Books: Paris Luck

THE DEMI-WIDOW—Mary Pickford— Bobbs-Merrill ($2).

Dedicated “To Someone I Love,” Mary Pickford’s first novel tells the story of Coralee Dumont, golden-haired, silver-voiced little widow whose extraordinary run of good luck began when she was stranded in Paris one July.

Going hungry for the sake of her infant son, Coralee fainted at a tryout for a part in a revue the great Chardon was producing. Thereafter good fortune came her way in breath-taking abundance. When she accidentally collided with a handsome young South American in the street, he turned out to be a dashing Argentine millionaire—”although taller than they usually are.” When she needed groceries, a basket of them was brought to her humble apartment by a delivery boy who turned out to be the same millionaire in a borrowed smock. “Had le bon Dieu,” wondered the pretty little widow from California, “instantly answered her prayer? Was this grocer’s clerk an angel in disguise?”

Her good fortune was only beginning. Chardon made her a star. To surround her with glamour, he let it be known that she had been the mistress of Camilo el Durqui, Argentine sportsman, who supposedly had been lost on a transatlantic flight—the same eccentric, grocery-delivering millionaire. As Coralee rose to fame on this hoax—”all Paris twittered over her aura of mystery”—Camilo el Durqui returned, uninjured but angry.

Their romance, involving nocturnal meetings at which Coralee was embarrassed because she was wearing only stepins’, developed by the devious paths of mutual misunderstandings. These two lovers were so easily baffled that they could not grasp even the most rudimentary aspects of each other’s characters. Camilo could never get it through his dark and well-groomed head that Coralee, in her new role of star, was just the same little girl to whom he had delivered groceries. (He had some justification, for Coralee’s eyes, china-blue in Chapter One, turned dewy violet in Chapter Five.) When she spoke of her love for her son, he thought she was referring to a rival. While Camilo entertained her lavishly, kissed her, caressed her, and told her of his dreams of Argentina, she thought, the little goose, that it meant he loved another.

Moreover, she was worried because her sister-in-law was trying to steal her son. The moppet was rescued by a mysterious young man who became devoted to him. This rescuer, too, turned out to be the Argentine millionaire. At this, the lovers penetrated the veils of mystery that had enveloped them. “In one stride he reached her. His fingers shook as he tipped up her face to the moonlight. He uttered a short sharp cry. His arms swept her close.”