HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 February 1939, Page 10

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

COPYRIGHT.

BY

BERTA RUCK.

(Continued)

“A what” “A person who can pull the strings of human dolls. All authors, playwrights and story-tellers are puppet-masters. To a greater or less degree. From Shakespeare to Noel Coward they have the gift—they pull strings with dialogue and with scene-setting, and look! —their dolls live! They love, they ! weep, they laugh. The puppet-masters make us laugh and cry with them. ‘Lords of tears and laughter’ as Kipling said. Oh, Terry, it’s a great thing to be.” She glowed with pleasure. “But you’re one, far more than I- ” “No. I wear the puppet’s clothes. You jerk the strings.” After all this, Terry Grey felt there was nothing that she could not achieve: this was the top. She drank in the sound of that adored voice beginning “Act Two, Scene One.” She thought “I’m .good: I never knew.- I was so good-!—!” “This is where you start to go off the lines.” Vai Lavery said, suddenly. “Second Act; that’s where everybody falls down. Are you going to be difficult, Terry, or will you let me suggest how it would go better?” “Go right ahead and suggest, Mr Lavery,” said Terry, adding, “I might not agree with you.” “All right, Miss Arrogance”—His head had lifted, his shoulders were set well back, his entirerface had altered. Interest in life was coming back to Vai Lavery. From what an unexpected quarter there had come help! ’ Outside, tne mountain rain still fell and fell. Inside the sitting-room they lighted the enormous white china stove, for even in June evenings mountain rain makes everything chilly. The sitting-room air grew thick with the mingled scent of Egyptian tobacco smoke, of flowers, chocolate-cake (the speciality of that inn) and two intensely interested people still discussed and argued over the doings of Terry’s puppets. “Don’t you see, my good girl? The man would obviously do so-and-so —” Terry: “Not my man. Not my hero as I see him, I mean.” Vai: “Well, this is how I see him. After all, young woman, I ought to know. Not only am I a'man, but you said yourself that I was the character you thought of for the part, and not only that but I assume I ought to have I rather more stage-sense than you. After all, how many years have I acted, on the ‘set’?” Terry, audaciously: “And for how many years have I heard that “lookerson see most of the game?’ However! Pass me that pencil and I’ll query that page; and go on reading—” Vai: “It’s no use going further until we’ve got that other right ” They went on like this until midnight. Then Lavery sprang to his feet and dragged on his mackintosh. “I've got to get across to my blacksmith’s, or they will sit up all night, there’s only one key. See you in the morning, puppet-master, and we’ll work again.’L--For the next two weeks they worked ( like maniacs. For the next two weeks | it rained. It didn’t matter to these drama-hounds. Quite unscrupulously they neglected their correspondence forwarded on from London, sending, in answer to the longest letters, postcards only. In the evening they sat in the peasant’s homely little restaurant where they could listen to guitar-music and folk-song—and, in the intervals, talk about the play. “There is no fun better than the fun when puppets begin to come to life,” declared Vai. “It’s better than any fame I’ve known.” Once a day the puppet-masters went forth in the downpour and tramped, conscientiously, along the road by the lovely mountain-lake. And all the time they tramped they still discussed the play, arguing in perfect amity. Their views of its prospects varied from—“To begin with, no human eye will ever see it but ours” to “Mr Lavery, what coloured frock shall I wear on the play’s first night?” “White” was Vai’s choice. “Men always say black or white, so unenterprising of them,” complained Terry; “merely means they can’t think of any colours.” “Not at all. I say white, a warm, ivory-white, not only because it will suit you, but also it will look best against all that jam-colour-and-gilding of the theatre-decorations when you come down to the footlights to make your speech before the curtain.” “You’ll make the speech.” “We shall probably both have to make one. So a pretty white frock, please,” stipulated Vai Lavery, quite seriously. “If I may, I’ll send you a knot of scarlet roses to wear with it.’ “Thank you.” “It might even run to a little sum-1 mer-ermine theatre-jacket." “We shall have to settle which theatre before we arrange about jackets to wear in it—" At great length these two discussed Theatres. They picked and re-picked their cast. “Even if it never even gets put on, we have had no end of fun out of it already. By jove, Terry, do you know that it’s months!" exclaimed Vai Lavery one still-rainy afternoon, “since I’ve enjoyed anything as much as this?" Terry very nearly ( but not quite) replied: “And I have never enjoyed myself so much. Never, in twenty-seven years.” For never, in twepty-seven years had she lived in a place so different that it was as though she had been transplanted to another planet. Never had she found herself in such superb health. Never —she knew this, had she so nearly approximated to being a really goodlooking woman. Never had she coin-

bined working at her secret passion with having that passion helped, encouraged. praised. And never before had she know the delight, the exciting stimulation of working with a great friend—and. that friend a man —and that man the one to whom she was — however secretly, however hopelessly! —devoted. “Oh, if this,” thought Terry, “need never come to an end! Anyhow there’s no reason why things shouldn’t go on as they’re going, for a long, long time? Just as they are ” This, as Terry might have known, is a most ominous thing to say. Nearly always it means that things have reached a point when they are going to alter. Or, even, when they are going to crash! A couple of afternoons later: “Final curtain!” —Two words that look good to me,” declared Vai Lavery glancing over Terry’s shoulder at the last page of the manuscript of their play. “Now that the thing is actually finished, and now that it has actually stopped raining, a large evening is indicated. At six there is a motor bus into the gay capital. We will take it, Terry.” It was delightful to see Lavery looking as pleased as any boy of sixteen who has just finished a play that his School Dramatic Society are going to produce next prize-day. If the precious play has done nothing else, thought, Terry, working on it has pulled him out of his Slough of Despair. I believe it’s even helped to wash That Girl Flowei- and her heartless cruelty out of his mind. Marvellously the scratches have healed up, and the “Patient’s” genuinely keen to gad out again, thought Terry with satisfaction. Then her expressive little face fell, as Lavery saw. “What’s the trouble?” “No glad-rags with me.” “Is that all?” laughed Lavery, who was looking extraordinarily boyish for a man of thirty-three. “We can go anywhere here in peasant-costume, one of the chief beauties of this place. You put on one of those delightful, puffysleeved white blouses with your flowery skirt and your black velvet bodice. And —Will you wear these too?” He handed her a small packet. In it she found a. pair of massive old gold heirloom earrings. “Oh, how lovely! For me?” “Wanted to give you a sort of souvenir. Something—so that you’ll remember these weeks ” “I shall not forget,” said Terry, busy fastening the beautiful old ornaments into her ears, which were small and prettily-set, “ever.” “Nor shall I,” said Lavery watching her. Adding, “I couldn’t.” If it had been any girl but Terry, she would then and there have recognised in his tone the note of the man who has begun to be much more than an appreciative employer of an efficient handmaid. More than even the brotherly colleague and sympathetic co-puppet-master. x Several times lately Vai Lavery had asked himself where his eyes had been, when he summed up this girl as “a nice, plain-headed, sensible, good little sort.” Certainly Terry was nice., She was a good sort. She was —well, not too sensible to be amusing. But—plainheaded? Never. He looked at her with his gold souvenir ear-rings swinging against her softly-flushed cheeks. He told himself that anybody with eyes in his head must admit the girl was not only extraordinarily attractive, but a Lovely. Even Terry, who because of these years of repression and of playing second-fiddle had grown into an embodiment of inferiority complex, noticed Lavery’s tone. It thrilled her. But at once she pulled herself together. “Don’t misunderstand, Terry, you moron. He’s brotherly. He’s pally. Nice of him to say, “Look here, you must say Vai to me, so pointed if you won’t’, simply because of the play. He may even be a little inclined to be fond in an unbrotherly way. Simply because, except for Marie at the inn, I’m the only girl he’s spoken to for three weeks. He’ll probably see some of these pretty Tyrolean girls tonight at ( the restaurant, and he’ll get his eye in < again. It won’t surprise me.” < ... » * * I There were other surprises for them both at the gay little Innsbrucker restaurant where they were at once led to one of the best tables bordering the dancing-floor. ( They had given their order when the 1 pretty waitress came up with a large bouquet of native flowers; blue gentian, deeply-pink Alpenroses, and set it down on the table with a very special glance for’ the English client. She was followed by madame of the restaurant; a plump blonde in a coquettish black frock who beamed upon the pair—especially upon Vai. In that good and careful English which so many Austrians learn from lessons on the radio, she began, “Good evening, Mr Lavery. It is it must be Mr Valentine Lavery?” "Yes—oh, yes. How did you know my name?” “It's all over Innsbruck this week,” smiled the plump hostess. “We are always so pleased to welcome celebrities to our restaurant! I recognised, as soon as the gentleman came in, the star of that beautiful film now playing at the Cinema. Star of—no, ‘The Planet of Love’ ” (To be Continued.)