Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-04-19
CHAPTER II


CHAPTER II
~ONY HARTMAN had been
brought up with sense of the
fitness of things. He was the
only child, and subconsciously
he had felt that some day he would
settle down. marry a girl who would
make him a good wife, and turn his
hand to the, managing of his fathers
business. AS for this theoretical
wife of his, the thought that he
might, or might not. love her had
never seemed important to him. Love
between married people was not an.
essential. His own mother and
father had lived a dignified, calm eX-
istence, but as for love, the kind one
read about in books, there was moth
ing of that kind between them. Yet
they seemed happy enough. An
thongs attitude toward girls was
singularly healthy one. He liked
them. and at college they had fitted
lightly in and out Of his life. He had
danced with them, flirted with them,
taken them here and there, but there
had never been anything serious in,
his relations with. them, no fancy
deeper than that 'of the moment,
nothing that had ever caused his
heart to skip beat.
Somewhere in the back of his head,
however, there was the knowledge
marriage to him meant choosing a
girl from his own walk of life, a girl
who would sit at the head of his
table, manage his home, be a credit
to him always If he had ever con-
nected any one girl with these ideas
who had come nearer to his ideals
than anyone else. Edith was a tall,
attractive girl with a rather stat
uesque type of beauty. Her father
was Barnes Comstock, a business
colleague Of Clayton Harriman's, and
the two families were very Intimate.
Edith danced well, looked dlstln-
guished in her evening gowns, played
fairly coed same of tennis, ran
car, had a pleasing amount OF small
talk, in short was splendid, all
around girl. Anthony liked her, but
he had never INDUCED in any senti-
mental ideas about her. There had
never been even the smallest kind of
a Irritation between them, but the
knowledge was there just the same,
and both of them realized it, that
some day they would marry.
The night Tony had taken Char
lotte in his arms, he had forgotten all
about his ideas of the right kind of
a wife. He knew that he wanted her,
that was all, that this tiny girl must
be part of his life for all time. He
had not stopped to reason, it was
against mis- heart. The idea of taking
Charlotte cut of her present exist
ence, of showing her life, of carrying
her home to his mother to be petted
and made much of, obsesSed him. He
did not remember his mother as a
would be apt to judge Charlotte for
her deficiencies, but only as his
mother who would welcome the Wom-
an he had chosen to make his wife.
He did not reason that Charlotte was
entirely ignorant of all those little
conventi0nalities that women of his
own world observed with the utmost
rigidness, he saw her simply as sweet
and utterly desirable, and 50 he asked
her to marry him, with no thought Of
the awakening that would come later.
Anthony had been on a camping
trip up in the Berkshire hills with
some of his college friends. His first
meeting with Charlotte had taken
place in the general store of Weston
bury, where he had gone for supplies.
Charlotte had appeared like a fairy
apparition, strangely out of place in
her surroundings, and with that pale,
blonde beauty that stirred him from
the first glimpse he had of her. He
had invented an excuse to speak to
her, and she had responded with
naivete that showed plainly her utter
lack of experience. Since then there
had been other meetings, and once
Anthony had had supper with the
Graves family, including the hired
help. Old Abner Graves ate with
his knife, and Charlotte's mother
waited silently and with dragging
footsteps on the hungry men, but
Charlotte, pushed back in her chair
by her mother whenever she wanted
to help, sat like a princess, the lamp
light shining on her pale gold hair,
her blue eyes radiant in the dim
room. 1t was then that Anthony had
resolved to take her out of it all, and
now as he sat in the hired buggy
waiting at the fork of the road for
Charlotte to appear. he had no for
bodings at all concerning the future.
ITO Do Gnn+in11nd