Dewsoralit lat
-_—
Bellefonte, Pa., May 25, 1928.
THE COUNTRY ROAD.
The country road climbs up the hills
And ambles down the vales.
To the left you hear the whip-poor-wills,
To the right the nightingales.
The country road is cool with shade
And calm with rural joys,
Unsullied by the shouts of trade,
Untouched by city noise.
At least that’s how it used to be,
This sweet and peaceful land,
But now beneath the maple tree
They've built a hotdog stand.
A filling station lifts its head
Above the verdant grass,
And where the spreading chestnuts spread
The air is full of gas.
The roadside of another day
Is now another kind,
For picknickers have passed this way
And left a mess behind.
The roadside that was strewn with flowers
Is strewn with empty cans.
Though Nature made the lovely bowers,
The other marks are man’s.
A Sunday paper blows around,
Some cake is drawing flies.
It looks more like a battleground,
Where Mother Nature dies.
And, if I sought some tidy spot
To build me an abode,
I'd seek it up an alley, not
Upon a country road.—Douglas Malloch.
AT 35.
“We may as well die smiling!” par-
tridge-plump little Mrs. Graham said
philosophically, with a shrug and a
smile.
Eve Guthrie glanced at the clock, a
copy of a fine old banjo, with a white
church painted on the pendulum glass,
and a sign “Bargain” stuck in the
frame. It was just two.
“Three hours more of it!” she said,
her own shrug ar. smile not quite so
cheerful. For she was part proprie-
tor of the Gray Goose Gift Shoppe,
and this afternoon was to mark the
closing of its brief career.
Its narrow, aristocratic show-win-
dow, wedged in among all the other
frock and jewel and book and per-
fume shops of the East Fifties, would
be denuded tonight of that egg-yel-
low fringed shawl Eve had so often
draped temptingly over chairs and
screens, the four yards of Liberty vel-:
vet, the boxes of vermilion Japanese
lacquer, the crackle-ware bowl from
Massachusetts, the four classics in
limp red leather—all would be gone.
She was sick of them, and sick of
the dim, dead little store itself, where.
she and Mrs. Graham waited and
waited for the customers who never
came. Mrs. Graham didn’t care; she
aiways went down to Asbury Park
for the summer anyway, to help her
sister with a small hotel. She was
merely a paid assistant. And Betty
McTavish, who was Eve's partner,
didn’t care, for she liked to take her
two little girls up to Joe McTavish’s
father’s place for the summer school
vacation. :
But Eve—no, Eve didn’t care eith-
er. She had had enough of the Gray
Goose. It sounded a fascinating ad- | b
venture, a sure way %o fortune, when
she and Betty had first discussed it,
2% a club luncheon, four months ago.
Bat its eleven weeks of life had been
niough not only to disenchant both
women with the idea of smocks and
bridge prizes and vases and shawls,
but to sober Eve with the realization
that the actual conquest of the busi-
ness world was a much more serious
undertaking than she had ever im-
agined.
Sitting here in the gloom of a wet
spring afternoon, waiting for the
whole wretched venture to die, she
told herself that she hated the Gray
Goose for itself, and hated it addi-
tionally because its failure seemed to
be also the failure of a hundred other
vague dreams of achievement. For
years now, when she discussed her
dwindling finances, she had been say-
ing, “I could do interior decorating—
I could open a gift shop—I could shop
for my friends—people always love
what I buy!” It was daunting to have
to refrain from at least one of these
harmless boasts.
“I guess you and Mrs. McTavish
are a good sum out of pocket over
this!” sugegsted Mrs. Graham.
“Not so much,” Eve said courage-
ously. “It isn’t that.
stuff Betty McTavish had. I didn’t
put much in. But— but I hate not
being—started, at something,” Eve
finished, as if speaking to herself.
This was what hurt. To be idle,
superfluous, drifting again. Waking
up in Tom’s house, packing her suit-
case to go down to spend the week-
end with Edith in Washington—back |.
to Tom’s house again—needed by no-
body.
She had had five years of it; she
was thirty-five years old. Some wom-
en went on into the fifties and sixties
at this sort of thing. Handsomely
dressed divorced women, playing
cards and making visits, always free
for engagements. Eve's soul sick-
ened within her. Even if one had
enough money to do it—and she had
not enough—it wasn’t much of a life!
She had left Frank Guthrie with
scant ceremony, forced into the long-
anticipated and much dreaded final
step by the crowning indignity of a
night when Frank and several male
friends had brought down a very
storm of protests and threats from
the other occupants of the apartment
house; she had fled—as she had tear-
fully told her brother Tom an hour
later—from the possibility of inva-
sion of police, of publicity, of horrors
of all sorts, and she had demanded
neither alimony nor a divorce from
Frank. He had been a fine fellow
when she had married him, but he
had retrograded steadily, finally to
sink into a pit of obscurity and unim-
portance, as far as Eve was con-
cerned. She truthfully could tell sym-
pathetic friends since leaving him she
had heard nothing from him, she had
never had a penny of his money.
All very well, while she had had a
few pennies of her own. Her grand- |
Most of this |.
mother, opportunely dying. had left
Eve a comfortable sum, and Eve had
gone abroad, to put a few months of
Paris between her and the memory of
those last scenes with Frank. Bobby
Brown had been in Paris.
An insignificant name for the su-
premely handsome and dashing fel-
low with the golden voice, the tall,
slim, deliciously non-chalant, deli-
ciously English young squire, who had
taken Eve to the races and to the Fol-
lies and to everything else that meant
Paris and fun. Eve had been heart-
broken, bewildered, crushed by a hun-
dred painful emotions, and Bobby,
with his boyish simplicity and devo-
tion and utter absence of any curios-
ity or constraint, had cured her.
Mabel Brown had presently come
down from London, of course, very
British and proprietary. But Mabel
didn’t matter. Eve and Bobby had
had their fun in spite of Mabel, and
sometimes even because of her. To
be sure, in the end Bobby had for-
gotten the rules of the game, and Eve
had been so sorry, so confused and
surprised, that she had all but forgot-
ten them, too. There had been one or
two scenes with Mabel, and then for
months—Ilong after Eve had returned
to America—there had been almost
daily letters to and from Bob.
Of course nothing could come of
that. There were the three small
Browns, and Mabel; Eve told herself
that she had known from the very be-
ginning that nothing could come of |
that. Yet it had left a sting, that ex-
perience; Bob’s last letter had been
renunciatory and heroic and devoted
beyond all criticism, and Eve had seen
at once that he was right, they were
only making themselves and Mabel
wretched—
But to this day she wished that
nat particular letter had come from
er.
It had all been years ago; she
thought of it now only at intervals,
and of the second trip abroad, when
Bob had been back in the Surrey cot-
tage, where he belonged, and Paris
had been different, much more expen-
sive and much less thrilling. Old Mr.
Williams had been paying all the bills
then, and paying them magnificently.
He had been only too delighted to
buy popularity at this comparatively
small outlay. He was in his middle
sixties, Chauncey Weed Williams, of
Buffalo, a compact, twinkling, silver-
headed little man who delighted in
the society of younger persons; mere-
ly another millionaire in Paris, en-
gaging open cars for the races, and
boxes for the races and tables at
Ciro’s and the Ritz.
Eve could have had him a hundred
times over. Any women as young and
pretty and amusing and decent and
sweet could have had Chauncey Weed
Williams, of Buffalo, could have sat
patiently through his cogitations at |
‘thebridge table, could have listened i
to his political views, could have
queened it in his heavily furnished,
crowded, rich, dark apartment on the
Bois where not even a plush cushion
gould be moved without distressing
im.
He had followed her to America—
he was that much in earnest this
He came to see her at Tom's,
and tookrher to dinner. .
Eve knew that she could make him
the proudest and happiest old man in
the world, for one winter, two win-
ters, even five. And then she would
e rich.
But to take on this job for a pos-
sible fifteen years, twenty years? She
would be fifty-five herself in twenty
{ years; Eve was still young enough to
feel that life, on the wrong side of
fifty-five, was an entirely unimport-
ant matter.
Thinking of these things, and many
others, in the gloom of the deserted
Gray Goose Gift Shoppe, she sighed
heavily. Mrs. Graham looked at her :
and decided that this was one of the
times when Eve Guthrie looked posi-
tively plain. Of course she always
looked interesting, with her dark
keen eyes and pale clear skin, and
ithe proud cut of her chin, and the
rich thick sween of her dark hair.
But there were days when she seemed
to subside, to collapse, to withdraw
into herself, somehow, and this was
one of them.
At four o'clock Betty McTavish
came in, bubbling and chattering as
usual. She had sold all this “junk”
to the woman in Pawling who ran Ye
Copper Candlesticke, and was elated.
“Eve, you beautiful thing,” said
Betty, “you look pale, and no wonder,
cooped up here all day. When are
you coming up to the kids and me in
Maine?”
“Not until late August,” Eve said,
stacking little luster bowls, lifting
platters from shelves as she spoke.
“If Tom gets. his sabbatical, he and
Alice and the children are going to
England. I'll have to be caretaker.”
And it was then that Betty, cheer-
ful and giddy and with her own par-
ticular little spoiled air of being im-
portant, had said, “Well, don’t be too
late! For I have a very important
engagement with a young gentleman,
about the middle of October!”
She had gone off, and Mrs. Graham
had been left to give some final in-
struction to packers, and Eve had
taken Daisy Hayward’s Chinese scroll
and had gone on the bus to Daisy
Hayward’s, in the East Eighties.
Of course Betty MeTavish, to whom
taxis and chauffeur and motor-car
were commonplaces, couldn’t be ex-
pected to go on such an errand and
deliver a parcel—Betty so compla-
cent over the hope of a son at last!
Betty never did anything demeaning
—servile.
Not that Eve minded the little com-
pact box under her arm—only it was
all so stupid and flat and disappoint-
ing. The Gray Goose had been a
dreary failure from its first anemic
day, and yet, when she wakened to-
morrow with no necessity of a prompt
rising upon her, she knew she would
regret even the unsuccessful gift
shop.
Women took regular college cours-
es in domestic science ‘and interior
decoration nowadays. Eve reflected
that perhaps she could take a sum-
mer course of some kind. Dull, to
enter oneself humbly as a student, at
thirty-five,
Mrs. Hayward was not at home;
that was a bit of luck, anyway.
walked slowly away from the house,
Eve’
on her way to the bus and the Long
Island train. And, so walking her
thoughts troubled and uncertain, the
soft dull beauty of the twilight about
her, she passed Number Eighty-nine.
She and Frank Guthrie had com-
menced housekeeping in Number
Eighty-nine, just thirteen years ago.
It was an old brownstone house, di-
vided into as many apartments as it
had narrow floors; three-room apart-
ments of a big front room, a big back
room, and a connecting neck of bath
and kitchen between. Eve, on the
third Saox had had a bedroom. Jock
ing into the green upper branches o
: a plane-tree, had had a pretty check-
erboard of back yards shaded by oth-
er big trees below her.
Looking up at the windows that
once were her living-room windows,
she saw the wide sill where she had
sat waiting for Frank, many and
many a summer afternoon, and her
heart winced away from the memory
of the sewing she had done there,
toward the end of the first year.
The Lexington Avenue car rattled
| punctuated the dreamy hot mornings
i when Eve Guthrie had been contriv-
iing and managing so happily on for-
ity dollars a week, buying strawber-
ries and bacon for Frank—making
‘onion soup for Frank—squeezing the
i price of six tulips out of the little
{ budget, for Frank.
| How it all came back!
self relaxed and loving in Frank’s
arms, assuring him that she didn’t
want Europe and frocks and women’s
clubs—herself jogging ‘along to a
hospital, Frank’s arm again tightly
about her, in a scared dawning, reas-
suring him again; she was all right—
everything was all right—this was
just part of it!
“How alive we were!” Eve whis-
pered, alone in the cool spring twi-
light, looking up at the windows that
had once gushed such love and light
into the world.
The Eve of those days had been a
rather fatter, laughing person, often
untidy of hair, cheerfully indifferent
to the mode. Paris had done much
for Eve, and association with business
and hands in scrupulous trim. To-
night, it seemed impossible to her
| that she was the same woman, the
| woman who had married a poor man,
| supposing poverty and hard work to
be hers for all her days. Who could
have thought that, suddenly, sensa-
tionally, old woolly-headed, unworld-
ly, blundering Frank would blunder
into success?
And yet the money had serenely,
amazingly continued to pour in. What-
ever Frank did in the way of engin-
eering—and it was always a mystery
to Eve—had been tremendously in de-
mand. There had been a first patent,
and then a second patent, there had
i been golf and polo and tennis and
yachting in the Guthries’ scheme of
life.
| The war came and Frank had pros-
| pered through that. His limp—he
i walked like a big bear—had excused
him from actual service, but he had
done other things, had rushed back
and forth between Washington and
{ New York. Aza yg had 2 im-
ortant, had felt that even those as-
lo years had held nothing to
the glories and excitement that were
to come.
Why—why had everything seemad
to slide away from her after the war
ended? Frank had been the same
! man—or no, perhaps that was the ex-
planation. Frank had changed com-
pletely. From a shy, quiet, unpre-
, tentious fellow who hated society and
was anything but mercenary, he had
i become a gambler, over the card-ta-
ble and in the street; he had wanted
ito entertain wildly, crazily; he had
, eaten too much, drunk too much. Eve
remembered that time with horror.
i And of course the nursery, once so
| gay, had been empty then. That had
hurt—it hurt her still. They had tak-
en little Junior pretty much for
granted, she and Frank; the young
couples who were “comers,” who were
“getting there,” generally had one
fine little girl, and they had had Jun-
ior. Just a square, hard rompered
!little person with a nurse, in the
background. Neither parent took
Junior very seriously.
Yet the whole world had changed
after the tragedy that took Junior
away, after that hideous wire,
screaming like a mad star across the
casual polo meet at Newport, split-
ting Eve’s very brain for a few see-
onds; “Junior hurt by car, come at
once.” }
Eve had collapsed during the days
that had followed. She remembered
lying dully on her bed in orchid-and-
blue room, and wondering why she
hadn’t seen more of her boy. So of-
| ten, when she had promised the child
to come up-stairs at bedtime, a rub-
ber would suddenly elongate itself. . .
Afterward she and Frank had
closed the house, and moved into the
city, and the gambling and drinking
and boasting had recommenced on an
even wider scale. It was no use. It
was no use. Eve couldn’t keep that
up. Frank didn’t love her any more,
and she all but loathed him; there was
no dignity in their keeping up the
pretense of marriage, and no neces-
sity for it. She had pleaded and up-
braided and coaxed and raged her-
self almost ill. :
And then had come that last fear-
ful night, and her flight, and the
soothing weeks with Alice and Tom
by B:iown, and months—years, in-
deed—of peace. : :
But now what was she to do? Stay
in Tom’s empty house all summer,
coming into town every hot day to
study interior decoration?
Eve laughed forlornly, began to
find herself fretted—fretted—fretted
to belong somewhere, to do some-
thing, to work her way into the hu-
man ‘comedy once more. ;
. Tonight it was dusk when she ar-
rived ‘at Tom’s house, that artful
green and white two-story building
that was far more colonial than any-
thing ‘genuinely colonial could be.
There were hooked rugs and high-
boys ‘and dressers, spinning-wheels
and warring-pans in the actual draw-
ing ‘foom, where no colonial house-
wife would have countenanced them;
there were pewter bowls and spoons
ih Yows along 'the wainscot; an
by, that same familiar rattle that had '
Her little !
women who kept shoes, gowns, hair :
and the children, and Paris, and Bob- | rich
the |
children’s samplers, once decently rel-
egated to the children’s rooms, were
brazenly displayed, as treasures, in
the very heart of the house.
Alice was in her colonial bedroom,
sitting in a quilted wing-chair, be-
side a pineapple four-poster, match-
ing socks. Eve, seeing her door open,
went in to chat with her before din-
, ner. x
“My dear, I've rented this place,
bag and baggage!” Alice announced
instantly.
“Rented it. I didn’t know you ev-
en thought of renting it.” Eve's first
thought was for herself; where was
she to stay with Tom’s house rented?
“Well, I didn’t,” said Alice, with no
reflection of the other woman’s mis-
givings in her triumphant voice. “But
Bates and Bates telephoned this
morning to know if there was any
chance for a very rich man, with one
delicate little girl, and five servants!
She,” said Alice, in heartless satisfac-
tion, of the child, “won’t break mach.
And for a year, Eve, for two hundrea
and fifty!”
“Two hundred and fifty!” Eve ech-
oed, impressed. This was conclusive,
“Well, that’s that,” she said.
“That’s that. And Tom Morehead
will be out of his senses!” Alice ex-
ulted. “You—you’ll spend part of the
summer with Betty?” she aadea, in
sudden faint concern. “That gift
i shop won’t stay open all summer.”
Eve. had told her brother and his
wife nothing of the gift shop’s lin-
gering decline. There always had been
a chance of a rally, a chance that the
absurd venture would succeed, aus
i such ventures did, in the backs of
| magazines.
She did not feel inclined toward
| confidence now; she merely said, “Do
Inot think about me at all; it’s too
! glorious to have this place taken off
| your hands!”
“There’s just one thing I wish you
would do this summer,” Alice began
resolutely. The other woman winced;
very differently from Tom about
this,” said Alice. “I know how miser-
able you are, Eve, ana it seems to
me—"
“I'm not miserable!” Eve said, but
without much spirit and with a
thickening in her voice.
“Oh, you are,” Alice insisted firm-
ly. “You try one thing and then an-
| other; you go abroad and come back
{ —Yyour money is seeping away, you’re
| neither one thing nor the other—”
“How do you mean I’m neither one
thing nor the other?” Eve asked in |.
mild, unresentful curiosity, as Alice
paused.
“Well, you’re not married and you
are not divorced, and I think you
ought to see Frank Guthrie, and set-
tle it, and get free!” Alice said bold-
ly. “You can’t consider any other
marriage—any other plan, really, un-
til you do!” Alice, encouraged to be-
lieve she was making an impression,
{ went on.
| “I haven’t seen the person I want
to marry,” Eve submitted.
“Well, but you might. I wish,”
Alice said, emboldened, “I wish you'd
go West, get your divorce, and come
to us, in England, and then look about
you. You wrote me that there were
dreds of attractive men drifting
ut Paris.”
“And thousands of attractive di-
vorced women trying tc bag them!”
Eve said, with a rueful little laugh.
“Well, nobody’s bagging Mr. Wil-
liams.”
“Dear old Chauncey!” Eve laughed
again, but without much mirth. “No,
| Nobody’s bagging him,” she conceded
"soberly.
suggested.
{ “Oh, yes, it would be an out,” Eve
agreed again, in a hard tone.
“I mean, it isn’t young romance and
all that,” the practical sister-in-law
pursued eagerly, “but it does mean
comfort and position and security,
end that’s much better than some
crazy second marriage with a man
who hadn’t any of those things, but
happened to be thirty-six! Every-
one likes old Mr. Williams, and you'd
be settled, Eve.”
“I'd be settled,” Eve echoed briefly,
as Alice fell silent. “But at thirty-
five,” she added dreamily, as if half
to herself, “I'm not so sure that one
wants to be settled.”
“Thirty-six in September, both of
us! Tempus fugit.”
“Yes, that’s true, too. But Nevada
and divorces cost so much money,”
Eve offered half-heartedly.
Alice got up. “Eve, I don’t want to
influence you. I told Tom I wanted
to have this talk with you, and he
said he would let you alone. But if
you really make up your mind to get
a divorce, then certainly you’ll have
to let Tom and me help you out.”
“I should have thought of this when
Ih money,” Eve observed somber-
y.
“You mean you will really consider
old Mr. Williams?” Alice almost sang
as Eve rose and trailed slowly to her
own room. “Because he really is a
gentleman,” said Alice, following.
“And he’s a most interesting man—he
as telling me of the clubs he be-
longs to the other night, and really—
What did you
“I said, ‘he wou
“Oh, I
goodness gracious, how many youn,
persons are fussy! And of course,”
finished Alice, who had never had
enough money, already on her way
down-stairs, “of course, youd be
3 ”»
99
4d, ” Eve said.
“I'd be a bird in a gilded cage!”
Eve said airily, unsatisfactorily, clos-
ing the door.
"Che wanted to be alone. It was a
relief, 1ater, to hear that Tom and
Alice were going out to dinner. The
boys went early up-stairs for lessons
gn bed; Eve had the house to her-
self.
The spring night had turned cold,
she sat before a wood fire, under a
low lamp, dreaming. And for the
first time she said to herself that
Alice was right, that Alice had been
right from the very beginning, with
her delicate hints and suggestions of
being off with the old ties before one
could with any propriety assume the
ne
Ww.
‘That’s what’s the matter with me,
really,” she thought. “For five years
now I've. been dabbling in this and
dabbling in that; I’ve mot planned
she knew that tone. “You know I feel i I
“Eve, it would be an out,” Alice |
know, Eve, he’s fussy, but |1
enough—I've not settled to anything.
I’ve got to get free first, and then de-
cide about Chauncey Williams, or—
if it isn’t to be Chauncey—what is it
to be?”
Mrs. Chauncey Weed Williams,
whose husband was a member of the
firm of Gordon and Company. Young
Mrs. Gordon Duke would give her a
luncheon at the Plymouth Rock Club,
and her home newspaper—far away
beside seal rocks and fogs and the
Pacific—would run a complacent
headline, “San Francisco Matron
Weds Millionaire in Paris.”
She would live in Chauncey’s ter-
rible apartment, dark and heavy and
rich and expensive—exactly every-
thing that one didn’t associate with
the idea of Paris! He would call her
Evelyn, proudly and fussily, and she
would call him “Dearest.” All the
pretty young wives of elderly million-
aires called them “Dearest,” and pre-
tended to care that their newspapers
and eggs and steamer rugs and tea
were exactly right.
Now, unmarried to Chauncey, re-
garding him merely as an eagerly
hospitable and admiring beau, Eve
felt that one ought to be willing to
be patient at least in the matter of
the rugs, tea, eggs and newspapers of
the man who made one rich. But once
married to him, she knew she would
begin to loathe his little. mannerisms
regarding these things, she knew she
would begin to loathe him too, the
dapper, alert, intelligent little old
man with the money.
Not that Chauncey was deceived;
she had to give him credit for that,
He had talked to her quite frankly
in Paris, and she knew he was ap-
proaching the point when he would
talk to her again, here in New York.
“You're not in love with me,” he
had said, “but you like me, and I
admire you very much. We'd get along.
You've had one disillusioning- experi-
ence under the name of love. I don’t
promise you delirious happiness, but
do promise you courteous treat-
ment and comfort, my dear, and I
believe we could not only be content-
ied, but that we could attract to our
home the interesting and worth
while—”
It had been a nice, dignified, im-
pressive speech, and she had listened
to it with her lovely head on one side
and a whimsical expression on her
face, an expression partly sympa-
thetic,
doubt partly that of one who wants
to smile.
. He wanted a companion,
ion always amiable, always ready to
listen to his stories, and fall in with
his plans, and give up her engage-
ments cheerfully when he had a head-
ache, and carry his on bravely when
she had. And she supposed that she
could listen to his stories again, listen
to them a hundred or a million times,
if it were expedient.
But what a waste! What a waste
to feel oneself young and strong, full
of potential service and achievements,
ready to learn and to act, to make
friends, to experiment and to dare,
a compan-
—never to know adventure or risk or
failure or success any more.
dends—dividends—dividends
in,
An by this time everyone would
have forgotten, and she most of all,
those vital passionate years with
. Frank Guthrie. And Junior .
“Junior—my little son,” said Eve,
‘aloud. Junior would be ten vears old.
“If IT had him,” she thought, “I cer-
[tainly wouldn’t want anyone else.
i But then Frank would never have
given him up, so that everything
| would have been different anyway. It
partly doubtful, and be yond |
i
i
i
The Bently School needed a new Ger-
man teacher. Eve said that she did
not speak one word of German, but:
Betty was blithe and optimistic, none:
the less.
“Oh, Eve, do go see them,” she said,.
“you're so wonderful! They'll want.
you anyway.” Betty had met the
proprietor of an immense department
store, at a dinner, and he wanted to
see Eve. Betty had met Arline Ar--
thur, who thought her friend sounded:
wonderful for the movies. Betty won--
dered if there wouldn't be something
in a newspaper column; just society
chit-chat, day by day.
Alice was full of suggestions, too.
It was maddening, humiliating, em-
barrassing and infuriating, to have
them all so anxious to place her, to
pause in their own full and necessary
lives to shed a little enlightenment
upon her lonely path. It was mad-
dening and embarrassing and humili-
ating to realize that her bank-acocunt.
was steadily lowering; a thousand
dollars only a few weeks ago, now
less than seven hundred, soon to
dwindle away to nothing. :
But the crowning blow came fro
Tom, her brother, smiling his nice
academic smile through his profes-
sional spectacles, kind and assured
and just a hint superior.
“Look here, Eve dear. Alice and
'I have beeen talking it over, and we
can’t go off on our holiday knowing
that you may be on the rocks any
minute. Now, I'm going to deposit.
the checks of that rent money—"’
That day Eve went in to Mrs. Brus-
sels, and Mrs. Brussels looked over
her lists and asked if there was any
chance in the world that Mrs. Guth
rie’s “friend” would lecture for a cer-
tain patent medicine ? No, she would
not do that. Well, would she consid-
er traveling with a very rich girl who
was a “trifle” insane? ~ No, she could
not do that. This friend was a lady,
was she. = Oh, yes, indisputably a
lady. Look anything like Mrs, Guth-
rie? Yes, she did, it happened; she:
was very much Mrs. Guthrie's type.
Because you know, my dear,” said
Mrs. Brussels, all of whose dealings.
were strictly confidential, “a lady
who looked like you could make big
money just sitting in the front of
gentlemen's cars, while they did a
little—delivering.” :
Eve laughed forlornly. Her friend,.
he was sure, wouldn’t care for that.
N
ell, then, there was just one nore
possibility. Would she consider a job.
in the Canadian northwest, a big elec-
tricity plant, where there was a main
social building, and where they need-
ed a socially capable woman to direct .
the dancing, card-playing, dining-
room, the community life generally ?
Mrs. Brussels was under the im-
pression that it was “the country God |
forgot,” and that the people were-
enough to put a permanent wave in.
your hair,” but the pay was good, and
everything was “found”—board, laun-
dry, light, transportation, dwelling—
|
|
and to be settled quietly for the rest {dro
of one’s life with this kindly old man | iri
At forty-five one would have quite to
a different feeling about it, of couyse, | tling northward, on
and at forty-five one would have de- | ternoon.
veloped an actual complacency over {don’t care!
the thought of those unfailing divi- ity,
1
i was partly grief for Junior that made |
Frank. act so terribly-—children do
keep men and women together, of
course.”
But now, at thirty-five, pretty and
how crowded out of life, was somehow
offered as an-alternative to work she
neither knew how to do, nor liked to
do, a marriage with a dry, gallant,
kind little old man who happened to
be rich.
Every fiber of her being revolted.
She wouldn’t—she couldn’t—marry
Chauncey Williams! Tears came to
her eyes and ran down her cheeks,
even thinking about it, and about the
desolate loneliness of her situation.
She shook herself, morally, mentally
and physically. There must be a
thousand things a woman of her age
and acquirements could do, in this
day and age, to make a comfortable
living and interesting life for herself.
But the drawback was that there
were so many thousands of drifting
women nowadays, hunting for just
those positions.
Tom and Alice returned upon her
still musing, and Alice saw the glis-
ten of tears on Eve’s smooth cheek,
and pressed Tom's foot significantly
with her own when he became jocu-
lar over Eve’s solitude and thought-
fulness. The Moreheads were in
great spirit tonight. Their first real
holiday lay ahead of them, after near-
y twelve years of housekeeping, and
school-keeping, and baby-raising; they
would be on the big liner in a few
weeks.
Eve’s problem interested them only
yogual% sentimentally. Eve wasn’t
a child, after all; she had been man-
aging her own affairs decisively and
assuredly for something like twelve
years. She had done her best with
an unsuccessful marriage, had dis-
solved that relationship only when
matters became, in the accurate lan-
guage of the day, “impossible,” and
now was trying a gift shop, and had
the opportunity for a conspicuously
good marriage,
Alice had told Tow tonight, driving
home, that the less said to Eve about
plans, the better. So Tom was rather
less sympathetic tonight than was us-
ual, with Eve’s perplexities, and the
night that followed the Gray Goose's
demise found her wakeful, further
from any Toone than ever.
In the next three days everyone
was extremely active in the interests
of Eve Guthrie. Betty telephoned
every morning with some ridiculous
suggestion for Eve's employment.
: “such as they were.”
And how soon:
could Mrs. Guthrie’s candidate leave?
Eve drew off her right glove,
pped the flimsy pretense of her-
end,” took out her fountain pen...
omorrow!” . she answered.
“Pll be dead and buried,” she said.
herself grimly, in the train rat-
the following af-
“Dead and buried. But I
I'll not be taking char-
I'll not be listening to Alice's:
pouring ' suggestions every breakfast, I'll not:
be married to Chauncey Williams!”
She was still breathing unevenly;
she seemed not to have caught her
breath since leaving Mrs. Brussels’, .
twenty-four hours ago. She had gone
from the confidential agency to see a
Mr. Mason, and Mr. Mason had been.
only too flatteringly sure that Mrs.
Guthrie was the very woman for the:
place. She'd find it rough and lonely,
at first, but they were lovely people
to work for, Mr. Mason assured her.
Her walking boots packed against
Shakespeare in three slim volumes, .
“her pen, her heavy coat, candy and’
intelligent and eager, she was some- |
|
i
i
magazines from Betty—tooth-paste -
and soap from Tom—kisses and fare-
wells—and she was off. Off to Book-
er’s Canyon, and titled “resident so-
cial director” of the Community Club. .
Montreal tomorrow; then three:
days—four days—it didn’t matter,
and then Booker’s Canyon, and the:
hazard of new fortunes. She prob-
ably would regret it; she rather
thought she was regretting it already
‘but at least it was entirely her own.
affair.
Her eye, as the: observation-car in
which she was sitting moved past the
cities and small villages that hurtled
by, idly rested. upon the lean form of
a man close beside her, reading a
newspaper. She could see his grayed,
thin temples over the top of the sheet.
and she noted the long clever hand
that rested upon the arm of his chair.
Her glance remained fixed, when it
reached the hand, upon the black seal-
ring he wore. Eve knew that ring;
she had given it to Frank Guthrie
upon the first anniversary of their
mariage. She knew that inside it
there was: what she had called a posy,
the words: “Frank from Eve. Time
flies; love: remains.”
Eve leaned forward and touched!
the hand that wore the ring, and the
man roused. himself, lowered the news
sheet, looked at her, smiled, and
turned his chair about te face her.
Frank—not. quite forty, yet looking
older, somehow, graver, more digni-
fied and reserved than: she remem-
bered his ever seeming before. Nor
had she remembered his being so well
groomed, so correctly and yet. incon-
spicuously well dressed.
They had not talked to each other
for almost five years. Now they"
spoke as strangers. Frank was going
to Montreal, to a consultation of en-
gineers, he said quietly.
It sounded important, impressive.
Eve mentioned in return that the Mec-
Tavishes had a Maine camp, and
loved to have her there. She let him
suppose that she was elegantly bound
for that luxurious destination.
They had not fallen in love instant-
ly, those long years ago: theirs had
been a slowly ripening affair, follow-
ing a schooldays’ friendship.
But Eve knew what was happening
to her now. She knew that Frank
Guthrie, middle-aged and lean and
quiet, well’ groomed and serious and
slightly grizzled as to close-cropped’
(Contiimed’ om page 7; Col. 1)))