Newspapers / The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, … / Jan. 16, 1941, edition 1 / Page 2
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m CHAPTER X—Continued —lO Daniels spoke without preamble. "You were down at the other end ■f the mill yesterday, Wills. Did you see anyone fooling around the kg vats—the digesters? We lost a batch of pulp through some funny business or other." "I don't know all the men in the mill as yet," Wills said. "And I was out for two or three hours. The *ats have padlocks, don't they?" "That's it." Daniels frowned. "It's an inside job, evidently—without even a motive that we can discov er. You haven't made any of these fellows sore, have you?" Wills looked puzzled. "How could 1? I've only been watching and lis tening. And if I made a man sore he'd be more likely to give me a poke in the jaw, wouldn't he, than to ruin a run of pulp?" "It sounds reasonable. It's a mys tery—and not so good for me be cause I carry the keys. Well, much obliged." At shouted instructions from a lank man in overalls, Wills went to help smooth the thick blanket into place on the bed of the machine. But the odd unease of being pressed upon by strange and unfriendly forces persisted. He hated the feel ing of defensiveness, of needing to justify himself in his own mind. He liked this job, and he had been swept up into admiration for the in trepid spirit of Virgie Morgan. And now, as the mill clamor beat around him, he was certain that it was the remoteness, the indifference in her eyes that made this feeling of being on trial without a friend in court. He had to show her. He had to show her that he was something other than a lost and rather pathetic young man whom a big-hearted el derly woman had befriended. A sudden sharp nausea caught him as his mind raced. Young men had been befriended by middle-aged women before—if she thought he was that sort, an opportunist, a jeel! He gave an involuntary jerk and Bud Spain yelled, "Hey!" But the yell was lost in other yells, rough and sudden and startling. Frank Emmet banged the gears of the Jordan machine back, jumped and ran. Wills ran, too, and be cause the others were yelling, he yelled, too. Hobe Anderson was dragging a flat hose off a reel. An other man struggled with a fire ex tinguisher. The smoke was pouring from a Tittle oil house, built against tl'C north wall of the mill. They kicked the door in, there were yells and men running into each other, and much coughing and hissing of chem icals. The smoke grew blacker, then turned white and sank to the ground. Wills' eyes were running scalding water but it was he who kicked the smoldering barrel into the open, where Hobe Anderson knocked it ever and sent it rolling with a stream from the hose. "Take it easy!" Wills shouted at Hobe. "Cut that water off. Let's have a look at this." A dozen hands jerked the charred, smoking staves of the barrel apart. A label, still intact, on its side, in dicated that it had held bisulphide. In the bottom an oily mass still smoked acridly. Dragged out, it flared into flame briefly—a soaked, dangerous bundle of cotton rags and paper. Men stamped out the flame, looked at each other somberly. "Somebody," announced Frank Emmet, "was fixing to burn the mill." "Wind's wrong," Hobe said, kick ing a smoking heap into a pool of water, "or she'd have went sure. like if anybody wanted to burn her they'd have figured on the wind." Wills was aware of Lucy Fields' white face near to his elbow. "It was set, wasn't it?" she said. "Obviously. Though, even if the tarrel had burned, there might not i ave been serious damage. That I ttle building is more or less air -4 ght. The fire probably would have •>mo!dercd out." "But why would anyone want to set fire to the mill? The town would b? ruined if it was destroyed." "Why," Daniels cut in, "would «nyone want to spoil the pulp? Something's wrong somewhere. Where is Mrs. Morgan?" "She went to Asheville to see Tom Pruitt's lawyers. I'd better tele phone her." "I wouldn't," Wills said. "The fire is out. Why worry her? She has troubles enough already." "That's true. I won't tell her. You'd better clean this up, Frank." "Let's have a look at it first." Wills looked at Daniels. "We can find out perhaps where this stuff came from." For an instant Wills sensed an edge of hesitation in Daniels' man ner. His eyes flicked around, then were as quickly guarded. But his voice was carefully casual when he answered, "Not much left—but there may be a clue." Wills went back to his work at the Jordan machine. It was an hour later that one of the Spain boys came to him and said, "Lucy wants to see you. In the office." Wills crossed the yard to the lit ' tie structure that stood so bleakly alone. Lucy Fields sat at her little d=>sfc, and her face went first red ' and thfcrt white as Wills came in. "Sit down, please," she faltered a little, then plunged rapidly. "Mr. Wills. I'm do,ng a very bold thing— j hawk" Wind 1 «*/ ur. ru TAnn.ur mii ien ©0- AWLITOW-ONIUmr Cf. | BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER W N U.Service asking you to come here. But I had to talk to you. There's—noth ing else to do." "I see. And what was it you wanted to say to me?" He took the chair opposite—the chair that still bore the imprints of David Mor gan's shoulder-blades. Her throat fluttered. A strained look came over her small wistful face. "This is such a little town," she began. "It's rather awful to live in such a gossipy little place. It isn't easy—what I have to say—to make it clear, I mean. About the town. About the mill. It belongs to the town—to all of us, Mr. Wills. The men who work here have been here always. Nobody ever came in from outside till Mr. Daniels came last year." "What is it you're trying to tell me?" Wills asked bluntly. "That I'm an outsider? That somehow or oth er I am to blame for the trouble in the mill?" "And so your suggestion is that I leave town in haste and never come back!" Tears ran down her pale face. "I know I sound like a fool to you, Her face went red and then white as Wills came in. but Mrs. Morgan has been a moth er to me—to all of us. We've all fought and worked and struggled to gether—always for the mill." "All but the fellow who poured oil oo the newspapers and ruined the pulp. He was fighting for him self." "Perhaps he thought he was fight ing for the mill. Perhaps he thought that outsiders would be coming in to take it away from us. He might have thought that you were the first." "It sounds fantastic. But it may be true. I'll talk to Mrs. Morgan— and you can be sure I won't let the mill be destroyed on my ac count." "Oh—please don't talk to Mrs. Morgan! Please—just go! You can make some excuse—you had a job, you can say you are going back to it. You could say you had changed your mind." "I'm sorry—l couldn't leave with out talking to Mrs. Morgan. I'm very much indebted to her." "I appealed to you," she sighed. "It's all I can do. But—if you were convinced—" "You've done your part. What ever happens—l'm to blame." "I hopf: nothing happens. I hope I'm wrc.ig." She smiled thinly. But there was a dubious uneasi ness in her heart, as Wills went away. Had Stanley Daniels been a little odd—a trifle curt and watch ful? He couldn't know anything about this affair—and yet, he alone carried the keys. Lucy was heavily unhappy as she walked home alone that night. Life could be so hopeless, so ghastly when you lived in a shabby old house at the end of a shabby street, When you were so achingly in love! CHAPTER XI Marian Morgan had driven her little car up a twisting stretch of ridge road, without having any very definite idea of where she was go ing or why. She drove slowly because she told herself that it was thrifty to spare tires on a rocky, boulder-edged track. She searched the hills above and below with her eyes, but not even to herself would she admit that she looked for anything. She had heard her mother telephoning in structions that morning, but she had kept her mind sternly on her break fast grapefruit and adjured herself not to listen. What did it matter where the woods truck went or who went with it? She slipped out of the car, dragged the cushion out and rummaged for the pump, set it up on the ground. With a nail-file from her purse she pressed down the valve of a front tire, let the air escape until the tire sagged, loose and flabby, a dis couraging flummox of limp rubber. Then she climbed back into the car, wrapped the rug around her knees and sat in a small, cold huddle waiting. Instantly, now that the thing was done, a hundred accusing and con- THE DANBURY REPORTER. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16. 1941 demning voices clamored in her ears. She was being cheap, she was doing the sort of shallow trick that a girl of Lossie's class might de vise, she was forgetting that she was the daughter of Virgie Mor gan of the Morgan mills. But draw ing out all these self-reproaches was the thin, poignant cry that had trem bled through her heart and beat in her blood since the night she had talked to her mother before the fire. "I have to know!" she said, plain tively, aloud. "I know it isn't true but I have to be sure!" This contradictory patching up of her conscience helped her to be calm, to wait, though her feet tin gled with cold. A mountain jay came and shrieked at her from a sumac clump. A deer stood for an instant, tense and listening under some gnarled ancient apple-trees beside the ruin of a stone chim ney. Then suddenly he bounded away. There was a metallic vibra tion through the woods. The truck was starting. She caught the back fire of a cold engine and the clank of shovels tossed aboard, and leaned her elbow on the button of her horn. The blare made the jays and the lit tle pine sparrows and crossbills scatter with a whirring and snap ping of twigs. Then the rusty radiator appeared over the rise emitting steam. Joe had let the engine run hot on the grade. He was always doing that, too impatient to cool it out properly when they reached the top of a long climb. Two men jumped down when they saw Marian's car, and came run ning. One was Joe. The other was Branford Wills. Swiftly Marian put every scruple out of her mind. She was a woman, using a woman's devious and often unfair weapons. She said, "I'm stuck. That miser able old tire insists on going flat. And I left the key to the spare in my other purse. Isn't mother with you? I thought she came up here. There's a long-distance call for her —I came up to tell her." "She didn't come with us. She must be at the mill," Wills said. "Let's have a look at that tire." "It's flat, all right." Joe gave the wheel a kick. "But there's still a little air in it. Maybe we can pump it up so you can get down to the read." They pumped up the tire, and Joe studied it, testing the valve. "Must be a pressure leak," he said. "Valve's all right. Can you turn around here without getting stuck?" "I think so—l'll try." "You better do it," Joe said to Wills. "It's steep off there. She could turn over easy." Marian slid along meekly. "I'm a lot of trouble," she said in a voice which would have amazed her moth er, so humble was it. "No trouble." Wills whipped the steering-wheel about. "This is a bad place to turn. Flag for me, Joe," he shouted. "O. K. Cut deep." Joe sema phored his arms. The car came about. Wills got out again to look at the tire. "Standing up all right," he an nounced. "You'll make it." Marian's throat cramped. But she fought its quivering, got the words out. "Would you drive it down for me? The tire might go down again and I'm not much good at the pump." "Of course." He resumed the wheel again, while Joe followed with the truck. "You shouldn't be driv ing on lonely mountain roads alone, you know," he said, as they bumped over a wooden bridge. "No one would hurt me," she de clared. "Everybody for miles around knows me—knows mother. And mother hasn't any enemies." "She has one, obviously," Wills said. "The fellow who kindled a fire in the oil house at the mill yes terday wasn't celebrating the Fourth of July. He was getting even." Marian looked thoughtful. "Per haps that wasn't mother's enemy." "That might be true." He drove the little car carefully around a slippery hair-pin turn. "But even without enemies there are dangers. This morning, for instance. Suppose you had had to walk back to the highway? Suppose th 5 truck had not been on the ridge?" "I knew the truck was on the ridge." Marian was truthful. "That's why I came. Does this catechism and fatherly admonition have to go on indefinitely? We could talk about other things. I'm fairly intelligent. I know all the tenses and that you shouldn't say ain't." "I'd better take another look at that tire." Wills stopped on a wide bit of road, waved the truck past. It roared down grade, flinging mud cheerfully. Marian sat, looking straight ahead, her cameo profile a trifle grim, her chin squared. "There's nothing the matter with the tire," she said. "I wanted to talk to you." He looked at her quickly, search ingly. She was so near—and BO dear! Even with her chin set at a resolute angle, even with her eyes cool and distant and her lashes eva sive. He made an impulsive move, then drew back as her aloof man ner did not change. "I'm listening," he said quietly. She twisted her Angers together, but kept her eyes straight ahead— on the thickets where the jays quar reled and the frozen slopes where m icicles made a diamond passemen terie on every rock and twig. "I don't like fighting," she began, with a little difficulty. "We seem I to clash. And it's rather silly, don't you think?" "Very silly. Especially when—" "Especially when we could ar range things sensibly. I—this isn't easy for me to say. But—l thought if I talked to you—alone—if I ap-1 pealed to you—" He stiffened a little. Only the day before Lucy Fields had used those same words. "I've appealed to you!" For a moment eagerness, j tenderness had rushed through his 1 blood like flame. He had looked at Marian and seen only her young ! sweetness, the golden curve of her ' throat where kisses were born to lie, the yielding curve of her lips, j But now the pride in him, that verged so close to a high, fine fury, j the terrible, blind, masculine pride, I that through a thousand centuries has gone flaunting banners and wav ing swords and trampling small ten der things underfoot, had him again. He could not see the pulse that quivered where a gold shadow lay upon her throat, he did not see the uncertainty of her fingers and her eyelids quivering. He saw only her profile, set against him, the chin that was like David Morgan's. He was blind and savage with hurt and frozen with disappointment. He was a very stupid young man. He drew back and swung the car wide on a curve, not looking at her. "I think I know what you're going to say. I've heard it all, already. I only have one answer. I'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the mill. I'm not going to be driven out—nor wheedled out. I'm in this to stay. So—it's too bad you went to so much trouble to let the air out of that tire!" She turned, as though she had been struck, but he did not see. Her She snatched at the whirled away with frosty mud flying. face was as white and stiff as his own. Her voice snicked like steel on ice. "You're a very famous egotist, aren't you?" she said, brutally. "You couldn't possibly think beyond yourself for a moment. It wouldn't occur to you that I might not want to talk about the mill. That I might be thinking—of myself a little. I won't say it now. I won't let you gloat over the kind of a fool that I was. I see—how hopeless it is!" She choked a little, then recovered her control, gave a savage drag at the brake, turned the key. Wills said, "Marian! Good God!". But she was not listening. Her eyes were black and blazing. She reached across his knees as the car lurched to a stop, and opened the door. "Get out, will you?" she said hoarsely. "I can't stand any more." He said "Marian!" again, in a husky, stricken voice, but she was like a woman on fire. "Get out! I hate you! Get out!" She snatched at the wheel, whirled away with frosty mud flying, al most before he *vas on the ground. Down the winding road she swung past the truck, grazing a hemlock tree, careening on two wheels. "You'd better wait for him," she shouted at the startled Joe. "He isn't riding with me." Down the mountain she tore blind ly, shame and a white, torturing pain burning her. Once she laughed and the laugh was bitter. So—he was in love with her, was he? She was a song sung to a gipsy tambourine. Cheap cheap to have sur rendered even a little! She hated him! She hated him! As for Branford Wills, he sat mo rosely in the jolting truck and hat i ed himself for a blundering fool, i Now—with his crass stupidity he had ruined what life with its ruth - less distinctions had not made in • tolerable before. i At the mill gate the truck halted, i "Something's busted again," an nounced Joe grimly, i Somehow, the spur track had been * undermined. A car, heavily loaded with pulp, had gone off the rails, swung sidewise, and turned over, > tearing up a hundred yards of track. "This here," declared Joe, "it ■ gittin' so it ain't even funny!" I (TO BE CONTINUED). NOTES OF A NEW YORKER: j The January Reader's Digest ha* a piece about the situation in Alaska . . . They tell of the Japanese laun dryman there who was very popular with everyone . . . But when he died, he was buried in the uniform of a commander of the Japanese I Navy! . . . The New York cinema | critics, who gave Chaplin's film a drubbing, have just selected his per formance in it as the best of the I year . . . The appeasers want you to handle the dictators with kid 1 gloves . . . It's more sanitary to handle them with rubber ones . . . ! The Nazi propagandists make a ' great to-do about the fact that Eng land hasn't paid her war debt . . . j The Chicago editorial writers, how ever, point out that England has | paid back half of it so far—more I than any other debtor nation . . . Germany has never paid a penny of its debt . . . C. R. Hunter's theme song for the isolationists: "Please Go 'Way and Lemme Sleep!" According to G. K. Chesterton, "merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is tc shut it again on something solid" ... In spite of the Third Term and other gloomy comments, U. S. Gov't Bonds are the safest investment not only here but everywhere in the world . . . The records prove that Hitler has given the world his sol emn assurance (no less than eight een times) that he desires no Euro pean territory which he later con quered . . . America has had all the troubles Europe has had. A revolution, a civil conflict, famines, depressions, plagues, etc . . . But through it all America has never lost its precious freedom ... Ed Howe's grand line: "Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better." The N. ¥. Times' ass't managing editor is Neil MacNeil ... He re cently wrote a corking book about newspapers in which he praised the accuracy of the Times over and over again . . . Recently MacNeil's name appeared in the Times—spelled wrong . . . The radio section of that gazette not long ago devoted much space to the broadcasters who had made the greatest popularity strides during the year . . . Every branch of the radio business was mentioned, except newscasters . . . One of them, in a year, went from 9.4 to 21.6, according to the sur veyors, who check the listener* semi-monthly. The other morning some well meaning strangers encountered our unmarried son of 5, and instead of talking to him about his toys and things little boys are interested in most—they spoke of his father's newspaper and radio activities . . . As if he hasn't enough on his mind ... "I wish they hadn't mentioned those things," we told Steve Hanni gan, "my son always thought I was a great man—and now look what's happened!" . . . Steve was re minded of the time when Jim Far ley's little boy startled him with this: "Pop," he said, "why do peo ple go around saying that you are a great man?" "I don't think I'm a great man," said Farley. "I don't either," was the retort. THINGS I KNEW ALL ALONG (But which you never knew 'til now) The man who said: "Give me Liberty or give me Death!" owned twenty slaves. When you hear the rumba crews shout: "A-100-bay, chongo!"—it's a form of "Hy, dee-ho!" . . . That very fast song they sing called: "Blem-Blem-Blem" comes from the rhythm of the five opening notes, to wit: "Blem-blem-blem. Blem blem" and sets the rhythm, to wit: "One-two-three. One-two." When a mosquito bites you the fluid he injects is Quinine. In Mexico, among the upper classes, courtship is an involved per formance. A young man paces the sidewalk across from the house of his love until her family investigates him. If he is acceptable he may stand in front of the house and talk to the girl through the window. But not until the engagement is official may he come in. i If you'd improve your golf score try eating candy at the 9th hole. Dr. Paul Michael reports that after ■ studying thirty male golfers he I found that those who ate luncheon, high in fat and sugar, played the • best games. Four rulers of Germany died in > the 40th year of their respective cen ' turies: Frederick lin 1440, George William in 1640, Frederick William in 1740 and Fred 111 in 1840. (1940's • gone but not Hitler.) If the glare of a strong headlight 1 bothers you—try this trick discov -1 ered in Britain's blackouts. Shut ■ one eye when the bright light ap • proaches and open it when it has • passed. The orb you closed will be ' as sensitive to darkness as before. (Say, this is worth money!) For Home-Wear or' Use Out-of-Doors ONE special beauty of this de sign (No. 8836) is that you can make it up in household cottons for home wear, cutting the sleeves off short, and in spun rayon or thin wool for runabout, cutting the sleeves long! And it's so easy to make that you're certain to repeat it many times. Belted only in the back, with lengthening bodice panels that ac cent height, thus making you look Jjjf| 6836 6limmer, and gathers beneath the yoke portions, this dress is clever ly detailed to give exactly the ef fect that women's sizes require. The v-neckline is finished with a deeply notched collar, the sleeves are trimmed with narrow cuff points. And you'll find it one of the most comfortable fashions you ever put on! • • • Pattern No. 8836 is designed for sizes 34. 36, 38, 40, 42, 44. 46 and 48. Size 36 re quires, with short sleeves, 4Tfc yards of 38- inch material without nap; with long sleeves, 4!i yards; % yard for contrasting collar and cuffs. Send order to; SEWING CIRCLE PATTERN DEPT. Room 1324 211 W. 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The Danbury Reporter (Danbury, N.C.)
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