Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 52
“No,” he replied at last. “There seems to have been some misunderstanding. Those stairs got me. I was merely resting. It must be the weather. Somehow I feel quite worn-out this evening.”
He turned wearily, his shoulders suddenly sagged, and arranging his body in lines of utter exhaustion he dragged his feet away from the presence of the hateful person behind the counter. Lamb was not cut out to be an actor. His idea of feigning fatigue was far too elaborate. It was arresting but lacked conviction. Mr. Lamb had never progressed in such a remarkable way in the whole course of his life. He looked as if he had been mortally wounded and was blindly making his way toward human aid.
How many others had witnessed his momentary madness, he wondered. How many eyes had dilated at the sight of his humiliating posture? Had the ear chanced to see his breakdown? Lamb was filled with panic.
“Sort of a funny place to pick out for a rest,” pondered the mystified newspaper man, looking after the half-crouching figure of Mr. Lamb. “Hope he makes his car before he drops in his tracks.”
The object of his solicitude was by this time painfully approaching his automobile. He was relieved to see that the youth he had so disastrously attempted to imitate had departed, but was not at all reassured by the puzzled look of inquiry in his daughter’s eyes.
“What happens to have broken down in you, major?” the young lady demanded in a cool, censorious voice. “From that peculiar walk you appear to be practicing, I’d say you needed a hot water bottle and a dose of castor—”
“Don’t!” interrupted Mr. Lamb sharply. “You may be right. Perhaps I do, but why advertise my shame to the entire community? Would you like to have people pointing out your father as a man who has or is about to take a dose of castor-oil? Do you desire to drag your own flesh and blood through the dust of these streets? And why do you persist in calling me major?”
“As for the dust of these streets,” the girl replied, “you seem to be doing the dragging of your own free will. How came you to get your middle section all bunged up like that? And why are you crouching before me like a jackal about to spring? One would think you’d checked your stomach somewhere. And that agonized shuffle of yours. Why did you embark on that?”
Mr. Lamb looked at his daughter with hopeless eyes. With a deep sigh he opened the door to the front seat and crawled in beside her.
“My stomach got itself that way,” he explained briefly. “Don’t know exactly how it did it. Had a frightful day in the city. Dog-tired.”
Why had he ever attempted to deceive that hellish newspaper vendor with such an obviously artificial walk? It had only succeeded in making matters worse. Now he must somehow save his face. His daughter was regarding him with an undermining look of sympathy. Lamb essayed a groan. Perhaps that might help a little.
“If you go on like that,” observed Hebe, “you’ll not only be dragging yourself through the dust, but you will actually have to get a prop for your stomach to keep your head from bouncing along on your feet.”
“A horrid picture,” thought Lamb. Then to keep his daughter’s mind from dwelling any longer on the subject, he asked abruptly:
“Just who was that emaciated-looking loafer who was practically swooning all over my car just now?”
“That emaciated-looking loafer,” replied Hebe unemotionally, “might be occupying the position of your son-in-law at any minute now. You’d better be careful how low you classify him. I have an idea he was admiring my legs. So many people do.”
The physical collapse aroused himself sufficiently to consider his daughter’s legs. He had always been interested in legs.
“Is that so?” he remarked. “Well, if he wasn’t near-sighted to the point of blindness, he must have got an eyeful.”
“Father dear,” admonished the girl, “I am still but a child.”
“Not with those legs,” replied Lamb. “From the way that fellow was peering into the car you would have thought he was trying to learn your legs by heart, or to subject them to the third degree.”
“And why not?” demanded Hebe ominously. “What’s wrong with the legs?”
“Don’t like them,” said Lamb. “They’re too vigorous. Interminable legs. Do they never come to an end?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Hebe. “They’re better than Sapho’s legs. Not so frank and confiding.”
Hebe was alluding to her mother, who had unfortunately been christened Mary, and who because of her penchant for amateur dramatics, had been renamed Sapho by her daughter. The name had been gratefully accepted by Mrs. Lamb. She was strongly of the opinion that she deserved it. Mary Lamb would not have been a livable name.
“You might be right,” agreed Mr. Lamb. “Your mother’s legs seem to be pretty well all over the place these days. Yours are a little less visible at least.”
He paused to consider the subject in all its ramifications. Hebe at times was quite a relief. Only she understood how to treat unimportant matters with academic thoroughness.
“You know,” he went on reminiscently. “In spite of Sapho’s extreme leggishness, I personally don’t seem to see them any more — not as legs, if you get what I mean. But she must have had legs at one time, I suppose.”
“Certainly,” replied Hebe, “or else I wouldn’t be here.”
“Logically arrived at,” agreed Mr. Lamb, “although your way of putting it has rather indelicate implications. Your parental respect also needs a little brushing up.”
They were alone now, the other automobiles having departed, and a new flock was arriving for the next contingent of commuters. Neither father nor daughter seemed to care whether they ever reached home or not. The casual ways of the pair were quite a trial to Mrs. Lamb. They were not popular around the house.
“Speaking of legs,” observed Hebe casually, “yon’ is an upstanding pair of shafts.”
She pointed directly across the street, and Mr. Lamb’s eyes followed the direction of his inelegant daughter’s finger. The shafts referred to belonged to a pair of arms busily intent on carrying several large bundles from the delicatessen store. Lamb looked on the legs with instinctive covetousness, then, like a frightened rabbit, froze defensively to his seat. They were the legs of the ear.
“Uh-hoo!” bawled Hebe’s uncultured voice. “Uh-hoo, Sandy! Over here!”
“Don’t!” pleaded her father. “Don’t make that awful noise. You sound like some sort of animal.”
“Over here!” shouted Hebe with unabated enthusiasm. “We’ll take you home.”
The legs paused in their progress, altered their course, and came forward attractively in spite of the bundles.
“That ear would have such legs,” thought Lamb.
There was something startlingly personal about them. They were vicious legs — suggestive. Lamb decided he had never seen such demoralizingly feminine legs. And Lamb was not elated. He had a premonition of change, of some complication arising to disturb the comfortable regularity of his life. He seriously resented this. He was Lamb of Lamb & Co., a contented, successful man. He was all set — had his own interests. Why should those legs come walking into his life? With characteristic thoroughness he washed his hands of the legs. Nevertheless, washed or unwashed, the legs continued to approach.
“Swarm in,” said Hebe urgently to the girl. “Slither over the major and drop your bundles in the back.”
“Why do we all have to huddle up here in the front seat like so many immigrants?” asked Lamb inhospitably. “Let me get out. I’ll sit behind. Willingly. Gratefully.”
In spite of his protest, the legs brushed past Mr. Lamb’s knees and arranged themselves alarmingly beside him.
“This is your father — yes?” asked the girl. “Is he a nice father? He doesn’t sound very. Is he?”
“He’s too long,” answered Hebe briefly.
“And drawn-out, perhaps?” suggested the other.
“Exactly,” agreed Hebe. “That’s just it. He’s too long and drawn-out. Take his neck for instance.”
“Me take his neck!” cried her friend. “You suggest I should take your father’s neck. How amiable!”
Mr. Lamb noticed that her voice was surprisingly deep and rich and that she spoke with an insinuatingly rising inflection. An unwholesomely foreign type, he decided.
“You’re mistaken,” he hastened to assure the girl. “My daughter didn’t mean for you literally to take my neck. She meant for you merely to look at it. She seems to think it’s too long.”
The girl scrutinized Mr. Lamb’s neck avidly. Mr. Lamb thanked God that he was a cleanly man.
“Why, I love that neck!” she suddenly exclaimed, and Lamb was both relieved and outraged. “I think I could neck with that neck.”
“What sort of friend is this, Hebe?” asked Lamb. “Something imported?”
His mood was waxing retaliatory.
“Her name’s Sandra,” replied his daughter, “and in a manner of speaking she is imported. Russian on her mother’s side. A nice girl but prone to folly.”
“Name doesn’t sound quite real,” observed Lamb. “Does she work in an office?”
“Not Sandra,” he was informed. “She’s a swell model. Underwear and things.”
“You should see me,” put in Sandra enthusiastically. “Then I am at my best. Then you would make me much. But to return to the neck, tell me, Hebe, your father doesn’t neck, perhaps?”
“Not sure,” said that young lady impersonally. “I doubt it. His sex life is practically nil.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” ejaculated Lamb, rapidly changing color.
“Such a big man too,” replied the other girl sympathetically. “The poor thing must be starved for some loving.”
“Hear that, major?” said Hebe. “What you got to say?”
“I wash my hands of the both of you,” came the emphatic response. “Never did I hear such stuff. Do all young women go on nowadays like you two?”
“This is mild,” his daughter calmly informed him. “So far, we have respected your feelings.”
“But I won’t any longer,” cried Sandra tragically. “He is trying to go back on himself. He is taking a flat leave of me. I must tell all. For weeks this man has been devouring with hungry eyes the back of my head. Do not deny it, major. I have watched you in my mirror. Today I regarded him with these eyes.”
Here she cast these eyes wildly about the automobile, and Mr. Lamb became slightly dizzy. He was glad he was not driving.
“Today I observed him eye to eye, so to speak, and he wilted — wilted before my gaze. Now he would wash his hands of me. Do not let him do that, Hebe. Do not let him wash. I shall not be washed by this long Lamb, do you hear? I shall remain unwashed forever.”
On this high note of resolve the emotional young woman paused for breath and gazed magnificently about her. Mr. Lamb was filled with amazement and consternation. The complication had arrived. He was embroiled.
“You may remain unwashed forever, so far as I am concerned,” he remarked soothingly. “I shall make no attempt to wash you.”
“Good!” she exclaimed with a pleased expression. “I knew you would make me much. And now I depart.”
The car drew up before a small, neat-looking home of the modest order, and the girl quickly slipped out.
“Bring him yourself the first time, Hebe,” she said. “After that he will come alone.”
“By stealth and at night,” added Hebe.
“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Mr. Lamb retorted emphatically. “Neither alone nor accompanied do I come. The two of you have gone far in depravity. I wash—”
“For goodness’ sake, no more washing,” protested Hebe. “We’re all washed out as it is.”
The other girl stood gazing soulfully at Lamb for a moment, then she observed complacently, as if addressing the world at large, “The Long Lamb will come, never fear. I shall have him.”
“Stop talking like an adultress in a French farce and go away,” urged Lamb. “I want to get home and snatch a drink.”
“I shall make you suffer for that,” she retorted.
With an emotional swirl of her scanty skirt, Sandra turned and hurried up the walk to the small house. Mr. Lamb in spite of his resolution, followed with his eyes the retreating figure, missing no details of its trim lines.
“Well, major, what do you think of Sandy?” his daughter asked. “Fairly hot stuff, what?”
“Torrid,” Lamb agreed. “Does she always go on like that or is this some sort of maidenly pastime you two indulge in?”
Hebe grinned.
“That’s for you to find out,” she said. “As for me I’ve discovered the cause of your weird conduct when you left the train just now. Sandy had regarded you with these eyes. Brace up, major. You’re a favored man.”
“Drive on,” growled Mr. Lamb, “and for God’s sake don’t be an ass.”
Chapter IV. The Little Russet Man Appears
STRANGELY ENOUGH HEBE heeded her parent’s plainspoken admonition, which both of them knew without saying amounted to nothing less than an abject supplication. One glance at her father’s face was sufficient to convince her that his long-repressed emotional arrangements were in a state of fermenting chaos which threatened at any moment to produce revolutionary results of an impredicable nature.
Thereafter she devoted her youth and energy to the business of driving, taking full advantage the while of that great liberality the law extends to the young and not unfavored daughters of prominent citizens of all well-regulated communities. Lamb was too busily engaged in washing his hands of practically everything to notice his close and constant companionship with painful injury and sudden death.
Hebe drove. She drove in the direction of that place in which Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb sought refuge and repose after the contemplative quietude of a short yet most unprofitable day.
As if preordained by a class-conscious God with an eye to real estate values, this fair mansion was situated on the financially correct side of the tracks.
In most commuting towns of any recognized worth there are always two sides of which the tracks serve as a line of demarcation. There is the right side and the wrong side. Translated into terms of modern American idealism, this means, the rich side and the side that hopes to be rich.
On either side of the tracks there sometimes extends a quarter — a blot — that is not rich, will never be rich, and makes no visible effort to be rich. The blot thrives squalidly amid its fights, sufferings, and enjoyments. It is fundamentally superior to either side of the tracks, because it envies neither, regarding all members of the community as legitimate prey.
Properly speaking, however, those who dwell on one side of the tracks form a separate and distinct race from those who have their being on the other side. The rich side is naturally of finer clay, superior morally, physically and intellectually. And it is the bounden duty of those who dwell on the rich side to defend its borders against the untimely incursions of the financially striving side. Between the two a silently genteel yet none the less bitter guerrilla warfare is in constant progress. No pickets are visible, no orders to halt are audibly voiced, no hostilities are openly exchanged. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense of vigilance. They shall not pass, is the order of the day.
By nature Mr. Lamb was too indolent and skeptical to care a rap about either side. By the accident of birth and inherited wealth he was well above the battle. One side of the tracks was as good to him as the other. He lived where he did, not from his own choice, but because the house had been left to him by those who had gone before after having lived in it themselves and had their fill of it. The modern plumbing and other embellishments were of Mrs. Lamb’s contrivance. Like other members of her ilk, she believed, for some obscure reason, that the rich side of the tracks was also the aristocratic side. She was one of those aspiring wives who would have ruined her husband’s health, hopes, and happiness in her efforts to drive him across the tracks to the right side, had Fate seen fit to have placed her on the wrong.
If Mr. Lamb was most entirely perfect in the eyes of his friends and associates, it was due solely to his profound disregard of the finer shades of class distinction, his complete indifference as to what was taking place about him in his sacrosanct community. He should have been a civil leader, the chairman of committees, the protector of the established order of things, whereas he devoted most of his time to making a fine art of comfortable if grotesque sitting. This state of affairs, to put it mildly, was most distasteful to Mrs. Lamb. Consequently Lamb enjoyed it the more. Silently, some might say meanly, he observed her irritation. He studied it analytically. He also enjoyed her dizzy attempts to make up in herself for the semi-recumbency of her husband.
Once when Lamb had elevated himself in an endeavor to rid the community of Home Defense lecturers, reformers, and other practitioners of a warped and questionable patriotism, his wife had been so outraged that she had withdrawn to Europe for the duration of three months, much to the peace and gaiety of the entire household. Lamb and Hebe often alluded half despondently to the unguarded naturalness of existence during that pleasant period.
Hebe drove. She drove a winding way along a picturesque, semi-rustic road leading to that desirable eminence from which the abode of Lamb looked down on both sides of the tracks through casements that had framed several generations of watchers, for the ancestral Lambs had always been estate-minded and land-possessed.
Mrs. Lamb objected to the antiquity of the house, but she had to admit the distinction of its location and the advantages of its ample grounds. She had endeavored to make Lamb build. Lamb had studied her darkly for the full space of a minute, and there the endeavor had languished, never to be renewed. He had merely grinned, elevated his knees a trifle higher, and sighted at her over them. That had been quite enough. The subject was definitely closed.
