Indianapolis Times, Volume 40, Number 202, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 January 1929 — Page 28

PAGE 28

OOhe Stortf of a Modern Moon Goddess r ~R?SC >% 7s<l?wr rchid mk

CHAPTER XXX Continued. THE wind swept the mountain, and tore madly through the garden. There was a great crashing noise, and a gigantic wrenching. "It sounds as if a tree had been uprooted,” Hollis told her. ‘‘Some of these trees are a great many centuries old. It would be cruel if they should die.” "What if that big mango fell across the house?” asked Ashtoreth. Hollis smiled. “Then,” he said, “the sins we sinned by two and two, we should pay for one by one.” “Aren’t you frightened?” she demanded. “Not a bit. If we’ve a rendezvous with death—you and I—we aren’t going to sidestep it, just because we’re scared you know. If we’re going to die in the arms of that ancient mango—we’ll have had our little fun, won’t we? Our little loves our little dreams you and I.” “Why. you’ve the same philosophy of life and death that Mona had!” she cried. "But we’re not going to talk about life and death,” he reminded her. "You’re going to tell me about that letter your father wrote.” He slipped a pillow behind her back, and drew his chair beside hers. ■M * U “TTS7'ELL,” she said. “I told you VV about what a wonderful person daddy was. And how awfully clever. But I don’t believe I told you about the dreams daddy had for me. “You see, when he died, we thought at first that he hadn’t left any money at all. But, by and by, we discovered that, besides his insurance, he had saved enough more to send me through college. “Daddy didn’t believe very much in marriage. That is, he had some awfully strange idea 5 about it. I don’t know as T ought to tell you this, Mr. Hart—but mother—well, I guess I told you that she and daddy were about as mismated as two people could be. “Now, my mother’s just the best woman that ever lived. Daddy used to say she was fearsomely moral. Awfully, awfully virtuous, you know. I mean she is just as pure as any woman could be. “But she had sort of old-fashioned ideas. About the relations of men and women. Particularly husbands and wives. Marriage, in her eyes, was the most respectable state in the world. And theiefore to be desired above all things. "I know mother loved daddy with alll her heart. But I think she’d have married almost any one who had happened to ask her. And she’d have spent his money like water. “And kept his house as best she could. And been loyal and loving, and an exemplary wife according to her lights. “It never occurred to mother to read or study, or become interested in the things that interested daddy. She thought a wife’s share of marriage was to live with her husband, and cook his meals, and take care of him if he was sick. “But mother’s the very salt of the earth. Holly! She’d have died for daddy—and she’d die for me Only she failed him awfully in the big things of life, I think. Spiritually I mean.” Ashtoreth paused. ‘‘lf I didn’t tell you this,” she explained. “daddy's letter would be quite meaningless. He wa’nted me, you see, to be another sort of woman.” Mr. Hart nodded. “I see,” he said. “Tell me about the letter, Orchid.” CHAPTER XXXI ASHTORETH was remembering - that Mateie’s hard-earned money had paid for her tropical trip. That Maizle’s devotion had nursed her when she was ill. That Maizie’s love enfolded her every hour of the day and night. . . . And, remembering. she felt low and hateful. Unworthy for Maizie to mother and cherish. But she had started her story and she would finish it. “I love my mother with all my heart,” she told herself. “Is it wrong that I should know her, also, for what she is?”

THE NEW Saint-Sinner &yjJnneJlustin C 1928 MA STEVICLIKC

When Crystal Hathaway left the l offices of the Pruitt Wholesale Hardware Company with two weeks’ salary and the shame of having been fired for the ironic reason that she was trying to "make” Stanton society on a private secretary's wage, she had no idea that two days later her movements would be of intense interest to a million people. She knew nothing of the future, thought, indeed, that she could not bear to live to see what the future would bring her, if she could not immediately find the one person who had loved her utterly. Asa score of then uninterested persons reported later. Crystal Hathaway went to the downtown interurban station and boarded the car which would take her to Pablo. The police learned later how she stumbled down the steps of the car at the little box of a station near Grayson's dairy farm, but for a time her movements were shrouded in blessed privacy. No one saw her strike off across the field, for she waited until the interurban train had clanged away into the distance. She had no plan; she was simply going to Pablo, would beg him to forgive her and marry her. What did it matter that he had been only a ‘greaser” farmhand, that his mother was a Mexican woman whose ways could never be her ways? What did anything matter but that she loved the handsomest, dearest, most chivalrous boy in the world and that he loved her—or had loved her, before she had been so cruel to him? Crystal almost ran across the big pasture, beyond which lay the splendid white house and the giant red barns of the Grayson place.

And aloud she said, “Daddy had strange ideas about morality. You know how everybody thinks that if a woman is loyal to her husband, and works for him, and never looks at anybody else but him—why, they just naturally call her a moral woman. Don’t they? Everybody does.” Mr. Hart nodded. “Why, I suppose so,* he said. “Well, daddy didn’t,” she declared. “He thought that any woman who got married, just to get herself supported, was exactly as bad as if she’d never married the man at all. But just lived with him. “Here’s one paragraph from the letter he wrote me. I can quote every word of it because I know it all by heart: “ ‘lf you trust exclusively to your youthful charms for your provision in life,’ he said, ‘and if your cunning is further prompted by your mother, you will have just the same aim as a courtesan, Ashtoreth. Only you will be wiser and less honest.’ ” 000 A* SHTORETH paused to explain. “I found the letter,” she said, ‘three days after daddy died. He had tucked it under some things in my bureau drawer. “It was in a big white envelope, all stuck up with red sealing wax. And it said on it: ‘For Ashtoreth; a personal letter To be opened after her father’s death.’ “That was long before Judge Lindsey and everybody started talking about companionate marriage. But daddy quoted something that he said Nietzsche said. “‘lf married couples did not live together,’ he said,*‘happy marriages would be more frequent.’ And after that he wrote, ‘To be surfeited with love is a tragedy. In marriage there is inevitable satiety.’ And he advised me, if I loved a man a great deal, to refuse to live with him.” Hollis pursed his lips reflectively. “That was pretty strong fodder for a 16-year-old girl,” he observed. “Well, he said that women like to believe that love can do everything,” expounded Ashtoreth. “That it is a superstition peculiar to us. And that the sooner I found out how helpless and blundering even the best and deepest love is, the better cff I’d be. And he said that love destroys, rather than saves.” “Do you suppose,” asked Hollis, “that he felt that your mother’s love for him had destroyed him ?” 000 ASHTORETH hesitated. “ifrell,” she said, “I think mother’s devotion was a sort of suffocating thing. Mother isn’t what you’d call an inspirational person, Holly.” “Did you father read Nietzsche a great deal?” inquired Hollis. “Would you call him a student of Nietzsche’s philosophy?” “Why yes, I suppose so. Daddy read a lot,” explained Ashtoreth. Hollis held her hands in his. “And don’t you know,” he asked her, “that Nietzsche preached a decadent philosophy? The philosophy of gloom and horror. Now, my dear, I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world. “And I’ve no doubt your father was a remarkable man, and a wonderful father. . . . But you know, it seems, Orchid, you’re rather overlooking your mother. She sounds to me like a lovely, wholesome soul. “And it's rather a dreadful thing you know, child, when a young girl gets to feeling so very superior to the mother who bore her.” Ashtoreth smiled loftily. “That ‘mother who bore you’ stuff bores me to tears,” she announced. “And that sanctity drivel about motherhood! Why, just because a woman’s been through a perfectly normal, natural experience, people should start writing pon*s and singing songs about her, is more than I can see.” Hollis smiled at her. “Don’t,” he besought, “be a modem! Bea nice, old-fashioned little girl.” —“But I’m not old-fashioned!” she cried, “and I'm not particularly nice.”

“Well. I think you are,” he told

i Cattle grazed languidly on the frost-nipped grass; the “imo toro, very tame,” which Palo had delighted to tease with his magnificent scarlet cape, cocked a speculative eye at her, shook his head as if he were saying. “Naughty, naughty! But I'm too lazy to bother you today.” Crystal laughed, had the impulse to stroke his splendid, gleaming sides. But she ran on, for Pablo was all that realy mattered. “He’ll look at me with those boyish, ardent black eyes and whisper, ‘Diamante mia! Querida mia!’” Crystal told herself, her breath catching on a sob. “Oh, I’ve been a fool, a fool! The greatest thing in the world and I was too proud—me. too proud! Oh, Pablo!” A distant shout brought her up short. She thought at first that it was Pablo, who had seen her and was calling to her. But it was a farmhand in overalls, shouting to a team of horses hitched to some complicated piece of farm machinery Suddenly the girl was frightened, intensely aware of the scene her arrival and demand to see Pablo Mendoza would create. She load no idea that her trysts with the Mexican boy had been spied upon, believed that no one but Pablo and herself knew of their Indian summer love Idyll. Her feet lagged; the pride which she had been scoffing a moment before reared its head. No. she could not face the terrible foreman who had called Pablo a “damned greaser.” She would go to their bit of woods and wait there until he came, wait forever, if necessary. But he would come! (To Be Continued.) '■ ■ ,J^r v • ! ' .

her. “So don’t spoil my good opinion of you.” “I wonder,” she remarked, changing the subject suddenly, "if it’s ever going to stop blowing. Maybe I won’t be leaving tomorrow after all. I should think the whole side of the mountain would be an absolute washout.” “It probably will be,” he admitted. “How would you like to stay a little longer?” “I’d be fearfully compromised,” she declared, “but I certainly would love it.” “You’re compromised already,” he said. “Wait until your pious friends learn that you’ve visited with me for a week!” 000 HE laughed boyishly. . . . “What will Sadie say?” he asked. But Ashtoreth did not want to talk about Sadie. “Oh, she’d say 'plenty,” she admitted. "But I don’t propose broadcasting this little stop-over, you know, Hollis. “I’m not going to WNAC and make a speech. Or hand out a statement to the press. What makes you think my pious friends are going to learn about it?” “Pious friends,” he told her sagely, “have strange and devious ways of finding out what we least want them to know. Haven’t you discovered that?” “I don’t believe I ever tried to keep things from people before,” she answered. “W-w-w-ee-ee-e!” shrieked the wind. “W-w-ee-ee-ee!” . . . And they fell silent, to listen. It was moaning like a lunatic. Mornfully, as if it repented the devastate nit had wrought. Ashtoreth surprised herself when she spoke again. “I mean,” she said, “I’m always keeping things from people. . . . I suppose everybody pretends—but I’m the worst counterfeit that ever lived! “It was a preposterous lie for me to say I never tried to keep things from people. To tell the truth, Holly, it’s the busiest thing I do.” She laughed nervously, “It’s this uncanny wind that’s making me so truthful,” she confessed. “It’s as if God was flying all around the place. “I mean I’ve been making believe all my life. I’m always trying to keep things from people. My poverty, for instance. The fact that I’ve never been very much to school— I didn’t tell you, Holly, that mother and I buoght fur coats and a walnut bedroom set with the money daddy put away for college, “And other clothes besides. Dresses we couldn’t afford, and hats, and shoes and things. In those days I’d rather put money on my back than in my head. I know better now, but it’s too late.” Hollis laughed softly. “You’re having a perfect orgy of confessions,” he said. “When the wind stops howling you’ll be sorry you’ve told me so much about yourself.” Ashtoreth looked thoughtful. “I’m a fr aud, I know,” she declared. “But I think almost everybody pretends they’re nicer than they really are. If we didn’t, I don’t believe anybody would like us very much. “It is only when you get to know people awfully well that you dare to be yourself with them. And I don’t know that it’s wise even then. "For instance, if I hadn’t pretended that I was a most unusual stenographer that first time you ever £aw me, yoh’d never have thought about me again. If you’d known I was just a common, kitchen-garden working girl, you wouldn’t have looked at me. “Millionaires don’t play with the hired help unless the hired help looks rather special. So I started showing off the very moment you noticed the ring. “Talking about scarabs and Cleopatra. And pretending my mother was a student of antiquities —” 000 ASHTORETH blushed. .. . “Os course,” she said, “girls always tell lies to men that interest them. When a v oman is absolutely truthful with a man she either loves him beyond all reason or he hasn’t registered at all.” Hollis came and stood in front of her. “You’re being absolutely truthful with me,” he said. She tried to laugh. To pass it off lightly. . . . “It’3 the wind,” she declared. “I'm afraid to tell lies. I’m scared to death. God might strike me dead with a mange branch. Then what would I do?” “Did you mean what you just said?” he demanded. “Why, yes,” she parried. “I guess so. I mean, I never told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before.” “Then I don’t register at all?” “Now, see here, Hollis Hart!” she protested. “If you think you can win a declaration out of me that way!” . . . You know perfectly well you do.” He drew her to her feet. Their eyes, as they faced each other, were nearly on a level. Gray-green eyes blazing into blue ones. Hollis” eyes, reflected Ashtoreth, were a sort of unholy blue, and extremely thrilling when they flashed like that. “But you don't love me,” he insisted. “Now you're telling more lies.” “How do you know I don't? ’ she asked . . . and shrank a little from the fire that blazed in those blue, blue eyes. “One doesn’t banter about love,” he said. “I’m not bantering,” she told him. . . . Now . . . now he was going to tell her that he loved her! . . . Loved her truly. “Ah, Orchid!” he whispered. “Little lovely Orchid, playing with love.” 000 HE put his hands on her shoulders and shook her playfully, “You’re a darling fraud,” he told her. “And I’m glad you're going home tomorrow.” “Why?” she ask and. “Why am I a fraud? And why are you glad I’m going home?” He answered her seriously. “You're a fraua,” he said, “for the same reason that you are beautiful, and young, and soft. And make men want to love you. . . . (To be continued)

THE INDIANAPOLIsITIMES

! OUR BOARDING HOUSE

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BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

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FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS

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WASHINGTON TUBBS II

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SALESMAN SAM

MRS.HONORS IS TOSSIM A A K.O. GUZX.I fVJeLL.eVeRYTHIMCrS CARE OH \ C BRlO&e PARTY THIS aft; Jup AMO AT BUT TK' STUFFED OLIVES - GUESS J / SAM-6U-L HER. OROEP. < ’Et*v , HUH f I'LL HAFTa DASH OUT AM’ S 7 IW A HURRY {j r '

MON’N POP

THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE

After Oates had walked out into the blizzard to die, that his friends might have a better chance to live. Finally the pitiless eleScott, Wilson and Bowers, with breaking hearts, fought ments d rr ve them to onward to the north. Snow as fine as sand and sharp shelter.. They pitched as steel filings lashed them, making breathing almost their tent. They had impossible. enough food for two W*. HwMgt. Stroll t -&S Vdays.

OUT OUR WAY

By Ahern

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r MRS.HOMORS’CL HAFTa GO N WHAT TH‘ T f 7 VIOHOUT TH’ STUFFED OLIVES, } HECK ARE. 1 - Giazl ( WENT DOWN *TU’ / 1 UCISW. STREET TA GET SOME, S ABOUT— WHO • . - BUT TU’ GUY THREW ME. J THREW YA a //' * > — v* ~ y, •" ~~~ 1-1 —J r, \

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m They wrote their last letters of farewell and com* They spent four days pleted their diaries. Scott wrote a noble message tellin that tent. Cold anding of the cause of the disaster. He dedicated beautistarvation grr. and (.’ all y ful tributes to his comrades dying near him. He penned sapped them. The spec- notes of sympathy to the relatives of his- followers, ter of death stood at Death came as he lay in'his sleeping bag. their elbows. *4 Is*.,*.,™i trmm (To Be Continued) hu N_ • —— * ■ 'i ■

SKETCHES BY BESSEY. SYNOPSIS BY BKACCHER

JAK 11,1929

—By Williams

—By Martin

By Blosser

By Crane-

By Small

By Cowani