Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 76
“Guess you’re right, Barney,” said Daniel, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“Cheer up,” Barney said, and laughed light-heartedly. “Of course I’m right. I’m always right about everything. You’ve got to admit that. And anyway the cakes and everything are all ordered. Aunt Matty would have a horrible fit. She’d die, perhaps, or bust with a deafening report.”
Daniel nodded slowly and smiled. The Furies seemed to be jigging grotesquely on his grave. Reason was reeling drunkenly to bed. A crazy parachute was dragging him over a cliff. He would let go soon. Then the drop . . .
“No,” he remarked. “I guess it would never do, especially now that the cakes have been ordered, and all that about Aunt Matty. No, Barney, we mustn’t let her bust with a deafening report.”
“I merely mentioned the cakes in passing,” grinned Barney, now thoroughly satisfied that everything was once more as he wanted it to be. “They’re fairly good at that.” He extracted one from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “Fairly good but lamentably small. Crisp! Have one. Besides we love each other.”
Daniel picked up the soiled-looking object his brother had tossed across the table and, after removing several adhering threads and a family gathering of tobacco crumbs, followed Barney’s inelegant example.
“There’s paint on it,” he said.
“I know,” agreed Barney. “There’s paint on all of them. Just slightly though.”
“You’re going to have a swell time of it tonight,” said Daniel, “if you don’t make yourself sick on a lot of truck beforehand. I’d better speak to Aunt Matty about you.”
“No, don’t,” put in Barney hastily. “Leave her entirely alone. She’s been watching me all morning as it is. And speaking of cakes, do you remember, Dan, when we were boys and I’d be locked in the room, how you used to put cakes and stuff in an old shoe and I’d pull it up to the window with a string? Well, ever since then I’ve never been able to enjoy an honestly acquired piece of cake. To be thoroughly enjoyable it must be pilfered.”
He paused and looked back on the past. Something in that old dark room seemed to evoke memories. He was secretly a little frightened himself about the party that night, and was unconsciously seeking escape in memories of the days when he and Daniel had been boys together.
“You know, Dan,” he went on wisely, “I don’t think father would have been half as hard-boiled if mother had been alive. He must have missed her like the devil . . . mother . . . not having her and all. Just a couple of damn disorderly sons. I can see things better now.”
From a sense of loyalty, a sensitive understanding of Daniel’s position, Barney always included him in the hard treatment he himself had received. It was almost as if he were trying to justify his father and at the same time to let Daniel know that he understood. Then, again, it made his childhood seem a little less unshared.
“You got all the raw deals, Barney,” said Daniel, not trusting himself to look at his brother, the closest creature to him in all God’s world. “All the tough breaks were yours, but the old man really wasn’t like that — not really.”
The room had grown quiet now. Daniel was standing at one of the windows. He had parted the curtains slightly and was looking out on the lawn. Then his gaze lifted, and he was looking out across the lawn to the far-away water-rimmed edge of the sky. And he felt himself out there amidst a vast silence and peace. He was alone out there between the sea and the sky. He was alone and resting, his problem forever solved.
What was he going to do about it? He shivered a little. Only too well he knew. He turned back to the room.
He stood contemplating the small, firm, and strangely lined face of his brother. Suddenly it came over him that this would be in all likelihood the last time he would ever see him so completely happy again. He wanted to retain that memory . . . to fix it in his mind.
“You’re sure about tonight, then, kid?” he asked diffidently.
“Sure, Daniel, dead sure,” said Barney.
“All right then,” said Daniel. “I think I’ll go and dig up June. She might do a little something about food. Get back to your leprous painting, Barney. Do your specks.”
But Barney did not return at once to his painting. He remained seated at the table running his fingers through the fine straw-colored hair that gave the appearance of straying casually about his head. From a nut-brown face, prematurely old yet hauntingly attractive, a pair of large, speculative eyes, touched with the wisdom of a child, stared into the darkness. He was repainting the years of his childhood in entirely fresh colors. He sat quite still, all hunched up and untidy, like an ancient gnome greedily poised above a bowl of fruit.
Dan had been strange just now, he felt. There had been something different about him. He had suggested a person who was going away for a long time to some shut-off place.
And Barney wondered why. Perhaps because of tonight, he decided. Daniel was all wrong. He would get over that.
Chapter Four: Dan’s Last Try
WHEN DANIEL LEFT his brother he felt as if he carried with him his own as well as Emily-Jane’s death warrant. More than that, he felt as if he were holding in his hand the broken bits of happiness of several lives.
Like a cornered animal seeking refuge, yet knowing there was no refuge, he stood in a state of growing panic on the long, rambling front veranda of the old house. He craved yet feared the comfort of June Lansing’s presence.
Far away on the other side of the Sound he could see a few scraps of white jutting up from the water like jagged teeth. A few miles out lay three islands, bare rocks sprawled out on the surface of the water like dragons resting momentarily in their slow progress seaward.
Daniel knew all of those rocks intimately, their lobster-pots and the ashes of abandoned fires, their old tin cans and remains of rotted fish — unpleasant items, perhaps, until one became used to them, until they became familiar features and loved.
Thinking of those early days of exploration with the ambitious but unsteady Barney, Daniel moved restlessly across the wide tree-studded lawn until he came to the edge of the high bluff that dropped sharply to the smooth white beach below. To the right of him twisted the Cliff Path leading to High Rock Point. At this place the bluff came to its climax — assumed the proportions of a full-fledged cliff, at the base of which lay a broken floor of rocks. There were pleasant hollows in these rocks Daniel recalled. Some were always filled with water a little warmer than the sea. Some were filled with drifting sand. Altogether an attractive haunt for children, lovers, and straying artists. To descend the cliff was no easy matter, but could be achieved by the willing of spirit and bodily activity. Most reasonably minded persons found their way to this watery retreat by way of the beach. Up from the rocks reared the bitten face of the cliff to the summit of High Rock Point, a conservative but adequate name. And from the summit of High Rock Point grew sea-loving old pine trees, scrub brush, and wiry bushes.
High Rock Point was useful as well as ornamental. It served as a place to walk to, to linger at and leave behind. It was a landmark. Local residents were proud of it, as if that mattered a rap to the cliff. However people spoke well of High Rock Point and successfully managed to keep from falling off it, which was something.
Several homes lay between the Crewes’ house and the cliffs. Daniel could see their chimneys and gables now pointing through the green of the trees. He turned and looked back at his own home. Like its owner the old structure was friendly, brown, and rambling. It was a place of many large cool rooms and of many windows looking on the sea. Those in the rear gave view to an orchard that drifted away until stopped by the woods which bordered the marshes. A broad, irregular veranda virtually ran round the house and invited rest and contentment at any hour of the day. One could follow the breeze on that veranda as well as dodge the sun. On it opened at unexpected places little doors as well as large ones, and innumerable mysterious passageways invited exploration. On the ground floor no room appeared to be on a level with another one. In this house one was forever either stepping down into a room or up out of one. A large hall extended from sea view to orchard, the doors to this hall forming the frames of two charming pictures — the greens and browns and blossomings of an old orchard at the one end, while at the other, the blue reaches of the Sound glimpsed through a park of trees.
It was a house to live in, and Daniel had lived in it nearly all the years of his life. Now as he considered its familiar lines he had a feeling that the old place had about done with him, that their long term of companionship was just about at an end.
“Oh, well,” thought Daniel, “might as well look up June. She’s in for a tough time, too.”
June Lansing watched him coming toward her across the lawn. There was something radically wrong with this man, she decided. There had been something wrong with him for weeks. Of late he had seemed to be afraid to touch her. An invisible obstacle seemed to have raised itself between them. Yet it was not quite that. The obstacle was there for Daniel alone. He seemed to be exerting some inner restraint on himself. It was a hard thing to puzzle out, yet she could not help feeling the presence of some alien and inimical influence. Daniel had changed, there was no doubting that, no pretending it away.
Ever since the arrival of Emily-Jane, Dan had begun to freeze a little, as if the life within him were chilled. He had more and more taken refuge in his own thoughts, guarding them instead of sharing them as at one time he had done so generously. Intuitively June associated with the dazzling appearance of Emily-Jane the alteration of Daniel’s attitude, not only to herself but also to the world in general.
Now she watched the long, lounging figure out of troubled eyes and wondered much behind her placid countenance. She felt that this lover of hers owed it to their mutual confidence to let her help him. At least she could listen to his worries, or whatever it was that was plaguing his usually sanguine mind. She had always heard that a good woman can help a man. Yet here she had a perfectly good man who would not let her help him. June wanted to be with Daniel in whatever he was going through. Not for a moment did she suspect his loyalty. Dan was all right as far as that was concerned. It was something else, but what?
June Lansing was a loosely connected, sprawling creature, a big girl with big bones, but shapely withal. Unlike many of her sisters her well-developed bosom was no better developed than her brain. Above her ruggedly handsome face, sprinkled with a shower of freckles, lay interesting masses of flame-colored hair. She possessed a large humorous mouth capable of twisting itself into all sorts of eloquently expressive shapes. Her nose was fine but not small and her eyes, reflecting golden-brown — the shade of a proper ale — were flecked with little speckles, and were entirely her own. No other woman had eyes quite like those of June Lansing with their funny yellow specks.
Leggily ranging back in her deck chair on the lawn, she now looked quietly up at Daniel standing above her. For a moment neither spoke, then Daniel found an aimless-sounding “Hello,” which he offered her.
“Is that the way? Is that the way?” she remonstrated. “Can’t you manage something a little better than that?”
“How are you, June?” he asked woodenly.
“So well,” she said, “I do so well that if you don’t come out of your trance and give me a kiss I won’t forget in a hurry I’ll get up and give you such a sock with this chair that you’ll go sound instead of half asleep.”
Then Daniel knelt down beside her and gave her a kiss that she was destined not to forget in a long, long time, if ever. Into it went all of his love and longing for this woman, his pent-up misery and desperation. It was almost as if he were trying to lose himself in that kiss, to hide himself in her. When he rose she looked at him with pleased surprise behind which lay a shade of fear.
“Better and better,” she said at last. “One would think you’d been deprived of a woman’s kisses for years and years, and yet all the time you’ve had me. You should call more often, Dan. I like your visits.”
“I’m an accommodating sort of cuss,” he replied, striving to appear cheerful, “but exclusive, as you doubtless know.”
“I know nothing of the kind,” she answered. “For instance, where have you been all morning and why not at my side?”
“Been at the club most of the time,” he told her. “Sat out eighteen holes with Scott, then came home and badgered Barney. We had a talk or something approaching one. Since then I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I’ve been under your nose all the time.”
“I don’t like the way you put things,” he objected. “I don’t want you under my nose. Rather have you under my foot. It sounds more magnificent than nose.”
“Now don’t try to talk to me as you would to Barney,” she said. “It’s beyond my dim comprehension how you two lunatics ever manage to exchange thought. You seem to go strolling casually round the fringes of an intelligent conversation, then suddenly abandoning hope, seek out the nearest by-path to inanity. Is it that you feel obligated to amuse each other, or befuddle each other? He told me this morning that he suspected you were a mental case, but I told him you were merely growing.”
“I’m growing, sure enough,” said Daniel. “I’m growing old at a terrific speed, but Barney doesn’t amuse me any more, June. He’s got me worried, that boy has.”
“And you’ve got me no less worried,” she replied seriously. “You should let Scott Munson plumb into your mind and let in a couple of gallons of daylight or let out a flood of darkness. Just what is your guilty secret, Daniel Crewe? Out with it, man — out with it! Something is wrong with you, all wrong, worried, and unhappy. Don’t think for a second I haven’t known. Why don’t you give me a chance? I want to help. You know — kind of keep in touch with current events.”
She stopped and her eyes opened wide as she saw the color slowly drain away beneath his tan and noticed that for the first time since she had known him his eyes refused to meet hers.
“Guilty secret?” he repeated, laughing a trifle unsteadily. “Guilty, June? Why, I have no guilty secret. And as for Scott Munson, I haven’t joined the criminal class . . . yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not—”
He stopped suddenly when he realized he was needlessly repeating that crazy phrase. There was a tightness about his throat and a hot, empty sensation at the pit of his stomach. So it was already apparent, his guilt. He was branded before the deed. Good God! And Munson had seen it, too. Even Barney had looked at him queerly. He found a handkerchief and applied it to his forehead.
“Hot, isn’t it?” he said, but June did not answer. “Or is it?” he added lamely.
“Look at me, Daniel,” commanded June.
She said no more but strove to hold him with her golden-brown eyes. She seemed to be trying to draw from his brain the trouble that was there, for now she realized that there was something seriously wrong with Daniel, something that threatened their happiness. “Go on, Dan,” she said at length. “Tell me.”
“No, June, really,” he replied, endeavoring to drive off the suspicions he feared were forming in her thoughts. “Honestly, old thing, there’s nothing. What could there be? It’s just Barney. I’m worried about him — about Barney and this girl. Barney’s an awful kid, after all, while Emily-Jane — well, she’s quite a catch, I suppose, isn’t she?” He broke off lamely and looked hopefully at June.
“Is she?” asked that young lady. “Is she, Dan? What do you think, yourself?”
“Of course she’s wonderful and all that,” he replied. “I know everyone’s strong for her, but for some reason I don’t quite fancy seeing Barney attached to such a luminary, if you get what I mean.”
“Perfectly,” said June, dryly. “And a little more. I get that you think Emily-Jane is a lovely girl, but — you’d do anything in the world to get rid of her.”
She stopped suddenly and looked searchingly at Daniel, who in turn was looking at her with the fascination of horror. Deep in his eyes she saw something — what was it? What was it she saw there? It was furtive and dangerously driven, an expression she had never seen in the eyes of any man. And it was because she knew and loved this man so well, was so close to him in thought as well as emotion, that the terrible idea had come to her. From where did it come?
“You’d do anything to get rid of her,” she repeated slowly and as if to herself. “Anything in the world.” Her hands flew out and gripped him by the shoulders. She held him roughly. He could feel the strength of her fingers through his coat. “Oh, Dan, Dan!” she said.
“What — what do you mean, June?” he faltered. “What do you see?”
She gave him a push and laughed. It sounded a trifle strained. “A touch of sun,” she said. “Daniel, I believe you’d love to see Barney married to a younger edition of Aunt Matty?”
Daniel’s smile was a little more natural this time. “He could do a lot worse,” he admitted. “The two of them get along quite happily together what with her constant recriminations and preoccupation with food. A younger edition of Aunt Matty is just what Barney needs.”
June Lansing did not seem to be listening. Her eyes were leveled on the water. What was she thinking? What suspicion had suddenly come into her mind? June’s silence was making him nervous.
“Dan,” she asked at last, her voice steady, casual, only slightly interested, “did you ever know Emily-Jane when you were at college?”
“Never knew her . . . met her . . . danced with her . . . that sort of thing . . . heard of her, of course,” Daniel succeeded in jerking out, with a fairly convincing assumption of indifference.
“And what did you hear?” she continued.
