Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 41
With a faint smile touching the corners of her lips, Scarlet said, “Perhaps, David, you have one that would amuse Mr. Elliott.”
“Don’t tell it if it deals with death,” Hilda calmly put in. “The Elliotts have always been a childishly superstitious tribe.”
She cast a mocking glance at her husband, then turning to Scarlet, continued, “For a strong man he has the most unaccountable terror of death. The mere mention of the word makes him uneasy, doesn’t it, John? I suppose you can’t understand that, Miss MacKellar... the fear of death as an abstract thing?”
As though expecting an answer she looked brightly from one to the other, but none was forthcoming. For a space no one spoke, then Elliott broke the silence by saying in a voice of suppressed rage: “It’s hardly a topic in which Miss MacKellar would be deeply interested. Let’s change it.”
“How very stupid of me!” exclaimed Hilda contritely. “I should have been more considerate.”
Elliott was frowning impatiently into his glass and two spots of red were glowing in Scarlet’s dead-white cheeks. As she looked restlessly about her, I was reminded of a cornered animal.
“Life’s more interesting to me,” she said, with a swift glance at Elliott. “Perhaps your husband agrees.”
At her words he raised his angry eyes from his glass and caught her glance with a look filled with meaning.
“Right you are, Miss MacKellar!” he cried. “Here’s to life and all that it has to offer!”
Scarlet raised her glass to her lips and drank with Elliott.
“How charmingly virile,” said Hilda, with innocent appreciation. “Strength and beauty generously accepting life. Well, here’s a toast to death. Will you drink with me, David?”
As she rose from the table I followed her example and extended my glass to hers. Her hand was trembling slightly and beneath her spirit of mockery I caught a hint of tense earnestness.
“Here’s to death!” she cried in a ringing voice, dramatically raising her arm, “Death, death, death, and all that it has to offer! Drink, David, and remember, all that it has to offer.”
“Sit down, you devil,” growled Elliott, half rising from his chair. “Are you mad?”
She calmly resumed her chair and I looked at her with undisguised admiration. Her flushed face and sparkling eyes made it hard to believe that her life was ebbing out, and as the dinner progressed I gradually began to attach less importance to the words she had spoken to me upstairs in the gloomy room. I convinced myself that she had merely yielded to a momentary wave of depression induced by shadows and stifling walls. If I could only prevail on her to escape from this place I felt sure that she would speedily regain her health. I resolved to make the attempt.
For the remainder of the dinner she permitted her husband to dominate the table; and as the wine grew warm in his veins he carried on an overbearing monologue with Scarlet as his chosen audience. It was obvious that he was deliberately trying to belittle Hilda and me by excluding us from the charmed circle of his words. At the same time, through veiled allusion and sarcastic innuendoes, he kept us dangling like ridiculous jumping-jacks in front of Scarlet’s amused eyes. Several times in the course of his tirade he so successfully penetrated beneath the surface with his disagreeable insinuations that I was on the point of checking him, but the warning light in Hilda’s eyes and her attitude of good-natured detachment restrained me from introducing another element of discord. As the dinner drew to a close he made a last attempt to obliterate from his mind the sting of his previous defeat.
“What’s marriage, anyway,” he exclaimed with a large gesture, “but an abortive attempt to crystallize an essence that is essentially fluid? The poet, poor wretch, sings about his silly soul. Why? Why does he sing about his silly soul? Merely because he’s too damn puny to contain anything heavier.”
To thrust his point well home he paused and regarded me with an unpleasant smile, then resumed his one-sided attack, “Give him a heart and a good pair of lungs, put a strong appetite in his belly, breathe into him a proper appreciation of women, and the ability to overcome their scruples, and then harken to his song. Watch him forget his fragrant soul.”
His eyes shifted to Hilda, who, with a patient smile, was listening politely. Her indifference seemed to annoy him, and he continued with increased venom, “Those who dream so much about another world are damn seldom able to find their way around in this one. They appreciate poets because, like them, they have no appetite for pleasure, no ability to give it. Tell me, Miss MacKellar, tell me, Scarlet, aren’t there some caresses you remember that have expressed more downright passion than all the poems you’ve ever read, all of them put together?”
“I’ve never read much poetry,” she replied.
He looked at her for an instant with an appreciative eye, then slapping his hand on the table, burst into a loud laugh.
“Splendid,” he cried. “You’ve not read much poetry, but—”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she interrupted lightly. “Some poets I know can be quite intense when it comes to earthly matters.”
She smiled at me across the table, Elliott following her eyes.
“Some poets,” he remarked, “seem to cover a lot of ground in spite of their silly dreams.”
“All men are forgetful at times,” said Scarlet.
To meet their eyes without flinching required all of the self-possession I could command, but in spite of the turmoil within me I was able to remark in a natural voice, “You’ve only begun to skim the surface, Elliott. You should read a little deeper.”
“There’s too much slush on the top,” he replied, and turned back to Scarlet.
“Perhaps you’re right,” remarked Hilda, regarding her husband with an expression of rather impersonal antagonism, “but at least the poet can sin and sing about it while other men — you, for one — can only sin and swear. If we must have sin, I prefer it with a song. The other grows so tiresome. It’s like a business — dull.”
Flushed now and reckless, Elliott stared at her with open hostility.
“More rattle-brained reasoning,” he said, contemptuously, rising from the table. “Come,” he added to Scarlet, “let’s take a walk. It’s stuffy here.”
As if we had conveniently ceased to exist, he led Scarlet from the room. The servants entered, but on seeing us still standing at the table, withdrew. The moment they were gone a shade of weariness passed over Hilda’s face, and she sank in her chair, a scrap of a smile playing round her lips.
“Well, David,” she said, “that’s what might be known as a merry little dinner party. Four good friends dining in cozy intimacy.”
“It could easily have been worse.”
“Yes. We could have assaulted each other until the militia interfered. Just one of the remarks you didn’t make, but were dying to, would have been enough. It was-kind of you to check them.”
“Your masterful detachment helped me. After your first attack you were splendidly indifferent — irritatingly so.”
“Only on the surface. It seems that there’s still enough strength left in me to feed a healthy temper. If I hadn’t been so tired I’d have entered more spiritedly into the conflict.”
“Can you give me one good reason, Hilda, for your remaining here any longer?”
In my earnestness I leaned across the table and took her hands in mine. Cold and lifeless, they lay huddled in my palms as though seeking warmth.
“None that would satisfy you,” she replied. “I told you once how things were with me. Have you forgotten so soon?”
I made no reply, but stared hopelessly down at the tablecloth as mechanically I warmed her hands. To me there was still so much in life worth seeking that I found it hard to believe she had already abandoned the search.
“Come,” she said at last. “You look altogether too dismal. Let’s leave this place of mirth for outer darkness.”
She led me to the back veranda of the house, where she made me sit down close beside her on the steps. In front of us hung the heavy curtain of the night, behind which the marshes lay concealed. It was a starless evening, the darkness being almost palpable. In vibrating waves of sound the chorus of night things rose from the grass. The scent of damp earth and vegetation floated through the air. The odor was reminiscent of an abandoned garden. Staring into the blackness I could picture what lay before me, an old, forgotten garden over-run with weeds.
“It’s not so bad here, is it?” she said, settling herself comfortably.
“No,” I replied, “but when I think of that great, black house behind us, I feel as if I were sitting on the edge of a grave.”
“How comfortably you put things. Tell me, David, what’s been happening to you? Your face looks as if some one had mistaken it for a pincushion.”
“I’ve been out on the marshes with the mosquitoes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. I was caught in a storm.”
“That was dangerous. I should have been with you.”
“That would have been the end of everything.”
“Why?”
“Because it would have killed you.”
“Would that have been the end? How do you know? It might have been the beginning.”
“That’s what I was trying to find out. It may have been foolish of me, but I was attempting to reach the island.”
“And failed?”
“Abjectly. I lost my wits and fled in terror. The rain and the reeds and the quicksand. I was sinking, going down slowly — it was like the dream.”
“Not the real dream, David? Not your dream — our dream?”
With a feeling of guilt I remembered that I had never been honest with her about the dream, but had distorted the facts in my favor. She knew nothing about my leaving her night after night on the marshes and rushing back to shore. Partly for her sake, but more so for my own, I had kept much from her. Scarlet knew more about the true significance of the dream than she did. Even Elliott had heard a fairer version. I was troubled by this knowledge. Hilda’s questioning voice broke in accusingly on my thoughts.
“It wasn’t like the real dream?” she persisted. “The real dream isn’t terrible?”
There was a quality of earnestness in her voice which made it impossible for me to continue the deception.
“Yes, Hilda, the real dream is terrible,” I replied slowly. “At least, to me it is. My experience on the marshes was very much like it. If anything, I behaved less despicably in real life. That’s why I’m troubled. I can’t understand myself. I want to find out.”
Looking straight in front of me, I told her then the true story of the dream, and the effect it had on me. As I recounted my repeated desertions, I felt as though I were going through some painful operation in which my character was being stripped of all protecting tissue. When I had finished I continued to stare ahead of me. I could hear Hilda breathing softly by my side. She made no reply, but I could see that she, too, was gazing across the night in the direction of the marshes. The silence became unendurable. I turned and looked her full in the face, then laughed abruptly in a false key.
“Well,” I asked, “what do you think of your friend now?”
She started and returned my gaze, steadily and without reproach.
“It must be dreadful for you, David,” she replied. “To think what you’ve been going through all summer, and I haven’t known. Oh, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Doesn’t the dream itself answer that question?”
“No. How can you help what happens in a dream? And, after all, it is only a dream. You’ve no control over yourself when that comes on.”
“It’s an indication, Hilda.”
“Oh, David, don’t say that,” she said, and there was a note of entreaty in her voice. “Don’t try to make me believe that. Why, in reality, you risked your life out there on the marshes for the sake of a dream. It was partly for my sake, too. Isn’t that an indication?”
“I proved myself a coward in either case, that’s all.”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she pleaded. “Don’t you see what you’re doing?”
“I’m showing you what I am,” I replied grimly.
She was silent for a while and when she spoke again I detected a note of sadness in her voice.
“It’s only natural,” she said. “It’s to be expected. You’ve more to live for than I. There’s nothing solid to which I care to return, nothing to call me back. I can afford to be fearless.”
“But in your heart you’re disappointed just the same,” I said. “Can you truthfully tell me you’re not?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I can truthfully tell you that. If anything, I’m rather proud of you. It was a divinely inspired piece of madness, that venture of yours.”
She moved down a step and with a little sigh rested her head against my knee.
“Don’t let’s talk about it any more,” she said drowsily. “I feel as if I could rest with you. Once I was never tired, David. Now I’m never anything else.”
I touched her neck lightly with the tips of my fingers, and sat motionless as her breathing grew more regular. The minutes slipped past and still she did not stir. Like a weary child, exhausted by the events of the day, she had fallen asleep beside me. A feeling of still happiness warmed my heart. I felt that I could be content always to sit there and guard her in her sleep. I could look at her now without the fear of troubling her with what she might see in my eyes. As I looked down at her small head, and the drooping outline of her body, a bright mist swam before my eyes and danced in the darkness surrounding me. Somewhere beneath that darkness the island lay floating on the marshes. I wondered if, after all, in spite of my doubts and fears, a refuge might not be waiting for us out there at the end of the dream.
CHAPTER XVII
ALTHOUGH THE EVENING was well advanced when I left Hilda, I had no desire to return to the cottage. I was strangely alert and happy. An unfamiliar feeling of confidence stimulated my self-respect. I was warmed by a glow of hope. To check this heady sensation of well-being, this unaccountable lightness of heart, a warning voice within me kept asking, “Why should you be happy? For what is there to hope?” And unable to answer this insistent voice, I drove it from my ears. It was encroaching on my new-found sense of freedom, threatening to absorb it.
For some minutes I walked along the cliffs overhanging an invisible sea. From far below came the faint chiming of the surf. Like a shower of silver petals it fell through the silence. No moon, no stars, darkness, and the soft, moist breath of the night.
The narrow cliff path was taking me in the direction of the Ark, where the shelving rocks massed themselves against the waves. Hunter Aird occasionally haunted this spot at night. Moved by a desire to talk with him, I hastened my pace. It had been some time since I had last seen Aird, and now that I came to think of it, I found that I had rather missed his companionship. Of late I had been missing a lot of things. Hardly living at all. But now perhaps things would be different. Happier. Escape no longer seemed so hopelessly impossible. Hilda had been different tonight. I had been quick to notice it.
As I approached the Ark my expansive mood gradually subsided. I no longer felt eager to talk and was almost glad when Hunter Aird’s angular figure was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I stood irresolutely studying the dim outline of the squat, amphibious structure. Sharp beams of light crept through its shuttered windows, and from within came the sound of shuffling feet, laughter, and loud voices. Suddenly the door flew open and a stream of light like a golden snake ran swiftly up the trunk of a stunted pine tree near which I was standing. A small fisherman, as though being urged by some powerful, but unseen force, lurched across the threshold as the door slammed behind him.
“They can all go to hell,” he muttered comfortingly to himself as he regarded the door, then with drunken inconsistency he began to pound on it and plead for readmittance.
With sympathetic interest I listened to the mouthings of this small soul who had been ejected so unceremoniously from his alcoholic paradise. There was something fundamental in the earnestness of his entreaties. He was obviously sincere in his craving for drink and companionship. Then as suddenly as it had been closed behind him, the door flew open again and he was snatched from sight.
I had a vague impulse to follow him inside, if only to witness his joy at being received back into the fold. But it was not alone for this reason that I desired to enter the Ark. A recrudescence of the craving for excitement that had often plagued me in the city was again stirring. I had no real interest in the fortunes and flounderings of this drunken fisherman, but a strong desire to emulate his example. Like one endeavoring to shake off the familiar hand of an unwelcome companion, I turned impatiently from the door and made my way into the shadow of the rocks.
I hardly know whether or not a person can be both happy and depressed at the same time. Somewhere I think I once read in a book of a character’s being “sadly happy” and, if I remember rightly, I thought at the time that the expression was a short cut to nowhere. But as I sat on the rocks and stared out at the dark sea, these two emotions — happiness and sorrow — seemed to blend harmoniously in me into a single mood of tranquillity. I felt that I was on the verge of some glorious fulfillment which, if denied me, would lead to life-long incompleteness.
The air was filled with the din of charging water, and occasionally scarves of spray brushed across my face. As my thoughts turned back to the evening I had spent with Hilda I involuntarily stroked my knee where her head had rested. For more than an hour she had slept peacefully beside me, and although my body had grown numb from the tenseness of its position, I had continued to let her sleep, for she seemed to be in mortal need of it. Later she had awakened with a start and had clung to me as though in fear of being taken away.
“David,” she had said in an awed voice.
“Yes, Hilda, what is it?”
“It came to me, too.”
“What came to you?”
“The dream. It came to me. Oh, David, it was just as you said, but there were other things.”
