ran insanely along the woods road toward his home, his brain bursting with pain and disorder. The physical assault on his person had frightened him to his core and he was fleeing as though pursued by vampires. This quickly exhausted him. He had to slow to a walk. He clasped his chest tightly, his arms crossed over it Dry sobs jerked at his throat. As usual, since there were two, now, who had struck him with blows, he confused them and they became one, a kind of cloudy composite person. Deep in his heart was stark, black murder but this never emerged as a goal. It simply squatted there in the recesses of his guts and smoldered.
When he got home he was shaking so badly he could hardly uncork the bottle he found after much search. But the alcohol only seemed to make his shaking worse. As before, he had to take refuge in the tub of hot water. That stopped the shaking. But it was followed by profuse sweating and a deathlike lassitude. He dressed in a warm, paint-spattered robe and sat in his room for an hour, staring at the wall. Restored, he got up, climbed to his studio and prepared a square of new canvas.
All night he painted with a frenetic singleness of purpose. When dawn peeped through the window, he cleaned his brushes meticulously, put them away. Then he stretched out on the floor.
On the easel was another horror. A composite painting of Bridge Pilgrim and Dr. Rodney Barrett. It was a perfectly executed painting, showed complete anatomical fealty. Instead of the usual pride of manhood, however, there dangled from the figure a dead snake. Its head was split open and sprouting a sunburst of color done in florid Moorish detail. The figure itself was standing tall and looking into a mirror which reflected the chest, also split wide. The heart was exposed, and from it flowered another burst of color. The ends of the ribs were clearly delineated where they had been severed and pulled back to reveal the heart area with its great fungus of riotous paint.
Barry Norton fell asleep with a memory in his mind. The memory of the look on Melody's face. Rejection, utter and complete.
He slept restlessly. No woman could reject him. Especially Melody. Was she not promised to him? The idea of her rejecting him was something he could not fit into his understanding.
They had walked and they had talked. Mostly nonsense with many a burst of free laughter from Melody, many a forced chuckle from the pain-smothered chest of Bridge. He was so full of love that he was choking on it.
By the time they turned back, Melody knew a lot more about him. She had an inkling of the torture she must have caused him. And she had more than an inkling that he was the kind of man for her.
As they walked past the cotton bins built into the side of the barn, moonlight showed them the blackened corner where lightning had struck.
"Does it bother you?"
"What? Oh, you mean the cotton room? Oh, no." She laughed. "Thanks to Dr. Barrett, what happened in there has left me without emotional hangover."
"Really? I'm surprised," Bridge said, thinking that, after all, this girl had hurled herself through a glass window.
"I'll prove it," she said. "Let's go in. Otherwise you'll think me afraid."
He hesitated. "Do you think we should?" His heart was hammering.
"Oh, come on." She caught his hand and led him through the door and into the gloom. Bridge's resistance, which had won many a skirmish, now lost the battle. As the cotton bin closed about them, he swept her into his arms-which was exactly what she had planned.
"Forgive me," he muttered into her hair. "You're so beautiful. So desirable! And you've been deliberately tempting me all evening."
"Of course I have."
"But why?"
She lifted her face to his. "You need me, don't you, Bridge?"
"Oh, Melody, yes. I need you and I want you-"
"Well, I've something to confess. I need you every bit as much as you need me." And lifting herself on tiptoes, she kissed him.
He could hardly credit his ears. Yet in spite of the primordial urge that shook him, it was with wonderful gentleness that he lowered her to the slanting thicknesses of cotton. Then he was enfolding her, his lips finding hers.
With primitive objectivity, the female sought the male with sinuous insistence. At the same time, his hands still gentle, he swept the burst orange creation from her. Now she lay palpitant, waiting breathlessly and in an agony of want. He kissed the chalices of her throbbing breasts, spiked high with excitement; he kissed the soft trembling platter of her stomach. And those gentle hands of his all the while were searching, caressing with a feather-touch driving her wild.
Then he became a canopy covering her. The gentle power of his arms held her soft body fast. He moved smoothly, but devastatingly, and the invasion jarred her into yet a higher stratum of shrieking sensuality.
The unabashed fervor of her response triggered Bridge swiftly, but not before she too was succumbing to the magic crescendo. One more lunge, met by her answering paroxysm, and the two, man and maid, soared into a shattering ecstasy.