Newspaper Page Text
BERBER
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY CLARK AGNBW.
Copyright by Co.
Doubleday, Pag* A
WNU 8«rrlc«.
SYNOPSIS
■—Introducing "So Bit" ;
his infancy. And hi*
_ DeJong, and daughter gentleman of ;
gambler
life, In to young been woman.
___ j,j 1888 , ha* un
MBereUy MAVentlonal, somewhat seamy, but j
ill Julie enjoyable. Hemps), At school her
Urn la daughter of ,
Attaruat Hempel, butcher Simeon Is 1
kilted in a quarrel that Is not his own. and
Hi Selina, destitute, nineteen years old school- I I
•Tactically becomes a
teacher.
CHAPTER teacher 11—Selina secures a posi
as at the High Prairie
ol, In the outskirts of Chicago,
ihg at the home of a truck farmer,
Pool, In Roclf, twelve years
son of Klaau. Selina perceives a
sdred spirit, a lover of beauty, like
self.
CHAPTER III.—The monotonous Ilfs
of a country school-teacher at that
ky tune, is Selina's, brightened somewhat
the companionship of the sensitive,
artistic boy Roeif.
CHAPTER IV,—Selina hears gossip
eeacernlns the affection of the "Widow
““rlenborg,” Pervus DeJong, rich and truck good-looking. farmer,
ho insensible poor widow’s
is to the at¬
tractions. For a community "sociable"
■•Una but prepares a iuneh basket, dainty,
"auctioned," not of ample proportions, which Is
according to custom. The
smallness of the lunch box excites deri¬
sion, and spirited, in a sense of fun the bidding
ing MoomeB DeJong finally secur¬
It for $10, a ridiculously high price
Over their lunch basket, which Selina
and teacher DeJong share together, the school
arranges to instruct the good
aatured farmer, whose education has
assn neglected
CHAPTER V-— Propinquity, r in their
positions of "teiicher' and "pupil,” and
■•Una's loneliness in her uncongenial
Surroundings, lead to mutual affection
Parvus DeJong wins Selina's consent
to be his wife.
CHAPTER VI.-—Selina becomes Mrs.
DeJong, a "farmer’s wife," with all the
hardships unavoidable at that time.
Dirk 1* born. Selina (of Vermont
Stock, businesslike and shrewd) has
plane ridiculed for building her up the farm, Maartje which
•re by husband.
Pool, Klaus’ decent wife, interval dies, and after the
requisite Ktaas marries
the "Widow Paarlenberg.” The boy
Jloelf, hie sixteen make years old now, France leave*
home, to his way to
and study, his ambition being to be¬
come a sculnior.
CHAPTER VII.-—Dirk Is Selina, eight years
old when his father dies. faced
with the necessity of making a living
for her boy and herself, rises to the
ooaaslon, and, with Dirk, takes a truck
load of vegetables to the Chicago mar¬
ket. A woman selling In the market
place Is an Innovation frowned upon.
CHAPTER VIII.—As a disposer of
the vegetables from her truck Selina Is
a flat failure, buyers being shy of
dealing with her. To a commission
dealer she sells part of her stock. On
the way home she peddles from door
to door, with Indifferent success. A
policeman demands her license. She
has none, and during the ensuing alter
cation Selina's girlhood clium, Julie
Hempel, now Julie Arnold, recognises
her.
CHAPTER IX.—August Hempel, risen
to prominence world, and wealth In the busi¬
ness arranges to assist Selina
in making the farm something more of
a fully paying accepts proposition. hla help, for Selina Dlrk’e grate¬ sake.
CHAPTER X.—Selina achieves the
success with the farm which she knew
was possible, her financial troubles
ending. At eighteen Dirk enters Mid¬
west university.
CHAPTER XI—Dirk goes to Cornell
university, intending work, to make architec¬
ture his life and on graduation
enters the office of a firm of Chicago
architects. Paula Arnold, daughter of
Julie, enters his life. He would marry
her. but she has a craving for wealth
and takes Theodore Storm, millionaire,
for her husband. The World war begins.
CHAPTER XII.—Paula, despite her
marriage and motherhood, continues
interested lnning in Dirk, gossip. their friendship She be
B to cause urges
_>)rk to give up the profession of archi¬
tecture and enter business for the
greater financial reward possible. Dirk
hesitate*, feeling hi* mother would not
approve of the change.
Chapter XIII I I
As it turned out, Dirk was spared
the necessity of worrying about the fit
of bis next dinner coat for the fol¬
lowing year and a half. His coat, dur¬
ing that period, was a neat olive drab
as was that of some millions of young
men of his age. or thereabouts. Most
of that time he spent at Fort Sheridan,
first as an officer in training, then as
an officer training others to lie officers.
He was excellent at this job. Influ¬
ence put him there and kept him there
even after he began to chafe at the re¬
straint.
In the last sir months of it (though
he did not, ol’ course, know that it
was to be the last six months) Dirk
tried desperately to get to France. He
was suddenly sick of the neat job at
home; of the dinners; of the smug
routine; of the olive-drab motor car
that whisked him wherever he wanted
to go (he had a captaincy); of mak¬
ing them “snap into it”; of Paula; of
his mother, even. Two months before
the war’s close he succeeded in getting
over; but Paris was his headquar¬
ters.
Between Dirk and his mother the
first rift had appeared.
"If I were a mail,” Selina said, "I’d
make up my mind straight about this
war and then I’d do one of two things.
I’i go into It the way Jan Snip goes
at forking the manure pile—a dirty
Job that’s got to be cleaned up; or I’d
refuse to do it altogether if I didn’t
believe In It aa a job for me. I’d fight,
or Fd be a conscientious objector.
There’s nothing In between for any
(me who isn’t old or crippled, or sick.”
Paula was aghast when she beard
this. So was Julie whose wailings
had been loud when Eugene had gone
into the air service. He was in France
now, thoroughly happy. “Do you
mean,’’ demanded Paula, “that you ac¬
tually want Dirk to go over there and
he wounded or killed!"
“No. If Dirk were killed my life
would stop. I’d go on living, I suppose,
but my life would have stopped.”
They ail were doing some share in
the work to be done.
Selina had thought about her own
place in this war welter. She had
wanted to do canteen work in France
but had decided against this as be¬
ing selfish. "The thing for me to do,”
she suid, "is to go on raising vege¬
tables and hogs as fast as i can," She
supplied countless hou.if holds with
free food while their men were gone.
She herself worked like a man, tak¬
ing the place of the able-bodied helper
who had been employed on her farm.
Paula was lovely in her Ked Cross
uniform. She persuaded Dirk to go
Into the Liberty bond selling drive
and he was unexpectedly effective in
his quiet, serious way; most convinc¬
ing and undeniably thrilling to look
at in uniform. Paula's little air of pos¬
session had grown until now it en¬
veloped him. She wasn’t playing now;
was deeply and terribly in love with
him.
When, in 1918, Dirk took off ids uni¬
form he went into the bond depart¬
ment of the Great Lakes Trust com¬
pany in which Theodore Storm had a
large interest. He said that the war
had disillusioned him.
“What did you think war was going
to do?” said Selina. “Purify! It never
lias yet.”
It was understood, by Selina at
least, that Dirk's abandoning of his
profession was a temporary thing.
Quick as she usually was to arrive at
conclusions, she did not realize until
too late that this son of hers had def¬
initely deserted building for bonds;
that the only structures he would rear
were her own castles in Spain. His
first two months as a bond salesman
netted him more than a year’s salary
at his old post at Hollis & Sprague’s.
When he told this to Selina, in tri¬
umph, she said, "Yes, but there isn’t
much fun in it, Is there? This selling
tilings on paper? Now architecture,
that must be thrilling. Putting a build¬
ing down on paper—little marks here,
straigiit lines there, figures, calcula¬
tions, blueprints, measurements—and
then, suddenly one day. the actual
building itself. Steel and stone and
brick, with engines throbbing inside It
like a heart, and people flowing in and
out. Part of a city. A piece of actual
beauty conceived by you ! Oh, Dirk !”
To see her face then must have given
him a pang, it was so alive, so eager.
He found excuses for himself. “Sell¬
ing bonds that make that building pos¬
sible isn’t so dull, either.”
But she waved that, aside almost
contemptuously. "What nonsense,
Dirk. It’s like selling seats at the box
office of a theater for the play in¬
side.”
Dirk had made many new friends in
the last year and a half. More than
that, he had acquired a new maimer;
an air of quiet authority, of assur¬
ance. The profession of architecture
was put definitely behind him. He did
not say to Selina that lie had put the
Other work from him. But after six
months in his new position he knew
that he would never go back.
From the start he was a success.
Within one year he was so successful
that you could hardly distinguish him
from a hundred other successful young
Chicago business and professional men
whose clothes were made at Peel’s;
who lunched at the Noon club on the
roof of the First National bank where
Chicago’s millionaires ate corned-beef
hash whenever that plebeian dish ap¬
peared on the bill of fare. He had
had a little thrill out of his first meal
at this club whose membership was
made up of the “big tneu” of the city’s
financial circle. Now he could even
feel a little flicker of contempt for
them. He had known old Aug Hem
pel, of course, for years, as well as
Michael Arnold, and, later, Phillip Em¬
ery, Theodore Storm, and others. But
lie had expected these men to be differ¬
ent.
They were not at all the American
Big Business Man of the comic papers
and of fiction—that yellow, nervous,
dyspeptic creature who lunches oft
milk and pie. They were divided into
two definite types. The older men of
between fifty and sixty were great
high-colored fellows of full habit.
Their faces were impassive, their eyes
shrewd, hard. Their talk was colloqui¬
al and frequently illiterate. They often
said "was" for "were.” “Was you go¬
ing to see Baldwin about that South
American stuff or is he going to ship
it through without?" Most of them
had known little of play in their youth
and now they played ponderously and
a Uttle sadly and yet eagerly as does
| one to whom tfie gift 'o? leisure had
. come too late. They ruined their pal¬
ates and livers with strong cigars,
thinking cigarette smoking undignified
and pipes common. Only a few were
so rich, so assured as to smoke cheap
light panatelias. Old Aug Hempel
was one of these. Dirk noticed that
when he made one of his rare visits
; to the Noon club his entrance was
met with a little stir, a deference. He
was nearing seventy-five now ; was still
straight, strong, zestful of life; a mag¬
nificent old buccaneer among the pet¬
tier crew. His had been the direct
and brutal method—swish! swash!
and bis enemies walked the plank. The | j
younger men eyed him with a certain
amusement and respect.
These younger men whose ages j
ranged from twenty-eight to forty-five
were disciples of the new system in
business. They were graduates of uni¬
versities. They had known luxury all
their lives. They were the sons or
grandsons of those bearded, rugged,
and rather terribie old boys who. in
1835 or 1840, had come out of County
Limerick or County Kilkenny or out
of Scotland or die Rhineland to mold
this new country in their strong hairy
hands.
Dirk listened to the talk of the Noon
club, looking about him carefully, ap¬
praisingly. The president of an ad¬
vertising firm lunching with a banker;
a bond salesman talking to a rare book
collector; a packer seated at a small
table with Horatio Craft, the sculptor.
Two years and Dirk had learned to
"grab the Century" in order to save
an hour or go of time between Chicago
and New York, Feel said it was a
pleasure to fit a coat to ids broad, flat
tapering back, and trousers to ills
strong sturdy legs. His color, inher¬
ited from his red-cheeked Dutch an¬
cestors brought up in the fresh sea¬
laden air of the Holland flats, was fine
and clear. Sometimes Seiina, In pure
sensuous delight, passed Her gnarled,
work-worn hand over his shoulders and
down Ids fine, strong, straight back.
He had been abroad twice. lle learned
to call it “running over to Europe
for a few days.” It had all come
about in a scant two years, as is the
theatrical way in which life speeds
in America.
Selina was a little bewildered now •
at this new Dirk whose life was so full
without her. Sometimes she did not
see him for two weeks, or three. He
sent her gifts which she smoothed and
touched delightedly and put away;
tine soft silken things, liund-made—
which she couid not wear. The habit
of years was too strong upon her.
Though she had always been a woman
of dainty habits and fastidious tastes
the grind of. her early married life
had left its indelible mark. Sun and
wind and rain and the cold and heat
of the open prairie had wreaked their
vengeance on her flouting of them. Her
skin was tanned, weather-beaten; her
hair rough and dry. Her eyes, in that
frame, startled you by their unexpect¬
edness, they were so calm, so serene,
yet so alive. They were the beautiful
eyes of a wise young girl in the face
of a middle-aged woman. Life was
still so fresh to her. There was about
her something arresting, something
compelling. You felt it.
“I don’t see how you do it!" Julie
Arnold complained one day as Selina
was paying her one of her rare visits
in town. “Your eyes are as bright
as a baby’s and mine look like dead
oysters.” They were up in Julie’s
dressing room in the new house on
the north side—the new house that
was now the old house.
Julie was massaging. Her eyes had
an absent look. Suddenly: “Listen,
Selina. Dirk and I’aula are together
too much. People are talking.”
“Talking?” The smile faded from
Selina’s face.
“Goodness knows I'm not strait¬
laced. You can’t be in this day and
age. If I had ever thought I'd live to
see the time when— Well, since the
war of course anything's all right,
seems. But Paula has no sense. Ev¬
erybody knows she’s insane about
Dirk. That’s all right for Dirk, but
how about Paula! She won't go any¬
where unless he’s invited. They’re to¬
gether all the time, everywhere. I
asked her if she was going to divorce
Storm and she said no, she hadn’t
enough money of her own and Dirk
wasn’t earning enough. His salary’s
thousands, but she’s used to millions.
Well!”
“They were boy and girl together,”
Selina interrupted, feebly.
“They’re not any more. Don’t be
silly, Selina. You're not as young as
that."
No, she was not as young as that.
When Dirk next paid one of his rare
visits to the farm she called him into
her bedroom—the cool, dim shabby
bedroom with the old black walnut bed
in which she had lain as Pervus De
Jong’s bride more than thirty years
ago. She looked somehow girlish in
the dim light, her great soft eyes gaz¬
ing up at him.
“Dirk, sit down here at the side of
my bed the way you used to."
“I’m dead tired. Mother. Twenty
seven holes of golf before I came
out.”
“I know. You ache all over—a nice
kind of ache. I used to feel like that
when I’d worked in the fields all day,
pulling vegetables, or planting." He
was silent. She oaught his hand.
“You didn’t like that. My saying that.
I’m sorry. I didn’t say it to make you
feel bad. dear.”
“I know you didn’t, Mother."
"Dirk, do you know what that wom¬
an who writes the society news in the
Snnday Tribune called you today?”
"No. What? I never read It”
“She said you were one of the
jeunesse doree.”
Dirk grinned. “Gosh!’’
“I remember enough of my French
at Miss Ftster’s school to know that
that means gilded youth?’
“Me! That’s good! I’m not even
spangled.”
“Dirk!" her voice was low, vibrant.
“Dirk, I don’t want you to be a gilded
youth. I don’t care how thick the
gilding. Dirk, that Isn’t what I worked
in the sun and cold for. I’m not re¬
proaching you; I didn't mind the work.
Forgive me for even mentioning it.
But, Dirk, I don’t want my son to be
known as one of the jeunesse doree.
No! Not my son P*
“Now, listen. Mother. That’s fool¬
ish. If you're going to talk like that.
Like a mother in a melodrama whose
son’s gone wrong. ... I work like
a dog. You know that. You get the
wrong angie on tilings, stuck out here
on this little farm.”
-She sat up in bed, looking down at
the thin end of her braid as she twined
it round and round her finger. “Dirk,
do you know sometimes I actually think
that if you stayed here on the farm —”
"Good G—d. Mother! What for!”
“Oh, I don’t know. Time to dream.
Time to—no, [ suppose that isn’t true
any more. I suppose the day is past
when the genius came from the farm.
Machinery has cut into his dreams.
Patent binders, plows, reapers—he’s a
mechanic. He hasn’t time to dream.
Well. . . .”
She lay back, looked up at him,
“Dirk, why don’t you marry?”
“Why—there’s no one I want to mar¬
ry.”
“No one who's free, you mean?”
He stood up. “I mean no one.”
He stooped and kissed her lightly. Her
arms went round him close. Her hand
with the thick gold wedding band on
it pressed his head to her hard. “So
big!” He was a baby again.
"You haven’t called me that in
years." He was laughing.
She reverted to the oid game they
had played when he was a child. “How
big is my son ' How big?" She was
smiling, but her eyes were somber.
“So big!” answered Dirk, and meas¬
ured a very tiny space between thumb
and forefinger. “So big.”
She faced him, sitting up very
straight in bed, the little wool shawl
hunched about her shoulders. "Dirk,
are you ever going back to architec¬
ture? The war is history. It’s now
or never with you. Pretty soon it will
be too late. Are you ever going back
to architecture? To your profession?”
A clean amputation. “No, Mother.”
She gave an actual gasp, as though
icy water had been thrown full in
her face. She looked suddenly old,
tired. Her shoulders sagged. He stood
in the doorway, braced for her re¬
proaches. But when she spoke it was
to reproach herself. “Then I'm a fail¬
ure.”
“Oh, what nonsense, Mother. I’m
happy. You can’t live somebody else’s
life. You used to tell me, when I was
a kid, I remember, that life wasn’t just
an adventure, to be taken as it came.
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Bring Your Colton to Us
Send your cotton to our ware¬
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Fertilizer Manufacturers—Cotton Warehouse
COTTON BUYERS
Phone 107 Camilla, Ga.
withthehej* Sit something glorious
was always hidden Just around the
corner. You said you had lived that
way and it hadn’t worked. You laid —”
She Interrupted him with a little
cry. "I know I did. I know I did.”
Suddenly she raised a warning finger.
Her eyes were lomtnoos. prophetic.
"Dirk, you can’t desert her like that!”
“Desert who?" He was startled.
"Beauty! Self-expression. What¬
ever you want to call It. You wait!
She'll turn on yon some day. Some
day you’ll want her, and she won’t be
there.”
Inwardly he had been resentful of
this bedside conversation with his
mother. She made little of him, he
thought, while outsiders appreciated
his success. He had said, “So big,”
measuring a tiny space between thumb
and forefinger in answer to her half
playful question, but he had not hon¬
estly meant it. He thought her ridicu¬
lously old-fashioned now in her view¬
point, and certainly unreasonable. But
he would not quarrel with her.
“You wait, too, Mother,” he said
now, smiling. “Some day your way¬
ward son will be a real success. Wait
till the millions roll in. Then we’ll
see.”
She lay down, turned her back de¬
liberately upon him, pulled the covers
up about her.
“Shall I turn out your light. Mother,
and open the windows?"
“Meena’ll do it. She always does.
Just call her. . . . Good-night”
He knew that he had come to be a
rather big man in his world. Influ¬
ence had helped. He knew that, too.
But he shut his mind to much of
Paula’s maneuvering and wire-pulling
—refused to acknowledge that her
lean, dark, eager fingers had manipu¬
lated the mechanism that ordered his
career. Paula hersglf was wise enough
to know that to hold him she must not
let him feel indebted to her. She knew
that the debtor hates his creditor. She
lay awake at night planning for him,
scheming for his advancement, then
suggested these schemes to him so
deftly as to make him think he himself
had devised them. She had even rea¬
lized of late that their growing inti¬
macy might handicap him if openly
oominented on. But now she must see
him daily, or speak to him. Her tele¬
phone was a private wire leading only
to her own bedroom. She called him
the first thing in the morning; the last
thing at night.
Her voice, when she spoke to him,
was an organ transformed; low, vi¬
brant, with a timbre in its tone that
would have made it unrecognizable to
an outsider. Her words were com¬
monplace enough, but pregnant and
meaningful for her.
“What did you do today? Did you
have a good day? . . . Why didn’t
you call me? . . . Did you follow
up that suggestion you made about
Kennedy? I think It’s a wonderful
idea, don’t you? You’re a wonderful
man, Dirk; did you know that? . • •
I miss yon. . . . Do you? . . -
When? Why not lunch? . . -
• . •
Oh, not if you have a business appoint¬
ment How about five o’clock?
. . .
No, not there. . . ■ Oh, I
. . .
don’t know. It’s so public. . • *
Yes. . Good-by. . - • Good¬
. .
night . . . Good-night. . .
They began to meet rather furtively,
in out-of-the-way places. They would
lunch In department store restaurants
where none of their friends ever came.
They spent off afternoon hours in the
dim, close atmosphere of the motion
picture palaces, sitting in the back
row, seeing nothing of the film, talk¬
ing in eager whispers that failed to
annoy the scattered devotees in the
middle of the house. When they drove
it was on obscure streets.
Paula had grown very beautiful, her
world thought. There was about hew'*
the aura, the glow, the roseate exhala¬
tion that surrounds the woman in
love.
Frequently she irritated Dirk. At
such times he grew quieter than ever;
more reserved. As he involuntarily
withdrew she advanced. Sometimes he
thought he hated her—her hot, eager
hands, her glowing, asking eyes, her
thin, red mouth, her saiiow, heart
shaped, exquisite face, her perfumed
clothing, her air of ownership. That ,
was it! Her possessiveness. Some¬
times Dirk wondered what Theodore
Storm thought and knew behind that
Impassive flabby white mask of his.
Dirk met plenty of other girls.
Paula was clever enough to see to
that. She asked them to share her
box at the opera. >Slie had them at
her dinners. She affected great in¬
difference to their effect on him. Site *
suffered when he talked to one of them.
(Continued on page 7,
■
i IP £
Camilla Council R. & S. M. No. 31
meets fith Thursday Night at 7:30,
all visiting Companions invited.
M. A, Warren, Jno. C. Butler,
111 Master. Recorder.
Camilla Lodge No. 128 F. & A. M.
meets 1st Thursday Nights at 7:30,
3rd Thursday Afternoons at 2:30.
Visiting brethren invited.
Jno. C. Butler, J. L. Palmer,
W. M. SecCy."'
Camilla Chapter No. 133 meets 3rd
Thursday Night at 7:30 Visiting
Companions invited.
P. C. Cullens, Jno. C. Butler,
H. P. Recorder.