Evening Star Newspaper, January 12, 1930, Page 87

= e = UARY 12, 1930. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, J/ TILLIE and the AGGRAVATING CHAP What It Takes to Make a Good Lover Out of a Bash ful LazyerIs Exactly the Lesson That Any Ambi- tious Girl Can Learn in This ReadableRomance. FTER the ball vas over Tillie went out on the veianda to cry. After this bawl was over she determined to go home and die. A few minutes later, before this sad event could transpire, she heard Fern Merritt’s voice trilling at her side. “Tillie, I want you to meet Mr. Plutarch J. Rathskellar, who's not as bad as he sounds. He has a good reputation, very little charley- horse between the ears, and a deep and abiding yen to know you. Plutarch, bow gracefully to Miss Matilda Newcomb, who's the belle here- abouts, and don’'t ask how come. Just permit your optics to be edified.” Four optics sought edification. Two, planted in the pericranium of a male, gazed admiringly on 120 pounds of seductively proporticned ponderosity decorated with certain features adorable in local whoopee circles. The two others, planted in the pericranium of a female, saw six feet of handsome matrimonial material going evidently to waste. “It is unfair, Mr. Rathskellar,” contended Tillie virtuously, after her hand was mildly mangled by the material she might salvage. “to begin a romance without dispelling the false doctrine spread by our mutual friend, Mrs. Merritt. I want to say that her words are equivalent to a certain well known product of the apple, and I don’t mean pie, preserves or jelly. I would not deny that in the dim past I used to be a belle hereabouts, but now my armor is deteriorated even if my tongue isn't so rusty. I was reminded of this tonight at the dance by some bold flappers who turned into surgeons to cut me out of several numbers of Irving Berlin’s induced calisthenics. “I admit, gloomily, to 28 summers, the same number of winters, and the same number of husbands—minus 28. Due to this latter woeful lack I was contemplating a rendezvous with death just as your name was denounced. I am a lady of few words, Mr. Rathskellar, having a limited vocabulary, and before discovering if you can drive a car with one hand I want blandly to interrogate this. Are you attached?” BEING a wise young bachelor girl, Miss Matilda Newcomb prescienced that if she uttered the truth her hearers would think she, in parlance, was kidding. True to this theory, Fern beamed with good-natured skepticism and Mr. Rathskellar's even white teeth parted to let emanate a jovially tolerant laugh. “The question, Miss Newcomb,” he responded politely, “has its ramifications.” Right then and there Tillie began to have her deep, dark suspicions. Why could not he have answered with simple dignity, “No, I am not married”? He could even have added with eloquent significance, “yet.” It would have seemed like the old days when she rejected a husband every morning before breakfast. Not other girls’ husbands—her prospective own. “Yes, the guestion has its ramifications,” re- peated handsome Mr. Rathskellar thoughtfully. “The word attached is variously interpreted and applied. Mine is the respectful idea your interrogation shouid be elaborated upon and made less ambiguous. I never judge prima facie. According to ‘Greenleaf on Evidence.’ we should demand words more specific and congruous to the thought involved. May I, therefore, counter-question, Miss Newcomb, to ask——" At this point young Mrs. Merritt spoke to Tiilie, whose enchanting visage had mantled with perplexity. “I should have explained in the first place, Tillie,” she said apologetically, “that Plutarch is a lawyer. You must censor your participles or else he will censure them. Mr. Rathskellar will even attempt to prove that two and two don’t make a bridge game and that the whale spent three whole days in Jonah’s diaphragm.” “She’s a good scout,” eulogized Tillie, blow- ing the merry matron a kiss of adieu, and then she turned to her companion to verify, un- consciously, the other's prophecy. “Well, Mr. Rathskellar, how do you like being a lawyer?” “BLACKSTONE declared,” affirmed that leader’s disciple, “that law was the most interesting and stimulating profession extant. William M. Evarts, probably this country’s foremost legal luminary, shared such pane- gyrical opinion. Our modern Clarence Darrow has asseverated a barrister has his happy moments. Of course, to the layman——" “I understand perfectly,” tarted his lovely mew friend, suffixing: “Fern was right; you @are guilty of aggravation, and assault and bat- tery on gullible intellects like mine. Pending By Joseph Faus. llustrations by Paul Kroesen. W hen they were on her doorstep Tillie said, apropos of nothing, “Oh, Mr. Rathskellar, isn’t the moon perfect?” your conviction, Mr. Rathskellar, kindly pro- cure for me a glass of that which is not 4 per cent alcoholic and unliable to damnation if you drink enough, and we’ll meander chateau- ward. My wraps also, Plutarch.” Plutarch, vouchsafing a puzzled and chas- tened smile, procured the drink and exterior raiment, and, with the last revelers of the terpsichorean evening, they benzined home- ward. Mr. Rathskellar, it eventuated, was as timid a lover as reckless a driver, and he superfluously gave visual attention to the road, wherefore his fair companion felt no calloused epidermis touching her hand in blissful com- munion. Being of a just nature, as before chronicled, Miss Matilda Newcomb decided she would of- fer the legal light another opportunity to square himself in part for past conversational derelic- tions, and perforce, when a few minutes later they were on her doorstep and she was diplo- matically good-nighting him, she said, apropos of nothing, “Oh, Mr. Rathskellar, isn’t the moon perfect?” She leaned, artfully, her fragrant person closer so that the lunar object on trial might be given prejudiced, or unperjured, testimony; but Mr. Rathskellar blushed away toward unbiased evidence. . “Authorities disagree,” solemnly he averred after recovering his professional poise. “Some scientists are of the opinion the moon’s pur- ported perfections are fallacious or magnified. Beyond gainsay, it sheds a lovely light, but so, too, can a fiend smile sweetly on an innocent child. Judgment should not be rendered until all the testimony is in, and astronomers prom- ise additional facts soon. Palpably, the moon has its flaws. As Cooley has effectively pointed out in his tome on Constitutional Limitations, there are many scientific, economic and legal limt “Mr. Cooley,” coldly interjected Tillie be. fore all the testimony was in, “is eminently correct, I am sure. Well, Mr. Rathskellar, X will be bidding you a nocturnal farewell. By all means call me up some rainy afternoon when I am out.” THE aggravating chap did call on a rainy day. “Please pardon my presumption, Miss New- comb,” he began, “but—" “Oh, that’s all right,” her voice smiled over the wire; “we all have our limitations and de- fects. Was there anything else you wished me to pardon?” “I thought,” he said, “it’'d be a nice evening to go to the theater. Will you please honor me with your company if you have nothing else to do and provided it doesn’t rain any harder, and also if you like shows and feel like going?” “A long question deserves a short answer,” she giggled. “Sure or surely—take your choice. Park that wild car of yours on my favorite rose bush out front at 8 tonight and sound your horn. Then come in, wait an hour and I'll be ready.” Mr. Plutarch J. Rathskellar's heart, that eve- ning, signaled his weighty legal faculties that she was worth waiting on hour for—In fact, am eternity spent awaiting her was time well invested. Tillie was supremely lovely in a gorgeous pink ensemble that enhanced the sheen of her yellow hair and the audacious light in her ravishing eyes. Plutarch himself—tall, handsome and gal- lant—reminded, mentally, his pretty play-fel- fow that she had not lived 28 years in vain; it was a long lane that had no yearning, and at last her yearing might come true. At least, he had come on time. Nothing marred the glorious evening umtil 11:30, when they were lingering over some ice cream sodas; and then Tillie had to go and bring an inadvertent question mark into dia- bolical play. “Do you think, Mr. Rathskellar,” she idly queried, “the villain in that drama was justified in killing the heroine’s father?” AS her dulcet voice rose at the last part of the innocently spoken sentence, certifying that it could phonetically and correctly be listed in the category of interrogations, Mr, Rathskellar slipped his spoon into his dish, leaned back and prepared to give forth learned utterance. “There was a strange analogy,” he stated earnestly, “in that fictional case tonight and one presented in ‘Bishop on Criminal Law,’ an invaluable brochure, by the way. Speaking de facto, it seems the father's fate was une deserved—de jure, that it was. Thus we have this paradox, per se, what is sometimes morally right is legally wrong. One scene revealed he had purchased a revolver with deliberate in- tent—as a contrast, or demurrer, his past life was depicted as decent and honorable. Withal, if we look on the ex delicto phase we realize the villain, in lex loci status, would suffer be- fore a just tribunal. In ‘Hilliard on Torts’ we find—"" “In ‘Newcomb on Retorts’,” she gayly inter- rupted, “we find the subject is not worth an- alytical dissertation. Give me your cherry and I'll forgive you all.” Mr. Rathskellar’s cherry was accompanied by a dazed smile, and when her delectable red lips closed rapturously over it for the first time in his life he sensed that being a lawyer, con- trary to Blackstone, had its shot-comings. He would like, for instance, to be a cherry. As they got into his automobile, Mr. Raths. kellar humorously remarked he had learned to drive through a correspondence course, but se- riously averred he meditated on his work while locomoting and consequently might now and anon wax caréless. His comely comrade did some meditating herself between a now period and an anon in- terval, and she somehow conjured up a vision of one John Alden and his embarrassment with a Priscilla. AN idea, naturally, penetrated under her smart permanent and some moments later she turned and naively asked if Mr. Rathskellar liked young ladies with blue eyes, yellow hair, nice figures and impeccable dispositions. The description, obviously, fitted the modest descrip= tionist. “Your question,” discursively rejoined the at- torney, “reminds me of a hypothesis advanced by Henry J. Stephens in his egregious volume anent Pleadings. The basical dialetics for the three misdemeanors—viz., contact, tort and crime—can often be attributed to idiomatic physiological and psychological aspects of the accused. Blue eyes, as you mentioned, denote a suzerainty to——" “You win, Plutarch,” succumbed Tillie. “Please don't make any more giant polysyllabic mergers tonight.” Miss Matilda Newcomb, however, to testify the truth, whole and candid, had not given vp hope of making another kind of merger herself. He was, most profoundly, an aggravating chap, but, equally profoundly, she realized she was this, that and the other way about him. She did not, she grinned, belong to the Royal Ca- nadian Mounted Police, but she would get her man. As for Plutarch J. Rathskellar, he in time came to the conclusion that lifz without the beautiful and capricious Tillie wou'd Le far worse than life without any affidavits, torts, subpoenas and gentlemen of the jury. He craved most earnestly to argue *o her the best point in his hymeneal case, bat whenever he essayed such attempt he found his tongue cloven to the roof of his mouth even if his heart did romp with the stars. THE climax came one day when they ran into each other, automobilically. It was out on a country highway, and he was in hig big sedan and she was in her small coupe. In coming out of a side road, her vehicle grated . his and two fenders lost good complexions. Miss Matilda Newcomb, also and inexplicably, lost her temper. E “Mr. Rathskellar,” hotly she accused, “yo@ are a menace to motorists! I'm going to have “What!” he startled. “Why, I had the right Continued on Thirteenth Page In coming out of a side road her vehicle grated his.