Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1936-12-10

village drunk. Ace was always
having to take care of him, free of
course-Tom had no money-for
alcoholism. Once he brought Tom
through delirium tremens. Yet
when Tom got well, Ace always
gave him his first drink-after Tom
had begged long enough for it.
And yet And yet Some
thing had happened to Ace-I don't
mean to his body. Something had
happened to his soul.
In the meantime, had married
Mark Avery. used to talk Ace
over with him. My husband, who
was nerve specialist like Doctor
Geary, with an office. in Boston,
had served as a physician in the
World war. He had great wis.
dom. He said to me once, MARY,
the strange thing about war is that
it frequently ruins good men and
rehabilitates bad ones. Men are
returning to this country on every
transport, who, if they had not
been caught at the right moment
by the discipline of an army, would
have spent most of their lives in
Jail. On the other hand, war fire.
quently ruins able men-its rigid
discipline, its inherent immortality"
War must have been bad medi-
cine for Ace. 1t must have I'M
loosed something in him that he
had always held in allegiance. be-
fore. '
At any rate, from the time he
came back, he seemed to me to
disintegrate. Not physically! To
the very end, he kept his magnif-f
cent body in condition. He was al
ways inheriting money. Yet no
matter how much company filled
the huge Blake house, Ace was
always leaving on sudden calls.
How often when I have been there,
he has returned with wearied
but triumphant, "a big eleven
pound boy!" or GA nice little grill"
Once-and this was the apex of
his medical pride-"Girl twins!"
The countryside always surged
with gossip about Ace. He was, had
always been, would always be a
terrific use the word of my gen.
eration-firt. I will not say that
he desired all women, but I will
say that any pretty woman seemed
to serve as a challenge to him.
Why, when Mark first began regu-
larly to specialize on me, Ace
looked upon that as challenges!
/ laughed his tentative wooing out
of existence. Along with this ire
mendous susceptibility, let me call
it-although it wasn't exactly that
came an equally tremendous
fckleness. AS l have limited, to
see a pretty woman meant, at
once, on Aces part, desire to
conquer her; and to conquer her
was, at once, to begin to tire of
her. Rumors of his conquests, both
at home and abroad, choked our
tea-talk. For the last few years,
other rumors had spread-reports
all his patrimony and his various
inheritances; that each year in
creasingly, he spent more than he
earned.
And then occurred the strange
complication to which have al
ready twice referred. Molly Eames
came back from year in Europe
the most beautiful girl that Satuit
had ever produced. In three
months she was engaged to Wal
ter Treadway, Aces secretary. 1t
seemed to everybody that they
were passionately in love and yet
after six months Molly broke her
engagement to Walter. Six months
later, she became engaged to Ace.
No one of us who had known
Ace, no one of us who loved Molly,
felt happy over this turn of events.
But one thing Ace brought to us
from the war which meant more to
Satuit as whole than all his dec
orations-and that was his friend,
Bruce Hexson.
Bruce Hexson was a lawyer. He
was in Paris when the war broke
and volunteered Immediately to
drive an ambulance for the French
army. He met Ace in the hospital.
When we entered the war he vol
unteered for aviation. The two
men served in the same squadron.
Long before the Armistice, they
had become inseparable pals.
Bruce, too, was man of private
fortune. He lived in Pennsylvania.
He came regularly every summer
to Satuit and visited Ace for two
months at time
And then suddenly an unexpected
thing happened to him.
To use the old pat phrase-Bruce
"got' religion, but not somehow
in the usual sense. Ace always
avoided talking about his friends
spiritual seizure, but he told me
once that he attributed Bruce's fren-
zy to the long strain of the war.
eff he had been wounded once"
he said to me, lit would have been
better for him. Aviators often went
haywire. The officers watched us
like doctors. The instant any one
of us showed the first sign of psy-
Geological strain, they gave him
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