Fp. Beworiacon Bellefonte, Pa., October 2, 1981. A ————————————————————————————— for the Ithaca | many years associate et | eer | or Watchman. i hill, | Of deepest blue; so tranquil they, ! And yet so stirring were their lustrous depths, That I saw wisdom, infinite and great, Shine forth from them like star dust through the night, Her hair was sunlight circling round her head, And blowing gently In the Summer's wind; Her garment’s soft, white folds which clung and swept About her, made her seem an angel standing there ! Against the sky. I thought she was, so knelt And hid my face from her transcen- dency; But then she turned, and turning look- ed at me. I raised my head and saw the glory of her eyes, And I could do but naught than kneel and gaze Into the depths, The goodness of them, oh The beauty of their gracious tenderness Held me enthralled, and wordless, and bereft Of sense and sight and all but wonder- ment. Dear God, she spoke to me. Her voice was music Coming from the skies, the moaning of The wind tossed trees, the sighing of a reed, The song of down, The infinite melody of joy and love: “Kneel not,” she said, I stood and wait- ed there, For 1 am life lived truly through the years, For I am love, self-sacrifice, Know thou, thou hast a they hands; A life thou hast, blend With beauty, nobleness and charity. Soil not that trust, a life within thy- self, A life God- given to a man of earth. Stand straight and face the world with fortitude! Thy majesty shall be to other men water, rushing tumbling and faith, trust within ‘tis thine to mold and A sign of God; 'tis that for which we live; Be thou not small, and low, and cen- tered on The happiness of self alone; but go And make life great with love for oth- ers; go And let life grow in beauty and com- passion, "Til towering high, the gates of sin far flung, Thou livest as truly thou wast meant to live. Bow not to me, for I am only what Thou mayest become,” thus ended she. And I— I turned, and as she bid me, took the path Which leads to nobleness, on A twisting in the road and sought again To gaze on her sublime and lovely face; I saw her standing on a wind-swept hill, One hand inert, the other raised to shade her eyes Of deepest blue; so tranquil they. And yet so stirring were their lustrous depths, That I saw wisdom, infinite and great, Shine forth from them like star dust through the night. —Bettie Mitchell I came up- THAT WHICH NEVEX RETURNS The captain paused for a moment on the edge of the deck, his face turned upward in the dim tropic darkness. He was young, much younger than the lean, middle-aged man who stood at the rail of the little schooner, and he appeared anxious and troubled. Bendham, the older man, seemed only bored, so listless and so indifferent that the boredom was like an illness. “I oughtn't to go ashore,” said they boyish captain. “Go ashore,” said the older man wearily. “The river is rising, sir. What will you do if she breaks her moor- ings?" “She won't. We're safe behind the point. I've moored in this spot before-—a hundred times.” “I don't like to leave you, sir.” The “sir” he added out of deference to Bendham's age and his position as owner of the schooner, and grudg- ingly, too, out of respect for the older man's superior experiences as a navigator in this part of the world. Bendham's boredom vanished ina sudden gust of rudeness. “I knew every eddy in this river before you were born, man!” The captain, snubbed, descended the short ladder and sprang into the dory. Bendham remained at the rail watching the boat making its perilous way across the water to the distant settlement. “Won't they ever leave me alone?” He felt the thought so intensely that he spoke it aloud, savagely. He was alone now save his wife, who lay asleep below deck, and the Malay who had remained on board to serve him. On his mat the Malay sat aft on the little schooner, and Bendham was aware that the yellow man was watching him. Even the Malays seemed different, he thought. Once he had liked and understood them. Now he was aware that he distrusted them and that they disliked him. He could not understand a change like that. He turned to the Malay. “Go to sleep,” he said in the man’s own dialect. “I skan't need you. Ge below the deck. The Malay silently rolled up his mat and disappeared down the com- panionway, and Bendham felt a quick sense of relief. He was alone on the deck. He was hungry for solitude. “I { am like a sick animal,” he thought, yet nothing appeared to be the mat. ter with him. It was no tropical | fever, for he knew all the varieties of fever from long had no . Yes, he was like a sick animal that wanted to hide away and die. appetite in weather like him. It was the worst of all sicknesses— an illness of the nerves. It was hot, horribly hot, with the menace of fresh torrential down- pours in the air. The atmosphere, he thought, must almost have reach- ed the point of saturation. difficult to breathe. In the dim light of the moon he looked about him at the raging riv- er filled with grass, uprooted sap- lings and all the flotsam and jetsam of the flood. The river would rise, he calculated, for perhaps another forty-eight hours, and no more than that. Never in all the years of his experience had it risen higher. On both sides of him lay the long black lines of the shore. what was there—a solid wall of dripping jungle, broken only by the It was He knew squalid settlement with its score of twinkling lights. Now and then the moon came from behind the rugged storm clouds and turned the churning river to molten silver. The insects became intolerable, whole clouds of them of a million sizes and shapes, buzzing and whir- ring, attracted the moist night by the schooner’s lights. He went inside a kind of tent made of netting which had been erected so that he could remain on deck, because he found it impossible to sleep or even breathe below deck. It was near the bow among the crates of plant specimens he had been collecting during the past six weeks. Inside the little tent there were two deck chairs and a rattan table with several glasses, a fresh bottle of whisky, a bottle of soda water, a shaded oil light with the wick turned low, and a bowl of rapidly melting ice from the American re- frigerating machine below deck. “I travel in luxury now-—different from the first time I saw this riv- er,” he thought, and then, bitterly, “And what of it?” He lifted the netting quickly to prevent the insects from entering, and slipped inside. He poured him- self a drink. Then he lay back in the deck chair drumming the edge with his long, lean, brown fingers. He was a long, thin man with a handsome narrow head covered with graying, curly black hair. His skin was yellow.tan, a color acquir- ed permanently before he was thir- ty-five from fevers and long expo- sure to the sun. He was lean and tough with unquestionable powers of resistance, but he was neat, too nervous and too well controlled; one of those men who by instinct and long habit never betrayed an emo- tion, and so turn knotted and tense in their very souls. The night was still and yet not still. There was no sound produced by man, but a million sounds made by nature itself-—the monotonous buzzing of insects, the gurgling sounds of the river, the bump of an occasional log against the side of the schooner. Once there was the wild cry of a panther somewhere in the jungle, and almost immediately the solitary scream of a monkey. He was aware of a wholl rimi- tive world all about him, fil with creeping, crawling, flying, climbing and swimming things—a primitive world in which eating and sleeping, reproducing and escaping death, were beginning and ending; a world, he thought with a queer sense of relief, which was, with all its sav- agery, simple. He had known it once intimately. He had lived that kind of life. Why, “Perhaps,” he thought, » looked at his ing back. Why can't they leave me in peace? Alone!” But he wasn't alone! Below deck lay Jenny sleeping quietly through the intolerable night. His wife. She was always there, young, pret- &g0 ty, calm, a perfect wife. Yes, con- found her, a perfect wife, thinking only of him. He could hear again her voice as she stepped off the pier at Singa- pore: “I thought I'd surprise you, darling.” And before he could an- swer she had kissed him in that way of hers, so strange and passionate in a woman so soft, gentle and well-bred, a way which filled him with distaste, because it made him feel that she was always trying to gain possession of him, or at least of that part of him which he meant to surrender to no one. He closed his eyes. Why had he not put her at once on the P. and O. boat and shipped her home? Why had he not escaped then and there her awful devotion, that dread- | ‘to be a perfect wife? he asked himself, was it impossible to recapture it? not a long time. For twelve years had passed since he went back to England a rich man, and during those twelve years he had grown richer and richer, and life oddly enough had grown more and more unsatisfactory. He could not say why wealth had not made it simple. His whole existence had, on the contrary, grown steadily more intolerable and now, when he could endure it no longer, he had come back again to the world where he had made his fortune before he was thirty-six. Twelve years was That primitive world was un- changed. He was here in it's midst. He had come halfway round the world to satisfy the hor- rible nostalgia, yet he could not find his way back. It stood apart, a long distance off, mocking him. Somewhere along the way he had got tangled in stocks and shares and the responsibilites and conven- tions of another world. He felt that he was stifling and that the only thing which could save him would be to find himself alone in a cave of ice where there was no other life but his own. If he could be alone again, alone in the world with nothing save his own health and spirit, as he had been at twenty-two, he might recover that thing which had gone away forever, and something-—he could not say what—which had given him courage and direction. And then immediately he felt cold and chilled by the kind of chill that was new in his long experience with fevers. He took another drink, and became aware of the roar of the in- sects. It seemed to fill all the world, growing louder, intolerable and suffocating. He almost extinguished the lamp and waited for 2 time, but it was not the lamp which attracted them. The air itself was filled with in- sects. The sound was unescapable. He decided to drink himself into un- consciousness. Otherwise, he felt he would go mad. And then he saw the light. He did not know how long he had heen sitting there when he heard the clamor of mongrels in the settle- ment on the shore. The lights lone by one had gone out until there i | linen. ful singleness in her determination There she was below deck, sleeping calmly through the intolerable heat and damp as if she were in her father's house beside the quiet river in Dev- on. She never complained. She was never in the wrong. You never could put your finger on what she did, saying, “It is this” or “It is that.” Even these dreadful nights had no effect upon her. She did not fall ill. She did not mind the insects. No, she belonged to a different, intolerable breed, and she was spoil- ing his solitude by bri with her a part of that life which he wanted so desperately to escape. So long as it clung to him he would never find his way back. But then once, long ago, he too had slept un- aware of heat and discomfort. Per- haps it was only because she was young. He thought, “I must not let her become an obsession. I must not blame her for everything.” But he kept having thoughts which fright- ened him with the suspicion that he was going mad. When he opened his eyes he saw that the light was no longer mov- ing along the shore. e were no longer barking and gi light was on the water, and he knew now that it was not Mason and the crew returning, for the light did not move with the steady roll of the dory; it bobbed and flickered and slithered from side to side. It was, he knew, a native craft light as paper, and he wondered what mysterious and urgent errand could have engaged so fragile a craft on such a night. But the sense of his own misery overpowered his curiosity. He did not rise from his chair to follow the movements of the light which came toward him like a will-o'-the-wisp across the surface of the swollen river. He simply closed his eyes, still vaguely aware of the buzzing of insects which was like distant thunder. His thoughts slipped backward over the past, leading him to won- der, “If I had done this or that, would it have been different? Would I have grown less tired and sick of everything? I am rich. I am successful. I have a beautiful wife. I need only children to have every- thing, and I am not sure that I want to bring children into this world.” And after a long time, in the midst of his brooding, he was start- led by the sound of something bumping gently against the side of the schooner. He thought at once, “It struck a log,” but a log would have struck the schooner and slip- ped past on its way to the sea, and this sound continued bumping gent. ly. Then he remembered the bobbing craft and the will-o'-the.wisp, and a sudden wild excitement took session of him. It was as if twen- ty years had slipped from him and he was a young man again on the deck of a dhow, waiting on the edge of the jungle, pistol in hand with every nerve throbbing. The long, thin brown hands clasp- ed the edge of the deck chair and his body stiffened with the effort of listening. His heart beat more rapidly and he was aware that he was alive again as he had once been. The whisky filled him with a pleagant fuzziness, and he knew that in the profound depths of his soul danger, even death, was a mat- ter of indifference. The great thing was that he felt alive again for the first time, he thought, in years; since the night he had said goodby to Albertine Robb and the old life on the edge of the jungle clearing. The light bumping sound contin- ued and through it he heard another sound—that of footsteps on the lad- der. They climbed upward and presently he heard someone walking on the deck, coming toward him. The moon had disappeared under a black cloud and it was impossible to distinguish anything through the swarms of insects on the netting. The steps came directly to the lit- tie canopy of netting, which was lifted with the quick, experienced gesture of one who had lived long in the tropics, and in the faint light from the dimmed lamp he was aware of a figure dressed in white It wore jodhpurs made of linen and a linen jacket, a helmet | with a veil to protect the face from faint accent which was neither Dutch nce French nor Russian. She spoke cwsually, as if they had seen each other for the last time only yesterday instead of twelve years And in a second he relived a whole decade of his existence that was past forever—nights on the river, in the Grand Hotel du Cap, in Singapore, in Sumatra, and nights on that ancient schooner Artemis, long since bleaching on the coral sand of an island not a hundred miles from where he sat. He heard her saying, offer me a drink?” and recovered himself. He turned up the light and looked at her for a long time in silence. He saw then how shock- ingly fat she had grown. The vol- uptuous curves had all swelled into pure corpulence. The face was puffy and badly painted. The sen- suous mouth had gone shapeless. She smiled, displaying two gold teeth he had never seen. “Will you Only the eyes were unchanged, fine, brilliant and exciting. For a second he felt again the faint warmth of a flame which once had nearly devoured him. The warmth was not for this woman, but for this woman's eyes and husky voice and for something which was a memory—the memory of Albertine Robb, part Dutch and Russian and French, but one eighth Malay. It was the Malay which in the end had claimed her body. “Staying with the governor.” He knew what that meant and he knew the governor, a fat Portugese with a green skin. She did not seem to resent his examination. She looked at him, smiling. “Yes, I have changed, she said. ‘““But so have you. Life is like that.” He asked a banal question. “Did you bring a boatman?” ‘““No. I came alone.” She nod- ded her head toward the settlement “He was drunk, so I came secretly. He is very jealous.” “You're a fool to come alone on this river.” She looked at him in an odd way. “We've been through much worse than that together.” She treated the rising river with scorn. And he saw not this fat woman but the Albertine Robb of Juste before with au foe, beautifnl y, tanned by the sun—his wo- man but his companion, too, as good as any man on an adventure. He knew that body but not this one. For no reason at all he thought of Jenny, young, blond and cool, below deck, so protected aml soft and luxurious. The visitor sat down and the deck chair creaked beneath her weight She seemed to find nothing unusual in her strange night visit. It was 2 if they had parted only yester- y. It was not easy to recapture the past. It was not easy to grow used to each other again and sit talking like old friends, because they had been so much more than friends. It was not easy for Bendham to sit there opposite this fat Malay wo- man with the fine eyes Rr the warm voice, thinking all the while of Albertine Robb as he saw her for the first time in the bar of the Grand Hotel du Cap. Had it not been for the eyes and ‘the voice, he would have believed this was another woman and he would have been indifferent but he kept seeing the eyes and hearing the voice, and they brought back not only visions of Albertine Robb on the deck of the Artemis or swimming naked on the white coral beach, but of wild dark rivers and native villages and brilliant sunlight and a night sky filled with stars It was not easy, and they felt their way toward each other in bana) questions. But it was easier for her. She appeared to accept what happened as inevitable, and in him . there lurked fierce rebellion and de- spair. She said, “You. You have done well for yourself. I've followed your career from time to time, when I came across English papers. You must be very rich.” “I am very rich. And you?” She took a drink of whisky before answering him. “Me—1I still have a little of what you gave me.” “T'll see that you have more.” She laughed. “No. T don't need more." He thought she looked af him with scorn but he could not be sure. “I have all IT need. I'm go- ing to quit him when the next boat comes in.” She nodded toward the settlement. “He doesn't know it. He won't know it until I've gone Then I'm going to Penang.” Dimly he saw that although the Malay in her had claimed her body, it had not claimed her mind. In. side the fat body, behind the fine eves, the mind was a European mind and it knew where to strike to hurt him most. She was telling him that she was satisfied with her life and was, in a way, happy, that at least she had peace; and she was telling him that all his money meant nothing to her. “And then what?” “I shall take a house and grow old and die.” Peace. She was saying, “Peace. I have Peace.” She did not even resent his having paid her off and left her twelve years before when he left the East to become a power, a rich man in London, to settlc and marry and become a personage. | g 3 ® : i 9 : : ‘at his going, but silent. moment, too, the Mala on of her. * turned back then on?” he wondered. “You stopped writing to me,” he said. “I was afraid you were dead.” instead of going and she the nurse. Tina looked at him sharply and he did not address her. He an- swered the other woman, his wife. “I'm here. It's all right. You can ‘go back to bed.” “I read that you had married.” She shrugged her fat shoulders. “After that—Besides, it was all finished.” “No,” he said. ‘“Things like that are never finished.” He heard the haunting, husky voice against the drone of the in- sects. “When I heard you were on board this schooner I had to see you once more—for the last time. We shan't meet . I wanted to see you.” She hesitated and he had the im- pression that she meant to say more and checked herself. He saw a look in her dark eyes that sent a wave of warmth through him. They were so near to each other for an instant, and then immediately so remote. She laughed . “So I got Portago drunk. He won't wake until noon tomorrow. And I came.” She light- ed another cigaret. ‘Maybe I shouldn't have come.” Looking away from him, she said, “I didn't come to annoy you. I don't want any money. I shan't ever bother you again—ever.” He But it was too late. Tina was two women, it seemed to him, could not have been more different. As ghey stood facing each other, for ‘longed an instant it seemed to him that they were symbols of his two lives and he knew that in the end he be- to the gross, adventurous one, to whom all life was an adven- ture. He had always belonged to her since that night so long ago in the bar of the Grand Hotel du Cap. With a great effort he said, “This is my wife,” and to Jenny he said, “This is Miss Robb, an old friend. She heard I was here and came out to see me.” The two women bowed, and the ‘wife, if she suspected anything, be- did not speak and she added, “You. look ill and tired. Fever?” “No, No fever. At least not fe- ver of the body.” “You ought never to have come back to the tropics. You can't stand it.” . He burst out fiercely, “Why not? I'm as good as I ever was.” “No, Jim. Neither of us is, but that isn't what I meant.” After a silence she said. “Why did you come back?" He asked himself what she was driving at. “I came back to look out for my properties.” And, as if he had forgotten, “Tu collect plants. They're in those boxes on the deck. They're for a museum.” “Collect plants,” she repeated ina voice gentle but tinged with acid. “That's a good name for what I'm doing, too,” and she nodded again toward the settlement. “Collect plants. We all have to do some- thing until it's time to die.” Presently she smiled and said, “I passed Patna three months ago so near that I scw the Artemis on the beach. There's not much left of her but a skeleton.” skeleton. He did nut answer her. He thought, “a skeleton.” She continued, “I spent Christmas at the Hotel du Cap. It's just the same. Old Vermaeren is the same, balder and fatter, a little.” No, he thought, it was impossible. Everything had changed. Balder and fatter. And he decided to abandon his plan of revisiting the Hotel du Cap. But she continued haved perfectly. She always be- haved perfectly. He thought now that her perfection would drive him mad. Suddenly it was the other woman, gross and horrible, whom he wanted to stay on the schooner. He heard his wife inviting Tina to stay the night. “No,” said Tina. “Your husband thinks I should leave.” The wife protested, but Tina said, “No, I must return. There are reasons.’ And again she nodded toward the shore and the Portuguese governor. Bendham said nothing but stood dumbly watching a comedy which he felt was vile and disgusting. The insects buzzed and the damp heat was like a blanket. He thought, “I hate them both. I can bear it no longer.” Then he saw Tina lifting her flabby bulk with extraordinary ex- pertness over the rail to the ladder. He moved to the rail and found that his wife, the soft, white, pretty wife he hated, was there before him. Tina slipped from the ladder to the maddeningly to dredge the past, dragging up memories. “I see by the papers that you made a fine match-—a woman young, pretty, distinguished. You were meant for that. I was never good enough for you.” “My Lord, good enough for me!” “No, not in that way. I went with vou as far as I could go. I'd only have spoiled things. A Eura- sian is’ beyond the borders and TI was too well known in this part of the world. I keep imagining you at great dinners. People in hotels cluster and whisper when you pass, “There goes Bondham, the rubber magnate.’ You're a great man, Jim. I always knew you'd be. But I couldn't go with you. I went as far as I could.” He was aware that she was bring- ing back their old intimacy in spite of anything he could do, and he kept fighting against it. She was in a strange way insinuating her gross, painted self betwen him and the pretty, gentie woman below deck. No matter how he struggled, she was taking possession of him. “I heard that she is with you,” she said, and looked at him sharp- ly. “Yes: she is below deck. She minds nothing-—not even this heat.” “A good wife. She never annoys you. Wonderfully faithful and de- voted.” How did she know that? How could she know that Jenny was like a parasite liana? Devoted, faithful. Suddenly he burst out violently, “What are you trying to do to me?” She answered him calmly. “Noth- ing. I'm interested, curious. That's natural-—even if T am an Eurasian. I'm a woman. I'm glad you found a good wife to care for you.” “Oh, she cares for me. She never allows me out of her sight.” And at once he was ashamed of the out- burst and the hitterness,. He be- gan to hate this gress, tawdry re- minder of his past. She would not change now. It was too late. She could not change any more than the skeleton of the Artemis could turn itself once more into a living ship. One could not go back. He wanted her to go. “I don‘t ask to meet her,” she was saying. “But I should like to see her,” she laughed, “from a safe distance. Are you bringing her ashore?" “Not here.” He had meant to stay here. He had meant to take Jenny ashore, but now he could not stay. He could not escape soon enough. If only this awful woman would go and leave him in peace in- stead of sitting there, gross dreadful, a mockery of himself and all his life and ambitions! and | His nerves cried out, but he be- | frail, bobbing craft with a wonder- ful dexterity. “You must come again,” his wife was saying. “I think not,” said Tina. The little craft bobbed off on the churn ing rivor. A solitary monkey screamed or the distant shore, and again the thought occurred to Bendham tha: these two women were symbols o: his two lives. The one was gone moving across the river toward the settlement, slipping always farthe: and farther from him, never to re turn. The other, beside him, wa: there forever, until he died. H: could never escape. And for th last time he heard Albertine Robb’ golden voice. She called “Goot night,” and disappeared. He felt a sudden mad impulse t: push his wife into the swollen rive: It was so easy. His head buzze and he heard her saying, “Jim, wha are you doing? What's the mat ter?” and the sound of her voic restored his sense of reason. H was holding her by both arms wit the grip of a vise. He released he and put his hands over his eyes. “Jim, come to bed. What yo need is sleep. You haven't slept fo days.” She began to stroke his’ head ger tly but he stepped away from he aware that he hated her with a unbearable intensity. “Go away,” he said dully. away." She tried to persuade him, but shook her off with such savager that she withdrew to alittle di: tance and stood looking at him. “Do you hear me?” he cried bi terly. “Go below for heaven's sak and your own! Get oui of my sigh I want to be alone." Silently she disappeared down tt companionway, and as he turned !} saw that the bobbing light he reached the shore. The dogs b gan to bark again distantly. Ti light disappeared and he was alon There were only the insects, mi lions of them, buzzing and roarir all about him. He coud not breath tarlearsts International Cosmopo an. “G KILL 15,400 DOGS WITHOUT LICENSE More than 15400 uncontroli dogs have been killed by poli officials so far this year, accordi to the monthly report of the b reau of animal industry, Pennsylv nia department of agricuiture. T} is a slight increase over the numb killed during the corresponding pe od a year ago. The total number of dogs licens to date is 476,056. While this tot is 1500 less than the 1930 figure, . increase is reported in twenty-eig counties. Allegheny county lea with over 30,600 dogs licensed. increase of more than 3,000 has curred in this one county alone. Prosecutions of dog owners f{ disregarding the law now aggreg: ed 3,802, or 240 less than a ye ago. Damage claims run higher in nu ber but lower in value than in 19 Guide (breathless): “I just saw man-eating tiger!” Guide (preoccupied): will eat anything!” “Some 1m