„Suitable for Trinette."

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13828, 13 February 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

„Suitable for Trinette."

(By Dorothea Deakin.)

Miss Paulino and her lover 'were strolling i-lly along the path of Parauise that morning—a wnite path between an avenue of pines. You may nnd it difficult to believe that he had quite forgotten for the moment that she was Miss Pauline Bartlott Hogg, the heiress, and that he was only thinking ot her as Ids sweetheart. She had iorgotten everything too, except that she had proved beyond every possibility ot doubt that he loved her entirely for herself alone; but one cannot wander in the clouds for ever, however rose-co-loured or golden they niav be. - H P,^sne3 " said John "Blair, "who is the little pink-faced creature,' dressed always with the darkest economy, that 1 sef- sometimes lurking at the'end of passages or at the top of the stairs, always, I may say, in the offing?" Miss Pauline smiled. - !iS h ' that >" said she lightly, "that is Tnnette, my maid." He raised his evebrows. "Your maid! But I saw you kiss her behind the. door the day before yesterday.-'" "YfryLUkel?; I often do, aud j should hire to know why not?" Miss lauhne demanded, "when she's got a lace, like a rose, and speedwell blue S' f and . th ? m °st, filling little hands an<J f e? t m the world. You don't know my rnnette. Miss Pauline sat down on a little Tvooden seat where the path forked mto higher and lower branches, and looked up at her lover with reflective eyes.

''Sometimes." she said doubtfullv, I f"el a httle worried about Trinette."

"Why? She ought to be radiantlv happy —living so Bear tj le rose „ ' Hiss Pauline disregarded liis absurd speech, and went on:

"You see, she's such a dear. Her people were once quite well off, but they lost their money, and rather than take up teaching or typewriting or anything uncongenial of that kind, she went in at once for the. tilings she could do best, without any false pride —hair-dressing and dressmaking—and devoted herself to making another lazy girl idle and comfortable—a girl who is just as well able to work as she is. Do you see?"

"Not quite in the same light," said John Blair cautiously. "I Itry to treat her more as a companion than a maid," Pauline pursued doubtfully, "but she won't let me. She seems really to like doing menial things for me. I should love to take her out with me, but she has a greatidea of what's suitable. She flatlv refuses to be taken out of her place. She's full of the queerest scruples, but she s a dear for all that. You look at her nest time you meet her on the stairs, and you'll see what I mean when J, sa y,that I f eel it simply criminal that the child shouldn't have as good a time as other girls. She ought to wear prettv frocks and go to parties and meet interesting and affluent young men. She ought to marry well, with those eves." "All right," said John Blair, 'with nnexpected tractability. "Let's marrv her to my millionaire."

Miss Panliue looked surprised. " I didn't know you had a millionaire. Jack."

"Oh, but 1 have! A real live one. At present he's staying at the ' Baur au Lac' He's here with his secretaries and valets and motors and horse's, and all his other expensive toys." "Does he want a wife to add- to the list? Trinette isn't a toy, you know. Docs he want a wife?" John Bbir shook his head.

"No, indeed.- On the contrary—b»it a wife would lie very good for him. Ifc wou>d give him something to think of outside himself." "Yc—es," said Miss Pauline slowly, "hut I think it's an awful pity, if people are happy, single, to disturb their happiness. Don't you?" "Nonsense," said.her lover. "It's the very thing. I don't believe he's a bit happy. How can. he be with all that money and no one to spend it for hinL? How shall we do it ? His ideal is a gentle, modest, womanly creature, as pretty as a rose, and as retiring as a_ daisy. He says the kind is quite extinct. He says there aren't any left. He hasn't seen my—:—" "It does • seem an idea," Miss Pauline interrupted thoughtfully. "Yet he may have formed all sorts of secret resolves to marry titles and things. You never know." "Not he," said John Blair with conviction. "His resolve is to remain single."

""Trinette!" Miss Pauline was having her soft brown hair dressed in the exquisitely becoming way which Trinette alone could compass, but she leant her head suddenly back" and drew the girl's round pink face down to hers. "Trinette! How would you like to . marry a milionaire ?" "Oh, not at all, Miss Pauline! It would be so unsuitable." Perhaps Miss Pauline was not always very wise in her remarks. Everyone knows how' bad compliments are for sweet and twenty. " I haven't been brought up to take a high place in Society," said Trinette modestly. " What I should like would be a quiet cottage home, whitewashed, with roses nodding in at the window." "And water, coming through the roof?" Miss Pauline suggested. " Where I could do things myself to keep it nice," said the little maid dreamily; "with an oak dresser, and a rack full of willow-pattern, plates—" " Geraniums and musk on the win-dow-sill all the year round?" Miss Pauline remarked with mild sarcasm. •'Trinette, I could shake you." Then John Blair, walking with his sweetheart' down the gay Bahnhofstrasse on market day, told her that he'd been talking to his millionaire about the little maid-companion, and he —Selling—had agreed with him that it was a pity, and he'd seen the girl carrying rugs out to Miss Pauline one day when she was going for a drive with her lover, and that she was a nice fresh little creature —mere beaute de diable, of course—yet pretty enough, and that something certainly ought to be done. "He's the sort of chap," Blair finished, " who thinks you can do anything with dollars. And you can't, you know." " Why, no," said Miss Pauline with a sigh. " You certainly can't." "Well," said John Blair,, "if you really won't let me carry the irises They're dripping wet, and they'll spoil your*pretty dress: but I suppose you know that you look like a Princess "of Juno with your arms full of white and purple flowers, and " "What else did Mr. Stelling say?" Miss Pauline interrupted with interest. "Oh, lots of things! I'll bring him to call'this evening, if I .may. The fact is. he's got a rather brilliant idea. At least he thinks it's brilliant. There's a voung secretary with him. a handsome bov-called Garland, and Stelling's going to see him through, he says—" "Through?" Miss Pauline asked. "Through what?" "Through life, T expect he means. He's going to run him for a diplomatic shop. I fancv. if he can, presently; and it seems that this same youth saw your little Trinette . and was tremendously struck. Stelling says it's the very" thing for the lad. He says a man ought to marry at twenty-five: says it would have been good for him if he had. He doesn't want Garland to marry money. There'll be no need, he says." He'sgoinc; to arrange a picnic, if you'll he angel enough to come and bring Trinette. He wants to take i;s to the Sihlwald. The woods arc c.uite

perfect now—and in this glorious weather —well, think of it! He will drive us himself, and there'll be you and I, and young Garland and the little girl, if she may come." "Of course she shall come," said Paulino warmly. "But she will keep so obstrusively in the back-ground, Jack. She does insist so firmly upon staying in her proper place. I should n't be at all surprised if she insists upon wearing her plain black dress and hat. However, I think I shall he obstinate there."

j She was. ' "There's that blue and white organdie." she said firmlv: "take a tuck in it, Trinette, and we'll go out after tea and buy a hat to match. Something big and white and fluffy, with blue flowers under the brim to match your eyes; something very becoming, and quite unsuitable for motoring; but you can tie anything on with a veil, and Pm not going to have you looking a mog in a motor-cap when'we get there." Pauline was glad she had been firm the next morning when Trinette came in to thank her, all white and blue, except for her golden brown hair and rose flushed cheeks and happy speedwell eyes. "That's how you should always look," said her mistress severely, "if I had my way." /-" You will keep taking me out of my place," said Trinette with' a rapturous little laugh. "Aren't you afraid that I shall take advantage of it?" Miss Pauline kissed her (she always spoilt tho girl shamefully) and began to put her into the big fur coat, then stopped. "No, wait," said she; "we won't hide you till the very last moment." She put on her own coat and veil and hurried the girl downstairs. John Blair waiting at the door of the hotel, was solemuly introduced to "Miss Trinette," and he in turn presented Mr. Garland, but the millionaire, it seemed was at the moment actively engaged in front with the internal arrangements of his car. When Pauh'ne thought that Mr. Garland's eyes had been feasted long enough on the blue-and-white radiancy ,she wrapped it up in her best white fur coat, tied its pretty hat on with a silky white veil, and tucked it in. Then she went round to the front and plunged at once into an enthralling conversation with its owner on the subjects of carburetters and sparking plugs and other obstruse matters until it was time to start. John Blair went.to tho seat beside the driver, and then Trinette, seeing that young Garland had no intention of moving from her side, and realising that by her presence that Pauline and her lover would be cruelly- separated, arose from her seat with a little cry and said: "Oh, Miss Pauline, do sit here! Let me sit beside the chauffeur.""

Silence. Stelling, standing there, a stumpy, unimpressive figuro, in a rather shabby leather coat, smiled warningly at the others, and Pauline's eyes wandered with some confusion to her lover. Garland laughed. "Really," Trinette insisted, iu a distressed voice, "I should much prefer to sit in front with the chauffeur. I like the wind."

" Oh, Trinette," said her mistress, shaking her head, "you know that nothing ever brings your hair out of curl. You know that your cheeks will be pink, and never your nose." But she was more graceful than young Garland was. He said rather unwillingly that he was sure if anyone went in frout he ought to go, when he caught Mr. Spelling's eye and abruptly retreated to his first position, and Trinette scrambled into her seat, and Mr.,.Stelling said curtly, "So she likes the wind, does she?" and then . they started. ... . • They stopped in" the very heart of the woods, left the car at the ' little "rostauration" there, and carried their tea up amongst the trees. Here, as Paulino pointed out afterwards. Trinette was very tiresome. She would load herself with rugs and baskets, and young Garland was nearly distracted. She refused to abandon anything to him, softening her obstinacy with the most charming smile, it is true. It would make her very unhappy, she said, if she wasn't allowed to be useful. For why had she come ? • She declined to accept Mr. Garland's explanation that she was there to make people happy. She denied that it was enough for them to be allowed to look at her. Hero the fight for the things with which she had laden herself began. John Blair and Pauline were well in the rear, of course, but the millionaire caught them up as they stopped to wrangle, and in the meleeo an. elegant cushion fell to the ground, and he picked it up and stood watehine them with his own peculiar smilci He had a cast-iron face and a rat-trap mouth, John Blair's millionaire.

"Oh, well," said Trinette at last, breathlessly, "if you will he. so absurd, Mr. Garland! I ought to carry them — Why—," she caught sight here of Selling's interested face—"whv not let the chauffeur take them all ? That's an excellent compromise." and there and then she bundled them. rugs, cushions, tea-pot, spirit lamp and matches, into the arms of the amazed Stellinir. already loaded with a basket of crockery. "That's much better," said Trinette.

with a sigh of relief. "Oh, much!" said , Stelling rather grimly. He didn't look pleased. Trinette's* fresh prettiness obviously did not hUnd him at all to the weight of his burdens, and he allowed Garland to releive him without demur. Trinette seemed disappointed, but the delicious smell of the pines, the warm soft breeze the dark, silent aisles of the high, slim, straight trees, raised her spirits to dancing pitch, and she walked on a little ahead of the others, singing softlv to herself a verse of an old song: " Ah, here's the clematis all graceful i and fair, You may set it like pearls in the folds of your hair, . And if" for your bosom you'd have a

boquet, Here's the meadow pink sweet and the touch-me-not gay." Yes. I think they all had a happy dav. Stelling, perhaps, looked a little bo'red: but then, as John Blair told Miss Pauline, he always did, "and hewas sort of odd man out, wasn't he?" Bv some chance when they sat down to tea he was a little way further off than the others, leaning up against the stem of his pine, and Trinette suddenly picked up her plate and cup and dropped down beside him. ,]_,■' " You see." said she modestly to linn, "if the'chauffeur has his tea apart from the others, it is only right that the lady's-maid should keep in her place.

too." . , , It was rather wanting in tact, l think, but Stelling, enjoying the irony of things in his gloomy way had managed to convey to the rest of the party that the maid Trinette should not be

undeceived. . ~., . "Wliv is she called Trinette.- he asked Miss Pauline as ho stood watchin" the others pack the baskets afterwards quite ignoring the maid s reproachful glances when he did not oltcr to help. "It's her idea of the fitness ot things." said she. "She thinks Miss Pauline Hogg ought by rights to have a French maid, and if I am so pig-head-ed as to prefer her, why, then, the least she can do is to take a French name. Tt's an abbreviation of her own name. Katherine, you see." " She has a passion for doing the suitable thing." "Oh, I've noticed that she insists upon keeping you in your place." Miss Pauline thought Stelling looked quite pleasant for once, in spite of bis irksome millions.

He must either have enjoyed it or been an extremely unselfish, person, for it was chiefly his doing that this was only, the first of several happy days. The day they vent to Rapazwyl, for instance. Trinetto keeping modestly hi the background, while they explorel the castle and the Polnischc Museum, tried to cheer the gloomy chauffeur by pretending in take an intelligent interest in his calling, which Stelling endured with an iron-bound smile, and later on Garland remarked .to Miss Pauline, as they walked together under the high castle walls, that Miss Triii- - e'tte was a wonderful girl.

'' She's awfully interested in any kind of machinery," said'he enthusiastically. "She says there's nothing she loves like fiddling with a nut or screw.'

Stelling who was just behind, grunted something sceptical, and Miss Paulino raised her eyebrows, remembering in a vivid flash some of Trinette's frantic futile- struggles with the new sewing-machine.

Stelling glanced back at John Blair and Mr. Hogg, and discerned far behind, the lonely little figure of Miss Pauline's maid. Perhaps it was the memory of her kind little efforts to set him at his ease earlier in tho day which made him fall back and relieve her of Miss Pauline's scarf and chiffon parasol. •

"He's really quite a kind old thins," John Blair told his sweetheart, "but he's a bit of a woman hater. I am afraid he will never, marry. He says he should want to be perfectly certain that he was loved for himself alone, although, as I pointed out tn him, such a thing would be impossible." "Oh, Jack, you didn't?" " Well. .1 didn't mean in the way you moan it," her lover explained hastily. The happy days went by with flying feet. Happy for Miss Pauline and" her lover, because they were still walking down the white path of Paradise: happy for the great Paul Bartlett Hogg, because his little girl was happy and the sun was shining; happy, perhaps, even for the millionaire, because he was making two young jieople happy: happy for Garland, the secretary, because he was dreaming a love's young dream which could not possibly e»d a« dreams do end ; happy for Trinette, because she was- young and pretty and nice, and everyone thought so. And then one day to their astonishment, young Garland disappeared without saying good-bye—went, they heard, to Helgiiim on business. Extraordinary! Miss Pauline sought Trinette with

s'.ino nervousness, for, indeed, she. didn't know how she would take it. Of course, he would come back. He wouldn't dare to trifle with this charming girl's young affections so cruel!v. " She lights up like a flower when the sun comes out, at the sound of his voice," she told her lover.

"They are an ideally matched pair," said young Blair. "The man can't have been such a hound as to cut and run — leaving poor Stelling in the lurch too!" You can imagine that Miss Pauline approached her subject with difficulty.

"Air. Garland's gone away for a few days." said she, gravely watching the young fresh face, and very glad, if-a little surprised, to see that" it .lost none _of its sweet colour at her .news. " Yes," said Trinette. "You knew, then?" "' Yes," said Trinette. "Did he say good-bys?" •' Yes," said Trinette. Miss Pauline put her hands on the giiTs shoulders. ■ .".Did you mind very much:-" said she kindlv.

" Yes," said Trinette. "Oh, my dear, why lias he gone?" Trinette was silent. " What is the meaning of it?" Miss Pauline said sharply. "The man's obviously head over ears in love with you, 'and.'l know you. like ""him." " Oh, I do," said Trinette quickly, "tremendously!" "Then why lias he gone?" No answer. Trinette turned away. "He'll conic back," Miss Pauline cried in rising anger. "Oh, he must come back! He'll ask you. to marry him when he conies back." "He as/kod mo before lie wuut away," said Trinette surprisinglv. "Trinette!" " Yes." said Trinette. " Ohj J. am so glad!" cried Miss Pauline.

Trinette raised reproachful blue eyes.

. "But I'm iiot going to," said she, "of course. How could I do anything so selfish? He lias his career to make. Do you think i would drag him down by. a marriage with me ? No, Miss Pauline —no. The match would be most unsuitable." frier street little voice was very iirm.

Paulino Hushed. " Look, here Trinette. You must marry someone above your absurd station, if you are to be lumpy. Don't you mean to marry at all?" Trinette gazed out of the window with musing eyes, then she blushed and smiled charmingly. Pauline stared. '"■Trinette! I believe you've got a sweetheart already. Oh. poor Mr. Garland ! Wha is it ?"

" Quite a suitable person," said Trinette shyly, "and yet he- attracts me wonderfully. He's clever, too, and frightfully interesting, and I never guessed that I should have drifted into being so fond of a person- who was devoted to machinery and dull things like Oil, I'm afraid I'm in love with him head over ears." "'What on earth do you mean?" Pauline demanded sharply, as a sudden suspicion bewildered her. It wasn't possible thatWasn't it?

"I mean," said Triuctle. with a happy smile, "I've promised to marry the chauffeur."