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Or possibly an artist? He had created something! He had no
pictures in the academies, no books to be bound in levant, no arias
nor flimsy furniture named after him, but every single one of the twenty
million motors on the roads of America had been influenced by his vision,
a quarter of a century ago, of long, clean streamlines!

Yes! And it didn't hurt a man to be a little proud of some honest
thing he had done! It gave him courage to go on. Especially with a
wife like Fran, who was always criticizing ...

Good God, had he really become confirmed, since the case of Arnold
Israel, in this habit of seeing Fran not as his loyal companion but as
a dreaded and admired enemy, to placate whom was his object in life?
Was this the truth about his wanderings, ... all his future?

He hastily got out of that torturing wonder by sending his mind
back to scholarship, while he looked intelligent, and placidly ate
<u>Back-huhn</u>, and seemed to listen to Theodor von Escher on his own superiority
to Kreisler.

Could he ever attain scholarship now? Was it too infantile a
fancy to think of becoming the first great historian of motors, historian
of something which was, after all, more important in social evolution
than twenty Battles of Waterloo? Or could he learn something of archi-
tecture? For he really was a little tired of motors. They meant, just
now, sitting at a desk in the Revelation offices. Could he really make
better Sans Souci Gardens?

Anyway, he wasn't going on just being a Cook's tourist, rather less
important to Fran than concierges and room-waiters! He'd do something ...

Or was this inner glow, so exciting and so rare -- was it merely a
reflection of drinking champagne and being warmed by Kurt's hospitality?

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ousness, but finally plunging into the long rollers of conversation.

Braut was lecturing Fran as though she were a rather small seminar.
He did violence, while he talked, to the English W and V and T, yet in
his earnestness, his was no comic dialect:

"Emotionally, as a Prussian, with the symbols of blood and iron,
of Bismarck and Luther and der alte Fritz, I detest the prostituted ele-
gance of Paris and the Italians, like children playing at Empire. Yet
all the time I think of myself -- most people like me think of themselves--
more as Europeans than as German or French or Polish or Hungarian; we
think of ourselves, whatever family differences we may have, as standing
together against the Russians (who are certainly not European but Asiatic),
against the British, The Americans -- however we admire them -- the Latin Amer-
icans, the Asiatics, the colonists. The European culture is aristocratic.
I do not mean that boastfully; I do not speak of famous old families,
like that of our friend Graf Obersdorf here. I mean that we are aristo-
cratic, as against democratic, in that we believe that the nation is
proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of
really great men -- like Einstein and Freud and Thomas Mann -- and that
ordinary, undistinguished people (who may be, mind you, counts or kings,
as well as servant maids) are happier in contributing to produce such
great men than in having more automobiles and bath-tubs.

"And by the aristocratic tradition of the real Europe I do not
mean any hauteur. I think perhaps I have seen more rudeness to ser-
vants -- as well, of course, as more rudeness to masters -- in America
than anywhere in Europe. In America, you can discharge a servant without
warning, for any reason or no reason. Here in Germany, you are compelled
by law to have a reason and to give notice. Servants here are not so
well paid, but they have more security and more respect. An American
thinks of a good cook as a low person; a European respects him as an
artist.

-310-A

(Insert on 310)

¶ Sam looked at her in mild astonishment. If anything had been
certain about their controversies, it had been that Fran was more im-
portant than his work. He tried to remember just where she had got
this admirable dissertation on feminism. Certain of the phrases he
traced to Renée de Pénable.

(Back to 310 - New Paragraph)

-314-

Brownie-face, with a snub nose and too wide a mouth, but her eyes opened in such surprised roundness, there was such vitality in her speech, her hands and her ankles were so fine, that she was more attractive than most pretty women. She lay on the couch, full-length, rather petulant, and Sam sat by her, leaning over with his elbows on his legs, like an old man smoking on a fence rail.

"Your wife -- she praises European husbands!" said Minna. "If she had one! Oh, they can be charming; they küss d' Hand, they remember your birthday, they send flowers. But I get so very much tired of having my good Theodor make love to every woman he meets! Just now -- of course he had to go practise with a man pianist, at midnight -- well, he is by this time at the apartment of Elsa Emsberg, and if Elsa is a pianist or a man, she has changed much this past week -- and she was my friend in the first place! Oh, I am a European, but I wish once I had an American husband who would not sacrifice me to music and lofzaffairs!"

She looked at him in a lively, appraising way, and suddenly Sam knew that she considered him an interesting big animal, that he could make love to her if he liked, and as much as he liked, and he was frightened by it.

He had always been monogamic. Now and then he had been attracted by some other woman, but he had been as shocked as though he were a priest. Perhaps the fact that his intimate life with Fran had not been very passionate had made him feel that the whole matter of sex stimulation was something rather shameful, to be avoided as far as possible. Certainly, when he tried to think about it, he escaped from thought with a gruff, "Oh, a fellow's got to be loyal to his wife, and not go getting mixed up in a lot of complications."

But just now he seemed insufficiently afraid of "getting mixed

-315-

up." He caught himself noting that Minna had an exquisite body. He thought, "I ought to give Fran a dose of her own medicine." He looked away from Minna, and growled, "Oh, I guess most husbands in all countries are 'bout equally selfish; just take different ways of showing it." He looked away, but his look was drawn back to her, and he wanted to take her hand.

"Oh no, you would not be selfish!"

"Sure would!"

"No! I know you better! Big, terrifically strong men like you are always gentle and kind!"

"Hm! I wish you could have met some of the kind, gentle, big fellows from Harvard and Princeton that used to sit on my chest when I played football!"

"Oh, in sports it is different. But with women --- You would be so gentle. But brave. Do you go hunting and camping much, and all those thrilling things, in your great American wilderness?"

"Well yes, I used to like it. I did quite a long canoe trip once, in Canada."

"Oh, tell me about it!"

No one since he had left Zenith had shown so comforting an interest in him. He was not looking away from her now; he was swallowed by her expanding, flattering eyes as he labored:

"Well, it was nothing especial. Went with a friend of mine. We made about a thousand miles, with sixty-four portages, and the last five days we lived on tea, without sugar or condensed milk, and fish, and our tent got burnt up, and we slept under the canoe when it rained. Yes, that was good going. Hm! Like to do it again."

"Why don't you? Why don't you? I can imagine you wonderful in that wilderness."

"Oh Fran -- Mrs. Dodsworth -- she doesn't care much for that

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unhappy if you run away early!

"Of course if you insist ---" said Fran.

She sounded vicious. Kurt looked at them both miserably, as though
he was wondering what he could do to reconcile them.

"No, no! Just didn't want you to tire yourself out. And here's
Mrs. Escher pretty near asleep," Sam crowed jovially. And everybody
laughed, and everybody looked relieved, and everybody said that Yes,
wasn't it much more fun to be together, just the Family, after the
others had gone.

But Sam had poisoned the occasion. They looked self-conscious,
and talked about music. Minna von Escher, not at all pleased by Sam's
coyness, made yawning signs of going home, and the party broke up in
fifteen minutes, with effusive announcements of what a good time they
had had.

And so, in the taxicab, when they had dropped Minna at a resid-
ence which was confoundedly out of their way, Sam and Fran again
started the battle.

-319-

And it wasn't even very late -- I don't suppose you'll ever learn that Berlin and Paris are not exactly like Zenith, and that people do manage to keep awake here sometimes after ten o'clock! Count Obersdorf was telling me all about his family, and it was frightfully interesting, and suddenly you feel sleepy and -- bang! The great Samuel Dods-worth is sleepy! The great industrial leader wants to go home! Everything must break up immediately! Nobody else must be considered! The great I Am has spoken!

"Fran! I'm not going to lose my temper and let you enjoy a row tonight....At least I hope not!"

"Go on! Lose it! It wouldn't be such a novel and shocking sensation! I'm quite used to it!"

"You are like hell! You've never seen me lose it properly! The last fellow that did -- Well, I paid the hospital bills!"

"Oh, the wonderful great hero that can knock people's heads off! That has all the charming virtues of a drunken lumberjack! That --"

"This is a little beside the point, Fran. I wasn't boasting -- I was regretting. Listen, darling; now that you've blown off steam, can't you be reasonable a little while?"

Thusthey reached the Adlon, bowed to the doorman as though they were in the best of humor, crossed the marble lobby -- a fine, substantial, dignified couple -- went serenely up in the elevator, and fell to it again:

"Fran, we've got to come down to cases. We've been drifting, without any plans, and I wanted to talk plans....Maybe you were right about tonight. I didn't mean to sound grouchy when I suggested going home, and if I did, I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, it was probably a good thing. I have a slight headache, from too much cigarette smoke in that

-320-

tiny place -- I do wish you wouldn't always take your own cigars along and smoke them -- it looks so pretentious. But let's not talk plans tonight. Heavens, if you were in such a mad passion to get away and get to bed, it's a little too much for you to want to stay up half the night talking about plans, when -----"

"But I'm in a mood for it!"

"But I'm not! My dear man, is there any hurry?"

"But we'll put it off, the way we've been putting it off, if we wait till tomorrow."

"Does it matter?"

"It certainly does! By God, I'm going to be a little stubborn myself, for once!"

"For once! Oh Sam, as if you were ever anything else!"

"All right. Have it your way. If I'm always stubborn, you won't be surprised -----"

"And -- please -- don't -- shout!"

"I am not shouting! ..... Fran, please quit playing the cat-and-mouse with me. Look here. It's getting to be time for us to go home, and I do like von Obersdorf, but he's the kind of fellow that's always so surrounded with people that if we stay here we'll find ourselves mixed up with a whole lot of folks, and we won't get away for weeks."

"What of it? Isn't that what we want? Isn't it worth while really knowing one European city? Not that Kurt has anything to do with it. It's really my cousins, the Biedners."

"But it is Kurt that counts! He's a mighty nice kind chap, but he isn't satisfied unless everybody is having a party all the time, unless he sees you every day, and especially as he's sort of attracted to you -----"

"Sam, are you hinting that he and I ----- Oh, this is too much!"

-322-

were always so good; I've admired you and respected you; but you've
always been so sound, so cautious, whereas with Arnold there was danger
and excitement and madness and --- Just for once in a whole lifetime,
I let myself risk danger! And I found I had a talent for it, too!
And then, for you, I gave it up; I obediently settled down to plodding
around from hotel to hotel, wherever you wanted to go. Arnold kept
writing me, and I scarcely ever answered him, and now, of course, I've
lost him for ever -- for your sake! And then you insult me about him!
Oh Sam, that wasn't generous!"

She cried a little, sitting twisted in a big chair, her cheek
against the back of it.

Sam felt that there was something wrong, something self-dramatizing,
about her version, but his sulkiness at being beguiled was less than his
fondness of her. He stroked her hair; he said, more tenderly and in-
timately than for a long while:

"I was beastly. Forgive me. And besides, of course I know your
friendship for Kurt is something quite different." He heard an inner,
testy voice: "It isn't, and you know it, fool!" But he went on urgently,
drawing a small gilt chair, ridiculous beneath his bulk, to her side,
and holding her hand as he talked:

"Fran, I want to go home and get to work. I'm naturally an active
sort of fellow. I can't stand this loafing any more. And I don't want
to manufacture cars! Maybe I half agree with you in what you said
about industrialized America, tonight. What I want to do --- Oh, I
suppose there'd be a lot of industrialization to it; certainly have to
use modern methods in production and sales and advertising if we're
going to meet competition. But there would be a kind of individual
achievement, I'd hope, and kind of lasting --- This is something I've
been figuring on for nine-ten months now, but I haven't said anything

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about it because I wanted to be sure. And for once, it would be some-
thing you could take part in ---"

She sat up with a bounce, tears dried, and demanded, "Oh say it!
Don't make a speech! Forgive me, darling, for being rude, but you do
take such a time ---"

"Well, I want to have this clear, especially to myself. I never
did pretend to be especially quick on the trigger!"

"As a matter of fact, you do think very quickly, once you have
your facts, but you have a superstition --- I fancy it started back
in college, when you had to play up to Silent Hero role. You have some
kind of a childish idea -- oh, I know you so much better than you do
yourself! -- you have an idea that it's somehow ridiculous for so big
and solid a man as you are to speak quickly, like some little fitter
to say, and you've always suffered from it ---"

"We're getting away from the point. Let me finish. As I say,
this is a project that you could do as much with, and have as much fun
with, as I could, and maybe more. Here's the idea:"

And, rather lumberingly, much interrupted, he outlined his notion
of a better Sans Souci Gardens.

He had scarcely finished when she volleyed, "Oh, it's utterly
impossible!"

"Why?"

"You haven't the taste for that sort of thing -- domestic archi-
tecture and decoration and so on. Why Sam, I bet you can't tell me
what the color of the last curtains we had in the drawing-room at home
was!"

"They were -- well, they were a kind -- Now let's see. They
were pale red."

"They were a sort of beige, with so little red in it that it
didn't matter. Dear, I do see the fun of a new venture like that, but

-325-

four or five or six months, she was not going to help him "build stone castles of cement, and brick manor houses of linoleum," as she put it; and that she was refraining entirely on account of her own artistic ethics.

Remumbling the whole talk again as he lay awake, Sam could not get quite straight how it had happened that he had again failed to lure her home.

"And she says I'm a bully. Well, as a bully, I class about 1/2 h.p., 2 m.p.h.," he sighed, *<u>between a cough and a stretch</u>* as he fell asleep.

He dreamed that Fran had fallen from a cliff and lay dead below him, and that Minna von Escher had come to smirk temptingly at him. He awoke to revile himself, then to rejoice that it wasn't so. In the dawn, he sat up in bed to look at Fran, and she was so childish, even her little nose hidden under the sheets, that he could think of no slogan of deliverance from her power.

line blank

Dining with Kurt -- at Hiller's, Borchardt's, Peltzer's, at the Bristol and Kaiserhof, at the simpler Siechen's and Pschorrbräu. Dining at the Winter Garten, on the terrace, *<u>watching the vaudeville performance.</u>* Dining at outdoor places round about the Tiergarten, as the weather grew warmer and beer more refreshing. A motor flight to the country house of a friend of Kurt, where all one glorious Sunday afternoon they loafed in the garden or bathed in the Havel.

But the point was that they were always with Kurt. *<u>And Kurt,</u>* though he liked Sam, admired him, yet had conceived that Sam and Fran, like so many other American couples he had seen squabbling into and out of the International Tourist Agency, were on the point of breaking. And to him, the Viennese, accustomed to tempestuous strays from the bitter mountains and gray plains to Eastward and the North, this

-328-

Once or twice -- as when the Berlin agent for the Revelation car looked him up and took him to the luncheon of the American Club, and Fran refused to come -- Kurt and she slipped away without Sam. He spent a conversational evening in the Adlon Bar while they went learnedly to the opera. After these outings, Fran looked rosy and content.

In London, thanks to the attentions of Mr. A. B. Hurd, Sam had
retained something of a position as an industrialist. Since then, pro-
gressively, he had become merely the Husband of the Charming Mrs. Dods-
worth. He saw it, though he could not see precisely how it had hap-
pened. In Berlin, he felt that no one considered him as anything save
her attendant -- even after the unfortunate incident of Herr Dr. Johann
Josef Blumenbach.

Herr Blumenbach's card was brought up to Sam just before he start-
change for dinner. "Don't know who he is. Still, name does
sound kind of familiar. Probably some friend of hers," Sam decided,
and grumbled to the page, "Let him come up."

When he informed Fran, who was sewing a snap on an evening frock
in her bedroom, she protested that she knew no Blumenbachs. She
followed him to their sitting-room, and sniffed a light of Herr
Blumenbach. A square, bullet-headed, bristle-headed, swollen-nosed
man was Herr Dr. Johann Josef Blumenbach, with ancient and absurd spats.

"Excuse me that I call on you, Herr Dodsworth," he sputtered,
"and please to excuse my English, it is I guess owful bad English that
I speak. But I have some liddle interest in a motor factory and from
the motor magazines, besides my cousin lives in America, in St. Louis,
I know moch about your development of the stream-line in owtomobeelz.
I vould be very pleast if Frau Dodtswort¹ and you would care to look
over our factory."

Very suavely Fran eliminated Herr Blumenbach with, "That's very
kind of you, Herr Uh, but we're leaving in just a couple of days, and

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I'm afraid we're going to be _frightfully_ busy. You will excuse us, I'm sure."

He looked at her with a most active dislike; he snorted, "Oh, thank you very much," and disappeared with quite ludicrous haste.

"His nerve! Probably hoped to get money out of you for some horrible gamble," she said placidly as Sam trailed her back to the significant business of sewing on the snap. "Horrid man! And you'd have taken an hour to get rid of him!"

When Kurt inevitably came in to pick them up for dinner, Sam inquired, "Ever hear of a man named Blumenback, Johann Blumenback or some such a name -- something to do with motors?"

"But of course!" said Kurt.

"Horrid man," offered Fran.

"Oh no-o-o! He iss a very fine man. Very public spirited. And he is one of the two or three big men in the motor industry in Germany. He controls the Mars company -- I suppose the Mars is the finest motor in Europe ------"

"Of course! That's where I'd heard the name," muttered Sam.

"------and I wish you could meet him. He would give you everything inside on motor industry here. But I have not the honor to know him. I have just seen him in a _Gesellschaft_."

"We must hurry!" said Fran.

And Sam said nothing at all.

He thought, many times, that if he telephoned to Herr Dr. Blumenbach, he might be accepted and entertained in Berlin as the Samuel Dodsworth he once had been -- thus again become that Samuel Dodsworth.

And he did nothing at all.

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They had expeditions with the Baroness Volinsky and Minna von Escher, until Kurt, wounded to his little heart, as he could be so

-330-

wounded, often and so piteously was convinced that no amount of advertising the merits of the pretty little baroness would make Fran like her. As to why Sam and Minna did not get along, he never understood, so he looked hurt and gave it up.

To Sam, Frau von Escher was a reminder that there were women who did not find him clumsy and cold, and he wanted to escape from that reminder. He could well enough picture falling into the entertaining distress of passion. He could even question whether it wasn't merely emotional indolence and fear of getting "mixed up", not morality, which had kept him "pure." Wasn't it because he did want to kiss Minna's wide derisive mouth that he was chilly to her, and contradicted everything she said....and gave Fran a chance to point out that he _was_ rude and that it had been only her influence which had kept him amiable all these years?

"Hell!" said Sam Doddsworth wearily, and for all his searching he never found a more competent way of expressing it.

So he groped through the fog, and there was no path to be found. In the distance was the sound of menacing waters, and always he stumbled over unseen roots in a trance less real than any dream.

-332-

for a walk but -- oh, he'd walked all over the inner city.

He mouched. He prowled through the sitting-room, turning over
tourist agency folders about Java -- the North Cape -- Rio de Janeiro.

He peeped into the bedroom. Fran, in night gown and fluffy pink
knitted bed jacket, was still abed, but over her chocolate she was
furiously trying to read the *Vossische Zeitung* and the *Tageblatt* with
the aid of a dictionary, imagination, and discreet skipping. He looked
admiringly at her display of scholarship, he said that it was going to
be a swell day, and returned to the sitting room to stare out at the
Pariser Platz and wish he were home.

At a knock, he said "Come IN!" indifferently. It would be the
room-waiter, to clear away.

It was a smart uniformed boy with a cable.

For a time Sam put off opening it. It pleased him to think that
even in his insignificance here in Berlin, he was the sort of man who
received cables. Then he read:

"congratulate us birth nine pound son stop emily splendid shape
cheers stop your first grandchild harry mkee."

Sam stood glorying. He was not finished, after all -- something
of him had been carried on with this new life! And Emily would be so
happy! How he loved her! And *now*, by golly, Fran would want to go
home! They'd catch the next steamer and see the baby,
Emily, Harry, Brent, Tub, Henry Hazzard -- In maybe two weeks --

He paraded into the bedroom, trying to play-act, trying to sound
unemotional as he remarked, "Um, uh, Fran -- lil cable from Zenith."

"Yes?," sharply. "Anything wrong?"

"Well -- Fran!" He went to kiss her; he ignored her slight
impatience. "We're granddaddy and grandmammy! And the devils never
let us know youngster was coming -- prob'ly spare us worry. Emily has

-335-

"Mighty pleased to meet you, Count," said the motor man, after kissing Fran's hand in what he considered a European manner.

Sam sharply cross-examined himself. "Look here, Sambo. Were you flattered to be able to introduce a Count? This tourist agency clerk! How long will it be before you become the kind of rotten soak that sits around boasting that his wife has a count for a lover? No! I'm not that bad, not yet. But I guess my mind is kind of sick, now. What the devil was it that hit me? I don't understand. Emily, my darling, with a son! Doesn't Fran want ——"

Coolly, quite prosaically, he interrupted Kurt to demand of Fran, "Say, uh, remember I told you about that young lady -- that cousin of mine -- that's just had a baby? Wouldn't you like to skip back to America and see her?"

"Oh, I'd love to. But I don't suppose we'll see her till next
autumn," said Fran placidly.

"Here comes my friend. <u>Soch</u> a lovely fellow," said Kurt.

line blank

The second message from Zenith, from home, came in a letter which was handed to Sam at the desk, three evenings later, as they were going out to dinner with Kurt.

"From old Tub!" he chuckled, and tucked it into his pocket. When they were at table he suggested, "Mind if I glance at my letter?"

Tub wrote, in schoolboyish script:

How are you and how's all the lovely femmes in Europe? Well, you're not going to get away with hogging them much longer. Matey and I have finally decided about time we ran over and had a look at the old country and get a decent drink. She's a grand wife and likes her likker. We sail on May tenth, on the <u>Olympic</u>, arrive London probably 16th, and Paris the 21st -- stay Savoy London and Continental Paris.

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I'm not going to travel fifteen hours in a dirty train for the pleasure
of acting as an unpaid Cook's guide to Mr. and Mrs. Tub Pearson!

"Well, all right. Then I'll go by myself."

"As you wish!"

She turned briskly to Kurt, and with excessive sweetness discours-
ed on the state of the theater in Central Europe. Kurt looked at Sam,
troubled, apparently wishing to say something soothing. Sam was very
quiet all that evening.

line blank

It was she who opened the engagement when they were alone, at the
hotel.

"I'm sorry about Tub, and I'll go down there -- a beastly journey! --
if you absolutely insist -----"

"I never insist on anything."

"------but I do think it's too ridiculous to be expected to be a
guide -- and of course your beloved Tub will want to go to the most ob-
vious and stupid and Americanized places in Paris ------"

"No, I've decided you'd better not come. You're probably right.
Tub will want to get drunk on Montmartre."

"For which charming occupation, my dear Samuel, you'll be a much
better collaborator than I, I'm afraid!"

"Look here, Fran: I wonder if you have any idea how dangerous it
might be for you, one of these days, if you go on being so airy and
insulting with me? I'd stood ------"

"It's the truth!"

"------ a good deal. I can understand your not thinking Tub is
any Endicott Everett Atkins, but how you can fail to enjoy giving a
good time to a neighbor that we've known as long and as closely as we
have Tub why you don't, just for once, forget what you're going to

-340-

"Let me tell you, young man, when there was something I could do for her, and for Brent, I did it! I'm not for one second going to stand any hints from you that I'm not a good mother -- and loyal! For twenty years, or anyway till Brent went off to college, there wasn't one thing those children wore that I didn't buy. There wasn't a thing they ate that I didn't order. You -- oh yes, you came grandly home from the office and permitted Em to ride on your shoulders and thought what a wonderful parent you were, but who'd taken her to the dentist that day? I had! Who'd planned her party and written the invitations? I had! Who'd gotten down on her knees and scrubbed Em's floor when the maids had the 'flu and the nurse was away junketing? I did! I've done my work, I've earned the right to play, and I'm not going to be robbed of it just because you're so slow and unimaginative that you've lost the power of enjoyment and can't conceive any occupation beyond selling motors and playing golf!"

"Yes. I guess -- I guess maybe there's a good deal to what you say," he sighed. "Well, it works out all right. I'll trot off and welcome Tub and then come back."

"Yes, and you'll probably enjoy it more if I'm not there. Men ought to get off by themselves now and then, away from the dratted women. Take my advice and get rid of Matey as much as you can -- get her interested in buying a lot of clothes -- and you and Tub knock around together. You'll probably have a wonderful time. You do see now that I wasn't merely being beastly and unselfish, don't you?"

And she kissed him, fleetingly, and was cheerfully off to bed.

Even of such kisses there had not been over many, since the affair
was
of Arnold Israel. The change in their intimacy never admitted, but it
was definite. It was not that Fran was less attractive to him; indeed
more than ever he valued her sleek smoothness; but she had become to him
a nun, taboo, and any passion toward her was forbidden. She seemed re-

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What could he do?

The train seemed to be running with such abnormal speed. Surely even the Twentieth Century had never anything raced like this. Anything wrong?

It would be nice if it were Fran in the upper berth; if her hand were drooping over the edge, so that he could see it, perhaps touch it by pretended accident

Not that she'd be in the upper, though, if they were together!

line blank

When he awoke at three, his first loneliness for her had passed, and he worked up a good deal of angry protest.

This "adventurous new life" they'd been going to find -- Rats! Might be -- for her, but he himself had never been so bored. All came of trying to suit himself to her whims. And then lose her, after all--

What would Kurt and she be doing while he was away?

And this business of her having been such a devoted mother! Ever been a time when the children hadn't had a nurse or a governess, with plenty of maids? If she ever did "get down on her knees and scrub a floor" it'd never happened more than once.

Oh, she'd meant it; she really did believe she'd been a sacrificing mother. Chief trouble with her. Never could see herself as she was. Never!

Yes, he'd have to rebel against her -- or against his worship of her. Not been a go, his trying to be happy in her way. Make a life for himself. Be pretty darn lonely for a while. Sure. But not impossible to make a new life

There were women, to say nothing of men friends

Suddenly he was taut with desire for Minna von Escher. He felt her lips; he saw her too clearly.

Well, there were gorgeous girls in Paris -- Hang it, he was

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CHAPTER 26

He was going to surprise Tub and Matey at the station. He had gone to the Continental Hotel, at which Tub had reservations. From Berlin, he had merely wired Tub in London, "Be in Paris day or two after you arrive delighted see you"; from Paris he had telephoned to Mr. A. B. Hurd, of Revelation Motors in London, asking him to snoop about and find out from the Savoy porter what train Tub was taking.

Sam waited in the Gare du Nord, excited but pleasantly superior. He was no American tourist, embarrassed by the voluble Parisians! He knew 'em! He could say to a porter, "Apportez le baggage de Monsieur a un taxicab" just as well as old Berlitz -- almost as well as Fran. He swung his stick, strolled along the platform, and nodded to the gathering porters, feeling much as he had on the evening after the last game of the football season. When the lean swift French loco-motive flashed in, hurling its smoke up to join the ghosts of smoke-palls that lurked under the vast roof of the train shed, he chuckled aloud.

"Old Tub! And Matey! First time in Paris!"

He looked over the heads of the crowd and saw Tub handing his bags out of the car window to a porter, saw him and the plump Matey hustle out of the car, saw him, with the blank worried nervousness of a man who doesn't expect to be met and who feels that

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the labors of travel are too much for him, wave his arms in the effort of explaining in Zenith French -- dealchoholized French, French Hag -- where he wanted to go.

Swift, looming, Sam thrust through the crowd toward the Pearsons. He saw that Tub himself was carrying a small suit-case -- probably with Matey's famous and atrocious jewelry. He swooped on Tub, grasped his shoulder, and snarled (with one of the exceedingly few impersonations in his unhistrionic life), "Here, you, fella! Not allowed carry y' own baggage!"

Tub looked up with all the rage of an honest American who has been enfeebled by rough seas, doubted by customs officials, overcharged by waiters, overinformed by guides, misunderstood by French conductors; who has suddenly by thunder had enough and who is going to expose and explode the entire continent of Europe. He looked up, he looked bewildered, and then he said slowly, "Well you damned old horse-thief! Well you big stiff!"

They banged each other's shoulders, Sam kissed the suddenly beam-
ing Matey, and they went down the platform together, Sam with one arm
about Tub's shoulder and one about Matey's. He said sharply to the
porter, "Un taxi, s'il vous plait" -- just as the porter was waving
to a taxi on his own -- and Tub clamored, "Well I'm a son of a gun!
Say you've certainly learned to parley-vous like a native, Sambo!"

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They asked after Fran.

It hurt him that they seemed so content to miss her, so willing
to believe that she "had a touch of 'flu and had to lie low a couple
weeks, so she couldn't come down to welcome you." But he resented it
only for a moment. There were so many exciting places to show Tub!
It was delightful to have the Tub who had always been cleverer and
more fashionable than he now regarding him as a sophisticated European

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and turning to him, admiring his dash and flavor.

And it was pleasant to be Tubbish and foolish and noisy without Fran's supercilious inspection.

Matey Pearson was a good soul. She was fat and pleasant. As a girl she had been the gayest and maddest of her set in Zenith; the fastest skater, the most ecstatic dancer, the most reckless flirt. Now she had three children -- one was Brent's classmate in Yale -- and she cultivated the Episcopal Church, a rare shrewd game of poker, and the choicest dahlias in Zenith. Fran said that she was vulgar. She said that Fran was lovely.

At the hotel she kissed Sam again, and cried, "Say my heavens but it's nice to see a human being that's *human* again! Now you boys get to thunder out of here and let me unpack, and you go off and get decently drunk, but do try to be sober enough for dinner, which gives you two hours, if we dine at eight, and enough time too, sez I. get out of here! I love you both. With reservations!"

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To be alone with Tub Pearson, on Tub's first afternoon on the continent of Europe!

They had left over the barriers that had been erected between them since college -- different vocations, rivalry as to the splendor of their several children, rivalry as to social honors, and this last flagrancy of Sam in living abroad while Tub stayed true at home. They were today the friends who had shared dress-shirts and speculations in Senior year.

From time to time they looked at each other and muttered, "Awful' good to be here with you, you old devil!"

Sam did not see that Tub was completely gray, that he was podgy, that round his eyes were the lines of a man who day after day sharply refuses loans to desperate men. He saw the lively Tub whom he had

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protected in fights with muckers and whom he had admired for his wit; and while he held to his temporary superiority as the traveled man and tutored gourmet, he anxiously showed Tub all his little treasures.

He took Tub to the New York Bar, introduced him to Harry, and impressed Tub as an habituant by casually asking whether anybody had heard from Ross Ireland. He took Tub to Luigi's, introduced him to Luigi, and recommended the scrambled eggs. He took Tub to the Chatham Bar; he was so furtunate as to find Colonel Kelly, the famous soldier of fortune; and he felt expansive and philanthropic; he felt, after this third highball, as though his European agonies really had been worth while, when he observed Tub's respectful attention to Colonel Kelly.

He felt that Tub was the finest and most lovable man living; that he was beyond belief lucky to have such a friend; and they returned to the Continental in a high state of philanthropy and Yalensianism.

Matey looked them over and sighed, "Well, you aren't much drunker than I thought you'd be, and now you better go in and wash your little faces in the bathroom and have a coupla Bromo Seltzers -- believe me, Sam, traveling with that man, I never fail to have some real genuine American Bromo along -- and then if you can both still walk, we'll go out and have the handsomest dinner in Paree."

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He took them to Voisin's, but when they were seated Tub looked disappointed.

"Not such a lively place," he said.

"No, I know it isn't, but it's a famous old restaurant, and some of the best food and wine in town. What kind of a place would you like? Find it for you tomorrow."

"Well, I don't know. I don't know exactly what I did think a

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Paris restaurant would be like but ----- Oh, I thought there'd be a
lot of gilt, and marble pillars, and a good orchestra, and lots of
dancing, and a million pretty girls, regular knock-outs, and not so
slow, either. I better watch meself, or I'll be getting Matey
jealous."

"Hm," said Matey. "Tub has a good, conscientious, hard-working
ambition to be a devil with the ladies'-- our fat little Don Juan!
-- but the trouble is they don't fall for him."

"That's all right now! I'm not so bad! Say, can you dig us up
a place like that, tomorrow?"

"I'll show you a good noisy dance place tonight," said Sam.
"You'll see all the pretty chickens you want -- and they'll come and
tell you, in nine languages, that you're a regular Adonis."

"They don't need to tell me that in more than one language --
the extrabatorious language of clinging lips, yo ho!" yearned the
class-wit.

"You're wrong, Sam," said Matey. "He doesn't make me sick --
not very sick -- not worse 'n a Channel crossing. And you're wrong
about thinking that I secretly wish he would go out with one of these
wenches and get it out of his system. Not at all. I can get much
more shopping money out of the brute while he's in this moon-June-
spoon-loon mood. And when his foot does slip, how he'll come running
back to his old Matey!"

"I don't know whether I will or not! Say, do we eat?"

The head waiter had been standing at attention the while. Sam
was aching to show off his knowledge of restaurant French, and he held
out his hand for the menu, but Tub seized it and prepared to
put into the life of Voisin's all the liveliness and wit and hearti-
ness he felt lacking.

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"Do you <u>sprechen Sie</u> pretty good English?" he demanded of the head waiter.

"I think so, sir."

"Attaboy! Been in England, son?"

"Sixteen years, sir."

"Um, not so bad -- not so bad for a Frog! Well now look here, Gooseppy, we want Mrs. Voisin to shake us up something tasty, and you take the orders from me, François, and you bring me the check afterwards, too, see and don't have anything to do with that big stiff there. He's a Scotch Jew. If you let him order, he'd stick us with stew, and then he'd make you take ten per cent. off the check. Now listen. Have you got any nice roast elephant ears?"

Tub winked at Sam, tremendously.

The head waiter said patiently, but not too patiently, "May I recommend the <u>canard aux navets</u>?"

But Tub was a conscientious Midwestern Humorist -- he was a Great Little Kidder -- he had read "Innocents Abroad" and he had seen "The Man from Home," and he knew that one of the superbest occupations of an American on the grand tour was "kidding the life out of these poor old back numbers of Europeans." He tried again:

"Not got any elephants' ears, Alberto? Well, well! I thought this was a first-class hash-house -- right up to the Childs^s^ class. And no elephants' ears?" The head waiter said nothing, with much eloquence. "How about a nice fricassee of birds' nests?"

"If the gentleman wishes, I can send to a Chinese restaurant for it."

"Tub," Matey observed, "the comedy isn't going over so big. You give Sam that menu now, and let him order, <u>hear me?</u>"

"Well, it was kind of a flop," Tub said morosely. "But I <u>told</u> you this was a dead hole. I may not be the laddie buck that locks up

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Fran in Tub's comradeship and that was not enhanced in the unromantic service of holding up a man retching and swaying in a barroom toilet.

They got Tub into a taxicab, while he protested that he was all right now and desired to return to his friends. Sam had to roar at him a good deal, and lift him in. During this knock-about scene, an open motor passed, and Sam saw that looking disgustedly out of it was Endicott Everett Atkins, with his high nose, his Roman imperial, and his Henry Jamesian baldness. Atkins turned to say something to the lady beside him.

Sam shivered. He fancied Atkins getting the information to Fran. He shivered, getting the information to Fran. He heard her saying, "Now was I right about your dear friend Tub!" He felt cold and irritated. He was less gentle with Tub than he had meant to be.

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Not till Matey and he had Tub in bed did it come fully to Sam that he might do well to forget himself and think of her.

"Hard luck!" he whispered. "But we all slip now and -----"

"Oh, you can talk as loud as you want," she said placidly.

"Gabriel with an augmented trumpet band wouldn't wake the little monkey now! But I do want to talk to you, and if he did wake up and want to go out again ----- Oh, well, there's no place to go but the bathroom. Heigh! Scandal in Zenith society! I guess this is that new American Jazzmania Age you read about!"

They sat absurdly in the bathroom, she on a white straight chair, he precariously on the cold edge of the tub, while she went on:

"No, I don't mind. Honestly! Tub doesn't get really potted more than once a year, and I never did think much of the females who lay for their menfolks and try to get an advantage over 'em when they have a chance like that. Life's too short! -- too short to raise hell about anything except some real vice, like his being humorous and

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making speeches. Rather be friendly and # Sam! You old dear thing!
When are you going to chuck Fran and let yourself be happy again?"

"Why Matey, honestly, she and I are on the best terms -----"

"Don't lie to me, Sam darling (you know how Tub and I do love
you!) rather, don't lie to yourself! I know. Fran has written to
me, now and then. Awful clever and jolly and uninterested. And you
don't propose to sit there and tell me that if she wouldn't come home
last summer and wouldn't come down from Berlin to see us, she isn't
about ready to cut out Zenith entirely! And there's no reason why she
shouldn't! She never was very much Zenith anyway.....or she thought
she wasn't! Only, Sam darling, only, if she is going to cut out Zen-
ith, she's going to cut out you, for even if you are kind of a Lord
High Chancellor, still, same time, you are Zenith, and in the long
run, after you've had your fling, you'd rather see the sunshine on a
nice, ragged, old Middlewestern pasture than on the best formal Wop
garden in the world!"

"Well -- yes -- I guess that's more or less true, Matey, but -----"

He wanted to tell her of the Sans Souci Gardens dream; he dismissed
the matter and struggled on: "But that doesn't mean Fran doesn't ap-
preciate Zenith and her friends and all that. Course she does! Why,
she's always talking about Tub and you -----"

"Yeah, I'll bet she is! 'My dear Samuel, is it necessary for
women like your dear Mrs. Pearson to use such vulgarisms as "I'll bet
she is" all the time?"

Though Matey's hearty and slightly brassy voice could never mimic
Fran's cool melodies, there was enough accuracy in the impersonation
to make Sam grin helplessly, and with that grin he was lost. Matey
took advantage of it to pounce:

"Sam darling, I do know it's none of my business, and you can
tell me so whenever you want to, but I figured that probably you've

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been so alone here, seeing nobody but the kind of folks that Fran
wants, and Sam, I've seen you change a lot, more than you
know, this last ten years. You never were a chatterbox, but you did
used to enjoy an argument or telling a nice clean smutty story, and
you've been getting more silent, more sort of scared and unsure of
yourself, while Fran has been preening herself and feeling more and
more that it was only her social graces and her Lady Vere de Vere beauty
that kept up your position, because you were so slow and clumsy and so
fond of low company and so generally an undependable hick! And you
have more brains in your little finger than And you're kind! And
humble too damn! humble! And you want to know a fact twice before
you say it once, and she -- well, she wants to say it twice before
she's learned it at all!

"Oh golly, I guess I'm defying the thunderbolt. Shoot, Jupiter....
Now mind you, I liked Fran. I admire her. But when I think of how
she's treated you, as though she were the silver-shod Diana of the
outfit -- and especially the way she shows it in public by being so
pizen polite to you -- well, I just want to wallop her! Now tell me
to go to the dickens, darling.... Listen to that man Tub snoring in
there! There's an aristocratic, college-bred consort for you! The
poor lamb! How sick and righteous he'll be tomorrow -- up to about
noon!"

Sam laboriously lighted a cigar, searched through a perfectly
blank mind for something to say, and then, for the first time in
months, he was talking candidly about something that really
mattered to him.

"Yes, Mate, I'll admit there is something to what you say. I
suppose I ought to be highty-tighty and bellow, 'How dare you talk about
my wife!' But Hell, Matey, I am so sick and tired and confused!
Fran is a lot kinder and more appreciative than you think. A lot of

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what you imagine is snottiness is just her manner. She's really shy, and tries to protect ---"

"Oh I am so tired, Sam, of hearing and reading about these modern folks -- you get 'em in every novel -- these sensitive plants that go around being rude and then stand back complacently and explain that it's because they're so shy!"

"Shut up, now! Listen to me!"

"That sounds better!"

"Well I mean --- It is true with Fran. Partly. And partly she enjoys it -- gets a kick out of it -- feels she's a heroine in a melodrama....Damn this bathtub -- coldest arm-chair I've found in Europe." Without a smile he laid the bath-mat on the edge of the tub, heavily sat down again, and went on:

"And she really thinks that having a social position is worth sacrificing for. And that it still matters to have a title. And I do know she makes me clumsy. But --- Well, first place, I really am an old-fashioned believer in what we used to call the Home. I hate to see all the couples busting up the way they are. Think of all the people we know that've separated or gotten divorced, right in our own bunch at home -- Dr. and Mrs. Daniels -- think of it, married seventeen years, with those nice kids of theirs. And then, and I guess this is more important, Fran has got a kind of charm, fascination, whatever you want to call it, for me that nobody else has. And when she likes something -- it may be over meeting somebody she likes, or a good party, or a sunset, or music -- well, she's so wrought up about it that it seems as if she had a higher-powered motor in her, with better ground cylinders, than most of us."

"Even when she's snootey -- oh, she's trying to have some form in life, some standards, not just get along anyhow, sloppily, the

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way most of us do; and we resent her demanding that we measure up to
what she feels is the highest standard. And her faults -- oh, she's
a child, some ways. To try to change her (even if a fellow could
do it) would be like calling in a child that was running and racing
and having a lovely time in the sunshine, and making her wash dishes."

"And so she leaves you to wash the dishes! Oh Sam, it's a thank-
less job to butt in and tell a man that in *your* important opinion,
his wife is a vampire bat. But it makes your friends sore to see you
eternally apologetic to your wife, when she ought to thank her lucky
stars she's got you! I swear she never, for one moment, with anybody,
thinks what she can give, but only what she can get. She thinks that
nobody on earth is important except as they serve her or flatter her.
But --- You've never been interested in any other woman, have you?

"Not really."

"I wonder if you won't be? I'm making a private bet with myself
that after another six months of carrying Fran's shawl, you'll begin
to look around. And if you do, you'll be surprised at the number of
nice women that'll fall for you! Tell me, Sam. Could you fall for
them?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't believe in being deliberately un-
happy for the sake of sticking to a bad bargain. If Fran and I did
drift apart and I couldn't find some kind of security elsewhere, I
wouldn't regard it as any virtue, but simply as an inability to face
things as they are ---"

"Ah hah! A year ago you wouldn't have admitted that! A year
ago, if I'd dared even to thumb my nose at Fran, you'd 've bitten me!
Sam, you old darling, I never have criticized Fran before, have I? --
not in all these years. Now I feel that the bust-up has happened,
and all that's needed is for you to see it, and then you'll be nice

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and heart-broken and sulky and unhappy, and after that you'll find
some darling that be crazy about you and spoil you proper, and
then all will be joyous tra-la -- curse it, that sounds like Tub!
And I'm going to bed. G' night, Sam dear. Like to ring us up about
eleven?"

As he plowed down the vast corridors of the hotel to his room,
too sleepy to think, Sam felt that this saint of unmorality had
a burden from his shoulder converted him, and opened a door
upon a vista of tall woods and dappled lawns and kind faces.

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"Hm!" said Sam.

Suddenly he was testy. Oh, of course she had a "right" to be with Kurt as much as she liked. He wasn't a haremkeeper. And of course it would be puerile to rage, "If she has a right to be loose, ~~obviously only a question of time~~ then I have the same right." There was no question of "rights". It was a question of what he wanted, and whether he was willing to pay for it -- whether he wanted new, strange loves, whether he could find them, and whether he was willing to pay in dignity, in the respect that Fran had for him, despite her nervous jabbings.

When he had seen the Pearsons off for Amsterdam, with mighty vows to meet them in Zenith within six months, when he had for an hour sat outside the Cafe des Deux Magots, brooding on the Franocentric universe which had cataclysmically replaced the universe of business and creating motors and playing golf, ~~of rivals and subordinates and neighbors and friends, of self-respect and power and happy busy weariness~~ then sharply, gripping the marble top of the little table with his huge hand, he admitted with no more reservations~~ that he was hungry as a barren woman, hungry for a sweetheart who should have Fran's fastidiousness, Minna von Escher's sooty, warmth, and Matey Pearson's shrewd earthiness.

He dined alone in a little Montparnasse restaurant filled with eager young couples: a Swedish painter with an Italian girl student, an American globe-trotter with his Polish mistress, pairs of white Russians and Italian anti-fascists. They all twittered like lovebirds, and frankly held hands over the *vin ordinaire* and horse-meat. And here, as it was very cheap, there were actually French people, all in couples except when they were part of enormous noisy family parties, and the couples stroked each other's hands, unabashedly

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Captain Dobbinses than Thackeray ever conceived, that if such a solitary look prosperous, if he speak quietly to the waiters, not talk uninvited to the people at the next table, and drink his fine a l'eau slowly, he may be merely a well-heeled tourist, who would be gratified to be guided into the citadel of the arts by a really qualified, gently tourist-despising, altogether authentic initiate of the Parisian Hobohemia -- a girl who has once had a book-review printed, or a North Dakota Swedish cellist who is convinced that every one believes him to be an Hungarian gipsy.

So it happened that when Samuel Dodsworth sat melancholy and detached at a table before the Select, four young people at another table commented upon him -- psycho-analytically, biologically, economically; cleverly, penetratingly, devastatingly.

"See that big dumbbell there by himself?" remarked Clinton J. Gillespie, the Kansas City miniaturist. "I'll bet he's an American lawyer. Been in politics. Fond of making speeches. He's out of office now, and sore about it."

"Oh hell!" said the gentleman next. "In the first place he's obviously an Englishman, and look at his hands! I don't suppose you have room for mere hands in your rotten little miniatures! He's rich and of good family, and yet he has the hands of a man who works. Perfectly simple. He's the owner of a big country estate in England, crazy about farming, and probably he's a baronet."

"Grand!" said the third, smaller, sharper-nosed man. "Perfect -- except from the fact that he's obviously a soldier and -- I'm not quite sure about this, but I think he's German!"

"You all," said the fourth, a bobbed-haired girl of twenty with a cherubic face, rose-bud mouth, demure chin, magazine-cover nose, and the eyes of a bitter and grasping woman of forty, "make me very sick!"

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as much as you want to, and I'm going to spend the night with you!"
And he was triumphant at having, after so much difficulty, been at
last able to take the first step toward sin.

"And now, young lady, I hope you're going to let me buy you a
little drink or something, just to show you think I'm as nice and res-
pectable as if you'd met me in your aunt's house, too. What would you
like?"

"Oh, I -- I — I've scarcely ever tasted alcohol." Sam had
seen her flip off two brandies at the other table. "What _does_ one drink?
What would be safe for a young girl?"

"Well — Of course you wouldn't touch brandy?"

"Oh no!"

"No, of course not. Well what would you most like?"

"Well — Oh, you won't think it's awfully silly of me, Mr.
Uh ——"

"Mr. Thomas -- Pearson J. Thomas."

"Of course -- how silly of me! You wouldn't think it was awfully
silly of me, Mr. Thomas, if I said I've often heard people speaking
about champagne, and always wanted to taste some?"

"No, I wouldn't think that was a bit silly. I'm told it's a very
nice innocent drink for young girls." ("I will! And tonight! She
picked on me first!") "Is there any particular brand of champagne you'd
like to try?"

She looked at him suspiciously, but she was reassured by his large
and unfanciful face, and prattled more artlessly than ever:

"Oh, you must think I'm a _terrible_ little silly — just a regular
little _greenhorn_ — but I don't know the name of one single brand of
any kind of wine! But oh, I did hear a boy that I know here —
he's such a hardworking boy, a student — but he told me that Pol

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Kurt would have at eighteen? , you American men! Fussing and fum-
ing and fretting over the obvious question of whether or not you'll se-
duce that little harlot! And then unable to accomplish it! What a
spectacle! But Kurt -- in the first place, of course, Kurt would have
taken Elsa away from there, away from her little parasite (friends---")

It was Fran's very voice, and he had nothing to answer.

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He awoke again to hear not Fran but himself jeering, "And the
rottenest part of the whole thing was the cheap superiority you felt to
those three little rats of would-be artists. Poor kids! Of <u>course</u>
they have to be conceited and supercilious, to keep their courage up,
because they're failures."

And again, "Yes, that's all true, but I'll find Elsa again, and
this time ---"

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ous and tedious form of journeying known to mankind, save possibly riding on a canal boat through flat country. The whole country spread in a map, yet, but how tired he got of looking at maps, hour on hour! He had less relationship to the country than in the swiftest motor, the most violent train.

It was so monotonous and safe-seeming that he laughed to remember his nervousness; laughed the more when a French business man took out his portable typewriter, set it on a suitcase on his knees and, a mile up in the air, began placidly to type a letter.

He forgot, then, all about aviating and, just glancing out now and then at distant green hills, he gave himself up to the thought of Fran. Oh, he would do anything for her.....he would make her understand .....surely such devotion would bring her to his arms!

They had left Paris at nine; they were due to alight in Germany, at Dortmund, at twenty minutes to three. Before one they ran into a thunder-shower, and all the commonplace dullness of their flight was instantly snatched away.

Their little lofty cabin seemed gruesomely insecure as the lighting glared past them, as they quivered in a blast of wind, as they ran into a dark cloud and for two minutes seemed lost in midnight, as they came out of the cloud into rain which crashed against the windows. Sam, who had cheerfully enough driven with motor racers at a hundred and ten miles an hour, was distinctly bothered. He was helpless! There was no ground to step out on, not even a sea to swim in, only the treacherous and darkened air.

The man across the little aisle from Sam -- and Sam never did find out what was the snarly language he spoke -- looked over, laughed deprecatingly, took a bottle of cognac, from a paper wrapper, drank long and gurglingly and, without a word, handed it over. Without hesitation Sam drank from the bottle and bowed his gratitude.

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"Why should you be!" She tossed her gold and crimson evening wrap
on the couch.

"Dear! Listen! This is serious! I've come back to you, willing
to do everything I can to make you happy. I adore you. You know that.
You're everything I've got. Only we've got to cut out this nonsense
of being homeless adventurers and go home -----"

"And that's your idea of 'making me happy'! And now you listen --
to repeat your favorite phrase! I love Kurt, and Kurt loves me, and I'm
going to marry him. No matter what it costs me! We decided it tonight.
And all I can say is I'm glad Kurt was too much of a gentleman to punch
your head, as he probably wanted to, when you played that sweet, prov-
incial trick of hiding in the bedroom to listen to us -----"

"Fran, Fran!"

"Now don't play the injured and astonished small boy! You have
no complaint. You've never known me. You've never known anything
about me. You've never known what I wore, what flowers I put in your
study, what sacrifices I made to cover up your awkwardnesses and help
you keep your dull friends and your dull reputation and your dull posi-
tion!"

"Fran!"

"Oh, I know! I'm being beastly. But I was so happy with Kurt --
till two minutes ago, ~~whatever it~~ And then I find you here,
a prowling elephant -- oh yes, the great Mr. Dodsworth, the motor mag-
nate, who has a right to commandeer my soul and my dreams and my body!

I can't stand it! Poor -- yes, Kurt and I will be poor. Only,
thanks to God, we'll have my twenty thousand a year! But that will be
poverty among the sort of people he knows -----"

She was altogether hysterical; she was tearing at her evening
frock; and he was as appalled as a man witnessing a murder. He said
timidly, "All right, dear. Just one thing. Does he want to marry you?"

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you feel so justified for all your dullness Oh, I can see what a
sweet time you'll have spreading scandal about me

"God!" Fran shrank at something in his face. He was standing by
the center table. He had cooled his huge right hand by grasping a vase
of roses. That hand slowly closed now, his shoulder strained, and the
vase smashed, the water dripped through his fingers. He threw the
mess, glass fragments and crushed flowers, into a corner, and wiped his
bleeding fingers. The hysterical gesture relieved him.

She looked frightened, but she quavered gallantly, "Don't be mel-

He broke in with a very hard, business-like: "We'll have no more
melodrama on either side. I warned you that I'd fly off the handle.
If you enjoy your little game of picking at me any more, it won't be
a vase next time. Now there's just a couple of things to settle. That
I go is decided. But --- You're quite sure that Kurt wants to marry
you?"

"Quite!"

"Been anything more than ---"

"No, not yet -- I'm sorry to say! There might have been if you
hadn't come tonight. Oh, I'm sorry! Please! I don't mean to be
quite as nasty as I sound! But I'm a little hysterical, too. Don't
you suppose I know what people will think about me -- what even Brent
and Emily will think! Oh, I'll pay ---"

"You will. Now will you promise me: see as much as you want to
of Kurt, but promise me that you'll wait a month before you sue for
divorce. To be sure."

"Very well."

"I'll instruct my bank to send you ten thousand a year, on top of
your own money. That seems to end everything."

"Oh Sam, if I could only make you see that it was your
ignorance, and not my fault ---"

Suddenly he had seized an astonished and ruffled Fran, thrust her

-381-

into the bedroom, growled, "We've talked enough tonight," and locked
the door on her infuriated protests.... berated himself for that xuf-
fianism....sighed that he would lie awake all night.....and, with no
bedtime preparations save removing his coat and shoes, dropped on the
couch and went instantly and blindly asleep.

-382-

CHAPTER 29

In the morning he was cool, determined to clear off as soon as
possible. She was no less cool. When he unlocked the bedroom door,
at eight, she was already dressed, in crisp blue coat and skirt and
plain blouse, and she looked at him as though he were a servant whom
she had resolved to discharge for insolence. She said quietly:

"Good morning. You know, of course, that your mauling me and
threatening me last evening made finally impossible any rapprochement
between us."

"Eh? That's fine!"

"Oh, Oh I see. Very well, that makes everything so ~~much~~ easier.
At last we know where we are. Now I suppose you'll return to Paris,
at least for a while."

"I suppose so. I'll take the evening train."

"Then you'll have a lot to do. I'm sorry to trouble you, but
I'm afraid we'll have to make a number of agreements -- about our
house in Zenith, about finances, and so on -- it's very generous of
you to go on sending money, though I certainly should not take it un-
less I felt that, after all, running your house, entertaining your
business acquaintances and all, perhaps I've earned it. And you'll
have to pack -- be something of a job to divide up the luggage, of

-387-

A minute later when, after desperate groping for speech, he felt
that it would be an ingratiating thing to say "If I happen to go to
Spain, would you like me to get you any lace or embroidery or anything?"
she answered suavely, "Oh, thanks, thanks no. I fancy I may run down to
the Balkans before long, and I believe there's some very decent embed-
ery there. I say, will you please notice that I'm putting these dress
collars not with your day collars but with your evening shirts? Heavens,
we must hurry!"

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When a man straggles on the short death-walk from his cell through
the little green door, into the room where stands the throne,
king of any crime stands up even does he, along with his incredulous
apprehension, along with trying to believe that this so-living and
eternal-seeming center and purpose of the universe, himself -- this
solid body with its hard biceps, its curiously throbbing heart that
ever since his mother's first worry has in its agonies been so absorb-
ing, this red-brown skin that has glowed after the salt sea at Coney
Island and has turned a sullen brick after wild drinking -- the
astonishment
that this image of God and Eternity will in five minutes be
still and stiff and muck -- is he at that long slow moment nonetheless
conscious of a mosquito bite, of a toothache, of the smugness of the
messages from Almighty God which the chaplain gives him, of the damp-
ness of the slimy stone corridor and the echo of their solemn march?
Is he a little more conscious of these little abrasions than of the
great mystery?

So busy were Sam and Fran at the station -- buying magazines, look-
ing over the new Tauchnitzes, seeing that his extra trunks were regis-
tered through to Paris -- that they had no time to question whether
this might be their last parting. They had dined in the crowded bar
of the Adlon, too close to others to have the luxury of mourning;

(Go to 387-A)

-389-

The train took another diabolic three minutes to start. They walked up and down -- a tall, well-tailored pair, obviously complacent and not much interested, not very emotional.

He took her arm, as he had so many times at so many railroad stations, taken it, but he dropped it with hot guiltiness.

"No, please," she said, tucking her arm into his. "It is going to be a little hard to realize, isn't it, old thing! Oh Sam darling, you and I can't get along together. And I do love Kurt. I stand by that! But we have been partners, good partners, in this funny business of life.... We've had so many happy times, just us two together!" Her voice lost its confidence. "Shall I ever see you again? And -- oh, my blessings, my dear --"

"Eeeeeein-steigen -- bitte einsteigen!" cried the mourning voice of the guard.

"That means 'all aboard'?" croaked Sam.

"Yes. Quick!"

The train was starting as he climbed up to the vestibule. Fran stood alone. He saw her with a strange, impersonal pity. She seemed so slim and young and defenseless, so alone in the gray city. He realized that she was crying.

His heavy mature voice became young and shaky as he cried, "Dear, did I remember to tell you today that I adore you?"

The guard slammed the vestibule door, and as through an open window he craned to look back at her, he saw Kurt von Obersdorf running down the platform, he saw Fran droop into Kurt's arms, and he walked slowly into the roaring loneliness of his compartment.

-4020

Orient; and it was in vain.

Bluntly, he could not go off to the Far East and leave Fran un-
protected.

Oh, he told himself she did not need protection. His presence
irritated her more than it soothed her, and he was a fool, and a puerile
and whining fool, not to be able to cut loose from his mother's apron
strings, now inconveniently worn by a wife, and veritable on her ways.

But ----- If anything went wrong there in Berlin ----- If Fran
wanted to run to him for help, and he should be ten thousand miles
away ----- He

He couldn't do it.

He wondered, occasionally, if he wasn't confusing the need to
serve Fran with the need of women in general, that basic need which
he had just consciously discovered; he wondered whether, if it were
a woman with some of Ross Ireland's sportsmanship and inquiring mind
who had invited him to come along, he would not have found it possible
to go, armored with a good, round, satisfying cliché like "Fran made
her bed; let her lie in it."

No! He swore to himself that his care for Fran was authentic;
was to him what prayer was to a hermit, and honor ----- to a soldier;
and always he wound up his fretful meditations with, "Oh, hell, I
can't analyse it, but I'm not going to desert her! Only wish I could!"

He wrote Ross not to count on his company this coming autumn,
and again fled from himself, but with himself, to Venice, because the
current news photographs from the Lido, the pictures of gay companies
on the beach, made it seem a place to divert a solitary man. And per-
haps one of these exquisite gold and ivory Englishwomen -----

No! He didn't want that sort. He wanted some one with Fran's
fineness but with Nande's sturdiness, Ross Ireland's brains.

-403-

He was able to laugh at himself: "If there were such a woman any-
where, what would she want with you?"

But as, in the too-familiar blue-velvet and stamped leather wagon
lit compartment, he clanked on toward Venice, he was not quite free
of the pictures of lovely ladies on Lido beach; not quite sure that he
had in life any purpose beyond the quest of the Not Impossible She.

-412-

had taught himself to admire with a quite surprising amount of sincerity.
Mrs. Cortright and the room which illustrated her seemed to him quite as
traditional as the faded splendors of the Princess Drachenthal at Pots-
dam; but he could reach Mrs. Cortright, understand her, not feel with
her like an inanely smirking boy invited to tea by the schoolmaster's
wife. He was a little afraid of her, a little afraid that behind her
pallid restraint there might be comment on such a stumbling tourist
as himself. But it was a fear that he could understand and answer, not
a bewildering midnight strangeness.

He saw that in an age of universal bobbing, when no Fran would
have dared be so eccentric, Mrs. Cortright kept her hair long, parted
simply and not too neatly. And he saw again the lovely hands moving
like white cats among cups of taffy-colored majolica.

line blank

She did not talk, this time, of diplomats and Riviera villas and
painting. She said:

"Tell me ------ Really, I'm not impertinent; I ask myself the same thing, and perhaps I'm looking for an answer for myself. What do you find in Europe? Why do you stay on?"

"Well, it's kind of hard to say." He sipped his iced tea, appreciative of the thin tart taste against his tongue. "Oh I guess ------ Well, to be absolutely frank, it's because of my wife. I've enjoyed coming abroad. I've learned a lot of things -- not only about pictures and all that, but in my own line -- I'm a motor manufacturer, if you remember. For instance, I went to the Rolls-Royce works in England, and it was a perfect revelation to me, the way they were willing to lose money by going on having things like polishing done by hand instead of by machinery, as we'd do them, because they felt they were better done by hand. But -- oh, I can understand how the artists that

-413-

hang around places like Florence, and that don't care whether the government is monarchial or communist as long as the tea and the sunsets are good, can be perfectly content to stay there for years. But me -- I'm getting restless at being so much of an outsider. I feel like the small boy that's never consulted about where the picnic will be held. I suppose I'm awfully lowbrow not to care for any more galleries and ruins but -- oh, I want to go home and make something! Even if it's only a hen-coop!

"But couldn't you make that here? In England, for example?"

"No. I'd feel the English chickens wouldn't understand my American, and probably go and die on me."

"Then you don't want to stay? Why do you?"

"Oh, well, my wife still feels -----"

Swiftly, as though she were covering a blunder, Mrs. Cortright murred, "And of course she is lovely. I remember her with such pleasure. She must be an enchanting person to wander with....And please don't feel that I'm one of those idiots who regard painting as superior to manufacturing -- I neither regard it as inferior, as do your Chambers of Commerce who think that all artists are useless unless they're doing pictures for stocking advertisements, nor do I regard it as superior, as do all those supercilious lady yearners who suppose that a business man with clean nails invariably prefers golf to Beethoven."

line blank

It was not brilliant talk, nor did it dazzle Sam by novelty. In both Europe and America he had encountered all the theories about modern business men: that they were the kings and only creators in the industrial age: that they were dull and hideous despots. He had hacked out his own conclusion: that they were about like other people, as assorted as cobblers, labor leaders, Javanese dancers, throat specialists, whalers,

-414-

minor canons, or asparagus-growers. Yet in the talk of Edith Cortright there was a sympathy, an apparent respect for him, a suggestion that she had seen many curious lands and known many curious people, which inspired him. Incredulously, he found himself trying to outline his philosophy of life for her; more incredulously, found himself willing to admit that he hadn't any. She nodded, as in like confession.

He urged: "I've enjoyed talking with you. Look here: Would I be rude if I asked you [insert line] to go for a gondola ride, now it's getting cooler, and possibly dine with me on the Lido this evening, if you're free? I've been, uh -- kind of lonely."

"I should be glad to, but I can't. You see my friends here are mostly the rather stuffy, frightfully proper, very sweet old Italian family sort who haven't yet got over being shocked by Colleoni. I'm afraid I couldn't go out in a gondola with you unless I were chaperoned -- bedragoned -- which would be a frightful bore. But won't you come here to dinner tomorrow evening -- eight-thirty, black tie?"

why

"Be pleased to. Eight-thirty....But [insert line] do you stay in Europe?"

"Oh [insert line] America terrifies me. I feel insecure there. I feel everybody watching me, and [insert line] criticizing me unless I'm buzzing about doing Something Important -- uplifting the cinema or studying Einstein or winning bridge championships or breeding Schnauzers or something. And there's no privacy, and I'm an extravagant woman when it comes to the luxury of privacy."

"But look here! In America you could certainly go gondoling -- well, motoring -- as you liked. Here you have to be chaperoned to avoid criticism!"

"Only with one class -- the formal people that I've chosen (wisely or foolishly) to live with. My grocer and my dentist and my neighbor on the floor below (amiable-looking person -- I rather fancy he's a gambler) -- they don't feel privileged to help me conduct my affairs,

-415-

or rather, they wouldn't if I were so adventurous as to be conducting
any! At home, they would. It's only in Europe that you can have the joy
of anonymity, of being lost in the crowd, of being yourself, of having
the dignity of privacy!"

"You try New York! Get lost enough there!"

"Oh, but _New York_ ----- Self-conscious playing at international-
ism! Russian Jews in London clothes going to Italian restaurants with
Greek waiters and African music! One-hundred per cent. mongrels! No
wonder Americans flee back home to Sussex or Somerset! And never, day
or night or dawn, any escape from the sound of the Elevated! New York --
no. But I am sure that there is still a sturdy, native America -- and
not Puritanical, either, any more than Lincoln or Franklin were Purit-
anical -- that you know. But tell me (to get away from my lost, expat-
riate, awfully unoriented and ^inimportant self), tell me frankly: what
have you seen in Europe -- I mean that you'll remember ten years from
now?"

He slumped in his chair, he rubbed his chin, and sighed:

"Well, I guess about as much as I'd get out of reading the steam-
ship and hotel ads in a New York Sunday paper! I know a little less
than when I started. Then, I knew that all Englishmen were icicles,
all Frenchmen chattered, and all Italians sat around in the sun singing.
Now I don't even know that much. I suspect that most Englishmen are
friendly, most Frenchmen are silent, and most Italians work like the
devil -- pardon me!"

"Exactly! "

"I've learned to doubt everything. I've learned that even a
fairly successful executive -- and I _was_ that, no matter how much of a
loafer I seem now -----"

"Oh, I know!"

-416-

"I've learned that even a fairly good garage boss like myself ~~isn't~~ much good at deciding between Poiret and Lanvin, or between Early English and Decorated. No American business man ought ever ~~to go abroad, except~~ to a Rotary convention, or on a conducted tour, where he's well insulated from furriners. Upsets him. Spoils his pleasure in his own greatness and knowledge!....What have I learned? Let's see: The names of maybe fifty hotels, of which I'll remember five, in a few years. The schedules of half a dozen de luxe trains. The names of a few brands of Burgundy. How to tell a Norman doorway from Gothic. How to order from a French menu -- providing there's nothing unusual on the bill. And I can say 'How much' and 'Too much' in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. And I think that's about all I've learned here. I guess they caught me too late!"

-417-

CHAPTER 32

With his second drink, at Florian's, after dinner, he recaptured
that rare exhilarating glow at the thought of travel, alone and fast.
He could go as he would: North, South -- the very names had magic:
*North* and snow-drifts among silent pines; *South* and bamboo huts in the
jungle; *East* and a cranky steamer jogging up a purple strait; *West* and
a bench by a log cabin in the Rockies, with a lake two thousand feet
below, and himself, strong and deep-breathing as he had been at thirty,
smelling the new-cut chips, the frosty air. Yes! He would see them
all! He wouldn't go back to an office!

He had twenty, perhaps thirty years more. He would have a second
life; having been Samuel Dodsworth he would go on and miraculously be
some one else, more ruthless, less bound, less sentimental. He could
be a poet, a governor, an explorer. He'd learned his faults of com-
mercial-mindedness, of timidity before women. Correct 'em! He'd seen
the gaps in his knowledge. Fill 'em! Twenty years more!

Start right now. Tomorrow he would take up Italian. Tomorrow
he would write to Ross Ireland about that jaunt to the Orient. Yes!

line blank

After the comfort of tea with Edith Cortright, he had been lone-
lier than ever. For five minutes he had planned to flee to Fran.
But fried scampi and a drink solaced him; a second drink set his im-
agination dancing. Then he wanted another drink -- and didn't want it.

-418-

No! He shook himself. He hated this flabby, easy escape through alcohol into a belief in his own power and freedom. He wasn't (proudly) one of weaklings who took refuge from problems in the beautiful peace of the gutter, where the slime covered one's ears from all the m準ing voices of the censors who were always demanding of a tired man a little more than he could do.

But Was that true? Was anything he had thought true -- even this easy disgust at easy escape? Was it possible that he was unable to fall permanently into drunkenness, to disintegrate, to scorn all decent scorn, to be content with a Nande Leäl in a stinking garret, not because he was too strong but because he was too weak -- too weakly afraid of what Fran, Tub, Matey, strangers like Mrs. Cortright, would say? Was it possible that it took more courage to be a hobo, deliberate, out and out, than to go on living like a respectable manufacturer while he ached like a Verlaine? Was dry rot, braver than a moist and dripping rage of defiance?

He gave it up.

He was so tired of dragging out his little soul and worrying over it! If he could only be laughing, unthinking, with Tub Pearson. Or if Mrs. Cortright had been willing to dine with him --

Mrs. Cortright. Now there was a woman! As proper as Fran, as worldly, yet as indifferent to titles and luxury as Nande Leäl.
"Mighty sweet woman, even though she is a grandee."

He thought again about that third drink, then vehemently didn't want it, vehemently retired into the respectability from which for a moment he had thought he might escape. For at the next table was an American party, full of merriment and keeping their brother from falling by setting an edifyingly bad example.

There were three men, three women. Apparently some of them were married to some of the others, but they seemed confused as to who was

-419-

married to whom.

They noted Sam, and one of the men staggered over to shout, "American, ain't you? Well say, why the lone fiesta? Come over and join a live bunch!"

Rather pleased, Sam went over and joined. "Just arrived?" he asked, as was proper.

"You bet. Landed at Naples, yesterday," said his host. "Came over on a Wop ship -- elegant boat too -- and say, boy, that was some trip, too, I'll tell the cock-eyed world! Say, I've heard about wet voyages, but this trip -- say, I bet I never went to bed before three G.M. once, the whole way over! And the girls -- say, they were just as good as the men -- Dorine here, she drank two bols champagne in two hours, and the whole bunch were so crazy about the Italian officers -- say, the officers had to brush 'em off the bridge every time they wanted to do any fancy navigating! And that gave us boys a chance to get in a little petting ourselves! Some trip! Say, if you could have seen the nightshirt parade the last night out! Boy! Some trip!"

One of the women -- and save for her damp eyes a most spinsterish and unaphrodisiac lady she appeared -- cried, "Some trip is right! And I've got a date to meet the second officer in Paris. He's going to lay off one trip. And maybe I'll just keep him laid off. Maybe I'll decide to buy me a nice little boy friend. Some baby! Oh those Or-i-ental eyes! Say, Pete, for the love o' Gawd, ain't you going to buy our little friend here --" She pointed at Sam with a thin, chaste, over-manicured, and rather wobbly forefinger. "-- a lil drink?"

But Sam declined. His vision of the beauties of the gutter had vanished with haste and a ludicrous squawking. He was grimly again the Sam Dodsworth who was proud of keeping in shape. He accepted, with irritating signs of pleasure, a lemonade (it was the first he had tasted

-420-

in months) and sat wondering about these fellow-countrymen.

He could not place them. In age they seemed to run from thirty to
forty. They were not so vulgar nor so vicious as at first they seemed.
Once in a while they were betrayed by alcohol into revealing that they
did have vocabularies and had perhaps read a book. He suspected that
two out of the three men were university graduates; that all six of
these loud-mouthed libertines were, at home, worthy deacons and pall-bearers.
He had known in Zenith of "young married couples", theoretically responsible young doctors and lawyers and salesmen, who turned
dances at country clubs into a combination of brothel and frontier bar.
But he had not gone to such dances. These people were none of
his! Then, shocked, he realized that perhaps they were. Were these
oafs anything but younger and gayer and slightly more amorous Tub
Pearsons?

They were not altogether to blame. They were the product of Prohibition, mass production, and an education dominated by the notion that one goes to college to become acquainted with people who will later be useful in business, and that the greatness of a university is in ratio to the number of its students and the number of its athletic victories.

Or so Sam brooded.

He had heard much of the "sexually cold American woman." Heaven knows, he raged, he had felt it in Fran! Yet with these riotous women, it was the lack of chill which he resented. The amiable lady who was going to "buy her" a second officer had, during Sam's stay at the table, kissed one of the men, held the hand of another, and was now turning her withered excitement on himself: "Say, you're some husk! Gee, I bet you hurt the lil' golf ball's feelings when you slam it one!"

He smiled bleakly.