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Show oooooo o:, ox ox oxoxoo' til I "DADDY" i 1 G 83 p p ;o ?c Dy FANNIE HURST - ; 1"' 'J . - . s 1 It C 0. McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) I, TI1KRE evor liaj lipen any doubts in the mir.rt of A Koken as tii v!iy the slim flower girl na:neil Dot Feverill had irarried him, he ivas not entitled to litem. Pot herself, aitiiouij too yonnir to realize nuieli of !nr own psychology, iaul nevei treated hiia with any more than the alTeetionaie soliritmle of the very .young toward one who is considerably con-siderably older and lenign. When Dot Feverill was twenty-one. as lovely as a jonquil, and with a voice that promised to lie an operatic one, she developed a spot on her lung. There was nothing of the conventional convention-al "angel" about Al Kol;eu. lie was a fat, middle-aged stock broker, who had come to know Pot through a friend of his, a business manager of one of the largest operatic companies in America. Her case was pathetic, her beauty appealing, and iier plight appalling. It was Koken 's money that sent her .to Arizona-for two years: it was the pudgy little band of the f.-it old bachelor bach-elor that wrote out the generous monthly checks. Dot's recovery was only partial. Her condition responded to the high, cleau western air. Her health d:d improve greatly nnd the old beauty flowed back into her face. But at the end of two years, when she returned to Xew York to resume her work, the sad truth revealed itself that there were only certain climates where Dot could thrive. The old lung condition began to reassert Itself ; she began to wilt again. Humbly, reverently, secretly and deeply in love was Al Koken. It is doubtful, had the return of Dot to a state of health been a permanent one, that this deep-rooted love of Al for Dot would ever have found voice. He was a timid soul, kindly, naive to a degree that was incredible. For a ruan-of-the-workl, at least of-the-world to the extent that a successful suc-cessful broker on Wall Street is bound-to bound-to be, he was as uncomplex as a child in certain of the ways in which you expect the average man to be versed. Al Koken had attained his bachelorhood (be was fifty-six when he met Dot) without more than a . half dozen women having crossed his path, and those half dozen casually. There are more men like that in the world than we realize, chiefly lie-cause lie-cause their stories are too eventless to project themselves. The quality of gratitude that Dot Feverill gave Al Koken transcended even her own understanding. From her teens, life had been a precarious performance for her. Hers had been the perilous and somewhat melodramatic melodra-matic position of a really beautiful girl, without parents, obliged at an early age to get out on her own. The gift of a voice asserting itself had not made her position any easier. So many tilings could have happened to Dot which did not, chiefly because when she was barely in her twenties a man of the caliber of Al Koken had providentially pro-videntially crossed her path. How It came about, after her return to the east from Arizona, and the subsequent sub-sequent relapse into ill health, that Al Koken was finally to find the courage cour-age to ask her to marry him was never clear in his own mind. She seemed so beyond his reach ; she seemed so out of his ken. From the first day be bad clamped , eyes upon her, he bad realized that, and had felt humbly grateful for his capacity ca-pacity to serve her as a friend. In any event, the pathos of it gave Al Koken the courage, and into the safe retreat of this kind man's sheltering shel-tering arms there crept gratefully the wounded nnd the frightened Rot. The marriage Unit resulted was one of those built on passionate adoration ador-ation on one side and grateful, sweet humility on the other. The happiest day in Al Koken's life was when he closed his affairs in the Fast, pocketed a large nest-egg of the money he had earned and saved throughout the long years of ills bachelorhood, bach-elorhood, and turned his face, with thp frail, lovely one of his bride, toward to-ward the more benign climate of southern south-ern California. As Al Koken used to say lo him-s him-s If in the period that followed, those precious first years of his marriage contained more happiness than any tine man had a right to expect of a life time. The Al Kokens took up their al'ode in what was lileratly a caslle in the air; a luxurious Spanish villa 1 hat hung from a mountainside that faced the plnchiily of the Pacific 0cr;in. And what happened subs quenfly was undorsintalai'le to him. because in the licpili of his happiness he was slill capable of a slrange wisdom ; ! he wis'lnm of rr.':M:'Pg the inevita-I inevita-I :.;iiiy 'if what w;s !o come. It was ti"t j t!:at ilio lovely pot loved him less, or j lit t: i"'r lt:i 1 "rtp-ioin t,-, im ns !fr ! "I v., My" ever -'.lve'-ed. Too sentiment ! v a; .'.i was in ri'.ifi in lie;- scct. , si r:.!n Iia'i'i vrt n pi, or orr; ; J, f,f ht'ir.f liiat i:a'i in his nto;n, "To v:y flariiag PaM" fr.ni a gr.i"'fa! P.::.'' w is ;-o- ti e !'--s s:n, ,.re ! e-ca-i-e one d; y. ono inowial.io day, : t v;; s to ;-,:! v.""- jlio ca!! of yiT-th to yo :" h. A ttrac '":'n'D; sr,rvfv:i,g on tl.e mttui.iairsi-'ie s;rn!;( n;A p, (f.n er.e a;;e:T.-:'on for a drink of water, which Dot herself served to him out of a dipper made of a gourd. The subsequent tiling that happened was as natural as the sunset dipping into the Pacific or the beautiful soaring soar-ing of seagulls about the castle-in-the-nir, or the sound of Dot's laughter before be-fore it became tinged witli the pain and the ecstasy of what was happening happen-ing to her. Al, tied into a knot Inside of himself him-self with the pain of it, was conscious con-scious of the setting of the sun of his dream almost before the first shadows had come to assert themselves; Al knew that Dot and the young engineer were drifting and carrying with them his happiness, almost before they knew it themselves. And tiie heartbreaking part of It was that she fought so against It, struggled strug-gled witli her little strength; and yet from the tirst she was helpless. One who knows inner tragedy might surmise sur-mise with what complete heartbreak, what devastating wretchedness, Pot might have carried on her part of the compact with Al, had it not been for Hie delicate nnd subtle wisdom of the fat little man. He saw it coming, and he braced himself; more than that, it was his initiative that was finally to bring about the collapse of his marriage. He made easy for these two young people that which without his assistance assist-ance would have been intolerably difficult. dif-ficult. He placed their happiness In their hands. He did the unthinkable, he stepped out of his paradise that another might step In. And yet in his heart, Al Koken's shrewdness again asserted Itself. He knew that In reality, whether he remained re-mained In it or out of It, actually bis paradise was finished. His song was sung. In the young engineer Dot had met her mate and had responded to the mysterious call. Al Koken lives by himself in a small bungalow down near the sound of the sea. Dot, married to the young engineer, en-gineer, lives in another castle-in-the-air that overhangs another crag of another mountainside. Her adoration of Al Koken is something some-thing that has never diminished, but on the contrary has increased. Her picture still hangs on his walls, "To my darling Daddy from a (rrnteful Dot." The quality of her happiness with the young engineer is Impeccable. There is hut one fly in their ointment As the babies come and the responsibilities responsi-bilities grow, financial pinch Is. upon them. Sometimes Al wonders to himself why he does not settle upon the young pair a substantial life income, but in his heart he knows why. Every so often, full of sweet distress at her mission, Dot comes down to the little bungalow by the sea secretly, asking her incomparable friend for the largesse lar-gesse of a loan to tide them over a bad spot in their finances. Al waits for these occasions a little relentlessly. To him, there is nothing in the world left to give him happiness but the sound of her voice appealing to him. "Dear Daddy please will you help us just this once more " |
