Waltz Into Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

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