HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 February 1939, Page 10

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT.

BY

BERTA RUCK.

CHAPTER 111. Continued.

“Of course not. Will you. though, promise not to use them to annoy Mr Lavery’s mother and family?" “What about my family?” retorted Doris —“she —they—come .in and talk to them now, won’t you?” “Certainly.” Terry swallowed her tea and got up, remembering that the places in which people live can tell you as much —and probably more of the truth than do those people themselves.

Through that over-grown porch Doris led the way into a dim little backparlour. “Daddy ” In the chimney corner a newspaper was lowered; from behind it looked out a sleepy face with a big guardsman’s moutache and a pair of blue, rather foolishly innocent eyes. Their owner struggled up. “Daddy, here’s someone from—you know —Mr Lavery.” “Good afternoon, Miss, pleased to meet you,7 said the man why by rights should become Mr Guy Lavery’s fath-er-in-law —sounding less pleased than nervous. “Sit down ”

Terry did so, noticing that this place

was one of this country’s thousands of identical village back-parlours, having, the same corner cupboard crammed with its mixture; of china and rubbish, and on the walls the same framed prints. There were also framed photographs of Doris as a smiling little girl, of Mr Woolcott in the regalia of his lodge, and of an athletic young man in football kit. • For some reason Terry's eyes were drawn to this portrait. “Your brother, I see ?” “I haven't got a brother,” snapped Doris.

“Old friend of a son of mine’s picture —I mean to say Ted’s my old friend's son,” explained Mr Woolcott still nervously. “Nice change in the weather, isn’t there? —Dorrie, aren’t you going to call your——?”

“Yes.” Doris raised her voice on high “auntie!” She went out; ran upstairs.

Then, after a short pause Doris reappeared, and after her came an apparition much less engaging; a gaunt woman of about fifty-five, with irongrey hair worn in an “onion” just on the top of her head, small angry eyes, and a mouth like a rat-trap. “This,” said Doris, now much more confidently, “is my aunt, Miss Mary Woolcott.”

One glance showed Terry who was the backbone of this household, whose the eyes to the main chance, who had dictated that letter,

“My niece has just told me what you’ve come here about,” was the elder Miss Woolcott’s opening lines, given with ramrod stiffness, and without returning Terry’s good afternoon, “but you may as well know at once that we refuse to discuss this private matter with anybody except Mr Valentine Lavery himself.” Terry thought, “She’d be quite right to stick to that, but she won’t. She's keen to unload it off on to me.” Accurate guess. For as Terry rose, gathered her handbag to her, and murmuring that in this case there was no more to be said.

Auntie interposed. “Oh, isn’t there? You wait a minute, please!” Terry waited. Everybody stood, waiting. “Before you go, young woman, I'd just like to tell you a few things!" Then, off at a tangent, she shot off' a series of contemptuous exclamations. “The idea! The very idea! Some people have no sense of common decency. Haven’t the pluck to show any of their faces. Send a woman. Send their —lt was amazing how much vicious scorn got into the next two words “paid secretary.” This was evidently intend to get Terry on the raw. But Terry was left unmoved by this statement of simple fact —for, after all, she was the secretary?

The paid secretary pulled herself back and listened attentively. Before she put in a word, Doris’s aunt must have her say. Her auntie brought out from under her arm a square leather bag which she slapped as angrily as if it had been Guy Lavery’s own over-handsome face. “Well, Miss Grey, I want you to understand and to make it quite clear to your people that sent you that there’s no manner of doubt of his having wanted Dorrie to marry him. Written it down in bl,ack-and-white, here. (Slap).

“I could read you the very bits — where this —“My own darling little pet!’—yes, and 'Then I’ll drive you up to town and we can choose a ring, oh darling, how wizard it will be when you really are by own little missus.’ What about that, fairly definite, don’t you think?" Terry managed to reply that the proposal of marriage was not contested. That it had been an engagement. But if it was a mistake and if one of the parties felt that they were not suited to the other, wasn’t it far better broken off? After all, plenty of engagements were ”

“You’re not telling me anything I don't know about that!” retorted Auntie more viciously than ever. “I know more about men and their playing fast and loose than ever you will. 1 shouldn't wonder. Men! It’s them all over, the way that Mr Lavery’s behaved. Coming here, upsetting her feelings, undermining her health ——" Terry could not help giving a quick and quiet look at the girl in such unmistakeably flawless blooming health.

“You wouldn't understand, Miss Grey, you haven’t the experience, I can see,” took up Auntie, with, a searing glance at Terry's business-like clothes, spectacles and unmade-up pallor, “not

the marrying girl sort is written all over you, i r you don’t mind my saying so ”

"No, I don’t mind at all," quickly replied Terry, who did, actually. “Never mind about me. I am here on behalf of Mr Lavery ” “He needn't think he’s going to got away with this, and you can tell him so. We're going to have all this out in the courts. The law’s on our side. I'll see it all comes into the open, fair and square. Made up my mind about that. Men get away with this sort of thing too often,” she announced so vehemently that Terry guessed there had been some philanderer in this woman’s remote youth. Was Vai Lavery’s secretary not going to be able to do what she had undertaken? It looked as if she could quite easily fail. Completely at a loss, she turned her eyes upon the shirt-sleeved Mr Woolcott, fidgetting from one stockinged foot to the other, and with his foolishly innocent blue pop-eyes fixed upon his sister as though she alone had any say in the matter; what she said went. Terry turned from him to his buxom daughter; her long eye-lashes were down over her plump rosy cheeks, but through them she kept her gaze warily upon the Aunt into whose bony hands Doris had put her love-letters and her. fate.

“Aunt’s got her thumb well down, both on the girl and the father,” thought Terry hopelessly, “as for the Aunt one might as well talk to the floor, so what’s to happen next?” She was about to open her lips to make one more effort, to say “With regard to any possibility of settling this matter out of Court ” when' something happened. In the outer room, shop-eum-post-office, a bell rang. “Shop!” exclaimed Mr Woolcott. Evidently relieved to escape from this woman's Parliament, he lumbered forward and padded off to the outer cave. He left the door ajar. Auntie and Doris both made a move to close it behind him. It was Doris who shut that door; Terry, swift to catch any detail about this disastrous girl, noticed that she put her head out for a second’s glance into the shop, and that when she drew back, her round face was again flushed, and distinctly more self-conscious. Why?

By moving a fraction to the right from where she stood, and by drawing herself up, hardly perceptibly, Terry could see over the top of that lace window-blind that screened the glass upper half of the door into the shop. Her swift glance showed her the back of the dark head of a man.

He turned, and Terry caught sight of a broad, sunburnt, pleasant-featured face with frank brown eyes that seemed in search of something before he moved out of her range of vision. But that was enough for Terry in her present mood of catching at any straw. “That was young Ted,” remarked Mr Woolcott, unnecessarily, as he padded back and shut the door again. “I told him we were too busy.” “Is ‘Ted,’ the young man who plays Rugger, the son of your old familyfriend, the young fellow in that photograph?” Terry asked rapidly. “How would it be if we asked him in?” “Ted ?” echoed all three Wo.olcotts in different tones. Auntie’s tone barred and shut out Ted, and was accompanied by a warning and forbidding glance at Doris as she pronounced his name. Old Woolcott’s tone leaned towards having in this son of an old friend. Obviously he liked Ted.

Doris's tone was a mixture of surprise, self-consciousness, and panic. Crimson-cheeked, and with a fluttering under the breast of the flowery pink overall, she broke out, “Oh, not Ted! What’s Ted got to do with it?” “Plenty,” thought Terry, with hope returning to her.

Intuition whispered that though the buxom Doris’s vanity had been dazzled by the film-star’s younger brother, the basic Doris, still hankered after a brown-faced, athletic village playmate.

The Off-chance of success on these lines restored Terry's confidence one hundred per cent. Herself again, she took up rapidly. "I only suggested bringing in this Mr Ted because he'd be some judge of whether this case might not be just as unpleasant for Miss Doris as for the other side ” “No fear,” said Auntie, grimly. “No, but look here," Terry appealed. “I have listened to you. Do just listen to me. It’s my tufn. Give me a chance to get out what I came down here to say. After all. that's only fair play ” To that magic phrase “fair-play," old Mr Woolcott produced the almost mechanical reaction. "That’s right, Miss. Fair play’s a jewel! You let the young lady have her say now, Mary. It needn’t make no difference to your opinion-—" (“It won’t!" put in auntie.)

“ But nobody wants her to go back to her friends in London and complain that she didn’t get fair play. Can’t have that. Sit down, Miss.”

“It’s almost certain,” began Terry, quoting brother Rex and strong in the conviction that brother knew best, "that if you bring this case into court you’ll get a verdict. There arc those letters, and they probably will be read aloud. But," said Terry (still, quoting brother Rex) “Breach of Promise isn’t the crime it was in the days when having failed to marry the first man to whom she was engaged was considered to have wrecked a girl’s whole future. And so, though you will almost certainly get damages, they vary most outstandingly. Sometimes a jury will give what are called ‘exemplary’ damages; thousands of pounds, sometimes." “Ah!" exulted Auntie, “and quite

right, too ” “Yes, but that is when the jury consider that the girl has been made to suffer in pocket as well as in emotion. Say if she has thrown up a well-paid job in anticipation of marrying this man. Or, say, she’s relinquished a partnership in a thriving business. Or that she had taken a house on the supposition that she will live in. it as a married woman. Or if it can be proved that the man is much older and more experienced than she. In some cases where the jury think that no enormous harm has been done, even if the man is guilty of breach-of-promise, they award ‘nominal’ damages. Sometimes they’re one farthing! You never know

She spoke so clearly and with such authority that even Auntie was silent. Then Terry went on: “None of those considerations hold good in Miss Doris’s case. For one thing she is older than Mr Guy Lavery——” “Not much!” protested Doris, stung, lifting her head. “He is 22. and he looks the merest boy,” said Terry, “and you are —26—?” “Twenty-four!”

“And a girl always seems more mature for her age—or men like to keep up the idea that she does. The defence will point out that you’re no baby. And if you think I am ‘sarcastic.’ I don’t know what you'll feel about having your love-letters quoted in open court “Not a very nice thing for any girl," uttered old Woolcott, uneasily. “I must say ” Aunt's baleful eye shut him up from saying anything further, but before Aunt could speak, Terry went on. She was now well into her stride, she ceased to quote what her legal brother said and broke out on her own initiative in in a new place. (To be Continued.)