He stripped off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and squatting on his haunches before the offending orifice, shook out a little powdery trail of the substance here and there. "Are there any others ?"
"One over there, just a little back of the coal stove."
She watched, with housewifely approval.
"That will do. Not too much, or our feet will track it about."
"It has to be renewed every two or three days," he told her.
He put it on the shelf, at last, where the spice canisters were, but well over to the side.
"Make sure you wash your hands, now," she cautioned him. He had been about to neglect doing so, until her reminder. She held the huck-towel for him to dry them on, when he was through.
It was the following night that his illness really began. She discovered it first.
He found her looking at him intently as he closed his book at their retiring-time. It was a kindly scrutiny, but closely maintained. It seemed to have been going on for several moments before he discovered it.
"What is it?" he said cheerfully.
"Louis." She hesitated. "Are you sure you have been feeling well lately? I do not find you looking yourself. I do not like the way you--"
"I ?" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Why, I never felt better in my life!"
She silenced him with tilt of hand. "That may well be, but your appearance belies it. More and more lately I have found you looking worn and haggard at times. I have not mentioned it before, because I didn't want to alarm you, but it has been on my mind for some time now to do so. It's very evident; I can see it quite plainly."
"Nonsense," he said, half laughing.
"I have an excellent remedy, if you will but let me give it to you. And I will join you in it myself, as an inducement."
"What?" he asked, amused.
She jumped up. "Starting tonight, we are to take an eggnog, the two of us, each night before retiring. It is an excellent tonic, they assure me, for fortifying the system."
"I am not an inval--" he tried to protest.
"Now, not another word, sir!" she ordered gaily. "I intend to prepare them right now, and you shall not hinder me. I have all the necessary ingredients right at hand, in there. Fresh-laid eggs, and the very best obtainable, at twelve cents a dozen, mind you! And the brandy we have in the house as well."
He couldn't help but smile indulgently at her, but he let her have her way. This was a new role for her; nursemaid to a nonexistent ailment. If it made her happy, why what was the harm ?"
Her mood was amiable, sanguine, all gentleness and contrition now. She even bent to kiss him atop the head in passing.
"Was I cross to you before? Forgive me, Lou dear. You know I wouldn't want to be. A fright like that can make one into a harridan--" She went toward the kitchen, smiling back at him.
He could hear her cracking the eggs, somewhere beyond the open doorway, and crinkled his eyes appreciatively to himself.
Presently, she had even begun to hum lightly as she moved about in there, she was enjoying her self-imposed task so much.
Soon the humming gained words, had become a full song.
He had never heard her sing before. Laughter until now had always been her expression of contentment, never song. Her voice was light but true. Not very lyrical, metallic was the word that occurred to him instead, but she stayed adroitly on key.
Just a song at twilight,
When the lights are low--
Suddenly the song stopped, as if at something she were doing that required complete concentration. Measuring the brandy, perhaps. Be that as it might, it never resumed again.
She came in, holding one glass in each hand. Their contents pale gold in color, creamy in substance.
"Here. One for you, one for me." She offered them both. "Take whichever one you want." Then when he had, she tasted tentatively at the one that remained in her hand. "I hope I didn't put in too much sugar. Too much would sicken. May I try yours ?"
"Of course."
She took it back from him, tasted at it in turn. It left a little white trace on her upper lip.
While she stood thus, holding both together, she turned her head toward the kitchen door.
"What was that ?"
"What? I didn't hear anything."
She went back in again for a moment. She was gone a moment only. Then she returned to him.
"I thought I heard a sound in there. I wanted to make sure I had fastened the door."
She gave him back the one he had had in the first place, and which she had sampled.
"Since it has brandy in it," she said, "I suppose we should precede it with a toast." She nudged her glass to his. "To your better health."
She drained hers to the bottom.
He took a deep draught of his. He found it quite velvety and pleasurable. The liquor in it, with which she had been unsparing, gave a mellow warming effect to the stomach after it had lain there some moments.
"I wish all tonics were this palatable, don't you ?" she remarked.
"It's quite satisfactory," he admitted, more to please her than because he saw any great virtue in it. It was after all, to his way of thinking, a bastard drink; neither honest liquor nor wholly medicine.
"You must drink it down to the bottom, that is the only way it will do you any good," she urged gently. "See, as I did mine."
To spare her feelings, after the trouble of having prepared it, he did so.
He tasted of his tongue, dubiously, after he had. "It is a little chalky, don't you find. A little--astringent. It puckers."
She took the glass from him. "That is because you are not used to milk. Have you never seen a baby's mouth after it feeds, all clotted and curdled ?"
"No," he assured her with mock gravity, "you have not given me that pleasure."
They laughed together for a moment, in close-knit intimacy.
"I'll just rinse out the glasses," she said, "and then we can go up.,'
He slept soundly at first, feeling at the last the grateful glow the tonic had deposited in his stomach; albeit it seemed to confine itself to there, did not spread outward as in the case of unmixed liquor. But then after an hour or two he awakened into torment. The glow was no longer benign, it had a flaming bite to it. Sleep, once driven off, couldn't come near him again, held back by a fiery sword turning and turning in his vitals.
The rest of that night was an agony, a Calvary. He called out to her, more than once, but she was not near enough to hear him. Helpless and cut off from her, he sank his teeth into his own lip at last, and kept silent after that. In the morning there was dried blood all down his chin.
Across the room, over in the far corner, miles away, stood a chair with his clothes upon it. An ebony wood chair, with apricotplush seat and apricot-plush back. Never heeded much before, but now a symbol.
Miles away it stood, and he looked longingly across the miles, the immeasurable distance from illness to health, from helplessness to ability, from death to life.
All the way across the room, many miles away.
He must get over there, to that chair. It was far away, but he must get over there to it somehow. He looked at it so intently, so longingly, that the rest of the room seemed to fog out, and narrowing concentric circles of clarity seemed just to focus on that chair alone, so that it stood as in the center of a bright disk, a bull's-eye, and all the rest was a blur.
He could not get out of bed legs upright, so he had to leave it head and shoulders first, in a slanting downward fall. Then there was a second, if less violent, fall as his hips and legs came down after the rest of him.
He began to sidle along the floor now, like some groveling thing, a worm or caterpillar, chin touching it at every other moment, hot striving breath stirring the nap of the carpet before him, like a wave spreading out from his face. Only, worms and caterpillars don't hope so, haven't such large hearts to agonize with.
Slowly, flowered pattern by flowered pattern. Each one like an island. And the plain-tinted background in between, each time like a channel or a chasm, leagues in width instead of inches. Some weaver somewhere, years ago, had never known his spaces would be counted so, with drops of human sweat and burning pain and tears of fortitude.