Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1931-06-12
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CRANDALLS
AND THE
STENDHALS
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By FANNIE HURST
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(@ by Mcclure Newspaper Syndicate.l
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"HE house of the Crandalls in
Oh Wittegar, street was one ofithose
Il massive brick-and-stone affairs
that looked as If it had been
built and passed on for a few gener-
ations from father to son. And so 1t
had, except in the case Of the Crandall
branch now in occupancy, 1t had been
case Of from father to daughter.
Martha Crandall had married Deep
ing Johnson in her fathers home and
remained there after her marriage,
and after the death Of the elder Gran
dali.
Martha Crandall Johnson's daughter
Adeline had been born In that same
house, In the same stodgy, high-ceil-
ing, wainscoated bedroom In which
she herself was born.
1t was a sOmber house, heavy wood
work, wooden pillars between arch
ways, folding doors, long halls. pier
glasses, hot-air furnace, push window
hanghgs, balcony-fronted china clos
cts, hatracks, what-nots, great bronze
figures for bric-a-brac, and a 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
going folks.
You felt about the house of the
Crandalls that the people who inhabit.
ed 1t had not made their money over
night, so to speak. Crandalls ever
since Crandalls had lived there, had
been able to afford the substantial
things of life.
Little Adeline Crandall Johnson
grew up in that environment, as bllthe-
ly as If the somber old house had been
a rose garden. She fitted through Its
halls. She danced through its dark
corridors as brilliantly as a butterfly,
caught In some strange netherworld
environment.
Her parents, her staid, cotton mer-
chant 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 as
If they warmed their icy fingers
around the luminous flame of her per-
sonality. She was something so alien
to them and yet so intellectually fasci-
mating. She had been born In the chill
autumns of their lives, when Martha
was fOrty-twO and her husbands fifty.
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 an
gular souls at Martha Crandall and
Deeping Johnson.
Unconscious of the incOngruity Of
her young presence in the deep brown
plush of the Crandall-J Johnson environ
ment, Adeline rushed into the flush of
her adolescence.
BY this time the Crandall-J ohnsons
were at the peak of the financial his
tory of all the Crandalls who had oc-
cup!ed that house on Wittegar street.
Not only had Martha come into a
vaster than ever accumulation Of
Crandall's monies. but Deeping John
son had practically cornered one Of
the most important cotton markets in
the history Of the industry.
When Adeline Crandall Johnson was
seventeen she was heiress to seven
million dollars. 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. 1t was one of those
predetermined affairs about which
there had not been much family dis
cusslon. 1t is doubtful If Adellne her.
self, In those years when she and the
fat young boy were so consciously sent
to dancing school together, was even
conscious Of the import of what was
happening.
Certainly she never took Donald
Dugan seriously enough to even resent
him. The fact that ut seventeen and
eighteen they were unOfiicially cOnsid-
cred engaged, glanced off her bright
young conscience with scarcely an i'm
pact.
One night, however. in the great
leep brown plush parlOr, the young Du-
gan, probably on the crest Of his first
fierce wave of Audience, caught her
INTO his short round arms and kissed
her wetly, patty. rOundly, and with pos
sesslveness on the lips.
Four weeks later Adeline Crandall
Johnson eloped with her music teacher.
1t was one of those seven-day-won-
der, local catastrophies. The town
shlvered. The town stood aghast
The newspapers, muted, as II stunned
into semisllence, carried news Of that
marriage as II they were printing the
story Of death.
The house Of the Crandall-J ohnsons
might be said to nave shivered to Its
very timbers.
For three months the great, solemn
brown doors were closed to Adellne
and her slender blond husband. Then
solemnly, inevitably and rather terri
bly. with the news that Adellne was
with child. they swung open, taking
Into the silent NAV Of that house on
Wittegar street, the young figures Of
Adellne and Jacques Stendhal.
Promptly It swallowed them
ra,,.~.,'v II a"'-.i' ili'm. Prompt.