Bonny's remark came back to him. "And we're none of us very much good, the best of us, men or women alike." She knew. She was wise in the ways of the world, wiser by far than he. She would never have put herself in such a false position.
No friend should be put to such a test. A man without the law no longer had a claim, no longer had a right to expect--
There was a subdued knock, and he shrank back against the wall. "Here they come now to arrest me," flashed through his mind. "He's put them onto me-"
He didn't move. The knock came again.
Then Jardine's whispered voice. "Lou. Are you in there? It's all right. It's me."
He'd brought them with him; he'd led them here in person.
With a sort of bitter defiance, because he could no longer escape, because he'd waited too long, he went to the door and unlocked it. Then took his hands from it and let it be.
There was a moment's wait, then it opened of itself, and Jardine came in, alone. He closed and relocked it behind him. He was holding a small satchel.
He carried it to the table, set it down.
All he said, matter of factly and with utter simplicity, was: "Here is the money, Lou. I'm sorry I'm so late."
Durand couldn't answer for a moment, turned away, overcome.
"What's the matter, Lou? Why, your eyes--!" Jardine looked at him as though he couldn't understand what was amiss with him.
Durand knuckled at them sheepishly. "Nothing. Only, you came as you said you would--You brought it as you said you would--" Something choked in his throat and he couldn't go ahead.
Jardine looked at him compassionately. "Once you would have taken such a thing for granted, you would have expected it of me. What has changed you, Lou? Who has changed you?" And softly, fiercely, through his clenched teeth, as his knotted hand came down implacably upon the table top, he exhaled: "And may God damn them for it! I hate to see a decent man dragged down into the gutter."
Durand stood there without answering.
"You know it's true, or else you wouldn't stand there and take it from me," Jardine growled. "But I'll say no more; each man's hell is his own."
(I know it's true, Durand thought wistfully; but I must follow my heart, how can I help where it leads me?) "No, don't say any more," he agreed tersely.
Jardine unstrapped and stripped open the bag. "The full amount is in here," he told him, brisk and businesslike now. "And that squares all accounts between us."
Durand nodded stonily.
"I cannot have you at my house again," Jardine told him. "For your own sake."
Durand gave a short, and somewhat ungracious, syllable of laughter. "I understand."
"No, you don't. I am trying to protect you. Auguste already suspects something, and I cannot vouch for her discretion if you return."
"Auguste hates me, doesn't she?" Durand said with detached curiosity, as though unable to account for it.
Jardine didn't answer, and by that confirmed the statement.
He gestured toward the contents of the satchel, still withholding it. "I turn this over to you under one condition, Lou. I ask it of you for your own good."
"What is it?"
"Don't turn this money over to anyone else, no matter how close they are to you. Keep it safe. Keep it by you. Don't let it out of your possession."
Durand laughed humorlessly. "Who am I likely to entrust it to? The very position I'm in ensures my not--"
Jardine repeated his emphasis, so that there could be no mistaking it. "I said, no matter how close they are to you."
Durand looked at him hard for a minute. "I'm in good hands, I see," he said bitterly at last. "Auguste hates me, and you hate-- my wife."
"Your wife," Jardine said tonelessly.
Durand tightened his hands. "I said my wife."
"Don't let's quarrel, Lou. Your word."
"The word of a murderer?"
"The word of the man who was my best friend. The word of the man who was Louis Durand," Jardine said tautly. "That's good enough for me."
"Very well, I give it."
Jardine handed him the satchel. "I'll go now."
There was a constraint between them now. Jardine offered his hand in parting. Durand saw it waiting there, allowed a full moment to go by before taking it. Then when at last they shook, it was more under compulsion of past friendship than present cordiality.
"This is probably a final goodbye, Lou. I doubt we'll ever see one another again."
Durand dropped his eyes sullenly. "Let's not linger over it, then. Good luck, and thank you for having once been my friend."
"I am still your friend, Lou."
"But I am not the man whose friend you were."
Their hands uncoupled, fell away from one another.
Jardine moved toward the door.
"You know what I would do in your place, of course? I would go to the police, surrender myself, and have it over once and for all."
"And hang," Durand said sombrely.
"Yes, even to hang is better than what lies ahead of you. You could be helped, Lou. This way, no one can help you. If I were in your place-"
"You couldn't be in my place," Durand cut him short. "It wouldn't have happened to you, to start with. You are not the kind such things befall. I am. You repel them. I attract them. It happened to me. To no one but me. And so I must deal with it. I must do--as I must do."
"Yes, I guess you must," Jardine conceded sadly. "None of us can talk for the other man." He opened the door, looking up along its edge with a sort of melancholy curiosity, as if he had never seen the edge of an open door before. He even palmed it, in passing, as if to feel what it was.
The last thing he said was: "Take care of yourself, Lou."
"If I don't, who else will?" Durand answered from the depths of his aloneness. "Who is there in this whole wide world who will ?"
54
He only breathed freely again when the train had pulled out, and only looked freely from the window again when the last vestiges of the town had fallen behind and the dreary coastal sand flats had begun. The town that he had once loved most of all places in this world.
The train was a rickety, caterpillar-like creeper, that stopped at every crossroads shed and water tank along the way, or so it seemed, and didn't deposit him at his destination until well onto one in the morning. He found the station vicinity deserted, and all but unlighted; carriageless as well, and had to walk back to their hotel bag in hand, under a panel of brittle (and somehow satiric) stars.
And though the thought of surprising her in some act of treachery had not been the motive for his arriving a half night sooner than he'd said he would, the realization of how fatally enlightening this unheralded return could very well prove to be, slowly grew on him as he walked along, until it had taken hold of him altogether. By the time he had reached the hotel and climbed to their floor and stood before their door, he was almost afraid to take his key to it and open it. Afraid of what he would find. Not afraid of conventional faithlessness so much as her own characteristic kind of faithlessness. Not afraid of finding her in other arms so much as not finding her there at all. Finding her fled and gone in his absence, as he had once before.
He opened softly, and he held his breath back. The room was dark, and the fragrance of violets that greeted him meant nothing, it could have been from yesterday as well as from today. Besides, it was in his heart rather than in his nostrils, so it was no true test.
He took out a little box of wax matches, that clicked and rattled with his trepidation, felt for the sandpaper tab fastened to the wall, and kindled the lamp wick. Then turned to look, as the slow-rising golden tide washed away night.
She was sleeping like a child, as innocent as one, as beautiful as one. (And only in sleep perhaps could she ever obtain such innocence any longer). And as gracefully, as artlessly disposed, as a child. Her hair flooded the pillow, as if her head were lying in the middle of a field of slanting sun-yellowed grass. One arm was hidden, the dimpled point of an elbow protruding from under the pillow all that could be seen of it. The other lay athwart her, to hang straight down over the side of the bed. Its thumb and forefinger were still touching together, making an irregular little loop that had once held something. Under it, on the carpet, lay two cards, the queen of diamonds and the knave of hearts.