Waltz Into Darkness (6 page)

She
closed her eyes, as if in ecstasy.

"Here's
the side way out. And no one's watching."

They
came to a deft, toe-gliding halt, such as skaters use. They
separated, and gave a quick look over at the oblivious wedding party
table, half-screened from them by the dancers in between. Then he
guided her before him, around palms, and a bronze statuette of a
nymph, and a fluted column, out of the main dining room and into a
scullery passage, redolent of steamy food and loud with unseen voices
somewhere near at hand. She giggled as a small cat, coming their way,
stopped to eye them amazed.

He
took her by the hand now, and took the lead, and drew her after him,
on quick-running joyous little steps, out to an outside alleyway that
ran beside the building. And from here they emerged to the street at
last. He threw up his arm at a carriage, and a moment later was
sitting beside her in it, his arm protectively about her.

"St.
Louis Street," he ordered proudly. "I'll show you where to
stop."

And
as the bells of St. Louis Cathedral near by began their slow tolling
of midnight, Louis Durand and his bride drove rapidly away toward
their new home.

6

The
house was empty, waiting. Waiting to begin its history, which, for a
house, is that of its occupants. Oil lamps had been left lighted, one
to a room, by someone, most likely Aunt Sarah, before leaving, their
little beaded flames, safe within glass chimneys, winking just high
enough to disperse the darkness and cast an amber glow. The same
blend of wood shavings, paint, and putty, spiced with a dash of floor
varnish, was still in evidence, but to a far lesser degree now, for
carpets had been laid over the raw floors, drapes hung athwart the
window casings.

Someone
had brought flowers into the parlor, not costly store flowers but
wildflowers, cheery, colorful, winning nonetheless; a generous
spray of them smothering a widemouthed bowl set on the parlor center
table, with spears of pussywillow sticking out all over like the
quills of a hedgehog's back.

A
clock had even been wound up and started on its course, a new clock
on the mantelpiece, imported from France, its face set in a block of
green onyx, a little bronze cupid with moth wings clambering up a
chain of bronze roses at each side of its centerpiece. Its diligent,
newly practised ticking added a note of reassuring, homely
tranquility to what otherwise would have been a stony-cold silence.

Everything
was ready, all that was lacking were the dwellers.

A
house, waiting for a man and his wife to come and claim it.

The
resonant, cuplike sound of a horse's hoofs drew near in the stillness
outside, came to a halt on a double down-beat. Axles creaked with a
shift of weight, then settled again. A human tongue clucked
professionally, then the hoofs recommenced, thinned away into silence
once more.

There
was a slight scrape of leather on paving stone, a mischievous little
whisper, like a secret told by one foot to another.

A
moment afterward a key turned in the outside of the door.

They
stood there revealed in the opening, Durand and she. Limned amber by
the light before them in the house, framed by a panel of night sky
sanded with stars behind them and over their heads. They were
motionless, as oblivious of what lay before them as of what lay
behind them. Face turned to meet face, his arms about her, her hands
on his shoulders.

Nothing
moved, neither they nor the stars at their back nor the open-doored
house waiting to receive them. It was one of those moments never to
be captured again. The kiss at the threshold of marriage.

It
ended. A moment cannot last beyond itself. They stirred at last and
drew apart, and he said softly: "Welcome to your new home, Mrs.
Durand. May you find as much happiness here as you bring to it."

"Thank
you," she murmured, eyes downcast. for a second. "And may
you as well."

He
lifted her bodily in his arms. She came clear of the ground with a
little foamy rustle of skirt bottoms. Moving sideward so that his
shoulder might ward off the loose-swinging door, he carried her over
the sill and in. Then dipped again and set her back on her feet, in a
little froth of lacy hems.

He
stepped aside, closed the door, and bolted it.

She
was looking around, standing in one place but moving her body in a
half-circle from there, to take in everything.

"Like
it?" he asked.

He
went to a lamp, turned the little wheel, heightening its flame to a
yellow stalagmite. Then to another, and another, wherever they had
been left. The walls brightened from dull ivory to purest white. The
newness of everything became doubly conspicuous.

"Like
it?" he beamed, as though the reward for it all lay in hearing
her say that.

Her
hands were clasped, and elevated upward to height of her face; held
that way in a sort of stylized rhapsody.

"Oh,
Louis," she breathed. "It's ideal. It's exquisite."

"It's
yours," he said, and the way he dropped his voice showed the
gratitude he felt at her appreciation.

She
moved her hands out to one side of her face now, still clasped, and
nestled her cheek against them slantwise. Then across to the other
side, and repeated it there.

"Oh,
Louis," was all she seemed capable of saying. "Oh,
Louis."

They
moved around then on a brief tour, from room to room, and he showed
her the parlor, the dining room, the others. And for each room she
had an expiring "Oh, Louis," until at last, it seemed,
breath had left her altogether, and she could only sigh "Oh."

They
came back to the hall at last, and he said somewhat diffidently that
he would lock up.

"Will
you be able to find our room ?" he added, as she turned toward
the stairs. "Or shall I come up with you?"

She
dropped her eyes for a moment before his. "I think I shall know
it," she said chastely.

He
placed one of the smaller lamps in her hands. "Better take this
with you to make sure. She probably left lights up there, but she may
not have."

With
the light brought close to her like that, raying upward into her face
from the glowing core held at about the height of her heart, there
was to him something madonna-like about her countenance. She was like
some inexpressibly beautiful image in an old cathedral of Europe come
to life before the eyes of a single devotee, rewarded for his faith.
A miracle of love.

She
rose a step. She rose another. An angel leaving the earthly plane,
but turned backward in regretful farewell.

His
hand even went out slightly, as if to trace her outline against the
air on which he beheld it, and thus prolong her presence.

"Goodbye
for a little while," he murmured softly.

"For
a little while," she breathed.

Then
she turned. The spell was broken. She was just a woman in an evening
gown, going up a stair.

The
graceful back-draperies of the most beautiful costume-style in a
hundred years gently undulated with her climb. Her free hand trailed
the banister.

"Keep
an eye out for the wallpaper," he said. "That will tell
you."

She
turned inquiringly, with a look of incomprehension. "How's
that?"

"I
meant, you'll know it by the wallpaper, when you come to it."

"Oh,"
she said docilely, but as though she still didn't fully understand.

She
reached the top of the stairs and went over their lip, shrinking down
toward the floor now as she went on, until her shoulders, then her
head, were gone. The ceiling-halo cast by her lamp receded past his
ken, down that same illusory incline.

He
went into the parlor, first, and then the other downstairs rooms,
latching each window that had not already been latched, trying those
that had, flinging out the drapes and drawing them sleekly together
over each one. Night air was bad, the whole world knew that; it was
best kept out of a sleeping house. Then at last blotting out each
welcoming lamp, room by room.

In
the kitchen Sarah had left a bunch of fine green grapes set out on a
platter, as another token of welcome to the two of them. He plucked
one off and put it in his mouth, with a half-smile for her
thoughtfulness, then put out the light in there too.

The
last lamp of all went out, and he moved slowly up the ghoststairs in
the dark, that was already a familiar dark to him though he'd been in
this house less than half an hour. The dark of a man's own home is
never strange and never fearful.

He
found his way toward their own door, in the equal darkness of the
upper hall, but guided now by the thread of light stretched taut
across its sill.

He
stopped a moment, and he stood there.

Then
he knocked, in a sort of playful formality.

She
must have sensed his mood, by the tenor of the knock alone. There was
an answering playful note in her own voice.

"Who
knocks ?" she inquired with mock gravity.

"Your
husband."

"Oh?
What does he say ?"

"'May
I come in?'"

"Tell
him he may."

"Who
is it invites me to ?"

The
answer was almost inaudible, but low-voiced as it was, it reached his
heart.

"Your
wife."

7

Arriving
home from his office--this was about a week later, ten days at
most--he hastened up the stairs to greet her, not having found her in
any of the lower-floor rooms when he entered. He was cushioning his
tread, to surprise her, to come up unexpectedly behind her and cover
her eyes, have her guess who it was. Though how could she fail to
know it was he, for who else should it be? But homecoming was still
an exquisite novelty, it had to be decked out with all these
flourishes and fancies; though it was repeated daily, it still held
all the delightful anticipation of a first meeting, each time.

The
door of their room was open and she was seated in there, docilely
enough, in a fan-backed chair, only the top of her head visible above
it, for she was looking away from the entrance. He stood for a moment
at the threshold, still undiscovered, caressing her with his eyes. As
he watched he could see her hand move, limply turning over the page
of some book that was occupying her.

He
started over toward her, intent now on bending suddenly down over the
back of the chair and pressing his lips to the top of her head,
coppery-gilt in the waning sunlight. But as he advanced, and as her
hidden form slowly came into view, lengthening into perspective with
his own approach, something he saw made him stop again, amazed,
almost incredulous.

He
changed his purpose now. Moved openly, in a wide circle about the
chair, to take it in from the side, and stopped at last before it,
with a sort of pained puzzlement discernable on his face.

She
had looked up at discovery of him, closed her book with a little
throaty exclamation of pleasure.

"Here
you are, dear? I didn't hear you come in below."

"Julia,"
he said, in a tone of blank incomprehension.

"What
is it?"

He
described her form with a sketchy lengthwise gesture of his hand, and
still she didn't understand. He had to put it into words.

"Why,
the way you're sitting--"

Her
legs were crossed, as only men crossed theirs. One knee reared atop
the other in unashamed prominence, the shank of her leg boldly thrust
forth, the suspended foot had even been swinging a little, though
that had stopped now.

The
sheath of her skirt veiled the full rakishness of the position, but
shadowy outlines and indentations outlined it only too distinctly
even so.

She
had been caught in a very real grossness, not to be understood by any
later standard of manners, but only when set against its own
contemporary code of universal conduct. For a woman to sit like that
would have drawn stares anywhere, then, even ostracism and a request
that she leave forthwith. No woman, not even the flightiest, sat but
with the knees both level and the feet both flat upon the floor,
though one might be drawn back behind the other for added grace.
Immorality lies not in the nature of an act itself, but in the
universality of the accepted tenet which it flouts. Thus a trifling
variation of posture can be more shocking, to one era of
strictlymaintained behavior, than a very real transgression would be
to another and more lax one. The one cannot understand the other, and
finds it only a laughable prissiness. Which it was not at the time.