Evening Star Newspaper, February 16, 1930, Page 96

12 Have Letters for It May Be That You Have Seen Marjorie Recently—The Author, Edward L. McKenna, Is Searching for Her. Here Is an Unusual Story—As All the Stories of the O. Henry Memorial Awards Are Unusual—You Will Not Forget “I Have Letters for Marjorie.” TUART HARKNESS was really my brother Jim's friend at first. They got acquainted in the 1911 game when Stuart put my brother in the hospital. He came around to see Jim that night and sent him a wagon-load of cigarettes and afterward, when Stuart made the second All-American, my brother sent him a wire congratulating him. Nobody knows more about a defensive half than the tackle on the other side of the line opposite him, and we heard plenty about how good Stuart Harkness Was. So when Stuart came up to the frat house and asked whether we had any one of my name he didn’t seem like a stranger. He stood there in the doorway blinking a little but not a bit fussed. “I'm Stuart Harkness,” he said. I heard him from the stairs. “Why, sure!” I said, going over to him. *“Come on in. Jim’s in South America. “Yes” he said grinning. “You look some- thing like him but you're not so big.” I sup- pose pretty nearly any one looked small to Stuart and I was only 19 then. He came in and I introduced him to the living room loafers and we fanned foot ball for a while. And I asked him to stay to dinner and he did. He was in the bond business, like most of the All-Americans. Looked it and acted it. He laughed easily and not apologet- jcally at everybody's jokes, including his own. After dinner he was persuaded to play a little quarter-limit. He played a lively conversa- tional game. It was fun to play with him and he could tell you what the draw had been for the last five consecutive deals. When we quit he had about $14. “Hate to take advantage of you young boys, but education’s expensive. Teach you not to gamble.” As he left he said to me: “Where else could I go for the same money and have such a good time You've got a nice bunch.' My outfit has no chapter here.” “Yes, I know. I saw your pin,” I told him. “I'm & member of the Colosseum downtown. It's an awful tomb. Tell you what—you give me a ring tomorrow—Kidding, Smallfoot and Company, Broad, One Million and we’ll have some dinner down there and you can see for yourself.” He met me at the Colosseum and he had seats for the “Follies” afterward and I don't think he salvaged much of his $14—and I don't think he meant to. After then I saw him pretty regularly. He used to drop up to the house to play cards and Be’d run a game at his own Spartment now and then—always a quarter game, never any more. ‘Then we threw a dance up at the Bellevue one night and invited him and he showed up with Myrile Delraine from the “Scandals.” Nice kid she seemed to be tvo. You see, Stuart was lonesome—that was about it. We all called him Stuart by this time. It was evident that he wasn’t one of these shining intellectuals any more than we were. He was captain in his senior year, though—1912, I guess that was—and he used $o call the other team’s plays. How you can @o that and still be dumb is one of life’s little nysteries. He was one of these undergraduate Peter Pans, I figure. You could have knocked me off when he told me he was 27. Twenty-seven— snd hadn't lost his pin yet nor his gold foot ball. Well, I suppose, at that, they’re trade goods in the bond business. When college closed I got the big idea that Td spend the Summer in the wheat fields and get all brown and healthy so I could be some- thing besides Jim’s brother and a legacy the mext Fall. I told Stu about it. “Good stuff, kid,” he said. “Do you good. When you're out there I'll give you a letter to my girl. Lives out past Fargo.” : That was the first time I ever knew he had 1 There’d been Myrtle Delraine and there were Maisie and a couple of others that some of the brothers knew embarrassingly well, He seemed a little upset. - “Sure. Been traveling with her a couple of Years. She’s some kid. Uh, Joe, she's an @wful nice kid—Marjorie is. I, uh .. .” “Oh, sure, Stu!” I said. He looked at me & lttle bit queerly for minute. Then he said: “Joe, could you walk up to my place for a while? Like to show you something.” When we got there he gave me a drink and 1:cn he got & cabinet picture out. Dame didn' !:0k much like Myrtle Delraine or Hke Maisie I'>’som either, What can: you say- about Liziere? She wes a gesdidosking: women; - L1 right. Then he fished out a book of poems by one Ernest Dobson, or Dawson, or Dowson, or some such name. It was new to me. I began to fear the worst because poems are not much in my line, but I opened it as if I were old Joe Keats in person. Don’t bother with the inside of it. It's a Jot of tripe,” he said. “The fly-leaf is what I want you to read. I, uh, I don’t show it to every- body, either. I thought, maybe, be a good idea, show it to you though .. .” Well, if it had been written to me I'd have seen anybody else a long way before I'd have shown it to them. It was certainly gooey and it was certainly mushy, but somehow the senti- ment behind it made you overlook all that, I guess I can't make myself plain about this without giving you an idea what it said. I read it over twice and I can remember most of it but I'm not putting it out here. A man don’t get so many good ideas in his life that he ought to treat them, as Variety says, like released gags. WELL. in the course of the Summer I met ' Stu’s girl, Marjorie, just where he said she’d be—past Fargo, N. Dak. I don't know whether you've been in Fargo., It's a nice town —in spots. It used to have some tough places, too. Some day, after I get over my present distaste for water transportation, I'm going to see this Port Said and, as the lady in the play sald, the lowest dives in Chighna, just to see in what way they differ from the old saloons in the wheat belt that catered to the casual laborer with a yellow card and two weeks' wages in his pocket . . . But all that's got nothing to do with Marjorie. : Marjorie was a big blonde, and when I say big I mean big, and when I say bionde I mean & woman with yellow hair. Every time you talk about a big girl it’s usual to say something about the Winged Victory of What's-its-name, although personally I've seen copies of it and I don’t think such a lot of it. If I had the time I'd hunt up a Swedish book and pick out the name of one of the square-head goddesses * and tell you Marjorie was just like her—it might mean something to you. All I have to say is, I feel sorry for anybody who never saw. Marjorie and sorrier still that the best I can mmkwuymnuu}oflemamg Her people were Swedes, all right. Great old boy, her father was, built like a blacksmith, Retired farmer. They had plenty, too. He was a director in a bank and he owned a few square miles of that wonderful wheat country where they did not feed you four or five times did not the laborer five or six dollars a day, Every year in the wheat country, this year's not so good for farm hands, but last year was swell and next year is going to be just dandy. Well, anyway . . . they lived in a big white house . . . It had to be big to accommodate people of the size of Marjorie and her folks. I stayed in Fargo four days. I'd just come in from a concrete camp—oh, no, harvesting wheat isn’t the only sweet job they have out that way; I found that out—and I toa s I ] \ another bath and by that time my clothes were pressed. I don't say they looked good but they certainly looked much better. And I got & hair cut and a shave and a 15-cent cigar, and if the mayor of Fargo had gotten in- my way I'd have tried to push him into the gutter. “Where men are men,” did you say? Out that way only the good ones live, I figure. I guess it made a hit with Marjorie’s father the way I ate. Don't ever tell me the Swedes are close. The old boy was no light eater him- self. They had some kind of meat with dump- lings and some sort of tart jelly. There was more, but that’s what I remember. After din- ner we had long black cigars. Then we had— or some such name. It's a Jewish drink, I think, and I'd Hke to see the man who could overproof rum up in the prohibition embarka- tion ports in Canada. And then galloping lato the money comes this Swedish beverage. I wish I knew the name of it. Wmntlmundmdsmokedlndbylndby . Marjorie played the piano and sang. And I looked at her through a cloud of smoke and I thought I'd never been so comfortable or seen nicer, friendlier people and I hoped I'd know them for always. I don’t know anything about music, of course, but she had a voice something like Ruth Roye's and she sang “Gray Days Are Your Gray Eyes” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Then the old man winked at me and said, “Sing something for the young man to remind him of the old country.” To make it real for you, I suppose I ought to have him say bane every so often, or mispronounce J's. Sorry. ‘Well, Marjorie laughed and sang two songs. I don’t know any Swedish but one of them sounded like “Vish ti di vinka, hargot, menner, vish ti di vinka, hargot, men,” and the other one was something about “Noah.” The old man told me it was about Noah bringing the animals into the ark—maybe he was kidding me. Nice jolly little songs, like songs a woman would sing to kids. ‘Then he said, “Go on, Marjorie. Sing it once for the young man, who comes from your young man.” And she blffshed and fiddled with the music and then she sang a song by Grieg, either in Swedish or German—I don’'t know which. “Ich liebe dich,” was the name of it. “I love you,” they said it means. As I remarked before, I don't know anything sabout music, but that thing gets me right where I live. It's so sad and yet, you figure, the sadness doesn’t matter. It don’'t make any difference, the songs says, whether you get the girl . . . anyhow . . . you love her forever. And that's all that matters.” It's like hearing “Old Nassau,” or that song Penn sings when they get a good trimming. Sort of sad, but trium- phant, too. Don’t know whether the Police Gazette wants a good competent musical critic, do you? When she got through I sat there like a dumbbell, not saying anything, but the old man helped me out. “So. So, you like music, too. Have a fresh cigar. So. There is nobody like Grieg. Schubert me no Schuberts. Bah! Of course, there are nice German songs, too. Sing us “Der Nussbaum,” Marge, or maybe ‘Die Asra’” But she smilel and shook her head. “Pop, I don't want to sing any more now. I want totalk toMr. . . . Mr. . .. “What is your name, young man? No, I don't mean your family name. Joe? All right, Hub, it is a fine thing to have sons. All I got is this no-good girl here.” “I'm terribly sorry for you,” I said. He winked at me again and stood up and held out his hand. “Now I go to bed. And you tell Marjorie all about her young man. Hope you'll be comfortable here.” “Yes, sir; that's what's giving me all this worry,” I said. ‘A FTER he'd gone I told Marjorie as much about Stuart as I thought she'd like to know. How everybody liked him and how he was the pinnacle on Kilding, Smallfoot & Co. She wasn’t hard to talk to. Or to look at. 8he wanted to know all about Stuart. . How did I get to know him? He was older than I was, wasn't he? I said “Yes.” She asked me how old I was and I told her I was 20, which was practically true, and she said I looked older and I told her it was probably those wheat flelds. Then she asked me how old I thought she was and I said 24. And she grinned and told me how old she was and I nearly fell over. And I said I didn’'t believe it. And honestly, nobody would believe it. She said, yes, she was that old; she was graduated from some State university out that way in 1908 and I could figure it out myself. Didn't I ever see her pin? . . . she was a Pi Phi . . . Stuart had it and she: had his . . . here it was. Only, of course, I'l seen his pin on his vest and I began to figure he must buy them by the gress, . She was an awful high-brow Phi Bete and everything, but nice, too, and simple. She'd read everything and still at the same time she was ship-mates. By and by to tease her, in case she should get to thinking I looked upon her years as venerable, I said like a cuckoo that I'd read a book of poems once by this Dawson or whatever his name was. A She looked at me as one of those Norwegian ladies of the old times probably did when she was reaching stealthily for the 12-pound sle or the two-handed sword. “Did Stu let you read that?” Well, I talked good. I certainly did. I tried - to tell her that I was proud that Stu let me read it. . It showed me something about her, - something that I couldn’t have known any other way. That he showed it to me because it was too beautiful a thing to keep all for him- seif.. And so on. Don't you think I thought it was all bolony THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGT( arjorie |j oreor s “Well, her husband’s named me either. All the time I was kicking myself for letting her know I'd ever seen it. I know why he showed it to me, all right. Finally I said, “Don’t be sore, will you, o “I'm not sore.” “Or . ..or ... ashamed about it. I e « . it's not as if I made any difference to H “I'm not ashamed, Joe. I'm embarrassed t not ashamed. And you do make a differ- ence to me. As a good friend of Stu . . . sand of mine.” Did that woman have a line, I ask you? And was she strong for that celebrated near- All-American half of hers, Stu Harkness? I suppose it was because he was such a big tramp, so sure of himself. And there was stuff in him, too, because my brother Jim doesn't g0 to a hospital for nothing. And Stu was an awful hound for a party and he'd be easual with the chaperons and make them like it. Stu was a bit of a roughneck, too, liked his liquor, got happy and sang and so on. - Nice bary, he had, particularly when he had a few. I can hear him yet in “Dear Old Girl”"—you know, that part where the tenor slides down and the bary goes up above him? Or in “You'll Always Be the Same Sweet Adeline” or “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” though that’s more of a tenor piece—wouldn't you say? Funny how many things come under the head of music, isn't it? And I suppose Marjorie's farmer biood was a little closer to the surface than it seemed to be, and lots of times one of these clever women will fall for some big tramp whose most- bril- lant speech up to date has been “Watch that tackle!” or “Fake! It's a fake! Get that end, Slooey!” Oh, I like Stu all right. You couldn't help but like him. But I began to figure that any bird that was wasting his time with Maisie and her outfit when a kid like Marjorie—well, say she wasn't a kid; a woman like Marjorie then —was waiting for him . . . that a bird like that was the original spendthrift. g THA'I‘ girl Marjori> was certainly some sunny day. As kind, as generous, as frank, as easy to get along with! . . . She trotted me around to see a couple of her friends that had kid sisters, figuring, I suppose, that I'd be more hands would have kidded the shirt