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About The Omaha morning bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 1922-1927 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 4, 1923)
The Sunday Bee } _ MAGAZINE SECTION VOL. 52—NO. 34. OMAHA. SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 4, 1923. FIVE CENTS The Bottom of the Barrel By Richard Washburn Child J Would the “Other Woman” Want the , Husband if She Knew Him z \ as the Wife Does? < WHEN Sirs. Elbridge was not at work in the laboratory or with her children, in the course of her routine plan, Bhe was a good deal of a girl. She neglected that fact. It served her well when she had to withstand ►the great shock of her life. She was slender, tall, without artificial aids to beauty, and ahe had that honest kind of loveliness which one believes is admired by dogs and chil dren, birds and butterflies, as'well as men. At 10 she bid fair to be always young. Some one has said that Mary was a “strange bird.’’ No 4oubt it is difficult for the person who said it to conceive a Before he had found that his_ Income permitted him to leave his father's old Nassau street law office with the re liable staff and devote his life to sharpening pencils and beginning various novels, he had not been an ^Rilorer of personalities. If Mary had regretted seeing Billy leave the law. she kept silent because she was willing to concede that a human being had a right to carve out his own des tinies. Billy had acquired that magnificent height of belief to the extent that he considered that Mary's plea in behalf of the servants, the children, and herself that he should get up In the morning and ho on time for meals constituted an evil, dominating influence, devastating to his right to grow and expand and to find the sunlight of self, as he called it. He was not odious at all, according to Mary's notion. She loved him deaHv. He was the center of her universe, not because if lie had died she could not have gone on living and doing pretty well, but somehow her own ambition to do canlcally. Her pillow was wet with tears and she turned It over in the morning no he would not know she hid U<*en awake. She closed her fiats as she made prefer * to play with the children. She thought wicked thoughts about re volvers She felt as a tigress Is supposed t * * fe«*l And she was ashamed because, perhaps, the tigress knows more about the truth of love and the family and the tiger than human beings know. It was not the rock she had called “their island' which first attracted her conscious attention to tin* part that Edith Barston, with her tilted nose, her sad. meditative eyes, and her hair curled under so that it looked like bobbed hair, was going to play in Mary’s life: It was a change in Billy. One day came when, at Mary’s suggestion, he went along the cliff walk, through the turnstile to invite Edith to come over to meet at dinner some people who were coming out for the night. Billy did not return soon* In fact, it was after luncheon when he came back. “I'd like to pull your damned liair out by the roots.’’ young woman who could achieve, without beating the bass drum. In that respect, Mary failed to meet the supposed necessities of feminism because she failed to make a clamor. Her formula for living, as much as one could discern It front her management of life, was this: "Create as much as possible, pay enough attention to the experience of ages after ages of mankind nnd not too much to doctrines which promise men progress nnd happi ness in a hurry. Above all, mere discontent may be showy, but it's wasteful." That was her notion of how a woman’s life, or a man's, might be guided. Her surprise was vnst when she discovered that \\ ilham Carr Elbridge was in love with another lady. Busy with tho children, and busy when she could find the time with a new lot of books reporting various post war investigations of the ductless glands and the theory of immunity, Just received from Germany, nnd finding her pleasures in the tints of sunsets behind the sea and the aromas of the pines, she was not alert. She absorbed the situation rather than received it in one piece; it came upon her somewhat like a slow dawn. She diagnosed it little by little a3 one diagnoses typhoid fever; It cannot be an nounced ns identified merely because there is some slight disorder and some slight degree of temperature. Edith Barston occupied the next shore estate, and Mary had to admit to herself that from the first of June, when Billy and the two children nnd she had come to their leased villa, the particular peculiarities and character of Miss Barston had not engaged ns much of her attention ns one human being may be thought to owe to another who hun gers and subtly calls for attention. Edith, who was 30, had inherited money and tubercu losis, had kept the first and after a time had suppressed the second. Good for her! The process had left her thin, wispy, meditative, slow in movement, with a kind or bone.* less grace observed in Burne-Jones figures. She was a good swimmer. She used the same little beach in the same pretty little cove nnd though Mary was oven a better swimmer, Mary stayed and paddled with the children. Edith used to invite Billy gently to swim out to the rock where the two often oat for a sun bath with their feet in (he waving sea weed. There, apparently, they ex changed ideas nl>out life, at first the impersonal Ideas. The rook had never had significance for Mary and it was even a shook to herself one bright sunny day when she said to little Jane, "Daddy will he late for luncheon if he stays any longer on their island." It was absurd to voice ob jection to Billy’s finding such treasure as tie might in any mind nr soul be wished to explore. well and have the children do well was always associated with Billy. There was a certain fundamental animal In stinct of love in it. and in addition there was a sense of ad herence to a family unit, where after all the stupidities, the unreasoning slavery, the suppression of self, a willingness to play the game and a reprehensible loyalty to the others created the most useful, forward going, productive institu tion which men and women for ages past have been trying to smash, substitute for, or commiserate. Mary, in behalf of this institution, went to the seashore in tho summer, where her work and her energies suffered most. She herself "preferred the mountains. There was Billy, however, and the children, and though they had never been to the mountains, once, when she mentioned it, Billy had a tantrum about her selfishness in wanting him to go where they would be no 1" spiratlon to start various suc cessive beginnings of urr.inished novels. Tantrums, how ever, Mary knew, usually took place when people love each other. And they loved each other—certainly, until Billy began to inquire why and pick life's fabric Into its separate threads. Then Mary had said: "Uo to the devil, Billy. I)6n't choose the tallest trees when you bark under them. Take the saplings that are your own size. The reason why Jane sometimes had that look of Clod In her face that sometimes appears in yours is no greater mystery than why I love you. You've got a good mind and I am glad it explores, but you'd better start for the north or south polo of under standing rather than advertise that your next whirl will be around the rings of Saturn. All men and women, even Soc rates, are more or less limited to being darn fools. And honestly, as much as T admire your mind, I’d never pick you to know it all.” Billy laughed—a handsome person. Mary would have liked to throw her arms around his bronzed young neck so those arms could tell him things that she couldn't. He said. "I never expect to know it all.” She grew serious for a moment. "Because your foun dation isn't very good, Billy," she said. "A good founda tion for exploring the mysteries of life better be built of Aristotle and Confucius, Iluxley, Spencer and Saint Thomas Aquinas, and so on rather than-” She stopped because he scowled and said, "I never as serted the modern writers of revolt, fiction or otherwise, were perfect. But they deal with a world which has changed. ’ Mary took one of the characteristic gazes Into eternity of which her gray eyes appeared capable and said rather sad ly. "I wonder how much the world does change." few events had come which made her world change vol “Eating out?” Mary asked. “Certainly not!” he replied. Then as lie looked Into tha mirror in the hallway and saw the crumb on Ills cheek he added, “She offered me a cruller—a brown cruller—with sugar on it. I haven't had a cruller since I left boarding school." He laughed lightly. Then the irritation swept over him. All mated beings who love each other recognize it. He said. “For heaven * sake, Mary, must we always be messing around discussing trivialities? I didn't start this discussion. What’* the fuss about? Life is intolerable!" He was not hungry: he said that lie was very hungry. Naturally honest, he felt that Ids snoopy lie would not quickly stop sagging down like a gallstone in liis self-respect until surgery took It out. Mary knew he felt it. He had had a little stolen luncheon with Edith. Perhaps he had not even sat down; rcchaps he had just stood around her dainty table, playfully; perhaps Edith, who had an impish ness, had romped with him about the table in that simula tion pf childish care free spirit which restless husbands or wives think would go on forever, or at least for a year, if they could l>e with one "bf the cunning personalities day in and day out. Billy told Mary that he did not consider Edith was any thing but rather plain, and this, being Inconsistent with all he had heretofore said, appeared to Mary to Indicate that her husband, by his absurd strategy of saying things de rogatory to Edith, was not only committing petty larceny In the cash drawer of their partnership confidence, hut that he was, as an incidental, doing It at Miss Barston’s expense. All that he said, indeed, about Edith he said with a skill in duplicity which shocked his wife. But above all. there was a lack of dlglnity in one who failed so miserably in an at tempt to deceive, even though the attempt extended to de ceit of himself. Billy was usually profuse in his reports of conversations held with others. He never reported what Edith had said to him and still less what he had said to Edith. Mary could see that whatever the June weeks had made of a relationship between them was their own . private preserve and she was not invited even to peck through the knotholes in the fence. Mary thought thnt evil consequences come from the dis coveries of such subleties. Tit breaks in family life may I,* painful, hut they are out in the o|>en. at least. Everybody . concerned can be told to either shoot or give up the gun. Taken early, the answer usually Is that it Is best not to shoot. She know there was one evil mnseequeneo. The nr cursed thing appeared at snee and it would not dow i 1' pulled all day at her skirts and plucked her flng-rs as sao