-46-

the Riviera -- interesting, I should think..... Darling !"

Gaining on but never quite passing that monocle-flashing,
tweed-coated man whom they detested on sight and who, within three
days, was to prove the simplest and heartiest of acquaintances.
gal !!

A racing view of all their companions of the voyage, their
fellow-citizens in this brave village amid the desert of waters:
strangers to be hated on sight, to be snubbed lest they snub
first, yet presently to be known better and better loved and long-
er remembered than neighbors seen for a lifetime on the cautious
land.

Their permanent home, for a week; to become more familiar,
thanks to the accelerated sensitiveness which is the one blessing
of travel, than rooms paced for years. Every stippling of soot on
the lifeboats, every chair in the smoking-room, every table along
one's own aisle in the dining salon, to be noted and recalled, in
an exhilarated and heightened observation.

"I do feel awfully well," said Sam, and Fran: "So do I. So
long since we've walked together like this! And we'll keep it
up; we won't get caught by people. But I must arise now and go to
Innisfree and finish the unpacking of the nine bean rows oh *why*
did I bring so many clothes! Till dressing-time -- *my dear*."

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He was dressed for dinner before her -- she had decided, after
rather a lot of conversation about it, that the belief that our bet-
ter people do not dress for dinner on the first night out was a
superstition. He sauntered up to the smoking-room for his first
cocktail aboard, feeling very glossy and handsome and much-traveled.
Then he was feeling very lonely, for the smoking-room was filled with
amiable-looking people who apparently knew one another. And he knew
nobody aboard save Fran.

-47-

"That's the one trouble I'm going to miss Tub and Doc Hazzard and the rest horribly," he brooded. "I wish they were along! Then it would be about perfect."

He was occupying an alcove with a semi-circular leather settee, before a massy table. The room was crowded, and a square-rigged Englishman, blown into the room with a damp whiff of sea air, stopped at Sam's table asking abruptly, "Mind if I sit here?"

The Englishman ordered his cocktail with competence: "Now be very careful about this, steward. I want half Booth gin and half French vermouth, and just four drops of orange bitters, and no Italian vermouth, remember, no Italian vermouth." As the Englishman gulped his drink, Sam enjoyed hating him. The man was perfectly expressionless, like a square-headed wooden idol, colored like an idol of cedar wood. "Supercilious as the devil. Never would be friendly, not till he'd known you ten years. Well, he needn't worry! I'm not going to speak to him! Curious how an Englishman like that can make you feel that you're small and skinny and your tie's badly tied without even looking at you! Well, he -----"

The Englishman spoke, curtly:

"Decent weather, for a February crossing."

"Is it? I don't really know. Never crossed before."

"Really?"

"You've crossed often?"

"Oh, perhaps twenty times. I was with the British War Mission during the late argument. They were always chasing me across. Lockert's my name. I'm growing cocoa down in British Guiana now. Hot there! Going to stay in London?"

-49-

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He wondered about introducing Major Lockert to Fran.

He was never able to guess how she would receive the people whom he found in the alley and proudly dragged in to her. Business men whom he regarded as upstanding and vigorous, she often pronounced dull; European visitors whom he found elegant, she was likely to call "not quite the real thing," and men whom he had doubtfully presented to her as worthy but rather mutton-headed, she had been known to consider fine and very sensitive. And for all her theoretical desire to make their house a refuge for him and for whomever he liked to invite, she had never learned to keep her opinions of people to herself. When she was bored by callers, she would beg "Do you mind if I run up to bed now -- such a headache," with a bright friendliness which fooled no one save herself, and which left their guests chilled and awkward.

Would she find Lockert heavy?

While they sat in the music room over after-dinner coffee, with a dance beginning in the cleared space, Lockert came ambling up and halted.

"Mr. Lockert -- my wife," Sam mumbled.

Lockert's stolidity did not change as he bowed, as he sat down in answer to a his/her faint invitation, but Sam noted that his pale blue eyes came quickly alive, and searched Fran with approval..... Fran's ~~lovely pallor~~ in a _robe de style_ such as only her slenderness could bear.

Sam settled back with his cigar and let them talk. To him, always, the best talk was no brilliance of his own, but conversation that amused Franmmm and drew her out of her silken sulkiness.

"You've been long in America, Mr. Lockert?"

-50-

"Not this time. I've been living in British Guiana -- plantation -- no soda for your whisky, and always the chance of finding a snake curled up in your chair on the verandah -- nice big snakes, all striped, very handsome and friendly -- don't seem to get used to 'em."

Lockert spoke to her, not with such impersonal friendliness as he had for Sam, not with the bored dutifulness which most men in Zenith showed toward any woman over a flapperish eighteen, but a concentration, an eagerness in the presence of attractive women, an authentic need for women, which seemed to flatter Fran and to rouse her, yet make her timid. She had first looked at Lockert with metallic courtesy. "Here was another of those ponderous business men that Sam was always dragging around." Now she concentrated on him, she forgot Sam, and murmured youthfully:

"It sounds dreadful. And yet so exciting! I think I should be glad of a nice striped snake, for a change! I'm terribly fed up with the sound, safe American cities where you never find anything in your chair more thrilling than the morning paper. I think I'll go look for snakes!"

"Are you going East?"

"Don't know. Isn't it nice! No plans beyond London."

"You'll stay in London a bit?"

"Yes, if there aren't too many Americans there. Why _is_ it that the travelling American is such a dreadful person? Look at those ghastly people at that second table there -- no, just beyond the pillar -- father with horn-rimmed spectacles, certain to be talking about either Coolidge or Prohibition -- earnest mother in home-made frock out to hunt down Culture and terribly grim about it -- daughter with a voice like a file. Why _is_ it?"

"And why is it that you Americans, the nice ones, are so much more

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the small even voice with which an Englishman can murmur, 'Don't be so noisy, my dear fellow -----!' Physically, it may carry only a yard, but spiritually it rings clear up through the Heavens! And I'll be hearing it, now that I've become a Colonnial. Even my cousin -- I was speaking to your husband about him -- absolute fanatic about motor transport -- I'm to stay with him in Kent, and he'll be pleasant to me, and gently rebuking ----- And he's rather a decent old thing -- General Herndon."

"General Lord Herndon? Of the Italian drive?" said Fran.

"Yes. You see, my revered great-grandfather did so well out of cotton that he was rewarded with a peerage."

"And you're so proud of it! That's why you enjoy your mock humility. You had a quite American thrill in admitting that your cousin is a lordship. It's bunk -- I mean, it's nonsense, the British assertion that only Americans take titles seriously. You have as much satisfaction out of not calling your cousin 'Lord' as -----"

"As any charming American woman would out of calling him 'Lord'!"

She seemed helpless against Lockert's bland impertinence; she seemed to enjoy being bullied; she admitted "Yes, perhaps," and they smiled at each other.

"But seriously," said Lockert, "you'll be more English than I am, after you've lived there a year. I've knocked about so much in South America and Colorado and Ceylon that I'm merely a tramp. Jungle rat."

"You really think so -- that I'll become English?" She was unguardedly frank, she the ever guarded.

"Quite. I say, may I have this dance?"

Lockert, for all his squareness -- he was as solid and ungraceful as looking as his favorite mutton-chop -- danced easily. Sam drooped in his chair and watched them. "Nice she has somebody to play with

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already," he insisted.

And within three days she had a dozen men to "play with," to dance and argue with, and race around the deck. But always it was Lockert who assumed that he was her patron, who looked over her new acquaintances one by one, and was not at all shy about giving his verdict on them. She became helplessly angry at his assumptions, and he apologized so affably and so insincerely that she enjoyed quarreling with him for hours at a time, snuggled in a steamer robe on deck. And when Lockert and she found that they were both devoted to dogs and they became learned about wire-haired terriers, Sam leaned back listening as though she were his daughter.

Between times she was gayer with him and more affectionate than she had been for years; and day by day the ~~casualness~~ suitable to a ~~Midwestern~~ manufacturer broke down into surprising, uncharted emotions.

-55-

and much was made of it. The dining salon was draped in scarlet,
the stewards were in red hunting coats, they were summoned to din-
ner by a huntsman's horn, and champagne was served at the expense
of the line. Even prohibitionists were betrayed into smiles which
indicated that they wanted to keep up the friendships of this hal-
cyon week. Toasts were drunk from table to table, with many bows
and the large Seattle contractor, who always overdid everything,
threw confetti, and tonight no one minded his alcoholic philanthropy.
The Comtesse de Val Montique, who had been born in Chicago, who
owned nine million dollars, two chateaux, and part of a beautifully
varnished husband, who crossed the ocean regularly twice a year and
was so aristocratic that she had for friends only her servants, was moved tonight to look amiable as
people passed her table. And the old captain, his beard like a
whisk broom, went about the room patting shoulders and chuckling,
"You cross again with Papa, eh?"

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Sam was raised to a quivering sensitiveness toward all of them. He was not drunk, certainly, but after two cocktails, half a bottle of champagne, and a cognac or two, he was released from his customary caution, his habitual concentration on his own affairs. He was excited by their merriment, at first; then it seemed to him pitiful that all of them, and he himself, should so rarely cease thus their indignant assertion of the importance of their own little offices and homes and learnings, and let themselves rejoice in friendliness. They seemed to him like children, excitedly playing now, but soon to be caught by weary maturity. He felt a little the lacrimae rerum of the whole world. He wanted to weep over the pride of the waiters as -- the one moment on the voyage when they were important and beautiful and to be noticed -- they bore in

-57-

"Don't be silly! You're a lovely partner. You're a man, not one of these gigolos, or whatever the damn word is. If you didn't have such a lovely wife, I'd probably lay my head on your lovely big chest and ask you to go out to Hollywood and kill a couple lovely beauty-parlor cowboys for me!"

He was pleased to believe that she meant it. His heightened sensitiveness, his wistful perception of the loneliness of the world, was gone in a boisterous well-being. When he danced with Fran and she dutifully pointed out his roughness, he laughed. Always she had a genius for keeping herself superior to him by just the right comment on his clumsiness, the most delicate and needle-pointed comparison of him with defter men. But tonight he chuckled, "I don't pretend to be any Nijinsky, but I'm enjoying myself so much that even you can't make me mad." He whirled her again, mercilessly, he slid gloatingly down the long deck, and marched her back to their table.

And, when Fran assured him they needed no more wine at their table in the music-room, there were joyful invasions of the smoking-room, where tablefuls of the shamelessly happy greeted him, "Come sit down!"

They liked him! He was Somebody! Not just as the president of the Revelation but in himself, in whatever surroundings!

He did sit down; he wandered from table to table in an ecstasy of friendliness... which became a little blurred, a little dizzy.... But they were the best company he'd ever known, everybody on board, all of 'em.... But he'd better watch out; he was slightly lit.... But they were the best folks -----

He went out on deck, to clear his head; he swayed up to the boat deck. Then he stood fixed, and all his boisterousness vanished in a high, thin, clear ecstasy.

-58-

On the horizon was a light, stationary, on land, after these
days of shifting waters and sliding hulls. He waited to be certain.
Yes! It was a lighthouse, swinging its blade of flame. They had
done it, they had fulfilled the adventure, they had found their way
across the blind immensity and, the barren sea miles over, they had
come home to England. He did not know (he never knew) whether the
light was on Bishop's Rock or the English mainland, but his released
imagination saw the murkiness to northward there as England itself.
Mother England! Land of his ancestors; land of the only kings who,
to an American schoolboy, had been genuine monarchs -- Charles I
and Henry VIII and Victoria; not a lot of confusing French and Ger-
man rulers. Land where still, for the never quite matured Sammy
Dodsworth, Coeur de Lion went riding, the Noir Faineant went riding,
to rescue Ivanhoe, where Oliver Twist still crept through evil al-
leys, where Falstaff's belly-laugh discommoded the godly, where
Uncle Ponderevo puffed and mixed, where Jude wavered by dusk across the
moorland, where Old Jolyon sat with quiet eyes, in immortality more
enduring than human life. And his own people -- he had lost
track of them, but he had far-off cousins in Wiltshire, in Durham.
And all of them -- there -- in a motor boat he could be ashore
in half an hour! Perhaps there was a town just off there -- He
saw it, from pictures in Punch and the Illustrated London News, from
Cruikshank illustrations of his childhood.

A seaside town: a crescent of flat-faced houses, the brass-
sheathed door of a select pub and, countrywards, a governess' cart
creeping among high hedges to a village green, a chalky hill with
Roman earthworks up to which panted the bookish vicar beside a white-
mustached ex-proconsul who had ruled jungles and maharajahs and lost
temples where peacocks screamed. Mother England! Home!

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line blank

He dashed down to Fran. He had to share it with her. For all
his training in providing suitable company for her and then not in-
terrupting his betters, he burst through her confidences as Lockert
and she stood aloof from the dance. He seized her shoulder and rum-
bled, "Light ahead! We're there! Come up on the top deck. Oh hell,
never mind a coat. Just a second, to see it!" His insistence bore
Fran away and with her alone, unchaperoned by that delightful Major
Lockert, he stood huddled by a lifeboat, in his shirtsleeves, his
dress coat around her, looking at the cheery wink of the light that
welcomed them.

They had full five minutes of romancing and of tenderness before
Lockert came along, placidly bumbling that they would catch cold.....
that they would find Kent an estimable county.....that Dodsworth must
never make the mistake of ordering his street boots and his riding-
boots from the same maker.

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The smell of London is a foggy smell, a sooty smell, a coal-
fire smell, yet to certain wanderers it is more exhilarating, more
suggestive of greatness and of stirring life, than ~~the~~ springtime
hillsides or the chill sweetness of ~~autumnal~~ nights; and
that unmistakable smell, which men long for in rotting perfumes along
the Orinoco, in the greasy reek of South Chicago, in the hot odor of
dusty earth among locust-buzzing Alberta wheatfields, that luring
breath of the dark giant among cities, reaches halfway to Southampton
to greet the traveller. Sam sniffed at it, uneasily, restlessly, while
he considered how strange was the British fashion of having railway
compartments with two facing seats, instead of an undivided car with
a nice long aisle along which you could observe ankles, magazines,
Rotary buttons, clerical collars, and all the details that made travel

-60-

interesting.

And the strangeness of having framed pictures of scenery behind
embroidered
the seats; of having hand straps -- the/silk covering so rough to
the finger tips, the leather inside so smooth and cool -- beside the
doors. And the greater strangeness of admitting that these seats were
more comfortable than the flinty Pullman chairs of America. And of
seeing outside, in the watery February sunshine, not snow-curdled
fields but springtime greenness; pollarded willows and thatched roofs
and half-timbered facades -----

Just like in the pictures! England!

Like most people who have never traveled abroad, Sam had not emo-
tionally believed that these "foreign scenes" veritably existed; that
human beings really could live in environments so different from the
front yards of Zenith suburbs; that Europe was anything save a fetching
myth like the Venusberg. But finding it actually visible, he gave
himself up to grasping it as enthusiastically as, these many years,
he had given himself to grinding out motor cars.

-62-

welcome, and when they were safely inside the car, she opened up:

"I do think you might have remembered to send that wireless, considering that you had absolutely nothing else to do aboard — except drink! When I did all the packing and ... Sam, do you ever realize that it really wouldn't injure your titantic industrial mind if you were occasionally just the least little bit thoughtful toward me, if you didn't leave absolutely everything about the house and traveling for me to do? I don't think it was very nice of you! And I'm so tired, after the customs and ..."

"Hell! I suppose you got the tickets to Europe! I suppose you got our passports ..."

"No, Your secretary did. I'm afraid you don't get any very vast credit for that, my dear man!"

That was all the family scene they had time for before they disembarked at the Ritz, but Fran was able to keep up quite a high level of martyrdom and bad temper, for the Ritz was nearly full, also, and they could not have a suite till the next day. Tonight, Fran had to endure a mere double bedroom with a private bath.

"I suppose," she stormed, "that I'm expected to spend my entire time in London packing and unpacking and moving and unpacking all over again! This awful room! Oh, I do think you might have remembered ..."

All the gaiety was gone from Sam's large face. He held her arm, painfully, and growled, "Now that'll do! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! I always deny it, even to you, but you can be the nagging wife! Just the kind you hate. We've never had a better room than this, and tomorrow we'll have a suite, and you needn't unpack anything besides a toothbrush this evening — we needn't dress for dinner. You make me sick when you get this suffering, abused, tragedy fit. I know it's because you're tired and jumpy, but can't you ever be tired and

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remember to send her flowers, or when you 'phone to her at odd hours,
just to say you love her, than she would be by a new motor car. Please
don't think I'm nagging -- maybe I was before, but I'm not now,
really! I do so want us to be happy together! And now you don't
have to think about business, don't you think it might be nice to get
acquainted with me? I'm really quite a nice person!"

"Nice? Oh Lord!"

She was cheerfuller, after their long kiss, and he -- he became
very busy trying to be a thoughtful husband.

And she agreed that it was jolly that they needn't dress for
dinner, and then she unpacked their evening clothes.

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It was toward evening; he must make her first night in London
exciting; and, like most American husbands, he believed that the best
way to do it was to invite some one, if possible some one a little
younger and livelier than himself, to join them.

Major Lockert?

Oh, damn Major Lockert!

They'd seen too much of him on the ship -- and the patronizing
way in which he'd ambled into their compartment on the boat train and
thrust a *Graphic* and a *Tatler* on them -- And he'd explained that you mustn't confuse a
florin and a half-crown --

Still, Lockert was younger than himself -- perhaps half a dozen
years -- and he could gabble about baccarat and Paris-Plage and other
things that Fran seemed to find important --

"Let's get hold of somebody for dinner, honey," he said, "and
then maybe we'll take in a show. How about it? Shall I try
to get hold of Lockert?"

-66-

of time to see Hurd; go call on him tomorrow, maybe."

"No, really, I think it would be lovely to have your Mr. Hurd. He wasn't so bad. I was exaggerating. Yes, do call him up -- please do! I'd feel terrible if I felt that I'd kept you from seeing ------ And perhaps you do owe it to the business. He may have some cables from the U.A.C."

"Well, all right. And if I don't get him, how about trying Colonel Enderley and his wife -- I thought they were about the nicest people on the boat, and they may not have a date for tonight. Or that aviator, Ristad? "

"Splendid."

Hurd's office was closed.

Hurd's home address not in the telephone book.

Colonel and Mrs. Enderley not at the Savoy, after all.

Max Ristad not in.

Who else?

How many millions of American husbands had sat on the edges of how many millions of hotel beds, from San Francisco to Stockholm, sighing to the unsympathetic telephone, "Oh, not in?" ruffling through the telephone book, and again sighing "Oh, not in?" -- looking for playmates for their handsome wives, while the wives listened blandly and never once cried, "But I don't want any one! Aren't we two enough?"

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A little melancholy at having to struggle through their Second Honeymoon unassisted, they dined at the hotel and went to the theater. In the taxicab, he had a queer timidity in the darkness -- no fear of violence, no sense of threatened death, but a feeling of incompetence in this strange land, of making a fool of himself, of being despised

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with her because then they would be unable to continue having tea and
love together at the husband's expense. And the English audience,
apparently good honest people, laughed.

The queer cold bewilderment crept closer to him in the entr'acte,
when he paced the lobby with Fran. The people among whom he was
strolling were so blankly indifferent to him. In Zenith, he would
have been certain to meet acquaintances at the theater; even in New
York there was a probability of meeting classmates or automobile men.
But here ----- He felt like a lost dog. He felt as he had on the
first day of his Freshman year in college.

And his evening clothes, he perceived, were all wrong.

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They went to bed rather silently, Sam and Fran. He would have
given a great deal if she had suggested that they take a steamer back
to America tomorrow. What, actually, she was thinking, he did not
know. She had retired into the mysteriousness which had hidden her
essential self ever since the night when he had first made love to
her, at the Kennepoose Canoe Club. She was pleasant now -- too
pleasant; she said, too easily, that she had enjoyed the play; and
she said, without saying it, that she was far from him and that he was not
to touch her body, her sacred, proud, passionately cared-for body, save
in a fleeting good-night kiss. She seemed as strange to him as the
London audience at the theater. It was inconceivable that he had lived
with her for over twenty years; impossible that she should be the mother
of his two children; equally impossible that it could mean anything to
her to travel with him -- he so old and tired and aimless, she so fresh
and unwrinkled and sure.

Tonight, she wasn't forty-two to his fifty-one; she was thirty to
his sixty.

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He heard the jesting of Tub Pearson, the friendliness of his chauffeur at home, the respectful questions of his stenographer.

He realized that Fran was also lying awake and that, as quietly as possible, her face rammed into her pillow, she was crying. And he was afraid to comfort her.

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CHAPTER 8

Sam had never, for all of Fran's years of urging that it was a
genteel and superior custom, been able to get himself to enjoy break-
fast in bed. It seemed messy. Prickly crumbs of toast crept in between
his
the sheets, honey got itself upon/<u>man</u>'s pajamas, and it was impos-
sible to enjoy an honest cup of coffee unless he squared up to it at
an honest table. He hated to desert her, their first morning in
London, but he was hungry. Before he dared sneak away to the restau-
rant, he fussed about, <u>man</u>'s to it that she had a proper breakfast.
There was a room waiter, very morose, who spoke of creamed haddock
and kippers. Now whatever liberalisms Samuel Dodsworth might have
about politics and four-wheel brakes, he was orthodox about American
breakfasts, and nothing could have sent him more gloomily down to
his own decent Cream of Wheat than Fran's willingness to take a
thing called a kipper!

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No, said Fran, after breakfast, she thought she would stay in bed
till ten. But he needed exercise, she said. Why, she said, with a
smile which snapped back after using as abruptly as a stretched
rubber band, <u>man</u> didn't he take a nice walk?

He did take a nice walk.

He <u>man</u>'s felt friendly with such old-fashioned shops as
were left on St. James's Street; brick shopfronts with small-paned
windows which had known all the beaux and poets of the eighteenth

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century: a hat-making shop with antiquated toppers and helmets in the window; a wine office with old hand-blown bottles. Beyond these relics was a modern window full of beautiful shiny shotguns. He had not believed, somehow, that the English would have such beautiful shiny shotguns. Things were looking up. England and he would get along together. (in that gray air the aloof)

But it was foggy, a little raw, and white-faced clubs of Pall Mall, which seemed in that gray air too haughty even for the associates of history, depressed him. He was relieved by the sign of an American bank, the Guaranty Trust Company, looking very busy and cheerful behind the wide windows. He would go in there and get acquainted but --- Today he could think of no reason; he had plenty of money, and there had been no time yet for mail to arrive -- curse it! -- how he'd like a good breezy letter from Tub Pearson, even a business letter from the U.A.C., full of tricky questions to be answered, anything to assure him that he was some one and meant something, here in this city of traditional, unsmiling state-liness, among these unhurried, well-dressed people who so thoroughly ignored him.

The next steamer back ---

Too late in life, now, to "make new contacts," as they said in Zenith.

He realized that Fran's thesis, halfway convincing to him when they had first planned to go to Europe, her belief that with their Duty completed they could make more passionate lives merely by running away to a more complex and graceful civilization, had been as sophomoric as the belief of a village girl that if she could but go off to New York, she would magically become beautiful and clever and happy.

He had, for a few days, forgotten that wherever he traveled, he

-73-

must take his own familiar self along, and that that self would loom
up between him and new skies, however rosy. It was a good self. He
liked it, for he had worked with it. Perhaps it could learn things.

But would it learn any more here, where he was chilled by the un-
familiarity, than in his quiet library, in solitary walks, in hon-
estly auditing his life, back in Zenith? And just what were these
new things that Fran confidently expected it to learn?

**Pictures?**

Why talk stupidly about pictures when he could talk intelligently
about engines? Languages? If he had nothing to say, what was the
good of saying it in three languages? Manners? These presumable
dukes and dignitaries whom he was passing on Pall Mall might be
able to enter a throne-room more loftily, but he didn't want to
enter a throne-room. He'd rather awe Alec Kynance of the U.A.C.
only
than anybody who'd/inherited the right to be called a king!

No. He was simply going to be more of Sam Dodsworth than he had
ever been. He wasn't going to let Europe make him apologetic. Fran
would certainly get notions; want to climb into circles with fancy-
dress titles. Oh Lord, and he was so fond of her that he'd probably
back her up! But he'd fight; he'd try to get her happily home in
six months.

So! He knew now what he'd do -- and what he'd make her do!

He became happy again, and considered the Londoners with a
friendly, unenvious, almost superior air.... and discovered that his
hat was just as wrong as his evening clothes. It was a good hat, too,
and imported; a Borsalino, guaranteed by the Hub Hatters of Zenith
to be the smartest hat in America, but it slanted down in front with
too Western and rakish an air.

And, swearing that he'd let no English passers-by tell him what
he was going to wear, he stalked toward Piccadilly and a hat-shop he

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remembered having seen. He'd just glance in there. Certainly they couldn't sell him anything! English people couldn't sell like Americans! So he entered the shop and came out with a new gray felt hat for town, a new brown one for the country, a bowler, a silk evening hat, and a cap, and he was proud of himself for having begun the Europeanization which he wasn't going to begin.

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For lunch he invited Hurd -- Mr. A.B.Hurd, manager of the London agency of the Revelation Motor Company, an American who had lived in England for six years.

Fran was fairly amiable about meeting Mr. Hurd, for the hotel management had given her the suite which she had demanded, with a vast sitting-room in blue and gold. "I was cross, last evening," she said to Sam. "I felt kind of lonely. I was naughty, and you were so sweet. I'll be good now."

But she couldn't help being a little over-courteous to Hurd when he came in.

Mr. Hurd was a round-faced, horn-spectacled, heavy-voiced man who believed that he had become so English in manner and speech that no one could possibly take him for an American, and who, if he lived in England for fifty years, would never be taken by any living being for anything save an American. He looked so like every fourth man to be found at the Zenith Athletic Club that traveling Middlewesterners grew homesick just at sight of him, and the homesicker when they heard his good, meaty, uninflected Iowa voice. He was proud of say, that the "goods vans with the motors were being shunted," though if he was in a hurry he was likely to observe that the "goods vans with the autos were by God being switched."

His former awe of Sam and of the elegance of Fran was lost now in his superiority as one who certainly did know his England and

-75-

could help these untraveled friends.

He bounded into their suite, shook hands, and crowed:

"Well by Jove, d' you know you could 've doggone near knocked
me down with a feather when I found you folks were in tawn! I say,
you know, if you'd just told us you were coming, we'd 've been down
to the depot with the town brass band! By golly, d' you know, Chief,
I'm almost sorry we're going in with the U.A.C. It's always been a
pleasure to have a straight-shooter like you for boss, and all of us
hope that you're going with the U.A.C. yourself. Say, maybe we aren't
shoving over what we got left of the old Series V on the Britishers,
too! Now I don't know what plans you folks have, and the one thing
we learn here in England about handling our guests -----"

(Sam wondered if Hurd noticed the sudden rigidity with which
Fran received the suggestion that she could ever be considered a
guest of Mr. A.B. Hurd.)

"----- is not to bother 'em, like the Americans do, but let 'em
alone when they want to be let alone. Now this noon you folks come
grab lunch with me at the Savoy Grill -- say, I've got the waiters
there trained, and I'll tell 'em they're not to treat you like or-
dinary Americans -- they all think I'm English; they think I'm kidding
'em when I tell 'em I'm a good Yank and proud of it! And then to-
morrow evening I'll get Mrs. Hurd to come in from the country --
we're living at Beaconsfield, got practically an acre there -- and
we might all take in a show. You folks will enjoy the English stage
-- real highbrow actors that know how to talk the English language,
not a lot of these New York roughnecks. And then maybe next week-end
you might like to come down and stay with us, and I'll drive you
around and show you some real English landscape, and you'll meet some
of the real sure-'nough English. There's a very high-class Englishman

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living right near us, you might say, in fact he's a knight, Sir Wilkie Absolom, the famous solicitor, that I know your good lady will fall for hard, Chief. Him and I play golf together right along, and I tell you he's a real democratic guy -- he'll take you in and treat you just like you were English yourselves!

"I think, Mr. Hurd," said Fran, "that we'd better be starting off and don't you think ---" (So sweetly; as to a maid whom she was going to discharge come Saturday.) "--- we can discuss plans on the way. You're very kind to bother with us, but I'm afraid that just these next few days we're going to be rather horribly busy. We've already, unfortunately, accepted a week-end invitation from some old friends -- you see, I lived here a long time, before I was married -- and tomorrow evening we're dining out. But now let's go and have lunch, and Sam and you will have such a nice chance to discuss all the details of the U.A.C. Just forget that I'm there."

And Hurd was unconscious that anything whatever had happened.

"Huh! Guess it'd be pretty hard to ever forget you were around, Mrs. Dodsworth! But I certainly would like to get the real, honest-to-God low-down on the combine. And maybe you'll be able to come out to us for the week-end after that. One American thing we do stick to -- real central heating! Maybe won't be as swell as some of these castles, but lot more comfy all right!"

"Oh, I'm sure of it. Shall we go now?"

Sam raged within, "I'm not going to stand her highhatting him like that! He's being as polite as he can." And, as heartily as Hurd, he shouted, "Wait there! Hold your horses, Fran! If Hurd is buying us all this expensive food, we got to give him a cocktail first. He'll be our housewarming party here."

He stamped firmly across the floor, rang for a waiter, and or-

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dered cocktails, ignoring her flashed fury, though he knew that he
would have to pay for it afterward. But he did hope that Hurd
wouldn't say, drinking, "Well, here's looking at you, Chief!"

Hurd didn't. He said, "Well, here's mud in your eye! Ha, ha,
ha! Say by golly I guess it's a year since I've heard anybody get
that off! But there's a few of the good old American expressions a
fellow likes to keep up, even when he's lived as long among the Eng-
lish as I have. Well, let's go feed the old faces. Certainly is
awful' nice to have you folks here. We must see a lot of each other."

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Not that Fran said anything rude at lunch. It would have been
better so. She merely knotted her brows and looked suffering. For-
tunately Hurd did not seem to care; probably he did not look at her;
probably he was one of the Americans of whom Fran had complained that
they never bothered to look at a woman of over nineteen.

Hurd was unflagging. "Guess you folks would like some American
grub for a change. I do myself, after all these years here," he
chuckled, and ordered clam chowder, fried chicken, and sugar corn.
"You folks will do fine in this burg," he said. "You'll meet some of
the best. I wouldn't wonder if quite a few men in the City (that's
what we call the Wall Street Section, here) have heard of you, Chief.
And your good lady ought to be able to get along fine with the ladies
here.....Oh yes, you said you were here as a girl. Well, you'll find
all that coming back to you before long. Shouldn't wonder if you took
to English life quicker 'n I did myself, and say, I took to it like
a duck to water. Of course I'm a one-hundred-per-cent. American, but
I do like English ways, and this damn' Prohibition -- excuse me, Mrs.
Dodsworth, but I'm agin Prohibition -- I guess that's about the only
subject where I haven't got any come-back when my English pals razz
me about the States. And the wages for servants here ----- Say,

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ain't it simply incredible, by Jove, what kitchen mechanics expect
to get in America, and never do a lick of work for it! Sure, you'll
like it here. But say, you must be sure to not make one mistake that
even a lot of high-class Americans make when they first come over.
Don't ever boast about how much money you make, ---"

(Surely Hurd must catch Fran's choke of rage.)

"--- because the British think that's what they call putting
on side. Not that you would do that, of course, but I mean ---
Surprise you how many of the real bon ton do. And of course I don't
need to suggest to anybody with a social position like yours, Chief,
that you can't just get to talking to fellows in a hotel bar here,
like we would back home. Oh you bet. I shouldn't wonder if you'd
catch onto English ways even quicker than --- Well, as I was saying,
I don't want to intrude on you folks, but it'd be a mighty great
pleasure to give you any hints I can about the British slant on
things, and to start you off with a genuine English bunch of acquain-
tances."

"It's frightfully kind of you, and it's been such a nice lunch,"
said Fran. "But do you mind if we run along now? I'm afraid I'm a
little late already for my engagement at the hair-dresser's."

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When, quite wordless, they had walked through Trafalgar Square,
he snarled at Fran, "Oh, say it!"

"Need I?"

"Better get it over!"

"You seem to be saying it to yourself, quite successfully."

"I am. Only hurry the execution. I have too much imagination."

"Have you? If you had, would you have invited the charming and
helpful and tactful Mr. A.B.Hurd to lunch with me? Couldn't you have

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enjoyed his highly British presence by yourself?"

"Fran, we've said all of this about so many different people ------ Granted that I am a good deal of a fool about bringing the wrong kinds of people together ------"

"You are, my beloved, and everybody gives you credit for being so loyal and hospitable!"

"Granted. And I admit Hurd likes himself a good deal. On the other hand, he's generous, he's honest, he's probably a man of very little home-training as a youngster. And that ------ No, wait now! You don't know what I'm going to say! In that I've expressed all our whole row, if we went on with it all afternoon. You'd just go on saying that he's a fathead, and I'd just go on insisting that he's got a kind heart. Can't you ever forego the pleasure of catching me in an error? Here we are in London, with a free afternoon ahead of us and the job of lunching with Hurd done. Must you be sulky?"

"I am not sulky! Only you can't expect me to be very radiant after an experience like that! Oh, it doesn't matter." She achieved a half-smile. "Never mind. We'll be meeting some decent people here soon. No, don't -- don't tell me that Hurd is decent. Probably he is. Probably he never beats his wife. I'm sure that his playmate, Sir Toppingham Cohen, is an adornment to any salon....Oh, all right, Sam; I'll be good. Only damn it, damn it, damn it, to think of wasting time like ------ Oh, let's go to Bond Street and buy lots of painfully expensive things."

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When for two hours they had shopped up Regent Street and down Bond, Fran was in an expansive, youthful, rattling mood, and she cried, "Let's go back to the hotel -- it really is a nice sitting-room -- and have tea there by our own fireplace."

On the large table in their sitting-room was a box of roses.

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"Oh, and you _thought_ of me, this morning!" she rejoiced.

He had, but he had not thought of the flowers. They were from Major Lockert.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," she said, in a tone which suggested that it decidedly did matter, and while he was being over-solicitous about the kind of cakes she'd like with tea, Lockert himself was announced.

He remarked, as though he had seen them five minutes before, "It's cost me almost a bob at the club telephone to find out where you were. I say Dodsworth my cousin says you're entirely wrong about hydraulic brakes I say won't you come down to his place for the week-end awf'ly modest country cot sort of place he'd like awf'ly to have you no no tea thanks must run along forgive informality General's a widower no Lady Herndon call on you do come."

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"At the same time," Sam complained, "Hurd and your friend Lockert aren't essentially different. (Oh, I don't know whether we ought to go down to Lord Herndon's or not -- no reason why he should care to see me, and it'll be one of these _eponymous_ houses with forty servants.) Oh, Lockert talks more politely than Hurd, but at bottom they're both bullies -- they both want to do things for you that you don't want done. I wish Tub Pearson were here!"

"You would! Of course we're going to Herndon's. And not because he's a General and a Lord but because -- Well, Yes. Because he's a General and a Lord. That's an interesting fact to discover about myself. Am I a snob? Splendid! I shall get on, if I can only be clear and resolute about it!"

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CHAPTER 9

Lockert called for them in a long, sumptuous, two-seater Sunbeam which he drove himself. He insisted that there was plenty of room in the seat for the three of them, but it seemed to Sam that they were crowded, and that Fran, glossy in her gray squirrel coat and her small cloche hat, snuggled too contentedly against Lockert's shoulder.

He forgot it in the pleasure of driving from the lowering smoke of London to the winter sunshine of the country; gray fields beginning to stir with green, breathing a faint bright mist, above which, in the shining branches of the oak trees, the rooks were jubilant. Little villages he saw, with homely tea rooms and inn signs -- "The Rose and Crown," "The Green Dragon," and "The Faithful Friend"; then thatched farmhouses, oasthouses -- he could not understand what these domestic lighthouses might be -- and on a ridge the splayed ruin of a castle, his first castle!

Knights in tourney; Elaine in white samite, mystic, wonderful -- no, it was Guinivere who wore the white samite, wasn't it? must read some Tennyson again. Dukes riding out to the Crusades with minstrels playing on -- what was it? -- rebecks? Banners alive, and a thousand swords flashing. And these fairy stories really had happened, and around that wall up there, with its one broken lump of a tower! The cavalcade of knights -- following this same road! -- became more real -- to him than the motor, for he was bored by the maintainable talk of Fran and Lockert and lost the thread of it in ancient book--

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colored memories which returned as desirable and somehow tragic.
The other two were chattering of cricket at Lord's, of polo at
Hurlingham; they were spitefully recalling the poor old rustic
banker on the Ultima who came to dinner every evening in prehistoric
dress clothes with the top of his trousers showing like a narrow
black scarf above his baggy white waistcoat. Their superciliousness
shut Sam out in the darkness along with the kindly old banker.

He suddenly wanted to escape from the hotel-and-theater
London of the tourist and see the authentic England of Dorset
shepherds -- cotton operatives on the dole in Salford -- the collier
captains in Bristol harbor -- Cornish tin-miners -- Cambridge
dons -- hop-pickers in Kentish pubs -- great houses in the
Dukeries. But they were too low or too high for Fran's attention,
and was it probable, he sighed, that he would see anything that she did
not choose?

A little incredulously he realized that Fran was really attrac-
ted by Lockert -- she who had not been given to even the most filmy
of tea-table flirtations, who had blushed and looked soft-eyed only
at the attentions of the very best of visiting celebrities: a lecturing
English novelist, a young Italian baron who was studying motor factor-
ies; she who had ever been rude with a swift cold rudeness to such
flappers as were known to indulge in that midnight pawing known in
Zenith as "necking." But Lockert seemed by his placid bullying to
have broken her glistening shell of
sexlessness. She, so touchy, so ready to take offense, accepted
Lockert as though he were her oldest friend, to wrangle with, to
laugh with.

"You drive much too fast," she said.

"It would be too fast for any one who wasn't as good a driver
as I am."

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"Oh really! I suppose you've won races!"

"I have. With German shells. I was in the motor transport before they sent me to America. I've driven at night, on a road full of shell holes, without lights, at thirty miles an hour....As I was saying, you're too American, Mrs. Dodsworth. Americans understand themselves less and are less understood by the world than any nation that's ever existed. You're excellent at all the things in which you're supposed to be lacking -- lyric poetry, formal manners, lack of cupidity. And you're so timid and incompetent at the things in which you're supposed to excell -- fast motoring, aviation, efficiency in business, pioneering -- why, Britain has done more pioneering, in Canada and Africa and Australia and China, in any given ten years, than the States have in twenty. And you, who feel you're so European, you're so typically American. You have the most charming and childish misconceptions about yourself. You think you're an arrogant, self-contained, rational, ambitious woman, whereas actually you're warm-hearted and easily dazzled -- you're simply an eager young woman, and it's only your shyness that keeps you going about doing the starry-eyed-wonder and trusting-little-niece sort of thing."

"My dear Major Lockert, I hope that the combination of your extraordinarily careful driving and your extraordinarily generous mind-reading isn't tiring you too much!"

But she didn't, Sam realized, succeed in making it nasty.

She had turned entirely toward Lockert, as one fascinated. She no longer noticed Sam when he mumbled, "There's a lovely old stone church," or "Guess those are hop poles"; when he wanted to hold her hand and tell her with quick little pressures that they were sharing the English countryside.

"Oh well ---" he reflected.

He recalled "Pickwick Papers," and the coach with the jovial,

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swaying
well-warmed philosophers down the frosty roads for Christmas in the
country.

"Lord!" he said.

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They stopped for lunch at a village inn. To Sam's alert gratification they drove under an archway into a courtyard of coaching days. He was delighted by the signs on the low dark doors beneath the archway: Coffee Room, Lounge, Saloon Bar.

They stamped their feet and swung their arms as the Pickwickians had done when they had stopped, perhaps, at this same inn. If Fran had ignored him, she took him in again and warmed him with her smile, with an excited "Isn't this adorable, Sam! Just what we wanted!" She insisted, despite Lockert's ruddy and spinsterish protests, on going into the taproom and there, with authentic-looking low rafters, panelling of black oak, floor of cherry-red tiles, they sat at a long wooden table between benches, and Sam and Lockert warmed themselves with whisky while Fran sipped half a pint of bitter out of a pewter mug -- Sam secretly bought it from the bar-maid afterward, and it in Paris.

The stairs to the dining-room were carpeted in warm dark red; and the wall/plastered with Victorian pictures: Wellington at Waterloo, Melrose Abbey by Moonlight, Prince Collars and Cuffs, Rochester Castle; and on the landing was such a Cabinet of Curiosities as Sam had not seen since childhood: a Javanese fan, carved chessmen, Chinese coins, and a nugget of Australian gold.

The dining-room was dominated by a stone fireplace on which were carved the Tudor rose and the high-colored arms of the local Earl. Near it, on the oak buffet, crowned with enormous silver platters, were a noble ham, a brown-crusted veal and ham pie, a dish of goose-

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berry tart; and at a table two commercial travelers were gorging
themselves on roast beef with Yorkshire pudding.

"Great!" Sam rejoiced, and his glow continued even through watery
greens and disconsolate Brussels sprouts.

line blank

Beyond Sevenoaks, Lockert played a lively tattoo with the horn,
and shouted, "Almost there! Welcome to the Stately Homes of England!"

They came to an estate, high-walled, with deer to be seen, ~~among the oaks of the park as they passed~~ *through* grilled gates, and the twisted Tudor chimneys of a great house visible beyond a jungle of pines.

"Oh Lord, is this the place?" Sam privately wondered. "It'll be
terrible. Ten footmen. I wonder if they do wear plush knee-pants?
Whom does one tip?"

But the car raced past this grandeur, dipped into a red-brick
hamlet, turned off High Street and into a rough lane gloomy between
hedges, and entered a driveway before a quite new, quite unpreten-
tious house of ten or twelve rooms. As with thousands of houses
they had passed in crawling out of London, there was a glassed-in
porch littered with bicycles, rubbers, and rather consumptive geran-
iums. At one side of the house was a tennis-court, an arboretum, and
the skeletons of a rose-garden, but of lawn there was scarcely a
quarter-acre.

"I told you it was only a box," Lockert drawled, as he drew
up with a sputter of gravel at the door.

There was a roar within. The door was opened by a maid, very
stiff in cap and apron, but past her brushed the source of the roaring -- a tiny, very slim, silver image of a man, his cheeks almost
too smoothly pink to be real, his mustache too precise and silvery,
and his voice a parade-ground bellow too enormous to be credited in
miniature a soldier.

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and his voice a parade-ground bellow too enormous to be credited in
so miniature a soldier.

"How d' you do, Mrs. Dodsworth. Most awfully nice of you to come!"
he thundered, and Lockert muttered, "This is the General."

If, in his quest for romance, the exterior of the house was a
jar to Sam, the drawing-room was precisely what he had desired, without
knowing that he had desired it. Here was definitely Home, with a
homeliness which existed no longer in most of the well-to-do houses
of Zenith, where, between the great furniture factories and the young
female decorators with their select notions about "harmony" and "per-
iods," any respectable living-room was as shiny and as impersonal as
a new safety-razor blade. At Herndon's, blessedly, no two bits of
furniture belonged to the same family or age, yet the chintzes, the
fireplace, the brass fire irons, the white paneling, brought everything
together. On a round table in a corner were the General's cups --
polo cups, golf cups, the cup given him by his mess in India, a few
medals, and a leering Siva; and through low casement
windows the gray garden was seen sloping down to meadows and a willow-
bordered pond. And the maid was wheeling in a tea-wagon with tall old
silver pot, old silver slop-jar, mounds of buttered scones, pots of
jam, and such thin bread and butter as Sam had never known could ex-
ist.

After a tea during which Herndon rumbled rather libelous stories
about his fellow soldiers, they walked up the lane, across a common
on which donkeys and embattled geese were grazing, past half-timbered
shops with tiny windows containing a jar or two of sweets, to the
fifteenth-century flint church, in itself a history of all Kent. The
tower was square, crenelated, looking as though it would endure for-
ever. In the low stone-paved porch were parish registers, and the
names of the vicars of the parish since the Norman Gilles de

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Pierrefort of 1190. The pillars along the nave were ponderous stone; on the wall were brasses with epitaphs in black and red; in the chancel were the ancient stone shelf of the piscina of Roman Catholic days, and a slab commemorating Thos Siwickley, Kt. -- all but the name and the florid arms had been worn away by generations of priestly feet.

While Herndon was lecturing them on the beauties of the church -- with rather more than a hint about the iron-bound chest in which tourists, particularly American tourists, were permitted to deposit funds for the restoration of the roof -- the vicar came in, a man innocent and enthusiastic at forty-five, tall, stooped, much spectacled, speaking an Oxonian English so thick that Sam could understand nothing beyond "strawdnerly well-proportioned arches," which did not much enlighten him.

As they ambled home he saw candles in cottage windows.

They stopped to greet a porcelain-cheeked little old woman, with a wreck of a black hat, a black bag of a suit, and exquisite gloves and shoes, whom Herndon introduced as Lady Somebody-or-other --

"But," Sam reflected, "it isn't real! It's fiction. The whole thing, village and people and everything, is an English novel -- and I'm in it! This is Chapter Two, and it's lovely. But I wonder about Chapter Twenty. Will there be the deuce to play?......Just because life is more easy and human here, I feel more out of it. So accused to having my office and the boys to boss around -- Now that I've quit, I've got nothing but myself -- and Fran, of course -- to keep me busy. These people, Lockert and Lord Herndon, they can live in themselves more. They don't need a movie palace and a big garage to be content, even in this little town. I've got to learn that, but oh, I enjoyed seeing that -- church, and yet I feel lohely for old Tub making a hell of a racket."

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The glow in him faded as he trudged with Lockert, both of them silent, behind the chattering Fran and Herndon.

And he was irritated when Herndon turned back to crow, in the most flattering way, "You know, I should never in the world have taken Mrs. Dodsworth and you for Americans. I should have thought you were an English couple who had lived for some time in the Colonies."

Sam grumbled within, childishly, "I suppose that's an Englishman's notion of the best compliment he can pay you!"

But Herndon was so cordial that he could not hint his resentment. He would, just that moment, have preferred rudeness and the chance of an enlivening row. But his loneliness, his uncharted apprehension, vanished with the whisky and soda which both Herndon and Lockert deemed it necessary for him to take before dinner, and other ills. As he stalked up to their bedroom (the reddest red and the shiniest brass and the most voluble little fire), Sam fretted, "I'm getting to be as touchy and fanciful and changeable as an old maid. Yet I never was cranky in the office. . . . never very cranky. Am I too old to learn to loaf? I will!" And he said, as he entered the room and was startled anew at Fran's shiningness in a combination of white glove silk, "Oh, honey, speaking of old churches, you fitted into that stone aisle as if you were the lady of the manor."

"And you were so big and straight! Lockert and the General are sweet but . . . Oh you old sweet stone statue!"

He remembered for weeks their warm shared affection in the warm red room, as they laughed and dressed. His slight jealousies disappeared at the thought of Lockert off (dressing somewhere) alone, probably in a room as chill as the drafty corridor.

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CHAPTER 10

There came in for dinner only a neighbor, whose name was Mr. Alls or Mr. Aldys or Mr. Allis or Mr. Hall or Mr. Aw or Mr. Hoss, with his wife and spinster sister. Because of the British fetish of unannotated introductions, Sam never did learn the profession of Mr. Alls (if that was his name) and naturally, to an American, the profession of a stranger is a more important matter than even his income, his opinion of Socialism, his opinion of Prohibition, or the make of his motor car. Listening to the conversation, Sam concluded at various times that evening that Mr. Alls was a lawyer, an investment banker, a theatrical manager, an author, a Member of Parliament, a professor, and a retired merchant whose passions were Roman remains and race-track gambling.

For Mr. Alls was full of topics.

And all through the evening Sam kept confusing Mrs. Alls and Miss Alls.

They were exactly alike. They were both tall, thin, shy, pleasant, silent, and clad in lusterless black evening frocks of no style or epoch whatever. Against their modest dullness, Fran was a rather theatrical star in her white satin with a rope of pearls about her gesticulatory right arm....and she was also a little strident and demanding.

When Sam was introduced to Mrs. Alls (or it may have been Miss Alls), she said, "Is this your first visit to England? Are you

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staying long?"

Contrariwise, when he was introduced to Miss Alls (unless it
was Mrs. Alls), she murmured, "How d' you do. How long are you stay-
ing in England? I believe this is your first visit."

So far as he could remember, they said nothing else whatever
until they went home.

But Herndon, Lockert, Fran, and Mr. Alls made up for that sil-
ence. The General liked an audience, and considered Fran an admir-
able one. When she thought any one worth the trouble, she could be
a clown, a great lady, a flirt, all in one. She was just irreverent
enough to rouse Herndon, yet her manner hinted that all the while
she really regarded him as greater than Napoleon and more gallant
than Casanova. So he thundered out his highly contradictory opin-
ions on Kaiser Wilhelm, the breeding of silver foxes, the improb-
abilities of Michael Arlen's "The Green Hat," the universal and
scandalous neglect of the back-hand stroke in tennis, the way to
cook trout, the errors of Winston Churchill, the errors of Lloyd
George, the errors of Lord Kitchener, the errors of Ramsay Mac-
Donald, the errors of Lord Birkenhead, the errors of Danish butter,
and the incomparable errors of Lockert in regard to emigration and
dog-feeding. Otherwise, the General said scarcely anything.

"The trouble with this country is," observed Herndon, "that
there are too many people going about saying: 'The trouble with this
country is ------' And too many of us, who should be ruling the
country, are crabbed by being called 'General' or 'Colonel' or
'Doctor' or that sort of thing. If you have a handle to your name,
you have to be so jolly and democratic that you can't control the
mob."

"We'll try to free you from that if you come to America," said

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Fran. "I'll introduce you as Mr. James Herndon, the pansy-grower, and I'll tell my butler that you're so fond of rude garden life that you'd be delighted to have him call you 'Jimmy.'"

"Am I expected, Ma'am, to say that I'd be charmed by anything that your butler might care to call me? As a matter of fact, I'd unfortunately, ask him not to be so formal, but I call me 'Whiffins.' However, I am not named James."

"And unfortunately we haven't a butler, but only a colored gentleman who condescends to help us with/parties, if he isn't too busy down in Shanty Town, preaching. But honestly --- Am I in bad taste? If I'm not, isn't it really rather pleasant to be known as Your Lordship?"

"Oh --- I inherited the handle while a subaltern -- no great day of mourning for lost dear ones, you know --- I inherited from a most gloomy old uncle. I'd never been able to rebuke my colonel --- tried to, in my eager boyish way, but he'd never noticed it. When I inherited, he used to go quite out of his way to rebuke me, so I knew I'd made an impression. Fact, he was so stiff with me that I became popular with the mess. But of course you Yanks, roving your broad steppes, never dream of such puerile triumphs."

"Quite. They're too busy punching cattle," said Lockert; and Mr. Alls inquired, "Just how does one punch an unfortunate cow?"

"It's now done with automatic punching-machinery," explained Lockert. "Neat little hole right through the ear. Mrs. Dodsworth is an expert --- punches six cattle simultaneously, while singing the 'Star Spangled Banner' and firing pistols."

"But my real achievement," asserted Fran, "is shooting Indians. I'd shot nine before I was five years old."

"Is it true," demanded Lord Herndon, "that the smarter American women always have girdles made of scalps?"

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"Oh absolutely -- it's as _de rigueur_ as for an Englishwoman
to carry a bouquet of Brussels sprouts at a lawn-party, or --"

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"Oh what a hell of a way to talk!" fretted Sam Dodsworth. "If
they can't talk sense, why don't they dry up? What's the use of
talking, anyway, beyond 'Pass the salt' and 'How much do you want
a ton?' Aren't these folks ever serious?"

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Suddenly they were serious, and he was even less comfortable.

"Mr. Dodsworth," asked Mr. Alls, "why is it that America hasn't
recognized Soviet Russia?"

"Why, uh -- why we're against their propaganda."

"But who is really responsible for the American policy? Congress
or the Foreign Department?"

"I'm afraid I don't exactly remember."

It occurred to Sam that he hadn't the smallest information about
Russian relations with America; only a thin memory of a conference
about selling cars in Russia. He was equally shaky when they ques-
tioned him about the American attitude toward the Allied war debt and
toward Japan.

"Am I beginning to get old?" he wondered. "I used to keep up
on things. Seems as though this last five years I haven't thought of
anything but selling cars and playing golf."

He felt old -- he felt older and older as Fran and Herndon slid
over into a frivolous debate about lion hunting. He had never known
that she could be so fantastic. Here she was telling some perfectly
silly story about having had a dear old lion for a pet; about Sam's
kicked it down-stairs, one frosty night when he was in a bad
tenper; the poor lion slinking down the street, pursued by a belli-
ganant

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fleeting, had fled to the Zoo, and stood whimpering in front of a cage. (And there wasn't even a Zoo in Zenith!)

Old! And out of it. He couldn't join in their talk, whether it was nonsense or the discussion of nationalization of mines presently set going by Herndon, who announced himself a Socialist as fervently as twenty minutes before he had announced himself a Die= Hard Tory. It was one of the few conversations in years in which Sam had not had an important, perhaps a commanding position. At dinner in Zenith, if he didn't feel authoritative when they talked of Stravinsky, of the Algerian tour, soon or late the talk would return to motors and a mystery known as "business conditions," and then he would settle all debates.

He suddenly felt insecure.

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As they walked to church next morning, he felt for the Kentish village a tenderness as for a shrunken, tender old grandmother. And when he noted a Revelation parked across from the church, he was certain again that he was Somebody. But amid the politely interested, elegantly pious congregation at Morning Prayer, glancing at him over their celluloid-covered prayer books, he felt that insecurity again. He was overgrown, clumsy, untutored. He wanted to flee from this traditional stillness to the anonymity and shielding clamor of London.

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They rode, for the hour between church and luncheon, on ragged but sturdy horses from the village stable. Mrs. Alls had lent a wreck of a riding habit to Fran, who looked disreputable and gay in her orange tunic, gayer than in her habitual taut sleekness. They rode away from the village, through fields and shaggy woods, to the ridge of the North Downs.

For years Fran had ridden twice a week with an English ex-groom,

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turned gentleman teacher and trainer in America, his Cockney accent
accepted in Zenith as the breath of British gentility. With her
slim straightness she sat her aged nag like a young cavalry officer.
Lockert and Lord Herndon looked at her more admiringly than ever,
spoke to her more cheerily, as though she were one of their own.

Sam's riding had been a boyhood-vacation trifling; he was about
as confident on a horse as he would have been in an aeroplane; he had
never quite got over feeling, on a horse's back, that he was appalling-
ly far up from the ground. Herndon had a shaky leg, and Sam and he
rode slowly. Suddenly Lockert and Fran left them, in a gallop along
the pleasant plateau at the top of the Downs.

"Don't you want to keep up with 'em? My leg's not up to much today," said Herndon.

"No, I'll trail," Sam sighed.

In a quarter-hour Fran and Lockert came cantering back. She was
laughing. She had taken off her tam, and her hair was wild.

"Sorry we ran away, but the air was so delicious -- simply had to have a scamper!" she cried and, to Sam, "Oh, was oo left all alone! Poor boy!"

All the way back she insisted on riding beside him, consoling
him.

A month ago he had felt that he had to protect her frailness. He
was conscious now that his breath was short, that he had a corpora-
tion..... and that Fran, turning to call back to Lockert, was bored
by him.

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Most insecure of all was Sam that afternoon when they motored for
tea to Woughton Hall, the country place of Sir Francis Ouston, the
new hope of the Liberals in Parliament. Here -- so overwhelmingly
that Sam gasped -- was in one of the great houses of which he had been

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apprehensive. Up a mile-long driveway of elms they came to a lofty
Palladian façade, as stern as a court-house, with a rough stone
wing at one end. "That's the old part, that stone — built about
1480," said Herndon.

In front was a terrace rimmed with clipped cypresses in the
shape of roosters, crescents, pyramids, etc., with old Italian wine-
jars of stone. To the right, beyond a pair of tennis-courts, half
a mile of lawn slipped in pale winter green toward rough meadows;
to the left the stables were a red brick village. There was about
the whole monstrous palace a quietness dotted only with the sound of
sparrows and distant rooks. To Sam, just now, the millionaire coun-
try houses he had seen on Long Island and the North Shore above
Chicago — Tudor castles, Italian villas, French chateaux, elephan-
tine Mount Vernons, mansions which he had admired and a little cov-
eted — were also raw as new factories beside a soft old pasture.

Through a vast entrance hall with tapestries on walls of carved
stucco, and high Italian candle-sticks at the foot of a walnut stair-
way, they were shepherded to a carved oak drawing-room high as a
chuch, and much noisier. After that Sam knew nothing but confusion
and babble. First and last there must have been fifty people popping
in for tea, people with gaudy titles and cheery manners, people so
amiable to him that he could not hate them as he longed to. What
they were all talking about, he never knew. They spoke of Sybil,
who seemed to be an actress, and of politicians (he guessed they
were politicians) to whom they referred as Nancy and F.E. and Jix
and Winston and the P.M. One man mentioned something called the
Grand National, and Sam was not sure whether this was the name of a
bank, an insurance company, or a hotel.

What could he do when a lady, entirely unidentified, asked,
"Have you seen H.G.'s latest?"

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"Not yet," he answered intelligently, but who or what H.G. might be, he never did learn.

And through the bright-colored maelstrom of people, his heart aching with loneliness, he saw Fran move placidly, shiningly, man-conscious and man-conquering and at home. They were all one family; they took her in; but himself, how to get in with her he had no notion. He had addressed conventions of bankers; he had dragooned a thousand dancing people at a Union Club ball; but here -- these people were so close-knit, so serenely sure, that he was an out-sider.

He escaped from the lady who knew about H.G.; he crawled through the mass of suspended tea-cups, and struggled to Fran's side. She was confiding (not very truthfully) to a man with a single ey-glass that she had a high, passionate, unresting interest in polo. When Sam had the chance, he sighed to her, "Let's get out. Too darn many people for me!"

"They're darlings! And I've made the most terrific hit with Lady Ouston. She wants us to come to dinner in town."

"Well -- I'd just like -- Thought we might get a little fresh air before dinner. I feel sort of out of it here. They all chirp so fast."

"You didn't seem to be doing so badly. I saw you in the corner with the Countess of Baliol."

"Was I? Which one? All the women I talked to just looked like women. Why the devil don't they wear their coronets? Honestly, Fran, this is too rich for my blood. I can stand meeting a couple hundred people at once, but not the entire British aristocracy. They --"

"My dear Sam, you are talking exactly like Mr. A.B.Hurd."

"I feel exactly like Mr. A.B.Hurd!"

"Sam, Are you going to demand that we take Zenith with us every place we go? Are you going to refuse to like anything that's the

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least bit different from a poker party at Tub Pearson's? And are you
going to insist that I be scared and old, too, and not reach out for
the great life that I can learn to master — oh, I can, I can! I'm
doing it! Must I go back with you now and sit at Lord Herndon's
select villa reading the *MUMMIES* Observer or else be punished by your
sulking?"

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And it was she who was sulky, though he had doubtfully urged
her to stay as long as she liked — or as Herndon liked. She showed
a gray sulkiness all evening, but not toward Herndon, decidedly not
toward Lockert. They had only a cold ham and beef supper, with no
other guests, and publicly, Fran was frivolous. She played the piano,
played and played, and since Herndon was seized with a passion to
discuss motor headlights with Sam, Lockert hung about the piano.
Herndon and Sam were at the other end of the drawing-room, before the
fireplace, backs to the piano, but in the Venetian mirror over the
fireplace Sam could watch the others, and he did, uneasily.

Only then was he certain that Lockert aspired to considerably
more than a polite friendliness with Fran.

Lockert turned her music, he kept drawling amiable insults that
were apparently more fetching than flattery. His hand touched her
sleeve, once rested on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and shook
her head, but she was not angry. Once Sam heard her: "— don't
know *why* I like you — your perfectly disconcerting admiration for
yourself ——"

He felt, Sam, like a worthy parent watching his daughter and
a suitor. He felt resigned. Then he began to feel angry.

"Damn it, was that why Lockert got us down here? To make love to Fran? Does he think I'm the kind that'll stand it? MMM Does she?"

When they were going to bed, his accumulated anger came out in
a chilly: "See here, my girl! All this His Lordship, Her Grace, Old

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England, palatial mansion stuff is fine — I've enjoyed it — but you're letting it dazzle you. You're letting Lockert be a whole lot too flirtatious. You're off your track. At home, you'd see that he doesn't just mean to pay you pretty little compliments —"

"My dear Mr. Dodsworth, do you mean to insinuate —"

"No, I'm saying it straight! Little good home bullying!"

"Do you mean to insinuate that I'd let Major Lockert, or anybody else, make the slightest improper advances toward me? I that never tolerated loose dancing at home, that have never in my life so much as held hands in a taxi? — that oh, it's too beautifully ironical! — that you've practically accused, time and again, of being too sexless to suit your manly ardors! Oh, it's too much!"

"Yes, at home that has been so. Though I've never accused you you of sexlessness — even when I've damn't well suffered from it. I've been patient. Waited. Waited a mighty long time. That's what makes it worse now, when you've been so little attracted by me, to see you falling for this man, or at least I mean being obviously attracted by him, just because he's —"

"Oh, say it! 'Just because he's the cousin of a Lord!' Say it! Try to make me seem as contemptible a little village greenhorn as you can!"

"I hadn't intended to say anything of — Well, if I did, what I meant was: I mean, just because he's wandered enough so that he knows how to handle women by beating them. I can't. Never could beat you. Wouldn't if I could....Oh, never mind. I don't mean anything serious. I just mean — Even though you are naturally something of a European, you've got to remember that this is a pretty wise and dangerous old country. But of course you've got too much sense. Sorry I said anything."

She was standing, a little rigid, in her low-necked, lace-trimmed, yellow pajamas. He lumbered toward her, his hands out,

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bumbling, "Sorry! Kiss me!"

She shuddered. She waited, "No! Don't touch me! Oh, don't you
ever suggest things like that again! Lockert? I haven't the slight-
est interest in him. I'm ashamed of you! You ought to be ashamed of
yourself!"

She resolutely said nothing more before they went to sleep; and
in the morning she was queerly quiet and her eyes looked tired.

Lord Herndon, kindest of hosts and one of the few living men
who were cheerful and full of ideas at breakfast, seemed hurt by their
aloofness, but Lockert was inquisitive and slightly amused, and at the
station (the Dodsworths were to return by train) he searched Fran's
eyes interrogatively.... most hopefully.

Sam was glad when the train was away, and she tried to pump up a
friendly smile for him. But he was all absement, all savage scorn of
himself, that he should have spoiled the happy party of this, his
child, by bucolic suspicions. She had been so innocently happy in
discovering rural England, in sturdy friendship with Lockert, in
chatter with Herndon, in a hair-blown race across the Downs, and
then, he groaned, he had spoiled it all for her.

He took her hand, but it was lax — all strength gone out of the
hand that yesterday had been so firm on the bridle.

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CHAPTER 11

The possessions of Sir Francis Ouston were numerous and very pretty. He owned thousands of acres of Welsh coal land, he owned Woughton Hall in Kent and a tall, bleak-faced house in Eaton Square, he owned the famous mare Capriciosa III, and he owned a position in the Liberal Party immediately after that of Asquith and Lloyd George.

He himself was owned by his wife.

Lady Ouston was a beautiful woman and very commanding. She had a high, quick, passionate voice and many resolute opinions. She was firm and even a little belligerent about the preferability of Jay's to Poiret in the matter of frocks, about the treachery of the Labor Party, about the desirability (entirely on behalf of the country) of Sir Francis's becoming Prime Minister, about the heinousness of beer-drinking among the working classes, about the scoundrelism of roast chicken without a proper bread sauce, and particularly about the bad manners, illiteracy, and money-grubbing of the United States of America.

She had been born — and her father and mother before her— in Nashville, Tennessee.

She was a formidable hostess. She had a salon, and while she did explorers and chemists and the few authors who understood morning coats, she had never stooped to fill her drawing-room by exhibiting cubist painters, Hindu nationalists, American cowboys, or any of the other freaks whereby rival professional hostesses attracted the right

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sort of people.

And her dinners were admirable. You could be sure of Napoleon brandy, Deidesheiner-Ausloes 1981, the cousin of a duke, and the latest story about the vulgarity of New York.

It was not to one of Lady Ouston's very best dinners, with a confidential cabinet minister present, that Lockert persuaded her to invite the Dodsworths, but it was quite a good, upper-middle dinner, with Clos-Vougeot and the master of a Cambridge college.

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Sam was quiet, extremely observant, not extremely jolly, as he surveyed that regiment of twenty people, all nibbling so delicately at their lobster and at other people's Mmmmmmm reputations. No one seemed to have any vulgarly decided opinions, and every one desired to know of him only two things: Was this his first visit to England? and How long would he stay? And they didn't seem to care so very much about either.

He wondered how many times he himself had asked foreign visitors to the Revelation plant — Britishers, Swedes, Germans, Frenchmen — whether this was their first visit to America, and How long did they plan to stay?

"I'll never say that again!" he vowed.

The dinner rather went on. Soup and a murmur about broadcasting and Bernard Shaw; salmon and a delicate murmur about Mussolini and influenza; roast veal and an exchange of not very interested confidences about cat Burglars. Sam was in a daze of gluttony and politeness when he realized that Lady Ouston was talking to him about America, and that every one at the table was beginning to pay attention. He did not know that she was born an American, and he listened to her with MMM almost no comfort:

"— and of course none of us would ever think of classing your darling wife and you with the terrible, terrible sort of Amer-

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ican tourists that one sees — of hears, rather — at the Cecil or in trains — where _do_ you suppose such Americans come from! In fact, I'm quite sure you could both be mistaken for English, if you merely lived here a few years. So it's a quite impersonal question. But don't you feel¹, as we do, that for all our admiration of American energy and mechanical ingenuity, it's the most terrible country the world has ever seen? Such voices — like brass horns! Such rudeness! Such lack of reticence! And such material ideals! And the standardization — every one thinking exactly alike about everything. I give you my word that you'll be so glad _that_ you've deserted your ghastly country that after two years here, you'll never want to go home. Don't you already feel that a bit?"

Sam Dodsworth had never in his life boasted of being an American nor yet apologized for it. It was amazement which made him mutter, with what sounded like humility, "Why, never thought much about America, as a whole. Sort of taken it for granted —"

"You won't long! What a land! Such terrible politicians — positively the lowest form of animal life — even worse than Irish Republicans! MMMM And don't you rather feel ashamed of being an American when you think of America's making us pay the war debt when, after all, it was all you did contribute?"

"I do not!" Sam was suddenly and thoroughly angry; suddenly free of whatever diffidence he had before this formal society. "I never was much of a flag-waver. I don't suppose America is perfect, not by a long shot. I know we have plenty of fools and scoundrels, and I don't mind roasting them. But if you'll excuse me for differing with you —"

Lockert said pacifyingly, "You can't expect Mr. Dodsworth to agree, Lady Ouston. Remember he's —"

Sam snarled on, uncheckable: "— I suppose I have been sort of assuming that America is the greatest nation on earth. And maybe it

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is. Maybe because we have got so many faults. Shows we're growing!
Sorry if it's bad manners to be ashamed of being an American, but,
then I'll just have to be bad mannered!"

Behind his brusqueness he was saying to himself, and timidly,
"Look at the dirty looks I'm getting! I've ditched things for Fran.
What hell I'll get from her!"

But incredibly it was Fran herself who was attacking, "My dear Lady Ouston, out of a hundred and ten million Americans, there must be a few who have agreeable voices and who think of something besides dollars! Considering how many of us are a generation or less from England, we must have several nice people! And I wonder if every member of the British Parliament is a perfect little gentleman? I seem to have heard of rows — We probably have more self-criticism at home than any other nation — our own writers call us everything from Main Streeters to the Booboisie. But curiously enough we feel we must work out our own fate, unassisted by the generous foreigners!"

"I think Mrs. DODsworth is quite right," said Sir Francis. "We're not at all pleased when the French and Italians call us barbarians — as they jolly well do!"

Suavely he said it, and stoutly, but Sam knew that thenceforth
Fran and he would be as popular in the house of Ouston as a pair of
mad dogs.

Fran developed a tactful headache at a quarter after ten.

Sir Francis and Lady Ouston were very cordial at parting.

Sam and Fran were silent in the taxi till he sighed, "Sorry,
honey. I was bad. Awfully sorry I lost my temper."

"It doesn't matter! I'm glad you did! The woman's a fool!
Oh, my dear —" Fran laughed hysterically. "I can see that the
Oustons and us are going to be buddies! They'll insist on our yachting
around the world with them!"

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"And scuttling the yacht!"

"Haven't they a dear little daughter, so Brent can marry her?"

"Fran, I'm crazy about you!"

"Du! Old grizzly! I'm glad you are one! Sam, a terrible thought occurs to me. I'll bet you anything that fool woman was born an American! Convert! Professional expatriate! She's much too English to be English. Not that the real English love us any too much, but she's like an Irish critic living in London, or a Jewish peer — seven paces to the right of the King. Oh, my dear, my dear, and I might have fallen into expatriate — Sam Dodsworth, if you ever catch me trying to be anything but a woolly American, will you beat me?"

"I will. But do I have to beat you very long at a time?"

"Probably. I'm rather a hussy. Only virtue is, I know it. And I did flirt with Clyde Lockert at Lord Herndon's! It flattered me to stir him out of that 'Damn your eyes' superiority of his. And I did stir him, too! But I'm so 'shamed!'"

In their apartment she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder, whispering, "Oh, I'd just like to crawl inside you and be part of you. Don't ever let me go!"

"I won't!"

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The Ouston debacle considerably checked Fran's social career, though Lockert continued their mentor. He came to tea the next day, casual as ever, and drawled:

"Well, Merle Ouston was a bit of a public nuisance last night. So were you, Dodsworth!"

"Well, I couldn't sit there MMMM and listen to her ——"

"You should've smiled. You Americans are always so touchy. No Englishman ever minds criticism of England. He laughs at it."

"Hm! I've heard that before — from Englishmen! I wonder if that

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isn't one of your myths about yourselves, like our belief that every
American is so hospitable that he'll give any stranger his shirt.
Well, I've never seen any of our New York bankers down at Ellis Island
begging the Polack immigrants to come stay with them till they get
jobs. Look here, Lockert! The Ouston woman said all our politicians
were hogs. Suppose I started making nasty cracks about the King and
the Prince of Wales ---"

"That's quite different! That's a question of good taste! Never
mind. Herndon and I are thoroughly pro-American."

"I know," said Fran. "You love America — except for the food,
the manners, and the people."

"At least, there's one American that I esteem highly!" said
Lockert, and his glance at her was ardent.

Sam waited for her to rebuke Lockert. She didn't.

white line

Lockert took them to Ciro's, to dance; he had them made members of
a rackety night club called "The Rigadoon," where there was friend-
liness and gin and a good deal of smell. Potentates of the English
motor manufacturing companies called on them and escorted Sam to their
factories. They met three or four stout matrons at a dinner given by
Lord Herndon in the women's annex of the Combined Services Club, and
as a result of it they were again admitted to the tedious perils of
occasional dinner parties.

And all the while they were as unrelated to living English life
as though they were sitting in a railway station waiting for the con-
tinental train. Lockert had gone off to the Riviera, a week after
the Ouston dinner. Sam was relieved — then missed him surprisingly.
And with Lockert away, their invitations were few.

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"Well," said Sam, "till we get acquainted with more folks here,

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let's do the town. Historic spots and so on."

He had studied Mr. Karl Baedeker's philosophical volume on London, and he was eager to see the Tower, the Houses of Parliament, Kew Gardens, the Temple, the Roman bath, the National Gallery; eager to gallop up to Stratford and honor Shakespeare — not that he had been honored by reading him, these twenty-five years past; and to gallop down to Canterbury — not that he had ever gone so far as to read any Chaucer.

But Fran made him uncomfortable by complaining, "Oh good Heavens, Sam, we're not trippers! I hate these post-card places. Nobody who really belongs ever goes to them. I'll bet Clyde Lockert has never been inside the Tower. Of course galleries and cathedrals are different — sophisticated people do study them. But to sit at the Cheshire Cheese with a lot of people from Iowa and Oklahoma, exclaiming over Dr. Johnson — atrocious!"

"I must say I don't get you. What's the idea of coming to a famous city and then not seeing the places that made it famous? You don't have to send souvenir cards about 'em if you don't want to! And I don't believe the people from Iowa will bite you unless you attack 'em first!"

She tried to make clear to him the beauties of snobbishness in travel. But, in her loneliness, she did consent to go with him, even to eat lark and oyster pie at the Cheese, though she was rather snapish with the waiter who wanted to show them the volumes of visitors' names.

Ambling through London with no duty of arriving anywhere in particular, Sam came to take its somber vastness as natural; felt the million histories being enacted behind the curtained windows of the million houses. On clear days, when rare thin sunshine caressed the gray-green bricks which composed the backs of London houses, even

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these ugly walls had for him, in relief at the passing of the mist-
pall, a charm he had never found in the hoydenish glare of sunshine on
bright winter days in Zenith. He loved, as he became familiar with
them, even the absurd proud little shops with their gaudy glass and
golden signs: chocolate shops with pictures of Royalty on the boxes
of sweets, tobacco shops with cigarette cases of imitation silver
Sunday-strolling for whom/clerks to flourish, even the shopman/and fumes of fried fish
shops. He was elated at learning the bus lines; at saying judiciously,
"Let's take a 92 and ride home on top." The virility of London, town
of men back from conquering savages and ruling the lone desert, seemed
akin to him.... But Fran began to speak of Paris, that feminine and
flirtatious refuge from reality.

Between explorations they tasted a loneliness they had never
known in their busy domination of Zenith.

Evening on evening

Mlle. they sat in their suite pretending that
they were exhausted after a day's "sight-seeing"; that they were ex-
hausted, and glad they were going to stroll out for dinner alone. All
the while Sam knew that she was waiting, that he was waiting and
praying, for the telephone to ring.

At their several party dinners they had met agreeable people who
had said, "You must come to us, soon!" and then he forgot them
blissfully. London's indifference to her charms depressed Fran,
seemed to cause frighten her. She was wistfully grateful when he thought
of ordering flowers, when he found some unexpected and cheery place to
dine. Half the time he was pitiful that she should not be having her
career; half the time he rejoiced that they had never been so
close together as now, in their isolation.

She was almost timid when Jack Starling, the nephew of Tub Pear-
son and a secretary at the American Embassy in London, came bouncing
back to town, called formally, accordingly, inspected Fran's complexion
and Sam's grammar, and adopted them with reserved enthusiasm. He was a

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pleasant, well-pressed young dancing-man, and full of ideas -- not especially good ideas, but very lively and voluble. He called Sam "sir," which pleased Sam almost as much as it embarrassed him. In Zenith, no one except men who had served as officers in the Great War used "sir," save as a furious address to five-year-old boys whom you were about to beat.

And suddenly, after Starling's coming, Lockert was strolling in as though he had never been away, and Lord Herndon was in town for a month, and without any very traceable cause, the Dodsworths had more lunches, teas, dinners, dances, and theater parties than even a lady lion-hunter could have endured. Sam was so happy to see Fran excited and occupied that not for a fortnight did he admit privately that the only thing that bored him more than being an elephantine wall-flower at dances was being a drowsy and food-clogged listener at dinner-parties; and that all these people with whom they were so busy, whom they must call up, whom they simply mustn't forget to invite to their own small dinners, were persons whom he would with cheers never see again. Nor could he persuade himself that their own affairs (in a private room at the Ritz, with himself pretending to supervise the cockroails before dinner, and Fran making a devil of a fuss about the flowers) were any livelier than other people's. The conversation was as cautious, the bread sauce quite as bready, and the dread hour from nine-thirty to ten-thirty passed on no swifter wings of laughter.

Mr. A.B. Hurd was a relief, now that Fran was busy enough so that Sam could slip away and revel with Mr. Hurd in shop gossip and motor prices and smutty stories and general American lowness.

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Mr. Hurd had done his best to be hospitable, and as it had not occurred to him that there were people, like Fran, who did not wish to

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be hospitalitized, he had been bewildered and become shy -- even his superb salesman's confidence had become shy. He had once, after innumerable telephone calls, been invited by Fran to tea, and he had brought his Oklahoma-born wife up from the country and put on his rather anti-quated morning coat and very new spats.

He came into the Dodsworths' suite briskly enough, but when Mrs. Hurd crept in after her boisterous husband, Sam was so touched that he occasionally rose to the courtliness he could show. She was dressed in blue silk, with a skirt hiked up in back. Her hands looked the more rough because they had just been manicured, with rosy and pointed nails. Hurd's salary was adequate now, but Sam felt that Mrs. Hurd had for years washed dishes, diapers, muddy floors. Her lips were rounded with smiling, but her eyes were frightened as she shook his hand in the small white-enameled foyer of the suite, and cried:

"My! I've heard so much about you, Mr. Dodsworth! Al is always talking about you and what a wonderful executive you are and what a lovely time he had with you folks when he was back in Zenith the last time and how much he enjoyed dining with you and ----- It's just lovely that you're here in London now and I do hope Mrs. Dodsworth and you will find time to come down to the country and see us. I know how busy you must be with parties and all but -----"

Sam ushered her into the sitting-room; he tried to catch Fran's eye to warn her to be good, while he was rumbling:

"Fran, this is Mrs. Hurd. Mighty great pleasure to meet her, after we've known her husband so long."

"How d' you do, Mrs. Hurd?" said Fran, and it was worthy of Lady Ouston at her politest and rudest. Fran pronounced it "Howjduh," and her voice rose at the end in a quiet brusqueness which finished Mrs. Hurd completely.

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Mrs. Hurd fluttered, "I'm real pleased to meet you, I'm sure,
then sat forward in her chair, refused the cake she most wanted, looked
terrified while Fran purred about Paris, and did not venture on the in-
vitation to the country which she had obviously come to deliver. Be-
tween Sam's heavy compliments to Hurd, Hurd's heavy compliments to Sam,
and Fran's poisonously sweet manner of saying, "It was so <u>very</u> kind of
you to come all this way in to see us, Mrs. -- uh -- Hurd," she was
bewildered, and she ventured on no conservation beyond "My, you've got
such lovely rooms here. I guess you know an awful lot of English folks
-- lords and everything -- don't you?"

After that, Hurd resentfully gave up telephoning.

But when, with Lockert and Jack Starling returned, Fran found
enough of thr admiration natural to her, Sam was now and then able to
sneak meanly out <u>of this place</u> and <u>to get hold of</u> Hurd for odd
meals. After a fortnight Hurd suggested, at luncheon:

"Say, Chief, I'd like to pull off a bachelor dinner for you, one
of these evenings -- some of the high-class American business men here
in London -- just sit around and be natural and tell our middle names.
Think you could duck your good lady and have an Old Home Week? What
about next Saturday evening?"

"Fine. I'll see if my wife has anything on."

"Well, I hope she has. Strict lot of police in this ole town!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"

Sam was not offended. Hurd was given to smutty limericks, to
guffaws about young ladies of the night, yet there was a healthy earth-
iness about him which to Sam was infinitely cleaner than the suave ref-
erences to perversions which he had increasingly been hearing in New
York <u>as well as</u> in London, and which sickened him, made him glad to be
normal and provincial and old-fashioned. Hurd -- hang it, he liked

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Hurd! The man's backslapping was real. He could do with a little backslapping, these days! Why should it be considered a less worthy greeting than chilly hand-shakes and fishy "Howjduh's"?

When Sam returned to the hotel, Fran was having tea with Lockert.

"I can tell that you've been seeing one of your jocund American friends again," said Lockert.

"How?"

"You have a rather decent voice when you've been under our purely insular influences for a week or so. Color in it. But the moment you slip off to America again, it sharpens and becomes monotonous."

"It's too bad!" muttered Sam, leaning against the fireplace, very tall, wondering what would happen if he threw his tea -- in the cup -- at Lockert. Damn the fellow! Oh, of course he was friendly, he meant well, and probably he was right in his hints about the nice conduct of a clouded American barbarian in England. But still -- Hang it, there were some pretty decent people who seemed to like Sam Dods-worth the way he was!

He interrupted Fran's chronicle of shopping and Liberty silks to blurt, "Say, sweet, apparently old Hurd wants to give me a bachelor dinner next Saturday evening -- meet some of the American business men here. I think I ought to do it; he's tried so hard to be nice."

"And you'd like it? Be back in all the Rotarian joys of Zenith?"

"You bet your life I'd like it! We haven't a date for that evening, if I remember. Could you get up a hen party or go to the movies or something? I'd kind of like -- -- --"

"My dear, you don't have to ask permission to have an evening out!"

"(The hell I don't!inqu) "No, of course not, but I don't want you to feel stranded."

"I say, Fran," Lockert remarked, "would you care to dine with me

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Lockert -- hang it, was Lockert always in his thoughts, behind
everything he was thinking?

It was true, the thing he had been trying to ignore. The beau-
tiful intimacy which for a fortnight Fran and he had found in their
loneliness, her contentment to be with him and let the world go hang,
had thinned and vanished, and she was straining away from him as
ardently as ever before.

line blank

Mr. Hurd's bachelor dinner for Sam was at eight-thirty. Lockert
and Fran left the Ritz at seven, to dine before the opera. Sam saw
them off paternally, and most filially Fran cried, "I hope you'll have
a beautiful time, Sam, and do give my greetings to Mr. Hurd. I'm sure
he's really quite a good soul, really." But she did not look back to
wave at him as he watched them down the corridor to the lift. She had
tucked her arm into Lockert's; she was chattering, altogether absorbed.

For an hour Sam tramped the apartment, too lonely to think.

line blank

Hurd's dinner was given in a private room at the Dindonneau Restau-
rant in Soho. There was a horseshoe table with seats for thirty. Along
the table little American flags were set in pots of forget-me-nots.
Behind the chairman's table was a portrait of President Coolidge, draped
with red, white and blue bunting, and about the wall -- Heaven knows
where Hurd could have collected them all -- were shields and banners
of Yale and Harvard and the University of Winnemac, of the Elks, the
Oddfellows, the Moose, the Woodmen, of the Rotarians, the Kiwanians,
and the Zenith Chamber of Commerce, with a four-sheet poster of the
Revelation car.

Fran would have sneered......

Outside was the dark and curving Soho alley, with the foggy lights

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of a Singhalese restaurant, a French book-shop, a wig-maker's, an
oyster bar. And the room was violently foreign, with frescos by a
sign-painter -- or a barn-painter: Isola Bella, Fiesole, Castel Sant'
Angelo. But Sam did not look at them. He -- who but once in his life
had attended a Rotary lunch -- looked at the Rotary wheel, and his smile
was curiously timid. There was no reason for it apparent to him, but
suddenly these banners made him feel that in the chill ignobil-
ity of exile he was still Some One.

He felt the more Some One as he was introduced to the thirty guests.

They had spent from a month to thirty years in England, and they
were as different one from another as the exhibits at a Zoo, with the
lion beside the monkey-cage, yet in all of them was a hint of American
heartiness and of that twang which is called "talking through the nose"
because it consists in failing to talk through the nose. There was
Stubbs of the Haymarket branch of the Pittsburgh and Western National
Bank, a gray solid man of fifty, fanatic about golf. Young Ertman, the
London correspondent of the Chicago Register, once a Rhodes scholar
at Oxford, very select and literary. Young Suffern of the Baltimore
Bagle, very red-faced and wide-shouldered and noisy. Doblin, manager
of the English agency of the Lightfoot Sewing Machine Agency, old and
thread-thin and gentle. Markart of the Orient Chewing Gum and Chicle
Corporation; Knabe of the Serial Cash Registers; Fish of the American
Forwarding Company; Smith of the Internation Tourist Agency; Nutthal
of the Anglo-Peruvian Bank -- he was Lancashire born but he had lived
in Omaha for eighteen years and he was three hundred per cent. Amer-
ican. And a throng of American motor agents.

Each of them crunched Sam's hand and growled (only the Rhodes
scholar's growl was more feline than canine): "Certainly is a mighty
great pleasure to meet you. Staying over here long?"

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Near the door was a side-table spread with Martini cocktails, Manhattan cocktails, Bronx cocktails, and bottles of Scotch, Canadian Club, and American rye and Bourbon. Sam could not escape without four cocktails, and when he wavered to his seat beside A.B. Hurd, he had altogether forgotten that he had ever been lonely, that Fran was with Lockert.

There was a deal of noisy humor at the dinner; a deal of shouting the length of the table; a number of stories beginning "Jever hear the one about the two Jews -----" And it must be said that Sam, privileged now to enjoy the suburbs of correct English society, enjoyed it more than any dinner this fortnight. He enjoyed it even when cognac and whisky sodas followed the desert and some of the guests -- free for only one evening a week from the American wives whom living in England had not weakened in their view of the women's right to forbid men's rights -- American snatched the excuse to get quite reasonably drunk and to soar into/melody: "The Old Man Came Rolling Home," and "He Laid Jesse James in His Grave" and "Way Down on the Bingo Farm," with what they conceived to be a correctly Cockney version of "She Was Poor but She Was Honest," all of them leading triumphantly up to:

My name is Yon Yonson,
I come from Visconsin,
I vork on a lumberyard dere,
Ven I go down the street
All de people I meet
Dey saaaaaay,
"Vot's your name?"
And I sa-saaaaay:
My name is Yon Yonson,
I come from Visconsin -----

de

It seemed a good song, at a certain stage of liquor, and they kept it up for ten minutes.

But between such high lights, Sam Dodsworth got in a seminar of inquiries about the question that to him, also, had become a disease: is America the Rome of the world, or is it inferior to Britain and Europe? Or confusedly both?

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Out of all the thirty, there were not ten whose speech showed that they had lived abroad. If occasionally they said "braces" instead of "suspenders," or "two bob" instead of "four bits," you would have supposed that they had been reading English fiction. There were not a few energetic thirty-six who would ever have been taken for Englishmen by Americans -- and not three who would have been taken for Englishmen by Englishmen.

Yet among all of them there were not more than six, Sam discovered incredulously, who wanted to return to America for the rest of their lives.

He had understood that hybrid cosmopolites with a fancy for titles and baccarat, eccentric artists who were fond of mistresses and chess, idlers who needed some one with whom to loaf, might prefer to live abroad. But that this should be true of the gallant thirty -- good salesmen, up-and-coming authorities on cash registers and motor tires -- was disturbing to him, and mystifying.

These men believed, and belligerently announced, that America was the "greatest country in the world," not only in its resources and increasing population and incomparable comforts of daily life, not only in its energy and mechanical ingenuity, but equally in its generosity, its friendliness, its humor, its aspiration for learning. Scarce one of them, Sam judged, but longed to see his own beloved quarter of America --

New York on a winter night, with the theaters blaring and the apartment-houses along Park Avenue vanishing up into the wild sky rosy from a million lights. Vermont on an autumn afternoon, with the maples like torches. Midsummer in Minnesota, where the cornfields whispered and across miles of rolling wheatland, dimpling to the breeze, you saw the tall red wheat-elevators and the spire of the German Catholic Church.

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New suburban developments -- whole luxurious cities grown overnight.
The grave stillness of the wilderness: plateaus among the scarred peaks
of the Sierra Nevadas, painted buttes in Arizona, Wisconsin lakes care
essing in dark waters the golden trunks of Norway pines. The fan-lights
above serene old Connecticut doorways in Litchfield and Sharon. Proud
cold sunsets in the last five minutes of the Big Game at Thanksgiving-
time -- Illinois vs. Chicago, Yale vs. Harvard -- yes, and quite as ach-
ing with sentimental and unforgettable and lost sweetness, Schnutz Col-
lege vs. Maginnis Agricultural School. Cities of a quarter of a million
people with fantastic smoky steel works, like maniac cathedrals, which
had arisen in twenty years upon unpeopled sand-barrens. The long road
and a rather shaggy, very adventurous family in a squeaky flivver, the
new Covered Wagon, starting out to see all the world from Seattle to Tal-
hassee, stopping to earn their bacon and bread and oil by harvesting;
singing at night in tourist camps on the edge of wide-lawned towns-----

"I certainly do like to get back to Alabama -- mighty nice girls
there, and you talk about your Georgia terrapin -- say, listen, boy,"
said Stubbs of the Pittsburgh and Western National Bank, "we got the
swellest food in the world in Alabama."

And Primble of the International Films Distributing Agency drawled,
"Just about once a year I certainly got to get back to the Ozark Moun-
tains and go fishing."

But except for half a dozen homesick souls, each of them admitted
that he was going to go on loving, boosting, and admiring America,
and remain in Europe as long as he possibly could.

Their confessions could still have been summed up in the
ruminations of Doblin, the pro-consul of sewing-machines, doyen of
the American business-colony, old and thread-thin and gentle, who mur-
mured (while the others listened nodding, nervously shaking ashes from

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servants here -- yes, and the servants themselves like their work a
deuce of a sight better than our red-neck hired girls in America, be-
cause they're skilled, they're respected here, they're secure, they don't
have the womenfolks nosing into their ice-boxes and love-letters all
day long! And business -- Our greatest American myth is that
we're so much more efficient than these Britishers and the folks
on the Continent. All this high-pressure salesmanship bunk! Why say,
I'll bet that stuff antagonizes more customers than it ever catches.
And over here, they simply won't stand for it! An Englishman knows what
he wants to buy, and he don't intend to be bullied into buying some-
thing else. And a Scotsmann knows what he doesn't want to buy!
Half our efficiency is just running around and making a lot of show
and wasting time. I always picture the ideal 'peppy'
him American business man as a fellow who spends half his time hav-
ing his letters filed away and the other half trying to find 'em again.
And then -- Englishman don't feel he's especially virtuous because
he spends a lot of extra time in his office not doing anything 'special.
He goes home early and gets in some golf or tennis or some gardening.
Might even read a book! And he's got a hobby, so that when he retires
he has something to do; doesn't just waste away from being bored to
death when he's old, the way we do.

"The Englishman will work, and work hard, but he doesn't fall for
the nonsense that work -- any kind of work, for any purpose -- is
noble in itself. Why, when I go home Well, there's old Emmanuel
White, president of my company. He's seventy-two years old, and he's
never taken a vacation. He's worth two million dollars, and he gets
to the office at eight, and sometimes he stays there till eleven at night,
and goes snooping around to see if anybody's left a light turned on.
Maybe he gets some fun out of it, but he sure doesn't look like it --
he looks like he lived on vinegar, and to have a conference with him is

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just about as pleasant as tending a sick tiger. And the fellows of forty
and forty-five that never relax even when they do take an afternoon off --
they drive like hell out to a golf course, and work at getting down their
card! Greatest myth in the world!

"But we're beginning to learn a little bit about leisure at home,
I guess. That makes me hopeful that some day we may get cured of oratory.
But I don't expect it in my time, and you bet your sweet life I'm going
to stay on here in England, even after I retire. Say! I've got a lit-
tle place in Surrey, with an acre of ground and a rose garden. But I'm
American, just's American as I ever was. And thank God there's enough
Americans here so I can see a lot of 'em. I admire the English, but they
make me feel kind of roughneck. But live here -- you bet! Say, that's
one of the best proofs that Americans the greatest country in the
world: Paris and London have become two of the nicest of American
cities! Yes sir!"

line blank

Sam was rather bewildered. Doblin was the old-fashioned, Yankee,
suramerican sort whom he preferred to all the strident new evangelists
of business.

He was more bewildered when Fish of the American Forwarding Com-
pany -- big jovial Fish, who had played center for the University of
the Western Conference -- chucked:

"You bet! First year I was here, I was homesick all the time.
I went home, and I intended to stay there. Well, I lasted just one
year in that dear old Chicago! God, the Loop, the elevated, driving
through that traffic out to Wilmette every evening, the eternal yow-
yow-yow about investments and bridge! Didn't even enjoy golf! Golly,
fellows worked at it! Didn't loaf and enjoy it, way they do here,
but felt guilty as hell if they were one stroke over yesterday!

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And most of 'em took up playing to get acquainted with possible customers at the club -- sell 'em eighteen bonds in eighteen holes. I got transferred back here. I guess I'd enlist to fight for America against any blooming country in the world but -- Maybe America will get civilized. I hope so. I'm going to send both my boys back home to American universities, and then let 'em decide whether they want to remain or come back here. Maybe we ought to stay home and fight the blue-noses, not let 'em exile us, but on earth life's short. Want to be a good patriot but -- Say! I wish you could see my house in Chelsea -- twenty minutes from Trafalgar Square, even in one of these non-motorized London taxis, and yet it's as quiet as a hick town in Nebraska. Quieter! Because there's no kids drinking gin and hollering in flivvers, and no evangelist in the big tent raising hell. Yes sir!

line blank

Sam was pondering.

He was coming to like England. Perhaps he really would live here. Take an interest in some motor agency. Have an Elizabethan black-and-white house in Kent, with ten acres. Join the American Club. These were good fellows -- perhaps there were three or four who would even pass the censorship of Fran. He would not be lonely here. He would learn leisure. And think of getting old Tub to come over for a while in the summer! Trot all round England and Scotland with him in a car -- play golf at St. Andrews.

Yes.

But he recalled the horrors of an arty tea to which Jack Starling had taken them in St. John's Wood. He recalled the tedium of dinner parties -- people dining solitarily in public. He recalled his discomfort in being unable to understand the violent difference between an Oxford man and a graduate of the University of London, between a

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public school man and one who abysmally was not. And yet ---- There
was something about life here -----

He didn't feel that he had to hustle, when he walked the London
streets. He didn't, just now, want to return to an office in Zenith and
listen to vehement young men who made Patrick Henry orations about wind-
shield-wipers; he didn't long again to study hours over the schedules
of a company which would provide seat-upholstery at .06774 cents cheaper
a yard, or to listen to Doc Wimpole, the cut-up of the golf club, in his
Swedish imitations or his celebrated way of greeting you, "Well, here's
the old cut-throat! How many widows and orphans have you stuck with
your rotten old Revs this last week?"

No!

he went home, after tremendously cordial handshakings, more
blissful about his new role of required adventurousness than ever before
and hoping that Fran would not say, "Did you have an agreeable time
with the great American commercial intellects?"

She would! She'd wake up, no matter how softly he came into the
bedroom, and she'd say ----- (He had it all out, there in the taxicab.)
She'd say, "Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself with Mr. Hurd and all the
other hearty Rotarians!"

"Now you look here! I heard more good talk tonight, more talk
that really got down to cases, than I've heard at any of your dinners
where gentlemen try to talk like Members of Parliament and Members of
Parliament try to talk like gentlemen -----"

"Why, my dear Sam, we're becoming positively literary! The influ-
ence of dear Mr. Hurd is astonishing. Was his wife there? She'd do
perfectly at a bachelor dinner!"

"Now you look here! I know what a profound scholar you are, and I
know I'm a toughneck business man, but may I remind you that I did go

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to a quite well-known institution for young gentlemen in New Haven, and
I have actually read several books, and furthermore ---"

It was a complete triumph, there in the taxicab.

He came radiantly into their suite. On the couch, crushing her
golden evening wrap, Fran lay sobbing.

He gaped from the doorway for full seconds before he chucked his
opera hat at the table, dashed to her, plumped down on the couch, and
cried:

"What is it? Sweet! What is it?"

She convulsively raised her face just enough to burrow it against
his knee while she whimpered:

"I've always said -- oh, damn! -- I've always said it was really a
compliment to a woman to be what they call 'insulted.' Well, maybe it is,
But oh, Sam, I don't like it! I don't! Oh, I want to go home! Or any-
way leave England. I can't face it. Probably it was my fault that ---

"No, it wasn't! I swear it wasn't! I never gave him the slightest,
littlest excuse to suppose that His Grace --- Oh God, how I hate that
man! He's so supercilious, and what about? I ask you, what about? What
is the fool after all but a failure, an international hobo? Even if his
cousin is the real thing! What is he? I ask you!

"It was like this. Oh Sam, Sam darling, I hate to tell you, because
I must have been at fault -- partly. It was after the opera. I suggested
to Clyde -- to Major Lockert -- that we might go somewhere and dance,
but he said all the good places were so noisy -- couldn't we just come
up here and have a drink and talk. I didn't mind; I was a little tired.
Well, at first, he was awfully nice. (Oh, I can see his line so clear-
ly now, and it wasn't so bad, considering!) He sat -- he sat right
there in that chair -- he sat there and he talked about his boyhood and
how lonely he'd been. And you know what a fool I am about children --

["-125-", "now on, d' you understand? Anyway, you can guess what he said. Where\nwas he to find the admirable spouse who'd be exactly like me?", "\"And of course I made noises like a purr-pussy!", "\"And the next thing I knew, he'd thrown his arms around me, and\nhe was trying to kiss me, and he was at the same time trying to inform\nme that I'd led him on --- Oh, I can sound funny about it, now, or\ntry to, anyway. But it was pretty fairly ghastly. That idiot insis-\nted on doing a real 'Woman, you have tempted me to perdition with\nyour poisoned smile' sort of melodrama. Oh Sam, Sam, Sam dear -- you\nold darling! You're so _decent_! But I mean: When he found that I was\nmost certainly not going to be embraced, he got awfully nasty. That's\none thing he does do well! He said I'd led him on. He said that\namong 'civilized people' there were 'rules of the game,' and the way\nI'd let him kiss my shoulder --- Oh yes, he did that, too, in the\ntaxicab going to dinner. Mmm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,

-126-

should have to listen to all the ghastly details. Anyway, I kicked
him out, and he -- oh, he was charming, my dear! -- he went back to
his delightful assertion that all American women are bloodless rotters,
who get a kick out of seeing men make fools of themselves and -----

"Oh, oh yes, and he also said this. This really was pretty, and
it'll interest you particularly! Though it certainly wasn't very con-
sistent with his bleat about my being a bloodless siren! He said --
he made it quite clear that he didn't merely expect a few consoling
kisses, and he said that I didn't know how much sex passion there was
concealed in me. He said that you -- he was so kind as to indicate
that you were a worthy motor-pedler and quite a nice kind friend, and
probably you could defend yourself if you were attacked by bandits,
but you had no sexual fire -- 'spiritual fire' I think he said, to
be exact -- and I was what he called 'unawakened,' and he was willing
-- bless his dear, kind, neighborly soul! he was willing to do the awakening.

"Oh Sam, I'm trying to be funny about it, but actually, I've never
been so insulted, so hurt, so horribly misunderstood, so innocent --

"Or do you think I led him on, too?"

Through all her vehement chronicle, Sam had been sorry for her,
most successfully; he had tried to agree with her, not very success-
fully; and, while he stroked her hair, he had studied a print on the
opposite wall.

He had not, till now, been very conscious of their sitting-room.
But in these seconds he so concentrated on the room that he could never
forget one minutest detail: the walls, cornflower blue; the ceiling,
dull gold; a wing chair in cretonne with cabbage roses; the mahogany
escritoire, with MUSEUM elegant books of English memoirs, recently
purchased by Fran, on the shelves above the writing tablet, on which
she had made neat piles of the chaste Ritz stationery and the letters

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which were now beginning to come from home. The low table for tea, with the old silver tea-service which she had excitedly purchased on Bond Street. He was touched by the home-making which she was always doing in hotel suites. But most of all he had been inattentively absorbed in the act of making on the wall opposite him. It wasn't any print in particular. It was what any aged and literate person would do. Yet at this sensitive moment when no line, no colon, was intensified, it was fascinating to Sam, this picture of a young gallant, rather leggy in tights, bent over a young woman with a smile and a flowery hat, against a background of towers and roses.

He roused himself from the study of the print as he heard her demand, "Or do you think I led him on?"

"No, I'm sure you didn't, Fran. But still ---"

Suddenly he had no control over what he was saying; no relation to the man who was saying it: *

"Oh God, I'm so tired! Tired!"

"If you don't think I'm tired!"

"Look here, Fran. I'm not awfully accustomed to dealing with little lovers in the home. I haven't had that sort of life. Oh, I know you never had any idea of Lockert's taking your friendliness for love-making. He was a swine. I suppose it's up to me to be gallant and go out and shoot him."

"Oh, don't be silly!"

"Well, I would feel a good deal like a fool, but if you want me to ---" He had been warning himself not to say what he wanted to. Suddenly he was saying it:

"But as a matter of fact, I don't entirely blame Lockert. You were flirting with him -- you were doing it down at Lord Herndon's -- even on the steamer you acted as if he was running the whole show for you. And he had some excuse for thinking he could grab you off. You

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deal with a few European importers without feeling ------

"Go on! Explain that you're the great Herr Geheimrat General-
direktor! That you invented and developed the entire motor industry!
It's all so new and interesting! Oh, I've never wanted to say
it, Sam, but you force me to! I have no question but that you've done
well. There are very few more impressive people -- in Zenith! But
it happens that we are not in your dear Zenith, just now, but in Eng-
land, and there are several things here that you don't know so much
about, and that I do know! After all, this isn't my first trip to
Europe! But you're too self-important to let me teach you! I cer-
tainly do not mean to hint that you're ill bred or common, but really
-- I hate to have to tell you this! -- you certainly do seem vulgar
and ill bred to people who don't understand you ------"

"To Lockert, I suppose!"

"------ and to people who venture to believe that the great tradition
of Europe is slightly superior to the pep and hustle of Zenith! I could
teach you that tradition, but you won't let me ------"

"I suppose you're an authority!"

"I certainly am, comparatively! After all, I have been in Europe
before! And my father's house was always full of Europeans. And I've
read more French and German, and more British books, these twenty years,
than you have a detective stories! They accept me here. Oh Sam, if
you'd only let me help you ------"

"My dear child, you can't at the same time pan me for my vulgarity and
be the tender little mother! That's too much to stand. And
as a matter of fact, when it comes to vulgarity ------ Now where the
devil are all the cigarettes?"

For a time it became more important to find the cigarettes without
which no real smoker can be comfortable and emotional and quarrel ac-

-130-

tively than it was to enjoy the pain of hatred. They suspended battle to join in the hunt. He turned out his dinner-jacket, rammed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and yanked out bureau drawers, while she popped up from the couch to look triumphantly -- then bleakly -- into the black and scarlet Russian box which she had bought yesterday.

1

"And another thing -- another thing -- But where are those cigarettes? I know I had half a package of Gold Flakes left, and some Camels," he mothered, as he searched.

It was she who thought of telephoning to the office; she who felt that mmhm she knew how to use servants, at no matter what time of night, while he would always be Americanishly shy of them.

She sat on the edge of the couch, in a grand duchess manner, she smoothed her skirt, she bent her head with irritating graciousness to receive a light from him when the cigarettes had come, and graciously, most irritatingly, she said:

"Sam, I hate to have to point it out again, but it really doesn't get you very far in a discussion to lose your temper and use big, strong, he-man words like 'damn' and 'the devil.' They aren't so awfully novel and startling to me! And as usual, you're merely missing the point. I'm neither 'panning' you, as you so elegantly put it, nor am I trying to mother you. I'm always willing to listen to your opinions on golf and how to invest my money. I merely expect you to admit that there may be a few things in which the poor ignorant female may know a little bit more than you do! Oh, you're like all the other American men! You speak no known language. You don't know Rodin from Mozart. You have no idea whether France or England controls Syria. You -- you, the motor expert! -- can never remember whether a lady should be on your right or your left in a car. You're bored equally

-131-

by Bach and Antheil. You're bored by going with me to shop for the most divine Russian embroidery. You can't fence with a pretty woman, but at dinner. And those are just symptoms. Separately, they don't matter. The thing is that you haven't the mistiest notion of what European civilization is, basically -- of how the tradition of leisure, honor, gallantry, inherent cultivation, differs from American materialism. And you don't want to learn. You never could be European

"Fran! Stop sneering!"

"I am not sneer—"

"Stop it! Dear! I don't pretend to have any of these virtues. I guess it's perfectly true: I never could become European. But why should I? I'm American, and glad of it. And you know I never try to prevent your being as European as you want to. But don't take out your soreness at Lockert on me. Please!"

His encircling arms said more, and he nestled her head on his shoulder while she sobbed:

"I know. I'm sorry. But oh—" She sat up, spoke resolutely, "I'm terribly ashamed about this Lockert business. Shamed right down through me. I can't stand it! Sam, I want to leave England at once. I can't stand staying in this country with that man, thinking he's here laughing at me. Or else I will be asking you to go out and shoot him, and the law here is so prejudiced! I want to leave for France. This week!"

"But golly, Fran, I like this country! I'm getting to know London. I like it here. France'll be so foreign."

"Precisely! I want it to be! I want to start all over again. I won't make a fool of myself again. Oh Sam, darling, let's run away, like two school-children, hand in hand! And think! The joy of seeing

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blue siphons and brioches and kiosks and red sashes and red-plush wall-seats and fat lady cashiers! And hearing 'B' jour, M'sieu et Madame,' the way they say it ~~when~~ you're leaving a shop -- like a little bell! Let's go!"

"Well, I did intend to see some aeroplane factories here, fact
I had a date -----"

went
They went to Paris in four days.

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The Channel steamer seemed to him like a greyhound -- small, slim, power evident in its squat thick funnel. The delight of sea-faring which he had found on the Atlantic came to him again in the narrow gangways 'tween decks, suggesting speed in their sharp curve toward the bow. When he had established Fran in a chair on the boat deck, amid piles of snobbish blond luggage, he slipped down to the bar.

There is about a ship's bar, any bar of any ship, however small, a cheerfulness unknown elsewhere in life's dark and Methodist vale. It has the snug security of an English inn, with a suggestion of adventure as the waves flicker past the port-holes, as you speculate about the passengers -- men coming from China and Brazil and Saskatchewan, men going to Italy and Liberia and Siam. As he clumped up to join Fran, Sam forgot, in waxing anticipation, ~~his~~ of the regret for England, and he kept that anticipation even while he listened on deck to a proper cross-Channel conversation among a ripe Wiltshire vicar, his aunt, and his aunt's dear friend, Mrs. Illingworth-Dobbs:

"Oh yes, we shall stop in Florence most of the time."

"Shall you stop at the Stella Rosa *ancora una volta*?"

"No, I really think we shall stop at Mrs. Brown-Bloater's pension. You know we've always stopped at the Stella Rosa, but it's really too outrageous. Last year they began to charge extra for tea!"

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A man with a long blond mustache and a monocle strolled past.
Fran insisted that he was Thomas Cook, of the Sons. And what was
Karl Baedeker like? she speculated. Short and square, with a short
square brown beard and double-thick spectacles through which he peered
at menus and ruined temples and signs reading "Roma 3 chilometri."

"Yes, and what is Mr. Bass like? And the Haig Brothers? I won-
der if they're like the Smith Brothers," said Sam, and, "Gosh, I'm
enjoying this, Fran!"

Then he saw a pale line, which was the coast of France.

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But he tramped aft, to look back toward England. He fancied
that he could see the shadow of its cliffs. Doubtless it was a dis-
tant cloud-bank that he saw, but he imagined the cool and endearing
hills, the welcoming crooked streets, the wholesome faces.

"England! Perhaps I'll never see it again.... Fran and Lockert,
they've taken it from me.... But I love it. America is my wife and
daughter, but England is my mother. And these fools talk about a pos-
sible war between Britain and America! If that ever came --- I
thought Debs was foolish to go to jail as a protest against war,
but I guess I understand better how he felt now. 'If I forget thee,
O England, let my right hand forget her cunning, if I do not remember
three, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.' How did that
go, in chapel? Oh yes: 'if I prefer not Jerusalem -- London -- above
my chief joy!' Well, I never could prefer England above America.
But next to America --- Oh Lord, I'd liked to 've stayed there!

The Dodsworths were in England three thousand years, maybe, where they've been in America only three hundred. "England!"

They he turned eagerly toward France.

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They crept into harbor, past the breakwater with its tiny light-houses, bumped along a rough stone pier, saw advertisements of strange drinks in a strange language, and were flooded with small, shrieking, blue-bloused porters; heard children speaking French as though it were a natural language; and for the first time in his life Samuel Dodsworth was in the grasp of a real Foreign Land.

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CHAPTER 12

Sam had remained calm amid the frenzy of the car andAutomobile
Show; he had stalked through the crush of a New Year's Eve
way, merely brushing off the bright young men with horns and feather
ticklers; but in the Calais customs-house he was appalled. The por-
ters shrieked ferocious things like "attonshion" as they elbowed past,
walking mountains of baggage; the passengers jammed about the low bag-
gage platform; the customs inspectors seemed to Sam cold-eyed and hos-
tile; all of them bawled and bleated and wailed in what sounded to him
like no language whatever; and he remembered that he had four hundred
cigarettes in his smaller bag.

The porter who had taken their bags on the steamer had shouted
something that sounded like "catravan deuce" -- Fran said it meant that
he was Porter Number Ninety-two. Then Catravan Deuce had malignantly
dissappeared, with their possessions. Sam knew that it was all right,
but he didn't believe it. He assured himself that a French porter was
no more likely to steal their bags than a Grand Central red-cap --
only, he was quite certain that Catravan Deuce had stolen them.

Dann it, he'd hate to lose his old
damn of course he could replace everything except Fran's jewelry
without much expense but --
red slippers

He was almost disappointed at so tame an ending when he found Cat-
ravan Deuce at his elbow in the customs room, beaming in a small bear-
ded way and shouldering aside the most important pa passengers to plank
their baggage down on the platform for examination.

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Sam was proud of Fran's French (of Stratford, Connecticut) when the capped inspector said something quite incomprehensible and she answered with what sounded like "ree-an." He felt that she was a scholar; he felt that he was untutored and rusty; he depended on her admiringly. And then he opened the smaller bag and the four hundred cigarettes were revealed to the inspector. The inspector looked startled, he gaped, he spread out his arms, and suddenly he let fall in the name of liberty, equality, fraternity, and indemnities. Fran tried to answer, but her French stumbled and fell, and she turned to Sam, all her airy competence gone, wailing, "I can't understand what he says." He -- he talks patois!"

At her appeal, Sam suddenly became competent, ready to face the entire European Continent, with all appertaining policemen, laws, courts, and penitentiaries.

"Here! I'll get somebody!" he assured her, and to the customs inspector, who was now giving a French version of the Patrick Henry oration, he remarked, "Just a moment! Keep your shirt on!"

He had a notion of finding the English vicar to whom he had listened on the Channel steamer. "Fellow seems to know European languages."

He wallowed through the crowd as though he were making a touch-down, and saw on a cap the thrice golden words "American Express Company." The beamed and American Express man/leaped forward at something in the manner with which Samuel Mr./Dodsworth of the Revelation Motor Company suggested, "Can you come and do a little job of interpreting for me?" .... Sam felt that for a moment he was being Mr. Samuel Dodsworth, and not Fran Dodsworth's husband. .... And for something less than a moment he admitted that he was possibly being the brash Yankee of Mark Twain and Booth Tarkington. And he could not successfully be sorry for it.

The American Express man saw them on the waiting train (a very bleak and tall and slatey train it seemed to Sam); he prevented Sam from tipping the porter enough to set him up in a shop. And so Sam

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man he knows.

"I'm enjoying this!" said Sam.

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He had been accustomed to "sizing up" American towns; he could look from a Pullman window at Kalamazoo or Titus Center and guess the population within ten per cent. He could, and with frequency he did; he was fascinated by figures of any sort, and for twenty years he had been trying to persuade Fran that there was nothing essentially ignoble in precisely knowing populations and areas and grade-percentages and the average life of tires. He had been able to guess not too badly at the size of British towns; he had indeed not been too greatly bewildered by anything in England, once he was over the shock of seeing postmen with funny hats, and taxicabs with no apparent speed above neutral. But in Paris, as they bumped and slid and darted from the Gare du Nord to their hotel, he could not be certain just what it was that he was seeing.

Fran was articulate enough about it. She half stood up in the taxi, crying, "Oh, look, Sam, look! Isn't it adorable! Isn't it too exciting! Oh, the darling funny little zinks! And the Cointreau ads, instead of chewing gum! These bald-faced high white houses! Everybody so noisy, and yet so gay! Oh, I adore it!"

But for Sam it was a motion picture produced by an insane asylum; it was an earthquake with a volcano erupting and a telephone bell ringing just after he'd gone to sleep; it was lightning flashes and steam whistles and newspaper extras and war and he remembered with great lief that he had been fifty thousand dollars accident insurance.

Their taxicab, just missing an omnibus, sliding behind its rear platform. A policeman, absurdly little, with an absurd white baton. Two priests over glasses of beer at a café. Silver gray everywhere, instead of against London's golden brown. Two exceedingly naked plaster ladies upholding a fifth-story balcony. Piles of shoddy rugs in front of

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a shop, and beside them a Frenchman looking utterly content with
his little business, instead of yearning across at an apartment store
and feeling guilty as he not being a success as he would in New York
or Chicago or Zenith. Fish. Bread. Beards. Brandy. Artichokes.
Apples. Etchings. Fish. A stinking-looking alley. A splendid sweep-
ing boulevard. Circular tin structures whose use he dared not sus-
pect and which gave him a shocking new notion of Latin proprieties
and of the apparently respectable and certainly bearded gentlemen who
dashed toward them. Many books, bound in paper of a thin-looking
yellow. An incessant, nerve-cracking, irritating, exhilarating bla-
blat-blat of nervous little motor horns. Buildings which in their
blankness seemed somehow higher than American skyscrapers ten times
as high. A tiny, frowsy, endearing facade of a house which suggested
the French Revolution and crazed women in red caps and kirtled skirts.
A real artist (Sam decided), a being in red beard, wide black hat, and
cloak, with a dog-eared marble-paper-covered portfolio under his arm.
Gossiping women, laughing, denouncing, forgiving, and laughing.
Superb public buildings, solid-looking as Gibraltar. Just missing
another taxi, and the most admirable cursing by both chauffeurs -- --
"This is a busy town, but not much traffic control, looks to
me," said Samuel Dodsworth, and his voice was particularly deep and
solemn, because he was particularly confused and timid.

-- line blank --

It was at the Grand Hotel des Deux Hémisphères et Dijon that he
was able to reassume the pleasant mastery with which (he hoped) he had
been able to impress Fran at the Calais culsoms. The assistant man-
ager of the hotel spoke excellent English, and Sam had never yet been
entirely at a loss so long as his opponent would be decent and speak a
recognizable language.

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Lucile McKelvey, of Zenith, had told Fran that the Hémispheres was "such a nice, quiet hotel," and Sam had wired for reservations from London. By himself, he would doubtless have registered and taken meekly whatever room was given him. But Fran insisted on seeing their suite, and they found it a damp, streaked apartment looking on a sunless courtyard.

"Oh, this won't do at all!" wailed Fran. "Haven't you something decent?"

The assistant manager, a fluent Frenchman from Roumania via Algiers, looked them up and down with that contempt, that incomparable and enfeebling contempt, which assistant managers reserve for foreigners on their first day in Paris.

"We are quite full up," he sniffed.

"You haven't anything else at all?" she protested.

"No, Madame."

"No, you're right, I'm a foreign nuisance -- jolly lucky you are to be admitted here at all -- I wonder if you two really are married -- well, I'll overlook that, but I shan't stand any Yankee impertinence!" (Even the airy Fran was intimidated, and she said only, "Well, I don't like it --")

And then Samuel Dodsworth appeared again.

His knowledge of Parisian hotels and their assistant managers was limited, but his knowledge of impertinent employees was vast.

"Nope," he said. "No good. We don't like it. We'll look elsewhere."

"But Monsieur has engaged this suite!"

internationalist

The MÉMOIRES/ and the provincial looked at each other furiously, and it was the assistant manager whose eyes fell, who looked embarrassed, as Sam's paws curled, as the back of his neck prickled with unholy wrath.

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"Look here, you know this is a rotten hole! Do you want to call the manager the boss, whatever you call him?"

The assistant manager shrugged, and left them, coldly and with
speed.

Rather silently, Sam lumbered beside Fran to the elevator, down to
their taxi. He supervised the reloading of their baggage, and atroc-
iously overtipped every one whom he could coax out of the hotel.

"Grand Universel!" he snapped at the taxi-driver, and the man
seemed to understand his French.

In the taxi he grumbled, "I told you I had to learn the French for
'Go to hell.'" A silence; then he ruminated, "Glad we got out of there.
But I bullied that poor rat of a clerk. Dirty trick! I'm sorry! I'm
three times as big as he is. Stealing candy from a kid! Dirty trick!
I see why they get sore at Americans like me. Sorry, Fran."

"I adore you!" she said, and he looked mildly astonished.

At the Grand Universel, on the Rue de Rivoli, they found an agree-
able suite overlooking the Tuileries, and twenty times an hour, as she
unpacked, Fran skipped to the window to gloat over Paris, the Casanova
among cities.

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Their sitting-room seemed to him very pert and feminine in its
paneled walls covered with silky yellow brocade, its fragile chairs
upholstered in stripes of silver and lemon. Even the ponderous boule
cabinet was frivolous, and the fireplace was of lively and rather in-
decorous pink marble. He felt that it was a light-minded room, a
room for sinning in evening clothes. All Paris was like that, he de-
cided.

Then he stepped out on the fretted iron balcony and looked to the
right, to the Place de la Concorde and the beginning of the MIMIMIM

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They insist that they cannot live in America, but they are so hungry for American news that they subscribe to the home paper, from New York or Keekuk or Pottsville, and their one great day each week is the arrival of the American mail, on which they fall with shouts of "Hey, Mamie, listen to this! They're going to put a new heating plant in the Lincoln School." They know quite as well as Sister Louisa, back home, when the Washington Avenue extension will be finished. They may ostentatiously glance daily at Le Matin or Le Journal, but the Paris editions of the New York Herald and the Chicago Tribune they read solemnly, every word, from the front page stories -- "Congress to Investigate Election Expanses," and "Plans Trans-Atlantic Aeroplane Liners" to the "News of Americans in Europe," with its tidings that Mrs. Witney T. Auerenstein of Scranton entertained Geheimrat and Frau Bopp at dinner at the Bristol, and that Miss Mary Minks Meeton, author and lecturer, has arrived at the Hotel Pedauque.

Each of these castes is subdivided according to one's preference or for smart society, society so lofty that it need not be smart, society given to low bars and earnest drinking, or the society of business exploitation, or that most important society of plain loafing. Happy is he who can cleave utterly to one of these cliques; he can find a group of fellow zealots and, drinking or shopping or being artistic, be surrounded with gloriously log-rolling comrades.

But Sam Dodsworth was unfortunate, for his wife panted to combine smartness with an attention to Art, while he himself preferred the business and the low bars.

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For all of Fran's connection with the fact that most people wanted to see a "sight" was a forceful reason for her not seeing it; they were at first lonely in Paris, and Sam was able to drag her to all the places

- 147 -

Everybody goes to 'em."

"Smart people don't."

"Well, I'm not smart!"

"Well, I am!"

"Then you ought to be smart enough to not care a damn what anybody thinks!"

"Perhaps I am.... But I don't care to be seen sitting with a lot of trippers in raincoats."

"But you sat in a café yesterday, and enjoyed it. Don't you remember the beggar that sang.-----"

"Exactly! I've had enough of it! Oh, if you want to go and yearn over your dear American fellow tourists, by all means go, my dear Samuel! I am going to the Crillon and have a decent tea."

"And yearn over the dear fellow American tourists that happen to be rich!"

"Is it necessary for you always to quarrel with me because I want to do what I want to do? I'm not keeping you from sitting on your sidewalks. Don't go to the Crillon! Go to one of your beloved American bars, if you want to, and scrape up acquaintance with a lot of drunken business men -----"

They compromised on going to the Crillon.

He puzzled over her feeling that it was a duty to keep herself fashionable in the eyes of the choice people who did not know that she existed. He could understand that back in Zenith she might have a good human satisfaction in being more snobbish than the matron across the street, in the ancient sport of "putting it over on the neighbors." He had been unrighteously pleased when he had seen her better dressed than her dear friend and resented rival, Lucile McKelvey. "Good girl," he had crowed; "you were the best-dressed wench in the room."

But why should it matter to Fran that a strange Parisian aristos-

- 148 -

crat passing in a carriage might some day see them sitting vulgarly
and contentedly at a café and arch her brows at them?

He admitted that the serene and classic Place des Vosges with
the Carnavalet Museum was perhaps more select than Pat's Chicago Bar;
that Caneton Presse might be a more elegant food than corn fritters
at the Savannah Grill. "But," he fretted, "why can't you enjoy both --
as long as you do enjoy 'em? Nobody's hired us to come here and be
stylish! We haven't got any duty involved! Back home there may have
been a law against enjoying ourselves the way we wanted to, but there's
none here."

"My dear Sam, it's a matter of keeping one's self-respect. It's
like the Englishman, all alone in the jungle, who always dresses for
dinner."

"Yes, I've read about him! In the first place, he probably didn't
do it, and in the second place, if he did he was a chump! That's how
I've always figured it."

"You would! You couldn't understand what it meant to him ---"

"Well, if all that stood between him and losing his self-respect
was a hard-boiled shirt-front, I guess he might as well have let it
slide! If I can't be self-respectful in a flannel shirt, I'm about
ready to jump off the dock and ---"

"Oh, you simply can't understand!"

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They had never had much time in Zenith for a serious attention
to quarreling and being domestically vulgar. All day he had been at
the office; most evenings they had seen other people; on Sunday there
had been golf and relatives. They had time a-plenty now, equally for
quarreling and for intimate and adventurous happiness together. One
day they wrangled -- and endlessly, because they were not quarreling

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crouched little old women, were willing to be seen at ordinary cafes
in the evening, when their counterparts back home considered the saloon,
the cafe, as the *final* haunt of the abominable? He saw the French people
being gracious in shops, beaming on the babies in the Luxembourg Gardens,
laughing together as they paraded the streets, and he decided that they
were the soul of kindliness; he saw a Frenchman scowl at an American bar-
barians for daring to enter his quarter-filled railway compartment, he
heard Fran being atrociously denounced by a recently smiling, buxom,
 Fran she
clean, wholesome shop-woman when he insisted that she had been over-
charged ten centimes on dry-cleaning a pair of gloves, and he decided
that the French were rude and mean to a point of hatefulness...and
that his Fran showed such a hidden enjoyment of squabbling which
was a little disturbing to him.

He saw theDUISINNE Louvre, the silks in shops on the Place
Vendôme, the trimness of their own apartment at the Grand Universel,
he and he decided that the French had the best taste in the world he saw
the department stores with their atrocious brass-fretted windows, their
displays of fish and fowl and Marquise-in-a-garden chromos, of buffets
carved with wooden blobs, of chairs that were even more violently high-
colored than they were uncomfortable; he saw, in the haughty Parc
Monceau, the imported ruins; he saw intelligent-seeming Frenchmen
snickering over smutty post-cards and the eternal, unchanging pictures
of naked young women in the *Vie Parisienne* and *Le Rire*; and he decided
that the French had no taste whatever.

But behind all his decisions was the decision that Sam Dodsworth
would never be anything save bewildered by foreign ways, while Fran
might, perhaps, take to them so eagerly that his companion-
ship would be smashed, forever.

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the hours when theaters began, she had to turn to the tall and patronizing concierge for information about what train to take to Versailles -- where to buy slippers -- who was the best American dentist -- how much one ought to pay for a lacquered Japanese cigarette case -- why the deuce Mathilde et Cie. hadn't delivered the evening staff they'd promised for this afternoon -- and just what was the general reputation of Mathilde et Cie. for delivering things and for overcharging?

He sank heavily into accepting the hotel as his natural dwelling, as a prisoner sinks into accepting a jail. Presently he was not bothered by the devious way from the elevator to their suite -- to the right, sharp turning right again, turning left by that dusty old trunk with the red and green stripes which had apparently stood there in the corridor forever, then seventh door on the left -- the door with the long scratch under the knob. He came to accept it as any other peasant accepts the long way to his hut, dark and meaningless and weary to tired legs. He was no longer annoyed by the too open-work and too generally brassy and light-minded appearance of the French elevator; he learned that the elevator was the "lift" or the "ascenseur" or indeed almost anything except the "elevator"; he learned that the room service-bell never worked and that the best way to get a waiter was to stand in the door and bellow "Gar-song"; and he learned that the Mr. Samuel Dodsworth who once had been received with a certain deference in the General Offices of the Rev elation Motor Company in Zenith was fortunate here when the Greek boots nodded to him in the hall.

He even got used to living in a lack of privacy like that of a monkey in a Zoo. After a time he could without self-consciousness sit and read the Paris editions of the American papers in the old-fashioned lounge of the hotel -- he went there daily, despite having a drawing-room of his own, in a sneaking, never-admitted hope that some day he would be recognized and picked up by a fellow American exile. The lounge was modern in its small and hideous tables covered with pebbled beaten brass, its fountain, with Neptune

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without waiting for a geyser. He found that he needn't have brought
two dozen tubes of his favorite (and very smelly) toothpaste from
America -- one actually could buy toothpaste, corn-plasters,
New York Sunday papers, Bromo-Seltzer, Lucky Strikes, safety razor
blades, and ice cream almost as easily in Paris as in the United
States; and a man he met at Luigi's Bar insisted that if one quested
earnestly enough, he could find B.V.D's.

And he discovered that French chauffeurs drove better than Amer-
icans.

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He meditated on it, alone with a cognac and soda (he had learned
to say "Une fine à l'eau de seltz," and often the waiters understood
him) in front of Weber's, during a not ungrateful hour of freedom when
Fran was trying on hats.

"Just what did I expect in France? Oh, I don't know. Funny!
Kind of hard to remember now just how I did picture it. Guess I
thought there wouldn't be any comforts -- no bathrooms, and every-
body taking red wine and snails for breakfast, and no motor busses
or comfortable trains, and no cocktails, and all the men wearing
waxed mustaches and funny beards. And saying, 'Ze hired girl iz vun
lofely girl -- oo la la--'

"And then, these young Frenchmen, in London clothes, driv-
ing Hispano-Suizas at a hundred kilometers an hour ----- And you
hear 'em at the Ritz, talking perfect English, talking about English
stainless steel and about building bridges in the Argentine and the
influence of the Soviets in China and -----

"I suppose I felt that the entire known world
revolved around the General Offices of the Revelation Motor Company,
Constitution Avenue, North, Zenith, and all the time Towers
and cathedrals and alleys, and Europe not caring so blame' much what

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Sam Dodsworth thought about making the 1928 models a Delft blue--

"It seemed so important!

"But mind you, I am glad I'm an American! But --

"Life was a lot simpler then. We knew we were It! We knew that all of Europe was unbathed and broke, and that America was the world's only bulwark against Bolshevism and famine. They lie so! These speakers at club meetings, and these writers in the magazines! They tell us that no European has ever played tennis or taught the Ten Commandments to his kids or built a railroad, and that the only thing that keeps Europe from reverting to the caveman is American cash.

"Rot!

"And yet, I'm never going to be European! Fran might Oh Fran, my darling, are you going to drift away from me? Every day you get snootier about my poor old provincial Americanism! You're just waiting for some really slick European to come along-- And by God, there's one thing I won't stand -- her telling me how inferior I am to some WEEE gigolo --

"Fool! Of course the girl-- Say! That's what she still is; she's still a girl! Little older than Emily, but not so sensible-- Of course she gets excited by Europe. She's done her job, hasn't she? She's run the house and brought Emily and Brent up, hasn't she? I've got to be patient.

"But falling for a feather-weight like Lockert --

"Hell! I wish Tub were here. Fran and I haven't got anybody--

"And you're still dodging the issue, my lad!

"What is Sam Dodsworth going to do about the fact that he's a provincial as a prairie-dog, and that he's only fifty-one, with a chance of another thirty years, and that he's discovered a world--

"Nothing, I guess! Too late. I'd be a pretty spectacle, now

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ionary on the flimsy desk.

"Le -- *cinématograph modern* -- est qu'il y'a ------ I mean, are
there any on the Left Bank?"

Mathieu looked at her with a most superior intelligence:

"Oh yez. You ask the concierge. He tell you! De veal steak
fine today -- just like Chicago!"

When Mathieu had gone out to fetch the veal steak that was so
fine today, Fran murmured, "I have made a great discovery! Aside
from food-vocabulary, the Mathieus speak English no better than we
do French! We're not so bad, my beloved!"

"You're not, of course. But I'm terrible!"

"Don't be silly! Yesterday you said 'A *quelle heure est le Louvre fermé*? -- as a matter of fact, I think you did say 'est le Louvre closed?' but the taxi-driver understood it perfectly, and I know you'd learn to speak a really splendid French, if you gave your mind to it."

"Honestly?" said Sam.

XXXIXI bank

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CHAPTER 14

They had ventured to the Left Bank for an evening at the Café Novgorod, the favorite of the more arty Americans. The café seemed to Sam less related to Paris than he was himself..... The French street: bourgeois fathers strolling with their brood; dark-eyed men jesting with girls in red kerchiefs; an old woman crawling along muttering to herself. But here, in the Café Novgorod, under the awning, a bumble of American voices:

"---get a little Citroen and tour Normandy ---"

"---a complete meal for six francs, with lovely roast beef, though prob'ly it's horse-meat---"

"---that Elliot Paul is the only really distinguished essayist in---"

The young Americans there were so disposive. Sam heard them, at the tables about, dispose of Californian scenery, the institution of marriage, Whistler, corn fritters, President Wilson, cement roads, and the use of catsup. He became gloomier than at the thickest dinner-party in London, and he was thinking of bed when his gloom was interrupted by a voice like that of a female impersonator. Lycurgus Watts (only he liked to be called "Jerry") was standing by their table and beaming in fondest affection.

Lycurgus (or Jerry) Watts was the professional amateur of Zenith. He was a large-faced man, as wide as a truck-driver, but he had a whiney, caressing voice, and he giggled at his own jokes, which were incessant and very bad. He was reputed to be fifty years old, and he looked anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred. He came from what was

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known as a "good family" -- anyway, it was a wealthy family. His father had died when he was ten. He had lived and travelled with his widowed mother till he was forty-three, and he told every one that she was the noblest character he had ever known. Compared with her, all young women were such hussies that he would never marry. But he made up for it by a number of highly confidential friendships with men whose voices and matriolatry were like his own.

He wandered much, in Europe and Asia, but always he came back to the flat he kept in Zenith. It was so filled with his collections of lace, wrought-iron keys, and editions of Oscar Wilde, that there was scarcely room for his genuine Russian samovar and his bed with a cover of black and gold. He spent much of his time in Zenith in denouncing the tradesmen who manufactured soap and motor cars instead of collecting lace, and in checking up his profitable holdings in soap and motor cars. He got up the first exhibition of Slavic embroidery in the state; he read poetry aloud; and he talked a good deal about starting a new magazine of the new poetry and the new prose.

Whenever Sam had met Jerry Watts in Zenith, he had grumbled to Fran on the way home, "Why the devil did they invite that white grub? He makes me sick!" But as Jerry had invariably told Fran in three languages that she was the loveliest lady in town, she turned on Sam with "Oh, of course! Just because Jerry is really cultured, because he has brains enough to cultivate a fine leisure instead of grubbing in a dirty office, all you noble captains of industry look down on him as a dray-horse might look down on a fine race-horse!"

She even had Jerry for dinner. In fact, Sam had been led to hate Jerry with considerable heartiness.

But in the oppressive strangeness of Paris, any familiar face would have been exciting, and for five minutes Sam believed that he was glad to see Jerry Watts.

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Jerry sat down; he giggled, "I told you you'd escape from that dreadful Middlewest, Fran, and come to a civilized country! Don't you just adore the Novgorod? Such darling rough necks! Such delectable poses! Oh my dears, I heard the best one here last evening! Tommy Troizka -- he's the dearest Finn boy, and a great water-colorist, speaks English perfectly, oh, too simply divinely, and Tommy said, 'The trouble with your American intelligentsia is that most of you don't know how to tell a gent when you see him!' Isn't that precious! Oh, you'll adore being here in Paris! Don't you, Dodsworth?"

"Yeah, great town," said Sam.

"Have you been to the Lion d' Or yet?"

"Oh yes," said Fran.

"Have you tried the rognons de la maison at Emil's?"

"Yes."

"And of course you've been to the L'Ane Rouge and the Rendezvous des Mariniers?"

"Yes."

"And the Chemise Sale?"

"No, I don't think -----"

"You haven't been to the Chemise Sale? Oh, Fran! Why, good Heavens! Don't you realize that the Chemise Sale is the duckiest little restaurant in Paris?"

Fran was annoyed.

It was not that she was given to ducky little restaurants or any other phase of synthetic Bohemianism, but that any other citizen of Zenith should know more about Paris than she was intolerable. She glared slightly when Jerry seized his advantage and laid down the rule that it was vulgar to go to Versailles but that they must see the exhibition of the Prismatic Internists. Sam felt patiently that she would presently dispatch Jerry. Yet she looked pleased when Jerry

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piped:

"Have you met Endicott Everett Atkins? He's coming to tea at my
place next Saturday afternoon -- I have such a dusky little studio on
the Rue des Petits-Champs. You and your husband must come."

"We'll be glad to," said Fran, to Sam's considerable discourag-
ment.

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Sam grunted, in the taxicab, "What do you want to go there for?
Who's Endicott Everett Atkins? Sounds like a business college yell.
He another lily like d Watts?"

"No, he really is somebody. Dean of the American literary colony
here -- writes about French novelists and Austrian peasant furniture
and Correggio and English hunting and Heaven knows what all."

"But I don't have to learn about peasant furniture, too, do I?"
Sam said hopefully.

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Mr. Endicott Everett Atkins was reputed to resemble Henry James;
He had
/the massive and rather bald head, the portly dignity. He spoke --
and he spoke a good deal -- in a measured voice, and he had a small
bright wife who was believed to adore him. He also was blessed, and
furthered in his critical pursuits, by having no sense of humor what-
ever, though he knew so many sparkling anecdotes that one did not
suspect it for hours. He came from South Biddlesford, Connecticut, and his
father, to whom he often referred as "that dear and so classical a
bibliophile" had been an excellent hat-manufacturer. He owned a real
house in Paris, with an upstairs and down, and he spoke chummily of
the Ambassador.

He did actually, against any expectation, keep his promise and
appear at the tea in Mr. Jerry Watts's studio -- an apartment with a
scarlet-fever of Spanish altar-cloths, embroidered copes, and Mandarin

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nobles.

The only apparent reason for calling it a studio was that it had a north window, and that Mr. Jerry Watts naturally would call it a studio. "I just can't make love except by a north light!" he nickered to Fran.

On the refectory table was a small tea pot, limp cakes, and an enormous bowl of punch. After every one had had three glasses of water, the punch, the conversation became very agitated. There were massed about the table, screaming, some thirty people. Sam never remembered any of them, save Endicott Everett Atkins. The rest seemed to him as indistinguishable as separate mosquitos in a swarm, and rather noisier. But there was nothing noisy about Mr. Endicott Everett Atkins. He had so developed poise, an appalling, reproving, Christian Science sort of poise, that Sam felt once toward him as he/had toward the professor of Greek drama at Yale.

Mr. Atkins could purr at the thought of particularly pleasant and beautiful things -- a Greek coin, a Javanese dancing girl, a check from his publisher -- but in such distressing mêmes as this, he stood calm and expansive as an observation balloon in windless air. In the quietest corner of the apartment he held forth on the Italian Renaissance, the superiority of Parliament to Congress, the future of the Republican party, and the perfection of Anglo-Catholicism, the letters of Horace Walpole, and the perfection of anarchism as a theory --he had actually attended an anarchist meeting in Milan in 1890, as an ardent young traveller. You never remembered what he had said, but you felt that he had been tremendously sound, and you sighed, uneasily running your forefinger between collar and neck "He has such a fund of knowledge -----"

Mr. Atkins pounced on Fran, and if he did not also exactly pounce on Sam, he tolerated him. He took in Fran's shining hair, her freshness, her slim quickness. He brought her a cup of punch, bowing like Louis XIV. He won Sam by telling him of meeting Dr. Carl Benz, the father of the motor car, at Mannheim, back in 1885, and of seeing his

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"Think of seeing Tub again and Poodle Smith and Bill Dyers end -----
Now what the devil was the name of that big fellow with the red hair that
played center? Florey -- Floreau -- Flaherty? Corking fellow!

"And Atkins goes on. I'd better listen and get what wisdom I can,
because I think our 'really leisured pilgrimage to Europe' is drawing
to a close!"

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"------ though I'm afraid, Mrs. Dodsworth, that you'll find our
house too dreadfully bookish. Beautiful people like you are superior
to books. You ought never to read anything -- you ought only to live.
You ought to exist imperishably on some Grecian isle amid the wine-dark
sea, dancing in the sunshine. But if your husband and you will delight
us by coming to lunch next Sunday, at least I may be able to show you
one or two intaglios ------"

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At lunch at the Atkinses', on Sunday, Sam met his first princess,
Madame Maravigliarsi. Not that he knew at first that she was a prin-
cess; in fact he supposed her to be a nice, rather shabby little Poor
Relation. But Atkins revealed her princessity in a dramatic aside,
and Sam was as impressed as any other proper democratic American.

And she was, Fran carefully ascertained, quite a good, high-
ranking princess, and only one-quarter American.

Sam sat next to her, at lunch in the tall cool room with its
Venetian glass and the serene bust of Plato; and while he made a res-
pectable show of not being humble, the boy who had read Ivanhoe and
Shakespeare and the Idyls of the King was gloating, "I'm sitting next
to a Princess!"

The Princess prattled of what she had said to Mussolini and what
His Eminence the Secretary to the Pope had said to her, and for ten

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minutes Sam desired to know the renowned of the world. He remembered -- what was it? -- something that Fran had said to the effect that with his tall dignity and his experience as executive, he might become an ambassadorial, and be intimate with ever so many people who had said/to Mussolini and had Eminences say things to them --

But he wearied of Princess Maravigliarsi's chatter. It was so important that he see Trouville and Biarritz; it was so important that he properly hate the Bolsheviks; so important that he go to tea at Lady Ingraham's. He dreaded these new obligations.

"So far as I can see," he brooded, "travel consists in perpetually finding new things that you have to do if you're going to be respectable."

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Fran was polite to the Princess Maravigliarsi with a cold politeness which indicated to Sam that she was impressed. But it was to a certain Madame de Pénable that she gave most of her attention. Madame de Pénable was a red-headed, white-skinned, rather plump woman who seemed to specialize on knowing everybody of influence in every land. The Dodsworths never learned whether she was born in Poland, Nebraska, Africa, the Dordogne, or Hungary. They never learned just who Monsieur de Pénable was, if there ever had been a Monsieur de Pénable. They never learned whether she was in trade, living on alimony, or possessed of a family income. Sam suspected that she was an international spy. She was a pleasant woman, and very clever. She talked about herself constantly, and never told anything whatever about herself. She spoke English, French, German, and Italian perfectly, and at restaurants, with waiters as mysterious as herself, she went off into tongues which might have been Russian, Lancashire, or Modern Greek.

Apparently she fancied the Dodsworths as additions to her circle.

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Sam heard her inviting Fran and himself to lunch at the Ermitage.

"Fran is launched," he sighed, "At last we'll be gay and cosmopolitan!"

I wonder how much I'll be able to win from Tub at poker, now that I've
had my style of playing perfected by European culture?"

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Sam hoped that there was not going to be another Lockert explosion. He believed her when she insisted that she considered Gioserro a "mere boy." But alone, brooding, he was worried. He wondered if her rigid distaste for flirtation had existed only because she had not found American men attractive. She seemed softer, more relaxed, more lovely, and considerably less dependent on him. She was surrounded by men, and warmed by their extravagant compliments. His conscious self declared that she couldn't possibly be tempted, but his sub-conscious self was alarmed.

And presently he became weary of their insane dashing. The voices -- the voices that never ceased -- the high thin laughter -- the reference to Mike this and Jacques that and the amours of Lady the other -- the duty of being seen at every exhibition, every select tea, every concert

Fran had sharply dropped for him the people they knew, all the low adventurers who sat about bars, the couples from Zenith whom they had met, and at the hotel, even the unfortunate Jerry Lycurgus Watts, once Jerry had served his biological purpose by producing Endicott Everett Atkins. And so Sam became exceedingly hungry for a good wholesome lowness; for poker, shirt-sleeves, sauerkraut, obscene vaudeville, and conversation about motor sales and Zenith politics.

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Fran was having her portrait painted, glossily and very expensively, by a Belgian whose manner of serving tea and commenting on new frocks had enabled him to capture a number of rich American women. With him, painting was a social function; while he worked he was surrounded by the most decorative human parrots and peacocks, shrieking their admiration of his craftsmanship, which was excellent. He managed to add the muzziness of a Laurencin to the photography of a Sargent; he made his

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women look rich, and all alike.

Madame de Pénable had insisted on Fran's going to this good man, and when Sam learned that the De Pénable had also insisted on a number of other women benefitting by the Belgian's gifts, he wondered if possibly the lively De Pénable might not have some interest in the business. But Fran was magnificently offended when he made the hint.

"It may interest you to know," she raged, "that M. Saurier wanted to paint me for nothing, because he said I was the most perfect type of American beauty he had ever seen! But of course I couldn't let him do that. Of course you wouldn't have noticed that certain Europeans think I'm rather good-looking ——"

"Don't, " said Sam mildly, "be a damn't fool, my darling."

He went once to the orgy of her sittings; and he, the rock of ages in business crises, wanted to scream as he heard Madame de Pénable, and six women, who spoke all languages, except French, with a French accent, lilting that "le Maitre" was at least a genius, and that he was particularly historic in the matter of "flesh tints.""

He did not go again.

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He came to like the affabilities of Endicott Everett Atkins even less than the expensive sunset-hues of Madame de Pénable. The De Pénable was surrounded by gay people. "Not so bad," Sam considered, "to have a cocktail with a pretty girl that tells you that you look like a cross between Sir Lancelot and Jack Dempsey." But Mr. Atkins had not yet heard of cocktails. And Mr. Atkins held forth. He had been everywhere, and he could make everywhere sound uninteresting. He would look at you earnestly and demand to know whether you had made a pilgrimage to Viterbo to see the Etruscan remains, and he made it sound so nagging a duty that Sam vowed he would never let himself be caught near Viterbo; he was so severe about American music that he made Sam long for the jazz which