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Title: Gideon Planish
Author: Lewis, Sinclair [Harry Sinclair] (1885-1951)
Date of first publication: 1943
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Random House, 1943
   ["first printing"]
Date first posted: 14 February 2019
Date last updated: 14 February 2019
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1595

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






GIDEON PLANISH

by Sinclair Lewis




    No character and no organization in this story is
    drawn from any actual person or group of persons.




    To MARCELLA POWERS

    who explained Carrie Planish and her friends to me





CHAPTER 1


The urgent whistle of the Manhattan Flyer woke the boy, and his square
face moved with smiling as in half-dreams he was certain that some day
he would take that train and be welcomed in lofty rooms by millionaires
and poets and actresses. He would be one of them, and much admired.

His present state, at the age of ten, in 1902, was well enough. His
father was not only a veterinarian but a taxidermist, a man who had not
done so badly in a city like this--for Vulcan, with its population of
38,000, was the seventh city in the great State of Winnemac. The
Planishes' red-brick house, too, was one of the most decorated in that
whole row on Sycamore Terrace, and they had a telephone and a
leather-bound set of the _Encyclopedia Americana_. A cultured and
enterprising household, altogether. But as the small Gideon Planish
heard the enticing train, he was certain that he was going far beyond
eagle-stuffing and the treatment of water-spaniels' indigestion.

He would be a senator or a popular minister, something rotund and
oratorical, and he would make audiences of two and three hundred people
listen while he shot off red-hot adjectives about Liberty and Plymouth
Rock.

But even as the boy was smiling, the last whistle of the train, coming
across the swamps and outlying factory yards, was so lost and lonely
that he fell back into his habitual doubt of himself and of his
rhetorical genius; and that small square face tightened now, with the
anxiety and compromise of the prophet who wants both divine sanction and
a diet much spicier than locusts and wild honey.

Gid already felt a little dizzy on the path that mounted high above his
father's business of embalming hoot-owls. He could feel a forecast of
regret that life was going to yank him up to greatness and
mountain-sickness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Into the office of the dean of Adelbert College hastened a chunky young
man with hair like a tortoise-shell cat. He glared down at the
astonished dean, upraised a sturdy arm like a traffic officer, and
bellowed:

"'If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold
standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost!' Huh?"

"Yes, yes," the dean said, soothingly. He was an aging man and a careful
scholar, for Adelbert was a respectable small Presbyterian college. And
he was used to freshmen. But Gid Planish was furiously going on:

"'Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world,
supported by the industrial interests----'"

The dean interrupted, "It's 'commercial interests,' not 'industrial
interests.' If you must quote William Jennings Bryan, do be accurate, my
young friend."

Gid looked pained. Through all of his long and ambitious life--he was
now eighteen--he had been oppressed by just such cynical
misunderstanding. But he knew the Bryan speech clear to the end, and he
was a natural public leader, who never wasted any information that he
possessed. He roared on:

"'----supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and
the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard
by saying to them: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this
crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,"'
and look, Dean, I got to take Forensics and Extempore Speaking, I got
to, that's what I came to Adelbert for, and I asked the prof----"

"The professor."

"Yuh, I asked the prof, and he said freshmen can't take Forensics, but I
got to take it."

"Don't you think that Freshman Rhetoric and a nice course of Freshman
English, Wordsworth and the daffodils, would satisfy you?"

"No, sir. I guess maybe it sounds highfalutin, but I got a kind of
Message to deliver."

"And what is your message?"

Gid looked out at the waiting-room. No one was there but the dean's
secretary. He insisted, mounting on his own eloquence:

"It seems to me, what this country needs is young men in politics that
have higher standards of honesty and more profound knowledge of history
and, uh, well, of civics than the politicians of today, and who will
advance the unfinished work lying before us of leading this country to,
uh, higher standards of Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Freedom,
and--well, I mean higher standards of--"

"Of Democracy."

"That's it. Of Democracy. So you see I _got_ to take Forensics."

"How do you spell Forensics, young man?"

"I guess it's f-o-r-e-n-s-i-k-s. Can I take it?"

"No."

"What did you say, sir?"

"I said 'no'."

"You mean I can't take Forensics?"

"No."

Gid felt confused. This business of preparing to lead the masses seemed
to be going around in circles. And he was aware that a fellow freshman,
but a thin, tall, unidealistic and devilish kind of freshman, had
entered the waiting-room, and was listening. Gid urged, more softly:

"I was the star on the debating team at Lincoln High, in Vulcan, and
that's the fifth biggest high-school in the State."

"No. It is a rule. Public Speaking is reserved for upperclassmen."

"And we debated with the Webster High team from Monarch on 'Resolved:
Flying-machines will never be useful in war,' and we won."

"My young friend, your fervor is admirable, and so----"

"I can take it? Forensics? Bully!"

"You can not! Please--go--away."

Gid went away, a little bewildered, as later in life he was so often to
be bewildered by the world's inappreciation of people who want to help
it.

The thin devil of a classmate leered at him as he crossed the
waiting-room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At Doc's Bar-B-Q Lunch, Gid was taking refreshment, this late afternoon
of his second day at Adelbert College. To his disillusionment was added
the stress of choosing between two fraternities, the Philamathean Club
and Tiger Head. Meantime he lived at Mrs. Jones's and endangered the
nice fresh digestion that the son of a veterinarian ought to have by
dining at Doc's on hamburger sandwiches and pickles.

Next to the broad-armed chair which was also his dining-table he found
the lean devil whom he had seen in the dean's office.

"How you makin' out?" said the devil.

"Oh, all right, I guess."

"Did you get in on the public-speaking course?"

"No, damn it."

"Why don't you try for the debating team?"

"Gosh, I've tried to try already. I went and saw the captain, and he
told me you can't get on the team till you're a sophomore. Gosh, I guess
they don't _want_ freshmen to be intellectual and idealistic here! But I
don't suppose you care a darn about that."

"What makes you think so?"

"You look so---- Say, what do they call you?"

"Hatch Hewitt, my name is."

"Gideon Planish, mine is."

"Pleasedmeecha."

"Pleasedmeecha."

"What makes you think, do I care can freshmen be idealistic in this
dump, Mr. Planish?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Hewitt; it's because you look like you'd make
fun of sentimentalists."

"Maybe I would, at that, Mr. Planish. But that's because I _am_ an
idealist."

"Is that a fact, Hatch! Well, well, is that a fact! Say, I'm tickled to
death! It would knock you for a row of small cottages if you knew how
few idealists I had to discuss things with, in a factory town like
Vulcan."

"That's how it is even in Chicago."

"Chi-cago?" Gid was reverent. "Do you come from Chicago?"

"Um-huh."

"Gosh! What do you want with a half-sized place like this, then?"

"Low tuition."

"Wouldn't I like to see Chicago! Holy mackerel! I hear where there's an
auditorium there that seats six thousand people. Imagine seeing a gang
like that stretching out before you! And I hear where there's a big
women's sufferage organization. That's a very fine cause. Women had
ought to have the vote, don't you think so? Don't you think we had ought
to have women for their moral effect in the purification of politics?"

"That isn't exactly my idea of what I want 'em for."

"I thought you said you were an idealist, Hatch!"

"I guess maybe I'm an idealist _against_. I hate all this fakery. I hate
these rich women bossing clerks in department stores, and these fat boys
with cigars in the corner of their mouths, like elongated warts, and I
hate books like this Mrs. Barclay's _The Rosary_, that they say is
selling by the hundred thousand. See how I mean?"

"Me, I don't hate things so much--only it does kind of make me mad when
I hear about little kids working in cotton mills. But I'm on the
positive side, you might say. I want to kind of, you might say, rouse
people to the idea this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom. I s'pose you think that's sentimental!"

"No--no! Only, I just wish people wouldn't quote Lincoln or the Bible,
or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs
more to the bank-book and the three golden balls. But I envy you. I wish
I could trust human enthusiasm. But I come from across the tracks. My
dad was an awful smart drayman and he could sing Harry Lauder songs and
he was a good union man, but my God, did he lap up the licker! I went to
work as a Western Union messenger at twelve--one Christmas Eve I worked
at the joyous Noel business till four A.M.--and I wound up in the South
Chicago bureau of the _Chronicle_."

"Gosh! A re-porter?"

"Yuh. But I'm a lot older than you are. God, I'm twenty-one!"

They both sighed at that senility, and Hatch went on:

"I got what education I could reading at the branch library. I don't
think so much of colleges, but maybe I can learn some economics here,
and some vocabulary besides 'holocaust' and 'suspended sentence'."

"Maybe you and I can do something in politics together, some time."

Gid felt exultantly that perhaps he had, for the first time in his life,
a Friend.

He was a tail-wagging pup, and in high-school he had always been member
of some respectable gang, but it had been only of baseball, fudge,
dances and swimming that he had been able to talk, while deeply he
desired a Real Friend, to whom he could confide his intentions toward
eloquence and justice and How to Get into the Legislature. He was jarred
now when Hatch Hewitt shook his head, and droned:

"No politics--no spieling. I'm a reporter. I do like Swinburne,
though--nice, smooth, slippery, marble words."

"My ideal is Bryan. But I guess maybe you think Bryan does a lot of
spouting."

"He loves dogs and mothers."

"What's the matter with loving dogs and mothers?"

"I don't know. I never had either. Probably I'm just jealous of you,
Gid. Maybe I wish I could hypnotize audiences too. Go to it! Sock em!
I'll write a speech for you, now and then."

"You bet, Hatch! We'll do that!"

So he did have the friend. But he did not intend to let even a Hatch
Hewitt write his speeches. Himself, he might not be so doggone poetic,
but he didn't guess even a big journalist like Hatch could turn out
anything better than his own salutatory in Vulcan:

"The fruits of the seven seas and the fruits of our broad fields from
the legendary East to the broad-bosomed West have been garnered together
by our illustrious princes of transportation and who have lent
themselves to enlightened barter not to merely expand their own princely
fortunes, so helpful, however, in benefactions to colleges and
hospitals, but first and foremost to fill the hungry mouths of the
clamoring multitude."

Beat _that_?

Hatch hinted, "Let's get out of here. C'mon over to my room. I got an
idea, and I don't want all these dopes listening."

Indeed the small lunchroom, with its faded green tin ceiling, its faded
blue plaster walls, its gallery of posters advertising gum, was filling
with young men yelping, "Hey, Bill!" and "Say, is this History of Art
stuff a gut course?" and the place smelled now of ham and cabbage and
fried onions. As Gid wandered out with Hatch Hewitt, he resembled a
plump spaniel trotting beside a wolf hound. Yet it was Gid, the
comparatively prosperous, who was fashionably sloppy and collegiate, in
shaggy blue woolen sweater and corduroys and thick brogans; Hatch who
was fussily neat in the cheap gray suit, the plain white shirt, the
cautious blue bow-tie, that he was to wear for four years to come.

Hatch's room was a stable, Gid romantically found; an old small stable
built for a team of inconsiderable horses, leaning and shaky, with
hayseed caked about the windows. But it was as orderly as a widow's
tea-room: a cot-bed in one stall, and in the other an old wood-stove and
a wooden table with a dozen exactly arranged books.

"I do my own cooking here and just go to Doc's barbecue for a cup of
coffee and company. With what I've saved, and a syndicate of papers for
college news that I'm working up, I'll get through," said Hatch. "But
this dump must look pretty messy."

"It's grand! It's Bohemian! Vie de Bohemia!"

"I hate Bohemians."

"Oh!"

"I like order and precision."

"Oh, you do!" Gid was not too meek about it.

"You--I suppose you have a handsome apartment, with a fumed-oak Morris
chair."

"I have not! I just got a stuffy room in a boarding-house till I find
out which frat I'll choose."

"So you're going to be a Greek--to join a select young gentlemen's
social club."

"Why not?" Gid was admirably angry now; he was not much afraid of other
people, only of himself. "I'm a social young gent myself. Just too bad
you don't like it!"

"Oh, I didn't mean----"

"You have such a hell of a time admiring yourself as a hater, and I'm
expected to sit at your feet----"

"No, no, Gid! I guess I just have mental sour stomach. You're okay.
You're not content with this dumb world, the way it is, either--you're
not mediocre. I don't think you are. Forgive me."

So did Gid find his first friend, and they sat at the table drinking
Hatch's privately brewed coffee--very thin and bitter--while Hatch
glanced up at the small high window of the stable to make sure the
Secret Service wasn't listening, and admitted his perilous secret.

"Gid, if you can't get into the debating club, why don't you---- I'm
going to start a Socialist Society."

"What? But socialism is against the home and marriage!"

"What of it?"

"Of course there's Gene Debs."

"Exactly."

"I hear he's a grand guy."

"Exactly. And we'll have a lot of debates, and you can be in 'em. Maybe
we'll challenge the entire college to a debate."

"That would be swell. I'd like to show up those galoots that wouldn't
take me in! I sure would! When do you start your society?"

"It's just started this minute. It only takes two fearless guys like me
and you to unsettle one little college."

"Let's go!"

That was the entire struggle involved in the conversion of Gideon
Planish to socialism. His deconversion was to take longer, a little
longer.

                 *        *        *        *        *

A train was whistling, and Gideon Planish was lying awake.

He remembered that he had a friend now, not just a companion to go
walking with. Between his brains and Hatch Hewitt's imagination, there
was nothing they might not do. Probably he would never really be
President of the United States, but if he ever were, it would be a
pleasure to appoint Hatch Secretary of State--or anyway, postmaster at
Zenith.

But of course they must think first not of such glories but of the good
they could do.

Before the train had ceased its piping, he had built a glass and marble
hospital in every village in America, he had Christianized China, he had
stopped all wars forever by courts of arbitration, he had given the vote
to women--and they had been very grateful. He remembered the co-ed in
the tight blouse whom he had noticed in front of the Library, and he
forgot his imperial benignity.




CHAPTER 2


The first meeting of the Adelbert College Socialist League, with all
five members present, was held in Hatch's stable home. It was felt that
it would be dangerous to meet in the libidinous atmosphere of Tiger Head
fraternity, where Gid Planish, as a newly elected member, had a bed, a
bureau, two chairs and a portrait of Longfellow.

College had been coursing on its wild hunt of culture for two weeks, and
it was now September 20, 1910. In those days, Adelbert opened during the
first week in September, and how innocent and medieval the whole system
was may be seen in the fact that students came by train instead of in
their private automobiles.

The five Socialists, in their awe at saving the world, gave up clogging
and all the kittenishness that was then considered proper to freshmen.
They sat about Hatch's table on two chairs and three boxes: Hatch, Gid,
young Francis Tyne, who was going to study for the ministry, an
iron-faced older man who had once been a labor organizer, and David
Traub, a handsome, precise lad from New York, forerunner of the eager
and rather heroic caravan who were later to escape from too much racial
discussion in New York, and emigrate like their fathers.

Francis Tyne was a thin, earnest youth with a biggish head and fine
colorless hair. He suggested their calling one another "Comrade," but it
didn't go. Gid and Hatch were still too close to the horrors of being
called "Brother" by loud evangelical pastors.

Gid looked them all over like a born chairman. Back in Limbo, before he
was born, he must have presided over committees of the Young Cherubim's
Anti-Birth-Control Association. He said merrily, "We don't seem to have
any girls with us. We certainly ought to, these days."

"Rot!" said the ex-labor organizer. He was a solid man, named Lou Klock.

"Why?" demanded Francis.

Klock growled, "Women are useful in all left-wing movements--addressing
factory rallies and addressing envelopes--but give 'em a chance on the
strategy and they'll have you wearing red neckties and dancing on the
green, instead of pounding the bosses for higher wages."

"Wait now!" beamed Gid, with the conciliatory good-fellowship of the
professional presider. "This ain't 1890, Lou. No! This is 1910! The
revolution has been won, except for a few details. War is finished,
except as an instrument of protest, and women are recognized by all
thinkers as our equals--practically."

"Rot," said Lou.

"Well, let that pass, for the moment. Frank Tyne, Comrade Tyne here, has
an outline of what he thinks we ought to do, and I vote we hear from
him."

Hatch Hewitt suggested, "By the way, don't you suppose it might be a
good idea if we elected a chairman?"

Gid felt pained and ill-used, for it had not occurred to him that
anybody save Gideon Planish could be chairman. His hard-won glory was
already being questioned, and that by the one man whom he had these many
years trusted as his friend and partisan. Somebody snickered--probably
Lou Klock--and all his life, however brave and impassioned before an
audience that hated him gravely, Gid would always feel watery in the
backs of his knees when anybody jeered.

David Traub snapped, "Don't be silly, Hewitt. Of course Planish is our
chairman. Or do _you_ want to be?"

"Oh, no, no!"

"Then he's the goat."

Gid blossomed with glory. He commanded, "Go to it, Frank. Let's hear
your plan."

Francis Tyne produced a pack of small filing cards, dark with tiny
notations. It was his moment. For years, in his Sunday-school classes,
in a village where it was not kosher to admit any doctrine more
subversive than that women might with decency become rural
mail-carriers, he had pictured just this hour, when he should be banded
with desperate but talented comrades. He looked up from his notes with
the eyes of a cocker spaniel, and Gid's tender heart was touched and he
was ready to go right off and build a barricade with Francis, provided
it should be finished in time for supper.

"Well, it's really awfully simple and reasonable, but I suppose there
will be objection to my program in privileged classes," said Francis.
"First, of course, the Government has to take over the ownership of all
mines, waterpower, agricultural land, and all industries employing more
than a hundred people."

None of them looked worried, and the newly converted collectivist, Gid
Planish, definitely glowed.

"But I don't think that's enough, Comrades. There's a lot of these
foreign and European Socialists who go that far," said Francis. "What
would make a peculiarly American socialism would be to have a state
church."

"What?" shouted the others, while David Traub proposed, "How about the
Jewish faith?"

Francis protested, "No, no, Comrade Traub. You don't understand these
things. Our Savior started an entirely new dispensation. But about the
set-up of a true revolutionary church: of course the Catholic Church and
Christian Science and the Mormons are out, and the Baptists are pretty
doggone super--supererogatory with their immersion, and it's against
Scripture to have bishops, like in the Methodist and Episcopal, and the
Congregationalists come awful close to verging on heresy and
wishy-washiness, and so it seems to me the true American model is the
Presbyterian Church--which happens to be my own, but merely by
coincidence."

"Say, what is all this wordage about?" said Klock.

"God knows--maybe," said Hewitt.

"Now wait! I never thought of it in that light, but he's absolutely
sound. I'm a Presbyterian, too!" said Gid.

                 *        *        *        *        *

All of them were young--even Lou Klock was but twenty-six--and in the
ardent next two hours it was variously stated that:

Christianity is exhausted and a failure.

Christianity has never yet been given a chance.

The church is the trap wherein the Capitalist class nabs the workers.

The church is the one union wherein all workers can defy the heathenism
of the Capitalists.

The Russians will have socialism first.

The Russians are lazy; they drink tea and read novels, and never will
have socialism.

Adelbert College is in a class with Abraham Lincoln, science, football
and the Packard car.

Adelbert College is snobbish and hasn't had a new idea since 1882.

With each of these opinions, Gid voluptuously agreed. He felt that they
were having a fine, free, enlightening time, but at last he pounded the
table, with Hatch's dollar watch, and announced, "We're beginning to see
light in this discussion. It's a sure-enough round table, all right. But
before we try and go any further, it's time to organize. We got to
decide on just who will map out each department of our activities."

"That makes sense," said Hatch.

Francis begged, "Oh, not yet! Let's spend a month or so searching each
other's minds and sort of inspiring each other."

As a professional, Gid was horrified. "You mean go on chewing the rag
about all these mighty topics without _or_-gan-iz-ing?"

"Why, yes. The natural form of organization must grow out of what we
think and then decide to do."

Gid explained, with great sweetness and reasonableness:

"Never! The kind of organization you set up, and who's on the
committees, decide what you can do, and what you do determines what you
think. Honest, that's the straight goods; that's modern psychology. I
know by experience. You bet." The veteran nodded sagely. "That's the way
I've seen it work, for many years now--ever since the Sixth Grade. We
started in to collect litter on the school grounds, but do you know, we
had such an active organization that we improved the whole basic idea,
and turned it into a co-operative revolving fund to buy molasses
popcorn. Yessir! And how can we raise money unless we have the right
organization--fearless but flexible?"

"What do we want to raise money for?" they protested.

"So we can send out letters and do publicity and get more members."

Hatch suggested, "Then when we get more members, we can raise more money
so we can get still more members?"

"Why, certainly! And then when we get a _lot_ of money, we can put on a
real campaign and get a whole _lot_ of members! That's what organization
is. That's how you progress, in _this_ ole world!"

David Traub complained, "I don't see that. If you want to promote some
reform, and not get all tangled up in jealousy and politics, you want to
avoid organizing for the sake of organizing."

"Oh, I agree with you, heartily," said Gid.

Some time during the evening there was an election of officers. Gid had
assumed that he would be president.

He was president. Not only that, but, without the least hesitation, he
made an inaugural address:

However much they might disagree upon minor details, such as the value
of Christianity and of women, they stood shoulder to shoulder, through
fire and obloquy, an army small but determined, invincible in their
loyalty as in their enfranchised intellects and their common
determination to throw off their chains, a force to make the blind
monster of Capitalism look up from its prey in terror, denouncing
unsparingly the capitalistic tyranny of Compulsory Latin and demanding
lower prices on tennis balls at the Co-op.

He, their leader, would retire for meditation and consolidate his plans.
They must not Breathe a Word. It would take some time to win over the
entire student body and, though on principle he was opposed to Fabian
tactics, it might be better to enlist the undergrads before lining up
the faculty and the president--and particularly that damn dean--and
giving them the choice of joining the revolution or resigning. As to
immediate strategy, they must decide whether their next step should be a
mass meeting in the college chapel, or the publication of a weekly
magazine, illustrated, and including articles by Eugene V. Debs and
George Bernard Shaw. He himself would be willing to write to Comrades
Debs and Shaw and instruct them to shoot along the articles, quick. But
whatever they did, they might now say that socialism had already
triumphed at good ole Adelbert!

After this springing verbiage, Comrades Traub, Klock and Tyne filed out,
looking dazed.

Gid fretted, "Hatch, do you suppose we can trust those dubs to keep our
plot absolutely dark till we're ready to spring socialism on the world?"

"Gid, do you think that pikers like me ought to have even a vote? Does
your sea-green radicalism go that far?"

"Oh, yes."

"What's your real plan? To turn this thing into a rival of the orthodox
Debating Society?"

Gid brought out a smile that Hatch could not withstand. "I haven't any
idea! What do you think we ought to pull, Hatch? Anyway, we got to get
rid of Frank Tyne. Why, that goat would actually like to overthrow the
Republican Party! But you're the brains in this gang. What shall we do
with the League?"

"I'll think about it," said Hatch, in subjugation to a man whom he liked
and envied and despised.




CHAPTER 3


The Dean of Adelbert College said feebly, "You again?"

Gid's expression declared that they were old and helpful friends; that
he was fond of this aged pal, and glad to give him new vigor and ideas.

"Yes, sir. I thought you ought to know that I have founded a secret
Socialist club."

"Well?"

"I just thought, if it was forbidden to have revolutionary clubs, I'd
better report it, so it would be okay. Gosh, I guess it must be awful
unusual to have secret juntas in Adelbert!"

"No, not unusual; a little annoying, perhaps, but not unusual. Some
years we have an anarchist club, and frequently a nihilist club or an
atheist club, and once we had a nudist club--I really had to speak to
the inaugurator of that one, a very nice young fellow who is now
assistant rector of St. Dimity's, in Philadelphia. But with most
subversive organizations, we don't do anything unless they parade in
nightshirts or trample the shrubbery. But it is somewhat rare for the
chief instigator to come in and inform us."

"Would you like me to wind up the club, Dean? I'd be glad to, if you'd
let me in on the course in Forensics. And in the circumstances, I guess
I'd have to be taken into the debating society, too."

"Please--go--away!"

"Well, sir, you'll remember I warned you."

"Just let me know well beforehand any particularly destructive sabotage
or direct action that you may plan. I wouldn't foresee them--my curious
learnings are rather along theological and ichthyological lines. You'll
let me know, won't you?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Dean. I have to be loyal to my gang. But I
think I may say I have a lot of influence, and I'll see they don't
perpetrate anything too dangerous. And if you'll just think over that
Forensics course----"

"Please--go--away!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Upon Gid's suggestion, the Socialist League challenged the college
debating society to a discussion of the government ownership of
railroads, and that official body accepted, with the notion of having a
practice match before the classic annual contest with the great
University of Winnemac.

Hatch Hewitt, who didn't really believe in government ownership of
anything except congressional spittoons, and whose idea of socialism was
that under it an enlightened young man could tell the city editor to go
to the devil; Gid, who hadn't believed in government ownership until
today; and Francis Tyne, who always had, sat together in the college
library, garnering statistics about socialized railroads in Germany. In
1910 that country, under the enlightened and scholarly leadership of
Kaiser William, was universally known to be the brightest nation in the
world.

As he was often to do in his later career as a professional promoter of
ideas, Gid nearly convinced himself of the truth of his own crusade. He
was deciding to go out and nationalize all rails, he was beginning to
believe he had invented collectivism, when the catastrophe struck them.

On October 2nd, they had the news that the plant of the Los Angeles
_Times_, which had been warring with union labor, had been blown up,
with nineteen deaths. And the Adelbert Socialist League blew up with it.

The League now had nine members. Most of them would have preferred to
meet dramatically at Hatch's stable, in conspiratorial darkness, but
they were up against reality. They weren't merely defying God and the
House of Morgan now; they were in danger of getting demerits from the
dean. The executive committee gathered in a corner of the Y.M.C.A.
lounge at three o'clock on a bright afternoon.

Gid panted, "Meancometorder. Lissen, Comrades, I think we better get the
hell out of this Socialist club, or turn it into a literary society."

"You're going to lay down and take it? You mean you don't dare to face
the ruling class and defy 'em when there's something to defy 'em about?"
demanded Hatch.

"Not at all! We'll call our literary society the Walt Whitman League.
That's defiant enough for anybody! Whitman never went to college!"
explained Gid. "There's nobody wants to hammer tyranny more than I do,
but this isn't the time for it."

All the rest of his life, in crises, Gideon Planish was to say, "But
this isn't the time for it." It is the slogan of discreet Liberalism, as
profound as St. Francis's "The beasts are my brothers," or Governor
Alfred E. Smith's war-cry, "Slice it where you will, it's still
baloney."

Hatch Hewitt was demanding, "Why isn't it the time for it?"

"Because there may be a chance that these labor agitators, the McNamara
brothers, _did_ blow up the _Times_."

"Impossible!" protested Hatch, while Lou Klock challenged, "And suppose
they did? Wouldn't you guys still support them? Do you know what _war_
is?" Unanswered, he walked out of the room, out of the Socialist League
and, in a few weeks, out of Adelbert College.

Hatch reflected, "I don't agree with Lou--yet. But I see his idea. Now,
Gid, you run to the dean again and tell him we've ducked for cover!" And
he followed Lou out of the Y.M.C.A., while Gid wailed after him, "Me?
Run to the dean? _Me?_"

That was the death of the Adelbert Socialist League, and for the funeral
there were no hymns, no flowers, and only such exhibits of Christian
resignation as were provided by Francis Tyne.

                 *        *        *        *        *

For a month Hatch looked at Gid with bleakness, and there were no
intellectual gallops in his stableyard. But Hatch Hewitt was a lonely
young man; he loved people too much and he despised them too much to
have long and casual friendships. When Lou Klock had gone and Dave Traub
had wandered on to the University of Chicago, Hatch was left
companionless, and by the end of their freshman year there had been
restored between him and Gid a flinching amiability. They sneaked over
to a neighboring city and drank beer and discussed the danger of war
with Mexico.

"I don't think a country as big as what we are had ought to pick on a
neighboring state," said Gid, the old Liberal.

"Is that a fact?" marveled Hatch.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On the day after the decease of the Socialist League, Gid sought out the
secretary of the college debating society, reminded him that it had been
announced on all bulletin boards that the society would debate with the
Socialists, who had blown up the _Times_ personally, and suggested that
the only way out of such a perilous connection would be for the debating
society to elect Gid a member. Then, he might possibly think about
killing off and generally disowning the League.

The debating society met, in haste, changed its constitution so that
freshmen might be admitted, elected Gid, and thanked him for
something--they weren't quite sure what--that he had done to save
Adelbertan oratory from shame. Late in the spring he was actually on the
debating team which invaded and conquered Erasmus College; and the fame
of Gideon Planish promised to be as firmly established in the glorious
annals of the college as that of Old Pug, for eleven years the baseball
mascot.

Erasmus College was in Eastern Ohio, and Gid had never been so far
East--almost into New York State!

With his associate debaters, including a very large junior who sang
grand opera in Dakotan, he traveled on a day coach to Erasmus. They had
large stickers, "Adelbert Champion Debaters," on their suitcases, and
they talked in enormous voices about taxation, to improve the minds of
their fellow passengers.

They were met by a cheering crowd of nine, and put up at a fine hotel:
twenty-two rooms, twenty-two pitchers, and twenty-two bowls. Gid had
never before stayed at a hotel, except with his fussy father and mother,
who kept telling him about the fire-escape. He had a room of his own,
and he proudly raised the shade, felt the bed, as he had seen his mother
do, demanded a luggage rack of the cynical bellboy, and unpacked the two
shirts, the chemistry textbook and the shoeshine rag.

They were all dressing for the debate, in dark-blue suits--practically
in evening clothes, felt Gid. He sat down to his debate notes, not very
nervously. He might not be a William Jennings Bryan, but he had worked
hard, he was full of earnestness, he had a great message for the student
audience of Erasmus, and there was no reason to suppose that God wasn't
enthusiastically with him.

They were entertained at dinner in the college, and when the Adelbert
heroes came into the Erasmus Commons, very modestly, just one of them
carrying a small banner lettered

    Adelbert
    Will
    Win

the student body clapped their hands, all six hundred hands, and some of
them threw bread in an affectionate way, while Gideon Planish tasted the
fiery brandy of public greatness and just acclaim.

At the debate, in the college chapel, there wasn't as large a crowd as
he had hoped; in fact, there were less than a hundred--in fact, there
were less than seventy-five. The hosts explained that it just happened
that there was also a basketball game tonight. But as Gid spoke, the
crowd seemed to stretch out endless, and they were all his, all looking
at him, all listening to him, and his power was on them.

For a moment he found it amusing that what he had to say was the
opposite of what he would have said for the Socialist League. Then it
was the truth, and the only truth, and he had invented it. He maintained
that the government ownership of railroads was not only inefficient but
naughty. He played on figures as on cello strings, and wound up his
Message like a Beethoven finale:

"I think we have shown by the statistics of railroad operation in New
Kamchatka how wasteful is the political control of transportation. But
there is another aspect that is even more important: the spiritual side
of this economic crime against suffering mankind.

"How would you like it if you were one of our fine, honest toilers, say,
like a conductor on your own K Line here, a man who has supported his
family and paid his debts and his charities and his lodge dues, and been
loyal to his State, his country, his God, and his company, and he finds
that some apparently innocent passenger is nothing but a snooper, a
Government spy, put there on the train by inimical politicians and
bosses to see how many cash fares the conductor knocks down? Do you
think any man could carry on, like the fine, honest workmen ought to in
our land of liberty, in that atmosphere of political intrigue and
distrust? Oh, to ask that question is to answer it! And so, finally, do
you know what that kind of stuff is? It is nothing less than that
menacing, that subversive, that most European doctrine--SOCIALISM!"

And Gid and God and the Adelbert team won the debate.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He came down the Erasmus Hotel corridor, broad, confident, shining with
youth and victory.

The night maid was a German woman of thirty, unmarried but not very
virginal, just from the farm, and lonely for her Otto. She had a radiant
skin, and a smile for returning heroes.

"Well, you been out," she said.

"Yes! I won a debate!"

"A debate? Well!"

It was the first time that he had ever encountered a person who was
completely worldly-wise. Marta had the sophistication that came from
seeing a mortgage foreclosed, a father killed by falling on a scythe, a
thousand animals bred and a hundred suitors smirking. He was
overwhelmed, and he said, by her volition more than by his, "Don't I get
a kiss after winning the debate?"

"Yuh--maybe."

Her lips were as sweet as fresh-made johnnycake with honey. He
unbuttoned her bodice, kissed her again and shakily unlocked the door of
his room. She followed him in, cheerfully, and much later she told him
he was a fine young man--just like her Otto.

But as Gid went to sleep, quite happily, to the urgent whistle of an
express flying through town, he was thinking not of the dark blind chasm
of Marta's love, but of how the applause had marched across his
audience, and he muttered:

"Now, nothing can stop me! United States Senator--why, I got it
cinched!"




CHAPTER 4


All that summer after his freshman year, Gid went to sea and met hairy
men who had known fog and shipwreck. He talked with passengers who could
toss you off a Capetown hotel or a Viennese countess or a Saskatchewan
fishing trip as easily as you could toss off a game of checkers.

He was a waiter on a Great Lakes steamer, running from Buffalo to
Duluth, and he learned something about navigation and more about beer
and the surprising varieties of cheese. He had time to think of girls
and religion and making money and all the things he could do in the way
of organizing the loose high spirits and good nature of his fellow
students. Standing in darkness on the lowest of the four sprawling open
decks, he listened to the lake water singing past him, and made two
romantic vows.

He would be a Good Man, a bringer of Messages to the poor old longing
world--Messages about brotherhood and democracy and the regular use of
green (including yellow) vegetables. He'd show 'em that there was
nothing to all this predatory vice. He'd inform them that the waiters
and deck-hands who gambled and got drunk had no bank accounts nor even
much jollity to show for it.

Otherhand, he perceived that most of the Good Men, such as his college
instructors, had little to show for their virtue. The trouble, he
decided, was that they fooled their time away, without direction.

He selected virtue as his lot, but virtue had to be organized.

There were but few born organizers; few that had his gifted combination
of imagination, power and accuracy. He wasn't sure but that he was an
even greater organizer than orator. Among Good Men, he would be the Most
Good Man, and their chairman.

In some slight awe he perceived that this was probably Destiny speaking,
and not just his humble willingness to serve mankind.

As for girls, God, scenery, also family life and physical fitness, he
was glad to find that he considered them all very nice things. He hoped
that he would never refer to any of them in any speech without saying,
"God bless 'em!" But for a devoted artist like himself, he felt, they
were important only as they could be organized and so made available to
mankind.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He returned to college with some acclaim. The dean was almost polite to
him, and the debaters assured him that if he would be patient, they
would elect him their captain in another year. The football captain
asked his advice as to whether there really was anything to all this
Reading that he kept hearing about in his classes, and the leading
bootlegger in the village gave Gid a box of thirty Turkish cigarettes.

Diligently harkening to the voice of the Lord, the first Great
Organizer, Gid started on his new plans.

The pants-pressing situation in Adelbert was deplorable. Pressing was
carried on, without co-ordination, by the village tailor shop, by the
janitor of a fraternity house, and by two students; the elapsed-time
factor was variable; and the prices ran anywhere from fifteen cents to
half a dollar, with collections, Gid estimated, not over 67%.

He disliked the tailor shop--he had had words about his bill--so he
eliminated it from the blessed society of justifiable pants pressers. He
called the janitor and the two student pants craftsmen together; he
smothered them with words, and set them all up in the janitor's basement
room, as The Adelbert Snappy Dressers' Pantorium--Terms Cash. He
increased their joint business by persuading the football captain to
come out for pressedness instead of manly sloppiness, he got sixteen
co-eds to sign a vow not to be "dated" by unpressed males, he coaxed the
editor of the _Weekly Delbertan_ to run an article, written by Gid,
stating that visitors from Yale and Harvard were shocked by the normal
state of the Adelbert trouser, and he even tried to remember not to
throw his own clothes on the floor when he went to bed.

He spent joyful hours in the basement pressing shop, sniffing the
pleasant steaminess, watching the tailors' geese--or gooses--turn
wrinkled cloth into smooth elegance, and going over the account book,
looking like the founding Rothschild. And the Pantorium prospered and
the rival tailor shop went gratifyingly bankrupt. Gid collected
twenty-five per cent of the Pantorium profits. And so, by April of his
sophomore year, he was so busy and so expanded that he was two hundred
dollars in debt, and likely to be suspended from college.

To set up the business, he had had to provide better irons and a quicker
furnace, to advance rent on the basement and, particularly, to pay for
the dodgers which communicated his first printed messages to a surprised
public. It is doubtful if ever in his life he was to be more forceful
than in the hot rhetoric of "Hey, fellows, do you want to look like
college men or town muckers? The garment oft bespeaks the man. Don't go
around bespeaking that you don't belong to the bon ton. Co-eds' suits
also pressed scientifically. Welcome, girls. YE OLDE PANTORIUM. Terms
cash."

For this enterprise, which was in the true American tradition of Jim
Hill, the Rockefellers and Jesse James, Gid had borrowed three hundred
dollars from an aunt who read nothing but the _Boston Cook Book_ and who
was deaf and pious, though she lived in the great city of Zenith. He had
promised to repay her within a month.

But his student patrons interpreted the phrase "terms cash" just as Gid
himself would have interpreted it: as somewhere between a poor joke and
a threat of horrid tyranny. In five months, Gid was able to pay back
only one hundred dollars, and his doting aunt stopped doting. She wrote
to his father on the same day on which the Adelbert Sportshop reported
to the dean that Gid owed them seventy-two dollars.

Gid's father arrived, a melancholy veterinary insignificance with a thin
gray mustache, and while the dean listened with small smiling, Gid's
father explained to him that the worst of all sins, excepting treason
and the neglect of sickness among domestic animals, was being in debt.
At the end of it all, Gideon cried out, as Gideon Planish was so often
to cry out, "It just seems like people don't appreciate it when you try
to do things for them."

                 *        *        *        *        *

He really got more credit for other enterprises which did not require
half the boldness involved in the Pantorium and which may have
brightened up the college public far less than a year of well-pressed
trousers. He organized the first Sophomore Prom ever known in Adelbert.
It is true that this Prom never did come off, but there were weeks of
splendid committee meetings, and, after them, Gid was elected president
of the class. He then combined the warring Student Volunteers and the
Society for the Study of Missions into one body, and he got the Zenith
Electric Lighting Company to invite the Social Conditions class to go up
to the city and inspect the plant, with free transportation and
lemonade.

He seemed to have won back the friendship of Hatch Hewitt, who said to
him something which Gid never quite made out, but which he felt to be
complimentary: "If I just stick around with you, I'll understand all of
American education and American benevolence."

Gid was glad to hear that, because one of the intelligentsia had been
complaining that though he was useful at starting great cultural
movements, like the evening class in Great Women of the Bible, he was no
true executive, and incapable of keeping his crusades alive.

Well, by gosh, Gid reflected, if he could hold onto the worship of an
ole bandit like Hatch, he certainly was a better executive than _most_
people, by gosh!

And so he flashed on into junior year and senior year, as class
president, assistant chairman of the Junior Prom, business manager of
the baseball team, vice-president of the Y.M.C.A., vice-fourflush of the
Four Aces and Growler Association, and as a scholar whose A's in
Rhetoric and Forensics made up for his C's in everything else. He was a
senior, and it was time for him and Hatch to decide which of the rewards
in the world outside college they would prefer to pluck.

Gid's professor in the speech department had hinted that if he would
"settle down to work and quit trying to uphold the arms of Moses and
teach everybody on the campus how to go to the bathroom," he might
become a fairly good teacher. But Gid saw himself and a whole armament
of Messages in a larger arena.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"I suppose you still intend to go back to newspaper work," said Gid.

"Sure. And what mode of gracious living have _you_ picked on this
morning?" said Hatch Hewitt.

"Say, I wish you wouldn't always try to kid me."

"I admire you, Gid. I think you're cockeyed when you look in the mirror
and talk about 'doing something for humanity'--which usually means
giving 'em another excuse for getting into war. But after four beers,
you have virtue. What are you really going to apply it to?"

"I'm still more tempted by politics than by anything else. I tell you,
politics needs men with intellectual training. I could be a doctor, but
I don't like sick people. Or a lawyer, but I hate sticking in an office.
Or a clergyman. Yes, I been a lot tempted by the ministry. But I do like
a glass of beer now and then, and anyway, I don't know as I could work
up the real feeling of instant communion with God that I'd like to, if I
was going to go around doing a lot of public praying. So, you see, I do
really feel a call to politics.

"Gosh, what I could put over! Old-age pensions for every man, woman and
child, and scientific measures of free trade, and adequate defense,
which would be the surest guaranty of world peace and----"

"Sure, sure, I know. Which party do you feel yourself called upon to
revive?"

"I don't care a damn which it is, as long as it isn't the Socialist.
Yuh, I got to hand both the major parties something. I'm all for
Jefferson, but then I think very highly of Lincoln, too."

"Really?"

"Yes, I certainly do."

"Look, Gid. The State Legislature is in session. Why don't we get a day
off and go up and visit it? I've been thinking about going into
political reporting myself."

(Years later, Gid explained to his wife that by taking Hatch to the
State capital, Galop de Vache, he had started him off as a
newspaperman.)

The dean gave them leave, and this time he said almost nothing about
beer. He had come to feel that young Planish was a really useful member
of the college, and that, no matter what the psychology professor said
about the boy's "bumbling busyness," he did have a fine, earnest
interest in Christian missions.

The dean was growing old.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Galop de Vache was a smallish town surrounding a State capitol building,
and the capitol was a jungle of marble corridors and onyx pillars and
cases of Civil War flags and marble ex-governors in frock coats,
together with eight or ten rooms in which the State business was done.
The gaudiest of these was the senate chamber, and when Gid, with Hatch,
teetered down the steep stairs in the visitors' gallery, he was
impressed.

The chamber was lined with mahogany, save for the front wall, which, in
one vast mosaic splashed with rose and gilt and scarlet, recalled the
history of the State: pioneers beside their ox-teams, tall river-boats
with buckskin huntsmen, and Stephen A. Douglas addressing a crowd, women
in bright calico and men with beaver hats, on this same spot where the
capitol stood. In front of the mural was the Lieutenant-Governor's desk,
upraised on yellow-and-black marble, and over the chamber the vast
skylight was jeweled with the arms of every State in the Union.

Here was glory, here was high politics, here was marble, and Gid wanted
to be standing upon this lofty and burning stone.

But he noticed, as he settled down and looked for flaws--a college
senior has to be practical--that the thirty-six seats for senators were
nothing but mahogany school-desks. And how sick he was of schoolrooms
and desks!

He had hoped for high oratory, about flags and eagles and the brawny arm
of labor, but a bald fat man was on his feet and, while nobody seemed to
listen, while one senator ate a sandwich and another snapped spit balls,
was mumbling:

"This bill--this 179--I know there's been some opposition to it--the
gentleman from Grolier County has been kicking about it--but it's been
pretty well talked over in committee and I guess it's a sound bill, I
don't know much about it--it's about muzzling dogs in the southern tier
of counties."

Gid groaned, "Good God! So that's how senators trifle around when we
elect 'em to preserve our liberties!"

Down on the floor, a silver-haired man with schoolmaster spectacles
rose, yawned, handed a peanut to the senator who was speaking, walked to
the back of the chamber, and stood yawning again.

"That old fellow seems as much bored as we are," approved Gid.

"Yes, and I know who he is--he really is something--that's Senator
Kurtshaw, the minority leader," said Hatch.

The man on the throne, presumably the Lieutenant-Governor, said
something rapid and entirely incomprehensible about the dog-muzzle bill,
there was a growl from the caged senators, and the measure seemed
incredibly to have passed. It wouldn't have if _he_ had been a senator,
Gid asserted. But he was to hear still more abysmal legislation slide
through, presented in the reading clerk's furry mumble----

"To amend the markets law in relation to the definition of 'limburg
cheese'."

"To amend the education law in relation to school camps for children."

"To revive and extend the corporate existence of The Highlife Brewing
Company of Monarch."

It was on this last that the silvery Senator Kurtshaw yawned most
destructively, and walked out of the chamber.

"Now there's one representative of the people that seems to have an idea
what it's all about!" said Gid. "Gosh, I wish I had a chance to talk
with him and ask him if we can ever really do anything with this
castiron political machine."

"Why don't we just butt in and do it?"

Gid appreciated the gall and ingenuity of his journalistic friend. Some
day he might give Hatch a newspaper of his own.

A doorman suggested that they might find Senator Kurtshaw in the
Financial Committee Room. Unaware that senators themselves slip up and
down in small smelly elevators, the two young seekers descended the
Napoleonic flight of the Grand Staircase--the first persons ever to do
so except scrubwomen, sparrows and General Lew Wallace. Gid was
declaiming, "Certainly a swell lot of legislative junk our guardians of
liberty are fussing over, while widows starve and the myrmidons, or
whatever you call 'em, beat up protesting wage-slaves! 'An act to tax
the State for red paint for the noses of brewery salesmen, to enchant, I
guess it's enhance, the sales of Old Dog Rover ales and lager.' Now I
know I _got_ to go into politics and clean up the mess!"

The Financial Committee Room was a bareness of plaster and steel filing
cabinets. Senator Kurtshaw was at the end of a ponderous table, reading
the Zenith _Advocate-Times_--the sports page.

"How do you do, Senator?" said Gid.

"Huh?"

"We're a couple of college men, from Adelbert."

"Well?"

"I could see how amused you were by that Highlife Brewery Bill."

"What d'you mean, amused? Very necessary bill. What do you want?"

"Well, to be frank, I wanted to talk about entering politics."

"Go ahead. There's nothing to prevent you, if you're a citizen, and
twenty-one. Why talk to me about it?"

"I thought I might find it a little complicated, as a college man in
politics."

"What about it? I'm a college man in politics. In fact, I once taught in
the university law school, and I suppose I was a conceited damn skinny
nuisance, just as you're a damn fat nuisance."

"I am not fat!"

"You will be. Now what do you expect to do in politics, with your
especial knowledge of Cro-Magnon tribal lore?"

Gid was becoming decently angry. "I'd speak up for the people, that's
what I'd do, and get 'em shorter hours and longer wages, more wages, I
mean--but I mean, of course, without allowing any of this tyranny of
union labor. I'd denounce all these consolidations of predatory
interests that----"

"What predatory interests you mean? The farm-bloc or the Medical
Association or the Methodist Church or your Adelbert Athletic
Association?"

"You know what I mean! Anyway, I'd do something about justice and
education and, well, I mean the Larger Issues, and not waste the public
time on a lot of tripe about dog-muzzles and limburger cheese!"

"And just who do you think is hired by the people to see they get good
limburger cheese, to see that we have food inspectors who know cheese
from Euclid? Do you think these things get themselves done by prayer and
reading the Gettysburg Address and listening to lectures by Emma
Goldman? If you get gypped on a street-car fare, or your mayor appoints
a chief of police that steals your shirt, or your eggs are rotten, or
your car breaks a spring on a bad road, then who do you blame? The State
Legislature! And then you don't re-elect us. We're not a bunch of actors
playing _Julius Caesar_. We're business men, and badly paid ones, trying
to carry out what the citizens want, or think they want, or some boy
orator from the River Platte, like you, tells 'em they want. If you'd
like to get into politics--all right. Go to your county committee, where
they know how good you are, and tell 'em you're fixing to step out and
save the country. I'm sure they'll cry with delight--but don't come and
tell _me_! I didn't walk out on the session upstairs because I was bored
or 'amused'. I had a toothache. And it's getting worse every minute!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

For ten miles, on the train to Adelbert, Gid was silent with a silent
Hatch. Then he broke up:

"Say it! I know. He was right. I'm just another college amateur. _And_
fat! I don't know one doggone thing about how a government is carried
on. That senator has certainly knocked all the ambition out of me! And I
haven't got any deep philosophy. Why, this question I noticed in the
Zenith paper--if there was a fire and you had to decide between saving
the Mona Lisa and a two-year-old child--I don't know which I'd save."

"Neither did the joker that wrote it."

"But it shows me I'm not so gosh-awful profound. I guess I better just
get into the teaching game and hand out the correct-speech guff, like my
prof thinks I had ought to." Then Gid became cheerful. "Maybe some day
I'll be a college president and get the alumni really lined up on
contributions, and double the college attendance. I could do _that_,
don't you think?"

"I'm sure of it," said Hatch.




CHAPTER 5


He had a rich brown small beard, a good thick beard for a man of
twenty-nine. He had grown it to give a more interesting look to a
certain commonplace squatness, and he had cultivated a trick of glancing
sharply at people who spoke to him, then casually looking away, as
though he had already learned everything about them. He wore brown
tweeds and a bright-blue shirt and a loose purple bow-tie. He hoped that
all the respectable people on the Pullman chair-car would be puzzled and
excited, and wonder whether he was a college professor or the kind of
Englishman you read about in H. G. Wells, the kind who was intellectual
but who rockgardened in front of an artistic converted mill in Surrey.

And at twenty-nine, in 1921, he really was a college professor. He was
Professor Gideon Planish, Dr. Planish, Ph.D. of the University of Ohio,
Professor of Rhetoric and Speech in Kinnikinick College, Iowa.

That was a small college with beautiful elm trees, a faint Episcopal
flavor--esthetic but responsible--and a pleasant feeling that
scholarship and piety were good old historical principles but shouldn't
be overdone. The college was attended by the sons and daughters of
manufacturers and physicians in Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and it
had football, but not too much, music, but not too much, and
co-educational flirtation, but not too public.

Professor Planish was well esteemed, in Kinnikinick. He looked at the
athletes, he looked at girl students who came to beg him prettily to
raise their marks from C Minus to C, he looked at the trustees and the
new president, new since last Christmas, as though he was on to all
their charming little dodges, but was amused by them and didn't mind.

He also did some teaching, in a fair routine way.

He did well at lectures to the women's clubs in Central Iowa, for which
he was often paid twenty-five dollars and expenses, with attendance for
tea at the banker's house obligatory. The clubwomen admired him, admired
his beard, admired his merry eyes, admired his trick of becoming moistly
ecstatic as he recited W. B. Yeats, then chuckling at himself and at
them for their emotion.

Yet he was not quite happy. He was, he felt, too young and strong to go
on sitting in classrooms. He was a bachelor, and the girls bothered him,
their legs bothered him, their knees mocked him, and he was obsessed and
extremely annoyed by their sailor blouses. He was afraid that he wanted,
even more than crowds and glory, to be holding one of these sweet,
collapsible little flappers in his arms. It seemed, he groaned, to be
the Lord's incomprehensible purpose that a pure and studious young man
who took cold showers regularly and played tennis and was willing to
serve the people as a United States Senator should keep having Evil
Thoughts about the flashy way in which these young women crossed their
legs as they sat in front of him.

Of course the way out, and the Biblical way at that, as suggested by
that wise old Y.M.C.A. man, St. Paul, was to be married. But Professor
Planish had never yet found a young woman who combined the three
imperative elements: that she should be young and curving; that she
should appreciate his humanitarianism and his gift for high hot
wordings; and that she should have the bland social talent that would
help him to go higher. He had not found her as yet, but meantime he was
able to control himself by his early Christian training and by the
constant availability of his mistress.

She was Teckla Schaum, and she was really a good soul, with money of her
own.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He had spent the summer of 1921 in the Yale Library, being snubbed by
such professors as were not up in Vermont being snubbed by the farmers
or over in England being snubbed by the professors at Oxford. He
believed that he had been trying to write a book on what he called _The
Genius of American Orators_: Webster, Lincoln, Calhoun, Bryan, Ignatius
Donnelly and all persons named Roosevelt. He had done only two chapters
of the book. Years afterward, he found them in a trunk, and turned them
into a singularly useful pamphlet which showed that True Americanism was
synonymous with extensive giving to uplift organizations. But he had had
good luck with the daughter of his landlady, out on Orange Street, and
he had learned to appreciate lobsters, salt water and dancing cheek to
cheek. He had spent a week in New York, and he could find his way from
the Grand Central Station to the Public Library to Billy's speakeasy in
Greenwich Village.

He was ready to take his place in the world of the Eastern Seaboard, but
those damned snobs of Columbia and Harvard and Princeton and Yale, those
high-voiced academic Pharisees, did not encourage him. Perhaps what he
needed was a loving girl who would, like a domesticated Joan of Arc,
show him the path.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Professor Planish decided that the passengers on the chair-car from
Chicago to Kinnikinick hadn't even noticed him. He looked gloomily at
his new tan-leather kit bag, with the grand gold letters GP. It didn't
seem worth while to have paid so much for it.

He sighed, shook his head at the porter's "Brush you off, sir?" and
carried his own bag to the vestibule.

Kinnikinick was now galloping past the train: two fat-bellied oil tanks,
a yard littered with shattered old automobiles, two gangling
grain-elevators, one exclamatory in red and the other of gray galvanized
iron, standing raw against the faded prairie. It all seemed cluttered
and flimsy to Professor Planish, after the shaded security of New Haven,
but he was comforted when, as he hitched down the train steps, carrying
the big bag, he was greeted by the station agent with a hearty "Welcome
back, Prof!"

He was home. On the plank platform, by the small red frame station, a
pretty girl junior was evidently pointing him out to a garland of still
prettier freshmen--pointing at him and whispering, while the girls all
looked at him gravely, without giggling. He was home, and he was
important, and the driver of the flivver taxicab was calling, "Back
again, Prof? Can I drive you up to the house?"

It was the custom at that time and place for the young men to paint
their ancient and derivative automobiles with such texts as "Pike's Peak
or Bust--Busted" or "How about it, Babe?" None of these amateur exhibits
was so florid as this taxi, this open Ford touring car, which was
labeled "Kinnikinick's Komical Kommon Karrier," and decorated with a
mural of young men in white evening ties and ladies in indiscreet
evening gowns attending a rural picnic at which was served nothing but
bananas and hard-boiled eggs. Professor Planish felt humiliated at
having to come back from the elms of Hillhouse Avenue to such frippery,
and he sat in the flivver glaring, his stout little beard straight out.

It all seemed better when they came to the campus. On the bluffs of the
Kinnikinick River, which curved like a question mark, the half-dozen
gray Tudor buildings enclosed a quadrangle shady with oak and maple, a
place for contemplation. Looking at it, young Professor Planish exulted,
"Not as big as Yale, maybe, but a lot purer architecture and sounder
scholarship--and a damn sight more human!"

The flivver left him at his residence, a bedroom and a study in the
square white house of Mrs. Hilp, a widow woman whom no one ever noticed
and nobody has ever described. She stood on the wide screened porch,
crying "Welcome home, Professor!" and heating up his sense of his own
importance. He unpacked by throwing his clothes on the bed and leaving
them for Mrs. Hilp. He was not a particularly tidy man.

It was still warm enough for him to show off the new linen suit he had
bought in New Haven, and in that pale angelic glory he started out on
his errands--a man who was again wanted and needed. He looked into his
private office, a grim and slate-floored coop in the basement of the
Administration Building, and looked at his secretary, a lady who adored
him but who was stringy and virginal. She had answered all his mail, and
he hadn't a thing for her to do, so he patted her on the shoulder, to
show that he was friendly but also keeping his sharp eye on everything.

He went through the memorial gateway, ornamented with the shields of
nine New England colleges, and walked down Wallace Avenue to the Kollege
Klothes Korner, where he bought a bright green tie that he didn't need,
and to the Smokes & Book Co-op, where he bought a red rubber eraser that
he didn't like. Thus he was able to receive from the clerks, "Well,
well, we missed you, Professor. Glad you're back with us."

He had planned his call upon Mr. W. C. Pridmore, president of the
Drovers' National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of
Kinnikinick College, for half-past three, when the bank would be closed
to the public--a caste to which he still referred as "the hoi polloi."
At five he would call on the new president of the college. This expert
schedule of weighty conferences would give him, in between,
three-quarters of an hour for the demands of love, which just now
concerned the slim person of Dr. Miss Edith Minton.

Mr. W. C. Pridmore sat near the entrance to the bank, in a compartment
railed with golden oak and of the general size of a pigpen. But neater,
much neater. He was a gentle, anxious man, with a stubby mustache, and
he was always sorry when he had to foreclose a mortgage. And as he
thought that Professor Planish was going to marry his widowed daughter,
Teckla, and as he considered Professor Planish to be the most book-read
and eloquent young man that he knew, yet with sound principles about the
Republican Party and with a decent salary, he rose from his steel
desk--the look of which gave money-borrowers a headache--he held out his
shaky hand, and cried, "Well, well! Teckla and I missed you, Gideon.
You're a sight for sore eyes!"

Professor Planish wondered if it really would take as much as ten years
for him to become president of the college.

He told Mr. Pridmore that there were fine bank buildings and large
factories in New Haven, also some scattered college buildings, but as
for him, he was mighty glad to be back among friends.

At five minutes to four, Professor Planish was at Lambda Lambda Lambda
House, slightly nervous, to call upon Dr. Edith Minton, proctor of the
House and instructor in English. All summer he had been thinking about
her, remembering her as a quartz crystal, as a doe with large eyes and
tiny elegant hoofs. What a mistake he had made, this past school year,
not to have seen more of her!

He had to wait in the Lambda reception-room, an apartment with Maxfield
Parrish prints, and throne chairs so straight and stiff and hard that
they caused you to wonder whether it was really the heads of the
crown-wearers that got so uneasy.

Edith Minton slipped in, and his bounding heart told him that here was
his true love wending; that Edith would be a credit to him and adorn his
dinner parties, no matter how great a magnifico he might become. He was
a little touched by his own cleverness in having recalled her so
accurately: pale, reedy, erect, and undoubtedly very soft and pleasing
under that armor of gray suit and crisp lace jabot. He thought about
trying to kiss her, but the Infinite shot a warning to him. He shook her
hand, her thin strong hand, and waved her to a chair--in her own house.

"You're looking fine, Edith. Have a good summer?"

"Not bad. I spent two weeks at a Wisconsin lake, but mostly I stayed in
Chicago and worked on Chaucer."

'Oh, I forgot to thank you for your card. I enjoyed hearing from you.
Well... You're looking fine. You look as if you'd had a good summer.'

"Yes."

"Well, back to the mine."

"What do you mean?"

"Back to work."

She thought this over. "Yes, that's so. Back to work now."

"Yup. On the job now."

"I suppose you liked New Haven better than here."

"I did not! They want to see your passport and a certificate signed by
three respectable clergymen that you attended Hotchkiss, before they'll
say good morning. No!"

"And yet you aren't content to be here, either!"

"A man has to keep on advancing, doesn't he? But why am I being jumped
on, my dear?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Gideon. I forget you're my superior officer, don't I!"

"Nonsense--nonsense--nonsense! Academic democracy--all on the same
level--even undergraduates--in some respects. But why so grouchy?"

"Oh, I've just had an afternoon of girl freshmen who couldn't make up
their minds whether they wanted to be scholars or women or have careers.
I get a little cranky."

"You'll get over it!" He arose in a superior sort of way and patted her
shoulder as chastely as he had that of his secretary. "Now get a good
rest. See you soon."

                 *        *        *        *        *

"She doesn't think so doggone much of me. She'd never be one to
appreciate me and help advance my career. God but she's bloodless and
sexless and conceited!... No, she's all right. Maybe she sees through
me! Maybe there isn't so much in me to appreciate, except punchful
words. I'll have to realize that and profit by it--study and do a lot of
hard, quiet thinking," meditated young Professor Planish.

He was clumping back to Administration Hall, his beard bright in the
September sun. With his self-confidence and his determination to make an
impression on the new regime flowing back into him, he walked boldly
into the green-carpeted, portrait-fretted anteroom to the president's
office.

He was a full professor; he was kept waiting only five minutes and
admitted to the fervid cordiality of the Rev. Dr. T. Austin Bull, the
new president of Kinnikinick.

There are rambling and rustic fellows, beanpoles with long noses and
disordered hair, who prove to be suave Men About Town in New York or
London, polo players or editors of gossip magazines, up to the latest
thing in music and morals. By contrary, there are sleek, slender,
quick-moving men, curly-headed and neat-featured, who wear their clothes
like popular actors, who are as quick as cavalry captains and poised as
infantry majors, but who prove to be studious pastors, doctors of
divinity, or teachers of manual training.

Of these deceptive elegants was T. Austin Bull who, after a Methodist
boyhood, a decade as an eloquent and money-raising Episcopal minister,
and a couple of years as secretary of an elephantine university, had, at
forty-four, come to Kinnikinick as president.

The business was under new management; the sales and advertising
departments were being reorganized; and the highest standards of
American business, piety, learning and manhood were to be advanced. Dr.
Bull was against sloth, debt, the teaching of Greek except in graduate
schools and the seduction of co-eds.

His handshake was virile, small though he was, and he greeted Professor
Planish in the best of glee-club tenors:

"Thank you for coming to call so early, Professor, but I'm not sure but
that I should have called on you. I'm so new to this job that I imagine
I'll have to lean heavily on your experience.

"Let's see now: three years you've been at old Kinnikinick. I can't tell
you what splendid reports I get of your splendid teaching and your, uh,
your splendid effect on the morale of the students. Oh, everywhere.
But---- There is one thing, one small detail, that I should like to take
up with you--oh, more in a spirit of asking advice than of giving it,
perhaps.

"Will you have a cigar, Professor? Of course as an ex-parson, I don't
smoke much, but I find that a really good cigar at once cheers the heart
and clears the head, provided it's a really good cigar, I mean, not a
five-cent one--and light, I mean. Good! Now settle back in your chair,
all comfy, and try and have the patience to hear me out.

"What I've ventured to think about, in a very tentative way, is: I'm
sure you make every effort to shelter our darling girl undergraduates
just as much from yourself as from any other man, but have you ever
given thought to the somewhat disturbing position of a strong, young,
unmarried man among so many lovely girls?"

"Oh, yes, I've given thought to it!"

"I imagined perhaps you had. And may I, in the most impersonal way, ask
if you have any plans for getting married?"

"I can't say anything definite just at this moment--only rash fools
tempt the gods by prophecy, you know."

"How true that is!"

"But I hope before long to have something very interesting to tell you."

"That's fine, that's fine. I'm very pleased, Professor."

                 *        *        *        *        *

To himself Professor Planish grunted, "Yeh, it _would_ be interesting to
know who the dickens this is that I'm going to marry! And it would be
interesting to Prexy if he shadowed me for the next few hours and found
out why I'm not likely to be a menace to the cute co-eds!"

So he tramped to the little gray widow's-house where lived Teckla
Schaum.

He knocked, instead of bursting in as he usually did. It would be a
pleasure to see her tremblingly peeping out, in hope. She'd be at home,
all right; hadn't he telephoned her that he was back! She would never
spoil the perfect art of his return.

He knocked and rang the bell, and with perfect timing, as rehearsed in
his mind, there she was, edging the door open, then throwing it wide as
she whimpered, "Oh, Gid, you're here!"

"Me? No! I'm in New Haven. You know--in Connecticut."

He closed the door behind him, to shut off the censorious eyes of
Kinnikinick, and kissed her profoundly, holding her small frail figure
close to him, conscious of her fine springy back.

"I've missed you so," she was sighing.

"Missed you, too. Nobody I could talk to."

"But you must have met some wonderful people in New Haven."

"Sure. Some swell English scholars--some real word-painters--make
Beowulf sit up and beg. And boy! What buildings and old New England
churches, and a very fine old town, Guilford, quite convenient on the
trolley, but--Jesus, Teckla darling, how I did miss talking to you! You
know--natural."

He was relieved to find that he could, without straining, tell her the
truth. He reflected that for all his talent, maybe genius, he was a
simple fellow who hated talking through pink gauze to Edith Minton or
President Bull. He wondered if he might not actually be a little in love
with Teckla. There was only one thing against the theory--he didn't like
her very much.

Teckla Pridmore Schaum, daughter of the head of the college trustees,
was four years older than Professor Planish. For two years she had been
married to a promising young townsman, head of the Power and Light
Company, who had been killed when an automobile turned over. She was
incessantly hungry for the smell of a man's pipe, the horizon thunder of
his grumbling. All the past winter she had been going to bed with
Professor Planish, but she didn't know much about him. She thought he
was a simple and friendly young man who wanted to help his students. She
was four years older, and thin, and she hadn't much of a complexion,
nothing very interesting in the way of hair or a nose or wit; nothing at
all but a rigid passion for him and an unquestioning joy when she could
comfort him and assure him that he was a superior man. She knew that he
was not in love with her, but she went on convincing herself that some
day the darling boy would see the gold she gave him.

"That's the sweetest new linen suit!" she adored.

"Like it? From the East! God-awful expensive!"

"It's so smart."

"Huh! I bet you think President Bull dresses better than I do. I just
saw him. He wore a double-breasted gray suit with the waist cut in like
a chorus man, and damned if he wasn't wearing a red carnation--the
curly-headed dude! Don't you think so?"

"Father and I always thought he was such a good scholar. But now you
speak of it, I guess he is a little dandified. You're so deep and
discerning about people."

"No, I just get around a lot."

"Dear, why don't you take your coat off? It's terribly hot, for
September."

"That's not such a bad idea, at that."

"And I know you'd like a highball."

"That proposition certainly has a lot of merit in it."

With such delightful love talk and academic interchange of ideas, they
played along.

There was no Prohibition-era drinking at Kinnikinick, which was moral
though Episcopal. There were no saloons in town; Holy Communion was
drunk in grape-juice; and at large public dinners, the bishop and the
football team were toasted in Coca-Cola. The students carried abstinence
so far that they never drank in the dormitories, except in the evening,
and perhaps afternoons. The president had to be known as a teetotaler,
and it was only in the houses of the professors who had married money
that there were any very large private cellars.

Not having had a drink since he had left his rooms at Mrs. Hilp's, the
Professor chummily helped Teckla crack the ice, open the White Rock
bottle, and look over her Prohibition stock: four bottles of Bourbon
whisky, two of Scotch, twenty-seven gin, and a bottle of rock-and-rye
like an anatomical specimen in a museum.

Teckla had no servant, but her kitchen was nearly automatic, and
brutally handsome. The electric stove resembled a mahogany hope chest;
the sink was of stainless steel; the cupboard of steel enameled a pale
blue; and off the kitchen was the "breakfast nook," a pair of cherry-red
settees facing each other across a blue metal-topped table, with
wallpaper flourishing strawberries and bluebirds.

In this metallic lovers' bower, where the rosebuds were pink electric
bulbs, Professor Planish and his Aspasia grew happily drunk. Before
that, the Professor gloated, "You haven't asked about my present for
you."

"You don't mean you brought _me_ a present?"

"Ha, ha, who else would I bring a present to!"

He curvetted back into the living-room, which was in blue and silver
with an Arthur Rackham print, and from his coat pocket he took a
jewelry-box of the most elegant pasteboard, icy to the fingers outside,
with the most luxurious honey-colored satin lining. His left hand on her
shoulder, leaning over her, he flashed the bright costume-jewelry
bracelet which he had anxiously bought on Madison Avenue, in New York
($11.99 cash).

"Oh, darling, it's lovely, just lovely! It shines so--like diamonds! You
shouldn't of!"

He kissed her, and for some seconds he was almost certain that he loved
her. But he was thirsty, and the ice and amber of his drink lured him
back to the settee across from her.

"Gideon, I think I've done something really useful for you this summer."

"What's that?"

"I've been reading Trollope for you."

"Oh, yes--uh--Trollope."

"You know: _Barchester Towers_."

"Oh, I remember. I tackled that guy once, but he was pretty strong
going. Not even a shooting. Too slow for me."

"Well, you know in your Rhetoric lectures, where you say an author can
have humor and excitement without falling into bad taste and immorality,
like all these young writers, Trollope would be a dandy illustration. I
made some notes for you on his plots and moral principles."

"Oh, swell! Fellow busy as I am, trying to ram art and eloquence down a
lot of boneheads, to say nothing of all the work I do on committees, he
don't get time to do all the reading he'd like. It's a great sorrow to
me, sometimes, Teckla. What I always say is, there's no friend like a
great book."

"Oh, I know how it is. Gideon! There's a hero in Trollope that's so much
like you--the same combination of learning and virility. He's a
clergyman, but he has a beard just like yours."

"Do you think I ought to go on wearing a beard? I thought President Bull
looked at it kind of funny."

"Don't you ever dare take it off! It makes you so distinguished. Like
that minister in the book."

"You know, I've worried a good deal, off and on, whether I hadn't ought
to gone into the ministry, instead of teaching. Of course what I always
say is, a man can do as much good by training these young minds in
oratory as in purity, but I guess I'm kind of a perfectionist--I'm funny
that way--I can't seem to be satisfied unless I follow the highest and
noblest and no compromise, yes, sir, and no matter how practical we are,
still we had ought to imitate the lives of the saints and sacrifice our
all to humanity without flinching and HOORAY, I feel wonderful!"

He had a quick one, without ice or soda. Was he--he pinched his mind, to
see if it hurt--was he getting lit? Oh, what the devil! He had to
celebrate his homecoming, didn't he? And Teckla looked at him with such
admiration and surrender. Pity she was so much older than he.

She was breathing, "Oh, I know how you want to help and lift up this
poor bewildered world. But I honestly don't see how you could do any
more good in a church than in your wonderful work of teaching your
students to write and orate so beautifully, and then those of them that
get a call to go out and influence mankind will be just that much more
gifted."

"Anyway, I'm not sure I've got the right kind of a voice for a
clergyman."

"Do you know the kind of voice you ought to have?"

"What?"

"Just the kind you got now, dear!"

"Oh... But do you think it's deep enough?"

"It doesn't sound like a rainbarrel, if that's what you mean--thank
Heaven! But listen, darling: you haven't told me one word about New
Haven. Of course I understood perfectly that you were working so hard
you didn't have time for much letter-writing. But now tell me about it.
Did they offer you a position there?"

"I've got a more interesting idea than New Haven." He rose. "Come!"

Mutely she followed him into the living-room, sat on his lap, fondly
rubbed her cheek against his chest, while he stroked her knee.

The Professor sighed to himself, "She's a good woman. She's one person
that does appreciate what I am. It's a darn shame that she's so
small-town and ordinary. It wouldn't be fair to her to take her off to
New York and Washington and face those snobs and intriguers."

She said, as though the words meant something quite different, "Getting
hungry? I've got the nicest little steak for you."

"Don't you think that can wait a while, sweetheart?"

"Yes, maybe it can," she whispered.




CHAPTER 6


Professor Gideon Planish was not satisfied with the workings of
Providence, at the beginning of this college year of 1921-22. He was not
satisfied with Teckla Schaum. Oh, she admired him, in her shallow
womanly way, but she did not understand the complications of a
statesman's career, did not even understand the problem of his
beard--how he looked rustic if he had one, and yet if he took it off
now, everybody would laugh.

She couldn't tell him how to jump from college to the Senate chamber
without going through a lot of sticky handshaking. She actually thought
he might go on teaching, and yet she didn't see how embarrassing it was
for him to have, as rival star in his department, a new English
professor who had taken the advantage of actually being English.

No, he was alone with his high dreams, no one to help him, no one to
hold his hand while he followed the road to the stars.

Damn it, he wasn't even quite sure that he ought to go on being Teckla's
lover. Maybe it wasn't altogether moral.

One of his most prickly grievances was that in this small college, with
only thirty-one on the faculty, he had to take the huge required
freshman class in Introductory Rhetoric and Composition. He was happy
enough in his small seminars in inspirational subjects like
Argumentative Composition, Oral Interpretation of the Drama, Persuasion,
and Speech Psychology, but to process this knotty raw material of almost
a hundred freshmen of every state of sex and unenlightenment was to pant
and strain at an intellectual assembly-line. Yet all that Teckla said
about it was, "You ought to feel that it's a privilege to stir up all
these young minds."

So it was with a shaky feeling of having been unjustly used that he
began his first lecture to the class in Freshman Rhetoric.

He came through the R. U. E. entrance into Atkinson Amphitheater,
carrying only a thin notebook. He was proud that he was too well
organized to need the green bag or the pile of shaggy brown books with
which the old troupers among the faculty messed up their unstylized
entrances.

With stilled and waiting power he looked at the huge class--ninety-seven
of them, all green. With most of them he hadn't even had consultations.
Ninety-seven children from supercilious but provincial households, all
busy with apples, chocolate, tennis rackets, newspapers, and with one
another, boy drawn to girl already, in the first week of college, in a
jungle of young life that was uninterested in professors--even those
with rich beards. If he did manage to stand there, looking a little
amused, a symbol of cold dominant wisdom, it was entirely an act and he
an actor. Inside, he felt lonely and, at best, he hoped they wouldn't
find him very funny or intolerably dull.

He gravely laid down his notebook, rapped his desk, and croaked:

"Young ladies and gentlemen, let us start this consortium, in which we
are compelled to be associated for the next nine months, nine long long
months [he did get a smile on that line], by firmly understanding
certain fundamental principles. Doubtless some of you are Shakespeares,
piping your native woodnotes wild, but for most of us, the magic art of
Rhetoric is rules, rules, rules, and yet more rules.

"It is discipline. It is a humble and willing subjection to the great
formulae worked out for us long ago by the Masters. We are not here to
show off or to think we are smart enough to do everything in new ways. I
shall tell you, and I shall expect acute attention when I tell you, what
the Masters have decided, in all such supreme mysteries as style,
beauty, conciseness, aspirations toward the Divine, the correct ratio,
in fiction, of analysis and narrative and description to dialogue,
scientific paragraphing, appeal to the nobler emotions such as love and
patriotism, the accepted punctuation and gosh----"

The last word had not been said aloud.

He couldn't be sure that her name did begin with an A or B, the girl at
the right end of the center section of the front row, for the ushers had
not yet assorted the class alphabetically. Maybe she was sitting there
so close to him because she wanted to listen to him. But whether she
began with an A or a B or a C or a Z, she was his true love forever.

It was true that her shoulders, like his own, were menaced by plumpness,
but her legs were sleek, her ankles fairly thin, and if her little paws,
twisted together on the writing tablet of her chair as she listened to
him, were not so delicate, they were white and sweet and shapely. And
her face was as amusing as a monkey's, round and pert. She had wise and
lively eyes, astonishingly wise and determined for a girl who couldn't
be over nineteen, and her friendly lips, not tight nor thin, kept moving
with excitement. Her high pride was her brown hair, shining like
polished walnut and, unusual here and now, not bobbed but flauntingly
feminine.

He was already telling her, under the campus maples by moonlight, that
she must be careful with her diet and not get fat--lovely child like
her--while his outer voice was rolling on:

"----and take, for instance, the case of a novelist less known than
Dickens or Thackeray or Harriet Beecher Stowe, yet always to me one of
the lords of language, Andrew--ah, Jupiter nods, I mean of course
Anthony--Anthony Trollope. Did a tremendous writer like Trollope think
the proper stunt was to go and live with a lot of Bohemians and
Frenchmen in an attic and try to invent a lot of new rules? He did not!
He was the soul of discipline. While constantly traveling as a--as a
school inspector in a--in a number of parts of England, he made himself
sit down every day and write--and write--and write, and all according to
the accepted RULES!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

His girl in the front row nodded. There was a serious-minded and helpful
young woman. He could imagine her being witty at a soda-fountain or
bouncing in her seat at a high-ranking basketball game--full of fun, a
jolly companion, but with a heart that would appreciate idealism and
ambition.

He was explaining to the class that elegant language was useful not only
to preachers and editorial writers but also to businessmen. Which, he
put it to them, would sell a vacuum cleaner better: a rich, full,
mellifluous address (and he strikingly illustrated it, playing both the
salesman and a pleased housewife), or a mess of crude language, as used
by persons who didn't go to Kinnikinick and love their Rhetoric class?

The girl's eyes forcefully agreed with him.

And for such of them as planned to enter politics--what was it that
elected Woodrow Wilson? His titanic knowledge of history? No, never! It
was the discriminating way in which he laid words end to end according
to the rules.

The end of Professor Planish's discourse was somewhat in the style of
the courtroom scene in _The Merchant of Venice_. He stopped dead, he
fixed them with the eye, he raised the hand, he gave with the voice:
"Let me conclude in the words of Alexander Pope's immortal translation
from Horace." He glanced at a slip filled with the handwriting of Teckla
Schaum.

    "Sages and chiefs long since had birth
      Ere Caesar was or Newton named;
    These raised new empires o'er the earth,
      And those, new heavens and systems framed.
    In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
      They had no poet, and are dead!"

He wondered if, after all, he shouldn't have been a leading actor
instead of a senator or a college president. Wouldn't his girl down
there have appreciated him even more? He calculated that she was near to
weeping. He looked at her knowingly, eye understanding eye, heart
snatched out of his body and joined to hers. When all the others had
gone, after only half a hundred fool questions about hours and
assignments and at what sort of an establishment did one accomplish the
abnormal feat of buying a book, he saw that she was still waiting, at
one side of the room.

She came up to his platform-table. Who said her shoulders were too
plump? Why, they were lustrous and soft for a man to lay his head----

Professor Planish caught himself. After all, he wasn't a mooncalf any
longer. This was a jolly-looking young woman, but she was no Theda Bara.
Seated with the table safely between them, she standing humbly below, he
looked at her like a judge.

"May I bother you a moment, Professor?"

"What is it?"

(These were, definitely, the first words between the celebrated Romeo
and Juliet of Kinnikinick.)

"I want to see if you'll let me take Oral Interpretation of the Drama."

"That's an upper-class subject."

"I know. I just want to take it as an auditor, without credit."

"Isn't your schedule full?"

"I'll say!" She shuddered.

"Then why do you want to take it?"

"Oh, I think maybe I might be an actress and----"

"Yes?"

"And I'd like to have another class with you!"

She was delicately shameless, and he stiffened with interest. He
marveled, "But why?"

"Oh, it was so stimulating today, and the other day I listened to you in
the hall--I was waiting for a vaccination appointment, in front of C7,
and I heard you talking to Professor Eakins. He was so sort of dry and
cranky--they all are, all but you--and I've snooped into a lot of
classes and listened--they just grind out a lot of information--gee,
Professor, I guess maybe I'm being fresh, but I'll bet you a billion
dollars the rest of the faculty think you're too dramatic, too exciting
to listen to."

"My dear young lady----" Then his flatulent academic tone changed into a
boyish demand: "What's your name?"

"Peony Jackson. From Faribault, Minnesota. I was on the platform when
you got off the train."

He got back the professorial manner. The self-protective superiority.
The armor against the mirth of young women.

"Well, Miss Peony Jackson, from Faribault, Minnesota, I'm sure you mean
to be complimentary, but the fact is, the members of the faculty,
however much they may differ----"

Never again, in private, did he speak to her with this stage burlesque
of himself--not to Peony. Raw and boyish again, remembering that he was
only ten years older than she, he cried, "Let's sit in the front
row--all these dumb freshmen gone now--come on!" They laughed; they sat
side by side. Probably to the eye even of President T. Austin Bull they
would have seemed decorous enough, but Professor Planish felt as though
he were holding her hand.

"Peony--Miss Jackson--you don't want to take that Oral Interpretation
junk. It's a lot of stupid analysis."

"Well, I came here to get educated, didn't I?"

He felt a tiny chill. "Did you?"

"That's what they claim!"

"Don't give it a thought."

"I won't!" They laughed, like freshmen, or very aged professors.
"Honestly, Professor, I just love the way you treat your students--tell
'em they're a bunch of lil Socrateses one minute and then jump right
down their throats the next. That would make even a dumb bunny like me
get busy and learn something--learn K-A-T, the cat, sat on the M-A-T-T,
mat. I betcha I learn enough here so's the court will let me get
married."

"And who may this be that you are going to marry?" Very coldly.

"I haven't got the slightest idea."

Was it possible that she was looking at him with appraisal?

"Look, Miss Jackson--Peony. I've got the idea. Forget the Oral Interp.
Did you know that it's part of my job here to coach a play, four times a
year?"

"Swell."

"We'll have try-out for the first one, _Poor Papas Prize_, in just a few
days now."

"Swell."

"And will you read for it?"

"Sw---- You mean, try and see if I can act one of the parts?"

"Professionally, we call it 'read for a part'."

"I'll be glad to." Her wrist-watch, he noted, was rather expensive.
"Gee, I got to be skipping along now."

"Don't go yet!"

"I got a date."

"With some boy, I suppose!"

"Uh-huh."

He was writhing. He was sick. These blab-mouth freshmen boys! Not human
yet!

"Well, look, Peony, I'd like to have more chance--I mean now, at the
beginning of the year, when we're sort of making plans--I mean, for the
year--and I'm very interested--I mean in your reactions to the
different--you know, different styles and modes of instruction--and it's
so interesting to get your reactions and----"

"Aw, Professor, you don't want any reactions from a Problem Child."

"Give me some, and see if I don't!"

"Swell!"

"Where are you living?"

"At Lambda House."

"Um! Well, look. I'll be in Postum's drug-store at exactly ten o'clock
tonight, buying a soda." He remembered that he had an engagement which
might be expected to last all evening, but he kicked out the thought. He
could not wait for forty-eight hours to see Peony again. "Exactly ten.
Suppose you happened to be there, and had a soda with me?"

"I thought the co-edibles weren't supposed to have dates with the
faculty."

"They aren't. But if you just happened to be dropping in there to buy
some talcum powder----"

"I got some talcum powder!"

"Are you going to be there or are you not?"

"Maybe so. We'll see. G'bye!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was nervous. Had he given one of his natural enemies, an
undergraduate, a hold over him?

He was jealous. Peony was off to meet some brash and unknown boy, who
had the worst of intentions, while he himself had nothing but an
innocent engagement with Mrs. Teckla Schaum.

Teckla's father, the banker and trustee, owned a one-room cottage with a
cook-stove and a two-story bunk, six miles out of town, on Lake
Elizabeth, to be reached by a sandy trail, on foot or with horse and
buggy. The Pridmores had given him a key and told him to call the shack
his own; here he had worked undisturbed on his book about the American
Orators--it was, in fact, an excellent place for catching up on sleep.
And here, this evening, while the early autumn was still warm, he was to
picnic with Teckla.

The road to the lake was deep in scrub oak and hazelnut and sumac; flies
gyrated in a backward dream of summer; and the aged Pridmore horse moved
unambitiously. The time should have been full of contentment, but
Professor Planish, driving, his shoulder bundled against Teckla's, felt
that he was wasting his talent. He was impatient even with the glimpses
of the lake through networks of brush, for he wanted to be undisturbed
in his thoughts of Peony Jackson. Yet Teckla took this touchy time to
chatter, looking at him as though she owned him, as though she were his
mother, his true sweetheart.

"Did the Freshman Rhetoric go well, Gideon? Was it a terrible ordeal?"

"What do you mean, 'ordeal'?"

"You always say the freshmen are so stupid----"

"I never said anything of the sort! I said some of 'em are. But some of
'em are mighty bright. _Mighty_ bright! Keen, unspoiled minds. They're
eager, not blas or fussy, like a lot of older people."

"I suppose that's so---- Did you use my stuff about Trollope?"

"No, I didn't!"

"Oh."

"Well, I used part of it. And I had to go to the dentist's, this noon."

"Oh, you poor darling! Did he hurt you?"

"No, he didn't!"

"You sound so tired and cross, dear."

"Me? I'm not tired! _Or_ cross!"

A vast silence, fringed with the tiny barbaric music of the flies and
the thump of reluctant hoofs.

Professor Planish was not a cruel man; at least, he had no definite
pleasure in giving pain, not even to those he loved. He said
repentantly, "I'm sorry if I sound touchy. I'm just worried--about the
students."

"About what are you worried about about them?"

"About their morals! Freshmen girls making dates with unknown, immature
boys! Very dangerous!"

"Is it?"

"Certainly it is! And then I've got to make out a whole lot of notes
for---- In fact I have to be back in town by 9:30 sharp tonight."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's such lovely soft fall weather. I was hoping we
might stay at the shack all night."

"I'd like that fine--nothing I'd like better--but tonight I just can't
make it. Have to be back by 9:30 at the latest."

Silence.

She said slowly, "I wonder how long it'll be before some sweet young
thing that's lots younger than I am will take you away from me."

He started to forswear himself, then felt honest. He not infrequently
did. He spoke affectionately--to the little mother:

"I don't know. Maybe some time. Not for a long time, let's hope. But if
that ever does happen, no girl can be half as tolerant of me and all my
fool talk about fool ambitions as you are."

"No, she won't be. Kiss me!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Pridmore shack, unpainted but clean and trim, was of the same
autumnal golden-gray as the long rough grass upon the bluff above the
lake, which slept in a stilly haze. Peace came upon the Professor, and
for seconds at a time he forgot Peony Jackson and his need of her.
Stripped to trousers and thin ribbed undershirt and looking, with his
brown beard, like a Manet portrait of an artist picnicking on the Seine,
he ran along the pebbly edge of the lake, and skimmed stones across the
tender-colored water, savagely breaking its pliant surface. Teckla was
happy because his fretfulness seemed to be over, and happily she spread
their supper on a black-and-red tablecloth in front of the shack. The
lake was half copper, half rose, now, and the western horizon
exclamatory.

When she called him to supper, he felt young and gay. But she was
looking at him with such possessiveness. And she was always doing things
for him--oh, he liked to have things done for him, but he certainly
didn't like to have people think that he ought to think that they were
doing things for him.

She had brought out for him a canvas reclining chair, but she herself
squatted on the grass.

He raged to himself: that was how she'd try to hold him--by pretending
to be so thoughtful that he would try not to hurt her feelings. And she
was so settled and routine. He wanted adventure. "I'm going places," he
vowed. Yet he was surprised to hear himself bawling at her, "Oh God, not
hard-boiled eggs again!"

He would have thrown himself pettishly into the canvas chair, but it
just wasn't the kind of chair you threw yourself into--not pettishly. He
lowered himself into it, as he went on, "You're always kind to me,
Teckla, but you haven't got one bit of imagination."

Was this nice, to be hurting her like this? No, maybe not; but he'd
better get it over, for keeps. "Can't you ever think of anything new?
You're in a rut, just like Kinnikinick College. Wake up!"

She mutely turned her eyes away from his scolding. She sat limp and
wordless, then crept up into his lap, softly kissing his cheek,
forgiveness-begging for whatever terrible thing it was that she must
have done.

He thought, gosh, this chair will collapse with the two of us, but how
can I tell her to get the hell off my lap, the poor darling, the damn
sentimentalist?

He thought, she's so hot and sticky, her hand feels sticky as fly-paper,
and it beats all get-out how heavy she is for such a thin woman.

He thought, this Peony Jackson is so fresh and jolly and _cool_. Even if
she is a little plump. And so brainy. Wouldn't have to keep explaining
and apologizing to _her_ all the time.

He said aloud, "Forgive me for being such an old sorehead today. I
always am, the beginning of the school year. Well, we better get busy
with the chow, or the cold eggs will get cold!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was at Postum's drug-store at 9:56.

Miss Peony Jackson wiggled in at 9:59. Without looking at him she went
to the cosmetics counter and said, "Have you a small box of rice
powder?" She was even fresher and softer and more miraculously special
than he had remembered.

As she turned around, he said, "Oh, good evening, Miss Jackson."

She said, "Oh, good evening, Professor."

"Can I buy you a soda?"

"A soda?"

"Why, yes."

"Oh, a soda. I'm afraid it's very late, Professor."

"No, do sit down and have a soda. Or a sundae. I want to ask your
opinion about--weekly themes."

"Well----" Her voice was plain, but as she sat down her eyes seduced
him.




CHAPTER 7


For a gentleman professor in Kinnikinick College to look upon a maiden
student as a human being was poorly thought of, and to meet her over a
dish of marshmallow, ground nuts, caramel and two kinds of ice cream was
as dangerous morally as it was dietetically. Now that he had once run
that danger, he did not dare try to see her except across the footlights
in his Rhetoric class.

She was, by alphabetical arrangement, half-way back in the room now, and
when he started his second lecture, he looked about for her
flutteringly, and was reassured by her smile that said, "Yes, here I
am!" Through his discourse, her attention told him that he was good--but
afterward she treacherously slipped away with the rest of the class, and
he was in a terror of uncertain love.

He knew that for the first time he was really in love. In all his life
he would have only four or five people who would completely know him and
accept him. Certainly Teckla Schaum did not. For all his warnings that
he would be stepping out into glory, she thought that he was really a
born progenitor and mower of lawns, who would settle blissfully into
domesticity if she was but loving and patient. Of these four or five
connoisseurs of Gideon Planish, Peony would be the only seducible girl,
and he no more intended to lose her than to lose his life.

His chance to talk with her came at the Freshman Reception, held in the
gymnasium, which was decorated with red and green paper streamers and an
enormous sign "Welcome Class o' 1925."

The male costumes at the reception ranged from President Bull's white
tie and tails to old Professor Eakins's eccentric white-flannel suit and
red bow, with Professor Planish soundly middle-road in a dinner jacket.
The hundred freshmen, in the ancient religious ceremony of the Reception
Line, filed before the president, the dean of men and the dean of women,
and all the full professors, complete with wives, fetishistically
shaking hands as though they really enjoyed the rite and from the magic
touch gained heroic strength. The preceptorial priests themselves were
hypnotized and stood mystically flapping their arms and croaking
"Spleasure." The only one who kept awake was Professor Planish, and he
only till after he had felt the firm warmth of Peony's young paw.

Yet during the reception he was apparently devoted to Mrs. Bull, the
wife of the new president. She was ten years older than Professor
Planish, but she looked sparkling; she wore a Chicago dinner-gown and a
Cedar Rapids hair-wave, and she liked young professors.

Professor Planish felt that he might need influence at court very soon,
and he danced with Mrs. Bull twice, stepping high and wiggling his plump
behind and thrusting out his beard in an ecstasy of social elegance, and
telling her that on the entire Atlantic Seaboard he had not found a lady
with so light a foot and such vital ideas about teaching domestic
science. In return, she gave out everything about her son Eddie, aged
eleven.

Just once he danced with Peony, and that far more sedately than with
Mrs. Bull. But he had been watching her, in her cheery yellow silk frock
with a golden girdle, kicking up hoydenish heels with unspeakable brutes
of young freshmen.

Now he was talking to Peony; he was talking to a woman, not to a social
obligation:

"Why didn't you come up after class, last time?"

"I didn't want people talking about me."

"You mean about _us!_"

"Why, Professor Planish!"

"I'm not Professor Planish, and you know it. I'm Gid."

"Gid!" mockingly.

"I've got to see you."

"It's so hard. I'd like to, but people watch you. You're too popular,
Gid!"

"Nonsense. I'm just unmarried. Listen! You know that little park across
the tracks from the station? Nobody from the college ever goes there."

Mocking again: "I suppose that's where you always have your dates with
co-eds!"

"I've never had a date with a girl there and you know it."

"How would I know it?"

"Because I just told you so, and I never lie--to you. Can't you feel
that's true? Don't you know it?"

"Maybe--yes!"

"Then be there in the park at ten tomorrow evening."

"I'll try."

"Do you like me, Miss Jackson?"

"I can't tell yet, Professor Planish. I don't know how sound you are on
the gold standard."

They laughed. That laugh was the only possible betrayal in a
tabby-looking conversation, and Professor Planish looked hastily to see
if Teckla and President and Mrs. Bull were observing. No, he was still
safe.

                 *        *        *        *        *

With Teckla he danced only once. She had been frozen in with the
chaperones, the faculty wives, who all had a fixed and smiling look of
intense distaste.

"Having a good time, Teckla?" he glowed.

"All right, but it's not much fun for me to sit back like a Mother in
Zion."

"I'll dance with you again, and I'll see you home, and now I'll bring
you a bottle of strawberry pop. I know how you like strawberry pop."

He did not dance with her again, but he did bring her a bottle of that
horrible drink, and he did "see her home." He had always been afraid of
scandal for himself--he had sometimes gone so far as to fear it for
Teckla--and he rarely was to be seen entering her house later than
suppertime. When she said, "Come on in for a while," he gurgled, "I
don't really think I'd better. Got to think of your reputation, you
know!"

Brightly. Like a professor.

She snapped at him, "Oh, come _in_!"

In the house, she held him with her hands on his shoulders. "Is there
something wrong tonight, Gideon?"

"Course not!"

"Because if there is---- Gideon, you never once looked at me. When I was
dancing with you, I was dancing with a stranger--a stranger that didn't
like me very much. Darling, it's awfully hard to see a man that you know
so well suddenly turn into a stranger right in your arms, with the
muscles and the way he moves all different. I knew something was
distracting you--I really felt frightened."

"Oh, you just imagined----"

"Why do you ever lie to me? I always catch you, you know. Even college
professors or preachers oughtn't to lie unless they can get away with
it---- So you fell pretty hard for her! Didn't you!"

He was aghast.

"Oh, I could see it. Gideon, she must be ten years older than you are.
At least."

"R?"

"I know she's handsome, but after all, Gideon, Mrs. Bull _is_ the
president's wife----"

He hooted with noisy joy; he kissed her with fond brotherliness. But his
relief was not merely in being safe; it was equally in being free from
Teckla's understanding. "She doesn't really know me then. She's never
got through to me. There's only one girl that can, that ever will," he
rejoiced to himself, as he palavered aloud, "Mrs. Bull? I don't even
know she exists. You don't know how funny your jealousy is, Teck! Matter
of fact, my crime is much worse than being after a married woman--my
crime is that I was making up to her in order to stand in with the
president, and that _is_ pretty low!"

"Yes, it is, you bad thing!" She was delighted; she believed him. "Do
sit down, and I'll make you a cup of coffee."

"No, I got to be moving."

"Why? It's not late. And you won't do any more work this evening."

"No, I just----"

"Gideon, I do love you so. God knows why, but I do. But you don't have
to make love to me, if you stay. If you'll just go on being a friend----
You'll never have any idea what it can mean to a widow, a young widow,
who was so happily married, not to have a man around the house to turn
to and have him close the shutters and open the bottles and be bossy.
It's terrible not to have anybody care enough for you to boss you
and---- Oh, sorry I'm sentimental. But don't neglect me again the way
you have at the reception all evening."

(He was thinking, "Oh, all women are annoying--except one. They poison
the very instincts that ought to lead a man on and up to a clearer
light. Why don't I be honest with this female? Go on, Dr. Planish--can
you ever be honest? By God, I will!")

"Teck! You've saved my life, out here in Kinnikinick," he flowered.

"And I do give you coffee."

"Very fine coffee! But now I'm going to be very serious, and this may
sound like a funny question, but do you think I'll have a chance to be a
leader of the United States Senate some day and maybe even go
higher--say a post in the Cabinet?"

"How can I----"

"Do you?"

"No! Frankly, I don't. I think you are a good teacher--you have a sort
of zest that makes up for what you lack in scholarship----"

"So I lack in scholarship!"

"----but I don't think you'd ever have the patience or the ideas to
become a political leader."

"Darling Teckla! Oh, I don't mind. But you don't really believe in me."

"I think I love you--some!"

"That's sorta beside the point. You're tired. You lack the enthusiasm of
youth. I shall certainly try to keep from it, but I'm afraid that, as
you yourself hinted recently, some day I'll fall in love with some girl
that's--oh, call it credulous, if you want to."

"Have you fallen for one yet?"

"No, of course not!" (He congratulated himself, "That's the only lie
I've had to tell her!") "But I might. And if I ever did, I know that she
and I would both turn to you as the wisest and kindest woman living, as
a woman----"

"Hey now, wait! I'm only thirty-three, you know, not seventy-three. Oh,
yes, I suppose I'd be kind and sensible--damn it!"

He had, then, to get through not over six minutes of farewells.

He felt, on his way home, that he had won a triumph, though he was not
quite sure what it was. But it must have something to do with keeping
him free to advance the welfare of mankind. He put on his own halo, and
it stuck there till he was asleep--a child in Vulcan, hearing a distant
train.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On that evening of early October there was neither harvest moon nor the
wine stains of afterglow, but only dusty air and an uneasy brilliance
from the arc light on the station platform. Professor Planish was
wriggling on a bench in the sick little park, feeling vaguely foolish
yet trembling with the coming glory. He tried to look at a line of
flat-looking flatcars, at a bumptious little caboose, but he could
really see nothing till, miraculously, Peony was crossing the tracks,
carefully stepping over the rails. He knew that it was she, but he
couldn't believe it, for she was grown-up and rich and courtly in a
white-flannel cape with a gold-braided military collar.

She said in a small voice, "Hello."

He slipped his arm under her coat, he whispered, "My girl--my girl!" and
he kissed her lips. "Do you know that I'm in love with you?"

She said comfortably, "Oh, you couldn't be."

"Well, darn it, I am!"

"That's good."

"Are you in love with me at all?"

"Sure. I have been for almost a year. Oh, yes. I came down from
Faribault with Daddy, to see about my entrance, and we sneaked into your
Rhetoric class. Dad said you were a great spellbinder."

"And what did _you_ think?"

"I thought you were cute. Oh, all right, all right, don't look so cross.
I thought you were wonderful."

"You know, all this is extraordinary. What are we going to do?"

"Do, Professor? Why, as I seem to have led you captive already--with
practically no expense for lipstick--we might get married."

"Oh, yes. Married."

"You've heard of it?"

"I certainly have, and we're going to be married, at the proper time,
but I want you to finish at least two years of college."

"Why?"

"Oh, to be prepared to take a great place in the world. I'm not going to
stay in a dump like Kinnikinick all my life."

"I should hope not! But why can't I be married and still go to school?"

"Against the college rules here for an undergraduate to get married."

"Why, the old meanies! Anyway, there's no rule against being engaged.
Will I do some ring-flaunting! (I know where we can borrow a dandy ring,
if you're busted.) Will I sit in class and stare at you and embarrass
you! 'Folks, meet Pee Jackson, the fiance of that charming Professor
Planish, the poor dope!' Poor Professor! Darling Professor! Do I call
you Gideon or Gid?"

"Gid, I guess. But darling, look here----"

It had come to him that if Teckla heard of his being engaged, she would
be annoyed, and that her father was chairman of the Kinnikinick Board of
Trustees, who could make the place itchy for a professor, contract or
no. He picked up Peony's hand and kissed it and put it carefully back,
and told her the whole story of himself and Teckla--or enough of it for
daily use. It had never been so nearly easy for him to be so nearly
honest. He asserted that Teckla was a good and helpful soul, and Peony
did nothing more than snarl, "I don't trust _any_ woman!" and, at the
end, demand, "But now you're not even going to have tea, call it tea,
with that woman any more, are you!"

Certainly he wasn't. How could she think of such a thing?

"Gideon! If her father and the trustees are likely to cut up--maybe get
us scandalized--why do we need to stay here? Maybe it's time for you to
beat it, on and upward. Excelsior!"

"Maybe it is, at that. I'd like to have a job in Columbia University."

"But I see you doing something more active than teaching, Gideon. You're
still so young----"

"Do I seem young to you?"

"A baby! What you could do! You're the kind could buck the business
world, say, like a banker or running a fifty-thousand-acre farm. And
you're so eloquent I just love it, but why didn't you take up economics
instead of rhetoric? Some day maybe you'll be governor or a senator."

"Now isn't that strange, your speaking about that! I've always had a
hunch I could do something big in politics--get to the top--and of
course do a lot of good for people."

"Yes--sure--do a lot for people."

"You really think I could?"

"Sure you could! I know it! Oh, Gideon, isn't it wonderful! And do you
think I could help you? I bet at dinner at the Governor's Mansion, I
could get all the old bags talking and laughing like a son of a gun,
don't you think so?"

"Sure you could! I know it! And it would make all the difference, your
believing in me, so I'd have self-confidence and be geared for success.
That's what wins--being geared for success, don't you see?"

"Yes, I can see that now."

"Not be willing to take anything but the best--in fame and financial
rewards and power--and the ability to do good--and be friendly with all
the big men, like the Rockefellers. Have your machine tooled for
top-notch success and refuse to go on with poky little jobs in places
like Kinnikinick. That's the formula!"

"Oh, yes!"

"And with you, I'll do it! Darling!"

She kissed him to exhaustion.

"We are engaged then," he said. "But can you keep it secret?"

"I'm the best Mata Hari in college--but of course a good Mata Hari."

He scarcely dared to, but it was a critical question, and he whispered,
"How good?"

She whispered back, "That depends. Not too good." Then, loudly and
brashly, sounding like a freshman, she yelped, "Gracious! It's late!
I've got to skip."

She was gone before he could grasp her flying white cape, and he didn't
know when he was to see her again.

For weeks he agitatedly never did know when he was going to see her
again, except at Rhetoric class, where she looked up at him like an
amiable monkey.




CHAPTER 8


Two weeks gone; they were in October, and he had a birthday and was
thirty years old. Teckla gave a birthday party just for the two of them,
with cake and ice cream, and a bottle of Iowa corn whisky for a present.
Still he could not tell Teckla, except by a cagy flinching which told
her too well, that his love had left her and flown off to the wars.

Yet he was less afraid of Teckla than of Dr. Edith Minton. It was
distinctly out of his way to pass Lambda House, where Dr. Minton
dragoned it and Peony lived in horrid security from seduction, but he
passed it, twice a day. He tried to look like a real professor, bustling
along in strict devotion to paragraphing and suffixes, but he could not
help peering hungrily at the yellow wooden Ionic of Lambda House. It did
seem reasonable that just once, at least, he might see Peony up there in
her room, shining in a chemise, but what he more often saw was the
eyeglasses of Dr. Minton.

She would probably rush out some day and grab him and haul him off to
President Bull. Oh, he was a most harassed young professor!

He hated Dr. Edith Minton, he hated President Bull, he was afraid of
Teckla Schaum and her father, and he was done with college--place of
twittering and of marks. He wanted to be out on the broad highway,
skipping hand in hand with Peony, and he was willing now to take any
highway--even an insurance agency. He had written to a dozen colleges
about a brighter job, but his letters conveyed no huge confidence in his
own ability to go on tenderly leading Youth amid the orchards of
knowledge.

He who had often told his students, "An inspired business letter can
pull the heart-strings of the prospect just as well as the best love
lyrics by Shelley or James Whitcomb Riley"--he himself could think of
nothing more forceful to write than, Please, he would like a new job.

He hadn't enough Boosters or Contacts, he decided. He had no one but
President Bull to recommend him. The authorities at Adelbert College and
the University of Ohio did not, he guessed, feel strongly about him; in
fact, they had distinctly stopped feeling about him at all. Somebody had
said that Hatch Hewitt, his sardonic classmate, was already a powerful
newspaper reporter in New York, but just where was he?

Professor Planish sighed, and wrote in his notebook, "In future career
shd cultivate hold onto friends more esp ones w influence, big bankers,
journalists, must be sure to do this, memo: ask P what she thinks, she
has so much sense."

                 *        *        *        *        *

He mustn't let himself get lost in the thicket of academic life, he
warned, and in a fury of contemporary research he read almost entirely
through a copy of the _Nation_--until he realized, from the fact that it
commented not too affectionately on Mr. Harding's campaign, that it was
a year old.

Professor Planish persuaded himself that he studied current events as
carefully as an undertaker. But this autumn of Peony, he noticed nothing
except that Mr. Harding was a handsome, confidence-showering man, and
that, after Wilson's demands, it was "fine to be back to Normalcy." He
stated this often at party dinners full of the two kinds of faculty
wives: those who sighed and were shabby and talked about diapers, and
those who were hard and flirtatious and shiny, and talked about the
latest shows in New York. Of the two sorts, the latter was the more
provincial and more likely to send him off yelling for Peony.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The casting and direction of the college play, to which he had looked
forward as an orgy of unacademic art and a much better ground than
classrooms for getting thick with the pretty girls, proved, entirely on
account of Peony, to be an embarrassing game of hide and seek.

The play this time was a nasty little work called _Poor Papa's Prize_,
one of those farces (1 set, inter., 3 acts, 6 f. 5 m.) jammed with
references to Hoboken and mothers-in-law, which in 1921 were still the
delight of provincial colleges that twenty years later would be haughty
with Saroyan and Sherwood and Maxwell Anderson. It was the idea in such
colleges then, and often much later, that the position of Professor of
Speech and Rhetoric automatically equipped the holder with a tricky and
veteran art in such matters as lights, make-up and stealing lumber for
scenery, and that a Professor Gideon Planish ranked with Belasco and
Lincoln J. Carter.

He agreed, and he considered _Poor Papa's Prize_ as on the same level
with Aristophanes. He thought it was a very funny scene when Papa's
prize turned out to be ten thousand plugs of tobacco, not dollars. He
felt masterful about stage business and gestures, but with all this
wizardry he was overthrown by the fact that, even with the grossest
nepotism, there was no way of wedging Peony Jackson into the cast.

She came faithfully to the try-outs, happy and handsome in the best
green sweater that ever came out of Faribault, Minnesota. She read in
turn for the parts of the ingnue, the mother, the comic great-aunt and
the comic Swedish maid, and she read them all with the same pleased
smile, the same accent, and the same complete lack of meaning. Sitting
back in the unlighted auditorium, his hat over his eyes and his legs
thrust way out, like a professional director, Professor Planish pitied
her and loved her for her lack of talent.

She stopped, looked down into the dark pit, smiled in unspoken
agreement, and said, "My, I am rotten, ain't I! Do you suppose I could
do the props, Professor Planish?"

"You can! You shall!" he shouted.

But before working the properties, she had first to acquire them, which
was a combination process of theft and brazen borrowing, and though his
one dream had been of snuggling beside her in the darkness, she was
rarely there at rehearsals. He was cross about it. He scolded the
actors, and they hated him; and all this time the letters he was getting
from other colleges in answer to his petitions indicated that they
thought he had too big a job already.

At last Professor Planish knew every one of the fine and racking sorrows
that glorify young lovers.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She was there for a moment after rehearsals, painting a pine box which
was going to impersonate a grandfather's-clock, and he gave her the
first of all his gifts. In the window at Postum's College Pharmacy he
had seen a "Novelty Gift Make-up Kit" that had tickled everything that
was young and fanciful in him: a pink, leather-covered box containing
nail polish and drying cream and all the feminine idiocies that seemed
to him strange and luxurious; with a mirror, inside the lid, that was
shaped somewhat like a shield and somewhat like a diamond and a good
deal like the map of Africa. It cost $5.65, which was, except in the
case of Teckla's bracelet, $2.65 more than, on any grounds, even those
of extreme passion, he had hitherto ever been willing to pay as love's
tribute. He bought it, but he had them wrap it in plain white paper.
Full-Professor Planish did not wish to be seen going about with Novelty
Gift Kits.

After rehearsal, back-stage, he was able to slip the package covertly
into Peony's hands. She yanked off the wrapping, let the paper slide to
the floor--he picked it up--and opened the box.

"Oh!" she squealed, with an ecstasy that delighted and rewarded him. She
would have made an excellent monkey to have around and smile at, if her
face had been thinner and less fair. She picked out each of the charming
bottles, she studied them with pleasure, she pinched them, she smelled
them, and then she kissed him in the double rapture of love and
cosmetics.

Every night, without ever having quite agreed upon it, they headed for
that same dim bower behind a prop fireplace--every night until, just as
he scrambled over a sawbuck and a pile of flats to reach her, he saw Dr.
Edith Minton watching him from the shadows beside the switchboard.

His talent for swift intrigue was considerable. With no especial stress
he called, "Uh, Miss--Miss Jackson--when can you help Miss Smidley with
the gelatines? Good gracious, I wish I could make you children
understand the importance of lights!"

Peony had an even richer natural intrigue. She could actually see
nothing more menacing than a roll of canvas and the beard of Professor
Planish, but she replied loudly, in the naked tone of a scared freshman,
"Oh, I am trying to get to it, Professor, but I've been studying so
hard." (Followed in her miniscule silvery murmuring that could not carry
beyond him, "You little sweet thing. Who is it? Go bite hell out of
him.")

He turned his back on her, turned his back on everything that was joyful
and fresh and living, and not too elaborately he then proceeded to
discover Dr. Minton, off R. "Why, hel-lo, Edith!"

("The blasted iceberg! I suppose she wants to bawl me out for something.
I ain't going to take it. I'm her boss.")

But Dr. Minton was smiling in a puzzling, diffident way, and as he
wabbled up to her she hesitated, "I've been listening from the back of
the auditorium. I think you're doing wonderfully with the rehearsals,
Gideon. Have you finished for tonight? You don't happen to be walking my
way, do you?"

"Fine! Let's go!"

Professor Count Cagliostro pranced away with the princess. There were
times when he wished that he were not a charlatan, not even a charlatan
of genius, but the ear for applause, the taste for spiced meats, always
dragged him on.

Dr. Minton was saying, as they cantered respectably to Lambda House, "I
was admiring the way you taught that stupid boy his Irish accent for the
play. Do you know, Gid--I've never confessed this to any one at
Kinnikinick--when I was a girl, I wanted to be an actress."

"No!"

"I had a lot of eagerness and maybe some ability. But I had to take care
of mother, and I got into graduate work, and my thesis was so demanding,
and there never happened to be any chance and---- Oh, I guess it's
better the way it is---- Gideon!"

He jumped. "Yes, Edith?"

"You haven't been at Lambda House for quite a while now. Do drop in,
won't you?"

"Oh, yes--yes, sure."

"And Gideon!"

"Ye-es, Edith?"

"Let me know if any of my girls in the play are ever lazy or
impertinent, and I'll take their heads off. It does seem to me that this
year they're the most undisciplined gang of young female rowdies I've
ever had to deal with. You're lucky you don't know any of them outside
the classroom, as I have to."

"Ee--that's so."

"It's this Post-War Generation, and Prohibition. But I know how to
handle 'em. Don't let them waste your time. Good night. Such a pleasant
walk!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was aghast. "She likes me a lot better than I thought. There's a
volcano under that ice-cap. How come both Teckla and Edith like me? Oh,
I suppose there isn't much for 'em here--nothing but undergraduates, and
all married men on the faculty except me and one pansy and one drunk.

"Nothing but undergraduates--but that's what Peony will be falling
for--some hairy-chested young clown of a football player, as soon as she
gets over the novelty of my being crazy about her. Oh God, I'm sure to
lose her!

"But Edith Minton--she is good-looking, too, in that Diana sort of way.
I might of had a chance, if I'd gone right after her--no, no, I mustn't
think about such things. I'm absolutely faithful to Peony, absolutely,
the damn Cheshire cat, the way she grins at me, she's absolutely onto me
and yet she still likes me---- But for her sake, I ought to give her up
entirely. After all, she is a freshman. Not twenty yet. Just a baby, the
darling. If Edith, the vixen, ever thought a faculty-member had so much
as patted Peony's hand, out she'd go--they'd send her home, with a
scandal tied to her, nobody would know exactly what it was, but it would
get worse year after year.

"If I could marry her now---- No, she ought to finish her college
course. A college course is absolutely necessary, nowadays. I suppose
colleges have some value. Hell, of course, they must have! Didn't I do
time breaking rocks for three whole years so I could get a Ph.D.? Then
after she graduated, I could marry her, if she wanted me, but I'd be too
old and she'd of met so many boys---- Oh God!"

Out of all his babbling as he walked home, as he clumped about his white
plaster bedroom, nothing came out clearly except that for Peony's dear
sake, he ought honestly to give her up.

And for her sake he did honestly give her up; he did incredibly force
himself to something he did not want to do.

Until the opening of the play, which had a successful run of two nights,
it was not difficult to avoid her. He did not go back-stage when he
felt, as he always did feel, that she was there. His dread was that she
would come up after his Rhetoric class and demand to know why he was
neglecting her. All through each class, he was enormously busy not
looking at her, and thinking of the coming horror of her reproach.

The real horror was that she went placidly out with the other students,
not glancing at him at all. So! he gasped. She wanted to break it off,
too.

That made it harder.

The opening night of the play should have been his compensation. The
college auditorium was full, with sixteen people standing; President and
Mrs. Bull and Mr. Pridmore and a man from Buffalo, New York, were there;
and sixteen newspapers were represented, in the persons of two student
correspondents.

But except for Teckla Schaum, Edith Minton and Mrs. Bull, nobody
congratulated Professor Planish, the director. In fact, most of the mob
did not know there was such a thing as a director, and it was the actors
and the student orchestra whom the groundlings applauded. When the comic
Irish hired man tried to be Irish and comic, this supposedly cultured
audience (the Professor noted bitterly) clapped and whistled as though
it hadn't been the director who had hammered every ringing "Shure an' Oi
will" into that stiff Pottawattamie County larynx.

The hall was rich in college flags and fragrant bundles of kinnikinick;
the light caressed the actors capering up there in the magic frame of
the stage picture; and even old Professor Eakins leaned forward with a
refined leer. But no one looked gratefully at Professor Planish; no one
knew.

He had to force himself to go back between acts and congratulate his
cast. They scarcely heard him, for they knew how good they were, even if
they blissfully didn't know how good they weren't. He made much of
ignoring Peony, but as she was helping shift scenery, she did not
notice. He left by the stage entrance and walked half-way around the
building to the lobby, chilled in the darkness of an early November
night, more chilled in the wind of man's ingratitude and woman's greed.
In the lobby, he posed a little, not too conspicuously, but it did no
good. President Bull said only, "I think they are doing very well."

_They!_

Mrs. Bull, Teckla and Edith Minton did recognize him as somebody they
had seen somewhere, but the rest of the herd did not look at him--they
were right there at the Battle of Waterloo, and Wellington was riding
past them, and all they talked about was the costumes of the lesser
drummer-boys.

After the play he went home, with the curtest of congratulations to the
cast and the stage crew. And Peony had had the nerve to smile at him as
if everything were all right!

He was extremely angry with Peony. And it scarcely seemed worth while
now to have attended two real stage plays in New York and one in New
Haven in order to equip himself as a professional director.

He sat in his room, and earnestly kept from telephoning to Peony at
Lambda House. She might have known, mightn't she, that he was doing
this, and have telephoned to him instead? Mightn't she?

                 *        *        *        *        *

For the first time in his life, Professor Planish had insomnia, which to
him had been merely a silly word, like prolegomenon. He had sometimes
lain awake for five minutes, but then his face, tucked deep into the
pillow, would turn peaceful and childish and still. Now, he went to bed
tired and drowsy, but there was no sleep. It simply was not there. He
was as astonished as though he should put down his hand and find his
familiar legs missing.

This was all nonsense. He'd lie still and quit thinking about Peony and
Teckla and Edith; he'd relax. He did relax, so elaborately that he was
frantic with the tension of keeping himself limp.

All right then; hell with it. He just wouldn't do anything. He'd trick
himself. He'd pretend not to notice himself, and drift off into sleep.

None of this strategy worked, and he kept on being very noticeable
indeed to himself. He was sleepy and there was no sleep. The machine,
always as dependable as light or air, was not working.

It was with surprise, and some pride in finding himself so complex a
person, that he realized that this was insomnia--the sort of thing that
Mrs. Bull boasted of having. Well, he _was_ a case! Insomnia! Hopeless
love and self-sacrifice and a theatrical opening and insomnia all on the
same day!

He became bored even by his singularity. It was interesting to have
spiritual distress up to the point of insomnia, but he wanted to get
some sleep along with it. He was becoming distinctly tireder, but ever
more resolutely awake. Well, why not give up the insomnia for the
present, and try it tomorrow night? Just now, he needed a little sleep,
to be fresh for his Oral Persuasion class in the morning.

The insomnia would not be given up. It calmly stayed on, and Professor
Planish was annoyed.

Well, he was a man of the world and a psychologist. He'd rise and smoke
a cigarette and relax and lie down again. Certainly. He was one who
could always turn the current of his thoughts.

He smoked the cigarette and lay down again, and instantly he was as
awake and quietly frantic as ever.

He seemed to be in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming world, with its own
cold tone and every sensation different from the secure world of
daytime. Nothing could be identified. There was a rattle that might be
far off, on the campus, and might be fearfully near him, in the
house--something like the rattle of a milk wagon or a lame man walking
or clicks from a revolver. The half-drawn window shade quivered with but
little breeze, and its half glow seemed to change, as though some one
were passing between it and the street lamp down below. The night sounds
were woven together, defying his vulgar daytime ears to identify them.

He had been seeing images of Peony, her young breast and her smile of
friendly irony, but now he was not thinking at all, nor feeling. He
floated in a sublimated current in which no thought was definite, no
emotion quite real.

The urgent whistle of the Chicago Special, hastening to the East and all
its glories, awoke him, and his square face moved with smiling as in
half-dreams he was certain that some day he would take that train and be
welcomed in lofty rooms by millionaires and poets and actresses. But he
wanted to know them so that he might take their friendship and glory to
Peony, he thought in his descending sleep.




CHAPTER 9


For three nights the insomnia returned, with its mockery. For three
nights he told himself that he was protecting Peony and her reputation;
for three nights he retorted that he was really afraid only for his own
job, which he would lose if it should be known that he was a tamperer
with virgins. It seemed to him that his rooms, with their suggestions of
a professorial life, their piles of _The Annals of the Northern and
Midwestern Society for Semantics_, brought on his illness. If he could
go off to a fresh rude place, then he could sleep.

After the third night of torture, on an edged late afternoon of November
he tramped out to the Pridmore shack, by the rustic shore of Lake
Elizabeth. He had told no one but his landlady. He was not in a mood to
have Teckla come mothering him.

The six-mile walk, the first two miles a panting discomfort but the rest
a vigorous swing, deep-breathing through the dusk, with the smell of
leaf mold and fresh lake water and cornstalks about him, restored his
life. He carried a professorial briefcase, but he swung it buoyantly.

He had his own key to the shack. Whistling, he opened the door, groped
in the one rough room, lighted a lantern, lighted a fire in the small
stove. The room smelled pleasantly of fresh-cut wood and burning resin,
and in it there was healing and woodland peace. From his respectable
briefcase, of unscarred and glossy tan leather with GP stamped on it in
sleek gold, he took out one large pork chop.

He dropped it into the frying pan, and the sizzle was cheerful and
somehow manly. Sure. He was an outdoor man as well as a deep scholar,
and some day he was going to cut down a tree. Maybe not too big a one,
for a start.

He gnawed at the pork chop when it was practically cooked and, more
daintily, he ate a chocolate bar, and humped over in a chair beside the
stove, his arms hanging between his knees and, without quite remembering
what it was, he hummed a lyric of his boyhood:

    You hold her hand and she holds yours,
    And that's a ve-ry good sign
    That she's your tootsy-wootsy
    In the GOOD old SUM-mer TIME.

Yes. Everything would come out all right, in the providence of God and
President T. Austin Bull and the courageous Professor Planish. He
laughed, he opened the stove door and spat into it as gallantly as a
lumberjack. And then he yawned.... He'd loaf a moment before basking
in the pages of _The Americanization of Edward Bok_, which was in his
briefcase, just slightly spotted with pork.

Still dressed, and purring, he lay meditatively on the lower bunk. Just
how everything would come out all right, he was not quite sure, but he'd
do something clever--he'd count on Mrs. Bull--count on Peony, who was
smarter than any of the faculty--good old summer time and that's a very
good sign--summer time, summer meadows, deep meadows with Peony----

                 *        *        *        *        *

The wooden latch of the cottage was creaking. A thousand years later,
the door was closing and whole armies were blundering across the room
with thunderous efforts to be mice. If he just kept hidden in that deep
soft dark well of sleeping, they would go away and not torture him.

A whole history after that, he had a witch-led illusion that he had
heard Peony's giggle. Giggle--chuckle--low laugh--what would he call it?
Illusion, all illusion. But revolving aeons after that, he came sharp
awake as some one sat on the edge of his bunk. Bewildered, defenseless,
he heaved up his ponderous head--and, by God, it was Peony Jackson
sitting there.

"Hello," said Peony.

"What in the---- How did you----"

"Why, I walked, same as you did, great one. My gracious, that's a long
dark walk through all those woods, even if I did borrow Mrs. Hilp's
electric torch. Twice I got lost, and I've looked into more darn shacks
that _weren't_ yours--you'd be surprised if you knew how many shacks on
this ole lake aren't this one, even after you prowl around 'em and
burgle 'em----"

"But how in----"

"Your landlady said she thought you'd come out here. Of course I knew in
a general sort of way. When we had the Lambda picnic out here on the
lake, all the girls pointed out the Secret Love Nest of the Widow Schaum
and Professor Planish."

"R!"

"But it's simply classic how different it looks in the dark, with all
the cunning ole tree roots reaching out to trip you up."

"LOVE NEST! Now what do you mean by----"

"Oh, yes. That's one of the reasons why you'll have to marry me.
Professor Planish, how could you! The other reason is that it's now
seven minutes past midnight----"

"What?"

"You heard me, dearest. So I'll have to stay all night, now---- Cheer
up, poor lamb. You don't really have to marry me, you know. I don't care
a hoot." She bent, to kiss him lightly. "I want you to quit worrying
about that poor lil freshman gal, Jackson. 'Professor, my feeling is
that a girl like her, with her upbringing and her father the best
wholesale grocer in Southeastern Minnesota, a girl that would do a thing
like that, absolutely pursuing that poor man out to the shack where he'd
fled to hide from her after he'd been so careful and not even said a
word to her after the college show, why, she deserves all she gets,
because she must've known what she was doing.' And did she know?"

Peony was off the bunk, swiftly crossing to his sacred briefcase, while
he was still rubbing sleep out of his hair and eyes. "Of course she did,
the little devil!" said Peony.

Busy and monkeylike as always, brimming and gay with monkeyism, she was
pawing into his briefcase and bringing out his chaste bachelor
possessions. "Hm. Silver-mounted hair brush. Pretty choice...
Squibb's tooth-paste. You don't keep the tube rolled up tightly enough.
I see where I'll have to educate you... A book? Now what do you need
a book for? Don't you _know_?... And pajamas. Aw, the sweet lil
baby-blue pajamas! Aw, Gid-eon! They're too sweet for words! With his
lil monogram embroidered on his lil pocket! I'll look lovely in them!"

He was shocked now out of his immense lassitude and he was on his feet,
weaving over to her.

"Baby, you've got to go home. I'll take you home."

"Do you think it would be any better for my reputation to have people
see me walking into Kinnikinick with you at two o'clock in the morning?"

"Why----"

"Besides, I'm in Davenport. Staying overnight with my aunt. As I
explained to Dr. Minton. Golly, I'll have to do some work on that aunt.
How old do you think she'd be? Gideon, I'm going to stay. You know I'm
always right. I always have been, all these years with you, haven't I!"

He rather thought that she always had been right, all these years, and
anyway, with this particular young woman, how did you persuade her to
let you be gallant if she didn't see anything in gallantry? With a
prodigious effort, Professor Planish rose above the middle-class
chivalry which he believed himself to have exemplified all these years.
He kissed her, very close to her, and, hastily getting away from that,
he commanded--only it sounded more as though he was petitioning--"All
right. Probably it would be safer for you not to show up till tomorrow.
You crawl in that lower bunk the way you are, and go to sleep, and I'll
take the upper one. And I'll be good."

"Of course you'll be good, Professor Planish. You'd always be good to a
poor freshman, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, shut up! You better take your shoes off."

"Do you honestly think that would be safe? To take my shoes off?"

"Oh, please shut up, darling! Good night."

With dignity he hoisted himself to the upper bunk. She had turned down
the lantern but she had not blown it out. As in a Pullman berth, he
wriggled out of his coat and vest and tie, tried to hang them on the
edge of the bunk, then in fury threw them into the air, to flop on the
floor.

Lying rigid, he realized that the room was rustling with the soft sound
of buttons, of a zipper, of garters being unhooked, of the tiny plump of
silk on the table. He looked over the edge and he could see his own
pajamas being fantastically flapped in the air as she put them on. He
lay back, sternly, and heard her blowing out the lantern; heard then, in
the lake-whispering darkness, small bare feet crossing the floor, and
the creak of the lower bunk.

In twenty seconds he went through a million light-years of sensations
which he supposed to be thoughts. He had lost his fear of her and of her
encroachment. He knew that it was not that she "trusted him," but that,
for some imponderable reason, she cared enough for this poor thing,
himself, not to care whether he was to be "trusted" or not. He knew that
he was now married, in the most old-fashioned and undivorceable
monogamy.

Then, terrifyingly, she was sobbing, down there below him. He was out of
his bunk like an alarm rocket, sitting by her and begging, "What is it,
what is it, sweet?"

"I feel so shamed!"

"Oh, no!"

"Shamed and scared and lonely. It did seem like such a bright idea, back
in town. I thought, 'Maybe he's lonely for me.' I thought, 'Maybe he
wants me, dreadfully.' And I was so busy rushing out here, stumbling and
getting sand in my shoes and losing my way and laughing--I thought it
was fun--I never really thought till now, maybe you don't want me here.
It's hard to realize, maybe to you I'm just another fool girl----"

He as nearly came of age then as Gideon Planish ever could. He grunted,
"Move over." He patted her head down on his shoulder, and as her whimper
died away and she was trustfully sleeping, moving her head only to
burrow closer into his shoulder, he lay awake with no insomnia but with
happiness and security.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They laughed as she dressed in the morning--she was approximately modest
about it, but not a fanatic. They breakfasted on the end of the
chocolate bar and pure cold water. They tramped, arms about each other
while he swung his briefcase high, two miles to a farmhouse, where he
hired a Ford. In town, while she sat on the floor of the car, out of
sight, he recovered from the station the suitcase with which she had
ostensibly been traveling, then drove her to Aloosia, and put her and
the suitcase on the train there, so that she could return from Davenport
in all decorum.

By this time they had been married, had honeymooned in Europe for a half
year, had produced a family--four sons, and seen United States Senator
Planish into his second term in Washington, and they thought extremely
well of it all.

He called on Teckla Schaum that morning at 11:30, which for her was
early. Widowhood had made of her a late lier, an avoider of all the
problems of boredom which daylight brought to a lone woman.

He was shocked that it meant so little to him now to see Teckla in
negligee, while to encounter Peony thus meant so much. He was, in fact,
sorry for himself that he should have to feel so sorry for Teckla, but
Peony's valor was with him, and he plunged:

"Honey, I guess the kindest way would be for me to come right out
and----"

She wailed, "The kindest way for you would be to wait till I've had some
coffee before you do whatever unpleasantness you refer to as 'the
kindest thing.' Would you like a drink?"

"So early? No indeed!"

"Well, don't be so virtuous about it. Sit down and read the paper and
I'll be with you in a minute."

He felt that Teckla was being pretty frivolous. Frivolity was all right
for a girl like Peony, but Mrs. Schaum was supposed to be tragedy in a
black veil---- Oh, let the poor thing cling to her fool's paradise for a
few minutes more, the poor thing.

She was back in the room, dressed in rosy gingham, before he had
finished sneering at the morning editorials. She said calmly, "Gid, I
imagine you've come to tell me that you've finally managed to fall for
some girl. Is that it?"

"Something like that, I'm afraid. But listen, dear: it's because I was a
lonely scholar and you accustomed me to a woman's tender care that I
ever began looking around----"

He was wondering whether he could get away with it. He was wondering why
he was always honest--within reason--with Peony, yet capable of such
acrobatics with other women.

She ignored his craft. "Gid, I suppose you wouldn't understand it, would
you, if I said that I used to be so fierce and proud and pure that no
one ever dared to try and use me; that if I've ever humbled myself to
you, it's because Max's death broke me; and that I'm still at least
proud enough not to hate you? I don't want to know about your girl, and
I shan't snoop. Go with my blessing, if you still care for it."

"I do care for it, and I do need it, Teckla. I won't try to be
proud----"

"Is that a crack?"

"No, honest to God it isn't! I mean, I can't afford to be proud, because
if your father, as a trustee, got a down on me, it would probably ruin
me, whereas if he thought it was you that---- Don't you see?"

"I suppose that's fair. He might think you'd been trifling with the poor
widow-woman. I suppose he's so strong himself, in a queer, lonely,
rustic way, that it wouldn't ever occur to him that, far from being too
strong and vicious, you were so weak that you were perfectly willing to
be my house cat. I'll have to tell him I threw you out----"

He told her that he'd see her in hell first. He was for a moment willing
to give up Peony and the mild honor of wearing a professorial white
collar rather than endure her sneering. Then she kissed him, as fondly
as she ever had, and speculated, "Maybe you will grow up. Maybe I'm fond
enough of you to want you to. Maybe that girl, whoever she is--oh, blast
her!--can do it. I never could. So run along, and I'll take care of
Father Pridmore---- Oh, Gid, be true to that poor girl, won't you? Women
need loyalty so much; they're so bewildered when they don't get it, no
matter who they are, young or old or famous or humble."

"I will!" said Professor Planish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He had always been a good hand at Seeing the Proper People. He was
calling upon the president's wife at five o'clock; he was drinking tea,
with no especial distaste, and being eloquent.

Mrs. Bull was the first of many influential women whom he was to call
"dear lady."

Dear lady, he explained, he was throwing himself upon her mercy; he was
turning to her as the only human being who would understand. He was in
love. (But purely.) Believe it or not (only she'd better believe it if
she didn't want to mangle his heart), the first thing that had attracted
him to this girl (no, wait, he'd tell her the name later) was that she
was so much like Mrs. Bull; the same aristocratic manner, the same
womanly sympathy, the same gimlet of intelligence and, if he might be so
brash, the same agate eyes.

But, and here were the old accustomed woes, and Abelard and Heloise, and
Rutherford B. Hayes and the postmistress, his girl was an undergraduate,
here in Kinnikinick, and according to college regulations, and possibly
the Bible and the State Constitution of Iowa, if they were married, she
would have to drop out of college and less agile minds might even hint
that there had been goings-on inconceivable in a rhetoric professor. And
what would a lofty Puritan like President T. Austin Bull think about a
teacher who confessed himself more enthralled by all women who reminded
him of Mrs. T. Austin Bull than he was by the use of the semi-colon?

"You just leave that man Austy to me!" beamed Mrs. Bull. "Now what is
your girl's name?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

At Christmas Holiday he was, for the first time, part of an authentic
home.

There had been little of home in the thin brick house of his father in
Vulcan--only a resentful contest between parents and children, between
brother and brother. Professor Planish did have two brothers and a
sister, but since he had left home they had existed for him only as a
theory.

This Christmas, Peony masterfully carried him up to her family, to
Whipple Jackson, vestryman and wholesale grocer, in Faribault. The place
was bursting with brothers, sisters, aunts, sets of Walter Scott and
Washington Irving, fudge, plum pudding, mandolin-playing, rum punch and
family prayers immediately followed by family laughter; a wide white
house that had thrown off wings and porches as a fountain throws off
spray, up on the bluff near the Immaculate Conception church, looking
across the noble Cannon River Valley to the towers of a whole tribe of
preparatory schools.

President Bull had forgiven Peony and Professor Planish; he even seemed
to think the marriage an excellent escape. He and the aged dean would
permit Peony to take all the courses she wanted, as a special student,
and they would manage to break the laws legally and give her a degree.

Teckla had had Peony to tea, and advised her about buying cuts of beef.
But Dr. Edith Minton had looked at Professor Planish with astonishment
and a certain fear in her eyes. That was the only thing he had to brush
off in order to be riotous at Christmas. He did brush it off, very
satisfactorily.

His welcome in the Jackson mansion was as warm as the forgiveness at
Kinnikinick. Whipple Jackson was a rangy, nervous, good-tempered man,
with ideas. "Gideon, my boy," he said, "Peony tells me you have a
hankering to get into politics."

"I don't know, but anyway, I don't want to be stuck at teaching all my
life."

"Well, if you ever want to start in here, let me know and I'll give you
a job and introduce you to all the Boys. You'll like Faribault--best
prep schools in the country, and did you know Faribault is the peony
capital of the world? That's how I happened to name my girl. But if
you're going in for politics---- Belong to a church, Gid?"

"Presbyterian."

"That's not so bad. The voters sure do like a man to be liberal in
morals and illiberal in theology. But what about a lodge? Do you belong
to the Masons? Odd-fellows? Elks? Modern Woodmen? Knights of Pythias?
No? Better join 'em all; fine bunch of friends and they'll all vote for
you, and speaking both as a patriotic citizen and a good churchman,
there's only one thing a politician ought to bother about--the votes.
Heh?"

"That's right, all right," said Professor Planish fervently, rejoicing
at having a family to back and guide him.

They were married, Peony and he, in Easter vacation, 1922, with the
Bishop starring. But if Peony played nothing more than ingnue at the
wedding, it was she who took the lead when they returned to Kinnikinick,
and she who chose a gold-and-scarlet cabinet to brighten up their
cottage, and Professor Planish was so proudly in love that he liked it.




CHAPTER 10


The Dean of Kinnikinick College, Dean Gideon Planish--he was a new dean;
in the fall of 1926, he had been so exalted for only a year--had almost
finished the annual plague of straightening out undergraduate schedules.
He was looking amiably at a thin girl with curly hair and troubled eyes,
and he was chuckling.

"This won't do, Miss Janes. Your schedule is badly unbalanced. Three
courses in literature! I never heard of such a thing! 'Advanced English
Poetry' and 'The History of the Novel' and 'Chaucer and Spenser.' What
do you plan to do? Teach?"

"I don't think so."

"What, then? Newspaper work? Write yarns?"

"I'm engaged to be married after I graduate."

"Then, good Lord, what do you want to take all this books-and-reading
for? They're no good for running a household. What is the idea, anyway?"

"I don't think I have any. I just like to read."

"Well, I don't suppose there's any real objection to your taking a lot
of literature and stuff if you _enjoy_ it!"

As she went out and left him in peace, in his handsome new office with
its partitions of oak and clouded glass, its portraits of Professor
Edward Lee Thorndike and President Coolidge, he congratulated himself on
having been so generous and so suave with her. Yet, even after his
summer vacation on Gull Lake, he was a little tired of this unending
persecution by smart-aleck students who acted as if they knew more than
he did.

Dean Gideon Planish thought pretty well of literature. He was an expert
in all its branches, and though he preferred the bright hard rocks of
Oratory in the literary landscape, he could pinch-hit any time for the
regular instructors in metaphysical poetry or commercial correspondence
or the rules of play-construction, and he had a fascinating theory that
Shakespeare was written by Queen Elizabeth. He knew all about teaching
literature in both of its aspects--as an incentive to morality and as an
aid to earning a living. He had figures to prove that he could increase
the vocabularies of freshmen 39.73% in nine months.

But, as he told the Kinnikinick Rotary Club, the teaching of literature
must be as manly and practical as the teaching of physics or football.
He had mastered that doctrine even as far back as 1918 when, after his
three months' service in an army camp in Illinois, he had started
teaching, with his caste-mark of Ph.D. freshly painted on his forehead.
At that time there was a universal expectation that literature would
modestly take its place, along with advertising and preaching the
Gospel, as a glad assistant to the expansion of American prosperity.

But now, in 1926, even after more than six years of the National
Prohibition which ought to have produced universal efficiency and
patriotism, there were everywhere hints of subversive ideas, probably
introduced into America by such Bolsheviks as Emma Goldman, H. L.
Mencken and Clarence Darrow, who, a year ago, had practically murdered
the Dean's hero, William Jennings Bryan. And unless literature set its
face like a flint against all such feeble-minded infidelity, he, for
one, would actually prefer th' unlettered hind (or farmer), said Dean
Planish.

As dean and as the readiest speaker in Kinnikinick, he had constantly to
enlighten the public on such problems as the recent Women's Suffrage
Amendment, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the progress of the Weimar
Republic, the heroic heart of the martyred president, Mr. Harding, the
Florida Land Boom (in which the Dean had lost a hundred dollars that he
badly needed for payments on Peony's new piano), the pedagogical
significance of the fact that Bryn Mawr was permitting students to smoke
within the college, and, always, the crisis of Flaming Youth: gin flasks
and giggling from automobiles parked in darkness and such dancing as had
not been seen since the Serpent and Mother Eve.

Dean Planish was, as his proprietor, President Bull, frequently told the
press, a philosopher and a leader of humanitarianism. The Dean said
right out that regrettable though the Flaming and the Petting and the
Bootlegging were, there was less danger in yielding to them than in
talking about them or in writing about them. He hated to encounter
students who jeered at all that was sturdy and helpful in literature,
and called their cultural murders "experiments." He sometimes said that
he would rather see his daughter lying dead at his feet than reading
callous innovators like Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, and as his
daughter was only three years old now, it may be seen that he felt
pretty strongly on the subject.

He smiled to himself at his desk. Yes, he could fairly be called "the
fighting philosopher." But what was he doing here in Kinnikinick,
wasting his time listening over and over to the same dreary bleatings
from successive flocks of students, when he ought to be out in the
world, battling for civic righteousness? That's what his wife Peony kept
asking, and, reflected the Dean, she was dead right.

He was interrupted then by one of the Flaming Youth in person. As she
slammed in, she might have been a particularly skinny boy; she might
have been a plucked chicken wrapped in a dish-towel; she might have been
almost anything except a flame. Her hair was clipped short, her sleeves
were short, her bosom was at once exposed and non-existent, and her
rolled stockings advertised her knees, which could have done with a
little washing. She was both an invitation and a denial. She was a
college senior in grade, a babe in intellect and a Hecate in guile.

When he had been a mere young instructor, the Dean might have been
aroused, but Peony took care of all that now, and Peony was not skinny.
He merely growled, "What do you want, Gwynn?"

She grinned in an excess of dry youthfulness.

"What have you been up to, young woman? Drinking too much? Roadhouse?"

She giggled, and made the preposterous remark, "I think you're
gorgeous!"

"Young woman, is that any way to talk to the dean?"

"Oh, I knew you years before you were a dean!"

"You did not! Only two years before. And even in that brief period,
you've been the cause of the gray hairs in my beard."

"There isn't a gray hair in it. It's just as brown as ever. I think it's
gorgeous!"

"You have five other adjectives that you haven't used yet: dandy, slick,
swell, cute and lousy. You aren't losing any of 'em, are you? Gwynn,
seriously, we're old friends, and I hate to see you graduate from this
institution next spring with only a hundred and seven words in your
vocabulary. Can't you make it a hundred and ten?"

He reflected how different, under his influence, Peony had become from
this brat. Why, Peony must have a hundred and twenty words.

"Honestly, Dean, I didn't get sent in to get hell. I want to change my
course. I want to major in art and architecture and geography, this
year, and cut out the physical training and Platonaristotle."

"Heh?"

"You know that Chinese boy in my class--Li?"

"Huh?"

"Well, him and me--he and me--you know what I mean--we were at the same
lake this summer. Li says China and India are going to have a big
renaissance--that's what he calls it--and I thought I'd like to go out
to Asia and be an architect."

"You mean as a sort of Christian missionary? Teach the little Oriental
brother?"

"Oh, no. According to what he says, when China and India join up,
they'll be teaching us. They're the oldest and the smartest nations in
the world, Li says, and they've decided to chase out all the
carpet-baggers, and I'd be lucky if I was allowed there. What do you
think, Dean?"

"What do I think? I'll tell you what I think! I think that I can stand
it when you Lost Generation jazz-babies, you unspeakable drug-store
cowboys and hot mamas, act like tarts and bootleggers. I have the faith
to believe that by the end of these barbaric 1920's, you will all have
come to your senses. That is, if--_if_, I say--you retain your essential
philosophy.

"And part of that philosophy is that the white races, America and
Britain and France and Spain and Italy--yes, and Germany, now that the
Germans have seen their folly and given up warfare as an instrument of
progress--that we of the superior race are, by some compulsion whose
divine origin and sanction must remain a mystery to us, destined to
rule, tenderly but firmly, all the yellow, brown and black hordes, and
that they can never be anything but clever children--especially
including your slick friend, Mr. Li--who imitate our civilization to
perfection but----

"No, you can't take architecture! And I want to see you behave yourself
this year, Gwynn, or even though we are old friends, I'll bounce you
right out on your ear, and as I told you, I want to see if you can't
develop some elegance in speaking and the normal vocabulary of a
six-year-old child and--and you know damn well that as dean I'm not too
hard on a little drinking or petting, and I trust I'm a Modern Thinker
and a Consistent Liberal, and I think you must admit I'm up to date if
not a little ahead of it, but when it comes to a point of degeneracy
where you consider subject peoples, whose brain sutures close up quicker
than ours do, as just as good as we are, and you're willing to see the
whole destined world-structure bust up in---- NO!"

So at last the Dean could scamper home to his sympathetic wife.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Planishes' rented house was the first of the charming small white
houses, cheerful and clean and realistic, with wide clapboards and
built-in garage and automatic oil heat, that had been erected in
Kinnikinick. Later, they were to brighten the whole Middlewest.

The weary Dean came up to it, admiring the small sleek lawn--mowed by
Peony before breakfast; inspired by the crazy-pattern of the walk--the
stones had been picked out by Peony; impressed by the white-painted
solid oak door--Peony had repainted it after the workmen had made a
botch. He edged the door open and remarked, "Oo-hoo!"

His wife answered, "Oo-hoo!"

"How's the baby?"

"Oh, she's just dandy--she's swell--she's just slick--she's so cute.
Want to see her? But first----"

Peony led him by hand through the small living-room. She stopped in
front of their major treasure, the Chinese Chippendale cabinet, a
splendor of gold and scarlet and carved mandarins, which they had bought
in Chicago on their honeymoon, and which had cost approximately ten
times what they could afford. As always, she breathed, "Isn't it slick!
It's the swellest cabinet I ever saw!" and as always, he agreed,
"Certainly is; it lights up the room like a house afire."

She led him on into their bedroom, with its wallpaper of silver
sailboats on a green sea, and its twin beds, of which one was more
hollowed than the other. She led him to the farthest corner, as though
it were a secret niche, and kissed him convulsively. There was in their
young and parochial love something dark and hidden and fierce,
dissolving him to water.

She led him to the second bedroom. It had been planned as a
guest-room--here, Father and Mother Jackson would often be staying. But
Father and Mother Jackson had, after a surprisingly short period, been
compelled to stay at the Kinnikinick Inn, for this had become the place
sacred to the baby.

At the age of three, Carrie Planish was cheerful and active, a genuine
grocers'-calendar baby, of whom it could be said, of whom it frequently
was said, "I declare, that baby's got the sunniest disposition I ever
saw in all my born days."

Carrie was likely to be darker than either of her parents, and more
slender.

She rose from her business interests--nine leaden soldiers, a decayed
doll, and a water-color portrait of the family cat--she sprinted across
the floor and yelled, "Daddy!"

"That's a darn smart baby, Carrie is," the Dean said, as they returned
to the living-room. "She'll be a dean of women, some day."

"She will like hell! She'll be a contented wife and mother. Like me."

"What's the plans for supper? You didn't tell me to bring anything
home."

"Nope. It's the hired girl's night out, and we're going batting. I've
got Mrs. Hilp coming, to take care of Baby. We're going to drive down to
Mabel Grove and eat at the Appleton House."

"That's swell--fine and dandy," said the purist.

Their car was a powerful new Maxwell, with a maximum speed of not much
less than forty-eight miles an hour. The Dean was behind on his payments
on the car, but only a month or two.

They swung south into the rolling cornland.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was the Dean's happy belief that, despite his own eloquence, force
and tact, it was really Peony who had made him dean, with a salary of
two hundred dollars a year more than a full professor's, with more
control over the students, and with less necessity of pretending that he
had read the latest works of Mrs. Wharton and Miss Cather and this new
fellow, Hemingway.

Following their marriage, Peony had called on Teckla Schaum and after
being snubbed more than usual, had become Teckla's closest friend, and
been asked to dine with Teckla's father. She had also, entirely against
the college etiquette of waiting for the president's wife to call first,
popped in on Mrs. Bull and, after being kissed and petted more than
usual, had become Mrs. Bull's closest friend. She had then called on Dr.
Edith Minton and, after meeting a blankness which she could never quite
understand, had become Dr. Minton's one frank enemy, and as nobody liked
Dr. Minton very much, that attitude on the part of Young Mrs. Professor
Planish was considered pretty deep.

Peony had urged her husband to offer himself to President Bull for every
style of committee work, and within a year it was expected that whenever
a Visiting Celebrity was to be introduced in Assembly, or a program made
for combining the organic chemistry and salad-making courses, it would
be Professor Planish who would take on the ordeal. When the old dean
died, in harness though also in liquor, the choice of Planish for the
deanship was inescapable, and his child-wife considered not unworthy of
the purple.

She was an earnest young matron as they drove into the county seat,
Mabel Grove (pop., 11,569). One who knew her high position would have
supposed that she was thinking of racial problems or social hygiene, but
she was saying to the Dean:

"I think we can sneak in a glass of beer at the Appleton House without
getting caught. But first I got something to show you: the most fool
extravagance you ever heard of, and God knows how I want it! Do I get
it, Gideon?"

"What are you asking _me_ for?" he said fondly.

She bade him stop at an old brown house with the modest sign, "T Shop &
Antiques." She looked nervous as they went up the walk; she yanked the
door open as if to get it over; she pointed at an object, and tightly
held his arm. The object was a huge Chinese rug, blue as a June lake,
with a border of dragons and fuzzy-headed lions, saffron and sage-green
and yellow.

"Isn't it the most beautiful thing you ever saw?" gurgled Peony.

"Mm."

"That'll be something for us to have when you're Senator from Iowa."

"Sweetie, I guess maybe we better wait till I _am_ Senator."

"It's a thousand years old--well, a hundred years old, I guess--and it
used to cost fifteen hundred dollars, but we can get it for three
hundred."

"Sweetie, I swear to God we haven't got three hundred dollars in the
world, and we must be over two hundred in debt--I don't really know--I
kind of hate to add up the bills."

"But you can get it for twenty-five dollars down, and it's worth five
hundred. The woman here told me so! That rug--it's got class! Don't you
want it?"

"Oh, yes, I like it fine, but it's utterly impossible----"

They drove up to the Appleton House for dinner with the Chinese rug in
the back of the car.

In celebration they drank not beer but old-fashioned cocktails, and at
dinner, looking in a pleased way at all the luxuries, pickled melon rind
and ripe olives and nut bread, everything that spelled richness and
worldliness and delicacy of taste, Peony said, "Don't forget Dad is a
crank about debts. We can count on him to pay up to a thousand, if we
get sunk badly enough, and by the time that's all dished out, maybe
you'll be earning more dough. Oh, and I got another surprise, just as
big as the Chinese rug, bless its blue soul!"

The Dean squeaked, in terror, "I hope it won't cost another three
hundred!"

"It won't set you back a cent, my boy. Honest it won't. I know how you
feel. I hate to spend money, and I hate to be in debt--I just hate it.
It's simply that I like to _have_ things, don't you see?"

"Yes," said the Dean, and "Well----"

They both looked relieved.

"Here's the new stunt, Gideon. We've been talking so much about your
getting on and taking your proper place in the world, and now it's time
to really start doing something. The chairman of the County Censorship
Board has just resigned, and they're looking for a new one. And has that
board got power! I don't suppose it has any legal position at all, but
every movie house and library board in the county listens to it. So
tonight we're going to call on Mrs. William Basswood, and then watch my
little man become chairman of the board!"

"Mrs. William----?"

"She's the widow of a dental supply house--lives here in Mabel Grove.
Looks just like a sweet little ivory statue, but is she hell on wheels!
She's so doggone moral she thinks pussy cats ought to wear step-ins. You
be good now. Try to look like the Y.M.C.A. was named after you."

Mabel Grove had, as happens in the Middlewest, leaped from crossroad
hamlet to small city without ever having had the leisure to stop and be
merely a pleasant village. It had concrete paving, a seven-story
office-building belonging to a bank, and a dozen rather squashed
apartment houses. By 1940 it would also have a radio station, a chromium
cocktail bar, a public swimming pool, and a much-mentioned unmentionable
scandal about a male high-school teacher. It showed that in eighty years
the prairies can go as far as Europe in eight hundred.

By nature Mrs. Basswood should have lived in a lilac-shaded cottage, but
she was found in a compressed flat with an electric log, and portraits
of Mary Baker Eddy, Tennessee Claflin and Mrs. Hetty Green. She had a
radio, which was pretty modern in 1926, but her torso, covered with jet
to take away the curse of sex, still creaked in the old-fashioned way.

"Oh, I think it's wonderful that you're interested in our little fight
for godliness, Dr. Planish, and your dear wife, and you must meet Mr.
Pederson, the Reverend Chauncey Pederson of the Lutheran Church, but
it's affiliated with the English Lutherans now, I mean it doesn't call
itself a Norwegian Church any more--I mean, of course, the Norwegians
are a fine, upstanding, God-fearing people but--and--oh yes, I'll
telephone Mr. Pederson right now."

This was Mrs. Basswood speaking. She continued speaking as they awaited
the Reverend. She always continued speaking.

Mr. Pederson was a wide, middle-sized man, weighing about 190 in his
stocking feet, and he seemed to be entirely free of vice and practically
free of everything else. He privately grew sugar corn and asparagus, but
he was without guile. He welcomed the Dean to their censorship board; he
explained that the Dean's name was supposed to be voted upon by the
other members of the board, but as those two dogs weren't even very good
Protestants, the Dean could consider himself elected right now; in
fact--and here Mrs. Basswood and he exchanged some small language of
nods and winks and pious smiling--he might almost say that Dean Planish
was already chairman of the board!

"I know he'll be proud to help you and the cause of Purity, though he is
so dreadfully busy and so much in demand for meetings everywhere, but
I'm sure he'll accept!" cried Peony, before Mrs. Basswood should
hesitate, or the Dean put his foot in it.

Mr. Pederson shouted, "That's fine! That's, if I may say so, dandy. I
want to tell you, Dean, we're all of us mighty proud to associate with a
man of your scholarly attainments and vast reputation. Now, Dean, I want
to ask you a question. Don't you feel, as Mrs. Basswood and I do, that
there is no force or factor which is a stronger factor in producing the
dreadful vice that we see rampant about us at this moment, a condition
that would bring a blush of shame to the cheek of Nero or any of those
notorious high-rollers of history, with King Alcohol ruling his rowdy
crew on all sides of us now, and women, even young women, pursuing the
males" (here Peony looked pious) "and doing things and acts that I could
not describe in the presence of ladies, and don't you think that there
is no factor that more grievously tends to produce these awful
conditions than the so-called popular and best-selling novels, with
their shameless word-painting of naked women" (he smacked his lips, Mrs.
Basswood looked hungry, and the Dean blushed, while only Peony remained
innocent) "and the at once bold justification, in these novels, of the
lowest vice, and malicious sneering at the dauntless defenders of purity
in the church and home? Scandalous!"

The Dean said he thought there was a lot to that.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Before the first meeting of the censorship board with the Dean in the
chair, Peony prompted him, "I've got something for you to go
after--novel published a couple of years ago--_The Tattooed Countess_,
by Carl Van Vechten. Why don't you get busy and censor hell out of it?"

"You can't! I understand Mr. Van Vechten was born here in Iowa. He's a
Native Son!" The Dean referred to Native Son as though it had a close
relationship to the Nativity.

"That's why I picked it. All the guys in the State that knew-him-when,
or claim they knew-him-when, will be jealous of him because he went off
to New York."

"But is it immoral enough to get folks interested?"

"I haven't read it. I tell you, with all I got to do, I just don't seem
to have time to read novels. But I hear there's a woman and a young
fellow interested in each other in the book, without being married! And
it's all laid in Iowa--the setting, I mean."

"I see."

"And then it's kind of highbrow and kind of humorous, and that makes
immorality a lot worse."

"We'll see what we can do to it."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The rest of the committee, when the meeting was held at Mabel Grove,
were pleased to censor a refugee Iowan, and they set forth with verbal
flaming torches to drive the Tattooed Countess clean out of Garfield
County. But in the entire county, though in cities like Dubuque and Des
Moines it was rumored to be plentiful, they could discover the book only
in the homes of a newspaper owner, a doctor, two lawyers and seven
clergymen. There were listed in the county five book shops, of which
three actually sold books, at Christmastime, but none of these had a
copy.

Peony was not satisfied. "There _must_ be some on sale. This is a
bright, educated county--Yankees and Scandinavians. There must be some
people here who're cultured enough to read immoral books." Ranging by
automobile, she went into every stand that sold magazines or toys, and
right there in Mabel Grove, not ten blocks from the grotto of Mrs.
William Basswood, she found two copies of _The Tattooed Countess_ on
sale in the cigar-store of one Mr. Rood.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The five members of the censorship board, attended by two admiring
wives, waited upon Mr. Rood in his shop.

He looked thin, amiable and dangerous. No, he hadn't read _The
Countess_. In fact, he never read anything but Chic Sales and sometimes
Louisa May Alcott. No, he didn't know how he happened to have two copies
of _The Countess_; they probably came in with a job-lot of magazines,
book-ends and Easter cards. No--truly no--he wouldn't promise not to
sell _The Countess_. He was running his business to suit himself, not a
bunch of bottle-nosed preachers and--he looked at Peony--dumb bunnies.
All right, why _didn't_ they arrest him? There was just as much
dividends in going to jail as in running a cigar-store.

The Dean remarked, "We'll see about this!" and with all the dignity of
his short beard and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, he led his crusaders out of
the den of vice.

On suggestion of the Reverend Mr. Pederson, they consulted Mr. Bill
Peniston, chairman of the commissioners of Garfield County.

Mr. Peniston reported, "You got no legal right to do anything, but I
don't see why us Republicans shouldn't have a fit of morality once in a
while, as well as the Democrats. I'll get the Mabel Grove police to let
you hold a meeting in Hawkeye Park, and you can lambast Brother Rood to
a fare-you-well. Say, tell me, Dean: Is this _Tattooed Countess_ pretty
hot stuff? I must get me a copy before Rood sells out."

"I haven't had time to read it--I mean, read it all, yet," the Dean
explained.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dean Planish was a dignified man, an educator and a student of
statesmanship. It would be very fine indeed to address a teeming throng,
provided it teemed in a regularly rented hall, with the sanctities of a
Bible, a flag, ice water and cane-seated chairs. But to stand in a park,
bawling like a street evangelist--he confessed to Peony that he was
"scared stiff."

"But sweet Gideon, the newspapers expect you! There'll be reporters from
Kinnikinick and Mabel Grove and maybe even from Waterloo and Cedar
Rapids."

"No foolin'?" marveled the Dean, in a delicious commingling of pride and
terror.

"I'm practically sure of it."

Peony might well be practically sure of it. She had telephoned to the
newspapers herself.

"But do you think President Bull and the trustees will like these
monkeyshines?"

"They're sure to think it's a fine campaign."

Again she had reason, for she had told these dignitaries that
Kinnikinick needed a little hot moral publicity, and they had sighed,
"Well, mebby so."

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the five censors appeared on the bandstand in Hawkeye Park, not
more than fifty persons had gathered to listen, and most of them
muttered, "What are they? Mormons or Seventh Day Advents?"

In a hasty prologue lasting seventeen minutes, the Reverend Mr. Pederson
introduced Dean Planish.

The Dean was in a deplorable state. It seemed to him that all of the
twenty-three auditors who were still remaining were snickering.

"My--my friends," he groaned, and somebody down there laughed. He
struggled, he tried to think of something better, and came out with a
thunderous "My FRIENDS!"

But Peony was looking up at him with eyes that promised that if he
walloped them good, she would be very sweet to him tonight. Without
effort or any apparent control of it, he heard his voice suddenly start
flowing, strong and steady, full of morality and adjectives and grammar.
Five minutes later he was trumpeting:

"If you will permit a teacher to use such a phrase, maybe we better quit
kidding ourselves into the belief that it's Wall Street and Paris and
Hollywood that start all this vice. Here's an Ioway boy, Carl Van
Vechten, and here's Al Rood, a neighbor whom you all know, conniving to
flood us with a masterpiece of such insinuation, immorality and wicked
brilliance that we are all tempted to thoughts entirely different from
those proper to the Middlewest. And what are we going to do about them?"

He never did answer his question, but wound up with Martha Washington
and the Coast of Maine.

Afterward, Bill Peniston shook his hand, and exclaimed, "First-rate
spiel, Doc. You ought to think about getting into politics. Come see me
about it."

As they left Hawkeye Park, the Dean sighed, "Poor Rood! I'm sure he's
not a bad fellow at heart. It's kind of a shame to ruin his business."

As he was driving past Rood's Cigar Store, he stopped. Standing on a box
in front of the shop was Mr. Rood, a pile of a hundred books on a box
beside him, and he was shouting, "Step right up, folks, and get your
copy of _The Tattooed Countess_--all about the French countess and the
sheik, in the Arabian desert--wild doings by moonlight on the banks of
the Congo--the book that's being advertised right now by the president
of Kinnikinick College, at the meeting in the park, as the hottest yarn
since the Song of Solomon."

They were buying.

Peony urged, "Oh, Gideon, I want to get a couple of copies. President
Bull said he'd love to read it, and I think I might send one to Daddy
for his birthday."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Like mightier men before him, actors and murderers and generals and
pugilists, the Dean nervously prepared for the worst and had the shock
of not having any worst or best. The State newspapers mentioned the
crusade, variously giving the title of the book as _At Tattoo_, _The
Tattooed Count_, and _The Stewed Countess_, and the author's name as
Carl Van Doren, Marie Van Vorst, Hendrik Van Loon and Upton Sinclair,
but reporting nothing more sensational about Dean Planish than that he
"also spoke."

The Des Moines _Register_ did have a small editorial, suggesting that if
the Dean had stayed home, he might have learned that on the same evening
certain of his own students had broken nine street lamps, and placed a
goat in the office of the Professor of Biblical Literature. This
editorial was mailed to the Dean by twenty-seven old friends, most of
whom he had not seen since graduation from college. But with this orgy
of friendliness, the incident dropped.

Bright balm descended upon him, then, in a letter from the Governor of a
neighboring State. His Excellency stated that he was always glad when
any of the teachers in institutions of higher learning showed that they
could leave the cloistered life and bring the benefit of their learning
to the Man in the Street. Dean Planish galloped over to show this wreath
to President Bull, who said, "Now that's fine--that makes me feel better
about the whole business." He galloped home to show it to Peony, who
said, "Oh, slick! Tell the Gov we'll call on him and Mrs. Gov some day
and look over his mansion and see which bedroom we'll give Carrie when
we move in there."

"Meaning I'm going to be the governor of some state?"

"I don't know about that, but meaning I'm going to be the governor's
wife of some state---- Aw, the poor little man, I didn't mean it. He
_shall_ be a gov!"

Bill Peniston came over to the Planishes' for dinner, and Bill Peniston
said:

"Dean, if you want to get in on politics, you better get acquainted with
the voters. You might have a chance at a seat in the Iowa House, two
years from now. We're going to have a Republican County Harvest-Home
Festival at the armory at Mabel, next Friday evening. You and your girl
come--bring some pickles and a banana layer-cake--I'll introduce you to
everybody that counts."

The Dean told Peony afterward that they might just as well go down now
and reserve their compartment to Washington. Peony said no, better make
it a drawing-room--it only cost a little more, and after all, they'd
have Carrie along, wouldn't they?

He gloated, "You watch me be chummy with the Garfield County peasantry,
next Friday. I'll kiss all the babies, in Swede, Plattdeutsch and Czech,
and I'll admire all the old ladies' elderberry wine receipts, and listen
to every old hound that wants to tell me about whitewashing his
corncrib. Seriously, they'll be lucky to have a man with my knowledge
and experience in their political horse-trading. Come kiss Senator
Planish, sweetie."

For reasons unknown, the baby Carrie started yelling in the next room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The National Guard Armory was decorated, as the derivatively urban
Planishes had expected, with strings of pumpkins, garlands of summer
squash, gonfalons of sumac, and a mural made of kernels of corn, yellow,
red and purple, depicting Indians on horseback. The long pine tables
were, as in the Dean's evangelical boyhood, brave with seven kinds of
pie, nine kinds of cake and three kinds of meat loaf. The Planishes were
a little disappointed that the farmers were so well dressed, in
mail-order blue suits and brown silk dresses, but their necks were as
brown as cigars, creased like eroded hills, and the Dean felt superior
again.

Bill Peniston did not, as expected, have them shake hundreds of hands
and be delightfully sympathetic about babies. He said, "I'm going to
have you two set with the county committee, and you can size 'em up--and
vice versa." The Planishes were mandated to a table with a dozen people
who were uncomfortably lacking in awe: a doctor, a superintendent of
schools, a lady milliner, an auctioneer who was a state representative,
and a stock farmer who was a state senator.

The Dean tried to think of a Message to hand out, but what could you
talk about to such a calm-eyed jury as this? Certainly not about
paragraph formation, and probably not even Flaming Youth. While he was
trying to tack together something in regard to the recently martyred
William Jennings Bryan, he listened to these backfield politicians.

They talked of taxes. Dean Planish hadn't known there were so many kinds
of taxes: federal and state and county and city, road and improvement
and amusement, licenses to sell tobacco and to sell pop. They talked of
the congressional candidates for this fall, and they talked of caucuses.
The Dean had always assumed that he knew what a caucus was, just as he
assumed that he knew what an aardvark was, but suddenly he wasn't sure
that he knew how either of them looked.

They talked of road commissioners and warehouse commissioners and the
state railway board, all mysteries to the Dean. They even talked, and
approvingly, of young Henry Agard Wallace, editor of _Wallaces' Farmer_.

"You seem to think well of him," suggested the Dean.

"Sure we do!" said the state senator.

"But I thought he was friendly with the Democrats."

"Well, I'll tell you: way we feel, an Iowa Republican is smarter than an
Iowa Democrat, but an Iowa Democrat is smarter than an Illinois
Republican."

"Oh, I see," said Dean Planish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As they drove back to Kinnikinick, the Dean was forceful.

"It's too late for me to get started in politics. Those party
leaders--they kept talking about some fellow here in the county named
George, like he runs everything, and I didn't even dare ask what
George's last name is. George Washington, probably."

"I thought he was dead," said Peony.

"And that's just typical. There's too much I don't understand. Caucuses.
Now why caucuses? Who starts caucuses? Who does what to who? _Damn_
caucuses! I'm too old to start in acting like I knew all about caucuses.
It's a shame, too, because---- Did I ever tell you how Senator Kurtshaw
begged me to join him in the party, when I was in college?"

"Sometimes."

"Yes--well--no. I could be a governor. Those fellows don't have to know
anything; they got guys they can ask. But to be a local politician in
Garfield County, you got to know too many mere _facts_. Darn it, I
suppose I'll go on the rest of my life, telling a lot of college
children that we don't hold classes just to be mean. It's a shame, too.
When I think of what I could bring to politics--freedom and democracy
and normalcy! High strategy; not a lot of bayonet practice. Warehouse
commissions! Huh!"

"Gideon, sweetie, you shall have your lil ole high strategy!"

"Whom do you think you are? George?"

"We'll find out how you can get one of the big political
appointments--not these snide elective jobs. You'd make a wonderful
Secretary of the Treasury--you're so cute the way you add up my bills
and almost always get the same total. Or Governor General of the
Philippines. Gee, I'd love to live in the Governor General's palace--all
palms and parrots and parades!"

"Wouldn't mind that myself," said the Dean, gratefully.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Dean discovered that his career as dean was interfered with by his
business as dean. He was tired of having a new crew of freshmen bring up
a lot of silly questions every year that he had settled for all time a
year ago. But his position did enable him to do one or two things that
were lovely with careerism.

Peony, who played at Chopin perhaps twice a month, had revealed to him a
thing called Music. He saw that this fad promised to go a long way in
America, and therefore needed to be organized, and he burstingly called
a meeting and created the Kinnikinick Music Guild.

Its members were to compose symphonies and mammy songs, to found an
orchestra, and to tour around advertising the college. He was proud of
the Guild, and he continued to be so for weeks after it had, without his
knowing, broken up in a riot about whether an accordion-player could
have as pure a talent as a violinist.




CHAPTER 11


It was Peony who suggested that, since they were so very much in debt,
they must economize all that next summer and fall. Peony was always
being spectacular.

She said, "I love to blow money in, and I'd give my virtue for the
Chinese rug and the Chippendale cabinet, but I can save, too--I can save
like a son of a gun." During vacation she found for them a three-room
cottage in Northern Minnesota, and she cooked, swept, scrubbed, amused
Carrie. She would let the Dean help her only with the dishes; she had
him reading economics, anthropology, history, and they both felt very
advanced and improved. Neither of them saw any difference between
Lothrop Stoddard and William Graham Sumner. Any book was good and very
useful if it said anything about head-measurements, the training of
youth for democracy, or the increased production of gas-stoves.

With advisory aid from an Episcopal clergyman who smoked a pipe and was
frank and helpful about Sex and was therefore called "Father," Peony had
the Dean inducted into the Episcopal Church. She felt that if he ever
got to be a leader of progressive thought in New York or Washington, he
couldn't very well be a Presbyterian; he had to be either an
Episcopalian or an atheist, and for an employee of an Episcopal college,
the former seemed a lot more thoughtful. Later, he was to know that this
was a mistake, and to see that if he was to be either a great Liberal or
a staunch Illiberal, and if he was to raise money extensively, he ought
to be a Methodist, a Baptist, a Congregationalist, a Quaker or a Russian
prince.

The Planishes came back to the campus in the autumn with many new ideas,
first-rate tans and only two hundred dollars in debts.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Garfield County Censorship Board had gone on attacking and
advertising good books, and Mr. Rood had, with amazement at himself,
taken to reading, and had established the first adequate book shop in
the county. The name of Chairman Planish, "a scholar who isn't afraid to
get out into the dust of the streets" (Waterloo _Courier_), had been
advertised almost as loudly as the books. Through the whole State there
began to slide a feeling that he was a very sound man, though nobody
except Peony was sure what he was sound at, and he was appointed a
member of the Legislative Advisory Electrification and Creative Planning
Committee.

Suddenly he was dashing to Ottumwa, to Mason City, to Sioux City, to
Muscatine, over a period of two months; his name was in the newspapers
daily--on page 7; he took Peony to public dinners of more than three
hundred persons, with sixteen speeches; and at the end of the
meritorious crusade, the Planishes were four hundred dollars in debt,
and Whipple Jackson sent a check to cover half the amount, and with it
Peony bought a rock-crystal lamp and five hundred shares in a diamond
mine.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dean Planish had been honored by his first invitation to become a
"national director" of a great organization with its office in New York:
The Sympathizers with the Pacifistic Purposes of the New Democratic
Turkey. He was assured that they desired only the use of his
distinguished name, and he need give no time nor money unless he was
eager to.

He wasn't.

Afterward he was often to have the experience, as warming to the stomach
as hot toddy, of seeing his name on organizational stationery. But this
was his first drink. He viewed the Turkish Sympathizers' letter,
lavishly signed by a Dartmouth professor, as a symbol of cultural
advance and the international low-down. Centered at the top was the head
of a fezless Turkish workman, with the mystic letters S.P.P.N.D.T.
circling him like a necktie blown in the wind.

To a resident of Kinnikinick, the address was inspiring: Fifth Avenue
and 43d Street, New York City.

In the upper right-hand corner of the letter were the National Officers,
who included three prominent clergymen, a Chicago corporation lawyer,
and a treasurer who was the fourteenth vice president of the Sixteenth
National Bank of Manhattan. The Dean did not know that all proper
national organizations, including many that pass away after a run of six
nights, have New York bankers for treasurers.

Beneath the list of officers was the item, "Constantine Kelly, Executive
Director," in letters so modest that the Planishes, amateurs in the
organizational world, did not notice it. They were interested in the
left-hand side of the stationery where, among the forty-eight directors,
appeared:

    _Iowa_
    Gideon Planish, Ph.D.
    Dean, Kinnikinick Cge.

The Dean and Peony looked at each other, and looked at Carrie, and all
three of them sighed--the elders with radiant joy, Carrie with boredom
and possibly wind.

The news of this honor appeared in the Iowa newspapers, and the Dean
received invitations to become a director of two other national
organizations, and to contribute to sixty-three of them. He accepted the
first two.

His duties in the S.P.P.N.D.T. did not tax him. After having appointed
him, that body seemed to have forgotten him, except for breezy monthly
letters, theoretically signed by the Dartmouth professor, explaining why
no one in Europe or Asia would ever go to war again, and suggesting that
he get more people in his State to contribute. It would be all right
with the S.P.P.N.D.T. if he held meetings and shipped them the
collections.

His many honors had now started the Dean on a meaty career of oratory
and public enlightenment. As the Kinnikinick _Record_ said, "This
gentleman is always in great demand as the speaker at alumni banquets,
high-school commencements, conventions, annual Rotary and Kiwanis
jollifications, and other occasions where there is a demand for wit and
culture, in this and neighboring counties, and there is no hand we are
prouder to shake than that of Dean 'Giddy'."

The invitations to speak were coming in, two a day, three a day, and
Peony took charge.

"Gideon, honey, you've been doing all this spieling free, and it's a
chance to cash in. We'll pay up that ole five-hundred-dollar debt in jig
time, and I can get me a real evening dress that tinkles. You let me
answer these bids. I'm going to stick 'em twenty-five and fifty bucks
apiece, and up to seventy-five, with traveling expenses, and there's no
reason why they shouldn't pay for a chair car, even if you don't feel
like taking one."

The Dean meditated, "I do get a lot of spiritual satisfaction out of
stimulating their intellects, but I swear, people that want free oratory
are the naggingest beggars there are, especially the women that run
committees. They got no mercy. If I let 'em, they'd have me making
addresses twenty-four hours a day, and look pained if I stopped to blow
my nose. Sure. Go ahead and soak 'em. I just never had the nerve."

"Nerve? Why the man never even had the nerve to seduce me, and Heaven
knows, that wouldn't have been hard."

"H?"

"Listen. I might pick out a regular topic for you and advertise it a
little--mention it in all my letters."

"Ausgezeichnet! Peony! Which do you think would draw more--a lecture
maintaining that the Post-War Generation are okay, and will get over it,
or just the opposite--a message that they're a gang of cockeyed hellions
and harlots? This is very important. A lecturer has got to get his
message straight, and more or less know what he's really talking about,
even if he isn't so eloquent."

"Oh, give 'em the young-generation-gone-to-hell number. Nobody wants to
pay their good dough to hear that the kids are simply human beings.
What's the use of a forum, if you only tell folks to act natural and try
to have some common sense? Besides! I got a wonderful name for the kids
that _are_ tough: singe cats! Isn't that beautiful?"

"Wow! You're the poet of this household, Peony! That ought to drag 'em
in. 'Don't Be a Singe Cat.' Okay! Let's go!"

This was the real origin of the term "singe cat," which spread over the
United States and became one of the permanent treasures of American
fancy.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The suggestion that vulgar money might be involved lessened the number
of invitations to toss the torches, but eight or ten times a month, now,
Dean Planish was called out of town, sometimes a hundred and fifty miles
from home, and the family debt was reduced to three hundred dollars, and
Peony did buy an evening dress that tinkled, and one, very soft and
feminine, which unfortunately made her look maternal.

President Bull was crosser and crosser as he saw his dean, whose job was
really to run the college and let the president go out and sell it, both
neglecting his duty and getting the pretty orange checks that should
have gone to T. Austin Bull.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dean Planish was to speak this evening at the joint dinner of the
Daughters of Pilgrims, and the Upsala Bach Society, at New Ipswich,
sixty miles from Kinnikinick. He would drive there. The roads were snowy
but passable, and he had bought new chains for the Maxwell. He came home
at four-thirty in the afternoon, kissed his wife, spanked her slightly,
kissed the baby and put on dinner clothes.

He decided that the dress-shirt would do one more time, but he'd better
change the collar. It had a spot on it from the quick one he had grabbed
in the men's-room at the Hotel Grampion in Des Moines, last Tuesday,
when he had addressed the Hawkeye Association of Agronomists. That had
been a sixty-dollar fee, but worth more, because he had had to make up
an entirely new lecture, something about the History of Agriculture, of
which he knew nothing whatever.

He ate a tuna-fish sandwich, hastily sucked in a straight rye, and put
on a dogskin coat, a plush cap and coonskin gauntlets, which utterly
disguised the scholar and philosopher. The visible remnants of him, the
brown short beard and the brown cheerful eyes and the ruddy nose, looked
somehow like a horse doctor's.

Peony bade her warrior, "Be a good boy. Have you got your key? Keep your
muffler tight around your neck. Don't go bringing any blondes home with
you, or I'll gouge their eyes out. Oh, where's that ten dollars you were
going to leave me? I have a feeling I'm going to buy me some silver
slippers before the store closes. Oh, nemmine, don't unbutton your coat
just to get it. I'll charge 'em. I love to charge things, anyway. Oh,
darling, do slow down on the curves, and remember to call your typical
singe cat 'Mamie,' not 'Meggie'--don't forget what a hell of a time you
had with that real Meggie at Clinton. Good-bye, lover."

As he lighted a cigar and eased his car into gear, Dean Planish
reflected, "That's the best little wife any man's had since----" He
balked. Since Caesar? Since Alfred Lord Tennyson? Since U. S. Grant?

"The best little wife any man ever had," he finished it.

He went buzzing, steady as a train, through a gray, steady wind over the
prairie. His car was a small fast bug, lost in that immensity. He
thought about the young men who had come to his office today, about the
luscious girls--but none of them could touch Peony--about his salary,
about how pleasant it would be to live in New York and not drive his own
car, about Professor Eakins's statement that he had heard of an explorer
who got $750 a lecture, about giving Peony some day an ivory-colored bed
with carved and gilded cupids, and, briefly, about his coming lecture.

Tonight he was, in a craftsmanlike way, going to combine his spicy
revelations about Youth's naughtiness with a denial that they were even
naughty, and he was calling the talk "It's up to the Parents."

Ten billion acres of flat grayness slipped by as the cozy philosopher
brooded:

"Must remember not bring the term singe cat in till after the tourist
camp story--oh, must be careful to tell that tactfully, so nobody will
realize I'm referring to contraceptives. Then introduce the phrase with
a rising inflection: singe--_cat_. Like that.

"Damn that farmer! What's he think he's trying to do? Crowd me over into
the ditch?

"She's not a bit fat. Just a good figure.

"Yes, in New York, have our bedroom like _she'd_ like it: carved bed and
a great big dressing-table, mirror big's a barn, and every kind of soap
and rouge and cream in the world--fun to arrange it and then take her in
there and surprise her.... Don't kid yourself now, Doc! Fat chance
your ever having a say about furnishing any room. Well, now, shut up!
That's the way it ought to be. I'm the scholar and a crank for high-tone
talk and accuracy, but she's got the punch and the genius. I wish I were
kissing her right now.

"Hm. Missouri license, eh? Wonder what he's doing up here, this time of
year. Nice job. La Salle, I guess. Gracious, is he going fast!

"Explain that it isn't the surface appearance of vice that matters, but
are the kids, no matter if they do tumble into the Slew--what is it?
slew, slau, sluff?--of Despond, still, are they trying to march on
toward intellectual solidarity with the leaders? (Like me.) Better bring
this in dramatically: youth with banners--mud on their robes may merely
show the fact that they been in the what-d'yuh-call-it of Despond,
fighting. Plenty dramatic.

"This will make a hundred and ten bucks extra this week. Wow! Well, I'm
worth it. They don't get many lecturers that hand 'em thoughts the way I
do. 'There's Dr. Planish--he's read just about everything, and he's
completely honest. I'll bet he's satisfied with the part he's playing in
the march to moral victory!' I don't care if she gets _three_ pairs of
silver slippers, bless her!

"By golly, here we are in the outskirts right now. That wasn't so bad.
I'm certainly a good driver. These kids, these students, that think they
can speed so! It's skill and steadiness like mine that covers the
distance.

"I wonder if any of these undergraduates _do_ do the things I tell about
in the lecture."

                 *        *        *        *        *

New Ipswich, Iowa, was exactly like Chicago, except that it was only one
two-hundred-and-fiftieth as large, and the March of Empire Hotel, in New
Ipswich, was exactly like the nobler Chicago hotels, except that it had
only one-tenth as many rooms. It had four stories of red brick trimmed
with gray limestone, and in the lobby was a mural depicting Richelieu
selling the glories of New France to Louis XIII.

The Bach-Pilgrims dinner was held in the Royal Bourbon Banquet and Ball
Room, on the mezzanine floor, with its own Pompadour Coatroom. But Dean
Planish could not venture up on that gala floor looking like a farmer.
At the main coatroom, downstairs, he took off his dogskin coat and plush
cap, tipped up his imitation silver pocket flask, combed his hair and
beard with a small baby-blue pocket comb, and put on his harness of
gold-rimmed eye-glasses with a broad black silk ribbon. Their lenses
were of plain window-glass.

As he ambled up to the mezzanine, he looked the perfect Maestro,
unafraid of ideologies or chicken croquettes.

He could without an introduction tell who his chairwoman was. She would
be the sharp-nosed and prosperous but slender lady who looked sick with
anxiety. The Dean sailed down on her, as she stood with her
program-flapping gang by the double door to the Banquet Hall; he held
out his hand, and purred in his deepest tomcat voice, "Mrs. Wiggleman?
Mr. Planish."

By all union rules, his job was done now, except for the mere eating and
lecturing; he was there, he was on time, he was sober, he was in dinner
clothes, and he had not forgotten his necktie.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was not one of your nervous lecturers who poke at their
apple-pineapple-peach-creamcheese salad, who shakily fill up on coffee,
and look glassily at the ladies to left and right, who answer "Ladies
and gentlemen" when anybody asks if it is cold enough for them, and
wonder how many cigarettes they can get in without being considered
libidinous. Dean Planish ate stolidly, and he thought very well of the
Surprise Ice Cream, while to Mrs. Wiggleman, the chairwoman, on his
right, he was saying, Yes, he did think the movies were a pernicious
influence on the young. After that he said to the lady on his left that
Yes, he did think the movies stimulated the imaginations and slicked up
the manners of the young.

All this he did with one lobe of his brain tied behind him.

He was not jumpy even when Mrs. Wiggleman introduced him. She had
neither of the virtues that a lecturer longs for in an introducer: to
keep it down to forty seconds, and to get the lecturer's name right.
Mrs. Wiggleman kicked up her palsied heels for two minutes and
forty-three seconds, by the Dean's wrist-watch, and she called him
"Professor" instead of "Dean." Yet when she had collapsed and sat
shrieking to herself in a whisper, he rose, put on his fraudulent
eyeglasses with a flourish, and sailed his plane steadily into the
tradewinds of intellectuality:

"Madame Chairman, Right Reverend Sir, ladies and friends, it is
altogether fitting and proper and a happy portent for the future that
the descendants of the Yankees, my own stern but noble forbears, and the
sons and daughters of the great Swedish race should thus have met
together, and that I should endeavor to address you on the ever-burning
topic of Today's Youth, for in what have these titan races better united
than in their emphasis on the scrupulous rearing of our children?"

He pushed his crumpled napkin away from him on the tired and
geographical-looking tablecloth behind which he was standing, and really
took flight. That he could soar at all while standing on a level with
the customers showed his skill, for normally the wisdom and stimulation
that will be tolerated from a lecturer are in ratio to the number of
feet he is elevated above the audience.

Sixty-two minutes later, he made his landing, a little dazed now, and
they yelled and hammered the tables. He enjoyed that, but it did not
keep him from getting down to the real climax.

The first rule of all professional lecturers, whether inspirational,
comic or travel, is to get your check before you leave the hall, for
otherwise, in the spell of your wizardry, they might forget to send it
on to you. So after he had shaken hands with forty-seven ladies and five
men, he turned merrily to Mrs. Wiggleman and said, as though it were
just a little joke between them, "I think I can save your committee a
whole postage stamp if I take my check along with me!"

Mrs. Wiggleman looked shocked, but before he went down to shrug himself
into his dogskin overcoat, he had the check tucked into his billfold.

He was weary now. He drove back to Kinnikinick in so still a paralysis
that he noted only that it had started to snow, and that he must see if
he couldn't find a not too expensive snakeskin belt for Peony.

She was asleep on the new chintz-covered chaise longue when he came in,
but she jumped up and kissed him.

"Were you wonderful? I got some hot beef-tea waiting for you. Did you
get your check?" she said.




CHAPTER 12


Mr. A. J. Joslin had been a country school teacher, a country banker, a
country editor. He now owned an excellent printing plant in Des Moines,
and he was publishing a bi-monthly magazine called _Rural Adult
Education_, which had a reputation that extended into Saskatchewan but a
circulation that didn't reach much beyond Osceola.

Mr. Joslin had twice heard the inspirational service furnished by Dean
Planish, and during January, 1927, he wrote begging the Dean for a few
articles. He would pay two cents a word. The suggestion came just when
the Dean and Peony were looking over the Christmas bills. It was Peony
who had had the courage to add them up, and she was grunting, "Believe
it or not--I guess it's witchcraft--we seem to be seven hundred dollars
in debt."

They looked at Mr. Joslin's letter, they looked at each other, and Peony
took him by the lapel, led him to the corner of the living-room which
they called his "study," pointed to his portable typewriter, and went
out to mix him a drink--and to telephone to the furniture dealer that he
could send up that leather floor-cushion after all.

Within three hours, the Dean had written an article on the consolidated
country high-school as a means of preparation for college. Mr. Joslin
accepted it and sent a check for $52.60; the Dean made the check over to
Peony; and she went out and bought an imitation French imitation
porcelain mantel clock. Two weeks later, he wrote some spirited advice
to college girls about teaching district school; he received $63.44, and
Peony paid a dry-cleaning bill and bought a lovely thing in the way of a
picture map of Iowa, depicting Jack of the Beanstalk climbing a
forty-foot stalk of corn, and Neptune and attendant dolphins frisking in
the Des Moines River.

The Dean was cheered thus into doing a rather larger essay on the
important books of the day (for his material he had to read clear
through the advertisements in a New York Sunday _Herald-Times_) and on
the use of college libraries by rural communities. This check, for
$93.88, Peony banked, unlooted. They both felt wonderful over the way in
which they were tackling their debts, and in this mood the Dean dashed
off a fantasy on farm boys earning their way through college.

This check was for only $25.94. Peony took it and went out and ordered a
new motor car, a Buick, and paid down part of the price, and this time,
when she added up their debts, they came to $1,687.79.

"I just don't know how it happened!" she wailed.

"I'm afraid you'll have to stop buying things--for a little while, I
mean," fretted the Dean.

"Oh, lover, don't be cross and beat me!"

"No, I won't do that. But we both got to restrain ourselves."

"And just when I've gone and written a letter ordering that English
picnic basket with the silver fittings. I suppose I can tear up the
letter."

"No, no, sweetie, don't do that. It would go so beautifully with the new
automobile. But after that, we simply got to do without things."

"Gideon! Why don't you write an article for _Rural Adult_ about how
folks can economize on the farm?"

"I've never hardly been on a farm.... But I'll write it."

"Oh, goody! That solves everything! And it was my idea, wasn't it!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Before the end of March, when the faculty appointments for the next
school year in Kinnikinick were made definite, Mr. A. J. Joslin wrote to
the Dean that he was discharging the editor of _Rural Adult_, who was a
very poor public speaker, and would the Dean like to give up his present
job and take the editorship? The emolument (a word used among the
loftier teachers and the more amateur editors, and meaning "wages," just
as the wages of lecturers are called the "honorarium") would be $4,200 a
year.

As dean, he had been receiving $3,800 a year and, despite a
five-hundred-dollar check--and an irritated letter--from his
father-in-law, he now seemed to be $1,200 in debt. He fluttered home to
Peony; they talked for half an hour; the Dean accepted the editorship by
long-distance telephone; then ceremoniously called upon President Bull,
to ask whether he ought to accept the editorship.

The locks of T. Austin Bull were still theatrically curly, but they were
gray; and, with executive scheming, his face had grown more folded.
"Poor old devil, he must be over fifty now," thought the Dean. Feeling
tolerant of this hedge schoolmaster who would never get invited to go
and be a big man in Des Moines, the Dean finished his speech:

"Of course it's a great honor to be offered the editorship, and I'm not
sure but that I can do even more good there than I can here--reaching
thousands with the message of education, instead of just a few hundred.
But I always feel that a man's first duty is to be loyal, and if you can
persuade the college Board of Trustees to raise my stipend from
thirty-eight hundred to forty-five hundred a year, I'll see if I can't
stay with you."

The President was a little abrupt:

"Dean, I'm glad you came in. I'd been thinking of asking you to drop in
before we confirm the next year's appointments. And the fact is, I think
you better take this editorship."

"Eh?"

"The fact is, I'm afraid you've outlived your usefulness as an
educator."

"Eh?"

"You're a good speaker, and you're popular with the students, and you've
started some interesting novelties--the course in Russian and the Music
Guild and the abolition of hazing. But you've seen the Russian and the
Guild fade and die, and you haven't done a thing about it. You're not
really an executive--you're a promoter--and the activities that you
promote aren't very sound. You just dream 'em and let 'em float off in
smoke. And you've been increasingly neglectful of plodding day-by-day
details. You haven't even been here very much. So I guess both sides are
perfectly satisfied, and we can say farewell with the best of good
feelings."

President Bull arose and stuck out his manicured hand, with his popular
actor's smile, his smile of a popular ex-clergyman, but the Dean, that
trained practitioner of scholarly good-fellowship, could not smile in
answer.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peony said, "I knew it all along. It's because he's been jealous of your
speeches, and wanted all those lil fifties and twenty-fiveses for
himself. I'm glad we're going, and I hope we never see this dump again.
I hate Bull and Mrs. Bull and Teckla and her stuffy father and everybody
except Edie Minton--she never liked me and never pretended to. On avong!
Lez go!"

So Gideon Planish firmly set his plump foot upon the upward path that
would lead through the miasma of lecturing and the bleak wind of editing
to the glory of cloud-cuckoo-land, yes, even unto the world of
committees and conferences and organizations and leagues, of
implementing ideals and crystallizing public opinion and molding public
opinion and producing informed public opinion and finding the greatest
common denominator in all shades of opinion----

Of grass roots and liberal thinking and blue prints for democracy and
the system of free enterprise and far-flung armies and far-flung empires
and far-flung money-raising campaigns, together with far-flung
night-letter-telegrams about the imminence of the crisis and far-flung
petitions to Congress about the state of politics in Chile or Iran, and
ideologies and ideological warfare and in general the use of the word
"ideology" as meaning everything except Far-Flung and Coca-Cola, and the
longing to serve and the need of discussion and constitutional measures
and challenges and rallying-points and crises, lots of crises,
practically daily crises, and basic appeals and spiritual ideals and the
protection of the home, and directives, and the sickness in our
civilization----

Of firm beliefs and doing the job without further discussion and
outstanding events and outstanding personalities and the logic of events
and catching history at the tide, high tide or low tide or neap tide,
and resisting pressure groups and also the formation of pressure groups
to exert influence, and upholding morals and reaffirming principles and
agreeing in principle and getting the average voter's reactions, and
educational campaigns----

Of prospectuses and money-raising letters and three-color-job circulars
that were folded in a funny way and if you opened the little pasteboard
door you would find out what the message was, and testimonial dinners
and organizational dinners and round tables and speakers' tables up on
daises and microphones and P.A. systems and lousy acoustics and dead
spots in the hall----

Of constructive philanthropy and the appeal to the heart and the
privilege of giving and the spiritual values inherent in giving and the
pressing necessity of giving at once and the higher levels of giving and
planned giving and systematic giving and the allocation of gifts and
subscription cards, sign on the second line, and generous responses and
unparalleled responses to this appeal and the joy of giving and the duty
of giving and giving till it hurts the giver and non-giving till it
hurts the hired hands at the organization----

And Conditions and Situations, Conditions and Situations in the
Chancelleries of Mitteleuropa, Conditions and Situations in Washington
and the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O., and inside information and the
low-down--always the low-down on Conditions and Situations, to be
discussed by little groups of authorities on foreign affairs, from 8
P.M. till 1:30 A.M., Conditions and Situations discussed over and over
and over and over and----

Of organizators and philanthrobbers and propheteers and directors and
executive secretaries and executive directors and managing directors and
the honorary chairmen and the sponsors and the trustees and the board of
advisers and national headquarters and Chicago headquarters and local
units and appeals to the press to give publicity to the unexampled needs
of this great cause and you ought to be able to get this picture of Miss
Viv de Vere, in bathing suit and holding a coin box, into the
rotogravure sections and maybe get five minutes on Station WSOB and
photographs and Dr. Geschwighorst addressing the students' forums or
fora at all the far-flung colleges on imperative giving and Conditions
and Situations----

Up into this earthly paradise was trudging a new Intellectual Leader
whose fresh and eager voice would inspire the philanthrobbers to give
till it hurt them, but enable him to provide his wife Peony with sandal
shoes and symphony season-tickets and five-pound boxes of Fanny Farmer
candy and his undiminishing love.

Though he had lost the Christian name Dean, still he was Dr. Planish,
always Dr. Planish--that was his first name: Dr.; and as such, along
with every Colonel, every Reverend Doctor, every M.D., every Monsignor,
every Rabbi, every Herr Geheimrat, every Judge, every Lord, every
Governor, he was so highly exalted that he was not merely a man, but a
title.




CHAPTER 13


"When we get to Des Moines, we'll rent a flat. I've always wanted to
live in a flat. It's so citified," said Peony.

"Aw, don't you think it would be better to take a nice little house, so
Carrie can play in the yard?" urged Dr. Planish. "Sure! We'll take a
house."

They took a flat.

The flat was, crowed Peony, the most tremendous bargain: only fifty
dollars a month, provided they did all the repairs; and their
Kinnikinick furniture would fit it perfectly. The blue Chinese rug, the
Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the French porcelain clock, and the leather
pouf, she pointed out, looked as if they had been made for this bright
little flat, with its balcony sun-room and its electric fireplace and
only two flights to climb. All they had to pay for was papering the
flat, in soft yellow, scraping and painting the floors, white-enameling
the woodwork, replacing a few warped window-frames, and buying a new
electric refrigerator, which was, Peony impersonally reported, the
dearest little jewel she had ever seen.

So, though rather grumblingly, her father sent them another check.

They were welcomed to Des Moines in July with a party given by Mr. A. J.
Joslin, a small and nervous man who had bright eyes but a mouth that was
always slightly open. The party was operated in a private dining-room at
the Count Frontenac Hotel, with Iowa vodka and Mississippi River caviar,
and they met a society editor, a congressman, and the chief agent for
the whole Middle-west of a great tractor company, who sang "Here's to
Giddy, he's true blue; he's a drunkard through and through."

Mr. Joslin stated that under the inspired genius, lofty humanitarianism
and practical hustle of the new editor, he expected to see _Rural Adult
Education_ on every parlor table from Kalispell to Paducah.

Then he called Dr. Planish aside and explained that he had left his
wallet home, and could the Doctor let him have fifty dollars till
tomorrow? (But on the morrow, he did not seem to remember it.)

So the Planishes were launched on a metropolitan stream of elegance,
excitement and fame.

                 *        *        *        *        *

"At heart you're a complete rustic. I believe you'd rather have a house
than our ducky flat. You'd like to mow the lawn and shovel the walks.
You _like_ the soil, even when it sticks to you. Maybe you were born in
a bigger town than I was, but it's me that's got the zip. But I'm going
to make a city slicker out of you yet," said Peony--but fondly--but
seriously.

And in the city, free from the spying of students, master of his own
office hours, among people whom Peony pronounced "fit to meet"--men with
three cars, women who were just as used to Le Grand Pension des Deux
Mondes et de Tooting, t.c.m., in Cannes, as they were to Charley's Eats,
Counter Service--he did enjoy the sea-change of becoming urbanized. At
least, he enjoyed Peony's becoming urbanized.... Though they never
did seem to meet any of the people with the three cars and private
Baedekers. But matter of time when they would be frisking in swimming
pools with the richest and most public-spirited. And from the first they
had what the Doctor called Urban Opportunities.

They could go, any evening, to a choice of a dozen movies, a dozen
restaurants--one of them with real Parisian red-leather wall-seats. At
any time, night or day, they could hear motor horns, radios, ticklish
lovers and riveting. They could adventure in department stores so large
that they never found what they wanted. They could read in the social
columns that right there in the city, not twenty blocks from them, a
bona-fide artist was promoting a studio party, that Madame Fitzinger, of
New York and Stuttgart, was conducting a children's class in the ballet,
and the Z. Edward Matzes were giving a whole series of parties to
celebrate the engagement of their daughter--in fact, the Matzes seemed
pretty relieved about it.

So Dr. and Mrs. Planish were Successes in Life, according to the best
American tradition: they resided in a larger city than before, and they
knew many more people much less well, if you counted in all the
street-car conductors whom they met professionally, and they had a
somewhat larger income and very much larger expenses. So Peony sang
oftener, and next winter Carrie had a new snow-suit of white imitation
fur, and only Dr. Planish was slightly bewildered.

                 *        *        *        *        *

His job as editor of _Rural Adult_ was not working out as he had
dreamed. He had expected to spend his time in reading entertaining
manuscripts and being interviewed by the newspapers regarding his
opinions on politics and the American woman and, instead of having to
talk with boorish college students, being witty in a large leather chair
with sparkling but grateful authors.

But he found that authors were stammering in speech, vicious in their
demand for quick payment, reluctant to give anecdotes out of which to
make publicity notes, and yet insistent on getting the publicity. In a
hurt and jumpy way, he found that they were very vain, poisonously
jealous, and usually musty of aspect.

For usable conversation, the printers and stenographers were much
better.

He had to learn painfully, from his own assistant--an aged party who
would himself have been the editor if he had not been a periodic
drunk--a whole tiresome technique of getting out the magazine: how to
read manuscripts by smell, without wearing out the eyes; how to get a
thousand-word article into an eight-hundred-word space; how to choose
the lead article and, with a stern printer waiting, rewrite its title;
and, most of all, how to obtain photographs for illustrations. He
usually telephoned to the press agent for a railroad or a factory and
promised him a credit which would undoubtedly sell ten threshing engines
or 10,000 passenger-miles.

Particularly, he had to learn taboos and libel laws. He must invariably
speak reverently of mothers, duck-hunting, the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation
Army, the Catholic Church, Rabbi Wise, the American flag, cornbread,
Robert E. Lee, carburetors and children up to the age of eleven.

All these mysteries the Doctor could learn and did learn. What troubled
him was that he was getting only half of his handsome salary.

Mr. Joslin explained that this wasn't his fault; that he was,
conservatively, ten times as anxious to pay up as Dr. Planish was to be
paid up or Mrs. Planish to get the check. It was the fault of the
printers, who insisted on getting their wages every week; it was the
advertisers, always so slow to meet their bills; it was the paper
manufacturers, always so intolerant about credit; it was the dead-beat
subscribers; it was everything except the publisher himself.

When he did pay, Mr. Joslin handed the Doctor a job-lot of wrinkled bank
notes, hotel due-bills given in exchange for advertising, due-bills for
school blackboards, and an occasional precious silver dollar.

Jittery now for the first time since their marriage, the Planishes had
their landlord dunning them for the fifty dollars a month, the corner
grocer refusing to charge it, and the maid becoming so impudent that
they had to pawn Peony's wrist-watch. The Doctor was terrified. The
warmth and faith of Peony were even more important to him than the good
steak dinners which he was not getting and of which he thought all
through the hungry days. And it bothered him even more that Peony was
not getting the brown juicy steak either. But she did not nag.

She scoffed, "Well, look at us! The hometown boy and girl that went to
the city and made good! One bottle of milk in the house, and that
belongs to that yelping young sparrow, Carrie. Oh, honey-sweet, I think
maybe it was all my fault. I was too greedy!"

She sobbed against his shoulder, she sobbed and looked up at him with
the face of a little girl who has been naughty. He kissed her, and her
sobs dwindled to a tired little whimpering.

Her fault? he thought. _Her_ greedy? Why, she was the one person in the
world who didn't know how to be greedy. By God, she'd have a palace on
Long Island and a marble swimming-pool before he was through!

This time it was the Doctor who wrote to Whipple Jackson, and he
enclosed a promissory note, and they had steak again, and dry martinis.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Though he did receive only half his pay, it was not easy for the Doctor
to quit _Rural Adult Education_. He enjoyed the small distinction of
being a real editor and he, the one time Dean and Professor, had little
value on the labor market now.

President T. Austin Bull would not give him any ardent recommendation,
and, anyway, not till late winter would the slave philosophers be
standing in that labor market while the trustees and presidents of the
several colleges looked at their teeth and wind and conservatism.

So the Doctor again took up the traveling-salesman's routine of the
itinerant lecturer.

This time, he went at it professionally. Instead of having Peony book
his engagements in her chatty pink notes to the committees, he submitted
himself, inspiration and beard and all, to a minor lady lecture-agent
who was not superior to dates at the Kosciusko High School Lyceum or the
Kiwanis Ladies' Night. She liked cross-word puzzles, and in the trade
she was known as "The Dragon."

Under her skilled hand, the Doctor scheduled a whole repertory of shows
from which the local committees could pick:

    W. J. Bryan: Soldier-Saint
    Don't Be a Singe Cat
    Trust in Youth
    The Dangerous Age
    Home Learning for Grownups
    How to Keep the Young Generation at Home
    Is College Worth While?
    Should Girls Go to College?
    What's the Best School for Your Children?

The answer to the last query was "the nearest one." This discourse was
described by the Dragon as "sixty-one minutes of fun, learning, bright
anecdote and sound advice, by a great professional educator." These
topics, with a half-tone of Dr. Planish smiling sidewise at the cord on
his eyeglasses, were emblazoned in a leaflet sent out to all customers
interested in cultural wares. When the leaflet was shown to Carrie, aged
four, she laughed so much that her parents looked at her suspiciously.

For two weeks out of every six, that winter, Dr. Planish pounded the
pebbly trail of the small-time lecturer.

He arrived in Washout at 5 A.M., caught the connecting train at 5:45,
rode two hours in the red dust of a day coach, and arrived at Napoleon
at 7:37. He felt dusty, his eyes felt glued, and his hope for the young
generation was that they would quit it and grow up.

He was met by the Committee, three women and a husband, and asked to
wait just a minute, because the reporter and the photographer had got
mixed up and gone to the C.B.&Q. depot instead of the Union Station. He
sat on a wooden bench for forty minutes, wanting coffee but talking
about education, while the husband looked at the Doctor's beard and
loathed it.

At 8:17, they gave up the Press, and the husband drove the Doctor to his
hotel. Barking with weariness, the Doctor telephoned down for coffee,
stripped off all his disguise except a gray flannel union suit--and the
beard--gulped the coffee, stuck the tray out in the hall so that he
would not be disturbed by the return of the room-waiter, drowsily forgot
to lock the door and cut off the telephone, fell on the bed, looked
cynically at the hotel picture of Marquises Horsing Around with Pages,
and was asleep at 8:58.

At 9:16, the reporter and the photographer walked in, without knocking,
and laughed very much at the union suit. The Doctor could scarcely see
his clothes as he wallowed back into them. He sat in an armchair with
his forefinger to his temple, and when the photographer's flashlight
went off, he hoped that the hotel had caught fire and that this would
end it all.

In answer to the reporter's questions, Dr. Planish stated that he
considered Napoleon the most beautiful city in the State--though they
must also permit him to say a word for the cities in his own beloved
State of Iowa; that he thought women had a perfect right to study
chiropractic or parachute-jumping but doubted if in these arts they
would be as happy as in bringing up a nice little family; that there
were many, many college girls who did not get seduced; and that
President Hoover was an even greater man than Coolidge.

At 9:41, after having locked the door, Dr. Planish was asleep again. At
9:52, the telephone exploded.

"Yesh," said the Doctor, blurrily.

"I bet you can't guess who this is."

"Well, I'm afraid you're right."

"How is the old rooster?"

"Fine--fine. Who is this?"

"You don't sound so fine. You sound cockeyed to me."

"Well, I'm not! Who is this?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I'm sorry, but somehow I don't seem to recognize the voice. I didn't
remember I knew anybody in Napoleon."

"So you're giving people the big Des Moines run-around now, are you!"

"Not a bit of it, but--who is this?"

"Well, who do you think it is?"

"I haven't any idea."

"Well, you old lobster, this is Bert!"

"Oh----Bert."

"You heard me!"

"Which Bert?"

"Well, for God's sake! Your cousin!"

"I'm terribly sorry, but----"

"Bert Twitching, your second cousin! From Akron!"

"Oh----Say, did we ever meet?"

"Why, of course we did! What's the matter--losing your memory from so
much chasing? You ought to watch that! You remember--Dad and I stopped
by your house about twenty-five years ago--you were ten-eleven years
old. And we didn't get such a hell of a friendly reception either, as I
recall it. But I'm the kind of a guy can always forgive and forget.
Well, well, well, well, what you waiting for? I can't loaf around all
day like you gab-artists! Get busy--put your bonnet on and come down to
the office and I'll buy you a drink."

"I'm afraid I can't, just now. There's a lot of people here. What's your
telephone number, and I'll call you up. Or say--will you be at my
lecture tonight?"

"Of course I won't be at your lecture tonight! Don't you think I got
anything more important to do with my evenings?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He told the hotel exchange not to put through any more calls; he slept
almost till noon, and bathed, and cursed with a small impotent cursing
that sounded more like weeping, and wrote his _Rural Adult_ editorial on
his portable typewriter. He had had the telephone connected again, and
during his period of inspiration he answered calls from an insurance man
who wanted to know whether he had ever given any thought to his wife and
little family of sons, from three several girl reporters on the same
high-school magazine, from an unknown lady who wished to submit to his
magazine song lyrics upholding Prohibition, and from another lady who
wished to know whether he was Joseph F. Snyder and, irately, why not?

The chambermaid came in, slapped his pillows once, and wanted his
autograph for her little lame son. He happily asked her how she had
found out who he was. She hadn't. She had no clear ideas about him
beyond the facts that he was a Doctor and had a beard and therefore
probably was a goat-gland specialist.

At 12:49, the silent and anonymous husband who had met him at the train
came in and took him to a luncheon of the Wholesale Stocking Dealers'
convention, at which he had to speak (gratis). This first husband was
relieved after the luncheon by a second and equally unwilling husband,
who drove him out to Maplewood Park and to the seventh Pioneer Log Cabin
(replica) that he had inspected in twelve days.

From 3:30 till 8, the hour of his lecture, he blessedly had all his time
to himself, except for being interviewed by the three high-school girls,
each of whom asked the Doctor what he thought about education, eighteen
telephone calls, a tea, at which he had to stand up beside the signed
photograph of Hugh Walpole and speak for five minutes, dressing for the
lecture, and a dinner of forty people--at a private house and yet no
cocktails--during which he had to explain the philosophy of Plotinus,
whom he had never read, to his hostess, who hadn't either.

His lecture was under the auspices of the Ladies' Current Events Club of
the Percival Boulevard Methodist Church, and it was held in the church
auditorium, which meant that he could not have a cigarette just before
speaking, that he could not say damn during the lecture nor refer to
abortions or garters nor tell his one prize story about the drunken
Deacon, and that he had to be hopeful about the Future of
America--regarding which, in view of sixteen more days of lecturing, he
actually felt very black.

He was met at the stage entrance to the church by his lady chairwoman
and the pastor, the Reverend Dr. Bowery, who pressed his hand, and
whistled, "It's a great privilege for us to have you with us tonight.
Let's see; I believe you were dean of old Kinnikinick. Did you ever know
Professor Epop of Bowdoin College, Maine, Doctor?"

"I'm afraid I don't, Doctor."

"You don't, Doctor?"

Dr. Planish had a distinct feeling that he'd better, or get thrown out.
"Oh, I know him by reputation, of course." The Reverend Bowery still
looked suspicious. "Know him _very_ well, by reputation. A fine scholar
and gentleman."

"He's a stinker. He drinks liquor," said Dr. Bowery, and sniffed at Dr.
Planish's breath.

The local newspaper photographer came in to do another bombardment, not
because the paper or anybody else wanted a picture of Dr. Planish, but
because no committee considers a lecturer fit to go to work unless, just
before the show, he has been fed to a state of coma, talked-out at a
large dinner, and finally blinded by flashlights.

Meanwhile the chairwoman was going crazy trying to remember her
introductory speech. She was circling round and round the vestry like a
Mexican bean, muttering "One who--than whom--one whom--than who." Dr.
Planish grasped her shoulder, shook her, and snapped, "Stop it, will
you, young woman! Don't worry about the audience. Those boneheads are
lucky to have a superior gal like you say _anything_ to them!"

She looked at him with surprised adoration, and from then on it was his
day, his night, and he was tolerably happy in the skilled performance of
his grisly professional duties. At 9:17 P.M., grasping the edges of the
pulpit, looking serenely out on all those rouge-patches and red hats and
blunt mustaches, feeling how all their attention poured in on him, and
loving it, he ended, "And so, my friends, I leave with you the thought
that it is not by asking advice or expecting a miracle that we shall
bring security to our children and solidarity to our families, but by
patiently doing what we know is right."

He got through the question-period afterward with only one nasty
moment--the inevitable heckling by the ubiquitous Communist. After that,
he had only to get his check in hand, and the gay funeral was over.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Sometimes there was a party after the show. Sometimes
unremarkable-looking people, whom he hadn't even noticed down in the
audience, came up and asked him if he didn't want a drink, and he was
taken to a real home, with a private bar and sufficient ash-trays and
good ribald conversation, and thus recovered from the sickness of
fluency before he had to take another train. But there was no such oasis
tonight, not in the Percival Boulevard Church, and in his hotel room his
only joys were the check, which he took out of his wallet and lightly
kissed, and his nightly long-distance call to Peony, at eleven; a joy
which he never denied himself unless at that hour he was on the train.
If that happened, he called her whenever he got to the new town--1 A.M.,
3 A.M., it did not matter. She always awoke quickly and sweetly, and
spoke as though his voice was the greatest surprise she had ever had.

Tonight----

"Hello, baby!"

"Oh, Gid-e-on! Lover! Where are you?"

"Napoleon."

"Now stop it! What would you be doing in a place like that for?"

"For eighty-five bucks, minus twenty per cent to the Dragon."

"You can consider it already spent, toy-man. Oh, Gideon, I do miss you
so, every minute. Even with Carrie yellin' her crazy head off, this flat
seems so empty, with no big bear bumbling around. I was just thinking
tonight, if you were here, we'd go chasing all over town, laughing like
fools, and have a drink and go to a movie and hold hands. Tell me,
lover, how are you?"

"Oh, fine. My throat is holding out fine. That's better than I can say
for the behind, on the seats in all these trains every day."

"Why, Gid-e-on!"

"And you're all right, dear?"

"Just dandy."

"And Carrie?"

"Oh, she's swell."

"Well, I got to hang up now. Take care of yourself."

"You take care of _your_self."

"I will, pet, you bet I will. Kiss Carrie for me. And be sure and take
care of yourself and--and---- God, I wish I were there with you, right
now! Good-bye, my dear--so long."

                 *        *        *        *        *

His train did not go till 12:30, and it was too late for the second
movie houses. Till 12 he sat bolt up, keeping himself awake by reading a
_True Confessions_ magazine, the financial page of the Napoleon evening
paper, and, several times, the interview with himself in the same. It
was pleasant when at last he could close his bag and call for a bellboy
to take it down.

As he sat in his Pullman berth, fumblingly undressing, he wished that he
were back in Kinnikinick, going to bed in the honorable cottage of the
dean. The picture of the placid campus reached out before him as he was
shaken to sleep--and then the porter was twitching his pillow, and it
was time to get up and do it all over again, and he knew that at the
depot, waiting, was another cultural posse of three nice but resolute
women and an anonymous husband, and maybe the Reverend Dr. Bowery,
swanking under another name, with girl high-school reporters lurking
behind every baggage truck, and all of them expecting these damn quips.

He came home, to his wife's embraces and to Des Moines' surprise that he
had ever been away, with a handful of checks which he threw into the air
before Peony, so that they fell about her in a flashing storm. He had
five clear weeks before he had to go out on tour again, and they planned
to put in practically every moment of it making love, playing with
Carrie, shopping, drinking martinis and doing enough editing to keep
from being fired.

Before the next summer, they had eleven hundred dollars in the bank, the
new car and the newest piano had been paid for--nearly--and they had
cautiously put up a little money on margin with a conservative firm of
stockbrokers. For this was in the late 1920's, and with their reading in
economics, their unusual clarity and imagination, Dr. and Mrs. Planish
could foresee a rise in prosperity which might make them millionaires in
another ten years.

"What if that ole meanie, A.J., don't pay your salary very often,"
crowed Peony. "We're going to have the marble swimming-pool without
him!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

After their financial recovery, the Planishes were able to step up on a
fairly high plane of society: investment counselors and general managers
of packing plants and high-school principals and lawyers and dealers in
music, with wives who had most of them been born middle-aged. They
looked on Dr. Planish as their proprietary Intellectual, and he now
first had the pleasure of being taken out to play golf, clad in the
short, baggy, Persian-looking trousers then called "plus fours."

"We're going ahead again!" Peony crowed. "These people ain't so hot, but
wait'll we get to New York! We'll be chumming up with the Rockefellers
and Mary Pickford and Nicholas Murray Butler!"

One of their warmer friends at this time was a gasoline dealer who owned
a new radio station. He invited Dr. Planish to make a regular
Saturday-morning fifteen-minute address for three weeks, and even paid
him ten dollars per augury.

No longer was Dr. Planish an old-fashioned schoolmaster at a meager desk
in a stale classroom which might just as well have been in the 1820's
instead of the 1920's. He was a master of modern machinery, a lord of
the airways, as spiritual and up to date as a safety razor. He could
reach and influence thousands now--indeed, far-flung thousands, and
pretty soon it would be far-flung millions--instead of dubious hundreds
uncomfortable in lecture halls. He was coming into his own, he was
putting on the robes of prophecy, and he had always known that they
would fit him.

So, on the miraculous radio waves, carrying his message at 186,000 miles
a second, the streamlined philosopher told the far-flungs that they
ought to read the Bible, that wealth did not ensure happiness, that just
the other day he had talked, personally, with the Governor of a populous
State, and that all conscientious citizens ought to vote--a virtuous act
that Dr. Gideon Planish had never yet performed.




CHAPTER 14


Back in 1924 there appeared a book which, like _Das Kapital_ or
Shakespeare or the Koran, inspired a generation and enriched an age. It
was The _Man Nobody Knows_, by Mr. Bruce Barton, a treatise which proved
that Christ Jesus was not a rebel or a peasant, but a society gent, a
real sport, a press agent and the founder of modern business.

This Epistle to the Babbitts had upon Dr. Planish such an effect as
cannot be comprehended by the wild children of an age which is more
concerned with Hitler and Expressionism. They miss the quivering zest
with which Dr. Planish said, "I learned a whale of a lot more about the
writing racket from Mr. Barton than I ever did from Walter Pater."

He proved it in what became the most beloved feature of _Rural Adult
Education_: his witty column called "Cornpone and Popcorn." In this
appeared his essay "Mental Elbow Grease," and this little masterpiece
was to be more quoted than any other foam from his pen. It began:

"As the Swede fellow says, the saws and chisels in your tool chest von't
yump up into your hand. And the books on your shelves aren't going to
crawl down and get inside your brain. It isn't the number of books that
counts in your mental development, but how you read and re-read them.
Books don't give up their inner secrets to the man who snubs them and
isn't friendly with them and doesn't try to coax out their confidence.
The proverbial old-time country doctor's library, just Shakespeare and
the Bible and Gray's _Anatomy_, contained plenty for the man who dug out
every word as though it were a golden nugget."

This pasticcio was reprinted by little treadmill magazines and trade
journals all over the country, and from these lifted as a filler by some
hundreds of newspapers. Occasionally they even gave credit to Dr.
Planish, and he began to receive letters about it addressed to him in
care of everything from the Salt Lake City _Manna_ to the Alabama
Department of Education.

One of the warmest letters was from the Reverend James Severance Kitto,
S.T.D., pastor of the Abner Jones Christian Church of Evanston,
Illinois, and president of the famous Heskett Rural School Foundation of
Chicago.

Dr. Planish knew him by mail, though he had never yet looked into his
red and friendly Scottish face. Dr. Kitto had contributed to _Rural
Adult_ a small panegyric on a handsome new illustrated edition of _Ben
Hur_, a classic which, as he wrote, lives on with the Bible and
Wentworth's Algebra. He had written to _Rural Adult_ that he was not
sure that he ought to keep their generous payment of $7.44. He did not,
however, return the check.

A. J. Joslin had lunched with Dr. Kitto in Chicago, and reported that he
was a learned but hearty fellow, who felt that the Kremlin was plotting
against rural church work in Nebraska, Missouri, and portions of
Southern Illinois. But this interested Dr. Planish less than Joslin's
tip that the paid executives of the Heskett Rural School
Foundation--known to all professional good-doers as the
H.R.S.F.--weren't cashing in adequately on the large funds of the
Foundation. Dr. Kitto had taken Mr. Joslin to the Foundation offices,
and they had found no one there except the managing secretary, a
spinster named Bernardine Nimrock, and two stenographers, who weren't so
much as sending out red and green circulars to supply the far-flung
wastebaskets of our broad land with information about the beauties of
rural education and with the plea that unless the wastebasket send in a
generous contribution at once, the little red schoolhouses and the big
gray consolidated schoolhouses would all be turned into speakeasies.

It appeared that old Heskett, the gents' furnishings chain-store king,
had left three million dollars to the H.R.S.F., but it was not using
half the interest. It did occasionally publish a report fly-specked with
statistics, it did give grants-in-aid to a few worthy schools, but
never, said Mr. Joslin, did the officers perform these deeds with enough
ballyhoo. They were regular bushel-hiders.

Dr. Kitto who, as president, was unpaid, was too busy with other
idealistic jobs to think up new ways of spending the Foundation's
income, and the salaried Bernardine Nimrock too timid, and both of them,
marveled Mr. Joslin, too lazy or conceivably too honest to take the
opportunity of giving their nephews, sisters-in-law, ex-lovers and
classmates such suitable jobs with the Foundation as knitting, copying
poetry, telephoning and drinking tea.

"I'd like to have my hands on that show. I'd make it take care of the
proper people---- Oh, by the way, Doc, I'm going to be able to pay you
that two hundred smackers I owe you by the end of the month,
positively," said Mr. Joslin.

All this Dr. Planish recalled when there came from Dr. James Severance
Kitto the letter praising his essay, and inviting him to accept a
National Directorship in the H.R.S.F. and to attend its Annual Midsummer
Conference. (Conference, not Convention, because Convention means
strip-tease shows and illicit liquor and the singing of "Happy birthday,
dear Henry Hargett Huisenkamp, happy birthday to you," while Conference
indicates only mental stripping.)

Dr. Planish accepted, and had his own Conference, with Peony.

Her father made a dozen trips a year to Chicago, and on the next one he
looked up certain things, and wrote to the Doctor:

    "I went in the Heskett place and got acquainted, and I even took
    the virtuous Bunny Nimrock, the secy, out to lunch. I didn't
    know I was so much of a beau, your father-in-law, the little
    devil, I had her quite flustered.

    "I think you ought to let her alone, the poor gal thinks she is
    doing a good job and getting city folks to take country schools
    seriously and trying to do a little amateur lobbying with State
    Legislatures, but if you want her job, go to it, she does not
    look so hot and I imagine you could expand it into a pretty
    well-paying proposition. I found, as you asked, that the fellow
    to honey up to, besides Reverend Kitto, is another preacher,
    Reverend Christian Stern of New York City, a slick politician
    who is in all the uplift rackets and will certainly be in Chi
    for the conference.

    "I also went out to the North Shore and sponged supper off my
    cousin Lucy and got to meet Reverend Kitto himself by accident
    on purpose and what shd we get to talking about but you, and I
    told him you were a national director of this New Turk outfit
    and a trustee of this Standard English society, whatever its
    name is, and cd have been president of Kinnikinick if you'd
    wanted to. Got Kitto so het up he is ready to give you the keys
    of the city, if you want to go there, I don't know why,
    personally wd much prefer Faribault or even Northfield or
    Winona.

    "The Nimrock woman gets only $2,200 but sure that cd be jacked
    up to $4,500 by the right second-story worker. Don't be too hard
    on Bunny Nimrock, try and get her a pension, she is OK, likes
    checkers and cats same as I do.

    "Yr. afft father,
    "W. Jackson."

It has never been quite clear whether it was Peony or Dr. Planish who
originally decided that because he loved country schools so much, right
down to the tin washbasins, he ought to take over the Rural School
Foundation. Certainly it was Peony who, on her own impulse, skipped up
to Kinnikinick for a week-end. She came back cooing.

"Lover, you'll be interested to know that old Prexy Bull is going to
interrupt his summer vacation and attend the Heskett Conference in
Chicago, and Teckla Schaum is still in love with you, and she and her
pappy have become Sustaining Members of Heskett."

"What's all this?"

"I told Bull that even if you _are_ so popular among the alumni, you're
opposed to this new movement to make you president of Kinnikinick----"

"_What_ movement?"

"----instead of him, and just as I suspected, he is a member of the
Heskett Foundation, and he's promised to be there with bells on and
support this project to make you managing secretary of it. And I told
Teckla that, frankly, I wasn't sure but that she'd of been a much better
wife for you than I am, and that I suspected you thought so too, and----
You don't, do you, Gideon? I'd murder you, if you did! Say you don't!
Okay. Now go down and tell Joslin that if he doesn't show up in Chicago
and support you with Kitto and Doc Stern, you'll sue him for the salary
he owes you. I mean it. Now skip, hero."

He skipped.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Before the annual conference of the Heskett Foundation, Dr. Planish had
learned everything about it except why it existed at all.

The two mysteries regarding any organization for philanthropy are who
really owns it and what, if anything, it actually does, besides create a
pretty letterhead and provide a warm office for the chief executive to
take naps in.

In the business, the term "Foundation" usually means an institution
which is entirely supported by a trust fund established by a
philanthropist (meaning a man with more money than he can spend on
houses and pearls) and which does not solicit donations, but somewhat
coldly picks out worthy persons or enterprises to which it does the
giving. Occasionally, organizations call themselves Foundations without
the benefit of large enough or oily enough trust funds, and send out
begging letters like any League or Committee.

But the Heskett Foundation was mixed. It had the trust fund, but it also
urged the pious or the guilty of mind to become Sustaining Members at
$100 a year, or even Founding Members, at $1000 flat.

But more mixed were its accomplishments. Neither Dr. Kitto, the
president, nor Dr. Christian Stern, the chairman of the board, got
anything more than carfare and glory, and that was all right with Dr.
Planish, but he was sorry to find that the Foundation was not more
devoted to guaranteeing a worthy living for the managing secretary, who
was a regular employee.

It published speeches about rural education by Kitto and Stern and by
one H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, Esq., in flat little gray pamphlets,
but no country teacher seemed ever to have received them. They were sent
to managing editors, who turned them over to the drama editors, who
threw them into the wastebasket, along with Hollywood releases about
Miss Sylvia Silva's goat farm. The Foundation had been known to give
blackboards to a school in Kansas, two motion-picture films to a
teachers' college in Dakota, and a collection of Turkish stamps to a
Hawaiian institute for pineapple growers, but the pattern for these
benefactions seemed to exist only in the head of Miss Bernardine
Nimrock. Dr. Planish studied the Foundation reports, he talked to rural
contributors to his magazine, but he found nothing more.

Well, he said to his wife Peony, he'd change all that. Under his
direction, the Foundation might not make more gifts, but they'd be
brighter and a lot more talked-about.

On the hot evening before they set off for Chicago, the Planishes sat
late in their flat, the Doctor in saffron pajamas open on his chubby
chest, Peony in mules and a wisp of nightgown.

"Well, looks as if we're going to take a shot at something new," he
said.

"Aren't you excited, Gidjums?"

"Oh, I guess so, but---- Same time. We don't always want to go on
shifting and changing. I've got pretty fond of Des Moines and the bunch
here--I don't even mind playing golf--and I get kind of homesick for
Kinnikinick sometimes. I liked our little white house. We ought to have
a dog for Carrie to play with----"

"Big tiny, I know how you feel. I want to be settled down, too. But
first we got to make New York. You'll be boss of the Boy Scouts or the
Red Cross or some really big philanthropy in another five-ten years, and
then we'll get a house out in some lovely suburb, with elm trees and a
stone wall around it--and yes, we'll _get_ a dog for her. We can't stop
now, with that ahead of us, _can_ we! It--wouldn't be fair to young
Carrie!"

"Maybe not--maybe not."

"And wait till you see the new red velvet opera cape I got today. It'll
knock Chicago's eyes out!"

"But won't it be kind of warm, this weather, on the poor girl's little
shoulders?" he protested fondly, and kissed her shoulder by way of
illustration.




CHAPTER 15


The Heskett Foundation conference did not assemble in a hotel, with
thunderous celluloid badges, sales managers boosting quotas by awarding
to the best go-getter a golden calf, and a procession of delegates
trotting damply to the bar and their wives to the Powder Room. It
convened at the Foundation Building, and there were only a hundred
delegates.

Dr. and Mrs. Planish, a little rustic with suitcases and a paper parcel,
went to the fabulous Golden Strand Hotel, on the north side of
Chicago--naturally they went there, and naturally they took a suite, for
the Foundation was paying the expenses of delegates.

A little muted and impressed, Peony looked at the lilac-colored couch
with silver-brocade pillows, in front of it a carved teak coffee table
covered with glass, at one end of it a super-heterodyne radio in a
Sheraton cabinet, and at the other a Russian brass table holding a Swiss
smoking-set made in Japan, while behind it stood a Japanese screen made
in Switzerland--she looked at all this richness, and sighed, "This is
what I like! This is by golly what we're going to have all the time,
from now on. I tell you, most people don't understand will-power, if you
choose to use it, isn't that so?"

He agreed.

The Heskett Foundation Building, when they found it, was less than
magnificent: a barracks made by throwing two brownstone houses together.
The lower floor was all in offices lathered with enlarged photographs of
unhappy country schoolchildren, and the second leaked pamphlets, but the
third floor an auditorium which, packing them close, would hold three
hundred people, especially educative people, who are not very well fed.
"This hall is fancied up real nice, with those silk curtains," admired
Peony. There were two murals, showing a teacher leading her flock from
dark pigpens up to a lighted mountain peak--nobody ever did say how it
would have been if the pigpens had been lighted and the peak in
darkness--and of Madame Montessori chatting with William Penn, Socrates
and Bronson Alcott.

Peony giggled. "That ole girl's got some awful stuffy boy-friends," she
said.

"Sweet one, you mustn't sneer. All earnest effort is commendable," the
Doctor gently instructed.

"Oh, I know. I'm sorry, lover," she whimpered.

"And I'll bet they laid out not less than ten thousand bucks on those
murials," admired the Doctor.

"Well I'll be damned!" his wife said fondly.

Then, at the secretarial and registrative desk of Miss Bernardine
Nimrock, they met their first leaders of the organizational world. They
had not experienced such handshaking, such a counterpoint of
congratulatory voices, since their last Freshman Reception at
Kinnikinick.

Dr. James Severance Kitto shook hands with them as though he enjoyed it.
He had a broad soft red face and a broad soft white hand, and his voice
was wonderful: molasses basso with a stick of Scotch in it.

"I feel that you and I can do great things together, Dr. Kitto, and I
want you to meet my wife," said Dr. Planish.

Dr. Kitto held Peony's ardent paw almost permanently; he looked at her
and then he looked at Dr. Planish, and he boomed, "Right you are! GREAT
things!"

More satisfying, even, was the meeting with the Reverend Dr. Christian
Stern, of New York, chairman of the executive board. He was a
sandy-looking man in his late thirties, dry, thin and galvanic. He said
that he was fond of Tolstoy and canoeing, and his sandy hair was parted
in the middle, but his handshake was powerful.

Dr. Planish bubbled, "It's most annoying, Doctor. I keep hearing such
praise of you from everybody that goes to New York. We all get very
jealous!"

"Well, well, Doctor! Is that true!" said Dr. Stern.

A crew of others, less brisk about Heskett Foundation politics yet
actually more famous in the banquet world in general, made as though
they were delighted to have the Planishes introduced to them. There was
Maude Jewkins, M.D., who said, humorously but pretty often, that women
were better doctors than men because they weren't so poetic. There was
Mrs. Natalia Hochberg, of New York, who was now trying to settle a horde
of violently unwilling sweatshop workers on the wholesome farm land.

There was Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, born in New England but a
graduate of Columbia and therefore refined, and now resident in the
hobohemian hinterland of California; book-reviewer and editor of Little
Magazines and founder of leagues for nudism, Thomism, cricket and the
black mass. He had red whiskers and pale eyes and a merry smile, and he
had once been taken for a son of Bernard Shaw. He kept on saying that he
did not believe in Democracy, but he said it with such gentleness that
you thought he didn't mean a word of it--that's what you thought. He
remarked to the Planishes, "I dare say I am the only person in this
rapturous assembly who is at once a Nietzschean and a cabalist." They
weren't sure what that meant, and they didn't like him very much.

All this happened at tea--the Heskett Foundation and Miss Bernardine
Nimrock sprang to tea and raisin cakes as readily as a policeman springs
for pretzels.

"Didn't I _tell_ you so?" whispered Peony. "Some day we'll be meeting
John D. Rockefeller and Bishop Manning and the Prince of Wales!"

Then they saw President T. Austin Bull of Kinnikinick, standing alone,
like a solitary birch tree on the Iowa prairie. "My, how we've missed
you and Mrs. Bull!" caroled Dr. Planish, and the President yelled, "And
how we've missed you dear people!"

But the Planishes met their one real treasure in Professor George Riot.

They had heard about Professor Riot, so young and yet so brilliant and
so deep. At only thirty-one, he was Professor of the Philosophy of
Education in Wisteria College for Women, and author of _Don't Be
Afreud_. He had had a little trouble, which made the Planishes only the
more sympathetic with him; the sensational newspapers said that in a
lecture he had asserted that, by Federal law, no girl ought to be
allowed to remain a virgin after twenty-six. For two years now the poor
fellow had had to go all over the country explaining (at $150 per
denial) that he hadn't meant that at all, but merely something that
sounded the same.

He looked like an English Guardsman, on the tall thin side.

The Planishes and he instantly drew toward each other, since they were
so much younger than the other uplifters: Dr. Planish, thirty-seven,
Riot, thirty-one, and Peony but twenty-seven. She whispered to her two
men, "Let's shake this bunch of old dodoes and sneak out and have a
cocktail."

"Splendid!" said Professor Riot.

At cocktails, Dr. Planish anxiously watched Peony watch Professor Riot.
At last she turned to her husband and nodded, and he went into his act:

"Dr. Riot, my girl and I don't hardly know a soul here, except President
Bull, and I hope we three can play around together. Without handing
ourselves too much, I feel maybe we three have a slightly more
man-of-the-world attitude toward education than antiques like Bull and
Kitto--but not cynical, you understand, Doctor!"

"I know just how you mean, Doctor," said Dr. Riot.

"Perhaps more sophisticated, Doctor."

"Yes, I think that might be the word--more urbane and realistic,
Doctor."

"That's what I mean, Doctor."

"You boys have another drink," said Peony.

The three musketeers, after an evening in the Heskett Auditorium devoted
to enduring it through addresses on Religion in Education by Reverend
Kitto and Education in Religion by Reverend Stern, hastened to the
Planishes' suite, and they parted at 3 A.M.

They were calling one another George and Gid and Peony by then. The
Planishes did not merely consider Riot useful now; they really liked
him, which in the philanthropic realm was extraordinary.

Dr. Planish had explained that he would be willing to become managing
secretary of the Heskett Foundation. There were wonderful things he
wanted to do for the country schools, and after his experience on _Rural
Adult Education_----

"Right-oh! I'll put it over," said George Riot. "You and I could work
out some plans together. Besides, I don't see why Kitto and Stern should
go on hogging the whole three million. But have you got acquainted with
Hamilton Frisby?"

"With who?"

"Little sawed-off lawyer--an uh'er--he says, 'I, uh, I feel that, uh, we
should, uh----'"

"I think I ran into him. What is he?"

"The real works behind the Foundation. He's trustee for the whole
Heskett estate--the heirs are all imbeciles or painters or both; they
live in Italy or the Berkshires and leave everything to Frisby."

"F-R-I-S-B-Y." Peony was writing it down. "He's in the bag already,
George. Hey! Put more soda in."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Next noon, the Planishes had lunch with President Bull, and Dr. Planish
was full of ideas about What Could Be Done. That afternoon, he read
before the Conference a paper that proved you can't have spirituality in
a school without sewerage. Late that afternoon, the Planishes had tea
with Dr. Christian Stern, and cocktails with Mr. Hamilton Frisby, who
liked the Doctor's ideas about golf. Before this, Dr. Planish had said
lavishly to the Reverend Dr. Kitto, "I know how busy you must be,
Doctor, with this Conference as well as your tremendous regular clerical
duties, so how about our having breakfast together, tomorrow?"

That evening, the Planishes were the dinner hosts to Mrs. Hochberg, Mr.
Sanderson-Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Stern, Professor Riot, Mr. Hamilton
Frisby--and Miss Bernardine Nimrock, whom Peony encouraged to talk her
heart out.

She didn't seem to have much to talk out.

The others left at ten, busily but courteously, as great humanitarians
and the whole tribe of Celebrities usually do, and the Planishes and
George were left to themselves.

"That Sanderson-Smooch is a cross between a cobra and a pussy cat,"
yelled Riot.

"Mrs. Hochberg keeps on being so rich, Bull tells me, because she never
gives anything to her own charities," shouted Dr. Planish.

"That poor Nimrock woman had on the damnedest hat I ever saw!" screamed
Peony.

"Oh, by the way, speaking of that, and I do hope I won't be infringing
on your good nature," said George, "but will you go shopping with me
tomorrow afternoon, Peony, and help me buy some pajamas for my wife?
Gracious, she certainly would've come along if she'd known I was going
to meet you folks instead of a lot of windbags like Chris Stern."

Sure she would.

They had another drink, and said they were having _such_ a good time.
They had still another drink, and became cultural.

"The trouble with a lot of these muffs like Stern and Kitto and your
poker-faced President Bull is that they haven't any sense of the
artistic," said Professor Riot.

"That's so. Like music," mused Dr. Planish. "You bet. I certainly am
fond of music. I wish I had time to hear some now and then."

"So do I. I certainly do like to hear Beethoven. And Rimsky-Korsakoff,"
cried Professor Riot.

"You bet! And Rosa Bonheur," said Dr. Planish.

"I don't think she was a composer. Wasn't she a shark about radio or
radium or something?" worried Peony.

"Oh, that's so, of course she was." Dr. Planish laughed heartily. "Just
for the moment I got her balled up with that French woman composer.
_You_ know, George."

"Of course I do, Gid. Know her name's well as I do my own, but just for
the moment it slips my tongue. Claudette? No, that's not right. But
anyway---- Don't you play the piano, Peony?"

Dr. Planish said, weeping, "George, do you know that, for my sake,
Peony gave up a career which would have made her the greatest woman
pianist?... Sweetie pie, how long is it since you've touched the piano?"

"What of it?" explained Peony.

"You see? Gave it all up for our sake--no, for sake of cause of----
What's our cause, George?"

"Idolism--i--idealism."

"No it ain't! It's cause popular education and honesty politics,
strickly honest!"

"Same thing. Hurray f'r idealism! This dumb country--lot of farmers,
pot-wallopers. Where'd it be if wasn't for us, Gid?"

"Hurray for us!" said Dr. Planish.

"Oh, boys," wailed Peony, "I think I'm getting a little tight!"

They both kissed her tenderly.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Executive Board of the Heskett Foundation met at 10:30 next morning.
They decided to buy a new carpet for the auditorium, to appoint a
committee to elect a chairman to authorize the secretary to draw up a
resolution to inform Professor John Dewey that they agreed with him in
principle, to publish a symposium on spreading democracy by saluting the
flag in all schools, and to elect Dr. Gideon Planish as managing
secretary of the Foundation, at $3,900 a year.

Professor Riot went to see if he would accept.

"Gid, I'm sorry as hell I couldn't jack 'em up higher than thirty-nine
hundred, but that's all the tightwads would stand for. And you getting
forty-two hundred already! Still, I do think this slow-poke institution
might lead the way to nobler and much better publicized organizations.
How about it, Gid?"

Dr. Planish said bravely, "Yes, it may be a step into a wider and more
useful field. I'll take it, George. By the way, I hope they're
pensioning off Bernardine Nimrock."

"Yes--eleven hundred a year."

"Oh, fine! I certainly would hate to think I was doing that poor old hen
out of a job. A fellow's got to be chivalrous, George, no matter what."

Peony fondly protested, "Now I won't hear a word about either of you
boys ever being anything but chivalrous!"

"That's sweet of you, baby," admired Professor Riot. "You're a real
Hypatia--if that was her name. So I'll tell 'em the thirty-nine hundred
bucks is okay, Gid?"

"Yes, you may tell them so. I think I may honestly consider myself
non-commercial," said Dr. Planish.

He had already decided that since he never actually got more than
twenty-eight hundred out of Joslin, he would take the new job even at
three thousand. He continued:

"But they must understand what a sacrifice I'm making."

"I've already explained that to them. You bet I have!" said Professor
Riot.

"The first quality an organization executive has to have is willingness
to sacrifice."

"That's so," sighed Professor Riot. "I wish the public who bellyache
over their privilege of giving a little to philanthropy out of their
great treasury would appreciate that fact."

The telephone rang.

Dr. Planish answered it. He stuttered, "I g-guess you better let her
come up." He turned to his guerrilla forces with a terrified "It's
Bernardine Nimrock!"

Peony seized Riot's arm and melodramatically muttered, "Let's skip in
the bedroom! Giddy can get rid of her quicker without us!"

Three minutes later, Miss Nimrock crept into the living-room, a dusty
moth of a woman, fluttering, and Dr. Planish backed away from her. This
was not going to be fun. He felt that it was very unjust of Peony and
his old friend George Riot and the Reverends Kitto and Stern to put this
upon him. Her mouth was working queerly. Was she crazy? Sometimes frail
women picked up things like that Bourbon bottle and killed powerful men.

"Dr. Planish, I've just heard that the Foundation plans to fire me,
after ten years' service, and give you my job, and you don't need
it--you don't need it--you're a man and you've been a college professor
and you could always get some kind of job. But I'm supporting my mother,
and Dr. Kitto promised I should have the job always, and if I never have
accomplished much as managing secretary, and I know I haven't, it's
because I've had to submit everything to Dr. Kitto for his okay, and I'd
never get it--I'd wait and wait and telephone and never get it. It'll
kill me and kill my mother if you just amuse yourself by coming in and
taking this job away from me--I've got to have it--oh, you're not a
hypocrite like Dr. Kitto, or cruel like Mr. Frisby, are you? You'll stop
and think about this, won't you? You'll try and see if there isn't
something else you can find to do, won't you? I've never been a beggar
like this before. I thought I was a decent independent woman and I
worked so hard. You are a man of honor, aren't you? You won't kill us,
just to get ahead?"

He had backed clear to the windows; he stood with his hands behind him,
twitching at the net curtains. He had to say something.

"Well, this is all news to me--practically. I've just heard rumors.
Certainly the last thing in the world I'd want to do would be to injure
you two ladies. Yes, I'll look into this----"

Miss Nimrock was looking at him with sunny, adoring eyes. She seemed
almost young and pretty. This was what he could do for women, the poor
things! He went on, "Certainly look into this right away, and see if we
can't----"

Then Peony walked in.

She charged on Miss Nimrock like St. Catherine, or Mrs. Calvin routing a
witch, and this time it was Miss Nimrock who backed up, as Peony
chanted, "Oh, I didn't know you were here. Isn't this dandy! I did want
a chance to congratulate you on getting that lovely
eleven-hundred-a-year pension, so you can have that and still get a
second job if you want to, any job you want, say like teaching, my,
you'll be making so much money you won't know what to do with it, and
personally I should think you'd be glad to get away from Kitto, the ole
stuffed shirt----"

She had Miss Nimrock through the door into the corridor, she closed the
door while the adversary was trying to speak, and she cried to Dr.
Planish and the now cautiously emergent George Riot:

"My, I do think women are the worst sports! Imagine her trying to welsh
like that! I did hate to be so mean to her, poor thing, but I thought it
would be kindest to just be brutal, really, and get it over. Poor
Gideon, I was so sorry for you, and for you, too, George, and I guess
that calls for a drink. Let's make it a quickie, because I got to go out
shopping with George and get some pajamas for his little wife, I swear,
I'm so jealous of that girl of yours, I could bust, George, and me
promising I wouldn't do one ounce of shopping all the time I was in
Chicago, and save and scrimp and economize and--there you are, boys."

Where, glowed Dr. Planish, was there another wife like that?




CHAPTER 16


They were dressing for the great annual Heskett Foundation dinner, final
ensemble of the Conference, at which his appointment as managing
secretary would be announced.

"You always look so distinguished in your tuxedo, Giddy," she said.

"Oh, not so much. Well, go on. You haven't told me anything yet about
shopping with George."

"I think most men do look better, dressed for dinner, but especially a
man with a beard. That's where the English are so smart, dressing for
dinner. My, that must be a grand city, London--and neither of us ever
seen it yet! England's a so much more civilized country--as the English
themselves so often tell us. Will we go and live in London some time,
when we're rich, sweetheart?"

"Go on. Tell me. What've you been up to?"

"Gideon! I did promise not to throw money around this time, didn't I!"

"It was a voluntary promise. I never asked you to make it."

"I know you didn't. So don't you see?"

"See what?"

"Well, after we found George his pajamas--my gracious, now that's a
slip, isn't it, you better page Dr. Freud, I guess--and anyway, after we
found the pajamas for his wife--and George and that giggling hyena of a
saleswoman did make me kind of sore, even though they were just joking,
his putting his arm around me like that and pretending to show her his
wife's bust measurements with me for model. I told George I had a good
mind to slap his ears off. But anyway, I certainly did pick her out some
lovely pajamas, my, I'd like to have 'em myself, all silk, in peach
color with green piping and----

"But anyway, as I was saying, George insisted we might as well look over
the department store while we had the chance, and we went up and down on
the escalators, gee, that was fun, and the things I wanted to buy,
heavens and earth, you have no idea how strong-minded I was--a white
bearskin rug that would be so delicious on my toes on a winter morning,
and a portrait of President Andy Jackson--Daddy says we're related to
him somehow, way far back--and an electric drink-mixer--it would really
be economical, it would save so much time, but I was firm, and oh,
Gid-e-on, a real Finnish hand-carved wooden salad bowl!

"They'd all be so useful, but I was adamant, absolutely ada_mant_. Maybe
it just shows us that pride goeth before the most God-awful fall,
because George and I stopped at the antique jewelry counter and oh,
honeybun, you'll probably murder me, but it did look cheap, and so
darling, oh, the loveliest thing I ever saw, and it didn't seem
expensive and---- Let's get it over. Look at it."

She had sneaked out from the dressing-table drawer a ring with a
sparkling oval center.

"God! Not diamonds?" he grunted.

"No, don't you see? It's steel points, antique. But it was expensive,
I'm afraid."

"How much?"

"Eighty-nine dollars."

He winced. But he was quickly on another track.

"I'm glad George Riot didn't give it to you."

"The funny thing is, he offered to."

"Oh, he did, did he!"

"Prob'ly not seriously. Not on a professor's salary!"

"So he offers you rings! He pretends to be buying pajamas, and feels you
up! Damn him, I'll show him!"

"Why, Gideon Planish! Do you mean to say you're jealous?"

"Huh?"

"Are you?"

"M-maybe, a little."

"I'm tickled to death! Seems like you haven't been jealous for a long
time, lover. But you don't think I fell for him, do you?... Do you?"

"No, I guess you and I are about as loyal as any couple living. That's
_one_ thing where we aren't phony humanitarians."

"Why, Gideon Plan-ish! What do you mean? To dare and say a thing like
that, when we're giving up such a lovely job as editor and dean and all,
and just sacrificing and sacrificing and _sacrificing_, and not even
buying the white-bear rug or the salad bowl or anything. What a thing to
say about yourself just when you're starting this wonderful new path of
service!"

"I know. We really are beginning to dedicate ourselves to mankind. I
don't know what made me say that. And you're sure you still love me?"

"Shall I show you?"

"No, no--this is the only clean dress-shirt I got along. But do you love
me better than George Riot?"

"Manny darling, you aren't going to get a grouch on George, I mean and
show it, are you?"

"No, no, course not. He's helping me to get planted in the
organizational field more than anybody else, isn't he? Oh, no, no, no,
no, sweetheart, you mustn't misunderstand me about old George. They
don't make 'em any better than old George."

"So now, you see, everything's fine, isn't it, hero! You don't suppose I
could afford an orchid tonight, do you? Or do you feel like _giving_ me
one?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

The dinner guests clapped profusely when Dr. Kitto announced the
appointment of Dr. Planish as managing secretary.

Dr. Planish lubricatingly told them of his practically rural birth and
rearing.

Miss Bernardine Nimrock was not present.

They gave her a rising vote of thanks.

That night, Dr. Planish turned and turned in bed.

"What is it, faun? I know something's bothering you. It isn't my new
ring, is it?"

"Good Lord, no!" (That is what Peony sensibly expected him to say.) "I
just can't get that Nimrock woman's face out of my mind--this
afternoon--so scared, and all blubbered up with crying."

"Silly! Dear silly! Progress has to go on, doesn't it? We know as
students of biology that certain lower forms of life are bound to
suffer. Indeed, if they didn't suffer and get themselves eliminated,
they would block all true progress, wouldn't they? But do you know what
I'm proudest of you for? For being so sensitive to the feelings of
others. I suppose that's what has made you a humanitarian and a sort of
prophet instead of just an ole college professor. So proud!"

"Well----" said Dr. Planish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They had the Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the Chinese rug, and the
porcelain clock crated and sent on to Chicago in early August. They left
behind them the leather pouf. "It looks kind of hick to me now. Goodness
gracious! How one's taste does get improved by traveling!" said Peony.

They drove by automobile from Des Moines to Chicago, with an overnight
stop at Davenport, three hundred miles in the brilliant heat; and Dr.
Planish said, over and over, that it was the most enjoyable trip he had
ever made, and that little Carrie was proving to be a True Gipsy, like
her parents.

Now that they were practically started for New York and London, and she
was therefore no longer bound to debts and worry, Peony was a foamy
cataract of ideas dashing around and over any vulgar rocks of fact. Her
ideas all entailed the Doctor's doing a lot of work and magicking a lot
of important people, but she looked sidewise at him, at the wheel, with
such wide admiration that he had to accept them. (He was still doing
most of their driving at this time; it would not be for five more years
that she alone would be trusted with the car.)

He was to be a senator, after all, but from Chicago or New York, where
he wouldn't have to pretend about country road-taxes. After that, he was
to consolidate a string of small colleges, be president of the lot of
them, run them like chain-stores, and give them such sprightly
advertising--and profits--as no university in history (since the U. of
Al-Azhar, Cairo, f. 970, colors: green) has ever enjoyed.

He was to combine the foreign missions of all Protestant churches, and
take personal charge of them. (She would simply love traveling with him
through India, and seeing palm trees and natives.) And as the start of
all these glories, he was to get rid of Dr. Kitto and Mr. Hamilton
Frisby and control all the funds of the Heskett Foundation, and she
rather thought she would like to have one room of their house in Paris
all in scarlet and black.

As Peony chattered, as she read the map and navigated, as she slipped
down from the car to take Carrie to a "rest room," Dr. Planish loved her
each moment with a more wistful amazement at being with his own
particular girl, who would always be there, and give him a purpose for
living and laboring. He marveled at her swift evolution. She was so
smart, in her black and mustard suit, her black cloche hat. How had she
done it? He was almost forty, and he had seen the world, had spent an
entire week in New York, but it seemed to him that his country chick was
as old and worldly-wise as he himself, that she knew everything there
was to know--except possibly the exact time of day, the amount of her
bank balance, and how to spell Cincinnati--and that there was nothing
that a trudger like himself, learned, rock-steady and fanatically honest
though he was, could better do than to follow her divine intuitions in
everything.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peony was the best of traveling companions, interested equally in a
meadow lark or a special-job Cadillac, uncomplaining of cold or heat or
hunger. Only once did she worry him.

The first day, the car had run too easily, and at each restaurant they
had said, "Oh, we'll find a better place farther on." Toward three, they
were passing a converted village store-building with a shaky
home-painted sign announcing EATS. At this suggestive word, Carrie
howled.

They stopped.

The interior was gaunt and long and skinny, with three round tables, a
gas stove, a lunch counter behind which were shelves of cigarettes and
horrible candy bars, and a sign "Not respble for hats coats."

While Peony and Carrie were in the washroom, the lone waitress, a
frightened-looking woman in a red sweater and lilac slacks, dropped on
the wet surface of the table in front of Dr. Planish a hand-written menu
presenting "Ham and eggs, Steak, Hamdburger sandwich, Hot Dog sandwich,
cofee, coke."

"Uh--what kind of steak you got?"

"We're just out of steak."

"Let's, uh, let's have three orders of ham and eggs."

She went to a mysterious back door and yelled. As she came back, she
looked at him wearily, and suddenly he knew all about her; he was one
with her in the devastating struggle to keep on living. He greeted her
as a fellow human being with a cheerful, "Business not so hot just now,
I guess."

"Mister, there ain't any business. God, I don't know what my old man and
me are going to do. I hear where there's a big stock-market boom. I
guess that's where all the money's going then, stock-market. Yours's the
first order that's come in here today."

"That's a shame. I certainly hope you and your husband catch on soon."

Peony reappeared, and he looked at her in a dazzle of admiration. This
released and Chicago-bound Peony was a new woman to him. She was so
solid on her two feet, yet her fresh cheeks and reckless eyes were as
adorably young as when she had first sat in front of him, a baby
student.

"What do we draw?" she said amiably, as she tucked Carrie into a chair.

"Hamneggs."

"That's fine."

But that was the last cheerful thing she said at EATS. She pointed out
that they had had to ask for water three times, that the table was damp,
that there were no napkins in sight and no sugar, that cigarette butts
covered the floor, and that the eggs were sour, the ham was salty.

"A woman that serves the public as badly as this ought to be arrested
for slow murder," muttered Peony.

"Oh, the poor thing's hard-up and untrained."

"You're _sorry_ for her?"

"Yes, I am!"

"I'm not, one bit. The slut!"

Their daughter Carrie spoke: "Mama, what's a slut?"

"You shut up now, sweetest honey-pie, and eat your nice ham."

"You said it wasn't nice ham."

"Now don't interrupt, little mocking bird. Mama and Papa are discussing
philosophy."

"Why?" said Carrie.

Dr. Planish went on, "After all, that's going to be our job now, to
encourage rural rehabilitation for just such poor victims of environment
as this woman. We got to educate them."

"Wh----" Carrie had started, but she found an enchanting fly.

"Oh, pooh!" said Peony. "You can't educate animals like that. I'm
terribly glad you're dedicating yourself to uplifting the soggy masses,
big one, but don't wear yourself out getting sentimental about them.
They're hopeless. You devote yourself a little to your wife."

"Don't I?"

"Course you do! Me just cwoss. But just the same, don't waste your time
trying to help a lot of unemployables. You can't get around it: people
with good taste don't decorate restaurants with fly-specks. Yes, my
Hari-Carrie, Papa and Mama are going to get started now, and off for the
pretty Chicago we go, all of the jingle bells gay in the snow."

"Why?" objected Carrie.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Their overnight halting-place in Davenport was the first large hotel in
which Carrie had ever slept. She was not at all frightened by the crowd
in the lobby, nor by the near-marble pillars. When the clerk leaned
across the desk and chirped at her, "And is this little lady staying
with us, too?" she looked at him and gravely nodded.

After dinner, Carrie was put to bed in a tiny single room, and Peony
urged, "Will my darling be awful scared if Papa and Mama slip off to the
early movie, and get back by nine?"

"No," said Carrie.

"This sweet, old-fashioned, maply bedroom--doesn't my babykins think
it's the sweetest little room she ever saw?"

"No," said Carrie.

"What, my pretty?"

"I'm sorry, Mama, but I don't."

"And pray why not?"

"I think the wallpaper is silly--all those flowers like pink worms."

Peony looked at her husband adoringly. "Will you listen to that now,
will you? For six years old, isn't she the grown-uppedest thing you ever
saw!"

"N-yes--oh, yes," said Dr. Planish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

For three days Peony shopped through Chicago for a flat, and in the
evenings she cried against Gideon's shoulder. Doubtfully they leased an
apartment in an oldish building on the South Side, decent enough but
depressingly inferior to their green and silver cottage in Kinnikinick,
their canary-yellow flat in Des Moines. She shuddered, "I wonder if we
really are going ahead so fast? I never realized how hard it is to make
a dent in a place like Chicago."

Their flat was all in brown, a clean but sullen brown; all long and
tiresome lines, all tightness and a smell of respectable resignation;
and it looked across the street to the brownstone front of a house
wearily resigned to dullness.

"We won't stay in this dump long," vowed Peony. "You'll shake a bigger
salary out of Hamilton Frisby--looks like he's the one that guards the
Foundation cash. Pretty soon we'll have a modernistic apartment, right
on the lake."

He felt guilty.

Within two days, Peony was caroling that the Chinese rug, the cabinet,
the airy French clock "brightened up the flat something wonderful." But,
naturally, she had to buy a few other things--"gay and civilized junk
that you can live with," she called them: a chromium and black-glass
portable bar, a pale birch radio cabinet, a sage-green Chinese lamp
imitating jade, and a Gauguin print.

By laying out only $362.75 for these adornments, Peony concealed the
in-soaked brownness of the place phenomenally. The only slip was that
they were again two hundred dollars in debt.

"Why?" asked Dr. Planish, but Peony kissed him.

He was busy now at the Heskett Foundation offices, finding out what Miss
Bernardine Nimrock had done, and hemming, and telling the stenographers
to go right on doing it--only more so.




CHAPTER 17


It must not be thought that Dr. Planish did nothing at all as managing
secretary of the Heskett Foundation. He took part in conferences, almost
weekly conferences, promoted by colleges, libraries, municipal forums,
state educational associations, and he unflinchingly told these
conferences that rural education was a fine idea. He sat on committees,
and if the sitting was not actual and physical, at least he had his name
on the rosters of committees, scores of them. He benevolently allowed
students to use the pedagogical library which Miss Nimrock had
collected, and he supervised the publication of three pamphlets prepared
by university instructors who had concluded, after examining all the
figures issued by the state governments, that teachers could be better
paid and better heated. This was called Research.

He was fond of these pamphlets, because whenever his accounts looked a
little confused, he could always put down "printing and promotion" as an
item of expense.

The publication of the Foundation that he really pushed was that more
popular and chatty volume _New Light in the Red Schoolhouse_, published
two years before (cloth-bound, illus. & map, $1.65, discount in
quants.). By the happiest of coincidences, it had been written by Mr.
Hamilton Frisby, trustee of the Heskett estate, and contained his signed
portrait as frontispiece. The use of this book enabled village-born
philanthropists to benefit their native states and get proper credit for
generosity (and perhaps show up their old boyhood friends who had stayed
home). If they purchased it in lots of one hundred, their names, as
donors, would be stamped on the cover in purest gold, and the books sent
to any list they desired, along with a beautiful form letter, with the
Heskett Rural School Foundation heading and signed by Dr. Planish--or
anyway, by Dr. Planish's secretary--or anyway, signed--stating that Mr.
M (or N) was a fine gentleman, nationally known for his large heart,
great wealth and intellect, and now weren't they sorry they'd laughed at
him when he was a boy!

This official letter was Dr. Planish's addition to the soulless routine
which Miss Nimrock had used in selling _New Light in the Red
Schoolhouse_, and it doubled the output of this spiritual item in six
months.

It was indeed chiefly as a literary man that Dr. Planish markedly
improved upon Miss Nimrock. He gave no larger financial grants for
school-garden contests, but he increased fourfold the number of letters
of advice sent out monthly to rural educators: advice on whether
blackboards should be greenboards or blueboards, advice on reading
poetry, advice on the established code for school janitors. He sat
dictating oracles all day long, stopping only to steal his information
from the publications of Columbia University, the Carnegie Foundation
and the Association for Adult Education.

He was spectacular in giving interviews, in what he called "the
application of modern high-pressure publicity technique to the ancient
causes of learning and righteousness." Weekly he sent out to the press
Human Interest Stories about six students in Wyoming, average age 11.7,
banding to study atonal harmony, or an Oxford graduate, frequently
sober, teaching in the mountains, or Lafayette Heskett's one-man
knitting show, or Mr. Hamilton Frisby breeding Hereford cattle, or Mrs.
Hamilton Frisby purchasing the pearls of the Grand Duchess Tilly, or
Master Hamilton Frisby, Jr., inventing a glider.

As a literary man, Dr. Planish also composed the Heskett Foundation's
first aggressive series of fund-soliciting letters. Mr. Frisby insisted
that the Foundation had enough funds so that it was not worth the bother
"to circularize a lot of fourflushers that you couldn't pry a sawbuck
loose from with dynamite," but Dr. Planish saw it more professionally,
with the eye of vision and of the Future.

The Biblical virtue of philanthropy was in this era turning into
something far nobler than the impulsive handing out of a quarter. It was
no longer emotion and friendliness, but Social Engineering, Planned
Giving, with a purpose and a technique; it was Big Business, as big and
busy as General Motors, but with God for executive vice-president. Dr.
Planish saw that today the Good Samaritan wouldn't do anything so silly
and unsanitary as to pick up a man who had fallen among hit-run drivers.
According to every rule of First Aid, the silly suburbanite might have
killed the poor fellow by moving him. Today, the Samaritan would
telephone to the nearest hospital and say, "Take care of him, and when I
come again, I shall increase my subscription to your nationwide chain of
hospitals, now headed by that great Organization Executive, Dr. Gideon
Planish."

Thus dreamed the Doctor, tender heart and powerful brain running strong
and true, as he took his daily nap among the steel filing cabinets in
his office.

All this colonization of hospitals was as yet merely in his prophetic
vision. Not for some time yet would Organized Philanthropy rank eighth
among the major industries of the United States. But already Dr. Planish
could foresee a wedding of generosity and efficiency which would make
the Crusades look like a bonus march, and perceive that it was going to
be valuable for a scholar with a wife and child to be stationed close to
this waxing flood of gold.

He saw himself dedicated now to the new life of service; in labors more
abundant, in conferences above measure, on committees more frequent, in
journeyings often, in long-distance telephoning often, in hunger and
thirst at unpalatable public dinners, in cold audiences and nakedness of
meaning--and he was not afraid, and gloried of the things that concerned
his infirmities.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Despite Frisby's doubting, Dr. Planish prepared a new letter of
solicitation for the H.R.S.F.


    HESKETT RURAL SCHOOL FOUNDATION

    _11872 Royal George Avenue_

    CHICAGO

    _Chairman_:
    CHRISTIAN STERN, D.D., Ph.D.

    _President_:
    JAMES SEVERANCE KITTO, S.T.D.

    _Vice-Presidents and Directors_:
    HAMILTON FRISBY, B.A.
    GEORGE L. RIOT, Ph.D.
    ALWIN WILCOX, M.A., M.D.
    J. AUSTIN BULL, M.A., D.D.
    JESSE VEITH, PH.D.
    NATALIA HOCHBERG, B.A., L.H.D.
    H. SANDERSON SANDERSON-SMITH
    CONSTANTINE KELLY
    HENRY CASLON KEVERN, A.B.
    J. COSLETT DOWNS, Ph.D.

    _Managing Secretary_:
    GIDEON PLANISH, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

    J. T. Niminy, Esq.,
    3756 Wynadotte Ave.,
    Marquette, Ind.


    Dear Friend of Education:

    This letter isn't for you. We know from our huge files that you
    are sound on the subject of rural education; you realize that
    unless our country schools are just as well staffed and supplied
    as the snootiest city private school, there is no hope for our
    beloved America in its race against world anarchy.

    But you have a friend who believes just as you and I do, but
    doesn't know about the HESKETT RURAL SCHOOL FOUNDATION. He doesn't
    realize that if he will take a mere $10.00 a year from his cigar
    money, he can make that sum do $1000 worth of imperative national
    good--and make him a proud Contributing Member of the H.R.S.F.

    He'll get all our publications free, with the privilege of
    attending our Conferences and hearing the biggest men of the
    nation explain the solution of all rural problems. And you, dear
    Defender of Education, will be doing the greatest good to the
    country by telephoning to that Unknown Friend of Ours and giving
    him our address and greetings.

    WE can't locate your friend--YOU CAN! While you're reading this,
    why not lift the receiver and call his number and tell him--RIGHT
    THIS MINUTE!--we want to send him, FREE, the four-color booklet
    "OUR SECRET SHAME."

    Cordially yours,

    Gideon Planish, Ph.D.

    Managing Secretary.


This letter was sent not only to all members of the Foundation, but to
all persons who had promisingly inquired about its work, and later sent
to a general list. Dr. Kitto thought it a rather shocking letter, and
Mr. Frisby thought it funny. But, in the technical term, it "pulled."
With the passion for exactitude and flapping charts which is part of the
New Scientific Philanthropy, Dr. Planish calculated that it cost ten
cents to send out the letter, including stationery, postage,
mimeographing, filling in, the booklet, overhead, and purchasing lists
of persons known to have been philanthropic--which were rather coarsely
known as "sucker lists," and which were sold commercially, like
fly-paper. As the professional saviors put it, "If one per cent of the
prospects on the sucker list kick through, the cost of the campaign is
covered."

To the gratification of the Doctor's love for beautiful letters, 1.37%
of his prospects did "kick through," and showed their devotion to
education by taking out Foundation memberships.

Even Mr. Frisby was impressed. Dr. Planish had been truly ordained as a
priest of Scientific Philanthropy.

And as for the pamphlet _Our Secret Shame_ which was sent out to
prospects--that was Bernardine Nimrock's old tract, _Statistics on
Salaries and Attendance in District Schools_, with a new cover on it.




CHAPTER 18


It was not the success of his circular so much as his genius in
foreseeing the stock-market crash of October, 1929, that brought Dr.
Planish to the acute personal attention of Mr. Hamilton Frisby.

All that summer and early fall, America had been speculating on a
soaring market. Kitchen girls had made five thousand dollars, managing
editors of newspapers had made a million--all on paper, which meant that
they left their suppositious profits to double, triple, increase a
hundredfold.

But the Planishes, the gamblers with life, for once were not gambling.
It was Peony's doing. She had pinned the Doctor in a corner and given an
order: "You're not to buy one share of stock, on margin or any other
way. We're more broke than ever. If we invested, we'd have to borrow
some more money, and we mustn't do that. Never. It's a matter of
principle---- Besides, there's nobody we can borrow from. Dad turned me
down!"

This was a new Peony, much firmer than any he had known. She was a
little frightened by the stretching, paw-curling indifference of the
great cat, Chicago. And they had not met any of the magnificos with whom
she had expected to dine and dance. They knew only a couple of dentists,
a couple of liberal pastors, an insurance broker, an instructor from
Northwestern, some minor philanthropists and a graduate student in the
University of Chicago. Peony was in a constant frenzy of being calm and
economical, and she announced to the Doctor, though pleasantly, that she
wasn't interested in one thing except the price of onions and the fact
that Carrie, in public-school kindergarten, had an Italian "boy friend,"
aged seven, who gave her green lollipops.

The Doctor dared not deceive her and make investments secretly, though
his obedience was grievous to him, because he was certain, after looking
glassily at the stock-market pages of the papers every day, that he
could easily make a million. Indeed one day he made, on two sheets of
quite inexpensive yellow scratch-paper, $7,880 clear, though
hypothetical. He was keeping up his brief lecture tours, but Peony made
him turn over every check, and she banked it, with no more extravagances
than a weekly bottle of vodka.

Now in that day and among the people he knew, you had either to invest
frantically, throwing in the laundry money and Aunty Emma's $100 legacy,
or be willful and prophesy disaster. If you did the latter, it was
believed that you lacked faith in the Pilgrim Fathers, and were either a
drug-user or a dog-poisoner. But Dr. Planish was trained to dazzle
audiences with words that sounded bold, no matter what they meant, and
he brazened out his unpatriotic shame.

The Reverend James Severance Kitto, S.T.D., said to him, "Doctor, as you
know, I entirely disapprove of gambling, but the present Wave of
Prosperity shouldn't be called gambling; it's more a rising tide of
democracy, and I rather think anybody who doesn't take advantage of it
is failing to show his trust in American Institutions. I'm two hundred
thousand ahead of the game--at least on paper--and I can give you a
straight tip on a wallboard stock that will double in the next month."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but I think the market is going to crash," said Dr.
Planish.

Dr. Kitto looked at him as at one who had slapped the baby.

Mr. Hamilton Frisby said, "Planish, I've got a tip on a radio stock for
you. Quadruple in a week."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Frisby, but there's something phony about this bull
market."

"Oh, you think so, do you! Well, let me tell you that I'm two million
bucks ahead right now--on paper, but I could cash in tomorrow. And I'm a
director of two banks, and supposed to be able to find my way down State
Street without a Seeing-Eye Dog!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Early in November, when all the paper that those profits had been on
blew up the chimney, blazing, both Dr. Kitto and Mr. Frisby telephoned
to him, in the tones of men just out of the hospital, and timidly asked
how he had known the disaster was coming. For weeks afterward, he found
himself everywhere revered as a wizard in finance, the one art that
transcended theology and music, as really meaning something. His
acquaintances begged, "Give us the lowdown, Doctor. When the next big
bull market comes, say couple months from now, I don't want to make the
same mistakes I must've made this last time."

The world got progressively more suicidal, and many supporters of
national organizations went bankrupt. But the Heskett Fund could still
support Dr. Planish's good works, and he was out of debt, and felt
superior as an Angora cat.

In December he was invited by Hamilton Frisby to go down to a
shooting-box in Louisiana.

His fellow guests were Frisby's old intimates, Dr. Alwyn Wilcox, the
surgeon, and Jesse Veith, the investment counselor, who had so
brilliantly guided his clients through the boom and the crash that he
himself had not gone bankrupt. Frisby had taken two drawing-rooms on the
southern train for them. Dr. Planish happily noted that he was
apparently not expected to spend any money, and he liked this touch of
high life.

In one of the drawing-rooms, they opened up on him as soon as the train
had started and they had poured out the first of the illicit drinks.

"Planish, now there's just us girls here and we've all taken our hair
down, tell us: what inside dope did you have on the stock market?" said
Frisby, with the awful geniality of a detective being chummy with a
murder suspect.

The other men bent toward the Doctor like two older and tougher
detectives.

"I didn't really know anything special. I just figured it out, as a
mathematician would."

"You a mathematician, Doc?" said Jesse Veith.

"It's one of the branches I specialized in--sort of," beamed Dr.
Planish.

"Tell me how much the cotangent of the ellipse of the cube root of seven
is."

"Oh, shut up!" Frisby remarked to Veith. Dr. Wilcox did not look much
amused.

Then Dr. Planish knew where he was, realized what memory it was that he
had been trying to tag. "I certainly have been here before!" he
shuddered. These three rich men were the bulky, silent, sardonic
football players who used to terrify him in freshman year at college,
squatting around him with this same placid and beefy intention of taking
him to pieces to find out why he was so earnest and funny.

Frisby was purring on, "What did Marduc tell you?"

"Marduc?" Dr. Planish was puzzled.

"You mean to pretend you don't know him?"

"I don't believe I do."

"Colonel Charles B. Marduc, the big New York advertising man and
publisher--Marduc & Syco?"

"Oh, yes. I think he's sent us a sizable contribution. But I've never
met him. What would he know?"

"That man's a buddy of all the billionaires, and somebody has told me
that you saw him when he was in Chicago, a couple months ago."

"No, I didn't. Never met him."

Veith snorted at Frisby, "I told you so. This Planish guy hasn't got any
more of the lowdown than----"

"Than an investment counselor!" suggested Dr. Wilcox.

"Oh, shut up. Let's play a little bridge," said Veith.

Mr. Frisby brought out the cards, very silently.

For all of that horrible week-end, during which they did three hours of
card-playing and drinking to one hour of hunting, Dr. Planish felt that
he was endured only because they had to have a fourth at bridge. When he
pumped up something neat to say, they ignored it. Over against their
pretentious laced boots and plaid Mackinaws, in his old gray suit and
khaki shirt he felt over-refined and over-fussy.

During every hour of this rich-man's vacation, he longed to take the
money and power away from this gang of bullies, and give it to Peony.

On the train back to Chicago, Frisby led Dr. Planish aside, looking as
though he must have met him before some place.

"Doc, you seem to me a very confused person," said Frisby.

"How's that?"

"Maybe I ought to tell you the facts of life about the Heskett
Foundation, and most other philanthropic foundations--not all of them,
but a good share. You're supposed to be a professional organizator----"

"A what?"

"Fellow that makes his living by running an uplift organization; a
professional at begging for money to use in publicizing the statement
that when the world becomes civilized, two plus two will equal four. An
organizator. He's the fellow that starts a society first, and then looks
around for a purpose for the society afterward. And the rich suckers
that give him the money, either to soften their own consciences or to
climb socially by associating with Vanderbilts on committees, or to show
off, or once in a while even because they think that a social club
chartered to befriend Liberia may really help the Liberians--these
come-ons I always call the _philanthrobbers_.

"But Old Man Heskett was no philanthrobber, and neither were quite a few
of the other moguls that set up Foundations. Here's their idea: With the
increase in taxes, especially this damn income tax and supertax, a man
can't afford to have too much income. And yet he wants to keep control
of the big corporations in which he owns a majority of stock. So he
places a big block of it in a Philanthropic Institution, in a trust
fund--he doesn't get the interest, but he doesn't have to pay any
pyramiding taxes, and he or his agents--that's me, for the
Hesketts--hold the voting proxies on the donated stock, and control the
corporation as much as before.

"They don't care what the Foundation income is spent for, as long as
their name gets whitened--and how many coats of whitewash it does take,
sometimes! A man that slashed a billion acres of timber buys the
reputation for loving the trees and birdies. And Heskett was a pretty
typical case. He made his dough by bankrupting small businesses through
lowering competitive prices, and he got so rich that he had to turn
philanthropic--that's a lot showier sign of great wealth than any
nonsense like buying yachts or titles. Then he had a second reason for
protecting his financial controls. His children and his nieces and his
nephews are idiots--all of 'em. One sculps and one married a Communist
and one lives on an island called Lesbos. Heskett hated 'em all, and he
put his boodle into two trust funds, of which the Heskett Foundation is
one, and made me trustee of both, because I am, somewhat to my own
surprise, comparatively honest.

"Now I advise you, as a simple-hearted organizator, to blow in as much
of the Foundation income as you want to. Even with this stock-market
crash, there's twice as much as you've been spending. Go ahead--do
anything that will advertise the grand old pioneer name of Heskett. Only
don't forget that I still audit the books."

Dr. Planish felt shy but desperate. "Then how about raising my own
salary? I could use it."

"Certainly not. It's much more likely to get lowered, if this depression
gets bad enough. You have some reputation--not much, but you have been
dean of a hayloft college, and a lecturer--but how would it adorn the
sacred Family Name to pay you more than rock-bottom wages? You talk
about economics, Planish. Be realistic!"

Dr. Planish sat and hated him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Peony cried, as he came in, "Did you have a lovely time, Gidjums?"

"Oh, yes, sure--you know--hunting. And bridge."

"Do you think I'd like Dr. Wilcox and Mr. Veith?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't! Listen, Peony, let's not make any special effort
to work up a circle of friends here in Chicago. I have a hunch we'll be
able to hit New York before _too_ long."

"Swell!" said Peony.

Dr. Planish was sitting in his office on the Friday before Christmas,
filing his nails and thinking that it would be nice to write a
book--maybe about the use of radio in schools--and hating Hamilton
Frisby.

His secretary brought in the card of the Midwestern representative of a
new schoolbook factory, one Mrs. Eaglestopper, a shiny woman. She said,
in coloratura, "Dr. Planish, you mentioned our series of school readers
once, at a teachers' convention."

"I'm afraid they're not very good."

"Oh, now, _you_!" She looked coy. "That's because you haven't examined
them closely enough. I want you to take a real good look at them, and at
our new series of geographies--they're written by such a fine university
scholar who's also a champion swimmer! I'm going to send you all of
them."

"I'm afraid I'm pretty busy----"

"Why, Dr. Planish!" She was prettily shocked. "We wouldn't _dream_ of
asking you to bother with them, we know what demands there are on your
time, without compensating you. Here's a--nice Christmas present!"

He peeped into the envelope she had handed to him. He lost his presence
of organizational mind. "Are you trying to bribe me?" he snorted.

She rose. "My dear man, I most certainly am not! We just want you to
appraise the books, and we know there's no scholar in America whose time
is worth more. If you do like them--you're the judge--then you might
care to mention them in your Foundation literature and your lectures.
Otherwise, distinctly not--dis_tinct_ly! Good-bye and merry Christmas,
and give my love to your wife. I hear she's the sweetest and smartest
woman in Chicago. Let me know anything I can do."

Out of the envelope he fished two hundred-dollar certificates. They
looked as different from dull-green five-dollar notes as blessed light
from dubious darkness. The fat ciphers did go on and on so cheerfully
after the digits. He took them home, to discuss with Peony the
legitimacy of accepting them.

"Anything you can put over on that bullfrog Frisby is proper," she said;
and, "This just about fixes up my Christmas problem. Now I can get you
something that I've been longing all week to give you--a cedar
blanket-chest, bound with the loveliest ornamental brasswork that you
ever laid an eye on, going for a hundred dollars--just giving it away.
It would just _make_ this hallway, don't you think so? Or am I being a
teeny mite extravagant?"

"Anything you do is always all right with me," he said.

Carrie trotted in. Peony knelt beside her and gurgled, "Oh, baby,
Mammy's going to get the loveliest new cedar chest!"

"Why?" said Carrie.




CHAPTER 19


In any national organization, the persons whose names are listed down
the lefthand side of the stationery, the persons who are supposed to
love the organization and guarantee it and work daily for it--these old
friends are sometimes labeled the Directors, sometimes the Trustees, the
Sponsors, the Advisory Board, the State Chairmen, the Honorary
Vice-Chairmen, the National Committee, the General Committee or the
Central Committee.

In the T.A.F.A.R.P., these apostles were called the Trustees, and in
January, 1930, Dr. Planish was elected a trustee of that
association--the True American Federation to Attack Racial Prejudice.
With the suspiciousness of one who has now lost his philanthropic
innocence, he skimmed over the names of his fellow trustees and even
that of the treasurer--the president of an insurance company--knowing
that they would all be the familiar bunch of Signers, and he looked
sharply at the name of the executive secretary (or, technically, the
Works). He approved. The Works was Professor Goetz Buchwald, of the
psychology department of Erasmus College, on leave of absence--a leave
that had now lasted for seven years.

Buchwald really was an honest and earnest man. He had read all the
books, and he hated the oppressors of the Chinese, the Negroes, the
Slovenes, as much as he hated the oppressors of the Jews. He spoke
vigorously, but he was equally vigorous with scissors and typewriter. He
nudged the press about hundreds of small incidents of tyranny or
prejudice. A good man and a good organization, felt Dr. Planish. There
were only two things wrong about it: Buchwald would keep on calling
himself Professor, letting his staff and the newspapers call him
Professor, being introduced at public meetings as Professor, though he
had stopped professoring years ago.

No, felt Dr. Planish. In a democratic world like this, where we rebel
against all such artificial distinctions as titles, a man ought simply
to be called Doctor.

The other flaw in the True Americans was that they had never yet been
able to convince anybody who was not already convinced. But that, argued
Dr. Planish, with the greatest fairness, was scarcely their fault, since
it was also true of ninety-seven per cent of all national
organizations--practically all of them except his own. And maybe it
overlapped the work of a few dozen other bodies, but then, insisted Dr.
Planish--but _then_!

He respected the officers of the True Americans: Natalia Hochberg, the
general secretary; Bishop Albertus Pindyck, of the Catholic or more
acrobatic wing of the Episcopal Church; Dr. Christian Stern; Monsignor
Nicodemus Lowell Fish, Ph.D., known as "the apostle to the Yankees"; and
Rabbi Emile Lichtenselig. When he was invited to attend the annual
conference of the T.A.F.A.R.P. in New York, in April, he was delighted.
He felt that here he would be stimulated, and meet the better minds.

Besides, Peony wanted to see the Empire State Building.

She did, and she smelled the ocean and the roast chestnuts. She moaned,
"Oh, lover, it looks--it looks like New York!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

There is a particular flavor to Celebrities, to people who have their
names in the papers and who expect to be recognized on the street. Most
of them will, within a year or two, slide back into the pit of anonymity
whence they scrambled, and that will either make them human again or, in
their resentment, destroy them utterly, for a Celebrity who has lost
celebrity is the emptiest of God's curios. But a few of them will remain
notorious till the hour when respectful ears reach for their
unintelligible dying words, and the majority of these regulars will
cease entirely to be human beings. They will be overly cordial or
preposterously peeved; they will be irritable when reporters bother them
at the train-gates and hysterical when no reporters show up at all; they
will shake the hand, chirp the good morning, willingly give the
autograph, leeringly pose the picture, and say a few nice words about
soy beans or the football team.

There are also adhesive persons who are unlikely to become Celebrities
themselves, but who relish the stir and smell and incessantly clattering
noise of the rotogravure Olympus, just as merchants may enjoy being
volunteer firemen, or elderly ladies like watching dog fights.

Of all Celebrity fans none was livelier than Peony Planish, and when the
delegates to the convocation of the True American Federation to Attack
Racial Prejudice met in the elegant lobby of Terpsichore Hall, in New
York City, she could enjoy her mania at its highest. On view were Bishop
Pindyck, Msgr. Fish, Dr. Christian Stern, Professor Buchwald, United
States Senator Felix Bultitude, General Gong, who was not only a general
but an army general, not a real-estate or newspaper general, Captain
Heth Gishorn, the distinguished explorer, Dr. Procopus, who was so
famous a psychiatrist that the Freudians took time out to hate him,
Judge Vandewart, Henry Caslon Kevern, rated at twenty million, and a
genuine but social-minded actress--Ramona Tundra, the movie star. Not
only that, but there was a title of nobility, the first that Peony or
Dr. Planish had ever tasted, the Principessa Ca' D'Oro, a real princess
though she just happened to have been born a Miss Togg of Arkansas.

She wrote social columns.

But, nobler than nobility, bluer of jaw than the principessa was blue of
blood, was Colonel Charles B. Marduc, deity among advertising agents,
owner of a dozen magazines, major on the Western Front in World War I
and now colonel in the National Guard; a man of fifty, sleek as a
greyhound but burly as a mastiff, with a planned graying mustache
against a cherry face.

Dr. Planish quivered, "That's Marduc, the fellow Ham Frisby admires so
much," and Peony answered, "And could I go for him! I'm going to wriggle
over and talk to him."

But Colonel Marduc, after shaking only the whitest and plumpest of the
assembled hands, slipped away, and the Planishes forgot him, for coming
toward them, hands out, was their friend Professor George Riot.

"One drink and one drink and one drink makes sixteen drinks, hurray,"
said Professor Riot, a little later.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dr. Planish wanted to know how these authentic Top Men talked, that he
might do likewise.

He was sorry to find (he reported to Peony and George Riot) that they
didn't seem to talk much about saving mankind. Chiefly, they all said,
with slightly different vocabularies, that they had lost their shirts in
the crash.

But Dr. Planish did see that only in New York could you adequately keep
a national philanthropic organization. Where else could you count on
generals and principessas and stars and Marducs and bishops of every
brand from Roman Catholic through Methodist to Pentecostal Abyssinian?

He devoted himself to the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern; he even attended
services at the reverend's Universalist Byzantine basilica--the first
time he had gone to church, except twice at Dr. Kitto's, in a year. He
got himself and Peony invited to the parsonage for tea, and told Dr.
Stern that it was a shame the Heskett Foundation was not situate in New
York, in proximity to Dr. Stern's spiritual guidance, to give pious
publicity to him instead of to those selfish and violent men, Kitto and
Frisby.

Dr. Stern agreed with an enthusiasm that was good to see in such a busy
man of affairs. His imagination trembled. Yes! If they had the
Foundation here, he'd be willing, as chairman of its executive board, to
have an office in its quarters, and to combine its work with his other
activities, to the greater glory of God and the little red schoolhouse.
Yes! If Dr. Planish would circulate around and find other Heskett
directors of like mind, he would be glad to talk to them at the annual
conference in Chicago, next summer.

So Dr. Planish informed Peony that she could get ready to move, that the
Heskett Foundation would be established in one of the taller and more
gaudy midtown skyscrapers in New York, that he would undoubtedly be
getting a salary of ten thousand a year, and that the way he saw it in
his new position, if she and George Riot didn't quit horsing around
Greenwich Village joints and drinking rotgut, he'd--he'd get
uninhibited.

To all of this the Doctor's wife murmured, "That's just lovely, Pan."

She was so absorbed in New York that it seemed to her but natural that
they should be moving here. She spent hours at the windows of Fifth
Avenue jewelers and perfumers and furriers, which, trying to deny that
their better customers were now ruined, were brilliant as they never had
been, with jet and crystal and gold and cocky little signs in French.

But this time she had not gone shopping-mad. She had not bought one
dress, one footstool for their flat--one steel-point ring. No, she had
merely found a basement lingerie shop conducted by the most beautiful
Hungarian countess, who had had misfortunes and had smuggled her silks
and laces through without paying duty. They were so cheap that they did
not constitute shopping but really an investment, and----

Anyway, Dr. Planish paid for them perfectly easily by merely omitting
the next few installments on the radio and on most of their other
possessions.

With a thoroughness that one was surprised to find in her young and
smiling head, Peony examined New York like a housewife buying melons.
She saw the Episcopal cathedral, the Catholic cathedral, the Rockefeller
uptown cathedral, a burlesque show, a Chinese restaurant, a Roumanian
restaurant, a Hindoo restaurant, an Oletime Sunny South restaurant, one
gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George Jean Nathan. It
was her one purpose now to conquer New York and make it recognize her
and her husband and her baby.

If she could make this spiritual triumph, she said, she would for all
time be willing to put up with a maximum spending-reservoir of forty
thousand dollars a year.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the quality of the entertainment given to the T.A.F.A.R.P. delegates
as much as in the solemnity of their discussion panels, the more shining
life was demonstrated. The final public dinner, at the Waldorf-Astoria,
had a much larger percentage of tail-coats and of necklaces rising and
falling on the tide of plump powdered bosoms than the Planishes had ever
seen in Chicago, and the chief speaker was no clergyman nor professor,
but Colonel Charles B. Marduc himself.

The Planishes and George Riot, way over at Table D 17, could only look
from afar upon his glory. Standing up there at the speakers' table on
the dais, his graying brown mustache a handsome streak across his beefy
cheeks, the Colonel looked like God arising from His throne and twirling
His eyeglasses.

He began, "Friends and Honored Chairman and Your Right Reverence, I
cannot speak to you as a profound scholar, like my friend Professor
Buchwald, but only as a blunt soldier and merchant."

Off among the second-string Celebrities, among the Intellectuals whose
lecture fee was not over two hundred dollars, Peony whispered to George
Riot, "I'll bet he's just as darn profound a scholar as anybody in the
room, at that. All those ads his agency gets out about glands and
refrigerators."

Dr. Planish inquired, "How big _is_ his agency?"

Dr. Riot said reverently, "Well, Marduc & Syco is one of the Big Four.
The Colonel is supposed to have something like five million tucked
away."

Dr. Planish sighed, "He looks like a fellow it would be nice to know!"

"Hush, you boys! I want to hear what the Colonel said to Pershing,"
commanded Peony.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Besides the dinner, the delegates received, in the most luxurious and
Manhattan manner, a reception at the apartment of Dr. Procopus, on Park
Avenue, and Peony knew finally that New York is not so much a city as a
state of bliss.

They never did understand the role of Dr. Procopus. He was called a
psychiatrist; he was supposed to teach women how to endure rich
husbands; but beyond this, he seemed to be the midwife for every
intellectual movement in town. He was always introducing authors to
radio executives, and politicians to managing editors, and Austrian
bankers to American bankers, and pretty wives to doctors who knew
somebody who knew the address of an abortionist. His apartment had
twelve rooms, each as large as the Planishes' cottage in Kinnikinick,
and all of them splashed with the signed photographs of opera singers.

It was here that Peony conceived an innocent passion for Captain Heth
Gishorn, the explorer. He was English and trim and monocled and he had
been in Celebes, which impressed Peony, though she never could remember
whether that was an island or a state of matrimony. He kissed her hand
and brought her a pink cocktail.

"You boys never will have the _savoir-faire_ of that monkey," said Peony
to George Riot.

"Nonsense! He's a powder-puff!" protested George. "If you fall for
anybody, you fall for either Gid or me."

"Yes, and you can go farther than that, Peony--you can fall for just
half that number!" raged Dr. Planish. He glared, then remembered that
George was his only friend in this staggering world of twelve-room
apartments and explorers and colonels who were millionaires.

He longed to be sitting with his classmate Hatch Hewitt in a beer
saloon.... Peony, Hatch, George Riot, his daughter Carrie--had he
anybody else in the world to rest with?... He was dimly glad that
Peony and George would probably never go farther than a finger-tip of
flirtation.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Behind all this intellectual shimmer, Dr. Planish was busy mustering
directors of the Heskett Foundation to support him in the plan to move
the Foundation to New York. He got promises of backing from George Riot,
Mrs. Hochberg, and a newly elected director, a fine, manly New York
clergyman named Dr. Elmer Gantry.

Dr. Gantry was perhaps the best known of Manhattan radio pastors. It was
said that he had studied at Harvard and in Germany, but there was a
folksy quality about his regular daily broadcast, "Love Is the Morning
Star," that won him a million far-flung auditors, particularly shut-ins,
and had brought him no less a sponsor than Phosphorated Chewing Gum. He
had an audience, too, in his church, but the experts noted that there
was something about Dr. Gantry that exactly suited the radio.

But even with this encouragement from the more powerful directors, Dr.
Planish kept from tackling Hamilton Frisby about the hegira till May,
two weeks after his return to Chicago. Before the scene, he studied all
the possible interpretations of his role: the tender and sensitive, the
manly and courageous, the aloof and slightly amused, then decided upon
the brusque man of business. In that mood he played to Frisby:

"Been making a lot of investigation and looking into things pretty
sharply. We mustn't be prejudiced or sentimental. Much though I like
Chicago, for the sake of usefulness it's about time to move the
Foundation headquarters to the Atlantic Seaboard. Like the proverbial
homing pigeon!"

Frisby looked at him a long time. "Yes, I've been hearing from Chris
Stern. So Chris and you think you can take this racket away from me!
Planish, you're fired!"

"W--w----"

"Illegal? Of course it's illegal. But the directors eventually do what I
tell 'em. You won't be re-elected at the annual meeting. So you have
from now till summer to find a new job--if any, Planish, if any."

                 *        *        *        *        *

He stormed at the Reverend Dr. James Severance Kitto. He said that if
Dr. Kitto took orders from that poker-faced hijacker, Mr. Frisby, then
he was a slave and a hypocrite.

Dr. Kitto said it was a shame, it was indeed a--a--in fact, a shame.

And that was all that Dr. Kitto did say, there in his handsome pastoral
study with its portraits of Alexander Campbell and Calvin and Cotton
Mather.

His parsonage was a bulging, brick-fronted, semi-detached dwelling on a
respectable old residence street in Evanston. Dr. Planish looked at it
as he went back down the street. He stared at the window of Dr. Kitto's
study. The curtain was up a few inches, and he could see Dr. Kitto
thoughtfully scratch his chin, yawn, pick up the fresh evening paper,
open it, and with untroubled placidity begin to read the day's pleasant
toll of murders, traffic deaths, divorces and starvation. Dr. Kitto did
not even raise his eyes in reflection.

Dr. Planish stood looking up, and he knew then how dead men feel.




CHAPTER 20


The two of them sat down to dinner with Peony--the compulsory self that
told him he must speak up and get it over, let her know that he was
discharged, and the physical self that was so tired and timid it could
scarcely lift this burden of confession. Peony and the half-handed maid
had prepared a particularly elegant salad of avocado and hard-boiled egg
and cherries and a few other trifles that must have been Peony's own
idea, and the ridiculous salad became to him, brooding upon it, a tender
symbol of her, like a glove still bearing the warmth and heart line of
her hand.

When he spoke he dodged up a dozen alleys. He told her that he had gone
out to Evanston, and that Dr. Kitto certainly wore a toupee. While she
was giggling, "Let's throw him out of the Foundation," he was sharply
calculating that he had no notion whatever about a new job, that he must
be about $850 in debt, with some $375 in assets (he felt in his pocket
and concluded that maybe he could add another dollar), and that his
father-in-law had been pretty nasty about that last touch.

He said that the lawns in Evanston were full of daffodils, and she said:
that reminded her, they really must get busy and decide now where they
would go for summer vacation--Northern Michigan, Vermont, Battle Lake in
Minnesota?--and couldn't he take a couple of months off instead of
one?--it was a shame the way those old dodoes Kitto and Frisby bossed
him--couldn't he get rid of them?

The serenity in her voice relieved his hesitation.

He ended his confession with, "I guess I ought to be boiled in oil for
endangering you and the baby this way."

Just then Peony could have played the perfect American wife, could have
been sorry for herself and asked what good he was, if he couldn't take
better care of her than that. For a moment she sat with the volubility
of her smile checked. Then she laughed.

"It's a joke on me. Oh, toy-man, it's all my fault, being so
extravagant. Otherwise we could tell Frisby to go to hell and start off
for New York without worrying. Come slap baby's fingers for being such a
bad baby." He kissed her, in a rush of returning faith, and she cried,
"Listen, darling, I want you to write George Riot. He'll dig up
something temporary for you. And maybe this is the time when I ought to
tell you there's nothing between George and me."

"M?"

"You looked in New York like you thought there was something. But I love
you too much. My vice is more along the line of wanting to get ahead and
be Somebody. And we will. You watch us. This is just another break in
the market--prosperity is just around the corner for us--with bells on!
We'll hit New York so _hard_!"

"Wouldn't it maybe be better to ask Austy Bull for some kind of a
temporary college appointment while I try to make connections in New
York?"

"No, no! I couldn't stand even a month in Kinnikinick. Nobody there that
could even stand up to the top people, like Colonel Marduc and Senator
Bultitude. I despise Kinnikinick. The people are so provincial. Whatever
you can say about your bad little wife, you can't say she's provincial,
now can you!"

Apparently he couldn't.

"I'll tell you what. I'll make up for the financial hole I got you into.
We'll store the furniture, and I'll go back and live on Mr. Whipple K.
Jackson, Esquire, till you get a really swell position with a high-class
salary."

"I'd worry so about----"

"Don't you worry about my worrying! I know when I got a good thing. Say,
I'll bet if you'd been a preacher, you could have prayed circles around
Jim Kitto and Chris Stern--you'd have had God tuned in on you all the
time. And do _good_--why, say, I'll bet you've already done rural
education more good than William Jennings Bryan put together!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was mid-August, and the movers were lugging their furniture down to
the storage company van. Dr. Planish's eyes and throat bothered him as
he stood with his arm about Peony, watching the bumpy departure to
prison of their treasures: the adored new cedar chest, the gold and
scarlet Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the Chinese rug that they had
bought at Mabel Grove--they had been so young then!--the faded little
porcelain clock, the jade lamp, the friendly birch cabinet of the radio,
to whose music they had sometimes danced, they two alone, after
midnight, triumphant in new success.

And the black and silvery portable bar.

"Oh, do be careful of that!" quaked Peony to the movers. He could feel
her breast heaving under his fingertips. He thought that for the first
time she was afraid. Men who had had desks and office titles a year ago
were huddled on street corners now, selling apples. In what hot slums or
stripped and mortgaged homes were their wives and babies panting, he
wondered.

"I do hate to see that bar go into hock. We had some good times here,
and---- No, sir!" Peony stoutly interrupted herself. "When we get ready
to unveil that ole bar again, in New York, it'll be Bishop Pindyck and
Senator Bultitude that'll be lapping up my martinis, and not just these
Chicago profs and docs!"

For their last night in the flat, they had only their suitcases, a
cot-bed borrowed from the janitor for Carrie, and for themselves, a
mattress on the floor. The flat seemed by dusk not only empty but
menacingly large, as though nobody could ever fill its spaces again, and
they felt that they would never furnish out any dwelling again, never
sit softly and eat true meals and talk with friends. They were city
Okies.

They fled to a cafeteria for a late supper and then, with Carrie, aged
seven now, to a movie, to see the lovely Joan Crawford. They three
walked through the gasping summer streets--a respectable family, in some
sense a holy family, trudging and round and stuffed with food,
permanent-looking as the brownstone porticoes. But Dr. Planish stared at
a brick mansion turned boarding-house. Its curtains were torn and
filthy, and on the hot stoop was a man who might once have been a
professor, a doctor; a bent man with a beard much like his own, but
hacked and dirty. Dr. Planish shuddered.

As they marched, Carrie babbled, "Why are you going to New York,
Papa--why?"

"Hush, pimpernel," remarked Peony. "Papa has to go there on business."

"Why?"

"I said, on business."

"I wish he'd come home to Faribault with us. I hate the city," pondered
Carrie, and Peony said:

"Why?"

"It's got too many street cars and too many people."

"Don't you like people, babykins?"

"No, I don't think I like 'em. They talk so much. I like dandelions and
sailboats better."

                 *        *        *        *        *

With Carrie luxuriously asleep in the borrowed cot, Dr. Planish and
Peony sat low on the edge of their mattress, in the abandoned flat,
which was lit with one unshaded bulb. He blurted something that had been
forming in his mind all through the motion picture:

"I guess we're supposed to be good Christians, aren't we?"

"Sure-you-bet. Good Episcopolopians, anyway."

"Then I wonder if we couldn't turn to our religion for comfort. The
clergy insist that people do still turn to it. Let's--uh--let's think
about the Lord."

"Okay."

"He's, uh---- Hell, I wish we'd kept a Bible. We still got a Bible,
haven't we?"

"Sure you-bet. I saw it when I was packing the books and blankets."

"There's something in the Bible about--now what the devil is it----"

"Honestly, hero, I don't think you ought to say 'what the devil' when
you're talking about religion and God."

Dr. Planish looked at her with admiration for her good taste, and
fretted, "Maybe you're right. Anyway, this stuff--this verse, I mean--in
the Bible, I mean--it was in Proverbs--something about 'all was vanity
and there was no profit anywhere'."

"No, it's from Ecclesiastes. And I bet I can quote it."

"Really?" He looked with new admiration at this remarkable young woman.

"You bet your life I can. I was a Sunday-school teacher in Faribault,
and I was a corker, too, before I went to college and ran into all that
irreverence, and all the menaces to a girl's morals. Lessee. I almost
got it. Something like this:

"'I was great and I increased more than anybody that came before me in
Jerusalem, and also my wisdom did increase--no, remained with me. And
whatever mine eyes desired I did not keep from them, nor my heart from
any joy, and I looked upon all the works that my hands had done and
behold, all was vanity and--and vexation of spirit and there was no
profit under the sun.'

"Gee whiz, that doesn't sound so good for my side," Peony reflected.
"Looks like God was telling us, 'What's all this business about going to
New York? Go on back to Kinnikinick and stay there--blackmail the Prexy
and make him give you back a job.' Oh, no, He wouldn't tell us that,
would He, lover? He wouldn't, would He? Not _stay_! Tell me He
wouldn't!"

"Of course He wouldn't. You're His own best lamb."

"Well, I do think He might be a little more careful about His lamb and
her husband always being so broke all the time. I just can't understand
it."

"Yes, yes, sweetie, there may be something to that, but you must be more
serious if we're going to try out religion properly, and God knows, we
need religion or _something_!"

She whispered.

"Now, Peony, that's absolutely shocking!"

"Okay, I'll be a serious little God's little lamb. Why don't you try
praying?"

"How?"

"Christians _do_ pray, don't they?"

"Well, of course, Peony, in church and so on, but I mean to say----"

"Why not take a shot at it?"

"Very well, if you want me to. After all, I suppose I _am_ a true
believer--everybody must be that devotes himself to the service of
mankind, as I do, and so--so----"

He looked upward, longing to feel the veritable presence of God, to
experience a merciful omnipotence that would protect his beloved wife
and his surprising daughter and his own fading ambition to possess power
and glory.

But he could see nothing and feel nothing above him save the one spotty
electric bulb.

"O Lord, our God----"

The words were empty to him and without destination. He blurted, "I
can't do it. I don't believe that God, if there is one, is listening to
me. And I don't believe Kitto or Chris Stern really thinks God is
listening when they spout, so glib and intimate. I believe they'd be
scared to death if He actually spoke up and answered. Oh, baby, no way
out. You and I just got to depend on each other, against everything."

"Well, that's enough, isn't it? We're lucky!" she said blithely.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He was on the train to New York, and for the first time in his life he
was sitting up in a day-coach all night. Dinner would have cost a dollar
or more on the diner, so he had been picking at two chocolate
almond-bars for hours now, and he was pleased to find a couple of
tin-foil-covered crumbs in his pocket.

His seat-mate, a shifty-looking man, hinted, "How 'bout gettin' up a
game of poker?"

"No--no thanks--don't play."

"What's your racket, Brother? Schoolteaching or book agent?"

"Book agent."

"How 'bout me for a prospect?"

"No--no," drearily. "I'm off duty just now."

Mr. Planish, Mr. Gideon Planish, a jobless vagrant, had no desire to
sell books, to communicate ideas about rural education, or to abuse the
public for their lack of freedom, generosity in contributing to
philanthropy, and the far-flung greatest common denominator in the
implementing of ideological blue-prints for crises among the grass
roots.

He wanted to be let alone, he wanted to sleep, and he wanted to
contemplate blowing in an entire quarter for coffee and eggs at
breakfast in New York tomorrow morning.




CHAPTER 21


He found the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern of New York amiable but jumpy.

"Too bad the power that that vile man Frisby has in the Heskett
Foundation. I wish you'd been a little more cautious in jumping the gun
on him, but still, I know how he is. Now about another organizational
connection. Of course with the Depression on, things couldn't possibly
be worse. I know what sterling ideals and executive competence you have,
Dr. Planish. And oratory. But our best benefactors have been hit. All
jumping out of windows. Really touching. But I'll see what I can do."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Captain Heth Gishorn, the distinguished young explorer, was by birth an
Englishman but, like most of the English, he did not look very English.
He was smooth and solid and square, with a thick white skin which never
looked tanned, and he carried a monocle but used his spectacles.

His voice was caressing and unpleasant. He was given to double-breasted
blue jackets, which looked pressed even when they were wrinkled. And for
a man of action, who was presumably always leading caravans somewhere
with camels, he was surprisingly business-like, being the president,
executive secretary, and sole beneficiary of the Association to Promote
Eskimo Culture, Inc., New York City.

"Dr. Stern tells me that you are experienced in organizational
activities," Captain Gishorn said civilly, in his office.

"Oh, yes--yes." Dr. Planish put his fingertips together and tried to
look even more efficient than he was hungry. "Getting out circular
letters, both appeals for funds and morale-boosting; teaching the staff
to be cagy on the phone about whether the director is in or not, and to
distinguish, among callers, between mere cranks who just want to ask
questions, and real sympathizers that might come across with some money;
scholarly research on all subjects--there's always college instructors
with big families that are willing to work cheap and grub out the facts
at the library, and write acceptable articles for the director to sign,
or executive secretary, as the case may be; addressing assemblies,
especially of women, both in the drawing-room and in hotel ballroom
meetings; getting actors and pianists to make free appearances at large
rallies, and coaching the ushers to pass the pledge blanks at the right
signal; making the speakers, if politicians, pipe down at the proper
time; getting concessions and a fair price from hotel banquet
managers--I needn't tell you that if you charge the guests five dollars
for a philanthropic dinner, you don't know your business if you actually
pay the hotel one cent more than a dollar sixty-five, including dinner,
tips, hall and light, and that a really skilled man ought to get it for
one thirty-five, including after-dinner peppermints; going to lunch with
bankers and listening to whatever they have to say about a new bull
market; attending committee meetings and moving a vote of thanks and
keeping all speeches about the call to immediate action down to three
minutes; keeping lists of prospects right up to date as regards both
changed addresses, present financial standing, and susceptibility to
emotional appeal; how to address important people on the telephone;
wangling publicity in the newspapers and on the radio; making all
organization literature and interviews a nice mixture of optimism and
warnings about the menace to the American Way of Life----

"Yes, I think I may honestly say I know the whole routine of scientific
philanthropy, educational propaganda, the skilled encouragement of the
virtue of generosity, and the publicizing of all noble causes--such as
your promotion of culture and, I have no doubt, music among the Eskimos.
Yes."

Captain Gishorn shook his head. "Then, my dear fellow, I'm afraid you're
not the man I'm looking for."

"Oh?" said Dr. Planish, and thought about fried chicken, golden dripping
fried chicken, with giblets and candied sweet potatoes and corn
fritters.

"You're evidently a real leader in intellectual advancement, but in this
Eskimo racket, I do most of the oratory and committees myself. All I
need is a good man to answer important telephone calls and lunch with
the lesser donors and keep the circularization going. And I can pay only
thirty-five dollars a week."

"Make it forty. I'm broke."

"Sold!" said Captain Gishorn, who was very clever about languages, and
could speak American just as well as he could Persian or Swahili.

Dr. Planish went out to telegraph Peony that he had a job, that he loved
her and Carrie, and that he hoped to send for them before Christmas.

He did not tell her about his present salary, and he tried not to
remember that he was now getting only forty a week, as against
seventy-five at the Heskett Foundation plus tokens of gratitude from
school-supply firms. (He doubted if he could count on Eskimos to do much
with tokens of gratitude, no matter how he cultured them.)

He found, before October, that Captain Gishorn had not done by him as
one likes to be done in philanthropic circles. Actually, Dr. Planish had
to use all of the professional accomplishments that he had outlined, for
the Captain went off to explore Hollywood and Santa Barbara, and for
months he showed no interest in Eskimo Promotion except to receive the
weekly financial report and to draw out all moneys above office expenses
and salaries.

Oh, he was thoroughly gentlemanly about it; in his letters he never
complained of anything--just encouraged the Doctor to send out more
letters of solicitation and hold more small meetings of evangelization
and get more money out of all persons who could be encouraged to
"recognize, with head and heart, the plight of our Brothers to the North
in being as yet entirely divorced from the stream of international
comity."

Dr. Planish sometimes thought this was rather hard on the Scandinavian
missionaries in Greenland; he sometimes felt that he himself could do
with less comity and more cash.

He was not very comfortable, that autumn and winter of 1930--his
triumphal invasion of New York. He lived in a dollar-a-day hotel room in
the theatrical district, a room with an iron bed, two straight chairs, a
Gideon Bible, a cockroach splash on the wall, and the bathroom seven
doors down the hall.

His Eskimo Promotion office was not much more entertaining. It consisted
of an inner room with one shredded oak desk for himself and one handsome
green steel one for Captain Gishorn, letter files, prospect files,
abandoned overshoes and, on a shelf, a specially bound and
extra-illustrated seven-volume set of _The Mistresses of French Monarchs
and English Dukes_. There was also a windowless outer room, with the
desk of the half-pretty, half-young lady stenographer, Miss
Cantlebury--who was also the switchboard operator and reception
clerk--with four chairs for improbable visitors, Miss Cantlebury's
umbrella, and an extra-illustrated and specially bound nine-volume set
of _The Chronicles of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Expeditions of
Explorers, Fur Dealers, and Missionaries of All Creeds, from the
Earliest Times to A.D. 1799_.

Dr. Planish always felt that to read this tract would be of the greatest
help in understanding Eskimos and teaching them to build Diesel engines,
but he never seemed to have time to look into it.

The office was in a forgotten building down on Fourth Avenue, red brick
and six stories, with an elevator that shook and protested as it swayed
upward. It was handy to a saloon that through Prohibition kept on
serving the best free lunch in Manhattan. On the same floor with the
Eskimo office were the establishments of a chiropractor, an agent for
rubber accessories, a publisher of New Testaments so efficient that he
put up a good show even against the Bible Trust, an all-night
stenographer who knew things about people, and the head offices, which
were also the only offices, of the Swastika-Rhodesian Gold and Sapphire
Mines, whose floor space and general moral purposes strikingly resembled
those of the Association to Promote Eskimo Culture, Inc.

When he first took the job, Dr. Planish was fretted by his lack of
knowledge about the Eskimos. All he had ever been told was that they
lived in the North, in snow houses, and ate blubber. He planned to spend
all his evenings in the public library, reading about snow houses and
blubber.

At the end of the Doctor's second day in the office, which he had
devoted to reading the letter files and making notes about prospects,
especially rich widowers, Captain Gishorn rose from dictating letters to
Miss Cantlebury, and piped, "Carry on, old chap. I'm off to cocktails at
old Mrs. Piggott's."

He went off, very decorative with walking stick, white carnation, spats
and black Homburg hat.

Dr. Planish looked at Miss Cantlebury and sighed. She seemed faded but
companionable.

"Doctor, do you mind if I sit down and smoke a cigarette, now the Big
Noise has gone?" she said.

"Why, no. I'll share one with you."

She sat at the Captain's desk, read one or two of his love letters, and
murmured, "Look, Doctor. Let me know what I can do to get you started in
this racket. From long experience, I'd say you were probably a good guy.
Anything I can tip you off on?"

(He wondered whether once, as a young Rhetoric coach in a good line of
business, he would have ruled out sentences ending in or on an "off
on.")

"Yes, there is, Miss Cantlebury. Of course I know organizational work in
general, but I don't happen to have worked much with Eskimos. What are
the best books on the subject?"

"What would you want to read books for, in this joint?"

"Naturally, Captain Gishorn doesn't need to, but then he's studied the
Northern peoples first hand----"

"Listen, Doctor, there isn't any Santa Claus, and you're getting a big
boy now. Excuse me for getting tough, but I hate to see anybody taken
for a ride unless he's one of the contributors. Fact is, ever since his
boyhood in England, the only time Cap Gishorn ever spent in any country
north of Bangor, Maine, was one day in Nova Scotia and one in Iceland
and two days in Norway, on a Midnight Sun cruise in 1926. I guess he has
done some real exploring in Persia and Africa--I dunno. But all he's got
to tell the world about Eskimos is a great advertising slogan, 'If all
the Americas are to stand together--that means All!' Get it? The Eskimos
are our little cousins to the North, so we got to win 'em over to
supporting all our own moral principles and civilized customs--which
means Amos 'n' Andy and Tom Thumb golf courses and Sweetheart Soap and
flying two hundred miles an hour to places that the Eskimos got too much
native sense to want to see."

"What do we actually do to help the Eskimos?"

"Do? Honest, Doc, the Seven Dwarfs are dead. Well, we send six hundred
bucks a year to the First Day Antinomian Church Mission in Greenland,
and they furnish all the photos and reading matter that we send out.
They even sent us a full display kit--a kayak and a native harpoon and a
whale vertebra and the cutest little stuffed baby seal you ever saw. It
looks just like my nephew Irving. You'd be surprised the way the cynics
and tightwads loosen up for enlightening the Eskies when they notice the
pleading glass eyes in that baby seal. I damn near gave a quarter to it
myself once!

"So we hand the Antinomians the six hundred--what they do with it I
dunno--play rummy in the long Arctic nights, I guess. And that's all we
do do--except, of course, the real purpose of any organization: pay your
salary and mine and pay the rent, so you and I won't have to spend the
snowy days in the Grand Central waiting-room. What's left over, say
sixty-two per cent, goes to Captain Heth Gishorn for his carnation and
his girls and his Napoleon brandy.

"You got to hand it to the Captain. He's the only organization owner
that doesn't even pretend to do any good, except with the suckers. Most
gangs do at least give the poor children one turkey a year, or show up
one labor spy that the newspapers have already shown up, or give a
hundred-dollar scholarship to one poor college student, or send out one
house-broken lecturer. Not Cap Gishorn!

"There's just one other angle you got to know, so you'll quit worrying
about doing any reading, Doc. That's John Littlefish. He's our prize
exhibit. He's the native Eskimo that we civilized. I don't know what
John Littlefish's name is--I don't think John does either. And I don't
know whether he's a real Eskimo or maybe a Cree Indian. Some
missionaries brought him down here from the North twenty years ago, when
he was about five, and then they went broke and scrammed. Anyway, he
looks like an Eskimo--I guess--and these grunts that he makes when you
tickle him, I guess they sound like Eskimo, and so you have him sit on
the platform when you're making a big drive, and the Captain has taught
him an eighty-five-word speech about how he loves malted milk. The rest
of the time, he plays professional billiards in a joint on Avenue A."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Thus guided, the Doctor found compensations which made him rather fond
of the Eskimo Culture office. As Miss Cantlebury kept the books, he was
able to have his salary adjusted to sixty dollars a week without
bothering Captain Gishorn about it. He took a small new flat, far up in
the Bronx, and sent for Peony and Carrie before Christmas. But they
still left their furniture in Chicago.

One blessing of his Eskimo experiences was that among the contributors
he met William T. Knife, one of the most strident laymen in that
somewhat eccentric and quivering and fundamentalist sect, the Antinomian
Church. Mr. Knife was referred to in the denominational press as "the
humble millionaire who has applied the principles of St. Paul to his
private life and to the soft-drink business." He was also advertised as
"a self-educated man who speaks with the eloquence of Cicero or Dwight
Moody, and who writes with the power and beauty of Mary Baker Eddy or
Mark Twain."

This was probably true, for Mr. Knife always had the Christian humility
and business sense to hire the best press agents available as his ghost
writers. He gave to oratory and to prose poetry the same zeal that he
gave to the spread of temperance and of Okey-Dokey, which was next to
the largest-selling soft drink in the country in 1930, according to
statistics compiled, by the Enterprise Bureau of Industrial Comparisons,
from 11,749 drug stores, 780 pool parlors, 61 church suppers, and 1,126
speakeasies.

Under the personal direction of the Lord God Almighty, Mr. Knife had, as
a youth, weathered a cyclone of doubting. As he often told the Y.M.C.A.,
he had sometimes been tempted then to think that if you were traveling
and missed church for just one Sunday, God would not necessarily condemn
you to eternal roasting. But God pulled him up sharp, with a bad fit of
rheumatics, and he got down on his knees--to extreme discomfort--in the
waiting-room of the Highhack depot of the D.&R.G., and confessed what an
atheist he had been. He had never missed a Sunday since.

By the same divine personal chaperonage, he had come through the
1929-1930 panic a richer man than ever, for millions found it cheaper to
buy Okey-Dokey than soul-deadening whisky. And Okey-Dokey had just
enough caffein in it to be profitably habit-forming without doing any
provable harm.

Mr. Knife was, in 1930, one of the brightest contemporaries of the
Spanish Inquisition.

The liberal churches were turning into lecture halls, but in 1930--as
would later be true in 1940, and probably in 1960--the solid
Fundamentalists, who knew that God created the world in six days and has
spent His time since then in intensely disliking it, still held the true
faith unshaken. No matter how red the Neon lights glow on Main Street,
they cannot rival the horrid hellfire in the chapel of the Antinomians,
or the True New Reformed Tabernacle of the Penitent Saints of the
Assembly of God, or in most of the brick and gray stone Baptist and
Methodist churches that resemble railroad depots of 1890, and he that
knows not that encouraging fact has never been west or south of
Blawenburg. Halfway on in the twentieth century, one-quarter of America
knows all about splitting the atom, but the other three-quarters have
not yet heard the news about Darwin.

For several years now, Mr. William T. Knife had left his six powerful
sons to conduct his business while he skipped about the country, telling
giant meetings that (1) he was self-educated, but a lot smarter than
most Harvard graduates, (2) the superintendents always opened the
workday at his several factories with prayer, (3) union labor was no
good, simply no good at all, and (4) there wouldn't be all this
bellyaching about shorter hours and longer wages if the workers could be
coaxed to read the Bible--the one book that was inerrantly true from
kiver to kiver--instead of selfishly thinking about temporal things like
rent and the groceries.

The time had come, felt Mr. Knife, when the surprising miracle of his
own life should be graven in permanent form. When he met Dr. Gideon
Planish at an Eskimo Culture rally held by the Antinomians, he inquired
whether the good Doctor was a believing Fundamentalist who had family
prayers night and morning. When he discovered that that was just the
sort of pious fellow the Doctor was, he offered five thousand dollars to
have his first-person autobiography reverently ghosted.

Dr. Planish accepted, and moved his family to a boarding-house in Mt.
Vernon, New York, to be near Mr. Knife and his sacred labors. He kissed
Miss Cantlebury--for the first time--and resigned in a letter to Captain
Gishorn, who was then gallantly exploring the tennis courts at the
Arizona-Biltmore Hotel.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mr. Knife was against all the vain luxuries of wine-bibbers and
cocktail-bibbers. He said, "Why, I could buy and sell most of these
unchristian cusses that show off their yacht boats and polo hosses, but
Mrs. Knife and I believe in the Scriptural injunction to cleave to plain
living and high-class thinking, so we are content with this hermit's
hut. Oh, there's room here to exercise the sacred writ of hospitality,
but for ourselves, we ask only a corner and a crumb. Yes, we ask but
little. However! It's only sensible to have that little of the best."

The hermit's hut was a twenty-room Colonial manor house originally built
as the rural residence of a motion-picture producer. It had a two-acre
rose garden, and an eight-car garage--filled. Dr. Planish and Mr. Knife
worked in the putative hermit's library, a forty-foot room adorned with
sixteen feet from the library of the late Duke of Deephaven.

Before they started, Mr. Knife always said--always--"Doc, will you have
a cigar? In principle, I'm entirely against smoking--it is unchristian
and unnecessary--it makes me sick to see a gang of little punks puffing
at coffin nails--I know for a fact that all labor agitators smoke
cigarettes. But my doctor, a Christian man, advises me to take an
occasional cigar for the sake of my throat, and I thought it would be
healthiest to smoke Porcos y Toledos. I don't know anything about such
things, but I understand they are a good brand---- By God, they ought to
be! I pay six bits apiece for 'em, and show me one of these snobbish
high-society heels over in Bronxville that pays half that much!"

Mr. Knife walked up and down, scratching his lumpy nose and spitting in
any of the series of six cuspidors, each with a sparkling quotation from
Dr. Frank Buchman painted on it, as he outlined the personal anecdotes
and the theories of theology, metaphysics and soft-drink promotion on
which Dr. Planish took notes for the book. His proud humility enabled
him to be surprisingly frank.

"I'm like Oliver Cromwell. I want the portrait-painter, as I often tell
the boys at evangelical tent rallies and the girls at Ladies Only
meetings, to put in the warts as well as the unusual jaw and eyes.

"Yes, sir, this autobiography that I am writing is to be an humble
offering to God, who will not be deceived, so put down all the errors
and lusts I have committed--and have I committed some lusts in my time,
oh boy, I'll say I have!--put 'em in along with the souls I've saved and
the pile of dough I've made and the Antinomian chapels I've built--glory
be to God, who has been my faithful partner in business, through the
interposition of the Holy Ghost, and His be the praise and the profits!"

He shook out of the bag quite a few exemplary facts and tales.... His
nine servants all had to take a Bible test and a Wassermann test before
he hired them, and they had to attend family prayers.... He had once
converted a labor-union organizer who up to that date had gone about
like a raging left-wing lion seeing what innocent open-shop employers he
could devour, and the fellow was now in the evangelical business in
Oregon, with a nice little Christian wife and his home almost paid
for.... Mr. Knife would furnish Okey-Dokey absolutely free, to be
drunk at communion services, provided the church gave him a receipt, to
be reproduced for his advertising in the religious press.... As a
boy, he had first seen the value of religion in business when he had
tattled on a friend who had stolen some candy, and the shopkeeper had
rewarded him.... When he had been persecuted by an alleged health
official on the silly grounds that Okey-Dokey was a drug, the Lord
Himself had stepped in, and enabled Mr. Knife to put the official away
by means of that most righteous statute, the Mann Act.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dr. Planish didn't really care for Mr. Knife, but he was valuable in
enabling the Doctor to Make Contacts (as it is called in the uplift
business). At the hermit's hut, the Doctor met one of the most earnest
forces for co-operative good-doing that he was ever to know, in the
person of the Honorable Ernest Wheyfish, an ex-congressman known in the
trade as "The Deacon."

Honorable Wheyfish had realized, too late in life, that he should have
been a clergyman instead of a politician, though indeed he had once been
an undertaker, which had a nice ecclesiastical flavor. Moved by this
pious perception, Mr. Wheyfish had renounced the glories of
Congress--just as soon as he was defeated for re-election--and gone into
the organizational world on the religious side. He was now president and
working secretary of the National Christian Excelsior Crusade, whose
purpose was to get the worker, the backbone of American industry, back
into the church, instead of wasting his time and money on unions and
Communist meetings.

Mr. Knife was a conspicuous giver to Honorable Wheyfish's crusade. They
agreed ardently about the needs of labor, and said frequently that they
were the best friends that the workers had, if they only knew it.

Dr. Planish noted that both of them, like Christian Stern, were
undersized, meager, sandy men, but with energy like hurdle-racers, and
preposterous bass voices, like thunder out of a graham cracker. He was
wondering whether he himself was of the right type to save Humanity when
he was comforted by a pilgrimage to the hermit's hut of two quite
different sorts of organizators: Constantine Kelly and H. Sanderson
Sanderson-Smith, whom he had seen in Chicago.

Mr. Kelly looked like a bartender, perhaps because for several years he
had been a bartender. He was now assistant and press agent to Mr.
Wheyfish in the National Christian Excelsior Crusade.

Mr. Sanderson-Smith was a different kettle of goldfish altogether. He
was a fine silky Bostonian--though some said Ontario, and others, South
Frampus Center. When Dr. Planish had met him in Chicago, he had had a
thin red beard, but he now showed up with his intellectual chin bare and
with handsome red Spanish sideburns beside his ears. He was forming a
less churchly and more political league than the National Excelsior
Crusade, namely, the Citizens' Conference on Constitutional Crises in
the Commonwealth, which was to have headquarters in Washington, D. C.,
and of which none other than United States Senator Felix Bultitude was
to be chairman.

But its purpose was the same as that of the Crusade: to coax the workers
out of this nonsense of thinking about more wages all the time. Mr.
Knife and numerous other Christian industrialists contributed to both
societies, as a form of spiritual and financial fire insurance.

                 *        *        *        *        *

There was really only one intolerable evil about working for Mr. William
T. Knife: he talked so much about the evils of alcohol that Dr. Planish
always got thirsty, and when he reached his boarding-house at night, he
demanded so many highballs that it looked as if this life of diligent
piety might land him in the sanitarium. And Peony, herself no especial
enemy of wetness and cheering, always joined him.

They were at Pete's Caf in Manhattan, on a Saturday evening, drinking
away the week's cosmic dust, when they saw Hatch Hewitt, that lean tall
devil who had stirred young Gid Planish's fancy and depressed his
ambition all through Adelbert College.

He wasn't quite so lean now; he was, at forty, a little bald, and his
face was worn. He looked at Dr. Planish in passing their table, did not
recognize him and stalked on to the bar. He was expertly disposing of a
straight rye when the Doctor poked his shoulder and murmured, "Hatch!
Gid Planish!"

Hatch sat with them, and stared at Peony.

"Can you stand for the ole friend's wife?" she giggled.

Hatch solemnly nodded, turned to Dr. Planish, and solemnly said, "Nice
woman."

Dr. Planish inquired, "I suppose you're a magazine editor by now, or a
Washington correspondent, or a Sunday editor. You always had the most
talent in our class."

"I always agreed with you about the talent, but New York doesn't. No,
I'm just a plain reporter on the _Herald-Times_. Mostly do labor and
politics. And how about you? I haven't heard a word since we graduated."

"You haven't?" Peony was indignant. "The Doctor has merely
revolutionized rural education in the Middlewest and inaugurated
education in Greenland and been dean of a college and refused the
presidency of several other colleges, that's all!"

Hatch marveled, "My God, she believes in you, Gid! I didn't know there
were any women left like that. Where did you find her? Have they got any
left?"

"God broke the mold after he turned her out!" Dr. Planish looked at
Peony as though, to his own surprise, he really believed it. Hatch
sighed, and suddenly the Doctor knew that Hatch was possessed by a wife
who was strident and opinionated.

The Doctor furnished a somewhat less laudatory sketch of his own
triumphs, though he did not feel it necessary to inform Hatch that he
had been discharged from the Heskett Foundation and that his
associations with Captain Gishorn and Mr. William T. Knife differed from
hijacking liquor trucks chiefly in being less useful. He sounded so
doubtful of himself that Hatch cried to Peony, unsneeringly, "Seems as
if your husband has learned not to take careering and butting into other
people's affairs too seriously."

"But I want him to take them seriously!" flared Peony. "If you only knew
what Colonel Charles B. Marduc said to him!"

As Colonel Marduc had never said anything to him beyond, "Ah, you come
from Chicago--great city," she could not do much with it, and she had to
sit back glorying in a wife's ancient privilege of disapproving of her
husband's pre-conversion friends.

"Well, it's been swell running into you," said Hatch. "We must see each
other again soon."

As this was New York, they did not see each other again for four years.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Speaking of crusades, Hatch had reported that the newest educational
racket in town was a company called "The Modernistic Educational
Bureau," which sold a new encyclopedia that---- No, the Bureau didn't
_sell_ anything. It just promoted culture.

It had set up the customary organization, with a publicity-loving board
of directors, including the trusty Dr. Christian Stern, Professor George
Riot and the learned Dr. Elmer Gantry. These directors were, it is
pleasant to announce, laden with no duties aside from letting their
names shine forth as guarantors, for which they each received fifty
dollars.

George Riot nominated as suitable members of the Bureau all persons
whose names were on Charity-Education Sucker List XM27E. The Bureau
wrote to each of these prospects that he had been named by the
distinguished professor and, as an almost inevitable consequence,
elected as a "senior Governing Member of the M.E.B., annual dues $15.00,
5% discount for cash within one month, for which you will receive a
handsome membership diploma suitable for framing, our own educational
magazine, frequent and illuminating letters on official stationery and,
as fast as each volume is issued, receive, Absolutely Free, the titanic
new-from-cover-to-cover MODERNISTIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE, the
FIRST cyclopedia to be prepared, by a staff of World Experts, on the NEW
SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF PHILOLOGY, BIOLOGY, PEDAGOGY, AGRONOMICS AND
MONEY-MAKING, and the most magnificently illustrated Book of Reference
in the entire history of publishing."

The preparation of this encyclopedia was not really so difficult as the
customer might have supposed. A small company of intellectual commandos,
in a shaky old building on 23rd Street, in a loft once candidly devoted
to the manufacture of gents' pants, went through the several older
cyclopedias, lifted and combined and abbreviated the contents, and
extensively illustrated this stew with photographs bought in job-lots of
one hundred.

The staff also farmed out many of the articles, which involved Dr.
Gideon Planish, and a number of college instructors of small prosperity.
(After all, new college buildings are expensive, and you can't lavish
_everything_ on the faculty.)

When he had heard from Hatch of this cultural adventure, Dr. Planish
sent for the Bureau's "literature," happily noted George Riot's
prominence, had George recommend him to the "financial secretary" of the
Bureau, who was also the sole owner of it and a fine fellow who had been
graduated from one of the best grade schools in Jersey City, and
obtained from him a little piecework. It was not well paid, but it
padded out the Planish income without interfering with the Knife
memoirs--and besides, Peony actually wrote all the articles that the
Doctor signed.

So they were prosperous again. They brought on their furniture from
Chicago, the Chippendale cabinet and the rug and the shiny bar, and in
Mt. Vernon they rented a "Cape Cod bungalow" not quite so comfortable as
the house they had had in Kinnikinick at the beginning of their
expedition to conquer power.

Carrie liked it and went wild in gardens, but Peony complained that out
here in the suburbs, they were meeting as few notorious people
("interesting people" she called them) as back in Kinnikinick, and she
fervently influenced the Doctor when Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith
invited him to join the CCCCC in Washington, D. C.

Peony yelled, "Oh, do it! Washington! We'll meet senators and generals
and the President, and maybe it'll lead to your finally going into
politics---- Saaaay! When did our plan to make you a senator get lost in
the shuffle?"

Dr. Planish fretted that he didn't really like the purposes of
Sanderson-Smith's gang, the "Citizens' Conference." Though it had on its
board members of Congress and newspaper-owners and eloquent corporation
lawyers and a lady author and an officer of the D.A.R., it was, almost
frankly, an anti-labor-union lobby. He worried, "I know there are
crooked labor leaders, but on the whole, I've always upheld the Rights
of the Common Man, of the farmer and factory-worker----"

"Now don't give me that Number 28 Lecture!" said his wife, with tartness
unusual to her. "Who knows but what you can do more good by getting this
Citizens' Conference outfit to be kinder to the lil brothers than you
can by staying out? Besides! I don't see any union organizer sweating
over where _we_ get a new radio and shoes for Carrie!"

"Well----" said Dr. Planish.




CHAPTER 22


The Citizens' Conference on Constitutional Crises in the Commonwealth
was known in Washington as the "Cizkon."

It had none of the fuzziness of purpose that had bothered Dr. Gideon
Planish, the new Assistant General Manager of the Cizkon, at the Heskett
Foundation. Its offices filled two floors of an official-looking old red
brick building. During the depression of the early 1930's, it was richer
in funds than ever, because it was then that the large industrialists
and merchants most feared revolution, and they were skillfully coached
by Mr. Sanderson-Smith and Dr. Planish to believe that the Cizkon was
insurance against their losing control of the country.

Any seedling notions about liberalizing the Cizkon that the good Doctor
might have cultivated were frozen quickly in that icy competence.

On the surface, the Cizkon was so idealistic that it dripped, and this
was the department to which Dr. Planish was particularly assigned. In
lectures and pamphlets and newspaper stories which it manufactured or
affectionately influenced, it shouted the best battle cries: "The
traditional American right to work unhampered by labor racketeers," and
"The menace to fundamental American institutions, by foreign atheism and
Jewish international socialism," and "The Founding Fathers' ideals of
Free Enterprise, an Economy of Abundance, and Free Competition unchecked
by sumptuary laws, so that the Poorest Citizen may have his chance in
the race for fame and fortune against the wealthiest corporation or the
most aristocratic and highly educated individual," and "The Cross and
the Stars and Stripes--or the Assassin's Dagger and the Crossed Hammer
and Sickle--WHICH?"

And, in those days, "Mussolini makes the trains run on time."

All that Dr. Planish had to do was to take the slogans he had believed
in and turn them inside out. He was still in the Ideals and Public
Improvement business, even if he had gone over to a competing firm, and
his salary was now a comfortable $4,500 a year. They had a thin tall
house in Georgetown and they entertained senators--perhaps twice--and he
and Peony and Carrie were happy--anyway, Peony was happy--anyway, Peony
said she was happy.

The Cizkon's chief operative, Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, was an
esthete. He had written a pamphlet on surrealism, he had been a
theosophist, a nudist, a spiritualist, a Bahaist and a Douglas Planner;
and he was enviously rumored to be a secret drunkard on benedictine
spiced with pepper and maple sugar. But he was an excellent
Organizational Engineer--his own phrase.

If the sort of beefy, Hamilton-Frisby, football-squad, Skull-and-Bones,
Meadowbrook-Club millionaires who always intimidated Dr. Planish also
despised Sanderson-Smith, in revenge he knew how to make them tremble
with his inside news about Jewish, Communist, and
Scandinavian-Irish-farmer-labor conspiracies against them, and radicals
now known to be manufacturing sub-machine guns in a cellar near St.
Sebastian, North Dakota. He panicked them into giving him funds with
which, as he caressingly put it, he would "put Bibles instead of
tommy-guns into the horny hands of these sons of--well--of toil!"

The Cizkon issued a magazine called _Flag or Lag_? illustrated with
pictures of strikers beating policemen, of Lenin and Stalin attending an
orthodox synagogue, and of George Washington crossing the Delaware, with
a caption hinting that if he did so today, it would be to spend a
week-end with the du Ponts.

In fact the Cizkon magazine assaulted the Communists with all the
accuracy and tender tolerance with which the Communists assaulted their
opponents. It was well padded with the advertisements of banks,
insurance companies and utility companies. The theory was that it
circulated among the Common Workers, persuading them to leap out of
their red cells and exchange their unions for the Union League. And at
least it did reach the desks of all the fine old gentlemen in
Massachusetts who owned textile mills.

The Cizkon also published, in pamphlet form, addresses which would
certainly have been delivered on the floor of the House if any other
congressmen could have been persuaded to stay and listen. These
addresses stated that the author had had a good mother and a pretty fair
father, and that all labor leaders were terrible.

Less directly, the Cizkon influenced many published writings. It
encouraged local school boards to throw out text-books that alleged that
Abraham Lincoln was an agnostic. It arranged with factory-owners to
welcome journalists who wanted to do little pieces about the glories of
modern machinery and the miracles of distribution. And it warned
editors, by letters ostensibly from indignant subscribers, that Liberals
were essentially more dangerous than Communists--which was probably
true.

It assisted right-thinking professors to get lecture-engagements, and it
got out clip-sheets with refrigerated editorials protesting that
President Harding had been a great man, after all, that H. G. Wells had
but rarely written anything about Bishop James Cannon, Jr., of the
Southern Methodist Church, and that honest workers do not watch the
clock.

But the Cizkon was not merely literary. In an emergency it would send
expert lobbyists to State Legislatures, to choke the vile hydra of
compulsory washrooms in factories. Once, Dr. Gideon Planish thus
journeyed out West, to appear before a legislative committee as an
economics expert and a disinterested tax-payer.

Beyond all other virtues of the Cizkon was its personal duty of
collecting just as many contributions from the jittery captains of
industry as it could cajole or frighten out of them. It annually got out
a financial report which showed the gratified contributors "just where
every red cent of your generous donations has gone," with lovely
figures, down to the second decimal, about Office Expense, Salaries,
Traveling Expenses, Postage, Publication and dozens of others. Still,
Mr. Sanderson-Smith did live in the former residence of an ambassador,
and did send three very charming and handsome young men through college.

He gracefully entertained here, and sometimes he invited the Planishes.
So Peony met poets and actors and rather astonishing old men who
tickled. She was in the pool of provincial hobohemia up to her neck, and
so soaked with Celebrity that occasionally she wanted to go back to
Kinnikinick for a rest.

But within the hour she would assure her husband that she didn't mean
it; that she was as happy here as a Lark, as a Grig, as the day is long.
She began to spend just a little too much for evening dresses, and she
developed a way of confiding to newcomers in Washington, "I happened to
be sitting next to a man who knows the Secretary of the Navy intimately,
and he told me, but don't repeat it now----"

She admired the smoothness of Sanderson-Smith, even though she did refer
to him privately as "Sneaky Sandy." She repeated often a dinner quip of
Sanderson-Smith which soared right up to the heights of Oscar Wilde:
"Last night Sandy told me--I made him repeat it--'I didn't mind it when
oi polloi claimed that a live hog was better than a dead lion. That's
arguable,' he said. 'But now,' he said, 'they're bellowing that a live
hog is better than a live lion!' Now isn't that brilliant!"

Dr. Planish sighed, "Sometimes it seems to me that Sandy sacrifices true
liberalism to a mere mot."

"Oh, stuff!" said Peony.

She still admired the Doctor as the fount of learning, but she was doing
very well on her own.

She had learned that congressmen and even bureau chiefs were not hard to
get for dinner. You just offered them free food and the best of illicit
liquor. She became chummy with several congressmen's wives who, on
cook's night off, had to scramble their own family dinners; who took
Peony into their confidences and swapped servant stories, while their
husbands fed her hunger for magnificence by grunting, even apropos of
the President himself, "I saw Herb yesterday, and he told me we're
coming out of the depression at last, yessir, that's just what he said."

She loved it. But the Doctor was ever more dubious as he toiled at
labor-baiting; and as for Carrie, preposterous child, she kept
whimpering that she wanted to see the suburban children with whom she
had played in Mt. Vernon.

Their high triumph was in becoming charmingly acquainted with that great
financial authority, Senator Felix Bultitude, who, as chairman of the
board of the Cizkon, was something besides ornamental. He was even more
celebrated for his honesty than for his intelligence--in fact, he wasn't
really so highly thought of for intelligence--and when potential
contributors to the Cizkon saw his name fronting on the board, they
exulted, "Don't tell me that the CCCCC isn't on the level, with a man
like Bultitude running it. You don't think _he's_ the kind of grafter
who'd stoop to padding his expense account ten dollars on his hotel
bill, when he's out lecturing for them, do you--a man of his standing?"
(Mr. Bultitude was always referred to as "a man of his standing," no
matter what he stood on.)

They were right, too. The Senator never received a cent from the Cizkon.
He merely let it interest a few prominent men outside his own State in
his harmless, necessary campaign fund.

Senator Bultitude was always referred to by chairmen as "that great
Liberal." He loved to dwell on the History of Labor, even though he did
mix up Heywood Broun and Big Bill Haywood. As a young man, while he was
studying law, he had worked as a farmhand for one entire vacation, so he
could properly call himself "a real dirt farmer," and Sanderson-Smith
regularly used him to put honey in the hair of farm blocs.

But when Sanderson-Smith wanted someone to come right out and tell club
smokers that, in the opinion of the Cizkon, all workers, even the good
or non-union workers, were dangerous to the peace of the state unless
they were controlled by the Right People, then he used as prophet not
Senator Bultitude but the Reverend Mr. Ezekiel Bittery, a former
Fundamentalist preacher who really had been a farmhand. Mr. Bittery
said, in Scriptural rhythms, "I've toiled with the toilers, I've
preached to their stoniness, I know 'em--and they're all skunks!"

Mr. Bittery was trying to enlist a private army called "The Gospel
Gentlemen" from among former Ku Kluxers, but he had too many rivals for
the position of American Duce, and he was still glad to do
Sanderson-Smith a sixty-one-minute exposure of the Jews and Radicals for
$65.00 cash--in advance--and a year later he would be throwing in two
minutes of denouncing Eleanor Roosevelt.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The bad luck of the Planishes seemed over. The Doctor had been in the
new job only a year when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President,
and during the experimentation of the New Deal, so alarming to the
Better People, who liked to have the objects of their charity grateful
and transient, the Cizkon became important as a safeguard against loose
spending and the horrid heresy of maintaining that Democracy also
included people who did not live in your block.

Now, Sanderson-Smith was able to hurl gas bombs not just at anonymous
Communists but even at the highly visible Administration itself. He was
full of wit about the new Government bureaus and their names: SEC, PWA,
FHRA. He said, "Our own little group, the CCCCC, has more C's in it than
the CCC's but much less seize!"

"Isn't that just brilliant!" said Peony Planish.

One of the mysteries is the origin of dirty stories and political
anecdotes. A tale will be repeated ten million times over ten years, and
yet the original author, honest fellow, will be unknown, unhonored. But
of the thousand anecdotes about Franklin D. Roosevelt and his family and
aides, at least a dozen of the more popular were created by the patient
artistry of H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, including the one about the
psychiatrist being sent to God when He had the delusion that he was
Roosevelt.

When Mrs. Roosevelt was friendly with coal miners, it was
Sanderson-Smith who explained to the ecstatic mine-owners--and the even
more ecstatic Young Communists, who were now beginning to exceed in
nuisance value the young disciples of Proust and Joyce--that it had all
been done by collusion with Moscow. He sowed the rumor that Miss Frances
Perkins, the Secretary of Labor, was really Rebecca Prjzbska from
Crakow, and originated the jest, attributed to several popular
columnists, that "The Trouble with the New Dealers is that they're all
small-town boys named Ray: Ray Moley, Ray Tugwell, Ray Frankfurter--and
Ray Roosevelt."

It was one of the duties of Dr. Planish to see that these witticisms
were spread properly. Mr. Sanderson-Smith was not always pleasant when
he failed to do so.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the New Deal started on wages and hours legislation, the Cizkon
came out for the very factory improvements that it had abhorred.

All industries were threatened with having to recognize one union or
another, and Sanderson-Smith hired an expert who had been a union
organizer himself to go from factory to factory of the Cizkon's higher
contributors and explain how to form reasonable company unions which
would be nicer all round than the A.F. of L. or the C.I.O. This expert
would also demonstrate how much cheaper it was to put in cafeterias and
clean washrooms and free medical service than to have the workers think
their bosses did not love them. He even went so far in a Southern State
as to persuade an employer to hire one per cent of Negro labor, which
clearly proved something or other, said Sanderson-Smith in an address
"The New Liberalism vs the New Deal."

Years later, in the 1940's, even after America had entered World War II,
Dr. Planish was interested to see that, though H. Sanderson
Sanderson-Smith himself was in prison on the astounding charge that he
was a Nazi agent, other bodies were carrying on the ameliorative work of
the Cizkon, with the slogans "The American Way of Life" and "The Sacred
Right to Work" and "The Founding Fathers who laid down the principle of
Free Competition" still frequently meaning that employers did not care
much for union wage scales.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Through all the Planishes' prosperity and social magnitude in
Washington, the Doctor had spiritual trouble.

Whenever his former colleagues, Chris Stern and Dr. Kitto and Natalia
Hochberg and Professor Buchwald and George Riot, all of them Reformers
at whom the Cizkon had heaved a paragraph or two, came to Washington,
the Doctor felt uncomfortably that they felt uncomfortably that he was
no longer a Liberal. He tried to explain to them that, really, he was
more of a Liberal than ever; he and Sanderson-Smith were all for
Constructive and Enlightened Labor Leadership, and they opposed only the
misleaders who made a living out of Labor. They seemed highly
unconvinced by him or by the fervors of Sanderson-Smith, for whom they
adopted Peony's name of "Sneaky Sandy."

Dr. Planish tried to be jovial about it: "All right--all right! You get
me as good a job with some liberal outfit in New York, and I'll leave
Sneaky Sandy flat!"

He had, he felt proudly, "called their bluff." But he was still
disquieted, and he tried to explain it all to Peony, when she came in
from a cocktail party to celebrate the anniversary of the repeal of
Prohibition.

"Now get this, Peony. To be realistic, I must admit that the first
purpose of any uplift organization must be to support the executives who
give their time and good hard work to it--like a doctor or a preacher.
But I do feel that if I make my living out of a movement to strengthen
the public morale, then it ought--well, it ought to try and do some
strengthening, don't you see?"

"See what?" said Peony.

He went on, thinking aloud. "And I'm afraid Chris Stern is right. The
Cizkon isn't really liberal. Chris is probably just as much of a
fourflusher as Sneaky Sandy--just as crazy to get power and
publicity--only he's a careerist on the right side, and Sandy is on the
wrong side."

Peony sniffed, "So what? He's a Liberal, but he's practical."

"When was he ever liberal?"

"What's the diff? We get our salary, don't we? And do you mean to tell
me that you don't believe in the American system of justice, as laid
down by George Washington?"

"Now what----"

"Every man that's accused has a right to be represented in court by a
lawyer, hasn't he? Well, Sneaky is the lawyer for the capitalists, and
they need a smart one, don't they?"

"That's an interesting point of view. Very interesting. But there's
another aspect of the matter. In the long run, I think that an executive
does better if he's known as a Liberal. By 1940, I'll wager there'll be
more money--or rather, I mean a more dignified social position--in being
associated with anti-Fascism than with Fascism. Besides, I'm an oldtime
Fighting Liberal, and a man with his battles behind me, I mean my
battles behind me, he simply can't turn his back on the People, don't
you see?... No, no, it isn't fly-by-night advocates of individualism
like Sneaky Sandy that come out on top eventually; it's proponents of
communal discipline, like Colonel Charles B. Marduc, the greatest
promoter of widespread prosperity----"

"Want a drink?" said Peony.

"Of course I want a drink!" said Dr. Planish.




CHAPTER 23


In the anteroom of Senator Bultitude's office, Dr. Planish fell to
talking with a meager and gentle man of fifty-odd, with a thin flaxen
mustache, baggy gray clothes, a bright blue tie, and a bright blue
shirt--the uniform of a man who wanted to be different. His name was
Carlyle Vesper. Something he said caused the Doctor to invite him to
lunch at the Crayon Club.

The Doctor was fond of the Crayon, which was full of ex-congressmen
turned lobbyists or Government clerks. The polite waiters called him
"Doctor," and believed that he was a bureau chief at least.

It appeared that Mr. Vesper had an idea for a virtuous organization, and
what was much more remarkable, he seemed to have the money, in the
backing of Mrs. John James Piggott, intransigent old widow of the Silver
Mine and International Railroad, and of Miss Ramona Tundra, who had
started as a child star in the motion pictures and was ending as a child
adult who patronized faith-healers. Without this cash behind it, Dr.
Planish was too well trained an organizator to have been interested in
the mere idea, though he did admit that it was possibly the noblest
religious inspiration since St. Paul.

Carlyle Vesper was as simple as Cardinal Newman. During years as a
commonplace bookkeeper he had dreamed of a Christian church in which the
director would not be a pope or an archbishop or a stated secretary or
any kind of paid minister, but Jesus Christ himself.

"I think we ought to believe that Jesus is perfectly capable of doing
this without some Doctor of Sacred Theology helping him out," said
Vesper, with the smile of a shy boy or a madman. "I think most churches
started off all right, but then they had to support a lot of men who
called themselves priests or ministers, and then these fellows wanted to
put on fancy dress, and that cost money, and pretty soon they wanted to
have churches that their voices would sound big in, and then the people
didn't have a fellowship between Christ and men any longer, but just
another salvation shop. I'd like our church to end all that."

Dr. Planish knew enough history to recall how many other Carlyle Vespers
had started churches to end all churches. But the sweet simpleton had
managed to interest Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra----

Vesper flowed on, "I guess what I want is just a gayer and more modern
group of Quakers, without the old Pennsylvania and Ohio Quaker families
acting a little like hereditary priests themselves. My organization, if
it ever gets going right--and it will be a failure unless it destroys
itself and quits, the minute it succeeds, like any good teacher!--it
will do nothing but suggest to every man and woman and child that God
really did make him a priest, as they understood so well among the early
Christians, and that he can pray by himself or in company with others
just as he is moved. I want to call it the Every Man a Priest
Fraternity.

"Oh, yes, I've thought about this for twenty years, and I can keep
books, but I'm not much of an executive. I can't bear bossing people! If
we only had a man like you! Could I persuade you to take an
interest--say, be our chief shepherd?"

"Uh--uh--how much would you plan to pay?"

"I hadn't thought about it. We have ten thousand dollars in the treasury
now. Would half of that be enough for a year's salary?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't even think of it for less than six thousand a
year. That's about what I'm getting now, and of course I have to
consider my poor wife and child."

"Oh, I'm sure that as this world's goods go, six thousand would be very
little for a man of your experience and your love for suffering
humanity. Shall we agree on that and get to work, Brother Gideon?"

"Wow!" said Dr. Planish, to himself, but aloud he bumbled, "I'll think
it over. Let's meet here tomorrow noon."

                 *        *        *        *        *

He telephoned to New York, to Chris Stern, who answered Yes, this
preposterous outsider, Vesper, did seem to have coaxed a lot of money
out of that tough old heathen, Mrs. Piggott.

The Doctor dared not hint to Peony, that evening, of his interest in the
absurd charlatan.

Next morning, Sanderson-Smith called him in, and Sanderson-Smith had had
an unpleasant dinner the evening before. He said, not so silkily as
usual, "Planish, I want to talk to you about your next lecture tour
among the colleges. I want you to quit all this pussyfooting and heavy
Liberalism. Come right out and tell these simpletons of undergraduates
that they can choose between bucking the unions and being enslaved by
them. Understand?"

"I'll think it over," said Dr. Planish, not very belligerently.

At the luncheon table, Vesper smiled, handed over a lovely check for
five hundred dollars, and said, "It's your first month's check, Brother
Gideon--Gideon, the Sword of the Lord! Now will you come with us?"

"By God, I'll do it! Oh, sorry for cursing."

"I don't think we need worry too much about the ancient Jewish
injunction against cursing and swearing. Don't you suppose God will take
the spirit of the oath rather than the actual wording? I don't guess He
is much deceived."

To himself, already beginning to resent the new employer as all that
morning he had been resenting the old one, Dr. Planish groaned, "He's
getting saintly on me! A careerist in holiness! I'll never be happy till
I've got an organization where I'm sole boss--unless it's one run by a
fellow like Colonel Marduc, who has real brains and power--and
cash!--and not a lot of sappy sentimentality like Vesper or psychopathic
malice like Sneaky Sandy-- Oh dear!"

But aloud he was beginning, "Now the first thing we want to do is to get
the names of the top men, like Bishop Pindyck--no, that's so, no
preachers for once, thank God. Well, how about William T. Knife--a true
Christian pioneer?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was hard to tell Peony that from now on his salary would be
guaranteed only by St. Francis of Assisi. He remembered how game she had
been in Chicago, when he had admitted that Hamilton Frisby had kicked
him out, but he put off his confession till after they had come home
from the movies that evening.

They were having a companionable drink at the scoured table in the dark
Washington kitchen when he told her. Even as he spoke, the notion of
anybody being a priest without being paid for it seemed as fantastic to
him as riding the tail of a rocket.

Peony listened with horrified silence; then: "Have you gone completely
bugs? To give up a settled job with Sandy, a racket that ought to be
good for at least five more years, for this crazy religious maniac? As
you know, I'm a true Christian and a church member, but---- Six thousand
a year? You'll never get six hundred! It'll blow up in a month! You've
got to get out of this insane picnic, right away. You've got to! Tell
Vesper to go roll his holy hoop!"

"I'm afraid I can't. I've already spent half of the five hundred he paid
me--we were two months behind on the rent--and this afternoon I finally
told Sanderson-Smith that he was a high-class scab. I'm through there,
I'm afraid."

"You're afraid!"

She shrieked it; she dashed out of the kitchen, and upstairs. He
followed, and heard the key turning in the door of their bedroom. He
hadn't even known that there was a key.

"Poor impetuous baby!" He smiled to himself. He knocked with playful
lightness--no answer; then with marital firmness--no answer. He tried
the knob.

After twelve years of married life, she had for the first time locked
him out of their room.

He cried, in panic, "Peony! Sweetheart! Let me in! Let me explain!" To
himself: "She's right. And suppose she divorced me? What could I do? I
couldn't sleep alone nights!"

Peony was not answering, even with a sound of tip-toeing feet, as he
called her name again and tried again to knock gaily, to show that he
didn't really mind this little loving trick she was playing on him.
Making his step as heavy and dignified and rebuking as he could, he
thumped downstairs, and stood at the foot, waiting for her to rush out
and call him back. She didn't. But she must--she had to! He went on
waiting. He could not hear her at all.

"I've had enough of this nonsense. She's acting like a spoiled child.
I'm just not going to pay any attention to her," he stated.

He went firmly into the small green-and-chintz living-room, and tried to
do a cross-word puzzle--a form of escape still fashionable then. It
would not come out. He threw the newspaper at the signed photograph of
President T. Austin Bull, and sneaked softly to the foot of the stairs.
He stood there in sick worry. Upstairs, he could hear her heavily
sobbing. He dared not affront her, and he crept back to the living-room,
to glare at the newspaper.

Where the devil was he supposed to sleep tonight? In Carrie's child-bed,
maybe! And it was bedtime right now.

He pounded to the stairs, and yelled up, "Hey! Where do you think I'm
going to sleep?"

After a noticeable pause, a mournful voice dribbled down, "In hell, I
hope."

"Is that a nice way to answer me when I ask a civil question?" he put
it. Yet it encouraged him to find that she was no longer so young and
broken. He marched upstairs and tapped, commandingly. "Sweetheart! Let
me in. Unlock the door."

She sobbed, "It's unlocked."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Mechanically patting her bare shoulder, he bumbled, "There, there,
there! My own baby! Still such a little baby! And yet so wise. Oh,
lambie, I'll never again make any organizational or occupational
affiliation [he meant, take a job] without your advice."

"Oh, no, you mustn't, lover. You know it's only because I love you and
have your best interests at heart. Of course you're stuck with the new
mission now, but I just know you won't find this Carlyle Vesper fellow
as smart as Sneaky Sandy."

Lying awake in darkness beside her, filled with the dark smell of her
hair, he realized that he was her slave and told himself that he was
very happy about it.




CHAPTER 24


The Every Man a Priest Fraternity office, on 43rd Street in New York,
was so much like the office of the Association to Promote Eskimo Culture
that Dr. Planish was confused. The lone employee, a plump secretary
named Miss Kremitz, so much resembled Miss Cantlebury of the Eskimo
office that he felt like sitting down and finishing the letter that he
had derisively left undone when he deserted to William T. Knife.

But when he went through the files, he found that this shop was notably
different from that of Captain Gishorn, who was as methodical about the
affairs of the Devil as Carlyle Vesper was slipshod about the service of
the Lord. Here were unanswered letters--one, actually, a query from the
wealthy chain-store man, Albert Jalenak, about the Fraternity's aims.

"Gosh all gracious!" winced the professional, "and Jalenak the very
finest type of conscience-drugging philanthrobber! Why, he might have
come through with five hundred! What kind of a way to promote the Lord
is that--not answer feeler letters by return mail! Shocking!"

He found that Vesper hadn't even "elected," as organizations playfully
call it, an impressive front of general officers and honorary directors.
He fretted, "How right Peony was! All Vesper really has here is his
idea, which isn't new, and the support of Mrs. Piggott and Ramona
Tundra, which isn't ironclad. I've got to go see those old girls and
find out where we are."

He telephoned, inviting himself to meet them at tea at the old Piggott
residence on lower Madison Avenue, not many squares from the J. P.
Morgan blockhouse which still defends the last pioneer white settlers.

He arrived at Mrs. Piggott's without Vesper--and without Vesper's
knowledge.

He felt at home in that ancient hallway, with a teak throne and a marble
Psyche holding a gas-lighted torch. He felt that he natively belonged to
this house with its resounding memory of past grandeur and of the epoch
when a man's goodness could be exactly measured by the number of his
millions. Nor was he embarrassed by the craggy old woman and the slim
faded actress who awaited him on a worn satin couch behind a tea-table
with a Georgian hot-water kettle resembling Mont-St.-Michel.

On the wall, in a shadow-box, was Mrs. Piggott's portrait by Sargent.

He accepted tea--yes, thanks, he would have just a wee drop of rum in
it; he didn't ordinarily indulge, but it was raw today. Yes, it would be
fine if everybody could feel Carlyle Vesper's high exaltation.

He mentioned his professorship, his deanhood, his installation of rustic
education and Eskimos. Gently laughing at himself, he recalled saying,
at the White House, "Mr. President, I trust you remember that _some_
people didn't make their wealth by brigandage but by being exceptionally
strong." (Maybe he really had said something like that, but maybe the
President had not heard him properly, as there were fifteen hundred
other people at that reception.) He touched on the characters and
private ambitions of the Secretary of State, the presidents of Yale,
Harvard and the University of Chicago, without feeling called upon to
explain that his conversations with all of them had been limited to "How
do."

All this presented modestly, with many little razor-blades of comment
which showed that he understood the ladies' own great position. They
listened with increasing trustfulness until his actor's instinct, so
important to salesmen of philanthropy, told him that the time had come
to play Old Family Doctor.

He gravely pushed the tea-table away, took both of Mrs. Piggott's aged
hands, and started building his great second-act speech:

"Dear Mrs. Piggott, and you, dear girl" (Miss Tundra was, he calculated,
at least thirty-five), "both of you, I have shockingly bad news. Let's
take it in our stride and take it with a brave smile, and get it over.
The Every Man Fraternity can't go on. It's finished."

"M?"

"It's a shame. I'd hoped, after my years of training, to find my
lifework here. And I'd hoped that your two names would go down in
history as the twin founders of a spiritual reform so powerful that it
might be called a new religion, like Mrs. Eddy or Madame Blavatsky or
St. Cecilia. But what do I discover when I get here and look over the
books and files?

"Letters unanswered. Lists of names with the wrong addresses and even,
believe it or not, the wrong titles--a high-class Methodist divine down
as 'Mister' and not as 'Doctor'. Now perhaps I could correct all this
but----

"We have at the moment only $9,044.37 in the treasury, and need I tell
you two, who have handled weightier business affairs than most mere men
ever thought of, that we couldn't even begin to spread this gospel of
simplicity and unworldliness for less than thirty-five thousand dollars
for a starter? So--but what a pity!--we'll have to let the whole thing
go."

In the look that Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra exchanged his expert eye
appraised a further twenty thousand. He hit again, quickly.

"And not only that, but a more spiritual matter. Carlyle Vesper is a
seer and a saint--the most forgiving man I've ever encountered.
Yet--well, I suppose he's one of these impractical souls that have to be
managed. You _would_ think that with his training in accountancy and
office technique, he'd at least answer letters from poor, groping,
soul-hungry seekers----"

He had not much farther to go before Mrs. Piggott nodded to Miss Tundra,
who interrupted him, "Yes, we can see that, Doctor. It's like a
heaven-sent cinema artist trying to produce and distribute. I think I
may speak for Lady Piggott, as I always call her, when I say that we're
already agreed _you_ ought to be the boss--Director General would be a
lovely title--and you can let Mr. Vesper go on dreaming his dear,
lovely, lonely lotus dreams apart from all the hurly-burly, and isn't it
fortunate that he's a widower without children--I'm sure he'll be
perfectly happy on thirty-five dollars a week, instead of the fifty that
we have been temporarily allowing him."

Dr. Planish breathed hard; then he besought the two religion-founders,
"But I'm not worthy to go to that noble spirit and tell him----"

"I'm worthy! I'm good at that!" announced Mrs. Piggott. "You let me tell
him. I'll get him right down here. Poor Doctor, I know how hard it is on
you!" He was suspicious, but he decided that she meant it. "Don't go
back to the office this afternoon, and when you go in tomorrow, you'll
find everything all okay and sublimated, or do I mean substantiated?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He felt that for once he could afford the most delicate luxury he
knew--having "the works" at the Gyro Building Barber Shop.

As he rode uptown by taxicab, he was only briefly bothered about
Vesper's downfall. "After all, any other executive would have thrown him
right out on his ear, and not even allowed him to stay on as a flunky.
Besides! I hope I'm a just and humanitarian man, and for myself I don't
want _anything_, but when people get in the way of Peony's rights, God
help 'em!"

The Gyro Building was only the fourth highest in Manhattan, only
seventy-nine stories, but it had more aluminum, more black glass, and
more murals by Communist artists than any other building in the world,
including Moscow.

The young Gid Planish, back in Adelbert College, had frequented the shop
of an aged German barber, which smelled of bay rum and cigar-smoke and
peace. The barber was one of the few people in town who took Gid
seriously; he consulted Gid tolerantly about his preference in hair
styles and his opinion of free silver. The place had been a refuge, a
healing, and ever since then a barber shop had meant escape.

But his tastes in size and glossiness and gadgetry had grown.

The Gyro shop was on the forty-seventh floor, and he rode up in an
elevator lined with marquetry depicting the chase of Diana. At the shop
entrance, the manager, who tried to resemble Adolphe Menjou, said "Good
afternoon, Doctor."

"Why, they know who I am!" rejoiced Dr. Planish.

It was quite a barber shop. While America might not as yet have
developed a Sibelius, it could substitute for the shabby hairdressers'
dens of Europe the combined genius of Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright,
Steinmetz and Delilah.

There were forty barber chairs, upholstered in yellow leather, and
twenty manicure tables, and ten bootblacks in Roumanian uniform, with
the manager in his Easter-morning costume, and a cashier who had once
been in a Follies chorus. The shrine was as filled with Beauty as it was
with Service. The walls were of black marble with green veins, the
washbowls of dark green porcelain, and the cupboard-doors were
brass-bound mirrors. The composition floor was patterned in zodiac
symbols of yellow and black, and the silvered ceiling was paneled, with
inverted onyx bowls for the indirect lighting.

Here was the very sign and heart of the Metropolis which now, for the
first time, Dr. Planish had conquered, and started to loot.

He did not encourage the barber's conversation, but sat in an ecstasy of
silence, thinking how he could most dramatically tell Peony, waiting for
him in their cheap hotel, the news that he now ranked with Chris Stern
or Captain Gishorn.

He did have "the works": a manicure by a red-head who squeezed his soapy
fingers; a hair-trim, a beard-trim, a shave, a face-massage, an oil
shampoo, a shine, an electrical treatment with horrible little rubber
tits, and a final Assyrian smearing with lilac ointment and violet
lotion.

Yet after a time his dreams were so disturbed by the babble of his
next-chair neighbor that virtue passed out of them, and he began to
mutter to himself, through the scented foam, "Barber--barbarous;
manicure--manicdepressive; electric massage--electric chair."

The neighbor was evidently an Important Man. He was having a quantity of
expensive things done all at once: not only reveling in a massage and
shine and manicure, but receiving telegrams from a Western Union boy and
giving messages for a page to transmit by telephone. He was talking
about the Spanish Republicans (he didn't care for them), the races at
Hialeah, his new girl, who was in a floor show, and real-estate prices
in La Jolla. He had, he informed the listening world, a yacht that would
"sleep eight and eat twenty," and he had once lost thirty-five hundred
dollars at roulette.

This magnificence so submerged the Doctor that suddenly he was no longer
a conquering Hun of humanitarianism, but just Doc Planish, a Kinnikinick
prof.

He went through the rest of his orgy as voluptuously as he could;
powdered and pink and brushed and polished, he tipped spaciously, bought
a large cigar, and went through the delicious nuisance of breaking the
cellophane wrapper.

But as he tried to parade into their sordid side-street-hotel parlor
like a Hialeah plunger, he gave way, ran to Peony, muttered, "I went and
saw the Piggott woman and we got her for all the money we need, and I'm
Vesper's boss now," then whimpered like a small boy. And his fat and
pretty wife sobbed joyfully with him.

But young Carrie said, "The assistant manager of this hotel has a pet
coon that eats Brussels sprouts."

                 *        *        *        *        *

An hour after this, a self-educated ex-bookkeeper named Vesper, who half
an hour ago had been told by a high-spirited old lady what an
unsystematic fool he was, walked quietly into his furnished room, in an
old house that smelled of generations of death.

It was a small bedroom and, aside from a table, a chair, a bed, a
bureau, a sink and a pile of books, mostly lives of the saints, there
was not much in it but an old photograph of a lovely girl, a bundle of
letters and a full bottle of strong sleeping tablets.

Vesper sat for some time on the bed, staring at the wall where two evil
blotches made the design of a gallows. He rose, looked at the photograph
of the girl, took the bundle of her letters, and read them all. He
carefully retied them. He hesitated for a while. Then he drew a half
glass of water at the sink, and one by one he dropped the fifty sleeping
tablets into it.

"It will be bitter," he said, aloud but without perceptible emotion.

He lay on the bed, the drugged glass at hand on the straight chair.

His head, on the pillow, was turned toward the girl's photograph. He
looked at it for a long time.

"All right, Mary," he said aloud.

He rose hastily, threw the contents of the charged glass into the sink,
and fell again upon the bed. He was sobbing, not as Peony had sobbed,
but dryly and painfully and alone.

"I wish now I'd drunk it. It's the anti-climax that's so clownishly
horrible," he choked. "But this too, O Lord, shall pass away. Grant me
strength even to be ridiculous, for Thy sake. Amen."

All that evening, all that night, unfed but empty of hunger, he slept in
spasms. In the morning he went to the Every Man a Priest Fraternity
office and told Dr. Planish--after that worthy had got through his
recitative of booming and manly and cordial lies--that he was ready to
take orders. Perhaps he was one who could not work without orders. To
himself he said that he had hoped it would be God who would give the
orders, but perhaps Brother Planish could hear them better and interpret
them for him.... Not in our time, O Lord.

Within a week he was trotting out on office errands. Dr. Planish was not
often impatient with his absent-minded pokiness--not very impatient--not
very often.

From that time on, Carlyle Vesper was errand boy or typist or emergency
accountant in one tender-hearted organization after another until he
died.... Once, at Christmas, he got a ten-dollar bonus.




CHAPTER 25


Dr. Gideon Planish was a man not slothful, not tardy, but forever going
about his master's business--Peony being his master.

The office routine at the Every Man a Priest Fraternity was almost too
easy for him. As automatically as a spider spits out thread, he wrote
the suitable "literature," and it was sent to the old Eskimo Culture
list of prospects, explaining that in this Desperate Crisis, unless they
ran, not walked, to their desks and instantly made out checks to the
Every Man Fraternity, it was doubtful if Christianity would last till
mid-August.

He did not fret over the returns, for Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra were
generous--so far. To his expert and cynical eye it was certain not only
that some day these ladies would go gunning for something newer and
sexier, for Communism or Anti-Communism or Glands or Vitamins or
Surrealism, but that in his next incarnation as a messiah, he would have
to take a drop from his present salary of six thousand to forty-five or
six hundred.

But as he said merrily to his wife, "It's a swell racket while it
lasts--and of course, baby, I don't mean 'racket' in any invidious
sense--in fact, I'm fully conscious of my privilege in being able to
pour new wine into a church that has become stultified by formalism and
by the very grandeur of its imposing----"

"There's a swell movie at the Tetrarch-Plaza," said Peony.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He showed his industry and social value by writing and sending out free
to interested friends a pamphlet on the need of introducing modern
science and economic distribution into religion. The only time Carlyle
Vesper made any trouble was when, after reading Dr. Planish's
masterpiece, "More Horse-Power in the Chancel," he complained, "But,
Brother, it seems to me that instead of breaking away from the church
machine, you're trying to turn the professional preachers into sales
engineers. Of course I'm not a man of much book education----"

"No, Carlyle; if you will pardon me, you're _not_!" Dr. Planish was as
genial as a hangman. "Can't you see that just now, with an upset world,
it isn't the time to start these revolutionary experiments that will
disturb people's sense of confidence and alienate a lot of the best and
most responsive top men? No, no. You really must trust the wider
judgment and sharper sense of spiritual technique that I have acquired
over so many years."

"I see. Well, excuse me, Brother. You told me to take some copy to the
printer."

Vesper's peasant habit of calling him "Brother" was Dr. Planish's only
mosquito on this outing.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Every national organization is afflicted by crank letters and fanatic
callers, but nowhere had they been such pests as at the Every Man a
Priest Fraternity.

Nine-page mimeographed documents with shaky additions in pen, promising
the solution of international enmity by using wooden money, or by having
the world controlled by a board composed of the Pope, Josef Stalin and
the author of the suggestion, who would work cheap. Pathetic letters
from old ladies about ancestral first editions of Robert J. Ingersoll,
which they were now forced to part with. Brusque letters from
businessmen beginning, "What do you guys think you're up to?" Vasty
telegrams from young preachers who would be very appreciative of ten
thousand dollars, to be sent by return wire, with which they could go to
Edinburgh and study. Callers with information about the Occult Inner
Secrets of Subconscious All-Power as Revealed to a Scotch Geologist and
Poet in an Ancient and Hidden Monastery in Tibet. The unemployed
musician who came in and wept about his wife, and wouldn't quit weeping
and go away for less than a dollar, cash.

At last Dr. Planish saw a way of making Vesper really earn his
thirty-five a week. He turned all the crank letters and irritating
callers over to Vesper, and he himself was left free to hold meetings in
Miss Ramona Tundra's suite in the Ritz Towers, and to get better
acquainted with "Deacon" Wheyfish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Hon. Ernest Wheyfish, ex-congressman, author of _Make Them Pay While
They Pray_, was not a nice man, but he was an authority on Giving to
Philanthropies, and an inspired diagnostician of Prospects. Let him take
an ordinary sucker list and he could, by innate genius, by an inner and
spiritual nose, smell out the fact that this name was useless, but that
other marked a man who could be encouraged to double his annual
contribution.

He stood four-square on the principle that, far from harvesting only the
rich and middle-class, we ought to look on the glorious majority of the
poor as a philanthropic field yet unplowed, but so fertile that the
pioneer fund-raiser could only lift up his eyes in thanksgiving.

He peeped into every new organization to promote religion--and there
were perhaps six new ones a week in New York City--because these
bush-leaguers might have some new ideas, and new philanthrobbers to tap.
Sometimes it was even worth while combining with them, and later
dropping their original founders out of the window while keeping their
typewriters, wastebaskets, pretty stenographers and lists of supporters.

Deacon Wheyfish had originally been proprietor of an organization called
the National Christian Excelsior Crusade, which, even more piously than
the Cizkon, promulgated the principle that if you can get your workers
to attend prayer-meeting and to buy their own homes, on time, then you
have them where you want them. But he had now divided this sacred
assembly into two bodies: The Family Prayer Crusade, managed by
Constantine Kelly, that unreconstructed Brooklyn Irishman who said he
was a Baptist and in fact crossed himself every time he saw a
Rockefeller; and the mammoth Blessed to Give Brotherhood, of which the
Deacon was president, executive secretary and, decidedly, the treasurer.

The Blessed to Give was the department store of philanthropic
enterprises. It was interested in helping out fifty different charities.
Often it worked through apparently rival associations, and it announced,
"Whenever we see that somebody can do any given job better than we can,
we do not hesitate to pass any contribution right on to them, with no
charge for routing or bookkeeping."

In his first week at the Every Man Fraternity, Dr. Planish received an
unsolicited check for five dollars from the Blessed to Give, with an
explanation from Deacon Wheyfish that in return he wanted nothing but a
kind smile--and some names of interesting new contributors.

There were scurrilous and uncharitable enemies who charged that quite a
little of the money stuck to the Blessed to Give mail-chute in passing
on, but the Deacon in answer published a budget showing that he, as the
officers, couldn't have kept more than $942.00 a year out of
contributions of $200,000.

Deacon the Honorable Wheyfish looked as a grasshopper would look if it
had a rough complexion and wore a Biblical white tie and clocked blue
socks.

There were friends of the Deacon who said that he should have gone on
and become one of the professional money-raisers who do not spoil their
pure art by fussing over where the money goes, but are engaged to put on
campaigns for a college, a church or a Christian mission to China.

The best of the money-raisers will not waste time on any objective under
a hundred thousand dollars; they much prefer a million; and they get, as
their fee, an amount which equals anywhere from five per cent to
ninety-five per cent of the total blessed treasure. They represent such
noble causes that they can command cabinet officers to preside at
dinners, and permit bishops to introduce strip-teasers at spectacles
attracting 25,000 persons at five dollars each. They efficiently make
use of the "boiler-room," in which caramel-voiced young women sit all
day long, telephoning to hundreds of strangers, "This is Judge Wallaby's
secretary, and His Honor would like you to buy four ten-dollar tickets
to the Fiduciaries' Fund Festival. If you'll have the check ready, I'll
send right over for it." (Judge Wallaby? Is he that demon of the traffic
court? You buy the tickets.)

Deacon Wheyfish might actually have become one of these higher
money-raisers, even though most of them were Eastern university men with
Phi Beta Kappa keys, who could placidly entertain their captives at the
Brahmin Club; but he jeered that he'd rather run his own show, and not
have to kiss the feet of a lot of old male hags. He remained supreme in
his smaller world, revered even if he wasn't liked by his fellow
organizators, and when he invited Dr. Planish to a lunch of executives
and publicity counsels, the Doctor was delighted to go.

                 *        *        *        *        *

There were only a dozen men and four women at the luncheon, a simple
repast of inedible food in a private room over an Italian restaurant,
but those sixteen people had the strength of sixty in influencing the
course of good works. Dr. Planish was there, and Chris Stern, _of
course_, and Professor Goetz Buchwald, Commander Orris Gall of the
Zero-Hour American National Committee for the Organization of Global
Co-operation. Rabbi Lichtenselig, Professor Campion of the Children's
Re-education Program, and rather unexpectedly, since he was a gay and
charming man, the most intelligent in the room, Dr. Nahum Lloyd,
graduate of Howard University and secretary of the Cultural League for
the Colored Races.

Dr. Planish approved much less of Dr. Lloyd than of the distinguished
Dr. Elmer Gantry, who was torridly also present. Dr. Gantry was pastor
of the Spiritual Home Methodist Tabernacle on Morningside Heights, but
he was better known as a radio pastor, with his weekly Torch Sermons and
Swing Sermons and Blue Sermons and Vitamin Sermons, in which, with a
splendid combination of modern slang and long hard words, he tried to
show the younger generation that God is in the automobile just as much
as He was in the oldtime hay-ride. Quite a number of lady society
reporters and several male editorial writers had noted that "There is no
better living exponent of a streamlined gospel than Dr. Gantry." But he
did not appear at today's luncheon as a latter-day Henry Ward Beecher,
but as the directive secretary of the Society for the Rehabilitation of
Erring Young Women.

Deacon Wheyfish arose and spoke to them, earnestly:

"Our friend Dr. Gideon Planish, who has had such a rich and varied
experience in the nation's capital, but who tells me that he is
practically a stranger in New York, and whom we are glad to welcome to
organizational circles here, is, as you can see, a sterling character,
but I'm afraid he's a bit of a naughty fellow, too, because, with that
sparkling wit of his, he refers to the gentry of our profession as
'organizators'.

"But what I think he is getting at is that all of us ought to have a
much more hardboiled professional attitude, instead of the sentimental
approach, and, say, he's dead-right--you bet he is. What we need today
is to perceive that raising money, raising lots of money, not for one
single second stopping in raising all the money we possibly can and then
going beyond that and doing the impossible in money-raising--this is
not, as some old-fashioned sentimentalists like to think, just a minor
detail and bother in organizational work, but our first big duty, our
very biggest one, first, last and all the time.

"We all talk too much about the supposed _purposes_ of our
organizations: how we feed so and so many children or help the victims
of T.B. That work is glorious, that is near divine, and yet I'm going to
venture a statement so radical that it will probably land me right in
Moscow with the other reds, for I want to tell you right here and now
that our primary mission isn't to _spend_ the money we collect, but to
train people, all the people, to give, to give generously, to keep on
giving not only to accomplish charitable ends, but to expand their own
miserable, narrow peanut souls by the divine _habit_ of giving.

"If they come to me and squeal and carry on and say that if they give as
I want 'em to, it's going to cramp their family lives and keep their
children from having a lot of fool extras like music and endanger their
savings accounts and so on and so forth, then I don't tell 'em I'm
sorry--not me, not one bit of it. No, sir! I say, 'That's fine, Brother!
Now you're learning to give in Jesus's way--to give till it hurts--yes,
and hurts your family as well as yourself. That's fine,' I say. You bet!

"And when a lot of cranks and critics and mean-souled little carpers and
cussers come around and say, 'Deacon, where's your financial
report--where's your certified proof that you haven't wasted any
money?'--why, then, I feel like saying to 'em, 'Damn it'--yessir, I get
so mad I could curse--I feel like saying, 'Damn it, how do you
cold-hearted and cold-faced carpers and critics know but what maybe the
best training to expand the soul of man is to dig down for money that
somebody _will_ waste!'... Not, you understand, that we ever do waste
one cent or even get any real salaries at the Blessed to Give
Brotherhood, and our books are audited by the great firm of French,
Saffron and Gubbey, C.P.A.'s, you understand, and show that every penny
contributed to us, except for the items of overhead, postage, printing
and rent, goes directly to some great body dealing with domestic or
foreign relief, every last penny! You bet!

"As many of you know, philanthropy, in hard dollars and cents, already
ranks eighth among the major industries of America. But it ought to rank
first. What can a man purchase in the way of a motor car, a bathtub or a
radio that will afford him such spiritual benefit, or for that matter
such keen pride and pleasure and social prestige, as the knowledge that
he is permitting the better organization executives the means and the
leisure to go around doing good, and the reputation of being the best
giver in his whole neighborhood? We may have to hypnotize him a little
to make him realize that, but how satisfied he will be when he does! You
bet!

"The philanthropic industry has been steadily increasing, but not
because of any improving generosity or imagination among the great body
of givers--not on your life--the sluggards--bless 'em! It's only because
they've been scientifically coaxed to give--scientifically, mind you.
The raising of funds must be a separate calling, with an infallible
technique. And yet some of you, my friends, tend to forget this, and go
around daydreaming about what good you'd do if you only had the cash,
instead of tackling it the scientific way; first raising the cash, and
_then_ seeing if there's some good you can do with it. You all know, or
ought to, that far beyond the fancy reasons that we spring in public
addresses--like native virtue and friendliness and the responsibilities
we're supposed to feel toward one another in a democracy--far beyond
these are the two _real_ factors: improved methods of obtaining gifts on
our part, like using the radio and movie stars; and then, when we get
folks into it, making them keep up the habit of giving.

"That's our job. Don't reason with folks--get them into the _habit_ of
filling out pledge cards just as regularly as they brush their teeth,
and make 'em feel guilty as hell if they fail to do either one! You bet!

"You know that it's been determined that the habit of giving is on three
stages. Highest of them is the passionate love of God--though I'm sorry
to say that in the budget, the gifts from this class don't add up very
big--there's too few of 'em. Then there's the class that gives from a
kind of restless feeling that they ought to be useful. Lowest, but maybe
most important of all to unprejudiced thinkers like ourselves, is the
class that is pushed by fear, vanity and self-interest: the fellows that
are afraid of revolution, the silly woman that gives us maybe one-tenth
of what she spends on war-paint, _maybe_, so that she'll get praised as
generous, and be invited on important committees.

"Now there we have the whole darn thing worked out, in perhaps the most
profound psychological analysis since Freud invented birth-control, and
yet what do we do? We go on circularizing and making personal appeals
and getting our front, the top men, to telephone to all three of these
classes of donors on exactly the same grounds, instead of laying our
plans to attack each one separate, and with a different appeal. That's
why philanthropy is only the eighth industry, that's why so many dollars
go to the automobile tycoons that properly belong in our coffers, and
it's all our fault.

"But what really gets my goat is the highly undemocratic belief that the
mass of the people are so miserably shiftless and ornery that they don't
even want to join their betters in giving. I tell you, I come from the
commonest kind of common people, and I resent the imputation against the
morale of this great class, and the unprofessional incompetence that
fails to see that here is not a negligible but the very most important
source of fund-raising.

"It's the deepest and richest mine in the country, and yet it hasn't
hardly been prospected. Don't the Scriptures say, 'As a man thinketh, so
he is'? Well, if you'll get your _thinking_ right, and on a higher
plane, you'll realize that there's almost a hundred and thirty million
people in this far-flung land, and that, at a mere dollar apiece, means
one--hundred--and--thirty--million gold simoleons, and I guess that's
worth the attention of even a highbrow like Dr. Planish or Professor
Buchwald!

"Yes, sir, the fundamental principle of the art and profession of
increasing the universal giving of money is that mighty few people do
give much unless they're _asked_ to give. And it's up to us,
particularly in these necessitous days when the war clouds seem to be
rolling up over Europe, to up and gird our loins and ask--and
demand--and insist--that those hundred and thirty millions come through
for the titanic moral and patriotic plans that we have so competently
laid out, but in which we are checked for the lack of just a few pitiful
millions of dollars. Now is the time! Don't forget that the menace of
war, properly presented, will scare into giving even those people, rich
or poor, who have been the most obdurate to our pitiful appeals for
help.

"Come on, gentlemen and ladies, get out from under that bushel and, on
behalf of the suffering and ignorant multitude, hit that line of
potential lower-bracket contributors, and hit it hard! You bet your
life!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dr. Planish was inspired by this Patrick Henry of philanthropy, and
inspired further by attending a two-day Round Table Conference conducted
by Commander Orris Gall, which presented a series of papers on
geopolitics, the certainty that Hitler would some day go to war, the
certainty that he wouldn't, and the use of graphs. It was like the
contents of a very earnest and well-bred magazine that was, during the
incarceration of the editorial staff, being conducted by several
candidates for the Ph.D. degree.

Out of all this Dr. Planish was beginning to weave a plan. He would
merge dozens of organizations--Wheyfish's, Kelly's, Gall's, Kitto's,
Stern's--into one, and let these men in as vice-presidents, but he would
be the supreme head, though at first he might work under Colonel Charles
B. Marduc, the master as he was the publicizer of American speed and
idealism. The time for his central powerhouse might not come for another
year or two, but now he was ready to meet and really talk to the
Colonel. His ambition was settled; his home was settled.

In Greenwich Village, on Charles Street, they had found an oldish house
which pleased the Doctor by its cheapness, Peony by its tall
drawing-room windows, Carrie by having a garden simply roaring with
cats.

The gold and scarlet Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the blue Chinese rug,
the jade Chinese lamp, the birch radio cabinet, and the portable bar
could all rest now, happier than they had ever been, in the long
drawing-room with its marble fireplace. There were four master bedrooms,
which gave young Carrie a room of her own, and gave Dr. Planish a study,
into which he fondly dragged the old splintered desk he had used as a
college instructor.

They had a home now, and they were only a step or two from glory.




CHAPTER 26


Rich old Mrs. Piggott had become bored with Every Man being a priest,
and for two years now Dr. Planish had been with the Blessed to Give
Brotherhood. His salary there had been reasonably adjusted at $4,800 a
year.

He didn't very much like his commander, Deacon Ernest Wheyfish, to whom
Peony referred as "Soapy Ernie," but with him the Doctor had taken
profound graduate work in the professions of fund-raising and
organization-executivity. He had learned that, against all the theories
of the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern, the bounteous blessings of
publicity had no value in collecting the temple money unless they were
sharply followed up by solicitation.

As Deacon Wheyfish often said, "Don't wait for the widow to bring in her
mite. Get right after her at the wash-tub."

This was not so merrily metaphorical as it sounded. The Deacon
specialized on bequests from wealthy widows and, if he did not think the
bequest was coming, in a dignified cat-burglar way he went right in to
the death-bed and demanded it.... Did Mrs. Jones go off to Heaven
without leaving a lot to the Brotherhood in her will, would she not look
down o'er the golden bar and realize that solely as a result of her own
carelessness there were evil and hunger in the world? And there was no
excuse for her. Honorable Wheyfish had regular printed Forms of Bequest
prepared for her use.

He once took Dr. Planish along when he prayed with an aged and affluent
woman who, the Deacon calculated, was good for about one more week--just
time to make a codicil to her will.

Embarrassed, a little itchy, Dr. Planish stood back in a corner of the
stifling rich room while Deacon Wheyfish happily banged right down on
his knees beside the bed, held the old woman's dry skeleton hand, and
whooped, "O Lord God, Thou knowest that our sister here has been a good
woman. It is none of our business to inquire to what charities she has
bequeathed such a share of her earthly store as Thou, who didst say
'Give all thou hast to the poor' would approve of, but Thou knowest that
her saintly heart and searching mind will have picked out and appointed
for the dispensation of that gift some person or organization who will
not take anything for himself, and with the expert knowledge to disburse
it where it will do the most good."

When he had finished the prayer, the old lady asked timidly, "Could you
tell me what is the surest way of making sure that my bequests will
really accomplish what I want them to?"

"Well, I did have a date with an archbishop, but I am always at the
service of suffering humanity," granted the Deacon, briskly drawing a
chair up to the bed and taking out of his pocket Blessed to Give Folder
#8A3--the engraved one.

Dr. Planish was just a little sick.

He reflected, "It's great technique, and I certainly don't look down on
it, but I do wish I could be in some organization where the money rolled
in just as fast but the aims were more refined."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Ernest Wheyfish was the first organizator to go right after the large
corporations, which, to save their corporate souls and keep down income
taxes, were now sending checks to philanthropies. As he himself gaily
said, "No one else put so much punch into selling the fat boys on the
idea that we who tote the grievous load of raising funds should be taken
just as seriously in the financial line as any other merchant." So it
came to pass that a corporation which employed two chemists, three
industrial engineers, a Burmese explorer, an interpreter, and a press
agent to reduce the cost of cable $00.0001 per yard, handed over large
checks to Deacon Wheyfish for distribution as he pleased--merely with
the prayer that this offering to the tribal priesthood might, by some
pious magic, propitiate the dark diabolic powers of the New Deal and the
Congress.

Wheyfish, a little later, was one of the first to note that when the
Government permitted a fifteen per cent deduction from income taxes for
charities, this really didn't mean that the tax-payer _could_ give away
fifteen per cent, but that he _had_ to give it, and that Ernest Wheyfish
was practically the Government official put there to receive it. His new
"literature," prepared by Dr. Planish, was starred and shining with
references to "15%--be generous without its costing anything," and
hinted that if you didn't do this, the Government would merely take it
in taxes anyway, and waste it on a lot of worthless loafers, so that a
gift to Wheyfish was practically a social duty.

"Sometimes I wonder if I ought to write that stuff. It seems almost
against true charitableness," Dr. Planish fretted to Peony.

"You're always so conscientious," she admired.

"I know what I _could_ do--make Vesper write that junk for me."

"But would he? He's such a sanctimonious crank."

"He'll damn well do what I tell him to, after the loyalty I've shown
him--almost risking my own job, getting the Deacon to take him over from
the Every Man at thirty a week. Oh, yes, I think Mr. Saintly J. Vesper
is beginning to realize that in _this_ world, one should be sanctified
in purpose but practical in methods. Well, Mrs. Planish, and what would
you say to a bottle of Rhine wine?"

"Why, I think I would say, 'Thank you very much, Professor Planish, you
sweet, saintly, and sanctified honeybee!'"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Wheyfish and Planish had the triumph of adding to their national board
of directors no less a derivative power than Major Harold Homeward, the
son-in-law of Colonel Charles B. Marduc and legal husband of Marduc's
daughter, who was known to all Intellectuals as "Talking Winifred."

Peony demanded of the Doctor, "I hear this Major Homeward that you've
got hold of is a regular polo-hound. You got to buy him for me. You meet
all these big-money boys, but what about me?"

"Dearie, some day you'll be really meeting Colonel Marduc himself, right
at his own home, maybe, if you'll be patient and give me time."

"Yes, that'd be wonderful, and I do believe you might pull it off."

"I'm not going to work for Soapy Ernie in that factory forever. I want
an organization of my own."

"That's the dope," said Mrs. Planish.

"Somehow," said Dr. Planish, "I have a hunch about Marduc."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Colonel Charles B. Marduc was a military man as well as an advertising
agent and an owner of magazines. He had been a fighting major in World
War I, then a colonel in the New York National Guard. In 1937, he was
fifty-five, and a fine, upstanding, silver-and-cherry buck, a biggish
man, though with his ambitiousness you would have expected to find him a
jittery terrier who went around barking "Notice me!"

He admired Napoleon and General Franco of Spain. Out of liquor, he
talked about being liberal; but in it, he talked about being a Strong
Man.

He was the legitimate son of an Upper New York State lawyer who became
richly interested in manufacturing carpets and became a judge; he was
graduated from Harvard, with no small fame for wenching and for
remembering dates in history; he was a reporter, and then the owner of
several small-town newspapers before he discovered the sociological
principle, later worked out by professors in the Harvard School of
Business Administration, that Advertising is a valuable economic factor
because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the
goods are worthless. Thus it was really along the line of Social Service
that his larger career began.

He was the president of Marduc, Syco & Sagg--formerly Marduc & Syco--who
had been pioneers, more like military strategists, really, in both radio
advertising and scientific research into retail markets--a Service given
strictly free to customers. They had been the first to broadcast the
song of the English skylark--sponsors, the King David Matzos Makers; and
the first to let the radio world (far-flung) hear the cry of a just-born
baby, in promotion of Vitaminized Vermont Flapjack Flour.

But the Colonel remained very Harvard through all of it, and at every
annual football game, his Assyrian eyebrows came down on the quaking
hosts of Bowdoin.

He was a publisher as well as an advertising man, and the chief owner of
the _Zinc Trades Monitor_, the _Housewife's Monthly Budget_, the
_Installment Plan Dealers' Trade Tips_, and of that popular journal
_Lowdown_, which presented the confessions of highly seduced young
women, as written by aged male hacks and illustrated with photographs of
the most virtuous models in Manhattan.

He was also a vestryman of St. Cunegonde's Protestant Episcopal Church,
and for years he had longed and plotted to become President of the
United States.

Illicit strangers were always running about with rumors that he wanted
to be President, so naturally he denied the rumors with irritation:
"These fellows apparently know more about my purposes than I do myself!
Very kind of 'em to volunteer to represent me! But seriously, I've
already got more than I can do, trying to grease the wheels of commerce.
I tend strictly to my own business."

He did, too, and also to the business of quite a number of other people.

He honestly felt that he had to become President, to save the country
from sliding down through New Deal Socialism into anarchy. Once, at
lunch, he firmly told his brilliant daughter, Winifred Marduc Homeward,
"Without any special pleasure in it, I can see that I have the best mind
in the country." She, the dear loyal soul, agreed with him, and told the
news to ever so many people.

There was only one thing that kept him from springing into a flaming sea
of publicity, of dinners and tours and photographs and interviews, and
thus swimming to the Presidency and saving democracy for the common
people. That was the fact that he couldn't endure the touch of the
common people. He felt that they were all fools and all noisy and all
smelly. It had kept him out of any race for the State Legislature, the
national Congress.

He had a large fame, but it was subterranean. Everyone in the world of
printing and cafs knew of him and of his desire to sacrifice himself as
President; everyone in the organizational world thought of him as young
lovers think of Helen. All executive secretaries tried to get him to
"write a little piece--just something off-hand that you can dictate to
your secretary in five minutes--for our monthly bulletin." They coaxed
him to preside at dinners and to stand at the microphone and say that
agriculture is fine and brushing the teeth is fine, but most inspiring
of all is the money-raising campaign of the Amalgamated Pan-national
Interdenominational Committee for Study of and Union between the Kremlin
and the Methodist Board of Public Morals.

One invitation out of one hundred Colonel Marduc accepted--preferably a
dinner attended by the President's wife, by the University of Michigan
football coach or by Professor Einstein. But he escaped the photographs
and the eye-searing flashlights in the anteroom before the dinners, the
handshaking and the "I don't know whether you'll remember me but I met
you" afterward, by actually eating comfortably at home or at the club,
not showing up at the dinner till nine-fifteen, and leaving always as
soon as he had done his act.

Among the thousands of professional advertising men in America, only a
few hundred were popularly known as literary, emotional and visionary;
only six as positively scientific; and of this latter class, Colonel
Marduc was the leader.

He made round-voiced speeches before church conventions, college
assemblies and sociological conferences, proving that modern advertising
was the cheapest way of selling goods, that it was a gallery of cooing
prose and lifting pictures, and that it, single-handed, had provided
what he called "Mr. Average American" with the silver-plated automatic
electric toaster, the recorded works of Friml and Johann Sebastian Bach,
the juke-boxes, two-ton trucks, two-tone summer shoes, tooth-paste which
eliminated all dentists, radios which enabled the listener to hear the
same jazz from Schenectady and then from Siam, mouth-wash that was
equally useful for sweetening the breath, removing dandruff and as a
cocktail in Prohibition territory, and all the other miracles that had
made Mr. Average American the happiest and prettiest human being that
had ever existed.

These facts Colonel Marduc proved with graphs, statistics and fury, and
he became so esteemed as a man of science that he received two Litt.D.
degrees, one M.Sc., four LL.D.'s, one L.H.D., and decorations from
Germany, Italy and the D.A.R.

And yet his mistresses always said, sooner or later, that Colonel Marduc
was not a man they cared to know.

These ladies were never Anglo-Saxon. The Colonel detested all American
and English women, and his playmates were Italian, Greek,
Russian-Jewish, French, or Chinese. They sharpened him up, and with them
he could laugh--for a few weeks. His regular system for getting rid of
them, as precise and tested as one of his firm's marketing reports,
always started with a sudden and justifiable quarrel, and rarely cost
him much money.

His wife must still have been alive in 1937, but nobody could quite
remember. She was important only as having contributed to the dynasty
the Colonel's daughter, Winifred, and she had been broken-hearted and
sweetly mute for so long now that nobody noticed it any more.

But Winifred, Winifred Marduc Homeward, that was something else; that
was a woman, _the_ woman, the American woman careerist, and it is a
reasonable bet that in 1955 she will be dictator of the United States
and China.

Winifred Homeward the Talking Woman.

She was an automatic, self-starting talker. Any throng of more than two
persons constituted a lecture audience for her, and at sight of them she
mounted an imaginary platform, pushed aside an imaginary glass of ice
water, and started a fervent address full of imaginary information about
Conditions and Situations that lasted till the audience had sneaked
out--or a little longer.

She was something new in the history of women, and whether she stemmed
from Queen Catherine, Florence Nightingale, Lucrezia Borgia, Frances
Willard, Victoria Woodhull, Nancy Astor, Carrie Nation or Aime Semple
McPherson, the holy woman of Los Angeles, has not been determined.

Winifred was as handsome as a horse, a portly young presence with a
voice that smothered you under a blanket of molasses and brimstone. She
was just under thirty in 1937, but she had the wisdom of Astarte and the
punch of Joe Louis, and her eyelids were a little weary.

For a couple of years now she had emulated her father in having a
mistress, who in her case was her legal husband, Major Harold Homeward,
who had got his title by being a first lieutenant in the paymaster corps
in World War I. He was a handsome, high-colored man, a dancing man but a
surprisingly good accountant, with an eye for interesting writing, and
useful about the Marduc magazines. Even when he felt merely dutiful
about it, he made love warmly, and Winifred used to come back from the
office happily to the little man in the home.

They had no children.

Her one humility was toward her father, and it may have been due more to
her demands than to his own that he was so often considered, in
editorial offices and bars, as a possible President, who would look
handsome at that starry and eagle-pinioned desk while Winifred merely
ran the country.

She said, privately and publicly--though with her, the two states
weren't always to be distinguished--that her father had taught her how
to think incisively and boldly, how to write simply and distinctively,
and how, at all embarrassing moments of being caught mentally naked, to
duck into the refuge of that fine old word "Honor." With the Colonel
himself, Honor was so developed that he wouldn't permit Marduc, Syco &
Sagg to handle any patent medicine, liquor or contraceptive
advertisements, but cared for them through a separate firm with which
his name wasn't even connected.

When Winifred and the Colonel were together, she talked so much about
his virtues that he had no chance to talk about them himself.

In all her dissertations occurred the face-saving phrases: "Oh, just a
second. There's one other thing I wanted to bring up. I do hope I'm not
talking too much tonight. Just let me speak of this, and then I'll shut
up."

She wouldn't, though. Winifred Homeward the Talking Woman.

Besides being on the boards of twenty-seven different welfare
organizations, serving as a Republican Committeewoman, and speaking
publicly on an average of three times a week on all the Causes in which
she believed--and they included every Cause that any active
women's-college graduate possibly could believe in, during the years
1930-1950--Winifred Marduc Homeward was the editor of that feminist and
liberal weekly _Attention!_, of which her father was the actual
owner--or donor--and her husband the titular publisher.

The complicated and slightly hysterical ideology of _Attention!_ may be
formulated as a belief that the offices of President, editor of the New
York _Herald-Times_, head of a united University of Columbia and
California, and the official dismisser of all distasteful conclusions of
the Gallup Poll, should be combined and held by a person whose
description resembled that of Winifred Homeward.

_Attention!_ had once been quoted in a sermon by the woman pastor of a
Spiritualist Church in Oakland, California.

One other person besides the pastor quoted it, and that was Winifred,
often and earnestly. It lacked nothing but circulation and the
possibility of anyone's ever reading through an entire paragraph.

It was referred to--when it _was_ referred to--as a feminist
publication, but it is not certain that Mrs. Homeward was a "feminist,"
it was not certain that she liked women very much. She was more likely
to be eloquent about males who praised her than about females who
didn't, and far more likely to be seen with them. And though
_Attention!_ had been published, and Colonel Marduc had been highly
public, during the year 1936, when Franco's revolution began in Spain
and Zinovieff and Kameneff had been shot in Russia, neither Winifred nor
the Colonel had taken a more belligerent stand on these matters than to
say, with affecting earnestness, "One must not come to hasty conclusions
on affairs so complicated and so uncandidly reported."

That was the reigning family--Colonel Marduc and Winifred and their
illegitimate offspring, Major Homeward--to whose golden company the
Planishes had long aspired.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Major Homeward appeared at a meeting of the directors of the Blessed to
Give Brotherhood, handsome, graceful, his mustache like a lithe new-born
thing, and his eye moist but lively. Ernest Wheyfish recognized him as
royalty, but it was Dr. Planish who thought of whispering, "Pretty dull.
Let's sneak out and have a quick one." The Major's eyes rounded like
those of a cat beholding an injudicious robin; he seized the Doctor's
arm, and they crept out behind Wheyfish's nervous eloquence.

They drank till seven. Dr. Planish privily telephoned to Peony, and
brought a friendly Major home to dinner.

Now Peony was plump but biological. She had never stepped off Main
Street, but her eyes could seduce even a traffic policeman, and to the
Major she said, "This is so nice!" as competently as a woman press agent
or an actress in her dressing-room. By ten o'clock the Major and the
Doctor and Peony were such a trio of buddies that they telephoned,
long-distance, to George Riot, and insisted on his flying down and
joining them. (He didn't.) Before the Major was got into a complete
state of liquid happiness, however, Dr. Planish had planted the seed of
a Message:

"I know Colonel Marduc is a figurehead on a lot of organizations, but he
never really has anything to do with 'em--lets 'em use his name and
sends 'em a small check, but he never knows what they're up to. Well, if
he really wants to be President of the United States----"

"He doesn't--he doesn't at all. I don't know how that rumor started,"
stated the Colonel's very own son-in-law. "He feels that he's just a
plain seismograph of public opinion. He has no political ambitions."

"Well then, Secretary of State or Ambassador to England."

"Maybe he might consider those."

"He doesn't realize how an uplift organization that he really worked
closely with could hook his name up with all these idealistic movements
that get the votes. If he'd pay some attention, and maybe some cash, to
a crack executive----"

"No, no, no! Thanks, Peony--that's plenty--whoa--that's better,"
observed the Major. "No, I'm afraid the Colonel wouldn't be interested
in your Blessed to Give bunch. He thinks that having me there on the
board as his stooge is enough."

"_That?_ Oh, that damn racket! Of course not. I mean a more general
idealistic association, more spiels about freedom and democracy. I'd
like to talk to him, some time."

The Doctor did not belabor his message further, and not till after many
more drinks did he probe the Major about the Colonel's mysterious
relationship to Governor Thomas Blizzard.

(Peony was thinking how very pleasant and urbane and worth striving for
this was: a parley in which the titles of Colonel and Major and Governor
and Senator and Doctor and Professor and Haig & Haig were thrown about
like beans.)

                 *        *        *        *        *

Tom Blizzard was one of the twenty men who, in 1937, had a chance to be
Democratic nominee for President in 1944, possibly even in 1940.

In his own Midwestern State, he had been Speaker of the House and for
two terms Governor, and the credulous readers of newspaper columns still
believed that he spent nine-tenths of his time out in the little factory
town of Waskeegan, and one-tenth in New York and Washington. It was
actually the other way around. He kept up his millionaire manufacture of
farm implements in Waskeegan, but most of the time he lived at his
humble twelve-room log cabin on Park Avenue, in New York, and he knew
every reporter, Communist editor, prize fighter, professor of economics
and night-club bartender in town.

He was a large untidy man with a rolling and affable walk, a fetching
youthful smile, and a core of hard shrewdness.

It was commonly reported that Governor Blizzard and Colonel Marduc had a
political understanding, but which was to support which was not
explained, nor, tonight, did Major Homeward explain it. Perhaps,
concluded the Doctor, he didn't know.

The party moved into the kitchen, as all really intimate parties must.

That kitchen on Charles Street had become a very fine kitchen. Peony had
concentrated on the once drab and wormy room and made it a splendor of
stenciled walls, cupboards with little red oilcloth frills and
unbreakable plastic dishes of red and green. They sat about the
green-topped kitchen table, drinking highballs, and it was the joy of
Major Homeward, son of the smartest tailor in West Virginia, as it was
of the Midwestern Planishes, to express their communal affection in the
tender strains of "Mandy, Mandy, sweet as the sugar cane," an American
folk-song from the Deep South via Tin-Pan Alley.

During this recital, Carrie Planish, returning from some unexplained
engagement, looked into the kitchen and sniffily withdrew.

Peony darted out after her, with "Come in and meet Major Homeward. Such
a fine man, and important socially."

"He looks to me like an old silly," murmured Carrie.

"Old? He's not as old as your father!"

"Well?"

"Carrie!"

"Honestly, Mother, I don't want to be disagreeable, but he seems like an
old tent-show actor."

"He's one of the very cleverest and most influential men in the whole
world of welfare-promotion!"

"Honestly, Mother, I'm sorry, but I don't think I like influential
people or welfare _or_ promotion. I like sleeping better. Good night."

Peony stood bitterly in the hall. What had come over this new
generation? She wasn't like that when _she_ was sixteen! Why, she'd have
been all eager and flattered if _her_ mother had invited her in to help
impress an important guest! But Carrie----

Insisting on leaving a good private school, where she met the daughters
of prominent people, for that horrible, big, overgrown public-school,
all full of Micks and Jews and Wops! And so impertinent! When Peony had
sighed, "But, baby, after your father and I have scraped and saved to
send you to a fashionable school like Miss Clink's," up and answering so
pertly, "Then you ought to be glad, Mother; you'll save money by my
going to high school!" Trying to trap her own mother by saying things
like that! And talking about biology and mechanical drawing and Ernest
Hemingway and James Farrell and a lot of nonsense like that! And
pretending to be so modest, and yet wearing those tight sweaters that
showed everything----

Peony summed it all up, "I just can't make out these jazz babies. You
can't get 'em to see the domestic point of view!" and she hastily rolled
back into the kitchen and had a highball.

When, later, it seemed better for Dr. Planish to get the Major into a
taxicab and accompany him safely as far as the Winifred Marduc Homeward
residence on East 68th Street, Peony went along, and they sang quite a
little more in the taxicab, and when the Major held her hand, she was
proud to have such interest taken in her by one of those rare men who
are liaison officers between rich society and the working
intelligentsia--that combination that makes New York so fascinating and
so very, very different from Kinnikinick, Iowa.

                 *        *        *        *        *

One of the most important activities of any liberal educational
organization is an activity called Research.

Say, Research into the monkeyshines of the ex-Reverend Ezekiel Bittery.

You read forty or fifty complete biographies of him in the newspapers
and then, under the name of your secretary, you send for Mr. Bittery's
own pamphlets and read everything all over again. Then you craftily send
out spies, with funny hats and their coat-collars turned up, to listen
to his public speeches. So, by Research, you discover that Brother
Bittery is a flannel-mouthed rabble-rouser who used to be charged not
only with stealing the contents of the church poor-box, but of taking
the box itself home to keep radishes in, and who at present, if he isn't
on the pay-roll of all the Fascists, is a bad collector.

A couple of years later, a Congressional committee will summon a lot of
witnesses to Washington and, after a lot of bullying and undercover
work, will discover that Mr. Bittery used to be a hell-fire preacher and
is now a hell-fire Fascist.

Two years after that, the more leftwing newspapers will send out all the
Ph.D.'s among its reporters, and discover that Mr. Bittery used to favor
lynching agnostics and now favors lynching socialists.

And during all this time, the Reverend Ezekiel himself will, as publicly
as possible, to as many persons as he can persuade to attend his
meetings, have admitted, insisted, bellowed, that he has always been a
Ku Kluxer and a Fascist, that he has always hated Jews, colleges and
good manners, and that the only thing he has ever disliked about Hitler
is that he once tried to paint barns instead of leaving the barns the
way God made them.

That is Research.

It was familiar to Dr. Planish, and he now tried to turn its fair light
upon a more hidden topic: the inner purposes of the Marduc-Blizzard
junta. That is to say, he went so far in investigation as to get hold of
Hatch Hewitt, the reporter, for a drink, and asked him some
questions--an example of Research Method not uncommon among
organizators.

"Yeah," said Hatch--a man whom Dr. Planish fuzzily remembered having met
some years ago. "Yeah, Tom Blizzard's hat is in the ring for
President--any ring. In fact, if a bunch of kids on Eighth Avenue are
playing marbles, they better watch their chalk circle pretty carefully,
because if they turn their backs on it for ten seconds, they'll find his
hat right in the center. He's just as likely to have a love affair with
the Lake Erie Professional Hockey Club or the Aroostook Potato Growers'
Association as with the St. John's Sodality for the Study of St. Thomas
Aquinas.

"He has the edge on Marduc, who'd like to do the same thing but he's
afraid of getting his hat dusty.

"And Winifred Marduc Homeward--oh, it isn't that she's always giving her
own version of the Sermon on the Mount, but that she always carries her
own portable Mount right with her and sets it up even at a cocktail
party. She's the first lady Messiah, and I'm afraid she's going to get
the entire Messiah industry in wrong. After her third scream of
righteousness whenever she attacks Hitler, Winifred almost makes me
tolerate Hitler, and I don't like that. Her only trouble is that she
read her Scriptures wrong. She thought they said 'If women learn
anything, let them tell their husbands at home. It is a shame for women
not to speak in the church.'

"I can't prove it, but I suspect that both her father and Governor
Blizzard think that they're using her as a guide to the Presidency, but
that she's using them, and when she decides which is the horsiest dark
horse, she'll cut the other one's throat. Changed world, my boy. In the
old days, you used to look for the _femme_ only in love affairs; now,
she's the hidden clue in political affairs.

"But what are you doing with these people, Gid? I thought you'd settled
down with honest bootleggers like Deacon Wheyfish. Don't tell me you've
gone over to the intellectual racket!"

Years of leadership and of oratory enabled Dr. Planish to throw
everything into his annihilating retort:

"Honestly--you--make--me--tired!"

A week later, Dr. Planish was invited to accompany Major Homeward on a
pilgrimage to the office of Colonel Marduc. (No Generals were involved
as yet.)

The throne-room at Marduc, Syco & Sagg's was the masterpiece of
Bobbysmith, who advertised himself as "the Gertrude Stein of Interior
Designing." It was as plain and dignified as Rockefeller Center, but a
little smaller. The only picture was a portrait of the Colonel, in which
he resembled a full-blooded camel on a turquoise desert, and it hung
against apricot walls, with fluorescent cornice-lighting. The curtains
were ripples of champagne-colored silk, and the furniture was of
polished white mahogany upholstered with coral leather. The ruddy marble
fireplace was set in without a mantel, and by it was a case of books by
Proust, Spengler and Zane Grey. On the plaza of the desk was one calla
lily and a signed photograph of Lord Beaverbrook.

Colonel Marduc sat at the far end of the room and looked at you flatly
as you made entrance, so that you already felt awkward before you had
got within twenty feet of him. He had the trick from Mussolini, who had
it from the Spanish Inquisition.

The conversation between the Colonel and Dr. Planish fell into that
atmosphere of an Oriental court which always clung about the Marducs,
even in a stratospheric advertising agency. The Doctor salaamed and said
that he was honored; he said that of course the Colonel would never
stoop to any political job, but if he desired to, he could be President
of the United States by ten tomorrow morning.

He said that he himself was the humblest creature under Allah's
beneficent sun, that he loved his present (well-paid) job, and was
aboundingly loyal to Wheyfish Pasha, but if either Colonel Marduc or
God, preferably the former, decided to start a real organization, one
that would take the weak little ideology of Democracy by the hand and
guide it tenderly, then he hoped he might be around to give advice. He
said that such an organization might, incidentally, get its founder
known around as the chief subsidizer of all Justice and Freedom.

And he said that now, as never before, was the time, with the war going
on between Japan and China and with Hitler smirking at Czechoslovakia.

"Not going to be any European war!" snarled the Colonel.

"But it's possible."

"If there were, America would never get into it. We'll be so well
prepared that we won't have to."

"But even in the matter of preparedness, we ought to have an association
that would be the first big one that was keyed to war psychology,"
argued the Doctor. "If we started out now, and had speakers and
hand-outs every week interpreting the news, then we'd get to be
considered the final authority, no matter which way the war-cat
jumped--win, lose, draw or stay out."

"Who do you think of as associated with us?"

"Well, your daughter, and Milo Samphire, the foreign correspondent----"

"Samphire? That fanatic? No! He's pro-English, and what's worse, he's
eloquent, and what's still worse, he's honest. He wouldn't take
my--suggestions," the Colonel grumbled.

"Well, we could get Senator Bultitude, and Christian Stern, and Walter
Gilroy--he hasn't any ideas, but he has a kind of touching reverence for
'em--and maybe you could coax Governor Blizzard to come in. I wouldn't
expect to decide which of the Big Names we'd get. My job is to know the
technique of putting over an organization--for anything, or against
anything--provided it's on the right side, I mean."

"And which do you regard as the right side?"

"I think that in any controversy, your side would probably be the right
side, Colonel."

So he got the laugh that promised him spiritual victory and five
thousand a year in salary.

"Are you doing anything for dinner next Thursday--you and your wife?
Drop up to my place--eight o'clock, black tie." The Colonel said it
casually enough, but to Dr. Planish it was the visitation of the Magi.

It happened that the Doctor had invited Hatch Hewitt and his wife for
dinner the coming Thursday, but he wasted no time on anything so petty,
particularly as Hatch had picked up a scraggly and unlaudatory wife.

He went home to inform Peony, "We're going to the Marducs' for dinner,"
in the tone of modest awe in which other men, in other places, have
said, "I'm to receive a knighthood in the next Honors List," or "I have
just made my first million dollars," or "I have at last devised a method
of proving the existence of God by pure logic."

Peony answered with a yell of joy.




CHAPTER 27


The apartment of Colonel Charles B. Marduc, on Fifth Avenue beside
Central Park, occupied one and a half floors of the building, and was
served by its own elevator, with two shifts of elevator men especially
trained not to mention the weather. It was famed throughout that whole
world of _Household Decoration_ and _Country Life_ magazines, that
little glazed empire, as showing the best taste in the country in having
assembled the best examples of the worst Victorian furniture.

It displayed petunia-red satin sofas with frames of black walnut carved
with grapes, rugs with hoydenish roses, a ruby and sapphire chandelier
with electric candles, white satin draperies with rose-silk lambrequins,
and a delicate old music-box cabinet containing cigars. It was so filled
with reproductions of good needlepoint and good breeding that it would
almost have fooled the connoisseurs.

Peony wandered blissfully, enjoying the bland flavor of wealth, and
wondering whether she was expected to laugh or be awed at statuettes
under glass and a tip-table painted with a Rhine castle seemingly
constructed of taffy. The Doctor was too busy to notice, for besides the
Marducs and the Homewards and Senator Felix Bultitude, here was the
celebrated Mrs. Tucket, who had made a social career by being rude to
everybody, and at last, here was Governor Thomas Blizzard himself,
looking astonishingly like Governor Blizzard.

When you saw him, you knew that he was Somebody, though you were not
sure whether he was a cultured ex-prizefighter or an athletic preacher.
He had never been seen without his tie crooked. But he also was the
first person to whom Dr. Planish had talked in days who smiled like a
human being.

Though they came as strangers, the Planishes were immediately hoisted to
eminence by the flattering screams of old friendship with which Senator
Bultitude greeted them. He remembered that Dr. Planish must remember
that once the Senator had been associated with H. Sanderson
Sanderson-Smith in labor-scuttling, and he wanted all that brightly
forgotten, for the Senator now called the labor unions by their first
names. Some of his best friends were labor unions.

Dr. Planish believed that throughout dinner he would impressively be
lecturing about organizations and their superiority to the Government at
Washington. He sat down at table, he cleared his throat--and found that
he was one second too late. Winifred Homeward had already started.

It was not that Winifred talked more than these celebrated men might
have, for no one can talk more than one hundred per cent. But she could
talk down talkers. She could put into her dinner offensives an assurance
and a demand for attention that made forty minutes of her feel like the
entire voyage of the Ark. She was so powerful that she could convince
anyone at all of the exact opposite of whatever she maintained,
including the man from whom she had lifted her ideas in the first place.

The moment now was some eight months after the Hitler-Chamberlain pact
of Munich. Winifred held forth about Hitler's nastiness so ferociously
that she had the same effect upon all present that she had on Hatch
Hewitt, and they became stubbornly certain that Hitler was a fine, fat,
jolly, drinking fellow, who loved girls and sausages and beer and
stories about pandas; as she talked on, they longed to sit with Hitler
in a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch at good old
Berchtesgaden, and talk about fishing. There might have been a dangerous
crop of Fascists grown that evening, except that presently, still
hurdling over all interruptions, Winifred stated violently that all
American young people were slatternly and impertinent, so that a
considerable degree of trust in Young America was instantly restored
around the table.

She also had a few pronouncements to make upon the movies, the
immorality of symphony music, the coal business and how to decorate a
twenty-dollar-a-month flat. She had a remarkable number of opinions, and
she thought highly of all of them.

Colonel Marduc did not say seventy words during dinner, but Dr. Planish
saw that he was watching. After it, the Colonel muttered to him,
"Planish, you seem to be a good listener. You'll have to be, if we do
start this new organization. Come see me tomorrow at three--sharp."

Dr. Planish was there at ten minutes to three.

"We'll have to take a few months formulating the thing," said Colonel
Marduc. "You'll have to resign from the Blessed to Give comedy, and
devote all your attention to our show. Five thousand a year for a start?
More later?"

"Okay," said Dr. Planish.

With these simple, brave words the new school of philosophy began.

                 *        *        *        *        *

There was a small commando squad of what were known in journalistic and
welfare circles as "Marduc's young men." They were employed by his
agency, but he frequently sent them off on detached duty all over the
country, to raid or spy in every known political or ameliorative
gathering. They numbered anywhere from four to ten at a time, and you
could tell them apart only by the fact that some of them were graduates
of Yale, some of Harvard or Princeton or Dartmouth or Williams, and
some, for pioneer work in rough country, of the State universities.

All of them smoked pipes but preferred cigarettes; on week-ends, all of
them wore tweed jackets with gray flannel bags and no hat; but in the
New York office they appeared in modest and expensive gray or brown
suits, with shirts and ties and handkerchiefs all in matching gray.

Each of them allowed himself daily exactly twenty-seven
cigarettes--carried in a quiet silver case--with two highballs, two
cocktails, three cups of coffee, one Bromo Seltzer, and fifteen minutes
of sharp and detestable exercise. They averaged 1 spirited minutes of
love per week, one rather unsatisfactory adultery per year, and one
wife--always from a Good Family, usually a dark pretty girl whom you
could never quite remember. They averaged 1 children, and if it was not
true that all of Marduc's young men had curly hair, still you thought
they had, and they all read the _Atlantic Monthly_ and the _New Masses_.
They voted high-church Republican or middle-creek Socialist, or both,
and all evening long, even when they were playing bridge, they listened
to the radio and said how much they hated the radio.

They were all either born Congregationalists who had become
Episcopalians, Episcopalians who had become atheists, or Christian
Scientists who didn't talk about it.

Of them all, none was more average than Sherry Belden.

He was Yale, class of 1928, both Phi Beta Kappa and Skull and Bones. He
had been a college tennis champion and cheer-leader, and now, at
thirty-two, he was still a college tennis champion and a cheer-leader.
But he felt very radical because he was a close friend of a man who
praised Gandhi--usually for the wrong things.

Sherry had modest manners and a straight nose; he lived in Port
Washington, in a brand-new, half-timbered Elizabethan cottage; he had
the largest electric ice box in his block, the largest stock of strange
liquors, including Strega and arrack, and the largest library of
communist propaganda, erotica, technocracy and Sir Walter Scott.

It was Sherry Belden whom Colonel Marduc detached from his fine job as
an account executive to assist Dr. Planish.

He said, "At least, Planish, Sherry will keep Winifred off your neck.
She's very useful to any Cause if you just keep her gagged till you push
her out onto the stage, or if you keep some well-bred eunuch like Sherry
for her to talk to."

Dr. Planish found Sherry as shining and nimble and useful as a new
bicycle.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Doctor's farewell to his recent boss, the Hon. Mr. Ernest Wheyfish,
was unexpected. He had pictured Soapy Ernest denouncing him as a traitor
and sneak, but Ernest only caroled, "Going to be associated with Marduc,
eh? I envy you. Now, Gid, you mustn't forget the happy times we've had
here together, shoulder to shoulder to put over the principle of
Christian giving, just like a joyful old-time prayer meeting, and let's
see if we can't go on working together. Fix me up a lunch with old
Marduc. God bless you, my boy. I never did find a fellow that I liked to
work with better, and I hope your contributions will come rolling in
like salmon in spring."

                 *        *        *        *        *

There was, at first, no need of general contributions. Colonel Marduc
supported the preliminary survey, as it was technically called, and if
he did not seem displeased by mysterious newspaper items mentioning him
as a possible President, he never demanded them.

For months Dr. Planish held conferences with the leading thinkers and
humanitarians and read their typed memos, which he called "highly
suggestive," even if each one did contradict all the others.

Sherry Belden took for him, at first, a three-room suite in a hotel,
with a small but distinctive bar in a closet. Here he worked with
Sherry, Colonel Marduc, Winifred, Major Homeward, Natalia Hochberg,
Senator Bultitude, Governor Blizzard, Bishop Pindyck, Rabbi
Lichtenselig, Ramona Tundra the actress, and, naturally, the Reverend
Dr. Christian Stern.

But there were a number of new intimates; for example, the Rt. Rev.
Msgr. Nicodemus Lowell Fish. The Monsignor was one of the few Yankees
who had ever become a Catholic dignitary, and it was his pride to be
known as "the missionary to the intelligentsia." He called a Negro
doctor, a New Deal economist, and a sports columnist by their first
names, and he went backstage at all play openings. It was obligatory
upon all atheist intellectuals to say that Msgr. Fish was a better
Protestant than they were.

He had personally converted seven reporters and a Baptist minister to
Roman Catholicism, and it was reported that he was arguing with Charles
Coughlin.

Also, he would not have known a real "intellectual" if he had ever met
one, and he believed that Hilaire Belloc was a profound historian.

And there was Professor Topelius, born on the Baltic, who had a plan to
bring eternal peace by having Europe conducted as one federal state,
governed by a committee of Americans--and Professor Topelius. There was
Dr. Waldemar Kautz, a play producer from Vienna, who hated America
because he believed that the entire population ate lunch at drug-store
counters. The poor man was dying slowly of longing for his Stammtisch
and the waiter calling him "Herr Doktor" or, with any luck, "Herr
Baron."

There was Judge Vandewart, who was a tower of strength as a receiver for
bankrupt utility companies. He liked to be chairman at all public
dinners that had press tables.

Professor Campion, an almost new friend, was a surprising person to find
in the Planish School of Economics, because Professor Campion actually
knew something about economics, and was even licensed to teach it at a
reputable school: Cornell University.

But Campion was a Signer.

Any group of rebels, Communist, Royalist, Argentine, Danish, S.P.C.A.,
Y.M.H.A., or O.G.P.U., who drew up a protest to be sent to the Congress
or to a foreign ambassador, complaining because somebody was going to be
shot at dawn, or wasn't going to be shot at all, could count on
Professor Campion to sign. He often signed nine protests between 1 A.M.
and bedtime, and his chief reading matter, outside of the works of
Plato, was his breakfast-table pile of four-page telegrams from
propaganda organizations asking for his immediate shirt.

Then, there was Ed Unicorn, a crusader in search of a crusade.

Till a year ago, Ed had been a simple-hearted American reporter, roving
about Europe and filing to his string of newspapers whatever his local
interpreter (for Ed knew no known language) told him was to be found in
the native press that day. He had not realized that he was a "foreign
correspondent" and he had denied that he was a "journalist." In bars in
Budapest, Belgrade and Oslo, he was frequently heard to say, "I'm a
plain newspaperman."

But he had come home and had given a public lecture, a very successful
one, full of anecdotes about fooling the censors and the customs
inspectors, rambling but diverting, for Ed was an extremely good fellow.
The lone lecture had led to a lecture tour, and the tour to a magazine
article, and the article to a book, and the book to broadcasting, and
the broadcasting to a wide public belief that Ed was the original
discoverer of geography and of a mysterious practice called Foreign
Affairs. Ed was prosperous now; he knew the slickest girls in the Stork
Club, and on the Linguaphone he had learned one hundred and fourteen
words of Spanish; but he had exhausted every single anecdote about his
adventures, and he was wistfully hoping that Colonel Marduc or Dr.
Planish would hand him out a new set of gospels to broadcast about.

A very different foreign correspondent was Milo Samphire, and Dr.
Planish found Samphire much less co-operative than Ed Unicorn.

Samphire had been stationed abroad for fifteen years; he was really a
scholar, and he had manners and a manner. Even English journalists had
sometimes been willing to call him a journalist. When he wanted an
interview with a prime minister, he did not make inquiries of the
American consul, the American Express Company, the barman at the Grand
Ritz-Crillon-Superb-Schwartz, or the oldest son at Thos. Cook & Sons. He
just telephoned to the prime minister.

He had been ousted from both Germany and Italy, and he had come home not
to broadcast and be recognized at the Twenty-one Club, but, quite
honestly and fierily, to persuade America that it was in danger from the
Fascist fever. He was a fanatic, he had a single-track mind, he was as
handsome as a Confederate Spy in the movies, and to him, Mister Marduc
was just another advertising man.

Yet the skilled and professionally forgiving Dr. Planish solicited his
advice, in the hope of using him at public dinners.

A comfort to the Doctor, however, were the familiar philanthrobber team
of Henry Caslon Kevern and Walter Gilroy.

To the eye, they were opposites. Kevern was old and dry and refined and
of a renowned family. Contrary to normal American eugenics, he had a
great-grandfather. He collected first editions of William Blake; and his
investment banking was so aloof, so disdainful of anything less than a
million dollars, that it seemed less like money-making than like a
further collection of rare editions.

Gilroy was a Westerner, youngish and burly and loud and very pleasant,
an owner of oil wells. But these two were alike in feeling guilty at
having so much money. They did not do anything about it so obvious as
raising the wages of their employees; that would have been a little
sordid, and lacking in any feeling of a mystic rite of expiation.

Another new friend was General Gong, U.S.A. (ret.), who had recently
bought a new world atlas (in two volumes) and a history of maneuvers in
which he himself had participated but which he had entirely forgotten,
and who was certain, poor man, that if America ever did get into war, he
would be recalled to command these inexperienced cubs of fifty and
fifty-five.

The one man whom Colonel Marduc went to solicit, instead of sending the
Doctor or Sherry Belden, was Leopold Altzeit, the international banker.

Altzeit finance was so vast and esoteric that, beside it, Henry Kevern's
seemed like pawnbroking. He was tiny and frail and inconceivably old; in
his private office, teak-paneled, there was only a desk, two chairs, a
framed letter from Beethoven to Prince Lichnowsky, and an unquestioned
Rembrandt.

Marduc did not need to tell him what Hitler was doing to the Jews.
Altzeit's chief operative in Germany had already risked his life to
become one of Hitler's staff.

Altzeit listened, still and impenetrable, then rang, and to an
expressionless secretary, in a very little voice like a breeze among dry
leaves in November, he whispered, "Lothar, will you please to bring me a
check for ten thousand dollars made out to Mr. Charles B. Marduc, thank
you."

It was Leopold Altzeit's third arrow that day at the Fascists. He did
not think much of this bow, with the curious Oriental name of Marduc.
But he would always go on shooting; he always had.

Between conferences, the Planishes proudly became intimates of Winifred
Homeward and her little boy, the Major. Winifred lost so many friends,
talked them to death so quickly or just forgot them into oblivion, that
it was not hard for newcomers to step in and be friends--while it
lasted.

Peony was a competent listener, and Winifred permitted her to come often
to the red-brick Georgian chateau of the Homewards on East 68th Street,
where Peony's position presently came to resemble that of a highly paid
companion and maid--except that she did not get the pay. For a while,
she was perhaps Winifred's only woman friend--Winifred complained that
most women friends were selfish and jealous and were always interrupting
her.

Peony was rapidly promoted, in this romantic chronicle of modern court
life, from milkmaid to lady in waiting. She confided to the Doctor that
she was at last enjoying to the full the social and intellectual
advantages of New York, and, without paying one cent (except for taxi
fare), she could always get a cup of tea (not very hot) at Winifred's.

Dr. Planish saw the great lady informally, too. Once, after a tense
conference on the wickedness of dictators, Winifred said gaily to him,
"Oh, let's go out and have a sandwich at a cafeteria. I love cafeterias!
So jolly!"

In that vast white-tiled room shrieking with light, they took their
trays and edged along the counter, inspecting cakes with marble icing,
cakes crumbed with sugar, ingenious cakes like sections of a tree.

"Isn't this amusing!" Winifred screamed, so that a policeman on the
corner outside nervously grasped his club. "I love an adventure! And
don't you hate these people who come into a dump like this as though
they were slumming? The whole pleasure of it is to feel that you're not
really any better than the Common People."

Winifred set down her tray and looked at the tables about her. She
sighed, "I must say, though, it worries me to think of loafers and
lower-bracketeers like these actually having a vote, and deciding major
issues. I keep trying to think of some way of combining absolute
democracy--in which, of course, my father and I believe implicitly--with
keeping the decision in really important national affairs in the hands
of experts--like ourselves. I think I'll make that my next editorial in
_Attention!_."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Pretty much everything was decided about the new organization except its
name, and for what purpose it existed, if any.

Many suggested purposes were discussed in the months of conference. What
were the purposes and the topics discussed may be ascertained by taking
the following list of the words most frequently repeated during the
meetings, and adding to them any nouns or verbs or flavoring that may
suit the taste:

 far-flung                                category
 founding father                          keynote
 global                                   dynamic
 hail with enthusiasm                     vital
 decisive factor                          implant
 outstanding event                        indoctrinate
 immediate need                           activist
 brook no opposition                      suggestion
 grave responsibility                     solution
 white light of criticism                 resolution
 hot under the collar                     stimulus
 hit the nail squarely on the head        firm belief
 get down to brass tacks                  turning-point
 get over the message that                net result
 take with a grain of salt                memorandum
 take it on the chin                      drive
 feet on the ground                       tentatively
 lacking in solidarity                    morale
 equal opportunity for all                organizational
 resist the pressure                      policy
 put pressure on                          do the job
 outcome of the crisis                    challenge
 to quickly sum up                        commonwealth
 in the final analysis                    committee
 the sense of it is                       community
 what I want to say is                    conference
 the point I'm making is                  confidence
 I want to say a word for                 congress
 index of emotional state                 constitutional
 democratically organized                 contributor
 to implement the policy                  co-ordinate
 reaffirming the principle                crisis
 keep away from political considerations  the top men
                                          sponsor
 we surmise                               director
 another angle                            trustee
 not good enough                          discussion
 we agree in principle                    research
 basic principles                         broadcast
 to get your reaction                     union
 complexity of the modern world           grass roots
 sickness in our civilization             desire to serve
 along the lines of                       altruistic
 break the bottlenecks                    make sacrifices for
 influence public opinion                 willful minority
 refer the report back to                 rallying point
 left to the discretion of                pressing problem
 putting our shoulders to                 immediate problem
 duly made and seconded                   face the problem
 venture to predict                       solve the problem
 bring up the point                       new set of problems
 remarkable progress                      blue prints for
 basic directive                          way of life
 definite objective                       ideology
 generosity in giving                     sense of security
 neither the time nor the place to raise  courage to face it
   the issue
                                          I so move
 one thousand dollars                     ten thousand dollars

Winifred Homeward proposed that there should be a Federal police
force--with her husband as chief. Governor Blizzard proposed that a job
be found for his cousin, Al Jones, a fine young fellow. But, as the
godlike eye of Colonel Marduc perceived, eventually it was Dr. Planish
who settled on the purposes and title for their new organization.

The title was "Dynamos of Democratic Direction," though it was always
known as the DDD. Winifred was to be the first president; Sherry Belden,
treasurer; and the "directive secretary" was Gideon Planish, M.A., Ph.D.

The DDD was to have a chapter, called a "powerhouse," in every community
in America. Each of these was, under instruction from New York about the
latest Conditions and Situations, to organize a Discussion Group, a
Health Committee, a Gardening Unit, a History Class, an English Class
for the Foreign-born, an Investigation Group to report on local
Fascists, and a Committee to wangle free radio time. There was, of
course, to be a national magazine, but it never did get started. The
whole scheme, in fact--to supplant the Federal and State and Town
Governments and the entire Christian Church by a new Soviet headed by
Colonel Marduc--was beyond criticism, even carping criticism. Dr.
Planish summed it up in a private memo to the Colonel: "All ordinary
citizens, especially those west of Buffalo, need instruction and
direction in becoming thoroughly democratic from trained thinkers like
ourselves. When we have given our democracy to the entire nation, then
America will enforce it on the rest of the world. That is our basic
idea."

The basic ideas behind this basic idea were that Dr. Planish was to have
a secure hundred-dollar-a-week job, which would some day become a
two-hundred-a-week job, and Tom Blizzard and old Charley Marduc were to
enjoy being known as great statesmen, and Charley's horsy-looking girl,
Winifred, was to have an audience whenever she got hungry for one, and
Peony and the United States of America were to enjoy one unending
Christmas morning.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the haven of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, Dr. Planish passed
three serene years, from late in 1938 until December 1941, while the
rest of the world was not so serene.




CHAPTER 28


December 5, 1941, was a good normal day in the career of Dr. Gideon
Planish, Directive Secretary of the DDD--the Dynamos of Democratic
Direction.

He had returned late the evening before from a routine visit to
Washington, where he had appeared as an expert on Eskimos before a
Congressional committee.

He arose at eight o'clock, a pleasant, cherubic sight, with his gray
short beard jutting out over his cherry-and-blue striped pajama jacket.
He was fifty years old now, and his life of clean habits and thought,
plus two hours a week in Pete Garfunkle's Gymnasium, had made him so
sturdy a figure that it was evident that we shall be able to count on
him for another twenty-five years of scholarship, philanthropy and
political influence; and that, if we have any luck at all, he will still
be molding public opinion for us in 1965.

He looked fondly at his wife, who was still asleep, her smooth face that
of a plump and cheerful baby. He remembered that, for over a year now,
they had not had so much as one word of quarreling, not even on the
night when she had drunk three mint juleps with their friend George
Riot, now worthily enthroned as president of Bonnibel College for Women,
Indiana.

He looked fondly about their bedroom, on Charles Street, in the
Greenwich Village section of New York. Peony had recently redecorated it
with Swedish furniture. The refurnishing cost a little more than they
had expected, but it was almost paid for, now, and they had, in solid
cash, $172.37, to say nothing of seven shares of stock in the Artaxerxes
Antimony Mine.

He could not quite live on his salary, but he was sure that, in 1942, he
would be able to earn an extra $2,500 by lecturing.

The morning was chilly, but he took a shower with almost no shudders. In
the past ten years, he had got as used to a daily bath as Winifred
Homeward.

He hastily, for he was a man of affairs with an ignorant world awaiting
his guidance, put on the short athletic underwear, pale blue, which,
Peony often declared, "made him look as oomphy as the Great God Pan,"
and his newly tailored suit of pale-brown cheviot.

He bounced downstairs for breakfast of oatmeal and bacon and eggs and
toast and four cups of coffee, with his daughter Carrie, aged almost
twenty.

He supposed that he loved Carrie, and very much; he knew that he was
irritably puzzled by her and by "whatever it is that she thinks she's up
to."

She was a pert and pretty figure, in sweater and tweed skirt, but she
did not seem to him richly and truly feminine, like her mother. And
though her "Good morning, Daddy" was amiable enough, they didn't seem to
have any of their good old-time intimate talks, such as those (he was
sure he remembered them) in which she had told him that he was ever so
much brainier than his bosses, Sanderson-Smith and Wheyfish. She never
mentioned Colonel Marduc except when she snapped, "Do we have to take
much time in defining a vestigial nineteenth-century stuffed shirt?"

(All out of books!)

She was a Junior in Hunter College, and devoted to such unglamorous
subjects as physics, mechanical drawing and ethnology. She did not seem
to be even normally soft toward any of the horde of boys who hung about
her and about the house. The Doctor was fairly sure that he would not
like to hear that she had been seduced, but he was just as uncomfortable
in feeling that his own daughter was so superior to males like himself
and to the entire idea of seduction.

Some of her boys were Wolves and Hell-Raisers, some were skinny and
spectacled and superior, but none of them seemed to do anything but
listen to the phonograph with Carrie, and talk with her about persons of
whom the Doctor had never heard: Orson Welles, Bartok, Hindemith, Georg
Grosz, Erskine Caldwell, Shostakovich. Some of the boys got mildly
tight, as a young man should, but some of them were actually
teetotalers--and, more embarrassing, so was Carrie.

He fretted that he certainly didn't want her to get soused, but still,
it was disagreeable to have her look that way at Peony and him when they
rejoiced in their evening cocktails and recalled the Good New Ones they
had heard during the day. It was exasperating to have her, though
ordinarily a civil young woman, calmly state that they were
old-fashioned survivals of a Flaming Youth era that to her was as
antiquated and ridiculous as the Dutch Tulip Craze or Mr. Gladstone.

He had given up trying to be helpful to her young men by giving them
valuable inside information regarding the International Situation of
1941 and the secret plans of fallen France. All of them, skinny and
intellectual or stout and bawdy, expected to go to war some day as
fighting soldiers, with no fuss about it; they disliked Hitlerism, and
talked expertly about Spitfires and Stukas. Yet when he, the secretary
of the DDD, tried to inspire them with his best explanations of what
Winston Churchill was going to do year after next, they just didn't seem
to listen, although paying audiences of the most expensively dressed
women applauded him on an average of twice a week for bestowing exactly
this same revelation.

"Sometimes," the Directive Secretary sighed, "I wish I were a plain
college teacher again, instead of a leader of democratic thought."

This morning, he read the war headlines to Carrie, who had read them
herself half an hour before, until Peony appeared, adorable and soft in
a lace-trimmed peachblow negligee, gurgling, "Everybody here? I can't
seem to get up mornings, any more. But, oh boy, did I dance with Hal
Homeward and Sherry Belden last night, while you were gadding off to
Washington! What, no strawberries?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

He rode to within a block of his office by subway, wishing that he could
afford a limousine instead of having to be elbowed by these gum-chewing
clerks. But he was restored to dignity as he walked up to the building
of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, which occupied all of a handsome
old brownstone house in the Thirties.

The Blessed to Give Brotherhood headquarters had been like a warehouse,
heaped everywhere with piles of pamphlets; the Heskett Foundation
gloomy, the Every Man Fraternity and the Gishorn hideout like minute
cells in a steel beehive. But the DDD offices were as proud and gay as
that aristocratic scholar Dr. Planish himself.

Like a refined sultan entering his harem, he was greeted in the hall by
the receptionist, Mrs. Ethel Hennessee, a flat lady with harlequin
spectacles. Her desk was at the foot of the stairs, and it was her job
to make inquiring visitors warmly unwelcome. The DDD did not want to see
new faces unless the faces were backed by checks or by charters for new
local Powerhouses. Particularly it did not want to see the cranks who
brought in bulky schemes to save humanity by having the Government give
$27.87 to every person over forty-five at eleven o'clock each Thursday
morning.

On this ground floor were the Lounge, and the Council Room and Library,
once the drawing-room and the dining-room of the old house. In the
Library were oil portraits of Colonel Marduc and Governor Blizzard, and
also several books.

The basement, aside from the furnace room, was given over to the women
employees and women friends of the DDD. It had the odor of a
stenographers' school with a tea-room and a hairdresser's down the hall.
It was cluttered--no man entered here to enforce domestic order--with
folding umbrellas, flowery gingham overalls, coffee machines, teapots
and lipsticks.

Indeed the whole building was feminized. There were two and a half men
in the place against fifty women.

Besides the Doctor, they kept a man named Carlyle Vesper, a thin and
shabby and frightened clerk who was supposed to be office manager--he
counted for half a man; Julius Magoon, the press agent, an enterprising
wolf who was there only half the time; Dr. Tetley, the pale doer of
Research; and Fritz Hendel, the Investigator--his job was to wriggle his
way into secret seditious meetings, addressed by loud-mouthed Nazis on
street corners in Yorkville and rarely attended by more than a dozen
policemen, and come back with a report that he suspected the speakers of
a tinge of anti-Semitism. Tetley and he were about the place not more
than a quarter of the time. Average total male presence: two and a half.

Hovering about them, flattering them, listening to their jokes, filling
their water carafes, taking down their letters, mothering them but
wistfully hoping to be fathered by them, were the cloud of women: Mrs.
Hennessee, the receptionist; Bonnie Popick, Dr. Planish's fat and
adoring private secretary, who resembled a tawny Peony; and
undistinguishable young ladies named Flaude Stansbury, Sue Maple and
Adelle Klein, who were permanently employed at typing, filing letters,
folding DDD circulars and thrusting them into envelopes, running the
telephone switchboard and taking down numbers and handing on
falsifications for Mrs. Hennessee when she was out at lunch, worshipping
the Doctor, pitying Mr. Vesper, avoiding the fingers of Mr. Magoon, and
going home to boast that they had seen Colonel Marduc or Governor
Blizzard or Mrs. Winifred Homeward face to face.

They were about Dr. Planish all day, like a flutter of pigeons, and they
never gave him reason to doubt that he was the wisest and pleasantest
servant of humanity since Haroun-al-Rashid. And all evening, Peony and
the billowingly female cook were about him, too, and the only louse
among the pillows was Carrie.

Besides this permanent staff there were, addressing envelopes and
inserting circulars, anywhere from six to sixty unpaid volunteer women
workers--all prosperous women, for Dr. Planish just couldn't be bothered
with poor ones. They came here with a shaky planless desire to do
something for the world, and they were put to work, not because they
were as good as girls hired by the week, but because if they worked here
long enough and felt themselves part of the crusade, from 37 to 54% of
them (figures by Dr. Tetley of the DDD) could be counted on to come
through with cash contributions. So everyone was nice and helpful to
them, very nice indeed.

                 *        *        *        *        *

As happily as a surgeon inspecting his hospital, Dr. Planish went up to
the third floor, where, in a vast loft, worked all the women except Miss
Popick and Mrs. Hennessee, where Magoon and Tetley and Hendel had their
small disordered desks, and where Carlyle Vesper ineffectually watched
the workers from a den seven feet square.

The Doctor was full of abounding joy and kindness. "Good morning, good
morning, my dears!" he shouted; and even to poor Vesper, who bored him,
he threw a forgiving, "Splendid day for December, Carlyle."

Then he was free to go and sit in his fine Georgian office and be an
Executive, while Bonnie Popick (of whom Mrs. Hennessee was agonizingly
jealous) indicated that her day, her dawn, her golden sun had
started--and please, would Dr. Planish try and get off that letter to
the I.G.T.R.L.--he'd promised it yesterday--oh, she hated to bother him
about it!

His office was a square, ruddy room, with a solid mahogany desk, a
silver-framed picture of Peony, solid mahogany chairs, a portly
fireplace, a case filled with autographed books about Conditions and
Situations, and the Special File.

The whole building was banked with files of correspondence and of
contributors' names, but the Special File contained only the names of
philanthrobbers who might be good for a thousand a year or more, and all
the cards had annotations by the Doctor himself: "pers letter--flatter
on stamp collectn," and "gilded crook, likes to be taken for gent," and
"honest, intel, don't send any bunk."

Before he settled down to his correspondence, the Doctor went to his
private washroom for his regular morning session of quiet thinking.

He was glad that their office was so stately, but it was stimulating to
see through the tiny hexagons of the washroom's wire-glass windows the
strength and clashing angles of the new functional business buildings
across the court: raw yellow brick walls, high-perched water tanks,
roofs stepped back like ledges in an open-pit mine, fire-proof windows
with steel mullions. They were as harsh as factories, and as honest.

Dr. Planish felt that they represented modern power and speed, and from
that thought it was easy to glide into a feeling that he had built them.
He heard some unknown speaker, perhaps the suave Professor Campion,
intoning:

"My high privilege to introduce Dr. Planish, than whom no man of his
generation has more influenced not only political philosophy but the
rebuilding of his native city, New York, from one of whose finest old
Knickerbocker families he comes. Whether in such gracious palaces as
that in which are housed the thousands of employees of the DDD, or in
the streamlined efficiency of what is now universally known as the
Planish or neo-Frank-Lloyd-Wright type of architecture----"

The Doctor happily finished his dream and returned to work and to the
ministrations of Bonnie Popick, an active lady of twenty-eight who so
appreciated his humor that sometimes she laughed when he hadn't meant to
be funny. As he re-entered his office, she was brushing his hat and
overcoat; then she adjusted the slanted glass ventilation-shield at the
bottom of the farther window.

She snickered, "Our friend Mrs. Hennessee claims she's got a cold this
morning."

In office ritual this meant, "I love you much more than that
flat-chested old cat does, though I'd be ashamed to be jealous, as she
is--always pretending to feel ill, just to draw your attention. And I
know that you're true to your stupid pigeon of a wife--men are such
fools--but all day I'm closer to you than your wife or anybody
else--especially that damn Hennessee woman!"

He read the mail that she had opened and arranged in a pile on his desk.
He loved reading mail; it made him feel important to be denounced in the
same batch as an English Tory, as a Russian Communist, as a Midwestern
provincial; to be asked his opinions; to be invited to address clubs and
colleges.

He dictated the answers as rapidly as a windmill. Only one letter
bothered him: that from Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, the unpaid local
director of the DDD Powerhouse.

Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis was nobody and everybody. Sometimes Dr.
Planish remembered him as a lawyer, sometimes as a newspaperman,
sometimes as a farmer, sometimes as a small merchant, sometimes as a
labor-union secretary, sometimes as a millionaire lumberman. He accepted
intellectual manna from the professional manna-handlers, but he could
never be depended upon. At any moment he was likely to complain that the
manna had too much soda in it.

Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis wrote now: "I don't like the way our local
Powerhouse of the DDD is going. We are supposed to be still in
existence, and I notice in your bulletins that you say we are 'thriving
and doing a fine work in acquainting the Scandinavian citizens with the
ideals of Americanism.'

"I don't know. I haven't been able to get the committee together for a
month now, and all our English for Foreigners and history classes, etc.,
etc., are just on paper, and anyway, I don't feel there is anything we
can tell the Swedes & Norwegians & Danes about Democracy.

"I first joined the DDD because I had an uncomfortable feeling that in
these days a fellow ought to do something more than just make a living.
I'll admit I was a goat. I was impressed by all the titles and degrees
that you fellows on the National Board have. But now I'm wondering.

"I guess maybe it would be pretty bad to never talk about Public
Affairs, but I'm wondering if it isn't just as bad to make out that they
are a special mystery that only the DDD can understand.

"A lot of this inside information that you send us and that we're
supposed to hand on to the peasantry is pretty mildewed now. The
ox-teams got across the Alleghenies with the news quite some time ago.
You keep telling us that Zeke Bittery is a Fascist. Out here, we've
known for twenty years that Zeke is nothing but a crackpot evangelist
who would undercut Judas by eight pieces of silver. Why don't you give
us something new? For instance. Are there any Fascists that contribute
to the DDD so as to look patriotic?

"I'm bothered about all this chatter. Ever since Voltaire, and
especially since old Marx, there's been such a clamor of authoritative
voices. There's so many new branches of knowledge, from psychiatry to
conchology, from wine vintages to aviation records, that any sensitive
man keeps feeling guilty about his ignorance, no matter how hard he
reads, and so he turns for clarification to the fellows that set up as
authorities.

"Well, they better be good, or they're going to do a pretty terrible
thing to the Common Man (like me). They're going to make him get
disgusted with _all_ authority, and turn to the comic strips or to
anarchy."

Dr. Planish grunted to Bonnie Popick, "Regular crank. Mr. Johnson of
Minneapolis? Yes, I remember his name now. He's always kicking about
something he doesn't understand. Take this answer."

He wrote to Mr. Johnson that it had been a rare privilege to peruse his
profound analysis of the present Confusion of Tongues, and might he
please read his letter to the Board of Directors, and he was sure that
so bright a man as Mr. Johnson would soon have the Minneapolis
Powerhouse hitting on all eight again.

He was, actually, somewhat more disturbed by the letter than he
admitted.

His circular letters asserted the busy existence of ninety-seven
Powerhouses, as a reason for sending in larger and quicker donations.
Actually, only sixteen of them were visibly operating, and if that fact
got out, susceptible Generous Givers might think the DDD was a zombie
organization, and quit giving.

But he did not let the recollection worry him long. After all, could a
man be a leader of public thought if he was going to be disturbed by all
the Mr. Johnsons of all the Minneapolises that, so many miles from the
Directive Secretary of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, were deep in
provincial darkness?

"I'd like to see some of these fellows try to do my job!" he said to
Bonnie Popick, and looked at her as always for applause.

In his mail there was one most gratifying letter, from the Reverend Dr.
Elmer Gantry, chairman of the DDD Insignia Committee.

Though he was a particularly stately man of God, who could use
seven-syllable words just as easily as he could say Hell, Dr. Gantry was
also an efficient man of affairs. With the consent of Colonel
Marduc--since it did advertise the DDD, and cost him nothing--Dr. Gantry
and Dr. Planish were permitted to control the sale of DDD buttons as a
private venture. In the past six months, Dr. Planish had made enough out
of this philanthropic enterprise to pay Peony's lingerie and shoe bills,
and Dr. Gantry to engage, as an aide in his pious work, a new secretary
who was an M.A. and very beautiful.

They had hired one of the most artistic button-designers to devise a DDD
badge which, worn on the lapel, somehow gave the beholder an impression
that the wearer had been an officer in World War I.

                 *        *        *        *        *

To list the telephone calls which incessantly disturbed the Doctor's
high literary mood would be merely to give a depressing view of human
selfishness. To consider how many persons wanted him to make speeches,
without fee, how many rival dealers in oratory wanted to borrow from his
stock of ideas about Abraham Lincoln, would be merely painful. But these
annoyances he at last forgot in the pure ecstasy of composition.

Once a week he wrote a long Letter to the Editor, which he sent to one
of the New York newspapers and to a dozen strategically placed papers
outside the True Jerusalem. Often they were printed, too, and even the
expert Colonel Marduc admitted that they were good advertising.

Leaning back, scratching his beard, his eyes closed in ethereal bliss,
he dictated to Bonnie:

    The Editor.

    Sir:

    It was Thucydides who said to the Athenian people that, quote,
    In union there is not merely strength but a joy known ill to the
    striving hermit, unquote--no, wait, some bastard might know
    Greek, I think I better make up a name for whoever was supposed
    to have said that, make it--uh, let's see--make it
    Heresophos--H-E-R-E-S-O-P-H-O-S--I hope that sounds Greek. Put
    his name in, and then continue after the quote:

    I have the honor of being a member of an organization called
    Dynamos of Democratic Direction, and in these days it has been a
    privilege to see how citizens of every shade of opinion have
    found inspiration in----

He went on until the bells of St. Timothy the Good struck twelve
o'clock.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He reached the anteroom to the Gold Ballroom of the Grand Hosannah Hotel
at 12:32, and was photographed with the officers of the Riverdale
Ladies' Sociological Study Club; he lunched with the club till two;
then, to that sea of upturned minks and Tecla pearls, he talked for
twenty-five minutes about "Politics Needs Your Help." He told them just
what changes in the daily life of Paris had been made by the German
occupation, and if he did not tell them that he had never been in Paris,
neither did he say that he had.

He met Winifred Homeward in the Baboon Bar of the Hosannah, and they had
a quick one and went together to a committee meeting of the new Call to
Arms League, organized by Milo Samphire to advocate America's entering
the war against the dictators.

Samphire and his organization happened to be entirely honest. Winifred
and the Doctor were not very welcome there, but with smiles like the sun
on an icy tree, they pretended to be, and rather nervously they made
notes for Colonel Marduc.

The Colonel had been fidgety about Milo Samphire's demand that the
American dislike for Fascism extend to war. Indeed, for a time, the
Colonel had nearly slipped into the Isolationist faction. Secretly, he
rather liked the way of Hitler and Mussolini in dealing briefly with
anyone who opposed the Rule of the Strongest--the Colonel considering
himself quite a good candidate for the Strongest in America. He had even
spoken a few non-committal words at a Defense First anti-war meeting, a
few months ago.

But when he saw the newspaper editorials about the meeting, he publicly
explained that he hadn't said what he meant and, most decidedly, he
hadn't meant what he said. He called up Dr. Planish and told him that
from that moment on, the DDD would have nothing to do with the
Isolationists.

The Doctor was relieved; but Milo Samphire did not seem to care what
either Colonel Marduc or Dr. Planish thought, and as America tramped on
to war, the Doctor felt a little scared and lonely. He did so much want
to be a good man!

                 *        *        *        *        *

He rode the subway down to Pine Street, called on Walter Gilroy, looked
tearful, and got a check for four hundred dollars.

He went back to the DDD office, signed his mail, and endured a little
quiet torture with callers who were blessed with wealth but cursed with
ideas.

At six, he was in a studio of the Brontosaurus Broadcasting Company,
introducing Senator Bultitude on the radio. The time was bought and paid
for by "a committee of Republican citizens." Oh, blessed age when Time
can be bought and sold instead of being grudgingly bestowed by God; when
the very aged, if they be also very rich, can buy Time on and on through
eternity.

In swap for the Doctor's spirited introduction, the Senator mentioned
the DDD--favorably.

At 6:20, the Doctor had another quick one, with the Senator, and at 6:40
still another, with Peony, at home.

Peony put on a new frock while he became beautiful in tails and white
tie. They dined at a cafeteria, and Peony, in a crimson velvet evening
cape and red roses in her hair, carried a tray with scrambled eggs,
coffee, a chocolate eclair, a mocha layer-cake and caramel ice cream.

At 8:15 they entered the Artists' Dressing Room of Village Green Hall,
and embraced their friend George Riot, president of Bonnibel College for
Women. At 8:24, Dr. Planish and President Riot began, before another set
of furs and pearls and boiled eggs, a debate on "Resolved: in case of
war, women should bear arms."

Dr. Planish took the affirmative, and many of the furs present believed
that he was in earnest.

He spoke movingly of his wife and his learned daughter. Were those
women, whose intelligence and energy alone had enabled him to do his
modest work in Education for Democracy--were they mere toys to fondle in
his idle hours, mere bric-a-brac to be laid aside if war should ever
come? Were they? Never! He hoped and believed that it would never be
necessary for them to be fighters, not so long as he himself could
strike a blow. But should the occasion ever arise, he would be the first
to applaud their putting on khaki and shouldering a gun.

President Riot said, at length, that Dr. Planish was a deep thinker, but
all off on today's deep thought.

At 9:29, President Riot and the Planishes had a quick one at the Fanfare
Folly Bar, and at 9:41 they sat down at the speakers' table at the
dinner, in the Belle Poule Restaurant, of the Movement to Restore
Christianity and Regular Church Attendance in Manhattan, just as
Winifred Marduc Homeward arose and began defying the microphone.

Religion, said Winifred, would be restored only when True Democracy was
instituted. Her father and she wished that there was some way of making
every woman, man and child realize what Democracy was; that it opposed
all pressure groups and held that the rights of man and woman, rich and
poor, were equal; that all honest labor, whether of the editor or the
furnace man, the poet or banker or harvest-hand, was equally noble.

She didn't exactly say it, but she implied that if the poets, bankers
and/or harvest-hands did not listen constantly to her and to her father,
then civilization would smash.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Outside the Belle Poule Restaurant, which is expensive, Winifred's
waiting chauffeur was talking with the doorman and a taxi-driver.

"What's this Democracy they're talking about? I don't mean the Democrat
Party. It's some kind of theory," puzzled her chauffeur. "Me, I'd think
Democracy meant you don't figure how good a guy a fellow is by how much
money he's got or how much he shoots off his mouth. But if Windy Winnie
is all for it, then it must mean something different."

The taxi-driver grumbled, "I guess it means rich guys ought to be polite
to poor guys. And am I for it! Say, I wish you could hear the lip I have
to take off my customers. 'Driver, I want you to go slow.' 'Driver, did
you ever drive a cab before?' 'Driver, are you sure you know where the
Grand Central is?' God! One after another."

"Troubles _you_ got!" said Winifred's chauffeur. "You get rid of _your_
headaches after a few blocks. You should drive private, where that hyena
can not only bawl hell out of you for what she thinks is the wrong
turning, but remember all the dumb plays she thinks you made yesterday
and the day before, clear back to the Civil War. And does she bring 'em
up? I'll say she does! And she's the one that's always yapping about
this Democracy on the radio--so I hear--I wouldn't listen to it, not if
you was to pay me for it."

The doorman, a monument in blue and silver, returned from bowing in a
couple who made a point of entering the Belle Poule as though it were a
soup kitchen, and snorted, "This Democracy is all nonsense. If you guys
could work your way up to where you put on a uniform, like I do, instead
of a chauffeur's suit, you wouldn't worry. These rich slobs are all
right. See the tip I just got? Democracy! Think I'm no better than my
brother Jake, that's still on a potato patch in Maine? And think Jake's
no better than some hobo that comes asking for a hand-out? No, sir! This
Democracy just can't work out."

Mrs. Homeward's chauffeur argued, "It's got to work, or we'll go bust,
like Europe. Say! How the hell come we ever let porch-climbers like Mrs.
Homeward and her dad--and their toadies, like you, Doorman--get control
of this country?"

"I bet you wouldn't be very popular with your boss if she knew what you
think of her!"

"I bet nobody wouldn't be very popular with their boss if he knew what
they think!"

The chauffeur climbed into the Homeward car and went sulkily to sleep,
just as Winifred Homeward was cascading, "It has always been my pride
that the humblest truck-driver is just as free and easy with me, yes,
and with that inspired sociologist, my father, as he is with any of his
other pals!"

After the Movement dinner, the Planishes had the privilege of being
taken, with the Marducs and the Homewards, to the flat of Governor
Blizzard.

The Doctor rode with Winifred. She pointed to her chauffeur's back, and
whispered--she thought she was whispering--"But look at my driver--the
stupidest, stolidest man living. How can you persuade people like him to
listen to the Voice of Democracy? He never thinks of anything but
driving. I'm sure he's never even looked at me. He doesn't know whether
I'm dull or clever. I don't believe he even knows whether I'm
beautiful!"

In the other car, Peony patted the hands of Tom Blizzard, Charley Marduc
and Hal Homeward, in turn, and told them that they looked tired but
handsome after their gigantic labors, told them that she was so proud of
knowing them.

All three of them smiled like appeased tom-cats.

The Governor's bachelor living-room was forty feet long, with a bar at
each end and a fireplace on each side.

Dr. Planish interested them all by saying that either the Colonel or the
Governor would be a much better President than Mr. Roosevelt. Winifred
told them, but she had heard it confidentially and they must not repeat
it, that a correspondent who had had a cocktail with a French diplomat,
who had had a cup of tisane with Marshal Ptain, had said that France
would rise up against Germany before the end of January, 1942.

So the Planishes were in bed by 2 A.M.

So Peony yawned, "What a wonderful evening."

Dr. Planish was awakened by her sighing, "Do you know what that dress
Winifred had on tonight probably cost?"

"R?"

"Probably three hundred and fifty dollars. And me paying $39.95 top!"

The ghastly thought awakened him fully, and he fretted, "This New York
is an expensive town. I went in today to buy a necktie in a place on
Fifth Avenue--I'd planned to spread myself; maybe pay two and a half.
The clerk shows me a nice little number for five dollars, and when I
asked for something cheaper, he shows a throwaway, at three dollars, and
sneers at me. Jesus! I paid my three bucks, and sneaked out of there
feeling as if I'd been caught picking up a cigar butt. For a necktie!"

"I know. To think that you make--I suppose this year it'll be about
eight thousand, with salary and lectures and everything?"

"About."

"And yet we're poor people. Why is it? You're just as bright as Colonel
Marduc, aren't you?"

"I'm not as much of a crook. I really do think it's worth while knocking
out Hitler and Company for keeps, and I really do believe that people
can live more co-operatively. And yet I do nothing but promote that
double-crossing Marduc!"

"I won't have you say things like that! All the good you do, and the
lovely ideas you put out about--well, about Democracy and so on. But to
think of your making half again as much as President Bull at
Kinnikinick, and yet we often have to eat at cafeterias!"

"Peony!"

"Uh-huh?"

"Do you sometimes think maybe you'd like to go back--go to some smaller
town, or get into some good small religious organization, where we
wouldn't have to train with millionaires like Marduc? I'll bet he pays
_nine_ dollars for a necktie!"

"No, no, never! Don't you ever let yourself get to thinking like that!
That's how people degenerate--like in that play, _White Cargo_. You
wouldn't expect me to associate with a lot of farmers, would you, not
after all my years of struggle?"

"No, I guess not."

"There! You see?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

On Saturday morning, December 6, 1941, Dr. Planish flew with President
George Riot out to Bonnibel College for Women. It might have been an
extravagant journey, but the college paid his expenses, and he also
charged them in full to Travel on his DDD account.

At one, there was a "banquet" at Bonnibel, with exactly the same
committeewomen, flashlight photographs, handshakes, and ambitious
high-school girl reporters, whose notion of interviewing him was to ask
him how they could get New York newspaper jobs immediately, the same
cold hot chicken and hot three-colored ice cream, that he had
encountered at seven dinners in the past nineteen days. The only
difference was that the girls' heads were a brighter vista than the
dress-coats and sagging evening frocks he had seen at the others.

At 3 P.M., in the ceremony of Winter Convocation, he received from
President Riot the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. He now had
almost as many stuffed heads and horns as Colonel Marduc: two LL.D.'s,
three Litt.D.'s, one D.H., and even one real degree, a Ph.D. Thus
invested, he had in his veins a different and more royal blood--maybe
Type 5.

At 7:30 that evening, George Riot and he publicly repeated their debate
of the evening before: "Resolved: in case of war, women should bear
arms." But George had suggested that they change sides; it would be
safer for him to tell his girl students, the darlings, that they might
bear all the arms they wanted to.

That seemed a practical notion to Dr. Planish, since the newspapers had
not reported their previous debate, so now he wailed:

"And so, as I say, of the equality of women and men, there is no longer
any doubt, and no one, not a besotted fool, would any longer even in a
spirit of mockery even so much as hint that it has not been a sovereign
and healing blessing to have given, if indeed 'given' is the word, the
vote to women, whether as a practical measure or as a symbol of that
admitted equality, but still, nevertheless, gladly admitting all that,
the question of whether their fine and delicate talents, so superior to
men's in many tasks and, I haven't the slightest doubt, at the very
least counterbalancing the larger gross muscular power of the male that,
perhaps, is more suitable for certain other labors, should, I say, just
for the interest of experimentation, be wasted in the more brutal tasks
of actual soldiering--oh, my young friends, your great president, and, I
am honored to say, my close and long-honored friend, Dr. Riot, may wish
to play with this idea, as perhaps befits that sinuous intellect of his,
but as for myself, I am a practical man of affairs, not unversed in
military lore and training, and I tell you that for a woman, young or
old, to be, even if she wished to, permitted to bear arms in the heat
and toil of actual conflict, that, my young friends, and I implore you
to put away all the vanities of sex antagonism, natural though these may
be in view of the long and arduous and indeed properly prideful and in
some sense, no doubt, belligerent struggle that women have had in
conquering blind antagonism, witless prejudice, and the immobility of
mere custom and habit and the cultural pattern of other civilizations
that, though, to the unobservant, though possibly esthetic, eye, they
may have seemed of the richest texture yet actually, in construction,
they served but ill those basic necessities of the advance of human
culture, among which the true and equal co-operation of men and women in
all their relationships, whether of romance, war or the home is not the
least, and yet the very historic force and intensity of that antagonism
must, in the nature of the case, be a factor clouding the complete
lucidity and severe brevity with which it is, I need scarcely tell you,
necessary to consider a problem so complicated and far-flung----"

He caught a train at Indianapolis at 10:50; he flew from Buffalo to New
York; he was home for breakfast on Sunday--Sunday, December 7, 1941.




CHAPTER 29


Dr. and Mrs. Planish attended church every Sunday, except when Peony
slept late, which she did not do oftener than three Sundays a month.
They usually favored the pastors who were patrons of the DDD, such as
Chris Stern, Rabbi Lichtenselig, Msgr. Fish and the Reverend Dr. Elmer
Gantry. This morning they sat under Dr. Gantry.

In his sermon, the Reverend said that Europe was at war because people,
particularly in this section of New York, did not go to church more
regularly. He and God were displeased.

"Handsome buck, Elmer. Wasn't he born in New York?" Peony speculated.

"I don't know. I've heard that he comes from a fine old Massachusetts
family and went for some time to Harvard, but _Who's Who_ gives him as
graduating from a Western college. I believe that later he served in
some of the most barren parts of Alaska, and refused a bishopric. You
can see it in his bearing--fine upstanding type of manly leader."

"Was that his daughter in the front row--with the half-size hat?"

"No, I believe that's his new radio secretary. A wonderful new type of
intellectual woman the radio is breeding, don't you think?"

"I do not," said Peony.

He had to leave her for luncheon, which he took with the National
Directors, in the Council Room of the DDD Building. The food, brought in
from an apartment-hotel restaurant down the block, was generously
provided by Colonel Marduc, though the Colonel himself was in the
country, and was represented by Sherry Belden and Winifred.

It was the regular quarterly meeting of the DDD directors. Present,
besides the Doctor, Sherry, and Winifred, were Ed Unicorn, Professor
Topelius, Chris Stern--who came late and would have to run away at
three, for Sunday, as he said laughingly, "was his busy day"--Walter
Gilroy, Henry Caslon Kevern, Judge Vandewart, Professor Campion, Albert
Jalenak, president of the Spinning Wheel chain of stores for women,
General Gong, Mrs. Natalia Hochberg, Otis Canary, the poet-orator, and a
new friend, Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis.

They were gay and chatty during lunch, except for Mr. Johnson of
Minneapolis, who listened so much that they were suspicious, for in that
group, listening was only the price you had to pay for being the next to
be listened to. However, he was just a provincial, not a crowned New
Yorker.

They were a bunch of laughing boys and girls together till the waiter
took out the last choked ash-tray. By magic then, they turned from
friends into a stiff legislature, filled with stage-fright and
pomposity. That was but natural, for was not the whole beclouded country
waiting for this small and precious council to decide the fate of the
next century?

Dr. Planish said, with the quietness of a veteran legislator, "In my
official capacity as directive secretary, I declare this regular
quarterly meeting of the board of directors in session, and as temporary
chairmen pro tem, I call for nominations for chairman of the meeting,
and with your kind permission and in order to save time, for important
though our discussions will be today, and who knows, just possibly
fraught with significance for future agenda not only of this but of all
other enlightened organizations of the better class of Americans, yet I
am also fully bearing in mind the fact that all of us have innumerable
contacts, countless calls upon our time, and demands that we co-ordinate
and develop the certainty that out of the chaos of our era, we seem
slowly to be acquiring a nucleus, at least, and that a not merely
dialectic and Utopian asseveration, and so, as I say, I will save time
by, however irregularly, nominating one who, though the next to the
youngest among you, for you are that, I guess, Winifred, but next to
you, I mean, the youngest, although I don't suppose there is really any
great span of difference between his age and yours, Mr. Canary, and you,
Mrs. Hochberg, gallantry as well as a true admiration of your rare
qualities as well as that ever-charming appearance which, and I would
admit it to my dear wife just as readily as I would to you people, and
so I would say that you certainly still _look_ incomparably younger--and
a lot handsomer!--than him, and I would say that if you and I had not
for so long worked faithfully shoulder to shoulder for every cause that
promises enlightenment and the rebuke of sloth and selfishness and windy
talking and wordy demagoguery wherever found, in high places or low, for
so many years, and so, as I say, I nominate Sherry Belden."

(He meant that he nominated Sherry Belden.)

After throwing this bomb, he went on, "And just to be regular, unless
there are any further nominations, may I call for a second to my
nomination?"

Mrs. Homeward screamed, "Second mosh. Look, Gid, in consideration of the
news that the Japanese diplomatic representatives are to be at the State
Department today, and will, I think, end all this nonsense about Japan
being a menace----"

"Just a minute, please, Winnie!" The Doctor reflected inwardly, "By God,
a meeting is one place where I can make that woman shut up, and do a
little talking myself!"

He intoned, from the ritual by which a committee meeting is to be
distinguished from a country-store argument, "Sbeen moved n seckd Mr.
Belden servz chairm meet all fave sigfy sayn aye contrarmine no ayes
zavit Mr. Belden take chair."

Winifred shouted, "Oh, Sherry, before you start, before I forget it, I
want to express an idea I have--I have some very important inside
information about the Japanese delegation, who are sincerely seeking for
peace----"

Dr. Planish extinguished it.

"Just a minute, please, Winifred. There's one piece of formal business
we ought to get through before we get down to work--just to keep the
records straight. This is Mr. Johnson, the director of the Minneapolis
Powerhouse, a fine honest worker right after my own heart. He hasn't
felt entirely satisfied with our progress, and so he has come on to New
York to find out what we're actually doing to promote peace and
Democracy. I'm sure that after he has sat in with us today, he'll
understand better that our labors are not merely fundamental but, uh,
well--pragmatic. So I move you, Mr. Chairman--hey, Sherry, listen, will
you? I'm making a formal motion--I move you that Mr. Johnson of
Minneapolis be temporarily elected a full member of this executive board
for today."

"Arar sex that motion?" muttered Mr. Belden.

"Seckmosh," said Professor Campion, a great authority on Rules of Order.

"Muvseck Mist Johnss templeckt memboard tday aw fave sigfy raise riteand
mosh namus carry," ordered Mr. Belden. "Now, boys and gals, we got to
get down to brass tacks and get busier'n a cat on a glass sidewalk.
There's a hell of a lot of traffic on the trunk highway of international
conflict; we got to jump the gun the second the green light shows, and
jam the accelerator clear through the floor and drive like
Billy-be-damned on to some clear delineation of the basic spiritual
aspects of that monumental coming American Century, when we shall be
called upon to fortify the global struggle."

All of Colonel Marduc's Bright Young Men, all of his private corps of
trouble-shooters, felt that they had to curse and be metaphorical and
folksy, just as they had to wear tweed jackets and gray bags, to show
that, for all their college training and managerial talent, they had not
become stuffy. They never said "No" when "Hell no" would do just as
well, and of them all, none was more beautifully buttered over with the
Common Touch than Sherry Belden. He had been reading Kipling's "If"
since the age of ten.

Sherry continued, "You will all be glad to know that Colonel Charles B.
Marduc approves of what we have been trying to do, and he has been
pleased to make another generous contribution to our war chest of ten
thousand dollars!"

Everybody applauded, except Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, who said, "What
for?"

General Gong snorted, "Hush!"

Sherry went on, "The first thing on our agenda today is the report of
the Committee for the Determination of a Definition of the Word
'Democracy' for Propaganda, of which committee Otis Canary has been our
invaluable chairman. Come on, Ote, let's hear your report."

In his time, Mr. Otis Canary had also been one of Marduc's Bright Young
Men; he also had worn the gray bags and the hearty slang, but now he was
a free-lance poet and essayist. His tall, clear, high face was still as
open and friendly as Sherry Belden's, but his manner had become more
pontifical.

"Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Canary, making it
perfectly clear to whom he was speaking, "before I communicate this
definition upon which we have agreed, I want to thank my colleagues on
the committee: Mrs. Homeward and----"

Winifred shrieked, "Oh, I didn't really do a thing. You see, I've been
so busy with some reports I have from friends long resident in Japan and
who really understand the Japanese aspirations, which are entirely
peaceful and conciliatory----"

"PLEASE!" said Mr. Canary. (That meant "shut up.") "Just a minute, Mrs.
Homeward. As I say, I want to thank my friends and co-workers, Mrs.
Homeward and--PLEASE, JUST A MIN-IT, MRS. HOMEWARD!--and Professor
Campion and Mr. Jalenak and Mr. Gilroy for their unceasing labors on
this titanic task of accurately defining Democracy--a basic scientific
determination that may in some degree be directional in all ideological
activities for the next hundred years to come. We have all been working
on it like demons, ten and twelve hours a day, meeting at five for
cocktails and pounding right ahead, threshing this all out, till
midnight or later. In its final form--and now at last we have it----"

"All right, let's!" said Mr. Johnson.

"In its final form, we have adopted this definition: 'Democracy is not a
slavish and standardized mold in which all individuality and free
enterprise will be lost in a compulsory absolute equality of wealth and
social accomplishments. It is a mountain vista rather than a flat
prairie. It is a way of life rather than a way of legislation. It is a
religious aspiration rather than a presumptuous assertion that final
wisdom inheres in man and not in the Divine, for it boldly asserts that
whatever differences of race, creed and color the Almighty has been
pleased to create shall also be recognized by us.' So!" Mr. Canary gave
an embarrassed but happy laugh. "There's your definition of Democracy."

"Where?" demanded Mr. Johnson.

Not exactly ignoring Mr. Johnson, but throwing at him a New Haven glare,
Chairman Belden cried, "Jesus, Ote, that's the most magnificent piece of
lyric prose, as well as the most tender and brave and profound job of
straight thinking, that I've heard since the Gettysburg Address!
Gentlemen and ladies, byes and gals, I want someone to put a motion
trying to express our profound gratitude to Mr. Canary and his whole
committee for formulating this stirring definition, to Colonel Marduc
for financing the dinners during the conferences, and to Dr. Planish for
his tireless checking and re-checking and re-re-checking of other
definitions. Who will put this motion? Mr.--uh--Johnson, is it?"

"It is." Mr. Johnson was standing up, solid and placid. "Look, Belden. I
honestly don't want to throw a monkey-wrench into this juke-box, but I
came on East to find some group of people who weren't exhibitionists,
who were really trying to organize all men of good will to back the
Government and wake up the voters. I'd hoped to find a bunch at least as
sensible as the average high-school football team."

In the hall, the telephone was ringing, and the bored Dr. Planish went
out to answer it, as Mr. Johnson offensively blundered on:

"What do I find here? A bunch of congenital alumni and two very
articulate women, all sitting around log-rolling, telling one another
how smart you are, except when you stop to thank your real boss, Charley
Marduc, or to have a well-bred laugh at us innocents out in the Bible
Belt----"

A mutter of resentment was rising, but it was stilled as Dr. Planish
lumbered in, stammering, "That was my wife telephoning--news--the
Japanese have just bombed our ships in Hawaii, and we are in the war."

They all babbled at once that they must rush out and take charge of the
country, and they grabbed at briefcases if not at muskets.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dr. Planish felt confused as he telephoned the news to Colonel Marduc,
on his farm in Dutchess County, but the Colonel sounded jubilant:

"We'll wipe out all those little yellow devils in three months, and
maybe I'll go back into the army and accept a major-generalship, and
then make Tom Blizzard President--I've decided to let him have it. I
want you and Winifred and Belden to meet me in my office tonight, eight
sharp, and we'll make plans. Hooray!"

The Doctor walked painfully home. He was loyal to Marduc, but during all
the years when he had been making a living out of shouting that he loved
America, he really had loved his country, and it made him sick just now
to go on peddling that love for profit. He was willing to quit the DDD
and enlist. He was even willing to keep silent.

Yet when he came into the house and found his daughter Carrie talking
with a young Columbia graduate student, the Doctor snapped back into his
lifelong habit of being a professional wisdom-dealer--fact-softener--
brain-picker--information-retailer--lay-high-priest--unofficial censor
of all officials--critic so skilled in judgment that he did not need to
know anything about anything in order to tell everybody everything about
everything.

Carrie's young man was nervous of hands, widely spectacled, and probably
scared, but his eyes were steady.

The Doctor roared, "Well, fella, I can't tell you how I envy you this
hour of opportunity. I wish I were young enough to shoulder a musket!"

Carrie purred, "Now isn't that funny! I was just telling Stan how
important you and Colonel Marduc and Mrs. Homeward are. He ought to
study you and your influence instead of ancient Rome."

It sounded all right, but Dr. Planish was suspicious. He couldn't,
however, waste this audience.

"Yes, it's a great chance you have, my boy. Perhaps you and your valiant
generation will correct the errors that so many of the leaders of my
generation have committed. It's up to you young folks--with such aid as
I can continue to give you--to win the war and win the peace."

The graduate student remarked, "I've got to be getting back uptown,"
astounded the Doctor by kissing an unresistant Carrie, and walked out.
Before the Doctor could get under way, it was Carrie who attacked:

"Daddy, listen. Please don't hand out any more slogans to my
friends--not even 'win the war, win the peace.' That was a beautiful
war-cry once, and it meant something to us, but all of us have had it
thrown at us so many times in the last six months that it's just a
sound."

"My God, to think that I could have a daughter who can be frivolous at a
time like this, when men are fighting!"

"I won't stand your saying that! We're not frivolous! Maybe we know all
the horrors, the creeping plague and the old churches smashed and the
starving babies and the cynicism of men like Goebbels, better than you
do, because our imaginations are younger. And we're going to do
something. That boy who was just here--six months ago he was a pacifist,
three months ago he was an isolationist, and tomorrow he'll enlist in
the Marine Corps, if they'll have him. He used to use slogans, like you.
Now he wants to use a machine-gun."

"But we have to have slogans! This is an ideological war--the first war
in history that's entirely between two different sets of ideas. We got
to have slogans--and trained leaders to coin them!"

"Didn't the French Revolutionists think they were fighting for a set of
ideas, too, and didn't they have a slogan--Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity? Maybe if they hadn't had so many perfectly swell songs and
so many powerful orators and leaders, the Revolution would've had a
better run."

"I told you you were frivolous--you and all your friends--shamefully
frivolous in this dark hour of need."

"Well, most of them are going to be frivolous in khaki, in a few weeks.
They'll fight--like the Civil War. But to people that try to get
publicity for themselves out of telling the soldiers how noble they are,
they'll just say, 'So what!' Can't you see that?"

"I see that my own daughter has become flippant to the point of
blasphemy!" said Dr. Planish, and walked out of the house.

But he could not, as he sat in the Lafayette Caf, go on hating her. She
was too serious, and for once, this man who made a profession of
preaching seriousness was actually serious himself.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In his hotel, Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis was writing to his son, who had
been his junior partner but who was now a corporal in the United States
Army:

    Dear Son:

    Am writing from NY. Have seen Life w Father, very funny show,
    father in the play not unlike me, when you're not around to kid
    me out of it. Your mother phones from Mpls that she is well, she
    is also a funny woman, sometimes funnier than she thinks. Well,
    it has come, with Pearl Harbor, you were wiser than I, getting
    into the army so early, tomorrow Monday morning I shall go out
    and see if I can enlist in some branch of the service, it would
    be fun if we could be together, hope however you are more
    careful with yr rifle than sometimes you were with shotgun when
    we hunted duck together, well I guess I jumped you for that
    sufficiently at that time.

    I had hoped country could stay out, but I was wrong, and now
    shall think only of war. Have the business in shape so that Dave
    can wind it up. When you & I get back from the war we can start
    a new one. This town is full of stuffed shirts, do you know what
    is funny, son, they all bellyache here because the English come
    over and tell them what they ought to do about the war, and so
    they, the Easterners, tell us Middlewesterners what _we_ ought
    to do abt war. A gassy uplifter here named Planish--I guess he
    was born in the Great Valley himself, but he's conveniently gone
    and forgot it, and this old windbag said to me, "I'm so sorry I
    haven't got time to go out and awaken the Middlewest to the
    realities and emergency of the international situation!" Have
    you still got that young Polish doctor from Winona for a
    lieutenant? Tell him what Planish said, will you, and write me
    his comment.

    If I get into the service too, do not worry about yr mother and
    sisters, son, if anything happens--there is plenty insurance in
    their names, have found that place where we got such fine
    seafood that time, had a good dinner but sure did miss you,
    eating alone.

    Yr father.

Dr. Planish had walked little, the past few years, but on this restless
Sunday of December 7th, he walked all the way up to Colonel Marduc's
office. He was wretchedly wondering if he always did know what was going
to happen.

But he lost his indecision when he came into the buoyant presence of
Colonel Marduc, who put a new rose in his buttonhole, lighted a gigantic
cigar, pounded his desk and roared:

"Here's our chance. Germany will come in, and war must inevitably make a
new political set-up, and Tom Blizzard and I are ready to step in. But
I'm not so much interested in office during the war--that's only
temporary. What I want is influence after it. All right, call it
_power_, if you want to!

"We must start right now identifying my name with post-war negotiations,
and play it up so people will turn to me whether the war is lost or won.
If we win, and I think we will, I have a new peace plan that nobody has
hit on yet. We'd better get a lot of publicity on it, and get people
referring to it as 'The Marduc Plan'. Realize you're the first
person--except Winifred--that's ever heard those words, 'The Marduc
Plan'? You won't be the last! And here it is:

After the war, in order to make the Germans keep the peace permanently,
we neither slaughter the whole lot of 'em--as a lot of sound people
advocate, and there certainly is much to be said for that solution--nor
do we let 'em into any new League of Nations, as the sentimentalists
want. No. We just take their imperial government away from 'em, and
reduce 'em to the small separate kingdoms and duchies that they were
before 1870--a lot of small weak states. Doesn't that sound good?
Doesn't it? And who can tell--the plan might even get adopted--why, it
might even work!"

"But Colonel, mightn't those small states get to fighting one another,
and just increase the chances of new wars?"

"Who the hell cares what they do? Besides, a little war now and then is
good for business. Yessir! The idea of the Marduc Plan, then, ought to
bring me a prominent seat at the final peace conference, and lead right
to the post of Secretary of State... if not higher... but I'd be
satisfied to let Tom Blizzard have the big job, if he'll get busy and
move fast. I'm certainly not going to wait around while he backs and
fills. Don't tell anybody this, but maybe the Japs did me a big service
at Pearl Harbor!"

By just vigorously not hearing the last sentence, Dr. Planish was able
to rouse to action, and forget the warnings of Carrie. "Fine! What do
you think I better do now? God, I hope nothing will happen to the DDD!"

"It won't, my boy. I'll protect you. No, just carry on with the
Powerhouses. Send 'em all a mimeographed bulletin tomorrow and remind
'em that we warned 'em about this Pearl Harbor danger months ago.
Months!"

"But I don't think we did."

"Of course we didn't! What's that got to do with it? And begin to send
out hints about the Marduc Plan--don't tell 'em what it is yet. Write
some letters to the papers, under different names, demanding that
Congress send for me to tell 'em what we're fighting for. I don't think
they will, but they might have enough sense to. And phone Bultitude, if
you can get him; tell him to start making hints about my Plan, or I'll
expose him. Try him tonight--he'll be plenty worried. So!"

"I'll get busy right away, Colonel," said Dr. Planish.




CHAPTER 30


Governor Blizzard's New York office, with its red carpet and weighty
mahogany desk and steel engraving of John Quincy Adams, suggested a
State capitol.

He had summoned Dr. Planish, who found a changed man. For years, in
active State politics including biting and eye-gouging, Tom Blizzard had
hidden the fact that he had been graduated from a university, _magna cum
laude_. Of recent years, living in New York, he had played up the
degree, and joined the National Arts Club. Today, in January, with the
war five weeks old, Tom Blizzard had flopped back, and he was trying
again to be the roughneck politician who loved silos, split infinitives
and votes.

"Doc, I'm going to get out of this town and go back to the United States
of America. This is the time for it. I think maybe I'm the guy to put up
against FDR at the next Democratic National Convention, and till then I
want to just set in Waskeegan and get the garlic and Chanel smells off
me.

"I don't really savvy this Venusberg, and among other things I don't get
is your organizations. Pressure groups. One half of you, all this past
year, trying to make us stay to hell out of the war and the other half
trying to get us in, and both sides forgetting we still have got a
popular body called the Congress. What you're trying to do, all you
uplifters and organizators, is to set up an Invisible Empire that'll be
higher than the elected Government. You want to re-christen this country
'The Organized States of America, Inc.'!

"Now you, Doc, you're fairly sane, personally. I don't believe you
believe your own spiels about what crooks and weather-vanes and
foot-kissers we politicians are. You know damn well that politicians, at
their worst, can be checked and thrown out by the popular vote, whereas
you self-crucified Messiahs only have to keep on the right side of some
philanthrobber and you're in for keeps. You are only a little cuckoo;
you take care to hold down your job and play Charley Marduc's records.

"But have you ever noticed that nearly every one of the semi-honest
uplifters and crusade-leaders and rousers of the masses, including the
Communists and their brothers the evangelists, is anywhere from a
neurotic with the hives up to a complete lunatic? Of course any man that
deliberately sticks his neck out and goes into politics is a _little_
crazy, but compared with all you self-appointed Galahads, Huey Long was
a man of modesty and remarkable horse-sense.

"Yep, I'm reverting to Main Street with some of the fastest reversion
you ever saw. Six weeks from now I'll have my feet up on the table with
some honest ballot-box-stuffer, and forget all you unfrocked preachers
and crayonless professors and newspapermen that couldn't make the grade
and women that made it too fast.

"But I might be able to use the lowdown on the virtuous shenanigans that
Marduc and that bed-hopping daughter of his may pull from now on. My
bank will be sending you--at your home address--a check for one hundred
dollars, every month, and I'd like you to keep me informed on whatever
that enlightened pair get away with."

Dr. Planish gasped, "You don't mean you want me to _spy_ on Colonel
Marduc?"

"Sure I do!"

"Oh! Oh, I see. Well----"

                 *        *        *        *        *

The publicizing of the Marduc Plan was interrupted by the most strategic
idea Dr. Planish had had for a year. He saw a way in which, even during
these troublous times, the DDD might be kept alive and useful no matter
how wartime finances might go.

He felt that the citizenry were in a surprising and rather shocking
mood; they were listening to the President and the Army and to airplane
manufacturers, and not to the standard professional prophets, not even
to those who were so inspired that they had been getting $1,250 for a
lecture. The invitations to Colonel Marduc to attend public dinners had
so diminished that he was accepting all of them.

The aureous life-blood of all organizations was, to Dr. Planish's public
rejoicing and private worry, flowing into war bonds and Red Cross
subscriptions, just when he had to pay the installments on Peony's new
near-diamond and semi-sapphire bracelet. He knew that the other
organizations must be suffering from the same anemia. Why not save
expenses by combining all of them--with Dr. Gideon Planish as the
executive secretary of the lot?

The idea was simple and brilliant, he felt, and Colonel Marduc approved
it.

The word "co-operation" had long been one of the most valuable in the
organizational treasure-house, but nobody had ever done much about it,
because each organization had its paid secretary, and that secretary did
not want to be co-operated out of his salary. But now, with the young
secretaries being drafted and the old ones being starved, Dr. Planish
felt that he could move in on them as easily as Hitler had moved into
Poland--though, naturally, with an entirely different treatment of the
office staffs.

He knew a good deal about the others. Using the names of Bonnie Popick
and Flaude Stansbury and his other clerks, he had regularly sent for the
"literature" of every new private circumlocution office as it was
blithely set up. Now, with Bonnie, he began to list all the national
welfare and educational organizations with headquarters in New York
City.

He stopped when he had listed two thousand of them, mostly with titles
containing the words American, National, Committee, Institution, Guild,
Forum, League or Council. Even Dr. Planish had not realized that there
were so many bands of light.

He arbitrarily picked out every hundredth league, called a taxicab,
started out to co-operate the twenty he had chosen--and quit his crusade
at 4:37 that afternoon.

He had started with "The Get Together Alliance," which had one pink and
golden room in the Gyro Building, and proved to consist entirely in a
Mrs. Willoughby Eck, who was a tailored fifty but enthusiastic. It was
her notion that the cure for every world evil was for everybody to keep
on shaking hands with everybody else all the time, falling on them
whenever you could catch them off guard, in subways, at theaters, at
bars and prayer-meeting. Mrs. Eck gushed, "The Rotarians have the right
idea--good fellowship--but why should the Rotarians have all the fun?
Why don't us moral leaders also recognize each other's humanity by the
touch of hands? Let me give you my little leaflet, Reverend."

But the Doctor had fled, without even trying to co-operate with Mrs.
Willoughby Eck.

By 4:37 P.M., the innocent Doctor had been shocked by the whole business
of organizationally. He had found that the National American Eclectic
Institute for the Advancement of the Popular Principle in Education was
one large, gray old gentleman who had a small desk in a corner of a
public stenographer's clattering office; that its rival, the Society for
the Humanization of Higher Education, did have rooms and rooms and
pamphlets and pamphlets, but was, all the while, just another league for
attacking union labor; and that another rival, the Institute of
Investigative Consideration of Education, was nothing at all but #3
Telephone in a row of twelve telephones upon the desk of a backroom
real-estate dealer, which desk was equally the headquarters of the Mount
Celestial Cemetery Corp., the Fig Leaf Publishing Co., and the League
for the Protection of Home and Marriage.

He had also found that an association of poets headed by a lady who
looked like Emily Dickinson, a drama league mothered by an
insurance-man's wife, and a share-croppers' defense society, were all of
them strangely like Communist fronts.

Dr. Planish returned to his office, and left the world to darkness and
to philanthrobbing. He was so sunk that for a moment he thought of going
back to work, of taking a school job so that some younger teacher might
be released for enlistment.

But, he snorted, what percentage was there in being a professional Light
to the Toilers if you merely became a toiler? That would be as silly as
for a professional evangelist to go to somebody else's mission and get
saved, with not even a look-in on the collection-box.

No, he would go on with his co-operation, but he would perform it with
sound, reliable organizators, the ones he already knew personally.

Next morning, at 11, he was in the anteroom of the Anti-Racial Youth
Committee for the Organization of Global Co-operation, waiting to see
its managing secretary, Professor Goetz Buchwald.

He had to wait, for the Professor was "in conference" with another warm
friend, Dr. Christian Stern. The waiting-room was comfortable enough; it
even had a touch of splendor, with red-leather armchairs, rare volumes
in Bantu, Hindustani and Hebrew, and handsome blown-up photographs of
Youth Groups from sixteen different countries, all wearing shorts and
horn-rimmed spectacles and all looking exactly alike, except that the
Chinese and Palestinian groups looked more so.

Into this room militarily strode still another friend: Commander Orris
Gall, executive director of the Zero-Hour American National Committee on
Anti-Totalitarian Defense, which even since Pearl Harbor had gone right
on in a surprised way telling the country that Adolf Hitler was no real
friend of America.

"Well, well, well, Dr. Planish, this is swell finding you here. This
will save me a trip to your office. I phoned you, but they said you'd
just left," said the Commander. "I've got a perfectly revolutionary
idea. Like this. I needn't tell you how the sources of philanthropy are
threatening to dry up. So why don't a lot of us that have a common
ideology join up and economize on expenses and efforts? Let's
co-operate!"

The Doctor glowed, "Why, that's what I was going to suggest to you! I
suppose you'll be going back into the Navy."

"No, not--exactly. The new people that are running it claim that because
I belong to the old tradition, I haven't kept up to date. Imagine that!
But I am going to take a key post with one of the most important
manufacturers of naval equipment--in the public relations department.
Right away."

"So that'll leave your ZANC without a director. I'll be glad to take it
over----"

"That wasn't exactly my idea, Doctor. The fact is, my wife is going to
continue my work--she's really a lot more capable than I am--a very
remarkable writer, too; you ought to see some of the fiction she dashes
off--and what I was thinking was that since your DDD has always merely
covered the same field as ours, like exposing scoundrels like Zeke
Bittery--and after all, it was I who first showed him up!--why, Marduc
and you might like to put the DDD under Mrs. Gall's supervision and you
could--well, you could go on to something else, don't you see?"

Dr. Planish was staring at this insolence when out of Professor
Buchwald's office glided Dr. Christian Stern. He bubbled as he saw them:

"Well, well, boys, this _is_ a coincidence! I was going to call on you
both this afternoon, but I guess this'll save me some taxi-fares, ha,
ha! What I want to talk to you about is---- You know how busy I always
am, with my big institutional church, but somehow this crisis gives one
superhuman energies, and I was thinking I might be able to combine your
DDD and ZANC with Professor Buchwald's ARYC, and serve, or shall I say
function, as executive secretary of the whole caboodle--and, practically
speaking, at no extra salary, say just thirty-five hundred beyond what
I'm getting now--and thus release you boys for war work. I regret to say
that Buchwald can't see it my way. If there's any co-operating, he wants
to do the _operating_ and let us do the _co_! But you boys are more like
practical men of affairs, and so---- Let's co-operate!"




CHAPTER 31


Dr. Planish and the other directors of the DDD decided that, since they
were kept from co-operation by a little group of willful men, they might
as well help out the Government. When Washington announced to some
millions of newspaper readers that it wanted scrap iron, the Doctor's
bulletins hastily told several thousand members that the DDD was
thinking of letting the Government have some scrap iron.

When the Government got tired of H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith's taking
too much German money without registering as an agent, and sent him to
the Federal penitentiary, Dr. Planish rushed in to expose Mr.
Sanderson-Smith; and who but he presided at the meeting where Dr. Elmer
Gantry came right out and denounced his former buddy, Ezekiel Bittery,
as a deceiver, a turncoat, a Fascist, a Fifth Columnist, a renegade, a
snake in the grass, a Ratzi and an anti-Semite. (This was less than a
fortnight after Mr. Bittery had joined Mr. Sanderson-Smith in his cell.)

With each of these courageous deeds, Dr. Planish felt justified in
sending out a few letters suggesting an increase of contributions to the
DDD.

In a general sort of way, at this time Dr. Planish and the DDD also
arranged a large public dinner, not because it had any value, not
because anyone, except persons who like to be naked in public, could
find it anything but agonizing, but because it was an American primitive
tribal rite, astonishingly like the orgies of the Penitentes, except
that the Penitentes do not have a busy paid secretary. In New York it is
always possible to persuade from six hundred to fifteen hundred persons
to put on evening clothes and pay from $3.50 to $7.50 each for a very
bad dinner, at which very bad speakers, mostly throat-clearers, will
arise and say nothing at all at preposterous length, with an "uh"
between every adjective and noun. It is even possible to get these
speakers, these non-private persons, not only to endure the horrors of
oratorical vacuity, but also to put up with the torture of a reception
before or after the dinner, when they will shake hands with strangers
and smilingly listen to them without once protesting, "Everything you
are saying to me is complete foolishness."

It is not Broadway that is the Main Street of New York, but the long,
thin, prandial Speakers' Table, and every familiar--too, too
familiar--face along it knows intimately and detests furiously all the
other inevitable and self-opening faces there.

And one of the largest and dreariest of these rain dances was whipped up
by the DDD.

So the Doctor was able to make a good report when a former acquaintance
named Hatch Hewitt jeeringly asked, in a bar, what he had been doing
about the war. This Hewitt was in uniform as a major of marines, and
when Dr. Planish took the trouble to ask him where he was going, the man
merely growled "Abroad," and when, even more politely, the Doctor said
that he felt like joining up, too, the Major observed, "----!"

Yet with all this effort driving the Doctor half-mad, Colonel Marduc
incessantly asked that his name and his Marduc Plan for Permanent Peace
be mentioned in more radio talks, more interviews, and in mid-spring, he
was suddenly demanding publicity also for his daughter, Winifred
Homeward the Talking Woman.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Colonel Marduc was on the loose that evening. He felt lonely and
misunderstood; he felt his sixty years.

He had had words with his most recent mistress on the subject of
telephoning to her at 3 A.M. If he found that she was then asleep, he
was angry at her for neglecting him; if she was awake, he stated that
she must have another lover with her; if she didn't answer at all, he
called her at 6 A.M. to rebuke her for the sleep she had made him lose.
His last attention to her had been a slap.

He scouted into his favorite stalking ground, the Vicugna Bar, where
Park Avenue met Prospect Park and stage celebrities went to stare at the
suave and beautiful visitors from Omaha. The Colonel walked up to the
bar as if he owned it. He did.

Three drinks later, he felt healed enough to look around. One young
woman, at a table with another girl, looked familiar: a slim redhead
with a face as pert as a pearl button against black cloth. The Colonel,
with an indifferent bend of his finger, brought the manager of the
Vicugna on the run. "The redhead--what gives?" he grunted.

"I don't know, Colonel. I'll try and find out right away, Colonel,"
panted the manager, a less collegiate Sherry Belden, but more useful.
While the hero stood erect and drank, always too dignified to squat on a
stool at the bar, the manager scuttled through the caf interviewing
waiters, and came back to groan, "I'm terribly sorry, Colonel, but
nobody seems to know who she is."

"Have I got to do my own seductions, at my age? Imperial power,
intellectual panders on the court payroll, and still beneath the ermine
the emperor is naked, _nicht wahr_?"

"That's so, sir," said the manager, who had understood only the words
"payroll," "naked" and "_nicht wahr_."

"Go to hell," said the Colonel.

The manager went.

The Colonel watched the redhead till her girl companion had gone off to
what, in the infinite delicacy of modern American saloons, is known as
"the powder room," then moved on her like a traditional grand duke, like
a mighty bull of Bashan. He sat down at her table without invitation,
and she stared at him, breathless, frightened and already conquered.

"I seem to know you, young lady."

"Oh, yes, Colonel. I guess you must a seen me. I'm a stenographer at the
DDD."

"M?"

"Up on the third floor. Under Mr. Vesper. I've seen you when you've come
into the Doctor's office."

"Doctor? Doctor? Which Doctor?"

"Why, Dr. Planish!"

"Oh. _Him!_" A huge silence. "Yes, yes, a Christian gentleman and a fine
scholar. Undoubtedly. I'm sure that you girls enjoy working for him."

"He's awfully sweet and kind--you know, kind of jokey."

"I see. Jokey---- Look, dear, get rid of that piece of fluff that's with
you, and we'll go drink some champagne at the Syrinx Den. Here she
comes."

The redhead talked to her friend, aside. She came back to the Colonel
and his bulbous stare as timidly as though it had been she who had
started all this. She was amazed when, in the taxicab, he did not kiss
her, but only patted her hand. At the Syrinx cabaret, where he didn't
actually order champagne but a couple of innocent-tasting drinks called
"zombies," he respectfully asked her opinion of Dr. Planish's latest
pamphlet, _Defend Your Dollars_--which she had liked very much but which
she had not read. Not till she had chattered herself into loving
companionship did he ask her name.

"Flaude Stansbury. It's a kind of corny name, ain't it! My ma was
romantic."

"No worse a name than Marduc, precious."

"Maybe I ought to use my married name."

"Nonsense! You can't be married! You'reyoungenoughtobemygranddaughter!"
(But inwardly he was congratulating himself, "That'll save trouble!")

"Oh, I am so married, Colonel!" (He had not asked her to call him
"Charley," and he never did. Seduction was to Colonel Marduc no ground
for impertinence.)

"And who's the lucky boy, Flaude? I'll bet the dog is handsome."

"He isn't a boy. He's pretty old."

"Not as old as I am, I bet."

"He'd be twice as old as you are even if he was only half as old. Oh,
I'm not kicking. Honestly I'm not! I hate these wives that whine and
complain, don't you?"

"I certainly do!" said Colonel Marduc, with great sincerity.

"I thought it would be kind of different--he's such a student and
idealist and all that junk, and he was so desperately in love with
me--and God knows, I didn't want to always have to go on earning my
living, and he was so in love and---- No soap. The poor thing does try
so hard, but he's such a cold fish--and then he wants me to kneel down
and pray with him! Figure that one!"

"Who is this egg?"

"He's my immediate boss--Mr. Carlyle Vesper."

"Vesper? Oh, that flunky at the DDD--excuse me, I mean clerk. But he's a
million years older than you are!"

"I'll say!"

"And he's some kind of a Holy Roller preacher, isn't he?"

"God knows what he is, except that---- Oh, Colonel!"

He kissed her, so openly and so ignoring of all the drinkers packed in
around them, that nobody paid any attention. And in the Colonel's kiss
there was nothing of cold-fishness.

He took her to what she considered the most beautiful apartment she had
ever seen, and he considered the most horrible burlesque in New York: a
hotel suite choked with Spanish beams, escritoires in five kinds of wood
and three kinds of carving, coffee tables shaped like drums, and
armchairs that were also radios and smoking-stands and magazine racks.
There was a bathroom with flimsy nightgowns and cosmetics for women, and
in the kitchen, along with sound Bourbon, were crme de rose and
Dantziger Goldwasser.

The young lady cried on his shoulder, but it was no cry of unhappiness.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He thought, as he met Flaude at the Vicugna for the third time, that the
square-nosed man at the bar was shadowing him, but he forgot it in her
young hand-clasp. Her husband, Flaude said, was out this evening,
attending some dreary committee meeting.... The Colonel had seen to
it that Carlyle Vesper should be attending a dreary committee meeting.

He wanted to see Flaude's home, particularly to look over her wardrobe,
with a view to improvements.

As they entered that skimpy flat, a rear walk-up near the East River, he
ached for his poor little friend. The place had none of the lipstick
flavor that he had expected; there wasn't so much as a tall gilt basket
tied with a rosy ribbon. The living-room was hilly with old gray books,
and between the two narrow and sooty windows, which faced the courtyard,
was a _prie-Dieu_.

He growled, "What a dump! Come here and I'll give you something to make
up for it."

Over her shoulder, as he kissed her, he could see, slowly coming through
the door of the bedroom, slow and silent and gray, a man who looked like
a hill-billy preacher, a thin and sallow man, his mustache dribbling.

The man was Carlyle Vesper. He was carrying an old-fashioned razor, the
blade clear and vicious even in that muggy light. His mouth was wide and
trembling.

In a Harlem den, the Colonel had once seen a man sliced up with a razor,
but he was interested to notice that he was not afraid. With no especial
haste, he swung the girl round behind him. Then he laughed.

Solemnly, methodically, but with speed, a man who had been standing
outside on the fire-escape was sliding up the half-open window, falling
into the room, seizing Vesper from behind. He was the squat man who had
been tailing the Colonel.

The Colonel gave Flaude three hundred dollars, which would more than
take her back home to Stansbury Center--her great-grandfather had been
the founder of the village, her grandfather a loafer and her father a
drunk. He helped Flaude pack her two bags.

The detective was explaining to Carlyle Vesper that they just wanted him
to understand that unless he kept his mouth shut, he would be killed. "I
do mean killed--and I _do_ mean _you_!" said the detective, cheerfully,
and he bent Vesper's left middle finger back and back till the man
screamed, "Don't--oh, please don't! I'll keep still. Anyway, can't you
see I don't want to hurt her any more than I have?"

When they left him, the man was lying on his bed, sobbing.

The Colonel said, "Sniveling little bastard. By the way, flatfoot, how
do you get a man killed?"

"Search me. I just read about it in detective stories, same as you. I'm
very fond of a good detective story, though I don't know but what I like
a Western better. How do you suppose these fellows think up all these
ideas for stories?"

When they were seated in the back room of a saloon, the Colonel said
blandly, "Come across. Who put you on me, and how much do you want?"

"Oh, well, Colonel, no use bluffing you. I won't ask you more'n a couple
hundred bucks, because it was only your daughter, Mrs. Homeward."

"Oh... Winifred... Sweet girl... Idealistic."

"That's a fact. But Jesus, how she talks! A check would be all right,
Colonel. I don't think you'd stop payment on it."

"You mean, not twice I wouldn't."

"That's the idea!"

The two men of the world laughed together.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When someone--the voice was unfamiliar--telephoned to Dr. Planish that
Mr. Carlyle Vesper would be unable to return to the office, and would
they please send Vesper's things to this address, the Doctor was pretty
indignant.

In Vesper's desk, Bonnie Popick and the Doctor found a small
leather-bound copy of the _Imitatio Christi_.

The good Doctor protested gently, "Now isn't that just like a shiftless
beggar like Carlyle to go and blow in his money on such an expensive
piece of junk! On _his_ salary! Anyway, it was very inconsiderate of him
to have married that Stansbury girl in the first place. If he'd asked my
advice, I'd've told him not to. I've always stood ready to give him
anything--I mean, any advice--but do you think he appreciated that? Now,
I suppose he and his wife will go batting all over the country, never
thinking for one second how inconvenient it is for _me_ to have 'em walk
out and leave me flat this way, with all I've got to do. As I've always
said, ingratitude and disloyalty and lack of imagination are worse
crimes than--than--than----"

"Barratry," said Bonnie.

"What?" said Dr. Planish.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Colonel had invited his daughter to come down to the office for a
drink.

"I always do think you've got the nicest diggings here," she said.

"When the hell did an office become a 'diggings'?"

Her laughter tinkled lightly--anyway, she meant it to be
lightly-tinkling, as in the newspaper items about her. "Of course. How
silly of me!"

"What makes you so Park Avenue today? Or are you being English? You must
have been bumming around with some new lover--maybe your husband!"

"Dear Father, what's all this rudeness a prelude to?"

"Why are you trying to get the goods on me?"

"Trying?"

"All right, getting 'em. Wouldn't it be cheaper to come and ask me about
my affairs? I can tell you much more than Operative Skink of the O'Pook
Agency."

"Hm?" She looked glazed and impenetrable.

"He's now on my payroll. Just what is your game, my child? Are you
trying to get something on me so you can step on my face and climb up
over me, as you've been doing to other people all your life, starting
with your classmates in Miss Mitch's School and continuing on up to your
husband? Are you turning your fancy lightly to patricide?"

"Do you know that when you talk in that silly, self-dramatizing way,
it's very hard for me to remember that you're my father--presumably? Of
course I've been checking up on your little excursions. I have to
protect you against yourself; I have to know just what exhibitions of
puerility you've been up to, and decide whether to let your various
associates know about them. My dear Father, if you had the slightest
idea what I've gone through in my efforts to keep your old friends, even
your own doctor, loyal to you----"

"You----"

"If you could hear the way they confide to me that they're just about
fed up with your incessant drunkenness and whoring, and your badly
informed talk-talk-talking about foreign affairs----"

"_Me_ talk----"

"I've pled with them and I've begged them to remember that behind all
your senile capers----"

"Senile!"

"----you do have a generous heart, and a pretty good brain, at least for
business. Me climb? Me step on people's faces? Why, the only thing I've
ever wanted from life was to go on being an adoring wife and daughter,
stay home and sacrifice everything to help my husband and my father, and
if I've ever stepped out and taken some poor, pitiful little interest in
public affairs, it's only because I've been so sick at heart over the
way you two men have made childish drunken spectacles of yourselves. I
just couldn't endure sitting idle and helpless at home another hour.
I've undoubtedly kept both of you out of jail, or out of the alcoholic
ward, by my hourly and incessant struggle, and as for you--I warn you
that from now on I'm going to take charge of your political career.
Entire charge!"

On the Colonel's desk, the telephone that was connected only with his
secretary was ringing. It was Winifred who answered it. She gurgled,
"Oh, yes. Send him right up."

She turned on the Colonel in a sunburst of sweetness. "It's a reporter
from _Events_. He wants your opinion on the psychology of the Japs."

The young man came in, nodded tolerantly to Winifred, and said to the
Colonel, "The boss thinks your ideas about Japan ought to be valuable.
He says you handled a lot of publicity for the Japanese Government a few
years ago."

The Colonel sputtered, "Nonsense--nonsense! Just a few routine
matters--some commercial promotion that happened to come into our
office--carelessness on the part of an underling--fired him the moment I
heard he'd accepted the vile stuff!"

Winifred Homeward, delicately gesturing with a cigarette, her bright
voice soaring, caught the reporter's attention:

"But you're perfectly right to come to him. Even if he _is_ my father, I
must say there's no one who has more information about Japan and how to
crush it than the Colonel, whether as a soldier or an administrator.
Here's the way he and I feel about it. What's the shortest way from New
York or Detroit or Pittsburgh or Washington or St. Paul, or for that
matter, from Toronto, to Tokio or Kobe or Yokohama or, what really
counts, to Korea where, we have inside information, the natives are
ready to rise against their Japanese overlords----"

Colonel Marduc presently wandered out of the room, quite unnoticed, and
did not return until after this spirited interview with him was over.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Winifred said to Peony, "These _men_--even the talented ones, like my
father and your husband and mine--they do mean so well, but they have no
sense of orderliness and human values, like us. I suppose we get it from
housekeeping and from mothering them.

"We women have always controlled school-teaching in America, and
conversation and manners, but now that so many of the men are away at
war, here's our chance to have a much higher sphere of influence. When
the time comes, I'm going to run for the city council in New York, and I
don't see why I shouldn't be governor. I'm going to start an
organization of my own, something like the DDD, but much more hooked up
with practical politics. When peace comes, there's no reason why women
shouldn't be in power, and dictate the terms. We're so much less
emotional.

"You could save my life, Peony. I want you to start business school,
right away, and learn typing and shorthand, and be ready to boss the
corps of secretaries I'll have to have. I'll pay your tuition, and pay
you twenty dollars a week while you're learning. How about it?"

"Swell!"

Peony had been bored. With shopping, movies, reproving Carrie, playing
bridge with a gabby sister-in-law of Chris Stern, eating and a
prodigious quantity of sleeping, she had put in twenty-four hours a day,
but she had not met many of the powerful people whom the Doctor was
always quoting. She had even been driven to taking courses in economics
and history at Columbia, sometimes showing up as often as every other
class.

Now, business college was the liveliest party she had known in months.
She was thirty-nine, but she found herself of the same age with all the
girls of twenty-two and the undrafted boys of eighteen in the school;
with them, at the Palais de Hamburger, she gigglingly exchanged such
conversational delights as "What's cooking in your filing class? Say,
did you see the expression on that old bag's face when I _did_ know the
symbol for February? In the groove! That's cooking with gas!"

She was at home now; she had found that gay, urbane New York that she
had known must exist; and when George Riot slipped into town and on the
telephone muttered that she must meet him again at the dreary Hex Hotel,
she refused, because she was going to a party to be given by the clever
Miss Teddy Klutz, aetat 24, the youngest and liveliest teacher at their
Qwick-Shure Secretarial and Executive Commercial College, Positions
Guaranteed.

Late every afternoon Peony was at Winifred Homeward's office, mixing
Sazarac cocktails or confidentially helping the great woman in affairs
too delicate for the routine hands at _Attention!_; working on the grand
list of influential women all through America who were, know it or not,
fated to be Winifred's future corps of Black Blouses.

Not Colonel Marduc nor the chirping Deacon Wheyfish and certainly not
the anxious Dr. Planish had ever had so much fun in the invisible empire
of propaganda as Peony Planish.




CHAPTER 32


A disturbing letter had come in to Dr. Planish from Mr. Johnson of
Minneapolis, written from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center:

"I have been asked to be a sponsor, whatever that means, for a Dinner
Dedicated to the Plain People, to be held in your very fine Gladiola
Hotel and to be conducted by three novelists, a portrait-painter and an
alderman, at $3.50 a plate, which is a good plain price. There are a lot
of other names on the list of sponsors, but what bothers me is that they
seem to have left out all the Plain People.

"Should I send some on? I can't come myself because I am now in the
Navy, but I know quite a few of the Plain People in Minnesota--a dumb
farmer who happens to be my uncle, and a surgeon who likes duck-hunting,
and my plumber, and a chemist who went to Yale, which I guess should
make him a Plain Person as that college was founded to promote plain
democratic learning. Or do you think they might resent the imputation
that they are so Plain and so lowdown that they have to have dinners
given to them by liberal novelists to bring them up to a level where
Mrs. Homeward can notice them?"

                 *        *        *        *        *

Suddenly, a little heavily, he liked Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, and
agreed with him against all the organizators and all the ethical
raptures of his transmogrified Peony.

The next letter in the afternoon mail was from President T. Austin Bull
of Kinnikinick, inviting him to be the speaker at Presentation Day, in
early May.

"If you can possibly afford the time, stay on for a few days and get a
real rest here in the quiet while the lilacs come out and the thin green
lines of young oats look so pretty against the black earth."

A young Gid Planish was reborn, and he exulted, "I'm going, and maybe
I'm never coming back!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

No, said Peony, Good Lord, no; she couldn't possibly leave her shorthand
to go out to any Middlewest, and besides, she didn't think the Bulls and
that Teckla Schaum, that Gid used to be so much in love with, cared so
much for her; and now that Peony's father and mother were dead and she
had lost track of all her dumb friends in that dumb Middlewest----
Besides! She wasn't going to waste all these lovely new clothes that she
was (partly) paying for out of her new salary on a bunch of farmers, not
_her_!

But she insisted on their having a Real Time, a typical happy evening in
New York, before he went West, and they had it, to the full splendor.

In order to be at home on time, he called on five contributors in
thirty-eight minutes, riding up and down in express elevators, past a
total of 474 floors, with the shoulders of strangers unaffectionately
thrust into his jaw; he took a taxicab home and got stuck in crosstown
traffic; his wife and he dressed in expensive special evening garments
that were going to look pretty funny in the history-book pictures in
1982; they took another taxi, endured another traffic jam in the streets
of the theatrical district, smelly with carbon monoxide and Italian
food; paid for the unpleasant ride the ransom for a small prince; edged
past a doorman whose glance said "Tip!"; edged into a restaurant; were
insulted and kept waiting by a member of the Fascist Party who was
learning dictatorship as a restaurant manager; waited for the pleasure
of lending the Doctor's hat to a girl who just didn't like customers;
squeezed in between a skinny table and the wall; looked unhungrily
through the varieties of chicken on the menu; waited for the waiter;
muttered their orders to the waiter, who was German-Swiss and didn't
like customers or anybody else; ate radishes and celery and olives and
bread and lumps of ice and the table bouquet till they didn't really
want their chicken, and then ate chicken till they didn't want their
profiterolles, and then ate the profiterolles; listened to the shrieks
of three business women, all in tweeds and all drunk, at another table;
waited for the waiter with the bill; waited for their change; added a
tip to an amount sufficient to ransom a pretty big prince; struggled out
between tables; waited for the check-girl; paid her fifteen cents for a
ten-cent hat and got a vicious look from her because it wasn't a
quarter; waited for the doorman to call another taxi; got a vicious look
from the doorman because they hadn't tipped him; tipped him; sat in a
taxi one-tenth filled with cigarette butts and the corpses of paper
matches during another jam in crosstown traffic; discovered that it
would have been six blocks shorter to have walked to the theater; lifted
themselves out of the taxi at the theater; got a vicious, dirty, and
awfully discriminating look from the theater doorman who, while the
Doctor was paying another ransom to the taxi-driver, looked over their
clothes and muttered "Yonkers"; produced the theater tickets for which
the Doctor had paid the ransom for two princes and a king; crawled into
the theater behind a line of paralytics until they reached their seats,
where Dr. Planish fell into such a coma of exhaustion that not till the
second act did he sit up and discover that he had seen the play before.

And so they went home, to be kept awake by the radio across the way, and
the next morning he started for Kinnikinick, with enthusiasm.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The bluff by Lake Elizabeth had once been an hour and a half walk over a
sandy trail. Now, it was an eight-minute drive from the campus by a new
black-top road.

The Pridmore shack in which he had spent his first night with Peony had
been replaced by a log-and-stone chalet, where Teckla and her father
lived all year round; and next door, with a common plane of springy
lawn, was the Virginia mansion of President Bull, where Dr. Planish was
staying.

It was the morning of Presentation Day, and T. Austin Bull and he were
already in doctoral robes, very gloomy and priestly and proper. But a
catastrophe threw down all this majesty.

The small cat of the youngest Bull granddaughter scrambled up a tree,
and was too scared to come down. There was a domestic flurry. The
President, with his robe flapping, tried with a bamboo fishing-pole to
guide the kitten out on a branch that hung low. The four grandchildren
capered round and round the tree, screaming; the President's two
daughters, and Teckla Schaum, from next door, stood watching,
comfortable and amused, while Mrs. Bull leaned from one upstairs window,
and the young colored maid from another, ironically cheering. Dr.
Planish was excitedly giving advice to President Bull, who looked as
much like a sleek, curly-headed leading man as ever, but an old actor
now, old and kind and amused. The lake breeze was fresh, and wavelets
ran up among the bright dry weeds on shore.

Suddenly Dr. Planish was homesick for precisely the place where he was;
suddenly it was unendurable to think of going back to the city that was
an hourly futility and a yearly defeat.

Teckla was shouting, "Here's a berry box! Put a piece of fish in it and
tie it to the top of the pole and the kitten will crawl in to get the
fish, and you'll have her!"

The children danced and clapped their hands as the box was raised to the
kitten, who sniffed at it, scowled, and turned her head to the study of
arboriculture.

"Now this is really important!" proclaimed Dr. Planish.

"Extremely important. Let the Presentation Day wait!" agreed the
President.

There loomed up a farmer neighbor, bearing a lofty ladder and bawling,
"You boys got great minds but no sense. It's a good thing I never went
to college. Now let a real man get at that cat!"

"You're right," agreed the two doctors, as the farmer began to climb,
the kitten to swear, and the children to sing, "At that cat--that fat
cat--catch that cat!"

Then Teckla said to a young Gideon, "Now you're happy. It's the first
time here that I've seen you relaxed. But I think your heart is still in
our backwoods."

He looked uncomfortably at her, lonely for her even when he was actually
with her. It seemed to him that Teckla, fifty-four and gray, was younger
and more content than Peony at less than forty.

And not till then did he remember to ask for the Dr. Edith Minton who
had been so admirably icy. He learned that she had been dead for seven
years. Somewhere near by she lay in earth, alone.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He wanted to discard all of his careful Presentation Day speech. He had
seen the men students in uniform, he had seen the girl students on the
campus, smoking cigarettes, their legs bare with little rolled socks,
and he felt that if this academic shrine was less decorous than in his
day, it was shockingly more sensible. The Flaming Youth nonsense had
been all pose; just the propriety of impropriety. It seemed to him that
these young people now were too busy for posing--much posing.

He did not feel altogether safe in intoning to this audience, this
sharp-eyed gang of intellectual pirates, that they ought to look into
something new called Democracy.

In other colleges, he had had evidence that young people today were
irreverent toward sloganeering, but he had not comprehended it till he
had come home; and now, even this audience of over a thousand couldn't
keep him contentedly bombasting for more than twenty minutes. All
through his oration he heard, like a ringing in the ears, his own doubt,
"Maybe I ought to be asking these young people about freedom and
courage, not telling them."

He did not recover his front till, at evening at the President's house,
he was surrounded by his old acquaintances, asking him
respectfully--pretty respectfully--about the private scandals and
phobias of the Great Leaders: Governor Blizzard and Senator Bultitude
and Milo Samphire and, always, the dazzle-sounding, radiogenic Winifred
Marduc Homeward.

"All noble souls, yet often I feel as if I wanted to give them all up
and be back in this peaceful world of scholarship," he sighed.

"That's because you've been away a long time. You forget how many fakers
_we_ put out, in our modest way," said old Eakins, professor emeritus.

Dr. Planish was not even sure that Eakins was impressed by his inside
news about what the British Army was planning in the way of future
aircraft. "Some of these old devils out here are horribly on. They do
read, and they know Europe--which is more than I do!" he worried.

But the chairman of the Kinnikinick trustees, Mr. Pridmore, sat
admiring.

Dr. Planish rejoiced, "There's a man I can bank on. I'd like to have him
for a neighbor again. And Teckla!"

He noted that since his time here, the Doctoring and Professoring of the
faculty members had thinned out. Even that stickler Austin Bull
preferred to be called just Mister. Dr. Planish was worried for a time.
Was the whole country turning against its honorable titled leaders? Then
it seemed to him that for a while it might be pleasant to quit going
around Doctoring, and be plain Mr. Planish.

And just once say to the Colonel, "Hey you, Marduc!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the learned crew was gone, and Teckla had unexpectedly kissed him
and bolted away, Austin Bull patted his shoulder and said gravely:

"Gid, a year from now I shall retire. How would you like to be president
of Kinnikinick? I think when you left here, I said some very ill-advised
things to you and about you. I realize now that I was jealous. I'm all
for you as president, and I know some of the trustees are. It's a
possibility at least. What do you say?"

"That's splendid of you. I'm very grateful. I'll--I'll have to think
about it."

"You won't need to decide till next fall."

"I'll think quick and hard--Mr. Bull!"

And he did have to think hard, for he was seeing, all at once, a kitten
up a maple tree, the amused face of a bare-legged co-ed, the
storm-clouds of Colonel Marduc's countenance, the pipe-smoke in
President Bull's little study, twenty-five thousand admiring people at a
rally in Madison Square Garden, and Peony's lips that could pout for
kissing or square themselves in rage.

He stood on the porch and looked to the left, just a few rods away, and
saw the shack that had once stood there, saw the ghost of a girl who had
come gaily to a young professor by night. She hadn't been renovated then
by the world of fame and philanthrobbing. She had been so sweet!

Now he was lonely. Oh, he would do _something_----

                 *        *        *        *        *

Once there was a man in a condemned cell and he got to thinking about
all the places he'd like to see again, and he was a man who had already
traveled a lot and knew about such things, and he was thinking and
deciding between Capri and California, and he was picturing Point Lobos
and Carmel, and he calculated that if he sold a few shares of stock, he
could afford to drive out there, but then he remembered that there was
gasoline rationing now, and, besides, he was going to be hanged at eight
o'clock tomorrow morning.

                 *        *        *        *        *

He sat in his bedroom, thinking that if he became president of
Kinnikinick, he would make less money than at the DDD; when he traveled,
he would have only a lower berth, and not a Pullman compartment, where
you had a private toilet, and could stand up when you undressed, as a
man of years and dignity should, and where you could recover from the
strain of lecturing by lighting a cigar and making nice smoke rings. And
there was difficulty in that he had now forgotten whatever he might once
have known about literature, history and every other branch of learning
in which it was not enough to roll out, "We are called upon to bear the
heat and fatigue of the struggle," and you had to mix some dates and
figures with the oratory.

The president of a college was supposed to leave all these matters of
study to the dean, and attend to the higher branch of getting money out
of the alumni. Still, even the president couldn't always avoid meeting
inquisitive undergraduates.

Then he snapped back at himself. All right! All right! It was a
challenge. He'd meet the challenge. He'd read a book again. He'd look up
his old text-books, and read them. He was only fifty. By the time he was
fifty-five, he could again be as well-read as any of these
undergraduates--almost.

Anyway, he had to. Wheyfish's titter and Sherry Belden's jitter and
Marduc's totalitarianism and the swoop of express elevators filled with
sharp and twitching elbows. Philanthrobbers, Organizators, midnight
perpetual-motion discussions of Conditions and Situations, and Winifred
Homeward the Talking Woman. Was that a life?

                 *        *        *        *        *

He walked through the village and saw the cottage where Peony and he had
started married life. It was no longer white and shining. It belonged
now to a professor, but he had five children and a crippled wife; it was
as smeary and hopeless as something in factory slums.

Dr. Planish longed to paint it white again, but when he tried to coax a
young Peony into the doorway, it remained mocking and empty.

He plodded to the campus and ventured into the office that he himself
had once ruled, as dean. The present dean said, "Sorry I've got such a
lot of engagements, Mr. Planish. If you can wait, I'll be right with
you."

Mr. Planish could not wait for anyone, not in that room.

He returned to the lake, and lunched with Teckla, just they two, on the
veranda by the blue water, by the silver birches.

"Gid darling, you trouble me. I know it's impertinent, but you always
seem a little tired. There isn't anything that I can do for you again,
but there's no one that loves you better and more lastingly."

"I'm sure of it."

"Or who doesn't care even if you _have_ become a stuffed shirt."

"Me?"

"Daddy and I long to have you take the presidency and come back and be
our neighbor again."

"If I'm a stuffed shirt----"

"Well, aren't you?"

"Don't be disgusting! Certainly not! Well---- What if I am?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter to me. Not any more than your having done a few
murders. I still love you--God knows why."

She looked at him invitingly, but he was thinking that, aside from
Carrie, he loved nobody at all save Peony, that he was devastatingly
lonely for Peony this moment, and that Providence had used his loyalty
to her--the one lone virtue he had ever had--to destroy him.

His good-bye to Teckla was a kiss so brotherly that even he was
disgusted.

The young man across the table, in the diner on the train to New York,
was in uniform as a seaman in the Navy, but to Dr. Planish he had a
classroom air.

The Doctor hinted that it had been hot on the campus--oh, yes, he was a
college teacher himself.

The young man said cheerfully, "I got my Ph.D. in economics last
February, and then I enlisted, to save my alleged Liberalism."

"Hm?"

"I had the job of making arrangements for outside lecturers at the
university, and all these propaganda associations tried to sell me on
lecturers that, they claimed, had the patent on Justice, Political
Integrity and Love for the Chinese, and I set up _too_ much
sales-resistance. Then on the radio I heard a ballyhooer who calls
himself Charles B. Marduc--and I bet I know what the B. stands for--and
he attacked Fascism so hysterically, and with such a suggestion that he
was the one lone anti-Hitler, that I almost found myself beginning to be
pro-Fascist, anti-Semite, anti-Chinese, anti-feminist,
anti-socialized-medicine, anti everything I had always believed in. So I
thought I better get into uniform and get away from everything
resembling organized virtue, and do it quick."

The Doctor protested, "Now, now, now! There may be some useless or even
mercenary national organizations, as you suggest, but surely the
majority of them awaken the public to immediate needs which the
Government, however benevolent, is too slow-moving to tackle."

"Maybe. I decided that the rule was that if an organization was set up
to achieve one definite social end, it was virtuous, but if it was
started by one busybody who just wanted a career and a salary, it was
bad. But that's a simple-minded rule. Look at the Anti-Saloon League. I
suppose it did have a lot of good intentions as well as an awful lot of
millions, and look at the way it made the ideal of temperance ridiculous
for another hundred years. In a republic like this, I'm scared of _any_
private organization that can spend thousands on propaganda--that can
persuade thousands of people to telegraph their congressman to do what
the private organization demands. It's a little too much like a private
army--like the Brown Shirts."

"All very interesting," said Dr. Planish. "I'm sure the heads of the
great organizations would be very much worried if they knew you had
decided not to okay them! Good night!"

But the fact that this young man _was_ unknown to him made him, in his
compartment, feel naked in a cold gale that blew from a million unknown
icebergs.

He reflected, "Oh, I must go back to Kinnikinick. Maybe start all over
again."

If he did that, could he win again the love, the confidence, of his own
daughter?

No, she was gone from his tribe. However virtuous and lean-minded and
strong that Modern Young Woman was, in her way she was just as dependent
on clash and clatter and conversation as Peony. She had heard the new
call: "Go East, young woman, and grow up with the steel and concrete and
the electric waves."

If he could have kept Teckla's sympathy instead of Peony's florid
ambition and Carrie's self-righteousness, might he not have been a man
instead of an executive secretary?

"No, no, don't misunderstand me," he said to his other self. "I don't
mean any more--oh--well--you know--love-making with her, but if I could
have Teckla for a neighbor and friend again."

He would! He'd be bold and masculine and put his foot down and go home
to Kinnikinick.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When he came into the house on Charles Street, Peony cried, "It's so
sweet to see you back! I did miss you, even if I have been so busy.
How're all the hicks in Kinnikinick? Did they bore you to death? Never
mind--we'll have a Real Time, a real New York evening tonight."

He said nothing whatever about a college presidency, or about returning
to Kinnikinick.

                 *        *        *        *        *

After he came back to New York, Dr. Planish made a lot of speeches, and
there was a quiet man who heard one of them, and this quiet man got to
thinking.

He thought that the one thing that might break down American Democracy
was the hysterical efficiency with which these pressure groups crusaded
to seize all the benefits of that Democracy for themselves: the farm
bloc, the women's bloc, the manufacturers' associations, the consumers'
associations, the bar associations, the medical associations, the
Protestant ministerial associations, the labor unions, the anti-labor
unions, the Communist Party and the Patriotic Flag Associations. Drug
stores combining to force legislation forbidding the sale of aspirin on
trains. Irish Catholics voting not as Americans but as Irish _and_
Catholics, Swedish Lutherans voting as Swedish Lutherans, Arkansas
Baptists voting as Neanderthals.

Catholics forbidding the Episcopalians to advocate birth-control, and
Methodists forbidding the Unitarians to drink their ancestral rum, and
people who really believe in Christianity overwhelmingly outvoted by all
these monopolies.

Gangs of Fascists damning the Jews--always the opening gambit in any
mass insanity--until the Jews are forced to create their own alliances,
and these become a new Sanhedrin that censors the Jews who won't submit
to the new Mosaic Law.

The Friends of Russia, the Friends of Germany, the Friends of the
British Empire, the Friends of the Slovenes and Croats, the Sons of the
American Revolution, and the Sons of Dog Fanciers.

Each of these private armies led by devout fanatics--not always on
salary--who believe that the way to ensure freedom for everybody is to
shut up every one of their opponents in jail for life, and that this is
a very fine, new solution.

God save poor America, this quiet man thought, from all the zealous and
the professionally idealistic, from eloquent women and generous sponsors
and administrative ex-preachers and natural-born Leaders and Napoleonic
newspaper executives and all the people who like to make long telephone
calls and write inspirational memoranda.




CHAPTER 33


Carrie cried, "I have my job! Draftsman in a Hartford airplane factory.
I'm leaving this evening."

Peony fussed, "You'll never be able to stand it, away from New York."

"With all my young men in the service, I won't miss one thing in New
York, except Stan MacGovern's Silly Milly cartoons, and the music on
WQXR," said the modern young woman. There was a distinct period in her
sentence before she added, "Oh, and you and Daddy, of course."

When Dr. Planish saw her off on the train, when it had slipped away in
the mammoth cave of the Grand Central, he felt that it had been years
ago that she had gone from him, and that he could not remember her face
exactly.

A week later, Peony said, "It seems so strange not to have her around,
turning to me for advice and help every minute, and I know you feel
awfully blue, breakfast all by yourself. And yet, in a way, I'm
relieved. Young people today have no discipline, like you and I were
brought up to. They think the world's created to serve and please
_them_! So they never can settle down to really serious work."

Peony herself was extremely settled down to serious work, for Winifred
Homeward, her boss, was now doing a bi-weekly Interpretation of the War
News on the radio. Peony and she read the newspapers daily. As there was
a lot of valuable news in the papers, so inevitably there was a lot of
valuable news in Winifred's broadcasts, and after telling the far-flung
what the far-flung had themselves already read in the papers several
hours before, Winifred revealed pantingly that the Japanese were now
going to invade India--or else they weren't--maybe they were going to
invade Siberia.

So Peony received thirty-five dollars every Friday, and spent fifty of
it every Saturday, and began to explain to Dr. Planish just what the
Japanese and India and Siberia were.

The Doctor himself was also serious. With Sherry Belden and Otis Canary,
he was preparing blue prints (that's what they called them) for a new
Marduc organization to be entitled "The Citizens' Post-War
Reconstruction Advisory Planning Unit, Inc.," and already he was sending
things for Professor Campion to sign.

The Doctor suddenly had new burdens, for Sherry Belden came in, without
warning, in uniform, and he was decidedly impertinent before he went off
to take a train:

"Good luck to the Unit, Planish. I suppose you'll pussy-foot just as
successfully on freedom for India, and freedom for the Negroes in
America, as we did during the revolution in Spain. Good hedging,
Brother. I'll write you from Iceland or Dakar."

Now was that nice? the Doctor asked himself.

He could have taken a month's vacation, two months, whatever he wanted,
and apparently no one would have cared, but Peony was a busy and
important person who could take only one week, and that in late August,
and he nervously waited for her... and he still had not said one word
about becoming president of Kinnikinick.

He told her on the Maine coast, on the sea-washed rocks, by moonlight.

"Gosh, this certainly is beautiful, Peony--the way the moonlight falls
on that--the tide, I suppose you'd call it, I don't know much about
oceans, all these waves and foam and so on coming back and forth, and so
clear--you could almost read by this moonlight--don't you think it's
beautiful, pet?"

"Yes, I love Nature. When you're on vacation, I mean. You're real happy
here, aren't you, Gid."

"Yes, it's so nice and quiet. I don't somehow seem to sleep so well in
the city. But I'm afraid it's been _too_ quiet for you here. Hasn't it?"

"Well, God Almighty, figure it out for yourself! Whole tourist business
shot to pieces by this gas rationing, and me with a new wardrobe that
would knock your eye out, and nobody to impress with it--not even hardly
any dancing, except with college-boy waiters! And the way I been working
on the war effort--if anybody ever deserved a swell vacation, I do. And
we can't even go see if the other resorts are better. I think it's an
outrage you and I can't get more gas. If that isn't Government
usurpation, I just don't know what Government usurpation is, that's what
_I_ think about this Government usurpation!"

"But we got to save gasoline for the army."

"Oh, stuff! That's all very well for the common ordinary people that
where the hell have they got to go to if they _did_ have any gas, but
people like us, that have been sweating our souls out on behalf of
Democracy and the common people, and that have got the qualifications to
appreciate scenery and had ought to get around and look over the general
feeling in various parts of the country and report on it, why, when _we_
can't get enough gas, it's an outrage! And they expect us to not get any
real vacation and go back to our long winter's work in New York, so
tiring----"

"Peony! Sweet! Darling! Shut up and listen! _This_ winter in New York,
maybe, but after that---- Austin Bull and the trustees of Kinnikinick
seem to want me for his successor when he retires in the spring of
1943."

"You're craaaaazy!" was his spouse's comment. Her further remarks
occupied something over ten minutes, but they may be summed up in the
statements that she did _not_ think it would be agreeable to live in a
house on Lake Elizabeth, that she did _not_ wish to be refreshed by
association with the young, and that she had _not_, in her experience,
ever found one of the Kinnikinick male faculty members with whom it was
pleasurable to dance. She did not mention Professor Planish as an
exception.

He interrupted; he tried to sound like Colonel Marduc:

"Now wait--wait a minute! You've been doing all the talking. What you
overlook is that I do want to take this job, and I fully intend to. You
might just as well get ready to come along."

"And you might just as well get ready to take a tumble to yourself! For
years and years and years I've done nothing but toil and sacrifice and
stay home twenty-four hours a day, devoting myself to your comfort and
welfare, but the day passed twenty years ago when women were nothing but
slaves!"

"Why, Peony!"

"Oh, I know, you'd like to go on selfishly demanding that all my ability
be devoted to you and your whims and comfort and your alleged important
position in the world, but--you may not've heard about it!--there just
happens to be a certain Mrs. Winifred Homeward, who needs me in her
ve-ry im-port-ant undertakings, and I do not intend to bury myself in
that dusty hole of a tenement and sit back any longer and watch you
showing off and making speeches and making a monkey of yourself all day
long and every evening--to say nothing of your Teckla Schaum, the old
hag--oh, I suppose you two old playfuls had a lovely time tickling, when
I wasn't there to----"

"By God, I'll divorce you and marry Teckla and be president of
Kinnikinick!"

"By God, you'll do nothing of the kind! A sanctimonious backwoods school
like that--you think they'd stand for a divorced president--even if she
was the daughter of the chief grafter? No, no, my boy, you better get
wise to yourself. I'd hoped I'd never have to tell you, but you might
just as well know that neither Winnie Homeward nor the Colonel thinks
you're so hot, and they'd of muscled you out of the DDD long ago, if it
hadn't been for me!"

So rigid he sat, so frozen in the moonlight, that she stopped, made a
sound of regret, and poured herself all over him:

"Oh, I didn't mean that! I was just trying to get your goat! All I mean
is, the Marducs think I'm pretty good, too. Oh, my little big, forgive
your bad Pansy! It makes me mad when you even _think_ of admitting that
New York has licked you, and want to sneak back, without ever stopping
to think and realize how wicked and horrible it is to expect me to live
in a corncrib and not even be able to go to the Stork Club with Hal
Homeward--oh, no, no, my precious, you wouldn't do that to me, when I've
given my whole life to you!"

"Maybe you would find it kind of slow back there, but still----"

They went happily enough to bed; they said nothing more of Kinnikinick;
and when they had returned to New York, he devoted himself to Gilroy,
Kevern, Vandewart and all the other millionaires who, in the dread and
misty future, might provide inspiration if Colonel Marduc should unfrock
him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Ex-Governor Thomas Blizzard, in September, back home in Waskeegan, was
nominated for United States Senator.

Dr. Planish gloated, "I certainly am glad I haven't slipped up on
keeping Tom informed about the organization racket here, all these
months. His chances to be President look better and better and----
Peony! How'd you like to be wife of the Minister to Cuba or Sweden some
day?"

"And how'd I like to be _Minister_ to Cuba or Sweden!" she shrieked, and
laughed a great deal.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Two days later, toward the close of his office day, Dr. Planish had a
long-distance call from Kinnikinick:

"That you, Gideon? This is W. C. Pridmore. I've got some bad news.
President Bull died suddenly this morning.... Yes, it was sort of
terrible. It was the first meeting of the student assembly, I was there,
and he started to address the students, and then suddenly he stopped and
looked kind of shocked and he crumpled up on the floor and before I
could reach him, I and Dr. Evarts, he had already passed away.

"I'm speaking from the bank. The trustees, there's a quorum of 'em here,
and they all send you their regards, they think very highly of you, and
we want to offer you the college presidency officially. How about it,
son?"

Dr. Planish stammered, "I'll call you back tomorrow morning. Ten-thirty,
at the bank? Fine. Oh, give Mrs. Bull my extreme regrets. Call you
tomorrow. Oh, give my love to Teckla."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dr. and Mrs. Planish actually had no engagement that evening. No one had
telephoned to them; no one to whom they tried to telephone was at home.
Naturally, that was pretty distressing to Peony, and she whimpered,
"This is the coldest, most indifferent town. Nobody in New York cares
about anybody else. Sometimes I almost think you were right last
summer--that we might've been happier in Kinnikinick. After all, I must
admit that as the president's wife, I would have a secure position. I
could even tell Winifred to go to hell!"

The Doctor was certain now that there would be a God-given moment, some
time this evening, to tell her.

They took a Fifth Avenue bus to 34th Street and walked up the Avenue in
the autumn evening. The whole city was dimmed out. With the shop windows
dark, the traffic lights showing only as small red and green crosses,
the avenue was like a country lane. But the softened light merely lured
Peony's excellent imagination, which played tonight about furs and
diamonds. War-savings did not seem to stand high in her fancy. She
looked into the shadowy shop-windows, at the veiled glimmer of glass and
silver and suave wood, and crowed, "You wait till I'm making as much
money as you are--you know how I hate to waste it, but what a shopping
bat I'm going to have, one of these days! Oh, I do love a city where you
can make money in the first place and have somewhere to spend it in the
second!"

They dined with elegance in the Plaza Oak Room. Peony seemed to be in a
tender mood, whether because of the chicken casserole, or the fact that
Caesar, the headwaiter, remembered their name, or just out of fondness
for her loving man; and the Doctor took the chance. He addressed her as
carefully as though she were an audience of willing philanthrobbers:

"Dear, listen to me now, and don't say anything till I've finished. I
know what a wonderful, loyal heart you have. When I hear fellows like
Homeward or Gantry kick about what grafters or conceited gabblers their
wives are, I always think how very fortunate I've been, all these years,
in having my own little steadfast Peony. Hey--hey--wait'll I finish! I
know sometimes you get a little impatient with the slowness of life--all
of us ambitious people do--but I know that in the long run, you're as
faithful as Ruth--you have the genius for love that so few people
have--you'd follow your husband wherever he had to go, even amid the
alien corn, hunh?"

Though affected unfavorably by the mention of corn or other crops
indigenous to the Middlewest, Peony said Yes, she certainly was a Ruth.

"Then--listen now, and don't interrupt--poor old Austin Bull dropped
dead this morning."

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

"Pridmore telephoned me--they want me to take the presidency right away.
Remember that it would be a job for keeps, not dependent on Marduc, and
with a pension. We could get away every summer, and come to New York or,
after the war, go to Paris. Don't be one of these stubborn women that,
just because you said no before---- And I'll fix up something so that
you'll have a job of your own, and be just as important as I am--maybe
I'll get the college to start a radio. Sweetheart, this is important,
and it's immediate. Can't I count on you?"

"Oh, Gideon, I don't want to be unreasonable. I know. I suppose I would
be sort of a queen in Kinnikinick--that would be a joke on all the
people that highhatted me when I was just a squab there, and---- Do you
solemnly promise we'll go to Paris if---- My God, will you look who's
here!"

By himself, lordly in a leather armchair at one of the small tables
against the wall, was Thomas Blizzard, Senatorial Nominee Blizzard, who
was supposed to be at home in Waskeegan.

Peony dashed to him--Dr. Planish rolled across the room more slowly.

Blizzard rumbled, "Just a little strategic surprise visit. Flew on here
from home to address the big rally at the Imperial Temple tonight--fly
back tomorrow. You two come and sit on the platform with me. Be some big
guns from Washington there--the Chancellor General and the Secretary of
Education and Arts. Doc, your reports have been fine, and you, young
woman, I hear you're developing quite a knack of winning friends and
influencing people. Maybe you'll be quite useful to the crass Blizzard
machine, some day. You're going to bring your husband and sit up on the
platform, like a crown princess, aren't you?"

"You bet your life I am--you bet we are!" said Peony.

                 *        *        *        *        *

They came through velvet curtains as tall as a political lie out on the
mammoth platform. Rising four full stories to the top balcony, so vast
that they ceased to be individual human beings and became a mass of
white dots on a dark sloping tarpaulin, were an audience of fifteen
thousand.

"Look at 'em!" exulted Peony.

Her husband bleated, "You know, we have quite big crowds at Kinnikinick
College, too."

"Not a quarter this size, not even at a football game, and nothing like
so many photographers, and lookit the flashlights! Now you got to admit
it's pretty nice to be up here with all these famous people, and all
those dubs down there staring and staring up and thinking what important
somebodies _we_ must be!"

"I don't take any interest in showing off to a crowd."

"Rats! You do so!"

"Anyway, not like I used to."

"Well, I do!"

Peony sat on the platform between her husband and the Chancellor General
of the United States of America. To the husband she whispered, "Think,
prob'ly just this morning the Chancellor was at a cabinet meeting,
talking to the President and getting the lowdown on Russia and the
second front and the Solomon Islands and everything--just like in
history! And me sitting here right next to him, with ten trillion women
looking up and envying me! And you expect me to go back and give teas
for all the old maids on the college faculty!"

"Oh, I know," sighed Dr. Planish, and after a long time, "I know."

Afterward, when the audience trailed up on the stage to get the
Chancellor's autograph, several of them asked Peony for hers, and one of
them took her for the Chancellor's wife. She giggled about that, on the
bus home; then she spoke with high seriousness:

"Honeybird, don't you worry if old Marduc lands in the alcoholic ward,
and leaves you without a job. The way I'm beginning to stand with Winnie
Homeward and Tom Blizzard, I can always support you, and you can stay
home and have a nice, long, quiet rest."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The distant urgent whistle of a ferry, laden with freight cars from
Winnemac and Iowa and the uplands of California, awoke him, and for an
instant his square face moved with smiling as in half-dreams he was
certain that some day he too would take a train, and in some still
valley find honor and dignity.

But the whistle sounded again, so lost and lonely that Dr. Planish fell
back into his habitual doubt of himself, and his face tightened with
anxiety and compromise. He felt now, at fifty, that though he might
follow the path of notoriety for another quarter century, he would never
recover from his mountain-sickness.

"Are you awake? Will you get me a glass of water?" said his faithful
wife.

"Yes," said Dr. Planish.

"Do you know what? Some day we're going to have a penthouse on East End
Avenue!"

"Yes?" said Dr. Planish.






[End of Gideon Planish, by Sinclair Lewis]
