Waltz Into Darkness (44 page)

A
colored steward brought it, but she at once took over the task from
him, remarking: "That shall be my pleasure, to see that the
wants of the gentlemen at this table are attended to." And moved
around from one to the next, filling their glasses, after the cards
were already well in play. Then sat back some little distance
removed, with the air of a little girl upon her best behavior, who
has been allowed to sit up late in presence of her elders. If her
legs did not actually dangle from her chair, that was the illusion
she conveyed.

Durand
took out the entire two hundred, with an indifferent gesture, as
though it were simply a small fraction of what he had about him, and
the game began.

Within
minutes, it was no longer two hundred. And at no time after that did
it ever again descend to two hundred, though sometimes it swelled and
sometimes it shrank back again. It doubled itself in bulk, finally,
and then when it had doubled itself again, he made two piles of it,
so that he must have had a thousand dollars in winnings there on the
table before him. He did not remove any of it from sight, as the
etiquette of the game proscribed, the play still being in
progress.

The
room was warm and unaired, and the players were heated in addition by
their own excitement. The champagne thoughtfully there beside them
was gratefully downed in hectic gulps at every opportunity. And each
time a glass fell empty, a fleeting shadow, less than a shadow, would
tactfully withdraw it a short distance behind the player, in order
not to interfere with his view of the table, and there refill it.
With graceful, dainty, loving little gesture, hand to throat, or
bosom, or toward ear, lest a drop be spilled, as the drink was
returned to its place. Tapering fingers, one or the other folded
shorter than the rest, clasped about its stem.

Occasionally
she got an absent, murmured "Thank you," from the player,
more often he was not even aware of her, so unobtrusively were his
wants tended.

Once
she motioned with her fan to the steward, and he brought another
bottle, and when the cork popped, she gave a little start of alarm,
as pretty as you please, so timorous a little thing was she, so
unused to the ways of champagne corks.

But
suddenly there was silence at the table. The game had halted, without
a word. Each player continued to look at his cards, but no further
move was made.

"Whenever
you're ready, gentlemen," Durand said pleasantly.

No
one answered, no one played.

"I'm
waiting for the rest of you, gentlemen," Durand said.

No
one looked up, even at sound of his voice. And the answer was given
with the speaker's head still lowered to his cards.

"Will
you ask the lady to retire, sir ?" the man nearest him said.

"What
do you mean?"

"Do
you have to be told ?" They were all looking at him now.

Durand
started to his feet with a fine surge of forced indignation. "I
want to know what you meant by that!"

The
other man rose in turn, a little less quickly. "This." He
knocked his diffuse cards into a single block against the table, and
slapped Durand in the face with them twice, first on one side, then
the other.

"If
there's one thing lower than a man that'll cheat at cards, it's a man
that'll use a woman to do his cheating for him!" Durand tried to
swing at him with his fist, the circumstances forgotten now, only the
provocation remaining livid on his cheeks--for he had no past history
of brooked insult to habituate him to this sort of thing. But the
others had leaped up by now too, and they closed in on him and held
his arms pinioned. He threshed about, trying to free himself, but all
he could succeed in doing was swing their bodies a little too, along
with his own; they were too many for him.

The
table rocked, and one of the chairs went over. Her scream was faint
and futile in the background, and tinny with horrified virtue.

The
manager had appeared as if by magic. The struggle stopped, but they
still held Durand fast, his marble-white face now cast limply
downward as if to hide itself from their scorching stares.

"This
man's a common, low-down cheat. We thought you ran a place for
gentlemen. You should protect the good name of your establishment
better than this."

He
didn't try to deny it; at least that much he had left. That was all
he had left. His shirt had come open at the chest, and his breast
could be seen rising and falling hard. But scarcely from the brief
physical stress just now, rather from humiliation. The whole room was
crowded about them, every other game forgotten.

The
manager signalled to two husky helpers. "Get him out of here.
Quickly, now. I run an honest place. I won't have any of that."

He
didn't struggle further. He was transferred to the paid attendants,
with only the unvarying protest of the manhandled: "Take your
hands off me," no more.

But
then as he saw the manager clearing the disheveled table, sweeping up
what was on it, he called out: "Two hundred of that money is
mine, I brought it into the game."

The
manager waved him on, but from a distance safely beyond his reach.
"You've forfeited it to the house. That'll teach you not to try
your tricks again! On your way, scoundrel !"

Her
voice suddenly rang out in sharp stridency: "You robbers! Give
him back his money!"

"The
pot calling the kettle black," someone said, and a general laugh
went up, drowning the two of them out.

He
was hustled across the floor, and out through a back door, probably
to avoid scandalizing the diners below at the front. There was an
unpainted wooden slat-stair there, clinging sideward to the building.
They threw him all the way down to the bottom, and he lay there in
the muddy back-alley. Miraculously unhurt, but smarting with such
shame as he'd never known before, so that he wanted to turn his face
into the mud and hide it there.

His
hat was flung down after him, and after doing so the thrower
ostentatiously brushed his hands, as if to avoid contamination.

But
that was not the full measure of humiliation, ignominy. The final
degradation was to see the door reopen suddenly, and Bonny came
staggering through. Impelled forth, thrust forth by the clumsy sweaty
hands of men, like any common thing.

His
wife. His love.

A
knife went through his heart, and it seemed to shrivel and fold and
close over upon the blade that pierced it.

Pushed
forth into the night, so that she too all but overbalanced and
threatened to topple down after him, but clung to the rail and
managed to hold herself back just in time.

She
stood there motionless for a moment, above him, but looking, not back
at them but down below her at him.

Then
she came on down and passed him by with a lift of her skirts to avoid
him, as though he were some sort of refuse lying there.

"Get
up," she said shortly. "Get up and come away. I never heard
of a man that can't win either way; can't win honestly, and can't win
by cheating either."

He
had never known the human voice could express such corrosive
contempt before.

59

He
foresaw the change in her that would surely follow this debacle
before it had even come, so well did he know her now, so bitterly, so
costly well. Know her by mood and know her by nature. And come it
did, only a little less swiftly and surely than his apprehension of
its coming.

The
first day after, she was simply less communicative, perhaps; a shade
less friendly. That was all. It was as if this was the period of
germination, the seed at work but unseen as yet. Only a lover's eye
could have detected it. And his was a lover's eye, though set in a
husband's head.

But
by that night, already, a chill was beginning. The temperature of her
mood was going down steadily. Her remarks were civil, but in that
alone was the gauge. Civility bespeaks distance. Husband and wife
should never be civil. Sugared, or soured, but civil not.

By
the second day dislike had begun to sprout like a noxious weed,
overrunning everything in what was once a pleasant garden. Her eyes
avoided him now. To bring them his way he had to make use of the
question direct in addressing her, nothing less would do. And even
then they refused to linger, as if finding it scarcely worth their
while to waste their time on him.

Within
but an additional day of that, the weeds had flowered into poisonous,
rancid fruit. The cycle of the sowing was complete, all that was
needful was the reaping; and who would the scythe wielder be? There
was a sharp edge to her tongue now, the velvet was wearing thin in
places. The least provocative remark of his might touch one of them,
strike a flinty answer.

It
was as though this had the better even of her herself; as though, at
times, she tried to curb it, make an effort, at intervals, toward
relenting, softening: only to find her own nature opposed to her
intentions in the matter, and overcoming them in spite of the best
she could do. She would smile and the blue ice in her eyes would
warm, but only for fleeting minutes; the glacial cast that held her
would close over her again and hide her from him.

He
took refuge in long walks. They were a surcease, for when he took
them he was not without her; when he took them he had her with him as
she had been until only lately. He would restore, replenish the old
she, until he had her whole again. Then coming back, with a smile and
a lighter heart, the two would meet face to face, the old and the
new, and in an instant he would have his work all for nothing, the
new she had destroyed the old.

"I'll
get a job, if this affects you so much," he blurted out at last.
"I'm capable, there's no reason why I--"

He
met with scant approval.

"I
hate a man that works!" she said through tight-gripped teeth. "I
could have married a dray horse if I'd wanted that. It'd be just
about as dull." Then gave him a cutting look, as if he had no
real wish to better their state, were purposely offering her
alternatives that were useless, that were not to be seriously
considered. "There must be some way besides that, that you
could get your hands on some money for us."

He
wondered uneasily what she meant by that, and yet was afraid to know,
afraid to have it made any clearer.

"Only
fools work," she added contemptuously. "Someone once told
me that a long time ago, and I believe it now more than ever."

He
wondered who, and wondered where he was now. What jail had closed
around him long since, or what gallows had met him. Or perhaps he was
still unscathed, his creed vindicated, waiting somewhere for word
from her, in tacit admission that she had been wrong; knowing that
some day, somehow, in his own good time, he would have it.

"He
must have been a scalawag," was all he could think to say.

There
was defiance in her cold blue eyes. "He was a scalawag,"
she granted, "but he was good company."

He
left the room.

And
now there was stone silence between them, following this; not so much
as a "By your leave," not so much as a "Good night."
It was hideous, it was unthinkable, but it had come about. Two mutes
moving about one another, two pantomimists, two sleepless silhouettes
in the dimness of their chamber. He sought to reach for her hand and
clasp it, but she seemed to be asleep. Yet in her sleep she guessed
his intention, and withdrew her hand before he could find it.

On
the following day, coming from the back of the hall, he happened to
pass by the sitting room, on his way out to take one of his
restorative walks, and caught sight of her in there, sitting at the
desk. He hadn't known her to be in there. She was not writing a
letter, by any evidence that was to be seen. She was sitting quite
aimless, quite unoccupied. The desk slab was out, but no paper was in
view. Yet for what other purpose do people sit at a desk, he asked
himself? There were more appropriate chairs in the room for the
purpose, in itself, of sitting.

He
had an unhappy feeling that some action she had been engaged in had
been hastily resumed as soon as he was gone. The very cast of her
countenance told him that; its resolute vacancy. Not a natural
vacancy, but a studied one, carefully maintained just for so long as
he was in the doorway watching. The pinkey of her hand, which rested
sideward along the desk slab, rose and descended again, as he
watched. The way the tip of a cat's tail twitches, when all the rest
of it is stilled; betraying a leashed, lurking impatience.