Waltz Into Darkness (28 page)

There
was something fragilely charming, he thought, in the evanescent
little gesture while it lasted. And he watched it wistfully and hated
to see it end, the hand drop back as it had been. It had been so
unstudied. With me; finger unconsciously to her heart.

The
stuttering little tap came again. There was something coy about it
that irritated him. He turned his head and frowned over that way.
"Who's that?" he asked sternly, but of her, not the door.

She
shaped her mouth to a soundless symbol of laughter; then she stilled
it further, though it hadn't come at all, by spoking her fingers over
it, fanwise. "A suitor, I'm afraid. The colonel. I know him by
his tap."

Durand,
his face growing blacker by the minute, was at the bedside now,
struggling into trousers with a sort of cavorting hop, to and fro.

The
tapping had accosted them a third time.

He
cut his thumb slashingly backhand toward the door, in pantomime to
have her answer it temporizingly while he got ready.

"Yes?"
she said sweetly.

"It's
Harry, my dear," came through the door. "Good morning. Am I
too early."

"No,
too late," growled Durand surlily. "I'll attend to 'Harry,
my dear' in a moment!" he vowed to her in an undertone.

She
was in stitches by now, head prone on the dressing table, hands
clasped across the back of her neck, palpitating with smothered
laughter.

"In
a minute," she said half-strangled.

"Don't
hurry yourself, my dear," the cooing answer came back. "You
know I'll wait all morning for you, if necessary. To wait outside
your door for you to come out is the pleasantest thing I know of.
There is only one thing pleasanter, and that would be-"

The
door sliced back and he found himself confronted by Durand, feet
unshod, hair awry, and in nothing but trousers and undershirt.

To
make it worse, his face had been bearing down close against the door,
to make himself the better heard. He found his nose almost pressed
into Durand's coarse-spun barley-colored underwear, at about the
height of Durand's chest.

His
head went up a notch at a time, like something worked on a pulley,
until it was level with Durand's own. And for each notch he had a
strangulated exclamation, like a winded grunt. Followed by a
convulsive swallowing. "Unh--? Anh--? Unh--?"

"Well,
sir ?" Durand rapped out.

Worth's
hand executed helpless curlycues, little corkscrew waves, trying to
point behind Durand but unable to do so.

"You're--in
there? You're--not dressed?"

"Will
you kindly mind your business, sir?" Durand said sternly.

The
colonel raised both arms now overhead, fists clenched, in some sort
of approaching denunciation. Then they faltered, froze that way,
finally crumbled. His eyes were suddenly fixed on Durand's right
shoulder. They dilated until they threatened to pop from his head.

Durand
could feel her arm glide caressingly downward over his shoulder, and
then her hand tipped up to fondle his chin, while she herself
remained out of sight behind him. He looked down to where Worth was
staring at it, and it was the one with the wedding band, their old
wedding band, on it.

It
rose, was stroking and petting Durand's cheek now, letting the puffy
gold circlet flash and wink conspicuously. It gave the slack of his
cheek a fond little pinch, then spread the two fingers that had just
executed it wide apart, in what might have been construed as a jaunty
salute.

"I--I--I
didn't know!" Worth managed to gasp out asthmatically, as if
with his last breath.

"You
do now, sir!" Durand said severely. "And what brings you to
my wife's door, may I ask?"

The
colonel was backing away along the passage now, brushing the wall now
at this side, now at that, but incapable apparently of turning around
once and for all and tearing his eyes off the hypnotic spectacle of
Durand and the affectionate straying hand.

"I--I
beg your pardon!" he succeeded in panting at last, from a safe
distance.

"I
beg yours!" Durand rejoined with grim inflexibility.

The
colonel turned at last and fled, or rather wallowed drunkenly, away.

The
detached hand suddenly went up in air, bent its fingers inward, and
flipped them once or twice.

"Ta
ta," her voice called out gaily, "lovey mine!"

40

Arms
close-knit about one another's waists, leaning almost avidly from the
open window of her room, shimmering in unison with laughter, they
watched the streaming debacle of the colonel's luggage, poured forth
from under the veranda shed, followed by its owner's hurried,
trotting departure. The colonel could not seem to climb into his
waiting coach quickly enough and be gone from this scene of
ego-shrivelling discomfiture with enough haste; he all but hopped in
on one leg, like an ungainly crane in waddling earthbound flight, and
the whole buggy rocked with his plunge.

It
was not his own private conscience that spurred him on,
conjecturably, it was public ridicule. The story had obviously spread
like wildfire about the establishment, in the inexplicable way of
such things at seashore resorts, though neither Durand nor she had
breathed a word to living soul. It was as though the tale were water
and the hotel a sponge; it was as though the keyholes themselves had
found tongues for their perpendicular slitted mouths and whispered
it. Strollers entering or leaving, at this moment, as he was going,
stopped and turned to stare at the spectacle he made in flight, with
either outright smiles visible upon their faces, or tactfully
sheltering hands to mouths, which betrayed the fact that there were
smiles beneath them to conceal.

The
colonel fled, within a sheltering turret of his own massed luggage
piled high on the seat, the plumage of his male pride as badly
frizzled as feathers in a flame. The yellow wheel spokes sluiced into
solidified disks, a spurt of dust haze arose, the roadway was empty,
the colonel was gone.

She
had even wanted to wave, this time with her handkerchief, as she had
waved at the door an hour or so before, but Durand, some remnants of
masculine fellow-feeling stirring in him, held her hand back,
quenched the gesture, though laughing all the same. They turned from
the window, still chuckling, arms still tight about one another in
new-found possession. They had been cruel just now, though they
hadn't intended it, their only thought had been their own amusement.
Yet what is cruelty but the giving of pain in the taking of pleasure?

"Oh,
dear !" she exhaled, breathless. She parted from him, drooped
exhausted over the back of a chair. "That man. He wasn't cut out
to be a romantic lover. Yet always that is the type that tries
hardest to play the role. I wonder why?"

"Am
I?" he asked her, curious to hear what she would say.

She
turned her eyes toward him, lidded them inexpressibly. "Oh,
Louis," she said in bated whisper. "Can you ask me that?
You're the perfect example. With the blushes of a boy--look at you
now. The arms of a tiger. And a heart as easily broken as a woman's."

The
tiger part was the only one that appealed to him; he decided the
other two were wholly her own imaginings.

He
exercised them once again, briefly but heartily, as any man would
after such prompting.

"We'll
have to go soon ourselves," he reminded her presently.

"Why
?" she asked, as if willing enough but failing quite to
understand the need to do so.

Then
thinking she had found the answer for herself, gave it to him without
waiting. "Oh, because of what's happened. Yes, it's true; I was
seen with him constantly all these past--"

"No,"
he said, "that isn't what I meant. It's that--business on the
boat. I told you last night, I went to a private investigator in St.
Louis, and so far as I know he's still engaged upon it."

"There's
no warrant out, is there?"

"No,
but I think it's better for us to stay out of his way. I'd rather not
have him accost us, or even learn where we are to be found."

"He
has no police power, has he?" she asked with quick, brittle
interest.

"Not
so far as I know. I don't know what he can do or can't do, and I've
no wish to find out. The police in New Orleans told me you were
immune, but that was at that time, before he took hand in it. Your
immunity may expire from one minute to the next, when least we expect
it, while he's still around and about. It's safer for us not to place
ourselves too close at hand, under their thumbs. Don't you see, we
can't go back to New Orleans now."

"No,"
she agreed without emotion, "we can't."

"And
it's better for us not to linger here too long either. Word travels
quickly. You cannot help drawing the admiration of all eyes wherever
you appear. You're no drab wallflower. Besides, my own presence here
is well known; I made no secret I was coming here, and they'd know
where to reach me-"

"Will
you--be able to?"

He
knew what she meant.

"I
have enough for now. And I can get in touch with Jardine, if need
should arise."

She
raised her hand and snapped her fingers close before her face. "Very
well, we'll go," she said gaily. "We'll be on our way
before the sun goes down. Where shall it be? You name it."

He
pocketed one hand, spread the other palm up. "How about one of
the northern cities? They're large, they can swallow us whole, we'll
never be noticed. Baltimore, Philadelphia, even New York--"

He
saw her chew the corner of her underlip in sudden distaste. "Not
the North," she said, with a distant look in her eyes. "It's
cold and gray and ugly, and it snows--"

He
wondered what Damoclean sword of retribution, from out of the past,
hung over her suspended there.

"We'll
stay down here, then," he said, without hesitation. "It's
closer to them, and we'll have to keep moving about more often. But I
want to please you. What about Mobile or Birmingham, then; those are
large enough towns to lose ourselves in."

She
made her choice with a pert little nod. "Mobile for now. I'll
begin to pack at once."

She
stopped again in a moment, holding some article in her hands, and
drew close to him once more. "How different this is from last
night. Do you remember? Then it was an arrest. Now it is a
honeymoon."

"The
beginning of a new life. Everything new. New plans, new hopes, new
dreams. A new destination. A new you. A new I."

She
crept into his arms, looked up at him, her very soul in her eyes. "Do
you forgive? Do you take me back?"

"I
never met you before last night. There is no past. This is our real
wedding day."

The
"tiger-arms" showed their stripes, went around her once
more.

"My
Lou," she sobbed ecstatically.

"My
Jul--"

"Careful,
there," she warned, with finger upright to his lips.

"My
Bonny."

41

Mobile,
then.

They
went to the finest hotel there, and like the bride and groom they
were in everything but count of time, they took its finest suite, its
bridal suite. Chamber and sitting room, height of luxury, lace
curtains over the windows, maroon drapes, Turkish carpeting thick on
the floors, and even that seldom-met-with innovation, a private bath
of their own that no one else had access to, complete with clawlegged
tub enamelled in light green.

Bellhops
danced attendance on them from morning to night, and all eyes were on
them every time they came and went through the public rooms below.
The petite blonde, always so dainty, so exquisitely dressed, with the
tall dark man beside her, eyes for no one else. "That romantic
pair from--" Nobody knew just where, but everybody knew who was
meant.

More
than one sigh of benevolent regret swept after them.

"I
declare, it makes me feel a little younger just to look at them."

"It
makes me feel a little sad. Because we all know that it cain't
last. They're bound to lose it 'fore long."