Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1921-Jan 1922)

Under th« Bj> SUSAN ELIZABETH BRADY Copyright, 1921, by Famous Players Corporation. All rights reserved. I SLEEP, but m y heart waketh : it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled : for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night." The deep voice of Robert Waring ]> a u s e d, h a v i n g grown unexpectedly tender at the exquisite passage. Deborah looked out the window across the dusty veld, with shining eyes that saw nothing. At last she turned her head. "I never thought it was beautiful, until you read it to me, "she whispered so that her husband could not hear. Simeon > Krillet, pouring over his accounts, was not wholly oblivious to the presence of his wife and his overseer, an al -^ together presentable young English ~ -■ man, just lately come to the Transvaal. .They were reading "The Word." This was the only book of any description that Krillet allowed in his house. He knitted his shaggy brows in perplexity. It was well to read "The Word," but one read that as a duty, not with such obvious pleasure and personal enjoyment as his young wife and Waring seemed to be getting out of it. His frown grew blacker, as the voice of Waring went on with the passionately beautiful Song of Solomon. When it was finished, Deborah sighed ecstatically and said under her breath, "It is Heavenly. The words are like music — but I wish I had something else to read. I've been married more than two years and I have not even seen any book but the Bible in all that time." "Why, you poor little starved soul," exclaimed Waring in a low tone, "I've got lots of books with me. Never travel without 'em. I'll be glad to have you read them." "Simeon wouldn't let me," murmured Deborah. "He thinks it is wicked to read any other than the Bible, and Boer women are brought up to believe that their husbands are their masters and must be obeyed." Krillet got up hastily from his desk. "Come in here, Waring," he called, unable to endure the lowered voices any longer. Gesticulating awkwardly with his ancient and inseparable meerschaum, he gave Waring his orders for the day, in a voice more than usually stern. His wife, standing apart in wistful abstraction, he ignored, until he was thru with Waring. "Go to bed, woman," he ordered, not unkindly. "Taut Anna is coming tomorrow with Jan on important business. See that my wife is fit to greet my sister and her son." Silently Deborah obeyed, and Waring too withdrew to his own quarters, leaving the old Boer to his complacent reflections. A hard man, Simeon Krillet. His whole life was governed by a limited and harsh conception of "The Word." Justice, yes, but untempered with mercy. The lives of others, he governed by the lash. His servants, men and women alike, he beat unmercifully for the slightest dereliction from duty. Henever spared the rod. His young wife had not yet felt the weight of his displeasure, but she knew it would come in time. His first wife had died of a broken heart, so one said, a timid well-meaning little creature who had not been able to survive the man's fanatic cruelty. Deborah was liner stuff, and younger, and only two years married. Perhaps the first wife had had some spirit in the beginning. Perhaps Deborah would break, too, in time, and become a toneless thing of drab domesticity — but not yet. Krillet was fond of her in his way, really loved her, as much as a man of his forbidding. character could love anything. Deborah had been married to him by her foster parents, because they wished her out of the way, so that their own dull daughter might have some chance in the marriage market. Simeon Krillet was more than thirty years her 61 PAG i