Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1917 — Page 3

REAL ADVENTURE

By HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER.

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ROSE STANTON ALDRICH MEETS A FAMOUS ACTRESS AND HEARS SOME PUZZLING STATEMENTS ABOUT . THE RELATIONS OF HUSBANDS AND WIVES

SYNOPSIS—Rose Stanton, student at the University of Chicago, is put off a street car in the rain after an argument with the conductor. She is accosted by a young man who offers help and escorts her home. An hour later, this man, Rodney Aldrich, well-to-do lawyer, appears at the home of his sister, the wealthy Mrs. Whitney, to attend a birthday dinner in his honor. Mrs. Whitney suggests that it’s about time Rodney looked around for a wife. He laughs at her, but two months later he marries Rose Stanton.

CHAPTER IV—Continued. She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. “I’m coming straight down,” she said, “and we’ll go somewhere for lunch. Don’t you realize that we can’t talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn’t, but it’s so.” Over the lunch-table she got as detailed an account of the affair as Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the North side for dinner. “Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney,” he commented. “I hope you’ll like the girl!” “That Isn’t what I hope,” said Frederica. “At least it isn’t what I’m most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy’s the only brother I’ve got in the world, and I’m not going to lose him if I can help it. That’s what will happen if she doesn’t like me.” As it happened, though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with her first look at Rose. Rodney’s attempts at description of her had been well-meaning; but what he had prepared . his sister for, unconsciously - of course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first acquaintance, had been a sort of-slatternly Amazon. But the effect of this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad, wfll-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl who didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t a critical moment for her, but was game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic—when Frederica realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about, she fell in love with her on the spot. Amazingly, as she watched the girl and heard her talk, she found she was considering, not Rose’s availability as a wife for but Rodney’s asa husband for her. It was this, perhaps, that led her to say, at the end of her leave-taking: “Roddy has been such a wonderful brother, always, to me, that I suspect you’ll find him, sometimes, being a brother to you. let it hurt you if that happens!”

CHAPTER V. The Princess Cinderella. When the society editor of “America’s foremost newspaper," as In Its trade-mark it proclaims Itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches had taken the Allison,McCraes’ house, furnished, for a year, beginning in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybody knew, it was an ideal house for a young married couple, and it was equally evident that the Rodney Aldriches were an ideal couple for it. * In the sense that it left nothing to further reajjeation, it was an ideal house; an old house in the Chicago sense, built over into something very much older still Tudor, perhapsJacobean, anyway. In the supplementary matters of furniture, hangings, rugs and pictures, the establishment presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be. If you happened to like that sort of thing, it was precisely the sort of thing you’d like. The same sort of neat, fully acquired perfection characterized the McCrae’s domestic arrangements. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction or another, and rented their house, furnished, for exactly enough to pay all their expenses. On the alternate years they came back and spent two years’ income living in their house. Florence McCrae was an old friend of Rodney’s and it was her notion that it would be just the thing he’d want. Rodney knew for himself what the house was —complete doWn to the ' ccfrkscrews. And six thousand dollars a year was simply dirt cheap. To clinch the thing, Florence went around and saw Frederica about it. And Frederica, after listening, noncommittally, dashed off to the last meeting of the Thursday club (all this

happened in June, just before the wedding )and talked the matter over with Violet Williamson on the way home, afterward. “John said once,” observed Violet, “that if we had to live in that house, he’d either go out and buy a plush Morris-chair from feather-your-nest Saltzman’s, and a golden-oak sideboard, or else run amuck.” Frederica grinned, but was sure it wouldn’t affect Rodney that way. As for Rose, she thought Rose would like it —for a while, anyway. But this wasn’t the point. “I’m so—foolish about old Rodney, that I can’t be sure I haven’t —well, caught being mad about Rose from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit this winter or not. If she doesn’t —go (and it all depends on her; Rodney won’t be much help), why, having a house like that might be pretty sad. So, if you’re a true friend, you’ll tell me what you think.” “What I really think,” said Violet — “of course I suppose i’d say this anyway, but I do honestly mean it —is that she’ll be what John calls a ‘knock-out.’ She’s so perfectly simple. She’s never —don’t you know —being anything. She just is. And she thinks we’re all so wonderful that she’ll make everybody feel warm and nice Inside, and they’ll be sure to like her.” “She’s got a, real eye tor clothes, too,” said Frederica. “We’ve been shopping. Well, then, I’m going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the house."

Rose was consulted about It, of course, though consulted is perhaps not the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she liked it—a question in the nature of the superfluous. One might as well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had provided her with for the prince’s ball. It didn’t occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the fact have had any value for her as an llluminant, because she would have had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of her future husband’s income. The new house was just a part, as so many of the other things that had happened to her since that night when Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater an<f two restaurants in Martin’s biggest limousine had been parts, of a breath-arresting fairy story. The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for social success, was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that Violet had put her finger upon the tnain-spring of it. So it fell out that what with the Junior league, the women’s auxiliary boards of one or two of the more respectable charities, the Thursday club and the Whifflers (this was the smallest and smartest organization of the lot), fifteen or twenty young women supposed to combine and reconcile social and intellectual, brilliancy on even terms. What with all this, her days were quite as full as. the evenings were,-when she and Rodney dined and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals, to keep themselves abreast of the minute in all the new dances. Portia had been quite right in saying that she never had to do Anything; the rallying of alf’her forces under the spur of necessity was an experience she had never undergone. And it was also true that her mother, and for that matter, Portia herself, had spoiled her a lot—had run about doing little things for her, come in and shut down her windows in the morning, and opened the register, and, on any sort of excuse, on a Saturday morning, for example, had brought her her breakfast on a tray. , But these things had been favors, not services—nerer to be asked for, of course, and always to-be accepted a little apologetically. .She had never before known what it was really to be served. *T haven’t,” Rose told Rodney one morning, “a single, blessed mortal thing to do all day.” . Some fixture scheduled for that morning had been moved, she went on to explain, and Hleanor Randolph was feeling seedy and bad called off . a little luncheon and matinee party.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

"Oh, that’s too bad,” he said with concern. “Can’t you manage something . . . r “Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. “It’s too heavenly! I’ve got a whole day just to enjoy being myself; being—” she reached for his hand, and, getting it, stroked her cheek with it “ —being my new self. used to think I faked pretty well. But I never was—don’t you know? —right. So, you see, it’s a real adventure just to say—well, that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly where I want him to drive me to.I always feet as if i~d ugh t to sa-y that Jf ’he’ll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey street, I Can walk.” He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful state of things would last. “Forever,” she said. But presently she looked at him rather thoughtfully. “Of course it’s none of it new to you,” she said, “ —not the silly little things, nor the things we do together—oh, the dinners, and the dances, and the operas. Do you sort of —wish I’d get tired of it? Is it a dreadful bore to you?” “So long as it doesn’t bore you,” he said; “so long as you go on—shining the way you do over it, and I am Where I can see you shine” —he took hold of both her hands, “so long as itfs like that, you wonder,” he said, “well, the dinners and the operas and all that may be piffle, but I shall be blind to the fact.” She kissed both his hands and told him contentedly that he was a darling. But, after a moment’s silence, a little frown puckered her eyebrows and she asked him what he was so solemn about. Well, he had told her the truth. But precisely as he said it, he felt that he was not the same man he had heen sixrmonths ago. Not the man who had tramped impatiently back and forth across Frederica’s drawing-room, expounding his ideals of space and leisure. Not the man who despised the clutter of expensive junk. That man would have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he, still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose—and meant. And the terrifying thing was that he hadn’t resisted the change—hadn’t wanted to resist — didn’t want to now, as he sat there looking at the slumbrous glory of her eyes. So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make anybody solemn to look at her.

CHAPTER VI. The First Question and Its Answer. Rose’s instinctive attitude toward the group of young to middle-aged married people into which her own marriage had introduced her was founded on the assumption that, allowlUgJtor occaslppal jESceptions, the husbands and wives felt toward each other as she and Rodney did —were held together by the same irresistible, unanalyzable attraction. Oh, there were bumps and bruises, of course! She had seen Rodney drop off now and again into a scowling abstraction, during which'it was so evident he didn’t want to talk to her, or even be reminded that she was about, that she had gone away flushed and wondering, and needing an effort to hold back the tears. These weren’t frequent occurrences, though, and did not weaken her idea that, barring tragic and disastrous types—unfaithful husbands, cold, mer-

“I've Got a Whole Day Just to Enjoy Being Myself.”

cenary wives—which had to be admitted as existing—marriage was a state whose happy satisfactoriness could, more or less, be taken for granted. It was something that Simone Gre-’ vllle said which gave rise to her first misgiving that marriage was not, perhaps—even between people who loved each other quite as simple as it seemed. No one has studied our leisured and cultivated classes with more candor and penetration than this great FrancorAustrian actress. She had ample opportunities for observation, because, while she played to houses that couldn’t be dressed to look- more than a third full, she was enormously in demand sor 1 luncheons, teas, dinners,

suppers,* Christmas bazaars, charity dances, and so on. Rose had met her a number of times before the inctdent’rnferred to happened. but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. She hung about, within earshot when it was possible, and watched, leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured Illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Greville’s English. - —-s She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard the actress' make the remark that American women seemed to her to be an exception to what she had always supposed to be the general law of sex attraction. It was taken, by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Greville intended it to be taken. But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and encountered a pair of big, luminous eyes, under brows that had a perplexed pucker in them. Whereupon she laughed straight into Rose’s face and said, lifting her head a little, but not her voice: “Come here, my child, and tell me who you are and why you were looking at me like that.” Rose flushed, smiled that irresistible wide smile of hers, and came, not frightened a bit, nor, exactly, embarrassed ; certainly not into pretending she was not surprised, and a little breathlessly at a loss what to say. “I’m Rose Aldrich.” She didn’t, in words, say, “I’m just Rose Aldrich.” It was the.little bend in her voice that carried, that impression. “And I suppose I was —looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly what you meant by what you said.” Greville’s eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon the flushed young sac a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen to you. “Mon Dieu!” she said. “J’ai grande envle de vous le dire.” She hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess. “You must forgive me,” she said, “if I make my farewells a little Soon. I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater and if it is to be done at all today, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a very pleasaht afternoon. “Make your farewells also, my child,” she concluded, turning to her prisoner, “because you are going with me.” No sooner were they seated in the actress’ car and headed north along the drive, than, instead of answering Rose’s question, the actress repeated one of her own. “I ask you who you are, and you say your name —Rose something. But that tells me nothing. Who are you—one of them?” “No, not exactly,” said Rose. “Only by accident. The man I married is —one of them, in a way. I mean, because of his family and all that. And so they take me in.” “So you are married,” said the Frenchwoman. “But not since long?” “Six months,” said Rose. She said it so with the air of regarding it as a very considerable period of time, that Greville laughed. “But tell me about him, then, this husband of yours, I saw him perhaps at the tea this afternoon?” Rose laughed. “No, he draws the line at teas,” she said. “He says that from seven o’clock on, until as late as I like, he’s—game, you know —willing to do whatever I like. But until seven, there are no—well, he says, siren songs for him.” “Tell me—you will forgive the indiscretion of ft stronger?—how has it arrived that you married him? Was it one of your American, romances?" "It didn’t seem very romantic,” said Rose. “We just happened to get acquainted, and we knew almost straight off that we wanted to marry each other, so we did, and—it came out very well,.’.’ “It ‘came out’?” questioned the actress. “Yes,” said Rose. “Ended happily, you know.” “Ended!” Madame Greville echoed, Then she laughed. Rose flushed and smiled at herself. “Of course, I don’t mean that,” she admitted, “and -I-suppose six months isn’t so very long. Still you could find out quite a good deal —?” “What is his affair?” The actress preferred asking another question, it seemed, to committing herself to an answer to Rose’s unspoken one. “Is he one of your—what you call, tired business men?” “He’s never tired,’’ said Rose, “and he isn’t a business man. He’s a law-yer—-a rather special kind of lawyer. He has other lawyers, mostly, for his clients. He’s awfully enthusiastic about it. He says it’s the finest profession in the world, if you don’t let yourself get dragged down into the stupid routine of it It certainly sounds thrilling when -he tells about it” . The actress looked round at her. “So,” she said, “you follow his work as he follows your play? He talks seriously to you about his affairs?” “Why, yes,” said Rose, “we have wonderful talks.” Then she hesitated. “At least we used to 'have; There hasn't seemed to be much time, lately. I suppose that’s IL” __

“One question more,” said the Frenchwoman, “and not an idle one—you will believe that? Alors! You love your husband. No- need to ask that. But what do you mean by love? Something vital and strong and essential—the meeting of thought with thought, need with need, desire with desire?” “Yes,” said Rose after a little silence, “that’s what I mean.” There was another silence, while the Frenchwoman gazed contemplatively out of the open window of the limousine. Then Rose said: “But you are going to tell me what you meant about —American women.” Madame Greville took her time about answering. “They are an enigma to me,” she said. “I confess It. I haven’t ever seen such women anywhere as these upper-class Americans. They ate beautiful, clever; they know

“Make Your Farewells Also, My Child.”

how to dress. For the first hour, or day, or week, of an acquaintance, they have a charm quite incomparable. And, up to a certain point, they exercise it. Your jeunes filles are amazing. All over the world, men go mad about them. But when they marry . . .’’ She finished, the sentence with a ghost of a shrug, and turned to Rose. “Can you account for .them? Were you wondering at them, too, with those great eyes of yours? Alors! Are we puzzled by the same thing? What is it, to you, they lack?” Rose stirred a little uneasily. “I don’t know,” she said, “except that some of them seem a Httle dissatisfied and restless, as if —well, as If they wanted something they haven’t got.” “But do they truly want it?” Madame Greville demanded. “I am willing to be convinced; but myself, I find, of your women of the aristocrat class, the type most characteristic is” —she paused and said the thing first to herself in French, then translated—“is a passive epicure in sensations- 1 — sensatlons mostly mental, irritating or soothing —a pleasant variety. She waits to be made- to feel; she perpetually—tastes. They give a stranger like me the impression of being perfectly frigid, perfectly passionless. And so, as you say, of missing the great thing altogether. A few of your women are great, but not as women, and of second-rate men in petticoats you have a vast number. But a woman, great by the qualities of her sex, an artist in womanhood, I have not seen.” “Oh, I wish,” cried Rose, “that I knew what you meant by that!” “Why, regard now,” said the actress. “In every capital of Europe (and I know them all), wherever you find great affairs —matters of state, diplomacy, poUtics—you find the influence of women in them women of the great world sometimes, sometimes of the half-world . They may not be beautiful —I have seen a faded woman of fifty, of no family or wealth, whose salon attracted ministers of state; they haven’t the education nor the liberties that your women enjoy, and, in the mass, they are not regarded—how do you Yet there they are!

“And why? Because they are capable of great passions, great desires. They are willing to take the art of womanhood seriously, make innumerable sacrifices for it, as one must for any art, in order to triumph in it.” Rose thought this over rather dubiously. It was a new notion to her — or almost new. “But suppose,” she objected, “one doesn’t want to triumph at It? Suppose one wants to be a—person, rather than just a woman?” “There are other careers Indeed,” Madame Greville admitted, “and one can follow them in the same spiritmake the sacrifices pay the price they demand. Mon Dieu! How I have preached. Now you shall talk to me. It was for that I took you captive and ran away with you.”

After her talk with the actress, Rose begins to understand more why it is that married folks don’t always get along very well together. An interesting problem is unfolded in the next installment, _

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

SIN

By REV. B. B. SUTCLIFFE

Moody Bible IrutituU, Chicago

TEXT—He did eat.-Gene«l« 3:6. From these three words, all the sorrow and suffering, all the distress and

the Word of God fully confirms the witness of conscience, philosophy and experience, that man is a sinner. The Nature of Sin. It was a very simple thing which man did. There was nothing evil in the tree of which he did eat, for God had declared that this tree, together with all others in the garden, w*as very good. It was just one step that he took, but it was like a step over a precipice. It needed no second step. A very simple thing, but in eating he doubts God’s love, for he had been assured of God’s love, he would have been assured that the commands of God were for his highest good. But doubting God’s love, he acts apart from God, choosing his own way rather than God’s, and so becomes a sinner. His own way was not necessarily an evil Why, as man calls evil, but it was not God’s, and therefore sin came in. Secondly, in eating he doubts God’s word. This is necessarily the second step, for he who doubts God’s love will doubt God’s word, and doubting God’s word, he acts contrary to God and becomes criminal. Sin is not merely the disease of which some sentimentalists speak, but sin is a crime, carrying a penalty which must be met. Thirdly, in eating, he disputes God’s authority. And so he acts in spite of God, and thereby becomes a rebel and enemy. This, then, is the nature of sin. It makes the one whom it touches to be not only a sinner but a criminal, guilty before the bar of God’s justice, and an enemy against God’s government. The sinner, then, is one who would overthrow-God and place himself on the throne of the universe. ; i The Results of Sin. J The first result of sin is shame, which is seen when they strive to hide their nakedness with the aprons of ‘ fig-leaves. These aprons speak of their attempt to clothe themselves with a righteousness which will make them comfortable in the presence of each other, a self-righteousness adopted to hide their shame. This is followed by separation from God, for when God comes upon the scene, they hide themselves among the trees of the garden. It is to be noted that the separation is formed by man and not by God. These are the first results of sin: shame, self-righteousness, separatios from God. —— —, God’s Treatment of the Sinner. First, he seeks him. In seeking, God reveals his own love for man and also the character of man, for when he finds him he says: “I heard thy voice and was afraid because I was naked.” But this is a He, for man was naked before and unafraid. He Is afraid only when God comes on the scene, and that because he is a sinner and a criminal and the enemy of God. The seeking of God proves man to be morally wrong, for he is a coward, attempting to hide behind a woman. He is shown to be mentally wrong for he tries to lie to the God; he knows he is lying. It shows him to be spiritually blasphemous, accusing God of his sin, implying that if God had never given him the woman he would never have sinned. Provision of God for Sin. This provision is found in the twen-ty-first verse. and it will be noted that this provision is made by God; not by God and man. It fs, therefore, all of grace. Further, it is made by sacrifice —the shedding of blood, for “without the shedding of blood there is no remlssioh,” and those who do not look for salvation by blood, look not for the salvation spoken of in the Scriptures, for the crimson mark of the blood of the Lamb of God is seen on every page of Holy Writ. Lastly, this provision is made through a substitute, and the covering of the substitute covers the sinner. This, then, is the provision that God has made for the sinner and his sin. He takes the sin away by the precious blood of his own sacrifice, the Lamb of God, so that the believer can say: “He hath made him to be‘sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

Can Serve Only One Master.

You cannot serve two masters; you must serve one or the other. If your wbrk is first with you, and your fee second, work is your master, and the' lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the devil.—Ruskin.

the despair in the world have come. But for these words, and what they imply, there would never have been a funeral, nor an aching heart; never a tear on the face of any human being. The Fact of Sin. The conscience bears witness that man is a sinner. The highest philosophy bears witness and