SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 9, 22 October 1940, Page 7

SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

» By PEARL BELLAIRS. ::

(Copyright). I

| A Serial Story of Spies, • Adventure and Love. I 11 —, ******** ■*■*"’*■*"'* H

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER

relaxed slightly, and bent his head, but even in the dim light she caught the gleam of laughter in his eye. “My impression was that one was supposed to show respect for the ladies of the party, madam.” “You overdo it, Hawksford. One might almost think you were —laughing at them!” He smiled openly, and said cautiously : “I’m sorry, I’m sure! But I don t know how you want to be treated. 1 began badly, if you remember.” She put that aside. “I’d be glad if you’d treat me as you’d treat Captain Mills, or any other man!”

General Sir Weston Harris, sent to New Zealand to report on certain aspects of Imperial defence, is accompanied by his daughter. Lorna, and his sister, Hilda, who, as an aunt, gives an eye to the high-spirited Lorna. The daughter is engaged to Captain Richards, the General's Aide-de-Camp, but Richards does not arrive in New Zealand with the party, lie haying been delayed on duty in Australia. One characteristic of the country which rather startles Lorna is the almost class-less state of society which allows the official chauffeur, loaned to hei father, to adopt a friendly, almost familiar attitude towards her. CHAPTER 11. It might have been because there was so little to do in the seaport of New. Plymouth beyond going to the pictures or walking in the fine Botanic Gardens, that Lorna lost her dignity sufficiently while they stayed there to take Hawksford on at his own game. “Kindly go and buy be a newspaper, Hawksford! . . . Be so good as t° fetch my parcels from the shop, Hawksford! Imitating liis tone of frozen formality, she gave him little jobs and errands to do for her. She knew he hadn t bargained for it in exercising his humour on her; and it gave her a malicious triumph to see him going to fetch a parcel she had deliberately left behind. But it soon ceased to be fun. After all, he was really a chauffeur ; it was too easy to score off him ,in that way. They had been in New Plymouth three days, and she jvas driving down the coast to Wanganui with her father and aunt in the afternoon; she had just gained a victory oyer Hawksford bj deliberately dropping her gloves for him to pick up. They stopped at a railway crossing waiting for a train to pass, and as she sat in the Ijpck seat she could see Hawksford’s face in the mirror over the windscreen. He lifted liis eyes suddenly so that they gazed into hers into the glass ... Such a wrathful, unguarded gaze it was, the gaze of a man protesting his manhood, the soul of his pride against all vanities and false superiorities. . .

“Oh!” .He looked at her consideringly under his thick brows, then shook his head. “I don’t think I could regard (you as a man.” He lifted his head, the look was very direct. “I don’t happen to feel that way about you!” Lorna returned'liis gaze and tho moment was tense. They stared at one another, in the quiet moonlight . . . Ho looked up at the night sky, then measured her again like a man taking aim at an uncertain target: “What would you say if I asked you to come for a drive with me?” THE SURPRISING ADVENTURE. As they drove out of the town and on to the lonely road across the plain of Taranaki, dark at the base of tenthousand foot Egmont, Lorna’s heart was beating a tense refrain. “What will happen? What will happen? What will happen?”Ever since that look between them in , 3 the car that afternoon, things had been coming to —something. “How indiscreet!” thought Lorna. “How horribly, frightfully indiscreet!” What bad taste! What would Aunt Hilda say? She didn’t ask herself what her father would have said because his horror would have been too serious to contemplate. Hawksford, driving slowly, talked of the country about them; the •Maoris, the early settlers, Mount _ Egmont, climbing parties lost in the mists in the bush above. All very impersonal; only his eyes flashed as he looked at her, as a man’s do. On.a quiet stretch of the road he pulled up the car. Low stars glimmered over the eternal snow cap of Mount Egmont beyond the black sentinels of faintly sighing pines. It was a strange night, her companion strange, yet like someone she had always known. Her heart beat wildly as he took her in his arms. She struggled then let him kiss her once, twice, then pushed him away. He sat back and lighted a cigarette. “If anyone had told me this morning,” he said, “that I’d bo here with you to-night, my dear, I’d have said they were mad. I thought you wero utterly out of reach. Yet I think I had made up my mind—!” He broke off. She wasn’t much interested in what he had made up his mind to, she was curious about him, so unlike anyone she had ever known before. She asked him:

His eyes widened as they encountered hers in the glass and a new light leapt into them, dangerous, desirous . . . Another instant and the train had roared away, Hawksford had let in the clutch, and the car moved forward. Lorna was looking out of the window with a queer feeling as though her whole existence had been turned upside down. “Customs and conventions and everything else!” she thought. “We are all men and women!” * * * * It was an idle, irresponsible young woman, not quite sure of what she wanted, who sauntered into the moonlit hotel yard late that evening when Hawksford was putting the par away. Be it said for Lorna that her attitude toward Hawksford was not deliberately callous. It was the cynicism of her age and upbringing which distorted her real admiration for his splendid looks, and the fire he had lighted in her blood. “Hawksford, I believe I dropped a handkerchief in the car. Could you see if it’s there?” Hawksford was in uniform after driving back from Wanganui, but his head was bare; Lorna was in evening dress, wrapped in an evening cloak, and exhaling the sweet fragrace of expensive womanhood.

“What sort of life have you had?” “Oh!” ho said, vaguely, “not uncomfortable, knocking around,” and added with great certainty: “I’ve never met anyone in the least like you before!” 1 She thought suddenly of Richards, on his way from Australia crossing tho Tasman Sea. Perhaps he was with someone else, too. She felt no guilt about this small lapse; hut she wished —what did she wish? Infinite discontent seized her.

In silence he opened the door and looked in the back of the car, then turned to stand with his usual rigidity.

Hawksford was saying: - ‘ ‘lf I tell you how beautiful you are, that will only be something that you’ve heard a hundred times before!”

“I’m. sorry, madam, it isn’t there.” “You never put your heels together and stand up like that for my father, do you, Jrlawksford —and he’s a General. I wonder why you do it for me?” She knew he was taken aback, he

“Oh!” said Lorna, throwing off her depression with an effort, “I always like to hear it again!”“You do, do you?”

“Again—and again!” she laughed. “The news is always fresh. Do you ever tire of hearing something to your advantage ?’,’ He looked at her steadily, disconcertingly, then said abruptly: “Tell me truthfully what you think of me?”

She said promptly and with complete honesty:

“I think you’re extremely good looking!” He looked at her with knitted brows as though only half satisfied, then smiled suddenly and threw away his cigarette. But she drew back determinedly from the look in his eyes. “I think we should go back now! We’ve been away long enough!” “Possibly you’re right! I don’t want to make things awkward for you.” He switched on the ignition promptly. On the way back she tried to appear unconcerned, but she was not as cool as she pretended When she got out of the car at the hotel garage and he faced her, a stalwart figure in his uniform, his face in the moonlight, she wondered what he was thinking. He lifted her hand abruptly, and raised it to his lips. “Goodnight—lovely lady!” “Goodnight —■ handsome Colonial, ” she laughed faintly, and turned quickly away from him.

She hurried quietly into the hotel and up to her room, and with an effort calmed the quiver into which her indiscretion had set her nerves. Ho had disturbed her more than she cared to admit; but by the timo she fell asleep there was a smile on her lips, and she had dismissed the matter as not worth worrying about. To-night was to-night; to-morrow, of course, she would lot him see that the thing could go no further. MORNING AFTER. Next morning Lorna’s breakfast tray boro a magazine sent in by her father containing thC-'photograph she had been asked for in Auckland, with the inscription underneath: “Miss Lorna Marris with her father, General Sir Weston Marris, is at present visiting these shores. Miss Marris is engaged to Captain Allen Richards, son of Colonel Graemb Richards) and Mrs Richards, of jGreston, Hampshire. Captain Richards is expected in New Zealand shortly.” Lolma put the magazine aside and thought no more about it. Miss Marris came in in her sensible dressing-gown soon afterwards. “Your father says ho won’t want the

car this morning,” Miss Marris said. “So I shall got Hawksford to drive mo into tho town—l want to get some embroidery silks; and then if I come back here and pick you up I thought wo could drive up to the mountain hut on Mount Egmont; they say the view is wonderful.” “I’ve seen more views in this country than I’ve lever seen in my life,” said Lorna lazily, “hut I suppose I could heap.’ another!” Miss Marris went away, with the magazine under her arm. Ten. minutes later when Lorna sprang out of bed she glanced out of the window and saw Hawksford standing below by the car, waiting .for her aunt. As though his attention had already been on, Lorna’s window, Hawksford looked up, he smiled: slightly, the Vary smile of a man who preserves the outward conventions, but conveys a personal meaning. Loirua drew back immediately. An / urpleasant little feeling haunted her as she dressed. Had she been very indiscreet? Allien didn’t mind her flirting a little —but with: her father s chauffeur? Allen might well consider that she hadn’t shown very much discretion. At 11 o’clock the car returned again to pick her up to go to Mount Egmont. When Lorna went out, her aunt was in the hotel, and Hawksford was sitting in his seat, studying a magazine. As she approached she saw it was the magazine with hep.' photograph and the chapter about her en gagennent in it; it flashed on her that i pei haps he hadn’t known she was engaged for with an ultra-modern carelessness of such things, she seldom wore her ring. . . % He saw her coming, put down the magazine, and got out of the car to open the door for her. She looked at him, and knew immediately that he had seen the photograph. “Good morning, Hawksford!” “Good mojrning.” Why were his eyes so stern, so questioning? She sat in the hack of the car; he got into his seat in front, and after a moment, without any preliminary, without looking round, said quietly: “I didn’t know you were engaged;” “l>idn’t you?” saidi Lorna, annoyed to find herself a trifle nervous. “If I’d. known, I wouldn’t have been poaching on someone, else’s preserve!” “I don’t regard myself as anyone’s ‘preserve,” ’ Lop’na said, colouring, “I’m, a free individual—at least, I hope so! You need not regard yourself as solely responsible!” •Hte tunned and looked at her then, his brows knitted, eyes searching her face, narrowly. She tried to withstand the examination coolly, and a slight; resentment at his thinking himself able to affect her affairs one way or another made- her add -. “It’s a very trivial matter, Mr Hawksford, isn’t it?” Tliere was a brief pause.* His jaw set, a kind of amusement flickered round his mouth, the contempt which came into his gaze brought .the hot blood to her cheteks.

‘Oompletsly trivial!” he said. He turned away, without another wofrd. Lorna sat staring at his back furiously; never in her life had any man looked at her like that. And then the ten so silence was broken, as lie got our to open the door of the car for her aunt.

All the way to Mount Egnront, over the green pastures and through the wrecked hush at the foot of the mountain ; up the narrow, winding roadway through the closfc, dark, virgin buslr on live mountain side, Lorna seethed inwardly. At the Mountain House when they got out to look at all. New Zealand spread below them, and the, wraith of Mount Cook far off in the South Island, she glanoed at him to see if lie regretted his temerity. His face was a study of impassive indifference. He did not look at her. (To be continued).

The characters in this story are entirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any public or private company.