Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 204
Once more she was clothed and in her right mind. Her thoughts turned to Mr. Jones. She would return to the house and look for him.
When she entered the long, low lounging room she found herself plunged into a scene that rivaled the beach in indignation if not in action. Little Arthur appeared to be occupying none too happily the center of the stage. At least five excited nudes were pointing at him accusingly. Mr. Jones was endeavoring to bring the vociferating members to order while Peter, Josephine, Aspirin Liz, and Bishop Waller were lending attentive ears. As Peter regarded Little Arthur, Yolanda read in his expression a mixture of admiration and pride. What had the little man done thus to gain the approval of his master and the enmity of this small but earnest group of bodies?
One of the first things Yolanda noticed was that Little Arthur’s accusers seemed to be finding difficulty in putting their thoughts into intelligibly articulate words. It was as if they had found a bottle somewhere and punished it severely. An amazing amount of slurring and mouthing was going on. Several of these angry people were almost whistling. Some words never managed to get themselves pronounced at all, others only partially, imperfectly, much as if they were swimming under water.
Her interest in this little scene made Yolanda forget for the moment her own distress and indignation. That she was an unassaulted lady no longer seemed to matter. Here was real anguish. Here was the stuff of authentic drama. Mr. Jones was speaking.
“Little Arthur,” he was saying in a voice which strove to express patience, “because members of a nudist colony are required to remove their clothes it does not follow that they must also remove their teeth if they chance to be wearing the removable type.”
So this was the explanation of the mouthing. Yolanda shuddered a little. The five indignant nudes by sound and gesture made it clear that they were in complete agreement with their leader.
“Then why do they go sleeping about the place with their mouths open?” demanded Little Arthur.
“Little Arthur,” continued Jones, “you don’t seem to realize that a person has a right to sleep with his or her mouth in any desired position. Shut, of course, is more acceptable to the public, but the fact remains that an individual can sleep with his mouth set grim or gay, swinging like a gate or closed like a trap.”
“According to his theory,” put in a large gentleman indistinctly, “no open mouth in the colony would be safe.”
“Some of ’em weren’t open,” Little Arthur said, not without pride. “They was almost gritted. That’s where I showed my craft.”
Cries of rage greeted this bragging statement.
“No doubt you were deft,” agreed Mr. Jones equably. “I cannot help admiring your technique myself, but it was used in a very low, a very degrading manner. You should leave other persons’ mouths alone as well as what is in them, Little Arthur.
“In Gord’s name, Mr. Jones,” exclaimed the exasperated little felon, “what’s a high-class pickpocket going to do with a lot of naked thighs? He’s gotter have some outlet.”
“As regards the naked thighs,” observed Mr. Jones, “your question rather embarrasses me. I would suggest that you consult the owner of the thighs. Mouths, however, are different. Once more I say, leave them entirely alone. I must protect my guests and their teeth.”
“I had ter keep my hand in, didn’t I?” demanded Little Arthur.
“You didn’t have to keep it in my mouth,” lisped a lady with artificially flaming hair.
“Nor in mine,” cried the large gentleman.
“Why don’t you keep your hand in your own mouth?” asked a third nude.
“What would be the fun in that?” retorted the small crook.
“You might snap your tongue out,” suggested Jo.
“Yes,” put in Peter, “or bite off your pilfering fingers. Like Mr. Jones here, I admire your craftsmanship, Little Arthur, but I’d hate to let it be noised abroad that I employed a tooth-snatching valet. A pickpocket is bad enough, but a pick-mouth is just too much.”
“You’re all against me,” Little Arthur replied sorrowfully.
“I’m not,” announced Aspirin Liz surprisingly. “Although I don’t hold with mouth-picking or tooth-snatching, I do know that a habit of years can’t be dropped in a day.”
“But teeth, my dear lady!” protested Mr. Jones. “Of all things teeth! Let him steal anything in God’s world but them. I’ll tuck coins about the place for him to snatch if he’ll only leave teeth alone.”
“I’ll give him five dollars if he’ll give me mine back,” said the large man.
“Don’t want money,” Little Arthur replied. “Don’t want teeth. Just a little sport.”
“It’s about the lowest form of sport ever indulged in by man,” commented Mr. Jones to the group. “In my mind it’s worse than body-snatching. He leaves his victims bereft of pride and self-respect. Listen to the inhuman sounds the poor things are making.”
“I wish we didn’t have to,” replied Jo.
“So do I,” agreed Mr. Jones, “but this question of teeth has to be settled for once and all.”
Bishop Waller spoke for the first time. It was clear to see he was deeply moved.
“Not only is the theft of the teeth a crime in the eyes of God,” he said, “but also it is in shockingly bad taste. Of the two, bad taste is the harder to forgive. Little Arthur, I thought you had resolved to mend your ways.”
“Bishop,” replied the little man contritely, “you don’t understand. You can no more keep from trying to save my soul than I can from picking your pockets while you’re doing it. Here’s one of your buttons.”
“Oh, miserable sinner!” cried the Bishop, snatching the button from the extended hand. “Now where does this belong?”
Jo promptly started to look.
“There, perhaps,” she said, pointing.
With a startled exclamation Bishop Waller turned sharply away.
“I will find the spot myself,” he said. “You take my question too literally.”
“It was merely a suggestion,” replied Jo.
“A most improper one,” muttered the Bishop.
“From where I was standing,” said Jo, “it was the most helpful one to make.”
“As bad as that?” murmured Bishop Waller, his eyes darting over his jaegers. “I must go in search of a pin. Perhaps I might even find a needle and a bit of thread. Pardon me.”
Stepping cautiously, the Bishop ascended the stairs to interview the housekeeper.
“To return to these teeth — —” began Mr. Jones.
“Must we?” inquired Jo.
“I wish somehow,” said Peter, “we could manage to drop the entire subject.”
“I say return the teeth to their various mouths,” suggested Jo, “and hang up an old pair of trousers for Little Arthur to play with. Put things in the pockets.”
“He might try to wear them,” said Mr. Jones doubtfully.
“Swear I won’t, mister,” Little Arthur pleaded. “I’ll just creep up on them, like. It will give a guy something to do. My eyes are fair tired of human flesh.”
“Will you restore the teeth to their rightful owners?”
“I’ll even put ’em back in their mouths,” replied the small dip eagerly.
Howls of indignation from the wronged nudes.
“I’ll click my own teeth back, if you please,” said the large gentleman with great dignity.
“Click,” observed Mr. Jones. “My God, how descriptive!”
He approached the silent Yolanda. “Come,” he continued. “I promised to show you the hot houses.”
As they strolled across the lawn, Yolanda made her protest.
“I undressed on the beach,” she told him, “and not a man made the slightest advance. They were very rough.”
“Don’t let that worry you at all,” said Mr. Jones smoothly. “I’ll see that something is done about it if I have to do it myself.”
Yolanda’s wounded vanity seemed somewhat appeased.
The breeze was warm that night. A moist breeze drifting in from the sea. It trailed scarves of mist behind it and was faintly edged with the tang of salt. The water breathed quietly against the beach. It felt cool to Jo’s feet as it stirred round them.
“So you still insist on making me an honest woman?” she said to Peter who was dawdling by her side.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to attempt that,” he told her, “but I am going to marry you good and proper the first damn chance I get.”
“In spite of my depravity?”
“Because of it, Jo.”
“But suppose you discover I’m not really bad?”
“By that time we’ll be too old for it to make any difference, my girl.”
“I really believe you’re a man of low moral worth, Peter. A wicked man — not good at all.”
“Maybe we’re both good and don’t know it.”
“Wonder how one ever finds out?”
“I don’t quite know, Jo. You just muddle along together. No divided loyalties. No cheap evasions. And when you’re through, you quit clean and cold if and when necessary.”
“But, Peter, a man and a woman never feel that way about things at the same time.”
“Then one of them has to stand the rap. It’s better than ducking down alleys — happier in the long run. Habit and self-interest are often mistaken for kindness, Josephine.”
“Perhaps we’ll last forever, Peter. It does happen, you know . . . at rare intervals.”
Peter looked thoughtfully at the girl, then turned his eyes to the dark water. They were a little sad, those eyes, and touched with premature wisdom. Love did not last like that — or rarely ever. Most men were on the prowl and so many women felt the need of the prowler. It was the old army game. Quite as it should be. Of course, some couples sat at home at night and hated each other and listened to the radio and went to bed quietly but bitterly, each wanting to be wanted, yet concealing their frozen longings behind commonplace remarks. This business of romance — Peter was unable to figure it out. It was like a moth in the house, only it made holes in human emotions instead of clothes and things. He turned back to the small white figure and dropped two hands on the cool shoulders.
Then quite suddenly Jo found herself sobbing quietly all over Peter’s shoulder. Perhaps he had communicated to her something of his feeling of the impermanence of things. Perhaps she felt, too, that desire itself had a longer life than passion between individuals — it was a ruggeder product, far harder to tame and forget. And somehow it made such a mess of things.
“I love you now, Peter,” she murmured. “That’s all I know.”
“That’s about all anyone can say, little chap,” Peter answered as he gently shook her. “I’m very much obliged.”
“You should be,” she retorted. “Haven’t I given you the best years of my life?”
“Those years are still to be lived, thank God,” said Peter. “We’ll wangle the best out of them — what say you?”
“I say you’re almost pushing me out to sea,” complained Jo. “Drag me back to shore or drown me and get it over with.”
As they walked back across the lawn, Jo asked a disconcerting question: “What about Yolanda?”
Involuntarily Peter glanced up at her window, then stopped.
“Why, there’s a man in her room,” he said. “Look, Jo.”
Jo looked. Outlined against the drawn shade were the figures of a man and a woman. They seemed to know each other quite well. Jo smiled cheerfully in the darkness.
“She seems to have solved your problem for you,” she said.
“Think I should do anything about it?” asked Peter. “This is more of a surprise than a blow, I confess.”
“What can you do about it?” asked Jo in return. “They seem to know what to do about it without your help.”
“Shouldn’t I at least shout?” said Peter. “Or ask them to move?”
“Forget it,” replied Jo briefly. “The leader of a nudist colony has his hands full.”
“Not to mention arms,” said Peter. “Just the same, Jo, I’m one hell of a chaperon.”
“Stupid,” she replied, “if you knew women as a woman does, you’d know that each one cuddles within her the sparks of her own ruination.”
Slowly they moved across the lawn.
“Is the dew upon your feet?” asked Peter presently.
“Great chunks of it,” said Jo.
“Sleepy?” asked Peter.
“Not a bit,” said Jo.
“Good,” the man replied. “Let’s turn in.”
“Why, Mr. Van Dyck, you say such things.”
“Yes,” replied Peter, “I am quite a card.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sound and Fury
AT BREAKFAST THE following morning Mr. Jones made an announcement. The nudists greeted it with cheers. Not so Peter and his party. They were considerably alarmed, especially Little Arthur and Bishop Waller.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Mr. Jones, rising and standing with one brown, slim hand resting lightly on the table. “Fellow nudists. It is high time we interrupted our nakedness and returned to the animalism of the conventional life we have abandoned.”
By this time a majority of the nudists in their spontaneous enthusiasm were stamping on the floor and tinkling their glasses with their knives. Mr. Jones waited modestly until the noise subsided.
“Spring is now well advanced,” he continued, “and in this connection it is generally agreed among poets that spring is the most immoral of the four seasons. Personally I have never found any great difference between them. However, there, might be something in it.”
“Mr. Jones,” called out the philosopher, whose name happened to be Horace Sampson, “spring is perhaps the most suggestive of seasons. It is not as immoral as summer. Summer is notoriously immoral. In the short course of a northern summer the Eskimos go mad with love, I am told.”
“If I had to love an Eskimo,” a slight blonde lady remarked, “I think I’d go mad myself.”
“The season’s so short up here,” stated a lean-looking gentleman, “I shouldn’t think they’d have time to get out of their furs.”
“They manage, nevertheless,” replied Mr. Sampson.
“Perhaps they start to undress somewhere towards the breaking up of winter,” someone suggested.
“I confess,” said Mr. Jones, “that I do not know the technique of the Eskimo in such matters.”
“You surprise me,” observed Peter. “It is difficult to believe that the women of any race or clime have quite escaped the liberating influence of your Civilized Occasions.”
“I can’t be everywhere at once,” replied Mr. Jones.
Color was mounting to Yolanda’s cheeks. She looked a little frightened.
“Well,” put in Jo, “when this place is pinched, as eventually it will be, you can hurry right up to Alaska and go mad with the Eskimos.”
“I shall bear that in mind,” replied the leader. “Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Not at all,” Josephine replied. “You probably had it in mind already.”
“Spring was always my most difficult season,” announced a still pretty woman with large dark eyes. “I never did succeed in getting through a spring season without saying yes to someone.”
“It was your generous nature, my dear,” said a lady sitting opposite her. “I always found summer almost unavoidable.”
“This is scarcely the time for tender confessions,” remarked Mr. Jones. “If there are no further suggestions, I’ll continue.”
“By all means,” rumbled Mr. Sampson. “Sorry I started the discussion.”
“I have noticed,” resumed Mr. Jones, “a growing tendency to nervousness and strain and an almost flagrant infraction of the regulations governing the conduct of our members.”
“I just couldn’t help it, Mr. Jones,” a young lady called out. “That man kept on pestering me until — —”
“No specific reference was implied, Miss Joyce,” Mr. Jones interrupted hastily. “But to continue. Quarrels breaking out between the male and female members of the colony have a way of ending up altogether too amicably. Of course, there are a number of you who could still hold out for several months.”
“Indefinitely, sir,” said an elderly gentleman.
“Splendid,” said Mr. Jones. “However, all things considered, I feel that it would be best to declare a one-week Season of Forgetfulness almost immediately. It will open tomorrow night at dinner and close, for those who have been able to stick it out, just one week later.”
More cheers and thumping. The elderly gentleman who could hold out indefinitely did not join in the applause.
“For those of you who don’t know,” continued Mr. Jones, “everything is tolerated — nay, encouraged — during the Season of Forgetfulness — everything save murder. It is, of course, understood that husbands and wives cannot base divorce proceedings on the grounds of each other’s conduct during this season. Nor can any member withdraw from the colony as a result of it. It is hoped, on the other hand, that all members will lend their willing support and do everything in their power to make this orgy a success. If each one of us does his or her bit, if each one of us gives the worst that is in him, if we all band together in a spirit of libidinous abandon, I feel that we cannot fail. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you.”
