1932-10-31 — Page 39

HANSI

(Coulinned from Page 21.1.

"Well, no," said Bertha, trying

to hide her surprise and embar rassment at this highly informal.. behaviour. "I don't believe it would be good for me. A great many people here do practice it, though. Of course, there aren't very many days in England when the sun is hot enough."

"Oh, but so good it is for everyone. Please come

here' where there is nobody but me "and Else and Lisl, and you try it. find you good place where you will be quite, quite alone. Two days only the gardener Is here.".

"Well," said Bertha, "I'll think about it."

"And now, please, it is such a nice day, perhaps you come out and have tea. My Else is there; I like you should see my Else."

"I'd love to," said Bertha, and followed her hostess into the bare little dining room and 'out through French windows into the somewhat unkempt garden.

The sight of Else in a tiny white bathing suit made her catch, her breath.

"What an exquisite child!" "She is nice.... Come here. bad girl, and say how do you, do to this lady."

The child ran to Bertha and seized her hand in both her tiny

олен.

"Tante Marie!" she shrilled. "Tante Marie! Tante Marie!"

"No, na. Liebchen, it is not Tante Marie. It is our neigh bour, Mrs. Tanner."

eried

the

"Tante Marie!" child, laughing excitedly.

"So funny that is," explained Hansi. "In Paris I have an Aunt Marie, and it is true that she look like you a little. Please do not mind. She is so nice lady, and, handsome too. I love her, and Else love her. She will love you because you look like her."

"Call me Aunt Bertha," said that lady impulsively, but the child continued to dance about her. laughing and saying, Tante 'Marie, Tante Marie."

"No, silly one, it is Tante Berthe." insisted. Hanni, and eventually Else kissed Bertha, on the cheek and called her, with much laughter, "Tante Berthe."

Satisfaction and dread filled Bertha's heart. Never had she been made to feel more quickly at her case-but 30. probably, would Frank be made to feel. Never had she felt herself to be accepted so completely as hy these two delightful beings-but so, probably, would they accept -Frank. Hanai, still wrapped in her white toweling, poured out the tea and talked to Bertha about her childhood, about her. life in Vienna, about her mar- ringe.

"My mother, she never liked Geoffry," she said, "but bad girl. I was. I didn't listen."

Bertha was completely charm- ed. Hansi was no respecter of age, and talked to Bertha as she might have talked to a contem

and the middle-aged porary, woman loved it. When she got up to go, Hansi went with her to the gate, and after accepting an invitation to dine at". The Copse on Saturday, said, laugh- ing and showing her pretty,

CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS NUMBER.

By Susan Ertz

white teeth:

"Good-by, Tante Berthe" When Bertha reached home, Frank appeared with almost suspicious promptness," and said:

"Well, what

was she like to How did you get on?"

a

Bertha settled herself in comfortable chair, as she always did when she had a tale to tell, and gave him a lengthy descrip- tion of her visit.

"And, darling," she said final- ly. "she's coming here to dinner. on Saturday evening, and I thought we'd ask the Speeders and the Lessingfords as welk" I think you'll admire her, though, of course, she's

very young-ne, only twenty-two-and I know. you like rather

more matured women.

But she is quite charm- ing, and the little Else's ador- able. What do you think?" They called me

And then, she stopped and thought: "Tante? Tante? Had better tell him that? It's all right for the child to have called me that, but for the girl? No, I don't think so." And she amended it: "They called me Berthe. That's French for Bertha: And I called her Hunsi."

"Hansi?" said Frank. "Hansi:" And for the rest of the day. It seemed to him that a reiterative bird took up its abode in his head and, kept uttering the word, "Hanai," 80 loudly that he thought anyone must hear it,

Hansi came and dined and con- quered. First at the Speeders',.. then at the Tanners, then at the Lessingfords'. At first the" wo- men were loud in their admírá- tions, busy in their praises, but then, as they found that their admiration appeared pale beside that of the three men, and their fluous, they began to withdraw. praises became wholly super-

a little, to recant, to find faults where before they had seen only... perfections.

Presently Vanessa alone of the three women kept

up her friendly attitude. She went to The Birches to talk German with Hansi, or asked Hansi to Blythe- wood to take English lessons from her. Sometimes they took walks together. Margaret had Laken Else under her wing and the two were inseparable. "out there were soon no more dinner parties, no more invitations for. the evening.

There was not the slightest doubt that all three men were, in their different ways, completely fascinated. The silent Tanner was perhaps the most violently and painfully attracted. Bertha soon noticed how the grass was' worn down into a little track leading across the lawn of The Copse to a gap in the hedge of The Birches. Hansi was the

very embodiment, the perfect

Bertha

epitome of everything Tanner admired, and knew it. She resembled, but ex- ceeded in loveliness, all the girls at whose pictures he looked no wistfully in the magazines of the fim and stage, and of the Ger man nature-culture magazines, he sometimes smuggled into the house for their photographic. atudies of beautiful and bealthy German girls by lake or ses or forest: The first night that

at he

1

met her, he knew himself to be her prisoner. She wore tightly fitting, scanty, but, per- fectly cut blue satin dress. She seemed to all three of the men the very spirit of all the gay and charming heroines of the Viennese "light operas. She was the very spirit of the Johann Strauss waltzes. And she could even play them.

Only Frank

Tanner

Was furtive about it. He would slip away to The Birches, and return, if he could, unobserved. Charles Speeder and Sam Lessingford made no secret of their visits," but went frequently and openly, and

even unashamedly to see her. Bertha hoped that, the ar rival of the new saddle horse would divert Frank's thoughts. But he had only been riding it for ten days when Hansi, too, a- eided to ride, and a quite pre- sentable hack was brought to, her every morning from the livery stable in Maddingly: Then. Hansi and Frank and the boy, Julius, would go gayly off to: gether. It was not to be bornes

Only Vanessa remained loyal. Hansi was an enchanting creature, dowered-and that was no fault- of hers with every charm, and the fact that Charles, like Sam and Frank. had quite obviously", fallen in love with her altered nothing. Her complete natural- ness and gayety, her acceptance of life and any pleasant thing it might bring, her delightful animal spirits, were irresistible; and Vanessa took all this into ac- count, and strove to discipline her thoughts and feelings. She was sorry for Bertha, she was even sorry for Edna, but she re- solutely refused to be sorry for herself.

Bertha was the first to revolt and retaliate, and the weapons she employed were those that, *ituated as she was, lay most readily at hand. She knew only too well that tears and scenes were useless. She would make herself repulsive and ridiculous, and cause Frank to say things-to her that she might never be able to forget when the longed-for time came that her quivering nerves cried out for, when both would wish to forget.

Firmly, regretfully, she cut down his allowance to one third its former size,

"You so seldom wish to go to London nowadays," she said. And a few days later

a horse dealer appeared.

"What's he want?" Frank.

asked

"He's going to make an offer for Swallow, dear," she said quietly. "I'm afraid I find him, too expensive to keep.".

Frank said nothing at all. He understood perfectly, and she knew he did.

At the Lessingfords' things were not much better: Sam's been dull, uneventful except for life had for many years past financial disasters and disap

pointing. He had hoped fo children.

He had boasted that by the time he was forty-five he'd be able to retire and enjoy an expensive leisure. He was now forty-seven, and hard pressed for money. He 'occasionally. lunched in London with some charmer without men- tioning the fact to Edna, but shortage of money kept him from

the kind of indiscretions in which some of his luckier associates

here, at his very: door, was the were apt to indulge. And now, perfect inspiration of all the in- discretions of which he had ever 'dreamed. Hansi was foreign, she. belonged to a world he couldn't even visualise, she seemed un- tarnished and untouched by the world he knew. She had no routs there; no roots, it seemed, any- where. She didn't own that house she, lived in, she had few posses-. sions, she hadn't even a husband→→ and from matrimony-she had she was freeing herself from him" only that fairy child, Else, and. the strong, devoted Lisl. She pos- sessed for the dull and disappoint-

ed man

all the heartbreaking loveliness of dear and transient things. Had he been able to put his feelings into words, he might have said that she was the musi that delights the rapt cur and, at the very moment of enchantment. dies upon the air.

And an awareness of all this was turning Edna into a shrew, a wildcat, a devil. She wanted to punish him and could think of no way that would not cut her own throat as well as his. She felt reduced, shabby, put aside. When he went to The Birches with some little toy for Else that he had bought in the City, she would sulk and refuse to speak to him. Or she pictured to herself" passionate scenes in which Sam, turned sud- denly into Don Juan, surpassed ́ull the-love-making of screen or stage. She wore herself out with tears and reproaches, and Sam-who had nothing more to confess .or hide than the fact that Hansi had once laid her open palm lightly on his bald patch-treated these with anconcealed. impatience, Poor Edna was weaponless, penniless, anguished, humiliated. She had, she finally decided, only one re- course, only one answer-she took to her bed; she "went sick."

At Blythewood, though Charles freely admitted that he couldn't get Hansi out of his head, things were somewhat better. Vanessa tried to keep her sense of humour- and Charles' confidence.

"I always supposed

one of us would go through this some time," she said, "and in a way I'm glad It's you."

"I'm glad it's me too," he said, "because I know exactly what's going on in my own head, and I might not have known what was going on in yours."

"How bad is it, Charles?” "I don't quite know," he said. That is, I know what I feel about her, but I don't know precisely ..how far it's gone, or how much I' 'should be upset and made unhappy if she were to die, or go away."

"And what, exactly, do you feel about her?!

"I supposed it's partly her" de-. lightful accent," said Charles and partly her oddly quickly in- thoughtfully, "that attracts me. telligence; partly, of course-oh, 80 per cent. if you like her extra- ordinary physical charm and her youth and frankness. And there's; her background-which I happen to know well, and to be fond of I know the very street in Vienna where she was bern. I know all the lovely places in the hills that she knows. When she talks to: Else in German, I-well, she sim- (Continued on Page as.)