FROM AN INKWELL

Southland Times, Issue 20445, 24 March 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

FROM AN INKWELL

THE TEETH OF ADVERSITY

(By

Brunnhilde)

A special cable to the New York Tinies stated that on January 7 in a singular law-suit in Paris, a 50-year-old nursery gardener in the North of France, accused a Parisian dentist of alienating the affections of his 47-year-old bride-to-be at the very altar. On New Y'ear’s Day, two days before the intended wedding, the bridegroom was in a taxi accident. He suffered no injury, but his false teeth were knocked out, and the plate broken. The next day his dentist agreed to make emergency repairs, and when they were concluded Monsieur X presented himself for the ceremony in perfect condition. In a conversation just before the wedding-march began, however, the bridegroom, unfortunately, laughed, the false teeth plate was cracked, and ejected on to the floor. The bride-to-be fainted. The ceremony was suspended, and the engagement subsequently broken off. The unhappy bridegroom charged the dentist with deficient repair work, as well as wrecking a prospective happy home, asking 10,000 francs damages. I venture to suggest that it was particularly fortunate laughter of the bridegroom's just before the wedding march began, and, far from suing him, he could very rightly regard his dentist as his best friend.- But human beings were always thus, when it comes to a matter of their own welfare and peace of mind. With this moral in view, I become presumptuous enough to suppose that Monsieur X did not laugh until after the ceremony. The following-is based purely on this supposition, which is a privilege of the imaginScene: The dining-room of Madame and Monsieur X, who for the purpose of this scene had better be called Peridot. The time is somewhere about lunch-time, and the room is furnished in a fashion surely beyond the means of a market-gardener. In fact, were it not for his presence in the room, it might be said that there are no evidences of the mar-ket-gardener. Even the flowers, which it might have been reasonable to consider had been grown by him, cannot be taken as conclusive, for the comparatively simple reason that there are no flowers. Monsieur Perichon, the dentist, is the other reason for my supposition that this is, indeed, the dining-room of the Peridots. The time is the present, two and a half months from New Year’s Day. The two men are partaking of luncheon, and it is obvious from the lack of constraint apparent in their table-manners, that the two are close friends. With his mouth full of cutlet, Monsieur Peridot is speaking. PERIDOT: But I tell you, my dear Jacques, things cannot go on like this. She has' made me a laughing-stock ever since that accursed wedding-day—the servants, our guests, our friends, the tradespeople who come to the door, those miserable females she visits or who visit her every day—what do they talk about but poor Angelique, and the ogre of a man who deceived her and betrayed her maiden innocence. And how? By not telling her that his perfect teeth were not given to him by God—at the best indirectly, through the hands of his dentist. To hear them speak, Jacques, you fellows are the very agents of the devil. I don’t care what you are; but you got me into this. For Heaven’s sake get me out! PERICHON: (Digging into the salt with his knife, and brandishing half a cutlet on the end of his fork to emphasize his remarks) : What did she say, Raoul, when you told her of the appalling pyorrhoea with which I had to deal, and for which extraction was the only cure? At least you went to her with a clean mouth. PERIDOT: What did she say? What didn’t she say! Apart from the fact that such disgusting details invariably fill her with nausea, invariably remind her of the depth to which she stooped in marrying me, invariably come to her as a punishment for not listening to the advice of her parents and the suit of the eminently respectable tailor who seems to have disappeared miraculously whenever I came on the scene, I believe she’d rather have me with every tooth in my head rotting out one by one. At least there’d be a chance, then, that I’d swallow some of the poison, and give her back the freedom of widowhood. (He chokes over a mouthful of food, moved by his own dismal eloquence. One can almost see the movement of the poison as it slips down his throat. But it is only his enlarged Adam’s apple, and as he sips the white wine it moves up and down pathetically.) I’m sure I’d willingly give it to her if I could.

PERICHON: I Tut, tut, man, what a pessimist you are! ■ Remember that it’s only a set of artificial : teeth when all’s said and done. Your good I lady may have a natural aversion to them ; —very natural to those fortunate people ; who are able to do without them. But I you musn’t let that upset your sense of ' values. You’re letting them prey too | heavily on your mind, far too heavily. , Preserve your sense of proportion, old man, j and you’ll find most of your troubles will ; disappear. (Gives himself a liberal second i helping which he begins to consume vigorj ously.) PERIDOT: Sense of values! Sense of proportion! (Wildly) Commend them to my wife, not to me. Is it I who stir up all this fuss, make such a song about it ? Is it I who have alienated all our friends? (Moreslowly) I tell you it’s more than a sense of values you need to take you outside at all, when you know the sight of you recalls fresh tittering whenever you appear, when you go into a theatre, preceded by a round of sniggers and such a craning of necks that you feel that the floor is rising under you and bearing you aloft on a raised platform for everyone to see. (Bitterly) What you want more than a sense of values is a hide - thicker than the skin of. an onion. And for all my experience, I’ve 1 never yet learnt to toughen the human skin. PERICHON. Poor old chap. It’s certainly hitting you hard. It’s jolly difficult to know what to say to you. PERIDOT. (Glumly) The trouble is, Jacques, that you should have done the job a little better or a little worse. If you’d been a little better, she might never have discovered it, though, Heaven knows, fool that I was, I might just as easily have removed them from my mouth in front of her transfixed gaze. That would assuredly have come as a matter of course. No, you should have made it a little worse, so that the plate would have broken before the damage was done. Why weren’t you a little less thorough? (He takes the cover off one of the dishes, and carves a generous helping of duck). PERICHON: (Rather stiffly) I presume you are joking, Raoul? PERIDOT: Eh? Oh, of course I am joking. One’s jokes are inclined to fall somewhat flat after an extensive diet on milk puddings, that’s all. .

PERICHON: (With horror) You don’t mean to say that she—that you— PERIDOT: Exactly, Jacques (wagging a leg of duck to emphasise his remarks). She does. I do. And so would you, I’ll wager, if you were Angelique’s husband—that’s if yon had false teeth, you understand. Of course, she might be a perfect angel to you if you had your own —I’m not in a position" to know. My suspicion is that angels are not all they’re cracked up to be. PERICHON: (Laying down his knife and fork. Very deliberately) Raoul, do you love this woman ? PERIDOT: Love ? Does the small boy love the nurse i who will not let him play in the sun? Does the mouse love the cat that forces it to play in order to show its infinite superiority? Do the flowers love the sun that presses down on them until they must yield their fragrance and all that they possess? I tell you, Jacques, that since I married her, my time has been too much taken up in fearing her, and what new indignity she is going to heap on me, to give a thought to love. The day after we were married, in the hotel where we were staying, when the waiter was virtually in the act of placing before me the roast duck I had ordered, my wife looked at him with her eyes of a martyr, and rebuked him sternly for such an indiscretion. ‘My husband has not his own teeth,’ she said. ‘Take that away and bring him some gruel.’ I would rather forego all the poultry in the" universe than have to go through such an experience again. That is why I have been living on pap ever since. As a matter ; of fact, to-day is the first opportunity I : have had of tasting meat—two and a half months! Two and a half centuries! And during all that time I have been waiting for this duck. (Pushing the dish towards M. Perichon) Will you finish it? No? Then permit me. (Exchanges the meatdish for his own, searching eagerly amongst the debris which must consist for the most part, of skin and bone.) PERICHON: (Who has been watching him with tears in his eyes) My poor fellow! PERIDOT: (Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand) Haven’t you any more practical suggestions to make. I’m relying on you, you know. You’re my last resort, in the role of my only surviving friend. I doubt whether even you would have survived the ridicule you’d have had to climb through to reach me, if Angelique hadn’t been at j this meeting. She’s done for the others, anyway. She’d probably have done for you. PERICHON: (Slowly) It’s pretty obvious, Raoul, that you don’t love her. PERIDOT: (With a faint trace of sarcasm, which quickly disappears as he discovers the earnestness in his friend’s face) You’re very observant. (Pause) Sorry, old chap; but ’ my nerves are getting the better of me these days. Fire ahead. (Another pause.) 1 What’s the big idea?

PERICHON: (Intently) Then why don’t you divorce her ? PERIDOT: (Blanching, then flushing vividly, but retaining his friend’s gaze) As a matter of fact, I’ve thought of that several times. But there’s always one thing stops me. I’d like to, but—l couldn’t. PERICHON: Good Heavens, man—why? PERIDOT: (Slowly) Remember my telling you that when the damned plate fell out, Angelique fainted? (Bitterly) There’d be plenty to tell you that, anyway. After she’d recovered from the swoon she added to her reproaches the idea that I’d done the thing I deliberately because I knew she had a weak heart. There hasn’t been a day since —a day? There hasn’t been an hour—that she hasn’t reminded me of it. (Long pause.) Angelique has a horror of divorce. She seems to think marriage soils a woman, but that as long as she has a husband to exhibit it sort of saves her face. (Appealingly; If you could see her expression when she mentions Madame Lambert, who filed a separation order last week, you’d know how I felt. I simply couldn’t do it. (Defiantly) I’m not a murderer of women. PERICHON: (Getting up and placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder) Raoul, I Enter Madame Peridot. It would not be a fallacy to assert that she projects herself into the room. Her husband and M. Perichon both stand awkwardly side by side, while she is sunk abjectly into the Chesterfield, fighting for her breath. | It is obvious that she is a born fighter. It is also fairly apparent that the Peridot establishment is not a basement, and that they do not use a lift. The silence becomes oppressive. PERIDOT: (Squirming) Angelique, you said you would not be home for lunch. (The' silence becomes positively suffocating.) Er—my dear, this is M. MADAME PERIDOT: (With a gust) Oh, don’t talk to me, M. Peridot! I simply cannot bear any more. (Nearly strangling herself with the obvious constraint she is placing on herself. Her husband looks as if he wishes she would not—constrain herself.) Surely I have had enough for one day! (More constraint). Everybody seems to be in league with you to upset my heart. But I won’t be so sensitive, I musn’t be! (Voice rising, if that were possible) Even when I am hurt, I must learn to hide it, not to let them see. I must not let them score these petty victories. (Agitatedly opening her eyes) For why did they take artificial respiration for this morning’s lecture, if not to humiliate me! (Shudders) The word is like a thousand nettles to me, and they know it! PERIDOT: (Starting convulsively, clutching his friend’s hand with all the abandon of a drowning man) Jacques, I rely on you. (They cling desperately, looking deep into each other’s eyes, as The Curtain Falls.)