Waltz Into Darkness

32

He soon fell into the habit of dropping into the bar of one of the adjacent hotels, the Belleview House, at or around seven each evening for a slowly drunk whiskey punch. Or at most two of them, never more; for it wasn’t the liquor that attracted him, but the lack of anything to do until it was time for the evening meal. He chose this particular place because his own hotel had no such establishment, and it was the nearest at hand and the largest of those that had.

It was a cheery, bustling, buzzing place, this, characteristic of its kind and of the period. A gentleman’s drinking place. And like all others of its nature, while it was strictly a male preserve, women were never so pervasively present in thought, spirit, implication and conversation, as here where they were physically absent. They permeated the air; they were in every double entendre, and wink, and toast, and bragging innuendo. And here they were as men wishfully wanted them to be, and as they so seldom were beyond these portals: uncommonly accommodating. At all times and in every reminiscence.

Even in allegory they presided. Upon the wall facing the horseshoe-shaped mahogany counter, cheery lights blinking at either side of it — like glass-belled altar lights at the shrine of woman incarnate — extended a tremendous oil painting of a reclining feminine form, presumably a goddess. Attended at its head by two winged cupids flying in rotary course, at its feet a cornucopia spilling fruits and flowers. Purple drapery was present, but more in discard than in application; one skein straggling downward across the figure’s shoulder, another wisp stretching across its middle. In the background, and never noted by an onlooker since the canvas had first been hung, was an azure sky with puffballs of cottony clouds.

Dominating the place as it did, and shrewdly intended to, it was as a matter of fact the means of Durand’s striking up his first acquaintanceship since arriving in Biloxi. The man nearest to him, on the occasion of his second successive visit to the place, alone as he was, was standing there with his eyes raptly fixed on it, and almost humid with a sort of silly, faraway greediness, when Durand happened to idly glance that way and catch the expression.

Durand couldn’t resist smiling slightly, but to himself and not the devotee; but the other man, catching the half-formed smile just as it was about to turn away, mistook it for one of esoteric kinship of thought, and promptly returned it, but with an increment of friendly gregariousness that had been lacking in the original.

“Bless ’em!” he remarked fervently, and hoisted his glass toward the composition for Durand to see.

Durand nodded in temperate accord.

Emboldened, the other man raised his voice and invited over the three or four yards that separated them: “Will you join me, sir?”

Durand had no desire to, but to have refused would have been unwarrantedly boorish, so he moved accommodatingly toward his neighbor, and the latter made up the difference from his side.

Their orders were renewed, they saluted one another with them, and swallowed: thus completing the preliminary little ritual.

The other man was in his mid-forties, as far as Durand could judge. He had a good-looking, but rather weak and dissipated face; lines of looseness, rather than age, printed on it, particularly across the forehead. His complexion was extremely pallid; his hair dark, but possibly kept so with the aid of a little shoeblacking here and there; this, however, could only be a matter of conjecture. He was of lesser height than Durand, but of greater girth, albeit in a pillowy, less compact way.

“You alone here, sir?” he demanded.

“Quite alone,” Durand answered.

“Shame!” he said explosively. “First time here, then, I take it?”

It was, Durand admitted laconically.

“You’ll like it, soon as you get to know the ropes,” he promised. “Takes a man a few days, I don’t care where it is.”

It did, Durand agreed tepidly.

“You stopping at this hotel here?” He cast his thumb joint toward the inner doors leading into the building itself. “I am.”

“No, I’m over at the Rogers.”

“Should have come to this one. Best one in the place. Kind of slow over there where you are, isn’t it?”

He hadn’t noticed, Durand said. He didn’t expect to remain for very long, anyway.

“Well, maybe you’ll change your mind,” the other suggested breezily. “Maybe we can get you to change your mind about that,” he added, as though vested with a proprietary interest in the resort.

“Maybe,” Durand assented, without overmuch enthusiasm. “Now join me,” he invited dutifully, noting that his companion’s drink was near bottom.

“Honored,” said the other man zestfully, making quick to complete its disappearance.

Just as Durand was about to give the order, one of the hotel page boys came through the blown-glass doors leading from the hotel proper, looked about for a moment, then, marking Durand’s partner, came up to him, excused himself, and said a word in his ear which Durand failed to catch. Particularly since he did not try to.

“Oh, already?” the other man said. “Glad you told me,” and handed the boy a coin. “Be right there.”

He turned back to Durand. “I’m called,” he said cheerfully. “We’ll have to resume this where we left off, some other evening.” He preened himself, touching at his tie, his hair, the fit of his coat shoulders. “Mustn’t keep a lady waiting, you know,” he added, unable to resist letting Durand know of what nature the summons was.

“By no means,” Durand conceded.

“Good evening to you, sir.”

“Good evening.”

He watched him go. His face was anything but leisurely, even while still in full sight, and at the end he flung apart the doors quite violently, so anxious was he not to be delinquent.

Durand smiled a little to himself, half contemptuously, half in pity, and went back to his drink alone.