Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

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Demand KERR MASON in the yellow and black carton . . . millions of satisfied homemakers do. FREE Modern Homemaker, recipes, 100 Victory Canning Labels. KERR MASON JAR CO.. 475 Title Insurant* Bld[. Los Angeles, Cal. # Buy Kerr Jars & Caps Today Something of the same thought must have struck Dad, because he glanced quickly at me before he went on, "I'm afraid you'll have to be more explicit, Son. Are there any other old habits besides saying grace that are annoying you these days?" "Plenty." Jamie said, and now he spoke as if he were giving vent to thoughts that had been bottled up inside him for days, growing so strong and insistent that they could no longer be suppressed. "I'm tired of the way we live and think. We're living according to old, outworn notions. Every time we sit down to the table, we're either giving thanks for what we've got or we're begging for the next meal. Begging! This isn't a time when real men should beg for things. It's time when they go out and take what they want. Big changes are taking place all over the world, but nobody here seems to know it. You all live in an old-fashioned dream world. One of these days you'll wake up. You'll — " He stopped, ideas beating at his lips for expression — incoherent ideas, half-formed ideas — but violent. Dad spoke strongly. "James, I will not have you talking that way at my table!" And Jamie took a deep breath. "All right," he said sullenly. "I should have known better than to try to make you see anything new, I guess." His eyes swept me briefly, uninterestedly, as he stood up and left the room. In the dead silence that followed his departure, Dad picked up his knife and fork again and started eating. Mrs. Fraul stole into the kitchen. Douglas and Angus and Kathie followed their father's example, wordlessly. I wanted to run after Jamie. But somehow — I was afraid. For the first time in ray married life, I was afraid of my husband. "C'ROM that day on, everything was ■* different. None of us mentioned the scene at the dinner table again, but it was in all our thoughts. Jamie withdrew more and more into himself, showing little interest in the farm or his work and spending hours in town or immersed in a book. I couldn't understand him, and my lack of understanding made my life into something anguished, painful. Once I asked Jamie, timidly, "Is it just that you don't love me any more?" "Love?" His tone was scornful. "Is that all you think of? Of course I — I feel the same way toward you as I always have." "But you never talk to me any more. Even when you — you kiss me, it isn't as if you really cared for me. It's like I was just — " I struggled to express my unhappy thoughts — "as if I was just any woman." He didn't, significantly, answer the last part of my complaint. All he said was, "How can I talk to you? You wouldn't understand what I was trying to say." "I might. . . ." But he wouldn't go on with the discussion. I don't think I could have stood these days if it hadn't been for Dad and Douglas. They were worried over Jamie too, and they were as puzzled as I over the cause of his strange behavior; but neither of them ever wavered in his belief that whatever it was, it could be cured. It was only to Dad that I hinted my deepest fear 74 — that Jamie had stopped loving me, and that his unexplained trips to town were for the purpose of seeing other women. Dad smiled sympathetically. "A man who's carrying on an affair with another woman doesn't necessarily refuse to say grace at table — or read books until late at night." "No," I admitted, "only maybe — maybe he's unhappy and ashamed, and that makes him irritable. And he could read at night to shut himself off from me — and from his thoughts." I could see him considering the possibility, but still he shook his head. "I can't believe that's it, Margaret." he said. I didn't know it then, but Jamie had fallen in love. He'd fallen in love with a great lie, told by the biggest liar the world has ever known. He had fallen in love with a tale told by an idiot and spread by the cunning. Spread by emotional lepers,, masquerading as simple people in every big city and small town all over the world. ¥T WAS a lovely summer evening * when I discovered the truth. The boys and Dad had been out in the fields all day — that is, all of them except Jamie had. Glancing out of the window in the middle of the afternoon, I had seen Jamie in the yard, talking to Warner Tholl, who was a salesman for farm implements who lived in Briarsville and traveled around the country in his car. I supposed Tholl had dropped in as he sometimes did, to chat about crops and prices, and to keep the Lockheads reminded of him against the time when they would need a new plow or rake. I didn't know Tholl well enough to like or dislike him. He had never spoken to me. I turned back into the house and forgot I'd seen him. A few hours later, when supper was ready, everyone was present except Jamie, and Dad said he hadn't seen him since he left the fields early in the afternoon. Douglas looked up from the magazine he had been leafing through. "I saw him when I came in. He's out back of the barn with his nose stuck in a book." I could have rung the dinner bell, knowing that he would hear it and answer its summons. But all at once it seemed to me that I must meet whatever was doing this to Jamie — meet it and fight it out. I found him lying back against the hayrick, so intent on the book in his hand that he didn't even hear me come up. In the beginning, when we were first married, he used to say he'd know I was around, even if he couldn't see me. My fragrance, he said, preceded me. I walked in perfume, with scented breezes at my side. It had. been a long time since Jamie told me anything like that. Evidently he'd forgotten he ever told me. I had to touch his shoulder before he knew I was there. "Oh," he said, startled, "it's you, Margaret. What's the matter?" "Nothing," I said, "only it's supper time. That must be an awfully interesting book to make you forget supper." And quickly, before he had time to forestall me, I took it from his hands and looked at the title, " 'The Rule of Strength,' " I read. "I don't think I've ever heard of it." Jamie, after one glance of vexation, had looked away from me. "No?" he RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRBOB