Broadway and Hollywood "Movies" (Jan - Aug 1934)

14 “ MOVIES ” tion from its mooring, and, shielding Beth from sight with his own body, was backing her to the rear of the little shack. They escaped hurriedly, dodging a motorcycle policeman as they sped on their way. He fired one shot at them, but that wasn’t what Beth worried about most. Larry sensed her perturbation. He headed the car toward town. “Two thirty now,” he muttered, looking at his watch. “Be three before we can possibly get to town. We better beat it.” He drove with one hand, his other holding one of Beth’s cold little hands close. “Now don’t worry, honey,” he told her. “You’ve done no wrong and you know it. If worst comes to worst and your father finds out about it we’ll stand right up to him. Then we can get married. It’s all his fault anyway. If he’d given you a chance like other girls. If he wasn’t so narrow-minded and conceited ” But her fears proved groundless. In less time than she took to worry, she had climbed back into her window, slipped off her clothes, and gotten to bed, thinking. For half a year now she’d been meeting Larry, and at first he had just been content to meet her. Then kisses and hugs; now he kept talking of marriage and children. But she thought of the bleak, rigid home life she had had and of the five children her parents had had. “Loaned by God,” her father would say with an expansive smile. Then one by one they had been taken away — two boys and a girl died of diphtheria and one son, almost a young man, was drowned. Four graves in a row. “You’re all we have left,” her father had told her. “You owe a duty to us that you must fulfill. After we’re dead and gone then you can go your way — until then you belong to us.” Years of service in what her father called “his vineyard,” years of living with ladies’ aids and missionaries. Years of church activities with young people in the background and then youth and Larry Caspar asserted itself. She arose rather tired, after a somewhat worried night. There were the usual chores, mimeographing the church calendar and the like. Burdensome tasks now. The usual lengthy invocation at breakfast which was never overly cheerful. Then another half day of torture worrying whether her name would be in the papers, even though Larry urged her to face her father with the facts and offered to come over and back her up. But nothing came of it, and the Reverend MacDougal merely used the story to point out another moral “lesson” to his daughter. Just prior to supper the telephone rang. “Mother,” said the Reverend MacDougal, “it’s John Larson on the ’phone ; grandma Larson’s ill and they wonder if Beth could spend the night there. John’s wife has to stay at home and take care of the baby, and the daughter doesn’t get in until the late train from the city.” The minister’s word was law, but in going to her grandmother’s she found that the daughter had arrived on an earlier train and only a casual visit was necessary. The inevitable thing happened; she met Larry, and, with Billy McGee and Hortense, they went for a ride. “I’ve got the Chicago job cinched,” said Larry as he fondled her hands and lovingly caressed her waist as they sat in the rumble seat. “How about a walk down to the courthouse tomorrow' and getting married? You’re of legal age. After it’s over what can he say? What can he do? Just listen to reason, honey.” But Beth would not listen. “I wouldn’t dare, Larry,” she told him with finality. “I just wouldn’t dare. You don’t understand Father. I do. I’ve lived with him over twenty years.” But Larry was not to be entirely directed from his purpose. “Then what about the trial marriage?” he told her. “You come to Chicago to teach. Even if you don’t get the teacher’s job what does it matter? I’m going to have a hundred dollars more a month than here. I’ve had plenty to live on here and I’ve got some in the bank. We could get a little apartment and nobody would be the wiser.” “I want to marry you, Larry,” said Beth. “But I want to in the honest, old fashioned way. I know I made a promise to my parents they had no right, morally or legally, to exact; but I did, and that’s all there is to it now.” The rest of the argument trailed on until they arrived at the Light House Inn for a chicken diner and drinks in a neighboring county, and it was half after eleven when they again tried to start for home. By this time the rain had developed into perfect cloudbursts and the ditches at the side of the road were filled, making driving not only difficult but very dangerous. Stuck in the mud they drowned their sorrows and worries by drinking from the well filled flask Billy had,— including Beth of the temperance-bringing-up. Soon Beth and Hortense were both silly and hysterically happy. After the raid Larry had taken out a marriage license, and he suddenly thought of the idea of using it while Beth was in a mellow if not tractable mood. An elderly justice of the peace was summoned to the shack where they had sought shelter and in a jiffy a legal marriage was performed, Beth speaking only when Larry prompted her to say “Yes.” A rosy dawn was breaking when their car was finally hauled out of the mud and Beth was later delivered to her own parental roof. She was glad the day was Saturday; there were so many things to do to keep her mind off the blurr of the night before. She remembered nothing of her being married; that was Larry’s secret. It was John Larson who “spilled the beans,” as they say in the vernacular, and told the Reverend MacDougal that Beth should have gotten home safely on Friday night. Now she felt conscious-stricken for having been drunk, and on Sunday she had to listen to a glowing pulpit denunciation delivered by her father against the sins of the young people of today. She slipped Larry a ( Continued on page 411