NOT.YET

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXV, Issue 1942, 19 June 1905, Page 6

NOT.YET

By JOB AOTBHSOH If ORRIS

(Oopyrl(ctit,l9o4, by Duilj Biory P«b. Oo.) JUDITH had come from the -west to New York with mammoth artistic ambitions and crude ideas of morality common to rude, young and unsophisticated countries. She located in a small downtown studio and becoming suddenly afflicted with a homesick loneliness that struck cold to the marrow of her soul commenced to fraternize with whomsoever happened to be available. This was Louise Markham, her nearest neighbor, who occupied a studio on the second floor above. Clinging to her eagerly she inadvertently made a study of her life. This girl painted little water color sketches of somewhat impossible head? with dreamy eyes too close together and red hats. Sometimes she sold these little pictures, but oftener it appeared that she did not. She kep; house in a light way in her studio; and as is the rule in such cases, unless her friends took her out to lunch or dinner, she lived on air. "» She was not without a certain charm. "Very courteous, with a hoarsely musical voice in which there lurked considerable fascination unless heard too continuously, fortunately for Judith she was bent upon being agreeable, upon starting the western girl off ir. a society way—if the inhabitants of a building of offices and studios can be called society—advantageously as possible by introducing her as her friend. Going the rounds with her she last of all introduced her to Gilbert, another artist of male persuasion. So far aa appearances went he was rather a superior artist. His studio was furnished in a fashion bordering upon elegance, in black oak, the screens and draperies in green to match the canvas with which the walls were covered. As a matter of fact, judging casually, Judith was almost led to believe that he made money. Either that or he had developed a skill bordering upon the marvelous in the way of borrowing it. - People were never so entertaining to her as upon the occasion of talking about the most interesting possible thing to themselves; but before she had been with him ten minutes she had to acknowledge that Gilbert overdid it. He was so deeply, so astonishingly and profoundly interested in himself the wonder of it was to her that he found time to paint. And a greater wonder that he could have the heart to waste a moment of that precious time on other people. And yet it seemed that he found several moments to waste upon Ixniisc Once, twice, thrice even he paused in hji r subdued monotone relative to his career artistic, past, present and to com'embracing semi-occasional and brief allusions to various and sundry art editors for whom he had worked, for whom he was engaged in working, and for whom he expected at some future date to work, to point out the merits of his own masterpieces and show her how it was done. When finally they tore themselves away—he had not half finished his biography, but Judith determined ii should wait—and landed safely in tin hall, Louise clasped ecstatic hands together and raised her eyes ceilingwanl "Isn't he lovely?" she cried. "Lovely!" "Lovely enough," assented Judith, "but there is one seriooe objection to him." "What?" sharply. "He is too unselfish. He is wrapped up in the outside world to the exclusion of himself." "What?" again. & Unhappily Louise did not always understand. "It is my lunch time,** explained Judith. "Will you come out with me?" "No," refused T/Ouise, with her politely elastic smilo. "I will have my lunch in my 6tudio." Judith suppressed a groan at the thought of those lunches of hers. A wafer and a glass of water. A cracker and a cup of tea. Worse! One day she had found her lunching on burn! potatoes. A week later she drifted into Judith's studio, not hilariously as was customary with her, but in a depressed way. as if crushed by something. Judith looked up from her drawing and hack again. "Why aren't you laughing?" she asked her. Ordinarily she laughed. Judith was homesick enough. Sometimes she was homesick enough to die. Cheerful company in so much as it enlivened her was therefore grateful But she had to confess that there were moments spent in the society of Louise which she would rather have spent alone. Louise sat down and swept her hand across her eyes. "I feel more like crying," said sh«. "Why?" "He is married." ,:;.•'' "He? Who?" "Gilbert." Judith put down her work. 'How did you find it out?" Interrogated she. "I asked him accidentally, never for a second thinking he could be, and he told me he was." I "It's a mighty q-ood thing," ruminated Judith, "that you accidentally asked him." «* "Why?" quickly. Judith turned upon her. "You wouldn't be going about with a married man, would you?" she demanded to know. Without answering directly, Louise fell to dreaming aloud. "He is so cbanr:'"!T." she murmured. "Wr> are so con™.' ni ill."

"Unmarried people are always con- | genial," put in Judith. "We have so much ia common. Doth water color artists." • "If you were married you would tow ! jealous of one another." ! "I should never be jealous of him," j indignantly. "He is so far above me. ' And how could he be jealous of me, so far beneath!" I "Marriage seems to change the curj rent of people's lives," declared Judith i "and people." | Louise gave a sigh bo deep as to fill j the studio. "I don't know what I shall do without him," she lamented. "I don't. He is so helpful. Did you see that morning how he showed me about the colors? How to lay them on. What to do. That is a most unusual thing in an artist. Most of them wouldn't give you a hint if you died for it, but he!, I don't know what in the wide world I am to do without him." Here she buried her face in the pillows and Judith looking on was shocked to see that her shoulders shook. She left her work, took a seat in the rocking chair, and sat there for some time silently endeavoring, to the best of her ability, to express her sympathy through the medium of rraental telepathy, since she failed to find words. Bye and bye Louise, lifting herself weariedly up, took out her sidecombs, combed back her hair, put them in asrain and began to talk. "Of course." hesitatingly, "I must do without him," she said. "Considering the unhappines« you might cause his wife," she decided, "I should think you must" Louise got up and walked the floor for a space, not very far thia way or that, for there wasn't room. Presently: "Why will those men marry?" she exclaimed. "Before they have seen, us," finished Judith. "It is just as well. If we were their wives they would soon find some other little artists around in studios that they would like better." The subject had grown In interest. She concluded to give It her undivided attention. *-' "How would you like to be his wife?" she asked and some day come down and find yourself in hfs studio?" Louise stopped walking and stared "Find myself in his studio?" she questioned limply. "I mean find some other Mjirt," Judith hastened to explain. "I shouldn't like it," sfaafdealared. Then passionately: i "It would kill me!" ' "It perhaps affects his" wife in exactly the same way," remarked Judith calmly. "She wouldn't be a woman if it didn't. Go on, though, if you must. Then some fine morning she'll; discover you. She'll find you in his staidio and him gazing at you with those dreamy. shifting artist eyes of his and drop dead in her tracks. And it will be you," finally, "that will be afthiw havin' that death to answer fbr, asftPhilip would say." k Philip was the Irish janitor,' All the laughter had gone out of Louise. Her eyes were sad. Slowly she walked to the door and opened it. "I'll give him up," she promised, adding reminiscently and with seeming irrelevance, "the lovely little,dinrners he took me out to!" Judith observed her in surprlse,fcooJj! half comprehending. "But," she added quickly, "I'lL|girG him up. I promise you," and the4door shut on the word. As Judith looked out the windtow at (he heartening view of blackenediehjim* Tieys, she thought: "An honorable, straightforward' thai. I like Iter." £ What was her amazement then to see the girl on the following dressed in her best, going down in l.h< r-levator with Gilbert, going dowu blithely and out. to dinner with him a' ;.:ne cafe; for she heard him say so. She- smiled across at Judith anxiously, propitiatingly; but she resolutely turned her back, refusing to speak. It was late that night. Judith had come home from her solitary dinner at a little cafe, brushed her hair, made her preparations for steep, robbing the couch of its vario- | sated day covering and turning it inloj a whitely counterpaned bed; and wa c :J lying on It, half dozing in the dar,'t j she heard a light footstep in the hall and skirts brush against her door. There came a hoarse voice whisper- ; irig outside. It was the voice of Louise, j "A dinner is a dinner," it whispered, j and waited. \ Judith lay quite still. Not getting up ■' and asking her in to sit on the side of her bed and talk awhile, as she would < formerly have done. Just lying there. ! "Under the circumstances," said she. ' after a time, "I think I would rather starve." Then back came the voice from the j dark of the hall to the dark of her j room in a cry revealing depths In the j life of the girl which happily Judith j had not sounded. ; "But you have never been nungry : yet," it said, repeating, "but you have i never been hungry yet!" i Judith sat up and gazed! Into the , dark, which seemed all at once to her ■ frightened eyes to be filled with skele- ' ton fingers ready to clutch her, with the relentless fingers of poverty, bony, merciless and grim. "Oh, no," she whispered l back", ber own voice hoarse as that of Louise in her fright, "I have never been hungry yet!" , © "#~ First Use of Torpedoes. Torpedoes for the destruction of vessels were first used in the spring of 1861 by the confederates In the James river. In 1865 the secretary of the navy reported that more ships had I !been lost by torpedoing than from' all olther causes. Gen. Rains, chief of the confederate torpedo service, put the numjber at 58, a sreater number than has bejen destroyed, all the wars since.