CUPID CUTS THE CARDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18629, 9 February 1924, Page 5 (Supplement)

CUPID CUTS THE CARDS.

BY MRS. PATRICK MacGILL. (Copyright,.) ■"''"" • l. There was one desk and one telephone box in the little Barnet Branch Post Office and both, at the moment, were occupied. A girl was tugging impatiently at the stump of pencil tied to a string which apparently, and as usual, would not write, and a young man, tall, with vivid blue eyes and a big, generous, attractive mouth, with laughing lines graved deeply on either side, was doing his best to get a number that flatly refused to answer. " Shall I ring them again asked the exchange, grudgingly. " No, thanks," Ben Mostyn was about to reply. But he twisted his head and caught sight of The Girl. He rattled the receiver hook. "Ring them until they do answer," he said, urgently. Then he turned round once more to gaze his fill a£ the loveliest profile he had over beheld. She was dressed in black, but black with a difference, or so it seemed to his eager, interested eyes. It. would have been all the same if he had known the fact, which was that Peggy Randall had cut out the frock herself with a pair of manicure scissors, from an odd length picked up at the sales, the night before she was to take up her work as a Lyons waitress at the Corner House in the Strand. She was small, so beautifully and slenderly fashionedßen Mostyn's gaze lingered a long while on the neat, deliriously turned ankles in their artificial silken hose and little black court shoes with a bright steel bucklo'and her long dark lashes made fan-like shadows on her round, slightly pink checks. Ben wished that he could see her eyes — her hair seemed to be bobbed and was a glorious warm chestnut in , colour, what he could ! see of it beneath the rakish little black hat with a green cock's feather which was pulled so saucily over one eyewhen, suddenly, she left the desk to beg the loan of a pencil from the girl behind the grating, and. in her passage across the floor, Ben Mostyn saw that her eyes were dark blue and sweet as those of a little child he somehow thought of Mary Pickford in " Pollyanna "as he took just one fleeting glance at her before he turned iround to speak into the telephone; the number, unfortunately, had now answered. Ben raced through his business at express speed, but the desk was empty when he once more turned around, and the little girl of the chestnut hair and big blue eyes was gone. Of course, it was utterly and entirely ridiculous to feel so chagrined over a girl he had never before clapped eyes upon in all his rich, care-free, happy-go-lucky lifebut there it was. A mischeivous youngster was tooting the horn of his magnificent racing car, which was outside; he chased him away and returned to the counter, ostensibly to buy stamps. " Erdo you know that young lady who was in just now?" he asked, with the pleasant, white-toothed smile that made all women like him, and most of them love him. The girl clerk shook her head. " She's never been here before. She bought all the birthday cards we had in the shot^ n it was a stationer's as well as a post office'—" 14 of them, and wrote them ell over there." The girl directed her eyes toward the desk, and Ben's blue gaze, following hers, saw something that her own eyes missed. " Suppose it was Sunday school children she was sending cards —14 of her friends couldn't have birthdays on the same day, could they?" " Hardly," agreed Ben, strolling casually toward the desk. He sent a telegram to his mother, to cover his movements, and at the same time pocketed the three cards, which, already addressed and stamped, lay partially obscured by the big sheet of blotting paper, along with a typed letter which had already been opened.

Ben Mostyn examined the cards in the parlour of a little rose-covered cottage where he always had tea when he came for a spin Barnet way. There was no message written upon chem, but all were addressed to the same person— Peggy Randall, The Rushton Hostel for Business Girls, Tottenham Court Road, London. The letter, too, was addressed to Miss Peggy Randall, of the same address. Ben Mostyn was rather proud of his thick, snuff-coloured hair, which always lay so smooth and flat without the aid of a fixative; but he ruffled it up without a scruple in the endeavour to find out why Miss Randall should have three cards addressed to her by the same person on her birthday. He resolved to post the cards and deliver the letter in person. He might be able to find out something about the lovely little creature who had so captivated his fancy in that way. n. She came to him in the bare room with the white distempered walls, six chairs, a square table, with one picture, entitled, " When did you last, see your father ?" which was the gift of a meat extract firm to the Receiving Parlour of the Rushton Hostel for Business Girls. She was exquisite; she was even lovelier without her outdoor clothes; like Cinderella after she had found her prince, or a fairy who had lost her way. All sorts of similes occurred to the big, simple, essentially kindly young fellow, while his blood pounded and raced through his veins as it had never raced and pounded in all his life. " You are Miss Randall ?" was the very mundane, obvious thing that he asked her. " Y«s," said Peggy, wonderingly, her big blue eyes as bright as if a little taper had been lighted behind each, and her cheeks flushed to the colour of a deep pink rose, for she. knew that all the other girls were hanging out of the window in the dining room upstairs, eagerly pushing each otheir out ef place in order to get the best view of " the swell with the car," when he came out. . ' I—er»—as a matter of fact, I was at the post office in Barnot this afternoon, —you —er—left & letter ; and some birthday cards*—three of them—on the desk. I—erposted the cards. Here's the letter." Ben fished k Peggy's letter out of the pocket of his light overcoat; he was in evening dress, on his way to the club for dinner, and a theatre afterwards. He wondered why the roses in the round ' young cheeks deepened until Peggy's face was one huge, burning blush as she took the letter. So few of the girls in his own —not one, in fact— could blush like that. "It was awfully kind of you to take so much trouble. You could so easily

have sent it by post,"; said Peggy, m a sweet, 1> unhurried voice : r that exactly matched her personality. ; ' "So I could," agreed Ben, and then could have kicked himself for having said; anything so boorish and so utterly alien from his own desiires. * There ensued one of those awkward little pauses where neither seemed to know what to say, and yet emotion was struggling for an outlet. Obviously Peggy wanted to say something; twice she opened her little pink mouth, and twice she shut it. But at last she spoke. " I expert you wondered why I sent three cards to myself, didn't you 1 ?" she said, almost as if she were confessing to a cnrSe. " You sent 14," said Ben Mostyn, with a grin. Peggy started. "How on earth did you know ?" she said, in astonishment. But, without giving her visitor time to reply, she hurried on. "Of course you won't understand* a man wouldn't do such a thing; he wouldn't be so silly as to waste money he couldn't afford on sending postcards to himself on his birthday." Something tight caught in Ben Mostyn'* throat. She looked so little, so appealing, sitting there in her straight, black frock, starkly outlined against the bare, white wall. " Tell, me why you did it?" he said, softly. Very frankly, and with the most poignant, unconscious wistfulness, the young girl replied: " I've no friends, you see, except the girls here. My mother died last year, and I was the only child. She only had a little annuity, and we were always wandering about from one seaside place to another—and you don't make any friends that way,'do you?" she said, looking up for a second from her restored letter, which she was folding into a minute square. " —no, of course you don't," agreed Ben Mostyn, who knew nothing at all about it. He, with his mansion in town and • estate in the country, twelve thousand a year, and list of friends as long as his arm ! " I've been here fise months, and all the other girls, when they have birthdays, get picture postcards and letters and lovely parcels and more often than not a big cake." Her voice went to Ben Moyston's heart; he wanted to rush her out at once in his Rolls Royce and scour London's most luxurious and beautiful shops for her benefit. " You poor kid!" he murmured rather than said. But Peggy hadn't the foggiest notion that she was being pitied; she went on, dimpling and smiling, "so I saved up and bought myself a few things I'd have to have anyway pair of gloves, some hankies, and—and a few other things. Oh, it won't be so bad. I'm going to buy postcard frames for the cards and they'll do to decorate my cubicle. Thank you very much, once more, Mr.Mr? Peggy paused, with co-nically uplifted brows. He had forgotten to tell her bis name! " Mostyn— Mostyn, Miss Randall," said the rather husky voice which had not yet recovered from the shock of discovering how —just 01 e— the thousands of lonely business A'irls in London played her brave little game of " make-believe" in order to show a blight front to her fellows. But the next day, when Peggy came home from work, there was a notable addition to those presents that she had provided for herself. A telegram lay among the fourteen postcards, a glorious bouquet of roses stood in the centre of the table, filling the bare receiving parlour with odour and romance, and the most beautiful box of chocolates that Peggy had ever seen, with a Gladys Peto work of art on the lid, stood jest behind it. Peggy did a ridiculous thing—she cried ber eyes out, as th« saying has ii>— then, only those who had lived to be twenty without once possessing anything rare and exquisite—only somebody like this could, really understand why Peggy cried.

Her twentieth birthday was a month old when Ben Mostyn proposed. "Yon get into my blood, I feel it tingle and pound red-hot through me— and then I don't care a scrap for anything in the whole universe—nor for anybody, except you. I could sin*: and shout all day with the sheer madness and glory of it all That's how I feel about you, kiddie. If you don't marry me, I shall feel like murdering somebody—and you don't want me to swing, do you He was so tender, and whimsical, and simple and boyish; being with hun, under the spell of his personality and smile, it was entirely easy to forget that he was the eon of Lady Elizabeth Mostyn, whose every doing the press reported, while she herself was a waitress at Lyons in the Strand, a penniless little nobody, without a single influential friend in the world. . But she loved him— all the winds of heaven were shouting mad, sweet songs in her ear* as Ben Mostyn told her that he wanted her for his wife. She would rather that he had been a poor something in the thought of his riches appalled her, made her afraid —and the fear 3 were not groundless, as events proved. Two days after Ben's proposal—before he had bought the ring, before he had breathed a word of it to hi a mother, who had found out for herself by a method which was entirely discreditable and need not form,part of this little —Pej?gy received a letter in a thick cream envelope, asking, with condescending graciou3ness, for the pleasure of a call from Miss Randall, at four o'clock the next afternoon afc v her house in Portman Place. Peggy bought a new pair of white kid glovss and went. m. They faced each other in armchairs upholstered in rose-coloured silk, the young girl who knew instinctively that the rain was going to fall into the j golden glory of her first romance, and the woman who had been born and reared in the lap of luxury. ■'; " The girl's ©yes, incredibly blue and soft, took in at a single glance every feature of the elder woman's still attractive, but weak and petulant face it was the countenance of one who had never had a wish nngrstified, and who, a stranger to suffering, was a still greater stranger to largeness of outlook and human, sympathetic understanding. Lady Mostyn eyed Peggy furtively, as the girl sipped the tea, which had no flavour to her nerve-parched palate, and nibbled the cake which seemed to crackle like tissue-paper in her mouth. When Peggy said " No, thank you" to more tea or cake, Lady Mostyn came down to brass tacks, as our American cousins say. ' - *• Misser— She purposely appeared to search her mind for Peggy's name; it was a trick that never failed to make the person concerned feel small and uncomfortable. " Miss—er-Randall, I X. have asked you to call on me this afternoon because it has come to my knowledge that —er —my son has been paying you ; attentions that are likely to damage the good n»me of so' young a girl as yourself, • How old are you ?" asked Lady Mostyn, outwardly quite polite, bat inwardly ;smarting with temper because Peggy looked so charming, was so becomingly dressed, and spoke every bit as well i as herself. ", i " Twenty," answered Peggy," who felt as if somebody had filled her heart with lead. : .;•:" But, . really, Lady Mostyn, Ben —your son, I mean—is not just wasting his time and mine. Did he not tell you We—we are engaged to . be married. * : ;i

Frigid was not the wbvd to describe Lady-Mostyn's ■• countenance; it: , waif'"a i ;.. miracle of mingled disdain and hostility. Briefly, the reason" why she "had asked ; Peggy to call was for the purpose of " buying her off." One always bought off girls of that type; all her friends had stories to tell of the trouble that they had / had with their sons in similar affairs. - ; ''' V.' Certainly, Ben had never given her any trouble, and bo was two months "past twenty-six, but still, one never knew ; young men, not even when thsy were one's own flesh and blood.. All these : thoughts , moved slowly through her somewhat sluggish mind, as she got up and went to a small, inlaid Sheraton writing table. " Miss Randall, you are, I understand, a waitress If Lady Mostyn had accused Peggy of being a pickpocket she could hardly have infused more contempt into her voice. "I am at Lyons', in the Strand," answered Peggy, who was not in the least ashamed of hj£ calling. " Then, to you, three hundred pounds would be a great deal of money, vwuij it net she probed. Peggy opened ber violet-blue eyes till they looked like two blue lamps. "It would, indeed," she said, wisttuily, , thinking of the heavenly trousseau that she could buy. " You could open a little business of your own, train for some other callingdo many wonderful things for three hundred pounds," insisted L>dy Mostyn, her Wither-sharp eyes ravaging the young [ace, to see if Peggy sensed the drift of her remarks. At length, Bjsn's mother. made clear her abominable meaning. "I have here three hundred pounds in j Bank of England and' Treasury notes," she said, taking a thick wad of p*per table* * dXaWBr ° f the ••'*"*»«■ " The whole of it is yours, if you promise to cure my son of his mad infatua- ■ tion for you. It would only result in misery, even should the marriage take place. His friends would never receive you, and he would 'soon get tired of a wife who was, if not actually ostracised, at least only tolerated." fhl he^Wo^d 3 ere even more cruel than the speaker knew; they wiped every vestige of..youthfulness from the face of the twenty-years-old girl who listened. But as one moment of tense, utter stillSn? CCeede ? another a look of curious hardness and a repressed, white-lipped bee P m ' & ten} P° rai % Old ."Thank yon, Lady Mostyn. WO! you give me the money?" she said, as clearly anil distinctly, as if she had never known a throb of emotfoa in all her life, and . might, indeed, be the type of girl that this insolent woman took her for. «»" Hcw sensible!" murmured Lady Mostyn, who, with her cod-fish eyes and equally cod-fish soul, had not the slightest inkling of the Gethsemane that she had made of a heart that was as honest as the day, and as worthy of love as any in the whole wide world. . m • - "Thank you!" said Peggy, once again, Then she walked to the beautiful Adams firepiace, and, before Ben's mother could frustrate her intentions, she had dropped the thick wad of notes into the fire, poking it well into the blaze so s that to retrieve it was impossible. «' "It was the only way of expressing my ' feelings at such an insult, Lady Mostyn. I believe it is a fact that some women* of your social otauding believe that money will buy everything from women of mine —even their honour," said Peggy, with a sob in her voice. "But your son is not like that; he might be a carpenter or any ordinary working man, he is so simple and fine. Oh, Lady Mostyn, I love him bo, and he loves me. I shall only believe that he wants to be released when I hoar it from his own lips," finished Peggy, as she stumbled from the room. Melodramatic and improbable as it may sound, Peggy Randall heard what she believed to be a request for the termination of their engagement from Ben Mostyn's own lips. He had rung up in the dinner hour, as be had so often done before, and Peggy had left her dinner to run to the telephone in the housekeeper's room, where the girls were allowed to have calls if they paid for them. ' "Is that yon, Peggy?" " - . The voice was unmistakably Ben's. . Then all the blood in Peggy's body rushed to her head in a mad, singing torrent as Ben went on to plead with her for his freedom. He spoke about his mother and the pain it would cause her, he spoke about 7 * hundred things, but Peggy was not listen- '' ing. . ," ' ' . ':* " Certainly yon can consider yourself free,!' were her last words, spoken in a choked, husky little voice that scarcely carried along the telephone wire. That afternoon she had the chance of a vacancy in a restaurant up in the North, and Peggy, having interviewed the manageress, who > arranged everything, travelled up by the night train, so that she could commence her new duties right away, %v.s.v.' : '~ '.*.". •'■i'4:-.'■)■?• V- " Peggy Randall. If this should meet her eyas, she will hear of something to V her advantage if she applies to Messrs. Jones and Jinks, 289, Chancery Lane, London. Peggy was not a great newspaper reader,; ; and she never looked at the advertisement columns, except when she wanted a situation. 4.. It was one of the other girls at the restaurant who pointed it out to her. \ .. " If it's a rich. uncle who's died and left you a fortune, don't forget or., old girl were the parting words '-v of' her mates. _ ' :■.:.. . And now she was in the office of Messrs. Jones and; Jinks. An office boy showed her into a small ante-room, and suddenly —her heart seemed to stand stillßen entered . the room- by another door. ■ '- - "Oh, kiddie, it seems too good to be. true! I've been advertising lor yon for five months in every blessed newspaper I could think of." ..'..'., ' In spite of the fact that she hold herself aloof, like a little ,; marble statue, Peggy was seized in a pair of arms that seemed to possess the strength Of six men. V They hart, but Peggy; gloried ;in the hurt; she should have felt angry, her pride should have - sustained her. Bat ■. it didn't! That was the rock-bottom, plain, honest, glorious, . devastating factshe had hungered and thirsted for the feeling of those arms, and now she was appeased. There must be some explanation. There was. ; * '-' ; .;.:■• " The poor mater iold me what she did before she died, and I want you to forgive Tier, sweetheart, as I* did, said Ben, •earnestly. Then, for the firsi time, Peggy noticed that Ben wore a black suit. : v •; "Of course,' dear! But—tell me just one thing—whatever made you ring me up and ask me to release you, as you did V Peggy waited tensely, anxiously, for he* lover s reply. So much of hei£ future hap* piness hong upon it. . "Listen Ben spoke very gravely, and his unsmiling eyes looked straight into her own. *' I was not speaking at all. Th» mater was at an 'At Home,' and a fellow : was there as an entertainer who could so exactly mimic anybody in the room that the difference could hardly be told. Certainly it would be very easy for anybody .', to be deceived upon the telephone." >-:; Light dawned upon Peggy. She nodded her little brown head gravely. • "I understand," she said. Those were the last words that ever, were uttered : about tffchat chapter via,\ Peggy's"life. Sweetly, arid with a .: wonderful ' sim- - plicity» she entered into her wornan's. '■ heritage of love. ■ ' '^#1 ' ■ paa sea)*