Waltz Into Darkness (24 page)

"How
is it you don't order me from your room, Julia? How is it you don't
threaten to scream for help? Or all those other things they usually
do ?"

She
said, summoning up a sort of desperate tractability, that he couldn't
help but admire for an instant, "This is a matter that has to be
settled between us, without screams or ordering you from the room."
She stroked one arm, shiveringly, all the way up to the top. "Let's
get it over with as soon as we can."

"It's
taken me better than a year," he said. "You won't grudge
a few added minutes, I hope ?"

She
didn't answer.

"Were
you going to marry the colonel, Julia? That would have been
bigamous."

She
shrugged irritably. "Oh, he's just a fool. I'm not accountable
for him. The whole world is full of fools." And in this phrase,
at least, there was unmistakable sincerity.

"And
the biggest of them all is the one you're looking at right now1
Julia."

He
kicked the crumpled tossball of notepaper leniently with the toe of
his foot, moving it a little. But gently, as if it held somebody
else's wracked hopes.

"Who's
Billy ?"

"Oh,
no one in particular. A chance acquaintance. A fellow I met
somewhere." She flung out her hand, still with nervous
irritability, as if causing the person to disappear from her ken in
that way.

"The
world must be full of Billys for you. Billys and Lous and Colonel
Worths."

"Is
it ?" she said. "No, there was only one Lou. It may be a
little late to say it now. But I didn't marry the Bfflys and the
Colonel Worths. I married Lou."

"You
acted it," he agreed mordantly.

"Well,
it's late," she said. "What's the good now?"

"We
agree on that, at least."

She
went over to the lamp, and thoughtfully spanned her hand against it,
so that her flesh glowed translucent brick-red, and watched that
effect for a while. Then she turned toward him.

"What
is it, Lou? What are your plans for me ?"

His
hand rose slowly to that part of his coat which covered where the gun
was resting against him. Remained there a moment. Then crept around
to the inside and found it, by the handle. Then drew it out, so
slowly, so slowly, the bone handle, the nickelled chambers and fluted
barrel seemed never to stop coming, like something pulled on an
endless train.

"I
came here to kill you, Julia."

A
single glance was all she gave it. Just enough to identify it, to see
that he had the means to do it on his person. Then after that, her
eyes were for his alone, never left them from then on. Knowing where
the signal would lie: in his eyes and not on the gun. Knowing where
the only place to appeal lay: in his eyes.

She
looked at him for a long time, as if measuring his ability to do it:
what he'd said. What she saw there, only she could have told. Whether
full purpose, hopeless to deflect, or half-purpose, waiting only to
be crumbled.

He
didn't point it, he didn't raise it to her; he simply held it, on the
flat side, muzzle offside. But his face was white with the long pain
she'd given him, and whatever she'd read in his look, still all that
was needed was a turn of his hand.

Perhaps
she was a gambler, and instinctively liked the odds, they appealed to
her, whetted her; she hated to bet on a sure thing. Or perhaps the
reverse: she was no gambler, she only banked upon a certainty, never
anything else, in men or in cards; and this was a certainty now,
though he didn't know it himself yet. Or perhaps, again it was solely
vanity, self-esteem, that prompted her, and she must put her power
over him to the test, even though to lose meant to die. Perhaps,
even, if she were to lose, she would want to die, vanity being the
thing it is.

She
smiled at him. But in brittle challenge, not in anything else.

She
suddenly wrenched at the shoulder of her dress, tore it down. Then
pulled at it, farther down and still farther down, withdrawing her
arm from the bedraggled loop it now made, until at last the whiteness
of her side was revealed all but to the waist. On the left, the side
of the heart. Moving toward him all the while, closer step by step.
White as milk and pliable as China silk, flesh flexing as she walked.

Then
halted as the cold gun touched her, holding her ravaged dress-bodice
clear and looked deep into his eyes.

"All
right, Lou," she whispered.

He
withdrew the gun from between them.

She
came a step closer with its removal.

"Don't
hesitate, Lou," she breathed. "I'm waiting."

His
heel edged backward, carrying him a hair's breadth off. He stuffed
the gun into his side pocket, to be rid of it, hastily, fumblingly,
careless how he did so, leaving the hilt projecting.

"Cover
yourself up, Julia," he said. "You're all exposed."

And
there was the answer. If she'd been a gambler, she'd won. If she'd
been no gambler, she'd read his eyes right the first time. If it was
vanity that had led her to the brink of destruction, it had
triumphed, it was intact, undamaged.

She
gave no sign. Not even of having triumphed; which is the way of the
triumphant when they are clever as well. His face was bedewed with
accumulated moisture, as though it were he who had taken the risk.

She
drew her clothes upward again, never to where they had originally
been but at least in partial restoration.

"Then
if you won't kill me, what do you want of me?"

"To
take you back to New Orleans and hand you over to the police."
As if uneasy at their close confrontation, he sundered it, shifted
aside. "Get yourself ready," he said over his shoulder.

Suddenly
his head inclined, to stare downward at his own chest, as if in
involuntary astonishment. Her arms had crept downward past his
shoulders, soft as white ribbons, and were trying to join together
before him in supplicating embrace. He could feel the softness of her
hair as it came to rest against him just below the nape of his neck.

He
parted them, flung them off, sending her backward from him. "Get
yourself ready," he said grimly.

"If
it's the money, wait--I have some here, I'll give it to you. And if
it's not enough, I'll make it up--I swear I will--"

"Not
for that. You were my wife, in law, and there was no crime committed,
in law."

"Then
for what?"

"To
answer what became of Julia Russell. The real one. You're not Julia
Russell and you never were. Do you pretend you are?"

She
didn't answer. He thought he could detect more real fright now than
at the time of the gun. Her eyes were wider, more strained, at any
rate.

She
quitted the drawer she had thrown open and been crouched beside,
where the money was, and came toward him.

"To
tell them what you did with her," he said. "And there's a
name for that. Would you like to hear it?"

"No,
no!" she protested, and even held her palms fronted toward him
as she came close, but whether her protest was for the thought he had
suggested, or for the very sound itself of the word he had threatened
to utter, he could not tell. Almost, it seemed, the latter.

"Mur--"
he began.

And
then her palms had found his mouth and stopped it, terrifledly. "No,
no! Lou, don't say that! I had nothing to do with it. I don't know
what became of her. Only listen to me, hear me; Lou, you must listen
to me!"

He
tried to cast her off as he had before, but this time she clung, she
would not be rejected. Though his arms flung her, she came back upon
them again, carried by them.

"Listen
to what? More lies? Our whole marriage was a lie. Every word you
spoke to me, every breath you drew, in all that time was a lie.
You'll tell them to the police, not to me any longer. I want no more
of them!"

That
word, just as the one she'd stifled before, seemed to have a
particular terror for her. She quailed, and gave a little inchoate
moan, the first sound of weakness she'd made yet. Or if it was
artifice, calculation pretending to be weakness for its effect upon
him, it succeeded by that much, for he took it to be weakness, and
thus its purpose was gained.

Still
clinging in desperation to the wings of his coat, she dropped to her
knees before him, grovelling in posture of utmost supplication the
human figure is capable of.

"No,
no, the truth this time!" she sobbed drily. "Only the
truth, and nothing else! If you'll only listen to me, let me speak--"

He
stopped trying to rid himself of her at last, and stood there stolid.

"Would
you know it?" he said contemptuously.

But
she'd gained her hearing.

Her
arms dropped from him, and she turned her head away for a moment and
backed her hand to her own mouth. Whether in hurried search of
inspiration, or whether steeling herself for the honest unburdening
about to come, he could not tell.

"There's
no train a while yet," he said grudgingly. "And I can't
take you to the railroad station as you are now and keep you dawdling
about there with me half the night--so speak if you want to." He
dropped back into a chair, pulled at his collar as if exhausted by
the emotional stress they had both just been through. "It will
do you no good. I warn you before you begin, the outcome will be the
same. You are coming back to New Orleans with me to face justice.
And all your tears and all your kneeling and all your pleas are
thrown away!"

Without
rising, she inched toward him, crept as it were, on her very knees,
so that the distance between them was again lessened, and she was at
his very feet, penitent, abject, her hands to the arm of the chair he
was in.

"It
wasn't I. I didn't do it. He must have done something to her, for I
never saw her again. But what it was, I don't know. I didn't see it
done. He only came to me afterward and said she'd had a mishap, and I
was afraid to question him any further than--"

"He?"
he said sardonically.

"The
man I was with. The man on the boat I was with."

"Your
paramour," he said tonelessly, and tried not to let her see him
swallow the bitter lump that knobbed his throat.

"No!"
she said strenuously. "No, he wasn't! You can believe it if you
choose, but from first to last he wasn't. It was purely a working
arrangement. And no one else ever was either, before him. I've
learned to care for myself since I've been about in the world, and
whether I've done things that were right, or done things that were
wrong, I've been no man's but yours, Lou. No man's, until I married
you."

He
wondered why he felt so much lighter than a moment ago, and warned
himself sternly he mustn't; and in spite of that, did anyway.

"Julia,"
he drawled reproachfully, as if in utter disbelief. "You ask me
to believe that? Julia, Julia."

"Don't
call me Julia," she murmured remorsefully. "That isn't my
name."

"Have
you a name?"

She
moistened her lips. "Bonny," she admitted. "Bonny
Castle."

He
gave a nod of agreement that was a jeer in pantomime. "To the
colonel, Bonny. To me, Julia. To Billy, something else. To the next
man, something else again." He turned his face from her in
disgust, then looked back again. "Is that what you were
christened? Is that your baptismal name?"

"No,"
she said. "I was never christened. I never had a baptismal
name."

"Everyone
has a name, I thought."

"I
never had even that. You need a mother and father to give you that. A
wash basket on a doorstep can't give you that. Now do you
understand?"

"Then
where is it from ?"

"It's
from a postal picture card," she said, and some old defiance and
rancor still alive in her made her head go up higher a moment. "A
postal picture card from Scotland that came to the foundling home,
one day when I was twelve. I picked it up and stole a look. And on
the face of it there was the prettiest scene I'd ever seen, of
ivycovered walls and a blue lake. And it said 'Bonny Castle.' I
didn't know what it meant, but I took that for my name. They'd called
me Josie in the foundling home until then. I hated it. Anyway, it was
no more my rightful name than this was. I've kept to this one ever
since, so it's rightfully mine by length of usage if nothing else.
What difference do a few drops of holy water sprinkled on your head
make? Go on, laugh if you will," she consented bleakly.