The Sunday Bee
ft
4"
MAGAZINE SECTION!
VOL. 52 NO. 11. OMAHA, SUNDAY MOKN1XG. AUGUST 27, 1922. FIVE CENTS
Out of the Golden Pack By Ida M. Evans
(
r
She Was Lovely and 26; He Was 87, and
Always the Shade oj His Mother, the
Small, Dent, Wind-Browned,
Rain-Soaked Woman Doctor,
Hovered About,
FROM that first night Stephen Bentlewin k new that
Lettice Towne had wiped other women except
one from his mind. Hut even then he feared that
in the end he would drcide against marrying her.
Had he been. say, 25 yean old. he would doubtless have
married hrr in passion and qnMMMMMiMMMMHHUttn
run. At one aim
believes in a Santa Claui
with a golden pack of fu
ture! for men and women,
Lettice looked tike a
lovely gift for some man.
Sitting a little back from
the fireplace at the end of
the W'cllman's expensive'
Lake Shore hall, in a misty
pale .grern chilfon dinner
gown whose extreme low
cut was most kind to hrr
white nrrk and shoulders,
she exhibited that cared-for-pctal
perfertion whirh
is possessed in common ly
hothouse roses and many
women of this modern
masseuse and steam heat
day.
Her crossed feet in their
misty satin slippers were
narrow, high arched, and
attractive to a man and an
anatomist. Her black
brown hair was waved
low and caught with a
high tone set comb, as
was the; month's . mode.
The mode was kind to lat
tice Towne 'a delicate con
tour of cheek and white
chin 1 and to . her eyes,
which! .were ; no dusky, a
blue as to be'almost black.
A little bored, a little
disdainful, that first eve
ning, she was watching
her younger sister Flossy.
Jane Wellman, and others
who, rouged lacquerlike,
bobbed of hair, and visible
6i young knees, were try
ing with shrill voices and
an assortment of jazz rec
ords to live up to all thai,
has ever been imputed tr
flapperdom by fiction writ
ers, parents and the world,
in general,' The younger
crowd threw Lettire and
others' into an indistinct
relief. Between 16 and 26
nowadays, there are not
years but at least two or
three generations.
But Stephen Bentlewin
was neither 16 nor 26, He
was 37. He had men
friends who were husbands
surgeons, and internes,
and some not belonging
to his own profession. And
some of these were out
spoken. Some were (reti
cent tight lipped, ran tht
phrase but Stephen if
many instances had eyc
to supply what had never
been told him. He had
kood eyes, or he would not
have become the success
ful person he was. And
even Bickings (one of the
tight lipped) had once
grunted in an after-dinner
semi-professional con
clave: "The sex isn't qui
nine. You can't say thus
or thus or so and thus will
a man s spirit react to a
long or short dose of some
woman." , ' , ,
Korffcr, whose eyes were a glittering black and whose
hair was a washed-out gray, was ironically acquiescent.
"Stimulate him or stagnate him"
Bickings finished oracularly: "Man, there's no way of
telling beforehand 1"
Stephen Bentlewin learned a little about Lettice the next
day from Bickings, who had known the Townes since the
four children had the mumps. "Good family. Nice girl
Lettice. I-et's see, she must be about 26, Jim treats his
wife and children w ell Keeps 'em dressed up. Gueis that's
why Lettice has taken her time to marry home's comfort
able. Don't believe, though (grunt of vigorous disap
proval), Jim salts away much toward appendices or gall
stones." Stephen knew the type. His office girl had many such
names on hi book. Brokers, salesmen, adverting nen,
they and rtieir families were the rank an I hi of a rity
doctor's best practice.
He dunned the subject. (Bickings aad others de
scribed lleutlewin as tight lipped ) But even then he had
begun rr4entleslv to compare l.rltire Town with an
other wmtun the Utile, bent, scrawny, purpotcful one
hn hd borne him. It was unfair to l.ettfce Tow lie, per
haps, A.!miiiin (hit, he cu!d not restrain IK comparison.
When he was 9 years old. freckled. barelegged, md
hrtm'iie si'rauhrd mot of the year, he had ulen h
mother to be an ordinary parent. Stephen did not know
that at that time brackets belonged to a "woman doctor.''
Since thenr as he had attained skill, he had dissected
Cora Bentlewin, tend'-rly enough, analysed her, gi"rn her
a "humanity complex," a lonely soul and timid but pur,
poscful nature.
She must have had all three, so he giuscd, or she
would not have continued to live on, after his father's
death, in that sparsely settled, poverty inhabited northern
sandhill district, and minister to its needs without any ex
pectation of protter recompense.
She and Stephen's father had been students at the same
medical school. Stephen never understood just why the
two settled in those northern- sandhills, in a tVce-rooni
shack niih it few wretched acre. I'erhap for his fatlt-
Y.w-VV'''
"Lettice I Get up! I insist I"
er's health or because two poor graduates could not afford
to go farther or make a better break for a practice,
His father had died five years later. Stephen's child
hood was a series of grim pictures.
An old, rattling buggy and a gaunt horse and a little,
bent v Oman going forth wind and rain, all seasons of the
year, to answer calls. Long, hilly, sandy roads, scrub oak
or hazrlbrush at their sides, scratching a horse's helpless
ribs. Northern winters that nipped Stephen's small, lean
body. Through those sandy hills the wind slashed like a
saw. (Although she never took him along on the worst
days.)
Worst days or best, he could not recall that she ever
refused to go herself, no mutter what the hour of night,
what the miles to some "foreigner's" kitchen bedroom and
sharkful of numerous progeny. Those she attended in their
tit'knrics
Well, they were not to bUme. Mostly their land was
poor and their families were Urge. In retrospect, to Ste.
idicu, bis mother seemed alws to have ha4 a meditative
hand on that small, shabby bag of iimtruments and bo!llM,
aUays to have been upiuv'kmg a lower lip over the rot of
medicines whuh she mut willy nilly furniih hrr ptticutl
or watrh thrni die before her for l.uk of me tirme, lover
ly stalked the counir) ide, I'ariiivis, whn had bought
tltcir holding, on tune, toiled almott wiiti tooth an I nail
rmrg'Tn
0 mm
for any return from their small, arid acres. Many of them
drank home-made stutf, of course, whrn-4hey could yet
no other. They stared inept and sullen when their families
needed tonic or febrifuge, Stephen early was used to sul
len, unshaven men, vacuous-eyed women, shapeless from
hoeing or digging, with their straggling background of
children and wretched bedclothes.
Came over a S bill, or even a $2, his mother's way,
and promptly it posted to city wholesale home for qui
nine, calomel, aconite, podophvllin, and chloroform. He
remembered (Nice anking her what she'd really like to have
for Christinas. "Two thousand grains of quinine, son,"
she said gloomily, "That swamp four miles west of Nord'l
hill-"
She died one unrinir of
Wellman roof. He gave Dan
credit for putting him and
Adroitly, so they thought.
Friendships are made as well ai born. His friendship
with fat, rich Dan Wellman had begun 12 years before-over
a business and professional men's gathering to boost Chi
cago. Stephen Bentlewin was too busy a man to have many
time-taking friendships, But he had come to regard his
bi-monthly dinners and occasional week-ends with the Well
mans as acceptable relaxation. Once or twice before Maud,
stout, overdressed and over-rouged for her age, but con
iderrd a very smart president for a north shore current
events club, hid tried to marry Stephen off. He had never
been tempted by hf r bait until Lettice appeared.
Tempted he corrected himself, He was not tempted
now. Dangerously, that is. He laid the pros against the
cons. Besides love and money the greatest modern argu
ment for marriagu is loneline.s. He had his moments of
that, of course. He had no ties of family. It is only the
abnormally strong individual who ran get along without
more or less intimate lies. Hut an absorbed and success
ful busineu mar) is likely to realise personal loneliness
less than many wcople must realise it. Overlapping of
fire and hospital tours, his woik it.elf, the needs of a never
resting line ol a I ng bodies, his proiesiioitat associates an
sour): ! y 1 warded of! hmelmeti of the prctent au
' common cold which went
into bronchitis because a
wet, rainy body did not
put itself into dry cloth
ing until a gaunt, wet
horse had been unhar
nessed, fed, and bedded
in a shed barn.
- Stephen was 13. For
two years or so he worked
for his board with a fairly
decent family nearby. Lat
er he sold his few wretched
acres and house for a few
hundred dollars and got
to Chicago and, by pure
triumph of mind over mat
ter, through "Kush Medi
cal." He was a man who
made friends. He was not
vain. Sometimes he sus
pected that his surgical
and drug skill was half
vicarious, not so much
original as parentally in
spired. He looked at his
long, lean, careful but not
genius-tipped fingers and
surmised that the two who
bore him had given him,
for all their willingness,
but half a heritage. But '
he had a keen mind and
a conscientious mind, and
in time by the time he
was destined to'meet Let
tice' Towne be was earn
' ing around $20,000, he was
. on the consulting staff of
several Chicago hospitals,
his opinion on tonsils and
adenoids was considered
to be worth quotation
marks, and his office in a
towering cream stone State
street office building held
for waiting patients a desk
and a long bench of the
best dark renaissance wal
nut. Although no one knew
this and he was careful
, to tell no one, deeming the
matter his own private
affair his small, bent,
wind-browned, rain-soaked
mother often stood beside
him at that renaissance
walnut desk, paused to
look over the bench
ranged with patients, often .
sat with him in his inner
office where men and wo- .
men stripped their bodies
and their souls for his
diagnosis, and once or
twice she had poohooed
in his ear while with a
confrere he had discussed
the inconvenience of night
calls.
She vaguely seemed to
afford a quizzical contrast
to Lettice Towne those
first few months.
His meetings with Let
tice were casual .ones; -edged
necessarily with in
frcquency into the profes
sional days of a busy and
preoccupied man. Once
or twice they met on the
street; otherwise at din
tiers or evening gather
ings mostly under the
and Maud Wellman due
Lettice
in each other's way.