HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Advance-Times, 1940-12-19, Page 9WINGHAM, ONTARIO, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19th, 1940
A Christmas Romance
“But Once A Year”
By Helen Partridge
This compelling tale, rising through a steady crescendo of conflicting interests and
tense emotions to a Profoundly affecting conclusion on Christmas Eve,
is an engrossing love story of today.
CHAPTER I
Dustin Paine said Yes and No and
Possibly to a young man who was
trying to make a good impression and
incidentally hoping to sell him some
advertising space. Dusty would have
left this party an hour ago, once he
had seen that everything was going
well, only Dot had not yet appeared.
The tempo was speeding up. Sev
eral columnists had arrived and the
crush was enough to make a pretty
good-sized breakage bill, including
damage to the hotel carpet from
smoldering cigarette stubs. Dusty
surveyed the group by the fountain
and observed how careless people
could be, caught in the spirit of gre
garious hilarity. The party, he hoped,
would be talked about for weeks. He
also hoped it would sell a few boat
loads of Wilkinson’s Coffee and call
the attention of people to the fact that
Paine and Hodgson knew how to
throw a party and launch an effective
selling campaign.
Dusty looked around irritably. Al
most anyone he approached would
produce a brightly interested business
smile which would lead sooner or lat
er to a proposition. He wished Dot
would turn up.
' Just then he caught sight of her.
He thought how finished and smart
she looked, so much a part of the
New York scene.
Dorothy Graves wore a hand-tail
ored tweed suit with a sleeveless fur
jacket. Beneath a fur hat her pale
hair shone sleekly. She was small and
at a distance one would have taken
her for a Park Avenue younger sister
than one of the really successfully
New York executives. Only when you
looked closely did you see that there
were heavy smudges beneath her eyes,
and that she was actually not so
young as she appeared.
Dot smiled from across the room
and Dusty smiled in return. He
thought, “How lovely she is! But she
was just as lovely when I first saw
her ten years ago. How she did bowl
me over! Why didn’t we get married
then?” He laughed as he thought of
the real reason: that Dot needed a
warm winter coat and they couldn’t
afford that and an apartment, too.
He said, as he took Dot’s hand,
“Shall I get you a coffee cocktail, you
dilatory wench?”
She smiled as she disengaged her
self from.a group of chattering peo
ple. "Did you have to go that far,
darling? They sound awful.”
"They’re not. They’re smooth as
silk.” Dusty was indignant. "Benedic
tine as a base. I’ve had four.”
"I don’t know.’* Dot hesitated. I
haven’t had ally lunch. Oh, wait, Dus
ty, there’s someone I’ve been trying
to see for weeks.”
Dusty scowled.
When Dot came back, he took her
firmly by the ami. “No lunch. You’re
coming out with me right now for
dinner.” ,
“But I can’t, Dusty. I’m dining with
Stephen. We’re in a Sort of jam!”
“Make it tea, then.” Dusty was en
raged about Stephen,, disappointed
about the dinner and said so. He did
n’t see why Dot had to spend all of
her working day as well as evenings
in the company of Stephen Emery,
even if he was her boss. He didn’t
see why they couldn’t finish up the
day’s work in Stephen’s chromium-
plated office and be done with it. In
fact, so far as'lie was concerned, Dot
was seeing a great deal too much of
that carnation-in-the-buttonhole for
her own good.
“Don’t be ridiculous, egg,” Dot said,
“business is business.”
Over tea Dusty said, “But you are
n’t eating anything.”
Dot shook her head. “Too tired.”
‘ “Look here,” Dusty said, “this isn’t
right. It isn’t right at all.”
Pie was thinking that Dot had
changed a great deal in ten years. She
wasn’t that eager, quiet, careless girl
who wanted to work with color more
than anything else in the world. She
was instead a well-groomed, efficient
business woman, always with some
thing on her mind. There was a tense
ness about her which he was not al
together sure he liked. “We never
have time to be • ourselves,” lie said.
“We go' round and round in circles
and never get anywhere.”
She sighed then and sipped her tea-
“What would you suggest?”
“The first thing to do,” Dusty said,
"is to make a clean break. Do you
remember the farm we talked ab’out
— how after a little we’d leave New
York and go back to the soil and live
quietly?”
Dot’s scarlet lips curved. “That’s
right, Dusty. We. did talk about a
farm once.” She smiled wistfully. “A
quaint idea. We were awfully young,
weren’t we?”
“Well, what’s so darned quaint and
youthful about living on a farm, I’d
like to know?”
“Just how would you manage to
get away? It’s only a trifling matter,
but I was referring to your business.
Once it was fairly pressing.” Once,
she thought, it was so important to
both of us that I packed away a navy
blue dress with a pink lace jacket and
an ’old rose turban, because I couldn’t
bear to look at it. Because I was go
ing to be married in it. Instead, I
went to the boat and waved good-bye
to Dusty and cheered him up and
Said, “Never mind, darling. We’ll take
the great step, in the fall afte’r you’ve
sold the Russians some elegant little
tractors.” Only in the fall I went to
the factory in Framingham for six
months. I wonder what has happened
to that dress. It probabily looks silly
with the waist around the hips or
something. And the moths, no doubt,
have chewed it into stuffing.
"I’d get a bright young under
study,” Dusty was saying, “and Hodg
son is a good man — and we might
use my brother Joel.”
“Yes. And just how long do you
think Paine and Hodgson would
last?”
“Which means you are right as al
ways, Dot — only —” He wanted to
add, “Somewhere along the line we
have lost each, other, we who were
terribly, beautifully important to each
other. Can’t we ever be again?”
“Only,” Dot broke in, “life marches
on, doesn’t it? How is Joel? What’s
he up to these days?”
"He’s all right,” Dusty said. “He’ll
be coming down soon. He really likes
it back there in White Creek, al
though he does get fed up sometimes.
He’s an impractical young bum, Joel
is. He wants to run the mills again
full time with some new-fangled pro
duct. And he has a quixotic idea of
getting all the workers on to self
subsisting farms. He thinks the main
trouble with the world today is that
people won’t work with their hands,
or that they don’t produce enough for
themselves and feel their own inde
pendence.” .
Dot’s eyes rested tenderly on Dus
ty. “Sometimes I think you are more
alike, you two brothers, than you real
ize.”
Joel, next to Dot, was the most im
portant person in Dusty’s life. Orph
ans at an early age, Dusty, the older,
had managed to bring up Joel. It was
a sore point between them when Joel
finished college a few years before,
he had chosen to return to the small
Vermont mill town where his father
and grandfather had built up a textile
factory, rather than to enter the ad
vertising agency as his brother had
planned.
“All of which means you think I am
talking through my hat, Dot. No, my
dear, I mean it. I lie awake nights
thinking about how to get back to‘a ~
simple life.”
Dot sighed. “It would be heaven,
Dusty. Or aren’t we, perhaps, living
a satisfactory kind of existence?”
Then, “Oh, I almost forgot. Do some
thing for me, dear? I have a young
cousin, Sue Garland, who is docking
tomorrow on the Queen Mary — and
has to be met. I can’t possibly„•— the
buyer from Chicago.”
“Now where,” Dusty was hunting
in his mind, “have I heard of Sue Gar
land?” ■ 1 I
“Gran brought her up, in White
Creek after my uncle died. I was
quite grown-up when I spent my sum
mers there with Gran, and Sue was ■
only a middle-sized youngster. A ra
ther decent one, too. I was quite fond
of her. She had lived in White Creek
most of her life, at least until she was
grown-up enough to go away to
school.”
“She must have come after I went
away. Maybe Joel knows her,”
Dot frowned. "Perhaps. She has a
Voice. She was with a group in Eng
land doing American folk songs, Ind
ian and Nego.”
“American folk songs in England!
What an amusing idea! Buf how in
the world will I know her?”
Dot said, “That’s tip to you. Cer
tainly, with your fertile brain, you ean