Waltz Into Darkness (54 page)

In
a moment she returned to view again, beckoning to someone within to
hasten out after her. She came running back toward him, without
waiting, holding her skirts with both hands at once, bunched forward
and aloft to give her feet the freedom they needed. Behind her
appeared a shirtsleeved man, struggling into his coat as he emerged.
He set out after her.

"Here,"
she cried. "Over this way. Here he is."

He
joined her beside the loglike figure on the ground.

"Help
me get him to one of your rooms."

The
man, a beefy stalwart, lifted him bodily in both arms, turned with
him to face toward the lodging house. She ran around him from one
side to the next, trying to be of help, trying to take hold of
Durand's feet.

"No,
I can manage," the man said. "You go first and hold the
door."

The
black sky over the station square, pocked with stars, eddied about
this way and that just over Durand's upturned eyes. He had a feeling
of being very close to it. Then it changed to gaslightpallor on a
plaster ceiling. Then this slanted off upward, gradually dimming, and
he was being borne up stairs. He could hear the quick tap of her deft
feet, pressing close behind them, in the spaces between his carrier's
slower plod. And once he felt his dangling hand caught up swiftly for
a moment by two small ones, and the fervent print of a pair of
velvety lips placed on it.

"I'm
sorry it's so high up," the man said, "but that's all I
have."

"No
matter," she answered. "Anything. Anything."

They
passed through a doorway, the ceiling dark at first, then gradually
brightening to tarnished silver following the soft, spongy fluff of
an ignited gas flow. Their shadows swam about on it, then blended,
faded.

"Shall
I put him on the bed, madam?"

"No,"
Durand said weakly. "No more beds. Beds mean dying. Beds mean
death." His eyes sought hers, as the man lowered him to a chair,
and he smiled through them. "And I'm not going to die, am I,
Bonny ?" he whispered resolutely.

"Never!"
she answered huskily. "I'll not let you!" She clenched her
tiny fists, and set her jaw, and he could see sparks of defiance in
her eyes, as if they were flint stones.

"Shall
I get you a doctor, madam ?" the man asked.

"Nothing
more this minute. Leave us alone together. I'll let you know later.
Here, take this for now." She thrust some money at him through
the door. "I'll sign the registry book later."

She
locked it, came running back to Durand. She dropped before him in an
imploring attitude.

"Louis,
Louis, did I once want money, did I once want fine clothes and
jewels? I'd give them all at this minute to have you stand strong and
upright on your legs before me. I'd give my very looks themselves--"
she clawed at her own face, dragging its supple cheeks forward as if
seeking to transfer it toward him, "--and what more have I to
give ?"

"Make
your plea to God, dear, not to me," he said faintly, gently. "I
want you as you are. I wouldn't change you even for life itself. I
don't want a good woman, a noble woman. I want my vain, my selfish
Bonny-- It's you I love, the badness and the good alike, and not the
qualities they tell us a woman should have. Be brave in this: don't
change, ever. For I love you as I know you, and if God can love, then
He can understand."

The
tears were streaming in reckless profusion from her eyes, she who had
never wept in all her life; the tears of a lifetime, stored up until
now, and now splurging wildly forth all in one burst of regret.

His
fingers reached tremulously to trace their course. "Don't weep
any more. You've wept so much these past few minutes. I wanted to
give you happiness, not tears."

She
caught her breath and struggled with it, restraining it, quelling it.
"I'm so new at love, Louis. It's only a half-day now. Only a
half-day out of twenty-three years. Louis," she asked like a
child in wonderment, "is this what it's like? Does it always
hurt so?"

He
remembered back along their story, spent now. "It hurts. But
it's worth it. It's love."

A
strange snorting sound came from the outside, somewhere near by,
through the closed window, as if a great bull-like beast, hampered
with clanking chains, were muzzling the ground.

"What
was that ?" he asked vaguely, raising his head a little.

"It's
a train, out there somewhere in the dark. A train, coming into the
station, or shuttling about in the yards--"

His
arms stiffened on the chair rests, thrusting him higher.

"Bonny,
it's for us, it's ours. Any train, to anywhere-- Help me. Help me get
out of here. I can do it, I can reach it--"

She
had lived by violence all her life; by sudden change, and swift
decision. She rose to it now on the instant, she was so used to it.
She was ready at a word. Instantly her spirit flared up, kindled by
his.

"Anywhere.
Even New York. You'll stand by me there if they--"

She
thrust her arm around behind him, helped him rise from the chair.
Again the endless flight was about to recommence. Tightarmed
together, they took a step forward, toward the door. A single one--

He
fell. And this time there was a finality to it that could not be
mistaken. It was the fall to earth of the dead. He lay there flat,
unresisting, supine, waiting for it. He lay face up, looking at her
with despairing eyes.

Her
face swiftly dipped to his.

"No
time," he whispered through immobile lips. "Don't speak.
Put your lips to mine. Tell me goodbye with that."

Kiss
of farewell. Their very souls seemed to flow together. To try to
blend forever into one. Then, despairing, failed and were separated,
and one slipped down into darkness and one remained in the light.

She
drew her lips from his, for sheer necessity of breathing. There was a
smile of ineffable contentment left on his, there where her lips had
been.

"And
that was my reward," he sighed.

His
eyes closed, and there was death.

A
shudder ran through her, as though the throes of dying were in her
herself. She shook him, trying to bring back the motion that had only
just left him, but left him forever. She pressed him to her, in
desperate embrace that he was no longer within, only some dead thing
he had left behind. She pleaded with him, called to him. She even
tried to make a bargain with death itself, win a delay.

"No,
wait! Oh, just one minute more! One minute give me, and then I'll let
him go! Oh, God! Oh, Someone! Anyone at all! Just one more minute! I
have something I want to tell him!"

No
desolation equal to that of the pagan, suddenly bereft. For to the
pagan, there is no hereafter.

She
flung herself downward over him, and her hair, coming unbound, flowed
over him, covering his face. The golden hair that he had loved so,
made a shroud for him.

Her
lips sought his ear, and she tried to whisper into it, for him alone
to hear. "I love you. I love you. Can't you hear me? Where are
you? That is what you always wanted. Don't you want it now?"

In
the background of her grief, distant, dim, unheeded, echoes seemed to
rise around her. A muffled pounding on the door, clamoring voices
backing it, conjured there now, at just this place, this moment, who
knows how? Perhaps by long-pent suspicions of neighbors overflowing
at last into denunciation; perhaps that other crime in Mobile long,
long ago, overtaking them at last--too late, too late. For she had
escaped, just as surely as he had.

"Open,
in there! This is a police order! Open this door, do you hear ?"

Their
meaning could not impress, their threat could not affright. For she
was somebody else's prisoner now. She had escaped them.

Moaning
anguished into a heedless ear: "Oh, Louis, Louis! I have loved
you too late. Too late I have loved you."

The
knocking and the clamor and the grief faded out, and there was nothing
left.

"And
this is my punishment."

The
soundless music stops. The dancing figures wilt and drop.

The Waltz is done.

THE
END