Vol. 21 No. 3 1954 - page 286

286
PARTISAN REVIEW
slope that changed into the steep beach, the naked sea, running
deeply below, without embankment or promenade, or any friendly
shacks, though some prettily built homes showed to the left, with one
light in a window, glowing warmly through the trees on the edge
of the forest itself, as of some stalwart Columbian Adam, who had
calmly stolen back with
his
Eve into Paradise, under the flaming
sword of the civic cherubim.
The tide was low. Offshore, white horses were running round
a point. The headlong onrush of the tide of beaten silver flashing
over its crossflowing underset was so fast the very surface of the sea
seemed racing away.
Their path gave place to a cinder track in the familiar lee of
an old frame pavilion, a deserted tea house boarded up since last
summer. Dead leaves were slithering across the porch, past which
on the slope to the right picnic benches, tables, a derelict swing, lay
overturned, under a tempestuous grove of birches. It seemed cold,
sad, inhuman there, and beyond, with the roar of that deep low
tide. Yet there was that between the lovers which moved like a
warmth, and might have thrown open the shutters, set the benches
and tables aright, and filled the whole grove with the voices and
children's laughter of summer. Astrid paused for a moment with a
hand on Sigurd's arm while they were sheltered by the pavilion, and
said, what she too had often said before, so that they always repeated
these things almost like an incantation:
"I'll never forget it. That day when I was seven years old, coming
to the park here on a picnic with my father and mother and brother.
After lunch my brother and I came down to the beach to play. It
was a fine summer day, and the tide was out, but there'd been this
very high tide in the night, and you could see the lines of driftwood
and seaweed where it had ebbed. . . . I was playing on the beach,
and I found your boat!"
"You were playing on the beach and you found my boat. And
the mast was broken."
"The mast was broken and shreds of sail hung dirty and limp.
But your boat was still whole and unhurt, though it was scratched
and weatherbeaten and the varnish was gone. I ran to my mother,
and she saw the sealing wax over the cockpit, and, darling, I found
your note!"
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