Part 12 (1/2)

More words ... ”it would have been always the same. We've lived one moment and in all of life there's nothing more than what we've had.

Lovers who grow old together live only in their yesterdays. And their yesterdays are only a moment--till the time comes when their yesterdays die. Then they become little, half-dead people, who wait in lighted rooms, empty handed, fumbling greedily with trifles....”

”I love you!” She made a refrain for him. ”I don't know the things you do. I only love you.”

”Rachel ...” He had no belief in what he was saying. The things he knew?

What? Nothing but pain and torment. Yet his heart went on wagging out words: ”All life is a parting--a continual and monotonous parting. And most hideous of all, a parting with dead things. A saying good-by to things that no longer exist. We part with living things, and so keep them, somehow. Your face makes life for the moment familiar. Visions bloom like sad flowers in my heart. Your body against mine brings a torment even into my words. Oh, your weeping's the sound of my own heart dying. Rachel, you are more wonderful than life. I love you! I feel as if I must die when you go away. Crowds, streets, buildings--all empty outlines. Empty before you came, emptier when you have gone.”

He paused. His thought whispered: ”I'll remember things I say. I mustn't say too much. I'm sad. Oh, G.o.d, what a mess!”

They walked into the park. A sudden matter-of-factness came into Dorn's mind. He had sung something from his heart. Yet he remembered with astonishment it had been a wary song. He had not asked her to stay. Had he asked her she would have remained. Curious, how he acquiesced in her going. A sense of drama seemed to demand it. When he had received her message the night in the office he had agreed at once. Why? Because he was not in love? This too, a make-believe, more colored, more persuasive than the others? Wrong. Something else. Anna. Anna was sending her away.

The figure of Anna loomed behind their ecstasies. It stood nodding its head sorrowfully at a good-by in the snow.

They were deep in the park. Trees made still gestures about them. The ivory silhouettes of trees haunted the distance. A spectral summer painted itself upon the barren lilac bushes. Beneath, the lawn slopes raised moon faces to the night. Deep in the storm the ghost of a bronze fountain emerged and remained staring at the scene.

It was cold. The wind had died and the snow hung without motion, like a cloud of ribbons in the air. The white park gleamed as if under the swinging light of blue and silver lanterns. The night, lost in a dream wandered away among strange sculptures. In the distance a curtain of porphyry and bisque drew its shadow across the moon.

Rachel pointed suddenly with her finger.

”Look!” she whispered. She remained as if in terror, pointing.

Three figures were converging toward them--black figures out of the distant snow. Figures of men, without faces, like three bundles of clothes, they came toiling across the unbroken white of the park, an air of intense destinations about them. Above the desolate field of white the three figures seemed suddenly to loom into heroic sizes. They reared to a height and zigzagged across a nowhere.

”See, see!” Rachel cried. She was still pointing. Her voice rang brokenly. ”They're coming for me, Erik. Erik, don't you see? People wandering toward me. Horrible strangers. Oh, I know, I know!” She laughed. ”My grandmother was a gypsy and she's telling my fortune in the snow. Things that will jump out of s.p.a.ce and come at me, after you're gone.”

The three men, puffing with exertion, converged upon the walk and pa.s.sed on with a morose stare at the lovers. Dorn sighed, relieved. He had caught a strange foreboding sense out of the tableau of the white field and the three converging black figures.... If he loved her why was he letting her go? If he loved her....

He walked on suddenly wearied, saddened, uncertain. It was no more than a dream that had touched his senses, a breath of a dream that lingered for a moment upon his mirror. It would pa.s.s, as all things pa.s.s. And he would fall back into the pattern of streets and faces, watching as before the emptiness of life make geometrical figures of itself. Yes, it was better to have her go--simpler. Perhaps a desire would remain, a breath, a moonlit memory of her loveliness to mumble over now and then, like a line of poetry always unwritten. Let her go. Beautiful ...

wonderful.... These were words. Was he even sad? She was--what? Another woman.

In the shadow of a snow-covered wall he paused. The snow had ended.

”Come closer,” he whispered. She remained silent as he removed her overcoat. He dropped it in the snow and threw his own beside it.

”We'll be warm for a minute against each other.”

She was a flower in his arms. She seemed to vanish and become mist.

Slowly he became aware of her touch, of her arms holding him and her lips. She was saying:

”I am yours--always--everywhere. I will be a shrine to you. And whenever you want me I will come crawling on my knees to you.”

Dying, dying! She was dying. Another moment and the mist of her would be gone. ”Rachel.... Rachel. I love you. I send you away. Oh, G.o.d, why do I send you away?”

She was out of his arms. Undressed, naked, emptied, he stood unknown to himself. No words. Her kiss alone lived on his lips. She was looking at him with burning wild eyes. Expression seemed to have left her. There was something else in her face.

”I must look at you. To remember, to remember!” she gasped. ”Oh, to remember you! I have never looked at you. I have never seen you. It's a dream. Who is Erik Dorn? Who am I? Oh, let me look at you....”

The eyes of Rachel grew marvelously bright. Burned ... burned.

Dorn stared into an empty park. Gone! Her coat still in the snow. His own beside it. He stood smiling, confused. His lips made an apology. He walked off. Oh, yes, their coats together in the snow. A symbol. He stumbled and a sudden terror engulfed him. ”Her face,” he mumbled, ”like a mirror of stars.” He felt himself sicken. What had her eyes said? Eyes that burned and devoured him and vanished. ”Rachel,” he wept, ”forever!”

He wondered why he spoke.

The park, white, gleaming, desolate, gave him back her face. Out of the empty night, her face. In the trees it drifted, haunting him. The print of a face was upon the world. He went stumbling toward it in the snow.