Then he raised the tumbler a little, and stood looking at it. As if no more than an onlooker, as if waiting to see what would happen next, waiting to see what he himself would do next.
His wrist loosened and turned, and the tumbler turned with it, and the courage of his death went where the courage of his life had gone, down a drainpipe.
Something made him turn his head slightly, and Wise was standing there, unguessed and unheard, in the bath-door opening, looking in at him. There was no expression to be read on his face. Or perhaps it was there, but there were no eyes sufficiently skilled to read it.
Marshall smiled at him a little. Or seemed to, though it was meant for his own thoughts, and not for Wise.
I wouldn’t have had any luck even in that. If I’d gone ahead and tried it, he would have stopped me or pulled me through.
“You have to let it run a little while, first,” suggested Wise, amiably. “It comes too warm at first.” Then he said, “Why didn’t you ask me? I would have gotten it for you from the kitchen; it runs colder in there.”
Marshall thought of the past, and thought of the future. “I’m not thirsty any more,” he said with a sigh of fatalistic resignation.
“Come on back,” Wise invited. “The ladies are waiting for us. You deal the cards next.”
No I don’t. You do. You still do, echoed mirthlessly in Marshall’s mind. I just accept them as they fall.
Wise, about to turn, made a slight move of the arm, which Marshall anticipated. Marshall had suddenly shrunk back flat against the doorframe, with a minor but audible concussion from the woodwork. “Don’t,” he said faintly.
“I was only trying to give you the right of way,” protested Wise, with bland astonishment.
“I thought you were going to—”
I thought you were going to put your hand on my shoulder. It’s like being arrested already.
Wise gave him an odd little look, but he didn’t ask him what he had been about to say. He took a step in advance. “Coming?” Then went on without waiting for the answer.
Marshall stood there a moment, alone. Sheltering hand bent into a cone over his eyes. He knew what he was going to do; what he had to do, what he couldn’t keep from doing now. Suddenly he buttoned the upper part of his suit jacket, which he habitually wore open; and as if that weren’t enough, held it gripped together with one hand.
Then he struck out, passed through the room where they were sitting, at an intent, undeterred stride, without a word or look at them. Face pale, its muscles and tendons showing as in a plaster anatomical cast. In one doorway, out the other. As if he were some stranger who had suddenly lost his way and had to cut through the room to get to the outside.
The woman who called herself Mrs. Wise was over at a smaller table, across the room, back to him, putting some sandwiches on a platter.
Marjorie and Wise were still sitting there, both turned his way to stare from their diametrically opposite positions.
He caught something that Wise murmured to her in an undertone, as he went by. “—doesn’t seem to feel well.”
He would have flung the outside door open then and there, he had already arrived at it, but her voice halted him. She had risen and come out to the room opening after him.
“Press. We’re waiting for you to... Press, what are you doing?”
She saw something in his face. Anyone would have who merely looked at him. She came quickly the rest of the way, to join him. “What is it? Don’t you feel well?”
“I’ve got to get out of this house, Marjorie. I can’t stand it. I’ve got to get out of this house.”
“But what’ll I say? What’ll I tell them?”
“Hurry up, I’ve got to get out of this house. I can’t breathe. My chest—”
“Come in and say good night to them, at least.”
“I can’t. Don’t ask me to go back into that room. I can’t.”
And holding one hand open, close before his body, he kept pummelling the other, clenched, into it, in some sort of inchoate tensity that couldn’t express itself in any other way.
She’d gone back inside, momentarily. He heard her saying, “He’s not well. I’ll have to take him home... No, I don’t; I never saw him this way before.”
In the meantime, he definitely wasn’t well. No pretense was necessary. A nervous chill had set in, and he was standing, face turned to wall, one arm stiffly out to hold himself against it, shaking spasmodically at recurrent intervals.
“Can I get you a little whiskey? Think that would help?” he heard Wise address him.
He couldn’t bring himself to answer him. He shook his head, keeping it turned as it was. “Hurry up, Marj,” he besought her in a smothered voice. “Hurry up.”
“Yes, dear; just a minute,” she tried to calm him. “I have to get your hat and my own things. I’ll be right there in no time.”
The two Wises stood puzzled in the inner doorway, he turned one way to stare at Marshall in the hall, she turned the other to stare after Marjorie on her flying errand within.
She came back to him at a veritable run.
“Say good night to them, at least,” she whispered parenthetically. “You can’t leave like this, without saying good night to them, at least.” She was pretending meanwhile to adjust the collar of his coat at the back of his neck, as an excuse for directing her voice into his ear from close at hand.
They saved him the greater part of the necessity. They had come up closer by now.
“Good night, Mr. Marshall,” Mrs. Wise said uncertainly. “I do hope you feel better. So pleased to have met you.”
Wise, however, held out his hand toward him.
I can’t do that, he warned himself. I’d better not try; I know I can’t.
“Press, Mr. Wise is offering you his hand.”
He had to look down, then. He had to pretend he was first seeing it. He allowed himself to touch it.
A sudden rigidity locked his spine, made of it a steel brace. A pair of handcuffs seemed to close around his wrists with a clash. He could even feel them pinch the flesh, the illusion was so realistic.
He could feel his eyeballs roll around in their sockets, and thought he was going to drop for a second. Marjorie must have thought so too, the way she suddenly brought her second hand up to support the first in its hold at his elbow.
Then she had him outside the door.
Then they were in the open, walking rapidly away side
Presently she handed him his hat, which she had been carrying until now.
They came to where their homebound bus was to be met. He glanced behind him, to see how far they were from that house. They weren’t far enough, it was still in sight back there, within the gloom.
He continued walking, on toward their home afoot, without waiting for the bus. Without a question, without a word, she continued along beside him.
She didn’t ask him what it had been, what had caused it, what was its meaning. She asked him nothing. One of her greatest gifts was tact. That was her own undoing.
The only thing she said, when they were better than at the halfway mark on their return, was: “Feel better now?”
He looked up at the untrammeled sky overhead, he sighed, he nodded. Freedom felt so good.
“Yes,” he said. “A lot.”
She murmured poignantly, more to herself than to him: “They didn’t ask us to come again.” She gave a sigh, such as he had given in the bath doorway back there. The sigh of an enduring resignation. “I would have liked to have — somebody for a friend.”
20
There was a surreptitious air of excitement about her. As though some special event were in the air; some portent that must be kept concealed until its due moment had arrived. With that quickness for nuances he possessed, he noted it right away. He was no sooner in the door, he had no sooner pegged his hat, than he’d detected it.