Erik Dorn Part 27

"Yes, I have always known this here one thing. Everybody must have a religion. Because there's something in everybody that's way beyond their selves to understand. And there's n.o.body to give it to excepting G.o.d.

Some G.o.d, anyways...."

Rachel, sitting in the shadows, would listen with her eyes upon Erik.

The fear that he had brought her was growing in her heart, making her thought heavy and her gestures slow. She would listen, almost asleep, to his words.

" ... Yes, Mama Turpin, religion comes to all people. But not for long.

We all get a flame in us at some time and it burns until it burns itself out, and then we sit and forget to wonder about things...."

Talk perhaps for her to understand. But why should he hint when words outright were easier? Rachel carried questions in her heart.

Among the fishermen Dorn listened sometimes to stories of great catches and storms. He was usually silent watching them empty their nets on the sh.o.r.e and remove the catch into basins and pails. The men accepted his interest in their work with a pleased indifference.

Rachel sometimes walked with him or stretched beside him on the sand.

But he felt an uneasiness in her presence. Her eyes questioned him silently and seemed to answer their own questions.

Since the evening of his coming there had been no scenes. He was grateful for this. But the eyes of Rachel sometimes haunted him at night as she lay asleep beside him. What spoke in her eyes? He felt calm when alone, at peace with himself. But at night while she slept he would become sleepless and a sadness would enter him. Thoughts he did not seem to be thinking would move through his head. "Things pa.s.s. Years pa.s.s.

The sea and the stars remain the same. But men and women change. Life eats into men and women--eats things away from them...."

In his sadness there would come to him a memory of Anna. Thoughts of Anna and Rachel would mingle themselves.... Anna had once lain beside him like this. He remembered now. Her body was different from Rachel's--softer, warmer ... a woman named Anna had lived with him. Now a woman named Rachel. And to-morrow, what? There were yesterdays. These were not sad. Things already dead were not so sad. But things that are to die....

His heart would grow weak, seeming to dissolve. Something unspoken in the night. Tears in his heart. Calm in his thought. He would figure it out sometime. His words were alert little busy-bodies. They could follow things into difficult crevices. But was there anything to figure out? He was growing old and a to-morrow was haunting him. Some day he would close his eyes slowly and in the slow closing of his eyes the world would end. Erik Dorn would have ended. Was there such a thing as ending?

Yes, things were always ending. Now he was different than the night he had lain beside Rachel and whispered, "You have given me wings." But how? He felt the same. Change came like that. Leaving one the same. He would write things from Europe that would startle. He could write....

But, something unspoken in the night. He must say it to himself.... "You must love her...." Then that was it. He no longer loved her.

He lay listening to her breathing. An end to his love. Preposterous notion! How, since the thought of parting from her wrenched at his heart? "If I went away from Rachel I would die." Unquestionably sincere.... "I'd die." Not, of course, die. But feel death. Yet, there was something changed. But a man doesn't remain an ecstatic lover. There comes a time. Well, he loved her like this--quietly, happily, and if he went away from her he would feel an end had come to his life. The other love had been words flying in his head. Nice to have felt as he had. But life--practical, material rush of hours. Words had flown in his head once. He smiled. "Wings, what are they?" He remembered having spoken and thought a great deal about wings. Now the idea seemed somewhat absurd.

They were not a part of life. Inventions. An invention. A phrase to explain an unusual state of physical and mental excitement.... Sleep intruded and the sadness melted out of him. As he closed his eyes his hand reached dreamily for Rachel and lay upon her shoulder.

A week of silence followed. Dorn talked. Politics, economics, the coming peace treaty. Rachel listened and made replies. Yet their words seemed only the part of a silence between them. A letter from Was.h.i.+ngton interrupted them. A pa.s.sport was being issued for Erik Dorn, but the bureau was not issuing pa.s.sports for women and would have to deny Mrs.

Rachel Dorn ... "enclosed please find $1 deposit made for Mrs. Dorn at this office."

"Well, that ends it," he laughed. "Perhaps I shouldn't have lied about your being Mrs. Dorn. G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d and punishes liars."

"You must go on," Rachel said. "Perhaps I'll get one later."

"No, we'll both wait. I couldn't go without you."

Rachel regarded him tenderly. They were sitting on Mama Turpin's porch.

"Yes, you will," she said.

He shook his head, pleased at the opportunity for sacrifice. He hoped as he smiled that Rachel would plead with him to go alone. In her pleading she would point out all the things he was giving up by not going. She might even say, "You must go, Erik. You can't sacrifice your career."

Then he could shrug his shoulders, remain silent for a moment as if weighing his career beside his love for her, and smile suddenly and say, gently, "No. It's ended. Please, it's ended and forgotten." A laugh, a bit too casual, would leave the thing on the proper plane. Later there would be times when he could grow thoughtful and abstract and Rachel, looking at him, would know that he had sacrificed--his career.

On Mama Turpin's porch Dorn's thoughts rambled in silence. Rachel had said nothing. He looked at her and grew confused before the straightness of her eyes, as if she knew the tawdry little plot moving through his mind. Then an irritation ... why didn't she plead? Did she think it was nothing to give up his plans? Was it anything? No. He endeavored to evade his own questioning, but his thoughts mocked him with answers....

"I'm playing a game with her. I want her to feel sorry and grateful for my not going and to feel that I've made a sacrifice for her. Because I could cherish it against her ... later. Have something I could pretend to be sad about. It would give me an excuse to scold her.... Merely by looking at her I could remind her that she is indebted to me for a sacrifice. Make-believe sacrifice gives one the unconsciousness of virtue without any of its discomforts. I'm irritated because she refuses to play her part in the farce and so makes me seem cheap. She knows I'm lying but she can't figure out how or what about. So she looks at me and says to herself, 'Erik has changed. He's different.' She means that I've become an actor and able to offer her cheap things. But she doesn't know that in words."

As he sat thinking, an understanding of himself played beneath his thoughts. He was irritated with her. The pa.s.sport business was something he could hang his irritation on. It offered an opportunity to make the petulant, indefinable aversion he sometimes felt toward her into a n.o.ble, self-laudatory emotion.

He stood up abruptly. Make amends by being truthful and putting an end to the theatrics.... "Listen, Rachel, it's foolish for us to take this seriously. I don't give a d.a.m.n about going, and I never did. It would bore me. It means nothing to me, and it's no sacrifice or even inconvenience. Please, I mean it. Put it out of your head."

He leaned over and took her hands.

"I love you...."

Despite himself there was a note of sacrifice. He frowned. His "I love you" had startled him. He had said it as one pats a woman rea.s.suringly on the shoulder. More, as one turns the other cheek in a forgiving Christian spirit. He was not an actor. He had become naturally cheap.

Rachel smiled wanly at him and kissed his hands. He noticed that she looked thin about the face and that her eyes seemed ill with too much weeping. He wondered when it was she wept. When she was alone, of course. For a moment the thought of her flung across the bed and weeping stirred him sensually. Then ... what made her cry so much? Good G.o.d, what did she want of him? He was giving up.... Again he frowned. "I've become a cad," he thought. "I can't think honestly any more. Thoughts act themselves in my head. I've gotten to thinking lies and thinking them naturally without trying to lie...."

"I'm going for a walk," he announced, and went off toward the sh.o.r.e where the fis.h.i.+ng-boats were drifting in becalmed.

Mama Turpin came out on the porch. Rachel smiled at the old woman.

"It's peaceful here, Mama Turpin."

"Yes, honey. My work's all done for the day now."

"Nothing ever changes here," Rachel murmured. "The sea is just the same as when I came. I think I'll be leaving soon, Mama Turpin. Mr. Dorn will stay on for a little while. I have some work I must get back to."

She paused and shaded her eyes from the setting sun.

"It's been wonderful down here. I'll never forget it. Perhaps some day I'll come back to visit again."

She arose and sighed.

"What's the matter, honey?" the old woman asked, watching her.

Rachel waited till her lips could smile again. Then she said:

"Oh, I hate to leave it here. But I have so much work to do."

She entered the house swiftly. In her room she lay on the bed, her face in the pillow as if she were waiting for tears. But none came. She lay in silence until it grew dark and she heard Erik outside asking Mama Turpin where she was.

CHAPTER VIII

It was dawn when they awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A la.s.situde filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at Erik. His face was flushed and he was sleeping lightly, his eyes almost open.

"Erik," she whispered. When he looked at her she leaned over and kissed him.

"Last night was wonderful," she murmured.

He smiled sleepily.

"I want to lie in your arms for just a minute. And then we'll get up, Erik."