Painted Butterflies

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 992, 7 June 1930, Page 24

Painted Butterflies

Published by Special Arrangement.

By

MRS PATRICK MACGILL

AuiKo> o! ” Dancers ip the Dt'li T* e Little!* OirL The Flame ol Life ei* «»c

CHAPTER XXIII —(continued; The young, fiery Welsh preacher had chosen for his subject “Love,” and its peculiar application to his awn state made Frank Yardley wince. After all, he asked himself with the bitterness that is never again so keen after thirty, what did his life nold besides his work, and sport, and a crowd of gay friends who, even so, were busily engaged in pairing ihemselves off with each other in marriage. Every week there was a fresh announcement of one or another of the boys’ and girls’ engagements. Of course, there were his father and mother, both of whom he dearly loved, but the young cannot march along on the feet of the old, any more than last year's sowing will serve for another year’s yield. If he had never met and loved Jennifer, the pleasant, careless life or a normal, healthy, fortunately placed young man might have gone on until at least thirty-five. But living with Adela had revealed her in a new and charming light, and undoubtedly she loved him; had done so almost from the start. And, since he could never give to another the fine, fresh passionate flower of first love, w'hy nol be content with ardour on Adela’s side and a very sincere liking, a deei desire for her happiness qp his own? Their way home lay through a quie meadow, full of the scents of dam; grass, field flowers, and the soft, sal tang of the sea. It was a silent walk, and presentlj Lhe silence became a living, tangible thing, -weighted with the force of thi words that were yet unuttered. Somehow, he did not know why Frank Yardley felt stupid and tongue tied. It had been so different tellini Jennifer that he loved her better thai anything on earth, and beggini humbly' for her to be his wife. Fool ish, extravagant words perhaps, bu he had lost himself in love; glor iously, magnificently lost all con

sciousness of himself, and for the brief space of his losing had walked with the gods and been as they.

Adela, on the other hand, was palpitating, tingling with joy; in her delicate cheeks the colour came and went like the ebb and flow of a tiny tide; her whole being surged out in a rush of passionate impulse to the suddenly abashed man at her side.

“Frank!” she whispered softly, touching his hand lightly, as if to encourage him, as if to indicate the fact that she understood and longed to help him to conquer his shyness. "Will you marry me, Adela?”

Almost as soon as he had uttered the words, Frank Yardley became conscious of a violent reaction; he suddenly felt as he might expect to feel if he were walking over Jennifer’s grave. Entirely and utterly absurd! Valiantly he strove to shake off the feeling, and to banish Jennifer’s gallant, lovely young image from his mind.

“Darling, I’ve waited for this almost from the first day of our meeting.” Adela caught her breath in a tiny sob of sheer rapture, and the essence of every beloved woman since the world began seemed to flow Into her and make her glad.

“We’ll be married as soon as you like, dear. That Is, unless you would rather wait,” added Frank, with the courteous consideration that belongs lo friendship and has no part in love’s impatient pleading. m “There isn’t anything lo wait for, darling, now that I’m really and tiuly better, ' said the eager, radiant girl. Just fancy, Prank, I was going to suggest leaving tomorrow!. Wouldn’t it have been to awful to have gone without knowing that you loved me?” “I should have followed you ” lied Frank, gallantly.

Adela chattered on, almost beside herself with excitement. Frank walked beside her, acutely miserable because he could not disperse the cloud of depression that had descended upon him so suddenly, wiping out the temporary exaltation produced by the eloquent discourse on love to which he had just listened.

“Oh, my darlings! I’m so happy!” Lady Yardley embraced and kissed, and laughed and cried over the two whose union had been one of the dearest desires that her rather circumscribed and very sheltered life had ever known.

“I’m sending the announcement out to the papers, dear,” she told her husband, when he inquired why she was writing so industriously, long after it was her usual time to play a game of patience before going to bed.

The day that the newspapers spread themselves over the latest Society engagement, printing photographs of both Adela and Frank, and inventing a pretty little romance which barely survived the test of veracity, Jennifer returned from a trip to New York that had been undertaken in connec Hon with her work. She was often in the newspapers herself these days and was rapidly becoming as famous as Elise, the woman who had given her her start. She adored her work and tried to stifle memory as -well as emotion, by the most rigid application to its many demands. But her spirit was hungry with longing, dying with

loneliness that nothing—certainly noi time—would ever assuage. “Have you seen this, Carlos?” she asked the man whose close friend she would always be. Carlos grinned, and his white teeth flashed her a swift, cunning smile, as he observed, “Yes, the papers have given Adela quite a good spread." Then he asked a strange question, one that Jennifer was to recall and endow with a dreadful significance, but not until later. “Ever heard the fable of the cat and the mouse, Jennifer?” the sick man asked, and in his manner was the suggestion of something hidden, something with a meaning both sinister and strange. CHAPTER XXIV. The maid who tapped at Adela Creighton's bedroom door received a very curt, “come in,” not from Adela herself, but from, one of the small army of people who were helping her in her self-appointed task of being the* bestdressed bride of the season. No wedding for years had caused such a popular sensation as hers; public excitement had been raised to a very high pitch by skilful paragraphs inserted in the gossip columns of the . cheaper papers by a paid publicity agent. Frank was sick to the very marrow at the sheer vulgarity of it all, and began to look forward to the day which would at least ensure liim the privacy he claimed as his right.

A squad of mounted policemen had been detailed to keep in order the crowd which had begun to gather

around St. Margaret’s, Westminster, as early as seven o’clock that morning. The reception was to be held at the Ritz Hotel. Five hundred guests, including two minor Royalties, were being catered for.

The dress had been kept a close secret, and it Was partly to see the gown which was to be so startlingly original that nothing like it had ever before adorned a bride, that nearly five thousand spectators were waiting with keen-edged relish for the heroine of the day.

It was nearly eleven; the wonderful wedding dress, which was of the brightest scarlet chiffon, with a scarlet, satin train and priceless lace veil dyed to match, had just been slipped over the burnished head. It was Adela Creighton's ambition to make social history as the first bride sufficiently daring to go to the altar In red. “The Scarlet Bride,” she would be called in the Press; the big black headlines danced pleasantly before her dazzled eves.

The maid who had knocked, entered, saw the arresting figure in the middle of the moss-green carpet, and gasped. “She looked more like some unholy little devil than a bride, that she did,” the startled girl afterwards told the rest of the staff.

“There’s Mr. Yardley, along with Sir Ralph and Lady Yardley, another young lady, and a gentleman in a spinal carriage, all waiting in the liblary and they said to tell you it was most urgent, to come at once, miss.” said the girl, breathlessly. Adela listened, then was silent; delicately arched brows drew together over her light blue eyes with their screen of black lashes faintly tipped with mascaro.

A fraction of a second while tbe words slabbed deep. “Are you sure it is Mr. Yardley?” she queried, striving to overcome the deadly sickness which swept over and threatened to engulf her. “Yes, miss,” was the stolid reply. “Say that Miss Creighton is extremely sorry, but that she can see Dobody, except Mr. Yardley, until after the ceremony.. Show Mr. Yardley into the sun-parlour and say that I will come to him in three minutes.” There was something deadly, something ominous in Frank Yardley’s face, when, with a white satin wrap thrown hurriedly around her slim daintiness, she joined him in the sunparlour, where .obendient to instructions, he had gone to await her, “What on earth does this visit, with all this gang of people, mean, Frank? Surely you should know better than to bring them here, less than an hour before the wedding?” The high voice strove to keep calm, but broke on a note of ill-suppressed anxiety; there was such an agonised expression on Frank’s wholesome young face, and his voice sounded strange and hollow as, making no response to her offer of an embrace, he took her elbow gently in his hand and said, “I think it would be best to hear what Mr. Mayhew has to say.” They had nearly covered the few steps between the sun-jiarlour and the library door. At tbe threshold Adela turned fiercely upon her fiance. “What right have you to bring that man, whom I scarcely know, to my own house on our wedding morning?”

Frank Yardley opened his mouth, but no sound issued forth. The visit that Carlos Mayhew had paid him at seven o’clock that morning would remain in his mind like an unhealed wound for the remainder of his life. To the expression of hostility in the wide eyes was added one of a dread, unnameable fear, when Adela Creighton entered her library, to find her future parents-in-law, Jennifer, looking deathly pale but composed, and, lying flat on his back with his fierce, dark eyes turned toward the door, Carlos Mayhew, all awaiting her.

An exquisite clock on the mantelchimed a quarter past seven “What does this intrusion mean? In forty-five minutes my wedding is to take place. ... I am dressing . . .” Adela looked from one troubled, embarrassed face to the other, and her knees began to shake; she sat down and spread her beautifullytended hands on the table in front of her.

“If any man wants to marry such as you when he has heard what I have to say—well, he’ll have a darned queer taste in women, that’s all.” As he spoke, Carlos Mayhew picked up an attache case which was beneath his hand. “How dare you insult me in my own home, in front of Mr. Yardley! Oh, what does it all mean, Frank? Tell me at once!” Adela Creighton stamped her crim-son-clad foot in her fury. If possible, Frank Yardley looked more miserable than ever, but seemingly did not know how to reply. Instead, he bent over and whispered to Carlos Mayhew, who, addressing himself di-

rectly to the ashen-faced bride, said, in a voice from which he did not trouble to eliminate the malice that inspired them. “Had you been more of a woman and less of a fiend toward the finest girl that ever drew breath, I would have spared you, but as it is, I have deliberately waited until this day, and this hour, to bring together the people most concerned with a story that may sound like fiction, but which in reality is in every detail true.” The crippled film star was holding his audience well; every word as it teil from his mobile lips bore the impregnable stamp of truth. Jennifer and Frank were rigid as statues, their bodies indicating in every muscle the strain under which they were labouring. Sir Ralph and Lady Yardley evinced less emotion, but were sufficiently impressed not to interrupt but to wait. Adela seemed to be stunned into silence. The whole atmosphere was electric, charged with the stuff of which drama is made. “My part of the story can be told very briefly,” resumed Carlos Mayhew, with a mirthless smile that al-

tered his whole face. “But it opens with tne seduction of a young and lovely woman —my wife —by your uncle, the late James Read, Miss Creignton.”

Auela Creighton started, but an expression of unutterable relief lightened the taut rigidity of her features. Was that all, sne asked herself, indignantly. Had Frank brought his tamer and mother, and these two absurd people to hear the story of her dead uncle's immoral dealings with Carlos Mayhew’s wife? “My uncle is dead, Mr. Mayhew, but 1 am certainly not responsible for what he did during his lifetime,” Interrupted Adela Creighton, with, in the circumstances and considering her hasty conclusion, quite pardonable brusqueness.

“’Possibly not. But you have been responsible for quite enough misery on your own account,” was Carlos Ma.ytiew’s terse comment.

“Before my wife died, she begged my forgiveness and I gave it fully, freely—but 1 saw that my revolve.was loaded in all chambers before I started for the address where I expected to find him —the place where he used to receive my wife.”

A light seemed to break in upon the nerve-wracked niece of the dead man. “Then it was you who fired the shots at him that morning!” she shrilled, pointing an accusing finger at him where he lay propped un with a cushion that he might talk better. “It was, and if they had killed him, it would have been no more than his deserts; but I was lucky. He died without any help from me. And now,” the dark eyes were fixed upon Jennifer’s deathly-white face, “I come to Jennifer’s part in the story. She was there, in the room with your uncle. Miss Creighton— ” “I thought so all along,” was the nature of Adela Creighton’s interrup tion.

Frank Y'ardley looked interested, but not shocked, as his parents looked, when they permitted their eyes to dart for a moment in Jennifer’s diretion.

“Would you like to tell them why you were there, dear?” Carlos Mayhew asked Jennifer, very tenderly, for lip knew what she was suffering.

“No—-you, Carlos,” was Jennifer’s low-spoken reply. In words that bit like corrosive acid, Carlos Mayhew made clear the whole story of Jennifer’s signing of the 1.0. U. which Adela Creighton had been holding over her head, emphasising her reluctance to break her mother's heart by letting her know of her son’s disgrace, and in support of his word, he produced a signed statement that he had obtained from Jack Lome’s former manager, to the effect that every word was true.

“Plere is the cheque made out to ‘Bearer,’ as you can see,” and the last cheque that James Read had signed was spread out upon the table for the Inspection of all. “Now, Miss Creighton, will you be good enough to hand over to Jennifer the 1.0.TJ. which I have proved you have no right to hold?” was Carlos Mayhew’s final question. But Adela Creighton’s pale face was fiaming with fury. To think that this gutter-rat, as she mentally apostrophised him, should save up such terribly damaging facts until the very day and the very hour before her wedding.

The people—the crowd of guests who would all be assembled at the church —the story that would get into the papers—jilted—that was all her so-called friends would say about her. Thoughts of what It would mean, of the ugly stream of gossip that would presently eddy around her feet, bearing her reputation away on its unsavoury bosom, made her very soul cringe within her. But if she suffered, Jennifer Lome’s precious mother, Jennifer herself, and this arrant cur, this cowardly film actor, should suffer, too. After all. what had she done except fight for the man she loved with the weapons that chance had placed in her hands? Women had fought for men from the beginning of things—they would go on doing it. (To be concluded on Monday.)

PLAYING SAFE

CINNAMON BISCUITS

NEAT MODES PREFERRED Some interesting new silks are making their appearance in the form o i printed marocains and crepe de chines in tweed effects (writes a | London correspondent). They come in a very heavy-weight for tailoring into# neat spring suits, and are in small designs, such as are used for morning clothes. Another | smart printing is a small shepherd’s ; plaid silk with a satin back, which is being tailored by some of the best houses. Anything that can be made up into neat clothes is finding favour, as many women are still undecided whether they like the more ornate styles presented at so many houses. The safe style is always the first to be ordered. Evening gowns at a recent smart dress showing were of crepe satin, silk net, georgette and lace, and were for the most part in pastel colours. There was a dearth of flowered chiffons, as the collection was designed i to give a slimming line always easier j with plain colours. One lovely pink lace frock was made with a flowing skirt, and had a short coatee of pale pink velvet trimmed with beige ermine. All evening wraps, by the way, are short this season. Some are three-quarters, but at the best houses there are no full-length coats being shown for really smart wear. One of the prettiest of the dark evening frocks was in chocolate. At a recent dress show brown silk net was moulded to the figure and flowing round the feet. With it was worn a little coat of chiffon velvet made with a shawl collar. All these coatees are clutched around the figure at the hip-line and emphasise the necessary tight look. A new cire lace in black is an interesting fabric novelty. It is really a heavy net with cire thread darned on, and the effect is quaint in the extreme.

ALMONDS FOR DECORATION Take 4oz butter, 4oz sugar (brown), Soz plain flour, 1 level teaspoon baking powder, 1 egg, 1 dessertspoon cinnamon, loz almonds. Cream the butter, add the sugar, and beat well. Gradually add the well-beaten eggs. Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together, and add to the other ingredients. Blanch the almonds and split them in half. Turn the biscuit mixture on to a floured board, roll out very lightlv about Jin thick. Cut out with a fluted cutter, place half an almond on each biscuit, and cook on a greased oven sheet in a very medorate oven about 15 to 20 minutes, or till a nice

brown colour. Allow to remain on oven sheet till cold and crisp.