Erik Dorn Part 20

"Comrades ... workers ..."

A roar from the street concealed him and his voice. But the vividness of him lingered and emerged again.

"Comrades!"

A fist struck against his mouth. His head wabbled. Another fist struck against his eye. The two men holding his wrists were striking into his uncovered face with their fists. A gleeful, joyous sound went up. Rachel stared at the wabbling head of Tesla. The street laughed. Fists hammered at an uncovered face. People were coming on a run to see. A bell clanged. Beside her a man shrieked, "Make him kiss the flag, the dirty anarchist!"

Things slowed again. A film was over the scene. Tesla was being dragged down the steps. His head kept falling back as if he wanted to go to sleep. Then something happened. A laugh, high like a scream, lit the air. It made her cold. The men dragging Tesla down the steps paused, and their fists moving with a leisureliness struck into his face, making no sound and not doing anything. It was Tesla who had laughed. The fists kept moving through a film. But he laughed again--a high laugh like a scream that lit the air with mystery.

When the pack began to sift and sweep her into strange directions she felt that Tesla was still laughing, though she could no longer hear him.

The street became shapeless. Something had ended. A bell clanged away.

People were again walking. They had dull faces and were quiet. She caught a glimpse of the step on which Tesla had stood behind a mist and cried, "Comrades!" She remembered often having stood on the step herself in coming to the office of _The Cry_. This made her sicken. It was her wrists that had been twisted, her uncovered face that had been struck by fists.

The emotion left her as a hand tugged eagerly at her arm. It pulled her up on the crowded curbing.

"Good G.o.d, Rachel, what are you doing here?"

She looked up and saw Hazlitt in uniform. He kept pulling her. Why should Hazlitt be pulling her out of a crowd in 10th Street? She tried to jerk away. She must run from Hazlitt before he began talking. He would make her scream.

Turning to him with a quiet in her voice she said carefully:

"Please let me go. You hurt my arm."

But his hand remained. His eyes, shining and indignant, prodded at her.... The street was quiet. Nothing had happened. Unconscious buildings, unconscious traffic, faces wrapped in solitudes--these were in the streets again. She turned and looked with amazement at her companion. People do not fall out of the sky and seize you by the arm.

There was something stark about Hazlitt pulling her out of the street mob and holding her arm. He was an amputation. You pulled yourself out of a filth of faces and sprawled suddenly into a quiet, cheerful street holding an arm in your hand, as if it had come loose from the pack. It seemed part of some arrangement--Tesla, the pack, Hazlitt's arm. Her amazement died. Hazlitt was saying:

"I knew you'd be in that mob. I thought when I saw them haul that dirty beggar out ..."

He halted, pained by a memory. Rachel nodded. The curious sense of having been Tesla came again to her. He had laughed in a way that reminded her of herself. She would laugh like that if they struck at her face. Her eyes turned frightenedly toward Hazlitt. What was he going to do? Arrest her? He was in uniform. But why should he arrest her? His eyes had the fixed light of somebody performing a duty. He was arresting her, and Erik would come home and not find her. Her lithe body became possessed of an astounding strength. With a vicious grimace she tore herself from his grip and confronted him, her eyes on fire.

"Please, Rachel. Come with me till I can talk. You must ..."

A white-faced Hazlitt, with suffering eyes. Then he was not arresting her. The street bobbed along indifferently.

"I'm going away in an hour. You'll maybe never see me again. But I can't go away till I've talked to you. Please."

It didn't matter then. She would be home in time. And it was easier to obey the desperate whine of his voice then run into the crowd. He would chase after her, whining louder and louder. They entered a hotel lobby.

Hazlitt picked out a secluded corner as if arranging for some rite. He was going to do something. Rachel walked after him, annoyed, indifferent. What did it matter? This was George Hazlitt--a name that meant nothing and yet could talk to her.

Sitting opposite her the name began, "Now you must promise me you won't get up and run away till I'm through--no matter what I say."

She promised with a nod. She must be polite. Being polite was part of the idiotic penalties attached to adventuring outside her real world, in unreal superfluous streets. What had made Tesla laugh? His laugh had not been unreal. Almost as if it were a part of her. Blood dropping from his fingers. A bleeding man.

"I'm leaving for France, Rachel. I couldn't go away without seeing you.

I've spent a week trying to find you and this morning they told me to inquire at _The Cry_."

Was he apologizing for Tesla? She remembered the faces that had swept by in 10th Street. His had been one of them. Hazlitt had twisted Tesla's wrists and struck into his uncovered face.

Rachel slipped to her feet and stared about her. A hand caught at her arm and pulled her into the chair.

"You promised. You can't leave till you hear me."

She sank back.

"Give me five minutes. I'm unworthy of them. But I've found you and must talk now. I can't go across without telling you."

She looked up. Tears almost in his eyes. His voice grown low. He seemed to be whispering something that didn't belong to the sanity of the hotel lobby and the two large potted palms in the corner.

"I'm unclean. I've been looking for you to ask you to forgive me."

Hazlitt's hands crept over his knees.

"Oh, G.o.d, you must listen and forgive me."

This was a mad monkey uttering noises too unintelligible for even an attentive hat, dress, and pair of shoes to make anything of.

"Rachel, I love you. I don't know how to say it. There's something I've got to say. Because ... otherwise I can't love you. I can't love you with the thing unsaid."

He looked bewilderedly about him and gulped, his face red, his eyes tortured.

"It's about a woman."

"Perhaps," she thought, "he's going to boast. No, he's going to cry.

What does he want?"

The sound of his voice made her ill. If he were going to make love why didn't he start instead of gulping and covering his face and choking with tears in a hotel lobby as if he were an actor?

"I was drawn into it. I couldn't help it. One afternoon in my office after the trial. Then she kept after me. The thought of you has been like knives in me. I've loved you all through it and hated myself for thinking of you, dragging you into it. I dragged the thought of you down with me. But she wouldn't let me go. G.o.d, I could kill her now. I broke away after weeks. She got somebody else. I've been living in h.e.l.l ever since--on account of you. I'm unclean and can't love you any more. If it hadn't been for my going across I'd not have come to you. But the war's given me my chance. I can't explain it. I went in to--to wipe it out.

But I had to find you and tell you. I didn't want to think of dying and having insulted you and not ..."

He stopped, overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer.

"For G.o.d's sake, Rachel, don't look like that. Oh, you're so clean and pure. I can't tell you. You're like a star shining and me in the mud.

You've always hated me. But it's different now. I'm going to France to die. I don't want to live. If you forgive me it'll be easier. That's why I had to talk, Rachel, forgive me. And then it won't matter what happens."

She let him take her hand. It was an easy way to make an answer. A desire to giggle had to be overruled. The words he had spoken became absurd little manikins of words, bowing at each other, striking idiotic postures before her. But he had done something and for some astounding reason wanted her to forgive him for what he had done. He was a fool. An impossible fool. He sat and looked like a fool. Not even a man.

Hazlitt raised her hand to his face. Tears fell on it. Rachel felt them crawling warmly over her fingers. They were too intimate.

"You make me feel almost clean again. Your hand's like something clean and pure. If I come back...."

He stared at her in desperation. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten his intention to die in France. He recalled Pauline. Was he sorry? No.

It was over. Not his fault. All this to Rachel was a ruse. Clever way to get her sympathy. Not quite. But he felt better.

He became incomprehensible to Rachel. The things he had said--his weeping, gulping--all part of an incomprehensible business. She nodded her head and looked serious. It was something that had to do with a far-away world.

"Good-bye. Remember, I love you. And I'll come through clean because of you...."

She held out her hand and said, "Good-bye."