Waltz Into Darkness (29 page)

"But
they've had it."

"Yes,
they've had it."

Every
sprightly supper resort in town knew them, every gay and brightly
lighted gathering place, every theatre, public ball, entertainment,
minstrelsy. Every time the violins played, somewhere, anywhere, she
was in his arms there, turning in the endless, fevered spirals of the
waltz. Every time the moon was full, she was in his arms there,
somewhere, in a halted carriage, heads close together, sweetness of
magnolia all around, gazing up at it with dreamy, wondering eyes.

But
they were right, the musers and the sighers and the castasides in the
hotel lobby. It lasts such a short time. It comes but once, and goes,
and then it never comes again. Even to the upright, to the blessed,
it never comes again. And how much less likely, to the hunted and the
doomed.

But
this was their moment of it now, this was their time for it, their
share: Durand and his Julia. (Julia, for love's first thought is its
lasting one, love's first name for itself, is its true one.) The
sunburst of their happiness. The brief blaze of their noon.

Mobile,
then, in the flood tide of their romance; and all was rapture, all
was love.

42

Without
raising her eyes, she smiled covertly, showing she was well aware
that his gaze was lingering on her, there in the little sitting room
outside their bedroom. Studying her like an elusive lesson; a lesson
that seems simple enough at first glance, but is never to be fully
learned, though the student goes back to it again and again.

"What
are you thinking ?" she teased, keeping her eyes still downcast.

"Of
you."

She
took that for granted. "I know. But what, of me ?"

He
sat down beside her, at the foot of the chaise longue, tilted his
knee, hugged it, and cast his eyes upon her more speculatively than
ever. Shaking his head a little, as if in wonderment himself, that
this should be so.

"I
used to want what they call a good wife. That was the only kind I
ever thought I'd have. A proper little thing who'd sit demurely,
working a needle through a hoop, both feet planted on the floor. Head
submissively lowered to her task, who'd look up when I spoke and
'Aye' and 'Nay' me. But now I don't. Now I only want a wife like you.
With yesterday's leftover dye still on her cheeks. With the tip of
her bent knee poked brazenly through her dressing gown. With cigar
ashes on the floor about her. Jeering at a man in their most private
moments, egging him on, then ridiculing him, rather than swooning
limp into his arms." He shook his head, more helplessly than
ever. "Bonny, Bonny, what have you done to me? Though I still
know you should be like that, like those others are, I don't want
anyone like that any more. I've forgotten there are any. I only want
you; bad as you are, heartless as you are, exactly as you are, I only
want you."

Her
tarnished golden laughter welled up, showered down upon the two of
them like counterfeit coins.

"Lou,
you're so gullible. There aren't two kinds of women; there never
were, there never will be. Only one kind of woman, one kind of man--
And both of them, alike, not much good." Her laughter had
stopped; her face was tired and wise, and there was a little flicker
of bitterness, as she said the last.

"Lou,"
she repeated, "you're so--unaware."

"Are
you sure that's the word you had in mind?"

"Innocent,"
she agreed.

"Innocent?"
he parried wryly.

"A
woman's innocence is like snow on a hot stove; it's gone at the first
touch. But when a man is innocent, he can have had ten wives, and
he's as innocent at the end of them all as he was at the beginning.
He never learns."

He
shivered feverishly. "I know you drive me mad. At least I've
learned that much."

She
threw herself backward on the couch, her head hanging over so that
she was looking behind her toward the ceiling, in a sort of
floundering luxuriance. She extended her arms widely upward in a
greedy, grasping, ecstatic V. Her voice was a dreamy chant of
longing.

"Lou,
buy me a new dress. All white satin and Chantilly lace. Lou, buy me a
great big emerald for my pinkey. Buy me diamond drops for my ears.
Take me out in a carriage to twelve o'clock supper at some lobster
palace. I want to look at the chandelier lights through the layers of
colored liqueurs in a pousse café. I want to feel champagne
trickle down my throat while the violins play gypsy music. I want to
live, I want to live, I want to live! The time is so short, and I
won't get a second turn--"

Then,
as her fear of infinity, her mistrust that Providence would look out
for her if left to its own blind course-for it was that at bottom,
that and nothing else--were caught by him in turn, and he was kindled
into a like fear and defiance of their fate, he bent swiftly toward
her, his lips found hers, and her litany of despair was stilled.

Until,
presently, she sighed: "No, don't take me anywhere-- You're
here, I'm here- The champagne, the music are right here with us--
Everything's here-- No need to look elsewhere--"

And
her arms dropped, closed over him like the trap they were.

43

Presently
they quitted their suite in the hotel and rented a house. An entire
house, for their own. A house with an upstairs and down.

It
was at her suggestion. And it was she who engaged the agent,
accompanied him to view the several prospects he had to offer, and
made the final selection. An "elegant" (that was her word
for it) though rather gingerbready affair on one of the quieter
residential streets, tree flanked. Then all he had to do was sign the
necessary papers, and with but a coaxing smile or two from her, he
did so, with the air of a man fondly indulging a child in her latest
whim. A whim that, he suspects, tomorrow she will have tired of; but
that, while it remains valid, today, he has not the heart to refuse
her.

It
seemed to fill some long-felt, deep-seated, longing on her part: a
house of one's own; to be--more than merely an expression of great
wealth--an expression of legitimate great wealth; to be the
ultimate in stability, in belonging, in caste. It was as if her
catalogue of values ran thus: jewels and fine clothes, any
fly-by-night may have them from her sweetheart; even a lawfully
wedded husband, any sweetheart may be made into one if you cared to
take the pains; but a house of your own, then indeed you had reached
the summit, then indeed you were socially impregnable, then indeed
you were a great lady. Or (pitiful parenthesis) as you fondly
imagined one to be.

"It's
so much grander," she said. She sighed wistfully. "It makes
me feel like a really married woman."

He
laughed indulgently. "What had you felt like until now, madame
?"

"Oh,
it is useless to tell this to a man!" she said with a little
spurt of playful indignation.

And
it was, in truth, for each of them had the instincts of their own
kind.

Even
when he tried, half-teasingly, and only when the arrangement had
already been entered into, to warn her and point out the
disadvantages, she would have none of it.

"But
who'll cook for us? A house takes looking after. You're taking on a
great many cares."

She
threw up her hands. "Well, then I'll have servants, like the
other ladies who have houses of their own. You'll see; leave that to
me."

A
colored woman appeared, and lasted five days. There was some question
of a missing trinket. Then after her stormy discharge and departure,
which filled the lower floor with noise for some fifteen minutes,
Bonny came to him presently and admitted she had unearthed the
valuable in a place she had forgotten having put it.

"Why
didn't you search first, and then accuse her afterward ?" he
pointed out, as gently as he could. "That is what any other
lady, mistress of her own house, would have done."

"Oh,
would she?" She seemed at a loss. "I did not think of
that."

"You
must not tyrannize over them," he tried to instruct her. "You
must be firm and gentle at the same time. Otherwise you show that you
are not used to having servants of your own."

The
second one lasted three days. There was less commotion, but there
were tears this time. On Bonny's part.

"I
tried being gentle," she came to him and reported, "and she
paid no heed to any of my orders. I don't seem to know how to handle
them. If I am severe, they walk out. If I am kind, they do not do
their work."

"There
is an art to it," he consoled her. "You will acquire it
presently."

"No,"
she said. "There is something about me. They look at me and
sneer. They do not respect me. They will take more from another
woman, and be docile; they will take nothing from me, and still be
impudent. Is this not my own house? Am I not your wife? What is it
about me?"

He
could not answer that, for he saw her with the eyes of love, and he
could not tell what eyes they saw her with, nor see with theirs.

"No,"
she said in answer, to his suggestion, "no more servants. I've
had enough of them. Let me do it. I can try, I can manage."

A
meal followed that was a complete fiasco. The eggs broke in the water
meant to boil them, and a sort of milky stew resulted, neither to be
eaten nor to be drunk. The coffee had the pallor of tea without any
of its virtues, and on second try became a muddy abomination that
filled their mouths with grit. The toast was tinctured with the
cologne that she so liberally applied to her hands.

He
uttered not a word of reproach. He stood up and discarded his napkin.
"Come," he said, "we're going back to the hotel for
our meals."

She
hastened to get her things, as if overjoyed herself at this solution.

And
on their way over he said, "Now aren't you sorry ?" with a
twinkle in his eye.

But
on this point, at least, she was steadfast. "No," she said.
"Even if we have to eat elsewhere, at least I still have my own
house. I would not change that for anything." And she repeated
what she'd said before. "I want to feel like a really married
woman. I want to feel like all the rest do. I want to know what it
feels like."

She
couldn't, it seemed, quite get used to the idea that she was legally
married to him, and all this was hers by right and not by conquest.

44

Increasingly
uncomfortable, and extremely bored in addition, feeling that all eyes
were on him, he paced back and forth in the modiste's anteroom, and
at every turn seemed to come into collision with some hurrying young
girl carrying fresh bolts of goods into a curtained recess behind
which Bonny had disappeared an interminable length of time
previously. These flying supernumeraries always came out again empty
handed; judging by the quantity of material that he had already seen
go in the alcove, with none ever taken out again, it should have been
filled to ceiling height by this time.

He
could hear her voice at intervals, topping the rustles of unwound
fabric lengths and carefully chosen phrases of professional
inducement.

"I
cannot decide! The more you bring in to show me, the harder it
becomes to settle on one. No, leave that, I may come back to it."

Suddenly
the curtains parted, gripped by restraining hands just below the
breach, so that it could not spread downward, and her head, no more,
peered through.

"Lou,
am I taking dreadfully long? I just remembered you, out there."

"Long,
but not dreadfully," he answered gallantly.

"What
are you doing with yourself?" she asked, as if he were a small
boy left for a risky moment to his own, devices.

"Getting
in everyone's way, I'm afraid," he admitted.

There
was a chorus of polite feminine laughter, both from before and behind
the Secretive curtain, as though he had said something very funny
indeed.

"Poor
thing," she said contritely. Her head turned to someone behind
her. The grip on the curtain slit slid slightly downward for a
moment, and the turn of an unclad shoulder was revealed, a tapelike
strip of white ribbon its only covering. "Haven't you any
magazines or something for him to look over, pass the time with ?"