The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-04-23
CHAPTER ONE

II INDIA BOURNE hurried
home through the April
twilight of that day that was
to prove so fateful. A few
weeks more, she thought, and
the gray bushes would burst
into yellow bloom. April was
a nice month, but May would
be nicer.
That vas all right lit was
exciting to think of what was
ahead. In May the lilacs
would blossom, opening their
hearts to fill the air with
heady perfume. And some
times the birds sang at night.
The moon would be round
as a silver dollar on the
twentieth >.
"Wilda's party" (thus LindaS
thoughts few lis on the twentieth.
/ will sit on the terrace with Dix
and feel the broadcloth of his sleeve
beneath my hands that get hot and
cold when think of him.
L. Il. &
hair and fierce eyebrows that grow
so straight across your brow. You
haven't an aristocratic nose at all,
and your mouth is sensual, but you
are an aristocrat and you aren't
sensual. You're divine :"
The dance would be her seven
teenth date with Dix. Seventeen
since the night of the Glee Club
concert. The concert at Adelphi
Hall, and the tawny-headed boy
booming Neapolitan love songs
Justify in his sweet, unframed
voice.
And later, the waiter coming to
tell her that her grandmother"
wished her to take supper in the
alcoVe.
And in the alcove there was Dix,
the tawny-headed singer.
Hello, Red-dresS," he said. 81
didn't know any other way to get
you away from that mob and
wanted TO know you I'm Dix
Dixon Cobb Carter Will you have
some chicken salad?"
THAT was the way it began
IL Linda had some definite ideas
about how she hoped it would end
Where she didn't care. The farthest
corner of the earth in a canvas
tent would be all right with her.
so long as it was at the end of
life spent with him.
Linda on her way home from
her errand at the Newtown Blade
office, turned into her own street
land her dreaming came to an end
abruptly.
1t was the appearance of her own
home that startled her. The big
house was ablaze with lights; the
drive was filled with cars, yet only
silence came from the house, and
there we're strangers standing on
the wide porch.
Afterward she couldn't remem-
Der who took her aside, telling her
to be brave, to remember that her
father could not have been in his
right mind and-fnally-that he
was dead by his own hand.
And when she had escaped to
her own room, she stared at her
self in the mirror, shamed that she
could not cry, yet realizing that
she could not be untrue to herself.
Il linda BOURNE did not love her
IL father. She had tried to all
those years when the mother she
family remembered had gone away
with another man, leaving the tiny
Linda alone in the big house with
Calvin Bourne.
Linda thought of her mother
, then, and what manner of girl she
must have been. She tried to pic
ture her, here in the room that for
so long had been her little world
4 A loveless world where once Linda
had pretended that her dolls loved
her and asked her to help them
and love them always. No one in
Aall her life had asked for her love.
She had friends. She was popu-
Bar. She danced we'll, rode we'll,
played a good game of tennis and
golf. She was an Organizer" a
ecomnittee girl. That was the life
fshe led as leader of the little set
that constituted young society in
sNewtown.
The light went out of the sky
tRnd Linda sat in the dark IN that
Nhouse of tragedy, forlorn in the
Thought that there was no one to
think of her with sincere kindness
and sorrow. Her world would be
shocked, but it lacked tenderness.
nNE man was thinking of her
~ Peter Gardiner, alone in
the city room of the Newtown
Blade, putting lszily on a battered
pipe, contemplated his long legs,
drsped on an editorial desk, and
thought of the girl who had been
there short time before.
Point by point, Pete Gardiner, ace
political reporter in the state by his
own admission. reviewed his ap-
praisal of the president of the local
Junior League, daughter of the
towns leading mill owner and lead
er of set that had not yet discov-
cred him.
Pete knew girls, but not as many
as would like to have known him.
He had never known any like Linda
The GARDENERS, mother and son, had
lived on the wrong side of town ever
since Mrs. Gardiner, newly widowed,
had put up the little sign that read