HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 February 1939, Page 10

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT,

BY

BERTA RUCK.

CHAPTER IT • Continued.

leading lady looked lovelier even than, before. And as their eyes met —Flower blue painted eyes of the film-lovely, bright grey eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses of the business girl—an odd sensation came to Terry Grey, that efficient, plain-headed, sensible young woman of whom everybody saw that there was “no nonsense” about her. A presentiment, a conviction, whispered to hei- almist definitely as though it had been a voice in her ear.

“This girl and you,” warned the whisper, “ate going to mean something to each other. Something, whether for good or ill, is to tangle your fates together. Each to each you will mean something definitely important.” No such voice addressed Flower Armitage, no such idea entered her soignee blonde haloed head as she looked down at this girl whom she had chosen out of that group of four because she was so definitely unattractive, so safe, to minister to her Valentine. “Give me ten minutes, dear,” called Vai. “I’ve had my bath, only got to dash into ‘tails’ —

Then, hurriedly: “We shall have to put off our talk over this until tomorrow morning, Miss Grey.” She saw him,take up an envelope and shoyc it into the pocket of that wrap, and disappear through the door at the other end of the room that led into his bedroom.

Terry, busy putting into envelopes a score of signed cards that showed Valentine Lavery as “The Gay Grand Duke,” smiling debonair and attractive in, a spectacular Ruritanian uniform, was again conscious of feeling absurdly sorry for this famous, wellpaid and happily-engaged young man. Raising her eyes, they met the eyes of Miss Flower Armitage, bluer than the blue dance-frock, in which the “Well. Miss Grey,” said Flower with gay, but rot unfriendly condescension, “and how do you’ think that you will like being secretary to a Star?” “It’s about Guy,” the Star said next morning as he put before his secretary that promise to talk in confidence. “My young brother whom you saw yesterday. He’s got himself into jam again, Miss Grey.” Terry nodded understandingly. “It’s a help to .have this out with somebody,” said Vai. “I’d like your advice about—well, we’ll begin at the beginning. Early in the Spring young Guy springs it on me that he’s fallen in love with a girl in the depths of the country where he was trying out a car for a client. (You know Guy’s in the motor-salesman line). He had tea At the place—it’s one of those tiny village post offices that are the local tobacconist’s and sweetshop and tea-gardens combined. Girl’s people keep it. Nota bad girl at all. “Then'another girl came into the picture, d’you see? This time the Real Thing; or something remarkably like it. Much more Guy’s kind. A Bishop’s daughter, a mixture of the conventional and the snappy—she’d keep Guy happy and to heel, the very thing we all want. But now he’s a flap because— Nobody,” broke off Vai Lavery with feeling, “ought to write love letters. Miss Grey; if they must write, they oughtn’t to post them.” “I’ve never even written one, so don’t look severely at me,” said Terry mildly, and as easily as if she was addressing one of her own brothers. “Never written a love-letter? How have you avoided that? I thought everybody had at least a dozen to their discredit by the time they were twen-ty-five? You told me you were over twenty-five,” he added hastily. “Young Guy must have written hundreds. Up to now they haven’t mattered, except to two or three girls who took ’em seriously, and then it didn’t matter for long. But—now ” He drew out of his pocket-book the pink envelope that he had crammed into the pocket of his wrap yesterday. (This morning, by the way, the Star was dressed in a re-ticently-perfect town suit; shirt, tie, shoes and socks were of the best, though not of the ultra-expensive that adorned his brother). The envelope was addressed in a round unformed handwriting to Vai Lavery, Esq, care of the Film Studios.

EVen before she opened it Terry thought “From a girl who realises there’s money in the brother of a Star.” It ran— The Post Office, Little Drooling. "Dear Mr Valentine Lavery— I enclose a letter from your brother, Mr Guy Lavery, so that you may see for yourself that the love which he protested ever since he took to calling on me here at my parent’s house, was enough to justify me into thinking that it was something permanent. Naturally, I am very upset in my feelings and appeal to you to use your influence with him as his elder brother, and head of the family. With best wishes. I remain, Sincerely yours, Doris M. Woolcott. P.S. I hold in my possession, as I could show you, six other '’letters from your brother, all in the same warm terms.

“What d’you think of that?” said the Star brieflly. “I won’t inflict young Guy’s effusion to the girl on you," he added with a hand to his breast-pocket. Terry liked him for not giving away the returned love-letter. “Unfortunately my brother mentions having enquired the cost of a Special Licence. She's hitting back blindly.” “Not so blindly,” said Terry, looking at the letter. “This spells Breach of Promise action very deliberately, Mr Lavery.” “I was afraid so.” He frowned;

worried. “I shall have to' buy back the other six letters from this young woman.” ‘•Why shouldn’t your brother buy them back?” “The boy doesn’t get much from those motor-blokes for standing looking good in their Picadilly showroom with his foot on the running-board of their latest model. What he has he throws about . . . But - what none of these people understand (for I’ve had some of this) is that even if one has made good in pictures, even if one happens to be earning real money, one has plenty of responsibilities. You'll realise that later about me, Miss Grey. (As if she hadn’t realised that already). I don’t suppose I could lay my hands on more than a couple of thousand.” “What?” interposed Terry with a faint scream, “you don’t dream of offering her that?” ' “You think not? Up to now our family’s never gone in much for this kind of thing. Even in my law student days I don’t think I happened to come up against a breach of promise case. They vary, don’t they, according to the individual set of circumstances. A man hardly knows ” “A man isn’t fit to be let out alone, then. Really, Mr Lavery!” exclaimed, Terry, half-touched, half-exasperated by the ingenuousness displayed by this unpractical son of an age of cynicism. “Forgive me if I’m rude, but it would be much better if you let someone else go down to this village and to see how the land lies. With a fresh eye. Without committing anybody to anything. Lavery laughed again. You’re extraordinarily kind to listen to this imbroglio, Miss Grey, but I hardly engaged you to cope with our family difficulties. He turned to his other letters as though the subject were for the moment shelved.

Terry persisted. “But I mean that. Do let me. I’d like to feel I was really doing something about it. Let me meet my lawyer brother and talk it over with him this evening. Tomorrow I could take an early train down to this village ” “Not a train,” said Valentine Lavery, thoughtfully looking at her, “you’ve no idea of the train service to those wilds. The terminus is three miles away, then there’s a motor bus. Can you drive? Good. If you really mean this what’s the matter with my car?” “You’ll let me go and have a look?" Lavery said, “I should be glad if you would.” CHAPTER 111. “So this,” murmured Terry as she drew Mr Lavery’s car up in the shady lane in front of Little Drooling Post Office at three o’clock on the afternoon of the following day, “is the nest of the Village Gold-digger?” Out of the entrance there appeared at the sound of the car a girl in an overall of flowery pink. This, the gold-digger? She did not loof it. Just the fresh-complexioned, buxom, brown, curly-haired, large-eyed village beauty who would win prizes at local competitions as “Miss Loamshire,” or “Miss Ox-and-Bucks.” “Did you want tea, Madam?” “Please,” said Terry. “Will you come round to the back, please,” said the serpent in the pink overall. “We serve teas in the orchard.” “How very nice,” said Terry, thinking, “here we have the scene of the capture of young Guy,” and she left the car and came round to the tea-garden at the back. It was charming; little green tables set out on the grass under apple trees. When the girl had brought the tea — in the usual little brown pot, with home-made scones, home-made jam, home-made bread and butter and the usual horrible shop-made cake of Old England, Terry very quickly poured out and drank half a cup full, then looked up and said “Delicious. Thank you, Miss Woolcott—you are Miss Doris Woolcott?” “Yes, I am ”

The other girl looked at her more closely, sharply. “You —who sent you to our rooms, may I ask?” “I’ll tell you,” said Terry. “Sit down here, won’t you?” The pretty country girl sat down, not with too good a grace, on the rustic chair on the other side of the table.

“The inquiries I wanted to make were not about rooms,” Terry said cheerfully. “I am here on behalf of Mr Lavery—Mr Valentine Lavery.” “Oh, are you?" said the girl. She was flushed, uncertain, trying to catch ar her self-possession. “I suppose you would be his eldest sister?”

“No,” said Terry (calmly, though as a matter of fact that “eldest” had jabbed her a little. Why this constant insistance, ever since her recent twen-ty-seventh birthday, on Terry's advanced age”), “but I am his confidential secretary. Miss Grey, and T know all the facts.”

“Well. I put all I meant about them into the letter I sent to your boss. ’ said the younger girl, even more defensively, “but —but if you want to tell me what he said to that, don’t you think you might come into the house and talk?’: “You have a mother and father?" “My father. He’s in, if you want to “Thank you—after I’ve had a little chat with you. I think it’s always more satisfactory to deal directly with another woman; don't you?" said Terry, serenely, who saw by the face of Miss Ox-and-Bucks that she, certainly, did not consider it more satisfactory. She would infinitely have preferred to be interviewed by the man to whom she had written. “Seems funny that he couldn't come himself—Mr Lavery, I mean.” “Not at all funny if you knew what a rush a man like that has to live in,” said Terry, crisply and with gusto,

Ths was the first time in her life that she had even had to fight for anybody. Terry was enjoying the fact that here she, who up to now had played second fiddle, and had never been allowed a ha-porth of initiative, had on her second day as his secretary, marshalled Lavery’s forces for him, and had now carried the war into the gold-digger’s own country.

“This is the position, as I see it. Miss Woolcott. You were for a very short time engaged to Mr Lavery’s younger brother; he broke off, and in order to pay him out, you wrote to complain of his behaviour to his elder brother, hoping that he, Mr Valentine Lavery, would make it very unpleasant for him.”

“He deserved it!” said the girl, with a pout. “Besides, it wasn’t only that —" “No. You thought you might make it still more unpleasant for the young man by dragging him and his family into a Court of Law. Do you know, I find it rather difficult to understand the attitude of a girl who will do this to any man of whom she’s ever pretended to be fond. lam sure you see it would be more—well, dignified if you returned love-letters at the end of an engagement, or burnt them; instead of holding them over the head of the young man’s family?”

Doris shook her curly head and her expression from being slightly scared became thoroughly mulish. “They’re my letters. Nobody can make me give them up." <To be Continued.)