Indianapolis Times, Volume 48, Number 26, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 April 1936 — Page 35

APRIL 10, 1936.

Today’s Short Story

DRINK TO ME ONLY By Charles McGuirk

'ITTHEN you first meet Eve Shore * * you immediately think of romantic possibilties because she ha* all the things that a woman can bring into a romance. She Is beautiful and shapely in a dark, Junoesqu® way. She Is a good and sympathetic listener. And what more can a man ask of any woman? But when you’ve known Eve a while and. maybe, made some suggestions along those lines, you find out that Eve is not Interested in romance. More than that, she wants no par: of it. Then you'll realize that your first Impressions were all wrong and you’ll wonder how you ever got the idea that there was anything romantic about her in the first place. But, If Eve approves of you and takes you into her very infrequent confidence, you will learn that your first impressions were absolutely correct, though not in this phase of her life. She is, she’ll tell you firmly, through with love, or any part of it. She tells it simply but with a sincerity which you can't doubt. a a a EVE is one of those earnest, businesslike drinkers w r ho have evolved among modern women since the advent of repeal. You will find them at the fashionable bars from cocktail hour until it is time to dress for dinner. At dinner, they start with a cocktail and end with a liqueur and after the theater they step into the night clubs and dance and gossip while they sip drink for drink with their escorts. And, if the escorts aren’t careful, they see that they are safely carried home before they feel at liberty to go home themselves.' Eve has a very comfortable income of her own, which may or may not be a good thing for her, because it eliminates any necessity of doing anything but what she pleases. There are many things she could be if she wanted to. She is a better than good pianist. She studied ballet for 12 years. Her letter writing betrays the embryo author who needs only the drive of ambition to bring her, at least, into the magazines. And then, she has her looks, her family and her money. She could marry almost any man she chose. But she doesn’t want to marry. She plays the piano only when she Is sad. She is crowding 30 and dancing is to strenous. The things she likes to do most is to discuss Ben Jonson, that swash-buckling contemporary of Will Shakespeare, who saw the Sixteenth Century out and the Seventeenth Century in through the bottom of a glass, and to drink in that earnest businesslike way of hers. •a a a A MAN who will here be called Bill, because that Is not his name, is responsible for Eve’s lack of drive and, very probably for her well-defined and well-controlled thirst. He is also responsible for her sincere determination to be through with love. Bill is a husband and a father. That, Eve will tell you, if she tells you anything about the affair, is what gets her down. "To think that I,” she says, “a sophisticated New Yorker could have been taken in as easily and as completely as the farmer’s daughter, is the thing that makes me laugh at myself.” And she will laugh, but the laugh isn't a pleasant thing to hear. She and Bill met at a cocktail party on Park-av when cocktail parties were against the law anc! therefore the most interesting things in the life of the younger generation. Eve did not care so much for liquor then. She was in the stage when she could take it or let it alone, preferring most of the time, however, not to let it alone. The apartment was crowded and Eve, a little bored, had wandered over to the piano. She was playing her favorite piece, that little thing Ben Johnson wrote “To Celia'’ three hundred years or so ago, playing it softly and thinking about the man who wrote it and whether he really did love Celia or was just writing himself out of a hang-over. She knew enough about him to know that the latter was very possible. a a a CO she played it with a great deal of feeling. She played it to the end. And then she Just sat there, thinking the music and wondering where the tune had come from because the tune had not always been with the verse. She had known the song yeafs before she had learned that the words had not originally been written to the music. So she began to play it again, softer than usual. And then over her shoulder a man’s voice picked it up. a baritone voice, singing it as softly as she played. “Drink to me only with thine eyes he sang) “And I will pledge wdth mine; “Or leave a kiss but in the cup, “And I’ll not look for wine. “And thirst that from the soul doth rise “Doth ask a drink divine; “But might I of Jove's nectar sup, “l wouU not change for thine.” It was a good voice, trained, and it did something to her. It turned her heart over so that when she swung around to look at him. she was more than half ready to fall in love. “That,’• he said, “is the most beautiful song in the English 1, nguage.” a a a HE was tall and dark and heavy. He had soft brown eyes, a soft, mouth, a soft voice and a soft body which, some day, would become mountainous. Eve fell in love with him on sight. He was a professional singer who had come to New York from a small Midwest town and had found a place in radio. He sang very early every morning on a 15-minute program. It wasn't much of a job, but it had great possibilities. Already he was receiving fan mail and he had his eye out for the inevitable chance which would land him on one of the nation-wide hookups of one of the big stations. Eve learned all this by degrees

in the time she spent with him. It sas5 as quite a lot of time because he ad plenty of it on his hands and she began to live Just for him. She found him different from the other men she knew. He was typically small town, oddly intolerant of things that New Yorkers never think of. He was intolerant of Ben Jonson. She found that out when he talked to her of the poet one day. v “If we could disregard his private life,” Bill told her solemnly. “Ben Jonson would be almost as well loved as William Shakespeare. You knew, didn't you, he not only lived in Shakespeare’s time but he was even an intimate of Shakespeare?” Yes. Eve knew that. a a a “OUT you can’t admire the man,” Bill pointed out patiently. “You can admire his work, his beautiful poems and one or two of his plays. You can admire the fact that he was one of the best learned men of his time. But you can’t admire him or the way he lived because he wasn’t really a good Christian.” “Was Shakespeare?” “Certainly. He married Ann Hathaway and took good care of her and all their children. In fact, it was the necessity of supporting the family that drove Shakespeare to write most of his plays.” “But didn't Shakespeare have to marry Ann Hathaway?” Eve asked innocently. “Seems to me I remember some scandal like that and another about Shakespeare having to run away from Stratford because he had been detected poaching deer.” “That’s the trouble with New Yorkers,” Bill told her severely. “They go in for dirt. They go searching through the lives of celebrities for something scandalous.’ “And they’re pretty successful most of the time,” Eve smiled. “They go in for scandal,” Bill continued, ignoring her remark, “and for hard living. For instance, most New York women drink too much. Even you, Eve, drink too much. It is the only criticism I could make of you. Otherwise, you’re perfect.” a a a VTOW Eve was in love with him. She thought more of him than of anything else in the world. If he had asked her to jump over the moon, she would have jumped. She didn’t care anything about drinking. She did it because it was the fashion. And if he wanted her to quit, why she’d quit. “If that’s the way you feel about it, Bill,” she told him, “I’ve taken my last drink.” “Marvelous!” he praised her. “Now you’re perfect. You know I love you, don’t you, Eve? And it hurts me to see you doing anything like drinking that might tend to coarsen you.” Eve was thrilled with the high regard he held her in. “I’ll drink,” she told him earnestly, “to you but it will be only with my eyes.” He told her she was the most wonderful woman in the world. He told her he loved her. He told her of the things he planned for them to do together. He told her a lot of things. But he never told her about the wife and baby daughter he had left back in his home town to wait until he could make enough to bring them on to New York. a a a CO Eve Shore never knew of their existence. And in the course of time, his gradually increasing income and Mrs. Bill’s insistence, made it necessary for him to send for them and they came on to New York. Nobody else knew of their existence because Bill had told his studio that he W'as unmarried, having the born ham’s fear of his “public.” Your public, he argued, did not want you to get married or to be married. When it found you were, it -simply shunted you out of favor. So Eve never heard of Mrs. Bill and her baby daughter but Mrs. Bill heard of Eve. She heard a lot about Eve and she read a column one time of Bill and Eve being together. She protested to Bill but Bill told her he’d do something awful to her if she made any row about it. Mrs. Bill knew Bill pretty well by this time and she knew that he would keep his promise. So after thinking it over about a month and hearing time after time of Bill’s intimacy with Eve, she decided to go to Eve and plead with her to drop the affair. When Eves maid announced “Mrs. Bill,” Eve's heart dropped into her shoes. So Bill was married! Oh, how could he have done this to her? But then she got hold of herself. She told the maid to show’ Mrs. Bill in. a a a “T WANT you to drop your affair X with my husband,” Mrs. Bill said, coming immediately to the point. “Why should I?” Eve answered. “I didn't know he had a wife, but now that I do know it, I don't recognize your right to him. because obviously you haven’t been able to hold him. Why should I give him up?” “Because he has a baby daughter," Mrs. Bill told her. “You wouldn't deprive a child of her father, would you?" Eve admitted she wouldn’t, and she promised to give Bill up. When Bill called at the apartment that night he found Eve sitting in a deep chair drinking highballs. She was more than half drunk. When he chided her. she laughed. “I know I promised to drink to you only with my eyes," she said, “but it takes a stronger drink than I can drink with my eyes to make me forget a thing like you. Your w’ife, whom I didn't know you had married. was here to see me today. “She told me of your baby daughter. I won’t say what I think of you, because, though a New Yorker. I don’t use such language. Will you be kind enough to get out of here before I have you thrown out?” Bill got out. but Eve went right on drinking. She has been drinking from that to this. THE END.

OUR BOARDING HOUSE

YEAH-~T BEEM taw! KWCHAEU-^^A VIgTl WaJT-p, wo 7 W CALLED *TO LOKJDONt W \T<S FOLLY, LEAVIM<S / HOOkLE & fALLOP-ASUPPENJ/J AT BEDTIME LIKE J PAYIM6 TOR J |p f T'LL KEED 1M THIS. THE HOS- Jl HIS AWAKE, L jGUCR WIT* YOUSE'-~ ) ■pVTALrry OF ,T L00,<5 TTHEM I here! THIS SQUARES ) HOORLE MANOR } US TER TH' BOARD?— / IS YOURS AS LOUS J L AN' BERE'S A FEW < AS VCU WISH TO \

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—

IF I WANT TO KEEP THE WOMAN'S GUILD FEELS 'yES, MRS. GERRY, I TAG, HCW MANY TIMES A. POP; I JUST WANTED 16 'll " THAr 'toJ are making a bust-bodies.' there know what i'm doing! Mm mustitell>feu not ) tell 'itoa.nHE window SERIOUS MISTAKE, MR GOES THE PHONE AGAIN, AND I ALSO KNOW It) INTERRUPT "rOLIR \ IS OPEN IN THE BED- . MIND TOURS " f A^WIALCRIMfNAL' 3 FOR THE TENTH , TOT lAM RESPON- FATHER WHEN HE'S 1 ROOM NUTTY IS J V ID TOURS.. 1) 'L PCTTHKrTIAL CRIMINAL! , TIME TONIGHT.'.' J; SIBLE FOR THAT BCYS ) HE y PHONING ? SOklE A IH ' rBOT,SM3riT!USr " n

WASHINGTON TUBBS II

'o.K..gC>yS,\/ /)P "ft Tc£- R r2£s / MCV7 THE COAST \( WHERE'S VCJR Mpk. HERE-/ N£X POOR | / 43u (S3cl|J&lT LOOKS

ALLEY OOP

YOU MUGS -NOW, LET THIS Be A 1 f /TH'GRAND WfZER 9T OIMMY 'N LESSON TOyUH/ DINNY IS TAKIW' ( DOME SUMPiSJ TO SOCKED ALLEY! 1 HIS ORDERS FROM ME, HEREAFTER, PINNY - I PONT GREAT SAKES, \ AN' YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT H N KNOW WHAT. I SAY -1 NEVER Kp, OR ELSE/ _ BUT _

BOOTS AND HER BUDDIES

isn't IT A I VEKA™ i lOA . EAY WAVT II ) f t~ i 111 111 '.WWT.IX I. | WOMT ■ 111 i T

THE TARZAN TWINS

The flight of the four fugitives from the Bagalla cannibals was slow indeed. Ukundo and Bulala, swift men of the jungle, had to slacken their pace so that Dick and Doc might keep up with them, for the boys had been seriously weakened by their captivity and vile food.

Always Choose |{£M SltK DeLuxe Stockings, 6sc Pr. for QUALITY—for BEAUTY-for ECONOMY! DOWNSTAIRS AT AYRES

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

They were already tired and hungry before the day had fully dawned. Their bare feet, sore and bleeding, tramped painfully along dim trails. And the naked flesh of their bodies was torn and scratched by the cruel thorns that seemed to reach out to seize them. ...

With Major Hoople

OUT OUR WAY

[Ullll 11 ip P'liipiiiin ASE^PB-NQT^BQRM

—r>y wane k. ..■ f 1936 BY NEA SERVICE. INfc TM. REG U / S.'PAT. OFF. ~; L

DJ £llllllllll f .iitK^nr'i betcha iu. jarl ( a a/MHi - xTTi V\ itWHsll SOME SEWSE SACK n ,# ■%. fiP t*f _ /£7 © BY E NEA ~

—d> marim l£&(0)Coi I mSTHER THNVi L- Wttfc A \_ONS>G I OTVA^RTIDES' W *'' f TO3l **** t ....1 I Lilli j' * H .-■ 1111 BY ME* SERVICE. INC. T. M. WUIV.*. r*T. Os F.

. . . Meanwhile, Tarzan. mounted on Tantor the elephant, directed his Waziri warriors in a frantic search for the boys. Through their alert eyes, he scoured vast sections of the gloomy forest; and their many feet were as his own in traveling many trails, . . .

—By Edgar Rice Burroughs

. . . But the searchers had not yet reached that territory through which the Bagalla pursued the hapless Tarzan Twins. These fleet cannibals suffered no handicaps of weakness or tender flesh. And their savage bloodlust was fuel to their powerful muscles.

.COMIC PAGE

—By Williams

—By Blosser

—By Crane

—By Hamlin

—By Martin