Waltz Into Darkness

13

It was quite by chance that he happened to go through the street in which his former lodgings were. He had no concern with them, would have passed them by with no more than a glance of fond recollection; his errand and his destination lay elsewhere entirely, and it only happened that this was the shortest way to it.

And it was equally by chance that Madame Tellier, his erstwhile landlady, happened to come out and stand for a moment in the entrance just as he was in the act of walking by.

She greeted him effusively, with shrieks of delight that could be heard for doors away in either direction, flung her arms about him like a second mother, asked about his health, his happiness, his enjoyment of married life.

“Oh, but we miss you, Louis! Your old rooms are rented again — to a pair of cold Northerners (I charge them double) — but it’s not the same.” She creased her rather large nose distastefully. Suddenly she was all alight again, gave her fingers a crackling snap of self-reminder. “I just remembered! I have a letter waiting for you. It’s been here several days now, and I haven’t seen Tom since it came, to ask where your new address is, or I would have forwarded it. He still comes around now and then to work for me, you know. Wait here, I’ll bring it out to you.”

She patted him three times in rapid succession on the chest, as if cajoling him to stand patiently as he was for a moment, turned and whisked inside.

He had, he only now recalled rather ruefully, completely overlooked having his mailing address changed from here, his old quarters, to the new house on St. Louis Street, when he made the move. Not that it was vitally important; his business mail all continued to go to the office, as it always had, and of personal correspondence he had never had a great deal, only his courtship letters with Julia, now brought to a happy termination. He would stop by the post office, on his way home, and file the new delivery instructions, if only for the sake of an occasional stray missive such as this.

Meanwhile she had come back with it. “Here! Isn’t it good you just happened to come by this way?”

He gave the inscription a brief glance, simply to confirm it, as he took it from her. “Mr. Louis Durand,” in spidery penmanship; the three capitals, M, L, and D, standing out in black enlargement, the minuscule letters too finely traced and too diminished in size to make for legibility. However, it was his own name, there could be no mistaking that, so he questioned it no further; thrust it carelessly into the side pocket of his coat for later reference and promptly forgot about it.

Their leavetaking was as exclamatory and enthusiastic as their greeting had been. She kissed him on the forehead in a sort of maternal benediction, waved him steadily on his way for a distance of the first three or four succeeding house-lengths, even touched her apron to the corner of her eye before at last turning to go inside. She wept easily, this Madame Tellier; wept with only a single glassful of wine, or at sight of any once-familiar face. Even those she had once ruthlessly evicted for non-payment of rent.

He accomplished his errand, he returned to his office, he absorbed himself once more in the daily routine of his work.

He discovered the letter a second time only within the last quarter of an hour before leaving to go home, and as equally by accident as it had been thrust upon him in the first place by happening to thrust his hand blindly into his pocket, in search of a pocket handkerchief.

Reminded of its presence, he rested himself for a moment by taking it out, tearing it open, and leaning back to read it. No sooner had his eyes fallen on the introductory words than he stopped again, puzzled.

“My own dearest Julia:”

It was for her, not himself.

He turned to the envelope again, looked at it more closely than he had on the street in presence of Madame Tellier. He saw then what had misled him. The little curl, following the “Mr.” so tiny as almost to escape detection, was meant for an “s.”

He went back to the paper once more; turned this over, glanced at the bottom of its reverse side.

“Your ever-loving and distressed Bertha.”

It was from her sister, in St. Louis.

“Distressed.” The word seemed to cast itself up at him, like a barbed fishhook, catch onto and strain at his attention. He could not pry it off again.

He did not intend to read any further. It was her letter, after all.

Somehow the opening words held him trapped, he could not stop once they had seized his eyes with their meaning.