Our Serial Story

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19441, 29 October 1925, Page 5

Our Serial Story

HER DAY OF ADVERSITY

By

MRS PATRICK MACGILL

(All Rights Reserved.)

FOR NEW READERS. All the characters in this story are purely fictitious. Carol Oliver returned from a little excursion to the West-end where she had been enjoying the life and music of a popular teashop for one short half-hour, to the poor home in Bermondsey, which she shared with her mother, to find that dearly-loved mother —dead. When she recovered from her trance of stark and bitter misery, Carol realised that she hadn’t sixpence in the world even to pay funeral expenses. A long illness had swallowed up everything left to the two friendless women, the widow of a schoolmaster and the lovely girl, not yet twenty. In desperation, Carol, taking the circular of a money lender, Jacob Stone, at its face value, and clinging to the phrase, “No Security Required," went to the man’s house at Finsbury Park. The moneylender, struck by Carol’s unusual beauty, saw possibilities of exploiting the girl, refrained from his impulse to make love to her, and lent her £lO, on the understanding she worked for ten weeks in his office to repay the money, leaving Carol convinced that no more generous pian existed. CHAPTER 111. SHOCK “Mr Stone inf Tell him I want him. ’ ’ rhe voice was curt, peremptory, yet wiin a certain kindliness in its xuiienusted tones that made it impossiule tor a hearer to take oifence. “V\utat name, please?” asked Carol, timidly as sue rose irom her tame, luoixiiig like some pale, sweet waterliuwer in her sum liuio office frock, the Diack lasnes of her grey eyes making dark fans on her cheeks as she gave a downward glance at the card which the young man held out to her. It was her first day in Jacob Stone’s office, and David Murray was her first client.

She had received instructions never ot, allow anyoudy into the private office, no matter whom they represented ihemsclvcs to be, without first taking in choir name.

Jacob Stone had been the rock to which she had clung, the Sir Galahad in actions, if not in appearance, of her wildest flights of fancy. It was he who had settled the details of her mother’s funeral, he who had followed as the only other mourner, he who had placed a cross of expensive white flowers on the lonely grave, and if Carol had ever dreamed of suspecting his motives, her suspicions would have given way to shame when he recommended and paid for with a further advance out of her wages, a temporary home at the Finsbury Y.W.C.A. “I will see if Mr Stone is disengaged,” said Carol, with a smile that caused David Murray’s hitherto unassailed heart to beat a trifle faster. Well over six feet in height, and broad in proportion, with a sun tanned skin, and fearless blue eyes that met the gaze of man, woman, or child with equal frankness, David Murray, ex-.sol-dier, wanderer in many lands, and now heir to an enormous fortune left by a childless great-uncle was distinctly good to look upon. He was dressed with a certain careless grace in a splendidly cut tweed suit, but his tio did not match his socks, and his shoes looked like old tried friends—comfortable, but by no means elegant, and, somehow, Carol liked that detail of the young man’s appearance; it made him seem more homely. A deprecating cough from behind David Murray’s broad back caused Carol to pause on her way across the outer office to her employer’s room. A glance revealed a little shrunken old woman, dressed in rusty black, who had seated herself on the cane chair just inside the door.

Carol paused, qucstioningly. “It’s all right. Mrs Minns is with me. She doesn’t want to see this cur—what’s his name?—Stone, it’s I who want to do that.” Unconsciously, the deep, vibrant voice was raised a little above conversational level; it brought Jacob Stone, who could hear every word in his own room, into tho outer office. He glanced contemptuously at the old woman, but more respectfully at the handsome young giant who seemed to fill the whole office with his powerful frame.

“What can I do for you. sir? He inquired, sauvely, advancing with a smile which seemed to let loose a hundred demons in David Murray, to judge by tho flame which leaped into his blue eyes, and the thin, hard lino which narrowed the generously curvey youngmouth.

“You dirty, low down shark, for pins I’d drive your teeth down your throat for the way you ’vo robbed ant; nearly driven to suicide a poor, miserable old woman. Take that—and that and that! ’ ’ Each word was punctuated with a I blow, which caused Carol to feel faint I and sick with fear.

I The old woman seernd to have lost her shrinking fearfulness; her faded , eyes lighted up, her wrinkled, toil-worn . hands showed the skin stretched drum- . tight over knuckles that were so bony 1 and prominent with years of continual scrubbing that they seemed likely at any moment to burst through their apparently fragile covering. It. was her voice, raucous and high with bitter resentment, that eventually cut across the sickening sound, and gave Carol cause for wonderment that her kindly, generous employer could behave in such a fashion, always supposing that f he old woman’s statements were true.

“That’s right, sir. Give ’im another for me. ’it ’im in the eye like my old man ’it me when he found out about the money. If ever there was a devil in the shape of a man, this blinkin’ old brute’s one, ’swelp me bob if ’e ain’t.”

As the last words left his lips, Jacob : Stone ceased his mad struggle to proi tect himself, and sank limply in a little pool of blood, but before he lost, consciousness Carol heard him p-asp, “The Police... .telephone Miss Oliver.. ff

A" thr> purcnri' of her emplovnr’s wotclh ponotratod bar iindorst.nndin<r a 1 wall of ice which had seemed to close - in and temporarily numb every emotion

save that of terror suddenly melted, and she became aware of a redhoi Hatred for the tall, splendidly-built yuung man, who had used his superior strength in such a cowardly lashion against a man a good many years his senior. Then, her feelings overcoming her, she asked pointing to the inert, gnasJy figure upon the floor, “Aren’t you thoroughly ashamed of yourself” You Great Coward. “Not a bit. I’ve not given him half of wlitat he deserves,” was me cheery, absolutely unconcerned reply. Carol’s sweetly curved little mouth hardened as, not troubling to answer, she fell on her knees beside her employer, and, reaching the bottle of water which was standing upon her own table, apparently unnoticed to David Murray, she commenced to tenderly wash the cut, bruised face, first of all loosening the colliar and tie.

The bite of tho cold water caused Jacob Stone to stir slightly. Seeing this, Carol decided that it would be quite safe to leave him for a moment while she carried out his orders about telephoning tho police. David Murray who had been watching her efforts at first aid, reached out n, nonchalant hand and started to make an effort to improve his own appearance.

He turned round just in time to sec Carol place the receiver to her car. There was one second of hesitation on his part; the next he had taken out a penknife and, before his intention had travelled to Carol’s brain, the cord connecting the receiver w*as cut, and tho whole thing thrown upon the floor. Carol’s faco was marble-white with anger. “You are a greater coward even than I thought,” she said cuttingly. There was no resentment, no anger o : - amazement in David Murray’s c as he disked pointing to her em-

x yer: “You don’t mean to say that this dirty skunk is decent to those who work for him, do you?”

“He is one of the kindest, most generous, land splendid of men,” was Carol’s warmly spoken reply. Tho astonishment in David Murray’s blue eyes grew deeper. He turned to the little old woman in rusty bluck, who, inwardly a trifle afraid that her champion had killed tho moneylender, had become silent.

“Tell her, Mrs Naylor,” he said shortly. Mrs Naylor was instantly galvanised | into indignant speech. “I don’t know who you may be, Miss, but if you were a girl of mine I wouldn’t let you stay one minute longer with that old brute doWn there.” She cast a contemptuously angry look at Jacob Stone.

“What has ho done to you?” inquired Carol coldly. “What’s he done?” The old woman stammered as the eager torrent of words tied her tongue, and made speech almost inarticulate, so that eventually she cast a pleading look in David Mur ray’s direction.

He enlightened Carol in a blunt but lucid fashion. “Tho tyke has an extensive tally business,” he said. Then, seeing the grey eyes puzzled, he tasked abruptly. “Are you a Londoner, may I ask?” “I don’t see that it concerns you, but as it happens I’m not. I was brought up in the country,” was Carol’s uncompromising reply. “I see.” The look of respectful admiration which had dawned on the young man’s face directly he set eyes on Carol flowered once more. Somehow he felt glad Carol was U country girl. “A tally business is conducted by agents from door to door, usually in poor parts, but a good many husbands in quite decent class suburbs would be surprised if any know how often their wives run up accounts with these follows,” said David Murray seriously. Tho Ways of Sharks.

“This particular shark employs doz ens of lesser sharks who carry round all sn.-fo nf things—rubbish. of course -—to tempt the poor women who can

m . . » ... .o spend more than : shilling or so at a time upon them selves. They encourage them to g<*> into debt, then, when matters become ' -Un <hov send them to their employer—for a loan, which he gener ..... .n have at tan iniquitous

sometimes over a thousand per cent. He gets them to part with their treasured bits of furniture as security, if, as usually happens, they are too terrified to tell their husbands, and when tho time comes that even tho interest cannot be paid, the blow falls, wih tucrushing mcrcilessness that may certainly teach the poor victim a lesson for life, but at the cost very often of a brutal thrashing from an angry husband, and the loss*of that which sho held most dear —her few sticks of furniture. That’s what has happened to Mrs Naylor—it was an invalid son, crippled and blinded in the war, for whom she was induced to yield to tho tally-man. and now the poor boy is in the infirmary, and she hasn’t a stick in the house. Jacob Stone sent a van yesterday afternoon and cleared her out of everything.” David Murray looked so fine, so straightforward, standing there, with the summer sunshine full upon his handsome face, that it seemed incredible that any girl, least of all U trusting, innocent little creature like Carol, unused to citv wavs, should, even for a moment, withhold her belief. But a sense of loyalty and gratitude was one of her outstanding characteristics, tind a favourite maxim of her dead mother—“ There are always 4 wo sides 4 o every stor^”—darted into her disturbed mind, while naturally. Jacob Atonvts generous conduct towards herself made her more mindful of her mother’s mevirn. n-nd nwaved her symip direction. Rhe let hey frnrn unon hey em-nlover who still romhined white and still, in the spot he had fallen. Then, slowly one eye onrned. (To be eontinuetL)