Perth Amboy evening news., 1919-12-08
Moonlight and
Money
By Marion Rubincam
A LONELY EVENING
CHAPTER Al

AZ
Somehow the weeks dragged by
and the bitter cold of February set
in. For days at a time Louise did
not cave the house. She was feeling
too badly to want to brave the wind,
so she gave up entirely the country
tramps she used to make by herself.
But the Sunday walks she and Harry
still kept up.
BY the time she was through her
work she was usually too tired to
have either mercy or ambition. The
house, rented with such delight IN its
sunny rooms and broad plain spaces,
was really too large for one woman
to handle unless that woman was
fairly strong, and Louise had never
been that. In her efforts to econo-
mize she did all there was to do,
scrubbing and washing too. And one
day in February she looked at her
hands with a feeling of revulsion.
Louise's hands had always been
one of her greatest Joys. She had
kept them carefully manicured. They
were her n real vanity. The nails
were perfect in shape and a delicate
pink; the hands were slender and
beautifully soft and white. She look
ed at them now. The skin was dry
and red, the nails badly shaped from
neglect, with skin growing down over
them and dry, from hours In soapy
hot water. There were tiny callouses
on the ends of the fingers where she
had worn the skin off in rubbing on
a w~ashboard. The first finger of her
right hand bore innumerable marks
from the needle she had clumsily
used, marks hat had never quite
healed but had filed with black dirt.
Vaguely she recognized that her
hands typifled her life now, and its
contrast to what 1t had been. She
sat a long time looking at them and
indulging in a pastime beloved of
many Women-feeling sorry for her
self.
But Louise really had cause for
self-sympathy. She had fought brave
ly to make success of her marriage
with almost everything working
against her. h was badly prepared
for any fight, she was unusually
ignorant of practical details. Such
things h had mastered. She had
gone through all the problems of the
young wife and through many that
the average wife is fortunate enough
not to have to meet. She had fought
with poverty and used her pride to
keep hersfriends from knowing. She
had learned economy in its most
rigid aspect, she had gone to foolish
extremes in 1t.
And her reward? A pair of hands
whose delicacy and beauty was ruin
ed. That was What she thought, for
getting for the moment the pretty
home she had created II the many
real pleasures the work and struggle
for it had given her.
With a start she realized 1t was
past time for getting dinner. And
then the bell rang and a boy gave
her a telegram. 1t said, Mrs.
SALISBURY wants me to meet posi-
BILE client tonight. Home late. Harry"
h tore up the yellow paper and
dropped it into the fire. Always Mrs.
Salisbury She wondered whether
this pretty blonde lady really took
such an impersonal interest in Harry
as she pretended. Her philosophy of
life was rather cold and selfish. To
be sure, she had brought Harry such
business as he had, but was it really
q generous impulse on her part? She
must be well into her thirties, posi-
bly, forty or more-and to Louise
that was very old-and it would
please her vanity to have a man as
young and goodlooking as Harry as
a frequent guest.
Well, there was no use to get din
rer, she decided. She was too tired
to bother much about It and she dis
liked eating alone. SO she stirred
up the logs in the fireplace and pull
ed the couch as near as she could.
There was practically no coal for the
furnace and no money-unless Harry
borrowed again-to buy any.
She lay back on the couch staring
into the flames. Had she been less
tired by her work hat day, her
thoughts would not have grown so
desperate. AS it vas the long hours,
the dead silence of the house broken
only by the unnaturally loud tick Of
the clock, played on her imagination
until she was abnormally sensitive to
every tick.
She was terribly lonely, terribly
depressed. She needed someone, any,
one to talk to, just to quiet her
erv She needed a good cry to
work off excitement. And
she had nothing-nothing but the
lonely house and the clock ticking
and the vision Of Harry at a CHEEKY
dinner in a luxurious house and Il
woman who was always rested and
fresh, sparkling and alive, bending
her blonde head while she made
some merry comment to her partner.
At eleven she went upstairs, not