Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 206, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 January 1923 — Page 10

A Hoosier Chronicle By MEREDITH NICHOLSON First Novel in the Times Series of Fiction Stories by Indiana "Writers. (Copyright. 1812. by Meredith Nicholson)

"But the new game you can play better than any of them. It’s the only way you can find peace.” "With a gesture half-bold, half-fur-tive, he put out his hand and touched lightly the glove she had drawn off and laid on the table. "You believe In me; you have some faith left In me?” "Yea.” Her hand touched his; her dark eyes searched the depths of his soul—sought and found the shadows there and put them to flight. When she spoke It was with a tenderness that was new to all his experience of life; he had not known that there could he balm like this for a bruised and broken spirit. This girl, seeking nothing for herself, refusing anything he could offer, had held up a mirror In which he saw himself limned against dancing, mocking shadows. Nothing In her arraignment had given him a sharper pang than her reference to his loneliness, his failure to command sympathy and confidence in Ida home relationships. No praise had ever been so sweet to him as hers; she not only saw his weaknesses and dealt with them unsparingly, but she recognized also the strength he had wasted and the power he had abused. She saw life in broad vistas as he had believed he saw it; he was not above a stirring of pride that she appreciated him and appraised his gifts rightly. He had long played skillfully upon credulity and ignorance; he had frittered away his life in contentions with groundlings. It would be a relief, if it were possible, lo deal with his peers, the enlightened, the far-seeing and the fearless who strove for groat ends. So he pondered, while outside the sentinel kept ■watch like a fate. "Yes,” Sylvia was saying slowly, “you can make restitution. But nor to the dead—not to my mother asleep over there at Montgomery, oh. not to me! What is done is past, and you can’t go back. There's no going back in this world. But you can go on—you can go on and up—” “No! You don't see that; you don't believe that?” "Yes, I believe it. The old life—the life of mystery and duplicity is over; you will never go back to the old way.” "The old way?” he repeated. “The old unhappy way.” "Do you think you could ever be proud of me?—that you might even care a little, some day?” he asked, bending over her. "Oh, if it could be so!” sh*- whispered brokenly, so low that he bent closer to hear. The room was very’ still. Sylvia rose and began drawing on her grove not looking at him. She was afraid to risk more; there was, indeed, nothing more to say. It was for him to make hi3 choice. He was silent so long that she despaired. Then he passed his hand across his face like one roused from sleep. "Wait a moment.” he said, "and I will walk home with you.” He went to the door and dispatched the guard on an errand; then he seated himself at the table and picked up a pad of paper. He was still writing when Harwood entered. Sylvia and Dan exchanged a nod. hut no words passed between them. They watched the man at the table, as he wrote with a deliberation that Dan remembered as characteristic of him. When he had finished, he copied what he had written, put the copy in his breast pocket and buttoned his coat before glancing at Harwood. “If I withdraw my name, what will happen?” he asked quietly. “Ramsay will be nominated, sir.” Dan answered. Bassett studied a moment, fingering the memorandum he had written; then he looked at Dan quizzically. FIGURES SHOW DEATH AND INSANITY INCREASE Poison Booze Given as Cause in Chicago. By United Press CHICAGO, Jan. 6.—Deaths due to alcoholism, or poison "booze” have increased more than 100 per cent in Chicago, since the advent of prohibition, according to figures compiled at the psycopathic hospital here by Dr. James Whitney Hall. "Before the Volstead act was put in effect deaths from alcoholism averaged seven or eight yearly,” Hall said. "During the first nine months of 1922 twenty-two persons died from bad booze. “Not only is it taking life, but insanitl, traceable to alcoholism, has doubled since the dry law was passed. More than 150 people go insane in Cook County weekly as compared to sixty or seventy in pre-dry times. Family Comes Before Tobacco By United Press ATLANTA, Ga., Jan. 6.—"A woman is only a woman, but a cigar is a good smoke," Rudyard Kipling wrote. But the Georgia Supreme Court decided that a man's family should be placed above a good smoke. The decision was rendered in the ease of Nan Smith against Horace Smith, which was up on appeal after the wife had been granted ?20 a month alimony and? 50 attorney's fees. “The defendant bas stated that if compelled to pay the fees asked he will have no money left for tobacco," the court stated. “We appreciate the pleasures of the weed, but when a man enters the bonds of matrimony he accepts many matrimonial burdens. “One of these burdens is the support of his wife and children, and when a conflict arises between the discharge of this duty and the use of tobacco, the latter must yield to the former.” Marriage ala Mode In Southern Italy and Sicily, women are kept in almost oriental seclusion. Frequently when the husband is obliged to leave home he leaves his wife under lock and key if she is still young and beautiful. This is not regarded as tyranny, but a mark of affection.

“Just between ourselves, Dan, do you really think the Colonel's straight?” “If he isn’t, he has fooled a lot of people,” Dan replied. lie had no idea of what had happened, but he felt that all was well with Sylvia. It seemed a long time since Bassett had called him Dan! “Well, I guess the Colonel's the best we can do. I’m out of it. This is my formal withdrawal. Hand it to Robbins—you know him, of course. It tells him what I want done. My votes go to Ramsay on the next ballot. I look to you to see that it’s played square. Give the Colonel my compliments. That’s all. Good night.” Harwood called Robbins from the room where Bassett’s men lounged, waiting for the convening of the caucus, and delivered the message. As he hurried toward Thatcher’s headquarters he paused suddenly, and bent over the balcony beneath the dome to observe two figures that were slowly descending one of the broad stairways. Morton Bassett and Sylvia were leaving the building together. A shout rang out, echoing hollowly through the corridors, and was followed by scattering cheers from men who were already hastening toward the Senate chamber where the caucus sessions were held. Somehow Morton Bassett’s sturdy shoulders, his step, quickened to adapt it to the pace of his companion, did not suggest defeat. Dan still watched as the two crossed the rotunda on their way to the street. Bassett was talking; he paused for an instant and looked up at the dome, as though calling hi3 companion's attention to its height. Sylvia glanced up. nodded, and smiled as though affirming what Bassett had said; and then the two vanished from Dan’s sight. CHAPTER XXXIII “Sylvia was reading In her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled.” With these words our chronicle began, and they again slip from the pen as I begin these last pages. When Morton Bassett left her at the door of Elizabeth House she had experienced a sudden call of the truant spirit. Sylvia wanted to be alone, to stand apart for a little while from the clanging world and take counsel with herself. Hastily packing a hag, she caught the last train for Montgomery. walked to the Kelton cottage and roused Mary, who had been its lone tenant since the Professor’s death. She sent Mary to bed. and after kindling a fire in the grate, roamed about the small, comfortable rooms, touching wistfully the books, the pictures, the scant bric-a-brac. She made ready her own bed under the eaves where had dreamed her girlhood dreams, shaking from the sheets she found in th* linen chest the leaves of lavender that Mary had strewn among them. She slept late, and woke to look out upon a white world. Across the campus floated the harsh clamor of the chapel bell, and she saw the students tramping through the swirl ing snow just as she had seen them in the old time, the glad and happy times when it had seemed that the world was bounded by the lines of the campus, and that nothing lay beyond it really worth considering, but Centre Church and the courthouse and the dry-goods shop where her grandfather had bought her flrat and only doll. She bade Mary sit down and talk to her while she ate breakfast In the little dining-room: and the old woman poured out upon her the gossip of tho Lane, the latest trespasses of the Greek professor's cow, the escapades of the Phi Gamma Delta’s new dog, the health of Dr. Wandless, tho new baby at the house of the Latin professor, the ill-luck of the Madison Eleven, and like matters that were, and that continue to be, of concern in Buckeye Lane. The sun came out shortly before noon. Sylvia walked into town, bought some flowers, and drove to the cemetery. She told the driver not to wait, and lingered long In the Kelton lot where snow-draped evergreens marked its four comers. The snow lay smooth on the two graves, and she placed her flowers upon them softly without disturbing the white covering. A farmboy whistling along the highway saw her in the lonely cemetery and trudged on silently, hut the did not know that the woman tending her graves did not weep or that when she turned slowly away looking back at last from the iron gates, it was not of the past she thought, nor of the heartache buried there, but of a world newly purified, with long, broad vistas of hope and aspiration lengthening before her. But we must not too long leave the bell—an absurd contrivance of wire and knob—that tinkled rather absently and eerily in the kitchen pantry. Let us repeat once more and for the last time: Sylvia was reading in her grandfather's library when the bell tinkled. Truly enough, a book lay in her lap, but it may be that, after all, she had not done more than skim its pages—an old “Life of Nelson” that had been a favorite of her grandfather’s. Sylvia rose, put down the book, marked it carefully as on that first occasion which so insistently comes back to us as we look in upon her. Mary appeared at the library door, but withdrew, seeing that Sylvia was answering the bell. Some one was stamping vigorously on the step, and as Sylvia opened the door, Dan Harwood stood there, just as on that other day; now, to be sure, he seemed taller than then, though it must be only the effect of his long ulster. “How do you do. Sylvia," he said, and stepped inside without waiting for a parley like that in which Sylvia had engaged h!m on that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon in June. “You oughntn’t to try to hide: it isn’t fair for one thing, and hiding is impossible for another,” “It’s too bad you came.’ said Sylvia. “for I should have been home tomorrow. I came just because. I wanted to be alone for a day.” “I came,” said Dan, laughing, "because I didn’t Jike being alone.” "I hope Aunt Sally isn’t troubled about me. I hadn’t time to tell her I was coming here; I don’t believe I really thought about it; I simply

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wanted to come back here once more before the house is turned over to strangers.” “Oh, Aunt Sally wasn’t worried half as much as I was. She said you were all right; she has great faith in your ability to take care of yourself. I’m pretty sure of it, too!” he said, and bent his eyes upon her keenly. There was nothing there to dismay him; her olive cheeks stfll glowed

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE Old) HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

with color from her walk, and her eyes were clear and steady. “Did you see the paper—today’s paper?” he asked, when they were seated before the fire. ‘‘No,’ she replied, folding her arms and looking at the point of her slipper that rested against the brass fender. “You will be glad to know that the trouble la all over. Ramsay has the

TILL JLiNJJI A A ATULIP x 1 iVi-Lis

senatorshlp, which is merely a formality. They’ve conferred on me the joy of presenting his name. Ramsay is clean and straight, and thoroughly in sympathy with all the new ideas that are sound. Personally, I like him. He’s the most popular and the most presentable man we have, and his election to the Senate will grealy strengthen the party.” He did not know bow far he might

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speak of the result and of the causes that had contributed to it. He was relieved when she asked, very simply and naturally,— "I suppose Mr. Bassett made it possible; it couldn’t have been, you couldn’t have brought it about, without him." “If he hadn’t withdrawn he could have had the nomination himself! Thatcher’* supporters were growing

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—Bv AHERN

wobbly and impatient. We shouldn't any of us care to see Thatcher occupy a seat in the Senate that has been filled by Oliver Morton and Joe MacDonald and Ben Harrison and Dave Turpie. We Hoosiers are not perfect, but our Senators first and last have been men of brains and character. Ramsay won’t break the apostolio succession; he’s all right.” "You think Mr. BasMrtt might have

J XXX> . Oj

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN

had It; you have good reason for believing that?” she asked. “I could name you the men who were ready to go to him. He had the stampede all ready, down to the dress rehearsal. He practically gave away a victory he had been working for all his life." “Yes; he is like that; he am things," murmured Sylvia. (To Be Cantinqefl)