San Antone. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ went to a window, opening one shutter slightly to breathe deeply of the night air.

      It was like breathing water, heated water; surely you could drown in air like this. Beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead and, in a twinkling, soaked her gown.

      She fastened the shutters again and started toward the bed. Something creaked—outside her door? A floorboard? Or just the house, trying to settle itself after the battering it had taken?

      It occurred to her that one of the children might have wakened, and she started toward the door, but before she could reach it, it swung unexpectedly open, startling her into immobility.

      Someone stood framed in the open doorway. It was too dark to make him out, yet she knew at once that it was Clifford Montgomery.

      “What are you doing here?” she demanded of him.

      For an answer, he stepped into the room and closed the door after himself. The darkness swallowed him up. He might almost have disappeared into thin air.

      Then she heard the sound of his breathing, quick, ragged.

      “Get out,” she said with all the authority she could muster. “Lewis....”

      “Lewis is out—he took my carriage, remember?”

      He bumped into something. She stood frozen, listening; his breathing was louder, nearer. She backed away, trying to remember the locations of the room’s furnishings, but her mind was blank. There was a door, a connecting door...no, that wouldn’t do; Melissa was in there, sleeping—no telling what this brute might do.... She half turned, and hit a chair; it scraped noisily on the wooden floor.

      The sound led him to her. He was suddenly there, seizing her roughly, yanking her against him. She was afraid to scream, afraid of bringing the children to investigate; the two of them struggled in an eerie silence.

      He tried to hold her head, to turn her face so that he could kiss her. She bit his hand and he swore under his breath. “Bitch,” he said, and slapped her, once, twice, three times. She staggered backward, toppling onto the bed, her head striking the headboard.

      Too dazed to do more than mutter a protest, she felt her nightclothes being torn from her, felt his weight on her, his knees forcing hers apart.

      Then the brutal pain ripped through her.

      Outside, the storm had begun to rage again.

      She was barely aware of his leaving. She lay stunned, racked with pain, and began to cry noiselessly, tears not only of pain but of anger and frustration and, most of all, of humiliation.

      She must have cried herself to sleep. She was aware gradually of a dim light shining through her lids. She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at her husband.

      He was holding a lamp aloft, and by its flickering light she could see that he was drenched; his hair hung wetly over his brow and as he leaned down, the water dripped onto the bedclothes.

      “Lewis? How...the storm....”

      “I started back during the calm. I thought I’d made it just in time,” he said. “Now it seems I was a bit late, wasn’t I?”

      In her surprise at seeing him, she’d actually forgotten Clifford’s brutal attack, the pain, and fear. Her nightclothes were in shreds; there was blood on one breast where his nails had clawed at the delicate flesh....

      “Montgomery?” he asked.

      “Yes.” She could think of nothing else to say. Everything was obvious anyway, wasn’t it? Even his complicity, if you wanted to think of that. Though she would never have said it aloud, she could see that he had thought of that, too; Clifford Montgomery wasn’t the only cause of the anger and the pain she saw building in her husband’s eyes.

      He set the lamp down on the table and started for the door.

      “Lewis, wait,” she called. “Don’t. It’s over and done with. There’s nothing you can do now.”

      “It’s not over,” he said. “It’s not done with.”

      He went out without a pause, looking straight ahead, walking stiffly, like a sleepwalker.

      She sat for a moment propped up in the bed, stupidly clutching at a nightgown that could no longer begin to cover her nakedness. She was so unused to Lewis taking action. She didn’t at first grasp what he intended to do.

      It came to her all at once, like one of those flashes of lightning outside. That code of honor. God in heaven, of course, what else could a “southern gentleman” do? Even a drunk one? Even one who cared not at all for his wife?

      “Lewis.” She called his name again and jumped out of the bed. It took her a minute or more to find another robe. She rushed into the hall, to the top of the stairs. Alice Montgomery was in the hall below, in her own nightclothes—great flannel sprays of violets cascading over her rounded figure; she twisted her hands together like a Lady Macbeth reduced to the sniffles, and looked up wide-eyed as Joanna appeared.

      “They’ve gone outside, to the garden,” she said. As if to confirm her statement, a gust of wet wind swept along the hall, making the sprays of violets shudder on her bosom. “They took the pistols.”

      Joanna ran down the stairs. She was drenched before she even reached the open door to the garden; the wind was blowing the rain inside in sheets, like curtains at a window. Outside, her gown clung to her, her feet slipped on paths turned to mud. She waded through watery air.

      The noise and the darkness conspired to hide them from her. She stumbled, colliding with an oleander bush that brought her to her knees, and staggered to her feet again. She thought she heard Alice shouting, but the words, if they were words and not just a trick of the storm, were indistinguishable.

      At last a flash of lightning revealed the two men, in a far corner of the garden. They were standing back to back, pistols raised skyward.

      “Stay out of this,” Clifford yelled at her. Lewis ignored her completely; he might not have known she was there for all the notice he took of her.

      The fool, Joanna thought, and didn’t know if she was more angry or frightened. Lewis was no shot; even without knowing anything about guns, you could see that he was holding his all wrong somehow, it just looked inept. It had been a great many generations since the Hartes had had to hunt for their food, and not even for pleasure was Lewis likely to exert himself unduly.

      They began to count together, stepping in time away from one another. “One,” like a chorus, they sang. “Two....” Clifford’s voice faded on the wind, but you could still see his lips moving.

      She might have known, she told herself much later. Wouldn’t Lewis just try to cheat, even in a matter of honor. They had reached the count of eight when he swung around, lifting his pistol toward Clifford’s back. His foot slipped on the wet ground and he fell, the shot going wild, the gun flying from his hand.

      “Oh, Lewis!” Joanna cried, relief and exasperation flooding together through her. She ran to him, kneeling beside him in the mud. At first she thought he had fainted, but then she saw that he was crying, sobbing soundlessly into the crook of his arm.

      “Move aside,” Clifford СКАЧАТЬ