Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 36
Like a large bird abandoned on an unfriendly coast, Aird, when I saw him first, was perched on one of the slabs, where he sat motionless with his face turned expectantly to the sea. He was bird-like in feature and outline, and at this moment he appeared to be unconsciously forlorn. His nose was large and aquiline, and dominated without destroying the other features of his face. One was still conscious of a sharp, clean-cut chin, high, narrow cheek bones and eyes that were blue and rather apologetically inquisitive. As I studied his face I was struck by the thought that the mouth, which in a woman is so expressive of beauty, in a man can be beautifully expressive. His was large and strong and thin- lipped, not ungenerous, but giving the impression of a character intellectually controlled and free from the domination of impulse. With such a mouth Hamlet might have been able to make up his own mind instead of importuning a politely indifferent audience to do so for him. Here was a man, I instinctively felt, who was respected by many, but liked by few and to whom solitude came as a natural and unquestioned heritage.
When he became aware of my presence he greeted me with an unaffected friendliness characteristic of many persons who, either through choice or circumstances, are left much to themselves.
“Good morning,” he called, motioning to the rock beside him. “Surf gazing, too?”
“Yes,” I replied, accepting his offer to join him. “I never grow tired of this particular spot.”
“Nor I,” he answered simply. “I’ve always liked it here.”
As I sat beside him on a wave-worn stone I found that his presence made no demands on conversation. There was something composed and restful about him. Yet as I glanced at his sharp, eager profile I felt that here was a person who would understand whatever I had to say. For some minutes we sat without speaking as the wind and the waves filled the world about us with agitated sound.
“These waves must be hypnotic,” I remarked at last. “They put my thoughts to sleep.”
“I know,” he said. “Sometimes they do mine, but at others they seem to help me think. They form a sort of an accompaniment, and after awhile I fall in with their beat.”
“People think too damn much,” I replied with sudden irritation. “I’m not fond of thinking. That’s why I come here — the surf drugs me... pleasantly.”
He looked up and smiled, but made no answer, and once more we sat in silence. A little later he remarked laconically:
“I get paid for thinking. It’s forced on me.”
“That’s different,” I answered, this time smiling at him. “I was paid for a while, but if I’d kept it up I’d have gone mad.”
“Probably you weren’t interested in your thoughts.”
“I despised them. They were all false. You see I had to persuade people to buy things against their wills, and I was always on the side of the people. I felt sneakingly sorry for them.”
Aird laughed outright.
“Well, I’m not much better off,” he said. “I have to make people learn things against their wills and sometimes I’m quite sorry for them.”
“And so am I,” I answered, “and for you too.”
Once again he laughed good-humoredly, then turned his face to the sea, and for awhile we watched the waves rush in and hurl themselves against the great, unyielding finger. Spray fell like brilliants at our feet and the drone and churn of the water sounded in our ears. I had a desire to fling myself into the welter of the waves and to become a part of their mad disorder as they unreasoningly attacked the rocks. Aird began to speak, diffidently at first, and then with increasing earnestness.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t believe people think too much. It strikes me that they dream too much. They try to dream themselves blindly through life instead of first trying to adjust themselves to live intelligently and harmoniously within their own minds and bodies.”
“You’re as hopeless as I am,” I remarked.
“I’m not hopeless,” he answered. “I’m older and perhaps a little more experienced in a stuffy way. I’m a sort of intellectual wolf. I watch people and devour them. I’m a consumer of thought — though most of the time I’m hungry.”
“People like myself furnish scant intellectual nourishment,” I remarked.
He considered me seriously a moment, then grinned.
“You know,” he said, “I think you’re right. Perhaps you do think a little too much.”
“No,” I replied, “you were right the first time. I’m afraid I dream too much.”
“Don’t do it,” he replied. “It’s debilitating, unless you can put your dreams into action or words. I remember when I was a child people used to blindfold me and give me a tail to pin to a paper jackass hanging on the wall. I never won once, and although I enjoyed the game moderately, I soon grew tired of it. But man hasn’t wearied of the game. For several thousand years he has permitted himself to remain blindfolded while he’s stumbled destructively over the universe looking for a jackass to which he could pin a tail. Usually he’s ended by pinning the tail to himself. And because it’s the old, traditional game, the game of his nursery days, he still pretends to enjoy it in spite of his bruised shins. Man is still dreaming in a nursery that looks suspiciously like a cave.”
“It’s an edifying picture,” I said, “but perhaps man likes it that way.”
“No, he doesn’t,” replied Aird. “I don’t and you don’t. There’s no use in draping our bodies with the complicated finery of a civilization we scarcely understand. Why minister so solicitously unto the savage when we ourselves allow the dead weight of old, unventilated thought to retard progress and keep us from seeing the realities of life, much less its dreams. Only the clear eyed can dream to an end.”
Aird paused to glance at me with a deprecating smile, then added apologetically, “When I speak in this vein most of my students have the good sense either to go to sleep or to brush up for the class ahead. As you can do neither the one nor the other, Mr. Landor, I’m afraid I’m taking an unfair advantage.”
Surprised by the fact that he knew my name, I asked him how he had obtained the information.
“Leaving out the fishing element,” he explained, “there are not many souls on this narrow strip of land and here as in other places, a newcomer is immediately marked out and spied upon. My mother, who directs the destiny of our small place overlooking the marshes, keeps me continually supplied with news. You’ve been the subject of several earnest discussions at our table. For instance, she has come to the conclusion that you swim altogether too far out from shore and as a consequence of your recklessness and her garrulity I have been forced to listen to detailed statements concerning the watery graves of many of her dearest friends. In fact, I hardly see how she has any friends left alive, so many of them has she graphically drowned before my horrified eyes. You’d really be doing me quite a favor if you’d try skirting the coast line for a change.”
“For the sake of your peace of mind, I’ll consider it,” I said. “Evidently you’re not a newcomer like myself.”
“I was born here,” he replied. “Our cottage and the land on which it rests is one of the few pieces of property in the neighborhood that John Elliot doesn’t own. I suspect he dislikes us for that reason. My mother knew the old Elliott, his father. She insists he was slightly mad, and for years she’s been waiting, and, I believe, secretly hoping, that his son would also go mad. I’ve a feeling she hasn’t so very long to wait. It seems there has always been one crazy man in every generation of that family.”
“And his wife?” I asked casually.
“One sees very little of her — too little, I fear. She sails a boat and keeps to herself. She’s probably faring in her quiet way the same fate that’s overtaken the wives of many of the Elliotts. They’ve died young, I’m told, or lost their minds. There’s some compensation in that.”
Masking my true feelings I remarked, “It’s an interesting situation — like an old novel somehow.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is interesting in a rather tragic way. However, I imagine she doesn’t find it quite so interesting.”
“I should hardly think she would,” I answered, with a forced laugh. “It must be rather nasty to be tied to a man like Elliott.”
He subjected me to a quick scrutiny which I attempted to avoid by turning away. A few minutes later I invented a flimsy pretext to take leave of him. As I walked past the Ark, I paused for a moment to look back. He was following my departure with a friendly smile and resembled more than ever some large, lost bird forced to abandon flight after an unsuccessful struggle with the wind.
* * * * *
A LITTLE more than a week later, after numerous meetings had established a bond of friendship between us, I was sitting on the broad veranda of Aird’s cottage. His house, situated on the crest of a slight hill, commanded a sweeping view of the salt marshes. Cool and inviting on the vividly green campus of reeds, the island now lay bathed in the soft light of the evening sun. From where I sat I could clearly trace the narrow, reed-pierced band of water encircling it, and I fancied that I could also distinguish the small fan-shaped beach tapering down to the glinting channel between an avenue of bushes. As I gazed at the island in the full light of day I found it difficult to believe that a spot so calmly beautiful, so utterly real and familiar a feature of the landscape, could inspire me with terror when it appeared to me in a dream. The possibility that this picturesque place could conceal behind its graceful trees the slightest element of the supernatural seemed so infinitely remote that I scoffed at the very idea. Yet even as I scoffed I was unable to shake off a sensation of uneasiness that stole over me as I looked out upon this isolated bit of solid soil so alluringly set in the false ground of the marshes.
Behind us, in the kitchen of the cottage, Mrs. Aird, a delightful person who read the Holy Scriptures and quoted Robert Burns, was contentedly engaged in the preparation of gingerbread, with which, and a glass of milk, we should presently be regaled. Aird had once told me that the dispensing of this slight entertainment had been one of his mother’s most pressing activities from the day when he was first placed on solid food. I could not help noticing that although he always received the offering with almost religious devotion, like most people in the formal observance of their sacred obligations, he made an end of it as expeditiously as possible.
On previous visits to this quiet little household I had always taken pleasure in the company of these two friendly spirits, but on this occasion, as I sat watching the sun draw nearer to the tree tops on the island, neither the prospect of Mrs. Aird’s gingerbread nor the stimulus of her son’s conversation was able to arouse me from the depressing mood into which I had fallen. It had been many days since I had last seen Hilda. From the first morning of my illness I had heard from her only indirectly through Hugh MacKellar, and what I had heard had not served to cast a more cheerful light on the situation.
“David,” he had said after he had returned from one of his visits, “I believe her health is seriously endangered. She’s still subject to those peculiar fainting spells at dawn. It’s not natural. Can’t understand it. She looks like the devil — bad. Elliott doesn’t give a damn. I can see that, but the suave bounder conducts himself with the utmost concern whenever I call.”
At another time he had told me that for various obvious reasons Hilda had expressed the wish that I should make no attempt to see her. As a consequence I had abandoned my long vigils on the fallen log in front of Elliott’s inhospitable gates and had given myself over to tormenting speculations as to what was taking place inside the old gray house so completely shut off from the rest of the world behind its barrier of trees.
This profitless occupation, together with the constant recurrence of the dream, did much to retard my recovery and destroy what little mental poise I still retained. Frequently in the course of a walk with Aird I kept thinking to myself what a splendid subject I would make for one of his researches into human conduct had he but known what was going on in my mind. Perhaps he did have some slight suspicion of the overwrought state I was in, for as I look back on it now it seems to me that he made persistent efforts to lead the conversation into channels that would take me out of myself.
On this particular evening he had carried me as far afield as Oxford, which he was casually describing as a “funny old pin-cushion of a place quite overstuffed with cricket,” when my thoughts, flying back unbidden from that beautiful spired town, sank broodingly down in my mind. I could listen no longer to Aird. His words became meaningless to me. I was too much wrapped up in my own affairs and I hated myself for being so.
“Aird,” I asked, taking an advantage of a brief pause, “what do you think of a man who has neither the strength to live nor the courage to die?”
“He’s in a pretty bad way,” said Aird. “Do you know any one in that fix?”
“No,” I lied, “but I did once.”
“How did he get out of it?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he didn’t.”
“His life must have been an unhappy one,” Aird said after a thoughtful interlude, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were like that — neither one way nor the other.”
“This man was different,” I replied. “He knew what he wanted well enough. He wanted the other way — the way out — but he couldn’t take it. In spite of himself, he couldn’t. Something held him back.”
“What do you suppose it was?” he asked.
“The very thing he wanted most to shake off — life.”
“He must have loved it then.”
“He did. He loved it as a man does a drug which gives him dreams. Yes, he must have loved life, although he seemed able neither to accept it nor to escape it.”
“Your friend was honest at any rate.”
“Not honest,” I said, “but pursued.”
Aird made no reply to this and I continued to speak. Ascribing the story to somebody I had once known, I set my characters in an imaginary environment and caused them to move through virtually the same roles as those that Hilda, her husband, Scarlet, and myself were now playing in grim reality. As I told the story to Aird I could hardly find it in myself to credit the truth of my own statements; they seemed too utterly overdrawn. When I had finished I studied his face thoughtfully to see what impression my words had made on him.
“Well?” I said as the moments passed and still he did not speak. “How does a situation of that kind strike you?”
Aird frowned and puffed noncommittally at his pipe.
“It doesn’t strike me at all,” he said after a moment. “It sounds like the last, sorrowful slam of an unhinged mind.”
“Nonsense, you mean?”
“Not exactly nonsense, but too fantastic for any useful analysis.”
“The last slam of an unhinged mind,” I repeated. “It’s a graphic way of putting things, Aird. I never thought of that. Perhaps my friend was a little mad.”
“Most people are,” said Aird.
“But don’t you see anything in it?” I protested, almost desperately. “He wasn’t altogether a coward, this fellow. He wanted something, wanted it badly; in fact he’d have given his life for it, but he wasn’t able under the circumstances. It was all real to him, frightfully so, but the man was bewitched, caught up in some sinister magic. Life was laughing at him. He hated to hear it, yet he feared to leave it.”
“He wanted two things at once,” Aird broke in, “and his wants just didn’t jibe. The situation worked on his nerves and he dreamed about it. That’s about all Landor. Such things happen to people.”
“No, that wasn’t all,” I said. “There was more to it than that. You see, I knew this man.”
“Why are you so interested?” Aird asked, turning on me as he spoke.
“Why am I interested?” I repeated, carefully weighing my words. “Well, for one thing I can understand to some extent the workings of the man’s mind. In some ways I’m like that myself. It must have been miserable for him, beating and kicking at the narrow walls of life, yet never able to break through. Enslaved by his body and tormented by his mind. Always looking for something and finding it just a little spoiled. I know how he must have felt. It’s difficult to explain, but I’ve always been alone and thought things, beautiful things, and beastly. My God, the women I’ve seen and the women I’ve wanted! The dreams I’ve had and the songs I’ve heard. Where are they now? Gone. Women, dreams, and songs, all gone. Life swallows them up. If you’re not a genius, your soul starves; if you are, it isolates itself and feeds on its secret food. The man between is the man who suffers. He’s neither one thing nor the other. Yet he craves. He looks for love and passion and finds them... standardized, divided. There’s no zest nor sparkle, no joy and spontaneity — moral mouthings on one side, vulgar smirks on the other. Society makes either a curse or a cult of lust, and both sides enjoy it in secret. They make things dirty and like them that way.
“This man had a flame in his heart. I know it. It wanted to burn pure and leap high. It wanted to live in the sun, to give warmth and receive warmth. It wanted to be free and filled with glowing things. That’s what it wanted, but that’s just what it didn’t get. Instead the flame was smothered in his heart, where it nagged and tormented him until he became a changed man — warped, suspicious, ingrown.
