Waltz Into Darkness

46

The eye, falling upon them unwarned half an hour later, would have mistaken them for a pretty picture of domesticity; discussing some problem of meeting household expense, perhaps, or of planning the refurnishing of a room.

He sat now, legs outspread, head lolling back, in a chair with arms, and she sat perched on one of the arms of it, close beside him, her hand occasionally straying absently to his hair, as they mulled and talked it over.

He had been holding a glass, a succeeding one, in his hand. She took it away from him at last and placed it on the table. “No more of that just now,” she admonished, and patted him on the head. “You must keep your head clear for this.”

“It’s hopeless, Bonny,” he said wanly.

“It’s nothing of the sort.” Again she patted him on the head. “I’ve been—”

She didn’t finish it, but somehow he guessed what she’d been about to say. I’ve been in situations like this before. He wondered where, he wondered when. He wondered who had done it, who she’d been with at the time.

“To run flying out of here,” she resumed, as if taking up a discussion that had been allowed to lapse some little time before, “would be the most foolhardy thing people in — our position — could do.” As if hearing her from a great distance, he was amazed at how prim, how mincing, her words sounded; as if she were a pretty young schoolmistress patiently instructing a not-very-bright pupil in his lesson. She should have had some embroidery on her lap, and her eyes downcast to it as she spoke, to match her tone of voice.

“We can’t stay, Bonny,” he faltered. “What are we going to do? How can we stay?” And hid his eyes for a moment behind his own hand. “It’s already an hour.”

“How long was it before I came home?” she asked with an almost scientific detachment.

“I don’t know. It seemed like a long time—” He started up rebelliously from the chair. “We could have been far from here, already. We should have been!”

She pressed him gently but firmly back.

“We’re not staying,” she calmed him. “But we’re not rushing off helter-skelter either, at the drop of a hat. Don’t you know what that would mean? In a few hours at most, someone would have found it out, be on our heels.”

“Well, they will anyway!”

“No they won’t. Not if we play our cards right. We’ll go in our own good time. But that comes last of all, when we’re good and ready for it. The first thing is—” she hooked her thumb negligently across the room, “—that has to be got out of the way.”

“Taken outside the house?” he suggested dubiously.

She gnawed her lips reflectively. “Wait, let me think a minute.” At last she shook her head, said slowly: “No, not outside— We’d be seen. Almost certainly.”

“Then—?”

“Somewhere inside,” she said, with a slight motion of her shoulders, as though that were to be understood, went without saying. The idea horrified him. “Right here in the house—?”

“Of course. It’s a lot safer. In fact, it’s the only thing for us to do. We’re here alone, just the two of us; no servants. We can take all the time we need—”

“Ugh,” he groaned.

She was pondering again, worrying her lip; she seemed to have no time for emotion. She frightened him almost as much as the fact they were trying to conceal.

“One of the fireplaces?” he faltered. “There are two large ones down on this floor—”

She shook her head. “That would only be a matter of days.”

“A closet?”

“Worse. A matter of hours.” She stretched her foot out and tapped down her heel a couple of times. Then she nodded, as if she were at last nearing a satisfactory decision. “One of the floors.”

“They’re hardwood. It would be noticed the minute anyone came into the room.”

“The cellar. What’s the floor of that like?”

He couldn’t recall having seen it; had never been down there, to his knowledge.

She quitted the chair abruptly. The period of incubation had ended, the period of action had begun. “Wait a minute. I’ll go down take a look.” From the doorway, without turning her head, she warned: “Don’t take any more of those drinks while I’m gone.”

She came running back, squinting shrewdly. “Hard dirt. That’ll do.”

She had to think for the two of them. She pulled at him briskly by the shoulder. “Come on, let’s get it down there awhile. It’s better than leaving it up here until we’re ready. Someone may come to the door in the meantime.”

He went over to it and stopped, trying to quell the nausea assailing his stomach.

She had to think of everything. “Hadn’t you better take your coat off? It’ll hamper you.”

She took it from him and draped it carefully over a chair back, so that it would not wrinkle. She even brushed a little at one of the sleeves for a moment, before letting it be.

He wondered how such a commonplace, everyday act, her helping him off with his coat, could seem so grisly to him, making him quail to his marrow.

He took it up by its middle, the furled rug, packed it underarm, clasping it overarm with his other. One end, where the feet presumably were, of necessity slanted and dragged on the floor, of its own weight. The other end, where the head was, he managed to keep upward.

He advanced a few paces, draggingly. Suddenly the weight had eased, the lower end had lost its restraining drag on the floor. He looked, and she was holding that for him, helping him.

“No, for God’s sake, no!” he said sickly. “Not you—”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, Louis,” she answered impatiently. “It’s a lot quicker this way!” Then she added, with somewhat less asperity, “It’s just a rug to me. I can’t see anything.”

They traveled with it out of the room, and along the cellarward passage to its back. Then had to stop and set it down, while he opened the door. Then in through there, and down the stairs, to cellar bottom. Then set it down once more, for good.

He was breathing hard. He passed his hand over his forehead.

“Heavy,” she agreed. She blew out her breath, with a slight smile.

All the little things she did horrified him so. His blood almost turned cold at that.

They picked a place for it against the wall. She used the sharp toe of her shoe to test several, kicking and prodding at them, before settling on it. “I think this is about the best. It’s a little less compact here.”

He picked up a piece of rotting, discarded timber, broke it over his upthrust knee to obtain a sharp point.

“You’re not going to do it with that, are you? It would take you the live-long night!” There was almost a hint of risibility in her voice, inconceivable as that was to him.

He drove it into the hard-packed floor, and it promptly broke a second time, proving its worthlessness.

“It’ll take a shovel,” she said. “Nothing else will do.”

“There’s none down here.”

“There’s none anywhere in the house. We’ll have to bring one in.” She started up the steps. He remained standing there. She turned at their top and beckoned him. “I’ll go out and get it,” she said. “You’re kind of shaky yet, I can see that. Don’t stay down there while I’m gone, it’ll make you worse. Wait upstairs for me.”

He followed her up, closed the cellar door after him.

She put on her poke bonnet, threw a shawl over her shoulders, as if it were the merest domestic errand she were going upon.

“Do you think it’s prudent?” he said.

“People buy shovels, you know. There need be no harm in that. It’s all in the way you carry it off.”

She went toward the outside door, and he trailed behind her.

She turned to him there. “Keep your courage up, honey.” She held his chin fast, kissed him on the lips.

He’d never known a kiss could be such a gruesome thing before.

“Stay up here, away from it,” she counselled. “And don’t go back to that liquor.” She was like a conscientious mother giving a small boy last minute injunctions, putting him on his good behavior, before leaving him to himself.

The door closed, and he watched her for a moment through its pane. Saw her go down the front walk, just like any bustling little matron on a housewifely errand. She was even diligently stroking her mittens on as she turned up the road and went from sight.

He was left alone with his dead.

He sought the nearest room at hand, not the one in which it had happened, and collapsed into a chair, and huddled there inert, his face pressed inward against its back, and waited for her to return.

It seemed hours before she did. And it must, in truth, have been the better part of one.

She brought it in with her. She was carrying it openly — but then how else was she to have carried it? Its bit was wrapped in brown paper, tied with a string. The stick protruded unconcealed.

“Was I long?”

“Forever,” he groaned.

“I deliberately went out of my way,” she explained. “I didn’t want to buy it too near here, where we’re known by sight.”

“It was a mistake to get it at all, don’t you think?”

She gave him a confident smirk. “Not in the way I did it. I did not ask to buy a shovel at all. It was his advice that I buy one. What I asked was what implement he could suggest my using to cultivate in the space behind our house, whether a spade or a rake. I was dubious of a shovel; it took all his persuasion to convince me.” She wagged her head cocksurely.

And she could stand there and dicker; he thought, incredulous.

He took it from her.

“Shall I come down with you?” she offered, carefully removing her bonnet with both hands, replacing the pins in it, and setting it down meticulously so that its shape would not suffer.

“No,” he said in a stifled voice. To have had her watch him would have been an added horror, for some reason, that he could not have borne. “I’ll let you know when — I’ve done.”

She gave him helpful last minute instructions. “Mark it off first. You know, how long and how wide you’ll want it. With the tip of the shovel. That’ll keep you from doing more work than is needful.”

His silent answer to this was the reflex of retching.

He closed the door after him, went down the steps.

The lamp was still burning where they’d left it before.

He turned it up higher. Then that was too bright, it showed him too much; he quickly moderated it a little.

He’d never dug a grave before.

He marked it off first, as she’d told him. He drove the shovel into the marked-off space and left it, standing upright of its own weight. He rolled his shirt sleeves up out of the way.

Then he took up the shovel and began.

The digging part was not so bad. It was behind him, out of sight, while he was at it. Horror, though it did not disappear altogether, was kept to a minimum. It might have been just a necessary trench or pit he was digging.

But then when he was through—

It took him some moments to work himself up to the necessary pitch of resoluteness. Then suddenly he walked rapidly over to it, from the far side of the cellar, where he’d withdrawn and kept his back to it in the interim.

He dragged the rug over, placed it even with the waiting cavity’s edge. Then, taking a restraining hold along its exposed flap, he pushed the rounded part from him. It unrolled and emptied itself into the trough, with no more than a sodden thump. Then he drew it up. It came back to him again facilely unweighted. An arm flung up for a moment, but quickly dropped back again.

He avoided looking into it. He stepped around it to the other side, where the mound of disinterred fill was, and, holding his face averted, began to push and scrape that down into it with the back of the shovel.

Then when at last he had to look, to see how far he had progressed, the worst was over. There was no longer any face down there to confront him. There was just a fragmentary midsection seeming to float there on the surface, as it were; peering through the surrounding film of earth.

Then that went, presently.

“And all God’s work has come to this,” passed through his mind.

He had to tramp and stamp on it, at the end, to firm it down. That part was bad too.

He kept it up far longer than was needful. As if to keep what lay under from ever coming out again. He almost seemed to be doing a jig of fear and despair, unable to quit of his own volition.

He looked up suddenly.

She was standing there at head of the steps watching him.

“How did you know just when?” he panted, haggard.

“I came down twice to see how far along you were. I went back again without disturbing you. I thought perhaps you’d best be left alone.” She looked at him inscrutably. “I didn’t think you’d be able to go through with it to the finish. But you did, didn’t you?” Whether that was praise or not, he couldn’t tell.

He kicked the shovel out of his path, tottered up the steps toward her.

He fell before he’d quite reached her. Or rather, let himself fall. He lay there, extended on the step, face buried in one arm, and sobbed a little.

She bent over toward him. Her hand came down upon his shoulder, consolingly.

“There, now. It’s over. It’s done. There’s nothing more to worry about.”

“I’ve killed a man,” he said smotheredly. “I’ve killed a man. God has forbidden that.”

She gave a curt, humorless snuff of laughter. “Soldiers in a battle kill them by the tens and never give it a second thought. They even give them medals for it.”

She plucked at him by the arm, until he had found his feet again, stood beside her.

“Come, let’s get out of here.”

She stepped down there a moment to get the lamp, which he had forgotten, bring it with her, put it out. Then she closed the door after the two of them. She brushed her fingertips off fastidiously, against each other; no doubt from having touched the lamp. Or perhaps—

She put her arm comfortingly about his waist, as she rejoined him. “Come upstairs to bed. You’re worn out. It’s nearly ten o’clock, did you know that? You’ve been down there four full hours.”

“You mean—?” He didn’t think he’d heard her aright. “Sleep here in this same house tonight?”

She cast up her hand, as if at the nonsense of such a qualm. “It’s late. What trains are there any more? And even if there were, people don’t bolt out suddenly in the middle of the night. That would give them something to—”

“But knowing, as we do, Bonny. Knowing all the time, you and I both, what lies—”

“Don’t be childish. Just put it from your mind. It’s all the way down in the cellar. We’re — all the way up in the bedroom.”

She tugged at him until she got him to climb beside her.

“You’re like a little boy who’s afraid of the dark,” she mocked.

He said nothing more.

In the lamplit bedroom he watched her covertly, while apathetically, with numbed motions, drawing off his own things. There was no difference to be detected in the bustling routine with which she prepared herself for retirement, from any other night. Again certain under-layers of garments billowed up over her head in as much armless commotion as ever. Again the petticoats dropped to the floor and she stepped aside from them, one after the other. Again her unbound hair was trapped first on the inside of her high-collar flannel gown, then freed and brought to the outside, with a little backward shake. Every move was normal, unforced.

She even sat to the mirror and stroked her hair with the brush.

He lay back and closed his eyes, with a weazened sickish feeling.

They didn’t say goodnight to one another. She perhaps thought he was already asleep, or was a little offended at his excess of morality. He was glad of that, at least. Glad she didn’t try to kiss him. He had a curious sensation for a moment or two, that if she had tried, he would have, involuntarily, reared up, run for the window, and hurled himself through it.

She turned their bedside lamp and the room dimmed indigo.

He lay there motionless, as rigid, as extended, as what he had put into the trough down below in the cellar awhile ago.

Not only couldn’t he sleep, he was afraid to sleep. He wouldn’t have let himself if he could have. He was fearful of meeting the man he had just slain, should he drift across the border.

She too was sleepless, however, in spite of all her insouciance. He heard her turning about a number of times. Presently she gave a foreshortened sigh of impatience. Then he heard the bed frame jar slightly as she propped herself up on her arm.

He could somehow tell, in another moment, that she was leaning over toward him. The direction of her breath, perhaps, coming toward him.

Her silken whisper reached him.

“Awake, Lou?”

He kept his eyes closed.

He heard her get up, the rustle as she put something over her. Heard her take up the lamp, tread softly from the room with it, unlighted. Then outside the door, left ajar, the slowly burgeoning glow as she lit it. Then this receded as she bore it down the stairs with her.

His breath started to quicken. Was she leaving him? Was she about to commit some act of disloyalty, of betrayal, in the depths of night? Terrified, he suddenly burst the frozen mould that had encased him, started up himself, flung something on, crept cautiously out into the hall.

He could see the light from below peering wanly up the stairs. He could hear a faint sound now and again, as she moved softly about.

He felt his way down the stairs, step by step, his breath erratic, and rearward toward where the light was coming from. Then stepped up to the doorway at last and confronted her.

She was seated at the table, in the lamplight, holding a chicken-joint in her hand and busily gnawing at it.

“I was hungry, Lou,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t have any supper.” And then, putting her hand to the vacant chair beside her and swiveling it out invitingly, “Join me?”