I retreated in the direction of the window, and put my hand on the k.n.o.b.
"No," I said.
He sprang at me, but not before I had opened the window and thrown out the bottle. I heard it fall in the roadway with a crash and scattering of gla.s.s. Happily it had harmed no one. Diaz was momentarily checked. He hesitated. I eyed him as steadily as I could, closing the while the window behind me with my right hand.
"He may try to kill me," I thought.
My heart was thudding against my dress, not from fear, but from excitement. My situation seemed impossible to me, utterly pa.s.sing belief.
Yesterday I had been a staid spinster, attended by a maid, in a hotel of impeccable propriety. Today I had locked myself up alone with a riotous drunkard in a vile flat in a notorious Parisian street. Was I mad? What force, secret and powerful, had urged me on?... And there was the foul drunkard, with clenched hands and fiery eyes, undecided whether or not to murder me. And I waited.
He moved away, inarticulately grumbling, and resumed with difficulty his hat.
"Ver" well," he hiccupped morosely, "ver" well; I"m going. Tha"s all."
He lurched into the pa.s.sage, and then I heard him fumbling a long time with the outer door. He left the door and went into his bedroom, and finally returned to me. He held one hand behind his back. I had sunk into a chair by the small table on which the lamp stood, with my satchel beside it.
"Now!" he said, halting in front of me. "You"ve locked tha" door. I can"t go out."
"Yes," I admitted.
"Give me the key."
I shook my head.
"Give me the key," he cried. "I mus" have the key."
I shook my head.
Then he showed his right hand, and it held a revolver. He bent slightly over the table, staring down at me as I stared up at him. But as his chin felt the heat rising from the chimney of the lamp, he shifted a little to one side. I might have rushed for shelter into some other room; I might have grappled with him; I might have attempted to soothe him. But I could neither stir nor speak. Least of all, could I give him the key--for him to go and publish his own disgrace in the thoroughfares. So I just gazed at him, inactive.
"I s"ll kill you!" he muttered, and raised the revolver.
My throat became suddenly dry. I tried to make the motion of swallowing, and could not. And looking at the revolver, I perceived in a swift revelation the vast folly of my inexperience. Since he was already drunk, why had I not allowed him to drink more, to drink himself into a stupor?
Drunkards can only be cured when they are sober. To commence a course of moral treatment at such a moment as I had chosen was indeed the act of a woman. However, it was too late to reclaim the bottle from the street.
I saw that he meant to kill me. And I knew that previously, during our encounter at the window, I had only pretended to myself that I thought there was a risk of his killing me. I had pretended, in order to increase the glory of my martyrdom in my own sight. Moreover, my brain, which was working with singular clearness, told me that for his sake I ought to give up the key. His exposure as a helpless drunkard would be infinitely preferable to his exposure as a murderer.
Yet I could not persuade myself to relinquish the key. If I did so, he would imagine that he had frightened me. But I had no fear, and I could not bear that he should think I had.
He fired.
My ears sang. The room was full of a new odour, and a cloud floated reluctantly upwards from the mouth of the revolver. I sneezed, and then I grew aware that, firing at a distant of two feet, he had missed me. What had happened to the bullet I could not guess. He put the revolver down on the table with a groan, and the handle rested on my satchel.
"My G.o.d, Magda!" he sighed, pushing back his hair with his beautiful hand.
He was somewhat sobered. I said nothing, but I observed that the lamp was smoking, and I turned down the wick. I was so self-conscious, so irresolute, so nonplussed, that in sheer awkwardness, like a girl at a party who does not know what to do with her hands, I pushed the revolver off the satchel, and idly unfastened the catch of the satchel. Within it, among other things, was my sedative. I, too, had fallen the victim of a habit. For five years a bad sleeper, I had latterly developed into a very bad sleeper, and my sedative was accordingly strong.
A notion struck me.
"Drink a little of this, my poor Diaz!" I murmured.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It will make you sleep," I said.
With a convulsive movement he clutched the bottle and uncorked it, and before I could interfere he had drunk nearly the whole of its contents.
"Stop!" I cried. "You will kill yourself!"
"What matter!" he exclaimed; and staggered off to the darkness of the bedroom.
I followed him with the lamp, but he had already fallen on the bed, and seemed to be heavily asleep. I shook him; he made no response.
"At any cost he must he roused," I said aloud. "He must be forced to walk."
There was a knocking at the outer door, low, discreet, and continuous. It sounded to me like a deliverance. Whoever might be there must aid me to waken Diaz. I ran to the door, taking the key out of my pocket, and opened it. A tall woman stood on the doormat. It was the girl that I had glimpsed on the previous night in the large hat ascending the stairs with a man. But now her bright golden head was uncovered, and she wore a blue _peignoir_, such as is sold ready made, with its lace and its ribbons, at all the big Paris shops.
We both hesitated.
"Oh, pardon, madame," she said, in a thin, sweet voice in French. "I was at my door, and it seemed to me that I heard--a revolver. Nothing serious has pa.s.sed, then? Pardon, madame."
"Nothing, thank you. You are very amiable, madame," I replied stiffly.
"All my excuses, madame," said she, turning away.
"No, no!" I exclaimed. "I am wrong. Do not go. Someone is ill--very ill.
If you would--"
She entered.
"Where? What is it?" she inquired.
"He is in the bedroom--here."
We both spoke breathlessly, hurrying to the bedroom, after I had fetched the lamp.
"Wounded? He has done himself harm? Ah!"
"No," I said, "not that."
And I explained to her that Diaz had taken at least six doses of my strong solution of trional.
I seized the lamp and held it aloft over the form of the sleeper, which lay on its side cross-wise, the feet projecting a little over the edge of the bed, the head bent forward and missing the pillow, the arms stretched out in front--the very figure of abandoned and perfect unconsciousness. And the girl and I stared at Diaz, our shoulders touching, in the kennel.
"He must be made to walk about," I said. "You would be extremely kind to help me."
"No, madame," she replied. "He will be very well like that. When one is alcoholic, one cannot poison one"s self; it is impossible. All the doctors will tell you as much. Your friend will sleep for twenty hours--twenty-four hours--and he will waken himself quite re-established."