THE NATIONAL SUNDAY MAGAZINE
ASHES of DESIRE
James Hopper
! MAN sat at the black desk of his
darkened study. From a lamp hang
ing above and behind him, a rosy ray
of light fell upon a round polished
II spot set like a ehip in the center of
his head. A small seimitar of bur
nished metal was in his right hand; with it he had
slit the envelope of the communication he was read
ing. It could hardly be termed a letter. Two weeks
before, his university class had celebrated with a
banquet the twenty-first anniversary of its gradua
tion. Being far, and not able to go, and yet seized
by n nostalgic pang for vanished days, he had
despatched a fraternal greeting. The answer was
with him now; at the champagne, upon a card
making the round of the shining table, each, in
turn, had 'written his or her name.
He counted these, first. There were just thirty
four. Twenty-one years before, there had been two
hundred. This simple comparison seemed to throw
him into a rueful reverie; twice, hesitatingly, his
hand rose and touched the small bald spot like a
chip upon his head, lie began to work down the
list, pausing a moment at each name.
Some told him nothing. They were as colors in
the night, a sound fallen into vacuum. Some moved
him vaguely. They were as a dimly remembered
taste; or the rellection of a far (lame, made faint
by distance and by haze.
Others called up pictures clear but incomplete.
A linear profile, a trick of mobile features, a head
without its face, a face without its eyes. What tan
talized him was that he could not recall the voices.
But suddenly his eyes lowered sharply toward
the card.
Mrs. Carlton Coolidge (Ruth Anderson).
Long and with an ardent concentration, he scru
tinized the little purple letters. lie wanted to see
if they had trembled. When he raised his head
again, the air went hissing out of his lungs. He
found that
through his
long examining
he had held his
breath. Also,
he shook a lit
tle, so that he
could not tell if
the name trem
bled. Looking
straight at the
wall, h e s a w
vividly a gold
en land, silver
hazed, by a sea
as ton ndingly
blue. A n d
alone in this
land, a girl
slight and wist
f u I, w i t h a
in outli that
laughed a n d
eyes that were
sad, and hair
like yellow sun.
HI S glance
now fell to
the floor and
through it, into
an a b y s s of
doubt w h i c li
replied to his
quest ioni n g
only with fluid,
hueless and im
palpable stir
rings. Finally,
unanswered, he
took a sheet of
paper and be
gan to write,
I (SSSSF If TO COMMt vORAft THL ONC flUNDRfDlU ANMVTHSAUY f IsSMSa l
I II Ot THE INAU.l Af'ON OI C,r,"H.;.l WASHINGTON j I TjHSStt I
I 'iffT'il I as rinsT i'iumwnt of hil UnitId srAiFsj
faTW By WALTER ADOLF ROBERTS ''IpgrQiLp
M
li!
The starshine on the Arch is silver while ;
Elves, April elves, are dancing in the Square ;
The green-robed Spring has come to town tonight.
Jasmines are in her arms, and clouded quite
With lilac is the nimbus of her hair ;
The starshine on the Arch is si'ver white.
With sap at floodtide and pale leaves bedight,
Ghosts of gray trees assume a vernal air.
The green-robed Spring has come to town tonight.
Young lovers' lips seek out the old delight
On the park bench that winter-long was bare
The starshine on the Arch is silver white
And they who hear her primal call aright
Rejoice that, deathless, virginal and fair.
The green-robed Spring has come to town tonight.
Dreamers whose windows on the Square are bright,
Know that your dreams may not with this compare:
The starshine on the Arch is silver white.
The green-robed Spring has come to town tonight.
the pen leaping into action, as though long in wait
ing and long prepared for this adventuring.
"Ruth Anderson Today there came to me the
card of the class, and for the first time in twenty
years 1 am gazing upon your name in your own
handwriting. Had I a microscope, 1 would search
it. For with age I am becoming more and more
a searcher and one who is less and less answered.
But it is not only your name I see (in its significant
parenthesis). Again, today, you stand before me,
frail gold in the huge gold land. And a question
is again restive within me; one which has tormented
me long and increasingly with the years; and which
now is almost a torture, and which you alone can
answer.
r I 'O ASK it, 1 must go back twenty years to
the time of our friendship, to the time of its
fulness. For many mouths it had been absorbing sun
and dew. Gradually it had swollen with honeyed
ripeness, till it was very heavy, and burdened us at
times in the long silences of the yellow hill, when
to our ears came only a low and ambient hum which
was as the patter of imponderable sunshine, when
to our eyes, ceasing to note the blue of the sea,
swam a gold
en ellulgencc
which came we
k n e w it o t
whether, from
the lan d or
from our souls
with sudden
and inexplica
ble, desires to
weep. I ask
you to go back
to that time
to our last eve
ning together.
"Von remem
ber? We were
on the cliffs nt
twilight. The
day had been a
bubble ; as (law
less and fine
tinted and per
fect, hut also
as fragile;
tremulous with
a n iridescent
agitation like a
subtle fear.
Over the sea,
flashing sap
phire at noon,
a grayness was
spreading like
a pall of ashes;
and the clouds,
entlamed a mo
rn cut before
with so gener
ous a splendor,
now were dead ;
dull and inert,
they came ilap-
In
ping toward us on bat lined wings. They were
silent, but in the gesture of their flight there was
something evocative of screeches and lamentations
1 felt suddenly your shoulder very close to mine.
"Why this emotion of Nature? Was our Fate,
then being determined, of universal importance?
Why not. Ruth Anderson? Are we not one with
the All, flesh of its flesh, fibre of its fibres, atom
of its atoms, intertwined impcrishahly with its pains
and its joys Perhaps, that night, was the Cosmos
troubled with a pensive sense of mistake and fail
ure; as troubled as if, watching with Its sad eye
the void, It should have seen passing, inexorably
divergent through some slip of the celestial ma
chinery two flaming stars avid for each other.
"But this is not what 1 would ask. I am ap
proaching, searching, toward the question We
went in afterward. Side by side we sat before the
fire, and looked into it ns at something enchanting
Such a flame as with prodigal magnificence we lit
then in that laud.
"Hours slipped by. At far intervals, like a bell
striking the flowing of time, one of us said a word,
which reverberated long like a bell. We had by
then little need of speech. For the rare, the won
drous fact about our friendship, Ruth Anderson,
was that we communicated. From the first, with a
strange thrill, I discovered it; and this thrill now
is the precious pearl of my memory. The happi
ness of communion 1
"At midnight, I half-rose and said that 1 must
go. For a moment my fate trembled on the invis
ible balance. Then you said: 'Stay.' And I re
mained, gazing by your side into the fire. Twice
again I said that I should go, and twice you said;
'Stay.' And the night was passing toward the
morning. It was, 1 think, the three notes of a
meadow-lark which stiffened me to departure. They
had in them, already, the tinkling dewdrops of
music, a gaiety of dawn and the demands of day.
I arose. Then was the moment of which I would
question you; the instant of fleeing eternity upon
which many times since, and long, and hauiitedly,
I have bent in search and examination, and puzzling
surmise, and passionato interrogation.
'"V'OU were standing, slight and straight, near me
I made a motion prosaic as to intent (it was
toward my hat!) and how small, and yet wilh what
ineffable result. In the movement I felt against my
cheek the passing caress of your hair's loosened gold.
On the instant, with a surge as sudden anil compel
ling as the rise of the ocean to the heave of a
catastrophic earthquake, there welled through me a
tremendous impulse, seizing as it passed my every
vein, nerve and fibre. I wanted to press you to me.
To catch you in my arms and draw yon slowly
to mo in n movement regular, resistless and fatal;
then to crush you against me, my lips on your eyes,
your sad eyes; on your mouth, your merry mouth;
in a spasm to crush you, till you sank into my being
and through the room your perfume would reel, the
essence of your possessed soul.
"So strong was this impulse, Ruth Anderson,
that even now as 1 write these lines, to the re
awakened ghost of it my heart is still; for the time
of several beats remains absolutely still, while in
my mouth I feel my (Continued mi Page li)
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