Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

^ LUXURIOUS SECURITY FOR „WITHRF1NERB0DYTALC«W OF FACE POWDER 9^11X1 NOW-make Sure of s— £_ ness! Use. C-tag^gi • ■ ■ n°te Compare rt with other t q{ itjj Cashmere Bouquet s f ace.powder AN? FO%o!aAuaATakum imparts to Cashmere Bouquet ia lingers, you the fragrance men love ^ ^ L body odor wont brand y "lady who forgot. sffssSfS , and toilet goods counters. Cashmere Bouquet Taleum Powder 4 Member of Cashmere Bouquet — the Royal Family of Beauty Preparations "I — I'm not a patient," I explained, hesitantly. "You don't look like a patient," he said, smiling. "I — I wanted to see your son." I found Jay's name impossible to say. "My son?" The smile fell away from his face. "Jay?" "Yes," I said. "Yes. Jay. Is he — here?" He shook his head. Then with a sudden lighting of his eyes he asked, "Did you expect him to be? Did he tell you he was coming home? That he — maybe he has a furlough?" But the hope faded from his eyes as he saw mine, heard my voice. "Furlough!" Then I was crying out wildly, "Oh, I knew it! I knew I was too late!" And I was weeping, just standing there with the tears streaming down my face, feeling the room begin to whirl around me, physically sick with despair. XT E touched me with a doctor's ■" hands. "Come, my dear." He led me to the old worn black leather sofa and laid me down, then held my head while I drank something bitter and fizzy he had mixed. He said, "Just rest here a while and then we'll go along home and have a cup of coffee." "Home. . ." He had called his house my home, as if it were mine as well as his — and Jay's. The yellow house did seem like home to me. Something about its scent — compounded of stray medicinal odors from the office, of baking bread and cakes and cookies, of soap and clean clothes fresh from the windy line, of ferns and begonia and ivy and geranium in the sunny bay window— all mixed together into an indefinably right atmosphere for home. I felt as if I could have picked out from any group the round old wrinkled Mrs. Rainey as the housekeeper who had brought Jay up. I recognized Jay's dry wit, his reserve and careful manners in her tart speech and twinkling eyes. I sat drinking coffee and eating buttered crusty coffee rolls and imagining the numberless meals Jay had eaten in this same walnut paneled dining room. While I drank and ate I heard the news of Jay. It was brief enough. He had been deferred only long enough to finish his surgical residency, and he was now in a camp in the Southwest. The voice was gentle, the eyes — hazel eyes like Jay's — were kind and did not question me, but I gave the answers I knew he wanted. I held back only one thing. I could not tell him that his son had ever dreamed of giving up the clinic for a job with a society doctor. That made the end a little vague. "I — I failed him somehow, I guess. We quarreled. And — well, our parting was pretty final." What he read into that I couldn't tell. But in his eyes there was no reproach, only the wisdom that comes from years of helping human beings who are suffering. He said, "I see. I can understand now why Jay was — the way he was, this year." "The way he was?" "Yes. Unlike himself, the boy I'd known. Tired, almost bitter, as if the flavor had gone out of things for him; even his work. Not that he didn't distinguish himself," he added in a quick flash of pride. "He did. I had plenty of assurance on that score. But he himself hardly seemed to care about his record. He asked further deferment from the draft board to start our clinic and when it was dis allowed I had the feeling that didn't matter much either, nothing mattered. I often wondered if there was a girl. But never before had anyone counted that much in his life — " Somehow it made it a million times worse to know this was the way he was, that he had waited all his life for the girl he wanted — for love, and then had it denied him. "Oh, damn!" I cried out. "Damn my ideals!" Dr. Dawes did not look shocked. He did not question me. He simply placed his hand on mine. After a moment he said, "That's right, swear at it, cry it out, anything." Nothing could have helped me so. I spent the weekend there, the first night lying and weeping as tempestuously as he could have wished, and the next deeply and soundly asleep. For in between I had been getting acquainted with Jay. Not the young Dr. Jay Dawes, but the beaming baby Jay of the days when the clefts in his cheeks had been outright frank fat dimples; then the tall strong boy with the dimples made deeper by the tight-held corners of his mouth in a shy smile; and then the serious graduating boy whose mouth was still and grave and whose eyes were luminous with dreams and purposes. Oh, how could I have doubted the ideals, the integrity of that boy grown into a man? How could I? 62 AVOID WASTE ON THE LITTLE THINGS.. SPEND FO(X THE BIG THINGS. WAR SAVINGS BONDS Out of that shame I wrote to Jay. "I shall never forgive myself," I told him, "but I am asking your forgiveness. I should have known that, you were right — that nothing in all the world counted as much as the love we had for each other. How I could have dared to set myself up as a judge of right and wrong, or to tell you how to live your life, I can't understand now. And it is too late, I guess, to ask for the love that I deserved to lose. But I am not asking for love, Jay. I'm writing only that you may know, if it should matter to you now at all, that I believe in you, and always shall, forever." 1 MAILED that letter late in the night, feeling drained of emotion, dull and hopeless. Perhaps he would resent this message, coming too late for anything but regret. Perhaps he would not even care enough to resent it, for maybe his first hot anger had changed to cold indifference. Probably it would be less than meaningless to him now that I should suffer over a mistake that was still big to me but had shrunk to nothing in the perspective of his life. If he answered, it would only be from the kindness taught him by his father, the courtesy drummed into him by Mrs. Rainey. But like all women who love, I couldn't keep down my hope. Back in the city, I counted the hours till I could hear from him. Twenty-four, maybe even thirty-six before the RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR