Part 11 (1/2)
”Erik!”
She made his name mean something--a world, a heaven. For an instant his laughter ended and a sadness engulfed him. Then once more he was alone and laughing. Rachel was walking away, something rather ridiculously normal about her step. Yes, he would laugh forever. Lord, what a jest!
Like water coming out of a stone. Laugh at the crowds and buildings that desired to annoy him by sweeping toward him the memory of Rachel saying ”Erik!” He diverted himself, as he hurried to his home, by staring into people's eyes and saying, ”This one has a dream. That one hasn't. This one loves. The streets hurt him. That one is dead. The streets bury him.”
On the third day the bombardment of Paris interfered with his plans. He remained too late in the office to walk with Rachel. As he sauntered about the shop, a.s.sisting and directing at the extras and replates, he vaguely forgot her. Word had come from the chief to hold the paper open until nine o'clock. If Paris failed to fall by nine everybody could go home and spend the rest of the night wrangling with his wife or looking at a movie. If it fell by nine there would be a final extra.
”I hope the d.a.m.ned town falls five minutes after nine,” growled Warren, ”if it's got to fall. Let it fall for the morning papers. What the h.e.l.l are they for, anyway? I've got a rotten headache.”
Dorn told him to run along. ”I'll handle the copy, if there is any. A history of Paris out of the almanac will answer the purpose, I guess.”
Warren folded his newspapers and left. Dorn sat scribbling possible headlines for the next re-plate: ”Germans Bombard Paris ...” and then a bank in smaller type: ”French Capital Silent. Communication Cut Off.” He paused and added with a sudden elation, ”Civilization on Its Knees.”
The hum and suspense of the night-watch pleased him. He liked the idea of sitting in a noisy place waiting to flash the news of the fall of Paris to the city. And the next day the four afternoon papers would carry a small box on the front page announcing to the public that, as usual, each of them had been first on the street with the important announcement. The fall of Paris! His thought mused. Babylon Falls....
Civilization on Its Knees. The City Wall of Jericho Collapses. Carthage Reduced to Ashes. Rome Sacked by Huns. Yes, there had been magnificent headlines in the past. Now a new headline--Paris. There would be a sudden flurry; boys running between desks; Crowley trying to shout and achieving a frightful whisper; a smeared printer announcing some ghastly mistake in the composing room; and Paris would be down--fallen. Nothing left to do except grin at the idea of the morning papers cursing their luck. He sat, vaguely hoping there might be tidal waves, earthquakes, cataclysms. On this night his energies seemed to demand more work than the mere fall of Paris would occasion. ”Might as well do the thing up brown and put an end to the world--all in one extra,” he smiled.
A messenger boy brought a telegram. He opened it and read,
”I am going away. RACHEL.”
All a part of the night's work. Killing off Paris. Answering telegrams to vanis.h.i.+ng sweethearts. He stuffed the message into his pocket. On second thought he tore it up. Anna was coming home the next day. ”Wife Finds Tell-tale Telegram....” Another headline.
”Wait a minute, boy.”
The messenger lounged into an editor's chair. Dorn scribbled on a telegraph blank:
”Wait till Friday. I must see you once more. I will call for you at seven o'clock Thursday. We have never been together in the night. ERIK.”
The messenger boy and the telegram disappeared. Still the laughter persisted. There was a jest in the world. Paris seemed a part of it.
Everything belonged to it.
”I wonder what the writers of Paris are saying,” Crowley inquired.
”Enjoying themselves, as usual,” Dorn answered. ”I'll tell you a secret.
We live in a mad and inspiring world.”
There was no final headline that night. Wednesday brought problems of conduct. It was obvious that Rachel was going away because of Anna. Her departure was a fact which presented itself with no finality. It resembled an insincere thought of suicide. Rachel, having gone, would still remain. The emotional prospects of the farewell closed his thought to the future. He spent Wednesday waiting for a seven o'clock on Thursday. An hour had detached itself from hours that went before and that followed. At home in the evening he endeavored to avoid his wife.
His letters to her during her visit in Wisconsin had brought her back violently joyous. She desired love-making. He listened to her pour out ardent phrases and wondered why he felt no sense of betrayal toward her.
”Conscience,” he thought, ”seems to be a vastly over-advertised commodity.” He sat beside Anna, caressing her hand, smiling back into her pa.s.sion-filled eyes, and gently checking an impulse in him to confide to her that he was in love with Rachel. It would be pleasant to tell her that, provided she would nod her head understandingly, smile, and stroke his hair; and answer something like, ”You mean Rachel is in love with you. Well, I can't blame her. I'm horribly jealous, but it doesn't matter.” An incongruous sanity warned him to avoid confessions, so he contented himself by rolling the situation over on his tongue, tasting the jealousy of his wife, the drama of the denouement, and remaining peacefully smiling in his leather chair.
Thursday arrived. The afternoon dragged. He sat at his desk wondering whether he was sorrowful or not. The thought of meeting Rachel elated him. The thought that she was leaving and that he would not see her again seemed a vague thing. He put it out of his mind with ease and devoted himself to dreaming what he would say, the manner in which he would bid farewell.
Walking now swiftly in the street toward Rachel's home his thought still played with his emotions. It was this that partially caused his laughter. Also, now that he was going to see her, there was again the sense of fullness. An unthinking calm, complete and vibrant, wrapped him in an embrace. The fullness and the calm brought laughter. His thought amused him with the words, ”There's a flaming absurdity about everything.”
He delighted in dressing his emotions in absurd phrases, in words that grimaced behind the rouge of tawdry ballads. Thinking of Rachel and feeling the sudden lift of sadness and bewilderment in his blood, he murmured aloud: ”You never know you have a heart till it begins to break.” The words amused him. There were other song t.i.tles that seemed to fit. He tried them all. ”I don't know why I love you, but I do-o-o.”
Delightful diversion--airing the mystic desires of his soul in the tattered words of the cabaret yodelers. ”Just a smile, a sigh, a kiss....” A sort of revenge, as if his vocabulary with its intricate verbal sophistications were avenging itself upon interloping emotions.
And, too, because of a vague shame which inspired him to taunt his surrender; to combat it with an irony such as lay in the ridiculous phrases. This irony gave him a sense of being still outside his emotions and not a submissive part of them. ”I am still Erik Dorn, master of my fate and captain of my soul,” he smiled. But perhaps it was most of all the reaction of a verbal vanity. His love was not yet pumping rhapsodies into his thought. Instead, the words that came seemed to him somehow ba.n.a.l and commonplace. ”I love you. I want to be with you all the time.
When we are together things grow strange and desirable.” Amorous mediocrities! So he edited them into a further ba.n.a.lity and thus concealed his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. ”Saving my linguistic face,” he thought suddenly, and laughed again.