Waltz Into Darkness (2 page)

"Oh,
them," said Tom charitably. "The man said they do," he
went on. "The man said that's what they all ask for." He
fluffed the lace-paper collar encircling them with proprietary care,
restoring its pertness.

Durand
was hastily gathering together his remaining accoutrements,
meanwhile, preparatory to departure.

"I
want to go to the new house first," he said, on a somewhat
breathless note.

"You
was there only yesterday," Tom pointed out. "If you stay
away only one day, you afraid it's going to fly away, I reckon."

"I
know, but this is the last chance I'll have to make sure
everything's-- Did you tell your sister? I want her to be there when
we arrive."

"She'll
be there."

Durand
stopped with his hand to the doorknob, looked around in a
comprehensive sweep, and suddenly the tempo of his departure had
slackened to almost a full halt.

"This'll
be the last time for this place, Tom."

"It
was nice and quiet here, Mr. Lou," the servant admitted.
"Anyway, the last few years, since you started getting older."

There
was a renewed flurry of departure, as if brought on by this implicit
warning of the flight of time. "You finish up the packing, see
that my things get over there. Don't forget to give the keys back to
Madame Tellier before you leave."

He
stopped again, doorknob at a full turn now but door still not open.

"What's
the matter, Mr. Lou?"

"I'm
scared now. I'm afraid she--" He swallowed down his rigid
ear-high collar, backed a hand to his brow to blot imperceptible
moisture, "--won't like me."

"You
look all right to me."

"It's
all been by letters so far. It's easy in letters."

"You
sent her your picture. She knows what you look like," Tom tried
to encourage him.

"A
picture is a picture. A live man is a live man."

Tom
went over to him where he stood, dejectedly sidewise now to the door,
dusted off his coat at the back of his shoulder. "You're not the
best-looking man in N'Orleans. But you're not the worstlooking man in
N'Orleans either."

"Oh,
I don't mean that kind of looks. Our dispositions-"

"Your
ages suit each other. You told her yours."

"I
took a year off it. I said I was thirty-six. It sounded better."

"You
can make her right comfortable, Mr. Lou."

Durand
nodded with alacrity at this, as though for the first time he felt
himself on safe ground. "She won't be poor."

"Then
I wouldn't worry too much about it. When a man's in love, he looks
for looks. When a lady's in love, 'scusing me, Mr. Lou, she looks to
see how well-off she's going to be."

Durand
brightened. "She won't have to scrimp." He raised his head
suddenly, as at a new discovery. "Even if I'm not all she might
hope for, she'll get used to me."

"You
want to-just make sure?" Tom fumbled in his own clothing, yanked
at a concealed string somewhere about his chest, produced a rather
worn and limp rabbit's foot, a small gilt band encircling it as a
mounting. He offered it to him.

"Oh,
I don't believe in--" Durand protested sheepishly.

"They
ain't a white man willing to say he do," Tom chuckled. "They
ain't a white man don't, just the same. Put it in your pocket anyway.
Can't do no harm."

Durand
stuffed it away guiltily. He consulted his watch, closed it again
with a resounding clap.

"I'm
late! I don't want to miss the boat!" This time he flung the
symbolic door wide and crossed the threshold of his bachelorhood.

"You
got the better part of an hour before her stack even climb up in
sight 'long the river, I reckon."

But
Louis Durand, bridegroom-to-be, hadn't even waited. He was clattering
down Madame Tellier's tile-faced stairs outside at a resounding gait.
A moment later an excited hail came up through the window from the
courtyard below.

Tom
strolled to the second-story veranda.

"My
hat! Throw it down." Durand was jumping up and down in
impatience.

Tom
threw it down and retired.

A
second later there was another hail, even more agonized.

"My
stick! Throw that down too."

That
dropped, was seized deftly on the fly. A little puff of suncolored
dust arose from Madame Tellier's none-too-immaculate flagstones.

Tom
turned away, shaking his head resignedly.

"A
man in love's a man in a hurry, sure enough."

2

The
coach drove briskly down St. Louis Street. Durand sat straining
forward on the edge of the seat, both hands topping his cane-head and
the upper part of his body supported by it. Suddenly he leaned still
further forward.

"That
one," he exclaimed, pointing excitedly. "That one right
there."

"The
new one, cunnel ?" the coachman marveled admiringly.

"I'm
building it myself," Durand let him know with an atavistic burst
of boyish pride, sixteen years late. Then he qualified it, "T
mean, they're doing it according to my plans. I told them how I
wanted it."

The
coachman scratched his head. A gesture not meant to indicate
perplexity in this instance, but of being overwhelmed by such
grandeur. "Sure is pretty," he said.

The
house was two stories in height. It was of buff brick, with white
trim about the windows and the doorway. It was not large, but it
occupied an extremely advantageous position. It sat on a corner plot,
so that it faced both ways at once, without obstruction. Moreover,
the ground-plot itself extended beyond the house, if not lavishly at
least amply, so that it touched none of its neighbors. There was room
left for strips of sod in the front, and for a garden in the back.

It
was not, of course, strictly presentable yet. There were several
small messy piles of broken, discarded bricks left out before it, the
sod was not in place, and the window glass was smirched with streaks
of paint. But something almost reverent came into the man's face as
he looked at it. His lips parted slightly and his eyes softened. He
hadn't known there could be such a beautiful house. It was the most
beautiful house he had ever seen. It was his.

A
questioning flicker from the coachman's whip stirred him from his
revery.

"You'll
have to wait for me. I'm going down to meet the boat from here, later
on."

"Yessuh,
take your time, cunnel," the coachman grinned understandingly.
"A man got to look at his house."

Durand
didn't go inside immediately. Instead he prolonged the rapture he was
deriving from this by first walking slowly and completely around the
two outermost faces of the house. He tested a bit of foundation stone
with his cane. He put out his hand and tried one of the shutters,
swinging it out, then flattening it back again. He fastidiously
speared a small, messy puff-ball of straw with his stick and
transported it offside of the walk, leaving a trail of scattered
Maments that was worse than the original offender.

He
returned at last to the door, his head proudly high. There was a
place indicated by pencil marks on the white-painted pinewood where a
wrought-iron knocker was to be affixed, but this was not yet in
position. He had chosen it himself, making a special trip to the
foundry to do so. No effort too great, no detail too small.

Scorning
to raise hand to the portal himself, possibly under the conviction
that it was not fitting for a man to have to knock at the door of his
own house, he tried the knob, found it unlocked, and entered. There
was on the inside the distinctive and not unpleasant--and in this
case enchanting--aroma a new house has, of freshly planed wood, the
astringent turpentine in paint, window putty, and several other less
identifiable ingredients.

A
virginal staircase, its newly applied maple varnish protected by a
strip of brown wrapping paper running down its center, rose at the
back of the hall to the floor above. Turning aside, he entered a
skeletal parlor, its western window casting squared puddles of gold
light upon the floor.

As
he stood and looked at it, the room changed. A thick-napped flowered
carpet spread over its ascetic floor boards. The lurid red of lazy
wood-flames peered forth, from the now-blank fireplace under the
mantel. A rounded mirror glistened ghostly on the wall above it. A
plush sofa, a plush chair, a parlor table, came to life where there
was nothing standing now. On the table a lamp with a planet-like
milky-white bowl topping its base began to glow softly, then
stronger, and stronger. And with its aid, a dark-haired head appeared
in one of the chairs, contentedly resting back against the white
antimacassar that topped it. And on the table, under the kindly lamp,
some sort of a workbasket. A sewing workbasket. A little vaguer than
the other details, this.

Then
a pail clanked somewhere upstairs, and a tide of effacement flowed
across the room, the carpet thinned, the fire dimmed, the lamp went
out and with it the dark-haired faceless head, and the room was just
as gaunt as it had been before. Rolls of furled wallpaper, a bucket
on a trestle, bare floor.

"Who's
that down there ?" a woman's voice called hollowly through the
empty spaces.

He
came out into the hall at the foot of the stairs.

"Oh,
it you, Mr. Lou. 'Bout ready for you now, I reckon."

The
gnarled face of an elderly colored woman, topped by a dustkerchief
tied bandana-style, was peering down over the upstairs guardrail.

"Where'd
he go, this fellow down here?" he demanded testily. "He
should be finishing."

"Went
to get more paste, I 'spect. He be back."

"How
is it up there?"

"Coming
along."

He
launched into an unexpected little run, that carried him at a
sprightly pace up the stairs. "I want to see the bedroom,
mainly," he announced, brushing by her.

"What
bridegroom don't ?" she chuckled.

He
stopped in the doorway, looked back at her rebukingly. "On
account of the wallpaper," he took pains to qualify.

"You
don't have to 'splain to me, Mr. Lou. I was in this world 'fore you
was even born."

He
went over to the wall, traced his fingers along it, as though the
flowers were tactile, instead of just visual.

"It
looks even better up, don't you think?"

"Right
pretty," she agreed.

"It
was the closest I could get. They had to send all the way to New York
for it. See I asked her what her favorite kind was, without telling
her why I wanted to know." He fumbled in his pocket, took out a
letter, and scanned it carefully. He finally located the passage he
wanted, underscored it with his finger. "--and for a bedroom I
like pink, but not too bright a pink, with small blue flowers like
forget-me-nots." He refolded the letter triumphantly, cocked his
head at the walls.

Aunt
Sarah was giving only' a perfunctory ear. "I got a passel of
work to do yet. If you'll 'scuse me, Mr. Lou, I wish you'd get out
the way. I got make this bed up first of all." She chuckled
again.

"Why
do you keep laughing all the time ?" he protested. "Don't
you do that once she gets here."

"Shucks,
no. I got better sense than that, Mr. Lou. Don't you fret your head
about it."

He
left the room, only to return to the doorway again a moment later.
"Think you can get the downstairs curtains up before she gets
here? Windows look mighty bare the way they are."

"Just
you fetch her, and I have the house ready," the bustling old
woman promised, casting up a billowing white sheet like a sail in the
wind.

He
left again. He came back once more, this time from mid-stairs.

"Oh,
and it'd be nice if you could find some flowers, arrange them here
and there. Maybe in the parlor, to greet her when she comes in."

She
muttered something that sounded suspiciously like: "She ain't
going have much time spend smelling flowers."