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, Dollárd'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 coursingpast 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.