The Seattle Star Newspaper, November 3, 1921, Page 13

: ee — | MAIN The Story of Carol Kennicott~ BY SINCLAIR LEWIS Copyright, 1220, Harcourt, Brace & Hews, Inc. (Continued From Yesterday) CHAPTER XIII She tried, more from loyalty than desire, to call upon the Perrys} ‘a November evening when Ken:| ott was away, They were noti rin. yniess I stop this home. | Village Virus is the getm which Like & child who has no ont to! it's extraordinarily like the hook yy with she loltered thru the dark|worn—it infects ambitious people i. She saw a light under an|who stay too long in the provinces door, She knocked. To the/ You'll find it epidemic among law a who opened she murmured, | yers and doctors and ministers and Do you happen to Know where the | college-bred merchants—all these are™™ She realized that it| people who ha¥e had a glimpse of Guy Poleck ine world that thinks and laugha, but “Pm awfully sorry, Mrs. Kenni.| D8¥¢ returned to their swamp. I'm Dut I dom't Know, Won't you|® Perfect eXample. But I shan't pes- th ond eam tor them?” ter you with my dolors.” “Wwhy—" she observed, as she fected that im Gopher Prairte it/ ; mo Sikes agit Galo. tener eee dropped into the shrieking decen “ desk chair, Me looked squarely at deckied that mo, really. he) her: she was conscious of the pupils BY go in; and as she went In./ of his eyes; of the fact that he was “I dint know your office was! a man, and lonely. here” | barraseed. They elaborately glanced "Yea, office, town-house, and cha-| ®¥8y, and were relieved as he went tm Picardy. But you can't sag, . chateau and town-house (next | The Giagnosis of my Village the Duke of Sutherland's. | Vitus ts simple enough. I was born fre beyond that inner door. ‘are a cot and a washetand ** Gopher Prairie, and much less my other suit and the blue) frendiy. It'd had more generations in which to form an oligrachy of re. spectability, Here, a taken tm if he t# correct, if he likes She asked impulaively, “ do you stay here?” “I have the Village Virus.” “It sounds dangerous,” “It ian More dangerous than the cancer that will certaigly get me at Y¥ can see you.” | Be glanced about the rusty office | stove, shelves of tan law: deskebair filled with news| our senator. There, we didn't take tn tuously got used to them. It was a rs 0 long sat upon that they} ie ate © made it damp. and it smelied of rot lege and learned that since dictating the Bible, and hirtng a perfect race It was dirty and noisy and breathies and -|ghastly expensive. But compared for the theaters. ‘keeping up.’ Bout I | Suess the Village Virus had me al- . 1 was reading four copies of magazines to one poem. the Minneapolis trips till simply had to go there on a lot of “A few years ago I was and I realized | tert #0 superior to people like Jultus Flickerbaugh, but I saw that I was as provincial and behind-the times a: | Julius. (Worse! Julius pidws throug’ the Literary Digest and the Outlook faithfully, while I'm turning over pages of a book by Charles Fiandrau that I already know by heart.) “I decided to leave here. Stern resolution, Grasp the.world. Then I found that the Village Virus had me, absolute. I didn't want to face new streets and younger rmen—real competitors, It was too easy to go on making out conveyances and arguing ditching cases, So— That's all of the biography of a liv. ing dead man, except the diverting last chapter, the lies about my hav. ing been tower of strength and legal wisdom’ which some day a | preacher will spin over my lean dary | body.” the Jolly Seventeen, | I'll skate with | wide, or throw snowballs, ‘as gladly as talk with you.” nor) But they want to stay embroider.” He looked down at his table-desk, fingering the starry enameled vase. She could not comment. She pie tured herself running across the room to pat his hair. She saw that his Mpe were firm, under his soft faded mustache. She sat still, and maundered, “I know. The Village ing thas Virus. Perhaps it will get me. Some music, a university. clubs|day I'm going— Oh, no matter loafers uke me. (Lord, how I'd) At least, I am making you talk! ike to have a real club)” Usually you have to be polite to my % we Mmay be as obsolete ag monasteries, I imagine the farmer and his local eer going by monorail, at end of the day, into a city more e You run on, kiddies,” said Cap’n Pennywinkle PB One day Cap'n Pennywinkle sent {keeping near to the shore. Besides and Nick over toward the|'!f they'd show up out here, land love eh tai wihes tis ths Wenn wa ji wemeet Mr. Cod and Mr. Stur matter. “I just got a telephone | pig fellows, keke fests et Ssage from Mr. Fifteen-Fin| -we'n goat once and hunt them,” ck that his missus has been | replied Nancy obligingly. “But how all day and isn’t back yet,” said | shall-we know them? How do they captain. “And Mr. Corkwing sent | dress?” ; by old Daddy Lasher that Mrs.| Cap'n Pennywinkle had to laugh ing hadn't showed up since| before he answered, “Dress! Well, And Daddy said that as| jyst wait until you see them, You'll Passed by, he heard Mr. Bienny know ‘em all right. Just pick out over to Mr. Goby and ask if he anybody you see with stripes and where his wife was, and Mr. poikadots and dremses like Christmas. fe ailed back that indeed 'n’ he tree ornaments and you'll know it’s : and he was just wondering one of the missing wives. It's Just had become of tis own,” the same on the water as it is on the . run on, kiddies,” went on land, my dear, the ladies who like to mney winke, and see if you’ dress the gayest are usually the ones soy y the missing fish ladies. who leave all the housework to their Ukely to learn anything husbands. All these people, Mra away out here at the Goby, Mrs. Rock-¥ish and all the for these are all little others, are gay dressers. + YOU know, and do their house- ‘ (To Be Continued) They were em-| in an Obie town about the same size) stranger is | hunting and motoring and God and| even our own till we had contemp | red-brick Ohio town, and the trees | Very!” | | BELIEVE THAT BiG KID 1S PICKING y amoking. The | FRECKLES GE wire, Pod- GEOG QADUY IS ‘ garrulousness, but now I'm sitting lat your feet.” | you literally sitting at my feet, by Would you have a fireplace for now! Let the old man rave. old are you, Carol?" “Twenty-six, Guy.” “Twenty-six! I was just Jearing |New York, at twenty-six. I heard Patti sing, at twenty-six, And now I'm forty-weven. I feel like a child, | yet I'm old enough to be your father. | So it's decently paternal to imagine | you curled at my feet. . Of) | course I hope it isn't, but we'll re-| | Gect the morals of Gopher Prairie by | announcing that it ist » + « These standards that you and I live up to! There's one thing that’s the matter with Gopher Prairie, at least with the ruling- class (here is a rullng-<class, de- spite all our professions of democ- recyh And the penaity we tribal rulers pay is that our subjects watch ws every minute. We can't get wholesomely drunk and relax. We have to be so correct about sex mor als, and inconspicuous clothes, and doing our commercial trickery only | in the traditional ways, that none of | us can live up to it, and we become horribly hypocritical. Unavoldably. The widow-rebbing deacon of fletion | can’t help being hypocritical, The | widows themacives demand it! They admire his unctuousness. And look | }at me! Suppose I did dare to make| love to—some exquisite married | | Woman. I wouldn't admit it to my-) self. I gignie with the most revolt. | | ing salaciousness over La Vie Paris-| lenne, when I get hold of one in Chi- cago, yet I shouldn't even try to hold you band. I'm broken. It's the his-| torical Anglo-Saxon way of making life miserable. Ob, my |dear, I haven't talked to anybody bout myself and all ourselves for years.” “Guy! Can't we do something with | the town? Meally?”’ | “No, we can't!’ He disposed of it| like a judge ruling out an improper! objection: returned to matters less uncomfortably energetic: “Curious. | Most troubles are unnecessary. we) bave nature beaten; we can make) her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards, So we tuise the devil just for pleasure—- wars, politics, racehatreds, labor-dis putes. Here in Gopher Prairie we've cleared the fields, and become soft, | so we make ourselves unhappy arti- ficially, jat great expense and exer-| }tion: Methodists disliking Episco- | palians, the man with the Hudson | laughing at the man with the flivver.; The worst is the commercial hatred —the grocer feeling that any man | who doesn't deal with him is robbing | bim. What hurts me is that it ap-| plies to lawyers and doctors (and) decidedly to their wives} as much as| to grocers. The doctors—you know | about that—how your husband and Westlake and Gould dislike one an-| other." “No! I won't admit in He grinned. “Oh, maybe once or twice, when Will has positively known of a case,| where Doctor—where one of the oth ers has continued to call on patients longer than fecessary, he has laughed about it, but-—”" He etill grinned. “No,sreally! And when you say the wives of the doctors share these | jéalousies—— Mrs. McGanum and 1| haven't any particular crush on each | other: she's so stolid. But her moth. | er, Mrs, Westlake—nobody could be aweeter.” “Yes, I'm sure she’s very bland. But 1 wouldn't tell her my heart's secrets if I were you, my dear, I in. sist that there's only one profession al man’s wife in this town who} and that is you, you sed, credulous outsider!” | “J won't be cajoled! I won't be lieve that medicine, the priesthood of healing, can be turned into penny- picking busines: “See here: Hasn't Kennicott ever} jhinted to you that you'd better be nice to some old woman because she | tells her friends which doctor to call in? But I oughtn’t to——" She remembered certain re which Kennicott had offered re ¥ ing the Widow Bogart. She flinched, | jooked at Guy beseechingly. He sprang up, strode to her with) a nervous step, smoothed her hand She wondered If she ought to be of fended by his caress. Then she won- dered if he Mxed her hat, the new Oriental turban of rose and® silver brocade. He dropped her hand. His elbow brushed her shoulder, He flitted over to his desk-chair, his thin back stooped. He picked up the cloisonne vase. Across it he peered at her with such loneliness that she was startied. But his eyes faded into im personality as he talked of the Jeal- ousies of Gopher Prairie. He stopped himself with a sharp, “Good How THE SEATTLE STAR AND HIS FRIENDS 1 KNOW, BUT fT CAN BE EVERETT TRUE “It would be rather nice to’ have | | | | ne, WHat’S THIS $—— Six PERSONS meer Serious ACCIDENT { are Seattle |. Page 511 NIGHT Peggy snuggied closer to grand- mother’s shoulder and David gripped the arm of her chair and drew in a shivery breath. “O0-00-00-00f%" he said softly. “I would like to hear that Indian war cry just once.” “You would want to hear It fust ence, Davieman,” grandmother told him. “I heard it once, and though I was little more than a it fills me with terror yet now on the mountain side; they ‘were all about the settlers’ camp, on every side and they were com- ing slowly, surely, each ery was nearer than the one before it. “Darkness settled down on them. Darkness in the vast woods of a new country, darkness filled with the yelling voices of blood- thirsty savages, “Quietly the settlers moved back into the underbrush, quickly the men worked, making a cir cular wall§f the packs and sad- dies from the horses. Inside the littl defense they placed the women and children and covered them over with comforts, quilts and blankets. For a time there was silence. The night was black dark, not @ sound could be heard, The men gathered together and got ready for the fight. “Nine guns they had. Nine guns to defend themselves walnst how many savages they did not know—surely scores, possibly hundreds. Those settlers who had no guns quickly cut clubs, to use as weapons and as"fre war cries had seemed to come from the op- posite bank of the river, theys lined up facing it, waiting in the black dark for the attack,” (To Be Continued) she took up the story n the peaceful little camp all was changed in a moment. Ben with his brothers and the little wee ones huddled to their mother. “Here was a new danger. “When the buffalo herd had threatened them out on the plains, they had thelr great heavy wagons to make a barrier be- tween them and their danger, But here beside the little stream there were only living things, fathers and mothers and little helpless children, guides and slender ponies; only things of flesh and blood. “The first and second whoops of the Indians came from over a little mountain half a mile away and, like an echo, other brown throats took it up, now on the right hand, now on the left hand, bp Ahahehahel Lord, Carol, you're not a jury. You|The people are eavorless and proud are within your legal rights in re|of it. And-even if I liked you tre fusing to be subjected to this sum-|mendously, I couldn't talk to you ming-up. I'm @ tedious old fool | without twenty old hexes watching, analyzing the obvious, while you're | whispering.” the spirit of rebellion, Tell me your “But you will come talk to me, side. What is Gopher Prairie to! once in a while?” gem “I'm not sure that T shaf. I'm “A bore! trying to develop my own large ca. “Can I help? capity for dullness and contentment “How could you? |T've failed at every possible thing “I don’t know, Pérhaps by Ms-| I've tried. I'd better ‘settle down,’ tening. I haven't done that tonight. | as they call it, and be satisfied to be But normally—— Can't I be the|/—nothing.” confidant of the old French pla “Don't be cynical, It hurts me, in the tiring-maid with the mirror and] you. It’s like blood on the wing of a the loyal ears?” humming-bird.” “Oh, what is there to confide? me arty ‘Toouay ~- “I'm not a humming-bird, I'm ,@igneture of Now! Yoo WiLL SAY MY DADDY ISA MuTT WILL Yuu P S A SHOE DRUMMER GAVE A’PaRor SAMPLE SHOES TO"THE PORTER Ar THE CENTRAL. HOTEL. | From the church we went straight to the Ames home, John and Lila were out in the rose garden, walking arm in arm. “Come on,” Tom called, “and eat a wedding dinner with us!” Lila looked up, and then started | for the roadster on a run. John fol- lowed. “You can't mean it? Without say- {ing a word to us?" Lila was kissing hme and while I climbed out of the roadster into her arms, Tom and | John hands and grinning. “It's a wedding party four square, I think—#o we want you folks to go along,” Tom said. = “Trot up and get you? wraps, Lila —we can't miss this,” John layghed each of us wildly happy. I left directions with the house. keeper for the forwarding of my trunk and then went into my room ‘tor a last look, were gripping each other’s| So Lila and I hurried upstairs, (Copyright 1921 by Seattle Star) CHAPTER LXXVIII—GRACE, TOO, FINDS HAPPINESS There on the dressing table lay an envel “Miss Helga Sorensen”—was writ- ten in a bold hand on the outside. Bastily I opened it, and looked at the signature. It was from Grace. “Dear Miss Sorensen,” it began, “there are just these few things left that T want to clear up, It was I |you saw in the garden that night when you looked from your window but it wasn't Tom Bradford. Strange how much alike they are, isn’t it? The man I was with wys Frank DeLane! “He came back. Tom arranged that I meet him one afternoon at his office when I thought I had gone |there on business for Mrs, Ames. | So everything is all right now! Fot ad for me!-GRACE DE- It seemed my cup was running over. All that had troubled me was now clear, and I had no need to doubt. | Rawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked to death by these large, white, flabby, | wormy hens, But I am grateful to | you for confirming me in the faith | And I'm going home!* “Please stay and have some coffee with me.” “T'd like to, But they’ve succeeded jin terrorizing me. I'm afraid of wi people might say.” | “1m not afraid of that. I'm only jafraid of what you might say!" He | stalked to her; took her unrespon- sive hand, “Carol! You have been | happy here tonight? (Yes, I'm beg- sing)". She squeezed his hand auickly, then snatched hers away. She had but little of the curiosity of the flirt, and none of the intrigante’s joy in furtivgness. If she was the naive girl, Guy Pollock was the clumsy boy. He raced about the office; he rammed his fists into his pockets. He stammered, “I-—I-I—— Oh, For Infants and Children In Use For Over 30 Years Clit Always bears (the the devil! Why do I awaken from smooth dustiness to this jagged raw- ness? I'll make—— I'm going to trot down the hall and bring in the Dillons, and we'll all have coffee or something,” “The Dillons?” “Yes. Really quite a decent young pair—Harvey Dillon and his wife. He's a dentist, just come to town. ‘They live in a room behind his office, same as 1 do here. They don't know much of anybody——” “I've heard of them, And I've never thought to call, I'm horribly ashamed, Do bring them-——”" She stopped, for no very clear, rea- son, but his expression said, her fal- | tering admitted, that they wished | they had never mentioned the Dil- lons. said, “Splendid! I will.” From the door he glanced at her, curled in the peeled leather chair, He slipped la kerosene burner. They laughed, and spoke of Minneapolis, and were tremendously tactful: and Carol started for home, thra the Novem: ber wind, (Continued Tomorrow) WHEN A WOMAN TELLS By RUTH AGNES ABELING at I was happy to see the for somehow its bold lines to say that it had a perfect be, and I felt that Grace, visited a clergyman that morning. When I was in the car and the Ames were safely following us in their own, I held Grace's note on the wheel in front of Tom. He read it and then put one han@ over mine, “Was that, dear, what was troub- ling you?” he asked, I nodded happily and foolishly. And then we decided to do the same thing at the same time. Our lips met, over the wheel. It was a happy wedding dinner we jhad that evening, at a rustic sort of jlittle place filled with all sorts of |interesti” old furniture. And, in the dusk, Tom and said good-vy to Lila and John, and headed our car for the North to spend our honeymoon in a little | shack In the woods, miles and miles bese the nearest railway track. (The End)