Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 43
The man shuddered and turned back to Elliott as though seeking comfort from his inanimate body. I resumed my chair at the table and poured myself out a drink.
Something told me that Elliott was not dead. Now that my anger was passed I was glad of it. To have killed him would have settled nothing. I realized that now. I would still have Hilda to deal with, one problem instead of another. But suppose he were dead. Suppose I had actually killed him. I started to my feet and crossed the room. Elliott’s face was pallidly calm and across his forehead blood was flowing from an ugly bruise. As I looked down at the inert mass of flesh I began to feel a throbbing in my ears. A sensation of loneliness took hold of me.
“He isn’t dead, is he?” I asked, hardly recognizing my own voice.
For the first time the fishermen became interested to the point of activity. One of them bent over and peered down into Elliott’s face.
“He’s not dead,” he said regretfully, and resumed, with no little effort, an erect position. “He’s breathing... like an ox.”
I returned to my chair and sat down to wait until Elliott had revived. It would be interesting now to see what he would do. Finally, after half an hour of faithful endeavor, the efforts of the proprietor were successful. A shiver ran through Elliott’s body and he opened his eyes.
“Give me a drink,” he muttered.
The whiskey gave him strength, and soon, with the assistance of the delighted proprietor, he rose to his feet and stood clinging with one hand to the bar while in the other he held the knife. He seemed to be entirely sober now, and as I watched him I gained the impression that his mind was busily engaged in devising some unfathomable plan. I sat and waited, but he steadily refused to meet my eyes. When he did look up, there was an easy smile on his lips as he gazed thoughtfully at me. He was about to say something, but as if thinking better of it, he remained silent and continued to smile at his thoughts. The owner placed a chair beside him. He motioned the man away. When he had finished another glass of whiskey, he walked carefully across the room to the door, where he halted to look back at me.
“I don’t have to dream about my wife,” he said, pointing to me with the knife. “I’ve got her. Understand?”
He went out and quietly closed the door. The room became still and the three men returned to their glasses.
Elliott bore the scar but also the victory. His parting words were more painful for me to bear than any damage he could do to my body. With a feeling of utter defeat I rested my head on my hands and studied the grain in the table. Outside the wind tortured the sobbing pines. The proprietor moved slowly about the room taking the lanterns down from the crossbeams. In his secluded corner the sleeping fisherman continued to snore with unflagging energy. One of the oaks lurched from the bar and sprawled to the floor. Laughing like pleased children the remaining oaks gathered him up between them and dragged him away.
“It’s morning now,” said the owner in a husky voice.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHEN I LEFT the Ark, pools of daylight were lying among the clouds. Across the sea crept a putty-colored shadow pushing in front of it a wave of darkness. Ahead of me on the path thin columns of mist rose in the air and floated away among the trees like phantoms saddened by the approach of day. The chill of morning lay round me. My body felt cold and bloodless. Days seemed to have passed since I had set out from MacKellar’s cottage to Elliott’s house. Since then I had run the gamut of emotions, and now the reaction was setting in.
Years before, in my childhood, I had once stood in the early daylight and looked down at the frost clinging to some cinders my father had placed round a rose bush. I remembered those cinders now. Like them I was burned out and cold.
Smoothly the dawn flooded the sky, filling the pools with colors until at last they broke from their settings and merged into a sea of light in which the rose-tipped clouds floated like dream-built islands.
When I reached the grove I turned in, but hesitated before the heavy darkness of the place. It was as though night had selected this tunnel of trees as an avenue of escape. I had been too long already with the night and, despite my weariness, I was unable to bring myself to tread this passageway of gloom. With a feeling of relief I turned back to the path and walked along the cliffs. Far below me huddled the huts of the fishermen, spirals of smoke curling up from their chimneys. Already a few women were astir, busily engaged in collecting driftwood from the beach. A gull, poised for his plunge, hung over the ocean. As he dropped like a gray smudge through the air, I breathed a warning to the heedless fish below. There was a faint splash of water, then the gull rose with a quivering slip of silver in his claws, and circling inland over the tree tops, dropped like a thought.
Pondering over this daybreak tragedy, I continued along the path until I found myself standing once more in front of Elliott’s gate. For a while I stood there studying the granite hand slowly breaking the life of its victim. My gaze dropped from the tortured deer and wandered across the lawn. I wondered whether Hilda was sleeping now or struggling back to life. In fancy I saw myself standing by her bed, waiting for her to open her eyes. Elliott’s words returned. “I don’t have to dream about my wife. I’ve got her.”
A feeling of futility came over me. Without realizing what I was doing, I moved across the lawn. In my mind still floated a picture of Hilda lying asleep in bed. I was looking down at her — waiting. Her lashes parted and her eyes filled with impossible fulfillment as they rested on my face. Then she smiled and called my name and I, dropping to my knees beside the bed, took her face in my hands. “This will be the beginning of a new day,” I murmured. “It will always be morning now.”
Quietly I approached the house impelled by this vision. Forgotten now was the fatigue of the evening. I was conscious only of an overpowering desire to be with Hilda.
Then as though my mind had summoned her image, I saw her standing like a distracted apparition in a doorway of a deserted wing of the house. It was but a momentary glimpse before she was gone, wavering like a phantom down the garden path.
So unexpectedly had she flashed across my sight that for a moment I was unable to grasp the real significance of what I had seen. Strangely enough, as I gazed at the barren wing, I was reminded of a story I had once read in which a demented woman had escaped at dawn from an asylum. Hilda had looked much as I had imagined that woman had looked. In the one flash I had caught of her I had seen a stark-eyed creature with dishevelled hair and fluttering hands. For an instant she had stood there tugging at her robe, then melted from view down the garden path. I was disposed to believe that the incident had not occurred, that I had created an illusion of Hilda through association.
I took a few irresolute steps toward the path, and stopped, arrested by the conviction that Hilda had actually been present only a moment ago, and that even now she was somewhere near. In the light morning air a silk scarf was fluttering from a bush. Running across the lawn, I snatched the thing and examined it. There was no doubt. It was hers. I had seen her wearing it many times. I stuffed the scarf into my pocket and started down the path to the garden. The place was deserted. A scent of damp earth and decaying vegetation still lingered in the air, vividly bringing back to me the night just passed when together we had sat on the steps. I glanced quickly up at them, my heart heavy with misgiving.
“Hilda,” I called, then spying a path at the end of the abandoned garden, I ran down it, repeatedly calling her name. At the sound of my voice startled wings fluttered in the thicket. The bushes were in the conspiracy. No answer.
Soon I was in the open fields that rose in little hillocks and cantered to the marshes. As I tore through the high, interfering grass it occurred to me that possibly Hilda had fled to the pavilion hidden away among the reeds. Altering my course, I ran in that direction. There were no daisies now. I remember thinking of that. Then as I mounted the next hillock I caught a glimpse of a white figure swaying on the brink of the hidden declivity.
“Hilda!” I called.
The figure crumpled. It dropped from view.
* * * * *
SHE was lying among the reeds, crying softly to herself. When I tried to take her hands from her face she resisted and turned away. To my question she made no reply, but continued to sob in a low unbalanced voice. It was disquieting to hear. From time to time she shuddered and attempted to crawl away among the reeds. Her robe had fallen from her shoulders, leaving her back and arms bare. Only a light nightdress protected her. As though she were a child I gathered her up in my arms and carried her through the reeds. When I placed her on the mat she clung to me, her face hidden in my coat. For some minutes I held her while convulsive sobs shook her body. Then gradually they decreased and she became quiet.
“Hilda,” I said.
“Not now, David,” she pleaded. “Wait.”
Beneath the assault of the newly risen sun, the fog was melting from the marshes. Here and there waves of mist remained floating lightly above the reeds, like small clouds grazing. The island lay bright and clean in its deep, green setting. Round it sparkled the band of water and between the tall trees were narrow panels of the blue sky. Hilda began to speak in a muffled voice, her face still buried in my coat.
“It was dawn, David,” she said. “I must have gone off you know, as I do. When I came to, his eyes, all bleared were looking down into mine, close, horrible eyes.”
She caught her breath, then continued in a quiet voice, “My body felt crushed and broken. I could hardly breathe. I’m that way now, struggling—”
She put her hand to her throat. An animal noise hurt her. “He had taken me, David, taken me like flesh while I was unconscious. He laughed when I ran from the room. I can hear him still. That’s all,” she added helplessly. “You see? It’s just that.”
My arms fell limply from her. As though paralyzed I sat gazing out across the marshes. There was no feeling in me, nothing. I merely wanted to sit there forever, never to speak, never to stir, never to hope nor think. Hilda’s sobs fell painfully on the silence, and I became aware that she was calling my name and looking at me. It made no difference now, I would listen, but I should never again be interested.
“But you mustn’t mind,” she was saying. “Not like that, I mean. It makes no difference, David. It can’t make any difference. A thing like that has no place in life, no meaning. I’m the same now as before. Can’t you see I’m the same? Look at me, my ally! Oh! Look at me! Body and soul I’m the same. David, do you hear?”
I looked down into her eyes and noticed with a start that tears were dropping from them. “She has been crucified,” I thought, as I absently touched a tear with the tip of one of my fingers. Then something gave way within me and my arms went round her crumpled body.
“This will be the beginning of a new day,” I heard myself saying. “It will always be morning now. Stop crying, Hilda.”
“If you will,” she said.
CHAPTER XIX
IT WAS DECIDED that Hilda should go. After what had happened she felt that she could remain no longer under the same roof with Elliott.
“Even a dog has a right to a corner,” she said, “but he has succeeded in driving me from mine.”
“But where will you go?” I asked her.
“To another corner,” she replied indifferently.
She was calmer now and had moved a little away from me. On her wan face there was an expression of resolution and in her bearing there was something aloof, almost bitter. This new mood of hers was the more difficult for me to bear because in it there was something remote, something I was unable to share.
“I don’t know exactly where that corner will be,” she continued, “but I’d like to start out for it in a ship. The isolation of a temporarily detached universe might give me a sense of security. No walls, no lurking shadows, no corridors of fear.”
For a few moments she remained silent, contemplating the picture her words had evoked, then she went on reminiscently:
“Years ago my mother took me across. It must have been in another world, a different life... he wasn’t in it then. I can hear now the slap of the waves and the steady throbbing of the engines. And the little rainbows that chased each other across the bow. I can see them as if it were only yesterday. They used to fascinate me, those little rainbows looping through the spray. It might help me out a little now if I tried to repeat the experience. What do you think, David? It might even bring back something of the past in which he had no part — ah, David, don’t look so frozen.”
My frozen expression, as Hilda had put it, was due to the fact that she had decided to leave as she had always said she would. In her escape I was only to be indirectly involved. At first she had refused to allow me to accompany her even a part of the way, but in the face of my insistent entreaties she had finally consented that I should help her to find a refuge. After that there was to be a separation.
“It’s as much for your sake as it is for mine,” she said “You must see how it is... things are in the way. My ideas are all upset. There were other problems once, but now they will always remain unsolved.”
She looked at me strangely and smiled, then added, as though to herself, “To begin life again I must first be renewed and readjusted. There are no emotions left. I’m empty.”
Although I turned an unsympathetic ear to her words I felt something of her meaning. More than her body had been outraged. She was entitled at least to herself. But the thought of the separation facing me destroyed my sense of justice. In its place I experienced a feeling of stubborn resentment.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she continued, studying my face with considering eyes. “You’re trying to make yourself believe that I’m abandoning you, taking myself out of your life, but you’re wrong there. Won’t you understand and try to help a little? We’re different now. You must realize that.”
“It’s just you, Hilda,” I replied without daring to look at her. “There’s nothing else. How things will be with me when you’re gone I can’t say. I’m not very admirable, you know. The voices in the jungle... I’m afraid of them. They whisper. You’ve never heard.”
“How do you know?” she replied, laying her hand on my arm. “Perhaps I, too, have heard them as well as other voices — more insistent ones. We have more to hope for now than we had before.”
“Do you mean that some day we shall always be together?” I asked.
“That thought has occurred to me,” she replied with an enigmatic smile. “But first we must find the way. Will you follow if I lead?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “God knows I want to.”
“Then meet me here to-night,” she answered, rising painfully from the reeds. “It will be our last rendezvous, David. We must scheme like two conspirators, for to-morrow I start on the search.”
As though moved by the same thought, we turned and gazed in silence toward the island.
* * * * *
IN a bewildering confusion of mind I spent the remainder of the day wandering purposelessly about the neck of land, revisiting in search of comfort and distraction the places I had grown fond of during the course of the summer. The thing that had befallen Hilda lay like a live coal at the core of my heart, smoldering there until at times it threatened to consume in a surge of rage all other emotions in me. Only the knowledge that no action must be taken that would endanger Hilda’s chances of escape gained immunity for Elliott. At this, perhaps the turning point in her life, she was expecting me to stand by her. There was no place in her scheme of things for the satisfaction of personal revenge. Furthermore, I was unable to rid myself of the belief that in a way I had been partly responsible for her suffering. Had I not lost my temper with Elliott, the thing might never have occurred. By my actions at the Ark I had contributed directly to the outrage. Elliott was not alone to blame. Through him I had struck Hilda. Another half turn of the knife and things would have been different.
Then, too, I rather suspected that under a forced spirit of courage, Hilda was endeavoring to make it easier for me, and that, in reality, she was creeping away like a stricken creature to heal her wounds in secret, or else to die of them alone. But she had told me that we had more to hope for now than ever before. Surely she could have meant but one thing by that. Hitherto, the gulf between us had been too wide for bridging, but now, because of this recent tragedy, we were being brought closer together. As I stood by the marshes this thought gained ascendancy in my mind. “It will always be morning now,” I repeated to myself, and this single sentence summed up for me all that I hoped for in life — morning, the freshness of a new day, Hilda.
At the cottage I attempted, as far as it was possible, to avoid MacKellar. This was not difficult to do, for already he was absorbed in making sketches for a new canvas. However, he caught me once as I was passing through the room and fastened me with his keen old eyes.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded. “You don’t seem to have any place to sit down. Are there no chairs in this house?”
In spite of my fondness for him, I could not bring myself to tell him what had happened to Hilda. I was trying to forget the thing myself and the fact that another person also shared the knowledge would only serve as a reminder. Anyway, he was better off as it was.
“Come here,” he said when he saw me searching for an answer. “Who blew hell’s fire into your eyes? Has anything happened — something you can’t stand, I mean?”
“Hilda’s going away,” I said.
“When?” he asked without looking up from his sketch. “Are you going away, too?”
“To-morrow,” I replied. “No, only part of the way.”
“Then you’ll come back?”
“Perhaps, Hugh, but I don’t think so. It would be strange here without her, wouldn’t it?”
“Not any stranger than it is now with both of you ramping about, but, just the same, you’d better come back — that is, if you think you could.”
