"The Melody Girl"

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3447, 24 March 1932, Page 6

"The Melody Girl"

0 By RUTH D. GROVES. nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn:

CHAPTER XXXVIII. Tommy nodded in agreement. "Yes," he said grimly "I guess she will. But she must have known I'd never amount to much. That's the reason she threw me over probably." "Never amount lo much?" Beryl flashed angrily. "You've come through and that's what counts."

Tommy disagreed. "You're responsible for what I've done. I can't take any credit."

Beryl shook her head in denial. "Don't believe that," she said earnestly. "I simply asked you to make good on a debt I felt you owed me, and you did it. You deserve all the credit for that. But I "hope you don't feel it's necessary to your selfrespect to have anyone's approval." "No," Tommy said slowly. "It isn't that—" Beryl, tremulous and eager, felt hope die as her companion hesitated for words. He went on then to talk of other things and did not mention Irene again. Beryl could not know what it meant to him to think of meeting his sweetheart as another man's wife. Guesses were unsafe, but she hazarded a few. She could not help this, for under the calm that had descended upon Tommy she sensed a tremendous agitation.

When he said goodbye to her before taking a subway at Long Island City for upper New York his words were commonplace but there was a look in his eyes that caused her uneasiness.

She worried over Tommy all the way home, forgetting to prepare herself for her meeting with her sister. The family were still at the dinner table when she arrived. Irene did not rise to greet her. Beryl hesitated an instant, then said casually, "Hello. How are you?" Irene knew then that Beryl had not wanted her to come home. "And I think," she said to herself, "that I can guess the reason." "Mama tells me you drove Tommy to school," she remarked sweetly and sighed, "Poor Tommy. ... I'm so glad he stopped associating with those horrid Larkin boys."

Beryl looked at her mother but Mrs Everett avoided the glance. "How is Gaylord?" Beryl asked. Irene did not answer and Beryl sensed tension in the atmosphere. She looked inquiringly from one to the other, but no one gave her any information about Gaylord.

Suddenly Irene broke the silence by jumping to her-feet and crying to her mother in broken accents, "I can't go through it again. You tell herl" Then she put a handkerchief to her face and ran swiftly from the room.

Beryl turned back to her mother, whose expression was a mixture of embarrassment and dismay. Her stepfather too looked restless.

Beryl sat down in the chair that Irene had vacated, pushing the empty plate before her aside. Irene obviously had been able to enjoy the omelet her mother had prepared. "Well, what is it?" Beryl asked. Her mother made a fretful movement. ' "Now don't take that tone," she "began, but her husband, who had decided to enlighten Beryl, cut her short. "Tell her! Tell her!" he exclaimed vociferously. "Let her take it anyway she wants to. It's bad enough for you to encourage the little fool, but you can't expect everyone else to sympathise with her ..." Mrs Everett flushed angrily. "Your own daughter!" she shrilled at him. "Yes and I'm not so proud of that," Mr Everett retorted. "For heaven's sake," Beryl pleaded. "What is the matter?" "I'll tell you," her stepfather declared excitedly. "That feather-brain-ed Irene has left her husband. That's what's the matter!" "Left him," Beryl repeated incredulously. "What for?" "That's something she hasn't deigned to tell us," Mr Everett replied with an accusing look at his wife. "She said she couldn't talk about it and your mother upheld her."

"You could give her time," Mrs Everett whimpered.

"Time! I've a right to know —" "Mother's right, Dad," Beryl said soothingly. "There are things you can't talk about."

"Well," Mr Everett blustered, subsiding a trifle, "I won't have her led on in any silly quarrel between her and her husband. You find out before long what she left him for," he added, addressing, his wife. Mrs Everett got up to go to Irene, but the expression on her tear-stained face was not submissive. Mr Everett followed her retreating figure with anxious eyes.

"Let's face it," Beryl said to him wearily when he turned back to her. "If it's a serious break between Irene and Gaylord we can't help. Mother will uphold her in anything. And we've got to think of conditions at the store."

"It's no use," Everett said helplessly. "I'm licked."

"No you're not," Beryl insisted. "I think we can make something of the delicatessen end of the business. Individual effort counts for everything there. There'll be three women In the house as long as Irene stays. We can do the cooking. Demand is beginning to grow, you know." "But winter's coming. People

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won't buy picnic food then and the women won't mind cooking at home so much. Besides, the summer people are going ..." "You will be licked if you worry over all that," Beryl protested. "Let's try, anyway. Irene can take my place in the store and I'll help Mother at home."

The prospect of having Irene in the store did not please Mr Everett but he said nothing against it, and thereby saved himself wasted breath, for Irene refused to take Beryl's place there.

The thought of facing the local public "simply annihilated her" and her mother stood by her. Irene, she said, told her things about her life with Gaylord that she couldn't repeat. The poor child had suffered terrifically. Gaylord had been cruel to her in the extreme. He had neglected her and his jealously was unendurable. Beryl listened to this recital with her tongue in her cheek. Mr Everett was made to feel a brute when he dared to question it. To quiet him his wife told him in private that she thought Irene woud forgive Gaylord "just the same," in time. And what could they do? Turn her out of the house?

No they couldn't do that. So Irene stayed to become a poor, pitiful heartbroken child, too tired to do anything but rest from the "awful ordeal" she'd been through.

Mrs Everett insisted when Beryl questioned her that Irene helped with the housework and the cooking. But Beryl, who spent most of her time at the store, suspected the truth, for Irene always looked dainty and refreshed in the evening while . her mother grew wan and always seemed to look tired. Still she did not complain, and Beryl could not even get her to leave the house for a ride with her and Tommy on Sundays. Mrs Everett, aware of gossipy speculation concerning Irene, was staunchly loyal to her favourite. Denied the round of parties she had planned in honour of her daughter (she and Irene had agreed it was better to refuse all such invitations) she was staying stubbornly away from those who might question her. Beryl's attempts to make things easier for her mother were nullified by this" attitude.

Beryl had accepted a career in lieu of love, the loss of that career for love, and lastly, contentment in service in the knowledge of a worth-while sacrifice. What was her voice compared to a young man's whole life? Now she rebelled against seeing that sacrifice turned to vain account. Yet it seemed this must be her cross. Reluctant suspicion grew to certainty. The unfathomable expression in Irene's eyes when she and Tommy first met after her return had puzzled Beryl. After three weeks of uncertainty the situation was much clearer. Irene wanted Tommy. There could be no doubt of it. And in a short while she said, she would be divorced from Gaylord. This news had stunned Mrs Everett but it did more to Beryl. It sent toppling, spinning away in shattered bits, the radiant peace she had found in achieving Tommy's salvation. It tortured her and made every thought an aching burden in her tired mind.

She waited in an agony of dread for Tommy to understand as she knew Irene would have him understand, to read the welcoming smile on Irene's lips as Irene would have him read It, to realise as Irene would have him realise, that the sweetness, the gentleness, that clung- about her like a soft garment, was admission of a great mistake.

It was a lovely pose, this crushed innocence, this air of gentle sorrow nobly borne which Irene had adopted. It was impressive to all save Beryl who saw through it as through a pane of clear glass. Irene knew her sister saw through it. She knew that Beryl was aware of her real feelings toward Tommy. She knew this, and she knew more—something that Beryl did not know.

CHAPTER XXXIX. Tommy was in love with Beryl. Irene saw it with eyes sharpened by jealousy. In turn she secretly raged and mocked at this situation, called Tommy fickle and laughed scornfully at his blindness.

Tommy in these last weelcs had become a far more interesting and desirable Tommy than the callow boy she had claimed as her own since they were children. There was a subtle dignity, a seriousness about him that commanded respect and lilcing. Moodiness had dropped from him like a discarded garment. Irene could ,not understand the new Tommy. It was clear enough to her that he did not understand himself either, and that he accepted the change without question. But it annoyed her to realise that she, who remarked the change, could not analyse it. What was it that eluded her?

That was during the first week. The second she sensed that something of the old Tommy was stirring in him, breaking through the detached mood that possessed him. Touching this spark gave her unlimited satisfaction for she'd been face to face with the alarming thought that she'd lost her appeal for him. The discovery that Tommy cared for Beryl had stung. Consolously she strove to exert the old enchant-

ment over Tommy. Irene did this even though she understood that Tommy's feeling for her was not the gold of his love for her sister —the gold that lay buried deep in his heart. She thought Tommy was like a man who sought to grow a garden in the barren soil topping rich vein of pure ore.

Well, if you never knew you had a thing you couldn't miss it when you lost it. And Irene wanted Tommy. Tommy was hers. So she set herself to make his garden grow for him. She would have if. bloom with red roses and bright vivid poppies, with flame and colour and life. At first Tommy did not know that her spell was upon him once more. They had met —a meeting his fancy had been unable to etch in for him, so tremendous was its import. He had said with a coolness that startled himself and infuriated Irene, "Did you have a pleasant trip?" He did not know why he was not excited as he had feared he would be. He did not know that he had outgrown all but the memory of a youthful passion for Irene or that he was and always had been the true lov-

er of another girl. The bondage of love that held him and Beryl had been of such gradual, undramatic growth that Tommy was entirely unaware of it as love. Their quarrels, their reconciliations, were to him just incidents of friendship. And Beryl, watching in despair the return of his infatuation for Irene, was determined not to interfere. She saw Irene make herself lovely whenever Tommy was expected at the house, saw her wipe the petulant expression from her face on several occasions as though with a cloth, and substitute a mask of smiling charm. She saw that Tommy sometimes looked at Irene as he had looked at her when they were sweethearts. Beryl grew bitter. If Irene could win Tommy back then she, Beryl, did not want him. If he could so easily be called back by a girl who had jilted him then Tommy had, as she had feared in the beginning, a fundamental weakness he could never overcome. She must love him always, she felt, but if she could not respect him she did not want him.

i (To bo continued.)