Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1915 — The Governor's Lady A Novelization of Alice Bradley's Play [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Governor's Lady A Novelization of Alice Bradley's Play

By GERTRUDE STEVENSON

Illustrations from Photographs of the Stage Production

inis BlrtiM B— BfTtt) ter DatlS SeIMOO.

SYNOPSIS. Daniel Slade, suddenly advances from a penniless miner to a millionaire. He Is ambitious to become governor of the state. His simple, .home-loving wife falls to rise to the new conditions. Slade meets Katherine, daughter of Senator Strickland, and sees In her all that Mary Is not. He separates from his wife and takes rooms at his club. Editor Merritt, who has been attacking Slade, is won over to the latter's support because he cannot otherwise supply the money demanded- for a European trip for Mrs. Merritt. Katherine agrees to marry Slade when he Is free. Bob Hayes, in love with Katherine, has a stormy session with her over her affair with Slade. Mary, anxious to make It up with Slade, appears at Strickland’s house during a political conference. Slade Informs her that separation Is final.

CHAPTER Vlll—Continued. Blade nervously assured himself that all the doors were tightly closed. He suppressed the twinge of shame for hie stealthy action by assuring himself that it was not fear—simply business caution. To his cowardly wrenching of his wife’s heart he gave no thought at all. It was a move in the game. He made it as dispassionately as one moves a chessman on the board. Mary was looking at him with a new light in her brown eyes as he turned to her again. She spoke again. “It was all right until you made that lucky degl. Dan, with the money I helped you to make and you pulled me out from behind my stove and tried to make me a parlor ornament. I'd hate to think where you’d a been today, if yer had. Five years ago you took all the work I loved to do out of my hands and now you’re punishing me because I did work.” "No, I’m not,” Slade remonstrated, moved in spite of himself by her simple, eloquent argument. “Yes, yuh are, Dan, you’re just as good as whipping me for layin’ up the foundation of every dollar you’ve got and here I am at my age, sitting in idleness in a great big barn of a house with my job gone," she finished pathetically. "Well, that’s life,” declared Slade unfeelingly. “Then it’s a pretty poor thing," and she shook her head sadly. No, it ain’t life. It shouldn’t be. There’s something wrong in a man’s getting so far up he can’t live with the wife he married because she cooked and worked instead of playing. It ain’t Just!" "Oh, what’s the use, Mary?” Slade sighed wearily, as though he, and not she, were the injured one. “Dan," Mary lowered her voice and looked at him earnestly."lf I brought up a girl today gnd we were poor, would you 1 advise me to say, ‘Take piano lessons, learn languages, £eep up to the times, never mind doing yous share or being economical ?’ ” "I’m not going to argue," Slade replied loftily. “Yuh can’t, Dan," declared Mary with conviction. “There ain’t no argument. -It’s one-sided. Suppose I’d changed and you’d stayed the same, what would all your friends say? ‘Poor Slade, his wife’s crazy—or bad — probably bad.’ No, yer can’t get me to see it!” “Well, whether you see it or not, that’s just where we stand. You’d better let me call Robert to take you home."

"Wait, Dan,” she pleaded. "Will you see me again at home, if I go now ?” There was a tense pause. Slade did not reply. "I see, I see." She dropped wearily Into a chair and suddenly the tears started in her eyes. "Flense, Mary, remember where you are.” Slade was a trifle less cold. "I’ll let you know my plans. All you have to do is to abide by them. You say you’ll do anything for me, that’s all I ask you to do, abide by my plans. I wish you much happiness,, the best of everythitfg, a life beyond anything -you ever had,” and he was rapidly being carried away by his own magnanimity. “I shall always think of you with the greatest affection,” he concluded, taking on a patronizing sir and trying to make himself believe his own empty sentiments. His selfesteem had been severely torn in the last few moments of his wife’s talk. He had almost caught a glimpse of himself as he really was, but he was regaining what he was pleased to consider control of himself. “Well, you’ve conquered.” Mary dabbed her eyes and nose and tried to muster up sufficient courage to meet the situation. “I give in. 11l abide by your plans. Whatever you want me to do,” her voice broke into a sob, "tell Robert —I’ll do it.” The tears continued to fall in spite of her. Her heart was breaking. Her shoulders drooped pitifully, yet she felt a certain sad joy in acceding to his wishes. There waa a kind of happiness in sacrificing herself to please him. She began to pull her gloves. Jerkily, clumsily, finding some relief in having something to do. She was struggling hard not to break down—not to cling Vildly to him and beg him not to give her up. She steadied herself Anally. •■Well, Dan, there’s one thing yotrve got I won't be round to hold you back — now that I won’t be with you any

more,” her voice quavering. "I’m the only one who tells you all the truth. Everyone else is afraid of you. “Don't let them flatter you,” she eaid, with more maternal than wifely solicitude. “They can. I found that out. Father! You’re an awful fool with your money. You never had but one real friend. That’s me. You'll find it out." "I’ll look out,” Slade promised, and there was a note of relief in his tone at her change of attitude. "Do you want me to go away from our houße right off?" Mary asked, as if the idea of actual leaving had Just occurred to her. “Oh!” Slade hesitated. The details did seem rather cold-blooded. “But it’ll be better when it’s all settled —’’ “All right.” Mary's voice was patient and colorless. “I’d like to feel I was go in’ where you wanted me to go—wherever 'tie—and —doin’ what yer wanted me to—” “Thank you, Mary,” and the surface politeness seemed strangely out of place from this man who was turning the wife of his youth adrift. "Of course it’ll be arranged that you get the best of the divorce. I’ll attend to that. You simply leave it to me —” “A divorce," interrupted Mary. Her eyes widened with amazement, and shb came up to him, her mouth open with surprise. "A divorce?” “A divorce —why, yes—a separation —what’s the difference?” Slade was stooping now to deceive the little woman, who was herself the soul of truth and honor. “What?” the woman gasped. “A separation is the same thing as a divorce," and he lied shamefully. “Is It?" “It will be done quietly,” he went on. “Why, Dan Slade!” She could not believe her ears. “Give up your name? Why, you might as well ask me to give up my eyes. I’ve got it now — you’re looking for a younger. You can’t have a divorce, Dan!’’ All her tears were dry now and a new fiber in her voice. “I will have it,” stormed Slade, enraged because her mood had changed at the word “divorce,” just when he had been congratulating himself that the difficulty was all nicely adjusted. "That’s all there Is to it. I will have it.” “Anything else, Dan. Anything else —not a divorce. You mustn’t ask me to take the name I’ve carried all these years and throw it away. I’m giving in, but leave my name. I’m givin’ up everything else.” - “You might as well stop!” he warned her threateningly. “You’re going now, tonight, the first train East tomorrow. Go where you like, see what you like, do what you like, spend what you like. To what you have I’ll add a million more, but I’m going to have thiß done in my own way.” " } “Oh, Dan!” she shrank from his wrath. “JTm going home.” \ "No, you’re not, until this thing is settled. My mind’s made up. I don’t want to quarrel with you, and I should if you fought me." . “I won’t let you. You can’t do it.”

-“I can’t do it, eh?” The word can’t Was like a red rag to a bull. He stood over her with darkening face and shaking fist. “Don’t you know better than to stand there and tell me that? Have I got to bear it from you? Haven’t you seen what happened to man, woman and child, all of ’em, who ever told me that to my face? I’ll do it! HI do it now, by God!” and he strode angrily up and down the room. The angrier her husband became, the calmer and more determined was Mary Slade. "Dan,” she began very gently, but firmly, but you ain’t a bit more stubborn than I am when I’m right, and now I am. “You can go ahead. Do all you like, but' this time you won’t conquer, because I’m going to, fight you, father. I’m going to fight you, Dan.” Then with head proudly erect, she walked to the door, threw it open and cried, just a bit hysterically in spite of her effort to keep her voice steady:

* "Robert! You can take me home now, please!" She turned back Just once to the man gasing moodily into ’the firm." “I’m goin’ to fight yer, Dan!"

CHAPTER IX. Thirty years of one way of living becomes a habit—so much so that It is almost a human impossibility to adjust oneself to any other mode of life. Mary Slade, living year after year with Dan Slade, interested in his yrork, watching hind rise and succeed, had come to think of the man as only another part of herself. With him out of her life she felt as if a part of her own body had vanished without which she was restless and ill at ease. - As she sat in the little old cottage where with Dan she started out on married life, she experienced a feeling 6f detachment as if either this were hot the right place, but some sort of inferior substitute, or as though the real and vital part of herself were' absent The room was Just the same as it was the day she and Dan had walked out of it to take up their new life in the handsome mansion in town. Not a thing had been changed or disturbed. The same crooked hatrack, with her old knitted shawl dangling on one hook, bung behind the door. The same well-worn tidies were carefully pinned on the plush-upholstered chairs. The same cheap little ornaments that so delighted Mary’s simple heart in the old days still cluttered the manteL The same near-crystal crowded the sideboard. The tablecloth remained laid from meal to meal after the timesaving custom of middle-class families. Everything was the same but the atmosphere of contentment that once filled the room; everything the same but Mary’s happiness in her husband’s love. Outside the window the rose bush Dan had helped her to plant still nodded and blossomed in the sunshine that poured in a flood of golden Joy through the windows of the shabby room and emphasized all the worn places in the comfortable old chair where evening after evening Dan Slade had sat reading his newspaper and dreaming of the great future he was confident the fates held in store for him. cIn spite of herself Mary's thoughts were of her husband —the first bitter thoughts she had ever harbored against the man. She turned sick at heart at the thought of it. Dan and herself estranged, hopelessly at odds, fighting each other in the divorce court, fighting even over the possession of the little cottage that had shared in the first happy flush of their youthful love and happiness. This, the only place where she could find peace in her loneliness, Dan was trying to wrest from her. It was too near to town, too near to the scene of hie new activities, he had sent word W her. She must vacate. She must go so far away that his charge of "de> eertion" would stand fire in a court of law.

Face to face with the fact that Dan was trying to drive her even from this shelter, trying to drive her out into a strange and alien world, of which she knew nothing and which knew nothing of her, Mary could scarcely believe that Dan was so changed — that even now he would be willing to snatch away from her the place which held the memory of happier days. She had not seen her husband since the night in Senator Strickland’s library, when the awful knowledge had been forced home to her that he not only wanted a permanent separation, but insisted on having an absolute divorce. Over and over again a thought came into the woman’s mind. It was intuitive, instinctive. Try as she might to silence it, she could not put it out of her thoughts. It was that ever-recurrent feeling that another woman had entered Dad’s mind and heart. Again and again she pushed it from her, but always and ever the obsession clung to her like a black that haunted her during the day and persisted even in her dreams at night. From the kitchen came the voice ol her maid-of-all-work singing an old fashioned tune. It was one. that in her young days Dan had loved to hear her sing—one whose sweet mglody and melancholy sentiment he had loved in the days before his heart had become hard and his mind intense on the cold, hard problems of finances and political advancement. It was the song in which all lovers from the beginning to the end of time find a- responsive note: •“Nita, Juanita, be my own fair bride.* (TO BE CONTINUED.)