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Show (hnh AYNE5 ! RWI M W.N.U. SERVICE changed again. Worries! And all major worries! Walter and Molly! Margaret Fairweather! And-my thoughts always broke here and melted into a kind of dim. troubled confusion. However, I was up and dressed as soon as I had finished my break-last break-last When I came downstairs, I round Sylvia occupying herself with Donnda Belle on the piazza. "How does it happen that you're not down at the Merry Mere?" I demanded. "Nancy isn't coming over today," to-day," Sylvia informed me. "And I thought I'd stay up here. I think I 11 make a new dress for Dorinda Belle." She was sitting on a little footstool foot-stool beside one of the Gloucester hammocks. Beside her was her little work-basket Over the cushions lay bits of dress material which I had given her from time to time; patches of silk and chiffon; snippets of ribbon; tags of lace. She was threading an enormous darning-needle. I took it that Dorinda Belle's sorry wardrobemuch ward-robemuch the worse for play near the water was about to be replenished. replen-ished. "This child hasn't a thing to wearl" Sylvia announced in the accents, ac-cents, faintly disgusted, faintly in-dignant, in-dignant, which I had heard so many times from her mother's mouth. "She is a perfick disgrace. I'm ashamed of her. She's got to have a whole new wardrobe. She doesn't take care of her clothes at all. She gets them dirty. She spills her oatmeal all down the front. She catches her clothes in the blackberry vines. She's a per-fickly per-fickly terrible, terrible child sometimes." some-times." Energetic nodding and vehement emphasis accompanied this diatribe. dia-tribe. Of course, like all mothers, en you for granted, that you were within hand's reach so to speak. He felt that he could close his fist on you at any time. But when Mark began to specialize on you he didn't like it." "Ace and Mark and I were always al-ways good friends," I commented. "That's right! And Ace and I were great friends. Damn it all I loved Ace. I love him still. That story Walter told me yesterday rocked me more than anything that's happened in a long time. But there was something about Ace" "I suppose he had more natural charm than any human being I have ever known." "It was that charm that ruined him," Patrick carried my thought on. "It brought him so many things when he was young that he thought he could keep it up forever. for-ever. Yet, by God, I shall always feel about Ace " "It's one of the puzzles of life." I said. "Once or twice in a lifetime, life-time, this happens to everyone. Charm is as strong as the force of gravity. People who have it sweep our hearts along in the very face of disapproving Judgment That was Ace." I think I raised my voice a little; lit-tle; for Sylvia, suddenly abandoning abandon-ing her dress-making, seized a freshly dressed Dorinda Belle and came pattering into the living-room. living-room. She seated herself on a cricket beside the low table on which stood a telephone extension. "Patrick," she said, "did you know that Doctor Ace had gone to Heaven?" Heav-en?" Before Patrick could answer the question, her eyes, wandering over the surface of. the table, fell on a little Dresden box there. Now Syl-! Syl-! via has been brought up not to j touch bric-a-brac or books without permission. She is an extremely docile child and I cannot recall that she has ever broken anything in my hou?e. Now her eyes fixed themselves hard on that Dresden box. Her fixed gaze recalled no association to me, but apparently it suggested vaguely something to her. Suddenly she jumped up from her cricket and lifted the cover. "Oh there it is!" she exclaimed. "There's the beautiful buckle I found. I forgetted all about it. I found it-I found it " Her eyes seemed to look inward in the effort of her concentration. "I found it the day after the party." A silence as bleak and cold as ice seemed to fall on my piazza. For when Sylvia's tiny fingers lifted the brilliant buckle old paste and old silver from the box, a series of mental cataclysms shook me. They came as fast as successive shots from a revolver. Instantly I recalled Sylvia's entrance to the piazza pi-azza early Saturday afternoon, carrying car-rying a Dorinda Belle who glittered with a magnificent an alien splendor. I remembered taking the buckle from her and, as the telephone rang, slipping it into the Dresden box. Suddenly too now, I recalled, though I had not recalled re-called it then, that that buckle was one of a pair which ornamented the slipper which Myron Marden wore at the masquerade. Instantly too, I recalled another thing that I would have said must have departed depart-ed completely from my memory-departed, memory-departed, leaving no trace behind. And that was an event of Sunday morning waking and going to the bathroom for a drink of water, returning re-turning and for an instant gazing out my window onto the fog-laden scene. What I saw in that instant merged completely from my mind in the oblivious weariness with which I again sank back into sleep. Yet now, I saw the picture perfectlyMyron perfect-lyMyron Marden coming out of my Spinny and up over my lawn in the direction of the park and of his own home. Patrick's eyes had narrowed. Never had I heard silkier accents than those which emerged at that moment from his throat "Come over here, Sylvia," he wheedled. "I want to talk with you. Bring the buckle with you." Sylvia pattered over to him and he lifted her onto his lap. She opened her little fist and they surveyed sur-veyed the paste together. "How it sparkles!" Patrick commented. com-mented. "How lucky you were to find itl When did you say you Dicked it up?" "'51 It, ' t Iff T? mam KOAY Continued iTwatched that beau-Ln. beau-Ln. silent. I felt the I behind my eyeballs. t grew, as I knew it then he was touched, 1 ie non-committal, feat," Walter started, e has come for me to t my whole relation kie. It concerns Mol- Iatrick said, remember." Walter mgely enough he ad-lf ad-lf to me, "that I act-i act-i secretary for two will perhaps remem-iry, remem-iry, if you remember oily and I became en- was Ace's secretary; !! , ths later Molly broke Lent and that six she became engaged 4er all that," I said, nd," Walter went on, has rocked with ru-that ru-that broken engage-st engage-st every theory has d to account for it and lathing that could be ii said. None of them , I do think that one or conjectured that Ace Serately set himself to J breaking our engage-I engage-I was true. But how it libody but Molly and I potest idea." jj(sed and his look hard-. hard-. wis astonished at the tfcame over him. Sud- !ted, not so much ten as ten years wiser, dgeable, I would put -oecame hard and un-I un-I had the feeling that if I had not been dead, ihave been hatred in it hatred. truth of the matter Is 111 desperately in love I didn't blame him ': Here Walter's smile )"I have never blamed r falling in love with wonder to me is that 1 i the world is not at her not naturally a Jealous II wasn't and never p least bit jeilous of I known irom the mo- s Ie became engaged, that J me and would always t after a while, I could It was making a genu-; genu-; I Molly. I realized that ' g I had to do was to 1 f e'l secretary. Then I Ihave a talk with him j p to lay off Molly. I 4 jch further than that in I' But I had a dim suspi-he suspi-he didn't keep off, de-sparity de-sparity in our ages, I beat the face off him." e conscious of the our attitude?" Patrick he was. I did my e never exchanged a did not concern busl-ib busl-ib f have to go back and pthing about myself. ;:l at I have a faculty J I tignatures. When I 'J fee, I signed two-thirds J s 8nd nobody ever no- 3 pence. Several times j Feded money, he had n J make out the check 4 f(Jname to it. Then I J f down to the bank and L 1116 checks H 3 f Naturally I gave f,t f,ey' Anyway. one Sat-A Sat-A 1 gave Ace notice that flTl 3ob' He Baii Hf f at I d come to that JJ Nmse he had several f UJT t0 to ame then to my aston- 4 Z r,1 asked what 1 C Hesaid that be- (T, V my fath and i fch he Would lodge J C ee'of PaP on IjtS wie his 1 at hemh0si true. w?d taken 1 S it a handwrit- C' ?r weU 1 av 5 )t--.. He said. -Yes, t ' I'Jsed. Vipine "Passion 4 f hues had turned PPeced?- "Well, Pat I'm telling you about the epoch in my life of which I'm most ashamed," Walter admitted. "I have to admit to you that that that" Walter choked back the epithet and began again. "I have to admit to you that Ace Blaikie put it over on me. I was frightened, fright-ened, not on my own account but for my father and mother, I did not know what to do." "Did you tell Molly?" "At once. She didn't know what to do. We were like the babes in the wood. We clung to each other, but we did not know what to do; and because we were so inexperienced, inexperi-enced, we lay down to the situation. situa-tion. Molly and I pretended to break our. engagement In reality it was never broken. I left Satuit and went to New York where I got a Job, and a good one. I've given that up. I can always get a Job. In the meantime, Ace was devilling Molly. I did not know how much, of course. After a while she realized that in order to protect pro-tect me, she must get engaged to Ace. She wrote me that. But she said, TU die before I marry him.' " "Have you those letters?" "AH of them. Then one day, I waked up with the realization that in spite of my feeling for my mother moth-er and father I would rather go to prison and work out my sentence sen-tence than submit to what I was submitting to. I wrote that to Mol- ly and she wrote back that she agreed with me absolutely. She said in effect "Let's get married. If Ace Blaikie chooses to act in this horrible way, let him do it If you are arrested and tried and sentenced, sen-tenced, I'll stand by. And when you come out of Jail, we'll take up our life just where we left it and go all the way together.' So I made up my mind to that First of all, I came back in May to have another an-other fight with Ace." "Do you remember what you said to him when you met him in Locust Lane?" "Not all of course. Nobody ever remembers the whole ' of a long conversation, but I remember telling tell-ing him that I'd kill him before I'd let Molly marry him." I drew a long hissing breath of warning. AH three looked into my direction and smiled, Patrick in a grim amusement Walter with a detached humor, Molly in a soothing sooth-ing tenderness. "I returned to New York. However, How-ever, Molly and I made our plans. We agreed that just as soon as I could wind up my job, I'd slip back. Then we'd walk off and get married." "How did you happen to choose the time of the Stow party?" "Just because it came at the right time. I had the money I needed. Then I knew everybody in Satuit would be thinking of the masquerade. Besides Molly and I had had so many swell times at the Stow masquerades, that we wanted to go. So, as I told you the other day, I came on secretly and stayed in Aunt Mary's Little House." "And you had no contact with Ace at all?" Patrick inquired. "None." "You did not see him all day Friday?" Fri-day?" , "Not until the masquerade." "And did you speak to him at the masquerade?" For the first time there was a little lit-tle asperity in Walter's tone. "I think I told you before that I did not" "Then I am to understand," Patrick Pat-rick summed it up, "both from you and Molly that you saw Ace Blaikie only once between the time you left Satuit and the night of the masquerades and that one time was in Locust Lane on Decoration day?" "That's correct" Walter said. Patrick looked inquiringly at Mol- "That is correct" Molly said. Patrick bent forward until his elbows el-bows rested on his knees. He contemplated con-templated with a steady, down-shot gaze his neat and well-polished shoes. "Well," he said after a while, "go home, children! But I'll have to repeat Walter, stick around! I don't know when I'll need you." THURSDAY Again I spent a troubled night It was not so much that I did not sleep. I slept fitfully; for now exhausted ex-hausted nature was demanding her tolL It was more that dreams bothered me broken dreams without with-out logic or continuity, great looming, loom-ing, shadowy scenes which glided with an incredible ease and rapidi-tty, rapidi-tty, one into the other, blended for an interval and then by some inconceivable in-conceivable magic separated and Ace Fell Desperately in Love With Molly. Sylvia was enjoying the utter unre-generation unre-generation of her offspring and of course, like all childran, she was quoting grown-up violences of expression. ex-pression. Indeed, when she had finished, fin-ished, she looked up at me with a sunny smile. Then she set her lips again. "She ought to be sent to a reform school." I wondered where Sylvia had received re-ceived her education in regard to reform schools and then I remembered remem-bered that that was a pet phrase with Bessie in regard to naughty children. "But after all," I remonstrated, "it seems to me, Sylvia, that Do-rinda Do-rinda Belle is a pretty good child. She's very quiet about the house. She treats your other dolls very well." Compunction apparently hit Sylvia Syl-via hard. "She's a beautiful child!" she admitted remorsefully. She picked Dorinda Belle up from the hammock. She was still kissing the china face when Patrick drove up to the door. 'I left pretty suddenly yesterday. yester-day. Mary," he apologized, "but it gave me such a what my old prandmother used to call 'a turn' "Saturday afternoon," Sylvia answered an-swered with a childish explicitness. "Right after lunch!" "And where did you say you found it?" Patrick asked, turning the buckle this way and that so that it flashed fire. "Near the path to the Spinney." "Where were you going?" Patrick Pat-rick asked in the most casual of tones. "I was going to the Little House and I saw this buckle in the path. So I runned right back to get a ribbon to tie it on Dorinda Belle." "Now, who do you suppose," Patrick Pat-rick went on, "that buckle belongs to?" (TO BE CONTINUED) Transmitting Rabies Rabies is a central nervous sys tem disease, the virus of which usually is transmitted by the saliva. In animal bites the virus is transmitted by the teeth as they pierce the skin and flesh. The saliva sa-liva containing the virus if even spattered on a break in the skin, such as that made by a small hangnail, hang-nail, can send the lethal germ on its way to the brain. In violent rabies, the most common type, the first symptom in an animal is a marked change in dispositioa An affectionate dog becomes morose and depressed. A snapping, treach erous dog may become cowardly and affectionate. to hear that story from Walter and Molly." As though by mutual consent we withdrew to the living-room to get away from Sylvia. "It's haunted me all night" I admitted. "Mary." Patrick said, "I guess we've got to admit that from some points of view, Ace was a pretty bad actor." . "It wasn't exactly a surprise, I agreed, "and yet it was a surprise too Of course before we go any further, I'll have to tell you, Patrick, that I believe svery word Walter said." "So do I." "But" I 'ent on 1 had n0 ,dea that Ace was capable of such-I wouldn't have believed that he would have tried to compel Molly Mol-ly " "Well, you see, Ace was spoiled as far as women were concerned. He'd always had his way with them. That's bad medicine for any man. Especially, if a man lets it Jet him. And Ace let it get him When he was young, as you and I knew well enough, he was a chaser. I don't know why I call him a chas-pr chas-pr He was chased much more JD he chased. Girls fell lor him m all I directions. I think you're the only one who ever gave him his come-uppance, Mary. Ace never was in lovt with me. PWhap. not He's always tak- |