Waltz Into Darkness (51 page)

I
want to live again, his heart pleaded; I want to live again out
there.

He
turned, and let the makeshift be, the quicker to be down below and at
the original; and the stairs lay there before him, dropping away like
a chasm, a serried cliff. His courage quailed at the sight for a
minute, for he knew what they were going to cost. And the distant
scrape of her chair in the kitchen below just then, added point to
his dismay.

But
he could only go onward. To go back was death in itself, death in
bed.

He'd
reached their tip now, and his eye went down them, all the cascading
miles to their bottom. Vertigo assailed him, but he held his ground
resolutely, clutching at the newel post with double grip as though it
were the staff of life itself.

He
knew that he would not be able to go down them upright, as the well
did. He would overbalance, topple headfirst for sheer lack of leg
support. He therefore lowered his own distance from the ground, first
of all. He sat down upon the top step, feet and legs over to the
second. He dropped them to the third, then lowered his rump to the
second, like a child who cannot walk yet.

As
he descended he was drawing nearer, ever nearer to her. For she was
down there where he was going.

She
sounded so close to him now. Almost, he could see before his very
eyes everything she was doing, by the mere sound of it alone.

A
busy little tinkering, ending with a tap against a cup rim: that
meant she was stirring sugar into her coffee.

A
creak from the frame of a chair: that meant that she was leaning
forward to drink it.

A
second creak: that meant that she had settled back after taking the
first swallow.

He
could hear bread crust crackle, as she tore apart a roll.

Crumbs
lodged in her throat and she coughed. Then leaned forward to clear it
with another swallow of her coffee.

And
if he could hear her so minutely, how--he asked himself-- could she
fail to hear him; this stealthy rustling he must be making on the
stairs?

He
was afraid even to breathe, and he had never needed breath so badly.

At
last the bottom, and he could only lie there a minute, rumpled as an
empty sack that had fallen down from above, even if it had meant she
would come out upon him any instant.

From
where he was now there was only a straight line to travel, to the
front door. But he knew he could not gain it upright. He had
exhausted himself too much by now, spent himself too much on the way.
How then gain support? How get there?

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.

"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.