Radio and television mirror (Nov 1939-Apr 1940)

walked gray streets under a gray unfriendly sky. She went to Felton's office, Markisohn's, Jergen's. Girls were drifting to and fro among the drugstores and agencies and beauty parlors; someone called Ottie King, "the Broadway cut-up," was packing the Golden Gate; there was a line at the box office. Some people were successful, apparently. But at the agencies everyone said that the season was dead. Just dead. A girl Tarn knew only by her first name of Lita told her that she was just back from Hollywood; nothing doing down there, half the studios closed. "Mayne Mallory's down there again," Tarn said, to say his name. "Yes, so I hear. Berman had something for him, they said." Lita evidently knew no more; she went her way, and Tam walked on. She took the way she and Mayne had so often taken, up the steep hill of Taylor Street, where dried grass was flattened among the cobbles and which no motor engine would climb. She stood on the top of the rise under the somber lifeless sky, went on in irresolute starts and stoppings to Telegraph Hill and the Holloways'. Persis was there, but somehow today Persis seemed lifeless and apathetic, too. Persis had some plan, some engagement in which Tam had no share; she was cordial enough, but her suggestion of dinner was undated; Tam must come up to dinner some time, any time. TAM walked home in the dusk; in late February there was a hint of spring in the yellowed end of the day; there was grass in the hilliest streets, tiny, shy new green grassblades pushing up through last year's discolored growth of weeds. Back of Chinatown was the flat face of the old Spanish church. Tam went in and knelt with her mind vague and empty, her heart cold. Nothing to say — nothing about which she could pray now. It was too late for prayer. That day and the next and the next and the next went by; they were all alike. The thoughts she thought in them were all alike. The nights that followed them were fi]led with the same wakefulness, the same light restless sleep and fevered dreams. "Nobody ever will know, it wasn't important, girls are being just as big fools as you are all the time. But you fool!" she said in her soul, over and over again. "You fool! You were so happy a month ago — two months ago. Everything was fun — thinking of him and how he loved you — thinking that you'd 34 ■ Kathleen Norris is the first nationally famous writer to have her works brought to radio listeners as a daily serial program. "Woman in Love" can be heard Monday through Friday over the CBS network, at 5:00 P.M., E.S.T., sponsored by General Mills. So that you may read this stirring drama of love, as well as hear it, Radio Mirror presents the story in its original novel form. Angry shame hammered at Tam day and night. A short time ago she was so happy. Now it was all pain. meet, and talk, and that he'd buy you flowers. "You threw it all away. You threw it all away. What had you to gain? To be soft and give in, to say to yourself, 'Oh, what does it matter, nobody'll know, nobody'll care!' like every other fool! "Well, you've found out that you know, and you care, and you're going to know and care for the rest of your life!" Angry shame hammered at her day and night. Interest had gone out of everything. Her old springing joy of life, the courage that could rise even above the dreary background of the Valhalla, were both destroyed. The sickening circle of memories began and ended and overlapped itself and began again. It began with the happy days so short a time ago when she had dwelt upon evidences of Mayne's affection, lived upon his words, in just the obsessed and tranced mood she knew now. But that had been all joy, like a welling fountain of soft delight within her. And now it was all pain. A man held the whip hand until a girl yielded; after that she never quite owned her straight young body, her voice and her eyes, her mind and soul again. And men knew that girls would yield, knew that they wanted to, wanted to be kind and soft and beloved— men only had to wait; they had nothing to lose! Writhing with the smoldering insistent presence of it, Tam would lie awake in the night, hour after hour. She hated men, all men; hated the inexorable law of life that decreed that there should be no going back. And the smarting, insufferable crown of it all was to realize that Mayne had escaped free into the southern sunshine, was working hard, eating hard, sleeping deep, and that other girls were smiling at Mayne, fluttering when he smiled back. SHE wrote him once. In the two weeks after they parted she heard from him twice, but in neither letter did he say one word of what she was sick with hunger to hear. Tam hated herself because her heart would leap when she saw his familiar handwriting and the Hollywood postmark, but she knew before she opened the letters exactly the sort of thing he would say. He did not surprise her with his mention of health and weather, his safe general endearments, his charge to her to be a good kid, and not to forget that just as soon as an opening showed up he was going to wire her to come down to Culver City. All this she expected. She had known about this since that heavy sultry Sunday in Sacramento when he had had Berman's wire summoning him back to the movie studio, and had left the cast of "Five Sons." Instantly the change that by glimpses and moods had already frightened her in his manner had become confirmed; he had become Maynard Mallory of Hollywood again, confident, laughing, unreachable. Or at least she had not been able to reach him. "Time," he had said to her on that last day, seeing her rueful and sad — "time does everything, my dear. After a little while all these things will fall into their right proportions, and you'll find yourself thinking kindly of me again." And it had been on that note that they had parted, the man serene and affectionate and admonitory, in his big soft coat, with his handsome luggage piled in his compartment, his friends shouting congratulatory good-byes, (Continued on page 70) RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR