CHAPTER XXIII
BACK TO NATURE
We gave them a good supper and Mr. Pierce ordered claret served withoutextra charge. By eight o'clock they were all in better humor, and whenthey'd gathered in the lobby Miss Summers gave an imitation of MarieDressler doing the Salome dance. Every now and then somebody would lookout and say it was still snowing, and with the memory of the drifts andthe cold stove in the railroad station behind them, they'd gather closeraround the fire and insist that they would go as soon as the road wascleared.
But with the exception of Mr. von Inwald, not one of them really wantedto go. As Doctor Barnes said over the news stand, each side was bluffingand wouldn't call the other, and the fellow with the most nerve wouldwin.
"And, oh, my aunt!" he said, "what a sweet disposition the von Inwaldhas! Watch him going up and banging his head against the wall!"
Everybody was charmed with the Salome dance, especially when MissSummers 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 herneck, and the card said that at eleven there would be a clambake in thekitchen for all the guests.
(The clambake was my idea, but the dog, of course, was Miss Julia's. Inever saw a woman so full of ideas, although it seems that what shouldhave 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 hadbeen ugly all evening, and now he looked like a devil. She stood facinghim with her head thrown back and her fingers twisting her ruby ring.I guessed that she was about as much surprised as anything else, peoplehaving a habit of being pleasant to her most of the time. He left herin 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 simplypicked 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 stoodglaring at each other.
"Under the circumstances, Arabella," Miss Julia said--and everybodywas listening--"we can only withdraw Mr. von Inwald's invitation to thekitchen."
"Thank you, I had not intended to go," he said furiously, and went outinto the veranda, slamming the door behind him. Mr. Jennings looked upfrom 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 hethrew all the chessmen on the floor. As Tillie said later, it would bea pity to spoil two houses with Mr. von Inwald and Mr. Jennings If theywere 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 amagazine. 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. Menare like babies. If their stomachs are all right and have plenty inthem, they're pleasant enough. It's been my experience that your crankyman'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 minuteshe got her color again. "It is hard for him," she said. "He thinks thisis all vulgar and American, and--oh, Minnie, I want to get away, and yetwhat shall I do without you to keep me sensible."
"You'll be a long ways off soon," I said, touching the ring under myhand.
"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 andhowl 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, andhe ate by my count three dozen clams. At the end, when everybody washappy 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 hehad said he still maintained: that to pretend to make people well inthe way most sanatoriums did it was sheer folly, and he felt hisresponsibility too keenly to countenance a system that was clearly wrongand that the best modern thought considered obsolete.
Miss Cobb sat up at that; she is always talking about the best modernthought.
He said that perfect health, clear skins, bright eyes--he looked at thewomen, and except for Miss Patty, there wasn't an honest complexion or abright eye in the lot--keen appetites and joy of living all depended onrational and simple living.
"Hear, hear!" said the men.
"The nearer we live to nature, the better," said Senator Biggsoracularly.
"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--andall that!" she protested.
"Surely!" Miss Summers said, holding up her beer glass. "A toast,everybody! Back to nature, sans rats, sans rouge, sans stays, sanseverything. I'll need to wear a tag with my name on it. Nobody willrecognize me!"
Mr. Pierce got up again at the head of the long kitchen table and saidhe merely meant rational living--more air, more exercise, simpler foodand better hours. It was being done now in a thousand fresh-air farms,and succeeding. Men went back to their business clearer-headed and womengrew more beautiful.
At that, what with the reaction from sitting in the cold station, andthe beer and everything, they all grew enthusiastic. Doctor Barnes madea speech, telling that he used to be puny and weak, and how he wentinto training and became a pugilist, and how he'd fought the Tennesseesomething or other--the men nodded as if they knew--and licked him inforty seconds or forty rounds, I'm not sure which. The men were standingon their chairs cheering for him, and even Mr. Jennings, who'd beensitting and not saying much, said he thought probably there wassomething in it.
They ended by agreeing to try it out for a week, beginning with themorning, when everybody was to be down for breakfast by seven-thirty.Mr. Thoburn got up and made a speech, protesting that they didn't knowwhat they were letting themselves in for, and ended up by demanding toknow if he was expected to breakfast at seven-thirty.
"Yes, or earlier," Mr. Pierce said pleasantly. "I suppose you could havesomething at seven."
"And suppose I refuse?" he retorted disagreeably.
But everybody turned on him, and said if they could do it, he could, andhe sat down again. Then somebody suggested that if they were to get upthey'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 Barneschuckled.
"We may not get rid of him," he said, "but I can promise him the mostinteresting week of his life. He'll be too busy for mischief. I'm goingto take six inches off his waist line."
Well, in a half-hour or so I had cleared away, and I went out to thelobby to lock up the news stand. Just as I opened the door from the backhall, however, I heard two people talking.
It was Miss Pat and Mr. Pierce. She was on the stairs and he in the hallbelow, 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 youtry it for a week?"
"I quite understand your motive," she said, looking down at him morepleasantly than she'd ever done, "and it's very good of you and allthat. But if you'd only left things as they were, and let us all go, andother people come--"
"That's just it," he said. "I'm told it's the bad season and nobody elsewould come until Lent. And, anyhow, it's not business to let a lot
ofpeople 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 putmyself on trial and been convicted of being a fool and a failure. I'vefailed regularly and with precision at everything I have tried. I'vebeen going around so long trying to find a place that I fit into, thatI'm scarred as with many battles. And now I'm on probation--for the lasttime. If this doesn't go, I--I--"
"What?" she asked, leaning down to him. "You'll not--"
"Oh, no," he said, "nothing dramatic, of course. I could go around thecountry 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 aliving 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 forher sympathy and her respect, knowing nothing else was coming to him.But the minute they grew a bit friendly he seemed to remember theprince, 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 mademe 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 thecigar-case key for Amanda King in the morning. He reached up and tookthe 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 shallnot be using the mineral spring--"
"Not use the mineral spring!" I repeated, stupefied.
"Certainly NOT!" he said. "This is a drugless sanatorium, Minnie, fromnow on. That's part of the theory--no drugs."
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," I snapped, "theory or no theory, you'vegot 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 inthe mineral spring, I'd be sorry to close it. But there will be plentyfor you to do. Don't you know that the day of the medicine-closet in thebath-room and the department-store patent-remedy counter is over? We'vegot sanatoriums now instead of family doctors. In other words, we put ingood 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 dayof prophylaxis. The doctors have taken a step in the right directionand are giving fewer drugs. Christian Science has abolished drugs andestablished the healer. We simply abolish the healer."
"If we're not going to use the spring-house, we might have saved theexpense of the new roof in the fall," I said bitterly.
"Not at all. For two hours or so a day the spring-house will bea rest-house--windows wide open and God's good air penetrating tofastnesses it never knew before."
"The spring will freeze!"
"Exactly. My only regret is that it is too small to skate on. Butthey'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 withthat he went to bed.