Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

and beautiful and exciting and peaceful— all at once — I'd never have given Mark my word. "But I didn't know. And I did give Mark my word." Her eyes were so heartbroken they hurt him. But something male and predatory and demanding drove him on. "I have ideas about marriage too," he said. "I figure it's pretty hellish unless lots of love goes with it. When you find out you might let me know. . . ." #~kNLY a man who loved a woman " inordinately could be so cruel. He didn't care who knew he loved Ruth. Which was just as well. A blind man would have known from his voice when he spoke to her or of her. A deaf man would have known from his eyes when he looked at her or spoke her name. It was different with Ruth. She frequently spoke of her engagement to the other members of the company. She displayed her ring — which she wore on the wrong hand at the management's request — as if she hoped it would, in time, bind her to Mark and quiet her heart. Christmas came. With it were parties at which Ruth and Jay were guests of honor. They sat together on the dais at a public dinner. She was never lovelier in his eyes than that night when he pinned holly in her hair. And she never felt closer to him or more responsible for him than when he made a speech about Christmas and children and every word he uttered was poignant with his personal loneliness and longing. When they opened a charity ball she wore a white net gown with red roses nestling in its bosom and the orchestra played "I Love You Truly" and everyone stopped dancing, leaving them alone on the dance floor. "I feel a cheat," she whispered to Jay. "You are a cheat," he agreed, possessed once more by some demanding masculine instinct. "You're cheating yourself of a lifetime of such devotion and love as most women never know. That's what I would give you! You're cheating me of the only woman I ever wanted for my wife. And you're cheating Mark Ralston — who probably deserves better although I don't like him — of the love a man expects and needs from his wife. You can't give him that love and you know it! In spite of yourself you've given it to me!" "I wish," she said, her eyes blazing, "I never had met you!" For weeks after that they saw each other only at the theater. They didn't lunch together in the heart of town. They didn't go dancing. Fortunately — for they were insupportably lonely out of each other's sight — the management finally protested about their separate ways. "The public likes to see you together," they were told. "The rumor that you're in love has helped boxoffice receipts tremendously. The season is almost over. It won't kill you 86 to play out the schedule." Sometimes they knew only that the music was sweet and they were close. At other times Mark Ralston stood between them and, nerves frazzled, they quarrelled. Their quarrels were violent. It was not possible for anything to be temperate between them. Spring came. The company, about to close for the summer, planned a party to celebrate their successful season. And the town flocked to celebrate with them. Weeks beforehand every table in the grill room at the hotel was reserved. "I love you truly, truly dear . . ." The violins and cellos hummed it, the horns and trombones blared it, the piano carolled it, the drums beat it, the crooner crooned it . . . Jay, in his dinner clothes, was a strong foil for Ruth in her fragile lilac gown. Other dancers moved aside, applauding, and again they were left alone on the dance floor. "It's not going to be easy to tell you good-bye," he said. "Don't! Don't— ever!" she implored him. He tried to touch her ring, significantly. But it was gone. "I sent it back to Mark," she told him. Against his heart her face was shining. )O*OtO«O0O*OtO*O0OtOtO#OtOtO#O«O*O*O*O*OtO»O«O*O0O»O9Oe &cuu rrelxo lo* EMERY DEUTSCH — radio's gypsy violinist, frequently heard with his string orchestra over CBS. Emery's fame is three-sided, because he's a successful violinist, orchestra leader, and song-writer. Some of his hits are "Play, Fiddle, Play," "When a Gypsy Makes His Violin Cry," and the current "Two Lovers in London." Besides playing on the air, he and his orchestra have recently been touring all the big army camps and naval bases, and to date they figure they've entertained a hundred thousand service men. Emery is an ardent mystery-story fan and has made frequent appearances on air shows as an amateur detective. He is also very a^um, inventive, and was first to perfect automatic sliding auto tops. 40*0tC»0*O»040«OI0tO»0«e»O«0»O«O»O»040404O404O«O»0*0«0»0t04O«0*0«O9O4O>04 The music stopped and they ran through a French window to the terrace. The moon poured its gold light upon them and they were as rash as lovers were meant to be. "A ring on your finger can't bind you to a man," she told him. "Only one thing in the world can do that — love in your heart!" "My darling . . ." He said it over and over, as if he would forever lay claim to her and the love she bore him. RUTH'S father in Los Angeles was horrified to hear she had broken her engagement to dependable, solid, prosperous Mark Ralston. And still more horrified, if possible, to learn she was in love with Jay Jostyn, an actor. "Marriage, as I've tried to tell Ruth before, is a business," he admonished Jay and Ruth, standing like children before him. "A family and security in your old age are its assets. This — this wild thing you know now can't be trusted as a basis for anything as practical as marriage. Believe me!" At last they compromised. At last they agreed to separate for six months. Jay went back to Seattle. Ruth remained in Los Angeles. From April to October someway, somehow they lived on letters and telephone calls and dreams. It was late autumn when the organ in a Pasadena church pealed their wedding march. Ruth in her white gown and veil looked like an angel by Hattie Carnegie. And Jay, in turn, was a young god handsomely turned I out in morning coat and striped trousers. At the reception at the Elks Club no one beamed upon the bridal couple more warmly than Ruth's father. "I was against it at first," he told their friends, "proving there's no fool like an old fool. Look at them! Imagine anyone not knowing they belong together!" Their first son, John George, was born within a year. Their second son, Jean Charles, followed a year later, arriving on one of the blackest days of the depression. Ruth convalesced from Jean Charles' birth in the garden of a little bungalow in San Bernardino. Close by was the co-operative stock company in which both she and Jay worked endlessly without ever earning quite enough to pay the modest rent and the household bills which, now, would be larger than ever. One afternoon Jay came home from the theater to find Ruth resting, Jean Charles asleep in a basket beside her, John George circling the lawn in uncertain but happy pursuit of a large butterfly. "Darling," she said the moment she saw his face, "what's the matter?" "The company's closing!" Ever since he had heard the news he had rehearsed phrases with which to break it to her. But perhaps it was better to blurt it out, and have it over with after all. "I begin to know what your father meant about you marrying an actor," he said, bending to kiss her hair, bright in the sunshine. "Right now you shouldn't have to worry about anything. You should be able to lie peacefully in the sun and grow strong. If I were a substantial business man you could do that — we could have kept the nurse a little longer — and I would be planning, as a father should, for you and the children ..." "It's funny you should say that," she said, smiling at him. "Lying here in the sun this afternoon I've been giving thanks for — for everything! I've been thinking the most horrible thing in all the world must be to come upon hard times with someone you don't love — enough!" "Tomorrow . . ." His voice was neither very clear nor very sure. "Tomorrow I'm going to call on a guy I know in the advertising business; see if I can't get a job on the radio!" He got a job on the radio. And he made good. Soon he and Ruth and the boys moved East — because he was signed to broadcast from New York —and settled in a big house surrounded by old trees and overlooking blue water. In the winter there's iceskating and bowling. In the summer there's golf and badminton and swimming and horseback riding. The boys are older now, eleven and twelve years, so whatever they do and whereever they go they're a foursome. RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR