The rest of the deck lay scattered about on the counterpane, some of them even on her own recumbent form.
He got down there beside her, at the bedside, on one knee, and took up her dangling hand, and found it softly, yet in a burning gratitude, with his lips. And though he didn't know it, had fallen into it without thought, his pose was that of the immemorial lover pleading his suit. Pleading his suit to a heart he cannot soften.
He swept off the cards onto the floor, replaced them with the money he had brought from New Orleans. Even raised his arms above her, holding it massed within them, letting it snow down upon her any which way it willed, in a green and orange leafy shower.
Her eyes opened, and following the undulant surface of the counterpane they were so close to, sighted at something, taking on a covetous expression with their whites uppermost, by the fact of their lying so low; but one that was perhaps closer to the truth than not.
"A hundred-dollar bill," she murmured sleepily.
"Lou's back," he whispered. "Look what he's brought you from New Orleans." And gathering up some of the fallen certificates, let them stream down all over again. One of them caught in her hair. And she reached up and felt for it there, with an expression of simpering satisfaction. Then having felt it was there, left it there, as though that was where she most wanted it to be.
She stretched out her hands to him, and traced his brows, and the turn of his face, and the point of his ear, in expression of lazy appreciation.
"What were those cards?"
"I was trying to tell our fortunes," she said. "And I fell asleep doing it. I got the queen of diamonds. The money card. And it came true. I'll never laugh at those things again."
"And what did I get?"
"The ace of spades."
He laughed. "What one's that ?"
He felt her hand, which had been straying in his hair, stop for a moment. "I don't know."
He had an idea she did, but didn't want to tell him.
"What'd you do that for? Try reading them."
"I wanted to see if you were coming back or not."
"Didn't you know I would ?"
"I did," she hedged. "But I wasn't sure."
"And I wasn't sure I'd find you here any longer," he confessed.
Suddenly she had one of those flashes of stark sincerity she was so capable of, and so seldom exercised. She swept her arms about his neck in a convulsive, despairing, knotted hug. "Oh, God!" she mourned bitterly. "What's wrong with the two of us anyway, Lou? Isn't it hell when you can't trust one another ?"
He sighed for answer.
Presently she said, "I'm going back to sleep a little while more."
Her head came to rest against his, nestled there, in lieu of the pillow.
"Leave the money there," she purred blissfully. "It feels good lying all over me."
In a little while he could tell by her breathing she was sleeping again. Her head to his, her arms still twined collarlike about him. He could never get any closer to her than this, somehow he felt. He in her arms, she unconscious of him there.
His heart said a prayer. Not knowing to whom, but asking it of the nothingness around him, that he had plunged himself into of his own accord.
"Make her love me," he pleaded mutely, "as I love her. Open her heart to me, as mine is open to her. If she can't love me in a good way, let it be in a bad way. Only, in some way. Any way, at all. This is all I ask. For this I'll give up everything. For this I'll take whatever comes, even the ace of spades."
55
He came upon it quite by accident. The merest chance of happening to go where he did, when he did. More than that even, of happening to do as he did, when he went where he did.
She had asked him to go out and get her some of the fledgling cigars she was addicted to, "La Favorita" was their name, while he waited about for her to catch up with him in her dressing, always a process from two to three times slower than his own. She smoked quite openly now, that is in front of him, at all times when they were alone together. Nothing he could do or say would make her desist, so it was he at last who desisted in his efforts to sway her, and let her be. And it was he, too, who emptied off and caused to disappear the ashes she recklessly left about behind her, or opened the windows to carry the aroma off, and even, once or twice when they had been intruded upon unexpectedly by a chambermaid or the like, caught up the cigar and drew upon it himself, as if it were his own, though he was a nonsmoker--all for the sake of her reputation and to keep gossip from being bruited about.
"What did you do--before ?" he asked her, on the day of this present request.
He meant before she'd met him. Wondering if there'd been someone else, then, to go and fetch them for her.
"I had to go and get them for myself," she confessed.
"You?" he gasped. There seemed to be no end to the ways in which she could startle him.
"I usually told them it was for my brother, that he was ill and couldn't come for them himself, had sent me in his place. They always believed me implicitly, I could tell, but--" She shrugged with a nuance of aversion.
How could they have failed to, he reflected? How could anyone in his right senses have dreamed a woman would dare enter a tobacco shop on her own behalf?
"But I didn't like to do it much," she added. "Everyone always stared so. You'd think I were an ogre or something. If there were more than one in there, and there usually was, the most complete frozen silence would fall, as if I had cast a spell or something. And yet no matter how quickly it fell, it was never quickly enough to avoid my catching some word or other that I shouldn't, just as I first stepped in. Then they would stand there so guilty looking, wondering if I had heard, and if I had, if I understood its meaning." She laughed. "I could have told them that I did, and spared them their discomfort."
"Bonny!" he said in taut reproof.
"Well, I did," she insisted. "Why deny it?" Then she laughed once more, this time at the expression on his face, and pretended to fling something at him. "Oh, get along, old Prim and Proper!"
The tobacco shop he selected for the filling of her request, and his choice was quite at random, being in a resort town, sold other things as well with which to tempt its transient clientele. Picture cards on revolving panels, writing papers, glass jars of candy, souvenirs, even a few primary children's toys. There was in addition, just within the entrance where it could most readily catch the eye, an inclined wooden rack, holding newspapers from various other cities, an innovation calculated to appeal to homesick travelers.
He stopped by this as he was leaving and idly looked it over, hoping to find one from New Orleans. He had that slightly wistful feeling that the very name of the place alone was enough to cause him. Home. Word of home, in exile. Canal Street in the sunshine; Royal Street, Rampart Street, the Cabildo-- He forgot where he was, and he felt lonely, and he ached somewhere so deep down inside that it must have been his very marrow. Love of another kind; the love every man has for the place he first came from, the place he first knew.
There were none to be found. He noticed one from Mobile, and withdrew that from the rack instead. It was not new; having remained unsold until now, he found it to be already dated two full weeks in the past.