Radio and television mirror (Nov 1939-Apr 1940)

make you the happiest woman in all the world. We belong to each other, Tarn! I need you always, to scold me and make coffee for me and tell me what a rotter I am and how good I am! We know all about each other! I've seen you tired and blue and mad and hungry and dirty, and you've loaned me money and borrowed from me — " He was kneeling beside her chair again; her soft hand was against his eyes, and she felt his lashes wet. "Hush, darling," she whispered. "And you will, Tarn?" "Oh, if you want me — yes — of course!" WOULD you be surprised some day if I found a man I liked and wanted to get married?" Tarn asked. The older Mary, who was hulling strawberries, looked up quickly. "When a girl asks that," Mary said, "the young man is usually picked out and waiting." Tarn laughed again. "I'm afraid so," she admitted. They were in the old grape arbor; midsummer day lay still and fragrant over California. There was no motion in the high canopies of the green trees; a fountain splashed and was still and splashed again. "You're sorry?" Tarn asked. The other woman looked up as if for a quick denial, shrugged faintly, returned to her work. "A little Tarn," she said reluctantly. "It seems like fate," Tam observed, thoughtfully. "There seems to be a time when a certain man comes out of the crowd — meaning nothing to you one week, meaning everything the next. He's such a man. I thought for a while that he was the one who cared. I know now that I am." "It'll change things," the other woman said after a moment. "It'll mean Mary and I see much less of you. And ..." Mary Hutton's honest square sunburned face flushed a little; she looked significantly at her companion, spoke in a lowered voice, "what about that, Tam?" she asked. "You'll tell him?" "I told him everything, months ago. I told him just as soon as I knew how important he was going to be to me," Tam answered quickly. "You were right." "And he only said," Tam added, in a dreaming voice, "that it made me dearer to him." Young Mary charged across the lawn like a cantering colt, all legs and arms and blowing wild hair. She stopped to kiss Tam; she smelled of tarweed and dried grass and pine gum, Tam thought, and somehow of gingham and sunburned smooth young brown flesh, too. A moment only, and then she was gone again. Tam watched her out of sight. "A little girl and a devoted old Gran are something, Tam," Mrs. Hutton said wistfully. "Don't — don't be in too much of a hurry, my dear. She — we both love you so!" "George was an only child," Tam said slowly. "His father would have been a very distinguished lawyer, but he died young, and George's mother brought him up. He adored her, but she married again, and he felt himself out in the cold; in fact his stepfather told him he didn't want him in the house. His mother didn't know that, and he never told her, but she knew things weren't happy for him. He was in trouble all the time at JANUARY, 1940 school — in fact, he's a sort of genius; you feel it as soon as you know him, and geniuses aren't ever very lucky in childhood, are they? Anyway, he wasn't. So things went on until he was seventeen, and then he ran away and took care of himself." "Poor lad!" Mrs. Hutton said, listening absently. "And finally," Tam went on, "he landed himself in jail." There was a pause; the blunt brown hand, holding an unstemmed strawberry, was still. The warm late afternoon smelled of strawberries. "And then what? He got out of jail?" Mary Hutton asked presently. "He got out, but there was a queer circumstance about it. This is what I've been leading up to, this is what I wanted to tell you," Tam said. "His name was the same as that of another George, a colored man, as it happened, who had died in jail a week before. There had been an epidemic of some sort, the clerk in the registry office had died, there was a new warden. I imagine there had been a good deal of confusion in the records. Anyway, they wired his mother that he was dead." "Tam, don't tell me any more of this," Mary Hutton said, pushing away the bowl of berries, rising to her feet. "I cannot — it makes me feel a little faint. It reminds me — I can't talk of it — but it reminds me — I think I will go in and lie down." "You see, a week went by after the wrong telegram had gone before he knew," Tam said quickly, "and there had been no word from his mother. He thought — he thought she had forgotten him. So he let the mistake go. He never let her know he was not dead." The older woman was breathing hard; she had her back turned to Tam, her two sturdy hands, gripped there for support, held tightly to the back of one of the chairs. "No — no — no: you mustn't let me think what I am thinking!" she said in a choked voice. "The boy's name was George Davis," Tam said. Mary Hutton stood immovable; she made no sound. Tam did not dare speak again. After a long silence the older woman said: "This boy — you know him?" HE'S my George, Aunt Mary. Your son." Mrs. Hutton came blindly to the table, sat down, resting her elbow upon it, her face, with its closed eyes, covered by her hand. "My God!" she whispered. "Perhaps I should have told you sooner," Tam said with concern. I've known it almost from the beginning. But I didn't tell him until last Christmas." "And he — " "Oh, he burst out blubbering like the great big baby he is," Tam said, tears in her own smiling eyes. "But how did you know him?" "By his watch — your picture pasted inside the back cover of an old gold watch, and the initials 'G. D.' And 'From his Mother, M. D.' It all flashed on me when a stagehand found his watch and showed it to me, and I looked down and saw a snapshot of you that I'd seen before, with George, when he was about twelve." Mary Hutton whispered. 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