PAINTED BUTTERFLIES

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19134, 29 July 1930, Page 16

PAINTED BUTTERFLIES

[Published by Special Arrangement.]

By

MRS PATRICK MacGILL.

Author of lancers in the Dark,” “The Ukulele Girl,” “The Flame of Life,” etc., etc.

[Copyright.]

CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued). The change in the fresh, sunburnt, boyish personality was remarkable. In some intangible but definite fashion, Frank Yardley seemed to leave his boyishness behind him for ever that night. Ilis eyes were flashing, die lines of his face had grown harsh; even the angic of his jaw had become aggressive, while a wave of intense pity seemed to surge out from him and comfort Jennifer. But. though one side of her deplored the ill-timed action, the woman within exulted and gloried in the fierce, almost elemental passion of the man whose choice she had been out of all the women who had bloomed in the flower garden of his life. Those interested heard the crashing of breakers ahead as Frank Yardley, leaping to his feet, and flashing a smile round the tabic, getting tiic attention of them all, gave a little bow to his hostess and asked, “ Have I your permission to say something, Adela?” The pale blue eyes narrowed the merest trifle, and Adela Creighton experienced a strange, inexplicable unwillingness to let Frank have his say. He seemed all keyed-up, afire with some strong emotion that certainly did not owe its origin to his felldw-guests, nearly all of whom had been known to him since his boyhood. But she had no choice in the matter of giving a smiling permission for whatever it was that Frank wished to announce; so, with a smile that curved her lips but left her eyes cold, she said, “Certainly, Frank. We'd all love to hear whatever it is.” Every face round the long table, with the exception of that of Jennifer, her mother, Carlos Mayhew, and his hostess, was woven into the background of Frank Yardley’s life. Ilis mother and father were looking at him strangely, and both were a little pale and tight-lipped. Their outward composure when the bomb burst was an altogether gracious, kindly, and charming thing. “ As we are all here tc* honour Miss Lome, it seems a splendid opportunity of telling you that to-night she has | done me the honour of promising to be my wife.” Afterwards, Frank vov.ed that he could not in any way account for the sudden impulse that had caused him to jump up and make the announcement, but if he had been a worldfamous actor, timing the highest point of a drama, lie could not have better i succeeded in startling his hearers. Silence. Eighteen pairs of franklyamazed eyes—nineteen, if one included Saunderson’s fastened themselves ; upon Jennifer Lome, whose small, ex>quisite face had gone as pale as death itself. “Why? Why? Why? ” she kept asking herself, the word spinning round and round in her brain with the futility of a squirrel running around its cage. Sir Ralph Yardley was the first to rise to the occasion. With an apolo- | getic bow to Adela for leaving his seat, he rose, and going round to his son, first of ail shook hands with him, and then, before everybody, took Jennifer’s little cold face in both his hands, and kissed her on a cheek as soft as a baby’s, and as fresh. “Oh. you young moderns! ” he smilingly chided, as he gave the caress. Whatever she felt inwardly, Frank's mother behaved beautifully to Jennifer, in front of them all. “\cu were naughty children to spring it upon us like this, but then, from a boy, Frank has always loved surprising people,” the charming woman told those around her, who knew Frank as well as herself. Adela’s face was exactly as her but’iei later on described it to his fellow-ser-vants—faintly tinted with green. Her feeling of intense hatred against the ! girl who was sitting at her own table I was almost beyond human expression. In the first moment of shock, Adela Creighton felt as if everything that her world held of beauty and pleasure had come crashing down about her, like a flimsy doll’s house in the fierce breath of a hurricane. She stared, shaking in every limb, while her soul dwelt for a moment that seemed an eternity in the lowest hell. A dark curtain seemed to rise before her, and for the first time in all her selfcentred life, Adela Creighton looked upon the mysterious world of moral suffering, discerning at last the immensity of pain that can be represented by an infinitesimal space of time. “Congratulations to both of jmu Saunderson. bring some of the special champagne,” the wretched, heartsick girl heard her own voice ordering her butler. Then: “Here’s health, happiness, and success to both of you.” Those whom life had instructed in a true sense of values were touched and delighted by the sweet little romance which seemed so charming an accompaniment to the success of “Black Cargo.” “I have to leave town early to-mor-row morning, my dear. but Frank must arrange to bring you to Oversley—our place in the country—for the week-end. We can then have a little talk together, for this has been a tremendous—er— ” Lady Yardley bit back the word “blow” just in time—“a tremendous surprise to us,” she finished. About Lady Yardley’s face, voice and manner was something of the smoothness of polished marble, and Jennifer argued bitterly to herself that perhaps one could hardly expect them to be elated at the prospect of a match beween herself—a penniless girl with her way yet to make --and their only child, the son in whom lay ail their hopes. A marriage with the enormously wealthy and socially important Honourable Adela Creighton would have had their fervent blessing. That the rich Society girl was in love with Frank, Jennifer very well knew. What she did not know, for her essentially sane, loving nature was a stranger to such a destructive emotion, was the power of hate—the virulent hate of one woman who considers herself robbed of her lover by another. Verv soon after the announcement of Jennifer’s engagement, Mrs Lome had made an excuse to her hostess, and, escorted by Carlos Mayhew, had been bowled swiftly and smoothly home to the little house on Hampstead Heath which enshrined the greatest happiness that her life had ever known. “I suppose I ought to be as ’appy As a queen over Jennifer, Carlos,” Mrs l Lome confided to the strangely silent, unrelated young man by her side on their homeward way. “But. somehow, I’ve got a ’eavv 'eart, ’stead of a light, one. I don't like that there Miss Creighton. It was barefaced the way .she showed me up in front o’ them all, on purpose-like. I’ll take mv dving oath. Well, if she’s a sample of what a. society lady's like, give me a plain woman, that's all I’ve got to say. The young gentleman seems all right—l’ll say that for im—but even so, 1 wish Jennifer had fallen in love with some

nice, steady chap, without so much money and a title some day.” Carlos Mayhew said nothing, only looked straight in front of him, his dark, passionate eyes apparently absorbed in a single pink carnation which stood in a slim silver vase placed high on the opposite wall of the car. In reality his eyes were the mirrors of little flash-like pictures which kept coming and going in his brain. lie was seeing a dead man in a chair—a white, frightened slip of a girl with blue eyes —eyes that seemed to find some irresistible fascination in the hole torn fcy a bullet in the wall above the dead man’s head. “Oh, girlie, I’m so sorry I went and disgraced you like I did at that grand supper party Miss Creighton gave for you. I shouldn’t have gone. You piust have been ashamed of me, dear.” The contrition in the upSfet, quivering voice was a heart-rending thing. Like a flash, Jennifer’s arms were around her mother, her lips pressed to the trembling mouth, her young voice a thing of sheer beauty as she said, with that generous understanding which all her life was to make her beloved! “I am not ashamed of you, Mother, but of the woman who could have fallen so low as to invite you to her board and treat you in such a way. I am certain that was why Frank spoke up as he did—because he wanted to let everybody know that it was the mother of his future wife who was her victim. Darling, I’m so happy, say that you are, too. I shall not sleep unless I know that you are glad for Instead of answering her child directly, Jennifer’s mother dropped on her knees beside her child’s bed. Not since her childhood, when she had been teaching Jennifer to pray, had she done such a thing, and quietly, with a hushed feeling in her heart as if angels knelt beside them and joined them in their prayers, the young girl knelt beside her mother and sent her thank-offering up to the Throne of Grace.

CHAPTER XII. Madame Eiise looked up with a smile as Jennifer, dressed for dinner and the theatre afterwards, came into the din-ing-room, looking so radiant an embodiment of youth that she gave a little inward sigh—a thing that she rarely indulged in—for the days that were gone for ever, though in her case, the autumn was a decidedly attractive yield. Under her purity and culture and almost ethereal beauty of soul, Jennifer Lome was so warmly, vividly loving, so charmingly deferential without being obsequious, to older women. “You look exquisite, child, in that dull white satin and diamante—almost like a bride,” smiled the Frenchwoman, graciously. After the success of “Black Cargo," orders for designing had been fairly frequent with Jennifer, and it had been her employer's kindly suggestion that she should go to live with her in her smart, West End flat. “You can pay your share of the expenses, so long as you do not find them too heavy,” Madame Eiise told her with native shrewdness. “But you cannot create the right atmosphere for your work if you receive your clients in a little, out-of-the-way villa in Hampstead,” her employer told her, candidly. “My mother would not consent to giving up the house and the little girl whom she looks after. Faith has no mother, you see,” Jennifer explained, very sweetly and courteously. She did not want her employer to get the wrong impression, besides which, her mother had only worked out sixteen pounds of the money which she fondly believed Carlos Mayhew had advanced to her boy so that he could have his chance abroad. “No? Well, she must give up to you, my dear. I will speak to her about it. It is necessary for you to meet the right people,” Madame Eiise told her favourite. To herself she said, “It would be the best thing that one could do for that nice child—to take her away from her mother’s side.” Two days later, she was driving home in her Rolls-Royce, having been successful in persuading Mrs Lome, and, although she was not and had never been a mother, something in the stricken expression on the face of Jennifer’s mother must have pricked her conscience, for she told herself, half angrily, “Pah! It is the mother’s place only to give life, not to stand in the way of its progress! ” As the fiancee of Sir Ralph Yardley’s only son, Jennifer enjoyed quite a little .social triumph under the wing of her future mother-in-law, but there was far too much shrewd common sense in the bright brown head of Jennifer to allow herself to be swamped by society, and caught up in the whirl of mostly useless activities that occupied the girls of her own age who would have been quite willing to have admitted her to their exclusive circle had she wished. But, besides being genuinely interested in her work, Jennifer had her own pride.. She wanted to become well known for Frank's sake, and also, she was ambitious to make some money which she could invest for her mother, so that on the day of her marriage she could go to the altar knowing that she was provided for; that there would be no need for her husband to keep his wife’s mother. Jennifer looked like an artist’s dream come to life as she stood waiting in the little hall for Madame Eiise, who had gone to put on her cloak. Her voice was as bright and happy as a lark’s song on a summer morning as she picked up the telephone from the small table at her elbow and asked who was calling. The smile faded, along with the colour from the exquisite young face as the high, excited voice of Adela Creighton came to her ears saying; “I have something of the utmost urgency to see you about. I am downstairs in the hall, and the porter says he will bring me up to you at once.”

(To be Continued.)