Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-22


and stone affairs that looked as If it
had been built and passed on for a
few generations from father to son.
And so it had, except In the case of the Gram
drall branch now In occupancy, been case Of
from father TO daughter.
Martha Crandall had married Deeping john
son in her fathers home and remained there
after her marriage and after the death Of the
elder Crandall.
Martha Crandall JohnSonS daughter Adeline
had been born in that same house, in the same
stodgy. high-ceiling. wainscoated bedroom in
which she herself was born.
II was a Sonlber house, heavy woodwork,
wooden pillars between archWayS, folding doors,
long walls, pier-giaSses, hot-air furnace, plush
window hangingS, balcony fronted china closets,
hatrackS, what-notS, great bronze figures for
bric-a-brac and bronze clock with two bronze
warriors for the centerpiece on the parlor
mantel
And yet withal there was within this house
the feeling of stability. Its silent old walls had
soaked into their timbers the emotions of sane,
steady-growinS folks.
You felt about the house of the Crandalls
that the people who inhabited it had not
made their money overnight. so to speak.
had been able to afford the substantial things
Of life.
Little Adeline Crandall johnson grew up in
that environment blithely as If the somber
old house had been rose garden She fitted
through its halls. She danced through its dark
corridors as brilliantly as butterfly caught in
some strange nesherworld environment.
Her parents her staid, cotton merchant of
. father and her mother, Martha Crandall, who
had been reared to be Stolid, marveled at the
electrical kind of brilliancy of this girl, their
child. They marveled. and 1t was rs if they
warmed their icy fingers around the luminous
flame Of her personality. She was something
SO alien to them and yet so incalculably fasei-
mating. She had been born In the chill
AutuInnS of their liVeS, when Martha was AZ
and her husband So Almost any way you
Looked at her she was phenomenon, the last
creature in the world you would have expected
to spring from the union of two such angular
souls as Martha Crandall and Deeping Johnson
Unconscious OF the incongruity of her young
presence in the deep brown-plush of the
Crandal!-Johns0n environment, Adeline rushed
into the flush Of her adolescence.
BY this time the Crandall- Johnsons were at
the peak OF the financial history Of all the
CrandalE who had occupied that house on
Wfttegar street. Not only had Martha come
into vaster than ever accumulation Of Gram
dall's moneys. but Decping johnson had prac-
ticaIy cornered one Of the most important
cotton markets in the history Of the industry
When Adelin. Crandal johnson was II she
was heiress to 100000. More than that
and with an obsolete kind Of solemnity of
which they were totally unconscious, the
parents OF Adeline had picked out for her in
marriage the son Of another local millionaire
IL was one OF those predetermined affairs about
which there had not been much family dis
Cussion. It Is doubtful II Adelne herself, in
those years when she and the fat young boy
wore 20 consciously sent to dancing chool to-
gekher, was even conscious Of the imUort Of
what was happening
CERTAINLY she never took Donald Duean
seriously enough to even resent him. The
fact that at II and 10 they were unofHcially
considered engaged, glanced OF her bright
young conscience with scarcely an inpact.
One night. however, in the great deep brown
plush parior, the young Dugan probably on the
crest OF his first fierce wave Of adolescence
caught her into his short round arms and kissed
ner patty roundiy and with possessiveness on
the lips
Four weeks later Adeline CrandaM johnson
eAoDed with her music teacher.
1t was one Of those seven-day wonders local
Oatastrephes. The town shivered The town
stood aghast: The newspapers, muted, as II
stunned into scni-silence carried news NJ that