Dorn

“ The figures of the lovers lay without life. Rachel had turned her head from the glare. Through veiling fingers Dorn remained staring at the veneer of isolation about them. Waves of heat crept like ghost fires across the nakedness of the scene. He thought of the sun as a pilgrim walking over the barren floor of an empty cathedral. Over him the motionless smoke-bellied clouds hung gleaming in the dead fanfare of the sky. He thought of them as swollen white blooms stamped upon a board. As the moments slipped, he became conscious that Rachel was talking. ”

“ Kurt Dorn was at mess with his squad.
The months in France had flown away on wings of training and absorbing and waiting. Dorn had changed incalculably. But all he realized of it was that he weighed one hundred and ninety pounds and that he seemed to have lived a hundred swift lives. All that he saw and felt became part of him. His comrades had been won to him as friends by virtue of his ever-ready helping hand, by his devotion to training, by his close-lipped acceptance of all the toils and knocks and pains common to the making of a soldier. ”

“ Like a tempest swept over Dorn the most significant ordeal and lesson of his experience in France—that wonderful reality when he met the Blue Devils and they took him in. However long he lived, his life must necessarily be transformed from contact with those great men. ”

“ The lawyer, who was a young man, and possessed of a very lively appreciation of feminine beauty, lingered a few moments and then quietly took his departure.
"I hardly know whether I am most glad or ashamed to see you here, darling," said Dorn, looking tenderly at his beloved.
"Glad, I hope, dearest. Should you feel ashamed of being unfortunate? It is only guilt of which one need be ashamed; and that, I well know, my dear Dorn has not." ”

“ But I never believe Dorn. Do you, Miss Laskin?"
Rachel answered, "Yes."
Dorn, piqued by the continual silence of his wife, felt a sudden discomfiture at the sound of Rachel's voice. Was Anna aware he was talking to her so as to avoid talking to Rachel? Perhaps. But Rachel's presence was diluted by the company. He caught a glimpse of her dark eyes opened towards him, and for a moment felt his words disintegrate. He continued hurriedly:
"War, in a way, is a noble business, in that it reduces us to a biological sanity—much the same as does Miss Dillingham's lavender stocking!" ”

“ The boches were on the line! He leaped up. Through the dust he saw charging gray forms, thick and heavy. They plunged, as if actuated by one will. Bulky blond men, ashen of face, with eyes of blue fire and brutal mouths set grim—Huns!
Up out of the shallow trench sprang comrades on each side of Dorn. No rats to be cornered in a hole! Dorn seemed drawn by powerful hauling chains. He did not need to climb! Four big Germans appeared simultaneously upon the embankment of bags. They were shooting. One swung aloft an arm and closed fist. He yelled like a demon. He was a bomb-thrower. ”

“ He strode forth,--the parson stepped to the window, through which the bright moon was pouring its silver light, and, while watching Dorn's retreating steps, convulsively pressed his hands across his breast and gave frightful utterance to the following imprecation: 'Thy hand shall find all thine enemies, Thy right hand shall find them that hate thee. Thou wilt melt them as in a furnace when thou lookest upon them; the Lord will consume them in his anger, fire shall devour them. ”

“ To Dorn's regret, he believed that he failed his comrades in one way, and he was always trying to make up for it. Part of the training of a soldier was the ever-present need and duty of cheerfulness. Every member of the squad had his secret, his own personal memory, his inner consciousness that he strove to keep hidden. ”

“ Mary blushed and hung her head, but Dorn looked up manfully and replied, with a glad ring in his voice:
"Ah, yes, sir! I cannot tell you how happy we feel! But you, sir, may be able to know what is in the heart of a man who has been very close to a shameful death, for a crime of which he was innocent, and who is suddenly restored to life, and hope, and the love of the woman who is dearer to him than all the world beside." ”

“ This point Dorn did not care to discuss. So they moved onward over the moss grown roof of the ancient fortress until they stood upon the exact spot at which the shadowy giant of the night before had appeared.
“He stood right here,” said Dorn in an awed tone. “He moved right along there. And the little fellow, the bearer of the brass telescope, followed after.”
Doris had heard the story of the mysterious walking giant twice before, but to be standing at the very spot where the vision had appeared gave her an added thrill.
The sun was setting. Already half the world was in shadows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was Dorn's ordeal that his mentality robbed this hour of novelty and of adventure, that while his natural, physical fear incited panic and nausea and a horrible, convulsive internal retching, his highly organized, exquisitely sensitive mind, more like a woman's in its capacity for emotion, must suffer through imagining the infinite agonies that he might really escape. Every shell then must blow him to bits; every agony of every soldier must be his. ”

“ What may not one accomplish who is a man in the fullest sense of the word!' cried the enthusiastic Faith, pressing Dorn's hand to her heart.
'I know not,' said Dorn pensively, 'whether I shall have especial reason to rejoice at the turn the affair has taken or not. It just now occurs to me that the dismission of your persecutor from his quarters in your house, removes the evil which impelled you to leave Sagan, and that you may not now wish to accompany me to Schweidnitz.'
'O! we have on many accounts long desired to visit our Katharine,' said Faith with great earnestness. ”

“ The [Pg 8] smear of gestures, the elastic distortion of crowds winding and unwinding under the tumult of windows, gave him the feeling of a geometrical emptiness of life.
Here before him the meanings of faces vanished. The greedy little purposes of men and women tangled themselves into a generality. It was thus Dorn was most pleased to look upon the world, to observe it as one observes a pattern—involved but precise. Life as a whole lay in the streets—a little human procession that came toiling out of a yesterday into an interminable to-morrow. ”

“ The idea of Warren Lockwood being a lover grew upon Dorn. Of little things, of things seemingly unimportant and impersonal, the novelist talked as he would have liked to talk to Rachel—with a slow simplicity that caressed his subjects and said, "These are little things but we must be careful in handling them, for they're a part of life." And life was important. People were tremendously existent. Dorn, listening to the novelist, would watch his eyes that seemed to be always adventuring among secrets. ”

“ The movements of Dorn were too swift for her sight. But Glidden she saw handled as if by a giant. Up and down he seemed thrown, with bloody face, flinging arms, while he uttered hoarse bawls. Dorn's form grew more distinct. It plunged and swung in frenzied energy. Lenore heard men running and yells from all around. Her father spread wide his arm before her, so that she had to bend low to see. He shouted a warning. Jake was holding a gun thrust forward.
"Boss, he's goin' to kill Glidden!" said the cowboy, in a low tone.
Anderson's reply was incoherent, but its meaning was plain. ”

“ Inside the flabby, coarsened body with its red face munching out monosyllables, lived a recluse. "Too much living has driven him from life," Dorn thought, "and killed his lusts. So he sits and reads books—the last debauchery: strange, twisted phrases like idols, like totem poles, like Polynesian masks. He sits contemplating them as he once sat drunkenly watching the obscenities of black, white, and yellow bodied women. Thus, the mania for the rouge of life, for the grimace that lies beyond satiety, passes in him from bestiality to asceticism and esthetics. ”

“ Long did the youth hold the much coveted packet pressed to his lips. 'How much earthly happiness,' said he to himself with deep emotion, 'have I destroyed in my military career. Do I indeed deserve that love should crown me with its freshest wreaths in a land I have helped to lay waste?'
Dorn, who had retired late and awoke betimes with the interesting little packet under his pillow, found himself at an early hour leaning against a window in the family parlor, and engaged in examining a delicate little note. ”

“ Should his situation become more critical, I shall always be near him.'
'In God's name, master Dorn, what is to be the end of all this?' anxiously asked Katharine.
'A city full of catholics,' answered Dorn with a bitter smile. 'The count of Dohna has arrived to-day. That is a sufficient reason for fearing the worst. From a renegade, who expects to win the principality of Breslau by his tyrannical fury, nothing is to be hoped.'
'Then God help us!' sobbed Katharine, wringing her hands. ”

“ He directly hangs every one who makes the least opposition to him. He strung up a poor apothecary's apprentice for making too much noise in his neighborhood with his pestle and mortar, and a poor child because it cried in its mother's arms.'
'I nevertheless doubt not he will suffer me to live,' said Dorn, with a smile. ”

“ He would think then of Lockwood as an eagle of a rustic painstakingly hoeing a field. On such days the disquiet would vanish from Dorn's thought. He would feel himself propelled through the hours as if by some irresistible wind of which he had become a part. To live was enough. To live was to give expression to the clamoring forces in him. To sweep over Edwards, hurl himself through crowds, pulverize Warren, bang out astounding fictions on the typewriter, watch the faces of acquaintances light up with admiration as he spoke—this sufficed. The world galvanized itself about him. ”

“ No music aroused the elation in him that did the curious beat upon his eyes of window rows, of vari-shaped building walls whose oblongs and squares translated themselves in his thought into a species of unmelodious but perfect sound.
The preoccupation with form had developed in him as complement of his nature. The nature of Erik Dorn was a shallows. Life did not live in him. ”

“ He had probably slain more men in battle with his own hand than any man living. Van Dorn, with his light graceful figure, florid face, light waving hair, and bright blue eyes, seemed formed for love and war. Not over five feet six in stature, he would have encountered Forrest or any other man. I believe they were two of the bravest men living who stood face to face that morning. They never met again. When Forrest returned from his splendid pursuit and capture of Streight's command, General Van Dorn had fallen victim of private vengeance. ”

“ They live and breathe and think and talk only the ideas Victor Dorn believes and fights for. And whenever he wants anything done—anything for the cause—why, there are a thousand men ready to do it."
"Why?" said Jane.
"Victor Dorn," said Hull. "Do you wonder that he interests me? For instance, to-night: you see how it's raining. Well, Victor Dorn had them print to-day fifty thousand leaflets about this strike—what it means to his cause. And he has asked five hundred of his men to stand on the corners and patrol the streets and distribute those dodgers. I'll bet not a man will be missing." ”

“ Dorn whirled the bloody bayonet, and it crashed to the ground the rifle of the other German. Dorn saw not the visage of the foe—only the thick-set body, and this he ripped open in one mighty slash. The German's life spilled out horribly.
Dorn leaped over the bloody mass. Owens lay next, wide-eyed, alive, but stricken. Purcell fought with clubbed rifle, backing away from several foes. Brewer was being beaten down. Gray forms closing in! Dorn saw leveled small guns,, flashes of red, the impact of lead striking him. But he heard no shots. The roar in his ears was the filling of a gulf. ”

“ She lay upon a couch in Dorn's room and never closed her eyes. But he slept, and his slumber appeared sound at times, and then restless, given over to dreams. He talked incoherently, and moaned; and once appeared to be drifting into a nightmare, when Lenore awakened him. Next day he sat up and said he was hungry. Thereafter Lenore began to lose her dread.
"Well, son, let's talk wheat," said Anderson, cheerily, one beautiful June morning, as he entered Dorn's room.
"Wheat!" sighed Dorn, with a pathetic glance at his empty sleeve. "How can I even do a man's work again in the fields?" ”

“ Van Dorn in her tailored gown and seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat, dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman who had come in the day before–a woman no older than Margaret Van Dorn–yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled, wishing to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby and led another, and shooed a third and slipped into the corner near the magazine counter and thumbed over the children’s fashions in the Delineator eagerly and looked wistfully at the beautiful things in the store. ”