Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 26
After my encounter with the woman I had a feeling that I was becoming morally and intellectually bankrupt. I was beginning to accept things, things that I knew were false. I was even finding satisfaction in revenging myself against society by hastening the day of my country’s economic ruin through the medium of catch-penny advertisements exploiting inferior goods. Unless I abandoned my solitary mode of existence and shook myself free from the influence of the hotly circulating night life round me, I knew that soon I would not be listening to the experiences of my acquaintances, but cheaply participating in them. When not engaged at night in peering, like a shamed but desirous phantom into the eyes of the women I passed on the street, I had been forcing myself to the creation of what I fondly believed to be the better sort of literature — literature so remote from life that fortunately it never lived. Even in this I found no comfort. And now MacKellar’s letter. Did I care to leave the city?
I smiled cheerfully and gave a quick, appraising glance round the room containing my few possessions. No, it would not take me long to pack. Then I fell to studying the elaborately drawn and marked map MacKellar had enclosed in his letter, and as my eyes followed the outlines of a ragged coast New York gradually withdrew, until at last the room was filled with the sound of churning water.
CHAPTER IV
AS THE HEAVY train clanked and buckled from the little station, I felt, with unlimited relief, that the last tie binding me to the city and my old ways of life was definitely severed.
Somewhere, hidden, yet close at hand, I sensed the sea, and a great longing to look upon open water took possession of me. I produced MacKellar’s map and studied it with a view to finding my way to his cottage, which as well as I could figure lay some five miles off in a grove of trees running down to a beach.
According to the map, I was to take the Station Road. This dusty bit of tape twisted out of sight beneath a small railway bridge close at hand, only to reappear on the other side, sliding lazily over the crest of a brief hill, until finally it settled down to a quiet and comfortable course which carried it across a green stretch of meadowland into the shadowy recesses of a forest rising far off in the distance.
With renewed interest I returned to the map. Apparently the neck of land I was on the point of exploring thrust itself out into the ocean like a battleship plunging headlong through the waves. However, it was not altogether cut off from the mainland, for near its prow a narrow strip of land sprang out at right angles, and running gracefully across the sea, almost touched the opposite shore, thus forming a natural breakwater for small craft in time of stress. This smooth and practically land-locked body of water lay against the lower two-thirds of the battleship’s side and was finally absorbed in a series of salt marshes laced by innumerable serpentine currents, which flooded and faded away with the rise and fall of the tide. Thus on one side of this rugged vessel and against its prow the sea dashed endlessly, while the other side lay untroubled in the still waters of a lake. Altogether the promontory suggested an interesting subject for exploration, and as I studied the map I grew impatient to tread the reality.
Here was the road and at the other end of it lay shelter, friendship and the sea. It was enough to send me singing on my way. I lifted my bag from the platform and set off. My steps fell with satisfying lightness on the powdery dust rising in little puffs and spurts over my shoes. I paddled through it with a new feeling of exhilaration, my awareness of the sea becoming more acute as I proceeded. Already I seemed to hear the surf pounding against the rocks. There was a smell of its salt in the air. At any moment now I was prepared to see the ocean break tumultuously in view, and my eyes kept searching the distant vistas ahead. On either side of me smooth green meadows ran rippling back to a border of bush fringed woodland, and occasionally a smaller road turned off from mine to wander neatly across the meadows until it rested at the door of a farmhouse. There was an atmosphere of self-respect and well-being about most of these rustic dwellings that spoke enthusiastically of the industry of their inmates, probably the soil-wedded sons and daughters of men who had at one time snatched a precarious livelihood from the lurching waves.
I drew near the forest and entered into its shadow. It was silent here and cool. Only the notes of birds left a delicate tracery of music across the green dome of the trees, A feeling of peace and restfulness came over me. No longer eager to hurry forward, I dropped my satchel to the roadside, and sat down on a fallen tree. Somewhere behind me I had left a city — escaped from it. Sprawled out at the end of a ribbon of steel tracks the city lay sweltering noisily beneath a hot down-pour of sunlight. Once I had dwelt in this city, been a part of its industry and idleness, an elbowing unit in its endless stampede, fearing it, fighting it, and yet fascinated by it. Now that I was no longer bound to its pavements, drugged by its merciless routine, I felt no fear of New York, but only its tremendous challenge. Here in the dusky green of the woods, sitting at peace and unhurried beneath the slowly moving boughs, I gained a proper perspective on the place I had left behind.
A wagon came lumbering toward me down the road — an ancient vehicle laden with logs — and its driver, a grizzled veteran of the woods, holding the long reins loosely in one hand, plodded through the dust beside his team.
“Hi, there,” he said, pulling up in front of me. “I see you’re giving yourself a rest. Guess I’ll do likewise.”
“Not resting so much,” I replied with a smile, “as admiring those trees you’re so industriously carting away. There won’t be many left when you get through.”
“No, sonny, that’s not so,” said the old man. “There’ll be trees aplenty when my sons and grandsons are dead and gone, and before that time there’ll be another forest where my grandfather worked before I could hold an ax.”
From some recess in his withered body, he succeeded in producing a peculiarly patient sounding note, which partook of the nature of both a chirp and a cluck and which seemed to convey to his horses the intelligence that it was about time for them to be getting on. For a few minutes more he stood regarding me, the road, and his team, with impartial indifference, then he carefully assembled his ancient members to resume his measured pace.
“Well, so long, sonny,” he said, and repeated that curious, patient note.
Fascinated by his virtuosity and hoping to hear the sound again, I decided to share the way with him.
For some time we plodded along in silence. At length, after a mile of dust had settled in our wake, he reined in his team to ask if I was going in his direction. I had been and would be going in his direction for quite some time if it so happened that he was going in mine. He allowed that he was, and eyed me consideringly.
“Well, then,” he said at last, “I guess you might as well put your bag on the cart.”
For the third time I had the pleasure of hearing that half-chirp, half-cluck tremble over the old man’s lips, and of seeing it take effect upon his horses. To them it meant merely the resumption of an uninteresting occupation, but to me it was one of those altogether pleasant trifles which linger delightfully in the memory long after more important events have passed from mind.
For a matter of a mile we continued on through the cheerfully clinging dust. Gradually, but unremittingly — for I could tell by the strain on my city accustomed thighs — we had been following an up-grade road. I felt that soon we would be treading the quarter deck of the battleship I had pictured in my mind from MacKellar’s map. The ocean, however, was still hidden from view.
“See over there, those marshes,” the old man said as we broke through the last avenue of trees and the forest gave way on one side to a running slope of lowlands. “No soul’s ever found the secret of those marshes. They’ve called to men and they’ve eaten men, but nobody yet has been able to figure out just what purpose God intended them for.”
The summer sun was still triumphant in the sky, and the marshes lay in the glowing calm of midafternoon. The green plain of waving reeds seemed to cast a spell over me. I was troubled and at the same time attracted.
“They don’t do us no good,” broke in the old man, “but there they sleep just the same. They’re waiting for something, but no one knows what it is.”
I looked on the marshes with interest, so tranquil and beautiful they seemed. An atmosphere of tropical luxuriousness lay over them, and as I gazed, I was strongly conscious of their mysterious appeal. It was as though some hidden yet fascinating clanger were quietly stealing through the reeds and observing me from shadowed security out of bright, considering eyes. The extent of this level, water- laced plain was vast. The mainland stood many miles away on the other side, and yet the marshes appeared to fill completely the great space lying between the opposite shore and the out-thrown arm on which I stood. Here and there between the vivid green of the reeds there was a glinting flash of water, while through the marshes themselves innumerable putty colored streams sluggishly twisted.
And over all the hushed expanse there brooded an insecure peace, like a fantastic dream trembling on the brink of a tragic awakening.
* * * * *
THE wagon creaked, the boughs swayed, and time swam drowsily by. We walked in silence as though influenced by the witchery of the marshes. The lift of the road was no longer gradual, but steep and uncompromising. Weary itself of the journey, it was tugging impatiently to wriggle its way over the last grade. As I trudged along, my mind fell into one of those restful conditions of torpor in which tangible objects and active thoughts become subdued and blended in a twilight of untroubled stillness... hazy, distant, yet enveloping.
“There she is,” said the old man suddenly.
We stood at the end of the ascent. The horses came to an unrequested stop, raised their heads and sniffed, then fell peacefully to cropping grass by the roadside. The remainder of the land tapered unhurriedly away before us. On the side fronting the sea the cliffs were fluted with many groves that gave to smooth, white beaches. On the other side, lifting forests hid the marshes from view. The road lay along the cliffs, occasionally slipping out of sight down one of the gently sloping indentures. There were gables in the green, but only a few. The place seemed almost uninhabited, as though it had drifted away from the world and been lost on an unknown ocean.
In the air there was the cry of water. The distant rhythm of the surf spilled up over the cliffs. A plume-flecked campus of blue curled out to a cloud banked horizon. Gulls on motionless wings coasted down the air lanes and circled over a group of rocky islands, lying ponderously like a school or dozing leviathans on the ocean’s slanting floor.
“There she is,” repeated the old man. “Mean and unreliable, but just the same, fit for the labors of man. Those marshes now...”
He snapped the reins without finishing his sentence, and we proceeded along the road.
* * * * *
THE map indicated that its author’s abode lay somewhere near at hand, so I consulted my companion.
“Wait a bit,” he said. “It’s down the road a piece.”
Presently he stopped in front of two gray sentinels of granite standing guard at the gates of an estate. The house was barely visible through the trees, under which wound a smooth gravel road between a border of ragged grass, but what caught my eye and held it was the strange carving cut roughly into the flank of one of the granite posts. It was a bas-relief of a large hand, a cruel, gripping hand, crushing in its grasp the body of a deer, whose head was thrown frantically back between an imprisoning finger and the thumb. As I looked at this sinister tragedy in stone I was caught between a feeling of pity and antagonism. Instinctively, I looked about me, as though sensing an unseen enemy.
“Yes,” said the old man, following the direction of my gaze, “that’s just about the way he strangles this neck of land. John Elliott’s like his father before him. For ninety- nine years they got a lease on all that you see in sight and a great deal more besides, and we poor folks here fished and plowed for them — it’s him now. Some folks say he counts the sand on the beach to see if the ocean has taken any away.”
The old man spat deliberately in the dust and cleared his throat.
“Now, sonny, your place lies somewhere over there in that grove of trees,” he continued. “I know it, for I’ve heard folks speaking of an old artist feller that’s shut himself off from the world in a house he’s hired from him,” and he pointed to the granite hand. “You can cut across the lawn if you want,” he went on, “or you can go down the road till you come to the grove. You’ll find the place easy enough.”
He waved his hand in the general direction of the grove, gathered up his reins and made ready to depart. After thanking him for his companionship and instruction, I hastened down the road, preferring to try the grove rather than to trespass on the lawn of one who displayed such an inhospitable device at his very gates.
* * * * *
IN a short time I found myself in the midst of a grove of tall trees stepping majestically down a gradual slope to a beach sparkling at the end. A yellow half-light filled the place and birds slipped furtively through it among the branches overhead. MacKellar’s house lay somewhere at the other end of this sun-mottled avenue of trees. I was not long in finding it. The grassy flue curved sharply to the left and there at the edge of the grove, set back on a little lawn in a cluster of bushes, stood a small two-story cottage. Very neat and inviting it looked with its shingled roof, its small white sides and its windows picked out in green. I crossed the lawn and was about to step over the threshold of the door, when my foot was arrested on the ledge by the sight of a large painting hanging on the wall facing me.
On a low divan, across which was thrown a black silk mantle splashed with scarlet flowers, lay the body of a nude girl. She was partly reclining on one side and her dark, lusterless hair fell over the arm supporting her small head. The painting itself was striking enough with the dead white skin of the girl’s body thrown out in bold relief against the silken blackness of the flower-strewn mantle, but what held me transfixed was the claiming appeal, the almost irresistible urgency of the voluptuous figure.
To me it seemed to symbolize all that was desirable and at the same time corrupt in the human flesh... a soft, intoxicating refuge in which to abandon once and for all the dreams and aspirations that trouble the souls of men. Here there was no place for dreams, no need for aspirations; here was only delight, fierce, imprisoning, and futile.
The black, searching eyes of the girl seemed actually to live and glow in the pallor of an oval face made vivid with the scarlet of her full lips. A scarf of the same color, twisted snake-like across her thighs, fell in a strange design on the glossy surface of the mantle. Her breasts were high, imperious, and rather full for those of a girl; and the whole body possessed a luxurious yet indefinably youthful maturity suggestive of a tropical flower prematurely forced into bloom from the rich soil of a moist climate.
As I stood regarding this picture my mind fell into a vortex in which time and space faded away before a windy conflict of emotions, the impulse to become submerged and forgotten beneath suffocating waves of passion and the desire to rise, winged and alone, into some still, blue sky where only thought existed. The glowing eyes were looking deep into mine, and so humanly intense was the challenge in them, that as I returned their gaze, I felt a strange, almost hypnotic, influence impelling me to glance downward. Yielding to the power of those painted eyes, I lowered mine, and there, virtually at my feet, was the living embodiment of the portrait I had just beheld. The girl lay on a black divan, and even in my confusion I could not help realizing that the warmth and radiance of her flesh could never be transferred to canvas. She must have been silently enjoying the profound impression the painting had made on me, for when I looked into her eyes I saw that they were filled with the soft, half caressing glow that kindles in the eyes of some women when under the admiration of men. The girl did not stir, but lay there quietly in full and triumphant consciousness of her beauty. A sigh escaped my lips, and involuntarily I took a step forward. At this moment I was brought back to my surroundings by the gusty entrance of Hugh MacKellar through a door at the end of the room.
“David!” he cried, rushing up to me with his outstretched hands filled with spotted rags and recently cleaned brushes. “If it isn’t my flagged and failing Shelley, rancid from the city. Welcome, my boy, to our unsanctimonious sanctuary.”
My voice was hardly audible at that moment, but I stammered as ingratiatingly as I could and made friendly grimaces at my host. All the while I felt the mocking eyes of the girl quietly observing my embarrassment.
“That’s Scarlet,” explained MacKellar with an unceremonious wave of his brushes. “Scarlet, this is David Landor.”
“Has he come to stay all summer?” she asked in a dull voice.
“Certainly,” he answered. “That is, if you’re good to him.”
“That all depends,” she said. Then extending an arm to me, “Come over here, David.”
With a feeling of reluctance I crossed the room and took her hand.
“Do you think you’re going to like me?” she asked.
As she idly studied my face through her heavily fringed lashes, I felt that she was coolly expecting an affirmative answer, and I decided to disappoint her.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Heavens,” she exclaimed, petulantly tossing my hand from her. “How disagreeably honest. What sort of a boy is he, MacKellar?”
“He’s a poet,” replied MacKellar, “and a damn good boy.”
