Waltz Into Darkness Read Free

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