Waltz Into Darkness (48 page)

He
sat there wooden, unmoving, hands to table, keeping them resolutely
off her.

His
lips betrayed him, though he tried to curb them. "Again,"
they said.

She
lowered her face to his once more, and again she kissed him.

"Again,"
he said.

His
lips were trembling now.

Again
she kissed him.

Suddenly
he came to life. He had seized her with such violence, it was almost
an attack rather than an embrace. He pulled her bodily downward into
his lap, and buried his face against hers, hungrily devoured her
lips, her throat, her shoulders.

"You
don't know what you do to me. You madden me. Oh, this is no love.
This is a punishment, a curse. I'll kill any man who tries to take
you from me--I'll kill you yourself. And I'll go with you. There
shall be nothing left."

And
as his lips repeatedly returned to find her, his only words of
endearment, spaced each time with a kiss, were: "Damn you! . . .
Damn you! . . . Damn you! No man should ever know you!"

When
he released her at last, exhausted, she lay there limp, cradled in
his arms. On her face the strangest, startled look. As though his
very violence had done something to her she had not counted on.

She
said, speaking trancelike, and slowly drawing her hand across her
brow as if to restore some memory that was necessary to her, and that
he had all but seared away, "Oh, Louis, you are not too safe to
know yourself. Oh, darling, you almost make me forget--"

And
then the crippled, staggering thought died unfinished.

"Forget
whom?" he accused her. "Forget what?"

She
looked at him dazed, as though not knowing she had spoken, herself.
"Forget--myself," she concluded limply.

That
is not whom she meant, he told himself with melancholy wisdom. But
that word is the true one, nonetheless. I have no real rival, but
in her. It is only herself that stands in the way of allowing her to
love me.

She
did not go out of the house the next day. Again he waited, again he
held his breath, but she remained dutifully at hand. The appointment,
if there was to be another, still hung fire.

Nor
the next, either. The cleaning woman came, and coming down the
stairs, he caught sight of them standing close together in the hall,
as if they had been secretively conferring together. He thought he
saw Bonny hastily fumble with her bodice, as if concealing something
she had just received.

She
would have carried it off, perhaps, but the Negress made a poor
conspirator, she started theatrically back from her mistress, at
sight of him, and thus put the thought in his head that something had
passed between them.

There
are other ways of communicating than by the rendezvous direct, he
reminded himself. Perhaps the appointment I have been dreading so has
already been kept, right before my eyes, on a mere scrap of paper.

Toward
the latter part of their evening meal, that same day, she became
noticeably pensive. Again the woman, the go-between of treachery, had
gone, again they were alone together.

Her
casual remarks, such as any meal shared by any two people is seasoned
with, grew more and more infrequent. Soon she was making none at all
of her own volition, only answering the ones he made. Presently even
this proportion had begun to diminish, he was carrying the entire
burden of speech for the two of them. All he got now were absent nods
and vague affirmatives, while her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

Finally
it even affected her eating, began to slow and diminish it, so great
was her own contemplation of whatever it was that her mind saw before
it. And it must have seen something, for the mind by its very nature
cannot contemplate vacancy. Her fork would remain in position to
detach a portion of food, yet not complete the act for several
minutes. Or it would halt in air, midway to her mouth, and again
remain that way.

Then,
quite as insolubly as it had begun, it had ended again, this
abstraction. It was over. Whatever byways her train of thought had
wandered down, were now closed off; or else it had arrived at its
destination.

Her
eyes now saw him when they rested on him.

"Do
you recall that night we quarrelled ?" she said, speaking
softly. "You said something then about that old insurance policy
you once took out when we were living on St. Louis Street. Was that
true? Do you really still have it? Or did you just make that up, as
you did about there still being money left?"

"I
still have it," he said inattentively. "But it has lapsed,
for lack of keeping up with the payments."

She
was now busily eating, as if to make up for the time she had wasted
loitering over her food before. "Is it completely worthless,
then ?"

"No,
if the back payments were made up it would come into effect again.
Not too much time has passed, I think."

"How
much would be required?"

"Five
hundred dollars," he answered impatiently. "Have we got
that much?"

"No,"
she said docilely, "but is there any harm in asking?"

She
pushed her plate back. She dropped her eyes, as if he had rebuffed
her, and allowed them to rest on her clasped hands. Then taking one
finger in the others, she began slowly to twist and turnabout the
diamond ring that had once been his wedding gift to her. She shifted
it this way, that, speculatively, abstractedly.

Who
could say whether she saw it or not, as she did so? Who could say
what she saw? Who could say what her thoughts were? It told nothing.
Just a woman's restless gesture with her ring.

"How
would one go about it? I mean if we did have the money. In what way
is it done ?"

"You
simply send the money to New Orleans, to the insurance company. They
credit the payments against the policy."

"And
then the policy comes into force again?"

"The
policy comes into force again," he said somewhat testily,
annoyed by her persistence in clinging to the subject.

He
had divined, of course, what her sudden interest was. She was
entertaining a vague hope that they could borrow against it in some
way, obtain money by that means.

"Could
I see it?" she coaxed.

"Right
now? It's upstairs somewhere, among my old papers. But it's of no
value, I warn you; the payments have not been maintained."

She
did not press him further. She sat there meditatively fingering the
diamond on her finger, shifting it a little bit this way, a little
bit that, so that it gave off sparks of brilliance in the lamplight.

She
did not ask him for it nor about it again, but remembering that she
had, he set about looking for it on his own account. This was not
immediately, but some two or three days later.

He
couldn't find it. He looked where he'd thought he had it, first, and
it wasn't there. Then he looked elsewhere, nor could he find it in
any of the other places he looked, either.

It
must have been lost, during their many hurried moves from place to
place, in the course of hasty packing and unpacking. Or else it would
perhaps yet turn up, in some unlikely place he had not yet thought of
looking for it.

He
desisted finally, with no great concern; with, if anything, a mental
shrug. Since it was worthless and could not have been borrowed
against (which he thought had been the motive behind her asking about
it), there was no great loss, in any case.

He
did not even mention to her that he could not locate it. There was no
reason to, for she too seemed to have forgotten her earlier interest
in it, as she sat there across the table from him, idly stroking and
contemplating her ringless hands.

Within
the week, the cook and cleaning woman (one and the same) whom they'd
had until then, was suddenly gone, and they were alone now in the
house.

He
asked her about this, after two successive days without her, only
noting her departure, man-like, after it had already taken place.
"What's become of Amelia ?"

"I
shipped her Tuesday," she said shortly.

"But
I thought we owed her three or four weeks back wages. How were you
able to pay her ?"

"I
didn't."

"And
she agreed to go nonetheless?"

"She
had no choice, I ordered her to. She will get her money when we have
it ourselves, she knows that."

"Aren't
you getting anyone else?"

"No,"
she said, "I can manage," and added something under her
breath that he didn't hear quite clearly.

"What
?" he asked in involuntary surprise. He thought she had said,
"for the little time there is."

"I
said, for a little time, that is," she repeated adroitly.

And
manage she did, and far more successfully than in their Mobile days,
when she had first tried keeping her own house, and he had had to
take her back to the hotel for meals.

For
one thing, she showed far more purpose than she had in those far-off,
light-hearted days; there was less of frivolity in her efforts and a
great deal more of determination. There was less laughter in the
preparations, maybe, but there was less dismay in the results. She
was not a child bride, now, playing at keeping house; she was a
woman, bent on acquiring new skills, and not sparing herself in the
endeavor.

For
two full days she cooked, she washed the dishes, she swung a broom
all up and down the stairs. Then on the second night of this
apprenticeship--

He
heard her scream out suddenly in the kitchen, and there was the crash
of a dropped dish as it slipped her hands. She had gone in there to
wash up after their meal, and he had remained behind browsing through
the paper. Even the most enamored man did not offer to dry the dishes
for a woman; it would have been as conventional as assisting at a
childbirth.

He
flung down his paper and darted in there. She was standing before the
steaming washtub. "What is it, did you scald yourself?"

She
was pointing, horrified.

"A
rat," she choked. "It ran straight between my feet as I
stood here. Into there." And with a sickened grimace, "Oh,
the size of it! The horrid look!"

He
took up a poker and tried to plunge it into the crevice at
meeting-place of wall and floor that she had indicated. It balked.
There was no depth to take it. It seemed a shallow rent in the
plaster, no more.

"It
could not have gone in there--"

Her
fright turned to anger. "Do you call me a liar? Must it bite me
and draw blood, for you to believe me?"

He
dropped down now on all fours and began working the poker vigorously
to and fro, in truth knocking out a hole if there had been none
before.

She
watched a moment. "What are you trying to do?" she said
coldly.

"Why,
kill it," he panted.

"That
is not the way to be rid of them!" Her foot gave a clout of
impatience against the floor. "You kill one, and there are a
dozen left."

She
flung down her apron, strode from the room and out to the front of
the house. Sensing some purpose he could not divine, but disquieted
by it, he put down the poker after a moment, struggled to his feet,
and went after her. He found her in the hall, bonnetted and shawled,
to his astonishment, in readiness to go out.

"Where
are you going ?"

"Since
you don't know enough to, I am going to the pharmacist myself, to
have him give me something that will exterminate them," she
retorted ungraciously.

"Now?
At this hour? Why, it's past nine; he'll be closed long ago."

"There
is another, on the other side of town, that stays open until ten; you
know that as well as I do." And she added with ill-humored
decision, as though he were to blame for their presence in some way,
"I will not go back into that kitchen and run the risk of being
attacked. They will be running over our very bed, yet, while we
sleep!"

"Very
well, I'll go myself," he offered hastily. "No need for you
to go, at this time of night."