The Gossamer Cord Read Online Free PDF Page A

the young man.
    I said: “Oh, look! Do you see who that is? It is Else’s young man.”
    Dorabella’s thoughts were elsewhere. She looked at me impatiently.
    “What?” she said.
    “That young man who is delivering something. He’s Else’s young man. You remember. We saw him from our window. He’s her lover. We saw them embracing the other night.”
    “Oh, yes…I remember.” Dorabella was not interested in that particular young man.
    He was standing by the van now. He called out in German, which I could understand: “Tomorrow night, then. See you there.”
    “They must be friends,” I said. “He and the waiter…they are meeting tomorrow night.”
    “What of it?” said Dorabella petulantly.
    “Well…nothing. Just that I was interested, that’s all.”
    Dorabella continued to glance disconsolately along the street.
    I said: “Well, we can’t sit here all the afternoon.”
    She agreed reluctantly.
    But I knew that she was bitterly disappointed and, as I often did, I understood exactly how she was feeling.
    We walked slowly down the incline which led to the schloss. There was a faint chill in the air and a mistiness in the atmosphere.
    “I don’t want to go in yet,” she said. “I’d like to walk awhile.”
    “All right. Let’s do that, but not for long.”
    “In the forest,” she said.
    We left the road and walked through the trees. I wanted to comfort her, as I had always done when she was disappointed. I was reminded of the time when she had lost one of her teddy bear’s bootbutton eyes and another time when the face of her favorite doll had been smashed to pieces. I had been the only one who could console her on such occasions. I understood her better than any.
    Now I wanted to bring her out of that despondency. It was absurd, I wanted to point out. How could seeing someone with whom she had exchanged only a few words be of such importance to her? It was ridiculous. But that was Dorabella. She felt intensely…for the moment. Her emotions did not really go very deep and might not be long in passing, but while they were there they took complete possession of her.
    We never went deep into the forest. We had been warned about that. The road which led from the town to the schloss had been cut through it and on either side the tall pines rose to the sky. The trees grew less densely on the edges of the forest. Kurt had taken us deeper into it, but he had warned us always to keep close to the road so that if we could not see it we were aware of it.
    So we continued to walk on the fringe.
    We sat down on a log. I tried to talk of other things but Dorabella was absentminded. I knew this mood. Fortunately it would not last long. Her moods never did. She had been a little disappointed by the lack of admiring young men during this holiday. Helmut was too concerned with the running of the schloss to have given her the attention she looked for; and I gathered he was not good looking enough to appeal to her. The Cornishman Dermot Tregarland had been just right. He had appeared by magic right near the end of the holiday and that seemed to be the end of him. Poor Dorabella!
    I said it was getting chilly and we should return to the schloss.
    She agreed and we started to walk back the way we had come and then…suddenly, I began to be alarmed. We had not noticed how thick the mist had become. We should have remembered that it could come down quickly. We had been told often enough. Not that we could really say this was so sudden. It had been hanging about all day. And now…here it was and nothing looked the same.
    “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of this quickly.”
    But it was not easy. I had thought to see the road, but all I could discern were the trunks of nearby trees, their branches swathed in mist.
    I took Dorabella’s arm.
    “It’s what they warned us about,” I said. “How silly of us.”
    She was silent.
    I went on: “We can’t be far from the road. We must find it. I am sure this is the