' t', ' ' ' r r : '
Si,'!".
THE OREGON .SUNDAY JOURNAL,, PORTLAND. SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 21, 1913
Indian Summer
Arthur Stringer
(OopTttftrt by Wi MtortJi American Compear.)
IT WAS ne thm wta and atsiMratw daya a
April wtoen the Immuring; brtok and eton af th
city seamed Ilk th walla of prima that lUcfcart
Deerlng first appeared at my doer.
When the three Moorish tells had tinkled etrt thatf n
musical Moorish discord I turned away from the open
window and the pearl mitt that huna; arer th Wat. tin
roof, and tared with languid dlaoontant toward that
door. ; . , '
It wu a modal. I told myself, for tt was nearly -ways
a model la that Wgb.-oeill.nged old atudlo building;
where at loaat two doaea of vi toll ad at art Ilka so
many tinker In their booth. X scarcely know wbthe
It was the CorotUka pearl miat or the humid hothouse
warmth of 'the world or the outlandish Moorish bell
tinkle, but something; touched my tired spirit into sud
den ApriUan lightness. And I hoped that the applicant
' at my door would, be a girt, a slender and Umpld-eyed
girl In white lawn and with flower In hef hat. "It
eeemed only fitting, with all he world yaamln and
bursting1 toward tha rapture of Urlng, the one's visitor,
should be something; ; ardent-ayed and youthful-bodied,
with the joy of Ufa valiantly burgeoning from her In
nocent vernal headgear.
When I opened tha door, however. Instead of finding
a girl with flowera on her head, I found Richard Deer
lug with bjs hat In his band.
I found the sorriest figure that tha tides af Ufa could
wash up on the shores of mischance. The sorriest ha
seemed, for he stood there auoh a wreck of what toe
must once hare been! He reminded ma of a last year's
bird's nest. ' '
There was somatMng autumnal about the seedlnesa
of his attire, about ths dingy hat with its abraded brim,
about the Shiny and threadbare frock coat that' adorned
the gaunt flg-ura This figure Itself waa upstanding and
tinned to eat with tha atudtoos otmoentratlon a a
hungry child. There ware poUte baattatloaa, there wars
, half-ihearted momenU of reluotanoa, to be aura. But
they ware nothing mora than a aop to convention. He
ate. In fact, until tha taboret 'top waa as bare as a '
tombstone. And I saw that my surmise bad not bean
wrong. Tha man waa almost famished.
"X believe, after all." I said as I 0I more filled his
cup, "that I could use you now and then, But the
trouble la I'll only have two or three week more In
the city. I'm packing for, a year or so la Europe
and the atudlo here wlU be taken by a ohlna painter
from Syracuse.
"I'd be glad of anything," he humbly acknowledged.
"Has It been a bad season 7" I ventured.
"A terrible season, sir, a terrible aeaaonr ha heat
- edly declared. . I remembered that every season In that
world of, his seemed to be a terrible ona There were
the stars with Broadway, engagements, of course, who
smoked In their clubs and ate their suppers In bemlr
rored restaurants and visited their photographers and
telephoned for their motorcars, 'who might be finding
it the best of seasona They were having their brief
hour, and when an aotor has his hour aJl tha world
knows about H. But here, I told myself, was one of
the underdogs, one of the army about which tha out
Side world hears and knows little, the army of proud
spirited, easy-going, empty-handed children who haunt
the back comers of rooming' house and make the
rounds of the agencies as feverishly and foolishly sa
a hyena making the rounds of his cagw.
"What's made this a terrible sesaonr X aaked.
Ha turned slowly about and faced ma The lines of
his face deepened. The look of revolt about the flaccid
old mouth became almost vinHlotlva
"The same thins; hat is ruining; tha stage, tHr," h
"He was like a crazy man"
wide-shouldered enougth. But every calamitous Una off
It was still eloquent of fruition, of exhaustion, of some
thing gone to seed. About its very erectness there was
something pathetic, something too vooal of the fact
that Its valor was factitious. And his voice itself when
he spoke was funereal, a husky and wintry ghost of a
voice that made me think of a December wind la a
Florentine cypress top.
"Do you use modelsT" ha wistfully aaked. Tea I
somewhat petulantly reminded myself, I could have
used a model in that last pearl-mist hour of an idle
April afternoon. But It would have to be a blithe
lipped Ariel floating In blossom y laughter and touched
with the sunny lightness of meadow birds.
"Sometimes," I answered, with - my hand stia on
the door knob, for 1 was studying his solemn and
shadowy eyes.
"Could I be of service to youT" And he put tha
Question almost automatically, with a calm hopelearasas)
that carried Its own answer.
"Who sent you to met" I temporised.
"No one," he acknowledged. "I was merely looking
for work, sir."
"But what," I inquired, 'Is your line?"
He seemed puziled by the question. The great gaunt
face was clouded by a frown of perplexity. He put
forth an expostulatory arm, as though to argue nle
adeptness, but I cut short his gesture.
"Are you a professional model?"
The funereal eyes were fixed on me as the funereal
black shoulders were thrust back into their forlorn
line of dignity, It was like the wing stir of a caged
eagle.
"I have been on the stage, sir," he solemnly Intoned.
"I have never posed before, it Is true. But I hoped
that my career as an actor might have equipped me for
for a kindred art!"
"It very seldom does, I'm afraid," was my deliber
ately candid and none too encouraging; retort.
There was no resentment on his lean and hungry
face as he essayed Ms courtly bow.
"I'm sorry to have troubled you. sir," he said. I
watched him as he turned mournfully away.
It hurt me In some nameless manner to see him go.
There was something so poignant, so arresting, about
that autumnal figure that I found myaelf moved by It
even against my will. Inured as I was to the Impor
tunities of the needy, I could not find the heart to dls- ;
miss him in that blunt manner.
wui you step liusaef i retina myseu saying.. Ana
with a look of wistful wonder- he stepped into the
atudlo. He stood there, solemn and gaunt, a blur of
gloom enfiladed by the gayeties of color from my wall
canvases.
"Won't you sit down?" I said, motioning him toward
my most comfortable chair. And he . solemnly seated
himself placing his hat on tha floor beside him.
"Have you given up tha stage ?" I asked him, won
dering just how to begin.
"No-o!" he hesitated. "I have not precisely given
it upl"
"But you prefer posing?" I went on.
"I waa looking; for something to tide ma aver, aa it
were," was nis answer, s
I studied- hli" face In Mia unequivocal strong Ught of
the unshaded studio window. And in that betraying
light I saw what I had not seen before. The man was
ill. It was ten to ona I told myself, that ha waa 111
and weak from sheer want of food.
That a man should go hungry In a city of such waste
seemed almost incomprehensible to ma But such seemed
to be the case.
"By the way," I announced with an Innocent glance
at the clock, "this Is my afternoon tea time." And I
casually filled my copper teakettle and lighted the al
cohol lamp. Then on my old taboret, eireckled wtlh
cigarette burns, I put out a eherry decanter, a plate of
biscuits and cream .oheeee and wafers. Tha solemn
eyes watched me as I did so.
"Will you Join met" I oaralessly Inquired. Tha Ught
In those solemn wistful eye of his reminded ma of
a neglected animal too sternly disciplined in tha past
to think of protest. ,
"With great pleasure, air," ha replied. Bo I swung
the taboret out between ua, brewed tha tea and made
a pretense of falling to. ;
My visitor did not eat ravenously, as I had expected
and had even half hoped. Ha ate solemnly and steadily,
munching each cheese-covered biscuit with an unctuous
ness that translated avidity out of mar animalism.
He permitted ma to fill hi cup. acknowledging' tha
attention with one of M courtly bowa But ha eon-
burst forth. "The same thing that hasdegraded our
noble art of acting!"
"What's that?" I queried.
"Those moving-picture contraptions!" he retorted.
"This mania for what they call the canned dramal The
canned drama! Brrrh!" And his head shook with that
Inarticulate cry of disgust.
An accidental pose of that fiery old face as he spoke
caught my eya I began to see that ho had poastbllltlea
"I believe that I could use you for a charcoal sketch,"
I told him as I stepped out and swung ray sasel Into
place. "I can use you now If you keep Just as you are
and, of course, if you can give me an hour or so!"
"By all means, as long as you wish," he answered
In his pompous boom. And I set to work while the mood
waa on me, for I knew the light would not last much
longer.
"It's not very often that I can use men." I explained
aa I drew. "My work calls mostly for women."
He looked up at this.
"You could use women?" he asked.
"I do use them," I admitted.
He cleared his throat, paused, grew reflective, and
again cleared for action.
"J. TM wondering If If my wife might chance to suit
you?" he finally ventured.
"What's she like?" I aeked. Intent on my work. Yet
I could see him look sharply about at my question, as
uhough to make sure it was not an Inaipertlnence.
"She was a very beautiful woman." he said, and
he said It with a childlike simplicity that made it
pathetic.
"Is she on the stage with your I asked, trying to
picture what the struggles of that strange couple oould
have been.
"Not of late," he pensively admitted. "The fact Is,
sties not overly strong. She'd be better out of New
York, her doctor telle ma But I have been tied down
here. And she would not go without me, I'm afraid."
I began to understand the situation.
"Could' she pose for me?" I aaked.
"I think she would like It." he announced with blithe
solemnity.
at tTUlA y0U """ hr mjr tudl bera say tomorrow
1 saw the look of anxious doubt that crossed hi
seamed old face, and for a moment it troubled me. Then
I remembered the fact that I was disregarding a fixed
habit of the profession. The day, with them, only began
with noon.
"'Or perhaps two in the afternoon would be better?"
"If It would be tha same to you," was his courtly re
Joinder. And as I worked away at my drawing .nd an
atrociously bad study it proved to be he told me a lit
tle of his past life, of the Shakespeare repertoire with
whloh he had once been successful on the road, of the
later melodramas in which he had been compelled to
play, of the decline of the dollar houses, of an unhappy
excursion or two Into vaudeville, of the Increasing diffi
culties confronting an aotor of the old school. They
wanted only "types" now, he complained. Stage acting
was no longer an art; it waa a trade. He spoke wist
fully of the days of McCullough and Barrett and Booth,
of those golden days when an actor waa an actor, when
people still looked to the boards for the beauty and
sonority of the English language. Nowadays they paid
$2 to hear a dancing comedian sing ragtime through his
nose, to see a dlvoroe court oelebrlty trail a J500 gown
through a transplanted French farce!
"I should think you'd give up the stage, you'd turn
to somsUiing else!"- I mildly suggested, as I sat back
and waited for him to round out one of his Johnsonian
periods.
"What Is there to turn to?" he asked with the wist
ful helplessness of ' a child. And In the ways of the
world, I knew ha waa still a child.
taken a second glass of Madeira that ana began to talk,
Ttian ahe talked with that frankness wfhloh X bere a'
often remarked in women of the stage whoa Uvea are
lived In candid and dally contact with men.
She told ma mora perhaps, than ahe had intended.
X am afraid that after I had "placed" her and ahe was
openly disappointed that It waa not on the model throne
I even enoouraged her to be communicative. She
talked mostly of her husband, of toow hard he had
worked and how long he had studied. She acknowledged,
thanks to the Madeira, that they were quits at the end
of their rope. And Richard had felt so proud of his
art, and was now so hopeless about getting an engage
ment. "But Why shouldn't he get work?" I maintained, de-
pressed by the thought that such a fine figure of a man
ahould find no foothold on the stage of the day, the
possessor of an art to which years of study must havs
gone should find himself of no possible use in tha world.
She looked across the studio at me with her wide
and Infantile blue eyea
"They say Richard's old-timey," ahe admitted, with
the ghost of a sigh. "They all say the day of the ro
mamtia method has gone."
"But look at his voice," I declared, a little at sea as
to what the romantlo method meant. "Look at the
volume and power he must have there!"
"Tea. he has a wonderful voice. But It doesn't seem
the sort they want nowadays. They keep saying It
went very well for the old-fashioned ptaya But they
claim the moving plat urea have killed that kind of play,
that the romantlo drama's dead now!"
"It seems to ma" I said as I went on with my work,
"those moving pictures have a lot to answer for."
"Tea, they've thrown a kt of good actors out of
work," wistfully acknowledged the faded little woman. '
"But surely, somewhere.
there must be work for an
Intelligent and willing aotor!"
"Richard has tried and
tried. But nothing ever
comes of It Ha even had
to give up the dollar housea
Then he tried Shakespeare
In the aerodomea, and then
a Hiawatha play he'd work
ed out for the open-air cir
cuit. But even that failed!"
"WhyT"
"Evsrybody seemed to go
to the moving ptcturea
They said we were too old
fashioned and cancelled our
tlma"
"But what do they mean
by old-fashioned?" I de
manded. "I'm afraid it's rather
hard to describe," complain
ed the little woman. "But
one year you've an engage
ment and a good part and
get good notices. Then some
thing seems to happen,
eomethlng you cant account
for. But you wake up and
find the younger people are
taking your place, and say
ing you belong to the older
school and have had your
dayr
"But why should they
say that of your husband?"
"I can't quite under
stand it all, but they com
plain that Richard's gestures
are too theatrical, that his
poses are too obvtoua They
call It barnstorming nowa
days. And It' second nature
to Richard now. It's tha
only method he knowa H
can't get rid of It!"
Her faded and babylike
smile, as she spoke, carried
home to me more poignantly
than the most tragi o postur
ing could havs done the
actual hopelessness of that
forlorn coupla I had to
bury my face behind the
drawing that she might not
see my expression.
During all the rest of'
that month, as I quietly made ready for my year In
Europe, 1 kept up a pretense of using the Deerings.
My work suffered througrh them, as must all work Into
which the personal equation obtrudes Itself. Tbey were
not professional models: they were not even adaptable.
And, what waa worse, they seemed to carry about with
them an aura of foreordained failure, a blight of as
sured unsuccess.
It's a law of life that we must' Inure ourselves to
those forces Which too repeatedly or too poignantly as
sail our sympathies. I reached a state where I no
longer worried actively and acutely about the Deerings.
1 no longer woke up at night laboring over the hopeless
puzzle picture of their predicament. I became more
Impersonal In my contemplation of their faded careers.
And one reeiilt of this release waa a portrait study
I did of Richard Deerlng one sunny afternoon, a por
trait of which I was rather proud. I was so proud of
It, In fact, that I was blinded Into letting Deerlng him
self see it
It was not until ! watdhed nils face aa he studied
the canvas that I aotually comprehended What I had
done. I had painted him as he was, a hopeless failure.
7 had memorialized his misery. I had elucidated and
elaborated on his broken and useless life.
Deerlng studied the picture In silence.
But I could
mystified by her huabanda behavior, and sighed a nttle
ever his wayward moods.
A few days later aha Came to ma with tha startling
news that Deerlng had a ehanoa to "go on" with a
vaudeville aketch, a very silly sketch called "The Jeal
oua Huaband," put It might ,after all give him the start
ha had been waiting for.
It was three days later that aha came back to the
studio with the dolorous Information that Deerlng had
refused to appear In "The Jealous Husband" when he
found It was merely to be an Interpolated number In a
Harlem movlng-plcture hall. He refused to be In any
way Identified with the celluloid drama, aa he contemp
tuously termed it
It was a week later that she came to the studio
again and acknowledged that her husband had found
work as a "ballyhoo" for a Third avenue museum. It
was hard work, and It kept him out In all sorts of
weather, but ha was getting a dollar and a half a day
for It
Before the week was over, however, Deerlng had to
give up his work as a "ballyhoo." His wife brought me
the news that he was down with the grip. He recovered
In a week's time, but his throat kept troubling him,
my emissary reported. It grew so bad, In fact, that she
became alarmed and proceeded to take things In her
own usually docile hands. This belated energy led to an
operation on Deerlng's throat at a Bellevue clinic, where
a email fibroid tumor was removed. .
A week later she brouglut me the news of, his re
covery. But there waa neither relief nor Joy on her
face aa she told me of It When I asked If I mlgiht go
and see him, she hesitated, flushed, and said she would
ratihar that I did not
"But won't he look for work again? I Inquired.
The torn-up studio about us, for it was my last day to
the city, only added to the sorrow of tha encounter and
mad the afternoon seem heavy with a vague sense of
desolation.
"He can't now," were bar answering words. And
in the cerulean baby-blue eye ware actual tears, tha
first I had ever seen there.
' "Why not?" I sharply Inquired.
"His voice Is gome!" she huskily admitted.
And this proved. In a way, to be trua His voice,
his speaking voice, was not completely lost. But from
the standpoint of the stage It waa a thing of the past.
As an organ, as an instrument, it had parted with its
power. The final blow had fallen. Tha seal of ultimata
failure had been imposed on him.
"Could I come and see him before I sail?" I asked,
exasperated by the knowledge there was no way la whloh
I could actually help them. Money, I knew, they would
not accept from me and evso tha gift of that, aa I
could give it, would be merely postponement of the
inevitable.
"It wouldn't do any good!" waa her response,
"But why can't I see him?" I demanded, and I tried
to picture the broken man In his gloomy back room.
"He likes being alone nowl" was the only answer
she gave me
lt was late In the second fan whan I finally returned
from abroad. I came back without that sense of exhila
ration which should accompaLnx Che return to one'a native
lountry. And In eome way I waa able to blame tha
Deerings for It
My very studio seemed shadowy with their eonrbei
figures. I had several times written to their old ad
drees. It is true, but no word had come back from them.
And now, back between the walls on whldh they had
left their memories, I waa mora than aver troubled
aa to their fata
I made my way to their Id rooming house, but
could learn nothing about them. I made Inquiries, but
no one seemed to remember them. They were merely
two small units In that tumultuous and ever-hurrying
flood tide of city life whloh had been swept away and
forgotten.
They were forgotten, but with me at least they had
left a vague heritage of unrest, of discontent, of revolt
It was this feeling of discontent, late In October,
which drove me away from the studio and off on a
sketching tour in the Jersey hills. The open air and the
clear skies and the Jocund coloring of that autumnal
landscape brought my lost spirits back to me.
it was early one afternoon when I had set out my
sketching box in a little amphitheater of hills aflame
with surub oak after a black frost. I had felt myself
blissfully alone with my trees and skies and rocks,
when the entire valley was filled with a sudden In
vasion tending to make one's back hair stand up.
For sweeping down from the far side of that placid
parliament of hillocks I beheld a galloping and scream
ing band of half-naked Comanche Indians, sinister with
war paint and emblazoned with feathers and suggestive
of the wildest days of our wildest West
The chieftain of that fleeing band, I saw, carried
across his saddle pommel a slender-bodied white girl
of about sixteen, a white girl on Whose face I could
plaindy see protest and horror.
But I had no time to dwell on that startling and
somewhat distressful figure, for tearing on after the
fleeing Indians came a galloping, swarming, shouting
band of cowboys. And these cowboys, I perceived,
kept discharging their huge six-shooters as they rode.
They were nothing more or leas than a band of
moving-picture actors going through their turns for a
"Western" film. I had wandered Into the realm of th
"movies." I had caught a glimpse of "canned drama"
In the making, as Deerlng had called it
I tried to go on with my sketching. But It was use
leas. That little landscape of peace seemed as denuded
of tranquillity as though a fire had swept through It
from end to end. So 1 repacked my sketch box, folded
up my stool, and moved on to the other side of the
village whose spires showed over the next dip In the
hills.
There I stumbled on a road vista that seemed to
meander off Into some misty second valley of romance.
That road, with elms on one side and the raw color of a
circus poster flaming along an old barn on the other,
caught my eye and neld me thera And there I painted
It waa promptly at I o'clock tha next afternoon that
Richard Deering'a wife came to my atudlo. She was a
small blonde with a faded little smile and a petit regu
larity of feature. The very clothes that aha wore, only
too plainly the residuary makeshifts of earlier stage
costumes, carried tha aama sense of Incongruous bllnhe
ness. Tha ona vital and unfaded thins; about her were
her eyes, and these were stilt ardent and lnfantlla They
were th bluest eyea I have ever seen, a mild cerulean
blue, ak serene and soft as any April aky, ,
I had craftily delayed ordering la luncheon ao that
aha might be compelled to Join me In that midday meat
And this ahe did. a little timidly, eating with the fas
tidious haste of a hungry bird. It waa not until aha had
"A slender-bodied girl of about 10, on whose face I could plainly see protest, and horror"
aaa tha tightening of the line about that flaccid old
mouth grown large and loose In the delivery of heroics.
It waa 'In silence, too, that he took his pay for posing,
and left the atudlo. He never returned to it- He not
only understood, but he understood that I understood!
1 Deerlng never came back to tha atudlo, but his wife
did. X aaw to It, however, that the picture waa well out
of glgnt . before thjp time af her arrival. She seemed
myself back Into a humor of contentment with Ufa in
general and Jersey roads In particular.
l was sun joyously working on tna mysterious sort
"Instead of a girl with flowers on her headl
found Deerlng
n
My name must have bean called out several time
before I became actually aware that I was being ad
dressed.
When X looked about I beheld an elderly man, with
a shook of silvery whit hair showing from beneath tha
rim of his sombrero, smiling down at me from tha
driving seat of the automobile. It puzzled me a little
aee that he was olad in a Jacket of stained and weather
worn bUckskln adorned with much fringe and mbelllsh
ed with a wall-weighted cartridge belt The blue-eyed
woman beside him was also clad In a much-fringed gar
ment of buckskin, with a colored handkerchief knotted
loosely about her plump throat, and a tip-tilted som
brero pinned tack on her head. ! .
These two extraordinarily dad figures would hays
Startled me more, t suppose, if my thought had not gotaa
promptly back to the morning's panorama of th film
actors and their antlca
"He daesnt even know tie!" cried eh ladv in bunk
akin, with a half-humorous wall
I stood up and turned about at the sound of that
votoa, for there waa something etartllngly familiar In K.
X stared at the benignant sunburned face of th mas
with the silvery hair Showing under his sombrero.
"He doesn't know us!" echoed that benignant figure,
wj Lit u. gesture 01 imkk uiaigu&iaun.
Tet I knew him the moment I aaw tha geaturatilt
waa Richard Deerlng. And the woman In the cowboy
suit beside him was his wife. ,
I stepped over to the running board of their car.
I stepped slowly over to them, ao wlde-yed and In
credulous that they laughed together at my uncouth
amassment. Equally startling to me waa the easy Ught- .
heartedness of that laughter.
"It's the artillery he's afraid of!" crowed the Jocund
xseerujg. ajiu hi ciuv iwimau ui mm vur, ior uj ui.i
time, I saw the Utter of carbines and blue-barreled six-
shooters. r. "
"What are you doing with this stuff?" I weakly in
quired as I reached up and shook hands with them. Th
movement on my part was abstracted and automatic.
1 could not co-ordinate' things Into anything approaching
the rational. And tha two of them seemed to be enjoy
ing my obvious distress of mind. r
"Oh, that's only a part of our equipment 1" laughed
Deerlng. V i.
"Your what?" I demanded, hllnklnr nn Into hla wind-
roughened and aun-darkened faca "
cThey're only some of our studie props," hi wtf.:
explained. I could see the two of them exchange
glances, like children -with a happy secret between
them. It was hard to comprehend: - It waa tha last
thing In the world I was prepared for.
You're you're not a moving-picture man?" I almost
gasped, staring from the carbines to the oll-stalned buck
skin Jacket. At the back of the car, I noticed, trotted :
a mouse-colored burro with a packsaddle on Ita back.
Deerlng seemed a little hurt by my Incredulous in
qulry. . c
"D'you never go do see the movies?" ha demanded.
I had to confess that I did not, though that morn
lng. I somewhat maliciously added, they came to aee me.
'Richard's been the character man for tha Rudln
Film Company for nearly a year now," Interposed hla
wife, as though in dread I might say something to com
mlt myself. .
"A contract for fifty-two week In the year!" gloated
the sun-bronzed Richard. "Nine-tenths of the work la
the open air, the best equipped studio In aU Jersey, and
seven weeks off to California In the winter!" And tha
surreptitious squeeze that his bucksktnned arm gave 'to
the quiet-eyed woman at his side did not escape ma
She glanced half -guiltily about, and chanced to sa th
burro placidly browsfhg on the hood lining of tha ear.
"Look at Bepplno! ' she cried. "He's eating our
new car up!" And their duet of happy laughter aa tha -great
gaunt figure of the man In the buckskin Jacket
swung down from his driving seat and untethered the
burro was good to hear. It seemed like the laughter 'of
contented and happy children. Then Deerlng pointed
up past ft he poster-covered barn.
"You see that shack?" he called out. "Well, there's
a dago up there who makes five dollars an afternoon
renting us this donkey. He Just fits into the Wsstsro,
setups. And now I've got to take him back to hla horn." -,
He looked about as he swung the broken gate open.
"He's llkeme, this old burro. He wasn't even worth
burying, until the movies got Mini And now they can
bed him down with dollar bllU!"
I sat down on the auto's running board and stared X
after the stalwart leather-clad figure aa it strode up tha f
path with the burro at Its heels. "How did It happen?" ,
1 asked as 1 heard through the meUow autumn air
Deerings Jovial chirrup to tha donkey trotting behind
them. . - v
The woman in the car stared after tha chlrrupfcg
man and the mouse-colored burro.
"It was Just after you went away." she said. "Every.
thing seemed to be hopeless. I was going to a Brooklyn
studio as a super In the mob scenes. Richard found
out and came to take me away. The studios are Ifk '
stages, you know, with scenery and back drops and all
that with a square of tape tacked down to mark wnr '
tha action mut take place to get In the lena von
know. We were rehearsing, snd Richard came right Otl-
me stage, nt was ue a crazy man. He stormed and
railed at me, at every ona 1 thought they'd arrest html" '
"Go on!" I prompted as she paused. - .
"Something about him, a hs stormed around there,
caught the manager's eye. lie took Htohard to one aids
and talked to him. He told him he'd have to pay tor a
whole film he'd spoiled, or come and work It out" ,
1 looked up at the woman aa she stopped again.
From under the elms the low October sun shone across
her celestial blue eyea and ruddied her round and child
like chin. She seemed. In that Ught, Uttl mora than'
girl.
"So Richard had to come back and work it out He
pretended to hate it But it was mora like stag wof 4
than h'd Imagined. And he knew more than the others,
because he'd been a better aotor. And when 1 saw hint
working In another setup, 1 understood! U was liking
It. Against lais own will hs was liking it And his very
xaults. as an aooor, were at last a help to him. Those
gesturea and things that seemed overdone In real drama -were
Just what they wanted for film work, it didn't
matter, either, that his vole wasn't strong. , Voice
aren't needed."
She atopped again, and for soma absurd reason,' be
gan to cry softly and contentedly. Then, as she eaugnf
sight of her husband striding back down th farm path,
he hurriedly wiped her eye. , , .
, "You must corns along with us for dinner, aha
aid. "or IUchard will feel hurt" '
"Along where?" I asked, atlll watching tha approach
ing figure aa It swung down toward us, bathed In that
meUow evening light that turned everything to gold.
. "Why, we've a Uttle farm now, mile th other M
Of in mm eiuam. na m garusn, my near, ana wrum
1rhnrni nd cherry blossoms sverv sniins!" Kha lift 1
tones of that meandering road, making the most of the her head and emitted a happy Uttl sigh. "It a a c
alowly waning light when I became conscious that a Uf for ua isn't It?" ; - s
v "it aounas 11 K inoian summer," i said.
' Tea It's urXndtaa lunroir, ah choed Cro
fter happy teara .
touring; car had stopped somewhere close beside m
and that I was being stared at by th occupants of that
car.
m
i
J"