Waltz Into Darkness

48

She seemed to be gone the whole morning. How could it take that long just to buy tickets for a train? he asked himself over and over again, sweating agony. How? How? Even if you bought them twice over, three times over?

He was pacing endlessly back and forth, holding tightly clasped between his two hands, as if afraid to lose it, a cup of the coffee she had left for him warming on the stove. But the plume of steam that had at first, with a sort of rippling sluggishness, traced his course behind him on the air, had long since thinned and vanished. He took a hurried swallow every so often, but dipping his mouth nervously down into the cup, held low as it was, rather than raising it to his lips. He wasn’t aware of its taste, or of its degree of warmth, or even what it was.

She wasn’t coming back, that was it. She’d abandoned him, boarded a train by herself, left him to meet the consequences of his own act as best he might. Sweat would start out anew at the thought, sweat that hurt like blood, though it was only the dew of fear. Then he would remember that she had intentionally awakened him before leaving, that she would have carefully avoided that above all had desertion been her purpose, and he’d breathe again and his misgivings would abate somewhat. Only to return again presently, stronger than ever, as if on a wicked punishing spiral.

He was in the midst of this inner turmoil, when suddenly, on the outside, crisis confronted him, and he was alone to face it.

There was a knocking at the door that he knew could not possibly be hers, and when he peered from one of the sideward frontal windows, cloaking his face with the edge of the drape, there was a coach and coachman standing waiting empty out before the house for someone.

The rapping came again. And when he drew nearer, through the inside of the house, and stole a frightened look out from mid-hall toward the glass curtain veiling the upper part of the door, there were the filmy shadowed busts of a man and a woman imprinted on it, standing waiting on the threshold.

Side by side, in chiaroscuro; the cone of a man’s tophat, the slanting line of a woman’s bonnet brim.

The knocking repeated itself, and seemed to trap his voice into issuing forth, against every intent of his own to use it. “Who’s there?” Too late he tried to stem it, to recall it, but it was already gone.

“Dollard,” a man’s voice answered, deeply resonant.

He didn’t know the name, couldn’t identify it.

Unmanned, he quailed there.

The voice came again. “May I speak with you a minute, Mr. Durand?”

So the voice knew him at least. It was no mistake, it was he that was wanted.

He would have been incapable of further movement, even after having revealed himself, had they let him be.

But his name came again. “Mr. Durand.” And then the knocking, puzzled now and questioning. And then his name again. “Mr. Durand. Hello! Mr. Durand?”

He was drawn to it as if in a trancelike condition, and unbolted, and drew it back.

They flamed instantly into full color, from the pewter silhouettes they had been, and into full stature, from the shoulder busts.

The woman was dark haired, sallow skinned, rather thin of face but pretty none the less; wearing a costume of grape velveteen, adorned with black frogs across the bodice like a hussar’s jacket. The man was florid of face, with a copper walrus mustache drooping over the corners of his mouth, a cane handle riding over the crook of his arm, and a shirt front with small blue forget-me-nots patterned all over it.

He raised his hat to Durand, in deference to his companion, and revealed the crown of his head to be somewhat bald, and also somewhat sunburned.

Durand didn’t recognize him for a minute.

“I’m Dollard, the agent from whom you rented the house.”

He waited, ready to smile at the expected acknowledgement, but there was none.

“Mrs. Durand tells me you are unexpectedly called away and the house will be available.”

She had been there then. She had even thought of that.

“Oh,” he said stupidly. “Oh. Oh, yes. Of course.”

Dollard gave him a somewhat quizzical look, as if unable to understand his lack of immediate comprehension. “That is correct, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, realizing he’d already blundered copiously in the moment or two since he’d appeared at the door.

“Have I your permission to show this possible client through the house?”

“Now?” he murmured aghast. He could almost feel his chest pucker, as if closing up for lack of oxygen.

Dollard seemed to miss the intonation, having suddenly remembered his best business manners. “Oh, forgive me. Mrs. Thayer, may I present Mr. Durand?”

He saw the young woman glance at the forgotten coffee cup his hand still clung to, as if it were some kind of a chalice with mystic powers to save him. “I’m afraid we may have come at an unfortunate time,” she suggested deprecatingly. “We’re disturbing Mr. Durand. Should we not perhaps come back at another time, Mr. Dollard?”

The agent had already deftly inserted himself on the inside, however, and since he refused to return to her, she had to follow somewhat hesitantly to where he was, even in the act of speaking.

“I know how upset everything is when a move is contemplated; the packing and all,” she apologized.

“I’m sure Mr. Durand doesn’t mind,” Dollard said. “We won’t be very long.” And since he had unobtrusively managed to close the door after the three of them by this time, the fact was already an accomplished one.

They moved down the hall parallel to one another, the young woman in the middle; Dollard striding with heavy-footed assurance, Durand all but tottering.

“This is the hall. Notice how spacious it is.” Dollard swept his arm up, like an opera tenor on a high note.

“The light is quite good too,” agreed the young woman.

Dollard tapped his cane. “The finest hardwood parquetry. You don’t always find it.”

They advanced after the momentary halt.

“Now, in here is the parlor,” Dollard proclaimed grandly, again with a sweep.

“Is the furniture yours, Mr. Durand?” she asked.

Dollard’s answer overrode whatever one he might have brought himself to make, sparing him the necessity. “The furniture goes with the house,” he stated flatly.

She nodded her head approvingly. “This is quite a nice room. Yes, it’s quite nice.”

She had already turned her shoulder to it, about to lead them on elsewhere, and Dollard had turned in accord with her. When suddenly, as if only now struck by something he had already observed a moment ago, he looked back, pointed unexpectedly with his cane.

“Shouldn’t there be a rug here?”

The dust patch was suddenly the most conspicuous thing in the room. In the house, in the whole world. It glowed livid, as if limned with phosphorus. To Durand, at least, it almost appeared incandescent, and he felt sure they must see it that way too. He could feel his face bleaching and drawing taut over the cheekbones, as if the slack of his skin were being pulled at the back of his head by some cruel hand.

“Where?” he managed to utter.

Dollard’s cane tapped down twice, for irritated emphasis. “Here. Here.”

“Oh,” Durand said pitifully, crumbling phrases in a play for time. “Oh, there— Oh, yes — I think you’re — I’d have to ask my—” Then suddenly he’d regained command of himself, and his tone was firm, though still brittle. “It was removed to be beaten out. I remember now.”

“Then it’s outdoors?” Dollard queried, as though not wholly pleased. Without waiting to be answered, he crossed to one of the windows, lowered his head to avoid the interplay of the curtains, and swept his gaze about. “No, I fail to see it there.” He turned his head back to Durand, as if uneasily asking reassurance.

The latter’s eyelids, which had closed for a moment over some inner illness of his own, went up again in time to meet the agent’s boring glance.

“It’s safe,” he said. “It’s somewhere about the house. Just where, I couldn’t exactly—”

“It was quite valuable,” Dollard said. “I trust it hasn’t been stolen. It will have to be accounted for, of course.”

“It will be,” Durand breathed almost inaudibly.

The young woman shifted her foot slightly, in forebearing reminder that she was being detained; this instantly succeeded in recalling his present duties to Dollard, and he dropped the topic.

He hastened back to her, and tipped two fingers to her elbow in courtly guidance. “Shall we continue, Mrs. Thayer? Next I would like you to see the upstairs.”

They ascended in single file, she in the lead, Durand at the rear. They ascended slowly, and he seemed to feel each footfall imprinted on his heart, as though it were that they were treading upon. The rustle and hiss of her multiple skirts was like the sound of volatile water rushing down a wooden trough, though it flowed the other way, upward instead of down.

“You will notice the excellent light that is obtained throughout this house,” Dollard preened himself, as soon as they were on level flooring once more. He hooked his thumbs to the armholes of his waistcoat, allowed his fingers to trip contentedly against his chest. “In here, an extra little sitting room for the lady of the house. To do her sewing, perhaps.” He smiled benevolently, winked at Durand behind her back, as though to show him he knew women, knew what pleased them.

He was in fine fettle today, apparently; enjoying every moment of his often-performed duties. Durand remembered enjoyment, an academic word from the vague past; remembered the word, but not its sensation. His wrists felt as cold as though tight coils of wire were cutting into their flesh, had long since stopped all circulation.

At their bedroom door she balked, chastely withdrew the tentative foot she had put forward, as soon as she had identified it for what it was.

“And this room has a most desirable outlook,” Dollard orated heedlessly. “If you will be good enough to go in—”

Her eyes widened in dignified, gravely offered reproach. “Mr. Dollard!” she reminded him firmly. “There is a bed in there. And my husband is not accompanying me.”

“Oh, your pardon! Of course!” he protested elaborately, with recessive genuflections. “Mr. Durand?”

The two men delicately withdrew all the way up-hall to the stair-head, to wait for her, and with the impurity of mixed company thus removed, she proceeded to enter the room and inspect it at her leisure.

“A real lady,” Dollard commented admiringly under his breath, punctiliously looking the other way so that even his eyes could not seem to follow her on her unchaperoned expedition.

Durand’s hand lay draggingly on his collar, forgotten there since he had last tried to ease his throat some moments ago.

She came out again very shortly. Her color was a trifle higher than when she had gone in, since the bed had not been made up, but she had no comment to offer.

They descended again, in the same order in which they had gone up. Her undulating hand left the railing at the bottom, and she turned to Dollard.

“Have you shown me everything?”

“I believe so.” Perhaps judging her to be not yet wholly convinced of the house’s desirability, he groped for additional inducements to display to her, turned his head this way and that. “All but the cellar—”

Durand could feel a sharp contraction go through his middle, almost like a cramp. He resisted the instinctive urge to clutch at himself and bend forward.

Their eyes were not on him, fortunately; they were looking back there toward where its door was, Dollard’s gaze having led her own to it.

“It is quite a large and commodious one. Let me show you. It will only take a moment—”

They turned and paced toward it.

Durand, clinging for a necessary moment to the newel post of the banister, released it again and took a faulty step after them.

His mind was suddenly spinning, casting off excuses for delaying them like sparks from a whirring whetstone. Rats, say there are rats; she will be afraid — Cobwebs, dust; she may harm her clothes—

“There is no light,” he said hoarsely. “You will not be able to see anything. I’m afraid Mrs. Thayer may hurt herself—”

His tone was both too abrupt and too raucous for the intimate little elbow passage that now confined them all. Both turned their heads in surprise at the intensity of voice he had used, as though they were at a far greater distance. But then immediately, they seemed to take no further notice of the aberration, beyond that.

“No light in your cellar?” said Dollard with pouting dissatisfaction. “You should have a light in your cellar. What do you do when you wish to go down there yourself?” And glancing about him in mounting peevishness at thus being balked, his gaze suddenly struck the lamp which had been put down close by the doorframe by one of the two of them, Bonny or himself — Durand could no longer remember which it was — on coming up the night before.

Again he died inwardly, as he’d been dying at successive intervals for the past half-hour or more. He’d chosen the wrong preventative: it should have been rats or dust.

“No light, you said?” Dollard exclaimed, brows peaked. “Why, here’s a lamp right here. What’s this?”

All he could stammer in a smothered voice was: “My wife must have set it there— There was none last time— I remember complaining—”

Dollard had already picked it up, hoisted the chimney. He struck a match to it, recapped it, and it glowered yellow; to Durand like the fuming, imprisoned apparition of a baleful genie, called into being to destroy him.

He thought, Shall I turn and run from the house? Shall I turn and run out through the door? Why do I stand here like this, looking over their shoulders, waiting for them to—? And badly as he wanted to turn and flee, he found he couldn’t; his feet seemed to have adhered to the floor, he found he couldn’t lift them.

Dollard had opened the cellarway door. He stepped through onto the small stage that topped the stairs, and then downward a step or two. A pale yellow wash from the lamp, like something alive, lapped treacherously ahead of him, down the rest of the steps, and over the flooring, and even up the cellar walls, but growing fainter and dimmer the greater its distance from him, until it finally lost all power to reveal.

He went down a step or two more, and stretching out his arm straight before him, slowly circled it around, so that it kindled all sides of the place, even if only transiently.

“There are built-in tubs,” he said, “for the family’s washing, and a water boiler that can be heated by wood to supply you with—”

He descended farther. He was now all but at the foot of the stairs. Mrs. Thayer had come out onto the stage above, was holding her skirts tipped from the ground as a precaution. Durand, his own breath roaring and drumming in his ears, was gripping the doorframe with both hands, one above the other, head and shoulders thrust forward around it.

Dollard extended his hand upward in her direction. “Would you care to come down farther?”

“I believe I can see it from here,” Mrs. Thayer said.

To accommodate her, he reversed the lamp, swinging it back again the other way. As its reflected gleam coursed past the place, an oblong darker than the rest of the flooring, a patch, a foursquare stain or shadow, seemed to shoot out into its path, then recede again as the heart of the glow swept past. It was as sudden as though it had moved of its own accord; as mobile, due to the coursing-past of the lamp, as a darkling mat suddenly whisked out, then snatched back again. There, then gone again.

It sent a shock through him that congested his heart and threatened to burst it. And yet they seemed not to have seen it, or if they had, not to have known it for what it was. Their eyes hadn’t been seeking it as his had, perhaps.

Dollard suddenly hoisted the lamp upward, so that it evened with his head, and peered forward. A little over from the place, though, not quite at it.

“Why, isn’t that the rug from the upstairs room we were just speaking of?” He quitted the bottom steps, crossed toward it.

Again that deeper-tinted strip sidled forward, this time under his very feet. He stopped directly atop it, both feet planted on it, bending forward slightly toward the other object nearby that had his attention. “How does it come to be down here? Do you beat out your rugs in the cellar, Mr. Durand?”

Durand didn’t utter a sound. He couldn’t recall if there had been any blood marks on the rug. All he could think of was that.

Mrs. Thayer tactfully came to his aid.

“I do that myself at times. When it’s raining outdoors one has to. In any case I’m sure Mr. Durand doesn’t attend to that himself, in person.” She smiled pacifyingly from one to the other of them.

“One can wait until after it’s stopped raining,” Dollard grumbled thickly in his throat. “Besides, it hasn’t rained all week long, that I can recall—” But he didn’t pursue the stricture any further for the present.

A second later Durand was watching him stoop to recover the rug in his arms, lift it furled as it was, and turn toward the stairs bearing it with him crosswise in front of him, to return it to where it belonged. He perhaps wanted to avoid contaminating it further by spreading it open on the dusty cellar floor.

But the light would be better upstairs. And Durand’s breath was hot against the roof of his mouth, like something issuing from a brick oven. He couldn’t have formed words even if he’d had any to produce. They drew back one on each side to give Dollard passage, Mrs. Thayer with a graceful little retraction, Durand with a vertiginous stagger that fortunately seemed to escape their notice, or if not, to be ascribed to no more than a masculine maladroitness in maneuvering in confined spaces.

Then they turned and followed the rug-bearer back to the rear sitting room, Durand paying his way with hand to wall, unseen, like a lame man.

“That could have waited, Mr. Dollard,” the young matron said.

“I know, but I wanted you to see this room at its best.”

Dollard gave the unsecured edge of the rug a fine upward fling, let it fall, paid it out, shuffling backward to give it its full spread on the floor.

Something flew out as he did so. Something small, indeterminate. The eye could catch its leap, but not make out what it was. The wooden flooring offside clicked with its relapse.

Dollard stooped and pinched with two fingers at a place where there was nothing to be seen. At least not from where the other two people in the room stood. Then he straightened with it, whatever it was, came toward Durand with it.

“This is yours, I presume,” he said, looking him straight in the eye. “One of your collar buttons, Mr. Durand.”

He thrust it with a little peck, point first, into Durand’s reluctantly receptive palm, and the latter closed his fingers over it. It was warm yet from Dollard’s hand, but to Durand it seemed to be warm yet from Downs’s throat. It felt like the nail of a crucifix going straight through the flesh of his palm, and he almost expected to see a drop of blood come stealing through the tight crevice of his fingers.

“Mr. Thayer is always dropping them about our house,” put in the friendly Mrs. Thayer, in an effort to salve what she took to be his mortification at this public exposure, in her presence, of one of the necessary fastenings of his intimate apparel. Thinking that men were like women in that respect, and that if some safety pin or other similar clasp had been lost from her own undergarb, she too might very well have had that look of consternation on her face and confusedly sought support from the back of a chair, as she saw him do now.

“Hnh!” grunted Dollard, as if to say: I don’t, only a sloven does.

But he returned to the rug, smoothing out its ripples now with strokes of his foot.

Durand thrust the token deep into his pocket. A burning sensation, coming through his clothes, stayed with it. He beheld them swayingly through thick-lensed, fear-strained eyes. He wondered if, to them, he appeared to sway, as they did to him. Apparently not, for their expressions showed no sudden attention nor undue concern whenever they were momentarily cast his way.

“I think I’ve shown you everything,” Dollard said at last.

“Yes, I think you have,” his prospective client agreed.

They sauntered now toward the front door, Durand like a wraith faltering beside them. He had the door at last to cling to, and any see-saw vagary of balance could be ascribed to the flux of its hinges.

Mrs. Thayer turned toward him, smiled. “Thank you very much; I hope we haven’t disturbed you.”

“Good day,” said Dollard, with an economy of urbanity that, from his point of view, it would have been a waste to use on people who were about to cease being lessees of the property.

He escorted her down to the carriage, helped her in, talking assiduously the while in an effort to persuade her into concluding the transaction. He was just about to step in after her and drive off with her — to Durand’s unutterable relief — when suddenly Bonny appeared, walking rapidly along the sidewalk, and turned in toward the house, glancing back toward them as she did so.

Durand widened the door, to admit her and close it after her, but she stopped there, blocking it.

“For God’s sake,” he said exhaustedly, “get in here — I’m half-dead.”

“Just a moment,” she said, immovable. “He can’t rent this place unless we sign a release. Did you give him the keys yet?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said crisply. To his horror, she raised her arm and beckoned Dollard back. She even called out his name. “Mr. Dollard! Just a moment, if you will!”

“Don’t call him back,” pleaded Durand. “Let him go, let him go. What are you thinking of?”

“I know what I’m doing,” she said firmly.

Durand, aghast, saw the agent reluctantly descend, come back toward them again. He chafed his hands propitiously. “I think I have the transaction concluded,” he confided. “And at a considerably better figure. Her mind is all but made up.”

The remark brought a shrewd glint of calculation into Bonny’s eyes, Durand saw.

“Yes?” she said dulcetly. “But there are a couple of things you’ve forgotten, aren’t there? The keys, and the signed release.”

Dollard fumbled hastily for his pocket. “Oh, so I have. But I have the form right here on me, and if you’ll give me the keys now, that will save me a trip back for them later—” He glanced around at the waiting carriage. He was as anxious to be off, or nearly so, as Durand was anxious to have him be.

Bonny, however, seemed to be in no hurry. She intercepted the paper, which Dollard had been extending toward Durand, and consulted it herself. She studiously ignored the mute, frantic appeal in Durand’s dilated eyes. He mopped furtively at his forehead.

She raised her head; then with no sign of returning the paper to Dollard, tapped it questioningly against her arched pulse.

“And what of the unused portion of our rental fee? I see no mention here—”

“The unused—? I don’t understand you.”

She retained the paper against his tentatively extended hand seeking to reclaim it. “The rental for this month has already been paid.”

“Naturally.”

“But today is only the tenth. What of the three weeks we relinquish?”

“You forfeit that. I cannot return it to you once it has been paid.”

“Very well,” she said waspishly. “But then neither can you rent it to anyone else until after the thirtieth of the month. You had best go and tell the lady that, and spare her a disappointment.”

Dollard’s mouth dropped slack, astounded. “But you are not going to be here! You leave today. It was you yourself who came to me this morning to tell me so.” He glanced helplessly at the carriage, where the waiting Mrs. Thayer was beginning to show ladylike signs of impatience. She looked over at him inquiringly, she coughed pantomimically — unheard at that distance — into the hollow of her hand. “Come, be reasonable, madam. You said yourself—”

Bonny was adamant. There was even a small smile etched into the corner of her mouth. Her eyes, as if guessing the surreptitious, agonized signs Durand was trying to convey to her from behind the turn of the agent’s shoulder, refused to look across at him. “You be reasonable, Mr. Dollard. My husband and I are not going to make you a present of the greater part of a month’s rental. Our departure can very well be postponed in such a case. Either you return it to us, or we stay until the first of the new month.”

She deliberately turned and entered the hallway. She stopped before the mirror. In full view of Dollard, she raised hands to her bonnet, removed it. She adjusted her hair, to make sure it was not disturbed.

“Close the door, dear,” she said to Durand. “And then come upstairs and help me unpack our things. Good day, sir,” she added pointedly to Dollard.

The agent looked apprehensively at the carriage, to gauge how much longer he might dare keep it waiting. Then to her; she was now moving toward the stairs, as if about to ascend them. Then, more quickly, to the carriage. Then, more quickly still, to her once more. The carriage, at least, was standing still, but she wasn’t.

At last he blundered into the house after her, past the — by this time — almost audibly moaning Durand. “Just a moment!” he capitulated. “Very well; seventy-five dollars by the month. I will give you the amount for the last two weeks. Thirty-seven, fifty.”

Bonny turned, gave him a granite smile, shook her head. Then she continued, put her foot to the bottommost step, her hand to the newel-post. “Today is not the fifteenth of the month. Today is the tenth. We have had the use of this house for only one third of the time paid for. Therefore there is two thirds coming to us. Fifty dollars.”

“Madam!” said Dollard, striking hand to his scalp, forgetful that there was no longer hair there to ruffle.

“Sir!” she echoed ironically.

A shadow darkened the open doorway behind the three of them and the coachman had appeared in it. “Excuse me, sir, but the lady says she can’t wait any longer—”

“Here,” said Dollard bitterly, grubbing money from his billfold, “Fifty dollars. Let me get out of here before you demand payment for having lived in the house at all!”

“Sign the paper, dearest,” she said sweetly. “And give Mr. Dollard his keys. We must not detain him any longer.”

Durand got the door closed behind the fuming figure. Then he all but collapsed against it on the inside. “How could you do it, knowing all the time what’s lying under the very floor we—?” he gagged, tearing at his collar. “What have you for nerves, what have you for heart?”

She was standing on the stairs, triumphantly counting over the cabbagehead of money she held bunched in her hand.

“Ah, but he didn’t know; and that’s where the difference lay. You never played poker, did you, Lou?”