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BACK TO NATURE
We gave them a good supper and Mr. Pierce ordered claret served
without extra charge. By eight o'clock they were all in better
humor, and when they'd gathered in the lobby Miss Summers gave an
imitation of Marie Dressler doing the Salome dance. Every now
and then somebody would look out and say it was still snowing,
and with the memory of the drifts and the cold stove in the
railroad station behind them, they'd gather closer around the
fire and insist that they would go as soon as the road was
cleared.
But with the exception of Mr. von Inwald, not one of them really
wanted to go. As Doctor Barnes said over the news stand, each
side was bluffing and wouldn't call the other, and the fellow
with the most nerve would win.
"And, oh, my aunt!" he said, "what a sweet disposition
the von Inwald has! Watch him going up and banging his head
against the wall!"
Everybody was charmed with the Salome dance, especially when Miss
Summers drew the cover off a meat platter she'd been dancing
around, and there was Arabella sitting on her hind legs, with a
card tied to her neck, and the card said that at eleven there
would be a clambake in the kitchen for all the guests.
(The clambake was my idea, but the dog, of course, was Miss
Julia's. I never saw a woman so full of ideas, although it seems
that what should have been on the platter was the head of
somebody or other.)
Just after the dance I saw Mr. von Inwald talking to Miss Patty.
He had been ugly all evening, and now he looked like a devil.
She stood facing him with her head thrown back and her fingers
twisting her ruby ring. I guessed that she was about as much
surprised as anything else, people having a habit of being
pleasant to her most of the time. He left her in a rage, and as
he went he collided with Arabella and kicked her. Miss Patty
went white but Miss Summers was not a bit put out. She
simply picked up the howling dog and confronted Mr. von Inwald.
"Perhaps you didn't notice," she said sweetly, "but you kicked my
dog."
"Why don't you keep her out of the way?" he snarled, and they
stood glaring at each other.
"Under the circumstances, Arabella," Miss Julia said--and
everybody was listening--"we can only withdraw Mr. von Inwald's
invitation to the kitchen."
"Thank you, I had not intended to go," he said furiously, and
went out into the veranda, slamming the door behind him. Mr.
Jennings looked up from where he was playing chess by the fire
and nodded at Miss Summers.
"Serves him right for his temper!" he said.
"Checkmate!" said the bishop.
Mr. Jennings turned and glared at the board. Then with one sweep
he threw all the chessmen on the floor. As Tillie said later, it
would be a pity to spoil two houses with Mr. von Inwald and Mr.
Jennings If they were in the same family, they could work it off
on each other.
Miss Patty came down to the news stand and pretended to hunt
for a magazine. I reached over and stroked her hand. "Don't
take it too hard, dearie," I said. "He's put out to-night, and
maybe he isn't well. Men are like babies. If their stomachs are
all right and have plenty in them, they're pleasant enough. It's
been my experience that your cranky man's a sick man."
"I don't think he is sick, Minnie," she said, with a catch in her
voice. "I--I think he is just dev--devilish!"
Well, I thought that too, so I just stroked her hand, and after a
minute she got her color again. "It is hard for him," she said.
"He thinks this is all vulgar and American, and--oh, Minnie, I
want to get away, and yet what shall I do without you to keep me
sensible."
"You'll be a long ways off soon," I said, touching the ring under
my hand.
"I wish you could come with me," she said, but I shook my head.
"Here is one dog that isn't going to sit under any rich man's
table and howl for crumbs," I answered. "If he kicked ME, I'd
bite him."
At eleven o'clock we had the clambake with beer in the
kitchen, and Mr. von Inwald came, after all. They were really
very cheerful, all of them. Doctor Barnes insisted that Senator
Biggs must not fast any longer, and he ate by my count three
dozen clams. At the end, when everybody was happy and everything
forgiven, Mr. Pierce got up and made a speech.
He said he was sorry for what had happened that day, but that
much he had said he still maintained: that to pretend to make
people well in the way most sanatoriums did it was sheer folly,
and he felt his responsibility too keenly to countenance a system
that was clearly wrong and that the best modern thought
considered obsolete.
Miss Cobb sat up at that; she is always talking about the best
modern thought.
He said that perfect health, clear skins, bright eyes--he looked
at the women, and except for Miss Patty, there wasn't an honest
complexion or a bright eye in the lot--keen appetites and joy of
living all depended on rational and simple living.
"Hear, hear!" said the men.
"The nearer we live to nature, the better," said Senator Biggs
oracularly.
"Back to nature," shouted Mr. Moody through a clam.
"Exactly," Mr. Pierce said, smiling.
Mrs. Moody looked alarmed. "You don't mean doing without
clothes--and all that!" she protested.
"Surely!" Miss Summers said, holding up her beer glass. "A
toast, everybody! Back to nature, sans rats, sans rouge, sans
stays, sans everything. I'll need to wear a tag with my name on
it. Nobody will recognize me!"
Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long kitchen table and
said he merely meant rational living--more air, more exercise,
simpler food and better hours. It was being done now in a
thousand fresh-air farms, and succeeding. Men went back to their
business clearer-headed and women grew more beautiful.
At that, what with the reaction from sitting in the cold station,
and the beer and everything, they all grew enthusiastic. Doctor
Barnes made a speech, telling that he used to be puny and weak,
and how he went into training and became a pugilist, and how he'd
fought the Tennessee something or other--the men nodded as if
they knew--and licked him in forty seconds or forty rounds,
I'm not sure which. The men were standing on their chairs
cheering for him, and even Mr. Jennings, who'd been sitting and
not saying much, said he thought probably there was something in
it.
They ended by agreeing to try it out for a week, beginning with
the morning, when everybody was to be down for breakfast by
seven-thirty. Mr. Thoburn got up and made a speech, protesting
that they didn't know what they were letting themselves in for,
and ended up by demanding to know if he was expected to breakfast
at seven-thirty.
"Yes, or earlier," Mr. Pierce said pleasantly. "I suppose you
could have something at seven."
"And suppose I refuse?" he retorted disagreeably.
But everybody turned on him, and said if they could do it, he
could, and he sat down again. Then somebody suggested that if
they were to get up they'd have to go to bed, and the party broke
up.
Doctor Barnes helped me gather up the clam shells and the plates.
"It's a risky business," he said. "To-night doesn't mean
anything; they're carried away by the reaction and the
desire for something new. The next week will tell the tale."
"If we could only get rid of Mr. Thoburn!" I exclaimed.
Doctor Barnes chuckled.
"We may not get rid of him," he said, "but I can promise him the
most interesting week of his life. He'll be too busy for
mischief. I'm going to take six inches off his waist line."
Well, in a half-hour or so I had cleared away, and I went out to
the lobby to lock up the news stand. Just as I opened the door
from the back hall, however, I heard two people talking.
It was Miss Pat and Mr. Pierce. She was on the stairs and he in
the hall below, looking up.
"I don't WANT to stay!" she was saying.
"But don't you see?" he argued. "If you go, the others will.
Can't you try it for a week?"
"I quite understand your motive," she said, looking down at him
more pleasantly than she'd ever done, "and it's very good of you
and all that. But if you'd only left things as they were, and
let us all go, and other people come--"
"That's just it," he said. "I'm told it's the bad season
and nobody else would come until Lent. And, anyhow, it's not
business to let a lot of people go away mad. It gives the place
a black eye."
"Dear me," she said, "how businesslike you are growing!"
He went over close to the stairs and dropped his voice.
"If you want the bitter truth," he went on, trying to smile,
"I've put myself on trial and been convicted of being a fool and
a failure. I've failed regularly and with precision at
everything I have tried. I've been going around so long trying
to find a place that I fit into, that I'm scarred as with many
battles. And now I'm on probation--for the last time. If this
doesn't go, I"
"What?" she asked, leaning down to him. "You'll not--"
"Oh, no," he said, "nothing dramatic, of course. I could go
around the country in a buggy selling lightning-rods--"
She drew herself back as if she resented his refusal of her
sympathy.
"Or open a saloon in the Philippines!" he finished mockingly.
"There's a living in that."
"You are impossible," she said, and turned away.
Oh, I haven't any excuse to make for him! I think he was just
hungry for her sympathy and her respect, knowing nothing else was
coming to him. But the minute they grew a bit friendly he seemed
to remember the prince, and that, according to his idea of it,
she was selling herself, and he would draw off and look at her in
a mocking unhappy way that made me want to slap him.
He watched her up the stairs and then turned and walked to the
fire, with his hands in his pockets and his head down.
I closed the news stand and he came over just as I was hanging up
the cigar-case key for Amanda King in the morning. He reached up
and took the key off its nail.
"I'll keep that," he said. "It's no tobacco after this, Minnie."
"You can't keep them here, then," I retorted. "They've got to
smoke; it's the only work they do."
"We'll see," he said quietly. "And--oh, yes, Minnie, now that we
shall not be using the mineral spring--"
"Not use the mineral spring!" I repeated, stupefied.
"Certainly NOT!" he said. "This is a drugless sanatorium,
Minnie, from now on. That's part of the theory--no drugs."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I snapped, "theory or no theory,
you've got to have drugs. No theory that I ever heard of is
going to cure Mr. Moody's indigestion and Miss Cobb's neuralgia."
"They won't have indigestion and neuralgia."
"Or Amanda King's toothache."
"We won't have Amanda King."
He put his elbow on the stand and smiled at me.
"Listen, Minnie," he said. "If you hadn't been wasting your
abilities in the mineral spring, I'd be sorry to close it. But
there will be plenty for you to do. Don't you know that the day
of the medicine-closet in the bath-room and the department-store
patent-remedy counter is over? We've got sanatoriums now instead
of family doctors. In other words, we put in good sanitation
systems and don't need the plumber and his repair kit."
"The pharmacy?" I said between my teeth.
"Closed also. No medicine, Minnie. That's our slogan. This is
the day of prophylaxis. The doctors have taken a step in the
right direction and are giving fewer drugs. Christian Science
has abolished drugs and established the healer. We simply
abolish the healer."
"If we're not going to use the spring-house, we might have saved
the expense of the new roof in the fall," I said bitterly.
"Not at all. For two hours or so a day the spring-house will be
a rest-house--windows wide open and God's good air penetrating to
fastnesses it never knew before."
"The spring will freeze!"
"Exactly. My only regret is that it is too small to skate on.
But they'll have the ice pond."
"When I see Mr. Moody skating on the ice pond," I said
sarcastically, "I'll see Mrs. Moody dead with the shock on the
bank."
"Not at all," he replied calmly. "You'll see her skating, too."
And with that he went to bed.
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