Waltz Into Darkness (23 page)

The
door opened, and she had arrived.

Two
figures came in, not one; and advancing only a step or two beyond the
doorway, almost instantly blended into one, stood there locked in
ravenous embrace in the semishadow of the little foyer. A gossamer
piquancy of breath-borne champagne or brandy reached him, admixed
with a little perfume. His heart drowned in it.

There
was no motion, just the rustle of pressed garments.

Again
her laugh sounded, but muffled, furtive, now; lower now that it was
close at hand than it had been when at a distance outside.

He
recognized the colonel's voice, in a thick whisper. "I've been
waiting for this all evening. My li'l girl, you are, my li'l girl."

The
rustling strengthened to active resistance.

"Harry,
that's enough now. I must wear this dress again. Leave me at least a
shred of it."

"I'll
buy you another. I'll buy you ten."

She
broke away at last, light from the hallway came between their
figures; but the embrace was still locked about her like a
barrelhoop. Durand could see her pushing the colonel's arms
perpendicularly downward, unable to pry them open in the usual
direction. At last they severed.

"But
I like this one. Don't be so destructive. I never saw such a man. Let
me put the lights up. We mustn't stand here like this."

"I
like it better as it is."

"I've
no doubt!" she said pertly. "But up they go just the same."

She
entered the room itself now, and went to the night light, and it
flared from a spark to a sunburst at her touch. And as the light
bathed her, washing away all indistinctness of outline and of
feature, she glowed there before him in full life once more, after a
year and a month and a day. No longer just a cameo glimpsed through a
parted curtain, a disembodied laugh down a hallway, a silhouette
against an open door; she was whole, she was real, she was she. She
broke into bloom. In all her glory and her ignominy; in all her
beauty and all her treachery; in all her preciousness and all her
worthlessness.

And
an old wound in Durand's heart opened and began to bleed all over
again.

She
threw down her fan, she threw down her shoulder scarf; she drew off
the one glove she had retained and added that to the one she had
carried loose, and threw them both down. She was in garnet satin,
stiff and crisp as starch, and picked with scrolls and traceries of
twinkling jet. She took up a little powder-pad and touched it to the
tip of her nose, but in habit rather than in actual application. And
her courtier stood there and watched her every move, idolizing her,
beseeching her, with his greedy smoking eyes.

She
turned to him at last, offhandedly, over one shoulder. "Wasn't
it too bad about poor Florrie? What do you suppose became of the
young man you arranged to have her meet?"

"Oh,
blast him!" Worth said truculently. "Forgot, maybe. He's no
gentleman. If I run into him again, I'll cut him dead."

She
was seeing to her hair now. Touching it a bit, without disturbing it
too much. Gracefully crouching a trifle so that the top of the mirror
frame could encompass it comfortably. "What was he like ?"
she asked idly. "Did he seem well-to-do? Would we-would Florrie,
I mean--have liked him, do you think ?"

"I
hardly know him. Name was Randall or something. I've never seen him
spend more than fifty cents at a time for a whiskey punch."

"Oh,"
she said on a dropping inflection, and stopped with her hair, as if
losing interest in it.

She
turned and moved toward him suddenly, hand extended in parting
gesture. "Well, thank you for a congenial evening, Harry. Like
all your evenings it was most delectable."

He
took the hand but kept it within his two.

"Mayn't
I stay just a little while longer? I'll behave. I'll just sit here
and watch you."

"Watch
me! "she exclaimed archly. "Watch me do what? Not what
you'd like to, I warn you." She pushed him slightly, at the
shoulder, to keep the distance between them even.

Then
her smile faded, and she seemed to become thoughtful, ruefully sober
for a moment.

"Wasn't
it too bad about poor Florrie, though?" she repeated, as though
discovering some remaining value in the remark that had not been
fully extracted the first time.

"Yes,
I suppose so," he agreed vaguely.

"She
took such pains with her appearance. I had to lend her the money for
the dress."

Instantly
he released her. "Oh, here. Let me. Why didn't you tell me this
sooner ?" He busied himself within his coat, took out his
money-fold, opened and busied himself with that.

She
darted a quick glance down at it, then the rest of the time, until he
had finished, looked dreamily past him to the rear of the room.

He
put something in her hand.

"Oh,
and while I think of it--" he said.

He
fumbled additionally with the pocketbook, put something further into
her uncooperative, yet unresistant, hand.

"For
the hotel bill," he said. "For the sake of appearance, it's
better if you attend to it yourself."

She
circled, swept her back toward him. Yet scarcely in offense or
disdain, for she said to him teasingly: "Now don't look. At
least, not over my left shoulder."

The
folds of garnet satin swept up at her side for a moment, revealing
the long shapely glint of smoky black silk. Worth, up on the toes of
his feet to gain height, was peering hungrily over her right
shoulder. She turned her face toward him for a moment, gave him a
roguish look, winked one eye, and the folds of her dress cascaded to
the floor again, with a soft little plop.

Worth
made a sudden convulsive move, and they had blended into one again,
this time in full light of mid-room, not in the shadow of the
vestibule.

Durand
felt something heavy in his hand. Looked down and saw that he'd taken
the pistol out. "I' 11 kill both of them," stencilled
itself in white-hot lettering across his mind.

"And
now--?" Worth said, lips blurred against her neck and shoulder.
"Are you going to be kind--?"

Durand
could see her head avert itself from his; smiling benevolently, yet
avert itself. She twisted to face the door, and in turning, managed
to get him to turn likewise; then somehow succeeded in leading him
toward it, her face and shoulders still caught in his endless kiss.
"No--" she said temperately, at intervals. "No-- No--
I am kind to you, Harry. No more kind than I've always been to you,
no less-- Now that's a good boy--"

Durand
gave a sigh of relief, put the gun away.

She
was standing just within the gap of the door now, alone at last, her
arm extended to the outside. Worth must have been kissing it
repeatedly, the length of time she maintained it that way.

All
he could hear was a subdued murmur of reluctant parting.

She
withdrew her arm with effort, pressed the door closed.

He
saw her face clearly as she came back into the full light. All the
playfulness, coquetry, were wiped off it as with a sponge. It was
shrewd and calculating, and a trifle pinched, as if with the long
wearing of a mask.

"God
Almighty!" he heard her groan wearily, and saw her strike
herself a glancing blow against the temple.

She
went first and looked out the window, as he had earlier; stood there
motionless by it some time. Then when she'd had her fill of whatever
thoughts the sight from there had managed to instill in her, she
turned away suddenly, almost with abrupt impatience, causing her
skirts to swirl and hiss out in the silence. She came back to the
dresser, fetched out a drawer. No powdering at her nose, no primping
at her hair, now. She had no look to spare for the mirror.

She
withdrew the money from her stocking-top and flung it in, with a turn
of the wrist that was almost derisive. But not of the money itself,
possibly; of its source.

Reaching
into some hiding place she had in there, she took out one of those
same slender cigars Aunt Sarah had showed him in the St. Louis Street
house in New Orleans.

To
him there was something repugnant, almost obscene, in the sight of
her bending to the lamp chimney with it until it had kindled; holding
it tight-bitten, smoke sluicing from her miniature nostrils, as from
a man's.

In
a sickening phantasmagoric illusion, that lasted but a moment, she
appeared to him as a fuming, horned devil, in her ruddy longtailed
dress.

She
set the cigar down, presently, in a hairpin tray, and seated herself
by the mirror. She unfastened her hair and it came tumbling down in a
molasses-colored cascade to the small of her back. Then she opened a
vent in her dress at the side, separating a number of hooks from
their eyes, but without unfastening or removing it farther than that.
Leaving a gap through which her tightly laced side swelled and
subsided again at each breath.

She
took out the money now she had cast in only a moment before, but took
out far more than she had flung in, and counted it over with close
attention. Then she put it into a small lacquered casket, of the type
used to hold jewels, and locked that, and gave it a commending little
thump on its lid with her knuckles, as if in pleased finality.

She
reclosed the drawer, stood up, moved over to the desk, took down its
lid and seated herself at it. She drew out a sheet of notepaper from
the rack. Took up a pen and dipped it, and squaring her other arm
above the surface to be written on, began to write.

Durand
moved out from behind the screen and slowly walked across the carpet
toward her. It gave his tread no sound, though he wasn't trying for
silence. He advanced undetected, until he was standing behind her,
and could look down over her shoulder.

"Dear
Billy," the paper said. "I--"

The
pen had stopped, and she was nibbling for a moment at its end.

He
put out his hand and let it come lightly to rest on her shoulder.
Left it there, but lightly, lightly, as she had once put her hand to
his shoulder, lightly, on the quayside at New Orleans; lightly, but
crushing his life.

Her
fright was the fright of guilt, and not innocence. Even before she
could have known who it was. For she didn't turn to look, as the
innocent of heart would have. She held her head rigidly as it was,
turned the other way, neck taut with suspense. She was afraid to
look. There must have been such guilt strewn behind her in her life,
that anyone's sudden touch, in the stillness of the night, in the
solitude of her room, she must have known could bode no good.

Her
one hand dropped the pen lifelessly. Her other clawed secretively at
the sheet of notepaper, sucking it up, causing it to disappear. Then
dropping it, crumpled, over the desk side.

Still
she didn't move; the sleek taffy-colored head held still, like
something an axe was about to fall on.

Her
eyes had found him in the mirror by now. It was over to the left of
her, and when he looked at it himself, he could see, in the
reflection of her talcum-white face, the pupils darkening the far
corners of her eyes, giving her an ugly unnatural appearance, as
though she had black eyeballs.

"Don't
be afraid to look around, Julia," he said ironically. "It's
only me. No one important. Merely me."

Suddenly
she turned, so swiftly that the transpiacement of the silken back of
her head by the plaster-white cast of her face was almost like that
of an apparition.

"You
act as though you don't remember me," he said softly. "Surely
you haven't forgotten me, Julia. Me of all people."

"How'd
you know I was here?" she demanded granularly.

"I
didn't. I was the other man who was to have met you at the restaurant
party tonight."

"How'd
you get in here?"

"Through
the door."

She
had risen now, defensively, and was trying to reverse the desk chair
to get it between them, reedy as it was, but there was no room to
allow for its insertion.

He
took it from her and set it to rest with his hand.