HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 February 1939, Page 12

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT.

BY

BERTA RUCK.

CHAPTER 11. Glorious Apollo in modern dress; all sex-appeal and smiles. Beauty-con-scious to a sickening degree. That was what Terry had expected to see. But she saw —what?

A tired, pale young man in a faded wrap. A slender, haggard, and worriedlooking young man in that ancient disreputable bathing-wrap sitting at a table littered with papers which he had been studying so that presently he ran his hands through his hair in a gesture of genuine despair. He was on his feet, though, as Terry came in. She heard him. say in a pleasant, unconceited voice, "Good afternoon, Miss Grey; do sit down, won’t you?” He moved aside a chair out of the direct line of late sunlight which would have streamed through the open window straight into her eyes.

Terry sat down in fresh surprise; for she had expected that the language he spoke would be film —if not gangster—language and that his manners would be—well, the manners of any spoilt young male screenster confronting a Miss Nobody without looks charm or money.

“Excuse my kit,” he added civilly, drawing round him that wrap which was patterned with cigarette-burns, splashed with liquid-white, and only fit to be stuck on a broomstick and set to flutter warningly on an allotment. “You see, I hadn’t time to take off my make-up at the studio. Well, about you ”

She answered his pleasant, diffident questions about her previous experience, speed, shorthand capacity and salary. But Mr Lavery, seemed to be as lost over practical details as her last employer, the Professor, had been efficient.

“I shall want you to arrange with me how I’ve got to fit in my various dates and answer my mail, and to take my private telephone-calls and any messages while I’m at the studio and —” Here the telephone rang. From force of habit Terry took it up, raising her eyebrows, meaning “Do I answer this?” “Please. See who it is.”

“Hullo; yes. This is Mr Lavery’s flat. One moment.” She put her hand over, the receiver. “Mrs Lestrange.” “My sister; yes. I’ll speak to her. — Hullo Madge; how are you, how’s the boy? What? Oh, I say, bad luck. He what? The doctor says what? —If you get him away to the sea at once. Well, my good girl, get him away. Go yourself. Do you both good. Who’ll do what to your foot? Oh! ‘foot the bill.’ Why, but of course. Don't be silly. Glad to. That’s all right. I’ll fix that. I’ll ring tonight. Goodbye Madge.” He turned. “Miss Grey, lake a note, will you? Ring up the Royal Hotel at Frinton and tell them it’s for me; I want rooms reserved for my sister, Mrs Lestrange, and her small boy, who’s convalescent after an operation. The' rooms I had last time. As from tomorrow. That will do presently. I was going to ask you ” Here the door burst open. A petulant boyish voice exclaimed “Vai! Oi! Vai!” There looked in a young man of twenty-one or two, very much more like the film-star Terry had expected than the film-star himself. Hik clothes were beautifully—a thought too beautifully cut. His tie was a work of art. He was arrestingly good-looking, almost as good-looking as he thought himself to be. “You busy?—When can I see you, then?" “This evening,” replied the Star, rather wearily. “I thought you were joining Flower and me after dinner.” “I’ve got to see you first, alone; about —you know.”

“Well, you can come and pick me up at the Ritz; I'll have a cocktail with you at seven. Not before.” “Right. Seven. Don't be later, Vai; I must see you, and I’ve a date at seven-thirty. So long!” The vision disappeared. “That was my young brother, Guy,” explained the film artist. He sighed, or rather a long sigh seemed to be dragged out of him.

Terry thought “What's ‘Guy’ been doing to worry him? First the sister’s bill to be footed; now the brother . . . I feel it in my bones that this man’s got the sort of family that rushes out of one financial jam into another. Someone’s got to extricate them. Who? Obviously the solvent and successful Star-member ”

“You think you would be able to come and cope with all this?” asked the Star.

He jerked that head which his fans were accustomed to see rippled over by wave after smoothly polished masculinewave. At the moment, because of his gesture, the hair was standing up like a damp, brown, kitchen sink-brush, above his tired, boyish eyes. “Poor fellow,” thought Terry with a warm title gush of pity at her heart, Then she remembered "He’s scarcely to be pitied, what with his earnings, and his exquisitely lovely sweetheart to be crazy about him! and his reputation and his public!” All Die same, she found herself still pitying the Star as she following his gesture towards a couple of toppling card castles of correspondence. “Certainly 1 could undertake that. Would you like me to start, at once, Mr Lavery; Dial is, tomorrow?" How well Terry was afterwards to know the sound of that short, diffident boyish laugh that he gave! "I say, if you could manage it. Miss Grey, I’d rather ’at once’ than tomorrow. So if it’s all the same to you—”

"Quite,” Terry said succinctly. She sat down, pulled off her gloves. They were new and relatively much dearer than the rest of her outfit put together. Each of us, however, hopelessly plain, has one die-hard vanity. Terry’s was

her hands, which lookd as though they ought to have belonged to a pretty and petted woman. She turned to the typewriter and took up the first letter of the nearest tower of envelopes. But the Star interposed hastily, “Oh. I say, please. No. If you don't mind “ he said, reddening a litle. "Those are private leters. Family and that. Those I have to attend to. These others are what I want you to undertake. Bills, invitations, some of one’s begging letters, one’s fans. If you would n’t mind just grading them like that?” "Right," said Tdrry. She- fell upon those envelopes as a ravenous brown caterpillar falls upon a pan of seedlings. Relieved surprise filled the handsome worried eyes of the Star, watching her. “You are quicjc.” “Yes. my M.P. thought I was quick,” agreed Terry (thinking “My Professor, on the other hand, didn't.) “These,” she put a neat packet to her right, “are all fan letters, Mr Lavery.” “Good,” said Lavery, and took them from her. Their hands touched. Instantly Terry noticed what pleasing hands he had; shapely, cool. Virile attraction was his, and that potent charm of magnetic handclasp. Impersonally one could notice these things about a man, thought Terry. Quite impersonally one could decide just why he was a Star, the compensating dream of these dozens of cinema-haunting girls and women who wrote to ask him to forgive a perfect stranger who felt she simply must tell him how many times she had been to see “Bachelors All" and how she’d enjoyed it more each time, and how thrilled, one of his greatest admirers (Phyllis, Doris, Sylvia, Maysie, Jean or Joan) would be if Mr Lavery could spare a photograph of himself, with his autograph. “Today's batch isn’t'quite so big, though.” Was it Terry’s imagination or did a faint dismay tighten the lines of that well-cut, sensitive reticent mouth?

“Type out envelopes for those, would you, and enclose this picture-postcard with my signature? They seem to like it better when it’s in an envelope. Lord, I’ve come to an end of all the signed ones. Do you mind passing me that lot of unsigned ones?” He took up a fountain pen, then, catching Terry’s look, asked, “Why d’you look surprised?” “Only because I see you sign your own.” .

He now looked surprised. "Naturally,” he said more coolly. “It wouldn’t, be exactly a straight deal if I didn’t, would it?”

“No. I beg your pardon.” said Terry. She said it very prettily, and blushed as she said it.

The famous player looked up from his pile of picture postcards, looked at Terry as though he saw her for the first time. “I say, Miss Grey. I've just thought of something. You strike me as a person one could trust.” “I hope so.”

“Yes. I think both of us might bet on that,” said the Star. “Well, since you’re good enough to come to me here as my confidential secretary, I’m going to trust you with something pretty important.” ■ “Yes?”

“I —” Before he cduld say any more the telephone again rang. Lavery shot at it a glance of hatred. “Shall I take it, Mr Lavery?” “Yes; and tell everybody that I'm out, gone away, committed suicidewait. Everybody except my mother, Mrs Lavery. I’ll speak to her.” “Hullo!” Terry heard a soft, plaintive voice at the other end of the wires. “Is that Vai? Hullo. Is that you, Flower? I want to talk to Vai. I must talk to him, it’s very important. 1 want to speak to him at once, please —”

“I’ll 1 see. One moment. What name, please?”

“Don’t be absurd! Who. are you?” retorted the soft voice, aggrieved, “I want to talk to Vai at once —it’s important. Hullo! I say, it’s very unkind of him not to answer his own mother—

Terry put the receiver into the star’s outstretched hand. “Shall I go, Mr Lavery?” He shook his head. “Hullo, mother. Vai here . . . Well, you see, darling, I have been living in such an infernal rush. Yes; we have finished the picture, but only about two hours ago. I . . . . ves, but I . . .

Terry, now sorting bills, gathered that nt the other end of the telephone Mrs Lavery was talking, talking, volubly. plaintively, even a trifle querulously. “Yes, mother . . No, mother," replied the son. “Oh, my dear, don’t be an absurd little woman! . . Of course, I haven’t. Of course, I won’t! I m not hard on the boy, mother. I’m going to have a cocktail with him at seven. Now you’re not to think that. I’D see you tomorrow . . To-night? . . Musi you? Right, then! Right! So long! Yes! I’ll bring them with me. Goodbye. What? Goodbye!"

He drew a long breath. Again lie seemed about to run his hands through his hair with that gesture of despair. Evidently he thought better of it. He dragged a clean handkerchief from the pocket of the filthy wrap, brushed it across his forehead, pulled himself together. and said more briskly, “Now, Miss Grey, what I want to talk to you about it —”’

“Vai! Oil Vai. how much longer arc you going to be?" broke in the impatient voice of Vai’s fiancee on the other side of the door.’ ‘l’ve been home and changed; I'm all set. Aren't you dressed?” (To be Continued.)