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

18 “MO VI IS” stand the situation; she must not be informed! While Larry waited for a delayed train bearing his mother and sister, Beth entertained Billy McGee in the privacy of her rooms; still smarting under the wrong which she thought had been done to her. She was not even properly dressed when Billy called. Later, when Larry returned to the apartment Beth lay in bed, fully clothed, but stone drunk. After he had bawled her out, he threatened to take her back to her father, the Rev. John MacDougal, but was prevented from carrying this idea out immediately because he was called out of town on a hurried business trip. Returning suddenly he found McGee again in his wife’s room, attacked the rake and knocked him out while Beth and he sped on their way. Of course the police were summoned, but everything was explained satisfactorily. “Your kind is riding for a good, hard fall,” said the landlady when Beth tried to thank her for what she had done to keep the dirty affair out of the papers. “Somewhere you’ve had decent bringing up. Maybe a decent father and mother still livin’ for all I know. You’ve got a refined look about you, but you ain’t happy. Young couples that quarrel all the time and go on like you folks have aren’t starling on the level, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.” She turned and stalked unyieldingly to the door. “Mind what 1 say. Tomorrow’s the nineteenth and I want the keys.” So she left and boarded a train at the depot, without leaving any word for Larry as to where she bad gone. Larry worried, of course, — be even examined a few unknown corpses in the Chicago morgue in his quest for Beth. In the personal columns of a newspaper she read this startling notice: “BETH, COME HOME AT ONCE. MOTHER DYING, BEGS TO SEE YOU. COME BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. JOHN B. MACDOUGAL.” The money she had for a railroad trip didn’t carry her far, and she “hitch-hiked” it all the way home, even borrowing some money from one of the drivers. But thanks to a merciful Providence she arrived home in time to put her mother Donald Dillaway in good spirits, on her as “Larry” way to recovery. Dotty turned out to be, as she lutei found out, just one of those girls who chase men for the sake of making a conquest. “That’s the trouble, Caspar,” said Billy McGee when Larry tried to tell him all abbut the situation. “You’ve acted foolish all along. I can hardly believe that you lived together almost three months and she never knew you were legally married. That’s the thing I can’t understand. Why you didn’t tell her.” “She was so bitter about that promise to her father,” Larry explained for the thousandth time. “No person who didn't know Beth intimately could understand just how morbidly bitter she was ^bout it. It preyed on her mind. In the first place Beth isn’t the saint she looks. Oh, I don’t mean what you might think. There isn’t a more loving, kinder-hearted girl in the world than Beth. Nor a more virtuous, pure-minded one. But she wasn’t cut out for doleful hymn singing like her father wanted her to be. She’s a gay, little impulsive thing. She wanted to sing and dance and be happy. “And then he forced her to make this promise. Good heavens, think of it, the girl had never had a date. All through high school and then during those two years in college. And dozens of fellows had been crazy about her.” “I had myself,” McGee confessed. In the meantime, Hortense, Billy’s real friend, informed Beth that she really had been married, although the minister’s daughter was far from sober when it occurred. Her so-called “life of sin” was just a pleasant memory, a new start, now, and she was happy. She even forgave her father for trying to prevent her seeing her mother Mary. Arriving home, she heard footsteps on the walk outside the door. She opened it. On the threshold stood Larry Caspar. They fairly flew into each other’s arms, clinging together and turning defiant eyes to the stern man who watched. “It’s all right, dear, it’s all right,” Larry whispered soothingly. He turned so that his body shielded the girl, as though from the physical wrath of her father. “I didn’t know7 where Beth was, {ConCd. on page 13 > Beth had been ’ 1 drinking again and Larry Caspar was shocked.