Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 48
She made an attempt to smile, but it was far from a success. And all the time her fingers kept squirming together.
“Lots of things are coming back,” I said. “But why did I ever tell you that they lived happily ever after, Natty? That was a lie, wasn’t it?”
“No,” she replied, fiercely. “That wasn’t a lie, but all the rest has been.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” I replied. “There’s nothing true here.”
“Where are they?” she asked in a changed voice, making a jerky motion towards the house. “He’s not the only one. The other is just as bad.”
“I don’t know where they are.”
She took a few steps forward and began to speak in a low voice, her eyes darting searchingly around.
“I’m not here any more,” she said, “but I know. I tried to tell you many times. They sent me away, but before I left I heard them talking. They’ve planned it all. See how he’s gotten me? Look!” — and she held out her trembling hands— “Look. I’m full of it. I need some now.”
Her eyes sharp and eager, pleaded with mine.
“Perhaps you’ve some of it with you,” she hurried on with a note of entreaty in her voice. “Look and see. I’d do anything for it now... anything.”
She laughed brazenly. Then covering her face with her working hands stood bowing before me.
“Don’t mind what I say,” she went on. “I’m all different when I’m like this. I’m not this way myself, honestly I’m not. There’s still a little moonlight left, Mr. Landor, but I’ll never dance in it.”
Once more she tried to smile, but her lips were all wrong. They looked smeared and undirected as though they were not related to her face.
“Mr. Landor,” she said, “why don’t you go away? There’s still time. Why don’t you save what’s left while you’ve got the chance? Go away. Go away now! Get out of this place. It’s no good. Oh, what can I do to make you go?”
“It’s too late, Natty,” I replied, taking one of her dry hands in mine. “Don’t you see? They’ve gotten me too.”
I laughed a trifle unsteadily as she studied my face with her questioning eyes.
“Oh, well, I helped just a little myself,” I suggested.
“Yes,” she said. “I know how it is. I helped too, after they started me.”
“What can I do?” she continued as if to herself. “How can I help now — here?”
Before I could reply a strange expression came into Natty’s eyes. They no longer saw me. For her I had ceased to exist. Following the direction of her gaze, I saw John Elliott standing on the veranda. He was looking at the girl, with a warning expression on his face. It was plain to see that he was far from pleased with our meeting. Natty walked away from me and slowly mounted the steps. In subdued tones, the two of them spoke together, then Natty grew excited and I could hear her pleading with Elliott. Her hands went up as though she were about to seize him by the throat, then they dropped helplessly to her sides and she stood before him sobbing. Elliott thrust his fingers into his vest pocket and produced a small round box which Natty snatched and concealed in her dress.
“Now,” I heard him say, “clear out and don’t come back.”
She hurried down the steps and in her eagerness to escape with her prize, staggered against me as she passed. Her face was working pitifully and little dry gasps came beating from her lips.
I found it hard to believe that she was the same person with whom I had been speaking only a few minutes before. Her hand was clutched to her breast and as she hastened down the path she walked with a shuffling, one-sided gait — the little girl whose mind had once been fired by the picture of a slim white figure dancing in the moonlight.
I walked away, but before I had gone many paces Elliott caught up with me and slipped his arm through mine.
“You see how it is?” he said. “You can’t be kind to these people. They take advantage of one. Why that girl’s notorious. She worked for us a little while ago, but we had to get rid of her. She’s crazy. Too much intermarrying in her stock. The poor thing isn’t responsible for what she says. It’s devilish inconvenient just the same. People get the wrong impression.”
Sick at heart, I smiled at him and nodded agreement.
“I know,” I said. “Occultism, and all that.”
“I hope she didn’t annoy you,” he went on, looking at me closely.
Unable to answer him, I walked down the garden path and sought the pavilion by the marshes. I hadn’t been there for weeks. As I sat on the reeds and followed the waterways with my listless eyes, my mind was filled with thoughts of Natty.
Natty... poor wretch... “And they lived happily ever after, and the old knight never more was cruel to the deer.”
“Sad stories are sort of nice,” she had said. “They seem like as if they might happen.”
That’s odd.
They do happen.
CHAPTER XXVII
A PERSON ALONE derives scant comfort in trying to deceive himself. In the presence of others he gains confidence in his ability to lie, his own words for the moment bring him conviction, he admires his own skill in outwitting the probing minds of others. But alone a man becomes a rather sorry object. Brag and strut as he may he cannot deceive himself. He knows with a dreadful knowledge how false and futile he is. Although I have been trying to convince myself to the contrary neither Elliott nor Scarlet are responsible for my present condition. I have been drinking because I wanted to drink. I have been forgetting because I have been afraid to remember. I have been headstrong because I know my own weakness. With a feeling of relief I would abandon myself, yet I am reluctant to depart. Each new day is a false creation of time and I am its creator.
* * * * *
IT is quiet by the marshes. The sun, but newly risen, is feeling its way through the reeds, fingering them here and there with gilded hands and leaving behind on the green a path of yellow light. In the quiet stirring of the day something of the zest and freshness of youth comes back to me — a twinge of its enviable solitude, a breath of its wonderment. Here as the day grows strong I feel myself keenly expectant. Rhythms of life long dormant play over me again like friendly hands on an old fiddle. As green as jade the island lies beneath the morning’s golden light. In joyous salutation the trees spring up to the sky. A breeze moves across the reeds and I catch the smell of swamps and beaches, clam shells and tarred boats. It brings back things to mind, little, obscure memories that were hardly a part of life, yet which somehow justified living.
I have watched the sun cleave an aisle through the mist on the marshes. I have seen it climb to the sky and scoff the mist away. In the hush that precedes the birth of day I have knelt on the reeds and watched the earth appear through a mantle of drifting haze. I have been touched by the breath of dawn and have tasted its sharp perfume, and I have been happy. Something came back to me — a shred of strength and hope. Yet in spite of these moments of peace I have felt that all things must perish and be lost, that ecstasy would vanish from my heart, that even the marshes would fade, and that these eyes have looked so long on them would encounter at last only shadows.
It is an abhorrent thing to go down to oblivion. It is a terrifying and destructive thought. To-day as I looked at the island so secure and inaccessible, so set apart from life, I was seized again by the fear that everything must perish and that I should be left in darkness where even fear ceased to exist. I stretched out my arms to the island and called to Hilda — perhaps for the last time. I wanted her to return before it was too late.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DREAMS SPUN FROM incense floating in the amber heart of wine. Stained thoughts, and beautiful, edged with sharp regret. The peace of abandonment and quiet of despair.... How strange they are, these evenings passed in shadows tossed by flickering candles, waves of smoke in yellow places, the fragrance of incense mixed with mold of dying walls... silence, dreams, and the far-away voice of the wind.
In such a place it is difficult to distinguish between the false and the true. Sometimes I feel that this hall and its occupants are no longer in life. There is no such place and there are no such persons. It is all false, like the fancies of drugged brains. Yet the fact remains that for me this hall is the most hideously real thing in life. I try to blind myself to its existence, arguing that the hall has vanished and that I am out somewhere in a field tramping through the high grass. Sometimes I catch myself laughing crazily and waving my arms in gestures of defiance.
To know that only a few paces from here green waves are falling on a flat, white beach and children’s voices are crying through the spray; to know that somewhere outside this reeking place a great wind is rushing down the sky and that growing things on the earth are feeling the touch of its feet, to know these things and yet to be cut off from them is more at times than my mind can stand. This hall is real enough, its occupants are real, and at last I have been brought face to face with reality in one of God’s unfavored places.
* * * * *
ELLIOTT sprawls in his chair. He is muttering to himself. His indifference to his wife and the things round him far surpasses mine.
“Landor?” he called the other night, his voice sounding hollow in the silence of the hall. “Landor, are you listening?”
“Yes, what is it?” I said.
“You’re one of us,” he began, “you and your ridiculous aims and ideals. You’re no better than the rest. And somewhere she is witnessing your defeat. Do you think she’s enjoying it?”
“No,” I said quietly. “The very fact that it gives you pleasure would close that possibility. You never had anything in common with her.”
He made no reply to that but regarded me with brooding malice as he filled his glass with wine. I glanced up at Scarlet, who, with her face framed in her hands, lay gazing into space. It was apparent that she was not interested in her husband’s conversation. For a time we sat in silence, then Elliott again began to speak.
“Oh, you’re a clever fellow, Landor,” he said.
“I’ll admit that, but don’t think I’m being fooled. Even now you’re trying to make me believe that there’s nothing in that dream of yours. You’d have me think she died naturally — the way most people do. You’d like me to believe a lot of things, but I don’t. I’ve been in strange places and I’ve seen strange things. I’m not so easily deceived. In this very house strange things have taken place, but perhaps the strangest of them all is about to occur.”
“Death is behind a curtain now, waiting for us all,” I said with mock seriousness. “There’s nothing strange in that. Who goes first, Elliott?”
“Death!” he cried, starting to his feet and peering fearfully around him. “Death! Where?”
Like terrified wings his words beat through the hall. Panic was in his bloodshot eyes, and the veins stood out on his neck. With a shaking hand he raised his glass to his lips, then sank down on his chair. Completely unmoved, Scarlet looked at his huddled form, but when her eyes shifted to me they were bright with animosity. I thought at first that Elliott had fallen asleep, but after some minutes had passed he began to mutter to himself.
“She’ll wait all right,” he said. “There’s no going back now — no escape.... The dream... Oh, damn the dream!... through all eternity waiting... That’s good.... He’s one of us now... don’t have to lift even my finger... he likes it here... waiting... waiting... waiting... through all the years....”
CHAPTER XXIX
THIS MORNING WHEN I staggered along the cliff path and broke into the fields I heard some one calling my name. Hunter Aird was coming in my direction. With head lowered and feet spraddled I stood like some dumb animal and watched him approach. My heart was full of conflict. I wanted to see him and talk with him, I had an impulse to fling myself at his feet and to beg for protection, but an overpowering fear restrained me. He would take me away from my one source of comfort. With him there would be no release, no dreams, no floating figures. Unable to endure this thought, I turned and ran through the high grass. Once I struck my foot against a stone and was hurled to the ground. By the time I had regained my feet Aird was standing only a short distance away. The expression in his eyes infuriated me. He was pitying me. I could feel it. With drunken pride I drew myself up and cursed him roundly.
“Damn your pleading eyes!” I cried. “Go back. Can’t you see you’re not wanted? We don’t belong together.”
He held out his hands rather helplessly and in such a tragic way that I laughed at him in derision.
“What an ass you are,” I shouted. “For God’s sake go away. I’m through with you and your kind forever. You bore me.”
He took a step forward, but before he could approach closer I sprang back and started again across the field.
“David!” he called. “David!”
Without looking back I fled toward the marshes, his running feet keeping pace with mine, then falling faintly behind.
“David!” he called again, and as I turned to look back, the light went out of the sky and I felt myself spinning through a green eternity of twilight with his voice still ringing in my ears.
That happened this morning at an early hour. It was noon by the sun when I next opened my eyes to the restful green of the marshes. Bruised and numb, I was lying on the reeds, my mind in a sorry state of confusion. Remote and peaceful the island floated on the marshes. I longed with all my heart to be there in that quiet place. Far away on the other side I could see the curve of the shore, and my thoughts returned to the time when I had waded through the slime in an effort to reach the island.
All round me insect life was singing. The song of the little creatures was drowsy in the heat of the mid-day sun. My ears were filled with a ringing sound and a shower of buzzing notes. In the midst of this my brain began the distasteful task of reconstructing the immediate, yet irrevocable past. I had lost Aird’s friendship forever, that was certain. No matter what happened to me, I could never face him again. What a spectacle I must have made, raving before him like a maniac. Oh, well, it had to come some time. We lived in different worlds.
Wind and the smell of stagnant water, the marshes and the island — everything was the same. Only I had changed, and now I was looking on the scene for the last time. I should never come here again. Dull pains moved through my body, but from sheer indifference I refused to change my cramped position. The insects buzzed and the sun sprayed down on my back. I felt dreadfully weak and nauseated. From time to time I shook with convulsive tremors. My heart raced, and then stood chokingly still. As though in sleep, confused words came unguarded from my cracked lips. I was crying. The wretched tears trailed down my cheeks and dropped on my dirty hands. I looked at the tears and wondered who was crying, then I listened and wondered whose voice it was I heard.
“It’s over now,” the voice was saying, “and even the ending is over. I shall never come back to this place. Hilda, do you hear me? There’s nothing left that you can do or that I can do. Soon it will no longer be in my power to break the faith. All faith will have been destroyed. I shall feel no more, think no more, be no more. Even regret will have ceased to be, and with it all memory of what has been. You can no longer reach me with your spirit hands. You who are a part of the dawn could never walk the night through which I move.”
* * * * *
EMBERS dying in the dark... they lie on the floor of the sea... smoking embers, white with hate, triumphant as they die.... Spirit hands helplessly beating, poor hands, desperate hands, you cannot reach me now.
CHAPTER XXX
IT WAS MORNING and I was on the beach, walking by the water’s edge. My mind was dim. At the far end of the beach, quite removed from the huts of the fishermen, a number of rocks run out into the sea. When the tide is low it is a fascinating spot for children, because the receding waves leave behind in the hollows of the rocks a chain of sun-warmed pools ideal for the sailing of miniature craft and the paddling of small bare feet.
On this particular morning some vagrant memory of happier days attracted me to the rocks. With caution I picked my way out to the last stony ledge, and sitting down, hazily considered the little waves lapping at my feet. Beneath the green surface of the water, faces floated and peered up at me, faces familiar and unknown, men and women I had passed on the streets, eyes that had lived in my memory and lips that had smiled in my dreams. I was confronted in turn by Hilda, MacKellar, and a little girl who died in London, and then Natty’s thin white face swam into my vision and remained there. I brushed my hand across my eyes and looked again. The girl’s face would not vanish. Unlike the others, the eyes were closed and features sharply defined.
“Natty,” I muttered, “are you too among the dead? If not why are you floating there before me?”
The face still confronted me. In order to convince myself that my imagination was not up to its old tricks I rose to my feet and waded out on the ledge. I could distinguish a body now, the body of a girl left dangling by the tide on the tapering skirt of the rocks. Like one in a trance I bent over and stirred the water with my hand. When I withdrew it some strands of hair were twined round my fingers. My eyes clouded and I was seized with a desire to shout, to arouse the world and give warning. Then something shifted within me. I no longer protested or disbelieved, but accepted the situation quite calmly. Those clinging strands of hair were too pitifully appealing to allow for disbelief. Natty was bound to me in death.
How remarkable, and yet how simple, it was to look at her and know that she was dead. I straightened up and tried to think things out. Death had come to her and given back the peace which life had denied. Perhaps even now her spirit was away somewhere dancing in the moonlight. That would have been her choice, I knew. She had done the logical thing and placed herself beyond all earthly cravings. Elliott’s power was broken. She was free now, and forever, from things that did not matter. She was eternally simplified, and at liberty to enjoy the lilt of her own soul. Like a child in sleep she lay with her arms thrown up behind her head. The sea had washed her clean. Gone now the sting and the torment, the nausea and remorse. Natty was much better off, and in my heart I envied her and wished her peace.
