Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1941)

Record Details:

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be a suit for damages, filed by the wife, charging the minister's daughter with alienation of affections!" "You wouldn't — " Ned gasped. "I could. ... I think, if you're smart, Ned, you'll see a great deal less of Mary from now on." Torchy had dropped her mask of poised indifference, and fury blazed out of her face. Dimly, Ned realized how his visit to her opening night, in company with Mary, must have seemed to her — as a deliberate, planned insult. Before either Ned or Mary had a chance to answer, Torchy had stood up and was on her way to Ellis Smith's table. A carelessly dressed young man tried to stop her. "Miss Reynolds — I'm Spike Wilson, of the City Times. I'd like an interview— " Even in her rage, Torchy remembered that one must always be polite to reporters. She smiled mechanically and made an appointment to see him the following day. AS Ned and . Mary drove back to Five Points in his car, the silence between them was something that each could feel, as if it had been a heavy fog. They'd reached a complete, perfect deadlock, Ned was thinking. That was all. If it had been anyone else but Mary, he'd tell Torchy to go ahead and create her scandal. But not Mary. He had deserted her, humiliated her, then thrust himself once more into her life after she had learned to do without him. To all that, he couldn't add the final indignity of dragging her name through a public scandal. "Ned." Her voice was small and frightened. "What can we do?" "Nothing. Nothing but what she says. We'll have to stop seeing each other." And perhaps even that would be better than this continual torture of being near Mary, unable to touch her, crush her into his arms, answer the insistent call of his love for her. "If it weren't for Dad, I wouldn't mind anything she could do." "I know that, dear. But I would. You're too fine and sweet to be pawed over by scandal-mongers." Late that night, after he had left Mary at the parsonage, Ned faced the whole truth, and hated himself for it. He would do as Torchy said because he didn't want to expose Mary to scandal, yes — but he would do it for another reason too: to keep Torchy from revealing the secret of his parentage. All his success had never succeeded in uprooting that deepest fear of his life, the fear of walking through a world that knew of the taint in his blood. A good reporter must be a good detective. He must talk to people, and get the answers to questions he hasn't even asked; he must search old records with infinite care and patience; he must follow up the most unpromising clues; he must piece this fact up with that; and at the end, if he is lucky, he may have a story. And Spike Wilson had his story. Ned had spent this windy, bitter evening of winter at the broadcasting studio. On his way home, shortly before midnight, he bought a copy of the Times from a shivering newsboy. He hadn't intended to look at the paper until he reached home, but a word — his own name — in glaring headline type caught his eye. He read the story there on the street corner, snow-freighted wind whipping and 52 snapping the paper in his hands. "Ned Holden, the famous Spectator, is the son of Fredrika Lang and the man she was convicted of killing two years ago. Documents in the possession of the Times . . ." Often, in imagination, he had lived this moment. Always before, it had been only a nightmare. But this was reality. The secret with which he had lived so long was not a secret now. It was something for everyone with the price of a newspaper to read, to discuss, to wonder over. And, reading the rest of the story that Spike Wilson had written, he saw how much worse it was to have the truth blazoned out this way than it would have been if he himself had revealed it. Now he was put in the worst possible light: as a coward who had denied his mother. And that, of course — the knowledge came at last, from the depths of his soul — was the truth. He was a coward. Stumbling, the paper falling from Olga Andre who broadcasts on NBC's Pan American programs meets our own Bette Davis. Right, Jose Jasd, "the Spanish Noel Coward." his lax fingers, he went on down the street. A violent gust of wind tore his hat from his head, but he scarcely noticed its going. The storm itself was not more bitter than his own selfhatred. A policeman found him, soon after dawn, stretched out, unconscious, on the steps of a public building. An ambulance was called, and he was taken, still unconscious, to a hospital. And since hospitals proceed strictly according to rule, it was Torchy — Mrs. Ned Holden — who was summoned. "He keeps calling for someone named Mary," the doctor told her. "Do you know who that might be?" "No," Torchy said quickly. "No, I don't." A fury of possession rose in her; Ned was hers, and hers alone, and Mary should not be called. But when she went into his room, and saw his closed eyes and fumbling hands, heard his voice calling pitifully for Mary, she buried her face in her hands. What was this endless, pointless battle she was fighting? Perhaps Ned suspected her of telling Spike Wilson the whole story — but she hadn't. At least she hadn't intended to. She searched her mind, trying to remember what she had told him about Ned. Just that he'd been born in Cleveland, that was all. What, if that was the one thing Spike needed to know — the one clue? Then Ned would hate her, more than he hated her already. "Nurse!" she said. "I think— I think he's calling for Mary Ruthledge, Dr. John Ruthledge's daughter. Will you send for her, please?" Brilliant winter sunlight streamed in through the broad window of the hospital room, over the bed where Ned Holden lay propped up against a heap of pillows. On one side of the bed was Mary Ruthledge, on the other, her father. Two weeks of illness had thinned Ned's face, but he was smiling, and to Mary he looked happier than at any time since that long-ago night when she had first promised to marry him. This was the first day Ned had been allowed to see many visitors; Rose and Mrs. Kransky had just left. Rose, too, had seemed happier than ever before. She had a good job in a law firm, and Mrs. Kransky had sold the second-hand shop and moved into the suburbs where she could care for Rose's little boy while the girl was away at work. ROSE had come through all right," Dr. Ruthledge nodded when they were gone. "She's learned, I think, that it's impossible to be solely an individual." There was a quizzical expression in his eyes as he looked at Ned, and the younger man flushed and laughed a little ashamedly. "There's one other person that wants to see you, Ned," the minister added. "Somebody that I asked to come here." Ned looked from Dr. Ruthledge to Mary and back again. "Torchy?" "No. Your . . . mother." Involuntarily, Ned stiffened, as if in fear, and Dr. Ruthledge said quietly, "I know, Ned. You think it will be hard to see her — " "It's not that I don't want to!" Ned exclaimed. "I realized, the night the newspaper published the story, how wrong I'd been. But how can she forgive me?" "In your mother's eyes, my son," Dr. Ruthledge said gravely, "there is nothing to forgive." "I . . . " Ned turned uneasily, fearfully, to Mary. From her steady, calm gaze, so full of love and trust, he seemed to gain confidence. "There's nothing for her to forgive, Ned," she said, "because, don't you see, it's yourself you've hurt all these years — not her." "Myself? Why . . . yes. . . , I suppose that's true." He took a long breath. "All right. I'd like to see her, please." With a nod to Mary to follow him. Dr. Ruthledge went to the door and opened it. Fredrika Lang — slight. black-clad, trembling — stood on the threshold. A moment in which the earth stopped turning — and then she was clasped in the arms of her son. Dr. Ruthledge and Mary slipped outside and closed the door. They smiled into each other's eyes, winking away the tears. "The Ned Holden we used to know has come home, Mary," he said. The End (Be sure to tune in the current broadcasts of The Guiding Light, Monday through Friday, on NBC-Red.) RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR