Waltz Into Darkness (53 page)

Then
threw it down at last, and thrusting out her foot, trod upon its
remnants here and there and the next place with little pats of
finality.

"What
are you doing, Bonny?" he whispered feebly.

She
did not turn her head, as if it were of no consequence to her whether
or not he had seen. "Burning a paper."

"What
paper ?"

Her
voice had no tone. "A policy of insurance--upon your life--
payable for twenty thousand dollars."

"It
was not worth the trouble. It lacked force, I told you that."

"It
was in force again just now. I pledged my ring and made up the
payments."

Suddenly
he saw her cover her face with the flats of her hands as if, even
after having burned it, she still could not bear the remembered
aftersight of it.

He
sighed, but without much emotion. "Poor Bonny. Did you want the
money that badly? I would have--" He didn't finish it.

He
lay there for a moment or two after that, inert.

"I'd
better drink this now," he said softly, at last.

He
strained until his arm could reach the glass. He clasped it, took it
up.

64

Suddenly
she had turned, thrown herself toward him. He hadn't known the human
form could move so quickly. But she was so deft, she was so small.
Her hand flashed out, a white missile before his face. The tumbler
was gone from his grasp. Glass riddled on the floor somewhere offside
beyond his ken.

Her
face seemed to melt into shapeless weeping lines, like a face seen
through rain running down a pane. She caught him to her convulsively,
crushing his face against her soft breast. He hadn't known her
embrace could hold that much strength. She'd never loved him enough
to exert it to the full before.

"Oh,
merciful God," she cried out wildly. "Look down and forgive
me! Stop this terrible thing, turn it back, undo it! Lou, my Lou!
Only now I see it I Oh, my eyes are open, open now at last! What have
I done?"

She
dropped to her knees before him, as she had that night in Biloxi when
they first came together again. But how different now; how false, how
studied her pleas, her posture then, how inconsolable her passion of
remorse now, a veritable paroxysm of penitence, that nothing, no word
of his, could assuage.

Her
sobbing had the wild, panting turbulence of a child's, strangling her
words, rendering her almost incoherent. Perhaps this was a child
crying now, a newborn self in her, a little girl held mute for twenty
years, only now belatedly finding voice.

"I
must have been mad-- Out of my mind-- How could I have listened to
such a scheme? But when I was with him, I saw only him, never you--
He brought out that old bad self in me-- He made wrong things seem
right, or just something to snicker at--"

Her
fingers, pleading, traced the outlines of his face; trembling, felt
of his lips, of his lidded eyes, as if seeking to restore them to
what they had been. Nothing, no voracious kisses seeking him out
everywhere, no splurge of teardrops falling all over him, could bring
him back.

"I've
killed you! I've killed you!"

And
rebel to the end, fell prone and beat upon the floor with her fist,
in helpless rebellion at the trickery fate had practised on her.

Then
suddenly her weeping stopped. As suddenly as though a stroke of fear
had been laid across her bowed head. Her pummelling hand stilled.

Her
head came up. She was bated, she was watchful, she was crafty. Of
what he could not tell. She turned and looked behind her at the
window, in dreadful secretive apprehension.

"Nobody
shall take you from me," she said through clenched teeth. "I'll
not give you up. Not for anyone. It's not too late, it's not! I'm
going to get you out of here, where you'll be safe- Hurry, get your
things. We'll go together. I have the strength for the two of us.
You're going to live. Do you hear me, Lou? You're going to
live--yet."

She
sidled up beside the window, creeping along the wall until she had
gained an outer edge of it; then peered narrowly out, using the slit
between curtain edge and wall. He saw her nod slightly to herself, as
if in confirmation of something she had expected to see.

"What
is it?" he whispered. "Who's out there?"

She
didn't answer. Suddenly she drew her head back sharply, as if fearful
she had been detected just then from the outside.

"Shall
I put out the lamp?" he asked.

"No!"
She motioned to him horrified. "For God's sake, no! I was to
have done that. It will be taken for a signal that--it's over. Our
only chance is to go now, and leave it still on, as if--as if we were
here yet."

She
came running back to him, yet not forgetting even as she did so to
throw still another backward glance of dread at the window; she
settled down beside him with a billowing-out of her dress, took hold
of his untended foot, raised it, while he still strove valiantly with
the first.

"Quickly,
your other shoe! There, that's all-- No time for more."

She
helped him quit his sitting position on the edge of the bed, held him
upright on his feet beside her, like some sort of an inanimate
mannikin or rigid toy soldier that would fall over if her hands
quitted him for just an instant and left him to himself.

"Lean
on me, I'll help you. There ! There! Move your feet, that's it! Oh,
Lou, try this one time more. just this one time more. You did it
before. This time we're together, we're going together. This time
it's our love itself that's running away--for its very life."

He
smiled at her, as the floor slowly crept by beneath their tottering
feet, inch by painful inch.

"Our
love," he whispered bravely. "Our love, running away. Where
are we going ?"

"Any
train, anywhere. Only let us get out of this house-"

She
struggled heroically with him, as though she were the spirit of life
itself, contesting with the spirit of death that sought to possess
him. Now holding him back when he inclined too far forward, now
drawing him on when he swayed too far backward. Out the room door and
along the upper hall. But on the stairs once she nearly lost him. For
a moment there was a terrible equipoise, while he hung forward,
threatening to topple downward, all the way downward, head first, and
she strained her small body backward to the last ounce of its
strength, striving to regain the balance that had been incautiously
lost.

Not
a whimper came from her in that frightful moment, and surely had he
gone downward to his own destruction, she would have clung to him to
the end, gone down with him to her own, rather than release him. But
a strength came into her arms that had never been in them before, and
slowly her squeezing pull, her embrace of desperation, righted him,
drew him back against her, and equilibrium was regained.

And
then, as they rested half-recumbent against the rail a moment, she
with her back to it, he with his head pillowed on her breast, she
found time to stroke his hair back soothingly from his brow and
whisper: "Courage, love. I will not let you fall. Is it very
hard for you ?"

"No,"
he murmured wanly, rolling his eyes upward toward her downturned face
above him, "because you are with me."

Downward
once more then, more cautiously this time, step by mincing step, like
a pair of ballet dancers locked in one another's arms, pointed toe
following pointed toe in a horrid, groping, blinded sort of pas de
deux.

As
they neared the bottom, were within one last step of it, she suddenly
stopped, frozen. And in the silence, over the rise and fall of their
two breaths, they both heard it.

There
was a low, urgent tapping going on against the front door. Very
stealthy it was, very secretive. Meant only to be caught by a single
pair of ears, no other. A pair forewarned to expect it, to listen for
it. Two fingers at the most, perhaps only one, kept striking at the
woodwork; scratching at it, scraping at it, it might almost have been
said, so softened was their impact.

A
peculiar whistle sounded with it. Also modulated very low, very
guardedly. Little more than a stirring of the breath against a
wavering upper lip. Plaintive, melancholy, like the sound, of a baby
owl. Or a lost wisp of night wind trying to find its way in.

It
was intermittent. It waited. Then sounded again. Waited. Sounded
again.

"Sh,
don't make any noise!" He could feel her arms tighten
protectively about him. As if instinctively seeking to safeguard him
against something. Something that she understood, knew the meaning
of, he didn't. "The back way," she breathed. "We'll
have to go out by there- Hold your breath, love. For the love of
heaven, don't make a sound or--we'll both be dead in here where we
stand."

Cautiously,
straining against one another, as much now to insure their mutual
silence as before now it had been to maintain his uprightness,
they quitted the stairs, crept rearward on the lower floor, into the
dining room. She halted him there for a preciously spared moment, to
reach for a decanter of stimulant, give it a twisting shake, extract
the glass stopper and moisten his lips with it, while she still
continued to hold him within the curve of her other arm.

"I'm
afraid to give you too much," she mourned. "You are so
spent."

"My
love's beside me," he promised, as if speaking to himself. "I
won't fail."

They
moved on into the unlighted kitchen beyond, swimming submerged in the
blue tide of night, but with the curtained glass square of its door,
the back way out, peering at them, distinguishable in the dimness.

He
heard the bolt scrape softly back beneath her diligently groping
fingers. Then the door moved inward, and the coolness of escape was
grateful in their faces.

The
last sound behind them, traveling through the whole length of the
house from its front, was that low tapping, recommencing again after
a grudging wait. A little more hurried now than before, a little more
insistent. And with it the whistle, with its secretive message, that
seemed to say: "Open to me. Open. You know who I am. You know
me. Why do you delay?" A little sharper now, a little more
importunate, as its patience shortened.

He
did not ask her who it was. There were so many things in life it was
too late now to ask, too late now to know. There was only one thing
he wanted to know, he needed to know, and that at long last had been
told him: she loved him.

They
floundered out into the backyard of their house, and out through the
gate that led into it, from the lane that ran behind the backs of all
these houses; down that to its mouth, and from there onto the
sideward street. Then along that, and around the turn, and into the
street that ran behind the one their house had faced upon.

"The
station," she kept saying. "The station-- Oh, try, Lou.
It's just a few short streets ahead. We'll be safe, if we can only
reach it. There's always someone there, day or night-- There are
lights there, no one can hurt us there. A train-- Any train, to
anywhere-"

Any
train, his heart kept saying in time to its desperate pounding, to
anywhere.

On
and on and on, two lurching figures, breaths sobbing in their
throats; reeling drunken, yes, drunken with the will to live and
love, in peace. No eye to see them, no hand to help them.

It
was in sight already, across the open square ahead, the station
square, the hub of the town,--or so she told him, he could no longer
see that far before him--when suddenly the combination of their
overtaxed strengths gave out, her arms, her will, could do no more,
and he fell flat there in the dust beside her.

She
tried desperately to bring him up again, but she'd weakened so that
his inertness could only bring her down half recumbeht beside him,
instead, as if he were pulling at her, not she at him.

"Don't
waste time," he sighed. "I can't-- Not a step further."

She
struggled upright again, drove fingers distractedly through her hair,
looked, this way, that.

"I've
got to get you in out of the open! Oh, my love, my love, we may be
caught yet if we stay here too long--"

Then
bending to his face, to give him courage with a kiss, ran on and left
him there where he was. She disappeared into a building fronting on
the square, with a lighted gas bowl over its doorway and the legend:
"Furnished Rooms for Travelers."