WHITE LADY

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 24

WHITE LADY

Short Story

COR the first time Waldo Fitch's "library" had had an accession which was not just another form book. It was a volume of poetry, picked up for sixpence from a bookstall, and of late Waldo had studied it almost as much as his more familiar volumes of racing statistics. "Oil. blithe newcomer! I hare heard, X hear tliee and rpjoice." The words, it is true, referred to the cuckoo, but when Waldo Fitch came across them in his book lie thought them a pretty good analysis of his own emotions when Miss Connor had first spoken to him.

Miss Connor had recently come to live next door, and Waldo had been reading poetry ever since. At first he had been intrigued by the numlier of poets who seemed to have been named after horses —Tennyson, for instance, lie recalled as a good staying colt that Tarrant had trained—but of late he bad concentrated more on the verse.

Waldo's affections' usually changed their object more often than a sellinsrplater changes stables; but this time, he felt, everything was on a nobler plane.

Miss Connor was young and lovely; but what attracted Waldo Fitch, while at the same time it elbowed him off, was her air of unspoiled innocence.

'til such a girl, he told himself, it behoved him to go careful. No gladeye, pick-up stuff, or she would take fright like a startled gazelle. For a week therefore, he went no farther than a gentlemanly "Good morning" when they met oil the pavement outside. Xn't until the second week of his idyll did lie extend this to a few minutes' polite conversation.

Then he yearned to tell her that, in his opinion, there was a garden in her face where roses and white lilies grew; but he manfully fought down this craving until one glorious morning in the third week.

"Do , you mean there s enough dirt on my luce to grow a rose-bush ?" dimpled Miss Connor, and the poet, Campion, immediately descended in the Fitch estimation to the status of a selling-plater.

"It's going to be a fine day," said Miss Connor, gazing at the sky, and allowing Waldo to recover -from his confusion.

Having dedicated this meeting to the making of definite progress, Waldo tried again. There was a play at the Cameo Theatre, which, according to the reviews he had read, was so morally impreccable that it was coming off in a day or two.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Fitch, I couldn't,'' murmured Miss Connor, when he invited her to accompany him to this excellent opus.

Even though he upbraided himself for his persistence, Waldo decided to have another shot. Perhaps she had earmarked the evening for sewing or something. •

He dangled the most enticing bait he could imagine.

"How about Hardwick Park races, this afternoon?"

She shook her head.

"First class enclosure," Waldo urged. A week ago he had burgled a flat and had not yet backed enough horses to dissipate his booty. Miss Connor arrested another headshake.

"Should we see all the society ladies in their lovely dresses T" she asked, wide-eved.

"They'll be treading on our toes" said Waldo.

Miss Connor's blue eyes went starrv. "Oh Mr. Finch, I'd love it!" she cried. Hardwick Park was not Waldo Fitch's lucky meeting. There were times when, having backed something at Hardwick which had been drawn on the outside and had lost lengths at every bend, lie had lacked words bitter enough to describe its sharp twists and gradients. But that afternoon, it was an arena in Arcadia.

M i'iy—she had shyly told him her in a simple white frock of some firy material that had all but recalled to Waldo a poeni he had read. Had he remembered the words he would have declaimed them; but anyway, he thought, she looked far more beautiful than any of the exjiensivelyclad females present. . Her small, slim figure made him feel •big and protective. Her unsophisticated pleasure at finding herself in such fashionable surroundings made him smile almost paternally. She wanted to know who everybody was.

."Who is that, er—Waldo?"

"Lady Catterbridge. She owns 'Vamoose, fancied for this year's Leger." "Ooh, I think she's lovely!" Waldo gently squeezed her arm. "You give her ten pounds and a beatihg," he assured her, forgetting poetry in the atmosphere of his olderestablished passion.

"What does that mean, Waldo?" "You're much prettier than she is," Waldo explained, embarrassedly. To cover his embarrassment, he launched into an exposition of the whole theory of handicapping horses by weight. "Don't you know a lot!" cried Milly, gazing at him admiringly, when at last he paused.

By W. H. HARLEY

aldo blushed looked down into her ingenuous eyes, and then recoiled with an involuntary exclamation.

"What's the matter:" asked Miss Connor.

'■Nothing." stuttered Waldo,

But something was. When he had gazed down into the clear blue eyes of Milly Connor, be had seen there a, picture that horrified him.

Waldo Fitch had leered up at him form those eves—Waldo Fitch, ne'er-do-well, petty thief, and burglar! He had seen himself for what he was.

Tt seemed as if this was no longer Hardwick Park in the sunshine, but a desolate plateau in the Caucasus, swept by a melancholy wind. Waldo shivered like the Student of Prague confronted with his own image.

"What is that crowd doing?" Milly was asking, pointing to a throng of well-dressed people clustered round a liook maker.

"Placing bets," replied Waldo, mechanically.

"I'm going to see!" she cried eagerly, and darted from his side.

In spite of his agony of soul, be could not but smile at her eagerness. He watched her slender white figure pushing through the jteople round the bookmaker, and resolved to be a better man. As in the case of that bird the Felix —or was it Phoenix? —he decided that a new Waldo Fitch would rise from the ashes of the old.

"Who is that nice old man with the whiskers?" asked Milly, when she returned to this new, purified Fitch.

She was pointing to Lord Tinborougli, and Waldo gently told her so.

"Coo, and to think 1 nearly knocked him over!" cried the awestricken girl.

The smugness of the newly converted transgressor is well known. Judging by his fixed smile that afternoon, acquaintances of Waldo Fitch might have supposed that lie had found four winners at least.

Actually, after a six-year-old mare had won the first event of her career, in the last race on the card, and suffering punters had uttered their usual remarks anent the advisability of dynamiting Hardwick Park, Waldo had not backed one winner.

It said much for the potency of love that, even under these circumstances his smile did not so much as flicker.

After the races, he guided their happy footsteps to the station. They found a carriage that was empty,- and the returning punters, who were so sentijnental that they could follow a dud Jiorse over a period of years, let them keep it.

It was not until the train was about to steam out that the horrible realisation came to Waldo. His moral regeneration meant he would have to work! In the shock of this thought, he did not notice that Milly, too, seemed displeased about something She was staring out of the window at something on the platform, and on her pretty face was a shadow.

She suddenly returned her attention to Waldo. "Why didn't yon go and collect some money from those bookmakers like lots of people did?"

Waldo emerged from his gloom, and explained tenderly that bookies did not pay out on losers.

"So you lost a lot!" exclaimed the horrified girl.

"Yes, quite a bit," he confessed. Milly sat back and beamed suddenly. "I've had a good day," she said. Waldo stared. "I didn't know you backed a horse!"

"I didn't," replied the innocent Miss Connor. "Look!"

Snapping open her handbag, she took something out and held it up triumphantly. It was a bulging leather pocketbook, which, the surprised Waldo observed, bore the gilt crest of Lord Tinborough ! Even then he did not realise how far astray had been his judgment of this girl. "D-did he give you that?" he stuttered. "~So, I pinched it!" said Miss Connor. "Y-you're a pickpocket!" Waldo Fitch could not have looked more horrified if he had been a bishop. "Just a. beginner," said Milly, modestly.

Then the little lady showed that, however elastic were her morals, she still had a heart of gold. Leaning across the carriage she put the pocket-book into Waldo's hand.

"You have it," she said "it will make up for what you've lost."

The dazed Fitch took the wallet, and mechanically looked inside it. Five hundred pounds at least—and he had only lost forty! His austerity vanished. After all, who was he to chide?

Touched by her generosity his eyes misted over as he gazed across at her. Looking at her shapely fingers, and thinking how light they must be, he realised their solid uses in such an emergency as the larder running low.

"What a wife!" thought Waldo Fitch.

His attention thus occupied, he did not hear a gruff official voice making an inquiry in the next carriage. The injured chorus of denial that floated through the wooden partition conveyed no warning to his ears.

When he leaned across with the intenitou of telling Miss Connor that Waldo Fitch would henceforth be her devoted slave, he was shocked to see her recoil from him.

"Don't address me again, you horrid man!" screamed Milly Connor. Then Waldo became aware that they were no longer alone in the carriage. Looking up, he recognised without pleasure the sardonic features of Detec-tive-Inspector Fox. a policeman as widely known as he was feared.

As Fox sauntered over to him, Waldo hastily endeavoured to conceal the wallet, and was only a mere twenty seconds too late.

"Ha, my old friend Fitch!" murmured the policeman, with cynical affability. "And with Lord Tinborough's pocket - book, too! That's just what I'm looking for." _ "I didn't know you were a "dip,** Fitch," Fox added as he gently took the wallet from Waldo's nerveless hand.

That trapped gentleman found tongue. Tm not!" he howled. He pointed a trembling finger. "She gave it to me!" °

"Coo, I never saw him before in my life!" flared Milly. Fox glanced at her. Then lie turned to Waldo with a scornful click of his tongue. "Trying to frame an innocent girl!" be reproached.