Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 49
When I attempted to lift her from the ledge my strength almost failed me. Several times I slipped on the rocks as I carried her back to the beach. The poor thing was as thin as a starved child, but in my weakened condition it was more than I could do to carry her without frequently stopping to rest. Thus Natty and I made our slow progress down the beach, and the glaring sunlight fell cheerfully over us as though it would bring back life and warmth to the dead girl’s cheeks. In life she had tried to warn me, and now that she was dead I was paying her the final tribute.
Already my arms were beginning to ache from their light burden. My over-taxed heart pounded against Natty’s silent one. Several times I staggered and fell to my knees in the sand and remained in that attitude until I had regained my strength. When I came in sight of the fishermen’s huts I sank down exhausted, letting Natty slip from my arms. Presently a woman came out of one of the houses and I raised my hand to attract her attention. She approached me slowly, but when she caught sight of the other figure lying in the sand she hastened up to us and automatically broke into a volley of lamentation.
“God will punish some one for this,” she cried, lifting her arms above her head and shaking her clenched fists in the air. Her hands dropped to her sides and she stood looking at me suspiciously, then turned and hurried down the beach to inform the settlement of the fate that had befallen one of its daughters.
Once more I was left alone with Natty. As I looked at her peaceful face I was moved by a desire to make her appear as well as possible in the eyes of her friends. So I straightened her torn garments and attempted to arrange her hair, which the hot rays of the sun had already partly dried.
Soon we were surrounded by a number of excited men and women, all talking at the same time and to no purpose. Between the legs of their elders, children thrust through their heads and stared curiously at Natty. Then a woman broke from the circle and threw herself down by the body of the dead girl, and a gaunt man with red hands stood gazing at the two figures.
No one paid any attention to me and I was glad of this. Some tissue seemed to have snapped in my brain, leaving me in a mood of hazy indifference. I was aware of all that was going on round me, but the faces of the people were blurred and the voices came from far off. Only Natty’s face was clear, and on it my eyes dwelt in dumb entreaty. I wanted her to speak to these people and tell them to be quiet. In particular I wanted her to speak to that silent man looking down at her and explain his grief away.
Now he had lifted her up and was carrying her to the huts. The woman walked behind him as though she were being led by an invisible wire. From time to time her hands jerked out spasmodically from her sides. I rose from the sand and trailed down the beach in the wake of the crowd. The men bore Natty through the door of one of the huts and the people followed him. As she disappeared I muttered to myself, “Good-by, Natty. Live happily ever after.”
Then I sat down on a rock. When I looked up some minutes later the men had come out of the hut and were grouped about the door. They were talking quietly together. Several women joined them and the men’s voices became loud and excited. John Elliott’s name was mentioned and fists were swung aloft in ineffectual rage. An old woman appeared in the door of the hut and hatefully surveyed the gathering. Her short, white hair stood out from her head and her cracked voice grated on my ears.
“Men,” she shouted, “John Elliott did it! What are you going to do about it? Your oaths and threats don’t help. Why are you standing there?”
“We’ll get him,” a great fellow shouted. “Don’t you worry, mother.”
The old woman looked scornfully at the speaker, then pointed a finger at him.
“If he’d taken his two hands,” she continued, “if he’d taken his two hands and squeezed the life from her body he couldn’t have done worse — he couldn’t have been more of a murderer.”
The men surged round the door, and something like a smile came to the old woman’s face. Once more she extended her arms.
“You’re young and you’re strong and you’re free men,” she shouted in her cracked voice. “Do something about it or you won’t be worthy of the arms of your women. Punish John Elliott!”
For a moment she held the men with her eyes, then turned quickly away. The gaunt fisherman came to the door and stood looking far out to sea beyond the crowd.
“When we came back from out there,” he said in a surprisingly quiet voice, “she was always here to bear a hand, and now when we come back she won’t be here any more. You understand? Natty’s dead. She won’t be here any more — never.”
The men remained silent, pressing closer to the door.
“No,” continued the man in a tired voice. “She won’t be here any more; so maybe you’d like to step inside and see the last of her, see her as she is now all straggled out and dead.”
Several men started to enter the house, but he held them back and shook his head.
“I’ll bring her out so we can all have a look,” he said.
He moved gropingly from the door and reappeared with the dead girl in his arms. The old woman was standing anxiously beside him. She was holding one of Natty’s hands.
“Here she is,” he called out, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Look at her and thank John Elliott. He’s still alive.”
At the sight of Natty the anger of the people blazed forth. Men and women alike pressed against the tall fisherman with his dead burden. The cursing of the men and the shrill voices of the women disturbed me. I held out my hand as though to quiet them, and with this movement their anger was immediately transferred to me. I could feel it in the air, but I was not interested. I wanted to be left alone.
“There’s one of them now,” some one shouted. “He’ll warn Elliott.”
“Drive him away!” a woman cried. “He had a hand in this.”
A shower of stones came at me. One large missile, striking me over the heart, sent me sprawling from the rock. I rose to my feet and made an attempt to approach the crowd. Another volley of stones checked me. I was cut in several places, and the blood from a wound in my forehead ran down into my eyes. I took a few steps forward and tried to speak, but my voice was drowned by the shouts and jeers of the fishermen. Then I smiled and held out my hands. As I did so I felt, or rather heard, a great crash at the base of my skull and I toppled forward into a sea of angry faces.
When I regained consciousness Aird was bending over me.
“They didn’t mean it,” he said when I opened my eyes. “They didn’t understand.”
I moved my lips, but no words came.
“Lie still,” he continued in a low voice, “and I’ll get some one to help me. It’s my house this time.”
His face floated away and became confused with a cloud hanging directly over me in a blue sky. Far away several voices were calling. I imagined I could distinguish Hunter Aird’s. The sea and the land and the sky were swimming in my eyes, and little flames of pain danced over my body. Then daylight streamed from the world.
CHAPTER XXXI
I CANNOT VISIT the marshes now, and yet I have been there. Although three days have passed since I resumed these notes and during that time I have not moved from this room, I have stood each night with Hilda by the marshes.
For the first time in twenty years we have been together. For the first time in twenty years I have heard her voice and felt the touch of her hand. She came to me as I was lying in bed, and as I rose to meet her I left my body behind. It was nearly dawn. Far off on the edge of the sea a rosy light was tipping the horizon. To prove to myself that I was not dreaming, I stood by the bed with Hilda and together we looked down at my sleeping image. An old man was in the bed, an old gray stranger. His cheeks were sunken and pale, covered with a stubble of whiskers and his eyes were set in shadows. Deep wrinkles lined his face and touched the corners of a weak and petulant mouth. A soiled bandage was around his forehead and above this his long gray hair bushed out in disorder.
As I gazed down at the body I had quitted, a feeling of shame came over me. I was about to turn away, but Hilda restrained me and, kneeling down by the bed, she kissed this unlovable creature on the lips. The dawn streamed into the room and I could hear birds singing in the green boughs. Beneath the silver lash of the rising sun the sea leaped and sparkled. Then Hilda took me by the hand and we were back once more by the salt marshes. The reeds were round us and the marshes spread out at our feet.
“Hilda,” I whispered, “let me never return again.”
“You no longer fear the marshes?” she asked.
“Try me,” I pleaded.
“When the time comes,” she replied, “you will find me waiting here.”
She placed the tips of her fingers against my eyes and the scene faded from view. Little sunbeams were playing on the counterpane and the air was sweet with morning fragrance. I awoke with the firm conviction that Hilda had been in the room and that I had stood with her by the marshes. I am still of the same conviction.
* * * * *
FROM my couch on Aird’s veranda I am looking down on a scene of tropical splendor. Below me the marshes flare out into the distance, their water ways, now clearly revealed, gliding ceaselessly through the thick, green reeds like restless snakes on the search. Occasionally from the glinting coils a bird darts high in the air, then settles back again as though unable to snap the thread of fascination. There is always a trance-like stillness resting on the marshes, but to-day it seems more profound than ever before, more haunting and touched with mystery. One could almost imagine that they were waiting for something or for some one. The sun is slanting down a clear sky, but before it reaches the horizon, its light will be quenched in a dark cloud boiling up from the western horizon. It is the season of the year when summer is caught without warning and flayed to withered bits.
By my side Aird sits reading from a ponderous looking book. Occasionally we exchange a few words, then he returns to his reading and I to my notes. He strikes me as being one of the most solitary souls alive, and yet he seems to be contented enough. I do not mean that he has ceased intellectually to strive, but merely that he is in harmony with the way he has chosen to live. For one who has been so much alone, so far removed from human contact and complications, he has a remarkable appreciation of life, whereas I who have been bound to life by a thousand clinging fetters feel as though I had been too long alive.
* * * * *
WHEN I was a boy I was always a great one for cutting my initials in the bark of trees. It worked on my imagination to think that in the years to come another person would stand where I had stood, another boy like myself, who would admire my rude design and wonder a little about the vanished carver. No doubt I am still actuated by the same motive, for all day long I have been impelled to drain out the dregs of my life on these trivial pages. Death, what is it? A gasp of surprise in the face of unsuspected beauty, or is it merely a failing voice crying out in protest to unresponsive night? There is no death if Hilda ever lived, but sometimes I wonder if she did live.
How tired a person can be and still continue to cling to life! My body feels as crisp and dry as though it had lain on a slow grill. It is hardly time for me to be so old, yet I am old. I shall never be young again in this world. Like a common pickpocket I have filched the years from the purse of Time, collected life in advance.
There goes the sun now, piling down into a valley of clouds. From the west a wind is footing it over the marshes and the storm song of the reeds is in the air. Aird has laid aside his book and is walking out on the lawn where he stands hawk-like in poise and outline, nervously sniffing in the wind. As I look down on the marshes, over which the light is fading, I recall, as if it were only yesterday, the time I was lost out there in the storm. Once more I can hear the sobbing of the reeds and feel the suffocating assault of the rain, but none of the old terror troubles me now. Thank God, I am free from that.
A gray haze is driving across the twilight, leaping over the marshes like a living veil. As though in anticipation of defeat the trees are already dropping their leaves over the cottage. Aird has turned in the path and is looking back at me.
“Hold tight!” he cries. “It’s going to hit this old shack like an express train. I’ll fetch you in, David.”
And like an overwrought gull driven before the gale he gallops up the path.
* * * * *
SOME hours later.
Why is it that I, who have led such an inglorious life, have been vouchsafed happiness to-night? And why is it that I, who have failed so consistently in all my endeavors, have at the end been allowed to enjoy a glow of triumph?
Round the corners of the house the storm lashed like a stricken reptile. A thousand windy assaults were hurled against the walls and roof, and a limb torn from a neighboring tree came crashing to the veranda where it lay beating its branches against the door like a crippled stranger pleading to be let in from the storm. Lightning sprayed its gold across the marshes and at times the little cottage shuddered as the knife-edged thunder drove through the sky. The voice of the wind ran the scale of human emotions, from bull-throated bellowings of fury to shrieks of impotent rage, and in the lulls between it sobbed and whimpered like a tortured spirit broken in defeat. And there were times when it sounded like a mad woman crooning a crazy lullaby to a dead child in the dark.
As I sat in the yellow lamplight of Aird’s room I heard in the voice of the storm a mighty symphony, shot through with themes from the life of man. I heard him cursing and raving as he hurled himself against the naked stakes of life. I heard the muffled cry of his soul protesting against the bondage of his body. Louder and louder the cry rose, until at last it seemed to rip the cords from his straining throat, and in bitter snarls and screaming vent his spleen against the world. In the heart of the storm I heard his cries of defiance, his raptures of desire, his anguish and remorse. I heard him sob in the darkness as he knelt by the body of one he had loved, of one he had loved and destroyed. In the booming voice of the storm I heard the illogical voice of man. I heard his shouts of joy and triumph, his hunger and despair. Then as the storm receded and the wind fell to a minor key I heard a song floating from the lips of one who, spent and broken, had been left behind on the field. Clear and jubilant the song mounted to the arches of the sky, gradually dying away in the upper air. It was the voice of the spirit singing amid the ruins of a man:
“All things he has claimed and lost.
All things he has touched and destroyed.
Yet me he has not destroyed
And me he shall never lose.
Now he is weary of seeking,
His feet are broken and still.
Now shall my song be heard,
For I am the voice of his soul.
I have lived in the din of his body,
I have felt his fever and pain,
And now that the storm is past
I shall sing him upward from death.”
Far away over the mainland the thunder muttered and rumbled. From the eves of the cottage the rain dripped steadily. The broken branch kept tapping pitifully against the door.
“And now that the storm is past
I shall sing him upward from death.”
The singing faded away in the distance. I looked at Aird, who was standing by the window.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked, and my voice sounded strange in the quiet room.
“A lot of things,” he replied, facing me with a smile. “What do you mean, David?”
“I thought I heard some one singing,” I said. “A great voice pouring a golden flood against the gates of paradise. I wish you had heard it, Aird.”
He came over from the window and sat down beside me.
“Don’t go on like that, David,” he said, “or you’ll be making a nervous wreck of me. You’re going to get well now, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” I asked. “What did the doctor say?”
“He said you couldn’t,” replied Aird, looking me straight in the eyes, “but you know and I know he’s wrong. You could pull through if you wanted to, if you really cared, couldn’t you?”
“Why should I, Aird? There’s nothing here for me.”
“You’re not any too complimentary,” he said with a short laugh. “I’d rather looked forward to your visit.”
“I know,” I replied, placing a hand on his. “It’s a funny thing, but I’ve always had a feeling that the two of us belonged together. That’s why I cursed you that day in the field. You’ve forgiven me for that?”
“I understood at the time,” he said. “But damn it, all that has nothing to do with this. I know there’s a fight left in you. Are you going to make it?”
“Tell me, Aird,” I asked, “is it immoral or cowardly or particularly weak for a man not to want to live? What do you think? As I look back on my life it seems to me that I’ve never really wanted to live. There was a time, a brief period, when I did, but that passed like a—”
“Dream,” he interrupted.
“Yes,” I added, looking away. “It passed like that — like a dream at dawn.”
Before he spoke again Aird provided me with a cigarette, then lighted his pipe, behind which he sat thoughtfully puffing destruction into globes and minarets of smoke.
“No doubt you’ll think it rather ridiculous of me,” he said at last, “but there was a time when I wanted to become a leader. I thought it would be a splendid thing to educate the world. I felt that if I succeeded in clearing up only a few universal lies I should be accomplishing a great deal, but on my first attempt I found that all the roads to knowledge were already securely held by an established army of educators — academic mercenaries. There was no way of getting at the people. Even when you broke through the lines, the lies still surrounded the non-combatants like a picket fence. The people hid behind the lies and steadfastly refused to be disillusioned. They are doing it to-day.”
