The Road that Led Home

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 114, 4 August 1927, Page 16

The Road that Led Home

''' I J ElnpbethYorkM liter.

Author of The House oj the Secret Conscience " A Cinderella ot Mayfair, &c &c

CHAPTER IV

Twilight was beginning to fall when the last two members of the duckshooting party had themselves paddled ashore. The others had abandoned the sport just when it was beginning to get profitable. Lord Connover would have joined the deserters except for the fact that he was paired off with his host who had no intention of giving up when there was good prospects of ducks. Raymond Clayton had taken the Castle solely for the shooting. The house party was incidental, and it irritated him to discover that he had got together the wrong sort of party for his own pleasure. How had he managed to collect such a crew, he wondered. Of them all he liked Lord Connover best, but it was Conny who had whisked most of these people on to him. Except Mrs. Gerald Methune. Clayton was a big man, broad in proportion to his six-feet-two, so he did not look too tall. He had sandy hair, greenish eyes, and, like Alison Mowbray, suffered slightly from freckles, but unlike her was not made unhappy by that affliction. It was only recently that Clay ton had found leisure to interest himself in the social game, and he knew that he was awkward at it. He doubted if he liked it sufficiently to make the struggle for proficiency. Connover had intimated that a woman—a wife, if necessary—would ease the matter, but Clayton was a man slow to take a hint unless it emanated from his own consciousness. He had his reasons for being womanshy. At the age of 40 a sensible man may be said to stand midway between his susceptible periods. A.s they plodded in their waders through the marshy lowland toward the road where Connover’s racing car awaited them, the two presented a marked contrast. Connover was neat, dapper and perfectly turned out even at the end of a long day in a muddy tub of a boat. His smile, defined by a small, well-brushed moustache, was winningly amiable, his jests as fresh as the morning. Clayton, however, had accumulated a lot of marsh residue on his clothes, and a few smudges on his face. He looked anything but amiable, because he was thinking of what awaited him in his temporary castle. There wouldn’t be time now for him to steam his damp self before the fire over a pipe and a mug of mulled ale. Among the men there was nobody, with the possible exception of Connover, whose conversation would give him the faintest thrill of amusement, and he had had almost all he wanted of Connover for one day. “ ‘Home of my fathers,’ ” chanted the gay young man as the castle, with its myriad of narrow lighted windows, came into view. “Looks like an hotel. Bless me if that isn’t an idea.” “It is,” Clayton agreed grimly. “An expensive one, too.” But Conny refused to be damped. “Any idea of mine is bound to be expensive,” he said cheerfully. “I once had a mad one about a simple village maiden—but it was nipped in the bud. That only cost me a wigging by an unfledged parson, though. Rough fellows, parsons, but some of them grow up to have pretty daughters. I was an ass in those days.” Clayton laughed abruptly, but made no other comment. Connover stopped to light a cigarette before getting into the car. “I’ve a mind,” he continued between puffs, “to look—her—up again. It’s a temptation, and you know what one of our brilliant epigrammatists said about resisting temptation.” Not being familiar with that branch of literature, Clayton didn’t know, but didn't care to say so. He compromised briefly with “Quite,”’ which seemed to meet the case adequately. They got into the car, Connover at the steering-wheel, and roared up the hill. “She can do 112 easily on the level,” Connover shouted in his host’s ear. “Some going for a parson’s daughter,” Clayton shouted. “But if you mean this car—l’m satisfied with a miserable ninety.” He removed his cap, for it seemed unlikely that his hair would blow off. Connover guffaw'ed. “Oh, she was a good little ‘goer,’ too—the parson’s daughter.” As they flashed by the church and vicarage he turned on the blinding lights, for night had closed in suddenly. “This is a dead hamlet,” he informed Raymond Clayton. “Just as well,” the latter muttered to himself. It took about 20 seconds for the big aluminium-sheather car to roar its way through the straggling village street, then came the turning at the cross roads, negotiated on two wheels, and the twisting ascent to the castle. “I wonder how he drives when he’s drunk?” Clayton meditated pensively. As these things do, it happened so quickly that Raymond Clayton found himself sitting on the top of a thorny hedge before he knew that anything had happened at all. From that point of vantage he tried to take in the situation, but his wits had wandered a little. Below him in the ditch was a pale shimmering mass which snorted stertorously a couple of times and then expired. Some distance along the road a dark object crawled on its hands and knees, from which came the voice of Lord Connover, cracked and shrill, demanding querulously: “Where the deuce are you, Clayton? We hit something. I think it was a rabbit.” "I’m here,” Clayton replied. He made a weak effort to extricate him-

self from the embrace of the hedge, but the first attempt only involved him more deeply. “Oh, dash!” he complained. “Wait a minute —I’ll give you a leg down.” The crawling form heaved itself upright and staggered toward ! him. “I say, we’re lucky. Might have smashed more than the headlights, you know.” “I’m not so sure we haven’t,” mumbled Clayton. His hands were bleeding from the thorns, and other portions of him had been unmercifully pricked. With Connover’s help he tore himself loose, and jumped painfully into the ditch. Then simultaneously both cried out, and Clayton lurched toward the opposite ditch, where something still and white lay huddled. Before he reached it he encountered the wrecked remains of a bicycle, and nearly came to grief a second time. “My God. Connover —a rabbit, you said! It’s a woman. The odds are we’ve killed her.” CHAPTER V. Together Connover and Clayton lifted the limp, white form out of the ditch, and Clayton found that his electric torch was in working order He flashed it on the unconscious face and noticed that a little trickle of ! blood oozed from a corner of the pale lips; the eyes were closed. Connover gave a half-stifled groan. “It’s little Nora Mowbray,” he whimpered. “Oh, my God—if she’s dead! Can you tell, Clayton? What shall we do?” He wrung his hands in a gesture of distress that was almost feminine, and Clayton despised him. Blundering fool! “Go on ahead to the Castle,” Clayton ordered him savagely, “and telephone for a doctor. Don’t stand there snivelling like a hysterical girl.” Connover responded as though stung by a whip. He went off, limping as he ran, and Clayton gingerly felt at the girl’s limbs, then bent an ear to her heart. But he could tell nothing. It really seemed to him that every bone in her body must be broken, and if she were alive, even, it would be a miracle. He had to risk lifting and carrying her. As he staggered up the hill with the unconscious burden heavy in his arms, he cursed Connover softly but with vehemence. At the door he was met by a confused collection of people. Someone would have taken the limp burden from him but he warned them all away as savagely as he had ordered Connover. He caught a vision of Cora Methune in a jade and gold kimona. She had evidently been dressing when news of the accident reached her. She was patting Connover’s shoulder witli an absurdly pink-nailed hand, and Connover was weeping convulsively, his narrow shoulders hunched and shuddering. “Poor old Conny—he’s so sensitive. How dreadful for him!” someone—a woman—exclaimed. “Might have been worse,” one of the men remarked gloomily. “At least Conny and Clayton are all right.” “Out of here—all of you,” Clayton boomed, as he straightened up after depositing his burden on a couch. “No—you stay.” He motioned abruptly to Miss Adams who was hovering in the background. “And you, Hickson —that was the butler —“get some brandy. Has that idiot telephoned for a doctor yet?” “Dr. Belcher will be here in a moment, sir,” replied Hickson, who had done the telephoning. The room cleared slowly, reluctantly, but Connover remained, with Mrs. Methune to comfort him. He had collapsed into a chair by the fireplace and hid his tears with his hands. Miss Adams produced a bottle of smelling-salts and knelt beside the couch. Clayton and she whispered together. “It’s that Miss Mowbray from the vicarage,” Miss Adams informed him. “Don’t you believe she’s dead, sir.” “If only it’s just bones,” Clayton muttered. “Gad, Bessie, that’s the first time I’ve ever run into a human being, and I’ve been a motorist for twenty years.” “Nevertheless, I hold myself .responsible,” he replied. Both spoke without taking their eyes from the unconscious figure on the couch. Mrs. Methune —“the beautiful Mr 3. Methune” as the newspapers invariably called her —trailed across to them, the tail of her jade and gold kimona making a little swashing sound on the parquet floor. She held out a hand to Miss Adams for the smellingsalts’ bottle. “Lend that to me a moment,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s going to faint.” Clayton glanced contemptuously towards the stricken Connover. It was on his tongue to say, “Let him faint,” but he refrained, and Miss Adams sympathetically handed over the bottle. Connover was the sort of man of whom women made a fuss. To Clayton’s relief, the doctor appeared almost immediately after that and under his instructions Nora, still unconscious, but apparently alive, was carried upstairs to a bedroom. * * • Nora, very white and very still, hung as it seemed to herself, in an immensity of space. Vaguely she ■was aware of things happening somewhere in the distance —subdued voices, the faint chime of church bells, the cawing of rooks —things happening as in a dream She seemed to be curiously light, like a winged cherub’s head with no encumbering body. Where—where were that slim body of hers and the strong

young limbs that balanced Her eyes rested upon »' painted with garlands of faded flowers, now, and in some smudged away. This must be . ■urf” that her bodiless head rested UDeT* A strange man with spectacles bridging a very lon! 0 ®' 11 thinly prominent nose bent over if” 1 behind him gleamed the uniform hospital nurse. Then, on the 1 side, was a familiar face, the ruddy face of old Belcher, the moor doctor. ‘You've had an accident, Nora.- tv Belcher was saying. “You were thro£ off your bicycle by a motor-car” a Nora believed that she nodded u agreement with what he said, but sh had no power to move even that win*l! head of hers, and she rememS nothing of any accident. A long i o n time ago she had been standing t the gorse-grown common watchini the sun go down and the mists thicket over the marshes, and there had been tears in her eyes for the faithlS high-born lover she had tried so haw to put out of her mind. She wanted to ask where she was, now. 5!!? could not speak. Later other faces hovered briefly within her range of vision. There wai Alison’s face, sallow-pale and set in . painful smile; there was. her father* bewildered and pitiful, and the gray* face of another stranger who had red hair and freckles. Last of all, th er% was the face of James Prester. They all passed by and the thought dimly occurred to Nora that perhaps she was in her coffin and these people were taking their last farewell of her. Some of them, however, came back and remained more or less constant. The hospital uniform split into two different sizes. There was one tall and thin that materialised with a wrist-watch and a clinical thermometer in the mornings and flitted about all day; and another. short and plump, which came with som?thing in a feeding-cup at lamp-lighting and could be relied upon to mop away the sweat of fear that sometimes d«. scended upon Nora’s brow in the small hours. Twice that winged head of hers and the lifeless thing to which it was attached had been lifted upon a stretcher and wheeled intc another room where the big-nosed man in spectacles and Dr. Belcher appeared briefly clad in ghostly raiment Nora was made to breathe something sweetish and remembered no more of these excursions, awaking to find her self back in the room with the painted ceiling. Gradually she began to understand the situation. People talked to her & little about it. She was in Rifle Castle, from which the houseparty had departed, although Raymond Clayton remained. The red-haired, freckledfaced man was Mr. Clayton. The bignosed man was a famous London specialist. At last Nora understood that she was paralysed from neck to heels, and although the most cheerful hopes were held out to her of ultimate recovery, she felt in her heart that they only said so in order to give her courage and strength to face her living death. (To be continued.)