She tried desperately to bring him up again, but she'd weakened so that his inertness could only bring her down half recumbeht beside him, instead, as if he were pulling at her, not she at him.
"Don't waste time," he sighed. "I can't-- Not a step further."
She struggled upright again, drove fingers distractedly through her hair, looked, this way, that.
"I've got to get you in out of the open! Oh, my love, my love, we may be caught yet if we stay here too long--"
Then bending to his face, to give him courage with a kiss, ran on and left him there where he was. She disappeared into a building fronting on the square, with a lighted gas bowl over its doorway and the legend: "Furnished Rooms for Travelers."
In a moment she returned to view again, beckoning to someone within to hasten out after her. She came running back toward him, without waiting, holding her skirts with both hands at once, bunched forward and aloft to give her feet the freedom they needed. Behind her appeared a shirtsleeved man, struggling into his coat as he emerged. He set out after her.
"Here," she cried. "Over this way. Here he is."
He joined her beside the loglike figure on the ground.
"Help me get him to one of your rooms."
The man, a beefy stalwart, lifted him bodily in both arms, turned with him to face toward the lodging house. She ran around him from one side to the next, trying to be of help, trying to take hold of Durand's feet.
"No, I can manage," the man said. "You go first and hold the door."
The black sky over the station square, pocked with stars, eddied about this way and that just over Durand's upturned eyes. He had a feeling of being very close to it. Then it changed to gaslightpallor on a plaster ceiling. Then this slanted off upward, gradually dimming, and he was being borne up stairs. He could hear the quick tap of her deft feet, pressing close behind them, in the spaces between his carrier's slower plod. And once he felt his dangling hand caught up swiftly for a moment by two small ones, and the fervent print of a pair of velvety lips placed on it.
"I'm sorry it's so high up," the man said, "but that's all I have."
"No matter," she answered. "Anything. Anything."
They passed through a doorway, the ceiling dark at first, then gradually brightening to tarnished silver following the soft, spongy fluff of an ignited gas flow. Their shadows swam about on it, then blended, faded.
"Shall I put him on the bed, madam?"
"No," Durand said weakly. "No more beds. Beds mean dying. Beds mean death." His eyes sought hers, as the man lowered him to a chair, and he smiled through them. "And I'm not going to die, am I, Bonny ?" he whispered resolutely.
"Never!" she answered huskily. "I'll not let you!" She clenched her tiny fists, and set her jaw, and he could see sparks of defiance in her eyes, as if they were flint stones.
"Shall I get you a doctor, madam ?" the man asked.
"Nothing more this minute. Leave us alone together. I'll let you know later. Here, take this for now." She thrust some money at him through the door. "I'll sign the registry book later."
She locked it, came running back to Durand. She dropped before him in an imploring attitude.
"Louis, Louis, did I once want money, did I once want fine clothes and jewels? I'd give them all at this minute to have you stand strong and upright on your legs before me. I'd give my very looks themselves--" she clawed at her own face, dragging its supple cheeks forward as if seeking to transfer it toward him, "--and what more have I to give ?"
"Make your plea to God, dear, not to me," he said faintly, gently. "I want you as you are. I wouldn't change you even for life itself. I don't want a good woman, a noble woman. I want my vain, my selfish Bonny-- It's you I love, the badness and the good alike, and not the qualities they tell us a woman should have. Be brave in this: don't change, ever. For I love you as I know you, and if God can love, then He can understand."
The tears were streaming in reckless profusion from her eyes, she who had never wept in all her life; the tears of a lifetime, stored up until now, and now splurging wildly forth all in one burst of regret.
His fingers reached tremulously to trace their course. "Don't weep any more. You've wept so much these past few minutes. I wanted to give you happiness, not tears."
She caught her breath and struggled with it, restraining it, quelling it. "I'm so new at love, Louis. It's only a half-day now. Only a half-day out of twenty-three years. Louis," she asked like a child in wonderment, "is this what it's like? Does it always hurt so?"
He remembered back along their story, spent now. "It hurts. But it's worth it. It's love."
A strange snorting sound came from the outside, somewhere near by, through the closed window, as if a great bull-like beast, hampered with clanking chains, were muzzling the ground.
"What was that ?" he asked vaguely, raising his head a little.
"It's a train, out there somewhere in the dark. A train, coming into the station, or shuttling about in the yards--"
His arms stiffened on the chair rests, thrusting him higher.
"Bonny, it's for us, it's ours. Any train, to anywhere-- Help me. Help me get out of here. I can do it, I can reach it--"
She had lived by violence all her life; by sudden change, and swift decision. She rose to it now on the instant, she was so used to it. She was ready at a word. Instantly her spirit flared up, kindled by his.
"Anywhere. Even New York. You'll stand by me there if they--"
She thrust her arm around behind him, helped him rise from the chair. Again the endless flight was about to recommence. Tightarmed together, they took a step forward, toward the door. A single one--
He fell. And this time there was a finality to it that could not be mistaken. It was the fall to earth of the dead. He lay there flat, unresisting, supine, waiting for it. He lay face up, looking at her with despairing eyes.
Her face swiftly dipped to his.
"No time," he whispered through immobile lips. "Don't speak. Put your lips to mine. Tell me goodbye with that."
Kiss of farewell. Their very souls seemed to flow together. To try to blend forever into one. Then, despairing, failed and were separated, and one slipped down into darkness and one remained in the light.
She drew her lips from his, for sheer necessity of breathing. There was a smile of ineffable contentment left on his, there where her lips had been.
"And that was my reward," he sighed.
His eyes closed, and there was death.
A shudder ran through her, as though the throes of dying were in her herself. She shook him, trying to bring back the motion that had only just left him, but left him forever. She pressed him to her, in desperate embrace that he was no longer within, only some dead thing he had left behind. She pleaded with him, called to him. She even tried to make a bargain with death itself, win a delay.
"No, wait! Oh, just one minute more! One minute give me, and then I'll let him go! Oh, God! Oh, Someone! Anyone at all! Just one more minute! I have something I want to tell him!"
No desolation equal to that of the pagan, suddenly bereft. For to the pagan, there is no hereafter.
She flung herself downward over him, and her hair, coming unbound, flowed over him, covering his face. The golden hair that he had loved so, made a shroud for him.
Her lips sought his ear, and she tried to whisper into it, for him alone to hear. "I love you. I love you. Can't you hear me? Where are you? That is what you always wanted. Don't you want it now?"
In the background of her grief, distant, dim, unheeded, echoes seemed to rise around her. A muffled pounding on the door, clamoring voices backing it, conjured there now, at just this place, this moment, who knows how? Perhaps by long-pent suspicions of neighbors overflowing at last into denunciation; perhaps that other crime in Mobile long, long ago, overtaking them at last--too late, too late. For she had escaped, just as surely as he had.