The Road that Led Home

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 126, 18 August 1927, Page 16

The Road that Led Home

By

Elizabeth York Miller

Author of The House oj the Secret Conscience A Cinderella ol Vfautair Arr-

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS CHAPTERS Vin. 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 him.” A little later the Vicar of Riffmoor is taken ill and dies. The Claytons 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 XXI. She couldn’t believe that Raymond would be such a fool. Yet one thing he had stated positively, and that was his intention to get rid of Hangertield House. The world was certainly in upheaval this morning. Most decidedly to-day was unlike yesterday or any other day preceding it. What of to-morrow? Nora knew that a great deal of money had been settled on her at marriage, but the legal details were vague in her mind, and she assumed that her husband still had full control of the capital which produced her handsome personal income. Very likely that would go, too, if Raymond was in earnest about the destruction of his toys. What was she herself but one of those costly playthings? She took a step toward the telephone, then gave a little shake of the head. Cora Methune would be sure to be in at this hour, and one couldn’t discuss events of such a stirring nature over the telephone, anyway. Ten minutes later found Nora being shown into Mrs. Methune’s familiar drawing-room, where the lady was ensconed with the morning papers and her correspondence, and did not look any too pleased to see the visitor. “Oh!” she exclaimed, a little dejectedly. “I asked you to ring me up.” If there was one thing Cora Methune disliked intensely it was receiving other women’s confidences, and she was right in assuming that one was coming now. Nora was given a half-hearted invitation to be seated, which she accepted, and forthwith plunged straight into her subject—or, to be precise, her subjects. She assumed that Cora Methune would not only be interested, but would sympathise with her. After the first few words Cora was beyond all doubt interested. She sat up very straight, her strong, beautiful brows drawn level, her eyes watchfully attentive. This beginning was the story of yesterday, of Connover and the rendezvous at The Dragon Fly Tearooms, of Miss Adams’s untimely appearance, of the lie and its dramatic sequel. In the midst of the narrative Mr®. Methune threw back her head and laughed—a softly, insolent laugh, the mystery of which sent prickles of apprehension over Nora. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she remonstrated. “But it is,” Cora Methune assured her. “To think that you should have applied to me, of all people, to cover up your tracks with Conny!” “B—but why not? I thought you’d help me,” Nora said tearfully. “It wasn’t as though I'd done anything really wrong. Of course Conny is desperately in love with me, but that isn’t my fault.” Mrs. Methune controlled her unseemly mirth. “And you? Are you in love with Conny?” she asked. Nora shuddered. “Not after yesterday,” she confessed naively. The older woman darted her a quick glance. “It’s women like you. Nora Clayton, who ride triumphant over other people’s broken hearts.” “You mean—Conny’s?”

“No, I don’t. You haven’t broken Conny’s heart. I’m sure of that. Did Raymond hurt him very much?” Again Nora shuddered and made a fluttering gesture. “I don’t know, but I’m afraid so. And Raymond says he’s going to sell Dangerfield House and lose all his money, if he ‘has any luck.’ That's the way he puts it.”

“Is he, indeed!” “Aren’t you amazed?” Nora was at last beginning to fell the lack of chat sympathy upon which she had counted. “My dear child, there is only one thing in this world that ever amazes me, and that is stupidity. Whatever he does, Raymond Clayton could never be stupid.” Nora got to her feet, reddening a Uttle. “That’s to say, I am,” 3he aaaerted.

“Very, Nora, my dear. But you may grow out of it. Indeed, 1 feel sure you will. And now I must ask you to excuse me. I think I’d better dress and fly around to Conny’s. He’s a little stupid, too, and probably hasn’t called in a doctor to staunch his wounds.” When Nora found herself out in Shepherd’s Market again with Mrs. Methune’s cheerful blue front door closed after her, she felt that another episode was finished. Last year she had, herself, closed a door upon Riffmoor and old associations; yesterday Conny passed out of her life and even Raymond had definitely moved a step away. To-day it was the new friend, Cora Methune. Stripped, indeed! Cora Methune had said harsh things to her in a charming, kindly way, but neither the charm nor the kindliness took out the sting of them. What an empty place the world oeemed to be! Nora forgot her appointment with the dressmaker, and Bond Street did not appeal to her this morning. She was homesick—but for what? Perhaps for a little corner in somebody’s heart. This morning’s mood was the result of shock, just as the mood of last night had been, but it remained to be seen which of the various shocks she had received would have the effect of stabilising Nora Clayton. Last night—or rather, in the early hours—she had come to something like intelligent terms with life and with herself She had seen herself as a small, weakly emotional thing who had yet to grow to a true perception of values, but she had felt in herself the possibility both of growth and strength. Now she was wobbling under a fresh impact. The thing she had married Raymond for was to be swept away, if he had any luck. Did that mean he would go to any lengths to rid himself of her? She went into the park that morning, consciously lonely. It seemed to her that she was feeling her way toward something bigger and finer 'than she had ever conceived life to hold, but it was a blind groping. She did not know exactly what it was that she sought or where to be found, but she felt that it existed. Stupid l —And. stupidity was the

only thing that ever amazed Cora Methune. It was rather late that same afternoon when the thought of James Prester returned rather persistently to Nora and filled her with an insistent desire to see him. The last time she had parted from Jim she had been bitterly cruel on the subject of Conny, yet it might be that Jim had been misjudged. It was so easy to make mistakes in this world. CHAPTER XII. To Nora it seemed that James Prester must be quite as low in spirit as she was, herself. She pictured him in his slum mission saving drab souls and bodies, snatching white women from their Chinese husbands as brands from the burning, luring viciously inclined youth from the joys of rhe public-house and getting ailing chilren admitted to the infirmary. In her mind’s eye she saw him as a gaunt. wild-eyed priestly saint doing good to Limehouse with the efficiency of a moral vacuum cleaner. Probably he slept in a bare little cell of a room with a crucifix over his iron bedstead and washed himself in cold water. What errand could possibly have brought him to Conny’s rooms last night? Observe, that perhaps curiosity played some part in Nora’s freshly awakened interest in her old admirer. James Prester was mixed up somehow in her own problems. It was five o’clock and quite dark when the taxi Nora had summoned instead of her own car set he.r down at the corner of a narrow passage leading to the river, in the neighbourhood of the mission. The taxi-driver had discovered, by various inquiries along the way, that this was the farthest point he could go. For a recognised and much-adver-tised London slum the neighbourhood looked astonishingly orderly and not too poverty-stricken. There was a public-house on the corner to be sure, but its appearance had a sprightly, almost continental quality. Tramcars clanged through the main street, and the foreign shops and little restaurants all wore a modestly prosperous air. There was plenty of electric light. Outside the public-house stood two tall, good-humoured looking women police who smiled in friendly fashion upon Nora as she ventured a request to be directed to the mission. They smiled even more broadly when.) she inquired if it was safe for her to venture into that riverward passage alone. “Quite safe, madam. It’s only a little way,” one of them told her. “The door of the mission is facing you after the turn.” To Nora, however, it did not seem as if it could be safe, although she took the policewoman’s word for it. Small houses lined the passage with no more than a yard of pavement on each side and a cobbled space in the middle too narrow to admit vehicles. Dim faces peered at her from behind the windows of the little houses, and before one door a woman with her hair already in its Sunday curlers was beating a strip of carpet. At the turn in the passage stood a lamp-post against which leaned a young Chinaman in semi-European dress, indolently puffing at a cigarette while he watched a group of yellowfaced children playing an Asiatic version of the game of “Jackstones.” Nora shivered as she passed the Chinaman, although he did not so much as raise his eyes from the game to glance at her. From one of the little houses came the sound of a vigorous fox-trot being run at quick time on a gramophone, and further along someone was extolling the sentimental languors of Old Madrid” on a guitar. The policewoman was quite right. This particular corner of Limehouse. at least, was as safe as the West End, and on the surface, one would say, infinitely more respectable, unless honest poverty be accounted a social A wooden wall painted green barred off the mission premises, but there was a little door let into it with the name in white letters, and an electric bell. A woman was standing at the door when Nora arrived, obviously waiting for admittance. She was a thin woman of medium height, sallow under the arc lamp, dark-eyed and shrewishly tight-lipped. Her clothes were very shabby, and in the quick appraising glance she gave Nora was mixed an expression of insolence and envy. Possibly she had seen better days, and was embittered by the memory of them. "I’ve rung,” she said curtly. “You needn’t give yourself the trouble.” Before Nora could frame a reply to this somewhat hostile remark, the green door was opened by a half-grown girl in a uniform of grey linen, and with more than a trace of the Mongolian in her rather comely features. (To be continued)