Radio mirror (July-Dec 1943)

Happiness had come to her at last, and yet Allie knew that she must run away from this wonderful world she had just found. Could she never escape the shame of the past? HAVE you ever known what it is to be afraid? Not physical fear — fear of injury or of death — but mental fear, anguish that makes you shrink from contact with everyone, that makes you afraid to go out on the streets because you must face your neighbors, that keeps your eyes forever cast down to the ground, that makes your soul sick, and your very heart cringe? If you have known that dreadful fear, you know what I felt during those long months after Terry went away, and again during those dreadful months when I lived alone at Pine Ridge Farm, outside the little town of Fleetwood. If you have known that fear, and have conquered it, if you have found a haven in the peace and security of a happy, normal existence once more, how you must thank heaven each day of your life for that deliverance! Security, you must have learned as I did, is a state of mind, not of body. You can be poor and alone, and still be secure. You can be rich and famous, and still have no security. It, like the fear itself which steals precious security away, is within you. If you can't search your mind and your heart and find it there, you will find it nowhere. You will be a craven coward, a wretched, frightened, fleeing thing, as I was — as I was the day I locked the door of Pine Ridge Farm behind me, leaned panting against it, and swore that I would never face the world outside again. That was a dreadful day, but the days that followed it were worse. You've seen pictures that are out of focus, blurred and distorted — well, that's the way my life was then. I know now that it was wrong of me to shut myself away from the world like that — the worst possible thing I could have done to myself. I suppose I knew it even then. But I couldn't helD it. And remembering made those long, lonely days worse. Of course, I didn't actually keep my promise to myself that I would never face the world outside again, but I kept to it as nearly as I could. My work as a dressmaker was gone. The dark little house was called Pine Ridge Farm, but I had neither the interest nor the knowledge to farm the land that surrounded it. Only once a week did I venture out, and then only to bicycle to Fleetwood for supplies— a trip I made as hastily as I could, and as inconspicuously. I couldn't read; I couldn't sew — I couldn't keep my mind on those commonplace, everyday things. I hardly even bothered to do anything about the house — just washed the few dishes I used, the few clothes I wore, and let the dust and the dirt pile up. What was there, then, to fill the days but remembering? Most of the time I sat by the window, staring out, watching with uncaring eyes the winter change almost imperceptibly to spring. It was safe to sit by the window; very few people passed along the lonely road which ran by the farm, and when someone did I could shrink back out of sight behind the curtains. But that seldom happened; there was little to disturb me. I didn't want to remember, but I couldn't help it. So much had happened. The fear had been with me so long; even during those happy days in Fleetwood, before I ran away to the farm, it had been gathering over my head like storm clouds, ever since, long ago, I had met and loved and married and lost Terry Cassis. It was in my home town of Marston— far away from Fleetwood and Pine Ridge Farmthat I met Terry. I was a typical small My True Story Radio Bra ma !nr0ngiw J"*' °Ut °f "*" s*°°l. going on weiner roasts and dancing on Saturday nights with the other young people my age, singing soprar/solos m the choir on Sunday, helping the Sm°/k Wh° J?3* t3ken °ve'r Mother' dressmaking business when Mother died the year before. twer77au the most r°mantic thing that had happened to sleepy little Marston since I was born, and cer! tainly he was a more romantic thing than I had ever expected to happen to me. He was a small, dark, compactly fashioned man, with warm brown eyes and skin that was like gold. Even now I can see him clearly and then, at Pine Ridge, when I had nothing to do but remember, the memory of him burned like fire. Terry had slipped into Marston like a shadow. No one knew where he came from, why he was there, what he did for a living that was good enough to buy him his beautifully tailored suits, the long, gray car he drove, the diamond ring that twinkled on his dark hand. He was well-versed in the ways of making love, too, Terry was. Beautiful phrases came easily to his lips, phrases which in anyone else would have been almost funny, but which fitted so well with Terry's foreign softness of speech, the liquidity of his voice, the effortless ease with which he moved, the heady, hot excitement of his laughter. Do you wonder that I fell in love with a man who told me that my lips were the very shape of kisses, that my hands were fashioned to hold a heart between them? Do you wonder that I, eighteen years old, never one day away from Marston and the things Marston stood for, fell in love with Terry and cried a breathless, "Oh, yes — yes!" when he asked me to marry him? WE would stay on in Marston, Terry had told me. We would build a little stone house on the hill above the river, and live there forever. But we didn't. The little house was just plans on paper, our marriage was still in its infancy, when two more strangers came to Marston. Two strangers with official papers they presented to Sheriff Granger. Then the sheriff and the two strangers took Terry away. I didn't know the whole story until later— until it was all over town that Allie Barnes had married a Chicago gangster, that Federal agents had arfested him and taken him back fo trial That he had chosen Marston as a hiding place, had used me as a part '•You're right, Allie;' he told me. "We haven't really anything to talk about. I could never marry a coward. of his scheme for dropping out of sight. I didn't believe it— I mean that literally. My mind absolutely refused to credit what my eyes and ears told me was true. I could believe a story like that about almost anyone else, but not about Terry— not Terry of the soft voice, the gentle hands, the wonderful words to tell me of his love and the lingering caresses to demonstrate it! Not my Terry— those hands could never have held a gun that spoke of death, those lazy, dreamer's eyes could never have been hard and cruel and calculating. I couldn't believe it. But I had to, at last, because it was true. And then love and hate, so closely akin, tore me apart. I was like two women, one of them ashamed and sick and angry because she had married a man who was a public enemy, a killer, and the other half of me lying lonely, terrified in the long, dark nights, remembering her lover. I hod to remember him that way. No matter what he had been to the rest of the world, to me Terry had been gentle and kind. You can imagine how tongues wagged in Marston! Nothing like this, had ever happened before, or was likely ever to happen again. And I, walking about the streets, was a constant reminder to everyone of what had occurred. I got so that I hated to go out, hated to hear what people had to say to me. There was a great deal of difference of opinion in Marston about Terry and me. Some of the men gave me what I suppose I was meant to interpret as worldly, knowing looks. Some of them, men and women both, clucked their tongues and began their gossip with, "Well, I declare I don't see how a woman could live with a man like that and not knoui. Sometimes I wonder if Allie Barnes didn't know him for what he was all along!" Some of them just passed me by, their eyes averted. And some, worst of all, nearly wept over me. "Poor, dear Allie! Poor child. You must come along home with me and have a cup of tea and tell me all about it!" I couldn't stand it. I tried staying in my room, but that was awful. That was too lonely; I felt as if the walls were moving in to crush me. I knew that if I talked to these people who were my friends I'd scream at them all the things pent up in my heart. And everything in Marston was a reminder of Terry— all the good and the bad of Terry. There on the hill above the river was the gaping hole that was all that had materialized of our little stone house. There was the movie house on Main Street where we'd held hands in the dark, and the little tavern on the outskirts of town where 4J