Waltz Into Darkness (5 page)

"No,
don't say that," he urged, alarmed. "Satisfied? I'm the
happiest man in New Orleans this evening--I'm the luckiest man in
this town--"

She
was not, it seemed, to be swayed so easily. "There is still
time. Better now than later. Are you quite sure you wouldn't rather
have me do that? I won't say a word, I won't complain. I'll
understand your feelings perfectly--"

He
was gripped by a sudden new fear of losing her. She, whom he hadn't
had at all until scarcely half an hour ago.

"But
those aren't my feelings! I beg you to believe me! My feelings are
quite the opposite. What can I do to convince you? Do you want more
time? Is it you? Is that what you are trying to say to me ?" he
insisted with growing anxiety.

She
held him for a moment with her eyes, and they were kindly and candid
and even, one might have said, somewhat tender. Then she shook her
head, very slightly it is true, 'but with all the firmness of
intention that a man might have given the gesture (if he could read
it right), and not a girl's facile undependable negation.

"My
mind has been made up," she told him, slowly and simply, "since
I first stepped onto the boat at St. Louis. Since your letter of
proposal came, as a matter of fact, and I wrote you my answer. And I
do not lightly undo my mind, once it has been made up. You will find
that once you know me better." Then she qualified it: "If
you do," and let that find him out with a little unwelcome stab,
as it promptly did.

"I'll
let this be my answer, then," he said with tremulous impatience.
"Here it is." He opened his cardcase, took out the
daguerrotype, the one of the other, older woman--her aunt's-minced it
with energetic fingers, then let it fall in trifling pieces downward
all over the ground. Then showed her both his hands, empty.

"My
mind is made up too."

She
smiled her acceptance. "Then--?"

"Then
let's be on our way. They're waiting for us at the church the past
quarter-hour or more. We've delayed here too long."

He
tilted his arm akimbo, offered it to her with a smile and a gallant
inclination from the waist, that were perhaps, on the surface, meant
to appear as badinage, merely a bantering parody, but were in reality
more sincerely intended.

"Miss
Julia?" he invited.

This
was the moment of ultimate romance, its quintessence. The betrothal.

She
shifted her parasol to the opposite shoulder. Her hand curled about
his arm like a friendly sun-warmed tendril. She gathered up the
bottom of her skirt to reticent walking-level.

"Mr.
Durand," she accepted, addressing him by surname only, in
keeping with the seemly propriety of the still-unmarried young woman
that made her drop her eyes fetchingly at the same time.

4

The
interior of the Dryades German Methodist Church at sundown.
Fulminating orange haze from without blurring its leaded windows into
swollen shapelessness; its arched apse disappearing upward into
cobwebby blue twilight. Grave, peaceful, empty but for five persons.

Five
persons gathered in a solemn little conclave about the pulpit. Four
facing it, the fifth occupying it. Four silent, the fifth speaking
low. The first two of the four, side by side; the second two flanking
them. Outside, barely audible, as if filtered through a heavy screen,
the sounds of the city, muffled, dreamy, faraway. The occasional clop
of a horse's hoof on cobbles, the creaking protest of a sharply
curving wheel, the voice of an itinerant hawker crying his wares, the
bark of a dog.

Inside,
stately phrases of the marriage service, echoing serenely in the
spacious stillness. The Reverend Edward A. Clay the officiant, Louis
Durand and Julia Russell the principals. Allan Jardine and Sophie
Tadoussac, housekeeper to the Reverend Clay, the witnesses.

"And
do you, Julia Russell, take this man, Louis Durand, to be your lawful
wedded husband--

"To
cleave to, forsaking all others--

"To
love, honor and obey--

"For
better or for worse--

"For
richer or for poorer--

"In
sickness and in health--

"Until
death do ye part?"

Silence.

Then
like a tiny bell, no bigger than a thimble in all the vastness of
that church, but clear and silver-pure--

"I
do."

"Now
the ring, please. Place it upon the bride's finger."

Durand
reaches behind him. Jardine produces it, puts it in his blindly
questing hand. Durand brings it to the tapered point of her finger.

There
is a momentary awkwardness. Her finger measurement was taken by a
string, knotted at the proper place and sent enclosed in a letter.
But there must have been an error, either in the knotting or on the
jeweler's part. It balks, won't go on.

He
tried a second, a third time, clasping her hand tighter. Still it
resists.

Quickly
she flicks her finger past her lips, returns it to him, edge
moistened. The ring goes on, ebbs down it now to base.

"I
now pronounce you man and wife."

Then,
with a professional smile to encourage the age-old shyness of lovers
when on public view, for the greater the secret love, the greater the
public shyness: "You may kiss the bride."

Their
faces turn slowly toward one another. Their eyes meet. Their heads
draw together. The lips of Louis Durand blend with those of Julia,
his wife, in sacramental pledge.

5

Antoine's,
rushing all alight toward its nightly rendezvous with midnight;'
glittering, glowing, mirrored; crowded with celebrants, singing with
laughter, sizzling with champagne; sparkling with half -athousand
jeweled gas flames all over its ceilings and walls, in bowers of
crystal; the gayest and best-known restaurant on this side of the
ocean; the soul of Paris springing enchanted from the Delta mud.

The
wedding table stretched lengthwise along one entire side of it, the
guests occupying one side only, so that the outer side might be left
clear for their view of the rest of the room--and the rest of the
room's view of them.

It
was by now eleven and after, a disheveled mass of tortured napkins,
sprawled flowers, glassware tinged with repeated refills of red wines
and white; champagne and kirsch and little upright thimbles of
benedictine for the ladies, no two alike at the same level of
consumption. And in the center, dominating the table, a miracle of a
cake, snow-white, sugar-spun, rising tier upon tier; badly eaten away
by erosion now, so that one entire side was gone. But atop its
highest pinnacle, still preserved intact, a little bride and groom in
doll form, he in a thumbnail suit of black broadcloth, she with a
wisp of tulle streaming from her head.

And
opposite them, the two originals, in life-size; sitting shoulder
pressed to shoulder, hands secretively clasped below the table,
listening to some long-winded speech of eulogy. His head still held
upright in polite pretense at attention; her head nestled dreamy-eyed
against his shoulder.

He
was in suitable evening garb now, and a quick trip to a dressshop
(first at her mention, but then at his insistence) before coming on
here had changed her from her costume of arrival to a glorious
creation of shimmering white satin, gardenias in her hair and at her
throat. On the third finger of her left hand the new gold
weddingband; on the fourth, a solitaire diamond, a husband's wedding
gift to his wife, token of an engagement contract fulifiled rather
than of one entered into before the event.

And
her eyes, like any new wearer's, stray over and over to these new
adornments. But whether they go more often to the third finger or to
the fourth, who is to detect and who is to say?

Flowers,
wine, friendly laughing faces, toasts and wishes of wellbeing. The
beginning of two lives. Or rather, the ending of two, the beginning
of one.

"Shall
we slip away now ?" he whispers to her. "It's getting on to
twelve."

"Yes.
One more dance together first. Ask them to play again. And then we'll
lose ourselves, without coming back to the table."

"As
soon as Allan finishes speaking," he assents. "If he's ever
going to."

Allan
Jardine, his business partner, has become so involved in the mazes of
a congratulatory speech that he cannot seem to find his way out of it
again. It has been going on for ten minutes; ten minutes that seem
like forty.

Jardine's
wife, sitting beside him, and present only because of an unguessed
but very strenuous domestic tug-of-war, has a dour, disapproving look
on her face. Disapproving something, but doing her best to seem
amiable, for the sake of her own husband's business interests.
Disapproving the good looks of the bride, or her youth, or perhaps
the unorthodox circumstances of the preceding courtship. Or perhaps
the fact that Durand has married at all, after having waited so many
years already, without waiting a few years more for her own underage
daughter to grow up. A favorite project which even her own husband
has had no inkling of so far. And now will never have.

Durand
took out a small card, wrote on it "Play another waltz."
Then he folded a currency note around it, motioned to a waiter,
handed it to him to be taken to the musicians.

Jardine's
wife was surreptitiously tugging at the hem of his coat now, to get
him to bring his oration to a conclusion.

"Allan,"
she hissed. "Enough is enough. This is a wedding-supper, not a
rally."

"I'm
nearly through," he promised in an aside.

"You're
through now," was the edict, delivered with a guillotinelike
sweep of her hand.

"And
so I give you the two newest apprentices to this great and happy
profession of marriage. Julia (May I?" with a bow toward her)
"and Louis."

Glasses
went up, down again. Jardine at last sat down, mopping his brow. His
wife, for her part, fanned herself by hand, holding her mouth open as
she did so, as if to get rid of a bad taste.

A
chord of music sounded.

Durand
and Julia rose; their alacrity would have been highly uncomplimentary
if it had not been so understandable.

"Excuse
us, we want to dance this together."

And
Durand solemnly winked at Jardine, to show him that he must not
expect to see them back at their places again.

A
fact which Jardine immediately imparted to his wife behind the back
of his hand the moment they had left the table. Whereupon she seemed
to disapprove that, too, in addition to everything else that she
already disapproved about this affair, and took a prudish, astringent
sip from her wineglass with a puckered mouth.

The
bows of the violinists all rose together, fell together, and they
swept into the waltz from Romeo and Juliet.

They
stood facing one another for a moment, he and she, in the usual
formal preliminary. Then she bent to pick up the loop of her
furbelowed dress, he opened his arms, and she stepped into his
embrace.

The
waltz began, the swiftest of all paired dances. Around and around and
around, then reversing, and around and around once more, the new way.
The tables and the faces swept around them, as if they were standing
still in the middle of a whirlpool, and the gaslights flashed by on
the walls and ceilings like comets.

She
held her neck arched, her head slightly back, looking straight upward
into his eyes, as if to say "I am in your hands. Do with me as
you will. Where you go, I will go. Where you turn, I will follow."

"Are
you happy, Julia?"

"Doesn't
my face tell you ?"

"Do
you regret coming down to New Orleans now?"

"Is
there any other place but New Orleans now ?" she asked with
charming intensity.

Around
and around and around; alone together, though there was a flurry of
other skirts all around them.

"Our
life together is going to be like this waltz, Julia. As sleek, as
smooth, as harmonious. Never a wrong turn, never a jarring note.
Together as close as this. One mind, one heart, one body."

"A
waltz for life," she whispered raptly. "A waltz with wings.
A waltz never ending. A waltz in the sunlight, a waltz in azure, in
gold--and in spotless white."