Evening Star Newspaper, March 10, 1935, Page 80

10 s:.ihht;ig cottonwood trees.” And she sighed, a . Then, briskly, ‘‘Mr. McGash — Cordwood — I do think you ought to seize your oppor- tunities and all, and I'm hungry, and what say we slip off somewhere ashore and have dinner?”’ “*An elegant idea, Maybelle.” They inquired of a taxi-driver as to a really good place to dine. He looked at them sharply, and decided on a chop-suey joint. Cordwood handed him five dollars and, with an appear- ance of shocked awe, the taxi-driver instantly took them to Park Avenue. Cordwood was, as Maybelle flouncingly was not, rather awed by the quantities of chromium and murals by Mexican com- munists in the place, but the head-waiter, who had once been a poor boy himself, was so sympathetic and kind that almost without a struggle Cordwood was able to make a sensible and satisfying and wholesome twenty-five dollar order, ending with straw- berries from Labrador. For any good res- taurant can have strawberries out of season, say in January, but this establishment, the Chameau d'0Or, had devised a ravishing new feature — it imported viands from places where it was almost impossible to grow them: Southdown mutton from vacant lots in the Bronx, salmon from the Amazon, and moose- meat from Kansas. The wine-waiter handed Cordwood the vast sacred volume. “Just a minute. I'll look it over,” fretted Cordwood. “Look,” he pleaded with Maybelle. ‘‘I know you never drink a drop, but it's our one night in New York — "' ‘[ have drunk a half-bottle of claret every night since the day Prohibition began — and ended. Friends sent it to me from California, in candied-fruit boxes. The fact that I don't care for gasoline and ginger ale or for your friend, Mr. Bat Badger, does not keep me from following the example of most of the saints,” said Maybelle, with complete calm- ness. Cordwood was too dazed to speak. There was something he ought to say, something that you always said at crises when you were traveling, but he couldn't in this dizzy moment of revelation remember whether it was, “Well, well, it's a pretty small world after all,” or, *“Travel certainly does broaden a fellow. “There's Chambertin. I've heard that's quite a nice wine,”” suggested Maybelle. Since to him it tasted rather sour and without any authority in it, Cordwood wasn't sure whether it was really quite a nice wine or not — till he saw how much it cost. Meantime he had been confiding to May- belle that, as a child in Vermont, he had wanted to be president and to reform politics, and that he had thought vigorously about being a poet. None of this was true, but after beginning the second bottle of Chambertin, he believed that it was, and he noted that Maybelle listened to the pathetic tale of what a misunderstood boy he had been, with notably more interest in the subject than Oley Tengbom had ever shown. ‘“‘My!” she said, frequently and eloquently. He was in disgrace only once — when he said that the artichokes tasted like solidified whisk-brooms. In the Royal Suite of the Dipsomania that night, Cordwood reflected, ‘‘Golly, Maybelle's the finest lady I ever met. So cultured and everything. And elegant ankles. But I'd never dare even shake hands with her. Golly, how she’d bawl me out if I ever dared stroke her shouider.” Oh, Sylvester! The pilgrims had lived in scattered houses in Jackrabbit; they had been together for but two days on the train. It was only when they were inescapably at sea that they had a chance to examine and hate one another. They divided swiftly and sharply into four groups: they who were not going to let any- thing interfere with drinking and quartettes; they who had read a book but still liked a drink; they who were so determined to hogtie Culture and bring it back that they frowned on all dissipation; they who liked neither Culture nor Booze nor anything else in par- ticular and who seemed to have come along only for the pleasure of concentrated dis- approval of everything. And none in any of these four could endure the others. Grievously enough, husbands and wives frequently were divided as to groups, and few spectacles in history have been so savagely dramatic as the sight of eleven members of the W.C.T.U. look- ing down from the promenade deck at their husbands boisterously shooting craps on a forward hatchway, while relays of stewards galloped up with clinking trays . . . and then, most anti-social of all, the stewards laid down the trays and joined the game! THIS WEEK SEVEN MILLION DoLLARS Continued from page seven Cordwood and Percy grew gray as they panted about the boat trying to make every- body love everybody else. In Jackrabbit, varnations of wealth had not been so irritatingly evident. But jammed together on shipboard, the women without a single evening frock hated and gabbled about the women with one evening frock, and the women with one evening frock abominated and rebuked the women with a whole ward- robe; and as to Mrs. Scallion, who had a diamond bracelet and let you know it, the entire feminine party became violently social- istic. They were jealous of people who had better staterooms, and people who had the nandsomest stewards, and people who had got ahead of them in drawing the best detective stories out of the library. In fact, the whole joyous journey to enchantment was just one orgy of sitting and hating. They had all forgotten that on the train Cordwood had taken an upper berth, and now they were very bitter about his occupancy of the Royal Suite. *‘Well! I do think he might have made some effort to look after his guests before he took care of his own selfish desires,” said lady to lovely lady. What made it worse was that the selfish millionaire and — could you beat it! — his housekeeper, Sister Tinkerbun, and that stuck-up New England school-teacher, May- belle Benner, all sat at the captain’s table, had exclusive access to the conversation of that stalwart and romantic four-striper. Like most first voyagers, they believed that there was something especially exhilarating about all stories told by sea-captains, and the entire nine hundred of them felt that if there were any justice in the world, they would be sitting beside the skipper. They glared upon his table and gloomily imagined that they were missing a hair-curling tale of shipwreck, at the very least, when actually the good captain was saying: “I'll tell you, as I look at it, and after a good many years of experience, bicarbonate of soda is about the best remedy there is for gas on the stomach."” Cordwood himself had been mildly sur- prised and pleased at being invited to the captain's table. It did not occur to him that he had any superior rights on the boat. And when he was furthermore invited to a cocktail party in the captain’s cabin, when he learned that J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Edsel Ford and even Gene Tunney had sat right there in that same chair, Cordwood wiggled with the embarrass- ment of being honored beyond his merit. The captain’s cabin was a refuge to him from the rest of the boat, where he could not go ten feet without one of his guest’s seizing his sleeve to complain — to complain about the food, the fog, Mrs. Benner's eastern accent, smoking in the dining-salon, poker in Mr. Cabot's cabin, kissing on the boat deck, and the Polish question. He had entirely given up walking on the promenade deck since Magnolia Iigenfritz and Irving Berklund had recruited all the children aboard into a gang who happily, all day long, hurled shuffle-board discs at one another, and turned on the fire-hoses, and tried to crawl into ventilators. When Cordwood wasn't es- caping the children, he was escaping either infuriated guests, who wanted him to throw the children overboard, or the children's parents, who sniffed that apparently there were some people who were just so cranky and so selfish that they didn't want the kiddies to have any fun at all. Percy aqd he kept on desperately getting up entertainments — horse races, swimming pool cocktail parties, movies, concerts, and always dances, which to Cordwood were the major catastrophes of the trip, because his poor old feet did hurt so in his dancing slippers, and because he was expected to dance with every woman over and above twelve years of age and, as there were over two hun- dred of them aboard and his capacity was about three dances an evening, he was always quailing before the brightly smiling rebuke of some almost unknown female who shook a coy finger at him and gurgled, *‘Well! Of course you wouldn’t ask poor me to dance!" “Sometimes I almost wish 1 hadn't never got up this trip,” reflected Cordwood. ‘‘Maybe it'd of been more fun to collect stamps.” It was fortunate that they were met at Cherbourg by practically the entire French staffs of the American Express Company and Thomas Cook & Sons — as Cordwood under- stood it, indeed one of the fabulous sons him- self was there, surrounded by his staff and gazing at the battlefield through quite a long telescope. For warlike was the scene, and heart-rending. Their baggage was heaped on the low counters of the customs house like the piled dead on a battlefield. Aged females, never hitherto outside America, were shriek- ‘““Even If She Does Lay an Egg, What Sort of Meal Is ; That?” \P\ From a Drawing by Dr. Seuss ing at the cynicism with which black-bearded douaniers held up their respectable woolen union suits. Sporty youths were arguing that half a dozen cartons of cigarettes didn’t mean a thing, not between friendly nations. Portly merchants, who not an hour before had been jeering, ‘‘No dog-gone foreigner can faze John R. Stipple!"’ were now bounding through the customs house wailing, ‘‘My God! I can't find the black suit case! And it's got my razor and my Sunday pants in it!"” And the facteurs stood stolidly with their several piles of luggage. They knew. By and by these howling barbarians, who for reasons perfectly incom- prehensible and probably improper had come clear across the ocean, would find their bags and get on the train and blessedly get the hell out of there and leave the place to quiet. They did and, with the sound of a man who has just escaped being run over, Cord- wood looked out of his train window, and was considerably amazed to find that most of France consisted of fields and trees and roads, all in colors that would have been considered quite normal even in Jackrabbit Creek. There was less confusion in Paris than might have been expected. Percy and the express company and the son had engaged a fleet of buses; whole floors had been taken in three hotels within one block on the Rue Saint Honoré; and aside from the loss of Magnolia Ilgenfritz, who was later found playing steamship with the children of the Portuguese consul, in the Parc Monceau, the disconsolate culture-hunters were safelyhoused. In one of the hotels Percy established an office, staffed from an American tourist agency, to arrange for the party whatever diversion they might prefer — buses to Fon- March 10, 1935 tainebleau, guides to the Night Life of Montmartre, lists of the best onion soups at Les Halles, addresses of dressmakers guaran- teed to furnish Augustabernard fashions at S. Klein prices. So Cordwood sighed and at last prepared to be happy. And at that moment Mrs. Berklund nipped at him, in the manner of a dog snapping up a fly, and demanded, *'I hate to bother you, but they just won’t give the slightest bit of help in the tourist office, and I must find out the address of my second cousin that’s studying art, or maybe it's music, here in Paris, from lowa, Mary Daedal Smith her name is — "’ Then Cordwood blew up. ‘‘Listen! I've brought you all here. I've arranged for autos to take you anywhere you want to go. I've had a Baedeker Guide and a Gideon Bible and the latest number of ‘‘Screen Scrapings” put in every single dern bedroom. And now I quit being nurse maid. I'm going to enjoy myself a little, now!"” Mrs. Berklund gasped. She panted, “I have never been so insulted in all my — when 1 just asked a civil question!” She marched away. And Cordwood, intending to dash after her and apologize, heard a gentle snicker behind him, and turned to view Maybelle Benner. *I don’t know what came over me! I've never talked to nobody like that before!” he lamented. “I thought you were very sound on the subject. I've been waiting to see when you'd show maybe about half as much sense as it . takes to mow a lawn,’’ said Maybelle. ‘‘Come to the Louvre with me - just the two of us — tomorrow morning." “I don't know what a Louvre is— it sounds like some kind of a cat-disease - our Twinkie has got the loove — but whatever it is, I'll go.” “Do you happen to know that Mr. Willoughby is getting a commission on all the rooms here?’’ ‘‘Rats! Don't believe a word — uh — what makes you think so?"’ ‘I heard him talking to the manager - "’ **You mean to say, Maybelle, that you've been sneaking and snooping and following after that poor young fella?” ‘‘Certainly not. I didn't follow him one bit. I just sort of made it my business to be around where he was."’ *‘Oh. Well. Thunder. I don’t suppose he'll graft more 'n a few hundred. He deserves it. 'T’adn’t been for him, I'd be dead by now."” ““Very well. . . . Here in the lobby, ten- thirty tomorrow morning.” ‘‘Betcha. And then again, it kind of sounds like a musical instrument - he played ‘Old Black Joe' on his loove."” His first evening in Paris Cordwood spent with Lester Doggins, whom he had sent there to study the violin. Cordwood had been embarrassed by the fear that Les would show up in a black beard and a wine-colored velvet jacket — which he had learned from a veracious movie was the required uniform of all artists in Paris. He was relieved to see that Les was smooth-shaven, wearing the same gray suit in which he had left Jackrabbit, and whooping with unre- fined Jackrabbitan heartiness; relieved equally when Les — frequently emitting, ‘‘Well, by jiminy! it's grand to see you again!"’ led him not to a questionable den of art and the vices but to a sound, wholesome American saloon, called “Eddie’s Chicago Bar.” It was filled with American agents for sewing machines, automobiles, and machine guns; it was adorned with rye highballs, portraits of Coolidge and Harding, genuine hot dogs, college youths on vacation, cigarette adver- tisements, and all the other native American works of art for which Cordwood was already homesick. He sighed with happiness, and joined Les in an old-fashioned. ““Where'll we go to dinner?”’ hinted Les. ‘“You name it. Take you to the best joint in this man’s town."” Les sighed with happiness and joined him in a second old-fashioned. This was at 6:30 p.m. At 7:30 Cordwood delicately noted that Les looked rather shabby. Les wept and said, yes, he had worked like a dog, he had saved every nickle he could, but what with the enormous cost of music lessons and resin — At 8:30 Cordwood also wept, and pressed — after some difficulty in writing it — a check for a thousand dollars into Les’s hand. Les said he was unworthy of it, but he would try to show his appreciation by becom- ing one of the best dog-gone radio fiddlers in America and then, rather quickly drying his tears, suggested, ‘‘Hadn't we better go feed now?"”’ “You bet. But let’s have an old-fashioned first.” ( Continued on page 13 ) va