The Road that Led Home

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 127, 19 August 1927, Page 14

The Road that Led Home

Elizabeth York Miller.

Author of The Home oj the Secret Conscience." A Cinderella of Mayfair.” & c &c

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. Eater 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 Viearage 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. ‘ Yes, ladies?" she inquired prettily, with a little foreign hiss in her speech and making a bob of curtsy. ‘ What is your pleasure?" ‘Pleasure!" exclaimed the thin, dark woman in a mocking tone. "I can think of lots of things I’m not likely to get. My name’s Mrs. Raymond Clayton, and I want to see the Rev. Prester—for his pleasure, not mine." "Pleas© to come in," said the little half-caste, with another bob. Then, standing aside, she glanced inquiringly at Nora. Raymond Clayton—it was not exactly an ordinary name, and Nora had been taken badly by surprise. She had been, herself, on the verge of making almost an identical statement —that she was Mrs. Raymond Clayton and wished to see Mr. Prester—but the words were taken out of her mouth and she could only stare at the woman who had said them first and murmur a little incoherently, "I’d like to see Mr. Prester—that is, if he’s in, and it’s convenient." “Yes, lady. Will you please come in?” Nora’s heart was beating uncomfortably fast as she followed the other woman and the half-caste girl across a paved courtyard to the rather huddled, nondescript buildings which housed the chapel and mission. They were led through a bare hall superlatively clean to a waiting room sparsely furnished with a few deal chairs and a table. But there was a fire blazing in the grate and a vase of flowers and some papers and magazines on the table to give an air of cheerfulness. The thin, dark woman drew a chair to the fire fo.r herself and held out her shabbily-gloved hands to get the warmth. She had a half-starved expression which seemed to throw an angry challenge to the world and particularly at Nora’s sables. There was also a foreign look about her which had been a little noticeable in her accent as well. Nora took her for an Italian, in spite of the name she had given. It was awkward, the two of them sitting the.re in silence, for the dark woman said nothing and said it in such a resentful way that it was difficult to

venture a casual remark. Behind the tight locked lips one suspected venom only waiting for a slight excuse to be uncorked. But finally Nora risked it. A fearful, almost morbid sense of curiosity moved her. She said: “It’s strange, you and I having the same name. " Mine is Mrs. Raymond Clayton, too?” The dark woman reared her head and stared. There was something familiar in that blank, expressionless stare, familiar even in its hostility. Traces of an outworn beauty sat on the gaunt cheek bones and in the thin, high-bridged curve of the nose. The clamped lips parted in a quick breathing and two scarlet spots appeared on the sallow cheeks. “Perhaps, then, it is the same husband we both have,” the woman said in a taunting voice. “Scarcely. I mean ” “You mean because I am in these ugly black rags and you wear furs and velvet? Bah —that makes nothing. You are young and beautiful, but once I was the same and men gave me all those things, too. It is your husband who buys for you that stole, is it not? Or do you earn yourself the money that clothes you?” Nora flushed. The woman was offensively impertinent, having uncorked her venom handsomely. To Nora she seemed insane. Her laugh was too harsh and unsteady, her eyes too much like those of a wicked, evil-plotting horse for the comfort of one in the sole enjoyment of her society. The young half-caste girl saved the ® lt Y a ~ or i by entering at that moment an .r v beckonin £ to them. .lou t 0 she

vited, with a snowy-toothed smile. “Both of us?" Nora inquired. “We’ll go together, I think. It will woman. “How is the Reverend Prester to choose between the two Mrs. Claytofts without offending one or the other?" “The master says please to come," .repeated the little maid, obviously confused by her duties. The other woman rolled her wicked “You were first," said Nora, eyes and shook her head. “We’ll go together, Ithink. It will be the judgment of Solomon. I should imagine from the look of you, madam, that your old man would cut up quite handsomely. I should not object to a share in him.”

Nora was becoming alarmed. No doubt about it, this woman was crazy mad and it might create an unpleasant scene to oppose her. The little maid led them across the hall, after Mrs. Clayton Number One had stood aside at the door with mock and ostentatious deference for Number Two to precede her. Nora was almost hysterical when she found herself in Jim’s study and saw him standing there, big, capable Jim. with his back to the fire and a puzzled look of greeting on his friendly face. “Nora!” he exclaimed. “How good to see you again; how kind of you to drop in on me like this.” Pe.rhaps his welcome was just a shade too hearty and unembarrassed for Nora’s taste. Certainly there was nothing in it to indicate that her unheralded descent upon him had given James Prester a shock, sentimental or otherwise. He took her little hand in a firm grip and his kind eyes regarded her with an expression of warm hospitality. , ... “Alison promised to come down this afternoon if she could, and her friend, Miss Adams. We shall be quite a party,” he added. Then he turned inquiringly to the other woman. Nora had a confused impression of the solid but not decorative comfort with which Jim had surrounued himself as at Riffmoor. The old furniture of the cottage living-room was all here, his big flat desk, the bookshelves and leather chairs, the little tea-table by the fireplace, the two Italian porcelain vases filled with chryanthemums, and the collection of framed architectural prints which had found their way into his possession. It made a little bit of Riffmoor planted by the riverside in Limeliouse. The thin, dark woman took it all in, also, and the harshness of her face relaxed a little. “They told me you are a good man,” she said, in reply to his look of inquiry, “but that isn’t why I came here. Perhaps you didn’t get my name—or mixed it up >vith this other lady’s. I am Mrs. Clayton—Senora Raymon Clayton in my own country. You on’erstan’?” She spoke the last with a hurried incoherence, which emphasised her trace of foreign accent. “I’m afraid I don’t,” Jim replied, glancing at Nora, who shook her head. “May I ask who sent you to me?” The woman smiled, subtly triumphant. “My daughter,” she replied. “She wishes to talk with me here and with you. I have no bojection for this other Mrs. Clayton to hear what we say. I shan’t interfere with her. Only I claim certain rights.” “Please sit down,” Jim said gravely, pushing forward one of the big leather

chairs. “This is all very puzzling. Just in what way can I be of service to you? Let me see—do I know your daughter?” h “Ha! You know her very well. Ha. ha, I should say so. Only this moment you spoke of her. She is a drudge in the office of that very rich man, her father, who hasn’t even given her his name, although he is quick enough to give it to women in marriage.” A tremor passed over Nora and then she felt herself grow coldly rigid. As lightning illumines a midnight landscape, throwing minute details into vivid silhouette, so in a flash she saw. The mystery of Bessie Adams, Raymond’s devoted secretary, was explained. Miss Adams was his daughter —his and this woman’s. And the woman, herself? By his quick little movement toward her, Nora realised that James Prester also understood the woman’s insinuation. He would probably have stopped it if he could, but it was too late now. “I think,” he said, slowly, “that you are labouring under an illusion.” That queer, triumphant smile of hers was maddening. “It is no illusion that I have here my marriage lines and a copy x>f my child’s birth certificate.” Significantly she tapped her shabby handbag. “All in good time. Reverend Prester. My daughter is coming here this afternoon —you said so. yourself. It is unfortunate for this other lady is it not—painful, indeed! But what of me? All these years ” “Just one moment.” Jim interrupted. “I take it that you are making a serious charge against Raymond Clayton?” The woman sneered, and shrugged

her shoulders by way of reply. “Very well. Now the question in my mind is naturally this: Why don’t you go to Mr. Clayton? Isn’t he the proper person to meet you—er —your claim?" “Undoubtedly.” This time the reply was prompt and unequivocal. “I have been to Mr. Clayton. At least I have tried to see him, but it was the girl you call Miss Adams that I saw. She is her master’s watchdog.” “The girl that I call Miss Adams?” Prester repeated. She had bewildered him thoroughly. “You may be good, Reverend Prester, but you are not very clever." The woman tapped impatiently with the toe of a shapely, but ill-clad foot. “The girl is my daughter. Scarcely, indeed, did I hope to find her there, slaving in his office, when I went to see Ramon. But there she was, and she would not give him my message. She says I am to come here to-day, at this hour, and she will talk with me. So —behold me, here, Reverend Prester. It is all very simple, is it not? Only that by chance I meet this other lady of the same name. That is most amusing." “Well, really, I shouldn’t call it that, myself,” Jim said quietly. He turned to Nora. “Do you wish to stay, or will you wait outside?” “I’ll stay if you don’t mind,” Nora replied. He tried to send her a signal to the effect that he considered the other woman not at all right in the head, but although Nora herself had been of that opinion a few moments before, she was not so sure about it now. There was certainly a look of Bessie Adams in that cold, blank face; that was where the sense of familiarity came in. Bessie Adams might easily be this woman’s daughter, and with a slightly different colouring, she might be Raymond Clayton’s also. In expression, however—or the lack of it —she was more like the woman. James Prester glanced uneasily at his little tea table, which had been laid for three, but what was coming could scarcely be metamorphosed into a social affair. What; indeed, was coming? At this point the little half-caste maid appeared at the door, and without ceremony ushered in Bessie Adams and Alison Mowbray. (To be continued.