Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 35
Elliott had turned in the path and was looking back at us with a smile that would have been pleasant had it not been for the disagreeable light in his eyes. Hilda touched my hand and hurried after him through the rain.
I watched them disappear among the trees, then made my way to the cottage where MacKellar, like an affectionate bombshell, was sizzling with oaths and anxiety.
CHAPTER XII
IT STORMED STEADILY for the remainder of the day, and towards evening I was forced to admit the presence in me of the chills and fever that all afternoon had been consuming my body. I made my capitulation by announcing to MacKellar that I was unable to sit down to dinner and was only fit for bed. With a glass of hot lemonade he followed me up to my room and fussily assisted me to tumble in between the sheets while my teeth chattered an accompaniment to his running fire of lamentations.
“You know,” he said in leaving me, “I like a damn fool well enough, but you please me altogether too much. What do you mean by picnicking out there in a hurricane? A pretty thing to do! What a restful sort of a guest you make trying to turn yourself into a dancing dolphin.”
Receiving no answer to this, he lashed himself into a greater tempest of indignation.
“Of course you had no thought of me left alone all day in the midst of the elements,” he continued. “This cottage is none too strong. It’s as light as a feather... thistledown! Who am I, anyway? Farragut? Nelson? John Paul Jones? Now you’re sick... probably dying. For the love of God go to sleep and make an end of it. I’m miserable!”
Exactly what I was to make an end of he failed to explain, for after tossing another blanket over me, he muttered himself out of the room and closed the door quietly behind him.
Later, as I was lying in a semi-conscious doze, Scarlet came in and stood looking down at me. She was clad in some sort of a tight-fitting robe with a high collar, around which ran a narrow, white band. Her dark eyes looked somberly out from between their heavy lashes. I could catch the rounded outline of her strong breasts as they rose and fell beneath her dress, and the animal magnetism of her body seemed to envelop me like a suffocating blanket. Only the vivid red of her lips relieved the severity of her attire. As she stood there silent and motionless by the bedside, with her white hands clasped in front of her, I began to move uneasily beneath her gaze. Her red, arched lips, so soft and full, fascinated me. I was unable to repress a desire that she should bend down and crush them against my parched ones. Irritated by the thought, which my feverish brain intensified, I said, insultingly, “If the devil had a mother, Scarlet, Hugh could paint you as the Madonna of Hell.”
“I’d make the devil a better bride,” she remarked ironically. “Don’t you think, David?”
“Go away,” I muttered, half rising in the bed. “Go marry the devil and all his friends. I don’t want you here.”
She laughed and bent down to me. I could feel her breath on my dry lips.
“Doesn’t my presence bring you comfort?” she asked.
“Not yours,” I gasped, sinking back on the pillows.
“Whose then?” she demanded, her face flushing.
“Go away,” I repeated. “It doesn’t matter.”
With an impudent shrug of her shoulders she turned away and walked over to the door.
“Then why don’t you send for her?” she said mockingly. “Try it, David, and see how quickly she’ll come.”
“She’d bring me peace at any rate,” I answered. “That’s more than you can do.”
“Do you think so?” she replied with a strange smile. “Wait. I know you better than she does.”
* * * * *
THAT night, when the dream returned, it was slightly different from what it had been on previous visitations. We met as usual in the reed-sheltered pavilion by the marshes, but this time when Hilda came to me it was sorrowfully and with a bowed head. And when she stood before me she held out her arms and I saw that they were covered with dark bruises, and when she raised her head and looked at me out of her deep, unhappy eyes, I saw that round her neck there were ugly marks as though her throat had been squeezed by a powerful hand. At the sight of these signs of violence I began to tremble and cry out in a frenzy of rage like a nervous and overwrought child. When I awoke MacKellar was bending over me with his hands pressed against my chest.
“Lie still,” he commanded. “You can’t get out of this bed.”
“That devil’s doing something to her,” I panted. “I know it, Hugh, I saw it in his eyes to-day.”
“It’s dawn now,” he said, soothingly. “In a little while I’ll scout around and get the lay of the land... that is, if you’ll try to sleep.”
With my feverish mind harassed by tormenting speculations, I lay shivering in a cold sweat. Where was Hilda now and what was happening to her? Was she still out there on the marshes searching about for me, calling my name and waiting for me to answer, or was she suffering beneath the hands of Elliott? As I tossed miserably between the crumpled sheets I began to mutter my half formed thoughts. MacKeller with a distracted expression sat down at the side of the bed and endeavored to rearrange the pillows. When I impatiently rejected his kindly efforts, he rose and with a tragic sigh went to the window, through which the early morning sunlight was already sending a golden mist. He was on the point of drawing the blind when he stopped abruptly and looked down on the lawn, an expression of incredulity replacing the mask of martyrdom he had previously worn.
“Who is it?” I cried, filled with a sudden suspicion. “What do you see down there?”
“Has all thought of rest vanished utterly from the face of the world?” he demanded, turning from the window. “Has sleep been discovered worthless? Am I alone in my sanity? Am I just—”
“Who is it, Hugh?” I interrupted.
“You know who it is,” he snapped. “Knew it all the time... probably arranged it. What an hour for her to be standing on my lawn and looking up at your window! Damn me, if I didn’t think she was a ghost.”
“Perhaps she is,” I muttered.
With an embittered look at me, he left the room. Consumed with anxiety, I awaited his return. In a short time I heard him ascending the stairs in company with some one else, and in my eagerness it seemed to me that they would never reach the top.
“Hugh!” I called, raising myself in the bed.
He appeared in the doorway and with exaggerated ceremony ushered Hilda into the room.
“Here’s your ghost,” he said. “Now, let’s sit down and have a nice little talk after our long night’s rest.”
She gave him an affectionate smile and came quickly over to the bed.
“What’s happened to you?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied, with a nervous catch in her voice. “It’s all right... only I had an odd feeling that something had gone wrong with you. When I awoke this morning—”
“Had the same thing happened?” I interrupted. “Could you tell whether or not you’d fainted?”
“Oh, yes, I can always tell,” she continued. “There’s a numb feeling back of my heart; it gets chilly there, but this time it was different. I remember nothing except that when I came out of it I had the strangest feeling that somehow I’d lost you... as if you had gone away... suddenly. Then it occurred to me that you might have been taken ill after the sail, and—”
“And well it might,” broke in MacKellar. “After that sail, we all should be nervous wrecks. I am.”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed. “It was terrible, but you know how it is?... I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I’d run over to find out. He is sick, isn’t he?”
“He’s mad,” pronounced MacKellar, sitting down in a remote corner with an expression of a night watchman waiting for relief.
In silence I gazed at Hilda, suspiciously studying her pale face. Her hair had been hastily arranged and a soft, satin thing of gray, evidently designed for evening wear, was thrown over her shoulders and gathered round her neck. There was a distressed look in her eyes. They reminded me of the dream. She seemed nervous and ill at ease as she sat by the bed in a huddled attitude. I held out my hand to her and she was about to take it when, as if remembering something, she stopped and drew her cloak around her.
“Then he has been unkind,” I said with conviction.
“What do you mean?” she asked uneasily.
“Give me your hand,” I replied.
She hesitated, then held out her hand, and as the tears welled slowly to her eyes she bowed her head. MacKellar had leaned forward in his chair. He now smothered an oath. The room became quiet, and I found myself unable to speak because of a choking sensation in my throat. I felt the same desire to cry out I had experienced in the dream and as I clung to her hand I began to tremble violently. The white flesh of her wrist and arm was horribly mottled with heavy blue bruises, which only a maniac could have inflicted.
“And your neck,” I whispered at length.
“Don’t, David,” she protested, her hand involuntarily seeking her throat. “Why torture us both?”
I was about to insist that she should unfasten her cloak when my eyes fell on Scarlet standing in the doorway, regarding the scene with cynical amusement. She had just arisen from her bed, and the garment she had carelessly thrown over her thin nightdress but partly concealed the lines of her body, leaving her splendid arms and shoulders in bold display. Her pale face was slightly flushed now, and her thick, black hair fell across the dead white of her neck in two heavy braids. She looked at Hilda with sleepy arrogance, and Hilda returned her gaze with eyes filled with interest.
“Good morning, Mrs. Elliott,” Scarlet said, with an unpleasantly sweet smile.
MacKellar made a grumbling noise in his throat and walked up to her.
“Because he was instrumental in keeping both her husband and herself afloat yesterday,” he said, “Mrs. Elliott has been considerate enough to find out if the idiot is still alive. What are you doing up so early? Go back to bed. This will kill you.”
“Oh, I merely wanted to find out if the idiot was not yet dead,” she replied. “I imagine Mr. Elliott is anxiously waiting his wife’s report.”
“I think Mr. Elliott was still sleeping when I left the house,” Hilda offered casually. “But I’m sure he’d be interested if he knew of my visit.”
“I’m sure he would,” commented Scarlet, as she stifled a little yawn. With a ghost of a nod she turned her back on us and moved slowly to her room. Hilda, looked thoughtfully after her, then, extending her mutilated arm, she placed her hand on my forehead and said:
“Well, she succeeded in making me feel decidedly immoral. I’m quite cheered up at that. You’re going right to sleep now, or else I’m going home. How about it, Hugh?”
“Put the dolt to sleep,” he snorted. “I’m going, and when you two have succeeded in driving each other completely insane, just send for me and I’ll hurry up and drag you apart.”
With the bearing of a driven man he left the room and thumped out his indignation on the creaking stairs. Hilda laughed softly as if to herself, then turned to me.
“You’re to go to sleep,” she said.
“One moment,” I protested. “I want to ask you one more question. Why is it that you still persist in refusing to solve a problem when the solution lies so close at hand? Answer me that.”
“Now what are you driving at?” she asked.
“You know what I’m driving at,” I continued stubbornly. “Why don’t you clear out and leave that man? There’s ample justification, God knows.”
“But, David,” she said, “how do you know I’m looking for justification? Perhaps such freedom as I can gain through man-created laws and institutions no longer interests me. There was a time once when it would have, but that time has passed... it’s gone. Since this stupid malady has come over me I seem to have neither the strength nor the desire to start over again. It’s as if my will were being consumed by something else. Things don’t matter much. A bruised arm is ugly, but it isn’t really important. It’s only a superficial injury. You shouldn’t mind it. I don’t.”
“That fits in with your theory,” I replied in a rather mean spirit. “Didn’t you tell me once that the only thing in life that interested you was the leaving of it and what followed after? Do you still feel the same way?”
“About life?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I must have been blue then, David,” she said at length, “and I don’t think I intended you to take me literally, but perhaps I did.”
She stopped and gazed through the window at the limb of a tree stirring up the sunlight as a soft breeze swam through its trembling leaves.
“I don’t know whether or not you’ll understand me,” she continued, “but five years such as I’ve lived through are rather difficult to forget. Things have happened to me during that time... you don’t know... abominable things. I don’t think I could ever forget them in this world. You see, David, it’s just as if I’d been robbed of my womanhood. Those things that a man wants in a woman, expects of a woman, and which frankly every woman wants in herself have been turned in me to... loathing... spoiled. I’m changed and cheated. Only my mind and the compensating thoughts that have come to me in the repugnant hours of the night have been able to keep me on an even keel, have given me a little hope. Things grow up and spread out until at last it becomes too late to change them.”
“So you feel that it’s now too late for you to begin again?”
“I’d like to begin again, David, but it would have to be in a different place, an altogether different place, in a new world, in fact, and I’d have to have a new body and a less remembering mind.”
“With whom would you begin?” I asked.
“A friend who’s a bit of a dolt,” she answered with a rather dreary smile. “Don’t ask questions, David. We need each other too much for that.”
Then she began to stroke my head until my senses became partly lulled. A feeling of drowsiness stole over me, and, dimly, I heard her repeating, “Go to sleep. It’s time to rest. No more talk. No more worry... only sleep.” And as my surroundings faded away I imagined that my body was enclosed in a cradle of cool, green waves in which I was floating far out on a quiet sea... green, wind-swept miles.
Five days later, with the help of MacKellar, I was able to resume my chair on the lawn where the sunlight, like a yellow scarf, fell over my body, filling my mind with a restful languor from which it would suddenly jerk whenever my thoughts returned to the approaching night and the ordeal of the dream.
CHAPTER XIII
IT WAS AT this time that I met a man who, in spite of the brief duration of our friendship and the many years which have elapsed since last we met, I always recall with a spontaneous dash of interest. Hunter Aird, a professor of psychology in a neighboring university, was one of those keenly scientific yet tolerant spirits, who exist like a green oasis in the parched desert of academic life.
For one already a recognized authority in the scientific world he had been surprisingly successful in keeping himself free from the blighting traditions of a sanctified past. He belonged to a small, diligent and greatly disliked group of realists which will in time create a new romance. He sincerely believed — without feeling virtuous for it — that there was still ample room in the world for those whose thoughts and ways of life were diametrically opposed to his; in fact, he rather preferred to associate with such persons. Perhaps it was for this reason that he found me, the slave of impulse, acceptable as a friend.
My meeting with Aird occurred at a fortunate time, during another period of enforced separation from Hilda, and his companionship served to dispel the depressing thoughts tormentingly winding through the corridors of my mind.
I came upon him in the course of a stroll that had taken me to a spot where the land thrust its tapering hull far out into the sea. The place was interesting to me chiefly because of its desolate and rocky formation, but for the fishermen it held an interest of an altogether different nature. Nearby was situated a tavern wherein they could forget for a brief space the sea and the monotony of its waves.
The rocks were gathered here in massive shelves, which, mounting one upon the other from the sea, gave the effect of a great stairway up which in the days of the gods Neptune had probably stridden on his way to Mount Olympus with all his spray bright court. At the extremity of the point a huge rock arched down into the sea like a great crooked finger with its nail buried in foam, and against this massive digit the waves ceaselessly hurled themselves as if endeavoring to make it clench. Far down to the left the black nets of the fishermen lay on yellow sand beneath the sharp light of a sun blazing high in the heavens. To the right the narrow breakwater enclosing the marshes curved out abruptly and ran away to the distant mainland. Along the crest of this friendly reef a few adventurous trees maintained a precarious footing, bending down like timid divers to the surf.
At the highest step of the rocky ascent, where often I had pictured the streaming old God of the Sea as he paused to watch his creatures emerging from the waves, now stood, or rather squatted, a structure known as the Ark. This disreputable abode for the most part consisted of the hull of a ship which years before had been washed up by the sea and upon which a retired fisherman, like an expatriated but still enterprising crab, had reared a small one-story shack where his friends became his debtors and eventually his slaves. Prosperity, with its dirty hands, had approvingly patted this old sailorman upon his once honest back, and beneath the honor he had grown so mean and acquisitive that at last money had remained his only companion. It was a poor companion at best, for he heartily feared to be seen in its company, spending most of the time hypocritically envying the good fortune of the friends he had abandoned. The fishermen listened stolidly to his laments until drink so sharpened their blunted sensibilities that it became necessary to beat him for the sake of decency, after which they departed, reeking through the night down the narrow path winding to their respective homes and inhospitable wives. His life was not pleasant, but it paid. With John Elliott he divided the hate and fear of those who dwelt on the promontory, and there were times when the two of them in the midst of a hostilely silent group of fishermen ceremoniously drank to each other’s prosperity. Close to the Ark a few stunted pines clung wretchedly to their scrap of shallow soil. When the wind drove through their branches, it sounded like the accusing wail of the rigging which at one time had carried the old ship out on worthier expeditions. Around the isolated tavern there was always the clamoring of the elements. Men grew drunk to the tumult of the waves and the carousing voice of the wind, while above the roof gulls bent their wings as they wheeled through the spray-drenched air.
