The Washington times., 1933-08-03

mother-the mother of the man
who has sworn so glibly that he
was her lover.
Mahon'S wife and Jessie Costello
once talked together and that
Mary Mcmahon said:
"When you've known Ed Nc
MahOn as long as have, you'll
learn not to pay any attention
to anything he Says?"
And that Jessie Costello told
her, with half-humorous phi
losophy:
MARY, you've always got to
be catering to men. My mother
lived with my father 80 years
and catered to him every day Of
them. And I'm living 10 years
with Bill Costello and I'm still
catering to him."
Do we know that, or is that just
a lie that Jessie Costello invented,
Now we come to the fatal day,
the day that was to be Bill
Costello's last upon earth.
Early Morning Scene
We know that he got up early
at 6 o'clock when Bud, the baby
boy, woke up and brought the
youngster into his mothers room
and put him in bed between
them.
How plainly we can see 1.-THE
dark, lovely woman in her plain
nightgown, still sleepy because
she had been up so often in the
night with Sis and with Bill, who
wasn't we'll.
And the little boy, laughing
and pulling at her dark hair.
And the father, who perhaps
didn't dream that he had only a
few hours to live.
Then at 10 minutes to 7, the
little girls woke up, and Jessie got
up and took off her nightgoWn
0nd threw it across a chair and
dressed herself and the little boy.
Then with him in her arms and
Sis and Anna, the two little girls
beside her, went downstairs TO
cook breakfast.
We know that she kissed the
little girls goodbye and sent them
off to school and served breakfast
to her father-in-law, the old
gentleman who lived in the front
bedroom downstairs.
Cleaning Woman Comes
At 9 o'clock, the general clean
ing woman came and changed her
clothes in the back porch and
started her routine, and Jessie be-
gan, with the fatal paste, to clean
brass and silver and boilers.
It is all SO simple, so natural, so
like a thousand and other morn
ings in a thousand and one homes
everywhere.
But suddenly, as Jessie Costello
tells us these simple things, there
is a cold whisper, a cold wind
sweeps through the sweltering
court room.
Death enters.
How did he enter, the last grim
actor in this tragedy?
While she dressed her baby and
waved her little girls goodbye and
prepared the old gentleman's
breakfast, did Jessie Costello turn
into a heartless, hideous fiend and
with the same hands that had fed
the baby boy and smoothed out
the little girls hair feed poison to
their father?
The very thought sickens and
we stare at her, trying to get be-
hind the words.
Face White With Pain
Jessie Costello's face is white
now as she finds again, in words,
that. body. White with pain.
She knows the truth, she knows
all that happened in the little
house that morning.
Behind her hurrying voice is a
desperate inSiStence, an agony of
pleading.
She wants us to believe her.
Some of us do. Some of us do
not.
If only there were some way to
know, some touchStone Of truth
that we might know whether this
woman is innocent as she seems,
or whether she is a fiend in
human form and deserves the
most terrible punishment man can
mete out to man.
Only Jessie Knows
But we cannot know. Perhaps,
before she has finished, miracle
will happen-perhaps somehow
the gods of truth will show us
plainly whether this is truth or
ignoble false-lood.
Now only Jessie Costello knows
and the knowledge, guilty or
innocent, burns her with a scoring
flame.