Evening Star Newspaper, December 28, 1930, Page 78

[ e EX New HE faintly disturbing thought re- mained in Rhosa Waldron's mind 4 that underncath all the racket and the rumpus, the toot of tin horns, 4 the gusts of confetti, the night was New Year eve—a solemn night, prescient, sig- piiizant—and that she was spending it alone! Yet this spending it alone had at least been ©of her own choosing. . Certainly she had not be-n alone at the dinner hour! Sharply, the gay scene came winging back to her. That long right table lined with rollicking guests. New Year eve—New Year eve! Hooray! And H-u-z-z-a-h! Clank it with glasses! Blaze it with silver! Cool your hot cheeks in the snow of the napery! Scorch them again in the glow of red candles! Shake the flaming confetti from your hair! Yes, flame-colored! That was just exactly what the confetti had been! Even now in her hair, every time she shcok her head, it was like ® shower of sparks. Just ordinary confetti hadn't been gay enough for them, it seemed. Gold it must be! Gold! A veritable Midas shower across the blinking senses! Midas shower? Even the night itself. All the gleam Bnd glint of it. How like a gold-piece itching in the palm, the bright phrase tossed itself from hand to hand! “New Year eve—New Ycar eve! How shall we spend it?” Spend it, you wastrels? Why nst save it in- siead? Just for once. How oddly, like an inner voice, that sudden, impassioned protest had rung across her startled senses. “Save it— seve it! Why not save it—instead?” HOW persistently, all in that instant, her mind had kept reverting to the quiet hearth-fire waiting so patiently for her in her own private sitting room. The luxurious chaise .longue, the deep wing chair—just herself, just her husband! A new boock or two! A bit of talk even! A shy flare of mental intimacy! Just a handclasp surely at the fated hour. But her husband’s mood. it seemed, had not run in just this same groove. “New Year eve—New Year eve! How shall we spend it?” That was his question! As though in a single resonant voice, the answer had rung to the very rafters! “At ‘The Rcisterers,” of course! The best show in town!” “No, I thank you,” she had said. A single glance of surprise from her hus- band’s eyes, a babble of protest from her guestis—and then, in a clatter of pushed-back chairs, a riot of laughter, a whirlwind of color —the bright storm had passed. Yet even now, lolling back in the quiet which she had so longed® for, with book and table close at her elbow and all the silken soft- nesses of her life wrapping her senses like a luscious anodyne, she felt a vague sense of dis- quietude, an unprecedented hunger, gnawing at the vitals of satiety. She felt a little cold suddenly—reached to the smoldering fire—and found it did not warm her! She felt a little hungry suddenly— reached to the glistening bonbons at her elbow —and found they did not feed her! She felt a little thirsty suddenly, reached to the red wine on the table and found it did not quench her thirst. Frankly disquieted, she jumped up and ran to the window, and, pulling back the heavy curtains, stood staring down upon the rollick- ing boisterous scene in the park below. Snow everywhere! And a jostling throng! Around the brilliantly lighted municipal Christmas tree, still blazing stanch and sweet in the waning year, a gang of hoodlums wreathed like a garland twisting in a flame! Dogs were barking, firecrackers sputtering, ribald jests tossing to and fro! Yet underneath it all, transcending it all, that strangely arrest- ing sense of expectancy! A whole world wait- ing for that poignant moment when Time itself should cross from the proved has-been into the still unfathomed yet-to-be! And lovers’ eyes raking lovers’ eyes—— And old hands, groping for old hands—— Even young laughter, hushing suddenly in its vehemence— to question—to question? Without rancor, yet with a frankly ironic twinge to the humor, she tilted back her own head suddenly and laughed. Well, her Jover’s eyes, this night, had gone to rake the lines and languors, the barbaric beauties and incredible vulgarities of the most popular and altogether raciest show in town! And old friends, grop- ing eagerly through the shadows, groped only for the touch of a silver flask! And young laughter, if it ever did hush its racket to gueztion. asked only, “Where do we go from ere?” / Turning back into the room, she started slowly toward the chaise longue. Then stop- ped suddenly and cocked her bright-hued head toward a fresh burst of laughter and blare of tin horns from the rollicking park below. A strange httle light woke suddenly in her eyes. “No! Upon my soul, I swear it!” she cried out. “I will never spend New Year eve insig- pificantly again!” In another instant, rushing to a teeming wardrobe, she had tossed aside a dozen shim- mering evening wraps and priceless furs, and slipping instead into a plaided sports coat, with a black tam-o’-shanter pulled down over her glistening hair, she cast a single depre- catory glance at the jeweled heels of her black satin slippers, dashed down the stairs, and out Into the night! PLUNGING with a strange sense of exul- tancy and liberation into the throng, she Bound herself swept into a veritable maelstrom of excitement and festivity. From path to path, from bench to bench, joggling, laughing, pussling, the crowd surged. Sinking down at last in the first empty seat Bhe could find, she began to study the scene. Her lifted eyes, vaguely questioning, caught buddenly the eyes of a passing stranger, and flinched as suddenly. A man in evening clithes, a man of her own world, wearing his dgistinctiveness lightly—even rakishly—with a caje-coat flung half-fastenled across his pewer- THE SUNDAY STAR, WA Year Eve and an Old Year Adam She turned back sharply to find the stranger blocking her path.“Oh, my most I;-beauliful one!” he babbled. “I'm truly lonel ful shoulders, and his hat tilted at a faint but unmistakably tipsy angle. Rhosa Waldron felt herself blushing hotly, like a schoolgirl caught out of bounds. Im- pulsively she reached to loosen the stifling fur collar across her throat, clicked her jeweled heels together—turned with such casualness as she could summon to make some trifiing com- ment to the woman at her side. But the woman only shook her head, giggled a little, gathered up her bulging packages, and shuffied off into the crowd. ‘The man in evening clothes whirled suddenly in his tracks and slipped into the vacant seat beside her. Faintly startled but by no means actually disturbed, Rhosa Waldron rose with an exaggerated leisureliness, looked around for an instant as though seeking some companion’s face, followed the woman into the medley, and—finding another vacant seat on another crowded bench—sat down to watch a street faker juggle bottles of patent medicine. i But even as she watched, a shadow darkened across the arc-light, and the Tipsy Stranger stood before her again, remote, impersonal, yet vaguely sinister. Once again, without seeming to notice him, Rhosa Waldron rose leisurely to her feet and slipped away. Stopping for an instant to watch some sparrows twittering in a leafless hedge, she turned back sharply to find the Tipsy Stranger blocking her path, with a certain almost playful sort of impudence. “Oh, my most b-b-beautiful one!” he babbled. “Most gor-gorgeous girl——! I'm very lonely!” “It’s a lonesome world,” conceded Rhosa Waldron. “Please let me pass!” But the man merely stood his ground and laughed. Rhosa Waldron tossed her head. The gesture showered a glint of gold-dust into the man’s cupped hands. She stamped her foot. It twinkled a shower of sparks across the icy pavement. “Knew it!” babbled the man. “Goddess— absolute goddess!” A faintly hysterical sense of panic swept over her suddenly—the fear of a scene, the inherent dread of publicity. Directly opposite her—just a mere step to take, a sidewalk to span, a street to cross—loomed a black spire and the open door of a church glowing warmly with light and the tremolo vibrance of organ music. “Watch-night services? Why, of course!” She gave a little gasp of relief; noted shrewdly that the stranger had not followed her glance; and pushing him bluntly aside, bolted im- petuously for the door of the church. Startled by her somewhat precipitous en- trance, a half-dozing usher woke from his lethargy just long enough to guide her to a pew. There seemed to be no one else in it except a demure-looking little creature in gray, kneeling devoutly. With a gasp of relief Rhosa Waldron sank down, loosened her collar once again, and twinkled her jeweled heels, just as a stumbling step in the aisle, a fumbling click at the latch of the pew door, proclaimed the dismaying fact that the Tipsy Stranger had followed her. even here! ACING him bluntly for a single exasperated instant, she noticed with relief that the brisk race tffrough the wintry night had at least cleared some of the befuddlement from his eyes. He sank down Into the end seat of the pew und bent to examine with frowning sseutiny the glints of gold-dust still clinging © big bands. . { With a single speculative glance toward the little girl in gray, Rhosa Waldron settled back and began to look around her. It was many years since she had been inside a church! Not actual irreligiousness! But so many parties all the time! Sundays on the yacht, Sundays on the golf course! Sundays at this house- party. Sundays at that one. Tennis, concerts, reading—everything! Snuggling deeper . into her coat, she tipped back her head and sat half-adream, half-alert, staring up into the great-arched, heavily raftered ceiling of the church! Such depths! Such mystery! Across the vagueness of her reverie a voice broke suddenly—a preacher’s voice, brisk, au- thoritative, delivering its New Year eve message, Not from the pompous heights of - the great, towering, brillantly-lighted . pulpjt ~was the message delivered, but starkly and simply from the shadowy depths .at'the foot of the pulpit! A slender, black-gowned stripling with an eager ascetic, silver-blond-sort of face that slashed from the gloom like a naked sword drawn sud- denly in the cause of the kord! Brief, concise, absolutely uncompromising, the challenge was flung. ‘The young preacher paused” an instant, slipped utterly out of his dogma and positive- ness, and stepped forward almost diffidently into the candlelight. _~“This night——" he faltered. “This solemn night——? You and I——? The 50 or 60 cf you gathered here tonight——? Some of you whose faces are the faces of old friends, but most of you whose faces are the faces of strangers—a group of people who by the law of change and chance will never be together under the same roof again! Not while Time lasts! “This year which is just passing—for some of us it has been a good year, lavish, bountiful, bringing incalculable treasure to us! For some of us it has been a bad year, hazardous, dev- astating, bearing incalculable treasure from us! But to all of us it is at least now a proven year. “But this New Year—? This mysterious, yet- unfathomed New Year—what is it going to give us? And what is it going to take away? For give it must, and take it must! And neither youth nor age, health nor sickness, can prophesy the measure of that giving or that taking!” He paused an instant, threw out impassion hands to his flock. . “Oh, I wish—" he cried out, “I wish—that every one in the world tonight—the rich, the poor, .the old, the young—the magnate from his limousine or the hobo from his gutter— might enter the New Year with his hand in another’s! In the sheer mutuality of a com- mon experience, so that no man faring forth at the poignant hour from the known into the unknown might fare forth quite ' alone, nor ever again speak with scorn of his companion —be he sinner or saint, hero or wastrel—but say, rather: ‘Why, he was my friend! Once, indeed, hand in hand, we watched the——'" A little shiver crept acrcss the church, a thrill, a vibrance! Across the roofs of the city, suddenly the bells began to chime! One—— “It is the hour!" cried the young preacher. “Each to his own thoughts! And _let us pray!” But instead of kneeling, he glanced about an instans, stepped down from the chancel and, crossing swiftly to an old peddler’s side, drop- ped a hand almost caressingly on the tattered shoulder even as he bowed his own head in silent prayer. Two—three—four—chimed the slow, porten- tous midnight bells! In the pew just in front of Rhosa Walds two devoted daughters drew a little neare: their mother. Five—six— < Across the aisle, a taut-faced man tighte his folded arms. s ° Seven—eight—— At Rhosa Waldron's side the little girl gray pitched forward suddenly and crumy up in an agony of tears. She seemed so sn to have so large a sorrow. Glancing } askance at her, Rhosa Waldron reached suddenly and gathered the small hand in own . heavily-jeweled one. The tipsy s on her left gave an odd little gasp. m inadvertently Rhosa Waldron cast a glance at him. BUT even as she glanced, he looked up s denly and caught her eye. Across rakish impudence of his face a little shad seemed to settle suddenly, a quiver of p almost, the wistfulness of .a sorry child. In impulse so starkly simple that it fairly took N breath away, he reached out his own hand her. She slipped her hand into his! Hersd the little girl in gray, the tipsy stranger, Just one instant out of all eternity, linked~ gether. Ten—11—12! clanged the bells in a crescen of exultancy! . Like a man released from some ench ment, the solemn, bowed-headed young pi er woke suddenly to life. Radiant, beaming, swung back sharply to his flock. “Happy New Year to you!” he cried. “Hap) New Year!” ' The organ pealed. The white choir flutf to its feet. Like a clarion call the ecstatic tenol hurled their fluty challenge into the world lessness. Rumbling the bassos tock up tH melody. Down, down, down, from the somb rock-like vastness of the chancel into the n: rowing channel of the aisle, the choir came. S two by two, the recessional passed, with young preacher stalking alpne in the rear. With the soft whir and whish of coats an| furs, the thud of a falling book, the shuff of an overshoe, the little congregation bustle] out into the aisle and started for the doo congesting in the vestibule to shake the Youn Preacher’s proffered hand. 5 Then suddenly the door of the church b back with a ferocious bang and fairly stan peded everybody with a driving, merciless gus of totally unlooked-for snow. Like a yo blizzard raging, the storm drove in. A cras of real thunder sounded suddenly. A golder| flare of lightninng slashed across the silv gloom. And in another instant the whole cit; staggered in the throes of the wild, unseasona: ble storm. With - shoulders hunched and heads ben low, the two devoted daughters rushed theis mother to her waiting limousine. Anothey] car drew up at the curb, and another and another. . Shrugging into turned-up collars and burrowing into fur-lined pockets, a score of . pedestrians plunged out into the chaos. Wi the fainfest possible grimace, Rhosa Waldro glanced at her satin slippers. But even as she grimaced, another flash lightning slashed across the senses; a terrific peal of thunder shook and rocked across the housetops. And all the lights of the city went out. And all the lights of the world, except 3e candles still blooming on the far, shadowy tar. Calmly, across a woman's muffied scream