Waltz Into Darkness

38

He jumped up quickly and looked around. Strangely enough, for all the length of time he’d been in the room, he’d made no plans for concealment, he had to improvise them now. He saw the screen there, and chose that. It was the quickest and most obvious method of effacing himself, and she was already nearing the door, for he could hear her voice now, merrily saying something, close at hand in the hallway.

He spread the screen a little more, squaring its panels, so that it made a sort of hollow pilaster protruding from the wall, and got in behind there. He could maintain his own height, he found, and still not risk having the top of his head show. He could see through the perforated, lacelike, scrolled woodwork at the top, his eyes came up to there.

The door opened, and she had arrived.

Two figures came in, not one; and advancing only a step or two beyond the doorway, almost instantly blended into one, stood there locked in ravenous embrace in the semishadow of the little foyer. A gossamer piquancy of breath-borne champagne or brandy reached him, admixed with a little perfume. His heart drowned in it.

There was no motion, just the rustle of pressed garments.

Again her laugh sounded, but muffled, furtive, now; lower now that it was close at hand than it had been when at a distance outside.

He recognized the colonel’s voice, in a thick whisper. “I’ve been waiting for this all evening. My li’l girl, you are, my li’l girl.”

The rustling strengthened to active resistance.

“Harry, that’s enough now. I must wear this dress again. Leave me at least a shred of it.”

“I’ll buy you another. I’ll buy you ten.”

She broke away at last, light from the hallway came between their figures; but the embrace was still locked about her like a barrel-hoop. Durand could see her pushing the colonel’s arms perpendicularly downward, unable to pry them open in the usual direction. At last they severed.

“But I like this one. Don’t be so destructive. I never saw such a man. Let me put the lights up. We mustn’t stand here like this.”

“I like it better as it is.”

“I’ve no doubt!” she said pertly. “But up they go just the same.”

She entered the room itself now, and went to the night light, and it flared from a spark to a sunburst at her touch. And as the light bathed her, washing away all indistinctness of outline and of feature, she glowed there before him in full life once more, after a year and a month and a day. No longer just a cameo glimpsed through a parted curtain, a disembodied laugh down a hallway, a silhouette against an open door; she was whole, she was real, she was she. She broke into bloom. In all her glory and her ignominy; in all her beauty and all her treachery; in all her preciousness and all her worthlessness.

And an old wound in Durand’s heart opened and began to bleed all over again.

She threw down her fan, she threw down her shoulder scarf; she drew off the one glove she had retained and added that to the one she had carried loose, and threw them both down. She was in garnet satin, stiff and crisp as starch, and picked with scrolls and traceries of twinkling jet. She took up a little powder-pad and touched it to the tip of her nose, but in habit rather than in actual application. And her courtier stood there and watched her every move, idolizing her, beseeching her, with his greedy smoking eyes.

She turned to him at last, offhandedly, over one shoulder. “Wasn’t it too bad about poor Florrie? What do you suppose became of the young man you arranged to have her meet?”

“Oh, blast him!” Worth said truculently. “Forgot, maybe. He’s no gentleman. If I run into him again, I’ll cut him dead.”

She was seeing to her hair now. Touching it a bit, without disturbing it too much. Gracefully crouching a trifle so that the top of the mirror frame could encompass it comfortably. “What was he like?” she asked idly. “Did he seem well-to-do? Would we — would Florrie, I mean — have liked him, do you think?”

“I hardly know him. Name was Randall or something. I’ve never seen him spend more than fifty cents at a time for a whiskey punch.”

“Oh,” she said on a dropping inflection, and stopped with her hair, as if losing interest in it.

She turned and moved toward him suddenly, hand extended in parting gesture. “Well, thank you for a congenial evening, Harry. Like all your evenings it was most delectable.”

He took the hand but kept it within his two.

“Mayn’t I stay just a little while longer? I’ll behave. I’ll just sit here and watch you.”

“Watch me!” she exclaimed archly. “Watch me do what? Not what you’d like to, I warn you.” She pushed him slightly, at the shoulder, to keep the distance between them even.

Then her smile faded, and she seemed to become thoughtful, ruefully sober for a moment.

“Wasn’t it too bad about poor Florrie, though?” she repeated, as though discovering some remaining value in the remark that had not been fully extracted the first time.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he agreed vaguely.

“She took such pains with her appearance. I had to lend her the money for the dress.”

Instantly he released her. “Oh, here. Let me. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” He busied himself within his coat, took out his money-fold, opened and busied himself with that.

She darted a quick glance down at it, then the rest of the time, until he had finished, looked dreamily past him to the rear of the room.

He put something in her hand.

“Oh, and while I think of it—” he said.

He fumbled additionally with the pocketbook, put something further into her uncooperative, yet unresistant, hand.

“For the hotel bill,” he said. “For the sake of appearance, it’s better if you attend to it yourself.”

She circled, swept her back toward him. Yet scarcely in offense or disdain, for she said to him teasingly: “Now don’t look. At least, not over my left shoulder.”

The folds of garnet satin swept up at her side for a moment, revealing the long shapely glint of smoky black silk. Worth, up on the toes of his feet to gain height, was peering hungrily over her right shoulder. She turned her face toward him for a moment, gave him a roguish look, winked one eye, and the folds of her dress cascaded to the floor again, with a soft little plop.

Worth made a sudden convulsive move, and they had blended into one again, this time in full light of mid-room, not in the shadow of the vestibule.

Durand felt something heavy in his hand. Looked down and saw that he’d taken the pistol out. “I’ll kill both of them,” stencilled itself in white-hot lettering across his mind.

“And now—?” Worth said, lips blurred against her neck and shoulder. “Are you going to be kind—?”

Durand could see her head avert itself from his; smiling benevolently, yet avert itself. She twisted to face the door, and in turning, managed to get him to turn likewise; then somehow succeeded in leading him toward it, her face and shoulders still caught in his endless kiss. “No—” she said temperately, at intervals. “No— No— I am kind to you, Harry. No more kind than I’ve always been to you, no less— Now that’s a good boy—”

Durand gave a sigh of relief, put the gun away.

She was standing just within the gap of the door now, alone at last, her arm extended to the outside. Worth must have been kissing it repeatedly, the length of time she maintained it that way.

All he could hear was a subdued murmur of reluctant parting.

She withdrew her arm with effort, pressed the door closed.

He saw her face clearly as she came back into the full light. All the playfulness, coquetry, were wiped off it as with a sponge. It was shrewd and calculating, and a trifle pinched, as if with the long wearing of a mask.

“God Almighty!” he heard her groan wearily, and saw her strike herself a glancing blow against the temple.

She went first and looked out the window, as he had earlier; stood there motionless by it some time. Then when she’d had her fill of whatever thoughts the sight from there had managed to instill in her, she turned away suddenly, almost with abrupt impatience, causing her skirts to swirl and hiss out in the silence. She came back to the dresser, fetched out a drawer. No powdering at her nose, no primping at her hair, now. She had no look to spare for the mirror.

She withdrew the money from her stocking-top and flung it in, with a turn of the wrist that was almost derisive. But not of the money itself, possibly; of its source.

Reaching into some hiding place she had in there, she took out one of those same slender cigars Aunt Sarah had showed him in the St. Louis Street house in New Orleans.

To him there was something repugnant, almost obscene, in the sight of her bending to the lamp chimney with it until it had kindled, holding it tight-bitten, smoke sluicing from her miniature nostrils, as from a man’s.

In a sickening phantasmagoric illusion, that lasted but a moment, she appeared to him as a fuming, horned devil, in her ruddy longtailed dress.

She set the cigar down, presently, in a hairpin tray, and seated herself by the mirror. She unfastened her hair and it came tumbling down in a molasses-colored cascade to the small of her back. Then she opened a vent in her dress at the side, separating a number of hooks from their eyes, but without unfastening or removing it farther than that. Leaving a gap through which her tightly laced side swelled and subsided again at each breath.

She took out the money now she had cast in only a moment before, but took out far more than she had flung in, and counted it over with close attention. Then she put it into a small lacquered casket, of the type used to hold jewels, and locked that, and gave it a commending little thump on its lid with her knuckles, as if in pleased finality.

She reclosed the drawer, stood up, moved over to the desk, took down its lid and seated herself at it. She drew out a sheet of note-paper from the rack. Took up a pen and dipped it, and squaring her other arm above the surface to be written on, began to write.

Durand moved out from behind the screen and slowly walked across the carpet toward her. It gave his tread no sound, though he wasn’t trying for silence. He advanced undetected, until he was standing behind her, and could look down over her shoulder.

“Dear Billy,” the paper said. “I—”

The pen had stopped, and she was nibbling for a moment at its end.

He put out his hand and let it come lightly to rest on her shoulder. Left it there, but lightly, lightly, as she had once put her hand to his shoulder, lightly, on the quayside at New Orleans; lightly, but crushing his life.

Her fright was the fright of guilt, and not innocence. Even before she could have known who it was. For she didn’t turn to look, as the innocent of heart would have. She held her head rigidly as it was, turned the other way, neck taut with suspense. She was afraid to look. There must have been such guilt strewn behind her in her life, that anyone’s sudden touch, in the stillness of the night, in the solitude of her room, she must have known could bode no good.

Her one hand dropped the pen lifelessly. Her other clawed secretively at the sheet of notepaper, sucking it up, causing it to disappear. Then dropping it, crumpled, over the desk side.

Still she didn’t move; the sleek taffy-colored head held still, like something an axe was about to fall on.

Her eyes had found him in the mirror by now. It was over to the left of her, and when he looked at it himself, he could see, in the reflection of her talcum-white face, the pupils darkening the far corners of her eyes, giving her an ugly unnatural appearance, as though she had black eyeballs.

“Don’t be afraid to look around, Julia,” he said ironically. “It’s only me. No one important. Merely me.”

Suddenly she turned, so swiftly that the transplacement of the silken back of her head by the plaster-white cast of her face was almost like that of an apparition.

“You act as though you don’t remember me,” he said softly. “Surely you haven’t forgotten me, Julia. Me of all people.”

“How’d you know I was here?” she demanded granularly.

“I didn’t. I was the other man who was to have met you at the restaurant party tonight.”

“How’d you get in here?”

“Through the door.”

She had risen now, defensively, and was trying to reverse the desk chair to get it between them, reedy as it was, but there was no room to allow for its insertion.

He took it from her and set it to rest with his hand.

“How is it you don’t order me from your room, Julia? How is it you don’t threaten to scream for help? Or all those other things they usually do?”

She said, summoning up a sort of desperate tractabilfty, that he couldn’t help but admire for an instant, “This is a matter that has to be settled between us, without screams or ordering you from the room.” She stroked one arm, shiveringly, all the way up to the top. “Let’s get it over with as soon as we can.”

“It’s taken me better than a year,” he said. “You won’t grudge a few added minutes, I hope?”

She didn’t answer.

“Were you going to marry the colonel, Julia? That would have been bigamous.”

She shrugged irritably. “Oh, he’s just a fool. I’m not accountable for him. The whole world is full of fools.” And in this phrase, at least, there was unmistakable sincerity.

“And the biggest of them all is the one you’re looking at right now, Julia.”

He kicked the crumpled tossball of notepaper leniently with the toe of his foot, moving it a little. But gently, as if it held somebody else’s wracked hopes.

“Who’s Billy?”

“Oh, no one in particular. A chance acquaintance. A fellow I met somewhere.” She flung out her hand, still with nervous irritability, as if causing the person to disappear from her ken in that way.

“The world must be full of Billys for you. Billys and Lous and Colonel Worths.”

“Is it?” she said. “No, there was only one Lou. It may be a little late to say it now. But I didn’t marry the Billys and the Colonel Worths. I married Lou.”

“You acted it,” he agreed mordantly.

“Well, it’s late,” she said. “What’s the good now?”

“We agree on that, at least.”

She went over to the lamp, and thoughtfully spanned her hand against it, so that her flesh glowed translucent brick-red, and watched that effect for a while. Then she turned toward him.

“What is it, Lou? What are your plans for me?”

His hand rose slowly to that part of his coat which covered where the gun was resting against him. Remained there a moment. Then crept around to the inside and found it, by the handle. Then drew it out, so slowly, so slowly, the bone handle, the nickelled chambers and fluted barrel seemed never to stop coming, like something pulled on an endless train.

“I came here to kill you, Julia.”

A single glance was all she gave it. Just enough to identify it, to see that he had the means to do it on his person. Then after that, her eyes were for his alone, never left them from then on. Knowing where the signal would lie: in his eyes and not on the gun. Knowing where the only place to appeal lay: in his eyes.

She looked at him for a long time, as if measuring his ability to do it: what he’d said. What she saw there, only she could have told. Whether full purpose, hopeless to deflect, or half-purpose, waiting only to be crumbled.

He didn’t point it, he didn’t raise it to her; he simply held it, on the flat side, muzzle offside. But his face was white with the long pain she’d given him, and whatever she’d read in his look, still all that was needed was a turn of his hand.

Perhaps she was a gambler, and instinctively liked the odds, they appealed to her, whetted her; she hated to bet on a sure thing. Or perhaps the reverse: she was no gambler, she only banked upon a certainty, never anything else, in men or in cards; and this was a certainty now, though he didn’t know it himself yet. Or perhaps, again it was solely vanity, self-esteem, that prompted her, and she must put her power over him to the test, even though to lose meant to die. Perhaps, even, if she were to lose, she would want to die, vanity being the thing it is.

She smiled at him. But in brittle challenge, not in anything else.

She suddenly wrenched at the shoulder of her dress, tore it down. Then pulled at it, farther down and still farther down, withdrawing her arm from the bedraggled loop it now made, until at last the whiteness of her side was revealed all but to the waist. On the left, the side of the heart. Moving toward him all the while, closer step by step. White as milk and pliable as China silk, flesh flexing as she walked.

Then halted as the cold gun touched her, holding her ravaged dress-bodice clear and looked deep into his eyes.

“All right, Lou,” she whispered.

He withdrew the gun from between them.

She came a step closer with its removal.

“Don’t hesitate, Lou,” she breathed. “I’m waiting.”

His heel edged backward, carrying him a hair’s breadth off. He stuffed the gun into his side pocket, to be rid of it, hastily, fumblingly, careless how he did so, leaving the hilt projecting.

“Cover yourself up, Julia,” he said. “You’re all exposed.”

And there was the answer. If she’d been a gambler, she’d won. If she’d been no gambler, she’d read his eyes right the first time. If it was vanity that had led her to the brink of destruction, it had triumphed, it was intact, undamaged.

She gave no sign. Not even of having triumphed; which is the way of the triumphant when they are clever as well. His face was bedewed with accumulated moisture, as though it were he who had taken the risk.

She drew her clothes upward again, never to where they had originally been but at least in partial restoration.

“Then if you won’t kill me, what do you want of me?”

“To take you back to New Orleans and hand you over to the police.” As if uneasy at their close confrontation, he sundered it, shifted aside. “Get yourself ready,” he said over his shoulder.

Suddenly his head inclined, to stare downward at his own chest, as if in involuntary astonishment. Her arms had crept downward past his shoulders, soft as white ribbons, and were trying to join together before him in supplicating embrace. He could feel the softness of her hair as it came to rest against him just below the nape of his neck.

He parted them, flung them off, sending her backward from him. “Get yourself ready,” he said grimly.

“If it’s the money, wait — I have some here, I’ll give it to you. And if it’s not enough, I’ll make it up — I swear I will—”

“Not for that. You were my wife, in law, and there was no crime committed, in law.”

“Then for what?”

“To answer what became of Julia Russell. The real one. You’re not Julia Russell and you never were. Do you pretend you are?”

She didn’t answer. He thought he could detect more real fright now than at the time of the gun. Her eyes were wider, more strained, at any rate.

She quitted the drawer she had thrown open and been crouched beside, where the money was, and came toward him.

“To tell them what you did with her,” he said. “And there’s a name for that. Would you like to hear it?”

“No, no!” she protested, and even held her palms fronted toward him as she came close, but whether her protest was for the thought he had suggested, or for the very sound itself of the word he had threatened to utter, he could not tell. Almost, it seemed, the latter.

“Mur—” he began.

And then her palms had found his mouth and stopped it, terrifiedly. “No, no! Lou, don’t say that! I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know what became of her. Only listen to me, hear me; Lou, you must listen to me!”

He tried to cast her off as he had before, but this time she clung, she would not be rejected. Though his arms flung her, she came back upon them again, carried by them.

“Listen to what? More lies? Our whole marriage was a lie. Every word you spoke to me, every breath you drew, in all that time was a lie. You’ll tell them to the police, not to me any longer. I want no more of them!”

That word, just as the one she’d stifled before, seemed to have a particular terror for her. She quailed, and gave a little inchoate moan, the first sound of weakness she’d made yet. Or if it was artifice, calculation pretending to be weakness for its effect upon him, it succeeded by that much, for he took it to be weakness, and thus its purpose was gained.

Still clinging in desperation to the wings of his coat, she dropped to her knees before him, grovelling in posture of utmost supplication the human figure is capable of.

“No, no, the truth this time!” she sobbed drily. “Only the truth, and nothing else! If you’ll only listen to me, let me speak—”

He stopped trying to rid himself of her at last, and stood there stolid.

“Would you know it?” he said contemptuously.

But she’d gained her hearing.

Her arms dropped from him, and she turned her head away for a moment and backed her hand to her own mouth. Whether in hurried search of inspiration, or whether steeling herself for the honest unburdening about to come, he could not tell.

“There’s no train a while yet,” he said grudgingly. “And I can’t take you to the railroad station as you are now and keep you dawdling about there with me half the night — so speak if you want to.” He dropped back into a chair, pulled at his collar as if exhausted by the emotional stress they had both just been through. “It will do you no good. I warn you before you begin, the outcome will be the same. You are coming back to New Orleans with me to face justice. And all your tears and all your kneeling and all your pleas are thrown away!”

Without rising, she inched toward him, crept as it were, on her very knees, so that the distance between them was again lessened, and she was at his very feet, penitent, abject, her hands to the arm of the chair he was in.

“It wasn’t I. I didn’t do it. He must have done something to her, for I never saw her again. But what it was, I don’t know. I didn’t see it done. He only came to me afterward and said she’d had a mishap, and I was afraid to question him any further than—”

“He?” he said sardonically.

“The man I was with. The man on the boat I was with.”

“Your paramour,” he said tonelessly, and tried not to let her see him swallow the bitter lump that knobbed his throat.

“No!” she said strenuously. “No, he wasn’t! You can believe it if you choose, but from first to last he wasn’t. It was purely a working arrangement. And no one else ever was either, before him. I’ve learned to care for myself since I’ve been about in the world, and whether I’ve done things that were right, or done things that were wrong, I’ve been no man’s but yours, Lou. No man’s, until I married you.”

He wondered why he felt so much lighter than a moment ago, and warned himself sternly he mustn’t; and in spite of that, did anyway.

“Julia,” he drawled reproachfully, as if in utter disbelief. “You ask me to believe that? Julia, Julia.”

“Don’t call me Julia,” she murmured remorsefully. “That isn’t my name.”

“Have you a name?”

She moistened her lips. “Bonny,” she admitted. “Bonny Castle.”

He gave a nod of agreement that was a jeer in pantomime. “To the colonel, Bonny. To me, Julia. To Billy, something else. To the next man, something else again.” He turned his face from her in disgust, then looked back again. “Is that what you were christened? Is that your baptismal name?”

“No,” she said. “I was never christened. I never had a baptismal name.”

“Everyone has a name, I thought.”

“I never had even that. You need a mother and father to give you that. A wash basket on a doorstep can’t give you that. Now do you understand?”

“Then where is it from?”

“It’s from a postal picture card,” she said, and some old defiance and rancor still alive in her made her head go up higher a moment. “A postal picture card from Scotland that came to the foundling home, one day when I was twelve. I picked it up and stole a look. And on the face of it there was the prettiest scene I’d ever seen, of ivy-covered walls and a blue lake. And it said ‘Bonny Castle.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but I took that for my name. They’d called me Josie in the foundling home until then. I hated it. Anyway, it was no more my rightful name than this was. I’ve kept to this one ever since, so it’s rightfully mine by length of usage if nothing else. What difference do a few drops of holy water sprinkled on your head make? Go on, laugh if you will,” she consented bleakly.

“I no longer know how,” he said in glum parenthesis. “You saw to that. How long were you there, at this institution?”

“Until I was fifteen, I think. Or close onto it. I’ve never had an exact birthday, you see. That’s another thing I’ve done without. I made one up for myself, at one time; just as the name. I chose St. Valentine’s Day, because it was so festive. But then I tired of it after a while, and no longer kept up with it.”

He gazed at her without speaking.

She sighed weariedly, to draw fresh breath for continuation.

“Anyway, I ran away from there when I was fifteen. They accused me of stealing something, and they beat me for it. They’d accused me before, and they’d beaten me before. But at thirteen I knew no better than to endure it, at fifteen I no longer would. I climbed over the wall at night. Some of the other girls helped me, but they lacked the courage to come with me.” And then she said with an odd, speculative sort of detachment, as though she were speaking of someone else: “That’s one thing I’ve never been, at least: a coward.”

“You’ve never been a coward,” he assented, but as though finding small cause for satisfaction in the estimate.

“It was up in Pennsylvania,” she went on. “It was bitterly cold. I remember trudging the roadside for hours, until at last a drayman gave me a ride in his wagon—”

“You’re from the North?” he said. “I hadn’t known. You don’t speak as they do up there.”

“North, South,” she shrugged. “It’s all one. I speak as they do wherever I’ve been last, until I come to a new place.”

And always lies, he thought; never the truth.

“I came to Philadelphia. An old woman took me in for a while, an old witch. She found me ready to drop on the cobbles. I thought she was kind at first, but she wasn’t. After she’d fed and rested me for a few days, she put me into the clothes of a younger child — I was small, you see — and took me with her to shop in the stores. She said ‘Watch me,’ and showed me how to filch things from the counters without being detected. I ran away from her too, finally.”

“But not without having done it yourself, first.” He watched her closely to see if she’d labor with the answer.

She didn’t stop for breath. “Not without having done it myself, first. She would only give me food when I had.”

“And then what happened?”

“I worked a little, as a scrub girl, a slavey; I worked in a bakery kitchen, helping to make the rolls; I even worked as a laundress’ helper. I was homeless more often than I had a place to sleep.” She averted her head for a moment, so that her neck drew into a taut line. “Mostly, I can no longer remember those days. What’s more, I don’t want to.”

She probably sold herself on the streets, he thought, and his heart sickened at the suggestion, as though she were in actuality someone to cherish.

With an almost uncanny clairvoyance, she said just then: “There was one way I could have got along, but I wouldn’t take it.”

Lies, he vowed, lies; but his heart sang wildly.

“I ran in horror from a woman one night who had coaxed me into stopping in her house for a cup of tea.”

“Admirable,” he said drily.

“Oh, don’t give me credit for goodness,” she said, with a sudden little flare of candor. “Give me credit for perversity, rather. I hated every human being in the world, at times, in those days, for what I was going through; man, woman, and child. I would give no one what they wanted of me, because no one would give me what I wanted of them.”

He looked downward mutely, trapped at last into credulity, however brief; this time even of the mind as well as the heart.

“Well, I’d best be brief. It’s what happened on the river you want to know of, mainly. I fell in with a troupe of traveling actors, joined up with them. They didn’t even play in regular theatres. They had no money to afford them. They went about and pitched tents. And from there I fell in with a man who was a professional gambler on the river boats. The girl who had been his partner before then had quitted him to marry a plantation owner — or so he told me — and he was looking for someone to take her place. He offered me a share of his profits, if I would join with him.” She waved her hand. “And it was but a different form of acting, after all. With quarters preferable to the ones I’d been used to.” She stopped.

“He was the one,” she told him.

“What was his name, what was he called?” he said with a sudden access of interest.

“What does it matter? His name was false, like mine was. On every trip it changed. It had to, as a precaution. Once it was McLarnin. Once it was Rideau. I doubt that I ever knew his real one, in all the time we were together. I doubt that he did himself, any more. He’s gone now. Don’t ask me to remember.”

She’s trying to protect him, he thought. “You must have called him something.”

She gave a smile of sour reminiscence. “‘Brother dear.’ So that others could hear me. That was part of my role. We traveled as brother and sister. I insisted on that. We each had our own cabin.”

“And he agreed.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement of disbelief.

“At first he objected. His former partner, it seems — well, that’s neither here nor there. I pointed out to him that it was better even for his own purposes that way, and when I had made him see that, he agreed readily enough. Business came first with him, always. He had a sweetheart in every river town, he could forego one more. You see, I acted as the — attraction, the magnet, for him. My part was to drop my handkerchief on the deck, or collide with someone in a narrow passageway, or even lose my bearings and have to seek directions of someone. There is no harm in gentlemen striking up a respectful acquaintance with a man’s unmarried sister. Whereas had I been thought his wife — or something else — they would have been deterred. Then, as propriety dictated, I would introduce my brother to them at the earliest opportunity. And the game would take place soon afterward.”

“You played?”

“Never. Only a shameless hussy would play cards with men.”

“You were present, though.”

“I replenished their drinks. Flirted a little, to keep them in good humor. I sided with them against my own brother when there was a dispute.”

“You signalled.”

Her shoulders tipped slightly, in philosophic resignation. “That’s what I was there for.”

His arms were folded, in the attitude of one passing grim judgment — or rather having already irrevocably passed it — whom none of the pleas, the importunities, of the suppliant could any longer sway. He tapped his fingers restlessly against the sides of his own arms.

“And what of Julia? The other Julia, the actual one?”

“I’ve come to that now,” she murmured acquiescently. She drew deep breath to see her through the cumulative part of her recital. “We used to go down about once a month, never more often. It wouldn’t have been prudent. Stop a while, and then go up again. We left St. Louis the eighteenth of May the last time, on the City of New Orleans.”

“As she did.”

She nodded. “The first night out something went wrong. He met his match at last. I don’t know how it came about. It could not have been sheer luck on the prospect’s part, for he had too many sure ways of curing that. It must have been that he’d finally come across someone who had even better tricks than his own up his sleeve. I couldn’t see the man’s cards; he seemed to play from memory, keeping them turned inward to one another face to face. And all my messages to show the suits, by fondling necklace, bracelet, earring, finger ring, were worthless, I couldn’t send them. The game kept on for half the night, and my partner lost steadily, until at last he had nothing left to play with any longer. And since, in these games, the players were always travelers and strangers to one another, nothing but actual money was ever used, so the loss was real.”

“The cheaters cheated,” he commented.

“But long before that, hours earlier, the man had already asked me to leave the two of them to themselves. Pointedly, but in such a polite way that there was nothing I could do but obey, or risk bringing to the point of open accusation the certainty that it was obvious he already felt about me. He pretended he was unused to playing in the presence of ladies, and wished to remove his coat and waistcoat, and the instant permission I gave him to do so, he rejected, so I had to go. My partner tried to forbid it by every urgent signal at his command, but there was no further use in my remaining there, so I went. We’d fallen into our own trap, I’m afraid.

“Loitering on deck, beside the rail, a woman, unaccompanied like myself, presently stopped beside me and struck up a conversation. I was not used to chatting with other women, there was no meat in it for my purpose, so at first I gave her only half an ear.

“She was a fool. Within the space of minutes she was telling me all her business, unsolicited. Who she was, where she was bound, what her purpose in going there was. She was too trustful, she had no experience of the outside world. Especially the world of the river boats, and the people you meet on them.

“I tried to shake her off at first, but without succeeding. She attached herself to me, followed me around. It was as though she were starving for a confidante, had to have someone to pour out her heart to, she was brimming so full of romantic anticipations. She gave me your name, and, stopping by a lighted doorway, insisted on taking out and showing me the picture you had sent her, and even reading passages from the last letter or two you had sent her, as though they were Holy Gospel.

“At last, just when I was beginning to feel I could bear no more of it without revealing my true feelings by a burst of temper that would have startled her into silence once and for all, she discovered the — for her — lateness of the hour and fled in the direction of her own cabin like a tardy child, turning all the way to wave back at me, she was so taken by me.

“We had a bitter quarrel later that night, he and I. He accused me of neglecting our ‘business.’ Unwisely, in self-defense, I told him about her. That she was on her way, sight unseen, to marry a man worth one hundred thousand dollars, who—”

He straightened alertly. “How could she know that?” he said sharply. “I only told the ‘you’ that was supposed to be she after you’d once arrived and were standing on the dock beside me.”

She laughed humorlessly. “She’d investigated, long before she’d ever left St. Louis. I may have fooled you in the greater way, but she fooled you just as surely in the lesser.”

He held silent for a long moment, almost as if finding in this new revelation of feminine guile some amelioration of her own.

Presently, unurged, as if gauging to a nicety the length of time he should be allowed for contemplation, of what she knew him to be contemplating, she proceeded.

“I saw him look at me when I told him that. He broke off our quarrel then and there, and left me, and paced the deck for a while. I can only tell you what happened as it happened. I did not know then its meaning as it was happening. Looking back, I can give it meaning now. I couldn’t have then. You must believe me. You must, Lou.”

She clasped her hands, and brought them close before his face, and wrung them supplicatingly.

“I must? By what compulsion?”

“This is the truth I’m telling tonight. Every word the truth, if never before, if never again.”

If never before, if never again, he caught himself gullibly repeating after her, unheard in his own mind.

“I went out again to find him, to ask him if he intended to recoup his losses any more that night; if he’d have any further need of me, or if I could shut my door and go to sleep. I found him motionless, in deep thought, against the rail. The moon was down and the river was getting dark. We were still coasting the lower Missouri shore, I think we were to clear it before dawn. I scarcely knew him for sure until I was at his elbow, he was so indistinct in the gloom.

“He said to me in a whisper, ‘Knock on her door and invite her out for a walk on deck with you.’

“I said, ‘But it’s late, she may have already retired. She’s unused to hours such as we keep.’

“‘Do as I tell you!’ he ordered me fiercely. ‘Or I’ll put some compliance into you with my fists. Find some way of bringing her out here, you’ll know how. Tell her you are lonely and want company. Or tell her there are some lights coming presently on the shore that are not to be missed, that she must see. If she is as innocent as you say, any excuse should do.’

“And he gave me a push that nearly sent me face down to the deck boards.”

“You went?”

“I went. What could I do? Why should I suffer for a stranger? What stranger had ever suffered for me?”

He didn’t answer that.

“I went to her door and I knocked, and when she called out, startled, to ask who it was, I remember answering in honeyed tones to reassure her, ‘It’s your new little friend, Miss Charlotte.’”

“You had that name upon the boat?”

“For that voyage. She opened at once, so great was her trust in me. She had not yet removed her clothes, but told me she had been about to do so. If only she already had!”

“You’re merciful now in retrospect,” he let her know. “You weren’t at the time.”

She didn’t flinch. “I delivered my invitation. I complained of a headache, and refusing all the remedies she instantly put herself out to offer me, said I preferred to let the fresh air cure it, and would she walk with me a while, because of the lateness of the hour.

“I remember I was strangely uneasy, as to what his intentions might be — oh, I knew he boded her no good, but I didn’t dare allow myself to believe he meant her any actual bodily harm; some intricate blackmailing scheme, at most, I thought, to be brought to bear on her later, once she was married to you — and even as I spoke, I kept hoping she would refuse me, and I could give him that for an excuse. But she seemed to have become inordinately fond of me. Before I could ask her twice she had already accepted, her face all alight with pleasure at my seeking her out. She hurriedly put a shawl about her for warmth, and closed the door after her, and came away with me.”

His interest had been trapped in spite of himself. “You are telling the truth, Julia? You are telling the truth?” he said with bated breath.

“Bonny,” she murmured deprecatingly.

“You are telling the truth? You did not know, actually, what the intent was?”

“Why do I kneel here at your feet like this? Why are there tears of regret in my eyes? Look at them well. What shall I say to you, what shall I do? Shall I take an oath on it? Fetch a Bible. Open it before me. Hold its pages to my heart as I speak.”

He had never seen her cry before. He wondered if she ever had. She cried as one unused to crying, who leashes it, stifles it, not knowing what it is, rather than one who has many times before made use of it for her own ends, and hence knows it is an advantage and lets it flow untrammelled, even abets it.

He waved aside the suggestion that his own skepticism had produced. “And then? And then?” he pressed her.

“We walked the full length of the deck three times, in harmonious intimacy, as women will together.” She stopped for a moment.

“What is it?”

“Something I just remembered. And wish I had not. Her arm was about my waist as we walked. Mine was not about hers, at least, but hers was about me. She chattered again about you, endlessly about you. It was always you, only you.”

She drew a breath, as if again feeling the tension of that night, that promenade upon the lonely, darkened deck.

“Nothing happened. He did not accost us. At every shadow I had been ready to stifle a scream, but none of them was he. At last I had no further excuse to keep her out there with me. She asked me how my headache was, and I said it was gone. And she couldn’t have dreamed the relief with which I told her so.

“I took her back to her door. She turned to me a moment, I remember, and even kissed my hand in fond good night, she was so taken with me. She said ‘I’m so glad we’ve met, Charlotte. I’ve never really had a woman friend of my very own. You must come and see me and my—’ and then she faltered prettily — ‘my new husband, visit with us, as soon as we’re settled. I shall want new friends badly in my new life.’ And then she opened her door and went in. Unharmed, untouched. I even heard her bolt it fast after her on the inside.

“And that was the last I ever saw of her.”

She came to a full halt, as if knowing this was the time for it, to gain fullest the effect she wished to achieve.

“No more than that you participated?” he said slowly.

“No more than that I participated. No more than that I took part in it, whatever it was.

“I have thought of it since then,” she resumed presently. “I see now what it was, what it must have been. I didn’t at the time, or I would never have left her. I had thought he meant to accost her on the deck in some way; brutalize her into some predicament from which she could only extricate herself later by payment of money, or even steal some memento from her to be redeemed later in the same way, to preserve your trust in her and her own good name. It even occurred to me, as I made my way back to my own cabin alone, he might have changed his mind entirely, discarded the whole intention, whatever it had been. I’d known him to do that before, after a scheme was already under way, and without notifying me until afterward.”

She shook her head sombrely. “No, he hadn’t.

“He must have inserted himself in the cabin while she was gone from it with me, and lain in wait there on the inside. He wanted the opportunity, that was why he had me stroll the deck with her.”

“But later — he never told you in so many words what happened in there, inside that cabin of hers?”

She shook her head firmly. “He never told me in so many words. Nor could I draw it out of him. He had no moments of confidence, no moments of weakness, especially not with women. The way in which he told me of it was not meant to be believed; I knew that, and he knew that as well. It was just a catch phrase, to gloss over a thing, to have done with it as quickly as possible. And yet that is the only way in which he would tell me of it, from first to last. And I must be content with that, that was all I got.”

“And what was that?”

“This is the way in which he told me of it, word for word. He came and knocked surreptitiously upon my door, and woke me, about an hour before daylight, when the whole boat was still asleep. He was fully dressed, but whether newly so or still from the night before, I don’t know. He had a single scratch on his forehead, over the eyebrow. A very small one, not more than a half-inch mark. And that was all.

“He came in, closed the door carefully, and said to me very business-like and terse in manner, ‘Get dressed, I want you for something. Your lady friend of last night had an accident awhile ago and fell from the boat in the dark. She never came up again.’ And then he flung my various things at me, stockings and such, one by one, to hurry me along. That was all he told me, then or ever again, that she’d had an accident and fallen from the boat in the dark.”

“But you knew?”

“How could I help but know? I told him I knew. He even so much as agreed I might know, admitted I might know. But his answer for that was ‘What are you going to do about it?’

“I told him that wasn’t in our bargain. ‘Card-games are one thing, this another.’

“He carefully took off his ring first, so it wouldn’t mar my skin, and he gave me the back of his hand several times, until my head swam, and, as he put it, ‘it had taken a little of the religion out of me.’ He threatened me. He said if I accused him, he would accuse me in turn. That we would both be jailed for it alike. And I had been seen with her, and he hadn’t. That it would serve neither one of us any good, and undo the two of us alike. He also threatened, finally, that he would kill me himself if necessary, as the quickest way of stopping my mouth, if I tried to get anyone’s ear.

“Then when he saw he had me sufficiently cowed and intimidated to listen, he reasoned with me. ‘She’s gone now beyond recall,’ he pointed out, ‘nothing you can do will bring her back up over the side, and there’s a hundred thousand dollars waiting for you when you step off this boat in New Orleans tomorrow.’

“He swung back the door for me, and I adjusted my clothing, and followed him out.

“He took my baggage, the little I had, into his cabin and blended it with his. And hers we removed, between us, from her cabin to mine, to take the place of my own. Not forgetting that caged bird of hers. He took from his pocket her letters from you, and the photograph you had sent her, and I put them in my own pocketbook. And then we bided our time and waited.

“In the confusion of docking and disembarking she was not missed. No passenger remembered her, they were all busy with their own concerns. And each baggage-handler, if he noted her empty cabin at all, must have thought some other baggage-handier had taken charge of her and her belongings. We left the boat separately, he at the very beginning, I almost at the last. And that was not noticed either.

“I saw you standing there, and knew you from your photograph, and when at last the dock had cleared, I approached and stopped there by you. And there’s the story, Lou.”

She stopped, and settled back upon her own upturned heels, and her hands fell lifeless to her lap, as if incapable of further gesture. She seemed to wait thus, inert, deflated, for the verdict, for his judgment to be passed upon her. Everything about her sloped downward, shoulders, head, and even the curve of her back; only one thing turned upward: her eyes, fixed beseechingly upon his graven face.

“Not quite,” he said. “Not quite. And what of What’s-his-name? What was the further plan?”

“He said he would send word to me when enough time had passed. And when I heard from him, I was to—”

“Do as you did.”

She shook her head determinedly. “Not as I did. As it seemed to you I did, maybe. I met him once for a few moments, in secret, when I was out on one of my shopping tours without you — that part was by prearrangement — and I told him there was no need for him to count on me any longer, he must abandon the scheme, I could no longer prevail on myself to carry it out.”

“Why did you have a change of heart?”

“Why must you be told that now?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“It would be breath wasted. It wouldn’t be believed.”

“Let me be the judge.”

“Very well then, if you must be told,” she said almost defiantly. “I told him I could no longer contemplate doing what it had been intended for me to do. I told him I’d fallen in love with my own husband.”

It was like a rainbow suddenly glistening in all its striped glory across dismal gray skies. He told himself it was an illusion, just as surely as its counterpart, the actual rainbow, is an illusion in Nature. But it wouldn’t dim, it wouldn’t waver; there it beamed, the sign of hope, the sign heralding sunshine to come.

She had gone on without interruption, but the grateful shock of that previous remark, still flooding over him in benign warmth, had caused him to lose the sense of a part of her words.

“—laughed and said I no more knew what love was than the man in the moon. Then he turned vengeful and told me I was lying and simply trying to keep the whole of the stake for myself alone.”

I’d fallen in love, kept going through his head, dimming the sound of her voice. It was like a counterpoint that intrudes upon the basic melody and all but effaces it.

“I tried to buy him off. I said he could have the money, all I could lay my hands on, almost as much as he might have expected in the first place, if he would only quit New Orleans, let me be. Yes, I offered to rob my own husband, endanger the very thing I was trying to hold onto, if he would only let me be, let me stay as I was, happy for the first time in my life.”

Happy for the first time in her life, the paean swelled through his mind. She was really happy with me.

“If he would only have accepted the bribe, I had in mind some desperate excuse to you — that my purse had been snatched in a crowd, that I’d dropped the money in the street, after drawing it from the bank; that my ‘sister’ had suddenly fallen ill and was without means, and I’d sent it to her in St. Louis — oh, anything, anything at all, no matter how thin, how paltry, so long as it was less discreditable than the reality. Yes, I would have risked your displeasure, your disapproval, even worse than that, your very real suspicion, if only I was allowed to keep you for myself as I wanted to, to go on with you.”

To go on with you. He could remember the warmth of her kisses now, the unbridled gaiety of her smiles. What actress could have played such a part, morning, noon, and night? Even actresses play but an hour or two of an evening, have a respite the rest of the time. It must have been sincere reality. He could remember the look in her eyes when he took leave of her that last day; a sort of lingering, reluctant melancholy. (But had it been there then, or was he putting it in now?)

“That wouldn’t satisfy him, wouldn’t do. He wanted all of it, not part. And, I suppose, there was truly no solution. No matter how large a sum I would have given him, he would still have thought I was keeping far more than that myself. He trusted no one — I heard it said of him, in a quarrel once — not even himself.

“Taking me at my word, that I loved you, he discovered he had a more powerful threat to hold over me now. And no sooner had he discovered it, than he brought it into play. That he would reveal my imposture to you himself, anonymously, in a letter, if I refused to carry out our deal. He wouldn’t have his money, maybe, but neither should I have what I wanted. We’d both be fugitives alike, and back where we started from. ‘And if you intercept my letter,’ he warned, ‘that won’t help you any. I’ll go to him myself and make the accusation to his face. Let him know you’re not only not who you claimed, but were my sweetheart all those years to boot.’ Which wasn’t true,” she added rather rapidly in an aside. “‘We’ll see how long he’ll keep you with him then.’

“And as I left him that day,” she went on. “I knew it was no use, no matter what I did. I knew I was surely going to lose you, one way or another.

“I passed a sleepless night. The letter came, all right. I’d known it would. He was as good as his word, in all things like that; and only in things like that. I seized it. I was waiting there by the door when the post came. I tore it open and read it. I can still remember how it went. ‘The woman you have there in your house with you is not the woman you take her to be, but someone of another name, and another man’s sweetheart as well. I am that man, and so I know what I am saying. Keep a close watch upon your money, Mr. Durand. If you disbelieve me, watch her face closely when you say to her without warning, “Bonny, come here to me,” and see how it pales.’ And it was signed, ‘A friend.’

“I destroyed it, but I knew the postponement I’d gained was only for a day or two. He’d send another. Or he’d come himself. Or he’d take me unaware sometime when I was out alone, and I’d be found lying there with a knife-hilt in my side. I knew him well; he never forgave anyone who crossed him.” She tried to smile, and failed in the attempt. “My doll house had come tumbling down all about my ears.

“So I made my decision, and I fled.”

“To him.”

“No,” she said dully, almost as if this detail were a matter of indifference, now, this long after. “I took the money, yes. But I fled from him just as surely as I deserted you. That small satisfaction was all I had out of it: he hadn’t gained his way. The rest was ashes. All my happiness lay behind me. I remember thinking at the time, we formed a triangle, we three, a strange one. You were love, and he was death — and I was the mid-point between the two.

“I fled as far away as I could. I took the northbound boat and kept from sight until it had left New Orleans an hour behind. I went to Memphis first, and then to Louisville, and at last to Cincinnati, and stayed there hidden for some time. I was in fear for my life for a while. I knew he would have surely killed me had he found me. And then one day, in Cincy, I heard a report from someone who had once known us both slightly when we were together, that he had lost his life in a shooting affray in a gaming house in Cairo. So the danger was past. But it was too late by that time to undo what had been done. I couldn’t return to you any more.”

And the look she gave him was of a poignancy that would have melted stone.

“I made my way back South again, now that it was safe to do so, and only a few weeks ago met this Colonel Worth, and now I’m as you find me. And that’s my story, Lou.”

She waited, and the silence, now that she was through speaking, seemed to prolong itself into eternity.

He was looking at her steadfastly, but uttered not a word. But behind that calm, reflective, judicious front he maintained so stoically, there was an unguessed turmoil, raging, a chaos, of credulity and disbelief, accusation and refutation, pro and con, to and fro, and around and around and around like a whirlpool.

She took your money, none the less; why, if she “loved” you so? She was about to face the world alone for years to come, she knew only too well how hard it is for a woman alone to get along in the world, she’d had that lesson from before. Can you blame her?

How do you know she didn’t cheat the two of you alike; that what it was, was nothing more than what he accused her of, of running off and keeping the entire booty for herself, without dividing it with him? A double betrayal, instead of a single.

At least she is innocent of Julia’s death, you heard that. How do you know even that? The living, the survivor, is here to tell her side of the tale to you, but the dead, the victim, is not here to tell you hers. It might be a different story.

You loved her then, you do not question yourself on that. Why then do you doubt her when she says she loved you then? Is she not as capable of love as you? And who are you to say who is to feel love, and who is not? Love is like a magnet, that attracts its like. She must have loved you, for your love to be drawn to her. Just as you must have loved her — and you know you did — for her love to be drawn to you. Without one love, there cannot be another. There must be love on both sides, for the current to complete itself.

“Aren’t you going to say something to me, Lou?”

“What is there to say?”

“I can’t tell you that. It must come from you.”

“Must it?” he said drily. “And if there is nothing there to give you, no answer?”

“Nothing, Lou?” Her voice took on a singsong timbre. “Nothing?” It became a lulling incantation. “Not even a word?” Her face rose subtly nearer to his. “Not even — this much?” He had seen pictures, once, somewhere, of India, of cobras rising from their huddles to the charmer’s tune. And like one of those, so sleekly, so unguessably, she had crept upward upon him before he knew it; but this was the serpent charming the master, not the master the serpent. “Not even — this?”

Suddenly he was caught fast, entwined with her as with some treacherous tropic plant. Lips of fire were fused with his. He seemed to breathe flame, draw it down his windpipe into his breast, where the dry tinder of his loneliness, of his long lack of her, was kindled by it into raging flame, that pyred upward, sending back her kiss with insane fury.

He struggled to his feet, and she rose with him, they were so interlocked. He flung her off with all the violence he would have used against another man in full-bodied combat; it was needed, nothing less would have torn her off.

She staggered, toppled, fell down prone, one arm alone, thrust out behind her, keeping one shoulder and her head upward a little from the floor.

And lying there, all rumpled and abased, yet somehow she had on her face the glint of victory, on her lips a secretive smile of triumph. As though she knew who had won the contest, who had lost. She lolled there at her ease, too sure of herself even to take the trouble to rise. It was he who wallowed, from chair back to chair back, stifling, blinded, like something maimed; his ears pounding to his own blood, clawing at his collar, as if the ghosts of her arms were still there, strangling him.

He stood over her at last, clenched hand upraised above his head, as if in threat to strike her down a second time should she try to rise. “Get yourself ready!” he roared at her. “Get your things! Not that nor anything else will change it! I’m taking you back to New Orleans!”

She sidled away from him a little along the floor, as if to put herself beyond his reach, though her smirk denied her fear; then gathered herself together, rose with an innate grace that nothing could take from her, not even such violent downfall.

She seemed humbled, docile to his bidding, seemed resigned; all but that knowing smile, that gave it the lie. She made no further importunity. She swept back her hair, a lock of which had tumbled forward with her fall. Her shoulders hinted at a shrug. Her hands gave an empty slap at her sides, recoiled again, as if in fatalistic acceptance.

He turned his back on her abruptly, as he saw her hands go to the fastenings at the side of her waist, already partly sundered.

“I’ll wait out here in this little entryway,” he said tautly, and strode for it.

“Do so,” she agreed ironically. “It is some time now that we have been apart.”

He sat down on a little backless wall-bench that lined the place, just within the outer apartment door.

She came slowly over after him and slowly swung the second door around, the one between them, leaving it just short of closure.

“My windows are on the second floor,” she reassured him, still with that overtone of irony. “And there is no ladder outside them. I am not likely to try to escape.”

He bowed his head suddenly, as sharply as if his neck had fractured, and pressed his two clenched hands tight against his forehead, through the center of which a vein stood out like whipcord, pulsing and throbbing with a congestion of love battling hate and hate battling love, that he alone could have told was going on, so still he crouched.

So they remained, on opposite sides of a door that was not closed. The victor and the vanquished. But on which side was which?

A drawer ticked open, scraped closed again, behind the door. A whiff of fresh essence drifted out and found him, as if skimmed off the top of a field of the first flowers of spring. The light peering through from the other side dimmed somewhat, as if one or more of its contributing agents had been eliminated.

Suddenly he turned his head, finding the door had already been standing open a second or two before his discovery of it. She was standing there in the inviting new breadth of its opening, one arm to door, one arm to frame. The foaming laces that cascaded down her were transparent as haze against the light bearing directly on her from the room at her back. Her silhouette was that of a biped.

Her eyes were dreamy-lidded, her half-smile a recaptured memory of forgotten things.

“Come in, Lou,” she murmured indulgently, as if to a stubborn little boy who has put himself beyond the pale. “Put out the light there by you and come into your wife’s room.”