SHOUT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3512, 5 July 1921, Page 57

SHOUT STORIES.

Tlil ROAUNCh OF A CONFhTTI

By

Gekthude Waikai. .

[CopriiiGiix.] “Confound the confetti : I’ve swallowed about half-a-pound. We shall find the things sticking in our clothas for months.” “Jes; they’re small but insidious. You iia*. e uo idea of the mischief of one of theiso scraps of paper can do.” The speakers, were two fresh-coloured, goou-lookiiig Eng.tollmen, wearing light o\eicoats and dress-clothes, and drinking ; :leu ’ after-dinner coffee out.-ide a cafe at Cannes. xt was half-past nine on an evening in the beginning of February. Two days earlier they."had left then’ native London ankle-deep in islueh and dirty snow and veiled in sulphurous log; here, in favoured Cannes, t.'iey sat beneath a sapphire sky flecked with diamond stars, and watched the carnival maskers in their gay costumes of stun or satin, dancing upon the asphalte which surrounded tlie band kiosque, and even pirouetting gaily upon the open road. All around them was life and colour, laughter and movement, the sound of many languages intermingled in -ay banter, the democratic jostling of Pierrots and Pierette; in satin with white-capped marketwomen, townsfolk in cheap and gaudy dominos, and tweed-clad, tourists armed with guide-books and kodaks. To .Vorton, the younger of the two men. the scene had the charm of entire novelty. At the battle of confetti, earlier in the day, he had exhau-ted himself by two hours and a-half of confetti-throwing under a blazing sun, and now, after an excellent dinner, he was laughingly complaining of the confetti which nassers-bv every now and then cart in the faces of the two friend s over their coffee. Fleming, the elder of the two, and the one who had complained of the mischief making capabilities of tlie little paper missiles, was rich and independent, and spent his time in perpetual travel. Carnivals were nothing new to him, and as a rule he avoided them ; but this spring tho fancy had taken him to revifit Cannes in the company of his relative Norton, and now, as he sat watching the dancers under the palm-trees in the starlight the spirit moved him to be confidential. He lit a cigarette and blew a cloud slowly up into the night air. A curious wistfulners passed into his grey eves, and softened the lines of his month under the closely trimmed golden brown moustache. “It's odd,” he began dreamily ; “but ten years ago, almost in this identical spot, I had the happiness of my life ruined by one of these same mischievous confetti His companion’s round blue eyes grew rounder still in amazement. “Bv Jove! Arc you serious?” he exclaimed. “I never thought, von know, Jack, that you went in for affairs de coeur or anything of that sort.’’ “I don’t—now,” Jack Fleming returned grimlv. “But I did ten years ago. It was a night like this : only it seems to me that the stars were brighter, the music was ioTier, the fun more spontaneous. Mind, T only cay ‘seems.’ Probably the falling off is in me, not in the music and the stars and the fun. T am five and thirty now, I was five and twenty then. There was a girl on mv arm -eueli a "irl she seemed to me ' A little, oft-, round face like a peach, lips made for kisses and laughter, and a figure as lithe and light as a willow branch. I know mv similes are old. but T can’t find words to tell vou what she was like to me. You see I was in love with her. and she was mv wife.” “Your wife!” Norton repeated in astonishment. "Whv. I never knew you had been married. Though T remember T did hear there was some romance or other ” “Oh. there wasn’t much romance about it !” Fleming said bitterlv. lowering his voice as a laughing party of three maskers took pori-esr-ion of the seats at a neighbouring table. “The whole thing only lasted six weeks.” “Your wife is dead then? Old man, I am so sorry——” “There is uo need to be sorry, and she isn’t dead. She simply divorced me on the ground of incompatibility of temper or heaven knows what, according to the. laws of the State to which she belongs. Of course I don’t, recognise a thing like that, and I haven’t married again.” “And she, vour wife?” “Oh, she has consoled herself with a German baron. Three years -ago, being dead tired of knocking about the world, I was actually fool enough to decide to go over to America and persuade Maimie—that was her name—to marry me all over again. You must know she was an heiress, the only child of a mother who spoiled and idolised her. I met her on a short visit to the Statee and fell in love with her, and married and brought her over to honeymoon in Europe. London was too cold, and we came to Cannes for the carnival. How it. all comes back ! That night when we left her mother at the hotel and came out arm in arm to see the fun.” A lady in a, blue domino, who formed one of the group of three, at the neighbouring table, turned in her seat and fixed the gaze of two bright, dark eyes shining through a black velvet mask upon Jack Fleming’s face. “Then your wife’s mother was with you?” Norton suggested. “That was the beginning of the mischief. She insisted on following 11s to Europe in a week. As I told you we left her at the hotel, and here, under the palms, as I walked with Maimie’s two little hands fastened round my arm, I felt mv shoulder touched, and heard my name railed out of the crowd, ‘Jack ! Jack Fleming ! Gon’t you recognize me?’ It was Ethel liarborough, an old sweetheart of mine. We were engaged once, but she was such a flirt she drove me half-mad, and I broke it off.

She was in a mask and domino, by A 1 knew her voice in a moment. %

“I felt Maimie’e grasp tighten on',tij» arm, and saw her face change. I don’t know whether Ethel knew I was married. The whole thing had been very sudden, and I hope, for her sake, she didn’t. But, just to plague ire, she hung on to my arm, and kept on whispering about old times, and finally after I had broken away, declaring I did not know her, she slipped *a scrap of paper into my pocket and ran away laughing. Maimie seized it, and never spoke a word until we oot to the hotel. Then, in the presence of her mother, she opened it. It was nothing in the world but a pink confetti with the name ‘Ethel’ written across it, but it cut short my happiness most effectively.

""The two women worked themselves up into a scene; my explanations were hardly listened to. Maimie was an impulsive, jealous child of eighteen, and her mother had always been against the marriage. The end of it was that they left Cannes the next morning, and* returned to the States without me. I had put it to Maimie that she mrst choose between her mother and me, and she chose her mother. Ton know the rest. Three years ago, bearing that her mother was dead, I was starting in search of Maimie when I read by chance in an American paper that the daughter of Commodore Grierson (that was the name of Maimie’s father) had just married Baron Ludwig von Riegelthurm. Somehow I had always been fool enough to pope we migut come together again—which shows, I suppose, that a man doesn’t get wiser sa he gets older. And now, when that is all knocked on the head. T bad a fancy to visit this place again. Odd isn t it? ’

It must he awfully painful for von,” JVortor said sympathetically. “Were you very fond of her?”

“She is the only woman I ever really cared a straw about, or ever shall care ” He rose as he spoke, and the two men strolled away. The little lady in the blue domino at the adjoining tabic stared inten Jy after them. Then she whispered something to her companions, from one of whom she borrowed a pencil. “Those people who were at the next tabie are following us,” Norton presently observed to his companion. „ “T he £ r ® g? in P. to pelt us with confetti, no doubt, Fleming returned indifferently, th \ SP ?t e he . distinctly felt a hand n ust into the pocket of his overcoat It htU i - h3:ld ’ as he found T t and it was soft and feminine Its owner wore a blue domino, and wiWJed her fingers clear from his, leaving”™ his pocket a folded slip of paper The blood rushed to Fleming’s face. T.*e situation of ten years ago was repeating itsc,f Crossing to a brightly lighted divloII!r dmV ’ , he lln / olded the paper, and J'rttt • a con fett p acroSjJ which wajJ written in pened the name : “Maimie ” ■Jy Jo Yu if , should have been my wire s hand that I caught in mine'” that was his first thought but the next moment he recalled the° bitter fact that i la.mie was his wife no longer but the Baroness Riegelthurm. .Nevertheless he looked round for the blue .domino, and caught sight of her entering an open carriage with her two C v!? l f U n oll3 'i Tleining chartered another, l ’] e Y Tty t 0 the doore of the Hotel, the hall of which he entered seconds after them. , re the Baron and Baroness Riee-el-thurni staying here?” he enquired of an attendant. -I don’t want to leave my 1 !aiow friends of theirs ” J thmk they expect you, sir. One of the ladies asked me whether you wanted to see the Baroness Riegelthurm cr her step-sister Mm John Fleming ” 1 P hour ¥ er the bttle blue domino, u ¥ mask ’ and wi ‘b tears in her %i W sat. band in hand with ’ Fleming in her sister’s drawing-room. You horrid, proud old thing!” she was saying. Mhy didn’t vou come and years a £° ? 0f co «rse I always expected you to. And I’ve been so lonely and miserab.e sometimes! When I heard you tell all that to the man vou were with to-night it was all I could do net to jump for joy and kiss you.” ‘There is nothing to prevent vou from kissing m e now,” Jack Fleming raid and with him. “U hat in the world became of vou this evening.’’the disconsolate Norton inquired when Jack at length appeared at his hotel. j U rt ave ma the slip in the oddest wav, and-why, hmv jolly happy you look! Vv hat s the matter?*’ I am going to he married again here at Cannes to my wife, Maimie, and I want coolly lo b ° bC:t n ' an ’’’ Jack explained, , 1 ‘ r .?, a t Scot! But what brought- it all about?” " . This!” said Fleming as he eolemnly iassed a pink paper confetti. rAri. I!i(pits Reserved.]