Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1916)

BY NOHMAN BHUCE -IMP: This story was written from the Photoplay of ELAINE STERNE bit shv on the dough, eh? Old Bailey’s been a fair mark for the m othe r-in-law — God bless ’em ! — ever since bis gov’nor blinked ” “H e y ! you blighters down below,” their host's voice urged, excitedly, from the companionway, “quit gossiping like a ladies’ sewing circle, and come up here quick ! I’m going dotty or it’s the lobster we had for dinner — hang it. if it's that. I’m on the lobster diet for the rest of my life.” Taber dropped the letter, hastily, in its original position and regarded his slippered feet fretfully. “Y a c h t i n g,” he grumbled, “to be a gentleman’s sport, should mean seeing as little of the water as possible. Here we were almostas comfortable, in spite of the hardships of a fisherman’s it. Now, look at this” — he lifted a sheet of notepaper from the writingpad before him — “Bailey’s letter to his fiancee — if he will leave his love-letters around there’s no reason we shouldn’t read them. ‘Dear Dora’ — observe the ardent beginning — ‘We are having a very enjoyable trip.’ Embarrassing to listen to, isn’t it? ‘The weather has been fine up to date. Nothing of any particular interest has occurred.’ Jove! this shy, young sentiment makes me blush. ‘Tonight we pass Mermaid Rock. If I see one, will try to get a snapshot and send it to you.’ Sounds like Baedeker, doesn’t it? And he's going to marry the girl in three weeks !” “Poor devil !” The youngest of the party twirled the mustache-that-wasto-be, knowingly. “Fine gal. Dora Wainwright, o’ course, an’ all that — scads o’ position and ancestors, but a lite, as we would have been on shore, and now we’ve got to dress and go on deck. It’s almost dark and, I dare say, beastly cold — br-r-r !” When, ten minutes later, an unenthusiastic group* of ulsters lined up alongside their host on the dusky deck, they found him staring fixedly at a black rock, spray-drenched and stark against the scarlet, evening sky. “Look there!” he directed, without turning. “See if you see her — on the left of the rock. No, that’s not she. By the living powers, she’s gone!” He turned a bewildered countenance upon his friends. No amount of millions could make Bailey Dryden look like anything but a pink-cheeked, clear-eyed schoolboy — a fact he mourned sincerely in secret and attempted to disavow by a choice of reckless, daredevil haberdashery and the most hardened and dissipated checked suits that could be wheedled from his horrified tailor. More than “ ires,” said Tommie Taber, sententiously, lifting one moroccoslippered foot over a lavender silk pajama’d knee, "are dowagers at eighteen and girlish only when they have arrived at the kittenish age of thirty-five.” The group of youths in elegant undress, lounging about the smokingroo m of Bailey Dryden’s yacht, Sea Lass, nodded g 1 o o m i 1 y. The oldest of them was just arrived at voting age ; the youngest caressed the downy, precious promise of a mustache by-and-by. They were men of the world. They knew women ; they knew everything. “R i g h t-o, my boy,” lisped the pop-eyed scion of a noble Milwaukee house, upon whose crest a beer-bottle argent foamed pleasantly upon field vert ; “nev’ knew a girl yet, in our set, y’know, that wasn’t deucedly conventional. Between us. as men of the world, they’re weally bores, y’know.” “Y’ find the live ones in the chorus,” offered a weary Methuselah of twenty with fleur-de-lys embroidered on his socks. “Trouble with gals these days — they’re too artificial for a reg’lar man’s taste. All for dress and soci’ty and that sort of rot — nothin’ natural about ’em.” The weary one blew a cloud of cigaret smoke thru his nostrils and shook his head. “Find me a gal that says what she thinks instead of what she wants a fellah to think she thinks, an’ she can have me,” he offered in a burst of generosity. “Romance,” propounded Tommie, who had the name of an epigrammist, “has become rules — Beata Beatrix is now Beatrice Fairfax, and etiquette and eugenics have bidden love to beat (Twenty-nine)