In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his thought with its innumerable surfaces. Revolution. A new state. New flags and new slogans.
"I can't admire it," he explained to Mathilde at the end of the first week, "because its grotesqueries makes me laugh. And I cannot laugh at it because its intensity saddens me. To observe the business sanely is to come to as many conclusions as there are words."
Mathilde had recovered some of her enthusiasm. But the mania that had illuminated her thought was gone. She spoke and worked eagerly through the days, moving from department to department, helping to establish some of the innumerable stenographic archives the endless stream of soviet pronouncements and orders were beginning to require. But at night her listlessness returned.
"There is doubt in you too," Dorn smiled at her. "I am sorry for that. It has been the same with so many others. They have, alas! become reasonable. And to become reasonable ... Well, revolution does not thrive on reason. It needs something more active. You, Mathilde, were arevolutionist in Berlin. Now you are a stenographer. Alas! one collapses under a load of dream and finds one's self in an uninteresting Utopia, if that means anything. Epigrams lie around the street corners of Munich waiting new text-books."
They were walking idly toward the café von Stinnes had appointed as a rendezvous. It was late and the dark streets were deserted. The shops had been closed all week. The Revolution was struggling in poorly ventilated council-rooms with problems of economics. Beyond the persistent rumors that the city, cut off from the fields, would starve in another two days and that the legendary armies of Hoffmann were within a stone's throw of the Hofbrau House, there was little excitement. "My employers," von Stinnes had explained on the fourth day, "are waiting to see if the Soviet can stand against the Noske armies from Prussia. The armies will arrive in a few weeks. If the Soviet can defeat them and thus establish its authentic independence, my employers in Versailles will then finance the Bavarian bourgeoisie and assist in the overthrow of the Communists. On the one condition, of course, that the bourgeoisie maintain Bavaria as an independent nation. And this the bourgeoisie are not at all averse to doing. It sounds preposterous, doesn't it? You smile. But all intrigue is preposterous, even when most successful."
"I quite believe," Dorn had answered. "I've long been convinced that intrigue is nothing morethan the fantastic imbecilities unimaginative men palm off on one another for cleverness."
Now, walking with Mathilde, Dorn felt an inclination to rid himself of the week's political preoccupation. Mathilde was beginning to have a sentimental influence upon him.
"Perhaps if she loved me something would come back," he thought. "Anyway it would be nice to feel a woman in love with me again."
An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness enter his silence. Words spun. "The face of stars," he murmured under his breath, and laughed as Mathilde looked inquiringly up at him.
The café was deserted. Von Stinnes, alone in a booth, called "Hello" to them as they entered.
"We have the place almost to ourselves," he said. "There are some people in the other room."
He looked affectionately at the two as they sat down, and added, "How goes the courtship?"
"Gravely and with cautious cynicism," Dorn answered. "We find it difficult to overcome our sanities."
He smiled at the girl and covered her hand with his. Her eyes regarded him luminously. They sat eating their late meal, von Stinnes chatting of the latest developments.... A mob ofcommunist workingmen had attacked the poet Muhsam while he was unburdening himself of proletarian oratory in the Schiller Square.
"They chased him for two blocks into the Palais," the Baron smiled, "and he lost his hat. And perhaps his portfolio. They are beginning to distrust the poets. They want something besides revolutionary iambics now. Muhsam, however, is content. He received a postal card this afternoon with a skull and cross-bones drawn on it informing him he would be assassinated Friday at 3 P.M. It was signed by 'The Society for the Abolition of Monstrosities.' He is having it done into an expressionist placard and it will undoubtedly restore his standing with the Council of Ten. Franz Lipp, the foreign minister, you know, has ordered all the telephones taken out of the foreign office building. It's an old failing of his—a phobia against telephones. They send him into fits when they ring. He has incidentally offered to sign a separate peace with the Entente. A crafty move, but premature. And the burghers have been ordered under pain of death to surrender all firearms within twenty-four hours."
The talk ran on. Mathilde, feigning sleep, placed her head on Dorn's shoulder.
"You play with the little one," whispered von Stinnes. "She is in love."
Dorn placed his arm around her and smiled at her half-opened eyes.
A man, walking unsteadily across the empty café, stopped in front of the booth.
"I've been looking for you," he said. "You don't remember me, eh?"
Dorn looked up. An American uniform. An excited face.
"My name's Hazlitt. Come out here."
Von Stinnes leveled his monocle witheringly upon the interloper and murmured an aside, "He's drunk...."
Dorn stood up.
"Yes, I remember you now," he said. The man's tone had oppressed him. "What do you want?"
He detached himself from Mathilde and stepped into the room. Hazlitt stared at him.
"I owe you something," he spoke slowly. "Come out here."
Watching the man as he approached, Dorn became aware of a rage in himself. His muscles had tightened and a nervousness was shaking in his words. The man was a stranger, yet there was an uncomfortable intimacy in his eyes.
Hazlitt stood breathing heavily. This was Erik Dorn—the man who had had Rachel. Wine swept a flame through his thought. God! this was the man. She was gone, but this was the man. Shoot him down like a dog! Shoot him down! Kill the grin of him. He'd pay. He'd killed something. Shoot him down! There was a gun under hiscoat—army revolver. Better than shooting Germans. This was the man.
"You're going to pay for it," he spoke. "Go on, say something."
Dorn's rage hesitated. A mistake. What the devil was up?
"Oh, you've forgotten her," Hazlitt whispered. Shoot him! Voices inside demanded wildly that he shoot. Not talk, but kill.
"Rachel," he cried suddenly. His eyes stopped seeing.
Dorn jumped for the gun that had appeared and caught his arm in time. Rachel—then this was something about Rachel? Hazlitt ... Rachel. What? A fight over Rachel? Rachel gone, dead for always. Get the gun away, though....
They were stumbling across the room, twisting and locked together. He saw von Stinnes rise, stand undecided. Mathilde's face, like something shooting by outside a car window. And a strong man trying to kill him ... for Rachel. A Galahad for Rachel.
His thought faded into a rage. A curse as the man grabbed at his throat. The gun was still in the air. His wrist was beginning to ache from struggling with the thing. This was part of the idiocy of things. But he must look out. Perhaps only a moment more to live. The man was weeping. Mumbling ... "you made a fool out of her ... You dirty...."
As they continued their stumbling and clutching, a fury entered Dorn. He became aware of eyes blazing against him—drunken, furious eyes that were weeping. With a violent lunge he twisted the gun out of the man's hand. There was an instant of silence and the man came hurling against him.
Dorn fired. Down ... "my head ..." He lay still. The body of Hazlitt sprawled over him. For a moment the two men remained embraced on the floor. Then the body of Hazlitt rolled slowly from on top. It fell on its back—a dead face covered with blood staring emptily at the ceiling.
Dorn, with the edge of an iron table foot embedded in his head, lay breathing unevenly, his eyes closed.
The blinds were drawn. Cheering drifted in through the open window. Mathilde sat in a chair. She was watching him.
"Hello!" he murmured. "What's up?"
"Erik ..."
She fell to her knees beside the bed and began to weep. He lay quietly listening to her. Bandages around his head. A lunatic with a gun. Yes. Rachel. The man had been in love with Rachel. Pains like noises in his ears.
"You mustn't talk...."
"I'm all right. Where's von Stinnes?"
"'Shh...."
He smiled feebly. She was holding his hand, still weeping. A memory returned vividly. A man with blazing eyes. He had lost his temper. But there had been something more than that. Two imbeciles fighting over a thing that had died for both of them. Clowns at each other's throat. A background unfolded itself. Against it he lay watching the two men. Here was something like a quaint old print with a title, "Fate...."
"Bumped my head," he murmured. But another thought persisted. It moved through the pain in his skull, unable to straighten itself intolines of words. It was something about fighting for Rachel. He would ask questions.
"What happened, Mathilde? Where'd he go?"
"You mean the man? 'Shh.... Don't talk now."
"Come, don't be silly."
The thinness of his voice surprised him.
"What became of the fool?"
"He's dead."
"Dead?"
"Yes, you shot him. Now be quiet."
"Good God, so I did. I remember. When he jumped at me."
A sinking feeling almost drifted him away. He felt as if he had become hungry. The man was dead.... "I killed him. Well ... what of it?"
He opened his eyes and looked at the room. It was day—afternoon, perhaps.
"The doctor says you'll be all right in a few days. But you must be quiet...."
"Von Stinnes," he murmured. "There'll be trouble. Call him, will you?"
Mathilde turned away. Now the pain was less. He could hear cheering outside. A demonstration. Workingmen marching under new flags.
"Von Stinnes is under arrest, Erik."
"What for? A new government?" What a crazy business.
"No. Don't talk, please. Later...."
He was too weak to sit up.
"Things will have to be straightened out," he muttered. "The fool was an American officer. There'll be trouble."
"No, don't worry. Von Stinnes has fixed things."
His eyes grew heavy and closed. Sleep ... and let things, fixed or unfixed, go to the devil.
When he awoke again the room was lighted. Mathilde, standing by the window, turned as he stirred.
"Are you awake?"
"Yes, and hungry."
She brought a tray to his bed. He raised himself carefully, his head unbearably heavy. Mathilde watched him with wide eyes as he sipped some broth.
"What did they arrest the Baron for?" he asked.
She waited till he had finished, and cleared the bed, sitting down on the edge. Her face lowered toward him till her lips touched and kissed him.
"For murder," she whispered. Another kiss. "Now you must be quiet and I'll tell you. He gave himself up when the police came. We carried you out first. And then I left him."
"But," Dorn looked bewilderedly into the eyes of the girl.
"It was easier for him than for you. They would take you away for trial to America. But he will be tried here. And he will come out all right. Don't worry. We thought your skull wasfractured, but the doctor says it was only a hard blow."
She lowered her head beside him on the pillow and whispered, "I love you! Poor Erik! He is defenseless—with a broken head."
"You are kind," he answered; "von Stinnes, too. But we must set matters right...."
"No, no, be still!"
He grew silent. It was night again. In the morning he would be strong enough to get up. A misty calm, the pain almost gone, veins throbbing and a little split in his thought ... but no more.
"I will sleep by you," Mathilde spoke. She stood up and removed her waist and shoes. He watched her with interest. Another woman curiously like Anna, like Rachel—like the two creatures in Paris. Shoulders suddenly bare. Possessive, unashamed gestures.... She lay down beside him with a sigh.
"Poor Erik! I take advantage of a broken head."
"No," he smiled.
They lay motionless, her head touching his shoulder timidly.
"I could live with you forever and be happy," she whispered.
"We will see about forever—when it comes."
"Do you like me—perhaps—now?"
He would have preferred her silent. Silence at least was an effortless lie. To make love was preposterous. How many times had he said, "I love you?" Too many. But she was young and it would sound pretty in her ears.
"Mathilde, dear one."
Her arm trembled across his body.
It was difficult, but he would say it.... "Yes, in an odd sort of way, Mathilde, I love you...."
"Ah! you are only being polite—because I have fed you broth."
"No. As much as I can love anything...."
"Later, Erik. 'Shh! Sleep if you can. Oh, I am shameless."
She had moved against him. He thought with a smile, "What an original way of nursing a broken head!"
Later, tired with a renewed effort to straighten out words about the fool and Rachel and himself, he closed his eyes. Mathilde was still awake.
"I'll see von Stinnes in the morning," he murmured drowsily. "Von Stinnes ... a gallant friend...."
... Someone knocking on the door aroused him. Dawn was in the room.
"Matty," he called. She slept. He found himself able to rise and his legs carried him unsteadily to the door. A tall marine, outside.
"Herr Erik Dorn?"
Dorn nodded dizzily.
The man went on in German. "I come from Stinnes. I have a letter for you."
He took the letter from his hand and moved hurriedly to a chair.
"Thanks," vaguely. The marine saluted and walked off. Mathilde had awakened.
"What are you doing?"
She slipped out of bed and hurried to him.
"A letter," he answered. He allowed her to help him back to his pillow. Reclining again, his dizziness grew less.
"I'll read it for you," she said.
"No. Von Stinnes...."
"It may be important."
"I'll be able to read in a moment."
She shook her head and slipped the envelope from his weakening fingers.
"I know about von Stinnes. Don't be afraid. May I?"
He nodded and she began to read:
"Dear Erik Dorn:
"I write this at night, and to-morrow I will be ended. You must not misunderstand what I do. It is a business long delayed. But I have made a full confession in writing for the Entente commission—ten closely written pages. A masterpiece, if I have to boast myself. And in order to avoid the anti-climax which your sense of honor would undoubtedly precipitate, I will put a period to it in an hour. A trigger pulled, and the nobility of my sad country loses another of its shining lights. I am overawed by the quaint justice of life. I enda career of villainy with a final lie. It would really be impossible for me to die telling a truth. The devil himself would appear and protest. But with a lie on my lips, it is easy. Indeed, somehow, natural. But I pose—a male Magdalene in tears. Do not misunderstand—too much. You are my friend, and I would like to live a while longer that we might amuse ourselves together. You have been an education. I find myself even now on this auspicious midnight writing with your words. But I mistrust you, friend. You would deny me this delicate martyrdom if I lived. For you are at bottom lamentably honorable. So now, as you read this, I am dead (a sentence out of Marie Corelli) and the situation is beyond adjustment. Please accept my service as gracefully as it is rendered. The confession, as I said, is a masterpiece. It would please my vanity if sometime you could read it. For in this, my last lie, I have extended myself. Dear friend, there is a certain awe which I cannot overcome—for the drama, or comedy, finishes too perfectly. You once called me a Don Quixote of disillusion. And now, perhaps, I will inspire a few new phrases. Let them be poignant, but above all graceful. I would have for my epitaph your smile and the whimsical irony of your comment. Better this than the hand-rubbing grunt of the firing-squad returning to barracks after its labors. Alas! that I will not be near you to hear it. But perhaps there will come to me as I submit myself to the opening tortures ofhell, an echo of your words. And this will bring me a smile with which to cheat the devil. I bequeathe to you my silver cigarette-case. You are my brother and I say good-bye to you.
"Karl Von Stinnes."
"No postscript?" Dorn asked softly.
Mathilde shook her head. There was silence.
"Will you find out about him, please?" he whispered.
The girl dressed herself quickly and left the room without speaking. Alone, Dorn lay with the letter in his hand.
He spoke aloud after minutes, as if addressing someone invisible.
"I have no phrases, dear friend. Let my tears be an epigram."
CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VI
The sea swarmed under the night. A moon road floated on the long dark swells. From the deck of the throbbing ship Dorn looked steadily toward the circle of moving water. In the salon, the ship's orchestra was playing. A rollicking sound of music drifted away into the dark monotone of the sea.
A romantic mood. A chair on an upper deck. Stars and a moon road over the sea. Better to sit mumbling to himself than join in the chatter of the cabin. The gayly lighted salon alive with laughter, music, and voices touched his ears—a tiny music-box tinkling valiantly through the dark sweep of endless yesterdays, endless to-morrows that sighed out of the hidden water. The night was an old yesterday, the sea an old to-morrow.
A sadness in his heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap. There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain somehow alive.... His good-bye to Mathilde. And long, stupid weeks in Berlin. The girl had beenabsurd. Absurd, an impulsive little shrew. With demands. Four months of Mathilde. Unsuspected variants of boredom. Clothed in her unrelenting love like an Indian in full war dress. Yet to part with her had made him sad.
The sea rolled mystically away from his eyes.
"An old pattern," his thought murmured, "holding eternities. And the little music keeps tinkling downstairs. A butterfly of sound in the night. Like a miniature of all living. Ah, I'm growing sentimental. Sitting holding hands with the sea. She was sad when I left her. What of it? Von Stinnes. Dear friend! No sadness there. He was right. New phrases, graceful emotions. What an artist! But Warren couldn't write the story. It has to be played by a hurdy-gurdy on a guillotine."
He let his words wander gropingly over the water until a silence entered him. Thus life wandered away. The sea beat time to the passing of ships, changing ships. But always the same beat. It was the constancy of the stars that saddened him. September stars. The stars were yesterdays. Yes, unchanging spaces, unchanging yesterdays, and a ship's orchestra dropping little valses into the dark sea. He opened a silver cigarette-case—an heirloom with a crest on it. Von Stinnes again. Curious how he remembered him—a memory neither sad nor merry—but final like the sea. A phantom of word and incident that bowed with an enchanting irony out of anApril day. The other, the fool with the gun.... Good God, he was a murderer! He smiled. Von Stinnes, a melancholy Pierrot doffing his hat with a gallant snicker to the moon. Hazlitt, a pantaloon. Yet tragic. Yes, there was something in the café that night—two men hurling themselves drunkenly against the taunting emptiness of life. The rage had come because he had remembered Rachel. A sudden mysterious remembering. A remembering that she was gone. It had torn for a moment at his heart, shouted in his ears and driven him mad.
Something had taken Rachel out of him. Time had eaten her image out of him. He had remembered this in the café. But why had he fired at the stranger? Because the man's eyes blazed. Because he had become for an instant an intolerable comrade.
"We fought each other for what someone else had done to us," Dorn murmured. "Not Rachel but someone that couldn't be touched. Absurd!" Hazlitt slipped like a shadow out of his mind—an unanswered question.
The throbbing ship with its tinkling orchestra, its laughing, chattering faces, was carrying him home over a dark sea. At night he sat alone watching the circle of water. Four vanished nights. Four more nights. He sighed. The sadness that lay in his heart desired to talk to him. He struggled to change his thinking. Ideas that were new to him arose at night on the ship.
"Not now," he whispered. He was postponing something. But the night and the rolling sea were swallowing his resistance. Words that would tell him the pain in his heart waited for him.... "Anna. Dear God, Anna! It's that. But why Anna now? It was easy before."
Words of Anna waited for him. He stared into the dark.
"I want her. I must go back to her. Anna, forgive me!"
A murmur that the darkness might understand. The long rolling sea listened automatically. Weak fool! Yet he felt better. He could think now without hiding from words that waited.
His heart wept in silence. The unbidden ones came.... Anna—standing looking at him. A despair, a death in her face. Something tearing itself out of her. What pain! But no sound. An agony deeper than sound in her eyes. He trembled at the memory. The crucified happy one....
Dear God, would he always have to remember now? Other pictures were gone. They had drifted away leaving little phrases dragging in his thought. Now Anna had found him. Not a phantom, but the thing as he had left it, without a detail gone. The gesture of her agony intact. His thought shifted vainly away. He knew she was standing as he had left her—horribly inanimate—and he must go back. He would hold her in his arms, kiss her lips, kneel before her weepingfor forgiveness. Ah! he would be kind. At night he would sit holding her head in his arms, stroking her hair; whispering, "Forget ... forget! A year or two of madness—gone forever. But years now waiting for us. New years. Everything is gone but us. That brought me back. Mists blew away. Dear Anna, I love you."
He was making love to Anna, his wife. A droll finale. Tears came in his eyes. There lay happiness. She would move again. The rigid figure that he had left behind and that was waiting rigidly, would smile again. He plunged desperately into the dream of words to be. The music from the salon had ended. Better, silence. Nothing to remind one of the fugitive tinkle of life. A dark, interminable sea, a moon road, a sigh of rolling water and a ship throbbing in the night.
"Dear Anna, I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years—the halloo of strange sterile things—buried under the smile of her eyes ... deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old together, holding to each other and smiling; lovers whom the years make always younger." Words that were to heal the strange sadness that had come to him and start a dead figure into life.
He stood up and walked to the rail, staring into the churn of water underneath.
"It's slow," he murmured. "Four more days."
Anna's love would hide the world from him. But a fear loosened his heart. The smell of sea whirled in his veins.
"Perhaps," he thought dreamily, "perhaps there will be nothing. She will say no."
He hesitated, straightened with a sigh.
"A wife deserter, a seducer, a murderer. I mustn't expect too much, eh, von Stinnes?"
He smiled at the night. The sound of the Baron's name seemed to bring a strength into him. He walked toward his berth, his head unnecessarily high, smoking at his cigarette and humming a tune remembered from the Munich cafés.
There were people in New York who came to Erik Dorn and said: "Tell us about Europe. And Germany. Is it really true that...." As if there were some inner revelation—a few precious phrases of undistilled truth that the correspondent of theNew Opinionhad seen fit to withhold from his communications.
The skyscrapers were intact. Windows shot into the air. Streets bubbled with people. A useless sky clung tenaciously to its position above the roof-gardens. The scene was amiable. Dorn spent a day congratulating himself upon the genius of his homeland. He felt a pride in the unbearable confusion of architecture and traffic.
But in the nine months of his absence there had been a change; or at least a change seemed to have occurred. Perhaps he had brought the change with him. It was evident that the Niagara of news pouring out of Europe into the press and periodicals of the day had inundated the provincialism of his countrymen. People were floundering about in a daze of facts—groping ludicrously through labyrinths of information.
It had been easy during the war. Democracy-Autocracy; a tableau to look at. Thought hadbeen unnecessary. In fact, the popular intelligence had legislated against it. The tableau was enough—a sublimated symbol of the little papier-maché rigmarole of their daily lives, the immemorial spectacle of Good and Evil at death grips, limelighted for a moment by the cannon in France. The unreason and imbecility of the mob crowned themselves. Thought becamelèse majesté.
Dorn returned to find the tableau had suffered an explosion. It had for some mysterious reason glibly identified as reaction burst into fragments and vanished in a skyrocket chaos. Shantung, Poland, little nations, pogroms, plebiscites, Ireland, steel strikes, red armies, Fourteen Points, The Truth About This, The Real Story of That, the League of Nations, the riots in Berlin, in Dublin, Milan, Paris, London, Chicago; secret treaties, pacts, betrayals, Kolchak—an incomprehensible muddle of newspaper headlines shrieked from morning to morning and said nothing. The distracted mob become privy for the moment to the vast biological disorder eternally existent under its nose, snorted, yelped, and shook indignant sawdust out of its ears.
In vain the editorial Jabberwocks came galloping daily down the slopes of Sinai bearing new tablets written in fire. The original and only genuine tableau was gone. The starry heavens which concealed the Deity Himself had become a junkpile full of its fragments.
"In the temporary collapse of the banalitiesthat conceal the world from their eyes," thought Dorn, "they're trying to figure out what's really what around them—and making a rather humorous mess of it."
He went about for several days dining with friends, conferring with Edwards and the directors of theNew Opinion, and slowly shaping his "experiences abroad" into phonograph records that played themselves automatically under the needles of questions.
At night, he amused himself with reading the radical and conservative periodicals, his own magazine among them.
"The thing isn't confined to the bloated capitalists alone," he laughed one afternoon while sitting with Warren Lockwood in the latter's rooms. "The radicals are up a tree and the conservatives down a cellar. What do you make of it, Warren?"
"I haven't paid much attention to it," the novelist smiled. "I've been busy on a book. What's all this stuff about Germany, anyway? I read some things of yours but I can't figure it out."
Dorn exploded with another laugh.
"You're all a pack of simpletons and bounders, still moist behind the ears, Warren. The whole lot of you. I've been in New York three days and I've begun to feel that there isn't a remotely intelligent human animal in the place. I'm going to retreat inland. In Chicago, at least, people know enough to keep their mouths shut. I'll tell youwhat the trouble is in a nutshell. People want things straight again. They want black and white so's they can all mass on the white side and make faces at the evil-doers who prefer the black. They don't want facts, diagnosis, theories, interpretations, reports. They want somebody to stand up and announce in a loud, clear voice, 'Tweedledum is wrong. Tweedledee is right, everything else to the contrary is Poppycock.' Thus they'd be able to put an end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like having bites—the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the real truth is as follows. And there's where the trouble begins. There ain't no such animal."
"I see," said Lockwood, smiling.
"Yes, you do," Dorn grinned. "You don't see anything. The trouble is ... oh, well, the trouble is as I said that the human race is out in the open where it can get a good look at itself. The war raised a curtain...."
"What about the radicals, though? They seem to be saying something definite?"
"Yes, shooting one another down by the thousands in Berlin—as they will some day in NewYork. Yes, the radicals are definite enough.... The revolution rumbling away in Germany isn't a standup fight between Capital and Labor. It's RadicalversusRadical. Just as the war was ImperialistversusImperialist. One of the outstanding lessons of the last decade is the fact that the world's natural enemies haven't yet had a chance at each other, being too busy murdering among themselves. It's coming, though. Another tableau. All this hysteria and uncertainty will gradually simmer down into another right-and-wrong issue—with life boiling away as always under a black and white surface."
"Do you think we're going to go red here?" Lockwood asked pensively.
"It'll take a little time," Dorn went on. He had become used to reciting his answers in the manner of a schoolmaster. "But it's bound to happen. Bolshevism is a logical evolution of democracy—another step downward in the descent of the individual. Until the arrival of Lenine and Trotzky on the field, there's no question but what American Democracy was the most atrocious insult leveled at the intelligence of the race by its inferiors. Bolshevism goes us one better, however. And just as soon as our lowest types, meaning the majority of our politicians, thinkers, and writers, get to realizing that bolshevism isn't a Red Terror with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other, but a state of society surpassing even their own in points of weakness and abnormal silliness,they'll start arresting everybody who isn't a bolshevist. Capital will put up a fight, but capital is already doomed in this country. It isn't respected for its strength, vision, and creative powers. It is tolerated to-day for no other reason than that it has cornered the platitude market. I'm telling you, Warren, that when we get it drummed into our heads that bolshevism isn't strong and powerful, but weaker, more prohibitive, more sentimental, more politically inefficient, and generally worse than our own government, we'll have a dictator of the proletaire in Washington within a week."
Lockwood sighed unhappily and lighted a pipe.
"If you were talking about men and women maybe I could join you," he answered. "But I got a hunch you're just another one of those newspaper Neds. The woods are full of smart alecks like you and they make me kind of tired, because I never can figure out what they're talking about. And I'll be damned if they know themselves. They think in big hunks and keep a lot of words floating in the air.... What old Carl calls 'Blaa ... blaa....'"
The two friends sat regarding each other critically. Dorn nodded after a pause.
"You're right," he smiled. "I'm part of the blaa-blaa. I heard them blaa-blaa with guns in Munich one night. And up in the Baltic. You're right. Anything one says about absurdity becomes absurd itself. And talking about the humanrace in chunks is necessarily talking absurdly. Tell me about that fellow Tesla."
"They deported him to Rooshia," Lockwood answered. "There was quite a romance about the girl. That was your girl, wasn't it?"
"Yes, Rachel. She wouldn't tag along, eh?"
"No. I suppose they wouldn't let her. I don't know. There was a lot of stuff in the newspapers."
The novelist seemed to hesitate on the brink of further information. His friend smiled understandingly.
"It doesn't matter, Warren. Go ahead. Shoot."
"Cured, eh?"
"No—dead."
Lockwood nodded sagely, his mouth half open as if his words were staring at Dorn.
"Well, there isn't much I know. I met a little girl the other day—Mary James; know her?"
"Yes."
"She was quite excited. She told me something about an artist that used to hang around Tesla. It seems that he kidnapped her and carted her to Chicago. This James girl was all upset."
An interruption in the person of Edwards the editor occurred. The talk lapsed once more into world problems with Lockwood listening, skeptically open-mouthed.
Late in the evening Edwards suddenly declared, "You're making a big mistake leaving New York,Erik. You've got a market now. Your stuff went big."
"I'm through," Dorn answered. He arose and took his hat. "I'm leaving for Chicago to-morrow."
He paused, smiling at Lockwood.
"I'm going home."
The novelist nodded sagely and murmured, "Uh-huh. Well, good-night."
Making his way slowly through the night crowds and electrophobia of lower Manhattan, Dorn felt peacefully out of place. His thought had become: "I want to get back to where I was." In the midst of the mechanical carnival of Broadway he caught a memory of himself walking to work with a stream of faces—of a sardonic Erik Dorn to whom the street was a pattern; to whom the mysteries tugging at heels that scratched the pavements were the amusing variants of nothing.
"Eddy."
"Yes, dear."
"I have some news for you."
The round, smiling face of Eddy Meredith that refused to change with age, beamed at Anna.
"Erik's back."
The beam hesitated.
"He wrote. He's coming to see me."
"Anna...."
"Yes, dear, I know. It sort of frightens me, too. But," she laughed quietly, "there is nothing to be frightened about. He didn't give any address or I would have written him telling him."
"He must know you're divorced," Meredith spoke nervously.
"I don't know if he does, Eddy."
She reached her hand out and placed it over his, her eyes glancing at the figure of Isaac Dorn. He was asleep in a chair.
"Please, dearest, don't worry," she whispered.
"It'll be hard for you."
Meredith's face acquired an abnormal expression.
"Maybe you'll feel different." He sighed, and Anna shook her head. "When's he coming?"
"To-morrow night."
"Did he say anything in the letter?"
She stood up and went to a desk.
"Here it is." A smile touched her lips. "He always wrote curious letters. Words and words when there was nothing to say. And a single phrase when there was something." She read from a sheet of paper—"'Dear Anna, I am coming home. Erik.'"
In the corner Isaac Dorn opened his watery eyes and stared at the ceiling.
"Are you awake, father?"
"Yes, Anna."
"Did I tell you I'd heard from Erik?"
The old man mumbled in his beard.
"He'll be out to-morrow night," she said, smiling at him. He nodded his head, stared at her, and seemed to doze off again.
"Father is failing," Anna whispered. Meredith had arisen. His face had grown blank. He walked toward the hall, saying, "I'll go now."
Anna came quickly to him. Her hands reached his shoulders and she stood regarding him intently.
"There's nothing any more, dear. It all ended long ago. Perhaps I'll be sad when I see him. But sad only for him."
Meredith smiled and spoke with an effort at lightness.
"Remember, I don't hold you to anything. I want you only to be happy. In your own way. Not in my way. And if it will mean happinessfor you to ... for you to go back, why ..." He shrugged his shoulders and continued to smile with hurt eyes.
"Eddy...." Her face came close to his. He hesitated until her arms closed tightly around him. He felt her warm lips cling and open.
"You've never kissed like that before, Anna." There was almost a fear in his voice.
"Because I never knew I wanted you," she whispered, "till now—till this minute; till you said about my going back."
Her face was alive with emotion. A laugh, and she was in his arms again. They stood embraced, murmuring tenderly to each other.
Later in her bedroom Anna undressed slowly. Her thoughts seemed to be quarreling with her emotions, her emotions with her thoughts. This was Erik's room—ancient torture chamber. Something still clinging to its walls and furniture. Ah, nights of agony still in the air she breathed. Her words formed themselves quietly. They came to peer into her heart—polite visitors standing on tiptoe before a closed cell that hid something.
"Is there anything?" she murmured. "No. I'm different."
She thought of the day she had come out of a grave and resumed living. It had seemed as if she must learn to walk again, to breathe, to discover anew the meanings of words. At first—listless, uncertain. Then new steps, new meanings. Her mind moved back through the year. She hadwept only once—on the night of the divorce. But that was as one weeps at an old grave, even a stranger's grave. The rest had been Eddy.
"I've changed. And I've been happier in many ways."
She was talking to herself. Why? "I'm a different Anna." But why think of it? It was settled.
She lay in the bed and her eyes opened at the darkness. Here was where she had lain when she had died. Each night, new deaths. Here the lonely darkness that had once choked her, torn at her eyes and made her scream aloud with pain. Things on the other side of a grave. Memories become alien. Things of long ago, when the whisper of the dark came like an insanity into her brain. "Erik gone! Erik gone! Gone!" A word that beat at her until she died—to awake in the morning and stumble once more through a day.
Now she regarded the dark quietly. Black. It had no shape. It lay everywhere about her. But it did not burn nor choke. A peaceful, harmless dark that could only whisper as if it were asking something. What was it asking? Long arms of night reaching out for something. But there was nothing to give, even if she wanted to. Not even tears. Nothing to give, even though it whispered for alms. Whispered, "Erik ... Erik!" But there was no little memory. No big memory. Dead. Torn out of her. So the darkwhispered to a dead thing in her that did not stir. A smile like a tired little gesture passed over her. "Poor Erik, poor Erik!" she murmured. "He must be thinking things that are no more."
She grew chill for an instant.... The memory of agonies, of the screams her love had uttered as it died.
"Poor Erik!"
She buried her cool cheek restlessly in the pillow.
Everything the same as it had been. As if he had stepped out of the office for a walk around the block and come back. But a sameness that had lost its familiarity. Old furniture, old faces, intensely a part of his consciousness, yet grown strange. It was like forgetting suddenly the name of a life-long friend.
His entrance created a stir of excitement. He had spent the preceding two days arranging with the chief for his return. Barring the Nietzschean who had functioned in his absence, none had expected him.
He pushed open the swinging door with an old gesture, and walked to his desk. Here he sat fumbling casually with proofs and the contents of pigeonholes. An old routine saying, "Pick me up." Familiar trifles rebuked him. The staff sauntered up one by one to greet him. Crowley, Mortinson, Sweeney.
"Well, glad to see you back. We've sure missed you around here."
Handshakes, smiles, embarrassed questions. A few strange faces to be resented and ignored. A strange locker arrangement in a corner to be frowned at. But the rest of it familiar, poignant—a world where he belonged, but that somehow did not seem to fit as snugly as once. Handshakes in the hall. A faint cheer in the composing-room as he sauntered for the first time to the stone. Slaps on the back. Busy men pausing to look at him with suddenly lighted faces. "Well, Mr. Dorn, greetings! How are ye? You're looking fine...."
His world. It was the same, only now he was conscious of it. Before he had sat in its midst unaware of more than a detail here, a gesture there. Now he seemed to be looking down from an airplane—a strange bird's-eye view of things un-strange.
He returned to his desk. The scene again reached out to embrace him. Familiar colored walls, familiar chatter and flurry of the afternoon edition going to press. He felt its embrace and yet remained outside it. There were things in him now that could never be a part of the unchanging old shop.
During a lull in the forenoon he leaned back in his chair and stared into the pigeonholes. Memories like the unfocused images of a dream one remembers in the morning jumbled in his thought. The scene around him made things he recalled seem unreal. And the things he recalled made the scene around him seem unreal. He tried to divert himself by remembering definitely.... "We lay in a moon-lighted room and I whispered to her: 'You have given me wings.' I held a gun and pulled the trigger as he jumped at me.... Thenvon Stinnes took the blame.... There's a restaurant in Kurfursten Damm where Mathilde and I.... What a night in Munich!... at the Banhoff. What do I remember most? Let me see.... Yes ... there was a note pinned on the blanket saying she was gone and I ... But there's something else. What? Let me see...."
He tried to evoke clearer pictures. But the sentences that passed through his mind seemed sterile, impotent. The past, set in motion by his effort, evaded him. Its details blurred like the spokes of a swiftly turning wheel. He smiled.
"A sinner's darkest punishment is forgetting his sins," he murmured to himself. He thought of the evening before him. "Better not think of that. Read proofs." He had deferred his meeting with Anna until he should be able to come to her from his desk in the office.
As the day passed an impatience seized him. The unfinished event brought a fear with it.... "I must put it out of my mind until to-night." But it remained and grew.
In the afternoon he sat for an hour talking to Crowley and Mortinson. He listened to them chuckle at his anecdotes. Their faces beaming with affectionate interest seemed nevertheless to say, "All this is interesting, but not very important. Not as important as sitting in the office here and sending the paper to press day after day."
The words he was uttering bored him. He had heard them too often. Yet he kept on talking, trying to bury his impatience and fear in the sound of his voice. His anecdotes were no longer memories. They seemed to have become complete in themselves, related to nothing that had ever happened. He wondered as he talked if he were lying. These things he was saying were somehow improvisations—committed to memory. He kept on talking, eagerly, amusingly.
The afternoon passed. A walk through familiar streets and it was time for dinner.
"I'm not hungry. I'll eat, though."
Yes, the evening ahead was important—very important. That accounted for the tedium of the day. But it would be dark soon. There would be a to-morrow. There had been other important evenings. It was not necessary to get too nervous. He had writhed before in the embrace of interminable hours, hours that seemed never to arrive. Then suddenly they came, looming, swelling into existence like oncoming locomotives that opened with a sudden rush from little discs into great roaring shapes. And once arrived they had seemed to be present forever. But suddenly the roaring shapes were little discs again. Hours died as people died—with an abrupt obliteration. Yet each new moment, like each new face, became again interminable. Time was an endlessness whose vanishing left its illusion unchanged.
But now it was night.
"At the end of this block is a house. Two doors more. I have no key. Ring the bell. God, but I'm an idiot. She'll answer the door herself. What'll I say? That's her step. Hello? No. Walk in. Naturally."
He stopped breathing. The door opened. His legs were made of whalebone. But there was a new odor in the hallway.... And something new here in her face. He stood looking at the woman with whom he had lived for seven years and when he said her name it sounded like that of a stranger. His features had a habit of smiling. An old habit of narrowing one of his eyes and turning up the right corner of his lips. He stood unconscious of his expression, his smile a mask that had slapped itself automatically over his face.
But they must talk. No, she had him at a disadvantage. Her silence could say everything for her. His silence could say nothing. He reached forward and took her hands.
"Anna...."
She was different. A rigidness gone. When he had left her she was standing, stiffened. Now her hands were limp. Her face too, limp. Her eyes that looked at him seemed blind.
"I've come back, as you see."
That was banal. One did not talk like that to a crucified one. Her hands slipped away and she preceded him into the room. He looked to see his father, but forgot to ask a question about him. Anna was standing straight, looking straight athim. Not as if he were there, but as if she were alone with something.
"You must let me talk first, Erik."
Willingly. It was difficult to breathe and talk at the same time. He sat down as she moved into a chair opposite.
Something was happening but he couldn't tell yet. She was changed. Older or younger, hard to tell. But changed. It was confusing to look at someone and look at a different image of her. The different image was in his mind. When she talked he could tell.
"Did you know that I had gotten a divorce, Erik?"
That was it, then. She wasn't his wife any more. A sort of hocus-pocus ... now you are my wife, now you aren't my wife.
"No, Anna."
"Four months ago."
"I was in Germany...." Mathilde, von Stinnes,es lebe die Welt Revolution, made a circle in his head.
"Yes, I know. I'm sorry you didn't find out."
It was impossible. Something impossible was happening. Of course, he had known it would happen. But he had fooled himself. A clever thing to do. He was talking like a little boy reciting a piece from a platform.
"I've come back to you because everything but you has died. I begin with the end of what I haveto say. I came back from Europe ... because I wanted you...."
She interrupted. "I wrote you a letter when I found out about her. I sent it to New York."
"I never got it."
"I'm sorry."
Quite a formal procedure thus far. A letter had miscarried. One could blame the mails for that. And a divorce. Yes, that was formal too ... "whereas the complainant further alleges ..." He felt that his legs were trembling. If he spoke again his voice would be unsteady. He did not want that. But someone had to speak. Not she. She could be silent.
"Anna"—let his voice shake. Perhaps it would help matters. "You've changed...."
"Yes, Erik...."
"I haven't much right to ask for anything else...."
Why in God's name could he think clearly and yet only talk like a blithering fool? He would pause and gather his wits. But then he would start making a speech ... four-score and seven years ago our forefathers....
"I'm sorry you came, Erik...."
This couldn't be Anna. He closed his mouth and stared. A dream full of noises, voices, Anna saying:
"We mustn't waste time regretting or worrying each other about things.... It's much too late now."
He wanted to say. "It is impossible that you do not love me because you once loved me, because we once lay in each other's arms ... seven years." But there was no Anna to say that to. Instead, a stranger-woman. An impulse carried him away. He was kneeling beside her, burying his face in her lap. It didn't matter. There was no one to see. Perhaps her hand would move gently over his hair. No, she was sitting straight. Still alone with something. She was saying:
"I'm sorry. Please, Erik, don't."
"I love you."
"No. No! Please, let's talk...."
He raised his face. It was easier now that he was crying. He wouldn't have to be grammatical ... or finish sentences.
"I understand, Erik. I was afraid of this. For you. But you mustn't. 'Shh! it's all over."
"No, Anna. It can't be. You are still Anna."
"Yes. But different."
He stood up.
"Really, Erik," she was shaking her head and smiling without expression, "everything is over. I would rather have written it to you. I could have made it plain. But I didn't know where to reach you."
He let her talk on and stood staring. Her face was limp. There was nothing there. He was looking at a corpse. Not of her, but somehow of himself. There in her eyes he lay dead—an obliteration. He had come back to a part of him thathad died. It was buried where one couldn't see, somewhere behind her eyes.
"I have nothing more to say, Erik. But you must understand what I have said. Because it means everything."
He listened, staring now at the room, remembering. They had lived together once in this room. There was something beautiful about the room. A face that held itself like a lighted lamp to his eyes. "Erik, Erik, I love you. Oh, I love you so. I would die without you. Erik, my own!" The walls and books and chairs murmured with echoes. The familiar slanting books on their shelves. The large leather chairs under the light. He must weep. The little things that were familiar—mirrors in which he saw images and words ... a white body with copper hair fallen across its ivory; white arms clinging passionately to him; a voice, rapturous, pleading. He must weep because he had come back to a world that had died, that looked at him whispering with dead lips, "Erik, my beloved. Oh, I'm so happy ... so happy when you kiss me ... my dearest...."
He closed his eyes as tears burned out of them. Anna in a blur. Still talking quietly. Embarrassed by his weeping. He was offering her his silence and his tears. He had never stood like this before a woman. But it was something other than a woman—an ending. As if one came upon a figure dead in a room and looked at it and said without surprise, "It is I."
"So you see, Erik, it's all over. I can't tell you how. It took a long time, but it seemed sudden. I don't know what to say to you, but it will be better to leave nothing unsaid. I'm trying to think of everything. I'm going to be married next month. Remember, I'm not the Anna you knew. She isn't getting married again. I'm somebody totally different. I feel different. Even when I walk. You never knew me. I can remember our years together clearly. But it seems like a story that was once told me. Do you understand, Erik? I am not bitter or sad, and I have no blame for you. You are more than forgiven...."
No words occurred to him. Somewhere behind the smooth face of her he fancied lived a woman whose arms were about his neck and whose lips were hungering for him.
"It's all very clear to me, Erik. I've thought of it often. You made me a part of yourself and when you deserted me, you took that with you, and left me as I am; as I was born...."
"Will you play something on the piano for me, Anna?"
"No, Erik."
He seated himself slowly and remained with his head down. There was nothing to think.
"I'll go in a few minutes," he muttered.
Anna, standing straight, watched him as if she were curious. He felt her eyes trying to acquaint themselves with him, and failing. He was growing angry. Better leave before he spoke again. Angerwas in him. It was she who had been the unfaithful one. He could smile at that. He stood up then, and smiled. This was a part of life, to be felt and appreciated. A handshake, a smile that von Stinnes would have applauded, and he would have lived another hour.
"On the boat I made love to you," he said softly, "and I am not unhappy. It is only—my turn to weep a bit."
He regarded her calmly. Yes, if he wanted to ... there was something waiting.... Even though she thought it dead. If he wanted to, there was a grave to open, slowly, with tears and old phrases.
She let him approach her. He felt her body grow rigid as he placed his arms around her. His lips touched her cold cheek.
"It was to make sure that you were dead," he whispered.
She nodded.
... Another hour ended. He had returned. Now he was going away again and the hour was a disc whirling away, already lost among other discs.
The street was chilly. He walked swiftly. His thoughts were assembling themselves. Words that had lain under the tears in the room thawed out.
"She will marry Meredith and the old man will come to live with me. I should have gone upstairs and said hello. But he was probably asleep. I'll take my books and furniture. She won't needthem with Meredith. Get an apartment somewhere. How old am I? About forty. Not quite. Changed completely. Curious, I didn't want her after she'd talked about it. I suppose because I didn't really come for her—for somebody else. Conrad in quest of his youth. Lost youth. How'd that damn book end? Well, what of it, what of it? Things die without saddening one. Yet one becomes sad. A make-believe. That's right. No matter what happens you keep right on thinking and breathing as if it were all outside. Yes, that's it—outside; a poignant comedy outside that talks to one. Death is the only thing that has reality. We must not take the rest too seriously. If I get too bored I can remember that I killed a man and develop a stricken conscience. Poppycock!... The old man'll be a nuisance. But he's quiet, thank God! Well, well ... I'm too civilized. I suppose I made an ass of myself. No.... A few tears more or less...."
His thought paused. He walked, looking at things—curbings, houses, street trees, lights in windows. He resumed, after blocks:
"Good God, what a thing happened to her! To change like that. An awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ached. But it only lasted... let's see. Rachel, Rachel.... Nothing. It was gone a week after I came to her. The rest was—a restlessness ... wanting something. Not having it. Well, it doesn't matter now."
In his hotel room he undressed without turning on the lights. He felt nervous, vaguely afraid of himself.
"I might commit suicide. Rather stupid, though. I'll die soon enough. Maybe a few more things left to see and feel and forget. Who knows? I'll have to look up some of the ladies."
He crawled into bed and grew promptly sleepless.
"If I'm honest I'll be able to amuse myself. If not ... oh, Lord, what a mess! No. Why is it? Life runs away like that—hits you in the eye and runs away."
He closed his eyes and sighed. Like himself, the world was full of people who lived on. Things ended for them and nobody could tell the difference, not even themselves. Being happy—what the devil was that? Happiness—unhappiness—you slept as soundly and ate as heartily.
"I'm a little tired to-night." An excuse for something. He was afraid. He reached over to the small table near the bed and secured a cigarette. Lighting it, he lay on his back, blowing smoke carefully into the dark and watching the tobacco glow under his nose.
"Damn good thing I'm not an author. End up as a cross between Maeterlinck and Laura Jean.One could write a volume on a cigarette glowing in the dark."
He puffed until the tobacco was almost ended. He placed the still-kindled stub on the table and sighed:
"Yes, that's me. Life has had its lips to me blowing smoke and fire out of me. And now a table top on which to glow reminiscently for a moment. And cool into ashes. Apologies to Laura Jean, Marie Corelli—and God."