Waltz Into Darkness

21

The audience was streaming out of the Tivoli Theatre, on Royal Street. Gas flames in the jets on the foyer walls and in the ceiling overhead flickered fitfully with the swirl of its crowded passage. The play had been most enjoyable, an adaptation from the French called Papa’s Little Mischief, and every animated conversation bore evidence to that.

Once on the sidewalk, the solid mass of people began to disintegrate: the balcony-sitters to walk off in varying directions, the box-holders and orchestra occupants to clamber by twos, and sometimes fours, into successive carriages as they drew up in turn before the theatre entrance, summoned by the colored doorman.

The man lurking back from sight against the shadowy wall, where the brightness failed to reach, was unnoticed, though many passed close enough to touch him.

The crowd drained off at last. The brightness dimmed, as an attendant began to put out the gaslights one by one, with a long, upward-reaching stick that turned their keys.

Only a few laggards were left now, still awaiting their turn at carriage stop. There was no haste, and politeness and deference were the rule.

“After you.”

“No, after you, sir. Yours is the next.”

And then at last one final couple remain, and are about to enter their carriage. The woman short, and in a lace head-scarf that, drawn close against the insalubrious night air, effectively mists her head and mouth and chin.

Her escort leaves her side for a moment, to see what the delay is in locating their carriage, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, a man is beside her, peering at her closely. She turns her head away, draws the scarf even closer, and edges a step or two aside in trepidation.

He is bending forward now, craning openly, so that he is all but crouched under her lace-blurred face, staring intently up into it.

She gives a cry of alarm and cowers back.

“Julia?” he whispers questioningly.

She turns in fright the other way, giving him her back.

He comes around before her again.

“Madam, will you lower your scarf?”

“Let me be, or I’ll call for help.”

He reaches up and flings it aside.

A pair of terrified blue eyes, stranger’s eyes, are staring taut at him, aghast.

Her escort comes back at a run, raises his stick threateningly. “Here, sir!” Brings it down once or twice, then discarding it as unsatisfactory, strikes out savagely with his unaided arm.

Durand goes staggering back and sprawls upon the sidewalk.

He makes no move to resist, nor to rise again and retaliate. He lies there extended, on the point of one elbow, passive, spent, dejected. The wild look dies out of his face.

“Forgive me,” he sighs. “I thought you were — someone else.”

“Come away, Dan. The man must be a little mad.”

“No, I’m not mad, madam,” he answers her with frigid dignity. “I’m perfectly sane. Too sane.”