HANDMAID TO FAME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 February 1939, Page 12

HANDMAID TO FAME

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

COPYRIGHT.

BY

BERTA RUCK.

CHAPTER XI.

(Continued). “I see,” said. Terry slowly, and she thought, “Incredible Flower! Crabbing a good chance for the man she used, to be in love with merely because of another woman. Not even a woman for whom he gives two hoots, in that way." It was unbelieveable to Terry, who herself had not an atom of the scratchcat in her composition. “No use crying over spilt milk. Mustn’t show disappointment.” Briskly she said. “Well, it hasn’t been time thrown away. It’s taught me quite a lot —about puppets. And," she added, “it’s kept us amused for three weeks, Vai.” “More than that, Terry.” “More than three weeks?” “I don’t mean that. Listen ” He pulled himself together to say something to her which, during those weeks of work, he had pulled himself back from saying. Again and again during those weeks of work he had been within an inch of proposing to this girl again. Of saying to her: “Do you remember that time when you were the little ministering angel to me in London, and when I talked all that nonsense? Well. Do you mind, washing it all out? I mean what I said about friendship and tastes in common being the only reasonable basis for marriage. They’re a good basis. But they wouldn’t be the only basis for our marriage. The fact is. I’m crazy about you. Wash everything else out, except that I love you and want you to stay with me always. I can’t —no, I can’t do without you. I want the lot, Terry.”

Again and again Vai Lavery had said this silently, as they worked or as he strode across the village square to his. own rooms over the blacksmiths foige, leaving Terry in the amusing little inn among the pictures of the lovely Empress Elizabeth, St Hubert, and the Austrian heroes. Often it had been on the tip of his tongue to suggest how tired he was leaving her like this, and now his plan was to say: “Look here. We’ve got all our papers, haven’t we? I’m not quite sure how these things are managed, but my idea is that we—that is, you and I will now pack up, nip over 1 to Innsbruck as quickly as we can, take the next aeroplane to Vienna, go to our Embassy and see how quickly we can get married.” Valentine began the proposal by introducing the subject —the rather pompous subject—of the British Embassy. “As soon as you go to a foreign capital, you know, the first thing you have to do is to leave your card at the Embassy so that oui’ people know there is another British subject in the place, who may presently be wanting their help, and the next thing they do is to send you a card for one of their extraordinary Ambassadorial tea-parties.” “Why extraordinary?” asked Terry, idly. Her thoughts were far from any Embassy; she was thinking of the blow she had received about the play . . “Oh, because of the mixture of people you meet there,” Vai told her. “Puppets like me. ancient governnesses, gay young tourists, hitch-hiking their way across Europe, Indian students, anybody who is a British subject. All have delicious refreshments together in palatial apartments. It’s like the lion lying down with the lamb. Reminds you of the Day of Judgment, don’t you know,” Vai said, a trifle incoherently, for he wasn’t thinking of British Ambassadorial parties at all. He was leading up to a proposal to the girl with whom he was head over heels in love. “But that isn’t the only reason for the being of our Embassies in a foreign capital. Supposing a British subject wants to ” Just as he was about to bring out the words “to get married in a great hurry,” the door opened. Who was to know that it opened to x something which was to put back that proposal for weeks and eventful weeks?” But it only looked as though it were Flower, muffled up to her eyes in a spectacular bath-wrap. “Come out” she cried imperiously. “There’s time for one swim, Vai. before dinner.” Among her many vanities, Flower Armitage fancied her swimming: on many pictures Flower’s lovely form had appeared flying through the air in a swallow-dive. Perhaps almost her favourite of her own pictures, was that sequence of the diving nymph in the film, "Venus Rises,” the only sequence not to be scrapped. Flower had begged that it might somehow appear. Thanks to Sydney Leigh, Elmer K. Osgood and Isidore Maurus. it had taken its place in a news reel. She was determined to carry Vai off for a last, long swim.

Even as she’d played the American millionaire oft against Vai. so it was not in Flower to refuse to play Vai oi against the man she really loved—her husband. Poor Elmer! That was why, knowing that Elmer had gone off on a climb with his old friends from Yale who had turned up in Innsbruck. Flower dragged Vai out for a swim. “I'll wait while you get ready. You don’t swim, do you, Miss Grey. Terry Grey was what is known as a moderate swimmer, one of those for whom notices are put up, enclosures roped round. But then some feminine perversity prompted her to reply: “Yes, I’m swimming. I shan’t go as lar out as you people. But I shall come down to the edge, and splash and watch your performance.” Five minutes later all three of them were going down together to the lakeside, the tall, slender, but well-built Vai in white Turkey-towel and dark-blue slip, Terry in yellow, Flower in that bright green spectacular bathing-wrap of green transparency over darker

green, which looked as though she had wrapped herself in garlands of sunlit vine-leaves, the lovely Bacchante- —and. when she cast aside that wineleaf wrap, she was a lovelier Bacchante still. “Flower is perfection,” thought Terry. “Imagine if the girl had a heart, to match that lovely envelope." “In this‘she was doing Flower less than justice. The girl had a heart. For twenty-three years it had lain dormant in her scultured breast. But it was awakening, awakening . .

“I’ll race you to the diving-board,” called Flower to Vai. They scampered over the grass to the first stage of the diving-board, to the second, and now to the top. Out shot their arms. They sprang. They flew through the air. Too musical hollow splashes, then the foam flowered above their feel. They were out of sight. Then their two heads reappeared. Vai’s dark as a seal,’Flower’s in a cap green as a dripping lilypad. Enviously Terry watched them. Then shivering, she waded, inch by inch; which is quite the worst possible way of getting into cold water. Indeed, she was thoroughly chilled by the time the cold lake-water was up to her waist. At long last she threw herself forward into the icy embrace of the lake, and began to swim the first of the twenty strokes, which, so far, represented Terry's limit. There was no limit, it would seem, for those two star-performers, Vai and Flower. The dark head was only just a little ahead of the lily-pad green— Then— Suddenly Terry heard a scream that chilled her so that she knew that she had not before been chilled. The dark head had' disappeared. It bobbed up again, but it was Flower’s shrillest banshee tremolo that rent the air. “Help! Help! He’s got cramp!— I can’t —I can’t —!” In horror Terry beheld these two star-swimmers threshing the water, struggling; helpless as a couple of ladybirds that have fallen into the waterbutt. “ and what can I do? Swim’ Never get out to them—help! Nobody else on the banks—ah! The motor canoe!” Thank Heavens that modernity’s one touch on that unspoiled mountain village had been the little motor canoe which Elmer K. Osgood had booked for any and all of the time that it had been required by his brjde. Terry foundered up and out of the water and to that canoe. With incredible quickness she was in the canoe, switched on the engine, the self-starter and putting the gear-lever full “ahead” she drove towards the swimers, opening the throttle full out, effectively —if clumsily and noisily. The mountains sent back the echoes of this infernal din created by one woman and one machine of man’s making. When she got up to the struggling pair it was only in the very nick of time. Flower was helpless with cramp. Lavery would have been quite capable of dragging her in, but the icy waters of the mountain lake had given him, too, a touch of cramp in the left leg. But, at the moment the girl with the canoe, in a flurry of foam, drove up to them —nearly upon them. Vai could only gasp at her in accents of fury “Look out! You'll cut us to pieces ” How she avoided this, Terry could not have said. There was very little style in the way Terry managed her rescue work. One would like to be able to report that the girl kept her head, admirably! That with perfect coolness, efficiency and deftness she took hold of the situation, and of her two drowning friends. As a matter of fact it was only by the most extraordinary fluke that she managed not to upset herself into the water. It was clumsily and with the maximum of effort she grabbed hold of, and got, first Flower, then Vai, into the boat. But at least she did it. “You’d better let me get this thing back,” Vai said through clenched teeth. own were chattering. In Tier wet swimming suit the piercing moun-tain-breeze chilled her to the bone. Flower lay like an unrooted waterlily at the bottom of the canoe; even at the deplorable moment when any other woman would have resembled a drowned rat. Flower's name remained appropriate. By the time they reached the. little landing-stage the entire popuation of the mountain village was assembled; excited and stimulated as are ninetynine peope out of a hundred by the imminence of a catastrophe. In fact, as it turned out, nobody was to be a penny the worse—except Terry. Terry felt as though she would never I stop shivering. I She ran to dress. She put on stockings for the first time in weeks. She put on two woolly jumpers. She put on her tweed overcoat. Still she shivered, and shivered. Hot coffee was no avail, Hot Schnapps was no avail. “Here, you'd better go to bed,” Vai told her, angrily. Yes: Vai Lavery showed that normal reaction of any he-man towards any woman he loves, when that woman has dared to run herself into danger.

Next morning Terry was considerably worse. Site felt weak as a new-born lamb that cannot stand on its legs. Her throat hurt her. Her head hurt her. Her eyes, especially hurt her. She was not at all clear about anything else. Not about who the doctor was. Not about what he said. Nor how long it was before she quite unerstood what had happened—that she had taken a frightful chill which might easily have been the death of her, and that, while the other two had escaped scot free but for

a nasty shock, she, Terry, had acquired the world’s worst cold, and was not to dream of getting up for days. Not that she wanted to . . Out of a long doze she opened her eyes to ask herself “Now what has happened?” For she had wakened to find herself in a perfect bower of lilies, roses, carnations, all. flowers of magnificent size and exquisite colour (but scentless, as far as Terry was concerned). Flowers hid the walls. Flowers in new and beautiful vases stood everywhere. There wer.e also, three enormous baskets, gilded, tied up with ribbons and forming cornucopias out which cascaded clusters of hot-house grapes, peaches, pineapples, nectarines, cherries. “Here, you can’t talk,” said Vai—yes, there stood Vai. perfectly fit and handsome as ever, and beside him stood Flower Armitage-Osgood in such perfect travelling kit that it alone would have taken the spirit from the world’s greatest woman travellei'—Ballcis, Queen of Sheba. “Go away, go away,” cried Terry, desperately. She was, indeed, at the stage when with both eyes bunged up she could see plainly one large red object —her own nose. “Go-go!” “Yes, you go out, Vai, nobody wants you.” This was the voice of Flower — sounding —how different? Quite human- You don't want him, do you, Terry?” Speaking humanly—even to Terry? Poor Terry shook her muzzy little head. Then a door seemed to shut—was it behind Vai? Thank heaven, if so For even at death’s door no woman would want to look as unromantic as poor Terry knew she was looking at that moment, in the eyes of the man for whom she cared. It was now Flower who moved softly back to the side of the bed where Terry was trying to hide under the bedclothes like a hibernating animal hides itself under leaves. “Vai’s gone, Terry. 'l’ll keep him out. Nobody wants Vai. But look here, here’s another man simply agitating to come in and speak to you for just a minute. My husband ” Quietly as a thundercloud, but beaming like the sun. Elmer K. Osgood emerged. “Miss Grey,” broke in his earnest Californian voice. “Mayn’t Ibe permitted to put in one word of my eternal gratitude to the heroine who has preserved the precious life of my Honey' bunch? Oh, Miss Grey, one word ” * * * * A word? A deluge of words now poured from this grateful multi-mil-lionaire. (It. was, of course, he who had filled Terry’s room with these flowers, ordered by aeroplane from the first florist of Paris, these baskets of fruit from the Reviera that had put her in mind of Kept's midnight, picnic). Now he filled it with the outpourings of the whole heart of a grateful lover; for he was one of those Americans who express everything that a Briton only indicates. “Miss Grey! I want to tell you that Grace Darling and Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale have got nothing on you for pure and simple bravery—” “I wasn’t brave at all. I wasn’t in danger once, that’s a fact!” Mere facts were not going to upset Elmer K. Osgood in his then exalted state of mind. “It’s just your lovely modesty, Miss Grey, that makes you try and decry your —your marvellous achievement! I guess you make a man realise that all his strength is but a small, crude thing besides a woman's promptitude, her efficiency.” “Please don’t” (To be Continued).