Evening Star Newspaper, March 10, 1935, Page 77

He Could Hear His Own Voice Saying, With a Ghastly, Hollow Mirth, “Well, You Might Marry Me”’ SYNOPSIS OF FIRST TWO CHAPTERS €6 YORDWOOD'"' McGash tilted back his chair in front of the Sunset Trail Hotel in Jackrabbit Creek, stuck thumbs in sus- penders, and surveyed a world with only one flaw. As climax to a (partly) sober career as sewing machine salesman, carpenter, pro- spector, fortune teller, store keeper and tumberman, he had faced bankruptcy. Then iron ore had been discovered on his cut-over acres, and he had sold — handsomely. Now he had seven million dollars but no way to spend them! Supplies of bright vests and socks, candy for every child in town, these had made no dent. A $500,000 Community Hall had taken some, and Les Doggins, master of six musical instruments including the mouth organ, and studying in Paris at Cord- THIS WEEK Seven Million DOLI.ARS You N ever Know Your N ext Door N eighbor Till You See Him in Paris! The Third Installrfient of a ‘7\@}0 Satire 3 SINCLAIR LLEWIS Hlustration by Harry Beckhoff wood'’s expense, had taken more, but there was still a lot unspent. It was at this moment, in June, 1933, that Percy Willoughby, former Jackrabbitite but more recently ‘‘cashier or president or some- thing in a Milwaukee bank,” dropped into town. He became Cordwood’s secretary, business and social manager. He helped him buy a big house, furnish it grandly, and per- suaded him to entertain not only friends of prospecting days, but more respectable citizens, including the widow Maybelle Benner, intellectual leader of Jackrabbit. Then one day Cordwood had his big inspiration to make a trip to Paris —so glowingly described by Les Doggins — and take the whole town along! . You might think this easy, with Cordwood at the checkbook, but it wasn't. To each Jackrabbitite he had to offer special bate. To Mrs. Benner he mentioned museums; to Scallion the banker and the Reverend Mr. Mitch, he suggested a study of the financial and religious systems of France; to Oley Teng- bom and Manny Ilgenfritz he spoke eloquently of the cafés, with Les Doggins as guide. Finally the expedition started. Cordwood enjoyed himself until they reached Chicago, where they staged a big parade. As they marched down State Street behind the Jack- rabbit band, he suddenly realized that Chicago wasn't cheering him; it was laughing at him. CHAPTER 1II ORDWOOD was so embarrassed, so hurt by the guffaws of Chicago at his brave pilgrimage, that on the way to New York, he deserted the manly joys of Drawing Room B for whole moments at a time, and sat in the next car with Maybelle Benner, sagely collaborating with her in a deep study of Ohio and Upper New York State. They noticed and recorded that there were many factories along the way. They agreed that the apple trees were apple trees and that many of the denizens of Jackrabbit would not have known that the apple trees were apple trees but as to themselves, coming as they did from Ver- mont and Connecticut, they could tell at the briefest glance that apple trees, at least in season, bore apples. And together, fellow highbrows, they per- suaded the others to turn the radio — Cord- wood had had one installed in each car — from Hot Cha Cha to Walter Damrosch. Cordwood noticed that Maybelle had so china-smooth a com- plexion that it made his own cheeks feel like a heap of sawdust. He felt exhilarated when Maybelle breathed, “I didn't know you had such a taste for classical mu- sic, Mr. McGash.” He was even fortified to face the reporters and cameras in New York. For several minutes, on the June day of their metropolitan arrival, there was no other news. No one had been purging any European country. Douglas and America’s sweetheart were neither being reconciled nor disrecon- ciled. The N.R.A. was neither very Bolshevik nor taken over by Morgan. ‘‘Anthony Ad- verse'’ had slackened to a sale of less than ten thousand a day. The baseball teams were plain ornery. But the press associations had sent on sufficiently colored pictures of Cordwood and his private circus in Chicago to make him news, and he was going to be news, whether he liked it or not. He was ringed with reporters who, with the silky reverenice which has led many a more sophisticated man into the folly of saying something he really thought, besought him to enlighten them about the drought, Gertrude Stein, rainbow trout, the future of China, and whether, when he got there, he would let Paris go on acting that way, or take it over and run it like Jackrabbit Creek. So it came to pass that, when he had seen merely the headlines in the evening paper, Cordwood fled to the R.M.S. Dipsomania, and hid there, though they were not to sail for three more days. He was so irritated that he hoofed the absent banker Scallion out of the Royal Suite, and irascibly took it for himself. < ¢ Percy and he had admitted that in New York they would have to do some fancy planning to content every one with their accommodations on the Dipsomansia, since for over nine hundred pilgrims, there were only seven hundred and eighty first-class beds, and some hundred and twenty-one would have to be content with tourist-third. (That was according to official figures, though actually, before they left New York, the number was lessened by eleven, who went to Harlem and were not found till three days after the sailing.) Cordwood had modestly planned to be one of the third-class, along with the young people, but now he irritably tore the Scallion card from the dainty violet door of the Royal Suite, put his own card up, entered, threw his hat on the grand piano and his shoes on a Neo-Gothic desk, and rang for a drink. He had settled into calmness the next evening and was sitting on the boat deck watching the skyscrapers against an apple- green sky, feeling that perhaps, after all, he really would enjoy Paris, when Maybelle Benner came up to him, her heels a pleasant tapping on the deck boards, drew over a deck chair, patted his hand, and intelligently said, ““There! I know!” “But,” snarled Cordwood, ‘‘they made me say I was going to rent some dog-gone street they call the Champs Elysées”’ — he made it rhyme with damps pleases, **and grow potatoes on it. Those newspapers! And they made me ask whether Napoleon was a fruit or a drink. And one of 'em had a phony photograph of me — my head pasted onto a fake business, so it looked like I was riding in a chariot at the head of the band!” “I know, Mr. McGash, but now it’s all forgotten. New York wouldn't remember it for more than two days if Bishop Cannon were arrested for bootlegging —" “Has he been? Hurray!” “No, no, no! I just mean that as an example.” “How'd you find me, Maybelle? Good of you to take the trouble.” “I made Mr. Willoughby tell me . . Cordwood.” “How? That's a tight-mouthed lad —" “Oh, I just told him I'd go to the news- papers and say he’d been arrested for em- bezzling the funds of the tour.” ‘“‘He hasn’t been, has he?'’ sighed Cordwood. “No, not yet,” sighed Maybelle. Like Mr. Swinburne, then, they were full of the sunset and sad, if at all, with the full- ness of joy. Cordwood dared to touch the fleecy end of her scarf, but she did not know it. He sighed. She sighed. They sighed together — then sat up and giggled. “Listen to us two old things getting home- sick. My! I know we’ll love Paris, but what do you bet we're just as pleased as can be when we get back to Jackrabbit! My! that’s a sweet town! Do you remember how nice the box-elders are in the courthouse square?”’ “And 1 haven't seen one show-window slicker or tastier dressed than Cohen & Cabot’s!” “And the creek isn't awfully big but my! ( Continued on Page 10 )