Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 3
And the president, rousing his great body, towered like a devastating sun over the gleaming surface of his desk, then slowly advanced on Topper.
“You’re looking fit, Topper,” he said. “This man from Texas has been in again. Don’t want to see him. . . . Come upstairs. We’ll talk it over.”
Topper followed.
“Why this?” he thought. “Why have I been selected?”
Topper little realized that there was a new light in his eyes that set him apart from his fellow men. It was young and fresh. The president was an old man, and, like Topper, he had grown weary from watching eyes. He had peered into them for more than half a century . . . too deeply.
* *
*
Topper is speeding through the shadows like a virgin to a forbidden tryst. He is thrilled with secret alarm. In the close embrace of the night there is something almost personal. It clings to Topper like a wronged woman, filling him with a desire to be elsewhere.
For nearly a week now Topper had been lying steadily, mostly to his wife. Once he had stooped so low as to lie to the garbage man. Topper had come to that. It was excusable in this case, for the man collected garbage of the better sort throughout the town, and in order to forget his occupation, he continually busied his tongue with other people’s affairs.
The seal of sin is settling on Topper’s brow. He looks healthier and less uninteresting. He suspects everyone and, without being aware of it, he has been having a tremendous change.
At the garage, Mark is waiting for him. Good old Mark. Topper loves the man.
Topper arrives. There is a hurried conversation. Then each through his appointed door slides into the seat and they are off like a pair of conscience-stricken grave robbers. Mark is driving and Topper is doing strange, futile things with the brim of his felt hat. Instead of concealing his face, he succeeds in making himself look like a foppish desperado. He is hoping that he appears both sinister and repulsive so that people will avert their gaze without recognizing him, whereas, in truth, had any of Topper’s friends seen him at this moment, they would have been astonished beyond measure, their cherished belief in the eternal sameness of things completely demolished.
The car proceeds down a side street to that section of the town near which no nice people care to build. In this belittered and uncorseted neighborhood Topper feels more at ease. This place which he once considered a reproach to the community, when he considered it at all, has become pleasantly familiar to him, a part of his secret life. It is the hidden door that leads to the open road. The dour houses and dim shops no longer make him uneasy. He regards them with a friendly eye which does not drop disapprovingly at the sight of a woman nursing her child on the least populous step of a front stoop. And when a mulatto maid swings down the street and stops to talk with the technically white youth in the livery stable, the moral responsibility of the race question does not weigh down Topper’s heart. “Whose business is it?” he thinks to himself. “People should mind their own affairs.” Anyway, she was an upstanding figure of a woman.
Soon the town is left behind and the car spins along an unfrequented road.
“What did you tell her to-night, Mr. Topper?” asks Mark.
“Meeting of the Town Guardians,” replies Topper, emerging from his hat.
“Last night it was a Fire Council,” continues Mark. “What’s it going to be to-morrow?”
“The Assessment Club,” snaps Topper promptly.
Mark gives a low whistle of admiration and the conversation languishes.
“They were killed down the road a piece,” Mark announces presently. “Want to see the tree? It’s on the other end of the old bridge.”
“Certainly not,” says Topper. “To gaze upon the departing point of my predecessors would hardly add to my skill. I want to shift the gears, not chatter through them.”
“All right,” replies Mark, bringing the car to a stop. “You take the wheel and turn her around. Drive down the line a bit and then come back. Keep turning, and if anything comes along pull in close to the side and stop. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Like a dog beneath the caress of an unfamiliar hand the gears shivered nervously at Mr. Topper’s touch. They did not exactly chatter, but from time to time uttered cries of protest, like a child aroused from sleep by a convulsive pain in its stomach. Mr. Topper drove wisely but not well. He obeyed all the dictates of common sense, but still there was something lacking. Through no discernible fault of his own he seemed to bring out all the wayward traits of the car. It stopped without reason and started without grace. It darted as if pursued, then loitered alluringly. It displayed all the varied moods of a temperamental woman, one moment purring soothingly, the next scolding petulantly, now running ahead blind to caution, now holding back in virtuous alarm. It strayed from the path and returned again, and it treated its ardent possessor with the arrogant indifference of a beautiful thing. Mr. Topper was charmed. Not so Mark. Nevertheless after three-quarters of an hour of conscientious objecting the car was turned over to Mark, and Mr. Topper, moistly relinquishing the wheel, surveyed the June evening and found it good.
“You’ll get by,” remarked Mark as he headed the car for home.
And Mr. Topper did get by, what with the influence of Mark and a handful of cigars. Characteristically enough it was not until Mr. Topper held in his hands the official card entitling him to drive that he felt sure of his ability. The card dispelled all lingering doubt. He belonged to the brotherhood of the road. He had been tested and received. He could now speak on equal terms with the boy who delivered the ice. He had something in common with practically all the world.
* *
*
There were several surprises in store for Mrs. Cosmo Topper on the Saturday following the purchase of the car. The first one came when Mr. Topper, returning from the city, announced without previous warning that he was starting a two weeks’ vacation. Mrs. Topper successfully punctured the glory of this surprise by feeling audibly sorry that she was hardly up to going anywhere. Topper, not to be outdone, snatched her fleeting triumph by saying that he was just as well pleased. Of course he was sorry about her not feeling well, but then he was always sorry about that — stoically so, thought his wife.
Her second surprise came when Topper informed her that immediately after luncheon he proposed to attend a meeting of the Defense Society. Mrs. Topper saw scant reason for this, but made no comment until the meal was finished.
“What’s this?” she said as he rose from the table. “What are all these meetings about? First it’s the Town Guardians, then the Fire Council . . .”
“The other way ‘round,” corrected Mr. Topper, artistically cherishing his lies.
“Well, it doesn’t very much matter, does it?” she replied. “What’s gotten into this town? All these meetings!”
“Sparrows,” said Mr. Topper as he jauntily left the room.
Mrs. Topper followed her husband with wondering eyes. What a terse and uninforming answer. How unlike the usually explicit Cosmo. Sparrows. Why that?
A few hours later a third surprise caused Mrs. Topper to emerge with unwonted haste from the house. Topper, abandoning his secret life, was sounding his horn in the driveway. Mrs. Topper, from the front porch, saw a rather flushed and foolish-looking man of middle age gazing brightly at her from the driving seat of a glittering automobile.
“Well, what do you think of us now?” asked the man in a voice which conveyed the impression that Mrs. Topper would never be able adequately to express her admiration in words.
Mrs. Topper did not answer immediately. He had not expected her to. That was partly the fun of it — the dawning of delight, the wonder and unbelief and then the appreciation. Dyspepsia would be forgotten. A new era would start for them.
“You gave me such a start,” said Mrs. Topper. “What on earth are you trying to do with that garish-looking car?”
“Trying?” replied Mr. Topper, making a brave effort to retain his smile. “Trying? Why I’m not trying, my dear. I’m actually driving it. I drove it here all the way from the garage. It’s ours. Yours and mine. We own it.”
“You might own it,” Mrs. Topper said, “but we don’t. Keep me out of it. I won’t be involved. Everybody in town knows the Kerbys’ car. Even I recognize it. I’ve seen it thousands of times. A second-hand car. What a thing to do!”
Topper’s smile would not stay fixed. No matter how he strove, his lips refused to respond. Everything was so different from what he had expected.
“I know,” he explained, looking down at the wheel. “This is only our practice car. New one next year. Nice though, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think it’s a bit nice,” said Mrs. Topper. “Nor do I think it nice of you to sit there and enjoy yourself. Buying an automobile and not letting me know, picking up the most vulgar car in town, coming home at this hour and making noises on the lawn, upsetting my nerves and spoiling the leg of lamb . . .”
Then Mrs. Topper received her last surprise.
“Damn the leg of lamb!” he shouted, embittered beyond endurance by his wife’s reception of his surprise. “I’m going for a drive.”
An offensive honking of the horn overfilled Mrs. Topper’s cup of woe.
“He seems to be able to drive it,” she reluctantly admitted to herself as the automobile wavered down Glendale Road.
CHAPTER V
THE NEBULOUS LAP
IT COULD NOT be said of Mr. Topper that he was in a brown study as he drove away from his wife. He was keenly alive to the fact that he was sitting alone in a moving automobile entirely dependent on him for pace and direction. He alone was now responsible for the safety of the car as well as for his own safety. This knowledge never for a moment left his mind. In spite of it, Mr. Topper was preoccupied, or as preoccupied as a person in his position could afford to be. Violence had been done to his feelings, and a reaction had set in. After a week of tremendous lying, during which time life had seemed to be disclosing new and splendid vistas, Topper suddenly felt that after all life was no whit different. It was as flat and stale as ever. Automobiles were no use, nor were little attempts, nor anything.
“Oh, damn that leg of lamb,” he muttered, slowing down with elaborate caution at the sight of a car two blocks distant.
As the automobile passed Mr. Topper, the eyes of the man at the wheel grew incredulous with wonder. He leaned over the side and looked back. He came to a stop and continued to stare.
“That’s Hart,” said Topper to himself. “Well, damn him, too. He’ll spread the news around. Let him. See if I care.”
And Topper stepped on the gas.
Through force of habit he took the same road he had learned to know so well with Mark. This was not the drive he had intended taking — not if she had been decent and friendly about things, but now it did not matter. He drove along, occupied with his thoughts, keeping his eye on the road and paying very little attention to the scenery. Presently he became aware that he had passed his usual limits. Ahead of him was the bridge on the other end of which the Kerbys had met their fate. Topper had never driven over a bridge before and the rattling of planks unnerved him. He stopped on the after-side to regain his composure.
The tree must be somewhere close at hand, for Mark had said it was just at the end of the bridge. Topper got out of the automobile and looked morbidly about him. At the edge of the road stood a stunted tree with a gashed and splintered trunk. Undoubtedly it was the one, the very tree that had caused George and Marion Kerby hastily to withdraw from their questionable circle of friends. Topper surveyed the tree thoughtfully. Two human lives, two warm and vigorous creatures, had been sped into eternity against the age-old bark of that tree. He glanced up. Leaves were out on the upper branches, and wings were flitting through them. Life still went on with the tree. It drank in the moist earth and tossed its palms to the sun. It was made of sterner stuff than mortals. It was more firmly rooted to the earth. Topper had a funny thought. If he had had a son this tree would still be green and filled with birds when the boy was gray and gazing back on life. Topper wanted a son, he felt the need of youth, an enthusiastic, unspoiled soul, to stimulate his ebbing interest in the automobile, someone to admire his daring and to speak favorably of his newly acquired art. Topper was on the point of becoming a shade self-sympathetic.
An observer of character seeing him at that moment would have paused to ponder over his unremarkable figure. He looked rather small beneath the majestic reaches of the tree, and his stomach seemed pitifully brave, thrusting itself out aggressively into a world that could trump with mountains. The observer would have noted Topper’s stomach and the sturdily planted legs, and without exactly forgetting these features, would have really remembered Topper’s face. There dwelt the Prince of Denmark, shadowed and filled with trouble, an inarticulate prince, perhaps, run to flesh and bland of mien, but a prince withal, probing the problem of life and the mystic charm of death, a man existing reluctantly, unconsciously seeking release.
Mr. Topper turned from the tree and wormed himself into the automobile. And the observer, had he been endowed with cattish curiosity, would have noted by the laborings of Topper’s body that he had not long been familiar with the driving seat of an automobile. Once in he relaxed, then, collecting his scattered members, arranged his feet and hands as Mark had patiently instructed him.
“Just the same,” thought Topper with an important feeling of ownership, “these trees shouldn’t grow so close to the road. There should be a law about trees. A sort of a movement. Something done.”
At this particular time Mr. Topper’s conception of the ideal tour was limited only by the skyline of the Sahara Desert, a wide, unobstructed expanse affording adequate room for turning. Topper’s social instincts did not extend to motoring. He preferred an unfrequented road where only nature could hear the neighing of the gears, and where there would be naught of alarm to galvanize his nerves.
Mr. Topper made the customary movements, and with delightful regularity the scenery began to slide by. He became aware of an oncoming line of trees, flashing things filled with shadows, he felt a dip and a gentle rise and gazed across a sunken plain soft with grass, scarred by fences and heckled by an astonishingly undecided brook that turned and doubled on its path. Mr. Topper found himself enjoying this hollow expanse of green. It was longer than it was wide and it seemed to extend for miles. Only the woods on the other side put a stop to its triumphant march. There were dots of trees on the sunken plain, intimate groups of clustering green, but they did not rob the plain of its vastness. Instead they emphasized its majesty like a contentious family huddled beneath the vaulting dome of a deserted railroad station.
“Take those fences down,” thought Topper, “and what a space you’d have. Cavalry could charge across those fields.”
What a lovely place it was . . . the unexpectedly good road, the sunken fields, the sky closing them in and the occasional farm house bereft of life. The road puzzled Topper. It was as if the world had planned a secret path to nowhere. He felt that he was riding on through an endless dusky solitude. He no longer troubled about the car. It seemed to be running itself. There were trees on one side, green curving space on the other, and an unobstructed road ahead. Topper had become blended with his surroundings. His body was blotting up the landscape and his mind, no longer functioning, seemed to be absorbing the lights and shades and smells along the road. The color of the sky, now churning red with sunset, dropped like a mantle on Mr. Topper and filled the world with stillness.
And out of the stillness a voice spoke to Mr. Topper.
“Topper,” it said, “Topper, perhaps you do not realize you are sitting on my wife’s lap — or do you?”
Topper’s hands grew white on the wheel. He made an effort to stop the car, but as the machine seemed disinclined to stop he abandoned the effort and looked steadfastly in front of him, blindly refusing to admit the fact that he had heard a voice without seeing its owner. The thing just could not be. He, Topper, was at fault, or at least he heartily hoped so. Driving had overtaxed his imagination. The strange solitude of the place and the calm, mysterious beauty of the landscape had affected him. It would have affected anybody.
So Mr. Topper drove on. The behavior of the automobile disturbed him, although he would not admit to himself that it was acting in any way unusual. Nevertheless it was. It had become a self-propelled vehicle in the fullest sense of the term. It no longer concerned itself with Topper, but obeyed the dictates of its newly acquired independence. It did not hitch and spurt along the road, but progressed smoothly at a speed which the discreet Topper viewed with sincere alarm. Once when the motor slowed down he made an attempt to shift the gears, only to be paralyzed by a voice exclaiming irritably:
“Don’t do that!”
After this Mr. Topper withdrew completely from the management of the car and dropped to the rather unimportant position usually allotted to a pig iron image arbitrarily spiked to the front seat of a toy fire engine. And Mr. Topper looked the part. His face was a mask and his arms had become angular and rigid. He was certain of this, however: the first voice had been a man’s, whereas the second had been unmistakably feminine. After making a mental note of this Mr. Topper closed his mind. It was better not to think — safer.
“Topper,” began the first voice, sounding quite polite and reasonable, “must I remind you again that you are sitting on my wife’s lap? Why not squeeze over now and . . .”
“Stop!” cried Mr. Topper, coming to a quick decision, and with an extraordinary effort arresting the speed of the car. “Stop,” he repeated, “and for God’s sake don’t begin again. I can’t stand it.”
