Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 23
Amid enthusiastic shouts of approval the Colonel resumed his chair and Topper in turn got up.
“I toast you all,” he said, “as a revelation to me of a larger life and a lighter death. And I thank you all for the changes you have wrought in me. Once I was a law-abiding, home-loving and highly respected member of my community. Within a few short months you have changed all that. Now I am a jailbird, a hard drinker, a wife deserter and an undesirable, dissolute outcast. And I am glad of it. Only a few short miles now separate me from my home, but let me assure you that they will be the hardest miles I have ever traveled in my life.”
Topper sat down to be thumped on the back by Kerby and the Colonel. Marion’s eyes were like stars and Mrs. Hart’s like pale moons, big but dim. More champagne appeared and guests kept visiting the table, gossiping for a moment, then drifting away. Topper was elaborately introduced and frequently reintroduced. This continued for some time. Many flushed faces confronted Topper, many bright eyes challenged his. Thrilling laughter floated through the air, the quick responses to well-turned lines. Arousing perfumes, subtle yet intimate, quickened the expectant blood. A soft light, shed by the lanterns hanging from the rafters, flooded the room, and through this light the dancers revolved to the impersonal music of the phonograph. The Colonel was at his most beaming best, gracious, immaculate and highly charged with champagne. Like a prince he sat at the table and greeted his subjects with jovial words. It was an expansive, heady and fluid evening, a dizzy moment stolen from the lap of time. Mr. Topper, at the urgency of Marion, danced with many fair women, listening to their leading remarks and capping them with his short but pertinent rejoinders. At last he returned to the table and claimed Marion for a dance. They circled the floor once, then ducked through the rear door and wandered off into the woods. Other couples were there before them. Laughter and whispers drifted among the trees.
“Well, Topper,” said Marion, “how are you holding your grog?”
“With all my might and main,” he answered. “You seem to be quite untouched.”
“It’s not my fault,” she replied, sitting down with her back against a tree. “It just won’t work to-night, although I’ve consumed enough for ten. My heart is not in my glass. Only my reflection, which will soon fade away.”
Topper was painfully inarticulate and Marion slipped her hand in his, letting her head rest on his shoulder while she gazed up at the sky through the branches of the trees.
“Did you ever look at the stars so long,” she continued, “that you almost became a part of them, so that when a lightning bug flew past your vision it got all mixed up with the Milky Way? Did you ever sit alone for hours chewing the cud of your own futility, hating yourself for being yourself and blaming life for making you so? Well, that’s the way I feel to-night. It’s time for me to be moving on. I’ve enjoyed this sort of stuff too long. There are other things to do. I don’t mean better things, merely more interesting ones. Our capacity to enjoy life should be measured by our ability to create life, or beauty or some form of happiness. So far I’ve created nothing, only a constant confusion, a restless, discontented stirring in the ether.”
“You’ve created happiness in me,” said Mr. Topper. “You’ve awakened dreams and left memories. You’ve made me humble and you’ve made me human. You’ve taught me to understand how a man with a hangover feels. You’ve lifted me forever out of the rut of my smug existence. I’ll go back to it I know, but I won’t be the same man.”
“You never were,” she answered logically. “You were never intended to be. Nobody is, but life gets you, life and the economic urge — success, esteem, safety. How many of our triumphs in life spring from negative impulses, the fear of losing rather than the wish to win. It’s a lot of talk, Topper, the whole damn show. And no one alive to-day is to blame. We must thank the ages past and bow to their false gods. We dress them up in new garments, but in their essence they’re just the same — power, property and pride. You can’t get away from them, the subsidized steps to salvation. I talk like this, but I’ve contributed nothing. We must just keep on and on until the mountains themselves crumble from nausea or we learn to scale them and cool our hands in the sky. Wild talk, Topper. Let’s go back and cage a drink.”
She would have risen, but he held her back.
“Rest here with me a moment,” he said, “and let the world go to hell.”
“If you feel like that,” she answered, “we’ll have to cage a flock of drinks.”
They rose and walked back to the inn from which issued the tumult of many voices raised in song and uncontrolled abuse. The room presented a scene of great disorder. Couples not amorously inclined were either gambling or accusing each other of murder, arson and rape. George Kerby was among the gamblers, but the Colonel still sat at his table with a far-away look in his eyes. With the methodical precision of a wax figure he raised his glass to his lips at regular intervals. Mrs. Hart was sitting in a corner devouring a leg of chicken, while Oscar with moist eyes was trying to hypnotize it out of her hand. The hour was late, but no one seemed to care about that. There were still some uncorked bottles. Broken glass lay on the floor and cigarette ends smoldered beneath the dancers’ feet.
Topper and Marion made their way to the Colonel’s table and sat down. He regarded them with polite inquiry, then automatically passed them a bottle.
“Good evening,” he said. “Are you well?”
“We are very well,” replied Marion, quite seriously. “And you?”
“I am well,” said the Colonel. “I am well.”
He then lapsed into silence as if the last shred of conversation had been exhausted. Topper and Marion sat quietly drinking and listening to the din which was constantly increasing in volume. It had arrived at that stage of the evening when the women were doing their specialty dances and the men were imitating animals or encouraging the dancers to more abandoned efforts. Suddenly in the midst of this debauch a new and sinister note was introduced. The doors of the inn flew open and in each door stood a man with a revolver in his hand.
“This place is pinched,” announced the leader. “Men and women line up in two separate rows. No funny stuff now. Get a move on.”
As if they had long rehearsed the figure the guests arranged themselves in two rows and stood swaying and giggling at one another, all except Mr. Topper. He neither swayed nor giggled, but trembled in every limb. The Colonel stood on one side of him and George Kerby on the other. Marion was directly opposite. The raiding party moved from the doors and walked between the rows, and as they progressed the rows gradually faded from view until only Topper remained unhappily present. Each man in turn inspected Topper, then turned back to the guests, but there were no guests to be seen, nothing but Topper and an empty room filled with chuckling voices and glasses moving through the air. The raiders huddled together and raised their revolvers, and as they did so the weapons were quietly removed from their hands.
“Out with the lights!” cried the Colonel’s voice, and the room was plunged in darkness.
Cries of mortal fear now broke from the raiding party and a scuffling noise was heard. Topper was seized by either arm and carried from the room. He felt himself thrust into the automobile and heard the grating of the gears. There was a furious barking and Oscar sprang into the car just as it wheeled down the path.
“Another pursuit,” said Topper. “What a remarkable country this is. Someone is always chasing someone else, and I’m forever it.”
“Killjoys,” replied Kerby from the wheel. “I was fifty bucks ahead.”
“I still have my chicken,” Mrs. Hart gloated from the back seat.
“And I have a couple of bottles,” announced the Colonel. “Oscar seems to have the seat of someone’s trousers.”
“And we all still have Topper,” said Marion Kerby. “Let’s escort him home.”
When the party had materialized Topper found himself seated between Marion and George Kerby. George was driving with one hand and reaching for the bottle with the other. Thus they sped along increasingly familiar roads at an increasingly reckless speed. Marion admonished her husband, but he merely took another drink and broke into a ribald song. Marion was clinging to Topper’s hand and pressing it from time to time. The Colonel and Mrs. Hart had apparently gone to sleep.
“Here we are,” said Marion at last. “We’re approaching the old tree. It’s our parting point, Topper. Can you take the car from here?”
“It was a fine party,” muttered Topper, then the words refused to come. He felt that his world was dropping away from him, and as if to hold it back, he clung with all his might to Marion’s hand. The automobile gave a sharp, uneasy bounce, then side-jumped from the road. As the great tree rushed out of the night to meet them, Marion Kerby threw herself on Mr. Topper and held him in her arms. Then Topper’s world in reality did drop away. He had a sensation of clinging arms and a warm breath on his cheek. There was a terrifying crash and he caught a strange picture of Oscar describing an arc in the air and vanishing as he turned. The earth sprang up and struck Topper a smashing blow all over. Aching darkness settled down on him.
CHAPTER XXI
THROUGH THE EASTER EGG
MR. TOPPER WAS entering the peephole of his sugar Easter egg. Once inside he felt that he was in a different world, different yet strangely familiar. A soft, still radiance, more vital and sympathetic than that of the real world, lay over a vast hollow plain which ran in a great green dip to a distant fringe of trees.
What was he looking for? he wondered. Was it for the shepherdess of his youth? He knew that it had something to do with romance. Was he looking for Marion Kerby? That must be it But where was she? The hollow plain was empty. No living thing moved across it. And Mr. Topper was tired. Never before had he been so tired. He could hardly lift his legs, they dragged so heavily. But he had to find Marion Kerby. She was necessary to him. Already she had been too long away.
With slow, weary steps he set out across the sunken plain to the far-away trees on the other side. Their tops were dipped in a glowing light as the roof of the Easter egg turned on its downward curve, but all was dark at the base of the trees, dark, hushed and mysterious. He wanted to sit down and rest, but his eagerness to find Marion urged him onward. Several times he called her name, but was unable to hear his own voice. There seemed to be no sound in this Easter egg world of his. Why was there no sound? Topper became confused. He had a faint suspicion that he was suffering from an acute hangover.
He leaned against a small tree, and most amazingly the tree became Marion Kerby. This convinced Topper that he was suffering from a hangover of an exceedingly virulent nature. He took a step back and eyed her reproachfully.
“Where have you been?” he complained. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Looking and calling and wandering about. I’m going to cut it out, Marion. Too much grog. What a head I have.”
“You do look a bit like the Spirit of ‘76 after a hard night,” she said. “Sit down before you swoon.”
Topper promptly sat down and nursed his head in his hands.
“Where am I?” he demanded. “How did I find this place? You’re always getting me into scrapes.”
“Don’t blame me,” she replied. “Blame my charming husband. He has a decided flair for trees.”
“Oh, yes,” said Topper. “There was a tree. I remember now.”
“That’s why you’re here,” she explained. “You became altogether too familiar with that tree, but the effect will soon wear off and then you’ll have to go back.”
“But why do I have to go back?” he asked. “There is no other place. And I’m tired, Marion, dog tired.”
“You don’t belong to our club yet,” she told him, “although you came close to joining. There’s still a spark of life left in you. Furthermore, it would make things extremely uncomfortable for me with you hanging around. George, as you know, has some rather archaic ideas.”
“Marion,” Topper pleaded, “don’t send me away. You know how I feel. I can’t go back to the world now. There’s nothing left for me there.”
“How about Scollops?” she suggested. “How about Mrs. Topper?”
“I’m done for,” he admitted, after a heavy pause. “I see I’ve got to go on. But won’t I ever see you again? Won’t you ever come back to me?”
Marion shook her head.
“I’m moving on,” she told him. “Some day we’ll meet again, perhaps, but things will be different then.”
“Worse, if possible,” grumbled Topper, painfully getting to his feet and gazing ruefully at Marion.
She grinned at his woeful expression and lifted her face to his.
“I do believe you want to kiss me,” she remarked.
“Damned if I will,” he replied.
“Ah, come on,” she urged. “It’s the last.”
Topper groaned and kissed her.
“You always were a jade,” he said.
“How gracious,” she retorted. “You’re almost like your old self.”
“I’ll never be that again.”
“Don’t,” she replied. “Don’t. Remember this, old thing: Too much virtue will sour the sweetest character. I’ve taken a sort of pride in you, seeing you change and grow ornery. Don’t spoil it all and disappoint me. Life will squeeze you if you let it, squeeze you back into a nice little mold with whipped cream and fixings.”
“I know,” said Topper drearily. “Squeeze me back into the 7:32.”
“But never into white duck trousers,” she replied. “Promise me that, Topper.”
“I swear it,” he answered.
“Good man!” she exclaimed, patting his arm. “It’s almost like leaving a son — my own creation.”
For a moment she regarded him thoughtfully, then moved away.
“So long,” she called over her shoulder. “Good-by, old dear.”
Topper’s eyes grew round with desperation.
“But, Marion!” he cried. “Marion! When shall we meet again? Won’t you tell me when?”
“When fate sends you up against a larger and tougher tree,” she replied. “You’re a hard man to kill.”
Without looking back again she drifted away among the trees and Topper stood alone on the sunken plain.
“A pretty trick,” he muttered. “Leaving me flat like this. Well rid of her, say I. Always getting me into scrapes.”
But as he continued across the fields his heart grew heavy for Marion Kerby. Several times he stopped and gazed back, looking for all the world like a small boy reluctant to set out for school.
“The jade,” he continued to himself, “the heartless little jade. I don’t care a damn. Scollops has better sense. What’s happening to the light? I’ll never get out of this place. Marion, where are you? You got me into this fix.”
Gradually the plain grew dark and faded away as Mr. Topper, panting heavily, struggled through the peephole of his Easter egg world. It was a tight squeeze. He seemed to be hanging in space.
“Still too fat,” he growled. “My stomach sticks, damn it!”
* *
*
When Mr. Topper returned to consciousness he found himself in a small white bed in a small white room. The hospital was close to his home, but Mr. Topper knew nothing of this. During the course of his vacation he had awakened in so many unfamiliar places that he instinctively began to figure out what had happened at last night’s party. Where had he been? What had he done? In what place was he lying now?
Then his eyes fell on Mrs. Topper and everything became clear. There were no adventures ahead. He looked at her through half-closed eyes and wondered about the woman. She was crumpled in her chair and her eyes were fixed on some green boughs tapping against the window. Somehow she looked quite pitiful. Strange that was, she had never looked pitiful before. And her face was not so unpleasant, thought Topper, in fact it was almost attractive now that the petulant, self-centered lines had been replaced by those of genuine anxiety. Her hand was resting lightly on the bed and Topper fumbled it into his.
“Hello,” he said, “how’s the girl?”
With a little gasp she turned in her chair and looked at his sunken face. It was odd to see the tears in her eyes and the uncertain smile on her lips.
“You can kiss me,” said Topper magnificently. “I’m too tired to move.”
Mrs. Topper was very much afraid. She kissed him, but did not linger over it.
“I might hurt you,” she faltered.
“Am I as broken up as all that?”
“You’re pretty well cracked,” she admitted. “It’s lucky you’re still alive. The automobile burned up.”
Topper heard this with relief. Much damaging evidence had been destroyed.
“It was the same tree,” he remarked.
“They’re talking of cutting it down,” she replied.
A nurse looked in at the door and, seeing the two conversing, hurried for the doctor. Topper was examined and Mrs. Topper dismissed. When she returned to say good-by she found him white from pain.
“Go home,” he said, “and take a rest. I’ve given you a tough time of it. How’s the dyspepsia?”
“You know,” she replied, “I’ve been so worried I think I’ve lost it.”
“You’ll get it back,” he answered consolingly.
“I don’t want it,” she snapped. “I’ve got you back and you’re trouble enough. No sarcasm, please.”
“How’s my cat?”
“As useless as ever.”
Under her calm exterior Mrs. Topper was radiant. She gathered up her possessions and kissed her husband again.
“Those step-ins,” she whispered. “I’m sorry about them. They were lovely. I bought a lot more.”
A smile flickered momentarily across Mr. Topper’s lips. His eyes moved to the window. The fields and the woodlands stretched out to the dropping sun. Somewhere out there in space was Marion Kerby. But was she there? Had he ever seen her? A remarkable dream? Hardly. Across the fields the old song came back on the wings of memory:
