SUNBURST

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 208, 3 September 1934, Page 15

SUNBURST

berta ruck.

CHAPTER XVII. They made another of those blatantly decorative coloured supplements into which life so constantly forms any youthful group; the man sat, black and glossy as the lid of the piano; the girl beside him stood with pink shaded lights warming the white of her drees, the redgold of her curls, the rose of her faoe. Pat opened that flower of a mouth. From the first note, even before the first note, she knew she would make a hash of this. She did. She cleared her throat. Normally, Pat's voice was sweet and unforced as the flow of honey from the combs; to-night, though, it sounded merely untrained. She sang (taking breath in the wrong place): "I'd work and slave the whole day through, If I could hurry home to you!" Then, thinking, "If I could get back to Eupert now!" forgot the rest of the words. "Sorry." She. began again. It was a deplorable show. "Thanks," said Pedro indulgently. . \ "Charming." ("When I've got her taped I'll never let the , ;irl open her mouth again in song," thought he.) "What shall we have now, Patricia?" "Oh, nothing more! —from me, anyhow. Your turn." Nothing loth, this gifted amateur drew fresh ripples of fire out of the keys, then let that baritone (which, as one of his admirers had said, was a black panther metamorphosed into a voice) leap out and fill that room, and sidle through walls,- through closed doors. In tho dining room two women heard it; simultaneously they told themselves: "Pedro's come back!" His mother put down her spoon, went sallow under her glowing evening makeup, turned to Iter husband, and mutlered: "Papa! After staying out for dinner with that girl, he's taken her in there, to sing to her. The worst has happened. They're engaged. Listen—" "I'm thrilled by love!" Pedro sang as though in joyous abandonment of his mood; deliberately, however, he was using that voice of his a s ho was often wont! To plunge it like some sharp, sweetly poisoned dagger into the hesrt of a girl. Deadly straight it went—to the heart of someone of whom ho had not thought; the wrung heart of the Ericscn gir], sitting there all demure in brown taffeta at Mrs. Perry's table. It was Miss Ericsen who shared his mother's alarm. "Pedro's back! He's singing for that girl." Under tho table Miss Ericsen twisted a table napkin of Mrs. Rawley's fine old lavender-bleached linen as though it were a rival's neck; twisted it, suffering as though it were her own neck. Then, in swift revulsion, but let- ' ting no muscle twitch of her small shut ! face, she caught at ' new liope; she , secretly, desperately affirmed: "Some other day Pedro will sing for me." ' \ "If you'll excuse me, Mrs. Rawley." fussed Madame De Castra, rising, "I think I'll go and listen to that boy of mine. -

* » * • "How gorgeous!" murmured Pat, sincerely stirred. "Why, Patricia! You don't mean you deign to like one thing about me, my music?" murmured the wrong man. "I always mean what I say," said she coolly. Pedro had a spurt.of temper. Gosh, this casual beauty needed a lesson! Wasn't it time he showed her she couM not play him up this way? She had the ice, now, to be turning towards the door. Pedro (with whom any other <*irl would havo lingered, fascinated, for just as long as he chose) wheeled sharply round on the piano stool. "My dear, why this hurry?" "I heard them coming out of the dining room." "Let them. They'll only troop into tho bridge room. Tell me what you would like mo to 6ing for you now?" The philanderer used all the practiu-.d softness of his voice, tho gleam of daik lire between those inordinate eyelash-.e, tho whole horsc-foot-and-diagoons of his magnetism. With a swift gesture he caught her hand to anchor her to his side. Pat withdrew with an aloof: "Please don't. I hato people to hold my hand." "Many people try? I can't blame them. . . You're not going," he laught-d, rising. "Such a shocking waste of peace and quiet and my society, darling. I'll teach you to use it better." Ami, before Pat knew what he vro& about, ho had slipped an arm round her and had thrown back that anthraeice head to look at her in appraising triumph for an instant, before he approached that over-handsome face to hers. Smack! Pat's hand got home on his check and simultaneously with that ring ing sound came the tap of heels, tiTe glitter of sequins on parquet and the rustle of skirts, as Madame De Castr*, winged with alarm, bounced into the music room with the single thought of putting a stop to love making. "Pedro—Why! Whatever in the world's happening here?" Speechless, there Pedro stood with his hand clapped to his cheek. That girl— slapped his face? Truning her back on Pedro? "Whaaaat—?" gasped Pedro's mother. "Here—! I—You!" Insult and Injury. Pat, who was light and swiftlymoving, got to the music room dojr almost before Pedro's mother had found her breath and speech. But before she opened the door she caught three words of madame's outraged gaspings—". . . a common chauffeur!" Swiftly Pat turned and took two step 6 back to face the woman. . "That's true," Pat said quietly, distinctly. "My father was a chauffeur. I told you so last night. I don't know what you mean by 'common.' Only, it he was, it's a pity more people aren't. There was nobody to touch him." Then she was gone. Five minutes later a quick tap at Pat's bedroom door was followed by the brusque entrance of Mrs. Rawley. She found the room in darkness. • "Patricia, aren't you there? Or nave you gone to.bed?" ■ . • j "No—" Patj.whp was .standing, by. the dressing table, snapped on the mirror lights. .Witlv her other-hand;, she was ' still holding against, h'6r..breae£ some- ! thing that she had snatched' up when, after -leaving those two in ,the .music ' room, she had dashed blindly "up :irito : her own room. She turned a blank faoe. i "Sulking, now," thought the aunt, though Tat was not sulkinjr, she wns < dazed because for the first time in her i life she had come up against human 11

nature's uglier side. Only half-conscious was Pat that her Aunt Mary, now looking even more forbidding than any of the London aunts, was sternly asking for eome explanation of this strange behaviour of Pat's. Not only going straight up to her room without letting them know she had arrived back from London—. "Had to," protested a choked voice. "I had to be alone —." She clutched what she was holding; a double photogtaph frame of soft folding leather. ". . . Not only that, but you have behaved quite extraordinarily to one of tho guests in my house. Madame Do Castra's maid came running to tell m 3 that her mistress has been frightfully upset. 'Insulted,' she said, by my niece. What does that mean? Insulted? Were you actually rude to Madame De Castra ?" "Not enough," came from Pat, .still choked. "Wish I could have said more." "You can't be allowed to behave like this at Pinelands, you know," .said a voice of ice. Pat began to realise that it was her A.imt Mary, her only human aunt, who in this stranger's tone was talking about behaviour at Pinelands. With a shock she heard the next sentence. "Of course what you must now do is to apologise to madamc." "Apologise? Oh, no, Aunt Mary. Not that." "I think you forget yourself. At all events that is what you will do at once," [decreed Mrs. Rawley—to whom this in-

cident came as the climax of an overtrying day. First there had been the accounts of the overdraft. Then the revelation of Patricia's ancestry, putting off the eligible admirer's parents. Now Patracia's having been rude to madame had jeopardised the hope of paying off that overdraft by September; the girl had pushed them all to tho edge of a precipice! Well, if eating a large helping of the humblest of humble pie could remedy matters that was what Patricia would have to do. "At once, please." "I'm sorry, Auntie Mary, but I can't. You couldn't want me to," tho girl repeated, with an access of such quiet, unmistakable dignity that her aunt's anger dropped, even as her eyebrows rose. In surprise she regarded her tall, white-clad niece. Less rigidly, she persisted, "If you were rude you will, of course, apologise to an elder lady." "She was not . . . being a lady." "I daresay not, but—l mean—" (Oh, hateful situation, detestable necessity of keeping on good terms with one's bread and butter.) "That is not tho point. You will have to say you're sorry." She hardened her heart. "Otherwise I cannot, you see, have you staying here." "I would rather go," said Pat promptly. •Standing there amidst the oak beams, glazed chintz, Morland prints, motherly old four-poster, Patricia Roberts looked as if she were in the home to which she had been born. She gave a rueful glance round the beautiful old world bedroom, made homely by her strewn "irlish possessions. A lump rose in her throat; good-byo to Pinelands where she had looked forward to a happy summer? Pinelands, where Rupert was? Then she straightened her back. "I would much rather go." _"I think you are being extremely silly," said her aunt, but leßs sharply. "I don't want you to go. But what was all this about, with madame?" Patricia said nothing. "You'd rather not tell me ? Well, you needn't. But now run along like a sensible girl and tell my guest you did not mean to 'insult' her." Patricia said nothing; her look spelt gentlest, most immovable refusal. I "If you arc so obstinate—! What do ! you mean to do, then ? Go back to Emperor's Gate? V I am afraid your other aunts will bo scarcely pleased. But—"

"I won't stay with my other aunts; I mean, not long," Patricia said, gently. "Perhaps I'll go straight to clear old Shorty—Miss Short—while I'm looking about. I shall have to work, Aunt Mary. Take some job, like everybody else." "When they can get one!" Mrs. Rawley said, regarding the child with rueful admiration. "What do yon imagine you can do?" "The one thing I can do is drive; everybody says that. Surely I could go and take charge of somebody's car for my living? If I'd been staying on here I was going to ask whether I couldn't drive for Uncle Charles and save you the expense of keeping a man. I do know my way about a car. I inherit that. I—" Suddenly her voice changed to a voice even younger. "I'd do as well as any common chauffeur!" "Patricia—" "All right. I'm not going to cry." Childishly eho cleared her throat. Then, all of a sudden, she broke out. "It was that. It was that! I will tell you. Do you know what Madame Do Castra said to me?" Still with that perturbed look an her face, her aunt waited. "She said my daddy was common!" "What?" "She said daddy was common!" "Shame!" exclaimed Mrs. Rawley. suddenly shocked into outrage as sincere as if neither she nor any other StoncSteadwell .had ever iised any derogatory expression in speaking of poor Jin: Roberts. So that had been the trouble? That odious woman had said that? Out flicked all thought of prudence. Mr?. Rawley forgot that she was the struggling landlady of a guest house with a determination to make it pay; she forgot Her strenuously cultivated eye to the main chance. She remembered only that she had been Margaret's favourite sister, with every right to be furious because a vulgar woman had hurt Margaret's child by slinging mud at her slain father. "My dear!" Both hands flew out; sweeping forward, her arms went round the girl in comforting motherliness. "Oh, that makes it feel better, auntie," Pat whispered brokenly, and hugged her. "I was too —too —and when I remembered how mother said 'Sunburst'!" "Sunburst?" "Called him that sometimes instead of 'Taffy.' Told me once, 'Your daddy came into my life like a sunburst! All warm and bright and real and putting everything else out'!" "Yes, dear. I see." Swiftly Mrs. Rawley thought—lt is like that. Into 'ill lives, with any luck! Happiness breaks some time or other like a sunburst. Into some more brightly than others. Sometimes it's love. Sometimes it's a big enriching friendship. Sometimes a child; sometimes success in work or art. Generally it's love. "I sec, Pat." A thought struck her. "Auntie! The other aunts. They think as you do, don't they? About daddy, I mean? At the bottom of their hearts 1" i

i "Your other aunts? Why," exclaimed Mrs. Rawley, and had the surprise of her life in hearing herself say something she had not known she had even thought —"Why, I believe any of them would have been ready and glad to run away with Roberts—with your poor father, if he'd ever asked them!" She caught herself up. "Now look here, Patricia. You promise me that never, as long as you live, you will breathe a word to any of them . about my saying that. All I meant, . dear, was that your other aunts think ■ as any woman would." \ "I'm glad,"' sighed Pat, simply. "I ! promise. And you see I couldn't apolo- ', gise?" ! Mrs. Rawley gave an indignant snort of laughter. "She ought to apologise, that inexcusable woman! I shall certainly not send my own flesh and blood out of the house to please her!" Pat sighed again in deep relief. "No, I'll placate the horrid old fishwife," said Mrs. Rawley, who, like many women, felt released, uplifted, and capable of all things after the stimulant of an emotional scene. "I will handle the De Castra, Patricia." "Won't you call me Pat?" "Pat—won't you tell me now, what started it all?" "It began by our going into the music room to wait for you to finish dinner. And, after he'd sung —and the most heavenly song, and I thinking everything was all right he tried to kiss me." "Young Mr. do Castra did, of course." "Yes. Not of course. I'd told him not to hold my hand! Quite politely I told him I hated it." "M'h," said her aunt more doubtfully. "Well, so I was livid. Just as I smacked his face, his mother burst in—" "You . . . smacked his face, Pat?" "Hard," said Pat. Mrs. Rawlcy's arms dropped to her sides as sho gave an "Oh!" of profoundest dismay. For flick! There now came rushing and crowding back to her all her difficulties. The bank manager's letter. Those bills for repairs. The boys' allowances. Difficulties which could only be met by running beloved old Pinelands as a guest house where guests as valuable as the de Castras must be studied in every way, pampered, cherished! And Pat had smacked their heir's face, hard. "That," sighed Mrs. Rawley "has done it." "What else could one have done?' Pat confidently asked, and went on to explain that lots of girls would tell Auntie Mary that lots of men wouldn't believe the girls hated them until they were shown by main force. "I see," said Pat's poor aunt. She, already living on the precarious! edge, foresaw the impending crash; the I house emptied, herself and Charles in I tho bankruptcy court, and the boys on the dole. Why had she ever agreed to have this warm-hearted, lovable, lovely disturbing element in her house? Even as sho kissed tho trouble-maker good-night, there broke from her, in all affection, "Pat, vou'ro impossible!" * * • • Half an hour later, a glimpse of Madame de Castra scotched any remaining hope Mrs. Rawley may have had of pacification. "Charles, they're going. The young man's mother looked in on me just before she went to bed. No, she hardly said anything. I suppose she thought thcro weren't words for it in any language. Perhaps she's saving them up! At any rate, none came then. Just— Td like you to know, Mrs. Rawley, that niece of yours has taken it upon herself to box my son's cars.' My dear! It was like a court of law when some witness goes into the box and when he takes his oath and gives a piece of evidence in six words so damning that the lawyers pack uj) their papers and the case is over. Her son's ears boxed; She didn't need to tell mo that they would all be leaving in the morning!" (To be continued daily.)