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About The banner-courier. (Oregon City, Or.) 1919-1950 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 21, 1922)
THE B&NNEii-6dttoER, OREGON CITY, OREGON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1922. Page Six 5oSvIOMT BV MARKS CB06. . mJk -3 -cnlflMT BV UlRMR flBBOe. I. The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday; so quiet that there seemed an echo to my foot steps. It was four o'clock In the morn ing; clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to the shadowy sidewalk and lay like a trans parent silver fog upon the house of my admiration, as I strode along, return ing from my first night's work on the Walnwrlght Morning Despatch. I had already marked that house as the finest (to my taste) In Wainwright, though hitherto, on my excursions to this metropolis, the state capital, I was not without a certain native jealousy ' that Spencervllle, the couuty-seat where I lived, had nothing so good. Now, however, I approached its pur lieus with a pleasure In it quite unal loyed, for I was at last myself a resi dent (albeit of only one day's stand ing) of Walnwrlght, and the house though I had not even an idea who lived there part of my possessions as ' a citizen. Moreover, I might enjoy the warmer pride of a next-door-neighbor, for Mrs. Apperthwalte's, where I had taken a room, was just beyond. This was the quietest part of Waln wrlght; business stopped short of It, and the "fashionable residence sec tion" had overleaped this "forgotten backwater," leaving it undisturbed and unchanging, with that look about it which is the quality of few urban quarters, and eventually of none, as a town grows to be a city the look of still being a neighborhood. This friend liness of appearance was largely the emanation of the homely and beauti ful house which so greatly pleased my fancy. It might be difficult to say why I thought It the "finest" house in Waln wrlght, for a simpler structure would be hard to imagine; It was merely a big, old-fashioned brick house, painted brown and very plain, set well away from the street among some splendid forest trees, with a fair spread of flat lawn. But It gave back a great deal for your glance, Just as some people do. It was a large house, as I say, yet It looked not like a mansion but like a home; and made you wish that you lived in It Or, driving by, of an eve ning, you would have liked to stop your car and go in; It spoke so sure ly of hearty, old-fashioned people liv ing there, who would welcome you merrily. It looked like a house where there were a grandfather and a grand mother; where holidays were warmly kept; where there were boisterous family reunions to which uncles and aunts, who had been born there, would return from no matter what distances ; a house where big turkeys would be on the table often; where one called "the hired man," (and named either Ahner or Ole) would crack walnuts upon a flatiron clutched between his knees on the back porch; it looked like a house where they played cha rades; where there would be 'long streamers of evergreen and dozens of wreaths of holly at Christmas time; where there were tearful, happy wed dings and great throwlngs of rice after little brides, from the broad front steps: in a word, it was the sort of a house to make the hearts of spinsters and bachelors very lonely and wist ful and that is about as near as I can come to my reason for thinking it the finest house In Walnwrlght The moon hung kindly above Its level door in the silence of that Oc tober morning, as I checked my gait to loiter along the picket fence; but suddenly the house showed a light of Its own. The spurt of a match took my eye to one of the upper windows, then a steadier glow of orange told me that a lamp was lighted. The win dow was opened, and a man looked out and whistled loudly. I stopped, thinking he meant to at tract my attention; that something mlent no wroncr: tnnt nprhnrva snmp- one was needed to go for a doctor. My mistake was immediately evident, how ever; I stood In the shadow of the trees bordering the sidewalk, and the man at the window had not seen me. "Boy I Boy!" he called, softly. "Where are you, Simpledoria?" He leaned from the window, looking downward. "Why, there you arel" he exclaimed, and turned to address some Invisible person within the room. "He's right there underneath the window. Til bring him up." He leaned out again. "Walt there, Simpledoria I" he called. 'TU be down In a Jiffy and let you In." Puzzled, I stared, at the vacant lawn before me. The clear moonlight re vealed It brightly, and it was empty of any living presence; there were no bushes nor shrubberies nor even shadows that could have been mis taken for a boy, If "Simpledoria" was a boy. There was no dog in sight; there was no cat; there was nothing beneath the window except thick, close-cropped grass. A light shone in the hallway behind the broad front door; one of these was opened, and revealed In silhouette the tall, thin figure of a man In a long, old-fashioned dressing-gown. "Simpledoria," he said, addressing the night air with considerable sever ity, "I don't know what to make of you. . Tou might have caught your death of cold, roving out at such an hour. But there," he continued, more Indulgently ; "wipe your .feet on the mat "and come In. You're safe now !" He closed the door, and I heard him call to some one up-stalrs, as he ar ranged the fastenings : "Simpledoria Is all right only a little chilled. I'll bring him up to your fire." I went on my way in a condition of astonishment that engendered, almost, a doubt of my eyes; for if my sight was unimpaired and myself not sub ject to optical or mental delusion, nei ther boy nor dog nor bird nor cat, nor any other object of this visible world, had entered that opened door. Was my "finest" house, then, a place of call for wandering ghosts, who came home to roost at four in the morning? It was only a step to Mrs. Apper thwalte's ; I let myself in with the key that good lady had given me, stole up to my room, went to my window, and stared across the yard at the house next door. The front window in the second story, I decided, necessarily belonged to that room in which the lamp had been lighted; but all was dark there 'now. I went to bed, and dreamed that I was out at sea in a fog, having embarked on a transpar ent vessel whose preposterous name, inscribed upon glass life-belts, depend ing here and there from an Invisible rail, was "Simpledoria." II. Mrs. Apperthwalte's was a commo dious old house, the greater part of It of about the same age, I judged, as Its neighbor; but the late Mr. Apper thwaite had caught the Mansard fever, of the late 'Seventies, and the building disease, once fastened upon him, had never known a convalescence, but rather, a series of relapses, the tokens of which, In the nature of a cupola and a couple of frame turrets, were terrl fylngly apparent. These romantic mis placements seemed to me not Inhar monious with the library, a cheerful and pleasantly shabby apartment down-stairs, where 1 found (over a substratum of history, encyclopedia, and family Bible) some worn old vol umes of "Godey's Lady's Book," an early edition of Cooper's works ; Scott, Bulwer, Macaulay, Byron, and Tenny son, complete; some old volumes of Victor Hugo, of the elder Dumas, of Flaubert, of Gautier, and of Balzac; "Clarissa," "Lalla Kookh," "The Al hambra," "Beulah," "Uarda," "Lucile," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Ben-Hur," "Trilby," "She," "Little Lord Faunt leroy;" and of a later decaae, there were novels about those delicately tan gled emotions experienced by the su preme few ; and stories of adventurous royalty; tales of "clean-limbed young American manhood ;", and some thin, volumes of rather precious verse. 'Twas amid these romantic scenes that I awaited the sound of the lunch bell (which for me was the announce ment of breakfast), when I arose from my first night's slumbers under Mrs. ' Apperthwalte's roof; and I wondeMd if the books were a fair mirror of Miss Apperthwalte's mind (I had been told that Mrs. Apperthwalte had a daugh ter). Mrs. Apperthwalte herself. In her youth, might have sat to an illus trator of Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid, gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's insolvency (coincident with his demise) to "keep ing boarders," she did it gracefully, as If the urgency thereto were only a' spirit of quiet hospitality. It should be added In haste that she set an ex cellent table. Moreover, the guests who gathered at her board were of a very attractive description, as I decided the Instant my eye fell upon the lady who sat op posite me. at .lunch. I knew at once that she" was Miss Apperthwalte, she "went so," as they say, with her mother; nothing could have been more suitable. Mrs. Apperthwalte was the kind of woman whom you would ex pect to have a beautiful daughter.' and Miss Apperthwalte more than fulfilled her mother's promise. I guessed her to be more than Juliet Capulet's age, Indeed, yet still be tween that and the perfect age of woman. She was of a larger, fuller, more striking type than Mrs! Apper thwalte, a bolder type one might put It though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs. Apper thwaite without being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. She had an abundance of very soft, dark hair, worn almost austerely, as if Its pro fusion necessitated repression ; and I am compelled to admit that her fine eyes expressed a distant contempla tion obviously of habit not of mood so pronounced that one of her enemies (if she had any) might have described them as "dreamy." - Only one other of my own' sex was present at the lunch table, a Mr. Dow den, an elderly lawyer and politician of whom I had heard, and to whom Mrs. Apperthwalte, coming in alter the rest of us were seated, introduced me. She made the presentation gen eral; and I had the experience of re ceiving a nod and a slow glance, in which there was a sort of dusky, esti mating brilliance, from the beautiful lady opposite me. It nileht' base .been better mannered for me to address myself to "Mr. "Dow den, or one of the very nice elderly women, who were my fellow-guests, than to open a conversation with Miss Apperthwalte; but I did not stop to think of that. .."You have a splendid old house next door to you here, Miss Apperthwaite," I said. "It's a privilege to find it in view from my window." , There was a faint stir as of some consternation In the little company. The elderly ladies stopped talking ab ruptly and exchanged glances, though this was not of my observation nt the moment, I think, but recurred to my consciousness later, when I had per ceived my blunder. "May J ask -who lives there?" I pur sued. .- Miss Apperthwaite allowed her no ticeable lashes to cover her eyes for an instant, then looked up again. "A Mr. Beasley," she said. "Not the Honorable David Beasley !" I exclaimed. "Yes,"-she returned with a certain gravity which I- afterward wished had checked me. "Do you know him?" "Not In person," I explained. "You see, I've written a good deal about him. I was with the Spencervllle Journal until a few days ago, and even In the country we know who's who in politics over the state. Beas ley's the man that went to Congress and never made a speech never made even a motion to adjourn but got ev erything his district wanted. There's talk of him for governor." "Indeed?" , "And so It's the Honorable David Beasley who lives in that splendid place. How curious that Is !" "Why?" asked Miss Apperthwalte. "It seems too big for one man," I answered ; "and I've always had the Impression Mr. Beasley was a bach elor." "Yes," she said, rather slowly, "he Is." "But of course he doesn't live there all alone," I supposed, aloud, "prob ably he has " , . "No.. There's no one else except a couple of colored servants." "What a crime!" I exclaimed. "If there ever was a house meant for a large family, that one Is. ' Can't you almost hear It crying out for heaps and heaps of romping children? I should think" I was interrupted by a loud cough from Mr. Dowden, so abrupt and artW ficial that his intention to check fhe flow of my Innocent prattle was em barrassingly obvious even to me! "Can you -tell me," he said, leaning forward and following up the inter ruption as hastily as possible, "what the farmers were getting for their wheat when you left Spencerville?" "One twenty-five," I answered, and felt my ears growing red with mortifi cation. Too late, I remembered that the new-comer in a community should guard his tongue among the natives until he has unraveled the skein of their relationships, alliances, feuds and private wars a precept not un like the classic injunction : Bp Mrs. Apperthwaite Was the Kind of Woman Whom You Would Expect to Have a Beautiful Daughter, and Miss Apperthwaite More Than Ful filled Her Mother's Promise. Yes, my darling daughter; . Hang your clothes on the hickory limb, But don't go near the water. However, in my confusion I warmly regretted my failure to follow it and resolved not to blunder again. Mr. Dowden thanked me for the in formation for which he had no real desire, and, the elderly ladies again taking up (with all too evident relief) their various mild debates, he inquired if I played bridge. "But I forget," he added. "Of course you'll be at the Despatch office In the evenings, and can't be here." After which he im mediately began to question me about my work, making his determination to give me no opportunity again to men tion the Honorable David Beasley un necessarily conspicuous, as I thought I could only conclude .that some un pleasantness had arisen between him self and Beasley, probably of political origin, since they were both in poli tics, and of personal (and consequent ly bitter) development; and that Mr. Dowden found the mention of Beas ley not only unpleasant to himself but a possible embarrassment to the ladies (who, I supposed, were aware of the quarrel) on his account' After lunch, not having to report at the office Immediately, I took unto my self the solace of a cigar, which kept me company during a stroll about Mrs. Apperthwaite's capacious yard. In the rear I found an old-fashioned rose garden the bushes long since bloom less and now brown with autumn and I paced Its graveled paths up and down, at the same time favoring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of curiosity farfrom satisfied concerning the iuterestingpremises next-loor. The gentleman In the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life about the place. That portion of his yard which lay behind the house was not within my vision, it Is true, his property being here sepa rated from Mrs. Apperthwaite's by a board fence higher than a tall man could reach ; but there was no sound from the other side of this partition, save that caused by the quiet move ment of rusty leaves in the breeze. - My cigar was at half-length when the green lattice door of Mrs. Apper thwaite's back porch was opened and Miss Apperthwalte, bearing a saucer of milk, Issued therefrom, followed, hastily, by a very white, fat cat, with a pink ribbon round Its neck, a vibrant nose, and fixed, voracious eyes up lifted to the saucer. The lady and her cat offered to view' a group as pretty as a popular painting ; It was even Im proved when, stooping. Miss Apper thwaite set the saucer upon the ground, and, continuing in that pos ture, stroked the cat. "To bend so far Is a test of a woman's grace, I have observed. She turned her face toward me and smiled. "I'm almost at the age, you see." - . "What age?" I asked, ' stupidly enough. "When we take to cats," she said, rising. " 'Spinsterhood' we like to call It. 'Single-blessedness !'" "That is your kind heart. You de cline to make one of us happy to the despair of all the rest" She laughed at this, though with no very genuine mirth, I marked, and let my 1830 attempt at gallantry pass without retort "You seemed Interested In the old place yonder." She indicated Mr. Beasley's house with a nod. "Oh, I understood my blunder," I said, quickly. "I wish I had known the subject was embarrassing or un pleasant to Mr. Dowden." "What made you think that?" "Surely," I said, "you saw how pointedly he cut me off." "Yes," she returned thoughtfully. "He rather did, it's true. At least, I see how you got that Impression." She seemed to muse upon this, letting her eyes fall; then, raising them, allowed her far-away gaze to rest upon the house beyond the fence, and said, "It Is an interesting old place." "And Mr. Beasley himself" I be gan. "Oh," she said, "he Isn't Interesting. That's his trouble!" "You mean his trouble" not to " She Interrupted me, speaking with sudden, surprising , energy, "I mean he's a man of no Imagination." ''No Imagination 1" I exclaimed. "None in the world ! Not one ounce of imagination ! Not one grain !" "Then who," I cried "or what is Simpledoria?" "Simple what?'' she said, plainly mystified. "Simpledoria." . "Simpledoria?" she repeated, and laughed. "What in the world Is that?" "You never heard of it before?" "Never in my life." "You've lived next door to Mr. Beas ley a long time, haven't yon?" "All my life." "And I suppose you must know him Pfptty well." "What next?"' she said, smiling. "You said he lived there all alone." I went on, tentatively. "Except for an old colored couple, his servants." . "Can you tell me-" I hesitated. "Has he ever been thought well, 'queer?'" , . "Never!" she answered, emphat ically. "Never anything so exciting ! Merely deadly and hopelessly common place." She picked up the saucer, now matter with me." exceedingly empty and set It upon a shelf by the lattice door. "What was it about what was that name? 'Simpledoria?' " "I will tell you," I said. And I re lated in detail the singular perform ance of which I had been a witness in the late moonlight before that morn ing's dawn. As I talked, we half un consciously moved across the lawn to gether, finally seating ourselves upon a bench beyond the rosebeds and near the high, fence. The interest my com panion exhibited in, the narration might have surprised me had my noc turnal experience itself been less sur prising. She interrupted me now and then with little, half-checked ejacula tions of acute wonder, but sat for the most part with her elbow on her knee and her chin In her hand, her face turned eagerly to mine and her Hps parted in half-breathless attention. There was nothing "far away" . about her eyes now; they were widely and Intently alert. When I finished, she shook her head slowly, as if quite dumfounded, and altered her position, leaning against the back of the bench and gazing straight before her without speaking. It was plain that her neighbor's ex traordinary behavior had revealed a phase of his character novel enough to be startling. ' (Continued on Page Twelve) . NOTICE TO CREDITORS Notice is herebv eiven that the un dersigned has been duly appointed ad ministratrix of the estate of Willem Gottfried Lamper, deceased, and any and all persons having claims aeainst the said estate are hereby required' to present said claims, duly verified as by law reauired. at the office of mv attorney C. D. Purcell, Sandy, Oregon within six months from the date of this notice. Date of first publication, December 21st, 1922. " . - . ' Date of last publication, January 18th. 1923. Anna Lamper, Administratrix of the estate of Willem Gottfri&d Lamper de ceased. CD. PURCELL, Sandy, Oregon. Attorney for Administratrix. " 12-21-5t We do .printing of all kinds at the Banner-Courier the best workman ship at lowest prices. to help you do your Xmas shopping Hundreds of practical and acceptable gifts on display. Gifts of Furniture, Hardware of Household Utilities are Most Acceptable. You can do your Christmas shopping for the whole family here. Look over our list of gift suggestions, they are but a few of the many we have to offer. FREE DELIVERIES Any article purchased before 6 o' clock P. M. Saturday will be de livered in time for Xmas. filled with thousands of wonderful toys that bring joy and happiness to the little ones. No matter how much or how little you want to spend you will find "Just the Right Thing" here. . ' ' . 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"Sk Make Our Store Your Headquarters During Xmas week bring your packages here to be wrapped. Use our phone. We are at your service. Odd Gift Pieces Such as sugar spoons, butter knives, etc., at reduced prices, ranging in prices from 50c-$1.25