Painted Butterflies

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 980, 24 May 1930, Page 22

Painted Butterflies

Published by Special Arrangement

By

Mrs PATRICK MacGILL

Author oi “ Dancers in the Dark. ' The L'kelel* GirL’ " The Flame oi Life ” etc etc

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS CHAPTERS I and ll.—Jennifer Lome, fashion artist at "Elise, Ltd. ’, is sent tor by Madame. She has only come for a month on trial, and fears dismissal. She is small, pretty and popular. Maddame informs Jennifer that Miss Russell, their smallest mannequin, has had to go home ill. Would Miss Lome be willing to take this mannequin's place

and show Miss Creighton’s dress at her house at five o’clock that afternoon. Jennifer consents gladly. She taxies to Chester Square. The butler doubts whether his young mistress will see Miss Lome. She has sprained her ankie and will not be able to show off her new frock at the ball tonight. Miss Creighton sends for Miss Lome. Jennifer finds; her in a luxurious boudoir, nursing her ankle. Pier uncle. James Read, and a young man wick whom she is in love, are with her. His name is Frank Yardley. He is the son of Sir Ralph Yardley, Bart. Adela Creighton orders Jennifer to go into her dressing-room to put on the new dress. She obeys and emerges in a black gauze frock covered with hundreds of painted butterflies, grouped in their natural order. Enormous butterfly wings spring from her shoulders. She holds a bulb in each hand, and, when the lights are turned off. Jennifer presses these. Hundreds of tiny lights spring out all over the frock. Adela is certain it would win the diamond bangle if it were exhibited, and, being crippled herself, she wishes Miss Lome to act for her. Jennifer promises to be at the h a R at 11 p.m. Arrived at home in Camden Town Jennifer finds her brother Jack grousing as usual. _ . ,

CHAPTERS 11. and IV—Adele. Creighton is in her box at the ball in spite of the ankle. At eleven the exhibition of frocks takes place. When No. 14 is called, Jennifer steps forward. “Painted Butterflies,” as the dress is called, takes the first prize. Frank Yardley goes in search of Jennifer. He means to dance with her, but she has gone. James Read insists on taking her home in his motor. Half-way there he catches her in his arms and rains kisses on her face and npck. The car stops; home is reached, and Jennifer escapes into the house. Pier brother Jack is sitting up for her. He is in the depths, and acknpwledges to his sister that he has been indulging in petty piUerings from his firm until the sum of £2OO has been reached. If he does not find this sum by tomorrow evening, five o’clock, he will be arrested. Jennifer promises to do what she can. At eight-thirty the following morning she rings up James Read’s private house. When he replies she asks for an interview. He gives her an address in a street off Earl’s Court, at 9.30. She goes straight there, and James Read opens the door and takes her into what appears to be a sitting-room. She has to tell him what she wants the £2OO for, and also gives her word to pay it back. Pie makes out a cheque for the amount and she gives him an 1.0. U. CHAPTER V.—Almost the same moment that Jennifer Lome takes the cheque, a young man enters, threatens James Read, and fires. The bullet is embedded in the wall just above James Read's head, but the elderly man s heart is weak, and he succumbs to the shock. The young man seizes Jennifer by the arm, and together they reach the street. In a restaurant they drink tea, and the man sees the cheque that Jennifer has dropped. He asks for particulars, and she tells for the second time the story of her brother’s defalcations. He tells her to give him the cheque and he will give her one for the same amount. rte takes her to the Tube station and to his own home in Hampstead. They reach the little villa, and May hew invites her to enter. In the f , ront room he snatches up a framed photograph of a young man and smashes it with his heel. Recovering the cardboard, he kisses it passionately. Then he tells Jennifer that his young wife had Played him false with James Read, and before she died she had confessed. He gives her a short account of his life aa d9“'“ cumstances. He has a baby now with his sister-m-law. When ne discovers Jennifer’s home circumstances he makes his proposal: that Mrs. Lome should come to his home and act as ms housekeeper and look after his motherlesschild. He makes a business offer Jennifer. She also is to come to Hampstead.

CHAPTER VIII. “You are a lucky dog, Jennifer! Wish. I’d done a bit more starving so that I could have shown ‘Painted Butterflies’ tor the Hon. Adela. You 11 get a rise, sure thing, and it s always lolly good business to be taken up bv a rich client, so play your cards well, old girl. Ta-ta. All the best, said Claudine Peters, Jennifers favourite among her colleagues. The combination of intelligence, and an honestly sympathetic heart, form a strong force for sadness in the individual life, whatever theorists assert to the contrary, and Jennifer's face was so altered that Adela Creighton’s butler looked genuinely concerned when he opened the door to her punctually on the stroke of five. Alarm beat up in Jennifer in little waves; alarm that she tried in vain to still as she followed Adela Creighton’s butler up the nobly-planned staircase of Uer house to the room where a few days previously she had shown “Painted Butterflies.” She was frightened, but she flung out a challenge to her fear, and conquered it directly the bored, petulant voice from within bade her “Come in.” Adela Creighton was lying among a pile of coloured silk cushions, just as Jennifer had first seen her with her injured ankle resting on a tiny, satin-covered stool that had been placed at a convenient distance on the low divan. She was wearing a filmy black chiffon negligee, through which her pure white skin gleamed with an enticing sheen. Pearls of a size, quality and shape that Jenniter had never before seen—like small, perfect olives—hung softly down upon the breast that contracted swiftly, sharply, as if with sudden emotion, as Jennifer came into the room.

The rich girl—richer now by reason of her uncle’s death —did not immediately reply to Jennifer’s civii greeting; did not immediately ask her to sit down, and Jennifer remained where she was, feeling exactly as the arrogant, selfish, subconsciously jealous society girl intended that she should feel. “Oh, mj- wretched ankle! Sit down, please, Miss —er .” Knowing the name perfectly well since the bearer of it had been in her mind ever since the night of the ball, Adela Creighton yet conveyed the unflattering impression that, meaning nothing to her, it had escaped her memory. “My name is Jennifer Lome,” said Jennifer in the low. unhurried, charming voice that, was one of her most delightful attributes. A quick frown passed over the dolllike little face of the girl on the couch. This dressmaker's girl had everything, looks, talent, charm even, an exquisite voice! For all the lessons in voice production that Adela Creighton had had from the most famous teachers of the day, it was impossible for them to replace her own voice with another. The most that they had been able to do was to improve the slightly nasal, none too pleasant quality- of the voice that was Nature’s gift. “Oh, yes, Miss Lome,” acknowledged Adela Creighton, with a bare nod. Shifting herself round and resting on one white, dimpled elbow, she

said, with a very direct stare. “My late uncle's chauffeur was here this morning, and he told me that he drove you to some street in Camden Town after the Duchess of Vardon’s ball on Monday.” Jennifer’s dark blue eyes met the china blue gaze of her questioner without flinching, and there was no change of expression on her pale young face as she answered, readily enough, “Quite right, Miss Creighton. Your uncle was kind enough to drive me home. It was raining hard, there were no buses, and no taxis to be had,” Jennifer explained, simply.

Inwardly, she was filled with a sharp, white fear. Adela Creighton had the air of suspecting something, ■and that which she suspected was a thing to hate, to hound down to the ultimate depths. So it appeared to Jennifer, who was still greatly overwrought, her imagination still apt to contort and magnify every-thing connected with her hideous experience. The society girl’s next words confirmed her feverish belief that she was under a cloud of suspicion. “Did anything happen between you and my uncle? I mean,” hastily explaining herself, lest Jennifer should misconstrue her, “the chauffeur said that when he opened door of the car to Set you get out, my uncle seemed greatly annoyed and upset about something. Was it any-thing that y-ou had said?” ■ Jennifer had no intention of “giving herself away,” and yet, with that coldly-sneering face looking into hers, the peculiarly expressionless eyes probing into her very soul, she became filled with an alarm that almost prevented her chilled lips from framing the denial that was necessary if she would preserve her secret and save from disgrace all those who were within it.

“No, nothing disturbing of any- description passed between us,” said Jennifer, and somehow, she felt utterly degraded in her own eyes as she told the lie, and all her fierce, clean, white young honesty rose up in revolt and the longing to confess—confess, and feel clean —became so strong that the rein she was placing upon herself showed in the white, tautened face, bringing about the very issue that Jennifer w-as perjuring herself to avoid. Adela Creighton suspected her from that moment, although much was to happen in the drama that life was forcing upon them, before she obtained verification of her suspicions. Jennifer became increasingly conscious of an aching, passionate need to get away from this relative of the man whose dead body, huddled in one of his own chairs, had been before her mental eyes, ever since the morning of the tragedy. Suddenly the telephone beside the society girl’s elbow shrilled for attention, and Jennifer’s face lightened as she got up to go. But Adela Creighton put out a white, imperious hand, motioning her to stay, and knowing in what regard she was held by Madame Elise, Jennifer dared not disobey. The expression of the hard, beautiful face softened miraculously as the identity of the caller was announced by the butler from the hall. “Mr. Yardley, did you say? Oh, yes! Yes, er— —” Adela Creighton swung her flushed, softened, radiant face round to Jennifer, who again got up, interpreting the look as a sign that the interview was ended. But suddenly the radiance faded from the beautiful face, to be replaced by a look of cunning. The temptation to see how the man she loved reacted to this dressmaker’s girl, ■whether there had been anything in his anxiety on her behalf at the ball the other night, proved too much for the girl whose complete egotism had, up to the present, been encouraged rather than repressed by life. “Please stay another few minutes. It’s only Mr. Yardley. You met him here the other day,” she informed Jennifer, unnecessarily. Frank Yardley’s first words when he was shown into the room after greeting the invalid, were, “I’m so glad you haven’t gone, Miss Lome. They told me at your office that I should find you here.”

CHAPTER IX. There was an essential simplicity, a lovable, rather boyish quality about everything that Frank Yardley said and did. At public school and university, bis skill at games, complete lack of “side,” and seeming incapacity for saying anything that he did repeated in a social sense. Frank Yardley was a young man much sought after by hostesses with and without daughters, and the girls themselves certainly made no attempt to disguise their feelings, some, among whom was Adela Creighton, making themselves quite noticeable in their conduct. In all Adela Creighton’s conventional, well-ordered, moneyed life, she had experienced no emotion like this. It seemed to tear down all the artifice

with which her life was surrounded, leaving her free to see her angry, seething whirlpool of a heart exactly as it was.

The past was nothing; wealth, social power, was nothing; she wanted only that Frank should turn to her with that flame in his eyes that she had never yet beheld. Deeply unhappy, burning with resentment that Frank Yardley should openly admit that the object of his visit to herself was merely for the purpose of following this casually met girl, Adela Creighton’s emotions toward Jennifer erystallised into definite hatred, the foundation of which was Fear —that primitive fear of a rival for possession of the beloved, -which" began -with Creation’s dawn and has persisted, unchanged, through aeons of time and countless civilisations. She hated Jennifer; site hated the calm, exquisite stillness which yet gave an impression of warmth, of a closeness to the commonplace, and a revelling therein, instead of the aloof, lofty contempt which had once caused a servant of her own to give in her notice in a fit of temper, stating as her reason that “she -was flesh and blood, she -was same as ’erself, and not a bit of dirt to be treated as such.”

She regretted allowing Jennifer to stay, but she could hardly interfere and send the girl away now. Frank was talking to her in his quick, eager, pleasant fashion, frequently flashing his white teeth in the smile that she she —loved!

“You know, I've got a pal who has just got into the theatrical swim,” he was saying to Jennifer; just as if she were one of themselves, the girl lying op. the divan told herself indignantly. Jennifer did not “know-,” but she smiled, and said “Oh, yes,” and waited politely attentive. . Somehow, since the entry of Frank Yardley into the room, a tremendous peace had descended upon her, wrapping her round in its healing folds like a beautiful garment. She no longer felt afraid; at least, the terror of the animal with the hunter immediately behind was no longer hers. She gave smile for smile, and behind the composed mask that was her face, Adela noted the signs of Frank Yardley’s growing interest in this little “nobody,” as she was pleased to designate a highly intelligent, beautiful and innately gracious girl, whose greatest power was that of loving, and whose only wish was to serve those who possessed her love and save them from sadness. “This chap—Reggie Dawnley s his name—is putting on his own play, and wants somebody to design some original frocks for it.”

“Yes?” Jennifer’s mobile little face had lost its deathly whiteness. She was flushed, eager, animated. What this nice boy seemed about to propose was the realisation of a long-cherished dream .—to be a famous theatrical designer was tile pinnacle of Jennifer’s hopes!

“But . . . this is the snag in it . . . lie’s only got a certain amount of money to play with, and he couldn t pay much for the job.” “I’d do it for nothing!” promptly offered Jennifer. “It would not be a question of money, but whether I’d be good enough,” she added, modestly. Frank Yardley did not make the blunder of assuring Jennifer that her work would be bound to please his friend. His sensible comment was, “You could try, couldn’t you? Your inexperience would be part of the scheme for the whole production. It’s a first play, with a new producer, a new leadeing lady, and even a new theatre. It’s to be the opening piece at the ‘Perseus,’ the new theatre in the Haymarket that will be finished next month. Whether the venture succeeds or fails, there is a big advertisement in it,” said Frank Yardley. in the kindly, encouraging way that people who knew the family always said he had inherited from his father. Jennifer’s face dimpled and sparkled and shone like that of a happy child. Gone, momentarily, was her burden of care; she was youth insurgent, and the clean, virile, splendid youth of the man talking to her rushed to meet her own.

He talked on, quickly, enthusiastically, genuinely pleased that Jennifer inclined favourably toward his proposition, and the heart-sick girl on the couch felt in some indefinable way shut out from their gaiety, their jolly plans, their apparent unity. Suddenly Frank Yardley looked at liis wrist watch and exclaimed, “By jove, it’s later than I thought! Six o’clock. I say,”—as a sudden idea seemed to strike him--—“I suppose you wouldn’t like to come along and talk to Reg about it now, would you? The provisional casting has been done, and the first reading of ‘Black Cargo’ will take place at seven o’clock in the billiards-room of the ‘Skinner’s Arms.’ down Chelsea way. You would get a good idea of what it is all about. Wbat do you say?” “I say—splendid!” replied Jennifer whose eyes looked as if all the sunbeams in the world had come to play “Hide and Seek” in their deep blue depths. Adela Creighton’s voice was not one of her good points at any time, but as Frank Yardley got up to say

“Goodbye,” sound crashed hideously from her lips, sound that temporarily destroyed the lovely outline of her face. “Frank! Not even to give me the chance of saying ‘No thank you,’ to a thrill like a new play being read for the first time,” she reproached, looking directly at the man she loved so hopelessly, and entirely ignoring Jennifer. “Oh, well, your foot—” began Frank Yardley, with what should have been perfectly natural justification. But file delicate, china-like little creature in the filmy black gown laughed at the idea. “If I am carried in and out I shall be perfectly all right,” Adela Creighton assured him, with a pretty, appealing emphasis. “But it -will take too long for you to get fixed up and —” The situation was saved by the telephone again ringing. “Lord Carmell? Oh yes, he can come up,” Jennifer and Frank Yardley heard their hostess say, with outward graciousness, but, had they known it, an inward fury. “We’ll get a taxi off the rank and walk a little way, shall we?” asked Frank, turning to Jennifer and hesitating a moment for her reply. “Yes, it’s a beautiful evening.” smiled Jennifer, looking very tiny beside the broad, tall, athletic figure of her companion. Walking along by his side, Jennifer felt her spirits rising. As ever, the panorama of the West End filled her | veins with the heady wine of its ! glitter and surface charm. The homei going crowd of pretty winsome busiI ness girls; their faces glotving with j bold delight, seemed part of the city’s \ allure, part of youth’s passionate pleasure in itself, and its rhythm got i j i i

into Jennifer's blood, causing more than one head to turn after she had passed in order to catch another fleeting glimpse of her. (To be continued on Monday)