"Lou! Lou, darling! What is it? What brings you here like this? What are you thinking of--I found the door standing open just now. I found you gone from your bed. I've been running through the streets--I saw you standing here, fortunately, from the block below--Lou, how could you do such a thing to me; how could you frighten me like this--?"
A door opened belatedly, somewhere near at hand, but her face was in the way, her face close to his blotted out the whole world.
"Yes ?" a woman's voice said. "Did you wish something ?"
She turned her head scarcely at all, the merest inch, to answer: "No, nothing. It was a mistake."
The door closed sharply, and life closed with it.
"Up," he breathed. "Up there. Someone--who can help me."
"Here," she answered softly. "Here, before you--the only one who can help you."
He moved weakly to one side to gain clearance, for an ascent he could never have made anyway.
She moved as he did, she stood before him yet.
He moved back again, waveringly.
She moved back again too, she stood before him always.
The waltz resumed, the slow and terrible waltz of death, there on those steps.
"Up," he pleaded. "Let me go up. The door. Have mercy."
Her voice was all compassion, she wept with honey. "Come back with me. My love. My poor dear. My husband." Her eyes too. Her hands, staying him so gently, so gently, he scarcely knew it.
"Be content," he wept weakly. "You've done enough. Give me this one last chance-- Don't take it from me--"
"Do you think I would hurt you? Do you trust a stranger more than you would me? Don't you believe I love you, at all? Do you really doubt it that much ?"
He shook his head bewilderedly. When the body's strength is spent, the mind's discernment dulls with it. Black is white and white is black, and the last voice that spoke is the true one.
"You do love me? You do, Bonny? In spite of all?"
"Can you ask that?" Her lips found his, there in broad daylight, in open street. Never was there a tenderer kiss, breathing such abnegation. Light as the wings of moths. "Ask your heart, now," she whispered. "Ask your heart."
"I've thought such terrible things. Bad dreams they must have been. But they seemed so real at the time. I thought you wanted me out of your way."
"You thought I was the cause of--your being ill like this?" Gambler to the end. She drew a step aside, the step that he had wanted her to take before. "My arms are here. The door is there above you. Now go to whichever one of us you want the most."
He took a swaying step toward her, where she now stood. His head fell upon her breast in ineffable surrender. "I am so tired, Bonny. Take me home with you."
Her breath stirred his hair. "Bonny will take you home."
She led him down the step, the one step toward salvation that was all he had been able to achieve.
Here and there, about them, the walks, the near one and the far, were dotted with a handful of curious passersby, halted in their tracks to watch the touching little scene, without knowing what it was about.
As he and she turned their way, these, their interest palling, set about resuming their various courses. But she called to one man, the nearest among them, before he could make good his departure.
"Sir! Would you try and find us a carriage? My husband is ill, I must get him home as soon as I can."
She would have moved a heart of stone. He tipped his hat, he hastened off on his quest. In a moment or two a carriage had come spanking around the lower turn, her envoy riding upright on the outside step.
It drew up and he helped her, supporting Durand on the one side while she, strong for all her diminutive height, sustained him bravely on the other. Between them they led him gently to the carriage, saw him comfortably to rest upon its seat; the stranger having to step up and into it backward, to do this, and then descend again from its opposite side after he had relinquished his hold on him.
She, settling down beside Durand, reached out and placed her own hand briefly atop the back of her anonymous helper's in accolade of tremulous gratitude. "Thank you, sir. Thank you. I do not know what I should have done without you."
"No one could do less, madam." He looked at her compassionately. "And may God be with the two of you."
"I pray He will," she answered devoutly as the carriage rolled off.
Behind it, on those same disputed steps, as it receded, a man now stood astraddle, a black bag in his hand, gazing after it with cursory interest, no more. He shrugged in incomprehension and completed his ascent, readying his key to put it to the door.
In the carriage on their brief run homeward no one could have been more solicitous.
"Lean down. Rest your head upon my lap, love. That will ease the jarring of the springs."
And in a moment, or so it seemed, they were back again at their own door; his ldng Calvary was undone, gone for nothing. He felt no pang; so complete, so narcoticizing, was the illusion of her love.
The driver, now, was the one to help her getting him down. And then she left him for a moment in his charge at their gate. "Stay here a moment, dear; hold to the post, until I find money to pay him. I came out without my purse, I was in such a fright over you." She ran in alone, the doorway stood empty for a brief while--(and he missed her, for that moment, he missed her)--then she came back again, still at full run, paid off the driver, took Durand into her sole charge.
Up onto the porch floor, a last receding flicker of the white sunlight draining off their backs, and in. A sweep of her arm, and the door was closed again behind him. Forever? For the last time?
Down the long dim hall, past the antlered hatrack, to the foot of the stairs. Every inch had once cost a drop of blood.
But love enfolded him, held him in its arms, and he didn't care. Or perhaps it was death already; and at onset of death you don't care either sometimes.
Then up the stairs a dragging step at a time. Her strength was superb, her will to help him indomitable.
At the landing, as the final turn began, he panted: "Stop here a moment."
"What is it?"
"Let me look back a moment at our sitting room, before we go up higher. I may never see it again. I want to say goodbye to it." He pointed with a wavering hand, out over the slanted rail. "See, there's the table that we sat by, so many evenings, before-this came upon me. See, there's the lamp, the very same lamp, that I always knew--when I was young and not yet married--would shine upon my wife's pretty face, just across from me. And it's shone on yours, Bonny. I thank it for that. Must it never shine on you for me again, Bonny?" His fingertips traced its outline, there against the empty distance that separated it from him. "The lamps of home, the lamps of love, are going out. For me they'll never shine again. Goodbye-"
"Come," she said faintly.
Back into the room again; the bier receiving back its dedicated dead.
She helped him to the bed, and eased him back upon it. Then drew up his feet after him. Took off his shoes, his coat, but nothing else. Then brought the covers slowly up and over him, sideward, like a winding sheet.
"Are you comfortable, Lou? Is your bed smooth enough?" She put hand to his brow. "This foolish foray of yours has cost you all your strength."
His eyes were fixed on her with a strange, melting softness. Like the eyes of a wounded dog, begging its release.
She turned hers away, then irresistibly they were drawn back again. "Why are you looking at me like that, my dear? What are you trying to say ?"
He motioned to her with one finger to bend closer.
She inclined her head a little the better to hear what he had to say.
He reached up falteringly and stroked the fringe, the silken blonde bangs that curved before her cool smooth forehead.
Then he struggled higher, onto an elbow, as if cast upward by the ebb tide that was leaving him behind so rapidly.
"I love you, Bonny," he whispered fiercely. "No other one, no other love. From first to last, from start to finish. And beyond. Beyond, Bonny; do you hear me? Beyond. It will not end. I will, but it will not."