Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1917 — Page 3

The Real Adventure

A NOVEL.

By Henry Kitchell Webster

(Copyright 1818, The Bobbe-MenlU Company) CHAPTER Vl—Continued. For the next half-hour,' until the car stopped in front of her house. Rose acted on this request—told about her life before and since her marriage to Rodney, about her friends, her amusements —anything that came into her mind. But she lingered before getting out of the car, to say: “I hope I haven’t forgotten a single word of your —preaching. You said so many things I want to think about.” “Don’t trouble your soul with that, child,” said the actress. “All the sermon you need can be boiled down into a sentence, and until you have found it out yourself, you won’t believe it.” “Try me,” said Rose. “Then attend. How shall I say it? Nothing worth having comes as a gift, nor even can be bought—cheap. Everything of value in your life will cost you dear, and sometime or other you’ll have to pay the price of it.” It was with a very thoughtful, perplexed face that Rose watched the car drive away, and then walked slowly into the house —the ideal house —and allowed herself to be relieved of her ■wraps by the perfect maid. , There was still an hour before she need begin dressing for the Randolph dinner; when Rodney came home this vague, scary, nightmarish sort of feeling which for no, reasonable reason seemed to be clutching at her, would be forgotten. She wished he would come—hoped he wouldn’t be late; and finally sat down before the telephone with a half-formed idea of calling him up. Just as she laid her hand upon the receiver, the telephone bell rang. It was Rodney calling her. “Oh, that you, Rose?” he said. “I sha’n’t be out till late tonight. I’ve got to work.” “But Roddy, dearest,” she protested, ■“you have to come home. You’ve got the Randolphs’ dinner.” ... 1 “Oh!” he said. “I forgot all about it. But it doesn’t make a bit of difference, anyway. I wouldn’t leave the office before I have finished this job for anybody short of the Angel GabrielJ-’ ’-* -- --- - “But” —it was absurd that her eyes should be filling up and her throat getting lumpy over a thing like this — “But what shall I do? Shall I tell Eleanor we can’t come, pr shalTl offer to come without you?” “I don’t care! Do whichever you like. I’ve got enough to think about without deciding that. Now do hang up and run along.”

“But Rodney, what’s happened? Has* something gone wrong?” “Heavens, no!” he said. “What is there to go wrong? I’ve got a big ■day in court to-morrow and I’ve struck a snag, and I’ve got to wriggle out of it somehow, before I quit. It’s nothing for you to worry about. Go to your dinner and have a good time. Good-by.” The cl ick in the receiver told her he had hung up. The difficulty about the Randolphs was managed easily enough. Eleanor was perfectly gracious about it and Insisted that Rose should come by herself. She was completely dressed a good three-quarters of an hour before it was time to start, and if she drove straight downtown she would have a ten-minute visit with Rodney and still not be late for the dinner. She found a single elevator in com; mission in the great, gloomy rotunda •of the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor.. The ■dim marble borridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she reached the door of his outer office and tried It, she found it locked. The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his private office, and here the light shone through the ground glass. She stole up tp It as softly as she could, tried it and found it locked, too, so she knocked. Through the open transom above it, she heat'd him softly swear in a heartfelt sort of way, and heard his chair thrust back. The next moment he opened the door with a Jerk. His glare of annoyance changed to bewilderment at the sight of her, and he said: “Rose! Has anything happened? What’s the matter?" And, catching her by the arm,'he led her into the office. “Here, sit down and get your breath and tell me about it!” She smiled and took his face in both her hands. “But it’s the other way,” she said. “There’s nothing the matter with ma I came down, you poor old boy.to see what was the matter with you." He frowned and took her hands away and stepped back out of her reach. Had it not been for the sheer incredibility of it, she’d have thought that her touch was actually distasteful to him. “Oh,” he said. “I thought I told yon over the phone there was nothing

CONDITIONS FOR ROSE’S HAPPINESS ARE JUST TOO PERFECT IN HER NEW HOME AND SOCIAL SET—SO NATURALLY SHE BECOMES DISSATISFIED WITH THE EASY LIFE

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 Frederica (the wealthy Mrs. Whitney), and she, telling him he ought to marry, tries to Interest him in a young widow. He laughs at “Freddy,” but two months later he marries Rose Stanton. Rose moves from modest circumstances into a magnificent home and begins to associate with the exclusive social circle. She meets a French actress who tells her that nothing worth while is given us—for success, or happiness, or ease, or love, we must pay in some manner. These two are talking when the installment opens.

the matter! Won’t you be awfully late to the Randolphs’?” “I had ten minutes,” she said, “and I thought . . .” She broke off the sentence when she saw him snap out his watch and look at it. “I know there’s something,” she said. “I can tell just by the way your eyes look and the way you’re so tight and strained. If you'd just tell me about it, and then sit down and let me — try to take the strain away. . . .” Beyond a doubt the strain was there. The laugh he meant for a good-humor-ed dismissal of her fears didn’t sound at all as it was intended to. “Good heavens!” he said. , “There’s nothing to tell! I’ve got an argument before the court of appeals tomorrow and there’s a ruling decision against me. It is against me, and it’s bad law. But that isn’t what I want to tell them. I want some way of making a distinction so that I can hold that the decision doesn’t rule.” « “And it wouldn’t help,” she ventured, "If you told me all about it? I don’t care about the dinner.” “I couldn’t explain in a month,” he said. . - “Oh, I wish I were some good 1” she said forlornly. He pulled out his watch again and began pacing up and down the room. “I just can’t stand it to see you like that,” she broke out again. “If you’ll only sit down for five, minutes and let me try to get that strained look out of your eyes. . . “Can’t you take my word for it and let it alone?” he shouted. “I don’t need to be comforted nor encouraged. I’m in an intellectual quandary. For the next three hours, or six, or however long it takes, I want my mind to run cold and smooth. I’ve got to be tight and strained. That’s the way the job’s done. You can’t solve an intellectual problem by having your hand held,r or your eyes kissed, or anything like that. Now, for the love of heaven, child, run along and let me forget you ever existed, for a while CHAPTER VII. A Freudian Physician. Rose’s arrival at the dinner —a little late, to be sure, but not scandalously —created a mild 'sensation. None of the other guests were strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty. But when she came into the drawing room—in such a wonderful gown—put on tonight because she felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney—when she came in, she reoxygenated the social atmosphere. Shq, was, in fact, a stranger. Her voice had a bead on it which roused a perfectly unreasoning physical excitement —the kipd of; bead which, in singing, makes all the difference, be-

“I Came Down . . . to See What Was the Mattei* With You.”

tween a church choir and grand opera. The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes concentrated itself into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her face, burned brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale. And these were true Indices of the changes that had taken place within her. From sheer numb incredulity, she had reacted to a fine glow of infound iiofsolx £>u(l** denly feeling lighter, older, Indescribably more confident. They shouldn’t suspect her humiliation or her hurt. Her husband, James Randolph re-

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

fleeted, had evidently either been making love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he was curious to find out which. And, having learned from his wife that Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he would. A physician of the Freudian school, trained to analyze people’s souls, he was well equipped to find out, without Rose’s knowledge. He didn’t attempt it, though, during his first, talk with her —confined himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for polite conversation over the same hors d’oeuvres and entrees, from one dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn’t until Eleanor had turned the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game. “No need asking you if you like this sort of thing,” he said. "I would like to know how you keep it up. It can’t any of it get anywhere. What’s the attraction?” . “You can’t get a rise out of me tonight,” said Rose. “Not after what I’ve been through today. Madame Grevllle’s been talking to me. She thinks American women are dreadful dubs —or she would if she knew the word —thinks we don’t know our own game. Do you agree with her?” "I’ll tell you that,” he said, “after you answer my question. What’s the attraction?” “Don’t you think it would be a mistake,” said Rose, “for me to try to analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn’t any." “Is that what’s the matter with Rodney?” he asked. “Is this sort of’ —a gesture with his head took in the table “caramel diet beginning -to. -go against his teeth?” “He had to work tonight,” Rose said. “He was awfully sorry he couldn’t come.” She smiled just a little ironically as she said .it, and exaggerated by a hair’s breath, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply. , * “Yes,” he observed, “that’s what we say. Sometimes it gets us off and sometimes it doesn’t.” “Well, it got him off tonight,” she saRL “He was pretty impressive. He said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn’t rule. Do you know what that means? I don’t.” “Why didn’t you ask him?" Randolph wanted to know. "I did, and he said he couldn’t explain it, but that it would take a month. So of course there wasn’t time.”

“I thought,” said Randolph, “that he used to talkdaw to you by the hour.” The button wasn’t on the foil that time, because the thrust brought blood —a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her eyes that would have Induced him to relent if she hadn’t followed the thing up of her own accord. “I wish you’d tell me something,” she said. “I expect you know better than anyone else I could ask. Why it is that husbands and wives can’t talk to each other? Imagine what this table would be if the husbands and wives sat side by side!” The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered. • “I am under the Impression,” he said, “that husbands and wives can talk exactly as well as any other two people. Exactly as well, and no better. The necessary conditions fpr real conversation are a real interest in and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to contribute sdmething toward that subject. Well, if a husband and wife can meet those terms, they can talk. But the joker is, as our legislative friend over there would'say”—he nodded down the table toward a young millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state assembly “the joker is that a man and a woman who aren’t married, and who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, without meeting those conditions.” ». ' “Seem to talk?” she questioned. “Seem to exchange ideas mutually. They think they do, but they don't. It’s pure Illusion, that’s the answer.” “I’m not clever, really,” said Rose, “and I don’t know much, and I simply don’t understand. Will you explain It, in short words” she smiled “since we’re not married, you know?” He grinned back at her. “All right,” he said, “since we’re not married, I will. We’ll take a hypothetical case. We’ll take Darby and Joan. They encounter each other somewhere, and something about them that men have written volumes about and never explained yet, sets up. They arrest each other’s attention—get to thinking about

each other, are strongly drawn together. “It’s not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in the world, but nearly. Only, Darby and Joan aren’t primitive people. Each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements, and capacities, and the attraction is so disguised that they don’t recognize it. “Absence of common knowledge and common interests only makes Darby and Joan fall victims to the very dangerous illusion that they’re intellectual companions. They think they’re having wonderful talks, when all they are doing is making love.” “And poor Joan,” said Rose, after a palpable silence, but evenly enough, “who has thought all along that she was attracting a man tjy her intelligence and her understanding, and all that, wakes up to find that,she’s been married for her long eyelashes, and her nice voice—and her pretty ankles. That’s a little hard on her, don’t you think, if she’s been taking herself seriously?” "Nine times in ten,” he said, “slit’s fooling herself. She’s taken her own ankles much more seriously than she has her mind. She’s capable of real sacrifices for them. Intelligence she regards as a gift. She thinks witty conversation, or bright letters to a friend, are real exercises of her mind

She Listened With Mingled Feelings to His Argument

—real work. But work isn’t done like that. Work’s overcoming something that resists; and there’s strain in it, and pain and discouragement.” In her cheeks the red flared up brighter. She smiled again—not her own smile —one, at any rate, that was new to her. “You don’t 'solve an intellectual problem,’ then,” she quoted, ‘“by having your hand held, or your eyes kissed?’ ” Whereupon he shot a look at her and observed that evidently he wasn’t as much of a pioneer as he thought. She did not rise to this cast, however. "All right,” she said; “admitting that her ankles are serious and her mind isn’t, what is Joan going to do about if?” “It’s easier to say what she’s not to do,” he decided, after hesitating a moment. "Her fatal mistake will be to despise her ankles without disciplining her mind. If she will take either one of them seriously, or both for that matter it’s possible she’ll do very well.” He could, no doubt, have continued upon the theme indefinitely, but the table turned the other way just then and Rose took up an alleged conversation with the’man at her right which lasted until they left the table, and included such topics as indoor golf, woman’s suffrage, the new dances, Bernard Shaw, Campanini, and the political parties; with a perfectly appropriate and final comment upon each. Rose didn’t care. She was having a wonderful time —a -new kind of wonderful time. No longer gazing, bigeyed like little Cinderella, at a pageant some fairy godmother’s whim had admitted her to, but consciously gazed upon; she was the show, tonight, and she knew it. Her low, finely modulated voice, so rich in humor, so varied in color, had tonight an edge upon it that carried it beyond those she was immediately speaking to, and drew looks that found it hard to get away again. For the first time in her life, with full self-consciousness, she was producing effects, thrilling with the exercise of a power as obedient to her will as electricity to the manipulator of a switchboard. She was like a person driving an airplane, able to move in all three dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she’d have to come back to earth, where certain monstrously terrifying questions were- waiting for her.

CHAPTER VIII. Rodney Smiled. The next day, Rose took two steps toward making herself her husband’s intellectuaLcompanion. From a university catalog she picked out the names of half a dozen elementary textbooks on law, and then went to a bookstore add bought them. She had taken her determination during the endless waking hours of

the night: she was going to study law —study it with all her might! The other step was to go and bear Rodney's argument in«eourt that day. She was successful in slipping into the rear of the courtroom —up on the eighth floor of the Federal building—without attracting her husband’s attention; and for two hours and a half she listened, with mingled feelings, to his argument There was no us© pretending that she could follow her husband’s reasoning. Listening to it had something the same effedt upon her as watching some enortireus, complicated; smooth-running mass of machinery. She was conscious of the power of it, thougSr IgSSant of what” made it go, and of whfft it was-ac-complishing. The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, by indulging in whispered conversations. And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes. The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up, and the three stiff, formidable figures filed out by a side door. It was all over. But nothing had happened!

Rose had expected to leave the courtroom in the blissful knowledge of Rodney’s victory or the acceptance of his defeat. In her surprise over the failure of this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape before he discovered her there. One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a ratherunsatisfactoryafternoon. When she had gone home and changed into the sort of frock she thought he’d like and come down-stairs in answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn’t say, as otherwise she would have done, “ How did it come out Roddy? Did you win?" In the light of her newly acquired knowledge she could see how a question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said: “You dear old boy, how dog-tired you must be! How do you think it went? Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did!” And, not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her she was a trump. “I had a sort of uneasy feeling,” he confessed, “that after last night—the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I’d find you—tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can we just stay home?” . He didn’t want to flounder through an emotional morass. And the assumption that she couldn’t walk beside him on the main path of his life was just and sensible. But it wasn’t good enough for Bose. So the very next morning she stripped the cover off the first of the lawbooks shte had bought, and really went to work. She bit down, angrily, the yawns that, blinded her eyes with tears; she made desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless succession of meaningless pages spread out before hdl, to find a germ of meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She was very secretive about it; developed an almost morbid fear that Rodney would discover what she was doing and laugh his big laugh at her. She resisted Innumerable questions she wanted to propound to him, from a fear that they’d betray her secret. She even forbore to ask him about the case; it was The Case in her mind —the one she knew about. She discovered in the newspaper, one day, a column summary of court decisions that had been handed down; and though The Case wasn’t in it, she kept, from that day forward, a careful watch, discovered where the legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last she found it—Just the bare statement: “Judgment affirmed.” Rodney, she knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten. For a moment the thing had bruised her like a blow. And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it differently. She saw she couldn’t help him out of his intellectual quandaries —yet. But under the discouragement and lassitude of defeat, couldn’t she help him? She remembered how many times she had gone to him for help like that, and, most notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her mother’s, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his tenderness had soothed and quieted her. He had never come to her like that. She knew now it was a thing she had unconsciously longed for. And tonight she’d have a chance! There was a mounting excitement in her, as the hours passed—a "thrilling suspense. hours that afternoon, she listened for his latchkey, and when at last she heard it, she stole down the stairs. He didn’t shout her name from the hall, as he often did. He didn’t hear her coming, and she got a look at his face as he stood at the table absently turning over some mail that lay there. *He looked tired, she thought.

Rose tries hard to keep track of her husband’s professional labors and to be mentally interesting to him, but she doesn’t make much headway. Unusual developments in their relations are pictured in the next Installment.

(TO BE CONTINUED. J

Four-fifths of the world's coffee to raised in Brazil.

HAIGHT, THE MIRAGE

By JOSEPH T. KESCEL.

Out In the mining camps of the Southwest Frank Reed was known as “Satan,” or for short, “Sate.” Short and stout, with a roly-poly figure, bright blue eyes and honest countenance, he did not in the least resemble the picture of his Satanic majesty. His business partner, Harry Haight, known among the camps aS the “Mirage,” was extremely tall and very thin. “He's like a' mirage, 'cause you ain’t dead sure whether it’s something real or not,” an old prospector had aptly expressed it. Their occupation was the same — that of mining engineer—but outside of working hours they devoted most of their time to thinking up practical jokes to play upon each other. “Sate” was in the office alone, planning a new map of the mining district, while the “Mirage” was doing some work away from town. The tinkle of the telephone bell caused the roly-poly man to reach for the receiver. His face brightened at the words, “Is that you, ‘Sate?’ ” “Yes-s-s! Oh, yes, Mrs. Thompson. I didn't recognize your voice at first,” he chuckled into the transmitter. “Your niece, Alice, coming on the morning train? Hubby busy? Want me to go with you to meet her? Certainly, with pleasure, no trouble at aIL I’ll call for you thirty minutes before train time in the automobile. Goodby.” Even above the grinding brakes and release of air could be heard a woman’s clear voice from an open car window calling, “Here I am, auntie—over here.” The train came to a full stop, the vestibules were opened and a dainty foot tripped lightly down the steps to the platform. Two flying figures embraced each other. “Aunt Molly!” “Alice!” “Oh, you dear, it is so good to see you.” “Oh w excuse me, Alice,” broke out Mrs. Thompson suddenly, “I want you to meet my friend ‘Sate.* I beg your pardon,” she rippled on, noting the girl’s questioning look, “we call him ‘Sate,’ but his right name is Mr. Reed.” Bending over the wheel as the machine sped toward Mrs. Thompson’s he heard the Tippling laughter from the tonneau. "Didn’t think there were any like that left back East,” he thought to himself. “She’s a darlln* and looks better than bonanza ore to me.” The annual ball of the Golden Queen Mining company was the social event of the year. The main camp hall was ablaze with light and its freshly waxed floor shone like polished mahogany. , The grand march was announced, whereupon the joyous couples immediately formed in procession, their' impatient feet beating time to the music. Miss Seaboldt’s escort smiled, as he thought of the joke he had framed up on his business partner and the young lady by his side. The "Mirage” appeared, his tall figure easily overtopping the few men standing near the smoking-room door. "He is here! See that tall man over there —that’s the ‘Mirage,’ ” State eagerly remarked. “Too bad he’s so deaf. It will be necessary for you to speak loudly. You will not forget this when you meet him?”' When the “grand march” was finished, “Sate” hurried to greet his partner with a hearty handshake. “Who was that I saw you with a few moments ago?” asked the "Mirage.” “The young lady I wrote to you about staying over at the Thompsons’. You’ll have to speak loudly to her — hearing’s not very good. Too bad, too, for she’s a pippin.” Hooking an arm into his partner’s, “Sate” conducted him to the girl and shouted a cordial introduction. Miss Seaboldt’s pretty face flushed scarlet and her laughing brown eyes troubled. Why had Mrs. Thompson deserted her? People looked at them, first inquiringly and then with amusement. The face of the “Mirage” matched her own in redness and his blue-gray eyes showed the agony he was in. The girl’s high-pitched voice was plainly heard above the noisy chatter as she replied to some question directed at the loud, roaring tones of the man. It was too much. “Sate” was obliged to make for the smoking room, where he dropped into a large armchair, his sides shaking with mirth. Numerous friends crowded around him and asked the reason for his strange behavior. “Let me at him! Let me at him!” It was the “Mirage” who entered, brushing the crowd to one side. With a howl of rage he grasped “Sate” by the collar. Jerked him up and slammed him back in the chair. Friends hurriedly interceded, and led his struggling partner away. “Some hostile, wasn’t he boys? So long, fellows. It’s my dance with her, and if she’s as hostile as the ‘Mirage,’ I’m saying good-by for keeps.” Presently he returned to the smoking’room, and snorted: “It’s a cinch I’ll have to join the bunch of stags at supper.” Z His last statement was entirely correct. She with the laughing brown eyes sat beside the “Mirage” at the table and a year ♦later walked beside him in the maid church aisle, while “Sate” and Mrs. Thompson followed close behind.