Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 50
He paused for a moment to consider a leisurely disintegrating smoke cloud, then continued:
“So I abandoned my elaborate educational program and began to educate myself. I was not particularly fond of life either, but as time went on I gradually changed. I found myself growing interested. Each day offered me a new vista of knowledge, each night another secret. I studied, applied, and compared. I learned to love life intelligently, instead of emotionally. And I’ll tell you, David, there’s lots to love in life once you’ve gotten the hang of it.”
“It’s too late now for me to learn,” I told him. “You see I was never adjusted right to begin with — I didn’t work somehow. You’ve known people like that. They belong to the undisciplined army of the unstable. Men write books about them, then wonder why. So do the readers.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I can’t see anything immoral or weak about not wanting to live. Most people do, or pretend they do, but that doesn’t signify anything. If you could assure the average man that one quick gasp would be to his advantage, he would readily find an excuse to justify him in taking it. If the existence of another life were ever satisfactorily proved there would soon be few people left in the world. Heaven would be littered with a lot of amateur suicides, bragging about how easy it was to shake off life’s mortal coil. Those who hadn’t managed to get themselves run over in a state of grace, would have acquired heavy colds or something of the sort.”
“To keep the world filled you must keep it fooled,” I suggested.
“The wisest man must always remain a little ignorant,” said Aird. “If not he would lose his wisdom. I’d hate to be the man to learn the last secret of life.”
“And I’d like to be the one to learn the first secret of death,” I replied.
“It would amount to the same thing,” he answered.
“But you believe?” I asked after a brief pause.
“I do,” he said.
“And shall we be able to take all our happy memories and make them live again?” I continued.
He looked up at me and smiled.
“As a scientist,” he said, “I refuse to be interviewed theological questions.”
“But as a human being?”
“I unreasonably hope so.”
For some minutes we sat in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts. In the distance the mollified storm still grumbled through the sky. A drowsy numbness was creeping over my body. From the base of my skull hot pains occasionally played over me, but I was strangely insensible to them. Only when the spasms closed round my heart was I unable to suppress an involuntary gasp. At these times I felt as though I were being plunged into the black depth of a pool. At last I made an effort to rise, but fell back helplessly. My legs were like withered branches. When Aird helped me from the chair there was no feeling in the soles of my feet. They tapped the floor searchingly.
“You’ll feel better, perhaps, in the morning,” he suggested.
It was almost a question. In his eyes I read a mute appeal.
“Better, I hope, than I’ve felt in years,” I answered, gripping his hand.
For a moment we stood looking at each other, both of us groping for words and finding none, then we moved slowly across the room.
* * * * *
THERE has been enough scribbling for one day. And what a long day it has been. I am tired.
The room in which I am writing commands a view of the marshes. Out there lightning is still flickering, but now its fangs have been pulled. It waves among the clouds like a golden plume. My bed is near the open window, through which drifts an occasional scent of drenched shrubbery and other growing things. The rain is still falling. There are bogs in the woods tonight and along the cliffs the rollers must be churning — mad things, tearing at eternity. How vividly it all comes back to me and how intimately I have loved this place all my life. My youth lies buried in the soil and Hilda’s spirit still hovers over it. I have felt this keenly to-day. Even now I feel that she is looking down at me as she once did from her little boat as I lay in the water... “a small white cloud”... Hilda, do you remember? I called you that.
“And now that the storm is past
I shall sing him upward from death.”
Did I really hear a song to-day issuing from the heart of the wind, or was it merely a trick of my mind? I am almost certain I heard it marching up the sky.
“I have lived in the din of his body.
I have felt his fever and pain.”
Higher it soared and higher, the battle hymn of the unstable, the triumphant chant of the soul giving the lie to death.
Beneath the fiery plumes of the lightning I can catch, from where I am sitting, an occasional glimpse of the island lying beneath the rain. The trees are sharply edged with gold. Their black trunks glisten.
It will be a clear dawn to-morrow and a fair day. The sun will rise from the sea and loop across the sky. Its light will fall on the pavilion by the marshes and there among the reeds the insects will take up their chorus... shrill, little notes of life dancing in the sun. And through the green marshes the glinting waterways will wind, endlessly circling among the reeds in restless search of the sea. The sun will drop behind the island, catching the trees for a moment against its flaming heart. It will sink, and then the night will come and there will be stars in the sky — the frosty stars of a Fall night, perfect and remote. And out there on the marshes the waterways will be gliding and a sigh will follow after them as the wind runs through the reeds.
I wonder if I shall be here to witness another day. Aird would wish it so. Oh, well, old friend, I have waited too long already. Let me go now. I can accomplish nothing here. I have a feeling to-night that if the dream returns I shall awake in a fairer country than any I have ever known before and that my eyes will look on a face they have searched for years to find.
EPILOGUE
“IN CASE I over-sleep to-morrow I’ll say good morning now.”
Those were the last words that David Landor ever spoke. Sometime later when the golden bar of light disappeared from beneath his door, Aird felt as though the last tie had been severed between them.
For a few minutes he tried to read, but his mind was closed to the subject. Once he went to Landor’s door, then with a shrug of his shoulders put on his rain coat and left the room. Making his way to the protected side of the house, he flattened himself against the wall to be free from the dripping eaves. Landor’s window was just round the corner. The thought occurred to Aird that the rain might be driving in on his bed. He was about to investigate when a stirring in the darkness arrested his attention. The thing seemed to waver and melt away. He fixed his eyes on the spot and waited for the lightning. When the sky awoke and formed a background he saw against it John Elliott bending low, approaching. He was trying to reach Landor’s unprotected window. There was something chilling in his angular advance.
Aird moved round the corner and placed himself before the window. As Elliott rose to his full height Aird seized his upraised arm and twisted it back. The arm seemed to snap like a piece of chalk and Elliott fell writhing to the soggy grass. For a moment the two men struggled together then Elliott with an unexpected burst of strength scrambled to his feet.
“The dream,” he muttered. “It’s the dream. I knew it would come.”
For an instant he wavered drunkenly, then started down the hillside in the direction of the marshes.
“It’s the dream,” he almost sobbed. “I’ll get to the island first.”
When Aird reached the edge of the marshes he could hear the man splashing among the reeds. A glow of lightning revealed a swollen plain from which the reeds were thrusting up their points. About twenty yards from the shore Elliott was floundering waist-deep in water. He was raving like a madman. Darkness rushed in on the desolate scene and Aird waited for a sound he knew he should hear. Then he heard it — a long scream shuddering over the marshes. When the lightning came back to the sky, the plain was empty, so empty in fact that Aird was almost convinced that Elliott had never been there.
As Aird turned up the hill the cry still followed him, splitting through the night. The cottage squatted beneath the rain. Quiet lay around it. He went to Landor’s window and listened. After he had satisfied himself that his friend was still sleeping he went to the veranda and sat down on a wet chair. The rain had dropped to a drizzle, and the night was well advanced. Already he could catch in the air a hint of the oncoming day. It was like a fresh breath in a crowded room.
For some minutes he had been hearing the sound of voices in the distance. He paid no attention to this, his mind occupied with his thoughts, but when he opened his eyes he was startled to find a bright glare in the east. The voices continued to shout, and as he leveled his eyes on the fringe of a row of trees, a beautifully proportioned flame, like a formal design in a Japanese screen found its way to the sky and swayed there. Before it had time to become convincing, it collapsed and a number of lesser flames took its place, each suspended by a runner of tortured smoke.
Aird had little doubt of what was happening. The beach had risen and come inland. Elliott’s house was burning. Natty was being avenged. But Elliott would never know it. When Aird recalled the scream and saw again the funny helpless arm he decided the man had stood enough for one night.
Then dawn rose in the sky and Aird walked to Landor’s window. He was lying with one arm across the sill as though he were reaching out to the island. His head was resting on his arm and little drops of rain still glistened in his hair. Something about the still figure arrested Aird. It seemed to him that a change had taken place in Landor’s features. His expression was different yet familiar. He felt as if he were seeing again a person he had known many years ago. No miraculous transformation had taken place, but somehow it appeared to Aird that all of the grace and essence of youth had returned to Landor and touched him with triumph that was almost radiant.
Time passed unheeded as he stood in the presence of this friend he had lost, this being so unlike him. Something of the dead man’s peace entered into his soul, and yet because he had no one to share it with he felt lonely. He left the window and sat on the steps. Perhaps the strain of the past twenty-four hours had overtaxed his mind, perhaps he was unduly impressionable from lack of sleep. Whatever the reason was, the fact remains that as the dawn spread through the sky and spilled its light across the marshes, he heard, or thought he heard, a clear voice singing the lines that Landor wrote just before he died:
“And now that the storm is past
I shall sing him upward from death.”
On a slight hill bearing down on the marshes, they buried him, Aird and the fishermen, and there he lies now, a part of the soil he loved so well, but as Aird stood by the fresh mound he could not shake off the impression that David Landor had just begun to live.
THE END
The Stray Lamb (1929)
First published on 20 September 1929, this novel tells the story of T. Lawrence Lamb, a mild mannered investment banker, who has a crush on his daughter’s friend Sandy and finds his unfaithful wife in the arms of another man. When a mysterious “little russet” man makes his acquaintance, Lamb declares, “I’m tired of being a human being. I think I’d like to be things if I could — animals, birds, beasts, fish, any old sort of thing, just to get another point of view…” The following morning he wakes up as a horse. Subsequent transformations see him become a seagull, a kangaroo, a goldfish, a mongrel dog, a cat, a lion and, finally “any old sort of thing”. Adventures ensue and eventually Lamb makes the changes to his life that perhaps he needed all along.
The Stray Lamb was well-received by critics, with one writing, “We beg, implore, beseech you to read ‘The Stray Lamb’ and wait and see if you don’t thank us,” whilst another called it, “A brand new kind of humorous novel, more than a little crazy, albeit keen in observation”. Some were more cautious with their praise, saying, “It isn’t wise and it isn’t profound and we liked it. Plenty of light-hearted nonsense and a few pagan delights besides,” and, “This ridiculous book has so much virility, so much sly philosophy tucked into it and so much ribald humor, that it can be put in no casual classification”. Even critics in the twenty-first century, almost a hundred years after it was first published, have called it a “hysterical romp”.
The first edition
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Spines in Transit
Chapter II. The Ear Obtrudes
Chapter III. The Ear Has Legs
Chapter IV. The Little Russet Man Appears
Chapter V. A Horse in Bed
Chapter VI. Equine Excursions
Chapter VII. The Battle of the Church
Chapter VIII. What Happened to the Horse
Chapter IX. The Height of Tolerance
Chapter X. Lamb Takes the Air
Chapter XI. An Aerial Interlude
Chapter XII. Mr. Billings Removes His Clothes
Chapter XIII. A Lapful of Sandy
Chapter XIV. Sapho Tries to Murder a Fish
Chapter XV. Sandy Gets Her Man
Chapter XVI. Less Than the Dust
Chapter XVII. In Sandra’s Bed
Chapter XVIII. The World’s Worst Bootlegger
Chapter XIX. Above the Battle
Chapter XX. A Decidedly Different Something
Chapter XXI. Exit the Little Russet Man
Chapter XXII. In the Wake
Chapter I. Spines in Transit
MR. T. LAWRENCE Lamb weaved his long, shad-bellied body down the aisle, and as one sorely stricken in affliction, crumpled into a seat. He hoped prayerfully that the other half of it would remain unoccupied. He hoped even more prayerfully that if it should be occupied it would not be by anyone he knew even remotely. Every evening he hoped this and almost every evening his hope was disregarded.
Mr. Lamb automatically elevated his knees. Out came his paper and off went the train. All set. Another day smeared.
He sighed profoundly. So far so good. No one had yet encroached upon his Jovian aloofness. Perhaps for a change he would get the best of the break. Adjusting his features in what he fondly believed to be a repellent expression he prepared to concentrate his attention on the financial section of his newspaper. His heart was not in it. Neither was his mind. Lamb was in a vagrant mood — misanthropic, critical, at odds with himself.
“Here we sit,” he mused — his eyes darkly contemplating his fellow commuters— “Here we sit, the lot of us, a trainful of spines in transit . . . so many sets of vertebræ, each curved and twisted according to the inclination of its individual owner.”
His eyes rested unenthusiastically on a man he heartily disliked, Simonds, a purveyor of choice lots.
“Take Simonds there,” he continued to reflect. “That spawn of hell is just a lot of vertebræ all curled up. I myself am scarcely more than a column of vertebræ. And that old lady over there, she’s a repository of vertebræ, old tortured vertebræ, no doubt extremely brittle . . . museum pieces.”
He sighed morbidly over the great age and brittleness of the old lady’s vertebræ, and rearranged his own, flexing them deftly between the seat and its back. His knees crept up higher in front of him. His head sank lower. He was gradually jack-knifing into his favorite commuting position.
For some inexplicable reason vertebræ this evening seemed unusually important to Lamb. They were almost getting the best of him. The more he thought of vertebræ the lower his spirits ebbed. There were too many commuters, all trying to contort themselves into the most comfortable, the most restful positions — all striving to do well for their backs after the strain of the day.
Tentatively Lamb peered into his newspaper. He fully intended to wash his hands of vertebræ and to study the details of a new bond issue.
There were newspapers everywhere — evening newspapers. Alluring tabloids with impartially quartered front pages displayed one pair of robust legs, one good corpse, a sanguinary railway accident, and a dull-looking pugilist. What more could any reasonable person crave?
Lamb studied the absorbed readers with detached animosity. Papers were being held at every conceivable angle, some negligently, untidily, others grasped tenaciously as if their owners lived in momentary dread of being deprived of their comfort. Some readers scanned their papers from afar. Others approached them secretively, nose touching type.
“Newspapers and vertebræ,” elaborated Lamb, eyeing the suspended sheets bitterly. “That’s all we are. That’s all we’re good for.”
In the third seat in front of him sat a dignified old gentleman. He was having tough cerebration assimilating the fact that red ants greatly deplore the existence of essence of peppermint. For sixty-odd years he had managed to struggle through life without the benefit of this information. Now it had become urgent business with him. He must tell his wife about it the first thing. No more red ants for them. Then he tried to remember if they had ever suffered from red ants.
Farther down the aisle was a man whose expression grew bleaker and bleaker. He was following a comic strip. His concentration was almost pathetic. When he arrived at the grand climax he sat as one stunned, gazing hopelessly ahead of him. One would have been led to believe that he had suddenly received a piece of extremely depressing news.
In another seat, crouched like a dog over a bone, an ingrown-looking individual was enjoying a vicarious thrill from the sex irregularities of a music teacher and a casual man of God. Satisfyingly salacious stuff. Shocking. However, this particular commuter would not discuss the sordid affair with his wife. Such topics are better left outside the family circle.
