Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 262
“Your memories would overtax the strongest heart,” she told him; then asked curiously, “Has all desire vanished from your body?”
“Yes, my dear,” responded Mr. Pebble a little sadly, “but not from my brain. That’s what makes it so difficult to look upon you as you deserve — to estimate you dispassionately for what you are.”
“And what am I?” asked the girl.
“A saucy, impertinent young wanton with a single-track mind,” he told her; then added reflectively, “Not that the track doesn’t run through diverting pastures.”
“You’ve said it, old man,” replied Baggage commonly. “I need a spot of diversion.”
“I’m afraid you won’t find any here,” said Rex Pebble, “unless you’d like to have me try to improve your morals.”
“How can one improve what never existed?” Baggage wanted to know. “I never had any morals. That’s why I’ve always remained an essentially honest girl.”
“Perhaps you’re right at that,” observed Mr. Pebble. “Human beings are cluttered up with morals altogether too early in life. A wise providence should wait until our bodies are too old and weak to resent them — to get our backs up, so to speak.”
“How do you mean, get our backs up?” Baggage asked in a puzzled voice. She paused, then smiled delightedly. “Ah,” she said, “I think I see. What an odd way to put it.”.
“You don’t see at all,” declared Mr. Pebble, “but you’re quite right about having no morals. You remind me of my mistress.”
“What!” exclaimed the girl. “That old—”
“If you please,” Mr. Pebble hastily interrupted.
“Oh, all right,” said Baggage impatiently. “I’d remind you of all women if you only really knew them. At heart we’re not nearly so refined as you men try to make us, and we know a lot of words, too.”
“Don’t I know!” replied Mr. Pebble. “Not only do you know a lot of words, but you also love to use them. My life has not been overburdened by too many refined women.”
“Then you should know a lot of bad words I’ve missed,” the girl said hopefully. “Tell me some.”
Mr. Pebble looked really affronted.
“You’d better talk with my mistress,” he replied a little coldly, “or better still, with my wife.”
“I won’t have any dealings with either of those hags,” Baggage retorted. “They had all the youth of you. What have I got? Nothing but an old horrid.”
“Why don’t you join the army?” Mr. Pebble ungallantly suggested. “You should be able to get plenty of action there.”
“I’ve had my heart set on you for years,” said Baggage. “I hate to let you escape me.”
She cuddled up closer to him on the bench and put a cool arm round his neck.
“Heaven protect me,” muttered Mr. Pebble. “If that woman of mine called Spray finds us together like this there’ll be no escaping her.”
“I hope she does,” said Baggage. “I’d love to annoy her.”
“I feared as much,” said Mr. Pebble. “She is annoyed enough already.”
“Are you?” asked the girl, burrowing her small nose into his neck just behind his ear. “You smell awfully clean. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”
With a startled ejaculation Mr. Pebble broke the girl’s strangle hold and slid along the bench to momentary safety.
“You can think of the damnedest things,” he complained. “Let me point out this to you: I am a clean old man, and you are a vile young woman. We have nothing at all in common.”
“I want to bite your ear,” said the girl. “That is always a good way to start.”
“Keep your teeth to yourself,” Mr. Pebble retorted. “What are you thinking of starting, anyway?”
“Something in the nature of a seduction,” said Baggage. “That is, if you’ll stop flitting about like some nervous old bird.”
“I am a nervous old bird,” replied Rex Pebble. “A very nervous old bird, indeed. Why can’t you talk and be reasonable instead of mauling me about? You have even less consideration for a body than a professional wrestler.”
“Then consider my body for a moment,” said Baggage.
“What am I going to do with it?”
“Why don’t you take it back to your pedestal, where it belongs?” asked Mr. Pebble.
“My body belongs with yours,” replied the girl.
“Then it virtually belongs in the grave,” said Mr. Pebble. “I’m going to fall down dead if this keeps up.” “Let’s fall down together,” Baggage suggested.
“By God!” cried Rex Pebble. “If I were twenty years younger, or even ten—”
“Yes?” broke in the girl. “Go on. What would you do?”
“None of your damn business,” said Mr. Pebble. “I’d teach you a lesson.”
“How do you know you could?” Baggage challenged.
“By all that’s holy,” exclaimed Rex Pebble, now thoroughly aroused, “I will teach you a lesson if it’s my last act in life.”
He rose quickly from the bench, and ripping off his coat and vest in one ruthless movement, tossed them to the flags.
“Hurry!” cried the undismayed Baggage encouragingly. “Stick out your legs and I’ll drag your pants off.”
The hard-boiled ardor of the girl was too much for Rex Pebble. With a sudden revulsion of feeling he sank back on the bench.
“What a suggestion!” he muttered. “What a picture! Me with my legs stuck out and you dragging off my trousers. What do you think this is, a game?”
“Sure,” replied Baggage. “You can keep your shoes on. I don’t mind.”
“I’d look crisp with my shoes on,” observed Mr. Pebble. “Not to mention my socks and supporters.”
“Who’s going to worry about your feet?” demanded Baggage. “Snap off those pants.”
“Snap them off?” repeated Mr. Pebble. “Oh, my word. Everything is all off. I am definitely beyond seduction.”
“You’re no such thing,” cried the girl, flinging herself upon him and dragging out his shirt tails.
Once more the famous Pebble courage asserted itself. No woman was going to drag out his shirt tails. That was going too far. He rose from the bench and seized the girl by the shoulders. Mistaking his intentions she abandoned his shirt tails to the light summer breeze, and threw her arms round his neck. For a moment they struggled perilously on the edge of the pool, then Baggage with a low laugh wriggled from his grasp and sprang lightly away.
“Pist! She uttered in a piercing whisper. “Look behind you!”
The water of the pool parted smoothly as the even smoother body split its surface. Like a flash of silver Baggage streaked through the green depths, then dwindled and disappeared. Where had she gone? Rex Pebble wondered. Had the whole episode been a figment of his disordered imagination? Or had Nokashima mixed some curious Oriental dream-stuff in the cocktails? From cocktails to shirt tails was not a wide leap in thought. Mr. Pebble took the leap. His shirt tails were out. They were playing havoc with the Pebble poise. That was not a question of imagination. It was grim reality. And equally real was the fact that Baggage, in the flesh, had dragged those same shirt tails from their tender concealment. An impulsive wench.
Mr. Pebble realized with a pang of regret that he could not stand there forever gazing into the pool for a last glimpse of that swift silver body. Baggage had withdrawn from life as remarkably as she had appeared. He hated to turn about and face his mistress. Nevertheless, it would have to be done, or she would do it herself by force. He sighed, and without any unnecessary ostentation, collected his shirt tails and tucked them out of sight. It was not a neat job, but at least he felt less like a flag. Then slowly he turned his back on the pool and faced about to meet Spray Summers who, in spite of her feet, was bearing down upon him like a ship under full sail. Mr. Pebble noted with relief that the good lady appeared to be far more astonished than angry.
“A pretty way to be carrying on at your time of life,” she announced, a trifle winded from the unaccustomed speed of her progress. “Tell me without even attempting to lie, you senile atrocity, just who was that naked trollop you were trying to assault before you chucked her into the pool.”
“You’ve got your facts in reverse,” said Mr. Pebble. “In the first place, the trollop was trying to assault me, and in the second place, she chucked herself in the pool the moment she saw you.”
“Then why doesn’t she come up,” demanded Spray, “so I could give her a piece of my mind? Perhaps she’s drowning. I hope so.”
“It was Baggage,” said Mr. Pebble. “But she’s gone now. Look, Spray. The pedestal is vacant!”
4. JUST A DIP AT TWILIGHT
SPRAY SUMMERS LOOKED with large eyes at the pedestal upon which the wench Baggage had once stood so gracefully poised, then she sniffed with all the righteous indignation of the most moral woman in the world.
“Good riddance of bad rubbish,” she said. “What was she doing?”
“As far as I could find out,” replied Mr. Pebble, “she was trying to drag my trousers off.”
“What for?” demanded Spray.
“How should I know?” asked Mr. Pebble innocently.
“Who should know better than you?” snapped the woman. “If a man started in to drag off my pants I’d ask as a matter of interest exactly what he was after.”
“I was a little afraid of the answer,” said Rex Pebble.
“You needn’t have been,” observed Spray, witheringly. “She must simply have wanted a pair of pants. That’s the most you could offer the hussy.”
“Isn’t that quite enough?” asked Mr. Pebble.
“Empty pants never meant much in my young life,” said Spray, dropping wearily to the bench. “From the way that woman was tugging at you it looked to me as if she was after a great deal more than your pants.”
“It would look that way to you,” remarked Rex Pebble. “Aren’t you the least bit interested in the disappearance of the statue?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Spray, passing a hand across her eyes. “Odd happenings seem to be the natural order of events this evening — such as Mr. Henry eating the steak and Sue sending me slippers and you fighting with a naked woman for possession of your pants. I feel a little odd myself. It might be the cocktails, but I haven’t felt like this for years.”
Rex Pebble took her hand in his.
“I know how it is,” he said. “Almost anything might happen. But,” he added with a shrug, “nothing ever does. We just sit here growing older like a pair of spectators waiting after the curtain has dropped. There’s nothing more to see and no place new to go, yet here we sit, you with your tired feet and me with my bad heart.”
“You were wrestling with a naked woman only a minute ago,” said Spray. “Isn’t that enough for one evening?
“No,” replied Mr. Pebble decidedly, “it is not.”
“How about that precious soul of yours?” asked Spray Summers. “What’s become of that?”
“I’m afraid it never clicked,” said Rex Pebble. “Just a string of long words. Certainly, I don’t care for you with my soul, because now that you’re old I think you’re pretty awful.”
“And I think you should be chloroformed,” retorted Spray. “You sit there brooding over the past like an old buzzard on a dead cow.”
“Prettily turned,” said Mr. Pebble. “And quite right, too, but one can’t wrestle with a nude girl, even at my age, without feeling somewhat aroused.”
“It would only make me feel tired,” observed Spray.
“Obviously,” said Mr. Pebble, “but you’re not a man, and I am.”
“You’re merely the crumbling ruins of a man,” said Spray, pressing the hand that was holding hers, “but I like you just the same. You’re still so much of a fool.”
“But you don’t care for me with your soul?” continued Mr. Pebble. “Don’t tell me that.”
“No,” she said. “That sort of talk has always been ‘way above my head. I don’t understand it. If I were a young girl and I came upon you here, I know jolly well I wouldn’t fall in love with a white-haired man of sixty, no matter if I was fairly bursting with soul. I just couldn’t do it. And now I’m an old woman I don’t love you for what you are so much as for what you were — what we were together.”
“That’s it,” said Rex Pebble. “That’s it exactly. I keep calling on you and listening to your banalities not for what you are now, but because of old associations, for the things we’ve done and seen together, the good times we’ve had and the bad ones we’ve shared. Like the memory of a dead child, the past holds us together.”
“Beautifully but depressingly put,” murmured Spray. “The past is the only child I’ve ever had.”
“He was a lusty little devil,” said Mr. Pebble. “I wish we had him back.”
“Yes,” agreed Spray sadly. “He was a very amusing child and always up to mischief.” Cupping her mouth in her hands, she turned her head toward the house and shouted, “Nokashima, you heathen! We want cocktails!”
“If he isn’t singing aloud to Mr. Henry,” said Rex Pebble, “as is his custom, it’s barely possible he may have heard you.”
As if by magic Nokashima appeared, hurrying busily across the grass. On a tray he was carrying the silver shaker and two long-stemmed glasses.
“That’s a real pretty sight,” remarked Spray, growing a little esthetic at the prospect of a drink. “The white jacket, you know, and the silver shaker and the green grass and all. Only the man is vile.”
Collecting a red metal table on the way, the little servant deftly placed it before them; then, with a clever flourish, he deposited the tray on the table.
“I had drink all mixed,” he announced with satisfaction. “Nice evening, madam, for drink. Wine go good with dinner.”
“Damn me if I know how you’re still able to walk,” said Spray, “let alone to think, but for this service, Nocka, I freely forgive you the steak.”
Nokashima giggled his pleasure, gave several quick, ducking little bows, and was about to withdraw when his eyes chanced to stray across the pool. For a moment he stood staring with foolish astonishment at the vacant pedestal, then looked inquiringly from his mistress to Mr. Pebble.
“Naked lady all gone?” he asked in a hushed voice. “She no more be with us here?”
“I’m afraid not, Nocka,” said Mr. Pebble. “The naked lady seems to have taken flight.”
“Too bad,” said the Japanese sorrowfully. “She pretty good, I thought. She very nice.” Once more he was about to turn away, and once more he stopped as if remembering some trivial incident, “I saw naked lady on next lawn,” he announced quite casually. “She look like our one only this naked lady all flesh and no stone.”
“What was she doing on the next lawn?” asked Spray Summers, always alert for a little scandal.
“Oh, she just attack chauffeur,” explained the Jap indifferently. “Chauffeur called Alfred. Naked lady very determined. She get Alfred down right on grass—”
“Pretty,” interrupted Spray sardonically. “And only next door. Go on, Nocka.”
“Then Alfred spring up,” said Nokashima, “with big howl but no pants. Just drawers for Alfred.”
“The poor chap seems to have escaped not entirely without honor,” observed Mr. Pebble, “although it was just drawers for him. Were they long, Nokashima, those drawers?”
“Yes, boss, with bags,” said the Jap. “Quite funny.”
“She may have been naked,” put in Spray, hoping to cast a feeble beam of morality into the darkly unmoral jungle of her little servant’s mind, “but she was far from being a lady. She actually attempted to take off Mr. Pebble’s pants.”
“Yes, madam,” agreed Nocka sociably. “I saw that, too. Very active occasion. She pretty good.”
“Nocka,” put in Spray severely, “you can take yourself off without any more personal observations, or I’ll chuck you out on your ear.”
“Yes, madam,” murmured the small man, with one of his quick bows.
This time, when Nocka withdrew he made no attempt to turn back. He had read correctly the danger signals sparking in the eyes of madam.
“That naked lady doesn’t seem to be having much luck,” observed Mr. Pebble, looking with a faint grin after the retreating figure of the little Jap.
“She’s making progress,” replied Spray. “She succeeded in getting your shirt tails out and the chauffeur’s pants off. Anything may happen when her technique improves. Still, I contend her methods are too disconcerting. They tend to make the subject forget the object of the assault.”
“Exactly,” agreed Rex Pebble. “A man is accustomed to take the initiative in such affairs.”
“But they don’t take it often enough,” replied Spray Summers. “There should be an open season for unmarried women over a certain age.”
“From the little I’ve been able to observe of the modern young woman,” said Mr. Pebble, “assault seems no longer necessary. I have an idea there should be a closed season for men.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” replied Spray. “Your season is closed for good.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Pebble regretfully. “My hunting days are done.”
“And I am no longer hunted,” added Spray. “All I am is an old abandoned quarry whose feet have been run ragged.”
“I tell you’ what let’s do,” said Mr. Pebble, seized by a sudden impulse. “Let’s strip off our clothes and take a dip in the pool.”
“Are you craftily trying to get me to help you look for that naked lady?” demanded Spray Summers. “We haven’t been in the pool for years. The shock might kill us.”
“What if it does kill us?” replied Mr. Pebble, now reckless from many cocktails. “It would be as good a way to go out as any. My heart is ready to call it a day at the slightest provocation. Let’s take a chance. The cool water might soothe your tired feet.”
This last possibility did much to break down the woman’s resistance, which at best had never been strong.
