THE HANDFUL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3853, 17 January 1928, Page 81

THE HANDFUL.

By

F. Frankfort Moore.

Not even the most lenient of th e people in or aboat Mellingford would have faced the task of proving that Stella Paston was not a handful. The furthest that the lenient people would go in this direction took the indulgent form of a solemn head-shake, with a little smile as a rider to their verdict, when the less merciful critics asserted that she was a handful. She had also been alluded to as “ fast ” ; and it had been whispered within the precincts of. the croquet club that her pace had been so ’rapid that she had actually been seen smoking a cigarette. The fact that* this depth of degradation had been reached by her before she was 20 years of age made people ask one a?ij. other what' she would be at the age of 25. There were som e who did not hesitate to predict for her a future as an actress—yes, if she went on at that rate she might even find herself on the. stage; and it was generally accepted in her neighbourhood that.no fate .could be worse than to be on the stage, no matter how successful one might be as an actress—in fact, the more successful the more awful the aspect, of such a career seemed in the eyes of the town-of Mellingford, for the > y?® 1885. when ■ men were called r arid when girls—all unmarried girls— Were referred to, -even bv their own mothers., as “ voung -ladies/’ and Wlien Miss' Charlotte M. Yohge and Miss .Edna Lyall were the “ hest-stllers.” In those days it was known that voung ladies had feet-, but it was only rumoured thqt they .had knees, and only now and again;, by a compromising qecident were •he ankles of one of the young ladies dis-

played to public view. Instead, the object of nearly all of the sex seemed to be to suggest by their mode of dress a shape as far removed as human ingenuity and modistes could devise from that which the greatest sculptors of ancient Greece had assigned to women. The hour-glass of the Middle Ages represented the ideal aimed at by the modiste for a young lady for many years, until a modification, clearly suggested by the camel of the Sahara, was universally adopted and a back view of a young lady—and for that matter, of a young lady no longer young was like that of the switchback railway which afterwards became popular in certain directions.

Now as soon as she had left school—a daj’ that her preceptresses made no effort to retard.—Stella seemed to set out on a course of depravity. She refused to allow her hair to be “ put up ” in form of a bun behind, and with a friz or a pony fringe in front, and she declined to allow her dress to discharge the duty that devolved upon a crossing sweeper. I his was all verv well, but such obstinacy revealed *to all who had eyes to see —and upon these occasions there were a good many pairs of eyes in her immediate neighbourhood—the disquieting fact that she had very shapely ankles. She laughed at the loops 'which, the others, who were really young ladies, had attached to their long, swinging skirts when dancing, to prevent their followers from being tripped up, the left arm of tne dancer being passed through the loop —an ingenious but not always effective preventive of disaster. Stella had no need for a loop hue, for she had no “train.” (The superfluous three yards of swinging material was called the “ train ” in Court snite Ot f er u C ' rC J eS - m th ° Se da J' S ‘ ) But in spite of her daring revolt from all that fashion dictated, Stella Paston’s dance card was filled to overflowing into all extras before she had left the side of shl did P T° n at ® ver / dance - But "’hen it, ■! / e the Slde of her Chaperon she left it for good—though a good many scribed he S WOuld . scarcely have de AnJ h m ?, vement ln such a phrase. • A nd then she was fond of hunting, and instead of the customary hat, which suggested a chimney pot, she wore one which suggested an inverted bowl She was, however, rarely a conspicuous nguie at a hunt, unless to the eyes of such as were in’ the first flight. She m Jght have set up a brush shop with all the trophies that fell to her. But her trophies were not limited to these. If she had cared to exhibit all the missives that came to her openly by post and surreptitiously in the heart of bouquets, every one of which contained a declaration of a love that, in the impassioned words of a song of the period. wo pM not cease “ till the sun was cold and the stars were old,” they would have formed quite a fair-sized frieze for the decoration of her boudoir. Some of these she answered in a word, this word being rot! ” others with a pleasant smile and a shake of her flowing locks. That was how it came that she was 2 a 2- C^„ a “ hand ful.” and “fast,” and a flirt, and other names derisively complimentary, and her father, whom she caßed ad ’” and llcr mother, whom she called Mum, looked at her despairingly.

This father of Stella’s was a gentleman who had made a considerable fortune out of the manufacture and the sale of cast-iron grates. He was sometimes referred to in the punning humour, which was not quite extinct at that period, as the greatest of all the grate men of the day. He had made so much money that he could afford to be as religious as he had a mind to be, and it so happened that his convictions took the form of an exaggerated “ Pacificism.” He would not allow a man who was connected by however fine a thread with any of the fighting services to enter his house—even the humble volunteer of the period he included quite unjustly among the fighting men whom he kept at a distance. .This “ fad ” of his—some people termed it a “ fad ” —was supposed to interfere materially with his daughter’s prospects, for the people of Mellingford had accustomed themselves to the sprightly lyric of M. Offenbach: “Oh! que j’aime le militaire! ” which in its very English version ran: “ Oh, how I dote upon the military! ” The military were, indeed, the leading feature in Mellingford, and the presence of a regiment of infantry and a battery or two of artillery contributed largely to whatever gaiety might be found in such a place. It was thought rather queer that Mr Paston should have such an objection to the military, on whom the rest of the people declared in lyrical frankness they doted, while he allowed his daughter to attend several meets of the nearest hunt; but people who knew just what ' were the social aspirations of Mr Paston only smiled when this apparent anomaly was pointed out to them.. They knew that he aimed at being included amongst “ the county,” and that he was well aware of of the fact that, to become associated with the hunt, was the easiest way by which he could have his ambition realised.

He subscribed liberally to the hunt, and became on speaking terms with the master. He drove in a dog cart to all the meets that his daughter attended, and did his best to shepherd her out of the way of the contingent from the barracks, who were invariably most polite in their looking after her when in full cry. Of course, the “looking after” was only a figure of speech; her pace when on horseback was of such a type as enabled her to keep well in front of them. It was when returning that the leisurely pace gave some of the garrison the chance they hoped for.

Mr Paston’s business shrewdness that had allowed of his retiring with a considerable fortune caused him to feel that so far as Stella was concerned there was great safety in numbers, so he did not seem to mind her being escorted by a cavalry officer or two upon such occasions, but he never felt sufficiently indebted to them to ask them to cross the threshold of the mansion he had acquired to avert the imminent bankruptcy of a youthful peer. He was ready to congratulate himself upon the safe preservation of his daughter from the manoeuvres of the whole garrison, when one day his daughter came to him quite jauntily, saying quietly: “ Oh, dad, I quite forgot to tell you that Captain Devereux asked me to marry him yesterday wdicn he had helped me down from that hedge where that brute Sultan left me—Captain Devereux—he is a gunner, you know.” “ I don’t know! ” shouted the parent. “ But what I do know is that if the fellow, whoever he is, has the impudence to suggest such a thing to you again, he will hear from me! ”

She began to pout. It was rarely that she did pout; but 'she seemed to feel that this w’as a moment that demanded such an expression of her emotions.

“ You have no right to allude to him as a fellow,” she said. “ He’s no end of a nice boy, and I—l like him. He lifted me down from that beastly hedge as gently as if I had been a baby—yes, and the way he put me up on Sultan when he was caught —oh, nothing could have been sweeter!” “Sweeter! Good heavens! Sweeter!” he murmured—he could not trust himself to express his indignation in the key that he felt it demanded. “ And he actually proposed directly to yourself without a word to me? I never heard of such impudence. I hope you told him that—that—what did you say to the fellow, Stella? Tell me at once. Don’t stand there as if you were rather pleased than insulted.”

“ But I am rather pleased,” said she quickly. “ Captain Devereux is one o? the nicest men in the garrison. And so strong! Why, he put his arm round me and lifted me clear of those horrid thorns —”

“ Girl, have you no sense of shame — of humiliation? ” cried the father. “ You can speak without blushing of an incident that any nice girl would weep at the very thought of its having happened.” “ But, Algy—l mean Captain Devereux —” she began, but he cut her short. “ Algy, Algy—do yoji mean to stand up there before me and tell me that you think of him as a Christian name— Algy—” “ It’s short for Algernon,” said she apologetically. “ Come, tell me at once what you said to him—l don’t care what his name may be.”

“ Well, I couldn’t tell you just all. You mightn’t like it all. But I may say that I told him what I tell the rest of them —that you were my father, and all that sort of rot. I was afraid I might not obtain your consent—you have always been so cruel—but that will not prevent me from being true to —to anyone I may love. Algy—Captain Devereux, I mean—is one of the nicest, if not the very nicest, of the whole crowd. He once rode the winner of the Begum Cup, and he played for his county all one season.”

“ I don’t care what he did. Let him come to me and I’ll soon tell him that whatever he may have done, there’s one thing he’ll never do, and that is to get me to consent to my daughter having anything to do with an army man—no, not even if he was a field-marshal.” She gave a laugh.

“ I don’t think you need fear me wanting to marry a stuffy old field-marshal,” she said. “ But Algy—Captain Devereux —is quite another bunch of carrots, and—”

She gave another pout and burst into tears as she made for the door of the room.

But on the other side of the door she dried her eyes and grinned. For several days Miss Paston wore the aggrieved air of a young woman who has been unjustly accused of conduct unbefitting a young lady living under the guardianship of a father who has acquired the mansion of a peer of the realm. She kept to her own room for some time, and there was certainly the perfume of more than one cigarette pervading the corridor. But in a room on the ground floor there was a long consultation between Mr Paston and his wife, on the subject of Stella and her future.

Unlike a really nice girl, Stella had not thrown herself on her mother’s bosom with the confession that she loved Captain Devereux and that life would be a meaningless thing to her if she were not allowed to marry him. She had said nothing to her mother about the man. She wore a what-would-be-the-use air before her mother. And when her mother asked her what was the matter with her, with a view to eliciting some sort of a confession, she only shook her head, saying:—

“ What should be the matter ? Nothing is the matter—that is—everything is the matter; but no matter.” And then she had walked away somewhat mournfully,, and her mother began to think that something should be done if her daughter’s health was to be preserved in a normal way. Her mother had none. of her husband's prejudices against the military. To be sure, she herself would be ’-ather inclirm'l to b-» pleased if Stella had confessed to her

an attachment to a clergyman of a recognised church. She had. however, a feeling that if her daughter should' become attached to a clergyman, he would belong to some church outside the pale of the orthodox—that would be Stella's way. But if her child were to form an attachment to a gentleman who was also an officer in the Queen’s Army, and that, after a scrupulous inquiry, of course,- it was found that he was otherwise eligible, she would not have been accessory to any forbidding of the banns that her husband might instigate. She was well aware that Mr Paston’s prejudices in regard to the .Army were founded upon the miscarriage of a certain large contract which he hail for the supply of something for the Boer War of a few years earlier, and though she was bound to sympathise with him in a general and wifely way, yet when it came to place in jeopardy her daughter’s happiness she thought that she could bring herself to join in her daughter’s rebellion against the man’s obstinate objection to all things that savoured of the services.

But when she ventured to” suggest to her husband the grave possibility of Stella’s health being affected by such active hostility as he indulged in in this direction, she quickly found out that she was not strong enough to overcome a prejudice that was based upon the loss of something approaching £lO.OOO over that old contract. There was an old phrase—it was not yet extinct in 1885— about rather seeing a daughter in her coffin than married to somebody or other —most likely an actor—and Mr Paston had resorted to it with great rhetorical effect when his wife suggested that occasionally a happy marriage might be the result of a union in which one of the contracting parties was an officer in the army; so Mrs Paston submitted, shaking her head.

It took them a full month making up their minds —really there was only one min'd to be subjected to this process, the other being fully made up from the start —as to what should lie done to relieve the tension of the situation. It was suggested by the lady. She had a sister who had also been fortunate enough to marry a man who had retired from business, and they lived in a very quiet county—no hunting or anything like that—and the idea was that if Stella were sent on a visit of a month or two to her aunt’s house, she would leave off pining for Algy and become reconciled to a simple home life, which everyone knew was the ideal to be aimed at by all right-minded parents for their daughters. V\hen Stella heard that her parents had in their wisdom decided that an invitation which had come from her Aunt Dorcas for her to spend a few months m the beautiful Hopshire, she was very angry —that was, at first. She had declared that she would not go, and nothing would make her go. She had resort to a corresponding phrase to the one about the coffin—that was the father’s well-worn phrase; hers was a daughter’s, equally the worse for wear. It was “ I’d rather live on bread and water than submit.” Stella tried-it; but she didn’t expect much from it, and it seemed to fall flat. However, she sulked for a whole day, and then came submissively to her parents. She seemed to be truly penitent, and her parents did not know enough to be on the watch when a girl who has been described as “ a handful ” becomes penitent. They took credit to themselves for having brought her to look at the matter through their eyes. “It is a picturesque neighbourhood, my dear,” said her mother, “ and you will find it restful, after your hunting here. I m sure that your Uncle Jonathan and your Aunt Dorcas know many nice people in their neighbourhood, and your cousin Charlie will make a cheerful companion for you. Charlie must be nearly 18 now. He promised to be a nice bov.”.

“ I’m sure that we’ll get on all right together.” said Stella. “ When am I to go? ”

“ Let me see—-this is Thursday; suppose we fix on Monday? ”

Stella thought for a minute, and then said that she thought Monday would do verv well.

She went up to London the next day to buy some things which she- thought necessary for her visit, together with a nice book for Charlie. It was called Treasure Island.” and Mrs Paston had heard that it contained nothing obiection•ible. But one should be careful what books they put into the hands of youn<r people., ” And off she went to her Aunt Dorcas.

She found that both her aunt and her uncle were worse than she had expected ; but her Cousin Charlie was far better. He was a nice boy. and she soon found herself confiding in him to the extent of at least on P of her love affairs ; but this was the one that mattered. He swore to be on her side, and he felt himself to be quite 20 instead of 17 when he heard some of the details. During the next fortnight there was a good deal of Promiscuous giggling between them ; and on the whole Stella seemed quite happy ; as a .nlatter of fact, she confessed to her Aunt Dorcas that she had never been so happy in all her life; and this testimonial (entirely unsolicited) on being communicated to her parents.caused them to think more highly than thev had ever done of their own acumen in devising a Cure for her love affair with that Captain Devereux.

And then one afternoon, when Stella had been undergoing the “cure” for a little over a month, she came limping through the gate and up the carriage drive/ Her aunt was in the garden. and hurried to her side just as the girl sat down on the door -mat and swore in no undertone. Her aunt was shocked—not

9 11 -S’ by the wording of her complaint, but also by observing her torn frock and the blood upon one of her shoes. . “ It’s my knee ! ” cried Stella, displaying that part of her anatomy. “It was that beastly bicycle! He said I couldn’t ride it, but I tried all the same. Oh, I m sure my kneecap is thrown out—and look at the gash! It hurts horribly !” ’ And then a. gardener’s boy. came through the gate with a badly-smashed bicycle,. Now at that time the bicycle was a high and spidery contraption, quite out of the rang© of any girl’s ambition. Indeed, the gentlemen who rode them habitually were looked on as daredevils. zlnd yet ther e was this girl sitting on the mat after confessing ° W ho allowed you to do that horrible, un J ad yhke thing? ” cried her aunt. It was—oh, here he comes—Jack— Captain Crosby ! ” There hurried through the gate a well-set-up man, finely bronzed. The aunt had seen him occasionally in the neighbourhood during the past month. He was staying at the inn, and was accredited ■with being a fisherman. I hope 1 ? o’’ 0 ’’ ’h 6 Clded ‘ “ Nothing serious, “Beastly!” responded the girl. “An ° and kneecap—you can , P at he didn>t 6ee ' The aunt rushed between him and the awful revealing rent in the skirt. ° My niece is in safe hands, sir; vou ne ® d , not intrude ! ” sh e cried. << t sare , of madam,” said he. 1 feared the worst when she mounted rL /T e - l! y Ca P ta!n Crosb y> Roja! Navy. A scratch on the roadside hot']/ 6 f UP .h’ood-poisoning. so I put a ootde of iodine m my pocket. If V ou U>eV ? "nd’.- ° f ” tCt rU 100 k alt ” nr, Sil ’” l Sai r f v he Jad - V ’ “ tlle WOUn d U be se°nt for.” hei ' A d ° Ct ° r shaß “ Oh, Aunt Dorcas, don’t talk such rot. He knows all about it. He was with Mo sdey on the Nile! ” cried Stella then the uncle hurried up. Hold, sir • ” he shouted. ' “'if V ou carry out your threat, the ladv will' be seriously compromised.” ffirl Oh ’- ta!k , sucll rot!” cried the nmv..- 1 ' Jack Crosby and I have been Ja<-k l d ike°a deaJ—” W ° m ° ntLs ' Now ’

Crosby was not the name; it was Devereux/’ said the uncle. “ Oh, that was a blind,” said Stella. “ It was really Jack Crosby who proposed to Oh. Jack, for heaven s sake gather t<? m 'X r °° m - You 'know A the - porch - Yo » d °n’t have wav ™’ b UP th ' S tlnie ’ Can -V° u find vour

I think so. mv dear.” man he Pick<?d her ”P cai efullv and carried her upstairs to her room." • a ‘ lleave ns! She’s a handful—marShe was a handful, but in the hands Scot a 3 mam tUI ’’asband.-Weekf: