Waltz Into Darkness

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.