Waltz Into Darkness (49 page)

She
relented somewhat. She took off her shawl, though still frowning a
trifle that he had not seen his duty sooner. She took him to the
door.

"Don't
go back in there," he cautioned, "until I come back."

"Nothing
could prevail on me to," she agreed fearfully.

She
closed the door after him.

She
reopened it to call him back for an instant.

"Don't
tell him who we are, what house it's for," she suggested in a
lowered voice. "I would not like our neighbors to know we have
rats in our house. It's a reflection on me, on my cleanliness as a
housekeeper--"

He
laughed at this typically feminine anxiety, but promised and went on.

When
he came back he found that she had returned to her task in the
kitchen nonetheless, in spite of his admonition and her own fear; a
bit of conscientious courage which he could not help but secretly
admire. She had, however, taken the precaution of bringing in the
table lamp with her and placing it on the floor close by her feet, as
a sort of blazing protection.

"Did
you see any more since I was gone ?"

"I
thought I saw it come back to that hole, but I threw something at it,
and it did not come out again."

He
showed her what the druggist had given him. "This is to be
spread around outside their holes and hiding places."

"Did
he ask any questions ?" she asked somewhat irrelevantly.

"No,
only whether or not we had any children about the house."

"He
did not ask which house it was ?"

"No.
He's rather elderly and doddering, you know; he seemed anxious to be
rid of me and close for the night."

She
half extended her hand.

"No,
don't touch it. I'll do it for you."

He
stripped off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and squatting on
his haunches before the offending orifice, shook out a little powdery
trail of the substance here and there. "Are there any others ?"

"One
over there, just a little back of the coal stove."

She
watched, with housewifely approval.

"That
will do. Not too much, or our feet will track it about."

"It
has to be renewed every two or three days," he told her.

He
put it on the shelf, at last, where the spice canisters were, but
well over to the side.

"Make
sure you wash your hands, now," she cautioned him. He had been
about to neglect doing so, until her reminder. She held the
huck-towel for him to dry them on, when he was through.

It
was the following night that his illness really began. She discovered
it first.

He
found her looking at him intently as he closed his book at their
retiring-time. It was a kindly scrutiny, but closely maintained. It
seemed to have been going on for several moments before he discovered
it.

"What
is it?" he said cheerfully.

"Louis."
She hesitated. "Are you sure you have been feeling well lately?
I do not find you looking yourself. I do not like the way you--"

"I
?" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Why, I never felt better
in my life!"

She
silenced him with tilt of hand. "That may well be, but your
appearance belies it. More and more lately I have found you looking
worn and haggard at times. I have not mentioned it before, because I
didn't want to alarm you, but it has been on my mind for some time
now to do so. It's very evident; I can see it quite plainly."

"Nonsense,"
he said, half laughing.

"I
have an excellent remedy, if you will but let me give it to you. And
I will join you in it myself, as an inducement."

"What?"
he asked, amused.

She
jumped up. "Starting tonight, we are to take an eggnog, the two
of us, each night before retiring. It is an excellent tonic, they
assure me, for fortifying the system."

"I
am not an inval--" he tried to protest.

"Now,
not another word, sir!" she ordered gaily. "I intend to
prepare them right now, and you shall not hinder me. I have all the
necessary ingredients right at hand, in there. Fresh-laid eggs, and
the very best obtainable, at twelve cents a dozen, mind you! And the
brandy we have in the house as well."

He
couldn't help but smile indulgently at her, but he let her have her
way. This was a new role for her; nursemaid to a nonexistent ailment.
If it made her happy, why what was the harm ?"

Her
mood was amiable, sanguine, all gentleness and contrition now. She
even bent to kiss him atop the head in passing.

"Was
I cross to you before? Forgive me, Lou dear. You know I wouldn't want
to be. A fright like that can make one into a harridan--" She
went toward the kitchen, smiling back at him.

He
could hear her cracking the eggs, somewhere beyond the open doorway,
and crinkled his eyes appreciatively to himself.

Presently,
she had even begun to hum lightly as she moved about in there, she
was enjoying her self-imposed task so much.

Soon
the humming gained words, had become a full song.

He
had never heard her sing before. Laughter until now had always been
her expression of contentment, never song. Her voice was light but
true. Not very lyrical, metallic was the word that occurred to him
instead, but she stayed adroitly on key.

Just
a song at twilight,

When
the lights are low--

Suddenly
the song stopped, as if at something she were doing that required
complete concentration. Measuring the brandy, perhaps. Be that as it
might, it never resumed again.

She
came in, holding one glass in each hand. Their contents pale gold in
color, creamy in substance.

"Here.
One for you, one for me." She offered them both. "Take
whichever one you want." Then when he had, she tasted
tentatively at the one that remained in her hand. "I hope I
didn't put in too much sugar. Too much would sicken. May I try yours
?"

"Of
course."

She
took it back from him, tasted at it in turn. It left a little white
trace on her upper lip.

While
she stood thus, holding both together, she turned her head toward the
kitchen door.

"What
was that ?"

"What?
I didn't hear anything."

She
went back in again for a moment. She was gone a moment only. Then she
returned to him.

"I
thought I heard a sound in there. I wanted to make sure I had
fastened the door."

She
gave him back the one he had had in the first place, and which she
had sampled.

"Since
it has brandy in it," she said, "I suppose we should
precede it with a toast." She nudged her glass to his. "To
your better health."

She
drained hers to the bottom.

He
took a deep draught of his. He found it quite velvety and
pleasurable. The liquor in it, with which she had been unsparing,
gave a mellow warming effect to the stomach after it had lain there
some moments.

"I
wish all tonics were this palatable, don't you ?" she remarked.

"It's
quite satisfactory," he admitted, more to please her than
because he saw any great virtue in it. It was after all, to his way
of thinking, a bastard drink; neither honest liquor nor wholly
medicine.

"You
must drink it down to the bottom, that is the only way it will do you
any good," she urged gently. "See, as I did mine."

To
spare her feelings, after the trouble of having prepared it, he did
so.

He
tasted of his tongue, dubiously, after he had. "It is a little
chalky, don't you find. A little--astringent. It puckers."

She
took the glass from him. "That is because you are not used to
milk. Have you never seen a baby's mouth after it feeds, all clotted
and curdled ?"

"No,"
he assured her with mock gravity, "you have not given me that
pleasure."

They
laughed together for a moment, in close-knit intimacy.

"I'll
just rinse out the glasses," she said, "and then we can go
up.,'

He
slept soundly at first, feeling at the last the grateful glow the
tonic had deposited in his stomach; albeit it seemed to confine
itself to there, did not spread outward as in the case of unmixed
liquor. But then after an hour or two he awakened into torment. The
glow was no longer benign, it had a flaming bite to it. Sleep, once
driven off, couldn't come near him again, held back by a fiery sword
turning and turning in his vitals.

The
rest of that night was an agony, a Calvary. He called out to her,
more than once, but she was not near enough to hear him. Helpless and
cut off from her, he sank his teeth into his own lip at last, and
kept silent after that. In the morning there was dried blood all down
his chin.

Across
the room, over in the far corner, miles away, stood a chair with his
clothes upon it. An ebony wood chair, with apricotplush seat and
apricot-plush back. Never heeded much before, but now a symbol.

Miles
away it stood, and he looked longingly across the miles, the
immeasurable distance from illness to health, from helplessness to
ability, from death to life.

All
the way across the room, many miles away.

He
must get over there, to that chair. It was far away, but he must get
over there to it somehow. He looked at it so intently, so longingly,
that the rest of the room seemed to fog out, and narrowing concentric
circles of clarity seemed just to focus on that chair alone, so that
it stood as in the center of a bright disk, a bull's-eye, and all the
rest was a blur.

He
could not get out of bed legs upright, so he had to leave it head and
shoulders first, in a slanting downward fall. Then there was a
second, if less violent, fall as his hips and legs came down after
the rest of him.

He
began to sidle along the floor now, like some groveling thing, a worm
or caterpillar, chin touching it at every other moment, hot striving
breath stirring the nap of the carpet before him, like a wave
spreading out from his face. Only, worms and caterpillars don't hope
so, haven't such large hearts to agonize with.

Slowly,
flowered pattern by flowered pattern. Each one like an island. And
the plain-tinted background in between, each time like a channel or a
chasm, leagues in width instead of inches. Some weaver somewhere,
years ago, had never known his spaces would be counted so, with drops
of human sweat and burning pain and tears of fortitude.

He
was getting closer. The chair was no longer an entire chair; its top
was too far up overhead now. The circle of vision, straight before
him, level with the floor, showed its four legs, and the shoes under
it, and part of the seat. The rest was lost in the blurred mists of
height.

Then
the seat went too, just the legs now remained, and he was getting
very near. Perhaps near enough already to reach it with his arm, if
he extended that full before him along the floor.

He
tried it, and it just fell short. Not more than six inches remained
between his straining fingertips and the one particular leg he was
aiming them for. Six inches was so little to bridge.

He
writhed, he wriggled. He gained an inch. The edge of the flower
pattern told him that. But the chair, teasing him, tantalizing him,
thefted the inch from him somehow. It still stood six inches away. He
had gained one at one end, it had stolen it back at the other.

Again
he gained an inch. Again the chair cheated him out of it, replaced it
at the opposite end.

But
this was madness, this was hallucination. It had begun to laugh at
him, and chairs don't laugh.

He
strained his arm down to its uttermost sinews, from fingerpad all the
way back to socket. He swallowed up the six inches, at the price of
years of his life. And this time it jerked back, abruptly. And there
was another six inches, a new six inches, still between them.