Waltz Into Darkness (47 page)

"Are
you ill, Bonny ?" he asked gravely, advancing toward her, but
not hastily. Rather with a sort of reproachful dignity.

She
laughed. A surreptitious, chuckling little sound, exchanged between
herself and some alter ego, that excluded him. That was even at his
expense.

"I
knew you were going to ask me that."

He
had come close to her now.

The
floral essence had changed, as if from long exposure; fermented;
there was an alcohol base to it now.

"No,
I'm not ill," she said defiantly.

"Come
away from the door. Shall I help you?"

She
brushed his offered arm away from her, advanced past him without it.
There was a stiffness to her gait. It was even enough, but there was
a self-consciousness to it. As if she were saying: "See how well
I can walk." She reminded him of a mechanical doll, wound up and
striking out across the floor.

"I'm
not drunk, either," she said suddenly.

He
closed the door, first looking out. There was no one out there. "I
didn't say you were."

"No,
but that's what you're thinking."

She
waited for him to reply to that, and he didn't. Either answer, he
could tell, would have been an equal irritant; whether he
contradicted or admitted it. She wanted to quarrel with him; her mood
was one of hostility. Whether implanted or native, he could not tell.

"I
never get drunk," she said, turning to face him from the
sittingroom door. "I've never gotten drunk in my life."

He
didn't answer. She went on into the sitting room.

When
he entered it in turn, she was seated in the overstuffed chair, her
head back a little, resting. Her eyes were open, but not on what she
was doing; they were sighted remotely upward. She was stripping off
her gloves, but not with the usual attentiveness he had seen her give
to this. With an air of supine frivolity, allowing their empty
fingers to dangle loosely and flutter about.

He
stood and watched her for a moment.

"You're
late," he said at last.

"I
know I'm late. You don't have to tell me that."

She
flung the gloves down on the table, jerked them from her with a
little wrist-recoil of anger.

"Why
don't you ask me where I've been ?"

"Would
you tell me?" he retorted.

"Would
you believe me?" she flung back at him.

She
took off her hat next. Regarded it intently, and unfavorably;
circling its brim, the while, about one supporting hand.

Then
unexpectedly, he saw her, with her other hand, hook two fingers
together and snap them open against it, striking it a little spanking
blow with her nail, so to speak, of slangy depreciation. A moment
later she had cast it from her, so that it fell to the floor a
considerable distance across the room from her.

He
made no move to get it. It was her hat, after all. He merely looked
after it, to where it had fallen. "I thought you liked it. I
thought it was your fondest rage."

"Hoch,"
she said with throaty disgust. "In New York they're wearing
bigger ones this season. These little things are out."

Who
told you that? he said to her in bitter silence. Who told you that
you're wasting yourself, buried down here, away from the big towns
you used to know? He could hear the very words, almost as though he
had been there when they were spoken.

"Can
I get you anything ?" he offered after awhile.

"You
can't get me anything." She said it almost with a sneer. And he
could read the unspoken remainder of the thought: I can get anything
I want without you. Without your help.

He
let her be. Some influence had turned her against him. Or rather had
fanned to renewed heat the antagonism that was already latent there.
It wasn't the liquor. It was more than that. The liquor was merely
the lubricant.

He
came back in a few minutes bringing her a cup of coffee he had
boiled. It was a simple operation, and the only one he was capable of
in that department. He had watched her do it, and thus he knew: pour
water in, dribble coffee in, and stand it over the open scuttle hole.

And
yet where some others--some others he had never known-- might have
recognized the wistful charm there was, unconsciously, in the effort,
she rebelled and was disgusted almost to the point of nausea.

"Ah,
you're so damned sweet it sickens me. Why don't you be a man? Why
don't you give a woman a taste of your trouser belt once in awhile?
It might do the two of us a lot more good."

"Is
that what they used to--?" he started to say coldly. He didn't
finish it.

She
drank the coffee down nevertheless. Nor thanked him for the trouble.

After
a period of somnolent ingestion, it had its fortifying effect. She
became voluble suddenly. As if seeking to undo whatever harmful
impression her lack of inhibition had at first created. The
antagonism disappeared, or at least submerged itself from sight.

"I
had a drink," she admitted. "And I'm afraid it was too much
for me. They insisted."

She
waited to see if he would ask who "they" were. He didn't.

"I
had started on my way home, this was at five, hours ago, and I think
my mistake was in deciding to walk the entire way, instead of taking
a carriage. I may have overtaxed myself. Or I may have been laced too
tightly. I don't know. At any rate, as I was going along the street,
I suddenly began to feel faint and everything swam before my eyes. I
don't know what would have happened, I think I should have fallen to
the ground. But fortunately a refined woman happened to be just a few
steps behind me, on the same walk. She caught me in her arms and she
held me up, kept me from falling. As soon as I was able to use my
feet again, she insisted on taking me into her home, so that I might
rest before going on. She lived only a few doors from there; we were
almost in front of her house when it happened.

"Her
husband came soon afterward, and they wouldn't hear of my leaving
until they were sure I was fit. They gave me this drink, and it must
have been stronger than I realized. They were really the kindest
people. Their name is Jackson, I think she said. I'll point out the
house to you sometime. They have a lovely home."

Warming
to her recollection, she began describing it to him. "They took
me into their front parlor and had me rest on the sofa. I wish you
could see it. All kinds of money, you can tell. Oh, our place is
nothing like it here. Louis XV furniture, gilded, you know, with
mulberry upholstery. Full-length pier glasses on either side of the
mantelpiece, and gas logs in the fireplace, iron logs that you can
turn on or off--"

He
could see in his mind's eye, as she spoke, the shabby, secretive
hotel room, hidden away in one of the byways down around the railroad
station; the shade drawn against discovery from the street; the
clandestine rendezvous, unwittingly prolonged beyond the bounds of
prudence in forgetfulness lent by liquor. She and the man, whoever he
was--

The
flame of an old love rekindled, with alcohol for fuel; the renewal of
old ties, the whispers and the sniggered laughter, the reminiscences
shared together-- He could see it all, he was all but there, looking
over their shoulders.

The
factor of her physical unfaithfulness wasn't what shattered him the
most. It was her mental treachery that desolated him; it was the far
more irremediable of the two. She had betrayed him far more
grievously with her mind and her heart, than she ever could have with
her body. For he had always known he was not the first man to come
into her life; but what he had always wanted, hoped and prayed for
was to be the last.

It
was easy, in retrospect, to trace the steps that had led to it. His
lie about the money, a palliative that had only made things worse
instead of bettering them. And then their bitter, brutal quarrel when
he'd had to recant it at last, leaving her smarting and filled with
spite and thirsting to requite the trick she felt he'd played on her.
There must have been a letter North at about that time, and though
he'd never seen it, he could guess what rancorous summons it
contained: "Come get me; I can stand no more of this; take me
out of it." And then, five days ago, the answer; the mysterious
letter to "Mabel Greene."

She
needn't go to the post office any more, stealthily to appropriate
them. There would be no more sent. The sender was here with her now,
right in the same town.

Yes,
he thought with saddened understanding, I too would travel from a
distance of five days away--or twenty times five days away-- to be
with a woman like Bonny. What man wouldn't? If the new love cannot
provide for her, she has but to call back the old.

She
saw by his face at last that he wasn't listening to her any more.
"I'm chattering too much," she said lamely. "I'm
afraid I'm palling on you."

"That
you never do," he answered grimly. "You never pall on me,
Bonny." And it was true.

She
stifled a yawn, thrusting her elbows back. "I guess I may as
well go up to bed."

"Yes,"
he agreed dully. "That might be best."

And
as he heard her room door close upstairs, a moment after, his head
sank slowly, inconsolably down into the refuge his bedded arms made
for it upon the table top.

62

He
made no reference the following day to her liquored outing, much less
the greater transgression that it had encased. He waited to see if
she would attempt to repeat it (in his mind some halfformed intent of
following her and killing the man when he found him), but she did
not. If a succeeding appointment had been made, it was not for that
next day.

She
lay abed until late, leaving his needs to the tender care of the
slovenly woman of all work who came in to clean and cook for them on
alternate days, thrice a week. Even this disreputable malaise, which
was purely and simply a "head," as they called it, the
result of her over-indulgence, he did not tax her with.

When
she came down at last to supper with him, she was amiable enough in
all conscience. It was as if (he told himself) she had two selves.
Her sober self did not know or recall the instinctive animosity her
drunken self had unwittingly revealed the night before. Or, if it
did, was trying to make amends.

"Did
Amelia go ?" she asked. It was a needless question, put for the
sake of striking up conversation. The stillness in the kitchen and
the fact that no one came in to wait at table, gave its own answer.

"At
about six," he said. "She set our places, and left the food
warming in there on the stove."

"I'll
help you bring it in," she said, seeing him start out to fetch
it.

"Are
you up to it ?" he asked.

She
dropped her eyes at the rebuke, as if admitting she deserved it.

They
waited on themselves. She shyly offered the bread plate to him
across-table. He pretended not to see it for a moment, than relented,
took a piece, grunted: "Thanks." Their eyes met.

"Are
you very angry with me, Lou?" she purred.

"Have
I reason to be? No one can answer that but yourself."

She
gave him a startled look for a moment, as if to say "How much do
you know?"

He
thought to himself, What other man would sit here like this, meekly
holding his peace, knowing what I do? Then he remembered what he
himself had told Jardine on that visit to New Orleans: I must do as I
must do. I can do no other.

"I
was not very admirable," she said softly.

"You
did nothing so terrible," he let her know, "once you were
back here. You were a little sulky, that was all."

"And
I did even less," she said instantly, "before I was back
here. It was only here that I misbehaved."

How
well we understand one another, he thought. We are indeed wedded
together.

She
jumped up and came around behind his chair, and leaning over his
shoulder, had kissed him before he could thwart her.

His
heart, like gunpowder, instantly went up, a flash of flame in his
breast, though there was no outward sign to show it had been set off.
How cheaply I am bought off, he thought. How easily appeased. Is this
love, or is this a crumbling of my very manhood?