THE LOVE FLIGHT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11865, 4 November 1935, Page 4

THE LOVE FLIGHT

QJnuiimmnminimaiminimiiiiiiii iiitiiiiimniitutitiiitimin Anne Austin drew back into the shadows. She had meant to stop a bit farther on where moon-silver, sifting through the trees, would provide just the right light for the fluttering of her white gowu. Anne had studied effects long enough to make the most of'whatever nature and the arts provide.

Nature, : lavish with pines and silver birch, provided an unbelievably lovely setting for this boathouse perched high on a bluff overlooking a mountain lake. , Anne had taken care of the art, and the artifice too. It was her purpose to constitute herself the most brilliant, the most desirable jewel in the setting. Accomplishment was within her grasp. Craig Braden’s hand had closed over hers on the balcony rail. He was leaning so close that he caught the scent of her hair - and Anne was aware of the danger to men of such . proximity. If Craig Braden proposed to her to-night, or within the next two days when the house party would break into its component parts and go rolling merrily away in search of other exciting settings, she, Anne Austin, would be the crown jewel of the season. She would glitter on society pages. She would sparkle in those exclusive and elusive haunts where society congeals. She would be the envy of the girls in her set. the despair of their mothers.

Craig Braden was better than a catch. He was a positive treasuretrove of everything the reckless, restless, thrill-chasing young women of Mayfair and of its more democratic neighbour, Broadway, dreamed.

Money. Position. Power. Here was the triumvirate which brought the bright butterflies of frivolity and of fashion to flutter their wings before the tired eyes of the bored young man whose boast was that he had seen everything and done most of it.

During and immediately following his college days, a surprisinjg number of butterflies, varying all the way from the modest grey moth to the gorgeous purple creature that lives its life in night-gardens, had captured the fancy of Craig Braden; None had entangled his heart. It was common report that none had so much as brushed his heart with the tips of its wings. Then—along came Anne. She was rather moth-like at the time, her usually gay tones having been subdued a few-months earlier by one of those untoward "accidents” which followed the ’quake and the razing of the houses of Midas in Wall Street.

Edward Chalfont Austin, Anne’s father, had used a pistol to remove himself from a most embarrassing situation. To his only daughter, now entirely orphaned, he left nothing more than a memory of the fortune they had lavished on living, a memory further tarnished by his lack of courage in the face of failure.

The story given to the public was that Edward Chalfont Austin, banker and broker, examining a gun he kept for protection in his Wall street offices, accidentally pressed the trigger with fatal result. A few days later came news of the embarrassing, situation in the Austin finance. “Pshaw, ’’ said the public, "Austin was a coward. He couldn’t take it. He was wiped out, so he wiped himself out.”

That part of the world in which the Austins had lavished, was so terrified by the report it almost forgot to make its gestures of sympathy. Death and destruction. Everywhere, No exemptions. The seats of the mighty rocking. To-day it !was Austin. Who knew who it would be to-morrow, or the next day. or the next?

' We must do something for poor Anne,” the matrons of the mighty murmured. And. then forgot both Anne and what it was they meant to do. A few 1 remembered long enough to extend an occasional Invitation. It was on one such occasion, a small week-end gathering at an estate in Westchester, that Anne became a definite entity in the consciousness of Craig Braden, They had met before, but,the man’s vision had been, so, distorted by the Kleig lights. or had been so blurred by in diligence that Anne bad failed to register. ; time his gaze was arrested by the girl in grey. Her voice reminded him of a cello, muted, with a sob In its strings. His gaze held until a flush mantled under the girl’s pale cheeks. But her dark eyes, cool and steady, ! did not waver. He liked her for that. Women he met started cooing when he showed them marked attention, 'T’ve seen you some place,” Braden said, obviously puzzled either by the face itself or by its power to hold him.

■ "Perhaps,” Anne said, and gave "him the ghost of a smile. “I used to get about quite a lot.” Braden took possession of the pale girl's arm. , From that moment until her guests were saying their farewells, .the hostess was busy devising ways to lure “dear Craig” from the side of a menace she had not even considered. That Austin chit,, of all people! The hostess had asked Anne only because at the last moment a really desirable girl sent regrets, and she felt she ought to do something for Ned Austin’s daughter. She had Intended; Craig for herself. The Austin minx had practically chained bim to her side.. Well, that was an end, so far as she was concerned, to any foolish sentimentality about Ned Austin’s daughter. Let the girl fend for herself. She seemed well able to do so.

Shortly after the week-end ing in Westchester word was flash-' ed along the grape vine system of social secretaries to the elect that in order to get Craig Braden one must first Invite and secure the acceptance of Anne” Austin. As Miss Austin was in partial mourning, only small and informal affairs could he considered. Amazing, the numbers of mothers with marriagable daughters who suddenly decided to confine'their social, activities to and informal affairs, _ -

Craig Braden did everything except inaugurate a Braden hour on the radio for the purpose of broadcasting to the world the fact that he considered Anne Austin the pick of the crop of girls he had met, or ever expected to meet, “How does .she do it?" women asked one another. “She’s clever, of course, brains and all that, but Craig has affected to despise cleverness in women. He boasts that he likes them beautiful and dumb/’ Opinion generally seemed to be that roayhe Anne was not clever. Maybe she Just pretended cleverness. But even though she might be clever, she certainly was no first liue beauty. Considerably above average, of course. Gold - glints in her light brown hair. And didn’t she know how to make the most of any lurking glint, too, by tumbling her . hair about her head in,a kind of studied disarray! Dark eyes with something of the oriental la them* An 'upward tilt

By JANE DIXON

"WORK!" she said. (To-bo continued.^

iimiimmiiiiinni.tiimmuiatiimmiiiiiumiHmmHmnHnaQ) to her npse, an upward curve to her lips. As to the curves of her figure, even though they were delicate, still they were curves. The fashion was for girls in shorts to be mistaken for their brothers. .

Now the summer season was drawing to a close. Already the silver birch had begun to shake out the ruffles of their autumn finery. Gossamer veils of crystal glistened along the paths and on the roofs of Adirondack and Berkshire camps in the early morning.

A dozen, two dozen times during the last month, Craig Braden would have proposed to her, Anne knew, had she not been adroit enough to manoeuvre him into a position where a declaration of love seemed Why did she postpone the moment which meant for her a return to the- lavish days when money was something a teller drew out of the bottomless well and handed to her on demand? For almost a year now she had been a pensioner, living on the bounty of others, refurbishing her wardrobe with this and that makeshift to give it the air of being in the mode.

When she returned to town she would have less than three hundred dollars left of the pittance she had been able to salvage from the wreck of the Austin fortune, three hundred dollars? She turned her head so that her lips all but touched those of the man bending so close to her. She felt his hand over hers tighten its clasp. His arm was about her, drawing her close. His breath was hot on her cheek.

Craig,” she said faintly, raisingher free hand to her head and blocking his closer grasp with her elbow, “I—l—my head’s in a whirl. Get me a glass of wine, will you—or water—or ice, anything so it’s cold. I think I'm going to draw a blank.” “Dearest, hold-on—you’ll be all right in a minute.” Craig Braden picked up her bodily and deposited her in a deck chair farther back m the shadows. “I can’t leave you this way. Let us call a man to bring you a good stiff shot of brandy. That ought to brace you up,” “No please.” Anne pleaded. The man would be sure to make a fuss. All the others would come charging out. “I feel better already, but Ido crave something cool. Get it for me, there’s a lamb. Long and cool, in an iced glass.”

_ “It’s those infernal cocktails Bruno Beasley’s been shaking up all evening,” Braden growled. - "Worse than shell shock. I’ll run for a brandy and soda if you’ll promise not to do a fade-out while I’m gone.” “Brandy and soda, with a big lump of ice,” Anne said. "I’m almost normar now, or I will be as soon as you bring the ice. We’ll put it in your kerchief and park it on top of my head. Please go, Craig, now and step on it.”

He obeyed, scudding across the verandah toward the old-fashioned bar that was the pride and joy of the host. At a speed no one who knew ! Craig Braden would have believed he would essay, whether, pursued by all the furies or by Satan himself. Anne waited until he had disappeared through the French doors. •Instantly, then, she was on her feet, flitting through the darkness at the edge of the verandah. Down the steps, of logs, hand hewn, along the path of pine needles to an oasis of light where a dozen cars were parked, their drivers Idling on a bench, under the birches.

"Dennis!” Anne called toward the bench, lowering her voice so that it would not carry to the boathouse. ‘Yes, Miss.” A figure stepped out from the birches and raised its hand to the visor of a cap. ■ Drive me to Glen Arden at once, please.” Glen Arden was the summer palace the Beasleys called a camp. . It was here Anne had come, a week earlier, on a house party that Bruno Beasley boasted was to make house-party history, Bruno’s boast, Anne found, was no idle one. Bruno had almost as much imagination as he had money and what he lacked by way of originality and daring Mrs Bruno supplied. It had been a week of such mad flights, of such fantastic flurries that Anne was. sure ho sane person would believe it could have happened. There were times when she could not believe it herself, 1 But Craig Braden was never farther from her side than her hand could reach, alert to protect her from the major insanities.

‘Yes, Miss.” The figure Anne addressed as Dennis walked toward a long lean car, parked at the entrance to the circle.

"Keep the engine as quiet as you can, please, Dennis,” Anne instructed, whisking the car door while Dennis stood at attention. "I don’t want the others to know I’ve gone. It might disturb the party. Get me to Gren Arden as quickly as you can. Then come back and explain to Mr Braden that I felt ill and thought it better to get to the house at once.” “Very well. Miss.”

- The, car slipped out of the circle and wound its way among the pines as noiselessly as a woods animal foraging. Five, ten, fifteen minutes and Anne sauntered across the terrace of Glen Arden, careful not to attract the attention of any guests who might be loitering, fled up the broad stairs to her room; closed the door behind her , turned the key, and collapsed ,on a chaise longue. “Why did I do it?” she cried, stifling her voice against the pillows. "Why did I run from him? If he had kissed me I’d have screamed, or beat my : fists against his chest,, or dug my nails into his cheeks—along the Jaws where they sag---oh, why can’t rbe reasonable! Why can't I take him? The others would, any one of them. They’d take him and grovel for the chance. I’ve lost him. He’ll never come hack. Never. He’ll know the faint was a fake. He’ll be furious.- The others will take their lead from him. I’ll be dropped completely and they’ll be cruel about it, too. It*s finished, unless- f> ,

Wasn’t there some way she-might explain her flight to Graig? Tell him she felt queer after he left, and when her mind cleared she was in her room at Glen Arden. That would do. It was easy to accept what one wanted to believe. Craig would be a willing victim for her white lie. She d-write a note and dispatch It to the boathouse.' He’d come ,to , ‘B° what?’’ Anne,’ asking,, staring at herself wide-eyed and dishevelled m a mirror. “He’ll take me in his arms—his lips on mine— No J” AbrupUy she rose. Flung, her. arms beforeher as though she were wardhorror. She. was laughing fl S i ten J a l ly ', “Ican’t take it. I'm a tool, A fool'and a pauper.” She steadied herself before the mirror addressing, the White-faced, feverish woman who confronted her T . he f. e only two things yoii can do, she told, the woman. “You can be a reasonable human being and marry ciwig Braden, or. you can be a silly, little, fool and go to work.’’ . The white-faced woman gazed eyes ** AnDe with Btead y unwinking