The Road that led Home

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 120, 11 August 1927, Page 16

The Road that led Home

By

Eligibeth York Miller.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS CHAPTERS VIII. to X.—Mrs. Clayton enjoys her new status, but keeps her husband at arm’s length. One Sunday morning Raymond meets Connover and Mrs. Gerald Methune, and these two invite themselves to lunch with the Claytons Informed by her husband of the two guests Nora becomes excited, dresses with care in order to impress them, but finds that both Connover and Mrs. Methune are quite weight enough for her. Later she takes Connover to her boudoir, and is once more overcome by the old glamour. She tries to hold her own, but Connover takes the wind out of her sails by telling her that, in the long ago, the curate, James Prester, interfered between them, and took a message to him, Connover, that Nora never wanted to see him again. To Nora’s incredulity he replies, Ask hl ™” A little later the Vicar of Rilfmoor is taken ill and dies. The Clavtons go to the funeral, and Nora stays on at the Vicarage to help her sister to straighten things out. Alison intends to carve out her own future. Nora visits James Prester in his little cottage. Jim comes to the door. He invites her in and she challenges him with the statement made to her by Connover. He is silent. CHAPTER XIII. Although Nora had been so engrossed in her emotional affairs to pay much attention to Alison and the latter’s practical plans for her own future, Raymond Clayton had shown a more sympathetic interest. To Clayton it seemed strange that Alison did not come to live with them at Dangerfield House. Nora and he could not possibly occupy all the rooms in that vast mansion, and he would have liked to see Alison's seriously sweet face across the dinner table. She would have been a buffer between Nora’s and his nerve-wracking silence. Those silences of theirs sometimes fairly shrieked. But Alison wanted to earn her own living, and Nora, beyond all doubt, was perfectly satisfied to have it so. There was that little bit of money for Alison from her father’s insurances, and the sale of the furniture, although enough of the latter had been kept to furnish a couple of rooms, and it was Clayton, calling into conclave his faithful Miss Adams, who helped Alison to find her way about Another of her advisers was James Prester. On closer acquaintance the pallidfaced Miss Adams proved to be a most amiable, friendly young woman. Her business manner was something quite different from her purely personal one, although in her attitude toward the world at large she preserved always a grimly sardonic deportment. Nobody could take her in, and only a fool would have tried. She was savagely faithful to her employer, between whom and herself there existed a peculiar bond, which for other people had a mysterious quality. She ruled everybody in Clayton’s office, except Clayton himself, yet the breath of scandal had never breathed in connection with them. She was paid a big salary, but there was no question about her earning it. She was Raymond Clayton’s right hand even in such trivial matters as taking a poor rela-tion-in-law in tow. In no time she had established Alison in comfortable rooms over a tailor’s shop in a little passage leading from the Strand down to Temple Gardens, and only a short walk from the business college, -where Alison was learning all sorts of useful things. Where Miss Adams, herself, lived was another mystery. It was difficult to think of her apart from the office. A favourite joke of the head book-keeper’s had it that she was

covered up at night, and left standing like her own typewriter. The idea gained ground in the office that being so closely in the confidence of Raymond Clayton, Miss Adams had decided that it was discreet not to cultivate friendships. In the matter of Alison Mowbray, however, it would seem that she was making an exception, although it might be that she went about with Alison because Clayton wished her to do so. Offices are like villages. All the caution in the world cannot prevent the smelling out of important facts. Consequently, Clayton’s staff was well aware that Miss Adams had not approved of his marriage and that the marriage threatened not to turn out well. On several occasions Nora had descended gaily upon him in his city fastness, made friends with the manager, and smiled upon all and sundry before carrying him off to some festivity. but Miss Adams remained outside the circle of her charm. It was the more surprising, then, that Miss Adams appeared to be making a friend of Mrs. Clayton’s sister. To Alison, however, there was nothing strange in it. Alison was used to friends. Thejre was some puppy-like quality in her which brought forth spontaneously in others, smiles and pats and heart-warmings. One Saturday afternoon the two girls had planned to go to a matinee together, but as Alison was finishing the hasty lunch which she had prepared for herself in her homely little sitting-room, a telegram was delivered ; from Miss Adams saying that the lat- | ter could not get the tickets and would

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: Alison come to her at a certain address in Pall Mall. This was a little mystifying, since Alison had no idea what the address portended, but she concluded her meal and went, and then found that the building was a magnificent block of flats, new and glittering, and that apparently Miss Adams lived there. A bronze-gilt lift wafted Alison up to the sky and a shining mahogany door opened to reveal a smart young maid and a sumptuous interior. At the end of the tiled hall appeared Miss Adams wrapped in a black dress-ing-gown embroidered with silver flamingoes. “Too bad about the show.” she said, “but a little later we might go down to Limehouse and call on your friend Mr. Prester. He’s asked us twice, you know.” Alison nodded. “All right. I’d love to.” With a child’s curiosity her eyes strayed to the perfect surroundings as she followed Miss Adams into a charming little dressing-room. “You’ve got a lovely place, Bessie,” she said enviously. “Not bad. Hope you don’t mind hanging about for an hour or so. I’m expecting my_ hairdresser,” replied the laconic Miss Xdams. And then Alison gave a little start of surprise. “Why, Bessie!” she exclaimed, as the full light of a bright afternoon was shed upon her new friend. “Awful, isn’t it?” agreed Miss Adams, with a wry smile. “I’ve had to keep my hat on in the office all the w r eek. We working women never get any time to ourselves.” The cause of Alison’s start was Bessie Adams’s hair. It looked somewhat like a piece of woodwork from which the paint has been partially worn/ revealing a coat of another colour underneath. “Why—Bessie—l thought your hair was black,” Alison said. “Not as black as it’s painted,” replied the other, “In a state of nature, it’s a sort of red. I do feel sorry for breaking into the afternoon of the girl from Parfitt’s, but I’ll give her a good tip.” “What do you dye it for?” Alison asked. “To make it black, my child,” returned Miss Adams. “You needn’t advertise the harmless deception, however. Nobody else knows, except the girl from Parfitt’s —and Mr. Clayton.” “No—of course I won't mention it.” How altogether different Bessie* Adams would look with reddish or sandy hair, Alison thought. Like—like whom? Suppose there were a few freckles under that white mask of hers? With her greeny eyes, sandy hair and —if there were—freckles, wouldn’t she look a little like Raymond Clayton? CHAPTER XIV. “Nora, I think it’s time we came to an understanding.” Raymond Clayton spoke reluctantly. For months common sense had urged him to make that brief statement, or something akin to it, but all the time he had kept hoping against hope that his wife’s chill elusiveness would give place to a warmer quality. She was perfectly well. Yet, if she were to be believed, she still hovered on the verge of invalidism. Clayton gave lavishly of his material possessions, and Nora took greedily, but she did not want him, and she herself had nothing to give. The image of another man blotted him out. He had come upon her unawares that afternoon and discovered her dressed to go out. “Oh, I thought you were off to golf,” she had exclaimed. Clayton waited for his wife to tell

him what it was she had found meanwhile to occupy her, but as usual her silence expressed evasion. Then he made the remark about its being time they came to an understanding. There was some bitterness in his heart. She looked so beautiful, so altogether desirable, with the rose-white of her cheeks softly banked against the fawn-coloured sables he had given her, a slight little thing burdened with becoming richness. Heads turned when Nora Clayton passed, and it was no wonder. Clayton himself was an ungainly figure beside her. Massive, rugged of countenance, with the light of battle glinting in his pale eyes, he was at the moment repellent to Nora. She gave vent to a much-worn cliche. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. ‘Just think it over for a second or two,” Clayton advised her. “Are we going on like this for the rest of our lives? Does our marirage seem successful to you? In other wojrds, are you satisfied?” “Perfectly,” she replied, her voice coldly reticent. “Well, I’m not,” Clayton said bluntly Nora drew in a sharp little breath. For days she had told herself that Raymond Clayton was odious to her, that for having purchased her like a bundle of merchandise, he well deserved to discover that he had been swindled. He hadn’t asked for her love when she lay there, so broken and helpless. He had said merely that he wanted the joy of looking after her. of making it his business to restore her to health and strength. (To be Continued.)