"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, nonetheless; 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.