Orlando turned slowly towards her. His face was bloodless, his eyes dark ringed as if he had come to the end of a terrible journey.
“I killed him because I hated him for what he had made you into. You are my mother! And when you debase yourself, you debase me also. .”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she protested. And to judge from her wide, frank eyes, Pitt believed she still did not perceive what she had done.
It was Bellmaine who told her. He moved past Orlando, close to Pitt but turned to her. “You made your crusade without thinking what it would do to those who loved you, Cecily,” he said in a low, painful voice. “You had pictures taken of yourself that would shock people into thinking what you wanted them to. You woke new and powerful emotions, hurling them out of their safety of heart into the ways you wished them to be, because you thought it was good for them. You didn’t stop to think, or to care, that in doing it you were destroying what they might have held too dear to lose without tearing them apart, breaking them inside.” There were tears in his throat, and a terrible grief. “You broke your son, Cecily. The mind might tell him pornography is all right if it breaks down old prejudices, but the heart can’t accept.” His voice cracked. “The heart only says, ‘That’s my mother! The source of who I am!’ ”
At last the horror reached her. Understanding spread through her with unspeakable pain. As if she had been crippled inside, she turned her eyes to Orlando.
He did not answer. His face was eloquent enough; all the anger, and the loss and the pain, were there in his haggard features. He swiveled away from her and held out his wrists to Pitt.
“No.” Bellmaine touched him with intense gentleness. “You struck him, but you did not kill him. I did that.”
“You?” Cecily demanded “Why?” But there was already the beginning of a terrible realization in her.
“Because I hated him for blackmailing me,” Bellmaine said wearily, “over a photograph I posed for years ago. . when I needed the money. Shown now, it would have ruined me. An actor counts on image. But mostly to protect my son. .”
“Your son. .” Pitt began to ask, then he looked at Cecily, at Bellmaine, and at Orlando, and saw it in their faces. Orlando had his mother’s hair and eyes, but there was a resemblance to Bellmaine also. And acknowledgment was in Cecily’s silence.
Orlando had not known. That also was only too apparent.
“How did you know Orlando had gone there?” Pitt asked.
Bellmaine shrugged. “Does it matter now? I knew he was greatly distressed the evening before. I did not know why. Then on the day of his death, Cathcart sent me a message to tell me not to go to his house to pay my usual monthly dues to him because he had a new client coming, someone who had made the appointment that day. A young man called Richard Larch.”
“Who is Richard Larch?” Cecily demanded, but there was no anger in her, no spirit. The fire inside her was quenched.
“The first role Orlando ever played,” Bellmaine answered. “Don’t you even remember? I knew then-at least, I feared. I’ve seen the Ophelia picture as well. That’s why I dressed him. .” He swallowed and seemed to stagger a little. He regained his balance with difficulty. “That’s why I dressed him that way and sat him in the boat. He was still alive, but I knew he wouldn’t last in the cold. . and the water. There was. .” He gasped. “There was a kind of symmetry in it. I was a good Hamlet myself, thirty years ago. Not as good as Orlando. Cecily was my Ophelia then.”
Pitt saw the sweat break out in his gray face and understood. He was glad he had had no time to prevent it.
Bellmaine fell forward onto his knees.
“ ‘O, I die, Horatio,’ ” he said hoarsely. “ ‘The potent poison quite o’er-crows my spirit. . The rest is. . is. .’ ” He did not finish.
Cecily closed her eyes and the tears ran down her white cheeks.
Orlando did not go to her. He looked at Pitt for a moment, then bent over the motionless body of his father.
“ ‘Good night, sweet prince,’ ” he whispered. “May flights. .”
But he too could not complete his line. This cut the heart too deep.
Silently Pitt turned and left, Tellman behind him, his face wet with tears.
