Struggling upright, it came to him of its own accord. He rotated his shoulders along the wall, turning now outward, next inward, then outward again, then inward--he rolled himself along beside the wall, and the wall supported him, and thus he did not fall, and yet progressed.
Midway there was an obstacle, to break his alliance with the wall. It was an antlered coatrack, its lower part a seat that extended far out, its upper part a tall thin panel of wood, set with a mirror. It was unsteady by its very nature, its proportions were untrue, he was afraid he would bring it down with him.
He circled his body awkwardly out and around it, holding it steady, so to speak, and got to the other side. But letting it go in safety was harder than claiming its support had been, and for a second or two he was held in a horrid trap there, afraid to take his hands off it, lest the sudden release of weight cause it to back and sway in revealing disturbance.
He took his near hand off it first, still held it on its far side, and that equalized the removal of pressure. Then cautiously he let go of it in the remaining place, and it did nothing but waver soundlessly for a moment or two, and then stilled again.
Safely free of it, he let himself down at last into a submerged huddle, sheltered now by its projection. Out of prostration, out of sheer inability to go on one additional step, and not out of caution, and yet it was that alone that saved him.
For suddenly, without any warning whatever, she had stepped to the kitchen doorway to the hall and was peering upward along the stairs. She even came forward, clambered up a few inquiring steps until she was in a position from which she could hear better, assure herself all was quiet. Then, satisfied, she came down again, turned about rearward, and went back to where she had been.
He removed the mangled length of shirting he had crushed into his mouth to stifle the hard breath that he would otherwise have been incapable of controlling, and it came away a watery pink.
Within moments after that, his lips were pressed flat against the seam of the outer door, in what was not meant for a kiss, but surely was one just the same.
So little was left to be done now, that he felt sure, even if his heart had already stopped beating and his body were already dead and cooling about him, he would still somehow have gone ahead and done it. Not even the laws of Nature could have stopped him now, so close to his goal.
The latch-tongue sucked back softly, and he waited, head still but held forward, to see if that little sound had reached her, would bring her out again. It didn't.
He pulled, and then, with a swimmingly uncertain motion, the door came away from its frame and an opening stood waiting.
He went through. He staggered forward and fell against the porch post outside, and stayed there inert, letting it hold him.
In a moment he had stumbled down the porch steps.
In another he had lurched the length of the walk, the gate post held him, as if he had fallen athwart it and been pierced through by it.
He was saved.
He was back in life again.
A curious odor filled his nostrils: open air.
A curious balm warmed his head, the nape of his neck: sunlight.
He was out on the public walk now. Swaying there in the white sunlight, his shadow on the ground swaying in accompaniment. Teetering master, teetering shadow. He marked for his own a tree growing at the roadside, a few short yards off.
He went toward it like an infant learning to walk; a grown infant. Short, stocky steps without bending the knees; kicking each foot up, in a stuttering prance; arms straight out before him to clasp the approaching objective. And then fell against its trunk, and embraced it, and clove there.
And then from there on to another tree.
And then another.
But there were no more trees after that. He was marooned.
Two women passed, market baskets over arms, and sodden there, he raised his hand to stay them, so that they might hear him long enough to give him help.
They swerved deftly to avoid him, tilted noses disdainfully in air, and swept on.
"Disgusting, at such an early hour!" he heard one say to the other.
"Time of day has no meaning for drunkards!" her companion replied sanctimoniously.
He fell down on one knee, but then got up again, circling about in one place like some sort of a broken-winged bird.
A man going by slowed momentarily, cast him a curious look, and Durand trapped his attention on that one look, took a tottering step toward him, again his hand raised in appeal.
"Will you help me, sir? I'm not well."
The man's slackening became a dead halt. "What is it, friend? What ails you ?"
"Is there a doctor somewhere near here? I need to see one."
"There's one two blocks down that way, that I know of. I came past there just now myself."
"Will you lend me an arm just down that far? I don't think I can manage it alone--" The man split at times into two double outlines before his eyes, and then he would cohere again into just one.
The man consulted his pocket watch dubiously. "I'm late already," he grimaced. "But I can't refuse you on such a request." He turned toward him decisively. "Put your weight against me. I'll see that you get there."
They trudged painfully along together, Durand leaning angularly against his escort.
Once, Durand peered up overhead momentarily, at what everyone else saw every day.
"How wonderful the world is!" he sighed. "The sun on everything--and yet still enough left to spare."
The man looked at him strangely, but made no remark.
Presently he stopped, and they were there.
Out of all the houses in that town, or perhaps, out of all the doctors' houses in that town, it and it alone was not entered at ground level but had its entrance up at second-floor height. A flight of steps, a stoop, ran up to this. This was a new style in dwellings, mushrooming up in all the larger cities in whole blocks at a time, all of chocolate colored stone, and with their slighted first floors no longer called that, but known as "American basements."
Otherwise he could have been safely inside within a matter of moments after arriving before it.
But the good Samaritan, having brought him this far, at the cost of some ten minutes of his own time, drew a deep breath of private anxiety, took out his watch and scanned it once more, this time with every sign of furrowed apprehension. "I'd like to take you all the way up these," he confessed, "but I'm a quarter of an hour behind in an appointment I'm to keep, as it is. I don't suppose you can manage them by yourself-- Wait, I'll run up and sound the bell a moment. Then whoever comes out can help you up the rest of the way--"
He scrambled up, dented the pushbutton, and was down again in an instant.
"Will you be all right," he said, "if I leave you now?"
"Thank you," Durand breathed heavily, clinging to the ornamental plinth at bottom of the steps. "Thank you. I'm just resting."
The man set off at a lumbering run down the street, back along the way they had just come, showing his lack of time to have been no idle excuse.
Durand, alone and helpless again, turned and looked upward toward the door. No one had yet come to open it. His eye traveled sideward to the nearest window, and in the lower corner of that was placed a placard both of them had neglected to read in its entirety.
Richard Fraser, M.D.
Consulting Hours: 11 to 1, Mornings--
The half-hour struck from some church belfry in the vicinity. The half-hour before eleven. Half-past ten.
Suddenly two white hands, two soft hands, cupped themselves gently, persuasively, to the slopes of his wasted shoulders, one on each side, from behind, and in a moment more she had insinuated herself around to the front of him, blocking him off from the house, blocking the house off from him.