SUNBURST BERTA RUCK.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20441, 20 October 1934, Page 23 (Supplement)

SUNBURST BERTA RUCK.

CHAPTER XXXI.— (continued.) Mrs. Hawley forgot her dread of a ruined afternoon for the young people as she explained that Unity had gone off on a picnic-ramble with their—the StoneStead well’s cousin, Rupert Garfield. Without a glance exchanged, Maid, Victoria, Beatrice and Alice, became conscious that things in that quarter were going on exactly as they should. The whole family, in fact, felt that all was increasingly well with the world. A perfect day for the dear Duchess to see Pinelands; all these delightful nicemannered handsome young Swedes, in stead of the impossible guests i>oor Mary sometimes had about! The KupertUnity idyll progressing steadily— Patricia nowhere in evidence! Well, they supposed Patricia would presently —Thank Heavens she was adequately dressed! —presently have to be produced. ! Sotto voce, Miss Victoria inquired after that family problem; solo voce Mrs. Rawley replied, “I think Pat went off with young Fitzroy—” “The other young man. How typical,” murmured Pat’s Aunt Victoria, drawing up her spine, compressing straight lips, and looking down the bridge of her nose. “Men, men, men; always men with that gyarl! However. Is this Mr. Fitzroy any relation of our Fitzroys? .Is he at .all well-off, Mary? 1 mean, a possible—”

“Mercy!” the mistress of the house interrupted startled; at the same time the Duchess’ ever-keen interest was caught, and she asked eagerly, “And who is this?”

“This,” which had caught her attention was bearing down upon the house by the side-drive between the syringas. Along this drive progressed in a leisurely manner one of the strangest vehicles that had, in any reign, been seen to approach the entrance to Pinelands Court.

The Duchess—then the Eawleys, Stone-Steadwells, and the Swedes watched fascinated, as 6till at that leisurely pace! it approached.

It was an old, old-fashioned open barouche of basket-work painted —or faded to!—a greeny-brown, and with greeny-brown cushions; drawn by a pony, dappled, plump and sturdy as were the toy horses of the Duchess’ youth, and driven by an ancient gentleman in a grey alpaca coat whose black slouch hat was drawn down to protect his eyes from the strong sunlight. From under this hat, about his cheerful, lean old countenance, and over his collar, wisps of gyey floated like poplar-cotton on the breeze.

“Who on earth is this extraordinary old boy?” muttered Colonel Rawley. His wife had guessed already. Something had told her who this must be, even before the strange vehicle drew up and the old gentleman, throwing the reins on the pony’s plump back, advanced, sweeping that hat off a silvercrowned head. Even before he advanced with a courteous, rather attaching smile to introduce himself. Mrs. Rawley knew what was coming next. *T?ood afternoon. I am addressing Colonel and Mrs. Rawley, am 1 not? I daresay you have heard of me; my name is Llewellyn, and I have called for some property which I entrusted to your niece. It is, you see, the first of July.”

“Of course it is,” breathed Mrs. Rawley; seeing again, on that mysterious parcel of many vicissitudes, the written warning, “Not to be opened until July the first.”

“I have come all through the New Forest in this carriage, which I picked up quite extraordinarily cheaply at a village auction,” explained old Mr. Llewellyn, nodding towards that antediluvian barouche, drawn by that dappled inhabitant of some giant’s Noah’s Ark. “Driving by easy stages, I put up at country inns, subsisting on vegetables, clotted cream and fruit.” “It sounds a most delightful trip!” commented the duchess, beaming sociably.

“I enjoyed it,” said the old gentleman, taking his seat beside her and going on with his story as though he, and not she, were the guest of the afternoon. Quite well (it appeared from his talk) he remembered having given that string bag with that parcel into the hands of the young lady travelling from Wales to Paddington.—Miss Patricia Roberts. “Then you did read the various advertisements we inserted.”

“Certainly, I did. lam most obliged to you for all the trouble that you took.” He put his hand to the alpaca breastpocket and drew out a pocket-book of which the leather looked at least as old as the barouche. “You must permit me to pay for those advertisements. I cut out each as it appeared and have kept this account,” handing a paper, “which I think you will find correct?”

“But —might we know why we didn’t hear from you before, sir?” “Certainly. That is why 1 culled upon you. To explain everything about that apparently —only apparently! lost property.” M 1 will fetch it from my safe,” began Colonel Rawley, rising, but the old gentleman held up his hand. “A moment. One moment—”

“Really, this is all most thrilling,” pronounced the duchess. “I so hope it isn’t private?” She made no movement to rise, as she went on: “Perhaps I ought not to be here for the denoue“On the contrary, madam. The larger the audience,” observed the old eccentric, sweeping a bland, searching gaze over his full but oddly-mixed “house” of Victorian Survivals and Scandinavian athletes, “the more lucidly, I find, can one propound one's theories. But 1 should like the young lady herself to hear everything from the beginning.” “You mean my niece?” “Please, Mrs. Rawley. She is in the house ?” “Er—At the moment, Mr. Llewellyn “Nobody knows;” broke disconsolately from the Viking Karl Moller. “Yust everywhere vie have been looking for Miss Pat —” He made a sweeping gesture with his tennis racquet about that tun-steeped panorama of lawn, flower beds, screening elms —“and nowhere is she to be found!” “How like her!” murmured Victoria Stone-Steadwell. “How exactly like the sort of gyarl who always bursts in when she’s not wanted, to be missing at the precise moment when she should be here! What does she mean by it?” Pat's Aunts Victoria, Maud and Beatrice could hardly have looked more acrimonious had they guessed that Pat had fled to keep her tryst with Rupert Garfield.

CHAPTER XXXII. Rupert had chosen as try sting place “the field beyond the Hying field, under the duke's mulberry.” Now that ancient tree wus older than the court itself. Left to itself, that tree might have crumbled away into decay like one of last autumn’s toadstools. But it had been well looked after. A noble band of iron, strong as the binding of a huge barrel, encircled that mulberry’s girth. Certain branches which would otherwise have crashed were supported by props; others were braceletted with metal, shackled by chains to another band high up the great trunk. Where worm and weather had eaten holes in the trunk some treesurgeon had ministered with clay and cement, carefully as any dentist fills with gold the cavity in some precious tooth. So that the ancient mulberry still flourished vigorously, spreading about jt a vast oasis of shadow that fell half a dozen paces on all sides of it and beyond, the old rustic bench placed on one side close to the trunk. That bench, as well as the trunk, was covered with initials and dates cut in the wood. Inevitably, a heart or two framed an interlaced monogram. Rupert Garfield, as he sat there waiting for his love, was tracing with a brown forefinger the date 1834, just as a tall figure, luminous in strong sunlight, appeared in the field beyond. It sped towards him quickly as a ghost whose feet do not touch the earth. But this was no ghost, no ghost, but a girl whose yellow summer frock flickered about her lyric limbs in the breeze of her haste; a girl whose sun-Hushed face was one smile as the sight of him.

He was on liis feet; he met her and then they walked together over the glaring field of which all the borders quivered in the heat-haze. Together they walked to the mulberry; their united shadow flowing into it’s shadow. Together they sat down. Pat, suddenly unaccountably shy, found for her first words: “Where’s Unity? Will she be in for tea?”

Rupert, putting back his hatless head, laughed as though something amused him very much. Yet beyond the amusement there lurked something seriously important. For immediately he stopped.

“Unity,” he said, “will not be in for tea. She’s off with our Mr. Fitzroy.”

“Oh, is she,” Pat took up, as if she had only come up to the shadow of this tree in this empty field to hear how Unity proposed to spend the rest of Sunday. “With that rather sulky boy.”

“Sulky? You call him sulky. Pat, that youngster was merely wrapped up in something he had got on his mind.” “Oh?” (Pat thought how unbelievably odd. what other people will fall in love with! Unity, so devastatingly snappy and taking everything as a screaming joke, falling for that boy. That boy!) “Do you know—what he had on his mind ?”

“Yes,” said Rupert deliberately. “If you must know, he's trying to make the trip to Hongkong in an open Moth in under nine days.” “Hongkong? In that Moth?” Incredulously Pat lifted her head to stare infco the fleck’css, trackless blue. “But—but. Unity?”

“Flown too. Gone with him as his passenger,” reported Rupert, with his eyes on the lovely Clytie-profile backed by the tree trunk. “Unity? Flown too?” “She haß. In case of need she can take over. She got her A license last year.”

“I know. But —Unity never said a word except about all sorts of other things she vVanted to do this week-end.” “This trip down to Pinelands was the trail of the red herring. Unity didn't want her people to get wind of the venture before it was all fixed up. So they decided to push off from here. They were well away, those two, 23 minutes after I spoke to you at your window in the grey dawn.” “And now?”

“By now they’re —let's see—nearing Italy. U. said she’d probably send a message from Rome.” Pat, wide-eyed and with parted lips, sent a good luck message up from her heart into the blue sky where swallows swooped. Then her gaze dropped again to the man beside her; then quickly she looked away. He had edged aUittle further from her along the bench; lie was watching, unobtrusively watching every movement of that arrogantly bright sunflower head and harmonious young body. “But you, Rupert; where* were you all that time?” “Lying low. (Look at that rook! A lovely rifle shot.) They wanted at least half a day’s start accounted for before they were missed by a soul. The Pastons may be livid with me when they hear that I knew all along, and that I was aiding and abetting U. But those; two will be all right. They’ll pull iti off. Luck’s with them!” “Are they—” Pat began. Then she stopped. Then she went on, casually, “Are they frightfully keen? On each other, I mean.” Rupert, still looking at her, laughed, but could not make her look back at him. , “Last night I made the same mistake as you did. I thought Unity had suc-j cumbed to a sudden crush on that ladJ People cling, don’t they? to those obso-i lete notions ?” “Do they? I mean, they don’t—i Aren’t? That’s not why Unity’s flying with him?” :

Rupert shook-his head. “Unity’s as) logical as they make ’em. Should* thesei two pull it off, her name as well as will be all over London, all over Engand,| all over the world of aviation. When those two land back she’ll have such a scoop as never a dress designer in Lon-i don had yet. That’s 75 per cent of, what Unity’s after; the rest, good luck 1 to her, is the sheer fun of it. But as; for what young Percival Arthur is to! her—well, lie just opens the door to her •big chance!” “I see. What about him?” “Afraid his job will be his sweetheart for a long time yet. Rather. These hard-up young men don’t get engaged, you know, Pat,” said Rupert seriously and immediately he laughed out. He could read, signalled to him from the simple and ardent heart so near hirn, the message: “Oh, Rupert, do you m<?!tn that you are not well enough off to be engaged ? To me? After last night? After all, is this between us?” Rupert, out of pure mischievous masculine coquetry, and to see what his love would make of it, followed up this line: “I know plenty of fellow's who are that - way, Pat. Frightfully keen on some girl they can’t tell, because they haven't got a bean.” (To be continued daily.)