Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 259
On another occasion Mr. Bland contrived to steal the skeleton and take it to bed with him. When the nurse pulled down the covers she nearly had a fit. Mr. Bland insisted he had just become a mother.
But as the effects of the chemical fluid in his system gradually grew less potent through a system of irrigation and dieting, these little excursions occurred at longer intervals, until finally they ceased altogether and Mr. Bland became almost a normal patient. He insisted to the end, however, that both doctors and nurses had mistaken him for the Grand Canal.
Since the episode in the woods Lorna had lived in the ultimate chambers of hell until her husband was out of danger. Although still her old, unedifying self, she showed unmistakable marks of strain as she sat by his bedside. Mr. Bland, now himself permanently, considered her the most beautiful woman in the world and rejoiced in the return of his body.
He reached out a casually searching hand and Lorna slapped it sharply, looking quickly at the half-open door as she did so.
“You’re still a dirty dog,” she told him, then bent over and placed her mouth on his.
“And that doesn’t make me a better one,” he said when their lips parted.
“I wonder,” mused Lorna.
Some time later a wild scream from outside sent Lorna, in a state of happy confusion, hurrying to the door. Opening it and looking out, she saw the skeleton of Busy tapping briskly down the hall. The sight of a skeleton dog was doing convalescent patients little if any good.
Lorna quickly collected the dog and carried him into the room. After greetings had been exchanged between master and beast, Mr. Bland rose, dressed hastily, then, after a few words of admonition, placed the dog in the bed where he promptly fell asleep. Taking Lorna by the hand, he quietly drew her from the room.
A few minutes after their unobtrusive departure the nurse arrived. When she threw back the covers of the bed her reason almost crumbled.
A small cluster of bones occupied the center of the bed.
“My God!” she cried hysterically. “The patient’s had a relapse!”
THE END
The Glorious Pool (1934)
Smith rented a cottage in Sarasota, Florida throughout the summer of 1934 and, although accompanied by his wife and two young children, managed to work on this book, sending a bunch of chapters to his publisher, Doubleday. Sadly, he died from a heart attack on 20 June that year. He’d written around half of the book; it was completed by his wife, Celia and published on 18 December 1934.
The novel tells the story of Rex Prebble, a sixty-year-old New York businessman, who calls on his mistress to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their relationship. They are both slightly decrepit and somewhat battle-scarred. Pebble inadvertently discovers that the fountain of youth happens to be in his backyard swimming pool. A magical statue of a nymph by the name of Baggage, an ornamental pool decoration, has playfully endowed the Pebble swimming pool with the power to reverse the aging process. Pebble, his wife, and his mistress take a dip and take twenty years off their lives. Complications ensue, alongside a collection of pulchritudinous ladies of assorted ages, several firemen, a bloodhound and a Japanese butler. Interestingly, the Ron Howard 1985 movie Cocoon borrowed the novel’s concept with many of the same humorous results.
This being typical Thorne Smith fare, it’s fair to say that most critics enjoyed this book, with one describing it as, “an immoral book…but the action is so dizzy, the effect is somewhat like a stage filled with lovely young women dancing with practically no clothes on…” Another exclaimed, “It wears the air of a very cockeyed Freudian dream and is as full of double entendre as a hound dog is of fleas in the quaint old southern phrase. What it has to do with literature I can’t imagine, but it is mad, bawdy, outrageous and as generally goofy as an old fashioned movie comedy.”
Still, many reviewers argued that it wasn’t perhaps as good as previous successes, with one pointing out that, “The plot grows slightly complicated and more than slightly dizzy, but it’s all pretty funny and if you like humor so broad that you could drive a truck on it, here it is.” Another simply said, “his last book is by no means his best.”
The first edition
CONTENTS
1. CONGRATULATIONS
2. NOKASHIMA AND THE BLOODHOUND
3. BAGGAGE CHECKS OUT
4. JUST A DIP AT TWILIGHT
5. ALARUMS AND INCURSIONS
6. THE MAJOR’S OLD AND RARE
7. EXIT ON HOOK AND LADDER
8. THE LOWER HALF’S A LADY
9. CROWN’S COSMOPOLITAN
10. A WALK THROUGH TOWN
11. THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
12. SUE TURNS
13. MAN INTO CHILD
14. OF HUMAN BADINAGE
15. ALL IN A NIGHT’S WORK
THORNE SMITH’S WRITING AS THORNE SMITH SAW IT
1. CONGRATULATIONS
THE OLD GENTLEMAN with the resplendently starched cuffs moved into the room. In the kindly half light of the long, low apartment he stood poised like an ancient ramrod, worn and polished from long years of campaigning. About his person clung a pleasantly subtle suggestion of good soap and even better cigars. An expensive and thoroughly masculine smell.
With meticulous care he began to remove his gloves, releasing each imprisoned finger as if the action were an independent and definitely unrelated operation, requiring individual attention.
It was rather impressive, the way he took off his gloves — that is, if one’s nerves and patience were in good working condition. But the woman sitting in one corner of the huge divan had never been heavily endowed with patience, and at present her nerves were not so good. They were very bad nerves indeed.
“If you don’t take those gloves off,” she said, “I’ll drag them off with my own two hands. Your fingers aren’t made of china. Why do you wear them, anyway? They make me feel like sweating.”
“Give full rein to your animal impulses,” suggested the old gentleman in a calm, deep voice. “You might lose a few superfluous pounds hither and yon.”
Imperturbably he returned his attention to his gloves. He took them off as if he were really fond of them. And he was fond of his gloves. Always he had been like that, a creature whose nature was so ebullient with affection that it was generous enough to include even inanimate objects — all the good things of life. Now, at the age of sixty, he still loved the world, although he had learned to regard its creatures with affectionate contempt not untinged with that inner loneliness that comes from utter disillusionment.
He had loved a lot, and to no good end, so far as he could see, had this old gentleman.
With a slight pat of approval he placed the gloves on a rangy grand piano sprawling in the shadows like one of the less unneighborly monsters of the prehistoric past. Then from under his right arm he took a package and placed it neatly beside the gloves. This he also patted, but with a somewhat ironical gesture. Having attended to these little details with fitting solemnity and obviously to his entire satisfaction, he bent two remarkably bright and penetrating eyes upon the woman who sat watching him with an expression of brooding animosity on her faded but still good-looking face. Noiselessly he moved over the heavy carpet, bent with easy gallantry, and lifting one of the woman’s fleshy hands, kissed it quite impersonally, as if it were little better than a fish. Furiously she snatched her hand away. He made little effort to retain it — no more than one would to retain a fish unless one were grim about it.
“How do you do, my antiquated trull,” he said with unruffled good- nature.
The antiquated trull — a gamely preserved woman in the unreconciled fifties — answered with restrained passion.
“Don’t call me a trull, you crumbling ruin,” she told him. “What do you think a body can do at my age?”
The old gentleman gave an unnecessarily refined cough of admonition.
“My inquiry,” he explained with exasperating patience “had no anatomical significance. Let’s skip your body for the moment and totter up to a slightly higher level, if you don’t mind.”
“I wish I could skip my body,” complained the woman “These days I can scarcely drag the thing about.”
“That’s pitiful,” replied the old gentleman unemotionally. “It’s your appetite, my dear. You eat like a wolf. It’s surprising. But to get away from that for a moment, I might suggest that you’re supposed to have also a mind not to mention a bit of a soul knocking about within that gnarled exterior of yours.”
“All I have are corns,” said the woman, gloomily surveying her feet. “Toes full of corns. They keep me busy cutting them.”
“You disgust me,” replied the old gentleman. “Honestly you do — actually disgust me.”
“Rex Pebble,” the woman told him, “don’t stand there like an old hypocrite. For twenty-five years I’ve been trying to disgust you without the least success. I’m too tired now to try any more.”
“I don’t know about that,” Mr. Pebble reminiscently observed. “At times you’ve been fairly disgusting, my dear. I might even say, revolting.”
“But not to you,” retorted the woman. “You were born demoralized.”
Mr. Pebble selected a long cigarette from a box on a low table, then lighted the slender tube as if from afar he were watching himself perform the act with profound admiration.
“Birth,” he observed through a scarf of smoke, “is a demoralizing transition. Much more so than death, which has at least the dignity of something definitely accomplished. Birth — I don’t know — it always strikes me as being so tentative and squirmy.”
“You do love to hear yourself talk,” said the woman. “Especially when you know it annoys me.”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Pebble complacently. “If you don’t care to talk, Spray, my old decrepit, what do you want to do?”
“What did I ever want to do?” she demanded. Mr. Pebble started slightly.
“Let’s not go into that,” he said with some haste. “You appall me. This is becoming most difficult. At our time of life we should sublimate sex into an anticipation of an air-cooled existence on wings.”
“Nonsense!” snapped the woman called Spray. “I’d turn in my wings without a qualm for one good shot of sex.”
“How debasing,” said Mr. Pebble. “Unadmirable in the extreme. You, Spray, are about the most unreconciled old voluptuary it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.”
“You’re just a string of long words,” Spray retorted. “And that’s all there is to you. There’s nothing else left. Not,” she added regretfully, “that it would do me any good if there was.”
“Really,” objected Mr. Pebble, “I shouldn’t be allowed to listen to this sort of thing. It’s far too low for me. My natural elasticity of spirit becomes rigid in your presence.”
“Twenty-five years ago—” began Spray.
“That reminds me,” said Mr. Pebble. “I called this evening especially to offer you my congratulations.”
“For what?” asked Spray in surprise. “For God’s sake, don’t tell me I’m another year older.”
“No,” said Mr. Pebble. “It’s not as bad as that. Tonight is the twenty- fifth anniversary of your first seduction. I’m rather sentimental about such things. For a quarter of a century now you have had the honor of being my mistress.”
“What’s honor without pleasure?” Spray demanded bluntly.
“That’s a very difficult question to answer honestly,” Mr. Pebble admitted.
“I’m your mistress in name only,” went on Spray, her eyes clouding. “I’ve outlived my usefulness.” She paused and smiled maliciously at the man. “How do you know,” she asked, “I was first seduced by you?”
“I don’t,” replied Mr. Pebble. “Knowing you as I do, I think it highly improbable. But, if you don’t mind, allow me to retain at least one harmless illusion. I’m an old man, you know.”
The woman looked up at him thoughtfully. He was tall, slim, and straight, and faultlessly groomed. About him there seemed to linger still something of the insinuating, care-free, insatiable young devil she had known and loved in her way. But his face was lined now; his fine hair was white, and his eyes, though keen and alert, gazed down at her from a lonely height as if from another world. This much she could understand, for she too was lonely now that her fires were spent. Swiftly and regret. fully she traveled back through time, and yet a little proudly. This man had loved her and kept her, and although she had failed him more than he would ever know — at least, she hoped so — she was glad to remember he had never done a deliberately unkind or dishonest act so far as she was concerned. The years washed about her, and memories drifted among them. Perhaps not admirable memories, but happy ones. And there were some she refused to admit even to herself, for women are made that way. She had been a fair, ripe figure of a girl, and she had not wasted much time. This man still meant more to her than any man who had ever come into her life, although she still regretted a certain young doctor who had been so stupidly decent her charms had left him cold. What a fool that young doctor had been. She had liked him the better for it. Her face softened as she held up a hand to the man standing above her.
“You are an old man,” she said, her voice taking on a richer quality. “A distinguished old devil of a man. Sit down. You make my corns ache.”
“To relieve those corns of yours,” said Mr. Pebble, sinking into the divan beside her, “I would grovel on the floor. Gladly would I grovel.”
“And gladly would I let you if it would do any good,” she told him. “But nothing helps corns, really. When you grow old your feet grow tired all over. They ache and make you mean.”
“I know,” he said sympathetically. “I am not without my twinges and disconcerting cracks. There is no sense in crying out against nature, yet I fiercely resent my aged body and its lost powers. The mental tranquillity that comes with age may have its compensations, but one has to be damnably philosophical to attain them. It grows tiresome at times, being philosophical.”
“Give me a cigarette,” said Spray.
He lighted her cigarette, and for a moment the woman leaned back, puffing thoughtfully.
“Tell me about it,” she said at last.”About what?” asked Rex Pebble.
“About my first official seduction,” Spray replied.
“Don’t you remember?” asked Mr. Pebble.
“I might,” she told him, “if you’d just give me a start.”
“It was quite all right,” began Mr. Pebble. “As a matter of fact, it was hardly a proper seduction at all.”
“Are any seductions proper?” she wanted to know.
“No,” admitted Mr. Pebble, “but some are highly salutary — greatly to be desired, you know. What I mean to say is that both of us knew exactly what we were doing.”
“I’m glad I didn’t think I was flying a kite,” Spray observed innocently. “First impressions are so important in such affairs.”
“As I remember it,” went on Mr. Pebble, “you seemed to be quite favorably impressed. I hope you don’t think I’m bragging.”
“A sensible pride in achievement is perfectly permissible,” said the woman. “Especially at your age. It’s all you have left to brag about.”
“You depress me,” said Mr. Pebble.
“Go on with that seduction,” Spray reminded him.
“Then don’t interrupt,” Mr. Pebble objected. “And stop making me feel my years. It was a glorious night, as I recall it. Such a night as this. There was something a little mad about it — something that made important things, such as honor and loyalty, seem quite remote and futile. I had been married to Sue about three months at the time.”
“That’s a long time for a man to remain faithful,” observed the woman.
“Sue never gave me a chance to get started,” replied Mr. Pebble without rancor. “The little devil was up to her tricks six weeks after we were married. As a matter of fact, I don’t know to this day whether I’m the father of my daughter or not. Neither does Sue. It doesn’t really matter. She’s a decent sort, anyway, and, thank God, she doesn’t take after either of us.”
“Then her father must have been a nice man,” said Spray. “He couldn’t have been you.”
“I’ve about come to that conclusion myself,” Mr. Pebble admitted judicially. “He must have been much too good for Sue. Probably didn’t even know she was married. I like to think so, at any rate.”
“You haven’t much of an opinion of either of us, I suppose?” Spray suggested.
“Not much,” agreed Mr. Pebble, “but that doesn’t keep me from liking you both — I might even go so far as to say, loving you both.”
“Even knowing we’ve both been unfaithful?” Spray asked softly.
For a moment Rex Pebble stared unseeingly into space, then passed a hand across his eyes as if to brush away an unpleasant vision.
“Even knowing that,” he replied. “It isn’t sinning that counts so much as the concealment of the sin. You, Spray, and Sue, have been fairly honest with me in so far as your natures would permit. As for me, I have scarcely had the time or inclination to be unfaithful, what with two healthy women at my disposal. You know, the flesh is the frailest of our possessions, and yet we expect it to be the strongest. I’m inclined to believe that too much idealism leads to the cruelest sort of bigotry. Where was I?”
“I was in a fair way of being seduced,” said Spray, “and you seemed to think it was a nice night for it.”
“It was,” said Mr. Pebble. “Couldn’t have been better. You were singing at some Egyptian-looking cafe then, and showing as much as the law allowed. Very good stuff it was, too — song and all. I admired your voice as well as your body.”
