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 hail.
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 chickenjoint 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?"
47
The gentle but insistently repeated pressure of her small hand on his shoulder, rubbed sleep threadbare, wore it away. He started upward spasmodically.
Then it came back. Then he remembered. Like a waiting knife it struck and found him.
"I'm going to get the tickets, Lou. Lou, wake up, it's after ten. I'm going to get the tickets. For us, at the station. I've done all the packing, while you were lying there. I've left out your one suit, everything else is put away--Lou, wake up, clear your eyes. Can't you understand me? I'm going to get the tickets. What about money ?"
"Over there," he murmured vacantly, eyes turned inward on yesterday. "Back pocket, on the left side-"
She had it in a moment, as though she'd already known, but only wanted his cognizance to her taking it.
"Where will I get them for? Where do you want us to go ?"
"I don't know--" he said blurredly, shading his eyes. "I can't tell you that--"
She gave her head a little toss of impatience at his sluggishness. "I'll go by the trains, then. Whichever one is leaving soonest, we'll take."
She came to him and, bending, gave him a hurried little peck of parting. The fragrance of her violet toilet water swirled about him.
"Be careful," he said dismally. "It may be dangerous."
"We have time. There's no danger yet. How can there be? It's not even known." She gave him a shrug of assurance. "If we go about it right, there may never be danger."
The froufrou of her skirts crossed the floor. She opened the door. She turned there. She bent the fingers of her hand as if beckoning him to her.
"Ta ta," she said. "Lovey mine."
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 ?"