New Britain Herald Newspaper, May 28, 1927, Page 10

= MY SON'S SWEETHEARTS by Ida McGlone Gibson INustrated aud Copyrighted by Johnson Features Inc. PROLOGUE NTO the white face of Anne Huntington Tracy—which looked like a paper mask that had been burned and would at a breath dissolve into ashes, there came a flame of vivid life. She half rose from the chaise longue at a light tap on her door. With a low groan she fell back as it opened. “What is it Nonnie?” she asked impatiently. “The box from the Francine Shop, madam,” the®maid. As quickly as it was possible the woman raised her unwieldy form and almost snatched the dress box from the hands of the servant. Opening it quickly she fairlv poured out a gorgeous negligee of peach-colored chiffon velvet and Italian lace upon the floor. At its delicate beauty a sudden hopeful smile curled her lips. “Has Mr. Tracy arrived home?” she asked. “I think, madam, that Mr. Tracy opened the hall door as I tapped on your: “Hurry, Nonnie, ret me into this,” the woman com- manded, “T want Mr. Tracy to see me only when I am look- ing as well as possible under the circumstances. Perhaps this gown will prove the Open Sesame to my lost good looks.” With her eyes still on the door, through which Anne Tracy seemed to expect her husband would come any minute, she held out the robe with the trembling fingers of one hand answered Oh, baby, I do want you. I could not live without you.” while with the other she unfastened and dropped on the floor the one she had on. As she stepped out of it, the maid slipped the new peach velvet garment over her mistress’ black, wavy hair. As she felt its softness against her shoulders and arms a tremor of physical pleasure seemed to ripple over her entire body. “It's very becoming to madam,” said the maid obsequi- ously. Eagerly the woman went to the long cheval mirror at the other side of the room. There had been expectation in her large gray eyes. But after the first glance she pulled down the faintly bluish lids until the heavy black lashes shut out even the scintillating anger which she had turned upon her maid after her view of herself in the glass. “Why did yvou lie to me? Why did you make me think that I might possibly get something that would be becom- ing to me? You should have told me that nothing could be becoming to this ungainly body—that no tint could compli- ment the shallow complexion of my bloated face. “Take it off immediately. It makes me look even worse than I really am.” The maid hurried to do her bidding, but before she even reached her mistress a gay voice called from outside the door: “Anne, my dear’—The door burst open and the man standing there, in one horrified glance took in the grotesque figure and turned away his eyes from the ones bright with tears that were pleadingly trying to find in his face a little crumb of comfort. PHILLIP Wynne Tracy IIT was surprised. He had expect- ed his wife to be lying down at this time, patiently await- ing the hour of her agony. He thought that he would go over and lightly touch her forehead with his lips, telling her that he would not be home to dinner. “After all,” he had told himself, as he drove home to dress for his dinner engagement with Sabra Welford, “a woman, when she marries must expect childven.” He him- self was very proud and happy over the coming event. He could not understand why Anne should be so un ed to what must be. It was a part of life—the only life which na- ture recognized in humanity. Naturally he was quite annoyed to find Anne in this mood. It would make it harder to tell her that he was not going to have dinner at home. He noticed the new negligee and was fully aware that she was trying to make self more presentable to him, and he thought that probal at this moment she was ex- pecting him to take her in his arms and comfort her in her disappointment. Surely she should not expect this, for he had told her many times, both before and after marriage, how he hated all ugliness, especially an “ugly woman,” and that peach- colored negligee made her look worse than ever. By what grim stroke of fate had the woman he had just left been wearing a peach-colored neglizee? It had enhanced Sabra’s beauty a hundred times, while Anne— “Poor Anne! T wonder if she will ever be slender and lovely again?" he said to himself and there was a good deal of pity in the question. He had heen silent a longer time than he had meant to be, but for the life of him he could not reach out and kiss the dry, feverish lips of the tortured woman standing ho- fore him after the recent touch of the dewy, rose leaf mouth of Sabra. The tension was snapped by Anne’s eves brimming over and a sob that she could not suppress hreaking into uely silence. “Don’t cry, Anne. Don't ery. Tt's almost over now. Think how wonderful it will be to have a son. 1 would not want to live our lives without children.’ “T would.” The words issued from the woman's lips through clinchad teeth. “Of course youn want children—every man does. to his egotism ¢ 1 masculine human being. of the agony and pain. It adds You have none You will not have to give up your NEW BRITAIN DATLY HERALD, SATURDAY, MAY 28 1927 youth to minister to a baby—all that “develops upon the woman—all that is mine. “However”"—with a sigh she became, if not resigned, at least acquiescent—"Ive got to go through with it, but I want vou to know, Wynne, that I do not want this baby and I'll never be reconciled to the role of mother.” “You should have thought about this three years ago, when you married me, Anne.” ¢ ‘Wl«‘,LL, T did not. Why, I hardly thought of myself in the role of wife. I loved you and I wanted you. I wanted to be your sweetheart, and I only thought that to marry you would be a continual love making under the eaves of the church and approbation of society. “Now look at me! This is what I have,come to—some- thing ugly and unlovable, some one who longs for you and vet who would hide away before your very eves, while you, as you stand there, might be tlle symbol of the perpetual lover.” Phillip Wyne Tracy 11T felt the blood rush up to his sleek, dark brown hair. It was going to be deucedly hard to get away and yet it was almost physically impossible to stay here all the evening with Anne, especially when she was in this frame of mind. He wondered how he would tell her. Fortunately or unfortunately, his wife seemed to notice for the first time that he had changed to his dinner coat. “You are not going to leave me this evening are you, Wynne?” she asked, coming forward and putting her hand on his shoulder as though she would hold him even against his will. Gently Wynne Tracy unloosed his wife’s hand. “I am sorry, Anne, but I have got to go. There are some very in- fluential banker clients in town and you know they always expect to be entertained.” For the life’ of him he could not meet her eyes and to cover this cowardice and make his excuse seem casual, he brought Anne's hands up to his lips and kissed them, one after the other. “Anne’s hands were always beautiful, even more beautiful than Sabra’s,” he reflected. Violently those kissed hands pushed his away. “Go, go, before I tell you what I think of a man who leaves a woman in my condition to bear all her suffering in loneliness. At this he lashed himself into anger. “Yes, I will go, for you must know that you are unreasonable. I hope when 1 come back you will be in a pleasanter mood.” He started forward as if to kiss her, but Anne Tracy had turned away from her husband and she did not move as he went out and shut the door noisily. “Call the nurse,” she said to the maid, who made her ap- pearance the minute Mr. Tracy had left. “Give me something to make me sleep,” was her curt direction to the white clad woman who instantly prepared a dose of nervine. “Leave me, both of you,” was Anne’s next command. “But, madam,” remonstrated her maid. “You heard me—go.” Both women silently left the room. Anne threw herself on the bed in a passion of sobs, all the while tearing at the velvet and the lace of her negligee. The sobs grew fainter shortly and her hands less de- structive as the sedative I:ega:n to take effect. - Anne Tracy sat up in bed! For a moment she could not tell where she was. A peal of thunder that had seemed to shake the foundations of the house was still reverberating in the distance and an agonizing pain that had been convulsing her body was becoming less torturing. HE was not sure whether it was the pain or the shock of the lightning that had awakened her. Beside the bed her telephone tinkled. Nervously she picked it up and put the receiver to her ear. “Let me speak to Mrs. Phillip Wynne Tracy,” voice commanded. “This is Mrs. Tracy speaking.” “Mrs. Tracy this is the Mo mng‘ Tribune. heard nothing from vour husband in the last few hours? “No, not since he went out to entertain some guests at dinner.” “Then we have some very bad news for you—" there was a slight hesitation at the other end of the wire. “Yes, yves, what is it?” “Your husband, Mrs. Tracy, was killed about ten min- utes ago by a tree which had been struck by lightnipg fall- ing on him. By strange coincidence his car was directly un- der it when it fell on the Pinehurst road, just this side of the Pinehurst Roadhouse.” Queer what fantastic tricks one's brain will play upon one at such a time! Anne did not think for the moment of her dead husband; instead, she thought of the “visiting bankers” and asked quite calmly: “Was any one else hurt?” “Yes, Mrs. Tracy. Mrs. Sabra Welford was also killed. We have just telephoned her husband.” The hand which held the receiver dropped slowly to Anne Tracy’s side. An agonizing pain swept out everything but physical torture as she slowly sank to the floor. ® * #* an excited Have you P Twenty-four hours later she opened her eyes. She was lying in her silken covered bed. In a hollow of her arm there rested a little fragrant bundle of flannel and lace. About her was the odor of anaesthetic. But above, and over it all, there rested an atmosphere of ineffable peace. Slowly her eyes traveled over the top of the bald satiny head: tenderly she smiled: “Oh, baby, T DO want you! I could not live without vou! How could I have been so wicked—forgive me—" The nurse, hearing a murmuring sound, came to the bed. “It’s all right, Mrs. Tracy. I have never seen a finer boy.” With this she picked up the tiny body and laid it close to the heart of the woman lyving there. With an ecstatic smile Anne Huntington Tracy closed her eyes for she felt the moist nuzzling mouth of her son against her breast. Soventeen years have passed since that time. L " ] " CHAPTER T THE BLUE ROADSTER NNE HUNTINGTON TRACY threw up the window quickly and leaned out to look down the street up which in all the ulmx of an open cut-out and the noise of a honk- ing siren came a brilliant blue roadster at break-neck speed. She caught her breath, however, for only a little way behind it a motoreycle was seen. s going to get arrested the very first time he 8 Mrs. Tracy said to herself and then her at- tention was brought back to the boy at the wheel. “Oh, Mum—Mum—I've got it—I've got it. beauty 7" With almost as much enthusiasm as was the boy’s Mrs. isn't it a Tracy leaned further out the window and waved her hand gayly at her son, Phillip Wynne Tracy IV. It seemed to her that the greatest happening since her as born here in the old Tracy house at Flushing over seventeen vears o had come to pass. Her eves were full of love and pride as she surveyed her son in all the glovy of the blue roadster and its accompanying college-cut raccoon coat. In the warmth of Phil's expansive smile—that smile which he had not vet learned was usually to bri him every- thing he wanted from men as well as women—she forgot the Law which was vapidly gaining on the roadster as it slowed down with a jerk and sereech of brakes at the gate before the house. The boy stood in the car and looked up at his mother in triumph. “At last I've got it,” he shouted. “The guy who sold it to me said I was not to run it over twenty-five miles an hour until I had gone 500, but we fooled him. We came from the salesroom at a sixty-mile clip.” “We.” The word seemed fairly to pop nut at the woman in the window. She noticed now what had escaped her be- fore. Peepmg' around the great raccoon coat from which her son’s bare, sleek, brown head emerged was another head, also bare, its <tmght hair like corn silk put in cap fashion and bound with a scarlet band. At this moment the motoreycle policeman had dismount- ed at the blue roadster. “Say, voung fella, who do you think you are, anyway— the driver of an ambulance or the chief of the fire depart- ment ?” The boy turned a laughing face toward him. “Hardly, officer. I couldn’t have been going very fast. Don’t you see this is a brand new car and no one is supposed to run a new car over twenty-fives miles an hour?” “Come off—come off—don’t lie any more'n you have to. I just heard you call up to your mother that you'd been go- ing sixty.” The boy hung his head. T was then the girl on the seat beside him took a hand. Her straight, scarlet mouth smiled trustfully and her « lapis lazuli bluc eyes looked almost black as she raised them to the man’s face. “Have you got a car, Mr. Officer?” she asked. a He looked at her in surprise and answered gruffly: “Yes, T've got a flivver, but what’s that got to do with it, young woman ?” “Nothing, only—only you see it's Wynne's first car and my first ride in it—you would not spoil all that for us, Mr. Officer, now would you?” “Come off! Don’t lie any more’n you have to.” The man looked down into the two young faces so con- fidently raised to his and smiled reluctantly. “Oh, go on with yer blarney, Miss. For you I'll let him off this time, but if I catch him at it again I'll run him in.” “Thank you, Mr. Officer—have a smoke?” Phil's hand was thrust in his great coat and came out with an ornate gold case which he beld open to the policeman. “No, thank you, my lad. I don't smoke cigarettes and vou should not either,” the officer said gruffly as he stepped from the roadster's running board, mounted his motorcycle and rode off down the street. Mrs. Tracy stepped back from the window. She won- dered if Phil was going to bring Natlee Jones up. She won- dered if he had forgotten that she had told him that today, when he would get his long delayed roadster, she had ar- ranged to go with him to Arrowhead for dinner. She won- dered when Phil had taken up Natlee again. Ever since her son Phil was nine years old and Natlee Jones was eight they had had periods when they were in- separable and periods when they had apparently forgotten each other's existence. - . From time to time Phil's attention would wander and during this last year of high school when he had been try- ing to do two years in one, his entire attention had been taken up with athletics and his studies. She had noticed this with great pleasure and had told herself that next year when he would be in college he would / probably completely break off any silly intimacy that he had with his childhood playmate. Natlee Jones! whose father kept a dairy. Why Phil had first seen her when she was sitting on the front seat of a milk wagon driven by her father, who sometimes even now, although he had grown rich, delivered milk himself! Surely this girl was not the sort that Phillip Wynne Tracy IV should be driving about with in his new roadster which had been crdered for him just before Christmas with the proviso that he was to make up one condition in time to enter the spring term at college. ER thoughts were interrupted by the noisy entrance of her son. “Here's Nat, Mum,” lie announced as if the fact did not need an explanation. A quick glance from the girl, how- ever, seemed to say that she knew better. “1 did not want to come, Mrs. Tracy—— “Oh, shut up, Nat, you don’t have to be polite. Mother, what's got into you? Whenever you come near Natlee lately you make her feel like a punctured balloon.” “Phillip!” “Wynne!"—his mother and Natlee both used the name by which they called him in unison. “Well, Nat,” said the boy in grieved tones, vou told me she did.” “I am sorry if I make Miss Natlee uncomfortable,” said Mrs. Tracy in her most formal manner. “I am sure I do not mean to do so.” “There you go, Mum—that’s just what I am trying to tell you. You never high-hatted Nat before and that's what makes her feel it now.” “I am sure, Phil, 1 had no intention “high-hatting” (as vou call it) Miss Natlee, but you must remember that you two are growing up and it is time that your childish familiarity should be put upon a more conventional basis.” The moment after Anne Tracy had said this she was sorry, for glancing at the clever little face before her, with its pointed, aggressive chin and curiosity-laden eyes, she knew that by calling attention to the thing she would have avoided she put into the quick brain of Natlee Jones some- thing that had not been there before. She had in one mo- ment erased from the girl's mind all the childish innocence, which up until now had characterized her youthful friend- ship with Phillip, and had placed in her mind self-conscious- ness. Phillip, slower and more obtuse, evidently did not realize this, for he remonstrated vehemently when his mother said: “Well. take off your coats, children. I'll order dinner on the table shortly.” » “vou know emm—— —m—- “Oh, Mum, this is a great day for me with' my roadster . and everything—I don’t want to stay at home and just have eats, but I am broke and I thought I'd ask you for $10 so that I could take Nat out to Arrowhe WITH a clutching at her heart Anne Tracy thought, how like his father Phil is growing. He forgot all about her suggestion that when he got his car and the raccoon overcoat he so much wanted they should finish up his holiday together with a dinner at Arrowhead Inn. Only the name of the restaurant stuck in his memory and made him think it might be a good place to take Natlee. The girl sensed something wrong from Mrs. Tracy's face and she spoke up quickly: “I am sure, Mrs. Tracy, that I don’t want to go with Wynne if you don’t want me.to do so. I had made half a date with Rodney Maxwell for to- night, anyway.” “Oh, come off, Nat, you know you don't like that cod- fish. You know you told me when I stopped for you that you had never been to Arrowhead and we both decided that we had to begin to do things now that we're more grown up. : “Now, Mum, you see, you've already been thinking the same thing. You just told us so. Let me have the ten bucks, Mumsy,” he coaxed. Without a word Anne Tracy got from her pocketbook a $10 bill and placed it in her son’s outstretched hand. With a whoop of delight Phil clutched Natlee’s hand and dlagged her along while he shouted: “Come on, Nat, now we'll have a regular party.” “Don’t 'stay out late,” his mother called after him. “We won't,” Phil nnswered blithely—a moment later with a roar of open cut-out Phii and the blue roadster went tearing down the street on their way to a “regular With a sigh Mrs. Tracy watched the car out of sig] Somehow the avid, curiosity-filled eyes and the aggressive little pointed chin of Natlee Jones haunted her. As Anne Huntington Tracy sat down on the familiar couch chair she found herself \\oudermg more than ever be- fore what the years would bring forth. What was to be the destiny of her son? (TO BE CONTINUED) Recollections flooded Anne Tracy’s tortured mind on that evening when her son left her for his boyhood sweet- heart. Read the next chapter. Do You Read Herald Fiction? We pride ourselves in- giving, in our columns, the people of New Britain the best obtainable in news, fiction, comics, pictures and com- ment. Appreciation of our efforts is voiced by our steadily growing list of subscribers. It is gratifying to us that we please so many—to please is our duty as well as our joy. We believe that our continued story, which starts today on this page, will measure up to our stan- dards of excellence. Read It n The Hera