Waltz Into Darkness (26 page)

"I
said, 'But it's late, she may have already retired. She's unused to
hours such as we keep.'

"Do
as I tell you!' he ordered me fiercely. 'Or I'll put some compliance
into you with my fists. Find some way of bringing her out here,
you'll know how. Tell her you are lonely and want company. Or tell
her there are some lights coming presently on the shore that are not
to be missed, that she must see. If she is as innocent as you say,
any excuse should do.'

"And
he gave me a push that nearly sent me face down to the deck boards."

"You
went?"

"I
went. What could I do? Why should I suffer for a stranger? What
stranger had ever suffered for me?"

He
didn't answer that.

"I
went to her door and I knocked, and when she called out, startled, to
ask who it was, I remember answering in honeyed tones to reassure
her, 'It's your new little friend, Miss Charlotte.'"

"You
had that name upon the boat ?"

"For
that voyage. She opened at once, so great was her trust in me. She
had not yet removed her clothes, but told me she had been about to do
so. If only she already had!"

"You're
merciful now in retrospect," he let her know. "You weren't
at the time."

She
didn't flinch. "I delivered my invitation. I complained of a
headache, and refusing all the remedies she instantly put herself out
to offer me, said I preferred to let the fresh air cure it, and would
she walk with me a while, because of the lateness of the hour.

"I
remember I was strangely uneasy, as to what his intentions might
be--oh, I knew he boded her no good, but I didn't dare allow myself
to believe he meant her any actual bodily harm; some intricate
blackmailing scheme, at most, I thought, to be brought to bear on her
later, once she was married to you--and even as I spoke, I kept
hoping she would refuse me, and I could give him that for an excuse.
But she seemed to have become inordinately fond of me. Before I could
ask her twice she had already accepted, her face all alight with
pleasure at my seeking her out. She hurriedly put a shawl about her
for warmth, and closed the door after her, and came away with me."

His
interest had been trapped in spite of himself. "You are telling
the truth, Julia? You are telling the truth ?" he said with
bated breath.

"Bonny,"
she murmured deprecatingly.

"You
are telling the truth? You did not know, actually, what the intent
was ?"

"Why
do I kneel here at your feet like this? Why are there tears of regret
in my eyes? Look at them well. What shall I say to you, what shall I
do? Shall I take an oath on it? Fetch a Bible. Open it before me.
Hold its pages to my heart as I speak."

He
had never seen her cry before. He wondered if she ever had. She cried
as one unused to crying, who leashes it, stifles it, not knowing what
it is, rather than one who has many times before made use of it for
her own ends, and hence knows it is an advantage and lets it flow
untrammelled, even abets it.

He
waved aside the suggestion that his own skepticism had produced. "And
then? And then ?" he pressed her.

"We
walked the full length of the deck three times, in harmonious
intimacy, as women will together." She stopped for a moment.

"What
is it?"

"Something
I just remembered. And wish I had not. Her arm was about my waist as
we walked. Mine was not about hers, at least, but hers was about me.
She chattered again about you, endlessly about you. It was always
you, only you."

She
drew a breath, as if again feeling the tension of that night, that
promenade upon the lonely, darkened deck.

"Nothing
happened. He did not accost us. At every shadow I had been ready to
stifle a scream, but none of them was he. At last I had no further
excuse to keep her out there with me. She asked me how my headache
was, and I said it was gone. And she couldn't have dreamed the relief
with which I told her so.

"I
took her back to her door. She turned to me a moment, I remember, and
even kissed my hand in fond good night, she was so taken with me. She
said 'I'm so glad we've met, Charlotte. I've never really had a woman
friend of my very own. You must come and see me and my--' and then
she faltered prettily--'my new husband, visit with us, as soon as
we're settled. I shall want new friends badly in my new life.' And
then she opened her door and went in. Unharmed, untouched. I even
heard her bolt it fast after her on the inside.

"And
that was the last I ever saw of her."

She
came to a full halt, as if knowing this was the time for it, to gain
fullest the effect she wished to achieve.

"No
more than that you participated?" he said slowly.

"No
more than that I participated. No more than that I took part in it,
whatever it was.

"I
have thought of it since then," she resumed presently. "I
see now what it was, what it must have been. I didn't at the time, or
I would never have left her. I had thought he meant to accost her on
the deck in some way; brutalize her into some predicament from which
she could only extricate herself later by payment of money, or even
steal some memento from her to be redeemed later in the same way, to
preserve your trust in her and her own good name. It even occurred to
me, as I made my way back to my own cabin alone, he might have
changed his mind entirely, discarded the whole intention, whatever it
had been. I'd known him to do that before, after a scheme was already
under way, and without notifying me until afterward."

She
shook her head sombrely. "No, he hadn't.

"He
must have inserted himself in the cabin while she was gone from it
with me, and lain in wait there on the inside. He wanted the
opportunity, that was why he had me stroll the deck with her."

"But
later--he never told you in so many words what happened in there,
inside that cabin of hers?"

She
shook her head firmly. "He never told me in so many words. Nor
could I draw it out of him. He had no moments of confidence, no
moments of weakness, especially not with women. The way in which he
told me of it was not meant to be believed; I knew that, and he knew
that as well. It was just a catch phrase, to gloss over a thing, to
have done with it as quickly as possible. And yet that is the only
way in which he would tell me of it, from first to last. And I must
be content with that, that was all I got."

"And
what was that ?"

"This
is the way in which he told me of it, word for word. He came and
knocked surreptitiously upon my door, and woke me, about an hour
before daylight, when the whole boat was still asleep. He was fully
dressed, but whether newly so or still from the night before, I don't
know. He had a single scratch on his forehead, over the eyebrow. A
very small one, not more than a half-inch mark. And that was all.

"He
came in, closed the door carefully, and said to me very business-like
and terse in manner, 'Get dressed, I want you for something. Your
lady friend of last night had an accident awhile ago and fell from
the boat in the dark. She never came up again.' And then he flung my
various things at me, stockings and such, one by one, to hurry me
along. That was all he told me, then or ever again, that she'd had an
accident and fallen from the boat in the dark."

"But
you knew?"

"How
could I help but know? I told him I knew. He even so much as agreed I
might know, admitted I might know. But his answer for that was 'What
are you going to do about it?'

"I
told him that wasn't in our bargain. 'Card-games are one thing, this
another.'

"He
carefully took off his ring first, so it wouldn't mar my skin, and he
gave me the back of his hand several times, until my head swam, and,
as he put it, 'it had taken a little of the religion out of me.' He
threatened me. He said if I accused him, he would accuse me in turn.
That we would both be jailed for it alike. And I had been seen with
her, and he hadn't. That it would serve neither one of us any good,
and undo the two of us alike. He also threatened, finally, that he
would kill me himself if necessary, as the quickest way of stopping
my mouth, if I tried to get anyone's ear.

"Then
when he saw he had me sufficiently cowed and intimidated to listen,
he reasoned with me. 'She's gone now beyond recall,' he pointed out,
'nothing you can do will bring her back up over the side, and there's
a hundred thousand dollars waiting for you when you step off this
boat in New Orleans tomorrow.'

"He
swung back the door for me, and I adjusted my clothing, and followed
him out.

"He
took my baggage, the little I had, into his cabin and blended it with
his. And hers we removed, between us, from her cabin to mine, to take
the place of my own. Not forgetting that caged bird of hers. He took
from his pocket her letters from you, and the photograph you had sent
her, and I put them in my own pocketbook. And then we bided our time
and waited.

"In
the confusion of docking and disembarking she was not missed. No
passenger remembered her, they were all busy with their own concerns.
And each baggage-handler, if he noted her empty cabin at all, must
have thought some other baggage-handler had taken charge of her and
her belongings. We left the boat separately, he at the very
beginning, I almost at the last. And that was not noticed either.

"I
saw you standing there, and knew you from your photograph, and when
at last the dock had cleared, I approached and stopped there by you.
And there's the story, Lou."

She
stopped, and settled back upon her own upturned heels, and her hands
fell lifeless to her lap, as if incapable of further gesture. She
seemed to wait thus, inert, deflated, for the verdict, for his
judgment to be passed upon her. Everything about her sloped downward,
shoulders, head, and even the curve of her back; only one thing
turned upward: her eyes, fixed beseechingly upon his graven face.

"Not
quite," he said. "Not quite. And what of What's-his-name?
What was the further plan ?"

"He
said he would send word to me when enough time had passed. And when I
heard from him, I was to--"

"Do
as you did."

She
shook her head determinedly. "Not as I did. As it seemed to you
I did, maybe. I met him once for a few moments, in secret, when I was
out on one of my shopping tours without you--that part was by
prearrangement--and I told him there was no need for him to count on
me any longer, he must abandon the scheme, I could no longer prevail
on myself to carry it out."

"Why
did you have a change of heart?"

"Why
must you be told that now?"

"Why
shouldn't I be ?"

"It
would be breath wasted. It wouldn't be believed."

"Let
me be the judge."

"Very
well then, if you must be told," she said almost defiantly. "I
told him I could no longer contemplate doing what it had been
intended for me to do. I told him I'd fallen in love with my own
husband."

It
was like a rainbow suddenly glistening in all its striped glory
across dismal gray skies. He told himself it was an illusion, just as
surely as its counterpart, the actual rainbow, is an illusion in
Nature. But it wouldn't dim, it wouldn't waver; there it beamed, the
sign of hope, the sign heralding sunshine to come.

She
had gone on without interruption, but the grateful shock of that
previous remark, still flooding over him in benign warmth, had caused
him to lose the sense of a part of her words.

"--laughed
and said I no more knew what love was than the man in the moon. Then
he turned vengeful and told me I was lying and simply trying to keep
the whole of the stake for myself alone."

I'd
fallen in love, kept going through his head, dimming the sound of
her voice. It was like a counterpoint that intrudes upon the basic
melody and all but effaces it.

"I
tried to buy him off. I said he could have the money, all I could lay
my hands on, almost as much as he might have expected in the first
place, if he would only quit New Orleans, let me be. Yes, I offered
to rob my own husband, endanger the very thing I was trying to hold
onto, if he would only let me be, let me stay as I was, happy for the
first time in my life."

Happy
for the first time in her life, the paean swelled through his mind.
She was really happy with me.